WILLIE SUTTON Ep. 1 | “Irishtown”

. The street corner on which the bank was located, like most corners in New York, was usually very busy, but it was 7.45am on a rainy Monday morning and the city was waking up slowly. While most people were in their homes preparing for the day, Willie Sutton was finishing his day, at least he hoped he was. It was his first bank heist, so he didn't really know what to expect or how it would go, but what he did know was that he had been in the bank all night and he was way behind schedule and time was growing short. Willie gripped an acetylene torch that could cut through metal.

He ignited the torch and started cutting through the bank vault. The heat of the flame melted the steel, and the molten metal began to run. Willie was focused on his job, thinking only about the thick stacks of dollars that lay inside the vault, money that Willie was determined to steal. Meanwhile, Willie's partner in crime, Eddie Wilson, stood at the door keeping watch. The bank was empty, since it was not yet open to the public, but Willie and Eddie had cased the bank in the days leading up to the heist and they knew the guard normally took his post at around 8am, in about 15 minutes.

Willie and Eddie had planned to be safely out of the bank by now, but things had gone terribly wrong. The prep and planning had seemed perfect, everything had been in place just as it should have been, and the rainstorm had been an unexpected blessing. But a few minutes after the partners started the robbery, they realized they had a serious problem. Now, it was 10 hours later and they were still working. But despite the extraordinary delay, Willie Sutton was still hopeful.

His torch was burning through the vault and he watched more and more of the steel melt away. He needed just a few more minutes. Whether or not he knew the exact time at that exact moment, we'll never know, but he knew he was running out of it. He and Eddie hadn't spent all night working and come this far just to leave empty-handed. But then Eddie called out to him.

Two bank employees had just arrived and were standing in the doorway talking. Willie and Eddie were going to have to choose between two bad options, turn an overnight burglary into a robbery with hostages, or walk away with nothing. Whichever way it turned out, it would not be a brilliant beginning to the career of the man who would become one of America's most prolific bank robbers.

From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of Willie Sutton, one of the most successful bank robbers and escape artists in American history. This is Episode 1, Irish Town.

Willie Sutton was not born into a life of crime, but it was certainly all around him when he was growing up. Willie was born on June 30, 1901, in a section along the Brooklyn Docks called Irish Town. Irish Town was bound by the East River to the north, the Navy Yard to the east, and Washington Street entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge to the west. Irish Town was a working man's neighborhood, and Willie's father earned an honest wage as a blacksmith. His mother was a very religious woman who decorated their house with religious paintings.

He had a brother and two sisters, and Willie's grandfather and two uncles lived in the home as well. Everyone had to contribute money to the house, and Willie learned the importance of money at a young age. He saw his father work himself to the bone to save up for a rainy day. Every night, he would hand over all the money he earned to Willie's mother to make sure the household needs were met. The Suttons were a hard-working, law-abiding family who never had any trouble with police.

But the streets of Irish Town were rough. They were full of dangerous men who were doing dangerous things, all of which could influence a young boy in all the wrong ways.

In Irish Town, there was a constant battle over the control of the docks. Different groups went to war because whoever controlled the docks was also in charge of the gambling, the loan sharking, and all the other pilfering that was going on. Money was power, and it was won with blood. Gangs who were descended from the old Gangs of the Five Points, the area of vice and crime that was made famous by the book and the movie Gangs of New York, worked on the docks in Irish Town. The gangs were made up of young men in their late teens or early twenties.

Violence was standard, and young Willie grew up hearing stories of men who were beaten to a pulp or shot or stabbed in the streets. Their bodies were dumped in the East River that Willie and his friends often swam in. Willie's childhood idol was a mob leader called Wild Bill Lovett. Willie described him as having a sure sense of command and a vibrant personality. However, like most gang bosses of the time, he didn't stay in control for very long.

Before Lovett had been able to enjoy many of the fruits of his illegal efforts, he was found dead along the docks. He had been hit in the head with a metal instrument and shot three times. As was common, no one was convicted of the crime. To some extent, that was probably because the people of the neighborhood were notoriously tight-lipped. Willie Sutton said.

later in life, A code of silence was observed in Irish Town more faithfully than Omerta is observed by the Mafia. Nobody ever talked in Irish Town. As a child, Willie actually broke that rule, though the circumstances were far less severe than those surrounding the gangs on the docks. It was a classic story of a kid growing up, and it showed the two sides of Willie Sutton. The first person Willie ever stole from was his grandfather.

