Investigation
Parnell "Stacks" Edwards was supposed to take the van used in the burglary to a car compactor to have it destroyed; instead, jubilant from the gang's easy heist, he got high on marijuana while en route to the junkyard. He then drove the van to his girlfriend's apartment, conspicuously parked it in a no-parking zone, and spent the evening getting drunk and snorting cocaine, apparently intending to deliver the van to the junkyard the next day.
The next day, while Edwards was still asleep in his girlfriend's apartment, the police discovered the van, impounded it, and quickly identified it as the vehicle used in the burglary. Edwards himself successfully fled the complex without being apprehended. His fingerprints were later found on the steering wheel, and a muddy shoeprint found at the airport was matched to a pair of Puma AG athletic shoes Edwards owned.
The FBI had two suggestions of who led the heist, the John Gotti crew or the Jimmy Burke crew. Within three days of the robbery, the FBI determined that the Burke crew perpetrated the heist. The FBI set up surveillance of the crew, following them in helicopters and bugging their vehicles. There were a few bits of tantalizing chatter that the FBI managed to record in spite of the background sound of rock and disco music, such as Angelo Sepe telling an unidentified man about "...a brown case and a bag from Lufthansa..." or his telling his girlfriend, Hope Barron, "...I want to see...look where the money's at...dig a hole in the cellar rear lawn..." But this was not enough to connect Sepe and his crew to the theft.
According to Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke became paranoid and agitated once he realized how much attention Edwards' failure had drawn, and resolved to kill anyone who could implicate him in the heist, starting with Edwards.
With the violent deaths of most of the heist associates and planners, there was little evidence and few witnesses to the involvement of Burke or his crew in the execution of the heist. The authorities were able to gather enough evidence to prosecute inside man Louis Werner for helping to plan the heist.
The stolen cash and jewelry were never recovered.
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