MY NAME is Bill Mason. If that name is not familiar to you, then I've done a good job of keeping things to myself, which was my way of keeping myself out of jail, at least most of the time.

In a "career" spanning nearly three decades I've stolen many millions of dollars' worth of jewelry, gotten shot and almost died, wrecked a good marriage and raised three great kids despite their father's odd (pre)occupation. Although law enforcement authorities were aware of many of my scores, I've never been convicted of stealing jewels.

I've taken rare gems and jewelry from the likes of Robert Goulet, Johnny Weissmuller, Truman Capote and Phyllis Diller (twice), and even cracked a safe belonging to the underboss of a major Mafia family. I've also had some scores that didn't work out, including attempts to rob Marvin Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaux Hemingway and the McGuire Sisters.

I've been chased all over the country by local cops, state cops and the FBI, some of whom I've even developed odd sorts of relationships with. And on the subject of odd friendships, I was the key figure in a major scandal involving a prominent heiress that shocked Cleveland high society.

I didn't have very good reasons to steal; I was by no means poor and my upbringing was perfectly normal, so when you get right down to it, the reason I stole was because I felt like it. Call it a personality defect—many have thought so, including me—but I didn't really need the money.

This book is by no means a justification of how I chose to live my life. I was a criminal and there is no justification for that unless you're starving or living under a system where the laws themselves are unjust or you're forced to break them for some higher purpose. None of those motives was applicable in my case, and I wasn't some kind of Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor, so you're not going to find any excuses in these pages.

Rather, this book is simply a description of what I did, how I came to do it, how I felt about it and how it affected those close to me. The reason I can tell the story now is that I'm no longer "in the life" and the statute of limitations has run out on the last of my scores.

Everything you'll read is true, with the exception of an occasional hazy date, imperfectly recalled conversation or altered name. In some cases, people who were robbed of precious gems, jewelry or cash are going to learn for the first time who it was that stole them. A good many of my targets, including the Mob, were convinced all along that they were hit by a gang and will be surprised to find out it was just me, acting alone.

I don't expect any more forgiveness from friends and family for the pain I caused them; what I've already received from them is well beyond what I had any right to expect. I just want them to understand a bit more than I was ever willing—or able—to explain while the events in this book were taking place. This is their story as much as mine.

I think the most extraordinary thing about my life is how ordinary it was—at least if you don't count my little hobby of stealing jewels.

When I decided to write this book, I thought one of the more interesting aspects of the effort would be to reflect on my childhood days and try to identify those experiences that pushed me in such a questionable direction. I'd read some biographies of unusual people and there always seemed to be large forces prodding them inexorably toward their destiny. The way those books were written, you'd think it was impossible for them to have turned out any other way than they did.

But biographers, and that includes autobiographers, tend to focus on those things that support the impressions they're trying to establish. The way they write makes it seem that absolutely nothing else was going on in their subjects' lives other than the handful of specific events and experiences that turned them into musicians or politicians or scientists.

Fact is, children are bombarded with all kinds of influences, and it's nearly impossible to tell which ones had which effect. Just because it makes a good story doesn't make it true. My guess is that Newton would have figured out gravity whether that apple had hit him on the head or not, if it ever really hit him in the first place.

I think what's actually going on is that childhood is like an allergy test for talent. If you've ever been tested for allergies, you know that the doctor rubs your skin with hundreds of different substances until one of them raises a welt. In the same way, a kid comes across hundreds of opportunities to uncover some latent talent until one of them hits, and then his course in life starts to take on some direction. Sometimes it's obvious, like when a seventh-grader is six feet tall and can dribble a basketball blindfolded with either hand, or a grade-schooler builds a radio out of old washing-machine parts.

Sometimes it's not so obvious, as in my case. I could climb trees like a monkey and take apart all kinds of machines and put them back together; there was little that frightened me and I could keep my mouth shut while listening. But so what? How did those thing add up to a career?

It wasn't until I went out and tried to steal something that I realized what my odd collection of skills might be good for.

Copyright © 2003 by William Mason and Steeplechase Run, Inc.