The Pierre is one of New York's
most exclusive and expensive hotels.
You had all the richest people
all staying under a single roof.
It was like the perfect target.
Its well-heeled guests include the biggest names
in finance, fashion, and film.
One would see people like Aristotle Onassis there,
J. Paul Getty, Elizabeth Taylor.
It was that kind of place.
But for five ambitious crooks,
The Pierre means something more,
a chance to get rich quick if they can pull off
one of history's most daring heists.
Bobby hit about 25 hotels,
but he wants that one big score.
There's gonna be more money,
but there's also gonna be more security,
and that brings more problems.
You could plan a robbery for years,
and things will still go wrong.
♪ ♪
[devious music]
The masterminds behind every great heist
see what most people don't.
♪ ♪
Risking everything to pull off the score of a lifetime,
it takes a bold plan,
the right team,
and the skill to stay one step ahead of the law.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
It's 1972, and Manhattan is a tale of two cities.
Downtown, crime and poverty.
Uptown, the city's wealthiest
hobnob with celebrities and luxury hotels,
flaunting their wealth.
The line between the haves and the have nots
could not be clearer,
and that leads to an uptick in violent crime.
♪ ♪
There were shootings in the streets.
There was gangs.
And bad guys thought
they can get away with murder
because they actually did.
It really was kind of a dark time for the city,
but then on the other hand,
you kind of had all these celebrities
flocking to New York.
One of their favorite spots
is an infamous hotel, The Pierre.
At The Pierre Hotel itself,
you had Karl Lagerfeld, Valentino.
They were doing their fashion shows there.
It was even where Joe Frazier was staying
when Muhammad Ali called him
and asked him for a rematch.
It was that kind of place.
To rent a apartment there, for instance,
it cost the equivalent of about $34,000 a month.
So you can imagine the luxury.
On any given night, this roster of riches
makes a tempting target for ambitious thieves,
which is why The Pierre has more security
than almost any other hotel in New York,
starting with its vault.
Back in the 1970s, when you checked into a hotel
and you had jewels, you had cash,
what you would typically do was put it
in the safe deposit boxes owned by the hotel.
The vault at The Pierre Hotel
is made to look ominous.
They don't want it to look welcoming to thieves.
It's huge. It's steel.
It's not Fort Knox,
but you're not gonna get through it
with a crowbar either.
12-gauge steel, about 300 pounds.
The second that you open the vault door,
it triggers the alarm,
and it's incumbent then upon the employee
to turn off the alarm within 10 seconds.
Otherwise, the police are automatically called.
Inside the vault, there's 208 boxes,
and inside those boxes, some very expensive jewelry
from some high-dollar people.
A safe deposit box has a design
where there's two keys.
You have one key for the manager
and one key for the owner of the box,
so it takes two keys to get into that box.
Unless you have the proper tools,
you have to use a hammer and a crowbar.
And trust me,
it's real hard to get into a security box.
You can't get anywhere near this fault
without encountering a security guard.
Unlike many hotels of that era,
The Pierre Hotel has guards patrolling 24 hours a day.
Getting past the guards and into the vault
is only half the challenge.
With hundreds of guests and dozens of staff
roaming The Pierre at all hours,
the likelihood of getting caught is enormous.
Even so, one experienced thief
is dreaming up a plan to net the score of a lifetime.
He just has to get out of jail.
♪ ♪
Bobby Comfort is a lifelong criminal.
He is fearless.
He starts stealing at the age of seven years old.
By 13, he's in jail.
But Bobby is incredibly intelligent.
He has a history of getting plea deals
knocked down to lesser time.
In 1967, Bobby is in Attica prison,
and he gets a number of newspapers.
But he is interested in some of the gossip columns
in the "New York Daily News," particularly.
When Bobby is in prison, he was doing
what a lot of guys do.
They research their next job.
He's looking to see what kind of jewelry they wear.
He's looking to see where they're staying.
That's very important.
They'll say, oh, they're at The Pierre Hotel
or they're at the Ritz Carlton.
You're gonna always look for an opportunity.
Comfort spends two years
planning the perfect heist from his prison cell.
He knows robbing The Pierre is too big a job to do solo.
When he's released in April 1969,
he starts looking for a partner.
He gets introduced to a fellow professional thief
named Sammy Nalo through a mutual friend.
