What do you do when all you ever really wanted was to be loved by your dad and all he wants is to use you for his criminal enterprise? Vincent Moretti got wrapped up in his overbearing father’s penchant for doing inside-job armoured car heists. As Alexander Huls reports at Truly*Adventurous, when Archie Moretti refused to share the take fairly, Vincent decided he had had enough of the patriarchy.
Against the repeated advice of the court over several months of testimony, Archie was representing himself in a case that would decide whether he would spend the remainder of his life behind bars. His son Vincent was the prosecution’s star witness, the key to pinning nearly two decades of outlandish heists and assorted crimes — the family business, you might say — on his back. Archie’s only hope was to cast doubt on his son’s sanity.
Eventually, the old man started talking and explained that something had happened at the armored car company where he worked as a driver. Some money had gone missing from a truck — around $150,000 — and the FBI was looking into its disappearance.
Silence descended again. A few moments later, Archie turned to his son. He had stolen the money, he confessed.
Vincent was stunned. He knew his father was no saint, but their family was average by most Wisconsin standards and, he believed, law abiding. He had an especially hard time imagining his demure and soft-spoken mother living off stolen money. The revelation was a bombshell, as was the measure of trust his father had just shown him. Before Vincent could finish processing, Archie added something that seemed almost too outrageous to make heads or tails of: He wanted to do it again, and this time he wanted his youngest son’s help.
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