The Cat

Arthur Barry on the left

You have to be of a certain age—and not suffering from dementia—to remember Murph the Surf, the audacious but ultimately sloppy burglar who used an easily opened window at the Museum of Natural History on Central Park West in 1964 to make off with the Star of India sapphire, a 563 carat gem, as big as a golf ball that would not fit on anyone's finger. Other gems were also taken

Murph and his cohorts were captured quite quickly and the gem was recovered. Murpf did some time, but was then later convicted of a homicide in Florida. He served his time, got out, and became a counselor to inmates. He passed away in 2020.

You are likely deceased if you would be able to remember Arthur Barry, a second-story jewel thief in the 1920s whose life would easily be a movie starring Cary Grant. Barry successfully stole from homes in Westchester, Long Island, and even New Jersey, climbing into homes of the extremely wealthy and picking up the booty from dresser tops, drawers and safes, sometimes while his victims were sleeping, and sometimes when they awoke, and carried on a conversation with him. He was the original piece of work.

His career of illegal transgression began as a boy in Worcester, MA. Barry, born in 1896, was raised in an era where the parents could send a boy to a reformatory for being an "undisciplined child." Imagine being able to get a kid out of your house because you declared him undisciplined. Times change

In a reformatory where not just troublesome boys are housed, but hardened criminals as well are in the place it is no wonder young Arthur learned a trade. In this endeavor Arthur, was a carrier of nitroglycerin for a retired safe cracker who supplied other, more active safe crackers in the region.

Nitro, in the right hands, could be used to blow open tough to open safes when you weren't the one who was supposed to open the safe. The movie Asphalt Jungle has Sam Jaffe playing the role of an older safe cracker, Doc,  who knows how to use the "soup", as nitro was called int he trade. It's a great movie, also starring Marilyn Monroe in an early role of a beauty who distracts Jaffe's character.

Young Barry traveled on trains in the region delivering the nitro in a small suitcase. He was never pinched for this delivery service.

Arthur graduated to second-story jobs where he climbed into bedrooms, either through a window left open, (summer, no air conditioning.) or one that was easily lifted to prowl through a bedrooms in homes he had cased, often while the owners were eating downstairs.

He read society pages and attended parties, and was convivial with the guests, passing himself off as Doctor Gibson, all the while planning his heists. He even took the Duke of Wales, Prince Edward who would later be the king who abdicated, into Manhattan and showed him around the speakeasies and night clubs during Prohibition..

He was a gem stealing scourge who made his way into homes and left with the goods, to have them fenced for one tenth their value. He was a man-about-town who loved to play craps, owned and owned speakeasy for a bit.

He was a decorated medic in World War I serving his country, a veteran status he enjoyed when his life of crime and incarceration was over.

The Gold Coast of Long Island was Gatsby country, sporting many mansions owned by titans of business and industry whose wives wore expensive jewelry. Barry learned how to tell "paste", fake stones, from the real stuff. He was highly efficient, high tailing it back into Manhattan after a score.

He lived near Harry Houdini on the West Side. Barry's wife, an older single woman with a son, Anna Blake, was friends with Houdini's wife, who sometimes accompanied Anna to visit Barry when he was locked up.

In that era, Nassau County was a collection of towns and villages that each had their own police departments. During Barry's reign as a successful jewel thief Nassau put together a county-wide police force whose detective Harold King made Barry his No. 1 priority. 

Policing was quite different then. King gave orders to shoot Barry on sight if any on his men caught him with the goods coming out of a house. That never happened.

Barry had a place on Lake Ronkonkoma when he was headed there with his wife Anna and some jewels. The LIRR was two hours late getting to the station, but it didn't matter. The Nassau cops were waiting for him, likely tipped by a partner Barry did jobs with Boston Billie Williams, James Monahan.

This put Barry and Anna is serious trouble. Barry made a deal with the cops that Anna knew nothing about anything. He was guilty. Barry went to prison in Sing Sing, and eventually state prison at Auburn, New York.

In 1929 Barry escaped from Auburn in a massive prison riot. He jumped off the high perimeter wall, twisted his ankle and took a bullet in his shoulder. But he was free.

And free he remained for three years, holing up in New Jersey. Auburn prison is in Cayuga County, and Barry had a good knowledge of the area from his nitroglycerine courier days. He reached Fonda, New York, which it turns out was founded by Dutch descendants of Henry Fonda. Who knew? 

