Latest / History Dark / The Perfect Heist _ Exhibit A _ S2E12
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: An armored car filled to the brim with cash. A
- 0:06Speaker 1: classic example of a brilliant inside job.
- 0:10Speaker 2: The perfect heist.
- 0:12Speaker 1: But there's no honor among thieves.
- 0:15Speaker 3: It feels like a kick right in the stomach. It
- 0:22Speaker 3: just jumped out. Wow, both of us looked at it
- 0:24Speaker 3: and went, uh-oh.
- 0:33Speaker 1: Enter the world of forensic science, the science of crime,
- 0:37Speaker 1: where a suspect's guilt or innocence can hang on a single.
- 0:40Speaker 2: Piece of evidence.
- 1:15Speaker 1: On the job application for some armoured car companies, prospective
- 1:19Speaker 1: employees are asked, have you ever thought about robbing an
- 1:22Speaker 1: armoured car? If they answer no, they don't get the job.
- 1:27Speaker 1: Everyone has had a dream about pulling.
- 1:29Speaker 2: Off the perfect heist. Meet the three Ps.
- 1:33Speaker 1: Angelo Portante, an armoured car company employee for eight years.
- 1:39Speaker 1: Piero Percibali, a veteran officer with the Toronto Police Force.
- 1:43Speaker 2: And Andre Peliconi.
- 1:45Speaker 1: A part-time chef and former bouncer.
- 1:49Speaker 2: Angelo Portante and.
- 1:50Speaker 1: Piero Percibali were ideal.
- 1:52Speaker 2: As the two masterminds.
- 1:56Speaker 1: Angelo knew the inside workings of the armored car company,
- 1:59Speaker 1: and Piero knew the inside procedure of the cops. Armored
- 2:05Speaker 1: car security today is so tight that most thieves wouldn't
- 2:08Speaker 1: waste their time trying to rob one. But no matter
- 2:14Speaker 1: what protection these armored car companies install, there is a
- 2:18Speaker 1: factor they can't control. The human factor. Angelo had a
- 2:24Speaker 1: hunch that one of his fellow employees, an armored car
- 2:27Speaker 1: guard who is also an auxiliary cop, would likely depart
- 2:31Speaker 1: from procedure to help a fellow cop in trouble. Angelo's
- 2:35Speaker 1: old friend Andre was going to play that cop.
- 2:39Speaker 2: Are you starting to get the idea?
- 2:44Speaker 1: On the morning of the heist, Angelo Portante calls officer
- 2:47Speaker 1: Piero Percibali, saying everything is set for that night. Angelo
- 2:53Speaker 1: then contacts two other accomplices, both truck drivers, to stand
- 2:57Speaker 1: by for further instructions. Piero will control the whole operation
- 3:02Speaker 1: from a distance. He knows that if it's going to work,
- 3:05Speaker 1: everything would have to go off like clockwork. The conspirators
- 3:12Speaker 1: meet before going into action. Meanwhile, Angelo, the inside man,
- 3:22Speaker 1: has cleverly placed himself far from the scene of the crime,
- 3:26Speaker 1: in a completely different part of town.
- 3:30Speaker 2: A perfect alibi.
- 3:35Speaker 1: It's the last weekend of the summer, the Labor Day weekend,
- 3:39Speaker 1: and the targeted armored car is stuffed.
- 3:41Speaker 2: Full of cash.
- 3:47Speaker 1: To distract police, Piero gets the two truck driver accomplices
- 3:51Speaker 1: to place phony 911 calls, saying that there is a
- 3:54Speaker 1: brawl in progress and that a cop is in trouble.
- 3:58Speaker 2: It works.
- 4:00Speaker 1: Every police car in the district rushes in the opposite direction.
- 4:12Speaker 1: When the armored car arrives at its scheduled stop, Andre,
- 4:15Speaker 1: the fake cop.
- 4:16Speaker 2: Goes into action. Andre drives the armored car to a
- 4:34Speaker 2: parking lot.
- 4:36Speaker 1: The money is unloaded into a waiting van. The van
- 4:44Speaker 1: is then driven to a meeting place where Piero steps
- 4:47Speaker 1: in and takes over.
- 4:52Speaker 2: He drives off in the van alone.
