Three Sharpies

At first glance, the job suggested the professional touch of a career criminal. A man delivered a package of dry cleaning to the ten-room apartment on Manhattan's Park Avenue. Two hours later he telephoned to apologize--wrong address. Next morning two men showed up to reclaim the package; one of them drew a pistol and quietly invited the butler to instruct the doorman downstairs to admit their ringleader. Then they waited politely for their victim--Fashion Designer Mollie Parnis, 46--to finish a telephone call before they went into her bedroom. "You don't want to get hurt," said one soothingly. "Where are the jewels?"

Designer Parnis (Mrs. Leon J. Livingston) motioned to a dressing table, where she had tossed some of her jewelry the night before. She pleaded: "Don't take my jewels. I worked hard to get them . . . There's $1,000 in my bag over there. Take that and I won't turn you in." One of the holdup men seemed to hesitate. One swore. The first one snapped: "Watch your language; ladies present." They ordered Miss Parnis and her secretary into a bathroom, barricaded the door, and left with $114,800 worth of jewelry, plus the $1,000.

"I Just Froze." It was one of New York's biggest jewel robberies in years, and the newspapers were duly respectful. "Perfectly executed," said the Daily News.

Police Commissioner George P. Monaghan assigned 20 detectives to the case. Within 48 hours he proudly called newsmen, produced most of the loot, and the robbers, who turned out to be anything but professional. They were unemployed hoodlums, of the variety who are called "sharpies" and who wear a uniform--peg-top pants, sharply pointed shoes, Windsor-knot ties, tight blue topcoats. The ringleader was Joseph ("The Blimp") Paladino, 24. His accomplices: Joseph ("Jo-Jo") Guidice, 20, and Carmine ("Zoc") Zoccolillo, 21, also known as "Toothy" because he likes to wiggle his pivoted front teeth. The plan was to rob the apartment on the first visit, but Guidice was scared of the butler. "I froze," he explained with the air of a peasant who had seen his king. "I just froze up there." On their "mistaken" package they left the label of a real dry cleaner for whom Paladino used to work, and that was their undoing. Employees of the cleaning establishment told police that the not-so-brainy Paladino had recently been asking searching questions about the Parnis apartment.

"You Done a Good Job." At the station house, after they had told all, one of the trio apologized to Designer Parnis. (Said she: "Poor boys.") Paladino earnestly told newsmen: "Put in the papers that we didn't hurt anybody on this job. Put in there that we had a gun and a knife but we didn't use it, and tell how the gun wasn't loaded." When Commissioner Monaghan announced promotions for seven detectives, Guidice jumped dramatically to his feet, offered his hand to one of them and said: "We done a job and we failed. You done a good job and you get rewarded. I congratulate you, too. God bless you." The detective shook hands and mumbled, "Thanks, kid."

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