WILLIE SUTTON Ep. 3 | “Escape Artist”

Then Willie was transferred to the notoriously terrible prison in upstate New York, commonly called Dannemora. After surviving three years of harsh conditions and a riot two days before he was paroled, Willie vowed to go straight. after he was released. He got married and started a family, and did go straight until the stock market crashed in October 1929.. He lost his job and returned to a life of crime.

But this time he had a new plan. He was done with the time-consuming manual labor of literally breaking into a bank. As he scoped out his new target, he had an epiphany. A man in a uniform could get in almost anywhere. Willie bought costumes of policemen, firemen, postmen, and delivery men of all kinds.

Now he could stroll up to the front door of the bank, tell a simple lie, and walk right in. His partner, Marcus Bassett, was mainly the getaway driver, and their strategy worked like a charm. They pulled off heist after heist and kept the police guessing. At home, Willie Sutton was a devoted family man who took the train into Manhattan every day from his house on Long Island. For the benefit of his wife and young daughter, he kept up the ruse of being a working man.

He maintained a typical, low-key lifestyle that drew no attention. His partner, on the other hand, did the exact opposite. Marcus Bassett, usually called Jack, spent money like they were about to stop printing it. He had a wife and a mistress, and his wife soon became suspicious that he was having an affair. Willie covered for his partner and denied the affair.

In response, Jack's wife worked with the police to set a trap. Willie was arrested, tried, and convicted. As a second-time offender, he was given a mandatory 30-year sentence in prison. After a painfully short time on the outside, Willie was right back in Sing Sing, and his previous experience looked like it was going to happen all over again. He was threatened with a return to Dannemora because he was viewed as an escape risk.

So, he quickly told the warden of Sing Sing that he really needed to stay there because he was appealing his case, and he was confident the verdict would be reversed. To go through the appeals process, he needed to be close to his lawyer. The warden didn't necessarily buy it, but he agreed to look at Willie's records and think about keeping him at Sing Sing instead of transferring him to Dannemora. Willie Sutton was 28 years old and facing a 30-year stretch, plus an additional six and a half years from his previous sentence because he had violated his parole. If he did all that time, he would be 65 years old before he breathed free air again.

That simply wasn't an option. Sing Sing was one of several prisons that were referred to as escape-proof in that era, and Willie was going to put that label to the test.

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 3, Escape Artist.

A few days after Willie's visit to the warden's office, Willie saw a ray of hope for his situation. He was assigned a job as a bookkeeper at the prison shoe shop. That was a good job, and if he was given that job, it was a good sign that he was not going to be transferred to Dannemora. With that sense of security, Willie started planning his escape from Sing Sing. Sing Sing had changed a lot in the short time Willie was gone.

The prison had been rebuilt to make it bigger and stronger, and it had also become a little more comfortable for the inmates. The cells had been enlarged, and modern plumbing systems had been installed. Each cell had its own radio, many of which were undoubtedly tuned to the broadcasts of the New York Yankees baseball games. It was 1930, and the fabled batting lineup known as Murderer's Row was still in place. Lou Gehrig blasted 41 home runs that year, but his total was only good enough for third.

Gehrig's teammate, Babe Ruth hit 49, and his total was bested by Hack Wilson's 56.

. But Wilson's performance still wasn't good enough to beat Babe Ruth's single-season home run record of 60.. Whatever played on the radios, Willie Sutton wasn't super interested. The improved accommodations were nice, but Willie was far more concerned about the improved safety measures.

After the prison was renovated, it earned the reputation of being escape-proof. It was widely publicized that the cell bars were made of a special type of hardened steel. No hacksaw could cut through them. Not even a high-speed drill would do the job. A tall iron picket fence and a thick wall had been built around Sing Sing.

Willie was determined to escape, but it wasn't going to be easy. Willie's first idea came when he got lucky at his job at the shoe shop. He discovered that he was able to drop down into a cellar under the shop. In the cellar, he found a boarded-up space. But the board wasn't nailed down.

Willie lifted the board to see a large square hole. He lowered himself through it and found what seemed like a tunnel big enough for a grown man to walk through. Willie could feel that he was on the brink of something very interesting. There was one problem, though. It was pitch black in the tunnel, and he couldn't see anything around him.

If Willie had any hopes of exploring the tunnel further, he would have to return with a flashlight. The shoe shop was closed every weekend. Willie knew that those two days were his window to come back to the cellar with a flashlight. But that also presented another issue. If Willie was going to enter the shoe shop on a day that it was closed, he needed to find a way to get in.

So, he needed to make his own set of keys. The new and improved Sing Sing also featured a big powerhouse. Willie knew that sets of blank keys were kept in the powerhouse. He also knew that the inmates who worked in the powerhouse usually ate lunch there. The eating arrangements at Sing Sing were thankfully, not strict.

Willie made it a point to join the men in the powerhouse for lunch every day. Before long, Willie had made himself a shiny new pair of keys to the shoe shop, and he had also managed to grab a flashlight. The very next weekend, Willie put his plan into action. He led himself into the shoe shop and lowered himself through the hole. Then he turned on the flashlight.

As Willie looked around the underground tunnel, a clear plan to break out of Sing Sing prison formed in his mind.

The tunnel Willie had lowered himself into was really long. It stretched far beyond what he could see with his flashlight. It was filled with steam pipes that seemed to run the length of the tunnel. The biggest pipe seemed to be coming from the prison's powerhouse. But something else caught Willie's attention, an open pipe lying on the floor that was not connected to anything.

