Sort of like Robin Hood-except for the part where he kept the loot himself-Comfort masterminded what was, at the time, the most lucrative heist in history, while appearing to his neighbors like an ordinary suburban family man. Eventually, taking money from the rich was where he excelled. He had taken to crime from a young age with card sharping and petty theft.
The answer lay in the leader of the thieves, a man by the name of Bobby Comfort. The police were baffled by how such a large-scale operation could go off so smoothly. In January 1972, men in tuxedos robbed the Pierre, the luxurious Manhattan hotel, and got away with eleven million dollars' worth of cash and jewelry. It just so happened that he was great at being a criminal.
Growing up in Rochester, New York, Bobby Comfort wanted to be a good something. meetings.This Pulitzer Prize–winning author's true account of the thief behind the famed 1972 heist is "an engrossing crime biography. For all the derring-do, Comfort failed when he attempted honest business and ended his days watching Phil Donahue on television and often showing up as the only father at afternoon P.T.A.
Berkow describes him, Comfort's basic flaws were a lack of responsibility and an inability to be in touch with reality for any length of time. He also gives some clues as to what pushed Comfort into the criminal life (parents, of course) and describes the despairing terror of victims, including the actress Sophia Loren. Berkow, drawing on exhaustive research and interviews with Bobby Comfort, jewel thief extraordinary and mastermind of the Pierre and other robberies, spins a dramatic tale of the meticulous planning and audacious execution of heists and the police work that follows them and ultimately foils robbers, at least some of the time. If that were the extent of the story told by Ira Berkow, a sportswriter for The New York Times, it would be by itself a solid and fascinating account of the 1972 robbery of the Pierre Hotel. What is more, the thieves quarrel, the loot disappears, and the planner takes the fall (in Attica).
(Atheneum, $17.95.) It was a caper out of a Hollywood production of the 1930's: five dinner-jacketed thieves walk into a deluxe Manhattan hotel, handcuff 19 employees and guests and walk out with more than $10 million in jewels and cash. THE MAN WHO ROBBED THE PIERRE: The Story of Bobby Comfort.
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