Willie's grandfather was blind, but he was the unquestioned head of the house. He was a strict man. He was hard on his own children, but he doted on his grandson. At a young age, Willie stole loose change from his father's bureau to buy a pigeon. Competitive pigeon racing was a favorite pastime in Irish Town.

Every evening, the roofs of the houses would be alive with races. Willie wanted to compete, so he stole 25 cents to buy a pigeon that he named Sky Flyer. Unfortunately for Willie, he lost the pigeon soon after he bought it. He was so upset that he went home to his grandfather and confessed the theft. His grandfather comforted him and promptly gave him a quarter to buy another bird.

All things considered, in Irish Town, that was pretty mild on the list of offenses. But Willie's ascent into the world of real crime happened pretty quickly after that.

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The Confederacy had attached iron siding to one of its ships, the Merrimack, and the Union quickly countered with the Monitor. The two ships faced each other in just one battle, but it was the first time in history that two iron clads squared off. Sixty years later, the USS Arizona was built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was famously crippled and sank during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.. It now lies at the bottom of the harbor.

But 5,000 miles away from its final resting place was the place of its birth at the Navy Yard. Construction on the ship started in 1914 when Willie Sutton was 13 years old and lived just a few blocks away. He could have watched some of the construction, and maybe he did. One of the roads that led to the western gate of the Navy Yard was Sand Street, which is still there, by the way. By day, the place was filled with ambitious men going about the serious business of making money.

By night, it transformed into a fertile ground for debauchery and violence of all kinds. It came alive with bars, tattoo parlors, gambling houses, and brothels. And the nightlife was, of course, irresistible to young boys of the neighborhood.

Willie and his school friends started hanging around Sand Street at the tender age of 10.

. They would stare at the slick gamblers, burglars, and gangsters who frequented the area. The men wore fancy clothes, and their shoes always shined. They drew a sharp contrast for Willie and his friends, whose fathers were all working men of Irish Town, who managed to look awkward and uncomfortable even in their Sunday church suits. The crop of smooth-talking, finely-dressed men were Willie's first heroes.

So, when he planned his own first burglary, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. He and his school friend, Charlie McCarthy, decided to rob a small department store in the neighborhood. They meticulously plotted every detail as if they were planning the heist of a lifetime. On the scheduled night, Willie and Charlie made their way up the store's fire escape under the cover of darkness. Once they were on the roof, they pried open the skylight, tied a rope to the frame, and then Charlie began to lower himself into the store.

And that was when things went wrong. Charlie lost his grip on the rope and fell straight into the store's crockery section with a loud crash. People living in the neighboring buildings opened up their windows in surprise and started shouting questions. Willie acted fast. He lowered himself into the store and scanned the mounds of broken plates and cups for Charlie.

Willie found him standing at the back of the store. unharmed. The boys grabbed the cash register and dashed out of the store. Apparently, they got away with the crime. For the next two weeks, Willie and Charlie lived like kings with their stolen money.

They treated their friends to ice creams, candies, and trips to the picture shows. It was Willie Sutton's first successful caper, and he would pull off many more in the near future. And, like a good movie, scenes from the next 15 years of his life would showcase the building blocks of the robber he would become.

Willie's first job was at a bank. It was a summer job when he was 15 years old, and it left a lasting impression on him. He remembered seeing working-class people line up outside the bank early in the morning. They deposited their nickels and dimes and then left to endure another long, hard day of work. Then came the part that made Willie angry.

Around 11 o'clock every morning, the president of the bank arrived in a chauffeured limousine. His driver held the door open as he stepped out of the car, donning a derby hat and hooking a cane casually over his arm. The president walked into the bank, nodding at everyone without looking at anyone. Willie developed a strong dislike for the man. He hated how some people had to work so hard for so little, while others, like the bank president, looked down on them.

Willie didn't work at the bank for very long, but that was building block number one on the path to his future career.

Building block number two started with a girl, the first girl Willie was ever seriously involved with. Willie was 17 when he met Carrie Wagner in the dance halls of Brooklyn. Carrie was 15.. She was beautiful and shy, and Willie fell in love with her on the spot. But given their young ages, their biggest problem was Carrie's father.

Carrie had grown up in Irishtown, like Willie, so Willie knew that her mother had died when she was young and she had been raised by her strict father. Carrie complained to Willie that her father never let her go out. He sometimes allowed her to go to dances and movies with her two girlfriends, but never with a boy. If Carrie wanted to go out with a boy, she would have to lie to her father, and that's what she did to see Willie. But Willie knew it was only a matter of time before Carrie's father wised up to the relationship.

