Gangster Redemption Read online

  If Lawton was unable to find someone’s identity to steal, he would tell the jewelry store owner he was Michael Roberts, his two middle names. Sometimes he was Robert Michaels. In Daytona he was the owner of the vacant condo.

  Lawton also had a story prepared that he knew would convince a store owner he was on the up and up.

  He said, “I’m looking to buy a diamond ring for my wife. Ten years ago when I got married, I bought her a small ¾ carat diamond. I didn’t have money back then. I was just starting out in the construction business. Now I’m looking for a two-carat stone.”

  “Oh, we’ll take care of you.”

  The jeweler then looked at Lawton’s $2,000 pinky ring and said, “This diamond is kind of dirty. It needs cleaning.”

  “Can you clean it?”

  “Oh sure. Can you come back and get it?”

  “That’s fine.”

  “Can you fill out a slip?”

  Lawton joked, “That’s worth money. I don’t want you to steal it on me.” And the jewelry store owner then wrote down the condo owner’s name and his phone number on the slip of paper.

  “When it’s done, give me a call,” said Lawton, knowing the phone call would go unanswered. If he couldn’t arrange a phone number to call, he’d tell the owner, “I’ll stop by in a couple of days because I’m traveling,” or because he was building a house or whatever else he was “doing.”

  And because Lawton had given him his expensive diamond to clean, the clueless owner felt perfectly comfortable showing him his best pieces.

  “The owner sees me as a classy looking guy,” said Lawton. “I have tattoos on my body, but I always cover them up. When an owner trusts you, he’s no longer afraid of taking his diamonds from the safe or the other hiding spot. He’ll bring out the box that contains the loose diamonds for special customers. Getting him to show me that box is an important factor in a robbery.”

  Lawton already had valued the jewels in the display cases, and he figured there had to be at least $300,000 worth of merchandise including some Rolex watches. The owner brought out the small box with the special cache of diamonds.

  “This box is rarely kept in the big safe – that’s where the jewelry from the display cases is kept,” said Lawton. “That small box is kept in a secret area where it will be safe. The owner figures if he is robbed, the robbers won’t take the smaller box with the special diamonds. But of course, by watching the owner very closely, he inadvertently shows me where he keeps it, and it’s no longer safe.”

  The store owner went and got the small box, opened it, and showed him the expensive bling. There was a small fortune inside that box. In his head Lawton added up the value of the diamonds and other jewels stored therein. In his head he said to himself, There’s a half a million here. This is where the money is. This is going to be a big score. He couldn’t wait to tell his crew holed up back in a cheap hotel room under false names.

  “Now everything’s a go,” he said. “I know where all the jewels are, and I know the best time to rob it, late in the afternoon when few people would be entering the store.”

  Lawton already knew how many people worked there, what kind of cars they drove, and when they arrived and when they left. He knew who opened and who closed the store.

  While Lawton was browsing he always looked to see where the security buzzers that summoned the police were located. Some owners had alarm triggers in their pockets on a key chain. They could buzz you in, and they could also alert the police. Often Lawton knew when he announced a robbery he had to make sure the hands of the store owner were visible. He’d put a gun in the owner’s face before he could even think to put his hands in his pocket.

  Lawton didn’t care about the front door buzzer that was rung to admit people into the store. Those were good for Lawton. They kept out customers during robberies. They might stop the smash and grab robbers but not a professional like Lawton. A buzzer doesn’t stop a customer wearing a Rolex. Store owners want the Rolex owners in their store.

  Lawton came back the next day, fully prepared to rob the place. He had bought two large pillow cases, folded them nicely, and put them under his pants in front. He stuffed wire ties like the cops use in his jacket pocket. He hid rubber gloves in another pocket. His bb gun was in his belt in the small of his back. And he brought his unnamed accomplice.

