Getting ready for the Gardner heist's 20th anniversary: March 18, 2010:

BOSTON: He's practiced criminal law for more than a half century, been Myles Connor's friend and attorney for thirty years, and has immersed himself totally in the Gardner heist and its aftermath for twenty. "That's a lot of years of seeing things from the dark side," says Leppo. And he's taking all those decades of experience and all the memories as well as his legendary trove of Gardner-related documents, letters, memos, journals, news and magazine clippings and pouring it all into the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Gardner heist, March 18, 2010.

A new book on the unsolved Gardner heist next up for Leppo Media Group.

"I'm putting everything into two books," he boasts with a grinning nod of determination, knowing full well that the first of those two books has already hit paydirt for his Leppo Media Group. "One's in print and has been picked up by Hollywood, as everyone can see everywhere on the Internet. It's a hit that will only get bigger. But the next one, that's my baby: the Gardner heist itself. I got an office filled with bankers boxes of Gardner stuff, twenty years of experiences with the robbery, a career spent defending accused criminals who no one else would defend, and a half century of knowing how to feel and sense the pulse of everything going on in this city. And it's all going into my new book. I love Myles dearly, and I always felt that his bio had long needed a booklength treatment to show the real Myles. But at long last, his story's been told in 'The Art of the Heist'. Now, it's my turn.

"That's why I started the Leppo Media Group: to get the Myles memoir and my Gardner book out to the reading public."

The rise of a tough West Ender into the world of criminal law.

A rough-hewn, scrappy Jewish kid from Boston's famous and infamous West End, ex-Marine, former cabby hacking fares on the night shift to pay his way through law school and to support his young family, Leppo would quickly rise to the top of Boston's trial lawyers by specializing his law practice at defending accused criminals who no one else would defend. "The cases were slam dunks for the prosecution; no one would go near these accused guys, no matter what the fee," he says, getting serious all of a sudden. "They were goners! So, stupid me, I took them on. My tactic was always just plain old common sense: you want to put my guy away, then you better have the goods on him or I'll beat you. More often than not, these air-tight cases leaked bigtime. I'm a digger, and I scratched around until I found all the cracks. All of a sudden, air tight didn't look so air tight any more."

Leppo's West End and Marine tenacity, plus a brilliant legal mind, paid off with a high-profile career that saw him rise to be among the best trial attorneys in the country. And also gained him the moniker, mouthpiece to the Mob. It has stuck to him for his entire career. "I'm much more than that," he bristles a bit. "Believe me, I take it as a compliment, but I'm much more than that." And his Leppo Media Group is out to prove it. "The Perfect Plan: The Gardner Heist" is next in a succession of stories that also include upcoming book treatments of select criminal cases from his well-known Leppo files. Pointing to a wall of file boxes, he says with conviction: "There's a dozen movies hiding in there. Maybe a TV series, 'The Leppo Files'," he adds with a laugh. "I think maybe Harvey Keitel would be good to play my role...after, that is, he gets a little Leppo training on how to wear an Armani suit to court."

It all came into focus in April 2007.

"That's when I met up with our writer, Tom Green," began Leppo, recounting how things had gotten so far so fast. "His brother Michael introduced me to him. Up to 2007, I'd tried and failed numerous times with other writers and film producers to get the Myles and Gardner stuff off the ground. Both Myles and I were frustrated and it looked like we were going no where. What Tom showed us was that we were mixing together Myles' life, the Gardner, and lots of other story material. He saw that there were really two separate books in the mix and that we should try to get them published one at a time. Timing was important, he reminded us, because the twentieth anniversary of the Gardner heist was fast approaching in 2010. The media would take note of that anniversary and look around for story material that intersected with it. And he recommended that the Myles story be the first out of the shute. Myles had high visibility, was attached to the Gardner heist, and had over a hundred thousand pages on Google. Myles would get a book publisher's attention. He figured that while the Myles book was taking shape, it would give us more time to research the book on the Gardner heist. And so far Tom's plan has been right on the money.

"The Gun Collector's Son" was the initial book proposal.

"Tom Green first put together an extensive book proposal and sample chapters; something he titled "The Gun Collector's Son", which was a play on Myles' gun-collecting Dad, who had a pretty good collection of firearms. When Myles' Dad was falsely accused of stealing guns from a local museum by the museum's trustees, Myles took severe exception. In revenge for sullying his father's good name and reputation, Myles broke in and stole some of the museum's pistols. It was Myles' first museum heist. Tom took that concept and came up with the book title. Myles and I both loved the title and book concept.

"The book proposal went off to an agent that Tom knew at Writers House in New York. A fellow named Dan Conaway. Conaway came up with a different approach. A client of his, Jenny Siler, who has six or seven thrillers under her belt was looking for a piece of breakout non-fiction to do next. Dan appraoched her with the Myles Connor bio; she was more than receptive, dashing off an e-mail saying that she'd followed Myles' "career" for years and that she loved Old Master art. Bingo, we were in business. Dan and Jenny packaged up the proposal toether with three sample chapters for a book auction. HarperCollins was the high bidder. All of which has allowed Tom the time to dig into my files and to conduct necesary resarch for the Gardner heist book. That book, "The Perfect Plan: The Gardner Heist" is coming along really, really well. I'd like nothing more than to repeat Myles' book success with this new book. Actually, they are a very complementary pair of books--a matching set, so to speak."

Coming: Fox "America's Most Wanted" interviews Marty Leppo;
WCVB-TV "Chronicle" interviews Marty Leppo & Myles Connor.