♪ ♪
Sammy Nalo is basically known as the tool man.
He uses his hammers. He uses chisels.
He can break into anything.
Sammy needed Bobby's people skills,
and Bobby needed Sammy's mechanical skills.
These two guys are a match made in heaven.
Bobby convinces Sammy that they should team up
and go after a lucrative untapped target,
hotel safe deposit boxes.
What many people didn't know is that there's more money
in The Pierre Hotel "security boxes"
than at many banks in the country.
Before hitting The Pierre, Comfort wants practice.
So between 1969 and 1970,
he and Sammy launch a string of robberies
across Manhattan's mid-sized hotels.
In the 1970s, hotels were the perfect place
for Bobby and Sammy to hit for burglaries
because they didn't have security cameras.
They had security guards, but not too many,
because they didn't wanna appear
like they were a fortress.
And the staff themselves were trained
to really welcome guests,
not suspect them of being thieves,
so it was kind of the ideal target.
Sammy and Bobby follow the same approach each time.
They arrive in the middle of the night.
They have suitcases.
They act as guests.
They wear fake facial hair.
They wear fake noses.
Sammy typically wears a wig as well,
because he's bald.
Then at gunpoint, they force the manager
or a night clerk to open the vault.
When the robbery is taking place,
Sammy's just in there with his hammer and his chisels,
and he's busting open absolutely everything
and grabbing what's in it.
In the first year, Bobby hit about 25 hotels.
But he wants that one big score.
But first, Bobby wants more practice.
He ups the ante by planning a heist
at a bigger hotel, the Regency.
Up until this point, Bobby and Sammy have made
about $100,000.
The largest hotels that they've robbed
are the Sherry Netherland, with 100 rooms,
and the Carlyle, with 190 rooms.
With The Pierre Hotel at 714 rooms,
that's over twice the size
of any hotel they've ever robbed.
The Regency Hotel is 390 rooms,
perfect practice run.
Although the Regency has no security guards,
it's big enough to need a third man.
So Comfort and Nalo decide to hire another gun,
a man nicknamed Doc,
and dedicate more time to surveillance.
[bell dinging]
Three days before robbing
the Regency Hotel,
Bobby checked in, and he really did that
to look around, see who's coming and going.
Is it a place where there's more or less staff?
Casing a robbery is the most important thing you can do.
You have to know where everybody is at all times.
If you don't, you could have an unexpected surprise.
Confident he knows everything he needs to
from when the trash goes out to how the windows get washed,
Comfort is ready to strike.
♪ ♪
Their biggest practice heist yet is on.
In the middle of the night on August 5, 1970,
Sammy, Bobby, and one other man arrive with their suitcases,
and they assume their positions.
♪ ♪
These guys go into the Regency,
and what they do to the employees
is they tape their eyes and their mouths shut.
Why?
Because they don't want them identifying them.
As Bobby and Sammy take down the Regency Hotel,
they're practicing the tactics
that they're gonna employ at The Pierre.
One man is holding the hostages at gunpoint.
Sammy goes directly to the safe deposit boxes,
and Bobby mans the front desk.
Sammy is banging away at the safe deposit boxes,
one after the other after the other
with a crowbar and some other tools.
[phone ringing]
So the phone rings.
Bobby answers.
It's a woman in the hotel.
She's calling about the racket,
and if they don't stop it, she's gonna call the cops.
So Bobby's freaking out a little bit.
He goes to Sammy.
He's like, "Hey, enough.
We gotta get what we got and get out of here."
Sammy's like, "No, no, no. I'm not leaving."
They've been at it for nearly two hours,
but Sammy has only opened 17 deposit boxes
for a total of six grand,
not exactly the big score they hoped for.
Bobby notices one of the safe deposit cabinets
isn't attached to the wall.
If they can find a way to take it with them,
they'll have all the time in the world to break into it,
but they'd need a dolly to do that.
Then mastermind Bobby gets inspired.
So Bobby remembers that when he was casing the place,
every day, he saw a window washer across the street.
So he gets an idea.
He goes across the street to the window washer,
and he doesn't ask.
He tells him, "You see that dolly right here?
You and I are taking this across the street."
Pretty much hijacked him in to come in,
help on this robbery.
What that really showed me
is Bobby's thinking on his feet.