- 5:00Speaker 1: At the end of Angelo's shift, he meets up with Piero.
- 5:05Speaker 1: They're like two kids in a candy store.
- 5:13Speaker 2: They've actually pulled it off.
- 5:18Speaker 1: The armored car had been carrying over $ 3.
- 5:21Speaker 2: Million in cash.
- 5:23Speaker 4: Gone.
- 5:26Speaker 1: Minutes after the heist, police are called and arrive on
- 5:29Speaker 1: the scene. Shortly after that, the armored car is found
- 5:33Speaker 1: half a mile away, empty. Investigators immediately question the driver.
- 5:41Speaker 1: since he is the only one who saw what happened.
- 5:46Speaker 1: He says, there was a cop who seemed to be
- 5:49Speaker 1: in some kind of.
- 5:50Speaker 2: Trouble and needed help.
- 5:52Speaker 1: But when I opened my door, he pulled a gun
- 5:54Speaker 1: on me and drove off with the truck. The armored
- 5:59Speaker 1: car crew are all taken back to police headquarters to
- 6:02Speaker 1: be questioned. All the police know is $ 3 million is missing.
- 6:09Speaker 1: The investigators assigned to the case are Doug Kwan and
- 6:11Speaker 1: Rod Redquist.
- 6:13Speaker 3: In an investigation like this, the first thing you want
- 6:15Speaker 3: to do is clear the people who are working on
- 6:18Speaker 3: the truck because they are the most likely suspects right
- 6:21Speaker 3: off the bat.
- 6:22Speaker 1: Investigators interview all three of the armored car crew. But
- 6:26Speaker 1: to the police, the driver is the most suspicious.
- 6:30Speaker 3: He was very calm, cool, and Doug and I both
- 6:32Speaker 3: found that very unusual given that set of circumstances. He
- 6:36Speaker 3: certainly was a strong suspect because of the fact that
- 6:39Speaker 3: on that evening he wasn't supposed to drive. He asked
- 6:42Speaker 3: the other fellow who was the guard if he would
- 6:44Speaker 3: mind letting him drive for the evening.
- 6:48Speaker 1: Not only this, the driver opened his door, breaking a
- 6:51Speaker 1: cardinal rule and admitted not wearing his gun, an equally
- 6:55Speaker 1: serious breach of company rules. This was starting to feel
- 6:59Speaker 1: a lot like an inside job. The ident squad goes
- 7:07Speaker 1: over the armored car with a fine-toothed comb.
- 7:10Speaker 5: You go in the truck. You don't know what is evidence.
- 7:14Speaker 5: Anything could be evidence in that thing. So you have
- 7:17Speaker 5: to consider it all. You have to look at it all.
- 7:19Speaker 5: You have to collect a lot of items. And you
- 7:24Speaker 5: take a lot of items, and a lot of them
- 7:26Speaker 5: are useless at the end of it all. But you
- 7:28Speaker 5: don't know that right away.
- 7:30Speaker 1: Ed meticulously collects hairs and fibers from the scene. Then
- 7:34Speaker 1: he zeroes in on something.
- 7:37Speaker 5: When I see paper scatter on the ground, I think, oh, good,
- 7:39Speaker 5: there could be footprints on these papers. I may be
- 7:42Speaker 5: able to collect them. So the way I do it,
- 7:45Speaker 5: and in this particular case, I've got a kit that
- 7:48Speaker 5: I carry with me.
- 7:51Speaker 1: He places a sheet of mylar over the paper and
- 7:53Speaker 1: zaps it with his electrostatic charger.
- 7:57Speaker 5: And that gives it a static charge, and the mylar
- 8:00Speaker 5: goes down into the paper, and the paper gets sucked
- 8:02Speaker 5: up into the mylar, and the dust attaches to the mylar.
- 8:07Speaker 5: So when you peel the mylar off the paper, you
- 8:10Speaker 5: get the dust impression going with the mylar. You flip
- 8:14Speaker 5: her over and you get the oblique lighting, you look
- 8:16Speaker 5: at it, and if you see the footprint, all right.
- 8:19Speaker 5: It gives you a chill when you see that footprint.
- 8:21Speaker 5: You go, oh, you, I gotcha, I gotcha.
