The below short story originally appeared
in American Crime Magazine.
Crime Boat
By Paul Davis
Back
in 2009, I called the bold bank robbers in South Philadelphia the 'Cook Crooks'
in my crime column in the local paper.
I called them the Cook Crooks, as the armed bank robbers wore a
mask and a tall, white and pleated chef’s hat as they held up bank employees at
gunpoint in a series of bank robberies in South Philadelphia.
I interviewed FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael Virgillo at
the time, as he headed up the task force committed to capturing the armed
criminals. He agreed that the chef’s hat threw off witnesses.
“They all described the chef hats in great detail, but they
could not describe anything else about the bank robbers,” Virgillo told me.
“The hats were an attention grabber.”
Two weeks ago, I received a call from a local defense attorney
who told me he was calling on behalf of his client, who was serving a long
federal prison term at FCI Fairton in Fairton, New Jersey. He said his client
read my weekly newspaper column and wanted to talk to me about the series of
bank robberies in the mid-2000s.
I ventured from my South Philly home to Fairton, New Jersey and
entered the mid-security level federal prison. I was escorted to an interview
room, where John Kelly was waiting for me. He was younger than me, but he
looked older, as he was rail-thin, gray and had a long, creased face. I shook
his hand, took out my pen, notebook and tape recorder and laid them on the
table between us, and then sat down.
Kelly was one of the Cook Crooks. He said he read my weekly
column, and like me, he was from South Philadelphia. Also, like me, he served
in the U.S. Navy, although his service was some years after mine.
Kelly wasted no time and went right into his story.
Kelly, Pat Collins and Bob Reilly were boyhood friends and '2
Streeters.' While in high school they belonged to an Irish American street
corner gang on Second Street in South Philadelphia. Kelly was a lean teenager
with sandy hair, Reilly was short and wiry with light brown hair, and Collins
was tall, dark and muscular.
Kelly was a quiet, unassuming young man and Reilly was
good-natured and funny, but their leader, Collins, was a tough, vicious, and
intelligent teenager. Collins planned the small-time burglaries and armed
stick-ups that the trio committed in their last year of high school. They
committed the crimes as much for fun and excitement as they did for the money.
They were never caught and none of the young men had a police record.
After the three graduated high school, Kelly joined the U.S.
Navy and served as a coxswain (pronounced cox’s’n) in charge of the captain’s
small boat, called a 'gig,' on a guided missile frigate in the Mediterranean
Sea. Reilly joined the Carpenters’ Union and Collins worked odd jobs until he
was old enough to join the Philadelphia Police Department.
After leaving the Navy, Kelly became a bank guard, Reilly worked
as a carpenter on construction sites in Philadelphia, and Collins worked as a
patrolman, cruising the streets of South Philly’s 3rd District.
Collins remained a crook, even though he wore a policeman’s
uniform. He took bribes, stole money and drugs from crime scenes, and extorted
money from low-level criminals. When he felt Internal Affairs investigators
closing in on him, he resigned abruptly from the police department.
Collins rekindled his friendship with Kelly and Reilly. He was
pleased that Kelly was a bank guard. He asked Kelly for the best time and day
to rob the bank where he served as a guard.
On the day of the planned robbery, Kelly called in sick and sat
behind the wheel of a stolen car as Collins and Reilly went into the bank,
waving handguns and shouting while wearing masks and the tall chef’s
hats.
They gathered up the money from the tellers and walked calmly
out to the car. They climbed in and Kelly drove off.
The bank robbery went off smoothly, just as Collins planned, and
Collins’ idea of wearing chef’s hats made them all laugh. The trio went on to
rob several more banks, and the TV news and newspapers made them out to be
something of a curiosity due to the chef’s hats.
The Philadelphia Police and the FBI were not amused.
With his share of the illegal money, Collins bought a house with
a dock in Wildwood, New Jersey and a 42-foot Silverton white fishing boat.
Reilly, the carpenter, built a secret compartment in the boat’s cabin to hold
the bulk of the trio’s stolen money.
