WILLIE SUTTON Ep. 2 | “Man of Many Faces”

It was for love. At 17 years old, Willie robbed the safe of his girlfriend's strict father because they wanted to get married and the father wouldn't allow it. That escapade ended with a broken relationship, a jail cell, and a courtroom trial. The judge let Willie off with probation and an order to get a job. Willie did, but trouble had a way of following him.

The biggest irony was that Willie went on the run twice for crimes he didn't commit. Eventually, he spent so much time acting like a criminal that he decided he might as well be one for real. Willie joined a safe-cracking gang under the mentorship of a career criminal named Dr. Tate. The gang had a successful run and Willie lived a comfortable life.

But Willie's ambitions were growing. He grew bored of robbing jewelry shops, drug stores, and department stores. He wanted to go after bigger scores, like banks. But Dr. Tate wasn't interested in pursuing banks, so Willie struck out on his own.

He recruited fellow gang member Eddie Wilson, and they set their sights on Ozone Park National Bank in a neighborhood of Queens, a few miles from Willie's hometown.

They had a good plan to rob the bank overnight while they could do it in secret, but it took hours longer than expected and they were forced to abandon the effort. They walked away discouraged and empty-handed. On their way home, they got into a car accident. It wasn't a big deal, but it started a chain reaction that led to big problems. After the accident, Willie dropped Eddie off at home and then went to his mother's house.

As Willie sat down to eat breakfast with his mom, a cop showed up at the door. The cop asked about the grayish-green car outside. Willie, in his most innocent voice, said the car was his and asked what the trouble was. The police officer said there had been a hit-and-run accident and witnesses had described a grayish-green car driving away. He asked Willie to come down to the police station to clear it up.

Willie went to the station and explained that it wasn't a hit-and-run. Yes, he and his friend Eddie had had a minor fender-bender with a truck. thanks to the big rainstorm that was drenching New York. Eddie had exchanged license plate numbers with the driver and then Willie and Eddie went on their way. The police looked into the story and when it checked out, they sent Willie home.

Two weeks later, Willie would dearly regret breaking one of his cardinal rules. Never volunteer information to the police. Don't give them anything they don't already have. Willie was looking in the window of a department store when two detectives came up to him and told him they had arrested his partner, Eddie. Now, there would be no leniency in the form of probation.

Willie was about to experience maximum security, prison and the hellish conditions of incarceration in the 1920s. After that, the prison system would experience the brilliance of Willie Sutton and law enforcement would realize it had a new master criminal on its hands.

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 2, Man of Many Faces.

Willie and Eddie had been forced to leave behind all their equipment at the Ozone bank job, and now the gear came back to haunt them. The police traced it to Eddie and arrested him. Eddie didn't rat Willie out, but he didn't have to. Two weeks ago, Willie had sat in the police station and told them he had been in a car with Eddie. on the morning of the robbery.

Eddie and Willie were tried separately. Willie hired the best lawyer he could find and hoped it would be enough to keep him out of prison. But Willie's bad luck continued. In April of 1926, more than a year after Willie walked out of the Ozone Park National Bank robbery empty-handed, he was found guilty of burglary in the third degree and attempted grand larceny. He was sent to Sing Sing Prison, where authorities shaved his head and made him wear a coarse, dark prison uniform.

He went from being Willie Sutton to being a number. As the days went by, Willie learned that the warden of Sing Sing Prison was an outspoken supporter of prison reform. The warden viewed himself as a progressive man, and he designed policies to aid in the prisoner's rehabilitation. But he was an absentee landlord. He was rarely at the prison, and all of his policies were abused by the deputy warden who oversaw the day-to-day business of the facility.

The deputy warden was a corrupt man who ran the prison in any way that earned him more money. As a result, a strong hierarchy developed among the inmates, who seemed to be in charge of many of the important matters.

Willie quickly learned his way around the prison. He was given a job in the prison greenhouses, tending to plants, and he made friends with the right people. But maybe he learned his way around too quickly, because, three months later, Willie was informed that he was being shipped to another prison, Clinton Correctional Facility. Clinton Correctional is more commonly referred to as Dannemora Prison, or simply Dannemora. It's located in the tiny town of Dannemora, New York, just 20 miles below the Canadian border.

The prison was in a remote location, surrounded by a dense forest, and temperatures were known to fall as low as negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, which helped it earn the nickname Siberia of America. Escaping from Dannemora was nearly impossible because there was virtually no way to get through the thick woods. Inmates who tried to escape were usually dragged back to prison, hungry and cold. Willie was sent to Dannemora because of the suspicion that he was planning to escape from Sing Sing. When the warden of Dannemora explained the transfer to Willie, Willie was shocked.

