In the late 1860s, gentleman bank robber George L. Leslie arrived in New York and started working for Fredericka Mandelbaum, one of the city’s most notorious crime bosses. Leslie always claimed to have studied architecture in college and drew on his training to mastermind some of the most daring heists of the century, earning the nickname of “King of Bank Robbers.” His reign would prove short-lived, however, after a robbery went bad in 1878.
Above: An array of tools commonly used in nineteenth-century bank burglaries. Get a load of the "Improved Safe Opener!"
SHOW NOTES
Twelfth annual dinner of the Dartmouth Alumni Association of New York at Delmonico's. Delmonico's ranked among the most fashionable restaurants in Gilded-Age New York, famed for its steaks. George L. Leslie is said to have met robber baron "Jubilee" Jim Fisk at Delmonico's and received a coveted invitation to one of Fredericka Mandelbaum's celebrated parties. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
Delmonico's a favorite eatery of the greatest artists, intellectuals, socialites, politicians, and financiers of the day. In 1906, one of America's most venerated writers celebrated his seventieth birthday there--Mark Twain! Pictured above is a program for the special occasion. Twain, incidentally, coined the term, "The Gilded Age," along with his collaborator, Charles Dudley Warner.
A photograph taken at Twain's seventieth birthday party. (Twain, unfortunately, is not pictured here.) However, this photograph is interesting because it shows that Delmonico's also featured dining rooms for private events.
Newspaper sketch of Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum. Mandelbaum reigned as the supreme criminal fence of New York for twenty-five years, receiving stolen goods from shoplifters, pickpockets, and housebreakers. In the late 1860s, she expanded her criminal portfolio to include bank burglaries, and George L. Leslie was one of her favorite foot soldiers. Courtesy of the New York Public Library.
The vault of the Ocean National Bank. George L. Leslie is said to have masterminded a heist at that bank, backed by Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum.
The Manhattan Savings Institution. Leslie spent years planning a break-in at this bank, and his gang carried it out in 1878. Leslie would not take part, however, as he had already been shot and killed.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
---Burns, Ric and James Sanders. New York: An Illustrated History. New York: Knopf, 1999.
---Burrows, Edwin G. and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
---Conway, J. North. King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2009.
---Fox, Margalit. The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized Crime Boss. New York: Random House, 2024.
---Homberger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.
---Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain. New York and London: Harper, 1928.
---Roth, Cheyna. Between the Wars: A True Crime Collection. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023.
TRANSCRIPT
Mark Twain always liked a good challenge. In early 1873, after a whirlwind lecture tour, he and his wife, Olivia, settled down in Hooker mansion, their cozy property in Hartford, Connecticut. The couple entertained an endless stream of guests. Their neighbors came and went as they pleased, often without even bothering to knock at the door or bid farewell to their hosts. According to Twain’s early biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, “They were more like one great family in that neighborhood, with a community of interests, a unity of ideals.” Twain and Olivia were particularly intimate with writer Charles Dudley Warner and his wife, Susan. One night in mid-February 1873, the Warners came for supper, and as the two married couples sat around the table, Olivia and Susan chatted about the fiction they were reading and relishing. Twain and Charles teased their wives for their taste in books. But turnabout was fair play at this dinner table. “You think you can do better?” Olivia and Susan goaded their husbands. “Then you write a book and show ’em how it’s done.”
Twain and Warner did think they could do better, and they mapped out a plan to co-author a novel, right there at the table. Twain hated the venality of American politicians just about as much as the mediocrity of American novelists, so it’s no surprise that he and his partner dreamed up a satire about rampant corruption in Washington D.C. Twain composed the first eleven chapters, in which he introduces the Hawkins clan, an impoverished Tennessee family desperate to sell their farmland. The Hawkins’ adopted daughter, Laura, travels to the nation’s capital and works as a lobbyist, pressuring the federal government to buy her family’s property. After sundown, she parties it up in high society, making the acquaintance of crooked officials and money-hungry industrialists. To judge from the novel’s tepid reception, Twain and Warner overestimated their abilities. Their satire hit the mark, but the two storyline was insipid. One reviewer likened the outcome to a bungled salad dressing: “the ingredients are capital, the use of them faulty.”
Twain and Warner’s novel is seldom read nowadays. And yet the book’s title has shaped the way we discuss U.S. history. They called it The Gilded Age, and in so doing, they coined the definitive label for roughly the last three decades of the 1800s. Twain and Warner chose this title with Shakespeare’s history play, King John, in mind. The relevant passage reads, “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily / . . . / Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” By invoking these verses, the writers identify over-the-top opulence (and conspicuous consumption) as the defining trait of the late nineteenth century. Beneath the glittering surface of material wealth that characterized the Gilded Age, Twain and Warner saw the basest of human impulses: greed, corruption, deceit.
Few Americans embodied the era’s extravagant unscrupulousness like gentleman bank robber George L. Leslie. This criminal mastermind elevated heists to the level of an art form thanks in large part to his supposed training as an architect. Today, we’ll hear how Leslie reoriented his artistic talents toward a life of crime, rose to notoriety as New York’s cleverest bank robber, and finally fell victim to his criminal associates. This is The Art of Crime, and I’m your host, Gavin Whitehead. Welcome to episode 3 of Crimes of Old New York . . .
