Henry Zebrowski

But while the Bureau had no idea what the Chicago outfit's new target was, a heist went down in Chicago about a month later at a warehouse belonging to one of the biggest armored car companies in America, Pearl Later Security Incorporated.

At around 1 a.m.

on Monday, October 21st, $3.8 million in small unmarked bills, plus half a million in checks.

And that's $3.8 million in 1974 money.

Yeah.

All that was stolen from Perlator's Chicago warehouse.

But while the heist was well planned, it did not go off without a hitch.

The authorities were tipped off to the break-in when warehouse staff noticed that a smoke detector had gone off in one of the Perlator vaults.

But this was all a part of the plan.

When firefighters arrived, they discovered that three plastic money bags had been filled with gasoline and lit with a long fuse.

The fire was meant as a distraction while the perps got away with the cash.

Everyone's focused on the fire, no one's chasing the guys.

And that plan did work, but the fire was not as large as it was supposed to be.

The perps had meant for 11 bags of fire to go off, but eight bags filled with gas didn't catch because there wasn't enough oxygen in the vaults to keep the fire going.

I think, though, what the all of the bags of gasoline, bags of gasoline, all the shit I've ever heard.

Well, I mean, it worked partly.

I think it was also supposed to obscure how someone found out about the Perlator heist because there were no signs of forced entry to the vault.

The vault was protected by concrete walls a foot thick on each side.

This, of course, heavily implied that the heist was some sort of inside job, which gave the cops a solid lead.

And while it did take authorities a little while to pick up the trail, they did make six arrests in connection to the heist.