"King of Bank Robbers" ... George Leonidas Leslie

5fish

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Well @O' Be Joyful , you have hidden another Cincinnati secret form us all here... The guy did shirt the civil war... He was Ocean Eleven before the movie...


When Leslie arrived in New York City, he was met by the repercussions of the Civil War.[3] The city was overcrowded, and the rate of crime was high. The corrupted politicians and police left the city to the many gangs that occupied it. Not long after his arrival, Leslie fell into the criminal lifestyle of the gangs. Due to his architectural skills, he quickly went to the top of the ranks in the criminal world.[2]

Here is story... The Architect...


It’s a cliche of heist movies — that moment when the criminal mastermind runs through his brilliant plan with blueprints and models. Those scenes all owe a debt to George Leslie, one of the greatest burglars in American history. In his new book, “A Burglar’s Guide to the City,” which analyzes the intersection of architecture and crime, author Geoff Manaugh tells his story.

Leslie had been trained as an architect at the University of Cincinnati, where he graduated with honors. He was charismatic, well connected, and could have worked for any of the wealthiest clients in the city, from private bankers to financiers. But his first thoughts upon arrival were not about joining the parade of design and construction on display, still less about how his own remarkable architectural talents might help to beautify the city for those who could never afford to live like kings. His first thoughts were that he could use his architectural skills to rob the place blind.

No one thought twice of it — why would they? Leslie dressed well, he had been trained as an architect, and his illicit spatial knowledge of the city only continued to grow.

At the same time, Leslie went to work cultivating contacts on the opposite end of the social ladder: tradesmen of a different kind, and experts in darker undertakings. Leslie’s secret weapon here was a notorious fence of stolen goods, the Prussian-born Fredericka Mandelbaum, widely known as Marm.

Her eye for trickery and subterfuge extended even to architecture: she had a dumbwaiter installed inside a false chamber in her home chimney, where she could stash sensitive items in a rush. Rather than opening or closing the flue, a small lever in the fireplace would lift her hot goods to safety.

In her own way, Mandelbaum was a Dickensian supervillain, complete with a labyrinthine lair on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Her thieves’ den there boasted multiple entrances, unmarked doors, armed guards, and even a disguised access point through a pub on Rivington Street. These all led into a goods yard where deals and trades could be made.



Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum (March 25, 1825 – February 26, 1894)[1] [2][3] operated as a criminal fence to many of the street gangs and criminals of New York's underworld, handling between $1–5 million in stolen goods between 1862 and 1884. Like her principal rival John D. Grady and the Grady Gang, she also became a matriarch to the criminal elements of the city and was involved in financing and organizing numerous burglaries and other criminal operations throughout the post-American Civil War era
 

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Here a article about his big bank robbery and the detail that went into it...


Jesse James and Butch Cassidy may be more infamous as American bank robbers, but neither could match the skill or the audacity of George Leonidas Leslie, a mastermind known in his day as the ‘King of the Bank Robbers

On October 27, 1878, Leslie’s gang broke into the Manhattan Savings Institution and stole almost $3 million in cash and securities (about $71 million in today’s money), making it one of the greatest bank robberies in American history.
 

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He was not a live for his last bank heist...


On October 27, 1878, five months after Leslie’s murder, his gang, including Shang Draper, broke in and robbed the Manhattan Savings Institution. One of the largest investigations in New York City police annals began immediately following the heist, and slowly, one by one, the men who robbed the Manhattan Savings Institution were tracked down and brought to justice—all except George Leslie. Through a series of informants, mostly criminal underlings who were jealous of Leslie’s success, police were able to identify Leslie as the ring-leader. They were later able to connect Leslie to most of the bank robberies throughout the country. Since a bulk of the loot stolen from the Manhattan Savings Institution was in the form of certificates that the robbers were unable to spend, most of the loot was returned to the bank. Only a mere $15,000 in cash from the haul was never recovered.

He was kill by a jealous husband...

In May 1878, five months before Leslie planned to rob the Manhattan Savings Institution, he stopped at Murphy’s Saloon in Brooklyn. Someone in the saloon approached him and handed him a note. He recognized the handwriting as that of Babe Draper, the 21-year old wife of one of his gang members, Shang Draper, an infamous criminal and thug. Leslie had been secretly carrying on an affair with Babe. In the note, Babe asked to see Leslie one last time before he left New York City forever. Leslie couldn’t resist. He left the bar to have one final rendezvous.

police investigators surmised that he had been lured to his death by Babe Draper and killed by her husband, who had found out about the illicit affair. The King of Bank Robbers, the man responsible for carrying out or masterminding the robbery of millions of dollars, was buried in a $10 pauper’s grave in the Cypress Hill Cemetery


It is said he train and plan 80% of the bank robberies...

It took criminal mastermind, George Leslie, three years to plan the robbery down to the minutest detail. Leslie, a dashing, handsome, University of Cincinnati-educated architect, who came to New York City in 1869, was dubbed, “The King of Bank Robbers” by New York City police, newspaper reporters, and underworld figures, although they didn’t know his true identity until after his death. According to law enforcement authorities, from 1869 through 1878 Leslie was responsible for more than 80 percent of all the bank robberies in the country, either by planning the robberies or carrying them out himself. Despite his reputation, Leslie was never apprehended and never spent a day of his life in jail. Ultimately, it was Leslie’s roving eye, not his criminal exploits that led to his downfall.
 

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I was interduce to me by @rittmeister , he was a great bank robber . Who's style of bank robbing influenced Dillinger....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Lamm

Herman Karl Lamm (April 19, 1890 – December 16, 1930[1][2][3]), known as Baron Lamm, was a German-American bank robber. A former Prussian Army soldier who immigrated to the United States, Lamm believed a heist required all the planning of a military operation. He pioneered the concepts of "casing" a bank and developing escape routes before conducting the robbery. Using a meticulous planning system called "The Lamm Technique", he conducted dozens of successful bank robberies from the end of World War I. In 1930, Lamm committed suicide when surrounded by a law-enforcement party in Sidell, Illinois,[4] after a botched heist. Lamm's techniques were studied and imitated by other bank robbers across the country, including the famous John Dillinger.
 
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