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Nicholas George Montos, 92; Was Massachusetts' Oldest Convict

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Bill Schenley

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Dec 3, 2008, 10:49:13 AM12/3/08
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"'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.

She mistakenly thought he only
wanted his gun appraised, but then he
called her an anti-Semitic epithet and
tied her up.

'I wish he'd come in again,' said Paine,
a grandmother of six. "I'd beat the hell
out of him."
---

After a Life of Crime, State's Oldest Inmate Succumbs at 92

FROM: The Boston Globe ~
By Jonathan Saltzman

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."
---


MWB

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Dec 3, 2008, 11:07:53 AM12/3/08
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> 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.
>


A pacemaker at 92 years of age....is it just me?????

Massachesettets would have paid for a sex change if he wanted it at age 92.

Massachusettet is the most screwed up state in the Union.

The Republic of Vermont is a very close second.


GO PATRIOTS

Mark

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