Tow Head

In a strange way, Joane introduced Laurie to her cat burglar mentor. A woman named Florrie Fisher was making the rounds of the national talk shows. Fisher was billed as a former heroin addict, prostitute, and thief who was on an anti-drug crusade. Fisher had written a book about the subject called The Lonely Trip Back. Joane thought the example of somebody who beat the addiction would inspire her daughter. Instead, the book gave Laurie ideas.

Laurie began robbing hotel rooms, which during the Seventies in Miami Beach wasn't all that difficult. One night, she crept into a room, only to be confronted by its occupants. Sitting there were none other than Florrie Fisher and her Filipino husband, who went by the name Phil. "Who knew who I was robbing," Laurie cackles rhetorically. "They invented the cat burglaring game. Florrie had a broken leg and she was getting old. She looks at me, then she looks at Phil. öPhil,' she said, öshe reminds me too much of us. Why don't you train her?'"

You've probably seen Florrie Fisher yourself. Comedian and writer Amy Sedaris based her Strangers with Candy character Jerri Blank (an aging former junkie/prostitute who returns to high school) directly on footage of Fisher's motivational speaking engagements in the Seventies. Despite her crusade, Fisher was still in the game. She was charged with narcotics possession in Miami in 1971 and with forgery and possession of stolen property in 1972.

When Sedaris heard the story of this meeting, her first reaction was laughter. "Oh my god, that story is ridiculous!" she remarked, then reflected on her druggy muse. "I just love the idea of that," Sedaris says. "She was doomed from the beginning. I believe she would say let's train her right." (The movie Strangers with Candy is set for release this year.)

Phil had a new partner: Laurie. Sometimes the pair would scale buildings using ropes. Laurie recalls several times meeting a gentleman burglar from West Palm Beach, scaling the building as she was coming down. "He said, öWhat are you doing here?'" she relates. "I said, öForget about it. I started from the top and worked my way down.'"

The approach was often more simple. Laurie would make friends with maintenance people and steal the master keys, or she'd just walk in and try doors. "I remember when the mob called me and told me I couldn't touch the Beach," she says. "They had keys to every hotel. I could use lockpicks. But the whole secret was I would shake down the doors. People were dumb enough to leave their doors open for me. You notice I got very small hands? I would sometimes put my arm through a window and open the door. So when cops came and I got stopped, there was no tools. They always believed my story because I never had nothing on me and I looked so innocent."

Even when she got caught, Laurie often managed to talk her way out of a jam. If a couple woke up as she entered a room, she'd just put her hand on her hip and stare daggers at the man. "I'd say, öHow dare you. You meet me at the bar and invite me here and you've got another bitch in your bed?'" she divulges. "And I would still rob öem."

Nowadays, Laurie says she feels the most guilt about all the irreplaceable personal items, wedding rings and heirlooms, she took to finance her habit. Speedballs, a combination of heroin and cocaine, were expensive. "I keep eating myself up, trying to make it up, make it better," she confesses. "öCause the drugs, you know, they talk to you. We'd get ten, twenty thousand dollars a night sometimes. All gone the next day, into my arm."

Besides the thieving, Laurie also forged checks, ran up stolen credit cards, and, for a time, kept the books at a whorehouse on NE Tenth Avenue in Miami Shores. She also served as secretary to and minder of an attorney who owed local mobsters money, until he squealed to the feds. "I used drugs, but my word was good," she explains. "I wasn't a rat. I wasn't a snitch. That's why the mob took a liking to me. They needed somebody to watch the house. The cops tried to break the customer code a thousand times and they never did it. A thousand times. Oh, what the cops went through with me. They'd always tell me that when they got me, I was gonna get mine."