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Vato Maldito: My Life of Crime by John "Bubbles" Gallegos, edited by Raoul Vehill

Thursday, 12 November 2009 00:00 raoul vehill
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11

 

I soon got a job working for Timpte, making trailers for Safeway. One night my brother Richard invited me to a Heavyweight boxing match between Ron Lyle, and Greg Peralta, two contenders for the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

 

As we entered the Sports Arena in the midst of hundreds of people, an officer from the Intelligence Squad of the Denver Police Department spotted me and arrested me on a warrant issued because I left Cenikor in 1972. I was jailed for a couple of days on $5000 bail. I bailed out.

 

My attorney was supposedly one of the best  criminal lawyers in Colorado. I asked him how he  thought I should proceed. He advised me to plead the Court's mercy and hope for the best. I told him to take a flying fuck to the moon.

 

Then he asked me, "What do you want to do, John?"

 

I said, "Look Tom, the Judge made and issued an order that I be taken to Cenikor for drug rehab. I never asked the Court for that, and I signed no paper  attesting to that. I was advised by the Supervisor of the Probation Office that the Judge, Robert Kingsley,  had suspended my two year County Jail sentence on the condition that I go to Cenikor. I signed NOTHING agreeing to that. The Court Order Judge Kingsley issued is not binding because there's no record that I agreed to the order. Therefore the Court Order is NOT legal."

 

Tom looked at me, exasperated. "John," he said, "you're looking a gift horse in the face. Judge Kingsley gave you a break because he believed you really wanted to straighten out your life. You are challenging his authority. Don't you think that that makes you a real asshole?"

 

"Yeah, Tom," I answered. "We've all got one. It didn't cost him anything to suspend my sentence. I didn't agree with his Court Order to start with. He could have shoved it up his ass for all I care. He doesn't have to sit in that stupid jail for two years. And neither am I. My family suffers if I'm not with them. Look at it however you want."

 

He thought about it for a minute. Then I said, "File a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the order is not binding. I signed nothing agreeing to the order, so it's null and void." I went on, "If you don't want to proceed with my case, I'll get someone else, or do it myself."

 

He filed the motion to dismiss and of course all charges were dismissed. If you do not play hardball with the legal establishment, you will get fucked.

 

The psychologist who first came to interview me from Fort Logan was a really nice person. She went to Judge Kingsley and showed him the letter I had written from the County Jail, asking to be considered for the Rehab program they had at Fort Logan and would have gotten me released to their custody.

 

Judge Kingsley told her that I was attempting to manipulate her, the program and the Court. Maybe I was. I just wanted to be with my family. They needed me. I did what was necessary to be with them. I could not just sit in Cenikor for 18 months while they were out there hurting like I knew they were. Sure, I wanted to rehabilitate from the drug syndrome, but not at  the cost of the pain my family had to suffer by me not being there.

 

I worked for the remainder of 1973 at Timpte. The holiday season was upon us. A friend of mine came up from Arizona, where he had been working for the past few years. He had got drunk one night and was busted for burglary. A lawyer told him to come up with $5000 and he would have the charges dismissed.

 

I had a few jobs I had been considering. The first one was a liquor store. We removed the rear seat of my '63 Ford 4 Door. Gary had a pickup, but the bed of the truck was too high to load a safe onto. The safe weighed over 500 pounds. It would be a lot easier to use my car.

 

The store had an alarm system, which meant that we had 3 minutes at the very most to wheel the safe out of the place with a dolly and into my Ford. Hell, I wasn't even sure the safe would fit in the back of my car. I had never had to move a safe that heavy out of a store. I would usually crack the safe inside the store.

 

Back in 1953, '54, when I had first begun learning the safe cracking trade from Dube, we always opened the safes inside of the places we hit. He knew of methods to get around the burglary alarm systems. But in this case, we had to wheel the safe out through the front door, load the safe into the car and leave inside of 3 minutes. To do all this, I pulled up to the front door of the liquor store, got out of the car and popped the front door open with a crow bar. I held the door open for Gary as he wheeled in the  dolly. Once we were both inside we went behind the counter, maneuvered the safe onto the dolly and rolled it out to the car. We got the safe into the car, but about a fourth of lit was sticking out of the rear door, making it impossible to close the door. We didn't have time to push the heavy safe all the way into the car because the burglary alarm was going off and the police were probably on their way.

 

I drove a few blocks and pulled into an alley, where we both struggled to push the safe all the way into the car so that the rear door could be closed. That done, I got back onto the avenue and proceeded to drive towards our destination. I had driven about 4 blocks when a squad car pulled up behind us.

