This 1933 story interested me because it was linked to Jesse L. Livermore, the sometimes super rich speculator who made other news that year, including a brief, but strange disappearance.

While it was amusing to picture dozens of Long Islanders roaming around Ronkonkoma, digging up their neighbors' yards in a frantic search for buried treasure, it was obvious that part of the above newspaper story was ridiculous, as was speculation more jewelry was hidden. It's also doubtful Barry participated in 100 jewel robberies.

The May 29, 1927 jewel robbery at Livermore's Long Island Evermore estate became the cornerstone of the legend of Arthur Barry, America's most over-rated jewel thief. In truth, he was a member of a gang headed by James Francis Monahan, a long-time pal from Worcester, Massachusetts. Monahan was better known as "Boston Billy" Sullivan, and was the acknowledged leader of one of several gangs targeting wealthy families for brazen jewel thefts.

Several elements of the Livermore theft made it particularly interesting. Even in 1927, the image of the jewel thief was that of a cat-like burglar — picture Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief" — who sneaks into homes or apartments while occupants are away, selects his loot, and leaves unseen. That fits the definition of burglary.

What Boston Billy and Arthur Barry did at the Livermore house was pull a robbery, confronting and cajoling their victims, even negotiating with them. This pair prided themselves in being "gentlemen jewel thieves", an image Barry went out of his way to promote.

With Jesse Livermore as the victim, the thieves robbed a man regarded as one of the richest in the country. It was akin to robbing Donald Trump in the 1990s.

(Picture Trump talking about it afterward: "Yes, Boston Billy and Arthur Barry are thieves, but they're nice fellas, they really are. They apologized for robbing me, because they like me, like me a lot, they really do. But they said they did it because I'm so rich, I really am. So we made a deal, and I told them what they could take, I really did. When they left, they thanked me, and said, 'Mr. Trump, not only are you very, very rich, but you are a great human being! It was a huuuge thrill meeting you!")

It was downhill from there
Jewel thieves received kid glove treatment from the press because many people regarded them the same way they would bank robbers during the Depression — as modern day Robin Hoods, overlooking an important difference: These people took from the rich, and kept what they took. The poor were left to fend for themselves.

Oddly, many who've written about the Livermore job treat it as a crowning achievement for Boston Billy and Barry, when, in fact, neither benefited from the robbery, and it led to their capture.

As years passed, the self-promoting Barry became more famous than the taciturn Monahan. A prison escape and his unusual re-capture after three years a fugitive added to the Barry legend, fed by his tendency to shamelessly take credit for anything that would support the notion he was a "master jewel thief."

But if Barry were the "master thief," why did Monahan wind up with the item — Mrs. Livermore's $50,000 pearl necklace — that was worth more than the combined value of everything else stolen that day? Because Monahan was the boss, that's why.

Besides the pearl necklace, items taken from the Livermore home included two rings, each valued at more than $10,000; Livermore's watch, worth $1,000, and a pearl stick pin valued at $2,000. (A cigarette holder was never mentioned until that 1933 story out of Ronkonkoma.)

Livermore's watch was found ten days after the robbery in a Manhattan letter box at 7th Avenue and 33rd Street, and the stickpin was among items recovered by laborers in Ronkonkoma in 1933. The bag containing the stickpin and several pieces of relatively cheap jewelry had been buried by Barry, who, for awhile, lived in Ronkonkoma with Anna Blake.

THE DOWNFALL of "The Boston Billy Gang" began seven months before the Livermore robbery when they took jewels valued at $19,000 from the Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion of Percy Rockefeller, who retaliated by hiring private detectives from the Burns Agency in New York City. The Burns operatives and another private detective, Val O'Farrell, a former New York City policeman, did much to uncover the identities of the members of the "Boston Billy" gang. (Years later, O'Farrell figured prominently in the capture of Arthur Barry after he escaped from Auburn prison.)