He told the warden that he hadn't the slightest inkling about escaping from prison. Later in life, Willie would become legendary for successfully escaping from prison, but this time he was telling the truth. But the warden didn't believe him. He told Willie that if he ever found Willie lurking in a corner of the prison, he would blow his head off. And if the weather conditions outside the prison were bad, the living conditions inside were worse.

Dannemora made Sing Sing look like paradise. Dannemora operated on a silent system. Inmates were only allowed to talk in certain specified areas. Prison guards carried long wooden sticks with metal tips. They gave the inmates orders by tapping the sticks on the ground.

Two taps meant go. One tap meant stop. The cell blocks were harsh and bare. The beds were filled with bed bugs that never seemed to stop crawling out of the cracks in the wall. During the winter, it got so cold that the only way to survive was to go to bed early.

Rumor had it that the coal to heat the prison was bought from a company that was owned by the warden's brother. It was said that nearly half the coal meant for the prison was sold for a tidy profit. There was virtually no oversight of the prison system at the time, especially at a remote facility like Dannemora. The town of Dannemora was what was referred to in the mining world as a company town. The only people who lived there were prison workers and their families.

There was no hotel in town, so when wives of prisoners traveled all the way to Dannemora to visit their husbands behind bars, the women had to stay in the homes of the prison guards. Willie Sutton endured three years at Dannemora, and during that time, tension over the prison condition went from simmering to bubbling, and in 1929, it boiled over into a riot.

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But to Willie's great surprise, the board approved his parole and set a date for his release. Then, two days before his release date, the tension boiled over at Dannemora prison. A riot broke out, and 1,300 inmates rampaged through the prison for five hours. They stormed the walls and set fire to anything that would burn. Three people died, and 20 more were injured before the guards finally regained control.

That was in July of 1929.

. That same month, a riot broke out at Auburn State Prison outside Syracuse, New York. In October, a massive riot broke out at a Colorado state prison that left eight guards and five inmates dead. In December, another riot broke out at Auburn State Prison. After that, Congress finally started working on legislation to improve prison conditions.

For Willie Sutton, he was incredibly lucky. He survived the riot and mercifully walked out of Dannemora prison two days later.

Willie was determined to go straight once again, but this time he wasn't inspired by some higher ideal. A new law had been passed in New York that said a person who was charged with a second felony offense would be given a mandatory sentence of 30 years in prison. Willie Sutton was 28 years old, and if he got one more strike against him, he would go back to prison for 30 years, which might as well have been a lifetime. After being released in July 1929, Willie returned to New York City and got himself a respectable job as a gardener. He started dating a woman named Louise.

Louise's family was also from Irish town, and the pair got along well. Willie enjoyed a job that allowed him to spend a majority of his time outdoors. He made a good salary working on the gardens of the city's rich and famous. He took Louise to the movies, the theater, and nice restaurants. Their relationship moved fast.

Within three months of Willie's release from Dannemora, he and Louise were married. And Willie was delighted when Louise announced that she was pregnant. Everything seemed to be going well. But in October of 1929, a little more than three weeks after the deadly prison riot in Colorado, the U.S. stock market crashed.

The fallout immediately hit luxury businesses like landscaping. One week after Louise told Willie she was pregnant, Willie lost his job. As he joined the millions of people who were becoming desperate to make money, his mind increasingly turned to the thing he knew best. He kept himself in check, but he couldn't pass a bank without looking it over and thinking about how he would enter, what time the guard arrived every morning, and if there was a police station around the corner. Late one afternoon, after a bad day at the unemployment agencies, Willie walked past a bank and spotted something interesting.

The bank had already closed for the day, but Willie saw two guards get out of an armored car, ring the bell, and then enter the building. Willie was struck by something that seemed so obvious, he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it before. Uniforms opened doors. If you're wearing a uniform, you can ring the bell and walk right in. Within minutes, Willie had the plan all figured out.

All he needed was a partner.

Willie's old partner, Eddie Wilson, was still in prison, so he decided to call a new friend he had made during his time at Dannemora. Willie reached out to Marcus Bassett, an ex-inmate with a stellar reputation for being loyal, whom Willie called Jack. Jack Bassett had racked up lots of debt after being released from prison, and he was struggling to find a job. When Willie told him the plan, he jumped at the chance. Willie wanted to test his theory about uniforms opening doors before he robbed a bank.

