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The Gang That Couldn't Dress Straight

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"I just called my boy, I told him we're gonna check some things out Monday. Ya dig? But you're in."

To police, it appeared McAllister's bank holiday had ended.

"I'm tired of this shit," he told Merkson. "I ain't feeling to be keeping no goddamn getting up every motherfuckin' day, having to get up and do this, that and the other, even though I'm makin' it happen. I'm not ready to keep on bustin' my motherfucking ass. Shit, nigger needs a day to kick back and do that when he feels like it."

On February 3, Otis McAllister called his fiancée, Tylisha Thomas, with news that Franklin Morris' son was sick in Ohio and needed a ride. McAllister promised Thomas he would leave for Columbus that night and return the following day.

A flurry of calls between Morris, McAllister and Ida Merkson and their roundabout talk of "everything being ready" led police to conclude that McAllister was planning to hold up a Columbus bank and return home flush with scrilla.

Determined to stamp out the gang once and for all, the FBI lined up an extensive surveillance convoy.

Just before 6 p.m., FBI agents watched Merkson pick up McAllister in an SUV at a Kinloch junk yard. An hour later, another team of agents saw McAllister inspect the SUV's underside for a tracking device planted on it.

A third pair of agents noticed one of the alleged robbers walk straight toward a surveillance van parked outside a gas station. One agent feigned sleep while his partner hid in the back of the van, watching the man peek directly inside it. "It is believed that the individual observed lighted electronic devices operating in the vehicle," says an FBI affidavit.

Police proceeded to lose the SUV momentarily, and at the same time, the car's tracking device malfunctioned.

Not long afterward, an antenna-laden surveillance truck staged in Illinois watched the SUV pull into the same parking lot. The arrival turned out to be rotten luck for authorities. They saw McAllister and Morris jump out of the SUV and lay eyes on the truck's intricate mass of antennas.

McAllister, Morris and Merkson hurried back to St. Louis, and police resigned themselves to defeat, putting a halt to that night's stakeout.

"We tried time and time again, and we were so close to catching them in the act," remembers Detective Newsham.

So resolved were they, though, that McAllister, Merkson and Morris, investigators believe, stole away that same night and tried to fleece a Columbus credit union the following morning. The heist failed and the threesome returned to St. Louis once again.

Merkson and Morris got behind the wheel of the car and headed for Columbus one more time fewer than 24 hours later. Morris roped in David Greenwade, who brought along his pal Barry Ball and another friend, Jeffrey Moore.

The next morning, the crew thought they noticed police everywhere in the vicinity of their target, the Kemba Financial Credit Union, according to what Morris later told the FBI. Scared, the alleged robbers threw their handgun on top of an adjacent building and split.

The FBI decided to stop the gang en route home and question them for the first time. McAllister, perhaps sensing the end was near, began frantically dialing Morris and Merkson, to no avail. He also tried calling Tylisha Thomas at home. No answer there either.

McAllister, who was towing that day, stopped by Popeye's after work and returned home about 5:45 p.m. Thomas remembers it vividly.

About noon that day, she heard loud banging on the screen door of their Spanish Lake home. She opened it and saw the St. Louis County Police Department's SWAT team preparing to break into the house. A pack of FBI agents and area police officers proceeded to flash their badges at Thomas and explained that they came to carry out a search warrant. Police handcuffed her and put "Little Otis" and "Lady Bug," Thomas' and McAllister's two young children, in another room of the house.

"I kept asking them why they were here, and I couldn't get a response," remembers Thomas. "I'm like, 'Please, just tell me, is somebody a serial killer?' They didn't leave for hours."

Authorities hauled away boxes of McAllister's belongings, including safes, computers and a mask of some kind. They also took $2,900 in cash.

When they finished the search, Thomas walked the police officers outside. "Then some of the agents said, 'Here comes Otis!'"

Thomas says she was flabbergasted. "I'm going, 'How did they know who he is?' I told Otis, I cursed, I said, 'What the fuck is going on?'

"He was hugging me, like, 'It's OK, baby.' He told me his friend had got into some trouble."

Thomas shrugged off McAllister and left the house to go stay with family. McAllister screamed at police, demanding they return his $2,900. The officers refused and handed him a copy of the search warrant.

A little after nine that evening, McAllister called a girlfriend and said, "They're trying to sink me. They're trying to build a case." Thomas was clueless about his business dealings, McAllister added. "I'll have to tell her what I'm doin', some things I was doin'."

Police were still eavesdropping, and in the days following February 5, they heard McAllister work the phone, calling friends in an effort to find cash for a good defense attorney.

A little after nine o'clock on February 7, McAllister dialed the Cochran Firm in downtown St. Louis and asked if Johnnie Cochran was available. McAllister had no idea that the storied defense attorney who helped set O.J. Simpson free worked in Los Angeles. (Cochran died in March.)

McAllister also called Merkson and Morris, figuring they knew about charges the authorities were considering against them. Merkson and Morris refused to talk on the phone, insisting they meet McAllister in person.

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