George L. Leslie and The Gilded Age of Bank Robbery
Born to Rob Banks
Born in 1842, George Leonidas Leslie knew firsthand that money could buy more than a comfortable life—it could save you from mortal danger. Leslie grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the well-appointed household of a prosperous brewer. At eighteen, he later claimed, he enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, where he studied architecture. He skated through school until 1863, the same year that Congress passed the exceedingly unpopular Conscription Act. This law called upon able-bodied men aged twenty to forty-five to enlist in the military and fight for the Union. However, it included a provision allowing men of means to dodge the draft if they paid $300, a sum that most could not afford. (Alternatively, they could hire a soldier to serve in their place.) There was never any question as to whether Leslie would march alongside the 250,000 Ohioans who waged war against the Confederacy. Leslie’s affluent father could spare $300 and happily paid it to release his son from military service. By evading the bloodiest war in U.S. history, Leslie was able to complete his architectural training and graduated with honors. He opened his own firm and participated in a number of important projects, even providing shovels for the construction of the nation’s first transcontinental railway.
Sidestepping conscription may have kept Leslie out of harm’s way, but it also branded him with a permanent stigma. What he and his father had done lay within the bounds of the law. Nevertheless, Leslie’s neighbors and acquaintances frowned upon it, condemning privileged draft-dodgers like George as even more dishonorable than deserters. Tall, dark, and handsome, he stood six feet, with deep brown eyes, a cleft in his chin, and an athletic physique. The scion of a moneyed family and owner of an architectural firm, he could be counted on to provide for his future wife and children. When he proposed marriage to a Cincinnati beauty named Sarah Lawrence, however, Lawrence’s father, a Civil War veteran and staunch Republican, dragged his feet in blessing the union, on account of Leslie’s evasion of the draft. Lawrence’s father eventually agreed to support the alliance, but the young couple were never to marry. In 1867, Leslie’s fiancée jilted him for a decorated war hero, probably at her father’s urging. The aborted engagement fed malicious gossip around Cincinnati.
If Leslie’s personal life humiliated him, his professional life stultified him. He tired of drawing blueprints for nondescript office buildings and counting out shovels for railway companies. He craved a more adventurous—even dangerous—occupation. It was not long before his true vocation came into focus: George L. Leslie was born to rob banks.
The Bon Vivant
The trouble was, there weren’t many banks to rob in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1867, an opportunity to leave his home city presented itself. That year, Leslie’s mother and father passed away, leaving him in charge of the family property. Still widely resented for avoiding the war and without any relatives in the area, Leslie closed his firm and sold the home he inherited from his parents.
Then, he set his sights on New York, the financial and commercial capital of the U.S. At this point in history, the wealthiest of the wealthy lived in Manhattan. Among them were several of the so-called “robber barons,” gazillionaire industrialists who had amassed their fortunes through unethical—and even unlawful—business practices. The roster included Standard Oil president John D. Rockefeller, American steamship and railroad manufacturer Cornelius Vanderbilt, steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, and communications mogul Jay Gould, among others. The filthy rich flourished despite their shady dealings thanks to the cooperation of judges, politicians, and law enforcement. William “Boss” Tweed, head of Tammany Hall and the Democratic Party’s political machine in New York, personified the sleezy rapacity of the system. Where there was big money, there were also big banks, and that was the major draw for Leslie. He packed his bags and moved to the Big Apple in 1869.
In the cesspool of corruption that was New York, the crème de la crème freely mingled with underworld scum. As a man with criminal ambitions, Leslie figured that if he could ingratiate himself to the city’s social elites, he could make inroads into organized crime. Within a month of his arrival, Leslie was playing the part of bon vivant to perfection. He booked rooms at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a scintillating, block-long, white marble building that attracted the affluent like a clearance sale on cravats. The rent of $2.50 per day entitled him to a fully furnished room, complete with a fireplace. He shopped for the finest frock coats, vests, and trousers at Brooks Brothers and rode around town in a Brewster brougham, a four-wheeled carriage that epitomized luxury. Alone in his room, he positioned himself in front a full-length mirror and practiced his smile as well as his handshake, squeezing a pincushion in lieu of a hand. According to biographer J. North Conway, Leslie perfected three distinct handshakes, ranging from limp yet cordial to firm and enthusiastic, the latter meant to signal that Leslie wished to develop a deeper relationship.
Equipped with the new digs and the wardrobe of a rich man, Leslie set about schmoozing. There were few better places to hobnob with powerbrokers than Delmonico’s, the finest fine dining New York had to offer, open since 1827. Renowned for its twenty-ounce boneless ribeye, this two-story converted mansion boasted tiger-wood tables, marble walls, and silver chandeliers. (As an aside, you can still buy a frozen Delmonico steak at the grocery store.) Leslie made a reservation and amid the swirl of waiters in their spotless white waistcoats and matching gloves, he espied a man whom he knew by reputation: a civil engineer named John Roebling. Roebling designed the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge, the largest of its kind at the time of its completion in 1866. Now, he was chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, a colossal structure that would surpass its Cincinnati counterpart in size and link the locality of Brooklyn to Manhattan. (At this time, the only way to cross from one to the other was by ferry.) Leslie sauntered over to Roebling’s table, introduced himself as a newcomer in town, and made sure to foreground his architectural credentials. No sooner had Leslie unfolded his napkin and put it in his lap than the two were talking shop. Immediately approving of the well-dressed, well-groomed, and well-mannered Leslie, Roebling promised to connect him with New York’s major players.