In the 1920s, the nation's most publicized jewel robberies were committed against the wealthy in the New York City area or Newport, Rhode Island. There obviously were several gangs operating in the four states involved — New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island — but police, the press and the public tended to heap almost all of the blame — or credit — on the first jewel thieves arrested.

Thanks to the Livermore caper, those thieves would be Boston Billy and Arthur Barry. One newspaper account of the robbery:

Granted, that's a sketchy account, but it includes two fascinating details generally accepted as fact: The thieves left the Livermore estate in an automobile stolen from a garage next door. And they abandoned the car at a railway station. It also is widely believed Boston Billy directed the robbery from outside the house, sending Barry and another gang member inside to carry out his orders. To me, the escape in a stolen car suggests a fourth gang member — the person who went next door to steal the car while the robbery was in progress. Had the thieves arrived in the getaway car, they might well have alerted their victims, who were upstairs, presumably asleep.

Let the questions begin
As reporters and police investigated the Livermore job, many questions arose, and many more answers were suggested. The questions were obvious, many of the answers seemed fanciful.

Let's consider two of those questions: How did the robbers get to the Livermore estate? And where did they get the ladder they used to enter the home through a second floor window? Yes, I know. An even bigger question might be, since the robbers confronted their victims, why didn't they simply put on masks and enter through the front door before the Livermores and their guests went to bed?

Apparently, the answer is the victims would be more vulnerable in their nightclothes, and, more importantly, the robbery was conducted in the dark, the only illumination provided by flashlights the robbers carried. Also, Boston Billy must have believed the jewelry was upstairs, not in a downstairs safe.

This was a typical Boston Billy robbery. He was known for using ladders to enter homes on the second floor.

Okay, back to question one. Why? I don't know, but it's widely accepted Boston Billy and Barry took a train from Pennsylvania Station to a station at Great Neck, Long Island, then walked to the Livermore home. This is what Barry told police after he was captured, but it seems strange, because Barry lived in Ronkonkoma, east of Great Neck, and, afterward, the robbers took their loot to another Long Island location, the Jamaica neighborhood in Queens. Why begin their adventure in Manhattan?

A fourth gang member has never been mentioned or identified, but almost certainly participating in the robbery was Eddie Kane, who had worked as a chauffeur for the Livermores until he was fired.

Whether there were three thieves that night, or four, I can't imagine them walking three miles from a railway station to the Livermore home. I think they must have driven to Great Neck by yet another person, perhaps Barry's girl friend, Anna Blake, or one of Boston Billy's girl friends, who dropped them off. In the whole wacky story of the Jesse Livermore jewel robbery, one of the few consistent elements is the thieves left the estate in a car stolen from a neighbor's garage.

THE LADDER? Common sense says the robbers used a ladder already on or near the property. Assuming Kane participated, as the former chauffeur, he would have known about such a ladder, especially if it were stored in the garage.

Craziest version of the robbery appears in "Jesse Livermore: World's Greatest Stock Trader," a 2001 book by Richard Smitten, who doesn't speculate on how the robbers arrived. He has Monahan (Boston Billy), Barry, Kane and Anna Blake just sort of materialize on the Livermore estate, sitting around a campfire roasting hot dogs, waiting for the Livermores and their guests to go to their bedrooms. (The woman's role in the actual robbery is unclear, but the next paragraph is why I dismiss the Smitten version of event.)

Smitten claims Monahan had a specially-made steel ladder consisting of five sections, each four feet long and two feet wide, and that he assembled the ladder on the site of the robbery. Smitten added, "Boston Billy always left the ladder behind him after a job, as his signature." Yeah, sure. This would mean Boston Billy had such a ladder made before every job. The alternative: He returned to every crime scene days later and asked, "Pardon me, folks, have you come across a steel ladder consisting of five sections? I need it for work."

Also, imagine three or four men riding a train to Great Neck, each holding at least one four-foot-long section of a steel ladder. No matter how they traveled, transporting a 20-foot ladder, even in pieces, would be ridiculous, especially if they planned to leave it behind. (Some journalists estimated Boston Billy had pulled more than 100 robberies — undoubtedly an exaggeration — but even if the accurate number were, say,only a dozen, that steel-ladder business cannot be believed.)