Henry wasn't born in Fonda, he being from Nebraska, but his relatives came there in the 1600s rather than settle in Nieuw Amsterdam (New York City). They had fled from Italy to the Netherlands.

In Fonda, New York, Barry got out of prison clothes and settled in Newark and small towns in New Jersey. Anna joined him, and they lived as Mr. and Mrs. James Toner.

He managed to gain the good graces of a Otto Reuter in Sussex County where he did odd jobs around the farm. If it wasn't for the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in New Jersey, Barry might have never been caught.

But the police flooded the area around Highfields, in East Amwell New Jersey for clues to the baby's kidnapper. A homemade wooden ladder was left behind outside the second story window. Barry was leading a blameless life at Otto Reuter's place, but was notable for ordering all the New York papers he could from a local newsagent.

The frenzy created by the kidnapping had all the conspiracy theorists, police and newspapers and newspapers offering the explanation for the kidnapping lay at the hands of Arthur Barry. Didn't he go into second stories using a ladder?

Never mind that Barry never brought his own ladder to heists, but rather just fetched one from the gardeners' shed, and that the crimes of jewel heists and kidnapping were not likely committed by the same man, Barry's image was everywhere. He was a wanted man for the kidnapping.

Eventually, with a vast circulation of photos of Barry made possible through the newspaper speculation, Barry was apprehended.

Of course he wasn't the Lindbergh baby kidnapper, and soon Barry found himself hack where he escaped from, Auburn. 

He was tried and acquitted of instigating the Auburn riot. From 5 years of solitary confinement he was eventually transferred to Attica prison, a then newly built prison in Attica, Wyoming County, New York.

Attica is much harder to get to than Auburn from NYC. Visits from his devoted wife Anna were difficult. Eventually, Anna passed away from cancer in 1940, replying to Inspector King, the Nassau Detective's plea to tell where the loot was hidden with the replay, "No Dice." Barry on his eventual release told the world there was no hidden loot. It was all, easy come, easy go.

The 1940 short piece in the NYT was Anna's obituary with the headline: 

Gem Thief's Friend Dies with His Secret
Anna Blake Refused to Reveal What Barry Did With the Loot

When you read the short obit. Anna is described as having passed away in the Mineola prison hospital. You might get the idea she was incarcerated as well. She wasn't. In that era, the hospital must have been on the Nassau County prison's grounds. Nassau currently has a county hospital on Hempstead Turnpike near where I live. The county jail is behind it.

Anna is referred to as "friend", but she was Barry's wife for quite sometime. Barry didn't make it well-known that he and Anna had married.

Barry was paroled from prison in 1949, and with the deal made with Nassau County's District Attorney Frank Gulotta, he would plead guilty to several of the unsolved crimes and still be released with a suspended sentence. Frank was the father of an eventual County Executive Tom Gulotta, who would leave office in 2001 as the county was facing bankruptcy.

Barry settled into a blameless life, living with a sister in Worcester and working as a cashier at a diner. He was a model citizen who had many nieces and nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews who weren't even ware of his very checkered past. He was Uncle Artie, as a chapter in Dean Jobb's great biography of Barry lays out. He was the relative who you wanted over for Thanksgiving dinner.

On his release from prison Barry became a bit of a celebrity. He appeared on an early Mike Wallace interview show PM East in 1961. He even appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1964, telling the audience that no, there was no treasure somewhere. He spent or gambled away all the proceeds.

Tapes from early Carson shows were not saved. How great would it be to dive back into his interview with Johnny?

Neil Hickey wrote a book about Barry,  The Gentleman Was a Thief.

After an afternoon of puttering around in the garden at his sister's, Barry passed away in his sleep on July 15, 1981 at 84.

There was no NYT obituary, so I've suggested one for their Overlooked No More series of obituaries on those notables who didn't get the sendoff they would have gotten if they were to go in the current era of writing tribute obituaries.

Barry himself would easily provide he closing words: the last word:

Dean Jobb closes his story on Barry with Barry's words from an interview with Robert Wallace. "When you put down all those burglaries, be sure you put the big one at he top. Not Arthur Barry robbed Jesse Livermore, or Arthur Barry robbed the cousin of the King of England, but just Arthur Barry robbed Arthur Barry."

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