In the 1990’s, when Boston easily led the nation in armored car robberies, one tiny neighborhood at the edge of town dominated the trade. Charlestown, only one square mile of 15,000 people, drove the record setting spike with disciplined robbery crews who stole millions and passed tips on to younger generations.
Between 1990 and 1996, the Boston area averaged 16 armored car robberies a year, three times more than statewide averages across the country. One in five armored car heists in this country happened here. States such as California, New York and Florida experienced just half the heists of Boston. But numbers don’t capture the craze: Charlestown crews robbed armored cars in those three states too.
Underworld figures and the FBI both knew: the overwhelming number of thieves came from Charlestown, a neighborhood where the stick-up man, not the drug kingpin or mob boss, captured the criminal imagination. At one point during the criminal craze, Townies were printing and wearing t-shirts of masked leprechauns robbing an armored car under the words “Boston Bandits.”
Charlestown, it is said, produced more armored car robbers than any other square mile in the world.
“Robbing armored cars just seemed natural, it seemed normal,” Anthony Shea, a Townie doing life in federal prison told As Is. “Everyone was doing scores. You see people make a lot of money, they had a skill, they were wise at what they did. Your uncles or cousins were doing it and they passed on the experience as they got older. The older guys told the younger guys in the neighborhood how to do it, you share the tricks of the trade.
“If our uncles were dentists, we’d all be pulling teeth.”
Townie criminals had an advantage over other Boston lawbreakers: their neighbors. The physical isolation and tight-knit city blocks bred a mistrust of outsiders, and lips stayed shut when police came around.
Between 1975 and 1992, 33 of Charlestown’s 49 murders were unsolved, a no-arrest rate double other Boston neighborhoods. The phenomenon became known as The Code of Silence and federal authorities took note.
The most effective robbery crew of the 1990s was a gang without a name. Anthony Shea, Mike O’Halloran, Matt McDonald, Pat McGonagle and Stephen Burke formed in 1990 and went on to commit more than 100 planned, carefully executed armed robberies, stealing several million dollars in four states over the next five years. Their biggest scores included $600,000 in Lynn and $300,000 in Seabrook, N.H.
They treated robbery as a profession: after each job, they huddled to divide the money and critique their performance. If a guy committed a serious mistake, he had to pay a fine.
On August, 25, 1994, four masked men were lying in wait on the floor of a Chevy Lumina minivan in the parking lot of the NFS Savings Bank in Hudson, N.H. When an armored car pulled in, the gang spilled out, brandishing weapons.
Guard Ronald Normandeau opened the door of his truck, and the gang members picked him up and threw him against the side of the Lumina, shot him in his side and hauled him into the minivan.
A robber leaped into the back of the armored car and grappled with Johnson, who struggled and pulled off the mask worn by the gang member, who then slammed a .45-caliber weapon into Johnson’s mouth and pulled the trigger.
With their robbery plans turned bloody, the gang drove the armored car and the minivan to a remote field where a third vehicle awaited their escape.
They made off with at least $500,000. Normandeau was 52 and Johnson 57. Both were described by friends as good neighbors and fathers.
On the run from the feds, Shea and Burke fled to Palm Beach, Florida where they allegedly robbed three more armored cars for six-figure scores.