You have to improvise.
The best criminals in the world, they improvise.
They've got Sammy on the dolly,
and they've got the window washer.
And the window washer
is kind of a hostage at this point,
kind of an accessory to the robbery.
And can you imagine how heavy this thing is?
They're trying to push this dolly.
You've got Bobby trailing the window washer
with a gun, trying to ensure that he doesn't bail.
When these guys get out to the streets of New York,
anybody can see them.
This isn't exactly keeping a low profile.
♪ ♪
More than two hours in, the Regency Hotel
practice heist is not going well.
So Bobby and his partner Sammy decide to change course.
They'll wheel an entire locked cabinet
crammed with safe deposit boxes
out into the street.
Bobby takes these heavy safe deposit boxes.
He wheels them right through the lobby,
out the front door, into an awaiting car.
It takes a lot of balls.
And the window washer forced to help out,
he gets a $100 bill for his trouble and his silence.
Bobby gets away with about $100,000
in jewels and gems, about $6,000 in cash.
Not a bad take.
♪ ♪
Up until this point, the general public
is really kept in the dark about these robberies
for obvious reasons.
The hotels are embarrassed.
They don't wanna appear
that they're an open target for thieves,
but with the Regency,
it's such a big score that it makes headline news.
Bobby now realizes
that he's brought unwanted attention.
The NYPD starts seeing a pattern,
and they form a task force.
There's insurance companies investigating this as well,
and they're all gonna be all over
every hotel in New York City.
When Bobby realizes the heat is on,
he has to lay low.
Bobby Comfort waits patiently
for more than a year,
refining his plan for what he sees
as his swan song, The Pierre Hotel heist,
the job that will set him up for the rest of his life.
It's almost the holiday season,
and he knows the perfect way to ring in the new year.
In 1972, New Year's Eve is a Friday.
So when people come in
to New York City for the weekend,
they're staying at The Pierre,
they're gonna go out Friday,
and they're gonna go out on Saturday,
so they're wearing their finest jewels.
But by Saturday night, their jewels are tucked safely
into the safe deposit boxes
along with what's left of their cash,
making it the perfect opportunity to hit The Pierre.
♪ ♪
Bobby brings Sammy in 28 days before the robbery
because Sammy's the tool guy.
Sammy can get the proper equipment
to get into these maybe stronger safe deposit boxes.
Bobby tells Sammy that The Pierre is ripe for them,
and Sammy said, "But they have such security."
And Bobby said "I looked it over,
"and it's something that we can do,
but we have to plan carefully."
♪ ♪
Even with two years of practice,
Sammy is nervous The Pierre is too big a job.
So the two men do a walk-through.
When you case a hotel
or a jewelry store or any robbery,
you have to know when people are coming and going.
There are security guards and employees
around every corner 24/7.
♪ ♪
When Sammy sees The Pierre's massive vault door
and all the roving security guards,
he has his doubts.
But Comfort assures him a gun to the head
of the right employee will open any door,
even the vault.
There's just one thing.
They need some help.
♪ ♪
This is a huge, luxurious hotel.
They have 18 security guards at The Pierre.
They're working in eight-hour shifts.
There's no doubt it's intimidating.
♪ ♪
About 18 days before the robbery,
Bobby hires three outside people.
He doesn't tell him anything.
Doesn't tell them where it's gonna be.
But he does tell him the date it's gonna happen.
"I need you from this time to this time.
"I'm gonna pay you this money.
It's a big score. Are you in?"
The three guys say yes.
To this day, we only know them
as City, Country, and Doc.
When you're doing a robbery, every person on that team
gets a nickname, even Bobby and Sammy.
In case they have to communicate,
you're not gonna say a person's name.
"Hey, Bobby or Sammy, get that drill."
Or, "Hey, Larry, I need this."
You use an alias or a nickname during a robbery.
Very important.
Sammy needs a man
to help him bust open the boxes.
City is a man they've worked with before.
They used City in the Carlyle Hotel robbery
in their first year, so Bobby brings him on
because he knows he can trust him.
Bobby hires Doc
because Doc is a friend from out of town.
Doc also helped him with the Regency Hotel robbery.
Country's an interesting case.
You've got Bobby at a card game,
and he's looking across the table,
and there's Country.
And he's thinking, "God, this man looks so dumb,
"but he's got balls.
