Can you retire from a life of crime?

At what age can you afford to retire from a life of crime?

Often a lot of cops would talk about how they would commit a crime (sadly some go ahead and commit crimes, but let’s just focus on the ones that remain in the realm of theory). We would talk about how you’d do something, and inevitably you would realize that you had to be professional, one big score, and walk away. You could invest and live off the money, plus we would invariably settle upon a figure that would be necessary to live in a non-extradition country, and a couple of thousand dollars would not cut it.

Sadly, the criminal world has a vastly different reality for many of its members. This was an incident that I experienced first-hand.

I was a junior detective in a small rural town, we got a few break-and-enter offenses, as well as minor drug arrests, but it certainly wasn’t a seething hotbed of crime.

One day, the station received a phone call from a local pharmacist. They were telling us that a couple had been in buying packets of pseudoephedrine-based cold and flu tablets (popular in the production of methylamphetamines). They had also heard from other pharmacists in nearby towns that they had been doing the same there and were concerned that they were buying for an illicit drug manufacturing operation.

The pharmacist provided a description of the vehicle, it was registered to a woman from out of town, but she didn’t have any criminal history. We then set out to see if we could find these would-be criminals.

On the outskirts of town just near a service station parked at a rest stop, we spotted the vehicle in question. Nearby at a picnic table sat a couple set up with a thermos and two cups. They were easily in their 60s, and they reminded me of a sweet grandpa and grandma having their morning coffee.

I’ll be honest, I was convinced that the pharmacist had gotten it wrong, that they’d seen the wrong car and the actual offenders were on their way out of town.

We went over and spoke to them; they were very polite and friendly. I told them that we’d received a report about someone buying up cold and flu medication and asked whose car it was. The woman said it was hers and that they were on a trip down South. They were surprised that someone would think they were up to anything untoward, so when asked if they would consent to a search of their vehicle they said “Of course”.

It took about five seconds of searching to discover more than 50 packets of cold and flu tablets, along with several thousand dollars in cash. I hate misjudging people, but I really hated misjudging those two, and it pained me to have to take them into custody on suspicion of possession of implements for the manufacture of drugs and the proceeds of crime.

We separated them and then we started to run checks on both. The wife, as already ascertained, had no criminal history. The husband, on the other hand, had volumes of records dating back to the early 1970s. Spanning four states and ranging from low-level theft to major robberies.

But he was an old-school criminal, and he wasn’t going to let his wife get blamed for this caper. He told us directly that he’d give a full interview and admit to everything, but he would be stressing that his wife was not involved. We consented and he talked, well, he talked enough to keep his wife out of trouble but not enough to implicate anybody else.

He’d been buying the medication to make methylamphetamines, he described the process he would go through to extract the ephedrine and how the rest of the process worked. He was working on his own, and his wife didn’t know what he was doing. We had enough to charge him, and not enough to go after the wife so she was let go.

After the formalities, we had some time alone, as he was processed. It was a chance to find out about him, I was always interested in the criminal mind. So, we talked about his life.

He had grown up in a poor but hard-working family. He’d had very minor scraps with the law as a kid but nothing serious. He was drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he received training in munitions. After the war, he came home and tried to find a job. He got himself a job working at the wharves. When members of the union found out that he knew how to blow things up, he was recruited to help with some “special” jobs.

He was the go-to man to blow open safes. It paid relatively well, compared to unloading ships all day, but there was the ongoing risk of getting caught. He stepped us through some of the specific jobs he’d been convicted of, and only gave vague details for other unsolved crimes. Over the years he’d tried to go straight, but often found the allure of crime more enticing.

I liked him, he knew that we had a job to do and understood it wasn’t personal.

But there was one more thing I needed to understand, so I asked him, “Why are you still doing this sort of work at your age?” Now I was still young and idealistic at that point. He looked at me like I was a naïve kid asking if Santa Claus was real. He then explained:

Look, there’s no criminal retirement fund. They don’t have a pension scheme for criminals. You make your money, and you spend it. Half the time you can’t put it in the bank, so it’s lying around your house. If you’ve got too much money and the cops, come knocking, they ask questions or they seize it or they steal it. I don’t have any lifetime savings. I don't have any legitimate skills. What I do have is stomach cancer and a wife that I don’t want to leave in debt when I die. So I got asked if I wanted to do this and I agreed, because I need the money.

I let the comment about cops stealing his money slide, like I said, I was still naïve at that point. I didn’t know if he was serious about having cancer, so I didn’t ask him about that. I finished processing him, got him bailed out on his own recognizance, and let him go.

A couple of weeks later he rocked up to court, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to community service on account of evidence he had offered from a doctor relating to his poor health.

I was notified a few weeks later that he hadn’t shown up for his community service in accordance with his court requirements. I contacted the local police near where he lived and was informed that he had died not long after his sentencing.

I was sad to hear that. He wasn’t a bad guy, just someone trying to provide doing the only work he knew how to do.