- 8:25Speaker 1: As exciting as it may be for the ident officer,
- 8:28Speaker 1: he still needs a suspect shoe to make a match.
- 8:34Speaker 1: Police also suspect that the bogus 911 calls are connected
- 8:38Speaker 1: to the heist. They were recorded on tape, but for
- 8:41Speaker 1: the recordings to be useful as evidence, police need suspects
- 8:45Speaker 1: and voices for comparison.
- 8:51Speaker 2: Investigators were stumped.
- 8:53Speaker 1: They had an armored car driver they suspected, a shoe
- 8:57Speaker 1: print that wasn't leading to the bad guys, and two
- 8:59Speaker 1: phony 911 calls. It looked like the three Ps were
- 9:03Speaker 1: going to get away with it.
- 9:07Speaker 2: The pressure is on.
- 9:09Speaker 1: The case makes headlines every day for a week, and
- 9:12Speaker 1: the police still don't have a serious lead. A week
- 9:16Speaker 1: after the heist, Angelo and Piero are sitting on the cash.
- 9:20Speaker 1: But Angelo is starting to get cocky, flashing money around
- 9:24Speaker 1: and talking just a bit too much. A $ 50, 000 reward
- 9:29Speaker 1: is offered for information leading to the arrest of the robbers.
- 9:35Speaker 2: A man calls in with a tip.
- 9:37Speaker 1: He suggests they check out someone the cops had more
- 9:40Speaker 1: or less ruled out. Angelo Portante. They start to dig
- 9:47Speaker 1: into Angelo's background. They learn that in addition to working
- 9:51Speaker 1: as a guard for the company, Angelo also has his
- 9:54Speaker 1: own private security agency on the side.
- 9:59Speaker 4: Sure, we got information that he was a friendly type
- 10:01Speaker 4: of guy, a likable guy. He was open, pretty courteous
- 10:04Speaker 4: and cordial with everybody. He was a former auxiliary police officer.
- 10:10Speaker 1: To investigators, Portante seems a long shot as a suspect.
- 10:13Speaker 1: And besides, they know he was working far away from
- 10:16Speaker 1: the scene at the time of the heist. they go
- 10:18Speaker 1: back to the informant for more details.
- 10:21Speaker 3: He described the bundles of money, which we did not
- 10:24Speaker 3: make public. They had certain wrappers on them.
- 10:28Speaker 4: Identifiable markings on them.
- 10:30Speaker 3: Only the person that had done the robbery or had
- 10:32Speaker 3: spoken to someone would have knowledge of it.
- 10:35Speaker 1: It is enough for police to set up a sting.
- 10:39Speaker 1: They want to surprise Angelo away from his home, so
- 10:42Speaker 1: he can't alert anyone or make a phone call and
- 10:44Speaker 1: possibly move the money.
- 10:46Speaker 3: We called him up and had a conversation with him,
- 10:48Speaker 3: told him that we were in our own business and
- 10:51Speaker 3: we wanted to arrange a contract where he'd be moving
- 10:54Speaker 3: some product for us. And he was pretty excited that
- 10:58Speaker 3: he might have a client here, and he agreed to
- 10:59Speaker 3: meet us. And when we got there, he expected to
- 11:02Speaker 3: meet a couple of businessmen.
- 11:08Speaker 1: Angelo is caught off guard. He's got $ 14, 000 on him.
- 11:14Speaker 3: He just kind of went pale, and I think he
- 11:16Speaker 3: knew the gig was up.
- 11:18Speaker 1: Police obtain a search warrant for Angelo's office and for
- 11:21Speaker 1: his home. There they find some valuables that he couldn't
- 11:25Speaker 1: possibly have afforded on his salary.
- 11:29Speaker 4: We found approximately $ 170, 000 worth of diamonds in a safe
- 11:33Speaker 4: with an illegal weapon. And it just started to look
- 11:38Speaker 4: worse and worse for him at that point.
- 11:41Speaker 1: In Angelo's office, police find detailed cell phone bills. His
- 11:48Speaker 1: telephone call display is especially intriguing. It lists the phone
- 11:52Speaker 1: numbers of people Angelo called on the day of the robbery.
- 11:55Speaker 1: It's a real windfall for the investigators.