HOWEVER THEY arrived, Boston Bill, Barry and Kane departed in a stolen vehicle, left it at the Manhasset, Long Island, railway station, where they stole a taxi cab, which they abandoned in front of the Queens County Motor Company, a garage on South First Street, Jamaica. There were reports four men and a woman were seen getting into the cab in Manhasset. If true, that complicates my theory a woman drove the gang to the Livermore estate — unless the car that delivered them also was stolen, then abandoned, and the woman waited at the railway station for her partners to rejoin her.

Which reminds me, I saw no speculation that Livermore's neighbor, Walter Roessler, was in on the robbery. Or was it coincidence he happened to borrow a friend's car and leave it in his garage on the day his neighbor's house was robbed? (The Livermore Robbery Game is more fun than Clue.)

Two days after the robbery, police received an anonymous phone call from a man who claimed to have participated in the robbery. He said he got into a fight with other members of the gang when they reached Jamaica. Cause of the fight was a woman. The caller — most likely Kane — said he was beaten up by another member of the gang.

I believe the woman at the heart of that fight in Jamaica was a victim, Mrs. Dorothea Livermore, who reportedly flirted with Barry and talked him out of stealing her two most valuable rings. My guess is Monahan (Boston Billy) felt Barry had been used, which lessened the value of the loot by perhaps $50,000. That may be why Monahan kept the pearl necklace, which represented 60 percent of the take. Perhaps Monahan blamed Kane because he followed Barry's orders and not the boss's.

You're under arrest!
First to be apprehended, probably because of information provided by the "anonymous" caller, was Arthur Barry, who used the occasion to begin creating the legend that was accepted for many years. In the story that follows, Barry is sometimes referred to by his alias, Gibson, and even his brother, who had no alias, is identified as William Gibson. And if Barry is telling the truth about the Livermore robbery ... well, I still can't believe two experienced thieves pulled such a robbery almost on impulse, and took a train to Long Island, then walked to the house they intended to rob.

* "Admitting the corn" apparently was an expression sometimes used to acknowledge the truth of an accusation.

Barry blamed Monahan for his capture, one reason he so freely confessed. Another reason was his successful attempt to convince police not to pursue charges against Mrs. Blake and his brother, William.

Interestingly, at first Jesse and Dorothy Livermore said they could not identify Barry as one of the men who robbed them. They changed their minds after Barry told police about the bantering that went on between he and Mrs. Livermore, and how he lit a cigarette for her. (In talking to police in 1927, Mrs. Livermore said of the robber who turned out to be Barry: "You'll have to admit the man is charming."

Charming, maybe, but surprisingly, Barry was a one-woman man, devoted to Anna Blake even while he was in prison. Twelve years older than Barry, Anna Blake died of cancer in 1940.

Too many women
James Francis Monahan, on the other hand, fancied himself a ladies man. “Women just naturally fall for me,” he told police after he was tracked down and captured July 7 in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

At the time Monahan was juggling two women whose first names, while spelled differently, were pronounced the same. Erma O'Brien was a Manhattan manicurist; Irma Curry was the daughter of the mayor of Key West, Florida, and had met Monahan while he was vacationing there and posing as a diamond dealer. There may have been a third woman, one he intended to meet in Old Lyme.

It's likely Monahan intended to give Mrs. Livermore's pearl necklace to one of his girl friends, probably Irma Curry, because when he left her in Key West, he said he'd return to open the biggest jewelry store in Florida.

Unknown to Monahan, police learned about his relationship with Miss Curry, and had tipped her off to the man's real occupation. She agreed to help police set a trap for him in New Jersey, where they were supposed to meet, but on July 7 he was arrested instead in Connecticut. Police also wanted to arrest Eddie Kane, but he remained in hiding until December of the following year.