 

I told Gary, "Uh oh, we got company."

 

Gary reached for a gun which he had under the seat. "Put that down," I told him as I coasted to a stop.

 

"I want to shoot them!" Gary said.

 

"No!" I shouted. "Put the gun down."

 

Just as I came to a complete stop the squad car backed up, did a u-turn and sped away.

 

I told Gary, "They must have just got the call for the place we just hit."

 

I drove hurriedly to my nephew's house, where we unloaded the safe, took it in the house and opened it. It took us longer to carry the safe to the basement and back to the car than it did to crack the safe. We decided to use his pickup to dump the safe as we had a bit more time, and the safe was a lot lighter without the door.

 

There was only a couple of thousand in the safe.

 

The next day we robbed a large drugstore. We got several thousand more. A couple of days later, we hit a combination liquor and drugstore. Gary had enough to pay his lawyer off and them some. I could rest for a few months.

 

I was still working at Timpte, but I was bored with the job, so I resigned, as the plant was going to shut down soon. And then Johnny G, another friend from the past, appeared at my door. He asked if he could work with me. I told him that I would think about it and let him know sometime soon. My money was running low, and there was no one else I could readily work with. Being a stickup artist is more involved than meets the eye. Any mistake could put you in prison for the rest of your life or in an early grave. So I decided to work with Johnny G., to see how he could handle it.

 

Peggy asked me, "What is it with these guys? Can't they do their own thing? Why do they come looking for you?"

 

"I don't know, Peggy. They probably don't trust too many people. I'm trustworthy and I don't get caught."

 

I started working with Johnny G. In a few months we accomplished about a dozen robberys. We worked fine together. But he made a mistake in one robbery that was to get us busted.

 

We hit a supermarket one night. We parked the getaway car practically at the front door. We went in and robbed about 6 grocery clerks, and left, But he had forgotten to pull down his ski mask, to cover his face. About a week after doing the job, a cop car pulled us over. We were arrested and both taken to jail for investigation of armed robbery.

 

Johnny G. was charged with armed robbery. His bond was set at $25,000. My wife bailed him out in a couple of days. But I remained in jail. Everyday I would be taken to a line up to see if anybody could identify me for any recent robberies. I was finally released from jail about a week. After being through numerous lineups, no charges were filed on me. But the head of the Scat squad, a special unit formed to apprehend  habitual criminals, warned me that they would get me, no matter what. I knew what that meant. They would shoot first and ask questions later, any time I was pulled over by the squad.

 

From the jail, I walked over to Johnny G's house, after being released. Johnny G. was there with his wife, along with my wife and daughter. Johnny G. told me be had been bailed out by my wife a couple of days after we were arrested. I was a little dismayed on learning that. When we were alone I asked my wife about bailing Johnny G. out before me. She told me that Johnny's wife threatened to tell the cops all she knew about the robberies unless she bailed him out first.

 

"I couldn't bail you out because the police didn't have any charges they could file on you," she said. "Apparently Johnny is on parole from California and she was worried that a hold would be placed on him for parole violation, and he wouldn't be able to bail out at all."

 

"How could she have known anything at all about what we were doing?" I asked. "You didn't even know."

 

"He must have told her," she answered. "You've never said anything to me about your business."

 

Later on, I asked John how she had known anything     the robberies, and told him that his wife Helen had blackmailed Peggy to bail him out.

 

He admitted to me that he had told her about our activities. I was pissed, but too late for that. I told Johnny that we had to leave Denver real soon, as I had been threatened by the Scat Squad. "That means that they'll kill us if they catch us on the street," I said.

 

That night we pulled another job, as I was practically broke because of his bail, and we had to leave town. When we were leaving in our getaway car, it died out right at the exit to the shopping center. Meanwhile, I could see the flashing lights of the police cruisers down the boulevard as they raced to the scene of the robbery.

 

"Looks like we may have to shoot it out with them," I said. "The car won't start again."

 

I gave the key one more twist and the car started. As we turned onto the boulevard the police arrived, turning into the center, surrounding the place we had just robbed. We managed to get away as it was snowing near blizzard proportions. We made it to our getaway house in one piece.  Leno M., whose house it was that we used, agreed to drive us to Colorado Springs around about midnight.

 

 

VATO MALDITO: My Life of Crime, by John "Bubbles" Gallegos
Now Available!!! from Enlightened Pyramid
A notorious Denver professional criminal tell his story in his own words. Armed robbery,  addiction and hard time are just the tip of the iceberg in this career thief's autobio.

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