Carrie's father saw Willie one night and flew into a rage, promising to give him a lot of trouble if he ever saw Carrie again. The outburst only brought the couple closer together. Willie and Carrie planned to elope as soon as Willie could put together a few hundred dollars. And that was how Willie Sutton's next big caper happened.

Willie had left the bank job and was now working part-time for a florist, decorating churches for weddings. The job didn't pay well and he knew it would take forever to earn a decent sum of money. Then, one night, when they were out with friends, Carrie happened to mention something very interesting. She said that her father always kept at least a couple hundred dollars in his office safe. Willie only had one question for her.

Could she get the key? Willie, Carrie, and a friend named Bill hatched a plan to steal the money from the safe. With Carrie's help, they entered the office and opened the safe. To their great surprise, the safe was overflowing with money. They had expected $200, but there was a grand total of $16,000 in the safe.

In that year, 1918, $16,000 would be the equivalent of more than $320,000 today. For three teenagers, that was a fortune.

Willie, Carrie, and Bill stole the money and went on the run. After renting a car, their plan was to drive to Canada where Willie and Carrie could get married. They hit the road heading north and spent money lavishly everywhere they stopped. They may have been smart enough to steal the money, but they were too young to make the getaway. They only made it about 90 miles to the small city of Poughkeepsie.

They were picked up by police who were on the lookout for three teenagers who were on the run from the law. The police took the three friends back to Brooklyn and put them behind bars. Carrie's father bailed her out, but Willie and Bill stayed in jail. It was Willie's first arrest and first time in jail, the first of many. There was a quick trial and the judge let them out on probation.

But the terms of Willie's probation were painful for a heart-sick young man. He had to get a job and stay away from Carrie. If Willie ever tried to contact Carrie, the judge promised to throw him back in jail. Willie Sutton's first love had ended in devastation. But he took the judge's words to heart.

He set himself straight by getting a job at the shipyard. as an apprentice burner. He spent his days learning how to use an acetylene torch to cut metal. Willie was fascinated to see the skinny little blue flame slice through the steel hull of a huge ship. He liked his job and threw himself into the work, often spending extra hours perfecting his technique.

Willie's hard work soon paid off and he was promoted to the position of full burner. So, in just a couple years, Willie had developed a dislike for the rich men who ran banks and he had learned how to use a high-powered torch to cut through metal. Now, there was just one more building block needed before everything could be in place for him to start a career as a bank robber. And like the crazy experience with Carrie Wagner that eventually led him to the job at the shipyard, the experience that led him to his next influential job was wild and it forced him to go on the run.

Right after Willie Sutton's probation ended, he was forced to leave Brooklyn all over again. This time as a fugitive who was wanted by the police on a murder charge. It all started when Willie was laid off from his job at the shipyard. At that point, he started a career as a small-time robber. He got his own apartment and fell into some of his old habits.

He started spending his nights at nightclubs and dance halls with old friends. One night, Willie was running a dance hall, which meant he rented the place, hired a band, and sold tickets for an event. Willie was standing at the door taking tickets when a thug, ironically named Happy Gleason, and his friends showed up drunk. Gleason was a troublemaker, and he and Willie didn't get along. Willie had worked hard for the event and he had no intention of letting Gleason ruin it.

When Willie turned Gleason away, Gleason threw a punch. Willie caught Gleason's arm and shoved him backward. After a brief scuffle, Gleason left the venue, but not before giving Willie a look that said he would get revenge.

Willie didn't take much notice of the implied threat. He enjoyed the rest of the night and ended up staying with a friend out on Coney Island. Willie woke up to the news that Happy Gleason had been murdered during the night. It was common knowledge that Willie and Gleason didn't like each other, and lots of people had witnessed the scuffle at the dance hall the previous night. Willie knew he would be the police's number one suspect.

He believed that if the police got their hands on him, they would beat him until he confessed, even though he had nothing to confess to. He didn't want any part of that, so he skipped town, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan. His actions only raised the police's suspicions, and they indicted him for murder. Meanwhile, Willie got an apartment and a job under an assumed name. The job was as a repairman at an electronics appliance shop.

Willie's boss trained him to work on more advanced electric systems that occasionally came into the store, like burglar alarms. And that was the third big building block on Willie Sutton's path to becoming a bank robber extraordinaire. He now had motivation, the ability to disable alarms, and a new method for breaking into a vault. But even so, he didn't have a plan to use those skills, though that changed in short order. Willie was settling into the rhythm of his job.

when trouble came knocking again. The safe at the appliance shop was robbed. Willie had nothing to do with it, but he was worried. He was a fugitive working under a fake name. And he grew even more worried when the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency was called in to investigate.

