Black-haired, dark-browed Gerard Graham Dennis seemed to have been born to live brazenly. He had a grenadier’s imperious good looks, and a gentleman’s taste in clothes. He liked champagne, dance music, danger and girls, especially brunettes with high cheek bones. He was endowed with intelligence and a barefaced talent for lying. He had no scruples against shooting a man, aborting a girl, or whacking an old lady over the head with a pistol butt.
His career, however, began haltingly—as a youth in Ontario, Canada, he was repeatedly arrested for housebreaking and petty crimes, was thrice hustled off to reform schools. But three years ago in Montreal, he discovered that it was just as easy to steal a fortune—he coolly invaded the home of an aged gold-mine heiress, pushed her in a bathroom, carried off $75,000 worth of jewels.
Look for Big Lawns. After that he headed for New York. He settled down in suburban Rye with his mistress, a Canadian girl named Eleanor Harris, and their daughter Wendy. He bought a shiny Buick, drove it past big Westchester County estates and noted houses which had big lawns and Cadillacs parked in the driveways.
Night after night in the months that followed, he entered darkened mansions wearing a black mask, and collected jewels and expensive furs. One night, a wealthy New Rochelle boat builder named Tulloch refused to cooperate; Dennis shot him coolly and neatly through the hand and walked out with $1,200 in cash and $3,000 worth of jewelry.
He read treatises on precious stones, used jewelers’ tools to break up or remake stolen jewelry. To avoid the underworld markdown on hot goods, he printed up cards which bore his name and the legend “Felix P. Jacobson Co., 5 South Wabash, Chicago, Ill.”—an active firm whose name he had simply appropriated. He posed as a legitimate salesman and always demanded list prices for stones.
But in the summer of 1947 he made a mistake. He met a dark-haired girl named Gloria Horowitz in a Manhattan nightclub; he took her to Philadelphia, gave her some diamonds, told her to sell them for him in a jewelry store. A suspicious clerk called the cops. Dennis, waiting outside the store, saw her being arrested. He calmly walked away, but when Gloria finished talking, the police for the first time had a line on him.
Read the Gossips. He began life anew amid the lush estates of Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Brentwood and Bel Air. He bought a shiny new Lincoln and a Cadillac convertible to make himself inconspicuous while working, settled down in a modest apartment to keep himself inconspicuous off the job. He studied the movements of his prey by reading society pages, travel news, and Hollywood gossip columns. He soon had a king’s ransom in loot.
Early last year, while dancing at the Los Angeles Palladium, he found a new girl, a dark-haired, 24-year-old ex-Toronto schoolteacher named Betty Ritchie. Little Betty Ritchie succumbed to his line and his dark good looks, moved into his apartment. To Betty, the life they led was idyllic; Dennis insisted that she keep her $40-a-week job, but he gave her a wedding ring and an old mink coat.
Last week, Dennis told her that he wanted to divorce his “wife back East” so that he could marry her. He kissed Betty goodbye, and flew to Cleveland to sell eleven little packets of stolen diamonds. There he was trapped, almost by accident. As he sat talking to a jeweler named Irwin Nussbaum, in walked the jeweler’s nephew, one Zoltan Greenhut. Greenhut remembered seeing a “wanted” poster bearing Dennis’ photograph, and called police.
A little later three detectives walked, with drawn guns, into a jeweler’s cage. One of them said: “Reach!” Dennis’ hands came slowly up. He said: “Well, you fellows have got me.”
Police guessed that he might have stolen $600,000 in three years. Said Beverly Hills’ Police Chief Clinton Anderson with admiration: “. . . One of the greatest burglars who ever operated . . .”
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