THE HOFFMAN PICK
We had been robbed again. Through the entire summer of 1967 our pinball machines had somehow been looted of change. It amounted to quite a bit of money, and no one could figure out how it was being done. We would find machines in good locations, doors locked, no visible damage, only to open them up and find nearly empty change boxes. We wondered if somehow one of our master keys had gotten away from us, but we only kept two, and they were accounted for. These were Ace round lock keys; impossible to duplicate, so no one had copied one.
Losses mounted. A pin game in a good location would bring in up to $50 per week in coin ~ dimes. Good money back then. Obermiller Brothers Amusement Company covered mid-Missouri, headquartered in Columbia. At the time, our sort of company was ‘franchised’ by the Mob, in our case the East Saint Louis organization, the Buster Wortman gang. Competition wasn’t allowed in our territory, and Dad and Uncle Fred had scores of machines. It was a big, if somewhat edgy, business. Coin operated machines produced easily laundered money, which could be under-reported or over-reported depending on what the organization needed. Theft from the mob, or mob affiliates, was very risky indeed, but someone was stealing from us. We definitely did not like it and neither did St. Louis.
A lot of the machines were in Columbia. The police chief in Columbia was a teetotaler southern Baptist who hated us and viewed our business as a sin, a really big sin. I was harassed by this cop repeatedly, even run out of town once. He was glad we were being robbed and would do nothing to help us. Uncle Fred had decided to go after the local banks to find who was cashing in tons of dimes for bills. It is hard to live on dimes. Takes a bunch to buy anything, even way back then, but Chief Stull wouldn’t request any warrants, and without a warrant, the banks would not talk. We had to go to our fall-back man, Boone County Sheriff Sonny Fenton.
For many years, Sonny Fenton had protected Dad’s slot machine operation. Game nights at the Shriners were never raided. One time when Stull had me arrested for ‘questionable’ activity (trespassing) while Mom and Dad were on vacation, Sonny rescued me, taking me to his office and calling County Commissioner Jim Butcher to spring me. I had to spend a night in the City jail that time, and when Dad came home he was truly furious. Jim was another personal friend of Dad’s. I had to go before a judge, another friend of Dad’s, to get all traces of this unpleasant incident erased.
Sonny got on the pinball theft ring. After a few weeks, he persuaded the Boone County Bank to point out a man who had been turning in dimes for dollars. The Department did some research on this man and discovered he had recently been released from the pen in Jefferson City. His name was Hoffman and he was a ‘mechanic’, or a guy who could make things. Sonny waited until another bunch of pinballs were cleaned out, then put a deputy in the bank to wait for Mr. Hoffman. Soon, Hoffman showed up with a bag of dimes, and was arrested. Many of the dimes were marked with red fingernail polish, which Fred had painted on them.
Hoffman confessed. He told Sonny he had made a lock pick while working in the machine shop in the penitentiary. No one knew or recognized that the device he painstakingly made was a lock pick for Ace round locks. Who would? Round locks were only used in coin-operated machines.
I was in the Shop with Uncle Fred when Sonny dropped by and dropped an unusual device on the counting counter. This, Sonny announced, is the Hoffman Pick. The pick was a steel cylinder exactly the diameter and thickness of an Ace lock key. It had eight small grooves cut along the cylinder equally spaced around the barrel and a tiny locking dog at the end. Each cylinder groove had a three-inch long high tensile flat steel wire laid in it. These were held in place with a simple rubber band. There was a small oblong wooden handle affixed to the end of the cylinder and tapered down at the cylinder. The high tensile flat steel wire was curved out and bent slightly toward the end, creating a tool looking a little like a weird brush with eight bristles.
The lock pick simply inserted the round pick into the round lock, and while applying very light torque, pressed each wire in a tiny amount with his thumb until the tumbler clicked. One just felt the tumblers going home, you couldn’t normally hear them, and it was easy. The curved springy wire amplified each tiny click. I took the pick to a machine in the Shop and picked the lock in seconds. Hoffman would go to a machine in a business, and while playing the game, would pick the lock, and surreptitiously pull out the coin box and empty it in a bag tied to his belt. He would then lock things up nice and tidy and be on his way, no one the wiser until we went by on collection day.
Well, Mr. Hoffman had to return to Jefferson City and the State Penitentiary. I don’t know how he fared there, but he was stealing from the Mob, albeit indirectly, and that has severe consequences. He was a clever machinist and lock pick, but apparently not clever enough to realize who owns all the pinball machines. And that is the story of the Hoffman Pick.
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