"He takes huge risks.
That's exactly what I need for one of my robberies."
And that is how Country gets hired for The Pierre robbery.
Nalo rents an apartment
a mile southwest of The Pierre.
This will be their hideout before and after the robbery.
The three hired guns rent rooms at a hotel
a mile farther downtown.
The team deliberately keeps some distance
from both The Pierre and each other.
As part of the preparation for the heist,
Bobby and Sammy go to the library.
They're learning everything they can about the hotel.
They're also learning about who the guests are
that are gonna be there that weekend.
The Pierre had a lot of famous hotel guests,
but one of the most famous was Gabriele Lagerwall.
She lived in a seven-room apartment at The Pierre,
and she had about $3 million worth of jewels.
And she is always photographed in the gossip columns
wearing these huge diamond necklaces.
♪ ♪
Two weeks before the robbery,
Bobby Comfort checks in to the hotel.
The reason he checked in is so he could be in the hotel
when they locked the doors late and they have a doorman.
The Pierre locks its doors
between 1:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.,
which makes a lot of sense for the hotel,
because they only have one door open,
one guard watching that one door,
and they're really able to control who comes in
and who comes out.
But for Bobby, that was a great scenario,
because he only had to worry about
one door rather than four.
But that door has lots of protection,
seven guards spread throughout the hotel.
Rounding them up fast will be the team's first priority.
He's watching the comings and goings of all the employees
and all the security guards, but he notices
that the night auditor opens the vault
at 3:40 in the morning.
And because he's checking the cash
and he's refilling money,
he's back and forth between the cashier's office,
he leaves the vault door open until 4:30.
Bingo, it's the perfect time
to commit this robbery when the vault is already open.
[suspenseful music]
During the casing of this robbery,
Bobby and Sammy practice multiple routes,
multiple directions to get out of this
to the safe house.
And a good robber, what he does
is he gets an alternate route
even en route
in case maybe he thought someone saw him
and the person followed him.
You have to have multiple exit strategies.
As they get closer to the date,
they go out and they buy some supplies.
Handcuffs--20 sets--
gloves, and tape.
Now, they don't all buy it in one store,
reason being is because
that was gonna look kind of odd.
"Can I get 20 sets of handcuffs?"
♪ ♪
It's not like an S&M party or something like that.
They need disguises, so they go
to a variety of stores to pick out disguises.
They got wigs, they got beards,
they got mustaches,
they got eyebrows, and they got noses.
♪ ♪
Three days before the robbery,
Bobby lets them know they're gonna be robbing
The Pierre Hotel the day after New Year's.
They have to know their jobs.
Who's gonna go to the desk?
Who's gonna to take down the guard at the door?
You have to take down multiple people at once.
You have to do it--the timing, 'cause even back in 1972,
they used to have buzzers
that would go to the police department.
♪ ♪
Comfort and Nalo plan to position the getaway car
down the block from the hotel
and hide near the entrance.
City will dress as a chauffeur
and drive Doc and Country,
posing as wealthy hotel guests in the limo.
They'll all arrive at 4:00 a.m.
When Bobby does his first briefing
about The Pierre Hotel heist, he tells the men
the hotel's gonna be on lockdown.
It's in the middle of the night.
They have to arrive at the 61st Street entrance.
They've got five men this time,
so they need to delineate the roles.
You've got Country, who's gonna stay
at the 61st Street entrance.
You've got Doc, who's gonna be holding
the hostages at gunpoint.
Sammy and City are going to be focused
on the safe deposit boxes.
And Bobby, as usual,
is going to be manning the front desk.
They have to be out of there by 6:30.
In a job where you gotta break into safe deposit boxes,
it takes time.
This is not a smash and grab.
♪ ♪
The evening of the heist,
they start at Sammy's apartment.
You have Sammy and Country that are wearing wigs.
City as well.
He's gonna be the limo driver.
Doc and Country put on tuxedos.
But Comfort chooses a more obvious disguise.
Bobby has glasses,
and so he puts a ski mask over his face
to ensure that the glasses stay on.
Doc doesn't have a disguise,
because he isn't staying in New York.
He's not sticking around.
The adrenaline's pumping.
They're thinking about the score.
They're right about to take down.
There also has to be a fear factor
of getting caught.
