After a life of crime, state's oldest inmate succumbs at 92
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
He began his career in crime as a teenager in Florida, landed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list twice, and committed his last offense at 78, when he tried to rob an elderly antiques storeowner in Brookline who beat him with a baseball bat.
Nick George Montos, the oldest prison inmate in Massachusetts and a man described by a former prosecutor yesterday as a "criminal through and through," died early Sunday at age 92, after being taken from MCI-Norfolk to a local hospital, said a Department of Correction spokeswoman. He had recently asked Governor Deval Patrick to commute his sentence because of poor health, but the Parole Board had not acted on the request.
"I'm happy that he died in prison," said Sonia Paine, 86, the owner of the Brookline antiques store who thrashed him with an aluminum bat after he tried to hold her up at gunpoint in 1995. "I would have been sick if somebody told me he got out. I have no sympathy for a person like this."
But Nancy W. Ahmadifar - a member of End the Odds, a volunteer group that advocates for prisoners' rights - lamented that the Parole Board never approved Montos's request to let him live his last days with an elderly sister in Port Richey, Fla.
Although she had never met Montos or spoken with him or reviewed his entire criminal record, she pushed for his release, primarily because of his age and the tens of thousands of dollars it costs each year to incarcerate him. "He was no longer a threat to society," she said.
Montos, who walked with a cane, suffered a heart attack a couple of weeks ago that prompted doctors at New England Medical Center to implant a pacemaker.
In a request for parole that was rejected by the Parole Board earlier this year, Montos wrote that he had triple bypass surgery in 2000, could walk no more than 10 to 15 feet because of shortness of breath, and had prostate cancer and other medical problems.
"I realize that my criminal record is extensive," he wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided by Ahmadifar. "I suspect there may be some who will suggest I deserve no mercy or compassion. I can understand their feelings. But there is no way I am going to live to serve out my sentence."
He was serving 33 to 40 years for his convictions for the attempted robbery of the antiques dealer and a bank robbery six days earlier.
Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, said the Parole Board's executive clemency unit was gathering documents about Montos's commutation request when he died.
He died Sunday at 2 a.m. of natural causes at a hospital that Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the Correction Department, declined to identify.
He was the only nonagenarian among the 11,271 inmates in the prison system on Nov. 24.
The next oldest inmate is an 85-year-old man, Wiffin said.
Montos's sister, Sophie P. Walton of Port Richey, declined to comment.
Montos began a career in crime when he was only 14 years old, said John P. Benzan, a former assistant Middlesex district attorney who won a conviction of Montos in 1998 for the robbery of a Fleet Bank branch in Weston that he committed on July 12, 1995, six days before the failed antiques store holdup.
For more than 60 years, he crisscrossed the country, robbing banks and jewelry stores, stealing cars, and cracking safes, according to law enforcement officials. He was a small, compactly built man with several scars on his face.
He first landed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list Sept. 8, 1952, in connection with a robbery in Georgia, said Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the bureau's office in Boston.
Two FBI agents arrested Montos in August 1954 in Chicago as the fugitive and a companion sat in a car waiting for a freight train to cross, said Marcinkiewicz.
In 1956, Montos escaped from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, and he was placed on the Ten Most Wanted list again on March 2 of that year, she said.
He was arrested 26 days later in a Memphis motel after someone recognized him as a fugitive.
His career in crime ended when he tried to rob Paine's store.
She mistakenly thought he only wanted his gun appraised, but then he called her an anti-Semitic epithet and tied her up.
Paine, wriggled free, pressed a silent alarm, and then grabbed a bat and swung at Montos, kneeling at the safe.
"I wish he'd come in again," said Paine, a grandmother of six. "I'd beat the hell out of him."
Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
He began his career in crime as a teenager in Florida, landed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list twice, and committed his last offense at 78, when he tried to rob an elderly antiques storeowner in Brookline who beat him with a baseball bat.
Nick George Montos, the oldest prison inmate in Massachusetts and a man described by a former prosecutor yesterday as a "criminal through and through," died early Sunday at age 92, after being taken from MCI-Norfolk to a local hospital, said a Department of Correction spokeswoman. He had recently asked Governor Deval Patrick to commute his sentence because of poor health, but the Parole Board had not acted on the request.
"I'm happy that he died in prison," said Sonia Paine, 86, the owner of the Brookline antiques store who thrashed him with an aluminum bat after he tried to hold her up at gunpoint in 1995. "I would have been sick if somebody told me he got out. I have no sympathy for a person like this."
But Nancy W. Ahmadifar - a member of End the Odds, a volunteer group that advocates for prisoners' rights - lamented that the Parole Board never approved Montos's request to let him live his last days with an elderly sister in Port Richey, Fla.
Although she had never met Montos or spoken with him or reviewed his entire criminal record, she pushed for his release, primarily because of his age and the tens of thousands of dollars it costs each year to incarcerate him. "He was no longer a threat to society," she said.
Montos, who walked with a cane, suffered a heart attack a couple of weeks ago that prompted doctors at New England Medical Center to implant a pacemaker.
In a request for parole that was rejected by the Parole Board earlier this year, Montos wrote that he had triple bypass surgery in 2000, could walk no more than 10 to 15 feet because of shortness of breath, and had prostate cancer and other medical problems.
"I realize that my criminal record is extensive," he wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided by Ahmadifar. "I suspect there may be some who will suggest I deserve no mercy or compassion. I can understand their feelings. But there is no way I am going to live to serve out my sentence."
He was serving 33 to 40 years for his convictions for the attempted robbery of the antiques dealer and a bank robbery six days earlier.
Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, said the Parole Board's executive clemency unit was gathering documents about Montos's commutation request when he died.
He died Sunday at 2 a.m. of natural causes at a hospital that Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the Correction Department, declined to identify.
He was the only nonagenarian among the 11,271 inmates in the prison system on Nov. 24.
The next oldest inmate is an 85-year-old man, Wiffin said.
Montos's sister, Sophie P. Walton of Port Richey, declined to comment.
Montos began a career in crime when he was only 14 years old, said John P. Benzan, a former assistant Middlesex district attorney who won a conviction of Montos in 1998 for the robbery of a Fleet Bank branch in Weston that he committed on July 12, 1995, six days before the failed antiques store holdup.
For more than 60 years, he crisscrossed the country, robbing banks and jewelry stores, stealing cars, and cracking safes, according to law enforcement officials. He was a small, compactly built man with several scars on his face.
He first landed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list Sept. 8, 1952, in connection with a robbery in Georgia, said Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the bureau's office in Boston.
Two FBI agents arrested Montos in August 1954 in Chicago as the fugitive and a companion sat in a car waiting for a freight train to cross, said Marcinkiewicz.
In 1956, Montos escaped from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, and he was placed on the Ten Most Wanted list again on March 2 of that year, she said.
He was arrested 26 days later in a Memphis motel after someone recognized him as a fugitive.
His career in crime ended when he tried to rob Paine's store.
She mistakenly thought he only wanted his gun appraised, but then he called her an anti-Semitic epithet and tied her up.
Paine, wriggled free, pressed a silent alarm, and then grabbed a bat and swung at Montos, kneeling at the safe.
"I wish he'd come in again," said Paine, a grandmother of six. "I'd beat the hell out of him."
Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
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