The Coverdale Brinks Armored Car Robbery July 11, 2019

Copyright © 2019                               John F. Oyler 

July 11, 2019

The Coverdale Brinks Armored Car Robbery

The final presentation in the Bridgeville Historical Society’s 2018/2019 program series dealt with the very first robbery of a Brink’s armored truck in history. It occurred on March 11, 1927 in Bethel Park on what is now Brightwood Road, close to its intersection with Route 88.

The speaker was Courtney Williams, a multi-talented Bethel Park High School teacher. One of her responsibilities is directing the school’s dramatic production each Fall. In 2017 she decided to write her own play, based on an actual event that had taken place in her community. The result was “The Heist”, a fictionalized version of a very significant historical event.

The actual robbery was perpetrated by a notorious Detroit gang, the Flatheads. They took their name from the physical appearance of their leader, Paul Jaworski. Newspaper photographs do indeed resemble the old Dick Tracy comic strip gangster, Flattop. According to Wikipedia Gould based the character on “Pretty Boy” Floyd; based on my perusal of the photographs, I would bet on Jaworski.

Although the Flatheads were based in Detroit and committed a number of highly publicized robberies there, they regularly came here and specialized in robing coal company payroll shipments. Apparently one or more of the gang members was a local resident who had intimate knowledge of the procedures followed by the different coal companies. In 1927 they decided to take on the challenge of robbing the payroll of the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company’s Coverdale mine.

The surface facilities for Coverdale mine were in the general area of what is today Industrial Boulevard in Bethel Park. Adjacent to it was one of the largest “mine patch” communities in the area, over 250 company houses. Payroll day (twice a month) was an important event in the lives on the miners.

One day earlier, on March 10, someone had broken into the powder supply house at the company’s nearby Number 3 mine at Mollenauer and stolen five hundred pounds of black powder, a battery, and a long length of electrical wire. An annoying event, whose relevance was not apparent at the time. This was an era when payroll robberies were common. The Brink’s Express Company responded by developing the ultimate delivery vehicle, the steel-sided “armored car”, an obvious descendant of the tanks used successfully in World War I. 

On this day a Brink’s armored car picked up a payroll of over $100,000 at the coal company office in the Wabash Building in downtown Pittsburgh and, accompanied by a second vehicle full of guards, proceeded south to deliver its cargo to the Coverdale mine. Before it reached its destination two massive explosions threw the armored car “75 feet in the air” and deposited it upside down, with its occupants stunned. The support car was in a large cavern left by a second explosion; the guards in it were also incapable of resistance.

The robbers had buried the black powder in the roadbed and set off the explosions with a remote plunger, precisely when the two vehicles were directly over the charges. They efficiently scooped up all of the payroll envelopes, got into two getaway cars and disappeared. None of the Brink’s guards was seriously injured: one of them was able to identify the license number on one of the cars, a blue Stearns-Knight touring car.

The massive manhunt that ensued found paydirt at the farm house of Joseph Wenchoski at Ginger Hill, near Monongahela City. Following a tip from a neighbor who described Wenchoski as a strange farmer who could afford fancy cars and expensive farm machinery, but only sold three cans of milk a day, a large posse descended on his house. They apprehended Jaworski there, along with numerous items of incriminating evidence, including uncirculated currency that was identified as part of the payroll.

The Stearns-Knight getaway car was found nearby, hidden in a ravine. Eventually two buried milk cans containing about $30,000 in currency were discovered at the farm. Except for Stanley Malaskey, who was captured with Jaworski, none of the other nine gang members involved in the robbery were caught.

Included in one of the newspaper photographs of the posse at the farmhouse was Allegheny County Detective Robert L. McMillen, a well-known Bridgeville resident. I was not surprised to see him involved in this incident; McMullen figured prominently in all the law enforcement incidents in this area in the early part of the twentieth century. County detectives were quite important law officers in those days.