One just so happened to be at Delmonico’s that evening. Roebling pointed to a short round man with gingery hair, a flamboyant financier and notorious “robber baron” called "Jubilee" Jim Fisk. Rising from their seats, Roebling led Leslie between rows of linen tablecloths and past frescoed walls to the businessman. Fisk and Leslie hit it off, and the architect immediately befitted from the friendship. Fisk owned the magnificent Grand Opera House in Chelsea and offered Leslie a complimentary ticket to Twelve Temptations, a certified blockbuster. This prize paled in comparison to another: an invite to dinner at the house of Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum, queen of New York’s criminal netherworld. Mandelbaum made her living as a “fence,” buying stolen goods and reselling them at a profit. In her prime, she handled an estimated $10 million worth of ill-gotten property. Her criminal portfolio also encompassed bank robbing.
When Leslie undressed and climbed into bed that night, he may well have marveled at how easily a gentleman could move between New York’s upper crust and underbelly. A dinner at Delmonico’s and just two handshakes—one for Roebling and the other for Fisk—and Leslie had an in with a bona fide crime boss.
The Little Joker
If Leslie played his cards right at Mandelbaum’s soiree, he could persuade her to give him a job. After all, he had an ace up his sleeve—a safe-cracking device that he is said to have invented.
Aspiring bank robbers like Leslie faced a formidable obstacle in the person of Linus Yale Jr. Born on April 4, 1821, Yale nurtured an early affinity for portrait painting. Although he ultimately went into engineering, he still made use of his artistic inclinations. Yale specialized in lock-making, and his facility with pencil and paper enabled him to sketch intricate diagrams of his inventions. In 1862, Yale created the modern combination lock, hailed as burglarproof by many observers. This device eliminated the need for a keyhole, an opening that Yale believed rendered safes vulnerable. (That said, Yale did not dispense with key-operated locks entirely. He engineered numerous improvements on earlier models, drawing inspiration from ancient Egyptian technology.) Yale’s innovations met with such acclaim that in 1856 the U.S. Treasury selected his company as the sole supplier of locks to brand-new government facilities, including Custom-Houses.
Yale’s handiwork left would-be bank robbers with few desirable options. It was possible to crack a safe, but it was easier said than done. Like you see in the movies, a criminal could kneel in front of the safe was a stethoscope in hand. Then, turning the dial, he could discern the correct combination by listening to the inner-workings. But it could take hours—even days—to succeed with this method, making it necessary to remove the safe to a remote location, where robbers could tinker with the lock at their leisure. Alive to this strategy, banks increasingly stored safes in steel vaults. In the face of these security measures, many robbers resorted to gunpowder or dynamite to blast their way in, a tactic that frequently blew up in their faces. All too often, dynamite destroyed not just the vault and safe doors but also the cash, securities, and other valuables inside.
In the late 1860s, several sources maintain, Leslie started working on a tool that could thwart Yale’s locks, one that would eliminate the debris and tinnitus that accompanied explosives. He christened his invention “the little joker.” This device was a small tin wheel with a wire affixed to it. All you had to do to compromise a safe was remove the face of the number dial, place the little joker inside, and then reassemble the number dial. Once installed, the little joker defied detection. Then, you waited. When bank officials opened the safe over the next couple days, the safe left marks on the little joker, indicating the numbers in the combination. Once you had the numbers, it was simply a matter of inputting different permutations until you found the correct combination. Though ingenious, Leslie’s brainchild came with a downside. It required the robber to sneak into the bank on two occasions—once to plant the little joker and then a second time to retrieve the device and raid the safe.
Before moving on, it’s time for a few caveats. I relied heavily on three sources for this episode—King of Heists by J. North Conway, Between the Wars by Cheyna Roth, and The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum by Margalit Fox. There are major discrepancies across these sources when it comes to Leslie’s life story. It’s hard to separate fact from fiction in his biography, partly because he was given to self-mythologizing. Many of Leslie’s contemporaries claim that he invented the little joker. As Margalit Fox points out, however, some historians believe the “little joker” was invented by another bank robber named George—George White, a Massachusetts hotelkeeper who turned to a life of crime. Some of what follows in this episode might be apocryphal, but it’s all we have to go on. We'll be back after a quick break.
Lost and Found
As confident as Leslie was in his invention, circumstances conspired to jeopardize his first encounter with Mandelbaum. One day, he was walking out of a train station when his eye fell on a legless beggar, evidently a veteran given his dark-blue uniform. Such broken men were ubiquitous reminders of the horrors that soldiers had suffered in the war. Stirred by sympathy and perhaps a twinge of shame, Leslie fished out his wallet, removed a few dollars, and tucked them into a tin in one of the veteran’s hands. Leslie went on his way until he felt a gentle tug on his coat pocket. Leslie’s generosity had not escaped the notice of another panhandler, a blond-haired girl no older than ten, dressed in rags and holding a withered apple in the palm of her hand. She was proposing a business transaction, Leslie understood, and he handed over a dollar in exchange for the fruit. All of a sudden, a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy rushed out of Leslie’s periphery, brushing up against him. He scolded the little girl—his younger sister, it seemed—for selling Leslie an inedible apple. The urchin insisted that she return the money, but Leslie shook his head and told them to keep it, pocketing the apple and hopping into a carriage.