You're ready.
The pressure starts building.
[dramatic music]
It's happening.
♪ ♪
Dunford and Nalo arrive at The Pierre first.
They take positions on either side
of the 61st Street entrance, hidden from the guard's view.
Minutes later, the limousine arrives.
At first, it's a scene like any other night.
They roll up to The Pierre on the 61st Street side.
City, Country, and Doc get out of the limousine.
They approach the front door.
The security guard meets them.
They say, "We have a reservation
under the name of Dr. Foster."
The second that they start stepping in,
Bobby and Sammy race out from behind the planters,
and the heist is on.
♪ ♪
1972 has barely begun
as Bobby Comfort, Sammy Nalo, and their three accomplices
force their way into New York City's
elite Pierre Hotel.
It's been three years since Comfort first planned it,
but his heist to end all heists has begun.
♪ ♪
When they let 'em in, the guns fly.
They take this guard down.
And now they have control of the front door.
Like a well-choreographed strike team,
they go in so fast, so quick,
that the staff, the security,
they don't even know what's going on.
And this is a credit to Bobby's insistence
that everybody be prepared.
♪ ♪
Sammy leaps over the front desk,
and he takes the clerk hostage.
City races to the elevator
and takes the elevator operator hostage.
Bobby, one track mind, straight to the vault.
He's got a ski mask on,
so he can't just walk very slowly to that place,
'cause the guy will see him
and then lock up the place immediately.
He's in a cash room.
There's secure systems.
There's buttons to the police department.
But no, Bobby sneaks up quietly, gets to the guy,
and gets the drop on him, as we used to call it.
That guy's in shock.
Hands go up.
For their plan, take all the hostages,
put them in one place,
and that place is the executive office.
Being The Pierre Hotel is 41 stories,
multiple people living in there,
you're not gonna take over every room.
But you have to secure the main floor,
and at least you'll know who's coming down
by watching the elevator.
♪ ♪
It's only been 11 minutes,
and the robbers have captured six hostages.
But in a hotel this size in the city that never sleeps,
Comfort's biggest concerns are how many people
will they end up holding here,
and can they maintain control?
They clear the lobby, and they're looking
for the security guards and thinking
that there are seven, 'cause usually there are seven.
They're grabbing the employees,
and they get four security guards.
There's three unaccounted for.
That's panic time.
Where are these other three guards?
But Bobby, he's a quick thinker.
What does he do?
He takes one of the managers,
puts a gun to his head,
and finds out that they're short-staffed
'cause it's a holiday.
It's New Year's.
♪ ♪
After 30 minutes of sweeping the lobby and basement,
they now have 16 frightened hostages.
Comfort assures them, listen, no one will get hurt
if everyone just stays calm.
Confident in Bobby's planning,
men take up their positions,
hoping for a hiccup-free heist.
Bobby's casing set up a really important part.
He put a man at the door with a security outfit on.
Country stays at the 61st Street exit.
Doc is with the hostages.
Sammy and City are attacking these safe deposit boxes
with a hammer and a chisel.
Bobby takes position at the reception desk
so he can watch the elevator.
He can also answer the phone.
Who's calling to check on a reservation
if somebody checked in?
I have now control of that.
♪ ♪
This is where it becomes rather interesting.
45 minutes into the heist, an elderly guest
approaches the side entrance and asks to be allowed in.
The gunman opens the door.
He puts a gun into the man's stomach...
♪ ♪
And the man nearly fainted.
The guy almost has a heart attack.
He starts sweating. He's scared.
Bobby's worried.
Bobby puts him in a chair, doesn't tie him up.
He has to stay calm
'cause he can't have this guy die.
If anyone dies during the commission
of a felony or a robbery,
they are charged with murder.
Even if a cop comes to the place
and shoots somebody, misses you,
and kills a civilian or kills your partner,
you're getting a murder beat.
The concerned Comfort decides
to check in at the vault,
where Nalo's patented smash-and-grab tactics
are well under way.
Bobby goes into the vault
to check and see how it's going.
Sammy looks at him.
He's in a bit of a panic.
He says, "This is the Regency all over again.
"However, this time, we can't even get
the boxes out of the wall."
They're embedded in the wall,
so these aren't being dollied anywhere.
They are opening these boxes,
and they're not finding what they expected.
