The Greatest Heist Stories Ever Told

The Greatest Heist Stories Ever Told is a captivating collection of true stories celebrating the best heists ever pulled off—many still unsolved. It allows readers to appreciate the efforts that go into a truly magnificent heist. It is a celebration of stunning, well-planned, and audacious capers that left police and armies of investigators scratching their heads and looking for answers.

Unlock the cultural obsession with high-stakes robberies in Heist, a collection of the world’s greatest real-life break-ins. From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s famous art heist to the disappearance of the Marie Antoinette watch, these 100% true stories will have you on the edge of your seat—and double checking the locks on your doors! Have you ever watched a movie like Ocean’s Eleven and thought: “There’s no way that could ever actually happen, right?” Wrong. In the US alone, there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of heists, from bank break-ins to museum plunders. In this premium compendium, we’ll walk through the most impressive ones, diving into the details behind each case, the detectives that led the investigations, how the events unfolded, and what mysteries remain. The hardcover book will explore the top 50 incidents, including: 1. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist: In March of 1990, two men dressed up as police officers and sweet-talked their way past security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA. After tying up the real guards, these men dismantled and packed up 13 works of art, loaded them onto a truck, and drove off into the night, making the 81- minute breach one of the most expensive in modern history. Today, it remains the single largest property theft in the world. 2. The Great Train Robbery: Not all heists happen in buildings. In fact, one of the most popular ones was the 1963 train robbery in which nearly 2.6 million pounds was lifted from a Royal Mail train headed to London. Using intel provided by a man on the inside dubbed The Ulsterman, the group rigged the railways traffic light system to bring the train to an extended stop, during which time, they funneled the money from one of the carriages into a waiting truck by way of a human chain. 3. The French Bank Vault Tunnelers: On the morning of July 19, 1976, workers from a safe manufacturing company were called to the Société Générale bank to fix a faulty vault door that appeared to be jammed. When they drilled into the vault and peered in to diagnose the problem, though, what they found was not a loose screw or broken hinge, but a door that has been welded shut...from the inside. Also scattering the room was a couple of wine glasses, a portable stove, and a giant tunnel system that proved to be the method of transport for thieves, who had dug their way into the bank, spent the weekend there, and left with ten million in cash. 4. D. B. Cooper’s Escapades: The subject of many conspiracy theories, D. B. Cooper (not his real name) hopped on a Boeing 727 in a trench coat and sunglasses in 1971. When the plane had reached cruising altitude, Cooper hijacked it, extorting 200,000 dollars before strapping on a parachute, jumping out of the plane, and disappearing into thin air. This “aerial heist” remains unsolved to this day and remains one of the FBI’s most frustrating open cases. 5. The Botched Crown Jewels of England Theft: Back in 1671, a man named Thomas Blood (a cool name, by any standard) decided: “Eh, I’m gonna steal the Crown Jewels.” He reached out to Talbot Edwards, the keeper of the stones, with a proposition: if you give me a private viewing of the gemstones, I’ll have my nephew marry your daughter (a nephew who, naturally, turned out to not exist). At this private viewing, Blood knocked out Talbot, smashed the jewels into pieces and threw the shards into his pockets, hoping to make a run for it. Though he didn’t manage to escape, he did manage to escape jail time: The King at the time was so amused by this failed attempt that he let Blood off scot-free. And that’s just the start of it. Plastered with gorgeous photography and big, sleek pages, Heist looks as good as it is captivating. Crack the code of the world’s most elusive capers, from the popular tales your great grandad told you about to the ones that have been long forgotten.