Several hours passed before Leslie realized what you might have guessed already: his wallet was missing. That kid pickpocketed him outside the train station, and he had walked away with one hell of a haul: two hundred dollars in cash, not to mention that ticket to Twelve Temptations. But these were trifles compared to the real treasure he kept in his wallet: his little joker. He needed it to prove himself to Mandelbaum, and it could take months—even longer—to recreate it.
Hardly sanguine about the chances of recovering his wallet, Leslie reported the theft at the Mulberry Street police station. It would be next to impossible, he knew, to identify the children who duped him. The Gilded Age witnessed a spike in child poverty and criminality. In New York alone, police chief George Marshall estimated that between 5,000-10,000 children lived on the street. Some swept sidewalks or peddled newspapers, yet many survived on pickpocketing and shoplifting. Simply put, a staggering number of thieves could have preyed on Leslie. The Mulberry Street police station kept a photo gallery of known offenders, but none of those pictured had picked Leslie’s pocket. As a last resort, Leslie was referred to Officer Peter O’Brien. In the course of their conversation, the architect revealed that he had been invited to one of “Marm” Mandelbaum’s gala events, and O’Brien’s eyes lit up. Mandelbaum owed her criminal ascendancy to the cooperation of crooked policemen and other public servants. Knowing that Leslie had a seat at her table, the ambitious O’Brien was willing to prioritize this case. It didn’t hurt that the architect also offered a reward.
A day or two later, Leslie heard a knock at the door to his hotel room. Opening up, he found the corridor empty, a special delivery waiting on the floor. He bent over and picked up his wallet, perfectly intact. The money was gone—no surprise there—but the thing that mattered most was right where he left it; Leslie had regained his little joker.
Meeting Mother Mandelbaum
Frederika “Marm” Mandelbaum was a German-born Jew who emigrated to New York in 1850 with her husband, Wolfe. Herr and Frau Mandelbaum took up residence in a three-story building at 79 Clinton Street in the Lower East Side. Known as Kleindeutschland or “Little Germany,” their neighborhood was home to a sizable German immigrant population. The Mandelbaums ran a dry-goods store on the ground floor, but after a few years of simply making ends meet, Fredericka turned to fencing in pursuit of a more luxurious lifestyle. She kept the shop open so it could act as a front for her illicit activities. Fredericka kept sumptuous living quarters above the humble storefront, stuffed with antiques, artwork, and upmarket furniture. It was in these rooms that “Marm” held her black-tie fetes. The great and good of New York—businessmen, lawyers, politicians, and artists—ate dinner and danced in the company of career criminals. The party-loving guests who were privy to Mandelbaum’s racket were prepared to look past it.
Leslie showed up to his first Mandelbaum bash wearing a snazzy Highland frock coat, a striped shirt, and tailored wool trousers. Mother Mandelbaum’s teenaged son, Julius, greeted him at the door and escorted him upstairs to a lavish dining room. It was not long before he located the hostess. Almost six feet and nearly three hundred pounds, Frederika Mandelbaum had black, beady eyes and curly, dark hair. When Leslie first saw her, she was holding court at a mahogany table in the corner, seated at a bench.
After he bowed and introduced himself, Mandelbaum smiled. She knew his name already, and he knew that she knew it. After he got his wallet back, Leslie discovered that Officer O’Brien had contacted Marm. Mandelbaum took a personal interest in the case and saw to it that he recovered his stolen property. Thanking the fence for her timely intervention, Leslie sat beside her, whereupon Marm clapped her hands. In a flash, an adolescent boy snaked through the partygoers, bearing a tray that was laden with wineglasses. When the server came to a stop at the side of their table, Leslie fought the urge to do a double take. It was the same blond-haired kid who had nicked his wallet. This apparent street urchin had lost his beggar’s rags since the last time Leslie saw him. Tonight, he was sporting a clean white shirt, black vest, and bowtie. A wave of discomfiture rushed over the boy as he recognized Leslie. Gesturing to her waiter, Mandelbaum inquired if Leslie had had the pleasure of meeting Johnny Irving. Leslie nodded as he realized what had happened. Irving worked for Mandelbaum. After he stole Leslie’s wallet, Irving delivered it to her along with the rest of what he had stolen that day. This is what allowed her to return the wallet after he made inquiries at the police station. According to J. North Conway, Mandelbaum and Leslie dwelled on the subject of the theft with Irving at the table. Mandelbaum mentioned that Leslie’s wallet had not contained cash when she inspected it. Another lightbulb flashed in Leslie’s head: he had been carrying two hundred dollars at the time of the theft. Irving must have kept that money for himself. If Mandelbaum found out about this infraction, Irving would suffer a serious punishment. The kid looked about ready to faint at this point in the conversation, afraid that Leslie would reveal his malfeasance. Leslie, however, decided not to. Irving relaxed, grateful to Leslie. Mandelbaum dismissed him a moment or two later, and off he went to wait on another table.