- 11:59Speaker 3: The fact that he had these phone numbers still on
- 12:01Speaker 3: his call display from the day of the robbery and
- 12:03Speaker 3: the day before, I never expected to find that.
- 12:07Speaker 1: So police begin checking Angelo's call list. Many of the
- 12:10Speaker 1: numbers are traced to cellular phones. Every time you make
- 12:14Speaker 1: a call on a cell phone, the date, time, and
- 12:17Speaker 1: location are registered digitally, and this information is stored in
- 12:22Speaker 1: a central data bank. This technology has led to a
- 12:26Speaker 1: whole new branch of forensics, tracking the source of cell
- 12:30Speaker 1: phone calls used in crimes. Warren Leonard is a Bell
- 12:34Speaker 1: Mobility fraud and security expert. He works with law enforcement
- 12:38Speaker 1: on criminal matters involving cell phones.
- 12:43Speaker 6: We deal with the police when they come in for
- 12:46Speaker 6: informational requests. We satisfy search warrants, subpoenas. We do the
- 12:51Speaker 6: court testimony on call records if required.
- 12:55Speaker 1: Leonard provides the police with the names of the individuals
- 12:58Speaker 1: whose cell phone numbers appear on Angelo's call display.
- 13:03Speaker 2: Two of the numbers are traced to the truck drivers.
- 13:07Speaker 1: At least 20 calls had gone back and forth between
- 13:09Speaker 1: these truck drivers and Angelo on the day of the robbery.
- 13:14Speaker 1: But there are still several names which they get from
- 13:16Speaker 1: Angelo's call display that investigators can't account for.
- 13:20Speaker 2: One of them is none other than Percivali.
- 13:23Speaker 1: They have no idea who he is, but two weeks
- 13:26Speaker 1: after the robbery, while going through their own internal police directory,
- 13:30Speaker 1: they get a lucky break.
- 13:32Speaker 3: While looking through the nominal roll, totally nothing to do
- 13:35Speaker 3: with this case, looking for an officer's name who started
- 13:37Speaker 3: with a P that we were going to send a
- 13:39Speaker 3: notification to go to court for. There was Percivali's name
- 13:43Speaker 3: and it just jumped out.
- 13:44Speaker 2: Wow.
- 13:44Speaker 3: So we said, look at Percivali. Both of us looked
- 13:46Speaker 3: at it and went, uh-oh. It feels like you had
- 13:49Speaker 3: a kick right in the stomach, you know, to be
- 13:51Speaker 3: crude about it. To think that a police officer, one
- 13:55Speaker 3: of our own brothers, would be involved in a serious
- 13:59Speaker 3: offense like this with the potential of so much violence.
- 14:02Speaker 2: And greed.
- 14:04Speaker 1: But the driver's account described a very different looking cop
- 14:07Speaker 1: at the heist. Police are determined to find out Percivali's
- 14:12Speaker 1: connection to the crime. In order to set him up,
- 14:16Speaker 1: police decide to do something rarely done before. They place
- 14:20Speaker 1: a wire in Piero's car. They bug a police car.
- 14:26Speaker 1: Police hope that Piero will lead them to the others
- 14:29Speaker 1: involved in the robbery. and quite possibly to the missing millions.
- 14:35Speaker 1: While Angelo sits in jail, detectives continue to investigate his
- 14:39Speaker 1: cell phone activity.
- 14:41Speaker 2: Around the time of the heist.
- 14:44Speaker 1: Angelo might not have been anywhere near the scene of
- 14:46Speaker 1: the crime, but his cell phone activities may turn his
- 14:50Speaker 1: alibis into Swiss cheese.
- 14:52Speaker 4: He is the custodian on that route, so he is
- 14:55Speaker 4: by himself in the back of the truck. and it's
- 14:59Speaker 4: a reinforced steel truck, so you can have your own
- 15:01Speaker 4: private conversations in the back of that truck.
- 15:04Speaker 1: Angelo's calls that night were not quite as private as
- 15:06Speaker 1: he had hoped. His cell phone was also doing some
- 15:10Speaker 1: talking to the database on the cellular network.
