The robbers, precise as they were about meeting the two Brinks security guards on the 11th floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:30 A.M., were a little fuzzier about their exit from the building once the money was in their hands.
As they left, half a dozen security cameras captured images of their unmasked faces for posterity.
And as Brooklyn boys universally disliked in their neighborhood, their decision to return there proved calamitous. Before the sun had set, friends and neighbors by the dozens were calling police hot lines, hoping to collect a $26,000 reward for the thieves' capture.
Melvin Desmond Folk was the first to fall, turned in by his wife, according to police investigators. Michael Reed came next, handcuffed in the home of an elderly acquaintance who was feeding him cookies.
And the lone holdout, Richard Gillette, has three law enforcement agencies in hot pursuit as well as a host of civilian trackers hoping to win the crime-stoppers lottery.