ABSTRACT
Robert Lee Vesco was probably the most audacious crook ever to land in The Bahamas, and his effect was extraordinary. Vesco was born in Detroit on 4 December 1936. Early in 1953, he dropped out of Detroit’s Denby High after marrying sixteen-year old Patricia Melzer, who hailed from Bad Axe, Michigan. Before the year was over they had a son, and Vesco had a job reading blueprints in training as a draftsman with the Packard Car company. Beginning with Alpin, Vesco found a wide variety of talented and helpful people, many of whom became part of his permanent crew of “sharpsters.” Through the efforts of Snipes and Straub, Vesco was brought into the murky world of New Jersey and national politics. Called Don-Don, he entered Vesco’s world in the summer of 1971, apparently as a favor to his worried father, and was placed under Gil Straub’s tutelage.