They're finding nothing in many of the boxes.
Think of how much time it takes you
to get into one box, and now you're finding nothing.
They start panicking. "What am I gonna do?"
Mastermind Bobby quickly comes up with a plan.
Target the wealthiest boxholders first,
and he knows Sammy can be very persuasive.
Realizing that they are wasting precious time,
Sammy crabs the night auditor, and this man
is gonna give him the list of names of the box owners
if it's the last thing he does.
♪ ♪
Bobby and Sam know how to make somebody talk.
You can do it either the easy way
or the hard way.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Just over an hour into The Pierre Hotel heist,
Sammy Nalo is using his unique talent for persuasion
on the night auditor.
Doesn't take long to get the list of boxholders.
He didn't hesitate.
He's not about to save the heiress on the 27th floor.
He wanted to save his own skin.
They had already been reading the gossip pages,
so they knew which stars and which celebrities
and rich people were there.
So they went right to them.
Bam, the first one they hit, got money.
Let's keep going.
They got a list now,
and now they can really target certain boxes.
They find the Red Sox owner's box.
There was $17,000 in cash and $17,000 in jewels.
They also find a Greek shipping heiress' box
with a necklace in it worth $400,000 alone.
Inside Gabriele Lagerwall's box,
she had one single necklace
that was worth more than $5 million in today's money.
♪ ♪
The men barely have time to celebrate
when the phone rings at the reception desk.
Bobby Comfort answers
in the calmest voice he can muster.
There's a problem on the 37th floor.
There's a man up there.
He's a Brazilian lawyer.
He's just walked his mother-in-law to her room.
Now he needs to get down to the 20th floor,
where his room is,
and he's been waiting for an elevator,
and one is not coming.
Hotels like The Pierre and the Plaza
still were using these kind of old-fashioned elevators
where you would close the gate,
and you'd have an elevator man.
Unfortunately, all the elevator operators
are tied up at the moment.
Bobby receives the phone call and says, "Coming right up."
Doc goes up the elevator.
He grabs the lawyer and the mother-in-law.
He takes them hostage.
He then tries to get the elevator to go back down,
but this elevator isn't going anywhere.
He probably didn't know
how to operate the elevator properly.
Maybe he didn't close the gate all the way.
So he got stuck.
[phone ringing]
Doc can't get back down,
so he calls Bobby.
And Bobby now has to leave the front desk,
which wasn't part of the plan,
to go get Doc and the hostages.
♪ ♪
Bobby Comfort is, well, uncomfortable.
They got less than an hour until the day shift shows up,
only one man watching 17 hostages
with no eyes on the entrance.
Not exactly what they planned for.
Now you can imagine Bobby's anxiety.
He's worried this whole plan is gonna implode.
When Bobby got the lawyer and the mother-in-law
on the 37th floor, the lawyer says,
"But my wife is on the 20th floor."
And Bobby said, "Well, we have to get her too,"
because she's scared, and she can make phone calls.
This could be a problem.
So let's get the wife as well.
The more hostages Bobby's getting,
it's creating a larger problem for the whole takedown,
because every encounter could be a deadly encounter.
Who's gonna have a heart attack?
Who's gonna fight back?
So it's becoming a real big problem real fast.
While Bobby's in the elevator,
he recognizes that this lawyer has had
ample amount of time to look at Doc,
and Doc does not have a disguise on.
So Bobby, thinking quickly again, says,
"Look, I'm gonna make you a deal.
"Give me your safety deposit box number,
"and we're not gonna touch it.
"We're also not gonna hurt your family,
"but in return, you saw nothing.
You don't talk to the police."
♪ ♪
As the heist crosses the two-hour mark,
Comfort's fear begins to overpower his greed.
He wants to pack it up,
but Sammy insists on more time.
He's telling Sammy, "We gotta go, we gotta go."
Sammy don't wanna leave.
Sammy's found gold.
He found the boxes.
But Bobby's always thinking of the time
'cause he knows the longer it goes,
the better chance I have of getting caught.
Somebody getting up,
a cop coming in, change of shift.
He knows his time, and he's gotta go.
With the clock ticking,
Bobby can't afford any more hiccups.
So 6:00 a.m., there's a knock on the door.
Who is it?
It's the paper delivery guy.
Jesus. So now it's 21 hostages.