"Tells the story with the gripping pace of a true-crime 'Ocean's Eleven.'" The New York Post • "Like a diamond, this true-life caper is clear, colorful, and brilliant." Publishers Weekly ★Starred Review★ The Antwerp Diamond Center was one of the most secure buildings in the world. With hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of diamonds stored in its subterranean vault, it had to be. Located in the heart of Belgium's ultra-secure Antwerp Diamond District, it benefited from two police stations, armed patrols, extensive video surveillance, and vehicle barriers securing an area where 80 percent of the world's diamonds traded hands. But on February 15, 2003, a band of skilled Italian thieves — fronted by the charming Leonardo Notarbartolo, who spent over two years clandestinely casing the building — subverted every one of the Diamond Center's defenses and made off with a record amount of loot. Experts estimate they got away with nearly half a billion dollars in diamonds, cash and other valuables. They'd pulled off the biggest heist in history--everybody loves diamonds and they now had more than any thief before them. The robbers did it with stealth and smarts; no one was hurt or even threatened during what was quickly labeled the largest diamond heist in history. The bandits — members of a group of professional thieves known as "The School of Turin" — used cunning in lieu of violence, successfully evading security cameras, thwarting an array of electronic sensors, and penetrating a vault protected by a double-locked foot-thick steel door. Even when the police zeroed in on who committed the crime, how it was done remained a mystery, like something out of a heist movie or TV show. Flawless is a fast-paced global scavenger hunt uncovering the truth behind the daring Valentine's Day weekend heist. Tracking clues, sources, and documents throughout Europe — from seedy cafés in Turin, Italy to sleek diamond offices in Antwerp, Belgium — authors Scott Selby and Greg Campbell retrace Notarbartolo's careful discovery of the building's security flaws. They recreate the heist and its aftermath — detailing how the thieves brilliantly neutralized each element of the security protecting the Diamond Center's vault while inviting the readers into the secretive world of diamonds and diamond dealing. The result is a thrilling ride through the better-than-fiction heist of the century. "Fans of caper books and movies will be in seventh heaven." Booklist ★Starred Review★

From the bestselling author of Fred & Rose, Heist is the astonishing story of the GBP53 million Tonbridge Securitas robbery.

On a sunny September morning in 1930, six men entered the Lincoln National Bank in Nebraska's capital city armed with revolvers and Thompson submachine guns. In eight minutes they emerged with more than 2.7 million dollars, the largest take of any bank heist in history. A nationwide search for the bandits would lead Nebraska authorities through the rough, gangland streets of Chicago and East St. Louis, and deep into the heart of the Capone organization. The Great Heist not only chronicles the search for the bandits and the trials that followed, but the incredible story of how they got the money back.

King of Heists is a spellbinding and unprecedented account of the greatest bank robbery in American history, which took place on October 27, 1878, when thieves broke into the Manhattan Savings Institution and stole nearly $3 million in cash and securities—around $50 million in today's terms. Bringing the notorious Gilded Age to life in a thrilling narrative, J. North Conway tells the story of those who plotted and carried out this infamous robbery, how they did it, and how they were tracked down and captured. The robbery was planned to the minutest detail by criminal mastermind George Leonidas Leslie—a society architect and ladies' man whose double life as the nation's most prolific bank robber led him to be dubbed the “King of the Bank Robbers.” The New York Times proclaimed the 1878 heist “the most sensational in the history of bank robberies in this country.” An absorbing tale of greed, sex, crime, betrayal, and murder, King of Heists blends all the richness of history with the thrills of the best fiction.

How Lenin’s regime turned Russia’s priceless cultural patrimony into armored cars, trains, planes, and machine guns Historians have never resolved a central mystery of the Russian Revolution: How did the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and leaving nothing but economic ruin in their path, manage to stay in power through five long years of civil war? In this penetrating book, Sean McMeekin draws on previously undiscovered materials from the Soviet Ministry of Finance and other European and American archives to expose some of the darkest secrets of Russia’s early days of communism. Building on one archival revelation after another, the author reveals how the Bolsheviks financed their aggression through astonishingly extensive thievery. Their looting included everything from the cash savings of private citizens to gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, icons, antiques, and artwork. By tracking illicit Soviet financial transactions across Europe, McMeekin shows how Lenin’s regime accomplished history’s greatest heist between 1917 and 1922 and turned centuries of accumulated wealth into the sinews of class war. McMeekin also names names, introducing for the first time the compliant bankers, lawyers, and middlemen who, for a price, helped the Bolsheviks launder their loot, impoverish Russia, and impose their brutal will on millions.

Documentary students and fans revel in stories about filmmakers conquering extraordinary challenges trying to bring their work to the screen. This book brings vividly to life the sometimes humorous, sometimes excruciating-and always inspiring-stories behind the making of some of the greatest documentaries of our time. All of the filmmakers and films profiled are Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning. Documentary Case Studies walks readers through the fixes and missteps that today's documentary leaders worked through at all stages to create their masterworks-from development, fundraising and pre-production, through production and then post. There are plenty of “how to” documentary filmmaking books in circulation, but this book will instead deploy a personal, intimate, and candid approach to unlocking the secrets of the craft and the business by meeting filmmakers who tackle production challenges in the most resourceful and unconventional ways.