IT WAS the most daring and sensational heist in the history of New York City.

Twelve men, some dressed as ice sellers, lay in wait close to the Rubel Ice Corporation in Brooklyn, as an armoured cash truck pulled up to collect the firm’s takings.

In the peddlers’ carts? Machine guns.

As the truck pulled up to the ice firm’s loading bay, the vehicle’s three guards were held at gunpoint as $427,000 in cash was loaded into three waiting cars. In today’s money, that’s about $8m.

Such was the bandits’ skill, no suspicion was aroused within the factory.

They didn’t bank on the curiosity of six amateur tennis players across the street, who grew curious by the sudden quiet. But when one wandered over and peered through the wire mesh, they were forced to the ground.

Within minutes, state police across the Triborough area were told to stop any suspicious cars - particularly those carrying two or more men.

But the cops were looking in the wrong place. Like a scene from a movie, the robbers had fled on motorboats from a nearby dock.

NEW YORK’S biggest heist was conceived by two common thugs. John Manning, 27, and Bernard McMahon, 41, better-known as Bennie the Bum.

It came about as they strolled the boardwalk area of Coney Island, looking for bathhouses to rob.

But it was just off Surf Avenue where they spotted an armoured United States Trucking Corp truck stopping to drop off cash at the Brooklyn Trust Company bank.

The idea quickly germinated; they were to rob a money truck.

AFTER BRINGING on three more crooks, they tailed trucks every day. But there was a problem; the routes were random.

Even the driver only learned of his itinerary once he’d climbed inside the truck, when he was permitted to open the sealed envelope to reveal his stops.

A chink in the company’s armour was soon spotted: the one stop it always made was the Rubel Ice Corporation. A plan was quickly formed.

On the morning of August 21, 1934, the truck rolled up to the ice factory. When it was opened up, the security team were swooped upon.

THE BOAT getaway was well-planned, but there was one thing the gang didn’t anticipate; the clumsiness of McMahon.

As they went to ditch their guns overboard after passing through Rockaway Inlet into Queens’ Jamaica Bay, he accidentally triggered his shotgun, blasting off a chunk of his leg. It was only by chance that the boat wasn’t sunk.

After landing at Arverne, police had switched their attention to the rivers and seaports, meaning the rest of the gang were able to slip back into the city with impunity.

McMahon was taken to a seedy boarding house on the Upper West Side where his shattered limb was amputated in an upstairs room by an underworld surgeon.

As the operation was going on, the doorbell rang. Outside? A police officer.

One of the gang nervously opened the door, only to find the cop in an embrace with a woman. The officer’s elbow had accidentally rang the buzzer.

The gang member, indignantly, said: “You ought to be ashamed, waking people out of a sound sleep at this hour of the morning. What would the Commissioner say if I reported you?” The cop made a swift exit.

But the operation was in vain, and McMahon died from blood loss.

McMahon - for the record - was stuffed into the trunk of a car for disposal. When his body wouldn’t fit, the surgeon sawed off his other leg and placed it beside him. The gang paid the doctor extra cash to ensure he got a proper burial. But there’s no honour among thieves - the corpse was found in a suitcase shortly afterwards.

IT WASN’T long before the suspects were known to the authorities, and some were later convicted. Others languished in prisons around the country for unrelated crimes, with their involvement in the New York heist laying on file in case they were ever released.

None of the loot was ever recovered, and none of it likely will be.

With McMahon gone, perhaps you’re wondering what happened to his partner in crime, Manning?

Well, he met a similarly gruesome end, with a significant amount of mystery. He was walking along East 108th Street in his shirtsleeves on a hot summer’s day two years later when a gunman emerged from a dark doorway and fired at him five times, hitting him with four bullets.

Manning died instantly. The motive and the attacker remain a mystery.

Some suspect there is someone out there who couldn’t risk him talking…

Share