Several times in the autumn of 1917, Silva said, he and Mede and Joe Sammarco, a nineteen-year-old Italian corner boy known as Joe Nap because he had come from Naples, went to Bridgewater to look over the factory, the bank, and the connecting streets. Then on November 14, 1917, Mede and some of his boys were caught after robbing the paymaster of the American Net & Twine Company in Cambridge, and the Big Chief found himself doing a seven-to-ten-year rap in Charlestown.
Silva, left to himself, joined the Army. After his discharge in 1919 he returned to the North End and ran into Joe Sammarco. They were both broke. Silva remembered the L. Q. White payroll, waiting there in Bridgewater like a Christmas turkey. The job would need two more to pull it off. Sammarco said he knew just the two. Next day he appeared with “Doggy” Bruno, a chunky fellow with a short mustache like Silva’s, and “Guinea” Oates, who owned a touring car.
Silva told Callahan that the four of them had driven to Bridgewater several times to check the roads. They had walked around the town, shot a little pool in the parlor under the post office, and taken a long look at the Bridgewater Trust Company, where the White truck picked up the payroll. Because Christmas would fall on Thursday, they knew the delivery would be made on Wednesday.
Monday of Christmas week, Silva told Callahan, Guinea had driven them to Needham and at a garage near the police station Silva asked a man about license plates. When the man walked away for a moment, he spotted an old car that had dealer’s plates tied on with string. He untied them, tucked them under his coat, and cleared out to meet the others. From Needham they drove to Bridgewater for another rehearsal.
On Tuesday they made their final dry run. Wednesday morning they arrived in Bridgewater at about half past six and parked on Hale Street, not far from a lunch stand. Silva said, “Boys, let’s go down and have something to eat because this is liable to be our last meal.”
He and Doggy finished eating ahead of the others and walked up to the square opposite the bank to watch for the truck. Suddenly Silva noticed that it had slipped in from the side street and was parked in front of the bank.
They returned to the car and Doggy got in, leaving Silva outside as look-out man. Guinea Oates was at the wheel. At Silva’s signal, he was to back the car into the street and block the truck.
Silva called out “Let’s go” and Guinea shoved the car into Broad Street while the other two piled out. What they had not counted on was a trolley car coming down the street right behind the truck. They shouted at the men in the truck, now almost on top of them, and Doggy leveled his shotgun, but, as Silva told it:
When we said, “stick ’em up,” instead of the driver sticking up his hands, and the rest of them they kept on going, and all of a sudden shots were fired from both sides. Most of us were behind some trees or posts, a few feet from Hale Street. I seen this man that was sitting on the side seat, I don’t know who it was, but it was a big man. He got up from his seat and grabbed the driver’s wheel and while he was grabbing the driver’s wheel, the street car comes down and cuts us off from seeing the truck. All of a sudden I heard a noise. We heard some glass breaking. We couldn’t see the payroll car any more. We all got on our car and we shot straight through Hale Street into Plymouth Street.... No cars followed us.
They stopped near a cemetery to change license plates, and Doggy threw the stolen ones into a pond. Back in the North End Silva and Bruno shaved off their mustaches. “I was broke and desperate,” Silva told Callahan. “There was some Jew from New York that was hanging around Boston and I got acquainted with him. He was way worst off than I was.” The man, a down-and-outer named Jacob Luban, was full of plausible talk about easy money in New York. Calling himself Paul Martini, Silva set out with him. His easy money turned out to be nothing more than working the combinations of post-office boxes and stealing letters that might contain money. In this paltry venture Silva and Luban were joined by another floater, Adolph Witner. Hanging around New York post-office lobbies, they were soon noticed and arrested. Witner turned state’s evidence. Luban and Silva received terms in the United States penitentiary in Atlanta.