With Boston Billy and Barry in custody, newspapers began embellishing the exploits of the two thieves.

First, Boston Billy:

Both stories went on and on and on, and here and there one might have found a smidgen of truth, though the Barry tale went off the rails with that bit about a chauffeur named Wing Fu. The closet thing Arthur Barry had to a Wing Fu was Eddie Kane.

As for "a gorgeous apartment, lavishly furnished," it was well known by mid-1927 that Barry lived with Mrs. Anna Blake in a rather modest home she'd rented in Ronkonkoma.

It was a wonder anyone believed the Arthur Barry legend, but some did, and that legend actually grew while he was in prison, and especially during his three Richard Kimble-like years after he escaped the penitentiary in Auburn, New York. (More on that later.)

Meanwhile, things become complicated
When Barry spilled his guts about "Boston Billy" after his arrest in 1927, he did more than implicate Monahan in many jewel robberies; he said "Boston Billy" had committed murder a few years earlier. More than one murder, actually.

When caught, James Francis Monahan, alias "Boston Billy," would claim it was Barry who was the murderer. There were three shooting incidents hanging over the two jewel thieves, but none resulted in a trial. Both quickly confessed the Livermore robbery in hopes this would help them avoid being charged with murder.

This also explains why both men refused to testify against Kane after he finally was caught and charged with participating in the Livermore robbery. (He was found not guilty.)

Barry had implicated Kane in his early conversations with police, then thought better of it ... because while Kane was a possible suspect for one of the murders and for the shooting that had crippled a Greenwich, Connecticut, policeman, he was more strongly believed to be a witness, which is why neither Monahan nor Barry wanted to incur Kane's wrath more than they already had.

In the end, Kane returned the favor, pleading guilty to carrying a concealed weapon in the Connecticut case, for which he received a prison sentence of three to five years. Kane did not implicate either Barry or Monahan in the shooting.

ONE INCIDENT that received little attention after Barry and Monahan were arrested was a jewel robbery that occurred near Oyster Bay, Long Island, five days after the Livermore home was invaded. On June 4, Carl Schmidlapp, a former director of Chase National Bank, reported that a pearl necklace and two diamond rings, valued altogether at $200,000, had been taken from from his home the night before.

Barry would confess to the Schmidlapp robbery, but police might not have believed him, and no jewelry from that crime was ever recovered, at least, not in connection with Barry and Monahan.

As for Mrs. Livermore's $50,000 pearl necklace — the one kept by Monahan — it may well have wound up around the neck of a Connecticut woman who had no idea of its true value. Monahan had the necklace in his car when he drove to Old Lyme, but near Darien, Connecticut, he noticed a state trooper on his tail, so he tossed the necklace — and his gun — out of a car window. The state trooper drove past him, so Monahan returned the next day, but found no trace of the gun or the necklace.

On July 31 an insurance company, advertising in New York City-area newspapers, offered a $3,000 reward for the return of the necklace. No one ever collected that reward.

Barry was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Because he had a longer record, Monahan received a 50-year sentence. Upon their release in New York, both could be returned to Massachusetts to face additional jail time for several crimes committed before they ever teamed up on their first jewel robbery.

The two men slowly faded from the news until December 22, 1928 when Eddie Kane was arrested in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He faced seven indictments for murder and also was charged with participation in robberies, including the one at Livermore's home.

Barry and Monahan agreed to testify when Kane was tried in January, 1929, for participation in the Livermore jewel theft, but Barry changed his mind at the last minute and refused to testify. Monahan made the trip to the Mineola courthouse, but had no intention of incriminating Kane. His real reason for making the trip to the Mineola courthouse was revealed during his trip back to Dannemora Penitentiary in the Adirondacks.

When the train pulled into the Albany station, Monahan jumped through the window of a railroad car. Sergeant John Smith of the Nassau County Police detective division smashed another window and fired at the thief, grazing his head and sending Monahan sprawling on the tracks.