Five months later, while Jaworski was being held in the Allegheny County Jail, his brother Sam masterminded a daring jail break. He smuggled in five “automatic revolvers”, tossed three of them through the bars to Paul, and turned the other two on the startled guards. Retrieving the cell key from a guard he released his brother and John Vasbinder, a convicted murderer awaiting execution. In the ensuing dash to freedom two lawmen were seriously injured. The escapees drove off in a getaway car with a female driver. 

Jaworski and the Flatheads’ next well publicized robbery was at the offices of the Detroit News on June 25, 1928. It netted them $14,000 and cost police Sergeant George Barstad his life. Jaworski fled to Cleveland. On September 13, 1928, he and an accomplice, Frank “Whitey” Kraft, were enjoying a meal in a restaurant when a nearby diner recognized him and notified the police.

It turns out that Jaworski had been spotted by the director of the church choir in which he had sung as a young boy. He fought his way out of the restaurant, only to be cornered in a nearby house and severely injured by a shotgun blast from a policeman. Medical personnel were able to save his life and permit him to be extradited to Pittsburgh where society finally got its justice when he was electrocuted on January 2, 1929.

Jaworski was born in Poland in 1900; his name then was Paul Poluszynski. His family came to Cleveland while he was still quite young. When his father complained that Paul’s behavior would bring dishonor to the family name, he changed his name to Jaworski.

Although Jaworski and the Flatheads are remembered for the Coverdale robbery, it was actually the third such escapade in this area. The first heist occurred on December 23, 1922, when the gang successfully intercepted the payroll for Pittsburgh Coal Company’s Harrison mine in Beadling. The paymaster had picked up the payroll at the First National Bank in Carnegie and was transporting it by automobile to Beadling. Chief Clerk John Ross Dennis was riding in front of the car on a motorcycle. 

Shortly after the cavalcade reached left “the Carnegie road” and went onto Beadling Road, a single gunman shot Dennis, knocking him to the ground. He then killed him with a shotgun blast at close range. Five other bandits surrounded the car, forced its three occupants to lie face down in the road, and absconded in a getaway car with the $20,000 payroll. The case was never solved although the authorities tried to pin it on Daniel Rastelli. Initially convicted of the Dennis murder, he was eventually exonerated in a second trial. Years later Jaworski claimed responsibility for the robbery and murder.

I presume this robbery was committed on the portion of Beadling Road between its intersections with Cedar Boulevard and Gilkeson Road, close to the Mt. Lebanon Township maintenance facilities. “The Carnegie Road” was probably either a combination of Cochran Road and Cedar Boulevard or, perhaps, Swallow Hill Road, Segar Road, and Lindendale Drive. The fact that Dennis was taken to the home of Andrew Smith reinforces this presumption. “The Smith Castle”, on the hillside west of Cedar Boulevard is still a well-known landmark.

The other payroll robbery was at the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company’s Mollenauer mine, not far from Coverdale. It was perpetuated on December 23, 1925. Paymaster Leroy Hutton and two guards – Isaiah Gump and Francis Mahoney, picked up the payroll at the coal company’s offices in downtown Pittsburgh. Divided into two bags, it totaled $67,000. They boarded the Pittsburgh and West Virginia train at the Wabash Terminal, got off at Mollenauer, and proceeded toward the mine office.

At this point an automobile passed them, stopped, and discharged six bandits. Gump was immediately shot, the other two coal company employees thrown to the ground, and the bags of cash appropriated. The gang then jumped into their car and drove away safely. Gump died a few hours later. The case went unsolved until Jaworski claimed responsibility for the murder and robbery a few years later. 

I am surprised that the overall career of Jaworski and the Flathead Gang is not better known. He claimed to have killed twenty-six men, including four policemen and his fellow jail-breaker Vasbinder. His record of evil doing matches those of “Baby  Face” Nelson and “Pretty Boy” Floyd, highly publicized villains of the era. Perhaps he needed a better nickname.

The Historical Society will kick off its 2019/2020 program series on September 24, 2019 with a program by Steve Mihaly entitled “Marketing the Presidency”. This appears to be an appropriate time to compliment Program Chairperson Rosemary Kasper on another fine season of presentations.