Willie kept his head down and held out until one morning when he got a call from a colleague telling him not to come to work because he was the Pinkerton's prime suspect. Willie was on the run once again. He began to think about how he had been an amateur thief for a long while, and he decided to give himself a promotion. He was ready to become a professional thief, the kind who wakes up every morning and thinks about committing a crime, just as every other person wakes up and goes to their office. He joined a gang that specialized in safe cracking.

The leader was a man everyone called Dr. Tate. Dr. Tate took great pride in his work. He was always tinkering with the latest safes, vaults, and other burglar-proof devices on the market.

Dr. Tate found the perfect student in Willie Sutton, who was eager to absorb everything he could about the craft of picking locks and cracking safes. But a big reason why Willie respected Dr. Tate was the man's strict policy of nonviolence. He didn't allow his gang members to carry weapons of any kind, not even a knife.

His second rule was, never commit robberies in your own backyard. Willie and the gang traveled all over the Northeast, hitting low-key places like jewelry stores and drug stores. The score was always split equally between the members who participated. Willie was living a comfortable life, but soon he began to get restless. He wanted more.

Willie asked Dr. Tate if he would be interested in hitting a bank, but Dr. Tate said no. And Willie decided it was time for him to strike out on his own.

Willie and Eddie Wilson, a member of Dr. Tate's gang and an old friend, decided to rob the Ozone Park National Bank. Ozone Park is a neighborhood in Queens, right next door to Brooklyn and about 10 miles from Irish Town, where Willie grew up. In the days leading up to the heist, Willie and Eddie cased the bank thoroughly. They decided they would enter the bank through the underground cellar.

Then they would drill a hole in the concrete ceiling of the cellar to reach the bank's vault room. After that, they could break into the vault, steal the money, and get out without anyone knowing. The afternoon of the day before the burglary, Willie and Eddie picked the lock to the underground cellar and deposited all their heavy equipment. They waited a full day to begin their work, and during that time, a torrential rainstorm pounded the city. Willie watched the weather with satisfaction.

It was the perfect night for a burglary.

Willie and Eddie returned to the bank at 10.

30 that night, September 6, 1925.

. Once they were in the cellar, they built a makeshift platform for Willie to stand on as he drilled into the concrete ceiling. To Willie's surprise and dismay, the concrete was much thicker than he anticipated. Hours ticked by as Willie drilled into the concrete. The whole night passed, and it was about 7.45 the next morning before he made a hole large enough for them to climb through.

That left Willie and Eddie very little time to spare. The security guard usually arrived for work at 8 a.m., so now they only had about 15 minutes to break into the vault, steal the money, and climb back into the cellar without raising suspicion. Willie thought they could still make it. Eddie hurried to the door of the bank to keep watch for the security guard. Willie lit his acetylene torch and went to work on the vault.

The flame was powerful, and the vault's steel door quickly began melting away. The torch was working even better than Willie had hoped, and he was starting to get excited when he heard Eddie calling to him. Two bank employees had just arrived, and they were standing in the doorway. Willie and Eddie were so close, but they had to get out now. There was no time to waste.

Making what must have been an agonizing decision, Willie and Eddie left their equipment behind, dropped down into the cellar, and scurried out through a side door. They walked back to their car, unhappy and empty-handed. As they drove away, their bad luck continued. Their car skidded on the wet, rain-soaked roads. They hit a repair truck parked in the middle of the street.

The crash broke the radiator and one of the headlights of Willie's car. After going through the customary ritual of exchanging license numbers and names to deal with the accident, Willie and Eddie continued on their way. Willie dropped Eddie at his home and then decided to visit his mother, who lived nearby. The first thing Willie's mother did on that rainy Monday morning was sit Willie down for breakfast. He had just started eating.

when there was a knock at the door. It was a police officer who wanted to know who owned the grayish-green car that was parked outside.

Next time. on Infamous America, the fallout from the failed Ozone Park burglary lands Willie in jail. After being released, Willie once again vows to go straight and give up the criminal life. But of course, that doesn't last very long. Willie goes on to develop the strategy he will use to rob banks for the rest of his career.

That's next week on Infamous America.

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This series was researched and written by Ria Perowit. Original music by Rob Vallier. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and BBarrel Media on Twitter.

And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.