Crime: The Downfall Of Billy Bell

The Downfall Of Billy Bell

Bell Laboratories has long been proud of its thief-resistant pay telephone, boasting that the only way to break into it was to haul the whole contraption away and work on it with sledgehammers or explosives. According to the FBI, John Clark, 49, a former Ohio machinist who wears a shoulder-length ponytail and cowboy clothes, discovered otherwise. He is the only person known to have devised a tool that can pick pay-phone locks. It afforded him a comfortable, if itinerant, living. The FBI estimates that Clark, who sometimes used the alias Billy Bell, may have stolen as much as $1 million in...

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