The Man Who Robbed the Pierre by Ira Berkow

Knowing that the Pierre heist lies ahead, an impatient reader will wish these background sketches - including the repeated arrests and parole violations that kept Comfort almost continuously in prison - were even briefer than they are. Always deny everything, no matter what promises they make to you.' His father, who ran a Rochester gambling parlor and tried to convert him from stealing to cheating at cards, would later offer such paternal advice as: 'Never admit anything to the cops. At 12, he was robbing department stores and Rochester mansions he first landed in a penal institution at 13. When Comfort was 7, his mother induced him to steal $20 from his father. In his early chapters, Berkow recounts in plain but sturdy prose how Comfort grew up with a 'moral code' that accepted stealing as a way of life. Berkow interviewed more than 100 subjects in all, but Comfort's recollections are the backbone of the story. By 1978, when Berkow began work on the book, the statute of limitations had expired on Comfort's criminal career - he could no longer be prosecuted for information he divulged.

Until his death of a heart attack in 1986, Comfort was a willing collaborator in Berkow's research. In 'The Man Who Robbed the Pierre,' Ira Berkow, a New York Times sports columnist and feature writer, has thoroughly documented the 'inside' story of this robbery and its mastermind. To Bobby Comfort, then 39, the Pierre heist was to be the final 'big score' that would allow him to retire from his life of crime and spend more time with his long-suffering wife and children. 2, 1972, Comfort (also known as 'Bobby from Rochester') coolly led four accomplices into the 700-room hotel's ornate lobby, handcuffed and blindfolded 21 guards, bellmen and unlucky guests, and escaped with an estimated $10 million in jewels and cash from the hotel's safe-deposit boxes.

The stately Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York City - exclusive residence or home-away-from-home for the world's wealthiest kings, princes, magnates and society matrons for more than half a century - has never had a more unwelcome guest than Robert A. THE MAN WHO ROBBED THE PIERRE The Story of Bobby Comfort & the Biggest Hotel Robbery Ever By Ira Berkow Atheneum.

The Man Who Robbed the Pierre by Ira Berkow