  On this day the owner buzzed Lawton in. Lawton opened the door with his knuckles, making sure never to leave fingerprints. He was conscious never to touch anything. In twenty robberies, Lawton never left a single print. The FBI once pulled a palm print after Lawton jumped over a jewelry display case, but the bureau doesn’t have palm prints on record.

  After Lawton and his accomplice walked into the store, Lawton told the owner, “My partner is also in the construction business.” He gave a phony name. He too was dressed well. “He also wants a ring for his wife.” The owner had no suspicions at all.

  When they walked in the store owner was talking to his landlord.

  “You have a customer,” said the landlord. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” The landlord walked out.

  Lawton waited until the owner walked away from the security buzzers that summoned the police. This was the man Lawton had to subdue. He made it a policy to take the guy who might cause trouble down hard.

  The owner was standing between the counters. Lawton’s partner, meanwhile, walked over to the other employee.

  Lawton abruptly pulled his gun and stuck it in the owner’s face. His entire demeanor changed from businessman to psychopath. Lawton became an animal. The owner was behind the counter and out of view of anyone who might be walking by.

  “Get down on the floor,” Lawton screamed. “This is a fucking robbery. Get down or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.” The owner was petrified. He was on the floor, and Lawton had a gun to his head. Lawton told him, “If you open your eyes, I’ll blow your fucking head off, motherfucker. I dare you to open your fucking eyes.”

  Lawton looked over to make sure his partner had the other employee tied up on the ground behind the counter. He did. Lawton had cased the place perfectly. No one entered the store.

  “We were behind the cabinets, and we opened them and started pulling the jewelry off the shelves and out of the safe,” said Lawton. “I then went for the hidden box with the loose stones.”

  Lawton had a third man outside waiting in the car, which carried a fake license plate in case someone noticed. The plan was for Larry to signal, and his driver was to come around to the back door. When Lawton looked out the front window, he could see there was a police cruiser sitting right in front of the store. He would have to wait for the cruiser to leave before he could signal his wheel man. The twenty-minute wait seemed endless.

  “I was waiting, waiting, and waiting,” he said, “wondering What are those fucking cops doing”

  Lawton placed two pillowcases stuffed with diamonds and jewelry by the back door. He and his accomplice remained calm while the owner and his employee laid quietly on the floor tied up and out of sight. Lawton kept screaming, “Keep your eyes shut. Don’t let me see them open.”

  Finally the police car left, and Lawton gave the signal. Lawton told the merchants, “You better not fucking move, because I’m going to have someone watching.”

  Lawton and his partner fled out the back door, threw the two pillowcases filled with jewelry in the trunk, and headed up International Drive.

  “The first thing we did was go to a rest stop and change the fake plate back to the legal one,” said Lawton. “We got back in the car and from that moment we never stopped driving except for gas and a quick bathroom break. We drove from Florida to Brooklyn, and within twenty-four hours the diamonds were out of our hands and into those of the fence.”

  Lawton drove to Little Italy, where, he says, the illegal diamond exchange is located. He parked nea
r his fence’s place. He always put money in the meter because he didn’t ever want to emerge with his bag of cash to find a policeman giving his car a ticket. He left his two accomplices in the car.

  There are a lot of jewelry stores in the area of Manhattan surrounded by Chinatown. Fifty vendors sell their goods in a large store, and underground, below that level, is a vault with a man with a shotgun standing guard. Another man sits in a booth behind a cage. These men, who belonged to the Genovese crime family, were the men who fenced Lawton’s pillowcases filled with jewels.

  “I would go down there with my loot, go in the back room, and dump it out,” he said. “If there was any evidence I wanted to get rid of – the pillow cases, the fake license plate, my clothes – I could burn it in their incinerator that they used to melt gold.”

