For over five decades, a mysterious 55-year-old safe sat quietly in the Ashern Pioneer Museum, its secrets locked away and forgotten. Since 1969, no one could open it—not because of a lack of effort but due to an elusive lost key. This enigma captured the curiosity of many who visited the museum, their imaginations running wild with what treasures might lie inside. Fast forward to today: that mystery has finally been unraveled thanks to Rick Ammazzini, a safe-cracking expert known for his unique ability to unlock safes without leaving a trace.
To open a safe, you typically have to take a saw and cut through its walls or call a locksmith to use a drill. A Sandy Hook local, however, has made a name for himself with a very particular skill: he can open any safe without damaging it.
Rick Ammazzini has travelled across the continent, opening safes from Las Vegas to Calgary, Baltimore, Toronto, and beyond. Though any locksmith can get into any safe, his method leaves no trace and allows the safe to be used again.
“No one likes a drilled safe, right?” he said.
When the Ashern Pioneer Museum heard about Ammazzini, they contacted him to see if he could open their two safes. After finding a time that worked for them both, it turned out Ammazzini could come on the same day as the mini thresherman’s reunion, so he had an audience to watch the fun.
To start, he takes various measurements of the safe’s lock, getting every single number he can.
Then, using a few tools, Ammazzini does what’s called “exploiting the defects in manufacturing.”
“No manufacturing process is 100 per cent perfect,” he said. “So, if you know what to do, you can exploit those defects and use it to your advantage.”
That’s not to say anyone off the street could open any safe, though. Ammazzini’s process can take up to four hours and doesn’t include alarms, deadlines, or panic, making it easy for him to get the job done, but not for someone trying to be quick. Throughout the years, he’s honed his skills, and Ammazzini can now open a safe in 30 minutes, compared to the typical four hours.
Some safes, though, prove more difficult than others, and Ammazzini can’t open them — that’s why he says he has a 99 per cent success rate instead of 100 per cent.
That’s what happened at the Ashern Pioneer Museum. They had two safes for Ammazzini to open, but one had a lock that was damaged over the years and he couldn’t open it. The other safe took him just 25 minutes to open, and inside was a look into the financial history of Ashern.
Behind the thick safe door were the blueprints for Ashern and the original land plots, along with receipts for buildings and building materials, cost breakdowns, dog licenses that were never issued, and financial records from 1919 that showed a surplus of $7,000 that year.
“When’s the last time you heard of any town having a surplus?” said Ammazzini, noting that $7,000 then is equal to more than $125,000 today.
Ammazzini likes the challenge of opening safes, calling each one a new puzzle for him to piece together. He hates seeing old safes get damaged, especially when they’re empty inside, making the damage all for nothing. That’s why he does what he does — so safes across the continent can continue to be reused for years.
He said anyone can use a drill to open a safe, but when people find out he can do it without harming the safe’s integrity 99 percent of the time, they become more interested in his services.
This year, Ammazzini has opened 22 safes. Altogether, he guesses he’s opened more than 200.
