Singing Thief

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23009, 9 April 1938, Page 11 (Supplement)

Singing Thief

EXPERT SAFE-CRACKER

"Yankee Johnny"—one-time associate of A 1 Capo'ne and former member of a Texas chain gang, who has been sentenced to three years' penal servitude at London Sessions—used to boast: "There is not a safe in: this country I. couldn't crack," writes, a Daily Express representative. Before he faced his trial on a charge of breaking and entering a shop in Fulhani with intent to steal, >Yank<*e Johnny"—John Arnold, forty-six-year-old chemist—had talked to me in the fourieen-roomed house in Loughborough .Road, Brixton, S.W., where he lived with his wife and two sons. . At,that house at Christmas, Arnold, "threw a party" to thirty friends. It cost him £2OO. Neighbours thought John Arnold was '"something in the city." They did not know that ho was the brains behind some of the most daring robberies in London. Arnold chewed a fat cigar and dug his heels into the thick carpeted floor of his lounge as he said to me: "I always sing as I crack a safe. It helps me to forget thq 'cops' and drowns the noise of the drills biting, through the steels doors.„ "Most of the jobs on which I have worked hare meant six hours' work through tlie/'night. "In all -my work I use the finest tools available." (His burglary outfit, including a largo electric drill, is valued at £100.) Arnold spoke with a slow, pleasant Texan drawl. He is the son of a Canadian doctor and was one of three brothers in the medical profession—until lie was struck off the register after four years. When' he was put on Capone's pay roll, Arnold set to work to manufacture gas cylinders for »afe blowing. It was.while bringing off a £50.000 raid in Texas that he was caught and sentenced to serve in a chain gang. He was released after serving twelve months. He has been in England since 1924.