Mandelbaum had clearly gone through Leslie’s wallet. Had she seen the little joker? If so, what had she made of it? Leslie would not have to wonder about these questions for long. Later that evening, Marm waved him over and showed him downstairs to the storefront, away from the cocktails and corsages above, where they could talk in private. Mandelbaum came to the point: what was a man of Leslie’s upper-class breeding and bearing doing with a contraption like that in his wallet? She had never come across anything quite like it, but she had studied enough safe-cracking devices to know one when she saw it. Leslie was as much a straight-talker as Marm; he wanted to rob banks, and he wanted to work for her. Mandelbaum had taken an immediate liking to Leslie, but he would not win her confidence so easily. For all she knew, he was a police officer working undercover.
“Piano” Charlie’s Great Escape
Mandelbaum devised a test for Leslie. It revolved around one of her most talented recruits, Charles Bullard, also known as “Piano” Charlie. He came by his nickname honestly—his nimble fingers could dance across a keyboard like Fred Astaire’s feet across a stage. Not unlike Leslie, “Piano” Charlie realized that his artistic aptitudes had criminal applications, especially when it came to safe-cracking. Working for Mandelbaum, he pilfered more than $100,000 worth of merchandise from the Hudson River Railway Express. Shortly after, Pinkerton detectives captured the cat burglar and threw him in the clink. Leslie’s mission was to break him back out.
Meticulous and methodical, Leslie hatched a failsafe plan. Not just that—he vowed to spring “Piano” Charlie without firing a shot. Though a champion sharpshooter in college, Leslie had a loathing for violence in general and guns in particular. His first move was to visit Charlie. Meeting the inmate was of secondary importance during this outing. Among his many gifts, Leslie could lay claim to photographic recall. Inside the prison, he scrutinized the layout with his architect’s eye and committed it to memory. Then, back home at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, he did what he had done on countless occasions at his architectural firm: he drew up blueprints, marking the exact location of Charlie’s cell. Then, assisted by a team of Mandelbaum’s henchmen, Leslie rented space in an office building across from the jailhouse. (One of his accomplices, Adam Worth, went on to achieve infamy on the other side of the Atlantic, supposedly inspiring Sherlock Holmes’ adversary, Professor Moriarty. Expect a full-length episode on Worth some day in the future.) Leslie’s crew boarded up the windows of their workplace, obscuring their activities from passersby. Finally, they dug a subterranean tunnel that led from the basement of the office building straight to “Piano” Charlie’s cell, a feat made possible by Leslie’s blueprints. Without harming a hair on anybody’s head, the rescuers smuggled the pianist out of captivity and brought him back to Mandelbaum ready for his next assignment.
The Ocean National Bank Robbery
With this tour de force in pacifist jailbreaking, Leslie gained entry into Marm’s inner circle. In spring 1869, she assigned Leslie to his first bank caper. He and a team of handpicked goons were tasked with robbing the Ocean National Bank, housed in the first floor of a five-story brownstone at the corner of Greenwich and Fulton Street. (While there’s disagreement as to whether George Leslie—or George White—participated in the Ocean National Bank job, it has become a crucial episode in the legend of George Leslie.)
Leslie always claimed that he went into bank robbing for “easy money.” But there was nothing easy about his debut heist—he devoted three full months to planning it. Leslie began by canvassing Ocean National, signing up as a customer and depositing his own money there. During repeated visits to the branch, Leslie memorized its every nook and cranny, drawing a set of comprehensive blueprints. These he presented to his partners in crime, requiring them to learn the floorplan inside and out. Reaching back into his architectural toolkit, Leslie built a replica of the bank, which he erected in a massive vacant warehouse that Mandelbaum owned. (The queen-bee fence had to store her wares somewhere before selling them off.) Next, Leslie plotted how the heist would transpire, step by step. Transforming Marm’s warehouse into a rehearsal hall, he had his associates run through that routine over and over again inside the scale model of the Ocean National Bank. He even directed his troupe to rehearse in the dark so they could carry out the break-in with minimal lighting. By the time he was done with them, Leslie’s underlings could have plundered the Ocean National blindfolded.
When he wasn’t drilling criminal choreography into the muscle memory of his accomplices, Leslie was wining and dining the very men he meant to rob. After opening an account at Ocean National, Leslie befriended the bank president as well as other important officials, easily placing them under his dandified spell. By quizzing these individuals, Leslie was able to ascertain the exact make and model of the safe he would have to compromise. He gave plausible reasons for asking about this information—he wanted to ensure the security of his deposits, and the specs further intrigued him because of his architectural background. Equipped with this intelligence, Leslie purchased a smaller version of the Ocean National safe and had it delivered to Mandelbaum’s warehouse. The architect modified the shape of his little joker so it could fit inside snugly. Meanwhile, Johnny Dobbs, Leslie’s safe-cracker, practiced removing and replacing the number dial without leaving signs of tampering.
Given the unique function of Leslie’s little joker, he and his band of thieves would have to infiltrate the bank twice—first to install the invention, then to open the safe and make away with its contents. To bring this off, Leslie resolved to plant not just the little joker but also an accomplice inside the bank, somebody who could let them in after hours. Leslie’s inside man needed to be someone he could trust personally as well as somebody who could win over the bankers. Weighing the pros and cons of each candidate, Leslie alighted on perhaps the youngest member of his operation: Johnny Irving, the pickpocket. Leslie believed that he had earned Irving’s respect for staying mum about the cash the boy thief had stolen from Mandelbaum. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, barely in his teens, and hard-up for money, Irving could hardly have appeared more sympathetic and harmless. Exploiting his connections with the bank’s higher-ups, Leslie prevailed on them to hire Irving as a part-time custodian. In this capacity, the youth would sweep the floors after closing.