- 15:16Speaker 6: We create a call record for every call that's made
- 15:20Speaker 6: on the network. These individual call records have a variety
- 15:24Speaker 6: of information stored in them, such as your mobile number,
- 15:28Speaker 6: so we know who to build a call to, the
- 15:31Speaker 6: numbers that were dialed, the duration of the call, and
- 15:34Speaker 6: the location where your call was made or received in
- 15:39Speaker 6: terms of our towers. This is an example of a
- 15:43Speaker 6: tower map. Here we have the red dot indicating the
- 15:47Speaker 6: location of the tower. The outside area shows the diameter
- 15:52Speaker 6: of the coverage area for the tower. And then you
- 15:54Speaker 6: can see the individual pieces of the pie we call sectors.
- 15:59Speaker 1: Calls can be traced to exact sectors, which can be
- 16:02Speaker 1: as small an area as a few city blocks. Using
- 16:06Speaker 1: this data, can detectives place these individuals at a certain
- 16:09Speaker 1: place at a certain time? And can they relate this
- 16:13Speaker 1: information to the execution of the perfect heist? Two months
- 16:19Speaker 1: after the heist, police haven't found the money and Angelo
- 16:23Speaker 1: is keeping quiet. They lack hard evidence to make further arrests.
- 16:27Speaker 2: So they focus in on Percivali. in hopes that.
- 16:29Speaker 1: He'll unwittingly provide a breakthrough. Through the wiretaps on Percivali's car,
- 16:37Speaker 1: they overhear him alerting one of the truck drivers that
- 16:40Speaker 1: the heat is on. Police nab the truck driver and
- 16:43Speaker 1: bring him in for questioning. They suspect that.
- 16:46Speaker 2: He may have been one of the 911 callers.
- 16:50Speaker 1: They ask him to read the identical phrases recorded on
- 16:52Speaker 1: the 911 call. The recordings are taken to Steve Pausack
- 16:58Speaker 1: at the Center for Forensic Sciences. Pausack compares the 911
- 17:10Speaker 1: voices with the truck drivers through what's called a sound spectrograph.
- 17:15Speaker 5: There's a big brawl behind the Kelsey's. There's like 50, 40...
- 17:19Speaker 5: There's a big brawl behind the.
- 17:20Speaker 4: There's a big brawl behind.
- 17:23Speaker 5: There's a big brawl behind the Kelseys.
- 17:25Speaker 3: There's a big brawl behind the Kelseys.
- 17:27Speaker 1: He wants to determine whether the acoustical features of both
- 17:31Speaker 1: voices are the same. There's a big brawl behind the Kelseys.
- 17:34Speaker 2: There's like 50, 40.
- 17:35Speaker 7: There's a big brawl behind the Kelseys. There's like 50, 40.
- 17:40Speaker 1: Pausack concludes that the truck driver's voice is a probable match,
- 17:44Speaker 1: but probable isn't enough for investigators. When pressed further, the
- 17:50Speaker 1: truck driver finally spills the beans.
- 17:52Speaker 2: About the heist.
- 17:59Speaker 1: Investigators now have a good idea of how the crime worked.
- 18:03Speaker 1: But they still need to pinpoint the exact whereabouts of
- 18:06Speaker 1: the suspects on the night of the robbery in order
- 18:08Speaker 1: to make a convincing court case. The hard evidence they
- 18:14Speaker 1: need requires many days of painstaking work. Pouring over data, maps,
- 18:22Speaker 1: cell phone records. Finally, the precise connections are made and
- 18:26Speaker 1: they are able to construct a plausible picture of exactly
- 18:29Speaker 1: what happened and when, to the second.
- 18:36Speaker 2: 10.48 a.m.
- 18:37Speaker 1: On the day of the heist, Angelo calls Piero saying
- 18:40Speaker 1: everything is on schedule for that night.
- 18:45Speaker 2: 12.33 p.m. Angelo calls one of the truck drivers.
- 18:49Speaker 1: It's the first of more than 50 calls back and
- 18:52Speaker 1: forth between Angelo, Piero, and the two truck drivers that day.
- 18:55Speaker 1: 4 p.m. The crews observed leaving to do their rounds.
- 19:01Speaker 1: 10 p.m.
- 19:05Speaker 2: The conspirators meet before going into action.
