Willie Sutton
|
|
56474732346678b.jpg
William "Willie" Sutton (June 30, 1901 - November 2, 1980) was a prolific U.S. bank robber. For his talent at executing robberies in disguises, he gained two nicknames, "Willie the Actor" and "Slick Willie." Outside his felonies, he was an immaculate dresser.
| Contents |
Early Life
Sutton was born into an Irish family, in an Irish-American district of Brooklyn, New York. He was the fourth of five children. He did not go beyond the 8th grade of school.
He married in 1929; his wife later divorced him after he was imprisoned. He married again in 1933. His longest period of (legal) employment lasted for only 18 months.
He preferred the name Bill, but usually the police gave him the name Willie.
His criminal activities began when he was young. He robbed about 100 banks from the late 1920s to his final arrest in 1952—with several prison terms in between; he was also a master at breaking out of prisons.
Career In Crime
Sutton was an accomplished bank robber; it was usual for him to carry either a gun, a pistol or a Thompson submachine gun. "You can't rob a bank on charm and personality," he once observed, but had a professional's pride in having never used it. He stole from the rich and kept it, though public opinion later turned him into a perverse type of a Robin Hood figure.
On February 15, 1933, Sutton attempted to rob the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He came in disguised as a mailman, but an alert passerby foiled the crime: Sutton escaped. On January 15, 1934, he and two companions broke into the same bank through a skylight.
The FBI record observes:
- Sutton also executed a Broadway jewelry store robbery in broad daylight, impersonating a postal telegraph messenger. Sutton's other disguises included a policeman, messenger and maintenance man. He usually arrived at the banks or stores slightly before they opened for the day.
He was captured, and recommitted in June, 1931, charged with assault and robbery. He did not complete his 30 years sentence, escaping on December 11, 1932, by scaling the prison wall on two joined 9-foot of ladders.
On March 20, 1950, Sutton gained a spot on the FBI's list of the FBI ten most wanted fugitives.
Final Years
It is estimated that he stole perhaps $2 million in his career, and spent more than half of his adult life in jail.
A series of decisions by the United States Supreme Court in the 1960s led to his release on Christmas Eve, 1969, from Attica State Prison. He was in ill health at the time, suffering from emphysema and in need of an operation on the arteries of his legs. For a while after his release he was forced to live on payments from welfare.
Once a free man, he spoke about prison reform and consulted with banks on anti-robbery techniques. In an ironic moment of pure chutzpah, he made a television commercial for New Britain Bank and Trust Co. in Connecticut.
Sutton died in 1980 at the age of 79; before this he had spent his last years with his sister in Spring Hill, Florida. After his death his family arranged a quiet burial in Brooklyn in their family plot.
An urban legend
The (false) story usually goes about as follows:
- When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton replied "because that's where the money is."
In his partly ghostwritten autobiography "Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber" (Viking Press, New York, 1976), he said:
- "The irony of using a bank robber's maxim as an instrument for teaching medicine is compounded, I will now confess, by the fact that I never said it. The credit belongs to some enterprising reporter who apparently felt a need to fill out his copy...
- "If anybody had asked me, I'd have probably said it. That's what almost anybody would say. ...it couldn't be more obvious.
- "Or could it?
- "Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that's all."
External links
Further reading
- Linn, Edward and Sutton, Willie, 1976, Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber ISBN 067076115XTemplate:Lived