It's like, when is this gonna end?
They know they gotta go.
Everybody's doing their jobs, and all of a sudden,
Doc, what does he do?
He says Bobby's real name.
"Hey, Bobby, we gotta go!"
[dramatic music]
Now 21 hostages who have their eyes and mouths taped,
they all hear Bobby's name.
♪ ♪
It's now less than 30 minutes
before The Pierre Hotel's morning shift arrives,
and one of the gunmen just compromised the heist
by using Bobby Comfort's real name.
Imagine you're Bobby
and you plan this thing to the tee.
All of a sudden, you hear your own name
come out of the mouth of someone.
It's gotta be like a shock.
You know somebody heard your name.
Now it's getting a little sketchy.
"Let's go, let's go!"
You gotta get out of there.
City, Doc, and Country are the first to leave.
They all piled into their limousine.
Bobby Comfort stays behind.
The last thing that Bobby Comfort does
before he leaves The Pierre Hotel
is address the hostages.
And he says, "Nobody talk to the police,"
and then he starts tipping everybody 20s.
You get at 20 and you get at 20,
oh, but except for the security guards.
They get nothing.
And once he was comfortable that no one had left
everything behind, no fingerprints,
that's when Bobby himself also left the hotel.
♪ ♪
Imagine you have money, you have it all gone,
you're away from the facility,
you're away from The Pierre Hotel,
but will you get away with the robbery?
♪ ♪
At 6:30, the first employee
stumbles across the handcuffed hostages.
Terrified, he runs into the street
and flags down a police officer.
In a matter of minutes, The Pierre Hotel
is swarming with cops and G-men.
[siren wailing]
When the cops come in sweeping the place
for physical evidence, there's nothing.
No pictures, no fingerprints.
None of the hostages are willing to describe the gunmen
and are not helpful at all with the police.
[upbeat music]
Back at Sammy's hideout,
the thieves have a different focus: their loot.
They get back to the safe house,
and they put out the jewels.
And the feeling is unbelievable.
Look, I'm getting chills.
I'm getting chills,
'cause I remember that feeling myself.
It's amazing to see jewels on a bed and know it's yours now.
Bobby told me that there was $887,000 in cash
and close to $10 million in jewels.
$11 million in 1972
is equivalent to over $75 million
in today's money.
♪ ♪
They have the cash. They have the jewels.
They split the cash up, which is easy,
and now they gotta think about what they're gonna do
with the diamonds and jewels.
Bobby addresses the crew after the heist
and says the plan is that City and Sammy
are gonna hold on to the jewels for one year.
Everybody's gonna get your cut,
but right now, we've gotta lay low.
We've gotta disperse.
After the robbery, this topic
was in the newspaper headlines on a daily basis.
And the public had no sympathy
for the guests who were victimized
because they were very wealthy.
They were of high society.
In fact, the public is actually rooting for the robbers.
In this case,
there's an absence of physical evidence.
No fingerprints, no tools left behind.
So what does the PD do?
They have to go to ground.
They have to go to their confidential informants.
One of the things they're relying upon
is for someone in this crew to slip up.
♪ ♪
Just three days after the heist,
Nalo, in desperation,
calls Bobby and begs to change the plan.
He owes a lot of money to the wrong people.
Sammy's a degenerate gambler.
He's into the mob for big money.
He needs to sell these jewels.
Sammy's problem is he doesn't have a fence to go to.
He doesn't have a go-to guy to get rid of stolen goods.
What Sammy does is he starts going to different people
to try to sell these diamonds.
One is an FBI informant.
♪ ♪
Bobby agrees to Sammy's plan to sell the jewels early,
but he says everything's been too recent.
We can't show our faces.
Bobby has a caveat.
He goes, "We gotta get a front man,"
and he has a guy that's gonna represent
selling some of the heist.
Bobby decides to hire his friend Dom Paulino
to be the front man to go meet
with an independent jewelry appraiser.
♪ ♪
Bobby Comfort and Dom Paulino
return to New York City,
and they check in to the Royal Manhattan Hotel.
Sammy comes in with a bag of diamonds
worth over a quarter of a million dollars
for the sale.
Comfort's loyalty to his partner
overrules his cautious nature,
and he agrees to try to move the diamonds.
Nalo returns to his apartment to wait
while Bobby stays at the hotel.