  Over time Lawton got to know these guys so well that when he went down there, they hardly paid him any attention. In looking around Lawton could see their entire operation. He saw that they kept their money under a false baseboard along the wall. They would move the board and slide out a large suitcase filled with millions in cash in hundred dollar bills. From that suitcase came the money they used to pay Lawton. Before handing it over, they ran the bills through a counting machine which spit out any counterfeit bills. They didn’t want Lawton getting caught with wrong money. The Daytona robbery netted $800,000 in jewels. The fences put $300,000 in cash in a plain paper bag and handed it to Lawton, who walked down the street to Positano’s to talk with Rocky the owner and have his usual vodka rigatoni.

  *

  Lawton now knew where the Genoveses kept their money, and he told himself, Jesus, I’m going to rob these motherfuckers. His head was spinning. There were millions in untraceable bills down there. There was only one guy with a gun, a man who knew him, and the second unarmed man who sat in the booth behind the cage. I could tie them up and walk out with millions, Lawton thought.

  After Lawton finished eating, he got into the car where his two accomplices were waiting. Lawton made sure his two accomplices never knew the identity of his fence.

  Lawton voiced his plan to them. He said, “Hey guys, there are millions down there. I’m going to rob them. If I go back down there, they’ll let me in.”

  “No, no, Larry,” they chimed in unison. “No no, fuck no. You’ll get us all killed. You’re fucking crazy, Larry.” And they were right.

  Said Lawton, “In my head I saw myself walking in, taking all that money in the suitcase, and then taking off, but I also knew if I did that, I’d be dead, because it was the Genoveses. I wouldn’t have been able to be protected by anybody. Once I robbed them, the news would hit the streets, and the Genoveses would have a number on my head so large I would have had to leave the country and still worry.

  “I had a young son. Everyone knew where I lived. My accomplices knew I was totally crazy, and they were begging me not to do it, because they would have had to go on the lam too.

  “After thinking about it, I decided not to do it.”

  He cleaned out a jewelry store in Sarasota, Florida, instead.

  After returning home to Florida Lawton got back on the road in his search for the perfect target, and he drove until he came to Sarasota, on the west coast of Florida. He found a good one right on route 441 next to a dive shop. Stopping in Sarasota gave Lawton and his accomplices an opportunity to take advantage of why tourists came to Florida. During the week Lawton spent casing the jewelry store, they were able to go to the beach and to camp out.

  “Sarasota is a great place,” he said. “I love Lido Beach, the best beach in the country. The sand never gets hot, and you can drink on the beach. I didn’t want to be out in the open, but of course, my two accomplices and I went to the beach. When deciding where we should stay, I thought, Let’s be adventurous. Let’s go camping.

  “We were three Brooklyn guys camping. I bought a tent, a lantern, all the camping equipment, and we put it in my Cadillac. We don’t know anything about camping, but we went to Myakka State Park, and we set up. We didn’t even know how to open the tent.”

  Every morning at six Lawton drove to case the store, leaving the other two behind. He didn’t need anyone with him. He didn’t want anyone with him. He wanted to be alone.

  “This was in 1993, right after Hurricane Andrew,” he said. “I got all dressed up, wore my Rolex, and I went into the store. I told the owner I was a director for FEMA.

  “‘I’m Mike Roberts,’ I told him, ‘and I’m setting up trailers in case there’s another hurricane. I’m looking for something for my wife.’ It was a great line of conversation. We got talking, and he could see I was an intelligent guy intending to spend some money for his wife. The idea is to get him to trust you.”

  At the end of the day Lawton returned to the campsite and put a half dozen hamburgers on the grill. He walked away for a minute, when a raccoon walked over, climbed up, and stole one of the hamburgers. Lawton was furious.

  I’m going to catch that motherfucker and kill him, Lawton told himself. I want to wear that little fucker like a hat, like Daniel Boone.

  Lawton set a sheet on the ground, put food in the middle of it, attached to the four corners of the sheet, and tied the rope over a tree. Lawton waited for the raccoon to walk into the middle of the sheet so he could yank him up and catch him.

  The raccoon did just that, but when Lawton yanked on the ropes, the raccoon was too quick for him. He jumped out of the sheet.