So he chose a jewelry store on Broadway called M. Rosenthal and Sons. Willie rented the costume of a Western Union messenger boy on the pretext of acting in a church play. Then he met with a friend in an entirely different line of business to buy some pistols. On the day of the heist, October 28, 1930, Willie walked up to the store in the guise of a messenger.

a little after 7.

30 a.

m. He rang the bell and waited until the porter opened the door. partway. Through the crack in the door, Willie told the porter that he had a telegram from Mr. Rosenthal.

Willie asked if the porter would sign for it. The porter had to open the door wider to take the book and pencil and sign for the telegram, and that was all Willie needed.

He pushed his way in, pressed the pistol against the porter's stomach, and ordered him to stand back. Jack entered behind Willie, and they disabled all the alarms in the store. Then they waited for the store's salesman to arrive. The salesman had the combination to the vault, but when the man showed up and saw two robbers with guns, he was so terrified he couldn't remember the numbers. The porter convinced Willie to let him call the owner of the store and ask for the combination.

Seeing no other way out, Willie allowed him to make the call. The owner was irritated at being woken up so early in the morning. He read out the combination, and Willie and Jack acted fast. They opened the safe and made a clean getaway with $150,000 worth of jewelry. Willie's plan had worked like clockwork, and now he couldn't wait to try it on a bank.

Ironically, he didn't need a uniform to successfully rob his first bank. The manager of a bank in the Richmond Hill neighborhood had become sloppy. The door to the bank was protected by a sliding gate which was padlocked at night. Every morning, the manager arrived at 7.30 a.m. He unlocked the padlock and slid open the gate.

He stepped inside the gate and then slid it closed behind him before he unlocked the door to the bank. When he went into the bank, he did not lock the door or the gate. Fifteen minutes later, the guard arrived. He slid open the gate and closed it behind him. Then the guard simply turned the doorknob and walked right in.

The other bank employees who arrived after him did the same thing. Between the time when the employees arrived and the bank opened to the public, the gate and the door were unlocked.

Willie went back to the bank every morning for a week to make sure the routine continued. And every day, it was the same thing. Willie wasted no time in taking advantage of the golden opportunity. He and Jack Bassett quickly drew up a plan. The pair went to the bank early in the morning before the manager arrived.

Willie waited on the street opposite the bank. Jack was a little further down, sitting behind the wheel of their car with the motor running. Willie watched the bank manager open the gate and close it behind him, then unlock the bank door and step inside, just like he did every morning. Willie waited for a minute before walking up to the gate. He slid the gate open and turned the doorknob.

And in about three strides, Willie was in the bank. He didn't see the manager, but toward the back of the building, he noticed a small office. He walked up to the door and opened it. slowly. Willie saw the bank manager sitting behind his desk reading the newspaper.

The startled manager blurted out that Willie was not allowed to be there. Willie calmly told him that he was here now, and if the manager didn't open the vault in the next minute, everyone would read his obituary in the newspaper the next day. Less than 15 minutes later, Willie walked out of the bank with $19,000.. It was all over before the guard arrived.

After the jewelry heist had proved the theory about uniforms, Willie bought a bunch of costumes for policemen, mailmen, deliverymen, and so on. He didn't need a uniform for the Richmond bank job, but he put them to good use. after that. For the next bank, Willie dressed up like a police officer. He rang the bell and asked the porter if he could use the bank's bathroom.

The porter didn't flinch before letting him in. It was just that easy. Willie and Jack were on a spree. They used the uniforms of policemen, deliverymen, firemen, carpenters, and once, when they were feeling adventurous, window washers. The uniforms were like a badge of admission.

As long as Willie was wearing one, he could get in anywhere. The string of robberies left the police concerned and confused. When Willie used a Western Union uniform to rob a bank, the police tracked down former employees of the company who had left without returning their uniforms. When Willie used a police officer's uniform, the New York Police Department searched its roster for possible offenders. Investigators had not yet had the idea that it could all be the work of one man with different uniforms.

Meanwhile, Willie and Jack hit banks, jewelry stores, and insurance companies. They expanded their operations into Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Willie couldn't believe how successful his strategy was. But Sir Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion says, informally, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Bankers Association was not about to stand by and let the robberies happen without a response.

