41
The Lone Ranger
Among the many criminal enterprises Richard had become involved with, he also ran a breaking-and-entering crew. It consisted of Al Rinke, Gary Smith, Danny Deppner, and Percy House. Richard had met each of them, over a period of years, at Phil Solimene’s store. They broke into homes all over New Jersey and stole anything of value they could carry, much of which Phil Solimene sold, splitting the proceeds with the gang. They even stole cars from people’s garages. Richard was both the muscle and the brains behind the operation; and he was the discipline of the operation: he made sure none of them talked or did anything that would compromise the gang—and more important, compromise him.
Percy House was the foreman. He was a short, squat, gruff man that always looked dirty and in need of a shave—a nasty piece of work indeed. Gary Smith was tall and lanky and wore thick black plastic glasses and an Abe Lincoln–type beard, had a hare lip. Danny Deppner was also tall and thin, broad shouldered and strong, had a mop of unruly black hair that always looked windblown. Al Rinke was small and frail and looked like a mouse. None of them had so much as a high school education, and they were not too swift, but they took orders relatively well and, for the most part, did what Richard told them. They were all deathly afraid of Richard. By now Richard had garnered a very well-deserved reputation as a dangerous man, a stone-cold killer, and was the indisputable alpha predator in the criminal food chain. What he said went. He was the boss. The final arbitrator. God.
In this world might was always right.
Richard had always wanted his own gang, styled after a Mafia family. He, too, pined to be inducted into a Mafia family. But he knew that could never happen, because he was not Italian, so he was kind of developing his own crime empire, in his own way. Problem was, these guys were all undisciplined and dumb. They would ultimately become the chink in Richard’s armor of invisibility, breaking his incredible run of luck.
Louis Masgay had a variety store in Forty Fort, Pennsylvania. He bought a lot of swag from Phil Solimene, which he sold out of his shop. He also played cards in the weekend games in Solimene’s store. Masgay had bought hijacked blank videos from Solimene and Richard. He wanted more of them and kept badgering Richard: “When will you have more; I’ll take all you can get; I got cash money, no questions asked.”
This went on for months. Masgay was beginning to annoy Richard, and Richard began ducking him. Still, Masgay kept showing up at Solimene’s store, looking for a big load of blank tapes, saying he had “cash money.”
Finally, on July 1, 1981, Masgay came into Solimene’s store late in the day. Solimene told him a new load of hijacked tapes had come in. Masgay was excited. Solimene asked if he had the money. Trusting Solimene, Louis Masgay told him he did, that it was hidden inside the door panel of his van. With that Solimene picked up the phone and called Richard (he was one of the few people who had Richard’s home phone number) and told him what was up. Richard said he’d be there in one hour. Masgay was excited.
Richard walked in the store an hour later. He had a .22 pistol with a silencer in his pocket. By now the store was closed.
“Where is he?” Richard asked.
“In the john,” Solimene said.
Richard calmly walked to the bathroom, taking out the .22 as he went. Without a word he quickly opened the bathroom door. A surprised Masgay was sitting on the toilet. Richard raised the .22 and shot him in the forehead, above his left eye, then shot him a second time square in the center of his head, instantly killing him.
“Hope you don’t mind I did it here,” Richard said.
“If I did it wouldn’t matter now,” Solimene said. Richard trusted Phil Solimene; they had done many illegal things together over the years and there was never a problem. Richard considered Solimene a friend…perhaps the only friend he ever had.
They put Louis Masgay into a large black plastic lawn bag, went out to Mas-gay’s van, pried open the door panel, and found a neat stack of money held together with two rubber bands. Back in the store they counted the money; there was ninety thousand dollars. Richard and Solimene split it down the middle. Richard proceeded to put Masgay in his van and took his body over to his warehouse in North Bergen. In the back of the place there was a hole in the ground, an old well, and ice-cold spring water ran in it.
Robert Pronge and Richard had frozen a man Pronge had killed and stored the body in a meat freezer. The man’s wife had gone to Pronge and asked him to kill her husband so she could collect the insurance money. To pull this off successfully it had to seem that the man had died later than the actual murder, to give her time to get the policy in place. Richard watched Pronge kill the man with his cyanide spray, and then they deep-froze him for several months, then put him where he’d be found. The wife did, in fact, collect the insurance money, which she ultimately split with Richard and Pronge.
Now Richard was wondering if the ice water in the well would slow the decomposition of a body. Solimene had told him that Richard Masgay’s family knew he was coming to meet them, and Richard was thinking he’d freeze Masgay, then months later put him out somewhere he could be found. Richard carried Masgay to the well and dumped him inside, put a tire on top of him, then a piece of plywood, then poured some cement on top of the wood, mostly covering the hole up. Now he went back to Solimene’s place, and Solimene followed Richard as he drove Masgay’s van onto the turnpike and left it on the side of the road right there out in the open. Then Richard got into Solimene’s car, and they returned to the store.
Another job well done, it seemed. Solimene and Richard hugged and shook hands and Richard went back to Dumont, forty-five thousand dollars richer, carefully making sure he wasn’t being followed as he went, listening to country music.
But Phil Solimene had a big mouth. Several weeks after the Masgay murder, he told Percy House what they’d done to Masgay, and how Richard had killed George Malliband too. House was giving Solimene a hard time about money he owed House, and Solimene offhandedly threatened him with Richard.
Percy House wound up telling other members of the gang what he’d heard, and they in turn told people— wives and friends—and soon a dozen individuals knew about Malliband’s and Masgay’s murders.
Thus, for the first time, the cat was let out of the proverbial bag.
42
The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight
Pat Kane, the young air force veteran whose brother Ed had convinced him to become a state trooper, was now a detective, the youngest in the Newton, New Jersey, outpost, where he was stationed.
Pat was a religious man who went to church every Sunday and loved his job. He thought he was the luckiest guy in the world, getting paid for what he wanted to do more than anything: putting bad guys behind bars where they belonged. He often worked outdoors and had a chance to make the world a better place. What could be sweeter? For Pat, being a cop was not just a job, it was a calling, his passion in life. He was, in a very real sense, on a mission, and that mission was protecting women and children from the fang-toothed predators that so readily moved about in a free society. Pat did everything by the book. He was a genuinely honest man, would never take a free meal or drink from anyone, not even a cup of coffee. He had come to believe that the police were the last and final line of defense society had against chaos. Though he was highly religious, Pat Kane wouldn’t have a second thought about killing a bad guy if it came to that. Detective Kane was a diligent, proactive investigator—the type of man who will not let go of something once he gets his teeth into it. Stubborn and tenacious, he was like a bulldog.
Pat Kane’s boss was Lieutenant John Leck, a tall, stocky individual with a bald head who looked like Telly Savalas. Toward the end of 1981, Leck called Detective Kane into his office. There had been an inordinate number of burglaries all over northern New Jersey, and Lieutenant Leck was concerned: a band of professional burglars, he explained, was breaking into homes with arrogant impunity and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down. They mostly chose nice homes in secluded areas and robbed them at will, as though they had a license from the powers above to steal whatever the hell they pleased. A man representing himself as one of the gang had gotten caught robbing a house by the owner, and he was now in Lieutenant Leck’s office, trying to make a deal. The lieutenant
