Robbing the Red Baron

The Lufthansa Airlines cargo facility at New York's Kennedy International Airport is called one of the safest in the world. The "valuable room," a white brick structure about one story high, is rigged with electronic alarms and monitored 24 hours a day by closed-circuit television. Yet last week six masked men, acting with speed and daring worthy of Lufthansa's own Red Baron, broke through this security to pull off the biggest cash robbery ever in U.S. history.

Lying in the vault were about 50 Ibs. of paper money from the Commerzbank of Frankfurt to the Chase Manhattan Bank. It was a treasure far bigger than the $2.78 million taken in the Brink's holdup of 1950, bigger even than the $4.3 million Purolator heist in 1974 in Chicago. The Lufthansa bandits' haul: about $5 million in American dollars, nearly $1 million in jewelry, as well as an undetermined amount of foreign currency.

A freezing wind was whipping across Jamaica Bay when the bandits struck at 3:05 a.m. They drove a stolen 1978 black Ford van along North Boundary Road and turned onto a roadway at the north end of the Lufthansa cargo area. The thieves first stopped and clipped a chain securing the gate, and then proceeded about 400 ft. to a ramp. There an airline employee, Kerry Whalen, challenged them. The gang pistol-whipped him, threw him to the floor of the van and drove onto the loading bay area.

Inside the building, three other robbers, who had entered earlier, knew that the Lufthansa night crew was on a coffee break. They rounded up the employees in the lunchroom and handcuffed them. Then they joined the others, opened the door to the warehouse, drove the van inside and went straight to the high-security vault. With them they took the manager. One of the robbers held a gun to the manager's head, and, threatening to kill him, forced him to open the vault. With all employees handcuffed, the six men started throwing the boxes of money and jewelry into the van. Only one hour later, the robbers drove out the way they came.

"It went off like clockwork," said James Connolly of the Port Authority Police, which patrols Kennedy. "They were so well prepared that they had enough handcuffs for all the employees." All signs point to an inside job. According to police, only three robbers came into the warehouse by van. "Three other members of the heist team got into the cargo building on their own," said one investigator. "I feel someone inside opened the door for them." All six thieves spoke with Brooklyn accents.

Police also believe that an employee may have tipped off the robbers to Lufthansa's treasure. Apparently it was there by a fluke. The money was scheduled to be transferred from Kennedy into Manhattan on the Friday before the heist, but when a Brink's truck arrived to take the money to Chase Manhattan, the Lufthansa foreman was too busy directing another shipment to open the vault. Some investigators think that there may have been a conspiracy to keep the money at the facility over the weekend.

There also were reports of Mafia involvement. Underworld sources said that the robbery was sanctioned by Joseph DiPalermo, a New York Mafia captain. According to these sources, members of the robbery team went through practice runs under the noses of airport guards. At a nearby motel frequented by Kennedy workers, DiPalermo reportedly was seen waving last week's newspaper and boasting, "Those are my boys."

Will the Red Baron robbery turn into the proverbial perfect crime? At week's end, clues were still scarce. The FBI and New York police were questioning 150 Lufthansa employees. Some hostages caught a glimpse of two assailants who briefly took off their masks, but the description of them was vague: white, 25 to 30 years old, both of medium height, both with dark hair, one with a mustache. Three days after the robbery, police found the black van parked on a Brooklyn street with three parking tickets on the windshield. Rushing to the scene, the detectives discovered several partial fingerprints. Yet even in abandoning their getaway vehicle, the robbers seemed to be taunting the police. Carefully placed in the center of the floor of the van, like an invitation, was an empty envelope labeled John F. Kennedy Airport.

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