Leslie had his double agent in place, but he would not move forward until he had lined up an alternative way in and out of the bank. To that end, he instructed another member of the gang, Johnny Hope, to rent offices in the basement of the building where the bank was located. (Remember, the Ocean National occupied the first floor of a five-story brownstone.) Posing as the president of an insurance company, Hope made an appointment with William Kell, who rented the basement level. At Leslie’s behest, Hope went to the meeting wearing a hairpiece and a fake mustache, under the assumed identity of Lewis Cole. (Leslie picked the pseudonym in a tribute to outlaw Cole Younger, confederate of the train-robbing cowboy, Jesse James.) For $1,500, the imposter rented an office that opened onto Fulton Street, furnished with cabinets where Leslie and company could store their tools. Leslie selected this particular rental for a very specific reason: it sat directly below the safe room on the first story. As Conway remarks in King of Heists, “One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.”
Tensions mounted within Leslie’s gang as the date of the heist neared. For the architect’s accomplices, robbing a bank was a wham-bam affair—a late-night break-in, a dynamite blow-up, and a break-neck getaway. By comparison, Leslie’s production had as many moving parts as a Super Bowl halftime show. The obsessive ornateness of it all aroused major skepticism. One of Leslie’s thugs, Slang Draper, became hostile. He resented how quickly this Cincinnati dandy had risen through the ranks of Mandelbaum’s empire. For whatever reason, Draper instructed Red Leary, the resident strongman, to take out Leslie if he undermined the robbery in any way. Leary swore that he would if need be, but his promise was hollow. Leary’s loyalties lay with Mandelbaum, and if she ordered Leary to follow Leslie’s orders, then follow he would. Leary even prepared to neutralize Draper in the event of a mutiny.
After months of intensive preparation, the plan went into motion on one Thursday evening in June 1869. Once the tellers and other employees had clocked out for the day, little Johnny Irving leaned his broom against the wall, unlocked the door, and ushered Leslie and Johnny Dobbs inside. These two unscrewed the safe dial and inserted the little joker. Meanwhile, Slang Draper, Johnny Hope, and another gang member, Glen Yost, stood watch outside, all disguised with wigs and fake facial hair supposedly sourced from the Grand Opera House’s overstocked costume department. Still another robber waited at the reins of a carriage up the street, ready to act as getaway driver. Leslie and Dobbs made short work of installing the little joker, after which all beat a hasty retreat.
They waited until Saturday to commence the next phase, giving bankers ample opportunity to open the safe so the little joker could work its magic. Leslie supposedly upped security on the second night by disguising one of his men as a woman and posting him as a lookout. Nobody would suspect a comely young lady of wrongdoing, the architect reckoned. Leslie deemed the perfidious Slang Draper best-suited for the part—his slight build, rounded shoulders, and dainty hands made it easy for him to pass as feminine. Draper protested, but Leslie won the day after Mandelbaum endorsed the proposal. The afternoon of the break-in, Draper muttered curses as he slipped into a powder-blue gown and a long blond wig, a jaunty hat on top of his head and a parasol in hand. With the cross-dressing Draper in place on the street, the others forced their way into the bank. Irving was not scheduled to work that night, making it impossible to enter at street level. But Leslie was prepared for this contingency. He and his associates drilled and sawed their way upward from the basement office they had rented into the safe room overhead. Once inside, they retrieved the little joker from its hiding place. It had worked like a charm, and the safe swung open after they entered the correct combination. As they prepared to bag the cash and securities inside, Leslie stipulated that they take only what they could carry. When they reached full capacity, they jumped through the hole in the floor and ducked out of the office onto Fulton Street. The heist went off without a hitch.
The Ocean National Bank job cost Mandelbaum $3,000 upfront, plus an additional $1,500 to rent the basement office. Her investment paid off. The thieves came away with the staggering sum of $800,000—Leslie and company had just committed the largest bank robbery in New York’s history. Mandelbaum’s humble servants received a ten-percent cut of the total haul, half of which went to Leslie while the other half was divided among the rest of the gang. After all was said and done, Leslie walked away with somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000.
The robbery impressed and baffled the news media. As if applauding the culprit’s brilliance, a writer for the New York Herald praised the coup as, “A masterful bank job pulled off by one very special bank robber.” Nobody could divine how the criminals had penetrated the banks’s defenses. Looking back on the Ocean National affair in 1876, a journalist at the New York Times declared, “The natural inference is that [the safe lock] was picked. A thing never heard of before. The owners of the lock have guaranteed time and time again that it could not be picked. At the Paris exposition in 1867 a lock of the same pattern was submitted to the best lock workmen in France, England and America, and they worked for days, endeavoring to pick it, and finally all gave up in despair.”
Police were likewise stumped. Captain Thomas Byrnes was tasked with investigating the crime, but his inquiry fizzled out due to a lack of evidence. That said, he did unearth a curious detail. Shortly before the robbery, an Ocean National depositor named George L. Leslie had withdrawn all his money. Pursuing this lead, Byrnes learned that Leslie was an architect by profession and a man about town. Among the many dinner tables he frequented was that of Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum. Byrnes reportedly opined, “This can’t lead to anything good.”
