Crate Idea for a Caper

"Freeze, man!" Night Watchman Charles Taylor, who had been patrolling the second floor of the First National Bank in Palm Beach, Fla., quickly obeyed the shouted order, as well as instructions to hand over his keys and stand in a side room while the black-shirted, black-gloved intruder escaped. When polive arrived on that night in late April, they found no sign that anything was missing from the room -- a locked storage area in which socialites stash their artworks, silver and other valuables while they are away from home.

Last week police said, the mystery was solved, with the help of a telephone tipster. He suggested that police take another look in the storeroom at a seemingly innoucuous 4-ft.square wooden crate and a black footlocker. "You'll be surprised," the caller said. Police were indeed. When they broke into the crate, they discovered a mask and air tube for breathing, containers of fruit juice and water, a bottle for urine, pliers, bolt cutters, eleven smashed padlocks and $250,000 worth of loot, including rare coins, silver ingots and a case of 1934 French champagne. Inside the footlocker were three cement blocks.

Police learned that in mid-April a young man had opened a savings account in the bank in the name of John Kertz. A week later a deliveryman dropped the crate off, requesting that it "be held for Mr. Kertz." The box was labeled POMPALIOUM'S ANTIQUE, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. and marked FRAGILE. Guards moved the heavy box on a dolly into the storeroom, unaware that it contained not antiques but a man.

That night, police said, the man crawled out of the box, knocked the padlocks off eleven other storage containers, rifled them and put his jack and the broken locks inside the crate. Then he replaced the locks with new ones so that nothing would seem to have been disturbed. One theory was that he had intended to put the cement blocks in the crate too, so that it would weigh as much as when first carried in to the storage area. The clever thief's plan had been to walk out of the bank, then have the box delivered to him. Bank officials might not have known anything was missing until patrons returned to open their boxes. Said Police Chief Joe Terlizzese: "It was a fantastically ingenious job."

But for the tipster--a bank employee who claims to have been asked by a friend to help plan the burglary--it might have worked. Last week, acting again on the informant's tip, police went to an apartment in Coral Gables and arrested a suspect: William McFarlan, 23, a 170-lb., 5-ft. 6-in. freshman law student at the University of Miami, who was charged with grand theft and burglary. Police are now searching for a missing coin collection worth $50,000.

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