Monahan would remain in the New York prison system until 1956, and then serve two years in Massachusetts. Free in 1958, at the age of 60, he could not find employment. He died on October 22, 1960 in Worcester (Mass.) City Hospital. He had been a resident of Belmont Home for the indigent. Newspaper obituaries referred to him as "the gentleman jewel thief", and confused him with Barry by claiming the quote from Mrs. Livermore ("You've got to admit the man was charming") was directed at Boston Billy.

Next stop: Solvay. Briefly.
The next chapter in the story of the Boston Billy gang would put the spotlight solely on Arthur Barry. There'd even be a Solvay angle — Solvay being the name of my hometown. It was a brief visit, but it was unlikely Barry ever forgot it.

While Monahan had served time at Sing Sing and Dannemora (aka Clinton Correctional Facility), Barry begged New York prison officials to keep him and his former partner separated. And so Barry was quickly transferred from Sing Sing to Auburn Prison, about 25 miles west of Syracuse.

It was from Auburn, on July 28, 1929, that Barry and inmates George Small. Steve Pawlak and Joseph Caprico made good an escape.

The theory at the time was they instigated a riot as a distraction, and it was all too easy to start one in an overcrowded facility packed with 1,700 disgruntled convicts, two whom would be killed in the chaos that took authorities five hours to quell.

Prison officials believed the riot was designed to produce a mass breakout, perhaps as many as 200 inmates, but only four escaped. Barry was shot twice — in a knee and in his back — and also injured a foot during his leap from a 20-foot high prison wall.

Barry, in a magazine article many years later, and presumably in the book that grew out of those articles ("The Gentleman Was a Thief," by Neil Hickey), would claim he led the charge, but articles at the time say it was Pawlak, serving a life sentence, who was first up the steps of a turret to the top of the prison wall.

The four escapees broke into the prison arsenal to launch their escape, and armed themselves with riot guns. Barry would recollect that he and Pawlak stopped the first automobile they saw on State Street, outside the prison. It was driven by a man named Jacob Reese, whose passengers were his wife and four-year-old son.

Barry didn't mention Small or Caprico, but I believe they, too, got into that car. Barry said they forced Reese to drive to the edge of the city before letting him go, but that wasn't true. Mrs. Reese and the boy were left on State Street, but Reese was forced to keep driving.

Police and reporters later found the Auburn man outside the village Solvay, just west of Syracuse. Reese said he jumped out of his car near the State Fairgrounds, which border the village, and ran. One of the convicts, he said, pursued him for about 100 yards, and fired four shots. All four missed, but there was a hole through his left trouser pocket.

The convicts then drove into the village and abandoned Reese's car. The escapees entered a house at 144 Boulder Road in what we used to call East Solvay. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Schwartz, were out for the evening. In their absence, the convicts stole clothing and left behind two bloody prison outfits. Police figured Caprico for sure was one of the intruders because he was the shortest of the fugitives, at five-foot-two-inches, which prompted an emergency tailoring job on Mr. Schwartz's trousers. Judging by the jagged pieces of trouser ends left behind, Caprico's scissor work was rather sloppy, which made his new outfit rather conspicuous.

At this point Small and Caprico apparently separated themselves from Pawlak and Barry.

According to Barry's story, he and Pawlak set out to steal a car they found in an open garage. That garage, about two-thirds of a mile from the Boulder Road house, was on property at the intersection of Orchard Road and West Genesee Street, at the southern edge of the village. The car and the garage belonged to Dr. Eric W. France, a dentist.

The two escapees got into Dr. France's auto, but did not do it quietly. As Barry prepared to drive away, the windshield shattered, spraying slivers of glass in both eyes. The owner of the house had fired his shotgun at the convicts from a second story window.

