George Leonidas Leslie began life as one of the privileged. However, he ended up being a criminal, known to the New York City police as the “King of the bank robbers.”
Leslie was born in Cincinnati in 1840. Her father owned a brewery and Leslie started out as an academic, graduating from the University of Cincinnati with honors and a BA in architecture. After the death of her parents, Leslie sold her father’s brewery, gave up her architectural career, and moved to New York City. There he joined a bad crowd and decided he could make a good career robbing banks. It is estimated that in the ten-year period from 1874 to 1884, Leslie was responsible for 80% of all bank robberies in the United States, with an estimated cash value of between $ 7 million and $ 12 million.
In New York City, Leslie posed as a city man of considerable means. He belonged to the most exclusive clubs and was a regular theatrical and patron of the arts. He used his disguise to gain access to various bits of information that make his life of bank robbery more profitable. Leslie used to spend up to three years planning a job at the bank. When she found a bank to her liking, Leslie would try to get the plans for the interior of the bank. If this were not possible, he would visit the bank posing as a depositor and, using his architectural background, would draw general plans inside the bank himself. Sometimes Leslie would have one of his gang members get a job at the bank as a night watchman or janitor, so that Leslie could get the exact specifications, make, and model of the bank vault.
After obtaining this valuable information, Leslie would purchase a duplicate of the bank’s safe. He spent days and sometimes weeks perfecting the art of opening the safe. He avoided using dynamite to open the safe, and decided that that would cause too much noise and get him detected. Leslie’s method of opening safes included drilling a hole under the dial and then using a thin piece of steel to manipulate the glasses into place. To cover almost any bank robbery contingency, Leslie had a set of anti-theft tools specially created for him that cost a staggering $ 3,000, which was more than most people made in several years.
To perfect the job she was planning, Leslie would sometimes install a room, in a loft she rented downtown, to resemble the inside of the bank she planned to rob. There, Leslie, and the men she selected for that particular bank job, would spend a considerable amount of time practicing exactly how the bank robbery should unfold. Leslie would dim the lights and watch his men maneuver in the dark, then criticize their work. Their cohorts consisted of various known criminals such as Jimmy Hope, Jimmy Brady, Abe Coakley, Shang Draper, Red Leary, Johnny Dobbs, Worcester Sam Perris, Bill Kelly, and Banjo Pete Emerson.
In May 1875, Leslie decided to rob the Manhattan Savings Institution at 644 Broadway. Leslie, through his bank “inside man”, Patrick Shelvin, discovered the make and model of the bank vault lock. He acquired an exact model from the manufacturers, Valentine & Bulter, and spent six months perfecting the opening of the lock. On October 27, 1875, Shelvin let Leslie and his crew enter the bank for the night. When they finished their job, they had stolen $ 3.5 million in cash and securities, almost $ 50 million in today’s money. No one was arrested until May 1879, and as a result, Jimmy Hope and Bill Kelly were convicted and sent to prison. Abe Coakley and Banjo Pete Emerson were also arrested, but were acquitted at trial. Leslie was never arrested and his involvement in the robbery was not known until after his death.
Leslie’s reputation grew to such gigantic proportions that he was often called a “consultant” by other gangs of bank robbers. It was believed that he received more than $ 20,000 just to travel to San Francisco to review plans for a heist at a local bank.
However, if Leslie had a weakness, it was for the affection of women. He began an affair with the girlfriends of one of his companions, Shang Draper. On June 4, 1884, Leslie’s decomposed body was found at the base of Tramps Rock, near the border line between Westchester and the Bronx. They shot him twice in the head. Police speculated that Leslie was killed by the jealous Draper at a home at 101 Lynch Street in Brooklyn, then his body was brought to Tramps Rock by three of his associates, who had been seen near Yonkers at the time the man was discovered. body. But there was little evidence of the crime and no one was arrested.