  “He was quick, but I was determined to catch him,” said Lawton. “I laid down a trail of food leading up to the picnic table, and I got out my nine iron, and I waited for him. The little fucker came walking up, closer and closer, and boom, I whacked him so hard with my club that I killed him. I hung the raccoon from a tree to skin him, but I had nothing but a butter knife. The raccoon was hanging there when some guy walked over and saw these three psycho motherfuckers and said, ‘You can get in trouble for that. If the ranger sees that, you’ll go to jail.’ I had no idea. I also had no intention of getting caught killing a raccoon.”

  There’s a wooden bridge at Myakka State Park, an overpass where huge alligators swim underneath. Lawton took the raccoon carcass and fed it to the gators.

  It wasn’t the threesome’s only bout with nature. On another morning when Lawton was away, his brother went into the IHOP for breakfast, while the third man decided to go hiking. He had sneakers on, and he was walking through swamps, and he came back covered in ticks and bugs. He itched for days.

  After casing the jewelry store, Lawton finally went inside. There was only one person inside, and he jumped the counter, got him down, tied him up, and started clearing out the place. It was a little store. The cases were only in the back.

  While he was cleaning out the counters, an elderly couple walked in on him. He went up to them and informed them, “You’re in on a robbery.” He showed them his gun.

  “Oh my God,” the elderly woman said, and she started to get down on the floor.

  “No no no no no, ma’am,” Lawton said. “You don’t have to do that. Come with me. You two sit in these chairs in the back and don’t move.” He didn’t tie them up.

  “Face the wall,” he said. “Don’t look at me. I’m not going to hurt you. Nothing is going to happen to you. Don’t move for two minutes until after I leave the store. I’m going to come back in and check. Don’t make me be a bad guy.”

  Later the woman told the feds, “What a nice man.”

  Lawton ordered one of his crew to go and get the car. There was a dive shop next to the jewelry store and some traffic. He brought the car around, and Lawton wasn’t there, so he came back around the front. All the while Lawton was waiting for him out back.

  “The moron is back in front, so I have to go back in the store,” he said. “The two old folks were still sitting there facing the wall. I went to the front and again gave him the signal to co
me around back, and finally he gets there, and we put the jewelry in the trunk, and I drove on Route 27 to I-75 to I-4 all the way to my parents’ house in Palm Bay, Florida.

  “I emptied the bag of jewelry on a bed. Picture a whole bed full of jewelry. It was cool. I loved it.”

  Lawton called his father in. He said, “Dad, look at this.”

  “Oh my God. What is going on, son,” he said. “If you get in trouble, give me a call. Be careful.”

  “No one’s getting hurt,” Lawton said. “Just the insurance company.”

  He brought his mother in, and she squealed “Oh my god.” She held her hands over her mouth. She picked up a diamond ring.

  “Ooooh, this looks nice,” she said,

  “Keep it,” said Lawton.

  “Of course, she wouldn’t, and she was so worried,” said Lawton. “What I put that poor woman through.”

  “I took the jewels to New York and came home with $200,000 cash. It was a decent score.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Diamonds Are a Guy’s Best Friend

  Larry Lawton’s next robbery took place in Fort Lauderdale, his hometown. After casing the entire area, he picked out a promising store, which was a little different in that the jewelry cases were in the middle of the store and along the walls. He went in to look around and was able to locate the security buzzers. Two women worked in the store.

  On this beautiful sunny day Lawton and his accomplice drove to the front of the store. As usual he wasn’t scared, but his palms were sweating and his adrenaline was pumping. Lawton liked the feeling of the adrenaline high. Over time it would become addictive.

  Lawton entered the store by himself. He announced the robbery and made both women employees lie down on the floor behind the counter. He tied them up with plastic flex cuffs, walked to the front door, and nodded to his accomplice waiting in the car to come in. The accomplice then helped him clean out the place.