Said Barry in an American Weekly article on January 25, 1959:

It was in Fonda that police recovered a Franklin sedan reported stolen by J. M. Hastings at 105 Scarboro Drive, Solvay

By then Barry had hopped a freight train to Albany, where he had friends who arranged a discreet doctor's visit for treatment of his eye injuries. The bullet wounds would have to wait. Barry's story continues:

Lindbergh kidnapping is Barry's undoing
As if Barry's strange story couldn't get any stranger, he might have remained free forever if it weren't for the March 1, 1932 kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. from the family home in Hopewell, New Jersey. This marked the return of private detective Val O'Farrell into the life of Arthur Barry. Unlike others interested in Barry's capture, O'Farrell did not believe the fugitive was hiding in Canada ... or South America ... or Europe.

The detective's hunch was Barry had become a kidnapper, and was probably living close enough to Hopewell to study the layout of the Lindbergh estate. That hunch was based on Barry's reputation for wearing socks over his shoes during his robberies. Because a footprint beneath the Lindbergh nursery indicated the kidnapper not only wore socks over his shoes, but walked with a limp, O'Farrell thought Barry might well have taken the Lindbergh baby. O'Farrell hadn't seen Barry in years, but knew about the gunshot wound in the leg the inmate had received during his escape in Auburn, and concluded Barry may have broken a leg or an ankle in his jump from the top of the wall. The detective correctly assumed Barry now walked with a slight limp.

Further, the Lindbergh dog was silent during the kidnapper’s visit — and members of the "Boston Billy" gang knew how to distract or harmlessly disable watchdogs. Symbols on the ransom notes were astrological, said O'Farrell, and Barry was into astrology.

It was well known that Barry and Monahan only worked on moonless nights. So did other thieves. Moonless nights were darker. O’Farrell pointed out the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped on a moonless night. Finally, of course, there was the ladder used in the kidnapping. This was a trademark of a Boston Billy-Barry robbery.

All that was interesting, but Barry's whereabouts were still unknown. In October, police in New Jersey received a tip from a woman who believed a man living near Newton, about 50 miles north of Hopewell, was the Lindbergh kidnapper. Why she believed it, she didn't say, but when detectives checked it out, they followed O'Farrell's hunch — and took along a photograph of Arthur Barry.

What follows is from a syndicated newspaper story by Ruth Reynolds, crime reporter for the New York Daily News. It appeared in the Binghamton, New York, Press on December 28, 1949.

Despite O'Farrell's list of reasons to support his theory, police didn't believe Barry had any connection to the Lindbergh case. Barry was returned to Auburn prison, owing the state almost 23 years, plus seven for the jail break. He was later transferred to Attica Prison, but was out on parole in less than 17 years.

One of the myths included in the fairy tales you'll find about Barry online is he didn't kill anyone. But there were at least four people killed — two policemen and two convicts — and one policeman crippled because of Barry's crimes. And while he, among others, describes himself as "The King of the Jewel Thieves," his stories more befit a court jester.

In conclusion . . .
Arthur Barry was in prison from late 1932 until 1949. The Livermores divorced in 1932, she married a former prohibition agent minutes after she became legally free. Livermore married in 1933, his ex-wife divorced the former prohibition agent in 1934, had a new boy friend in 1935, when her drinking went out of control. The year, she and Jesse Livermore Jr. were drunk one evening, had an argument, and she shot him. Could have been an accident, could have been drunken carelessness. He recovered, but went on to have fairly wasted life, committing suicide in 1976. His mother, despite many years of alcohol abuse, lived until 1985. She was 90.

Jesse Livermore Sr. fatally shot himself in 1940, the same year Anna Blake died of cancer. From time to time press wondered again where Arthur Barry hid his non-existent jewels. James F. Monahan, as mentioned earlier, left prison in 1958 and died two years later.

Arthur Barry, thanks to several newspaper and magazine writers, was called the greatest jewel robber of all time and the American "Raffles," both descriptions being undeserved. He died in 1981. He was 85 years old.

Which gets me back to where I started: Why do stories about jewel thieves sound like fairy tales? Because that's what most of them are.

So who's the greatest jewel thief of all-time? Obviously, it has to be some unknown genius who knew how to keep a secret and was never caught.