Collins named the fishing boat Crime Pays. Reilly thought that
was funny, but Kelly was concerned that the name would draw unwanted attention
towards them. Collins replied that as an ex-cop, he could get away with the
name.
Collins loved to go to sea with his partners, although he knew
nothing about boats or the sea. Kelly urged Collins to take the Coast Guard's
small boat course, but Collins never did. He used Kelly, the former sailor, to
take the boat out and Collins learned the basics from watching Kelly. Once out
at sea, Collins would discuss their robbery plans as they drank beer and downed
shots of whiskey.
Things went on smoothy for several years, until they robbed a
bank on Oregon Avenue in South Philadelphia. Exiting the bank, Collins slammed
into a uniformed policeman who was coming in. The young policeman saw the mask
and the chef’s hat on Collins' head, and he pulled his Glock service firearm
out of its holster. Collins, who had his gun in his hand, shot the police
officer in the head, killing him.
Although Collins was a former cop, he felt no guilt in killing
the police officer. As he later told his partners, it was kill or be
killed.
The TV news and the newspapers no longer treated the bank
robbers as a curiosity, as they were now vicious cop killers. Kelly and Collins
headed to Wildwood, New Jersey to hide out, and Reilly headed to his cabin in
the Pocono Mountains to lay low until things calmed down. But even after
several months, things did not calm down for the cop killers.
In Wildwood, Collins asked Kelly to take Crime Pays out to sea.
Collins cut the engine and told Kelly that he wanted to sell his South Philly
and Wildwood houses and then take the boat to Florida, where he had a third
home. He wanted Kelly and Reilly to join him in Florida.
Kelly objected, as he had a wife and young son in South Philly.
Collins, who had already sent his girlfriend to Florida, told Kelly to leave
his family and then send for them later.
Kelly, the usually quiet and compliant one, said no firmly. He
said they should contact Reilly and they should evenly split up the money and
then go their separate ways.
Collins, stone-faced and silent, pulled out a .25 semi-automatic
Beretta from his pants pocket and shot Kelly in the chest. Kelly’s hands
gripped his chest, cried out in pain, and then collapsed on the deck. Collins
placed the Beretta back in his pocket, lifted Kelly up and slipped him
overboard into the ocean. Collins started the boat and headed back to
shore.
Once back at the boat dock, Collins cleaned the boat thoroughly.
He got on the phone and told a friend in real estate to sell his Philadelphia
and New Jersey homes. He then called Reilly and told him to meet him in
Florida.
“Oh, by the way, John’s dead,” Collins told Reilly.
“Shit. What happened?”
“He died of heart failure.”
“He had a bad heart?”
“No. His heart failed when my bullet pierced it."
“What?”
“Just an old joke. Meet me at my Florida house next Tuesday.”
But the meeting never took place, as Kelly, a fit and healthy
man, survived the gunshot wound and several hours floating in the ocean. He was
discovered bobbing in the sea and rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter.
While recovering in the hospital, Kelly asked to see the FBI. He
confessed to the FBI agents of his involvement in the bank robberies and
explained that Collins murdered the police officer and tried to murder him.
He told the FBI where they could find Collins in Florida and
Reilly in the Poconos.
Now sitting in Fairton prison, Kelly told me he felt bad about
informing on Reilly, but he thought he was saving his life. Surely, Collins
would have shot him as well.
“I always knew Pat was a cold-hearted prick, but I didn’t think
he would try to kill me,” Kelly said.
As for Collins, Kelly asked me if I remembered what happened in
2012.
“No, what?”
“Hurricane Sandy,” Kelly replied. “Pat owned a boat, but he was
no fucking sailor. The dummy sailed Crime Pays right into the path of Hurricane
Sandy."
Kelly said that according to the Coast Guard, the boat went down
somewhere off Cape May, New Jersey during the powerful and devastating
hurricane.
"Pat washed up ashore dead, but Crime Pays sunk with all
that money aboard.”
“Well," I said. "I guess crime doesn’t always
pay.”
© 2022 By Paul Davis