True Heist

On 22 February 2006, GBP53 million was stolen from a cash warehouse belonging to the Securitas company in Tonbridge, Kent. In terms of value, the robbery puts previous British capers, such as the Great Train Robbery, in the shade. This was a crime notable for its audacity, carried out by an unlikely crew of players that included a used car salesman, two Albanian casual workers and a roofer. Five men were convicted at the Old Bailey in January 2008, which attracted nationwide media coverage.

Every four years, the criminal underworld engages in a game. The Game. The challenges range from the impossible to the deadly to the truly insane. Things that only a crazy person would tackle. I’ve won the game five times. This time will be no different. I’m at the top of my field now, the best of the world’s thieves. There’s nothing I can’t steal, and this time, the game is all about theft, subterfuge, and sleight of hand. Starting with a legendary painting of poppy flowers.

Leonardo DiCaprio. Alex Rodriguez. Tobey Maguire. Affleck. Damon. Cassavetes. What do these people have in common? Not just fame and fortune; all these men are also alumni of the ultra-exclusive, high-stakes poker ring that inspired Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-nominated film, Molly's Game. But Houston Curtis, the card shark who co-founded the game with Tobey Maguire, knows that Sorkin's is the whitewashed version. In Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist, Curtis goes all-in, revealing the true story behind the game.

They broke into a bank by crawling through sewage—and emerged as legends. In 1976, under the glamorous streets of Nice, France, a group of thieves pulled off a bank robbery that defied logic and stunned the world. Led by the enigmatic Albert Spaggiari, the gang spent months tunneling through sewers and solid rock to breach the Société Générale vault during a long holiday weekend. Once inside, they worked for nearly three days—stealing millions in cash, gold, and jewels from over 400 deposit boxes. They left without a trace, except a note: “Without weapons, nor hate, nor violence.”

In February 2003, thieves pulled off the impossible—breaching Antwerp’s “impenetrable” vault and vanishing with over $100 million in diamonds, gold, and cash. No alarms, no broken locks, no trace. Dubbed the heist of the century, this true-crime account reveals how a crew of Italian specialists infiltrated the world’s diamond capital, outsmarted state-of-the-art security, and disappeared into legend. Riveting and meticulously researched, The Antwerp Diamond Heist uncovers the planning, execution, and enduring mystery of history’s greatest gem theft.

At just 21 years of age, friends Todd Wilson and Scott McCarthy were virtually inseparable. The pair reported for duty at United Bank of Denver at 6: 00 a.m. on Father’s Day 1991—McCarthy’s first day on the job. They joined two more experienced guards and began making their rounds. By 9:30 a.m., all four were dead. The killer then descended upon the cash vault where he held six petrified tellers at gunpoint before absconding with nearly $200,000. Eighteen days later, the Denver Police Department arrested one of its own. Not only had retired sergeant James W.

In August 1963, a Royal Mail train was stopped in the dead of night and £2.6 million in cash vanished into the darkness. The Great Train Robbery: Britain’s Most Daring Railway Heist uncovers the full story—from meticulous planning and the dramatic raid itself to Scotland Yard’s relentless pursuit, harsh sentences, and notorious prison escapes. More than a crime, it became a legend—an audacious tale of ambition, folly, and consequence that continues to captivate over half a century later.

On March 18, 1990, two men disguised as police officers entered Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and vanished with masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, and more—an art haul worth over $500 million. Decades later, not a single piece has been recovered. The Gardner Museum Heist unravels the daring crime, the mob connections, the false leads, and the enduring mystery that haunts the art world. Equal parts true crime and cultural history, it’s the definitive account of America’s greatest unsolved art theft.

In an era before modern forensics and digital surveillance, a group of clever criminals orchestrated a railway heist so precise, it baffled Victorian law enforcement and captivated the public. On a summer night in 1855, as a train carried war funds from London to Folkestone, thieves swapped the shipment’s gold bars with lead and escaped undetected.

On April 14, 1975, Myles Connor, already a known art thief, entered the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in disguise along with a cohort. The pair went directly the Dutch Gallery and proceeded to remove Portrait of Elsbeth van Rijn from its place on the wall. After a brief scuffle with the guards—with Myles deterring his partner from shooting a bystander—the pair was gone, leaving behind no traceable evidence amidst the mayhem. Most thieves are in it for the money, but Myles' motive was freedom.