Byrne’s prediction proved right in the long run. In the short term, however, Leslie struck it rich, earning the sobriquet of the “King of Bank Robbers.” We’ll hear about his rise and fall after a quick break.
The King of Bank Robbers
Between 1869-78, Leslie is thought to have taken part in more than 100 heists in New York alone. Outside the Big Apple, Leslie found work as a sort of bank robbing consultant, advising thieves from Baltimore to San Francisco. Never once did the high priest of heists spend a night in prison. His name surfaced every now and again in police investigations, but law enforcement was never able to link him to his offenses. It was not until after Leslie’s death, when his fellow criminals started talking, that the public learned of his felonious exploits.
Much like Dr. Jekyll, the “King of Bank Robbers” led a double life—a gentleman by day and a miscreant by night. In 1870, he met and fell in love with a young woman named Molly Coath, asking her to marry him following a brief courtship. How could she refuse? Her suitor was handsome and had plenty of money. She had no reason to doubt his story that he had made his fortune as a tax revenue detective. Molly said yes and may never have learned the illegal provenance of her husband’s wealth. (Leslie’s partners later claimed that she did know, however.) By 1872, Mr. and Mrs. Leslie were living together in a three-story farmhouse on Fulton Street, New York, surrounded on all sides by a manicured lawn. Scratch that—I should have said Mr. and Mrs. Howard, since Leslie had fabricated that fake surname to go with his fake job. Leslie was not just a man of means—he easily managed his steep $100 monthly mortgage payment—but also a man of culture. He accumulated an enviable book collection, went to the theater on a regular basis, and waxed poetic about painting in art galleries. If he and his wife weren’t patronizing the arts they were probably carousing with society ladies and gentlemen. Leslie kept his personal and professional lives separate; he made a point of avoiding his criminal associates unless they were working or bumped into each other at one of Mandelbaum’s legendary ragers.
Beginning of the End
Leslie’s troubles began with his libido. He had never really excelled at the whole monogamy thing—he had taken multiple mistresses since his move to New York, even after marrying Molly. It was a matter of time, perhaps, until his roving eye fell on the beautiful Babe Draper, sister of Johnny Irving. She may have even been the same waif who sold him that wrinkly apple for a dollar while Irving pickpocketed him outside the train station. She had since blossomed into a young woman and married another of Leslie’s minions, Slang Draper. Leslie acted as not just a lover but also a protector to Babe. Draper beat her, and when Leslie found out about it, he furnished his paramour with a double-barreled, pearl-handled pistol for self-defense.
Slang Draper had always envied Leslie because Mandelbaum held him in such high esteem. His antipathy toward Leslie only festered when he heard rumors about Babe’s infidelity with him. Draper once caught her in possession of an elegant camel-hair shawl, an expensive accessory that Slang most certainly had never purchased. The sewn-in label bore the name of the dry-goods store that had sold the garment, and Draper hot-footed it over to the business to inquire about the buyer. The proprietor remembered that Babe came in with a dapper man. When she oohed and awed at the shawl, her companion bought it without a moment’s hesitation. Pleased with the gift, she smothered him with kisses. Asked to describe the gentleman in question, the proprietor recalled that he wore a pearl stickpin. Leslie owned one that fit this description and practically never left home without it. Draper was all but convinced that Leslie had made the purchase. His suspicions of an affair only increased when he found the pearl-handled pistol among Babe’s belongings. He had seen Leslie with a weapon just like it.
Tensions escalated after an ill-fated robbery in mid-February 1878. That month, members of Leslie’s gang traveled out of state to plunder the Dexter National Bank in Dexter, Maine. In many cases following the Ocean National job, Leslie had bribed a bank employee who could open the door for him and his men and look the other way as they unlocked the safe. This time around, Leslie enlisted a cashier named James Wilson Barron. Barron agreed to cooperate with the criminals because he harbored “a great deal of animosity” toward his employers. Leslie and Barron hammered out a battle-plan. The crooks would knock on the back door to the bank, whereupon Barron would let them in and hand over the key to the vault. Once they made it past that barrier, all that remained was to plant the little joker in the combination lock to the safe. The robbers would then return, steal the cash and securities inside, conceal the booty in railway trunks, and ship them to New York.
On the night of February 23, Leslie’s crew assembled behind the Dexter National Bank, disguised as always. When they knocked at the door as planned, however, nobody answered. Finally, Red Leary forced it open, and in they went. Discovering Barron inside, Leslie demanded to know why he had abandoned the plan. Starting to sweat, Barron announced that he no longer wanted to participate. When Leslie told him to hand over the key, Barron refused. Leslie cemented his renown as the sultan of bank heists for his fastidious planning, his ability to anticipate and pre-empt any potential problem. He seized absolute control of the situation, whatever it happened to be. Now, he felt it slipping through his fingers. Losing patience, Leary and Slang Draper advanced on Barron, clearly intent on roughing him up. Leslie abhorred violence as much as ever and commanded the thugs to back down, to no avail. Leary pistol-whipped Barron across the face, and Draper threatened further punishment unless he cooperated. Growing desperate, Barron blurted out that he was powerless to help them. The vault’s inner door operated on a timer and could not be opened until the next morning. The thieves would not be able to get in. Incandescent, Leary and Draper manhandled Barron, binding his hands behind his back and stuffing a gag in his mouth. The vault had two doors, an inner and outer one. The ruffians jammed the helpless cashier in between the two doors and then shut the outer door, trapping him inside. Again, Leslie tried to rein in his henchmen, but there was no stopping them. Leary and Draper stole $500 from Barron’s pocketbook plus an additional $100 from a drawer before the lot of them absconded.
