In 1978, about six million dollars in cash and jewels was stolen from a vault at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. At the time it was the largest heist in American history, and you can learn more about it here:
The Lufthansa heist
Such a heist is unthinkable at a modern airport, and the fact that it was possible 35 years ago shows that the current aviation security environment has grown almost exclusively out of reactionary measures. At the time, millions of dollars of American currency was flown to New York from West Germany on a monthly basis after being spent by tourists and military personnel stationed in Europe. Large sums of cash don't weigh very much, so each month's shipment easily fit in the available cargo space of a Lufthansa flight. After arrival on the west side of the Atlantic, the money was stored in a vault at JFK overnight before being shipped to New York's banks the net day. There was security around the vault, but clearly it didn't pose enough of a challenge to the thieves.
Everything went relatively smoothly with the robbery itself, but afterward driver Parnell "Stacks" Edwards made the poor life choice of parking in a clearly-labelled no-parking zone and getting high with his girlfriend rather than taking the getaway van to a New Jersey junkyard. After examining the impounded van, police found Edwards's fingerprints on the steering wheel. This concerned fellow perpetrator Jimmy Burke, who proceeded to systematically murder 10 people capable of implicating him in the robbery over the next six months, Edwards first among them. As DB Cooper learned seven years earlier, even the best-case outcome from a heist often isn't very good.
Strictly speaking, this has nothing to do with the Lufthansa heist, but here's a Pink Floyd song that goes with today's post nicely anyway:
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