American Mobsters – George Leonidas Leslie – King of Bank Robbers

George Leonidas Leslie started out in life as one of the privileged class. However, he ended up a criminal, known to the New York City police as the “King of Bank Robbers”.

Leslie was born in Cincinnati in 1840. His father owned a brewery and Leslie started out as an academic, graduating from the University of Cincinnati with honors with a bachelor’s degree in architecture. After his parents’ death, Leslie sold his father’s brewery, gave up his architecture career, and moved to New York City. There he met some bad people and decided that he could make a good career robbing banks. It is estimated that in the ten year period from 1874 to 1884, Leslie was responsible for 80% of all bank robberies committed in the United States, raising cash between 7 and 12 million dollars.

In New York City, Leslie posed as a city man of considerable means. He belonged to the most exclusive clubs and was a regular at the theater and patron of the arts. He used his disguise to gain access to various bits of information that make his life as a bank robber more profitable. Leslie would often spend up to three years planning a banking job. When he found a bank he liked, Leslie would try to get the plans for the interior of the bank. If this were not possible, he would visit the bank posing as a depositor, and with his background in architecture, he would draw rough plans of the interior of the bank himself. Sometimes Leslie would get one of his gang members to get a job at the bank as a night watchman or doorman, so Leslie could get the exact specifications and make and model of the bank vault.

After gaining this valuable information, Leslie would purchase a duplicate from the bank’s safe. She spent days and sometimes weeks perfecting the art of safe-cracking. She shied away from using dynamite to break the safe, deciding that it would cause too much noise and lead to detection. Leslie’s method of opening safes included drilling a hole under the dial, then using a thin piece of steel to manipulate the tumblers into place. To cover just about any bank robbery contingency, Leslie had a set of anti-theft tools specially created for him that cost a staggering $3000, which was more than most people made in several years.

To perfect the job she was planning, Leslie would sometimes set up a room, in a loft she rented downtown, to resemble the interior of the bank she planned to rob. There, Leslie and the men he selected for that particular bank job would spend a considerable amount of time practicing exactly how the bank robbery should unfold. Leslie would dim the lights and watch his men perform their maneuvers in the dark, then criticize his work. His cohorts consisted of various well-known criminals such as Jimmy Hope, Jimmy Brady, Abe Coakley, Shang Draper, Red Leary, Johnny Dobbs, Worcester Sam Perris, Bill Kelly, and Banjo Pete Emerson.

In May 1875, Leslie decided to rob the Manhattan Savings Institution at 644 Broadway. Leslie, through his “inside man” at the bank, Patrick Shelvin, discovered the make and model of the bank vault lock. He obtained an exact model from the makers, Valentine & Bulter, and spent six months perfecting the lock’s opening. On October 27, 1875, Shelvin let Leslie and his team into the bank at night. By the time they finished their job, they had stolen $3.5 million in cash and securities, nearly $50 million in today’s money. No one was arrested until May 1879, and Jimmy Hope and Bill Kelly were convicted and sent to prison as a result. Abe Coakley and Banjo Pete Emerson were also arrested, but were acquitted at trial. Leslie was never arrested and his involvement in the robbery was not found out until after his death.

Leslie’s reputation grew to such gigantic proportions that he was often referred to as a “consultant” by other gangs of bank robbers. He was believed to have received more than $20,000 just to travel to San Francisco to review plans for a local bank heist.

However, if Leslie had a weakness, it was the affection of women. She started an affair with the girlfriends of one of her classmates, Shang Draper. On June 4, 1884, Leslie’s decomposed body was found lying at the base of Tramps Rock, near the Westchester-Bronx border. They shot him twice in the head. Police speculated that Leslie was murdered by the jealous Draper in a house at 101 Lynch Street in Brooklyn, then her body was taken to Tramps Rock by three of his associates, who had been seen near Yonkers at the time the murder was discovered. Body. But there was little evidence of the crime and no one was arrested.