It sent a pamphlet to its members, advising them to set up, quote, precautionary security measures. For many banks, those measures took the form of small, informal security systems. The first time Willie and Jack came across such a system was during the heist of a big bank in New York. Willie had already convinced the porter to open the door by posing as a postman with a special delivery. Jack was guarding the porter while Willie waited for the bank guard, who usually arrived soon afterward.

Willie noticed the guard approaching the bank. The guard walked toward the door, but instead of entering the bank, he did something very strange. He opened the door a little before hurriedly shutting it again. The guard opened and closed the door a few more times before walking toward a store near the bank. Willie and Jack didn't know what was going on, but they decided to abandon the job.

The next day, while reading the newspaper, Willie understood the guard's behavior. The bank had devised a system of leaving a small light on at the entrance all night. The porter would come in, and if nothing happened after five minutes, he would turn the light off. If the light was still on, the guard should be suspicious. The previous morning, the guard was on alert because the porter had not switched off the light.

Luckily for the robbers, the newspapers revealed the secret. For every bank they hid. after that, Willie loved trying to spot the warning signal ahead of time. He soon realized that most banks used a routine with a window shade. Sometimes it was pulling it all the way up, and other times it was leaving it suspended halfway.

Another bank got more creative. The porter had a routine of leaving a calendar turned on its side in the window and then straightening it up every morning when he came in. The banks were becoming more and more vigilant. But when Willie's luck finally ran out, it had nothing to do with security systems. It had everything to do with one of the most quoted or adapted lines in English literature.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell, a fury like a woman scorned.

The quote has become a modern idiom that usually goes something like, Hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned. The original line is usually attributed to William Shakespeare or the Bible, but it was actually written by English playwright William Congreve 80 years after Shakespeare died. It was in a play called The Mourning Bride, and it applied perfectly to the situation. Willie Sutton was about to find himself in, courtesy of the bride of his partner, Jack Bassett. Willie was earning a lot of money through the heists, but he continued to lead a quiet life.

Every time he brought in a good score, he told his wife, Louise, that business was going well. Like every other working man, he took the 815 train to the city each morning from his house in Lynbrook, a village on Long Island just outside the borough of Queens. Every evening, Willie caught the 530 train back home, and Louise was always waiting for him at the station. But while Willie lived a quiet family life under the facade of a typical working man, his partner, Jack, liked spending money as fast as he stole it. He bought expensive new suits and left hundred-dollar tips at restaurants.

Jack was married to a woman named Kitty, but he soon found a mistress. He rented an apartment for his mistress and showered both women with gifts. Jack thought his wife Kitty was in the dark about his mistress, but he was wrong.

Willie received a call from Kitty and she was hysterical. Kitty suspected Jack was cheating on her and demanded that Willie tell her the truth. Willie managed to convince her that the woman Jack was spending time with was just the wife of one of their inmate friends from prison. Willie told Jack that Kitty knew about the mistress and warned him to clean up his act. Jack promised he would change, but of course, he didn't.

At the time, Willie was out on parole and he was responsible for reporting to the parole board. Willie told the parole board that he was still working the job as a landscaper. The lie was going smoothly until suddenly Willie began sensing some upheaval. He started receiving strange requests from the parole board, things like demanding that he come down to the office in the middle of the afternoon. If they genuinely believed he was working as a landscaper, why would they want him to leave his job in the middle of the day and risk getting in trouble with his employer?

Willie was getting nervous, and then he received another call from Jack's wife, Kitty. This time, she told Willie that she was worried about the police catching Jack. She told Willie to help him lawyer up. Willie asked her to meet him one night to understand why she was so worried. Had the police been asking questions?

Had Jack said something specific? Willie met Kitty at a restaurant to talk. She looked distraught as she told him she thought the police were on to Jack. Willie calmed her down and gave her instructions to check into a hotel. And then, as Willie was putting on his coat to leave, detectives emerged from the kitchen and slapped handcuffs on Willie.

It had all been a set-up. Kitty had found out about Jack's mistress and wanted to get back at Willie for lying to her. It was November 25, 1930, and Willie had been out of prison for less than a year and a half. Now, after his trial for robbery, he received a 30-year prison sentence and was headed back to Sing Sing. If he served every day of it, he would be nearly 60 years old by the time he got out.

He vowed that would never happen.

Next time on Infamous America, Willie goes back to Sing Sing prison and he's threatened with a return to Dannemora. With the threat looming over his head, and it's not like life at Sing Sing was some grand picnic either, he decides he's not going to rot in prison any longer than he absolutely has to. He devises a daring and creative plan to return to life as a bank robber. 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 B Barrel Media on Twitter.

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