Stripping the Lincoln - the real deal

Since the film's premiere, there have been three questions audiences have walked away asking. 1. What is the meaning of "Do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?" 2. What is the meaning of the gunshot at the end of the film? 3. Did they replace the Lincoln Continental Mark III with a second car after they stripped it?

I'm going to try to answer the third topic. The stripping of the Lincoln is loosely based on what happened in the real case. On January 25, 1962, Patsy, Barbara, Tony Fuca, Jacques Angelvin and Francois Scaglia (Nicoli in the film) were taken into custody; the 1960 Buick Invicta, which was shipped from Marseilles to Montreal, then driven to New York City by Angelvin, was impounded by police and taken to the police garage in Maspeth Queens. As there were warrants on the car as well as the owner, the police had the authority to search it for contraband. As the suspects were already in custody, there was no race against the clock to conduct the search, so the mechanics under the supervision of Irving Abrahams (who appears in the film), went over the car inch by inch. What they found was the Invicta had a large cavity behind the wheel well that could easily secret a large quantity of heroin. As the chasis had been caked over with what they deemed to be "Mediterranean mud," the police concluded this is where the drugs were stored.

Unlike the film, the car yielded no large shipment of smack, merely some heroin residue which was presented at trial. The 60 kilos seized in the original case were found in two locations: the basement of Anthony Fuca's apartment in the Bronx and hidden in the ceiling of his father, Joe's, basement in Brooklyn. That these were the actual drugs that were transported by the Buick Invicta has been disputed by some, most probably the attorneys of the accused.

In 1969-70, when director, William Friedkin, was investigating the story for the proposed feature, he spoke with the head garage mechanic, Irving Abrahams, and decided the dis-assembling of the heroin car would become a key component of his film. When Abrahams told him, perhaps offhand, that the police garage was so well equipped that he and his mechanics could dis-assemble and re-assemble a car in 4 hours, Friedkin's imagination was spurred and he determined to make that a suspenseful aspect of the story.

So, in the film, the car is taken off the street before anybody is arrested and any warrants from a judge had been secured, then it is taken to the police garage where the suspects in the case are standing around while, unknown to them, the car is taken apart and put together again; a scene almost solely based on Abrahams' "four hour" assertion. The concept has haunted the film since. In one scene, we see a car stripped to its skeleton, in the next it looks like it came off the showroom floor.

Because he didn't hew to the facts of the real case, Friedkin has been left to explain to a skeptical viewing public the improbable scene as being based on a prideful boast by Irving Abrahams; one which may be accurate, but without any kind of set-up or dialogue that would at least give a plausible explanation, makes for what many see as an unbelievable scene in a believable story.

Also unfortunate for the filmmakers, the Lincoln Mark III did not have a trap compartment under its chassis so a new "hiding place" had to be found. There was a little cubby hole beneath the rocker panel and they were able to cram in two kilos of heroin (not 60) to create the effect.