The world’s greatest jewel thief rarely carried a weapon and never indulged in violence, yet in the 1920s he managed to steal between $5 and $10 million from wealthy victims, whom he called “clients.”

Born in Massachusetts in 1896, Arthur Barry committed his first burglary at 15, creeping in through the window of a merchant’s home to plan the job and then returning to steal his receipts. The value of preparation struck him, and after a stint in the Army he went to New York and began his career in earnest. He would scan the society columns for a wedding party on Long Island, crash it wearing formal wear, then enter the house, wander upstairs, memorize the floor plan, and unlock windows. He’d return later to commit the robbery.

Working in this meticulous way he managed to steal half a million dollars a year in the mid-1920s, including $750,000 in jewels in broad daylight from the suite of F.W. Woolworth’s daughter. “Whoever took those pearls really knew what he was doing,” marveled a police captain at the time. “There were five ropes in the drawer, four imitations and the real one. The imitations were good enough to fool an oyster.”

Ironically, by the time Barry was finally caught and sent to prison in 1927, he had discovered that some of his victims were criminals themselves. “On the day after a job I’d read stories which listed all kinds of things I hadn’t stolen at all,” he told Life in 1956. “The clients would hide them and get the money from the insurance company. Sure, I was a thief and I’m sorry now, but you’ll find a lot of people in the Social Register who are also thieves and aren’t one bit sorry.”

LONDON — Mrs. Kathleen Cameron, 19, was amazed at how hard and fast carpenters worked to tear down the pre-fab house next door at 10 Jardin Street.

‘I didn’t become suspicious of the four men until they skipped their tea break to continue working,’ she said.

Sure enough, the carpenters were thieves who stole the five-room house in its entirety. By the time police arrived, they were gone.

— Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Sept. 12, 1971

Mike and Tobye Madison of Baytown, Texas, had two odd experiences in January 1984: Their house was burglarized, and Baby, their exotic talking bird, began saying “Come here, Robert. Come here, Ronnie.”

“When the lady told me about it I almost broke up,” Baytown police detective Reggie Harper told the Associated Press. “I almost didn’t write it down.”

Apparently Baby, a female yellow-headed Amazon, was repeating the words of the intruders. This helped police identify two men and a 16-year-old boy and charge them with a series of house burglaries involving the loss of $50,000 in property.

Forty years earlier, the same thing had happened in New York.

A Mr. Smith was attacked at night, about a fortnight ago, in the neighbourhood of Hexam, by three men, who dragged him from his horse, and threw him on the ground face downwards. They made no attempt to rob him, nor did they utter a syllable. Mr. Smith also held his tongue until feeling the teeth of a saw enter into the flesh at the back of his neck, he exclaimed — ‘What are you doing with me?’ On hearing his voice, one of the men observed with an oath — ‘It is not him!’ And all three immediately departed. These barbarians had obviously been upon the look-out for some object of revenge, whom they had intended to destroy by means of the instrument we have mentioned.

— The Times, Dec. 19, 1821

In 1880 a man calling himself Smith opened an office and a bank account in London and purchased stationery reading “Henderson & Co., Ship Brokers.” Later that year another man approached a Glasgow chandler to order a large quantity of stores — he explained that Smith had chartered the steamer Ferret for a Mediterranean cruise. Henderson & Co. and the bank vouched for Smith, so the chandler filled the order.

The ship steamed to Cardiff, where it picked up Smith and a crew of strangers. On Nov. 11 it sailed through the Strait of Gilbraltar, showing its number, and then vanished. When some of the ship’s casks were found floating in the Mediterranean, the underwriters paid for a total loss.

A water policeman in Queenscliff, Australia, happened to be reading about this in a Glasgow newspaper on April 19 when he noticed the arrival of a steamer strangely similar to the Ferret. The India‘s hull was black, its boats white, and its funnel red, but the resemblance was otherwise striking. He notified the authorities, who seized the ship, where they noted that the Ferret‘s official numbers had been chipped off the hatch.

The ensuing investigation showed that after passing Gibraltar, the criminals had repainted the steamer, tossed the casks overboard, covered their lights and stole back through the strait, whence they had made for Cape Town and then for Australia.

Two of the pirates served seven years’ hard labor and the third three and a half years. “But for the copy of the Scotch paper falling into the hands of the Queenscliff policeman,” recalled The Age in 1930, “the identity of the vessel would probably never have been discovered.”

When Jesse James’ gang robbed a Missouri train in 1874, they left this note with the conductor:

THE MOST DARING ON RECORD!

The south bound train on the Iron Mountain Railroad was robbed here this evening by five heavily armed men, and robbed of —– dollars. The robbers arrived at the station a few minutes before the arrival of the train, and arrested the station agent and put him under guard, then threw the train on the switch. The robbers were all large men, none of them under six feet tall. They were all masked, and started in a southerly direction after they had robbed the train. They were all mounted on fine blooded horses. There is a h— of an excitement in this part of the country.

Understandably, it was false in one particular — they rode west.

On Oct. 17, 1941, 73-year-old Philip Peters was found bludgeoned to death in the kitchen of his Denver home. All the doors and windows were locked. His wife, who had been away at the time, returned to the home with a housekeeper, and both heard strange sounds throughout the ensuing weeks. Finally both moved out.

Police were checking on the vacant house the following July when they heard a noise on the second floor. An officer ran upstairs in time to see a man’s legs disappearing through a small trapdoor in the ceiling of a closet.

The trapdoor led to a narrow attic cubbyhole in which 59-year-old Theodore Coneys had been living for 10 months. He had broken into the house the previous September and had been living silently in the attic for a month when Peters discovered him one night at the refrigerator. After the murder he’d returned to the cubbyhole and had remained there ever since.

He confessed to the crime and was sentenced to life in prison.