Joe Bailey, along with Karl Burke, was one-half of a pair of thieves who broke into the primary vault at the World Government's International Monetary Centre. The two of them both had unique skills suited to robbery - Joe could disable any alarm, while Karl had invented a computer device capable of opening any electronic lock.
After succesfully gaining entry into the IMC building via a ventilation shaft, and disabling two automated security robots on patrol, Karl's computer was able to open the door of the main vault, which would hold about a billion dollars worth of gold. However, much to Joe's annoyance, his partner had not realised that the vault contained additional security features which were able to tell when the door had been opened without proper authorisation. The vault's door sealed and an alarm started ringing throughout the building, and Karl's device was unable to open it back up again from the inside. Now sealed in, Joe voiced concern about how much air was left in the vault, but Karl reasoned it was of no concern as the vault's security would have them out and arrested before then.
Unbeknown to the two robbers, the vault had sealed itself for 14 hours as a precaution, and there was no override, meaning the pair were as good as dead, as they only had 4 hours before the air inside the vault ran out. The guards called International Rescue as they were the only outfit who could get Joe and Karl out alive. After a failed attempt using the Mole, Brains Hackenbacker realised that the main vault sat right on top of an estuary of the Hudson River, and that Thunderbird 4 could blow its way into the vault from underneath.
Upon being freed from the vault, with mere seconds worth of air left, Virgil Tracy and Brains theorised that the pair would spend the next twenty years in a space prison for their crime.
Joe appears in Four Hours to Eternity, a short story that was published in the 1969 Thunderbirds annual.