
“The police recognized him as a wanted man,” explains White. Then, on New Year’s Day of ’76, Dussault’s girlfriend called cops to have him removed from her Vegas pad. The booking photo of Chucky Flynn, one of the ill-prepared thieves in the Rhode Island heist. However, in a face-to-face encounter, Dussault convinced Flynn that they were being set up. 2, says White, a Providence newspaper “ran a story that Dussault was going to turn himself in for $100,000.” Flynn and two others were dispatched to kill him. Patriarca is believed to have received the rest.

The participants each walked away with around $70,000. Those sparkling goods accounted for what the ill-prepared thieves - who failed to bring enough duffel bags and forgot to keep their masks on during the heist - were unable to carry out of Hudson Fur.Īs co-author White tells The Post, the robbery was sanctioned by local mob boss Raymond L.S. There were loose coins, a jeweled chalice, cash, guns.” The room was knee-deep with bars of gold and silver and all kinds of jewels. “After they left, huffing and puffing to get out with their bags of stolen stuff, we went in. “I heard guys saying, ‘Holy s–t, I can’t believe what’s here,’” Oliva, now 68, tells The Post. It’s chronicled in the book “The Last Good Heist,” by Tim White, Randall Richard and Wayne Worcester (out Monday).ĭespite the mob vault’s notoriety, even robbery ringleaders Robert Dussault and Charles Flynn were surprised by the volume of loot. The brazen job - which was echoed by a burglary this past May that had three men dropping into a Queens bank vault through the roof and leaving with $5 million - ranked at the time as the Northeast’s largest haul. Who would be crazy enough to steal from the mob?īut in August 1975, eight men walked in and waved guns at Oliva and her bosses, pulling off a robbery that would yield some $30 million in cash, precious metals and jewels. And while Hudson Fur’s alarm system was minimal, it also seemed unnecessary.

Among local criminals, the vault was no secret. But there it was, inside Hudson Fur Storage: 150 safe-deposit boxes that held loads of stolen booty.

Barbara Oliva, an apprentice furrier in Providence, RI, had no idea that her employers ran a secret bank for the Mafia.