Dom Paulino leaves the hotel room
and pays the hotel bill
and keeps the receipt in his pocket.
He then takes a taxi across town to the Summit Hotel
where the buyer of the jewels is waiting for him.
It becomes very clear
when they start working through the sale
that Dom is going to have to haggle prices
with the jewelry appraiser.
Dom Paulino begins to lay out Sammy's jewels
out of his briefcase onto a coffee table,
and he's suddenly surrounded by FBI agents.
[dramatic music]
They frisk him, and they find the bill
from the Royal Manhattan Hotel that he had just paid.
So Bobby's sitting at his room
in the Royal Manhattan Hotel.
He's awaiting Dom to return.
He thinks this is gonna be a quick and easy sale.
He has no idea what's going on until...
[knocking]
Somebody is at the door.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
Five days after pulling off
the largest hotel heist in history,
Bobby Comfort's about to be caught
by a simple mistake, a hotel receipt
that leads the cops right to him.
He hears a boom, boom, boom, boom!
♪ ♪
They bust into his door.
Bobby Comfort gets arrested.
The NYPD and the FBI are very anxious
to announce that they now have captured the four men
responsible for The Pierre Hotel heist.
♪ ♪
However, they actually only have one.
They have Bobby Comfort.
Pierre Hotel heist, it was perfect.
No prints, no physical evidence,
no information, except one thing.
One guy got greedy.
After Bobby Comfort's arrest,
an informant reveals to the FBI
that Comfort has a partner
whose name is Sammy "the Arab" Nalo.
♪ ♪
They find out where he lives.
And coincidentally, when they pull up,
Sammy Nalo is just exiting the building.
And he's carrying a trash bag full of evidence,
including a hammer and a chisel.
When the cops get hold of Sammy,
he denies everything.
He is making every excuse or denying everything.
But when they look into his apartment,
they find a scale.
They find loose settings from rings.
Think of that.
Talk about a red flag.
And they find a packed suitcase.
He's getting ready to go on the lam.
Sammy, who was charged with the diamonds,
was gonna hold some aside and double cross everybody,
and that's a low blow.
When Bobby finds out about the double cross
and everything that happened with the jewels,
it ends their friendship completely.
But neither Bobby nor Sammy ever revealed
the true names of Country, City, and Doc.
I guess there was still honor among thieves.
And I'm impressed. I have to be impressed.
They never ratted.
But the interesting thing about this robbery
is that there's no eyewitnesses.
The people that did see them aren't talking.
Everybody else had their eyes taped shut.
So the only thing that the FBI and the NYPD can pin on them
is second degree burglary.
Bobby and Sammy still, though, don't want to go to court.
They don't wanna take that chance,
so they take the plea deal.
♪ ♪
Bobby originally gets seven years,
but he gets that knocked down to four years,
which is quite common.
And then he ended up doing 2 1/2 years
because, back in those days,
you got what they called good time
or game time in the prison system.
And the reason that happened is nobody got hurt.
In this case, Bobby stole maybe $10 million,
took people hostage,
and walks away doing 2 1/2 years.
I'll do that right now.
Give me the 10 million.
I'll go back to prison for 2 1/2 years.
After his release,
is never arrested again.
Sammy Nalo commits more robberies
while on parole, including one in a jewelry store
where he takes 17 people hostage.
Sammy gets in a lot of trouble with the mob.
He's got a big gambling problem.
Gangsters actually tried to kill him in 1974,
but they don't succeed.
But then on October 25, 1988,
Sammy Nalo is shot and killed
by members of the Lucchese crime family.
We don't really know apparently
what happened to all the jewels.
It was assumed possibly
that City made off with a lot of the jewels.
We don't really know.
What we do know is that, for a number of years
after Bobby got out of prison,
he lived very comfortably
in a nice house outside of Rochester.
But he was a chronic smoker,
and he died of lung cancer at 53.
♪ ♪
Only $1 million in jewelry
was ever recovered from The Pierre Hotel robbery.
What happened to the other $9 million may never be known.
Today, The Pierre remains one of the most prestigious
and expensive hotels in New York City,
and considering that the Guinness Book of World Records
still has it as the most successful
hotel robbery of all time,
The Pierre Hotel belongs
among history's greatest heists.
♪ ♪