Sometime later, police discovered Barron, still trapped between the doors and badly injured. He succumbed to his wounds about an hour later. Leslie learned of the death in the newspaper. Never before had anyone died as a result of his robberies, and not only did he now have blood on his hands, but Pinkerton detectives were being dispatched to ferret out the perpetrators. Thinking it prudent to keep a low profile, Leslie booked a train to Philadelphia and purchased a firearm to protect himself. Equally concerned about Molly’s welfare, Leslie summoned her to the city of brotherly love so they could be together.
A month or two passed, and Leslie went back to New York, agreeing to meet with Draper and Leary in a Brooklyn saloon. Since the fatal robbery, paranoia had taken hold of all three, each afraid another might go to the police. As they sat around a table, Draper warned Leslie not to snitch, and Leslie talked back. Draper made as if to strike him, at which point Leslie overturned their table and whipped out a pistol. Leary’s stock and trade was physical force but this time he broke up the fight before it could turn bloody. What happened to Barron was an accident, he asserted. Leary and Draper had never meant to kill him. As they righted the table and sat back down, the collective heart rate returned to normal, and they considered whether other gang members might betray them to the authorities. For his part, Leslie viewed Irving as a threat; he had developed a drinking problem that made him erratic and intractable. Draper spoke about this anxiety with Irving, who went ballistic, vowing that he would kill Leslie for it. The mutual trust they once shared had eroded to nothing.
Leslie had no illusions: his reign as “King of Bank Robbers” was coming to a close. He wanted out of the business altogether, and if he desired a peaceful exit, he would need to proceed with caution. He two-timed Mandelbaum, forging a partnership with her number-one rival, John Grady, known as “Traveling Mike.” Worried about unexpected visits from the police, the Pinkertons, or a vengeful former associate, the bank-robber baron sold his prized library along with his furniture and cleared out of his house. Leslie stayed on the move for much of March and April, never sleeping in the same place twice. Finally, he came to a rest in a Brooklyn cottage at 861 Greene Avenue, persuading “Traveling Mike” to assign him a personal bodyguard. His name was Johnny Walsh, and he had killed more than once.
Meanwhile, Leslie popped over to see Molly in Philadelphia, telling her that he would throw in the towel as an insurance detective—he had made powerful enemies, he explained. When she responded in alarm, he assured her that he had hired protection from the Pinkerton detective agency—yet another falsehood. He had one last job to attend to in New York, and after that, he was out.
That last bit was true. Leslie did have a final undertaking that required his attention—the robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution on the corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street. The master thief had been planning this break-in on again and off again for the past five years, and if he pulled it off, he would score the biggest jackpot of his entire career. What better way for a gentleman robber to retire?
Nice Try
Leslie’s gang successfully plundered the Manhattan Savings Institution on October 27, 1878, stealing an astonishing $3 million. Yet Leslie himself did not take part. By the time of the break-in, he was already dead.
On the night of May 29, 1878, Leslie went for a drink at Murphy’s Saloon in Brooklyn, accompanied by Walsh. A handwritten note was delivered to him there, possibly sent by his mistress, Babe Draper. Leslie tore the note to pieces and instructed Walsh to call him a cab. When Leslie left the bar, he told his bodyguard not to follow, certain that he would be safe on his own. Walsh watched Leslie disappear in a carriage and never saw him again.
About a week later, on June 5, the body of a man was discovered at the foot of Tramp’s Rock in Yonkers, about three miles from Murphy’s Saloon. The victim died of two gunshots—one to the head and another to the heart. There was no way to identify him at first—his wallet was missing—but given the violent cause of death, police had ideas about who could provide a positive identification. It wasn’t long before Frederika “Marm” Mandelbaum told them who it was: George L. Leslie. The crime boss covered the cost of his no-frills funeral, attended by members of his gang along with his shattered wife, Molly. The sultan of bank robbery had earned Mandelbaum more than a million dollars in his nine years of service. In return, she paid ten dollars to have him buried in a pauper’s grave, a far cry from the luxury Leslie savored in life.
Police were never able to bring charges for the homicide, but they strongly suspected that Slang Draper had pulled the trigger. He had more than one motive to bump off his former boss, chief among them jealousy over Leslie’s entanglement with Babe. One piece of evidence certainly pointed to Slang’s involvement. The murder weapon was left behind with the body. It was a double-barreled pistol with a pearl handle, the same one Leslie had given to Babe.
Considering Leslie’s life and work, it’s a pity he deployed his myriad talents toward thievery and deceit. Had he pursued an honest line of work, history might have remembered him as one of the Gilded Age’s most esteemed architects rather than one of its most notorious criminals. But then, Leslie lived at a time when dirty money was often the most desirable kind. As Mark Twain once wrote, “What is the chief end of man?—to get rich. In what way?—dishonestly if he can; honestly if he must.”
Comments