Herbert Emerson Wilson - I Stole $16,000,000: King of the Safe-crackers

Copyright 2015

A DARLING TERRACE PUBLICATION

All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher

Originally Published:
The New American Library of World Literature Inc.
501 Madison Avenue, New York
Published as a Signet Book, April 1956

Signet Books First Printing, April 1956

Darling Terrace Publishing First Printing, August 2015

Illustrations and Artwork by:

Harrison Boyd, Chil Print & Promotions Angela Winkler

Special Thanks To: Randy White (Research)

Heres the stranger-than-fiction true auto-biography of a mastermind of crime-the blazing inside story of a safecracker who stole more than $16,000,000 and learned that crime does not pay, when he was put behind the bars for almost twenty years.

In his own words, Herbert Emerson Wilson, a clever and daring thief, describes how he planned and pulled off robberies that baffled the police and the FBI investigators for years until he was caught. With his own specially-made explosives, his nimble fingers, his well-run syndicate of mobsters and musclemen, and his beautiful and wily moll, Wilson blasted and torched, tunneled and talked his way into banks, stores, armored cars-without leaving a clue or a finger-print.

This no-holds-barred confession by one of the most famous white gloves robbers reveals the fear, desperation, hair-triggered tension and spine-tingling chills that made every day a hell on earth for a safe-cracker with a million bucks of stolen money in his possession.

I am sure the book will go a long way toward lowering the prolific incidence of crime in the world especially in the U.S.

- JULIAN H ALCO, former Warden San Quentin Penitentiary

Herbert Emerson Wilsons autobiography is the most human document among nonfiction books I have ever read. It has no parallel in current contemporary literature. I have read it three times and it has captivated me each time from the beginning, and invariably has held me spellbound to the end.

Moreover, in my opinion, the book contains the most timely message for the younger generation of any book yet written. Parents can, with utmost safety, recommend it to their children.

I am sure the book will go a long way toward lowering the great incidence of crime in the world-especially in the United States.

JULIAN H. ALCO

Former Warden of San Quentin Penitentiary and Member of the California State Board of Prison Directors

Come on out, Wilson, youre under arrest! Come out while you can with your hands up, you havent a chance! Were Government agents, the house is surrounded, we know youre in there! Come out or we start blasting!

A barrage of blows on the downstairs door had snapped me from a sound slumber. I heard the shouted words as I scrambled out of bed and it was the devils own time to hear them, at 2 A.M. in the morning and less than twenty-four hours before Christmas Day. I remember thinking that some people have no consideration for others, that there is not enough kindness in this world. Then I leaped to a nearby window and looked down on the front lawn. Up in a California sky dirty clouds were scudding across the moon; the yard below was swarming with John Laws, armed with revolvers, rifles and machine guns!

They meant business!

I knew it and I didnt wait to call out a greeting. Instead I wheeled and hurried down the stairs, wondering if I should go for my gun and make a fight of it. Of course I was mindful of the fact that if I did, my visitors would open up with their own artillery and the house could soon resemble a sieve. More important, so could I. No, a gun battle would get me nothing but premature death; I vetoed the idea even as I conceived it, but there still might be a chance for flight. In the gloom I missed my footing and cart wheeled down the last four steps. I rose and dashed to the breakfast room, pajama coat fluttering behind me, peeked through a crack in the window shade, and it was just as I expected. More cops!

Give them credit; the boys were doing their best not to disappoint me.

What a change three hours can make. At 11 P.M. in my comfortable home, attired in smoking jacket and having completed my reading of the last volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I had gone to bed a wealthy, carefree man, with the spirit of the impending Christmas in my heart. And now this! Dazed by the suddenness of it all I stumbled back into the living room, eyes sweeping around the walls and again hearing a shouted command to come out with my hands up. But what had brought it all about? The police had no reason to suspect me. I was sky-high above suspicion! I never made mistakes!

I had no way of knowing that two days earlier three Government men had grabbed my chief confederate, Herb Cox, on a Los Angeles bound train, or that for the past twenty-four hours he had been singing like a frenzied canary.

I stood there uncertainly, angered by my own sudden feeling of helplessness. I wanted to do something. I was willing to try anything but I couldnt think of what to do. The gray matter seemed to have gone on strike and wouldnt function. A heavy tread of feet resounded on the back porch. They were coming at me from both ways, and I heard the banging of the gunstocks that were being used on the door as battering rams. Mechanically, to get in the swing of things and do something-everyone else seemed to be doing something I stepped to the nearby switch and snapped on the lights.

The hullabaloo was awakening others. Lights began to go on in the surrounding homes of that exclusive Los Angeles suburb.

But that bewildered-looking, pajama-clad fellow in the center of the room. Was he clever, debonair Herbert Emerson Wilson, the former minister and king of the safe-crackers who always dressed for dinner? Was he the man who never made mistakes, who had successfully stolen more than $16,000,000 from armored cars, and blasted or torched safes throughout America during the Roaring Twenties? It didnt seem possible. At that moment I must have looked anything other than the mastermind of crime.

Come-on out, Wilson! Come out with your hands up!

I knew they had ideas for my future, ideas not in accord with my own plans for my Christmas dinner on the morrow-roast turkey with all the trimmings, to be followed by mints, coffee and a fat cigar in the living room. They would see to it that I would be dining away from home, and they dont serve six-course meals in jail. More than that, with my unparalleled record in crime, they would probably toss me into a dark hold and throw the keys into the ocean.

More shouts, a few threats and I heard the splintering of wood that heralded the end. Strangely enough I had a mental flashback to a few hours earlier, of the Salvation Army lass who had been ringing a small bell on a street corner when I passed her. Her smile revealed even white teeth, she had said, God bless you, Sir, when I dropped a bank note into the yuletide pot.

But I couldnt think of how I should combat the crisis on hand.