While researching old-time crooks as part of my Professional Criminals of America–REVISED blog project, I came across a “lost” treasure.
Maximilian Schoenbein, known to the public as Max Shinburn, was the most famous bank robber of the 1860s. In 1913, three years before he died, 74-year-old Shinburn wrote a series of eleven articles for the Boston Herald detailing his infamous crimes as well as those of this associates, Adam Worth, George Miles White, and “Little Dickie” Moore.
For some unknown reason, these articles were never collected and published as a book; nor were they ever syndicated to other newspapers, or reprinted in any format. Shinburn wrote these under a rarer variant of his aliases, “Mark Shinborn.”
I’ve spent several weeks transcribing the stories and have put them together in a new book available now on Amazon: King of Burglars: The Heist Stories of Max Shinburn
Contents:
The Real Story of the Stolen Gainsborough Portrait
How Adam Worth Stole the Kimberley Diamonds
Mark Shinborn’s Story of the Concord Bank Robbery
Mark Shinborn Tells Story of His Greatest Peril
A Wad of Bills Gets Mark Shinborn Out of a Tight Place
How Shinborn Cleaned Up $20,000 at Springfield
True Story of the Great South Norwalk Bank Robbery
How Four Gangs Sought to Rob the Wolfeboro, N.H. Bank
When Revolvers Barked in a Famous Old-Time Hold-Up
Mark Shinborn Tells Story of His Most Famous Crime
How Mark Shinborn at Last Paid the Penalty