- 19:07Speaker 1: 11.02.
- 19:10Speaker 2: They leave the meeting spot.
- 19:12Speaker 3: 11.45.
- 19:17Speaker 1: Piero, following the armored vehicle, has the truck drivers make
- 19:20Speaker 1: the diversionary calls.
- 19:28Speaker 2: 11.50.
- 19:30Speaker 1: Piero watches the armored car approach the bank.
- 19:37Speaker 2: 11.52.
- 19:37Speaker 1: The heist itself. It takes less than a minute to
- 19:43Speaker 1: pull it off. Thank you. 12.14 a.m. Angelo is called
- 19:59Speaker 1: in the back of his armored car and informed that
- 20:01Speaker 1: everything has gone off as planned. After two months and
- 20:08Speaker 1: thousands of man-hours... Detectives can at last move in and
- 20:12Speaker 1: make their arrests. But there doesn't turn out to be
- 20:20Speaker 1: much honor among thieves. The truck drivers decide to become
- 20:24Speaker 1: witnesses for the prosecution against the Big Three. Angelo Portante,
- 20:30Speaker 1: Piero Percibali.
- 20:31Speaker 2: And Andre Palacone.
- 20:34Speaker 1: The cell phones told the story, and forensics could back
- 20:37Speaker 1: that story up, But during the court case, they hit
- 20:42Speaker 1: a major stumbling block. The three Ps all refused to
- 20:47Speaker 1: acknowledge that they even know one another. The whole case
- 20:50Speaker 1: could fall apart unless the prosecution can link them. That's
- 20:56Speaker 1: when investigators remember a piece of evidence they had not
- 20:59Speaker 1: paid much attention to earlier. After they arrested Piero Percivali,
- 21:04Speaker 1: they found a small yellow sticky note in his briefcase.
- 21:07Speaker 1: Written on it was the fake cop Andre Pelicone's name
- 21:12Speaker 1: From looking at Angelo's day timer, police believed it was
- 21:15Speaker 1: an Angelo's handwriting.
- 21:17Speaker 2: If they can prove it, a clear unbroken.
- 21:20Speaker 1: Chain can be established connecting the two masterminds to each
- 21:23Speaker 1: other and to the fake cop.
- 21:27Speaker 7: Fortunately in this instance, I had a ton of printing.
- 21:31Speaker 7: The day planner was just filled with hand printing and
- 21:34Speaker 7: numerals all through it. So I had lots of material
- 21:36Speaker 7: for comparison. His A is formed the same as all
- 21:46Speaker 7: his other A's, goes up to the top, down to
- 21:49Speaker 7: the bottom on the right-hand side, cuts diagonally across to
- 21:51Speaker 7: the left, and continues out the crossbar, forms the connector
- 21:54Speaker 7: to the following letter again. I was fortunate that Mr.
- 21:58Speaker 7: Portanti is such a distinctive printer or handwriter. All the
- 22:02Speaker 7: forms came out beautifully for comparison. The similarities just jumped
- 22:07Speaker 7: off the page. I ended up in a situation where
- 22:10Speaker 7: I was sure that this was the same writer and
- 22:12Speaker 7: I didn't have any doubts whatsoever.
- 22:16Speaker 1: That was the clincher. Angelo Portanti got 10 years. Piero
- 22:22Speaker 1: Percibali also got 10 years. And Andre Pellicone, six years.
- 22:30Speaker 1: The two truck drivers got off in exchange for their testimony.
- 22:34Speaker 2: But what happened to the money? Angelo's brother Tony claimed
- 22:39Speaker 2: he gave three.
- 22:39Speaker 1: Gun cases filled with cash to a friend, who in
- 22:42Speaker 1: turn claimed he gave them to his girlfriend, but they
- 22:45Speaker 1: were never found. To date, they've accounted for over a
- 22:49Speaker 1: million dollars. That leaves over two million dollars still missing.
- 22:54Speaker 2: Maybe it will turn out to be the perfect heist
- 22:56Speaker 2: after all.
- 23:02Speaker 1: The stories on Exhibit A are based on actual cases.
- 23:06Speaker 1: The names of the victims have been changed to protect
- 23:08Speaker 1: their identities. The names of the guilty are real.