One of the biggest scores in Mafia history, the Lufthansa Airlines heist of 1978 has become the stuff of Mafia legend - and a decades-long investigation that continues to this day. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony DeStefano sheds new light on this legendary unsolved case using recent evidence from the 2015 trial of 80-year-old Mafia don Vincent Asaro, who for the first time speaks out on his role in the fateful Lufthansa heist.

On December 11, 1978, masked men stormed JFK Airport’s Lufthansa terminal and escaped with nearly six million dollars in cash and jewels—the largest cash robbery in American history. What began as the perfect crime soon unraveled into paranoia, betrayal, and murder. The Lufthansa Heist: The Mafia’s Greatest Airport Robbery pulls you inside the planning, execution, and bloody aftermath of a job that made history, destroyed lives, and remains unsolved in the eyes of the law.

One night, in a small North Carolina town, a down-on-his-luck guard at Loomis Fargo manages to steal $17 million - literally more than one ton of cash. Despite being caught on camera wheeling the money from the vault to the getaway van, David Ghantt makes off to Mexico before the FBI can blink. There's just one hitch: Ghantt has entrusted the money to an oddball crew of accomplices who had wooed him into committing this massive theft in the first place - and who, he soon learns, are trying to take him out.

Whether in Truman Capote’s detailed murder of the Clutter family or Ted Bundy’s small-town charm, criminals have always roamed rural America and towns worldwide. Featuring murder stories, criminal case studies, and more, The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns contains all-new accounts from writers of true crime, crime journalism, and crime fiction. And these entries are not based on a true story - they are true stories. Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, the stories in this volume span the globe.

In 2005, a team of criminals tunneled beneath the streets of Fortaleza, Brazil, and pulled off one of the largest bank heists in history. Disguised as landscapers, they built an 80-meter tunnel, cut into the Banco Central’s vault, and vanished with 3.5 tons of cash—nearly $70 million. This gripping true-crime account reveals the daring plan, the nationwide manhunt, and the betrayals that turned fortune into bloodshed. A story of ambition, greed, and the fragility of institutions, it remains Brazil’s most infamous “heist of the century.”

What If I Told You That $100 Million in Diamonds Vanished From One of the World's Most Secure Airports in Broad Daylight? You'd probably think it was fiction. You'd be wrong. On a cold February afternoon in 2005, Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport became the scene of one of the most audacious heists in criminal history. In less than sixty seconds, armed men disguised as KLM employees terrorized four airport workers and vanished with a fortune in diamonds destined for Antwerp—the world's diamond capital.

In The Lufthansa Heist: The Mob’s Big Score, author James G. Edwards II delivers a gripping account of the people, the plan, and the bloody aftermath of the crime that stunned law enforcement and fed the public imagination for decades. From Jimmy Burke’s deadly leadership to Henry Hill’s later confessions, this book explores how mob discipline broke down, how investigators struggled to connect dots, and how Hollywood mythologized a heist that remains shrouded in mystery.

On February 12, 1994, just as the Winter Olympics opened in Lillehammer, Norway’s most famous artwork—Edvard Munch’s The Scream—was stolen in under 60 seconds from the National Gallery in Oslo. The culprits? A group of masked men with alleged ties to a modern-day Templar revivalist movement, combining ideology, symbolism, and street-level criminal precision.

In January 1950, eleven men walked into the Brinks Armored Car Depot in Boston and pulled off what was then the largest cash heist in American history. Wearing Halloween masks and stolen uniforms, they vanished with over $2.7 million—and left behind almost no clues. For years, it looked like they had committed the perfect crime.

What do Wyatt Earp, Belle Gunness, Big Foot the Renegade, Billy the Kid, Dr. H.H. Holmes, and The Black Hand have in common? They were all subjects of true crime newspaper reporting in the 1800s. Now their stories and that of many others are brought together in their original form in this compilation by New York Times best-selling author Mike Rothmiller. These classic works of journalism resurrect astonishing stories that will take the listener back to when these horrific tales mesmerized a nation.