In the early morning hours of March 23, 1949, the Parker Pen Company in Janesville, Wisconsin, was deftly relieve of more than 40,00 gold pens valued at $363,000. To this day that brazen Sunday morning burglary remains unsolved. But only to this day. Today, if Parker Pen Company officials, Janesville Police and the FBI were to read Polish Robbin' Hoods by nationally-known crime reporters Ed Baumann and John O'Brien, they would discovered for the first time that Parker was Panczkoed. From their mischievously delinquent childhoods to their felonious adult years the Panczyko brothers, Joseph, Edward and Paul-AKA Pops, Butch and Peanuts-broke the mold. They symbolized crime, so good were they at being bad. Not only in their hometown of Chicago, or elsewhere in the Midwest, but in Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, and the British West Indies. For more than half a century, no city, big or small, was safe from the pilfering Panczkos. Nor was any product safe from their thieving grasp, whether it be a cement mixer or a bottle of aspiring, a showcase full of jewelry or a truckload of sponges, a storeful of silk neckties or a tube of Alberto BO5 hair cream, a pay phone's coin box or a pedigree poodle.
Sometimes, it seemed, the remarkable brothers were everywhere at once. A lock in the hands of Pops Panczko was like a basketball in the hands of Michael Jordan, and woe to the jewelry salesman who crossed Peanuts Panczko's path.