The pipe was around 16 to 18 inches in diameter and welded together in sections of 20 feet in length. Willie walked alongside the pipe for some distance, but he didn't have to follow it for long to know where it was leading. Even with the recent improvements, there was already a new powerhouse for Sing Sing under construction. As a security precaution, it was being built outside the prison. The open pipe would connect the prison to the new powerhouse.

At the new powerhouse, there was an identical pipe that was being constructed that would work its way toward the prison. At some point, workers would complete the two pipes and join them together. To do that, Willie knew they were going to have to break the wall that separated the two pipes. If he could find out when they were going to do that part of the construction, he could make his way through the pipe to the new powerhouse outside the prison walls. That was the plan.

And now Willie just needed to figure out how to handle a few practical concerns.

The first thing Willie needed to find out was if it was possible for a man to squeeze his way through a pipe that was only about 16 inches wide. He decided to do a test with a man who was smaller than him. Willie sought out one of his friends from the shoe shop, a young kid called Tommy, who had been sent to prison for robbing a restaurant. Tommy had a carefree, cheerful personality, but Willie was more interested in his size. He was certain Tommy didn't weigh more than 95 pounds.

Willie told Tommy the plan and asked him if he would be willing to go through the pipe to test it out. Tommy agreed almost at once. The next Saturday, Willie accompanied Tommy to the underground tunnel. Tommy dropped through the mouth of the open pipe while Willie waited outside anxiously. When Tommy returned, he had a mixed report.

The welding of the pipe was uneven in some places and the sharp metal had cut Tommy several times, but Tommy confirmed that it was possible for Willie to use the pipe to break out of Sing Sing. The only thing left to figure out was the exact moment when the prison authorities were going to break the wall to connect the two ends of the pipe. Willie was biding his time, waiting for more information, when it happened. Construction workers broke through the wall. There was just one little problem.

Willie only found out about the exciting development because four inmates who'd had the same plan tried to escape. They were caught a short distance outside prison walls trying to steal a rowboat to cross a nearby river. After all that planning, Willie was back to square one. He spent the next year doing his time and continuing to think of new ideas. The next idea arrived when Willie learned some juicy information.

The first piece was that one of the prison towers overlooking the yard was left unmanned during the midnight shift. The second was that there were two ladders in the cellar under the mess hall. If the ladders were strapped together, they would be tall enough to reach the top of the prison wall. Willie's first thought was that the information was practically useless. It almost made sense that the guards left the tower unmanned after midnight because all the inmates were in their cells at that time.

And if the cell bars were made of hardened steel that couldn't be cut, then it was impossible for inmates to get out of their cells to take advantage of the lack of guards on the watchtowers. And that was when Willie Sutton had his second thought. Were the cell bars really made of hardened steel? Or was that just a lie that was designed to prevent inmates from trying?

Late one night inside his cell, Willie realized there was no proof that the bars of his cell couldn't be cut, and he made up his mind to try. His first order of business was to get his hands on a hacksaw. He got in touch with an inmate called Johnny Egan. Johnny worked in the plumber's shop at Sing Sing, and Willie thought he might be able to get hacksaws. He was right.

A few days later, Johnny smuggled Willie two hacksaw blades. as they walked back from a work day. Willie waited until everyone was asleep, and the prison guard had finished his 10.30 p.m. check. Then Willie lay down in front of his cell and very slowly began to saw at the corner bar.

He worked very carefully, so it took a long time, but it worked. He was able to cut through the bar. In fact, Willie thought these bars were even easier to cut than ordinary steel. The next day, Willie told Johnny that he had managed to cut through the bars of his cell. Johnny was overjoyed.

From that moment on, Willie and Johnny started working together to break out of Sing Sing prison.

The plan was long and complicated. After sawing their way out of their cells, they would have to go down the corridor to the mess hall, then drop down into the cellar beneath the mess hall to pick up the ladders. After that, they would have to go through seven locked doors that would finally open into the yard. Since the tower was supposed to be unmanned at midnight, they would make it across the yard and use the ladders to climb up over the prison wall. The first step was stealing more hacksaws to cut through the cell bars.

That was the easy part. Now they had to tackle the challenge of the seven locked doors that led to the prison yard. That was a bit harder. Johnny worked extra hours at the plumber shop to get Willie the tools he needed to pick the locks. After months of preparation, Johnny and Willie were ready.

The big night finally arrived on December 11th, 1932.

. Willie cut a hole in the cell bars and squeezed through it. He put the bars that he had sawed off back in place and wrapped tape around them. Willie took one last look inside his cell before turning away to join Johnny. Johnny made it out of his cell as well, and the pair silently hurried through the dark corridors.

Everything was going according to plan until they reached the cellar. under the mess hall. Inside the cellar, there was an inmate bent over a work table. He was a trustee, a prisoner, who was trusted by the guards and given special privileges. Willie and Johnny were not expecting to see anyone there, but the trustee wasn't expecting to see them either.

Willie crept up behind him and threw an arm around his neck. With the trustee overpowered, Willie told them that they were trying to break out. He was surprisingly helpful and showed them where the ladders were kept. Once they had the ladders, Willie and Johnny picked the locks of the seven doors between themselves and the yard. Fortunately, Willie was such a skilled picklock that the task wasn't difficult.

Once they were in the yard, Willie and Johnny crouched low and scurried across the ground as quietly as possible. Willie knew they were close, but they were also completely exposed. The escape could still fail in any number of ways. The pair gingerly raised the ladders to the prison wall and started climbing. Once they reached the top, they lowered themselves down the other side.

The second they hit the ground, they started running. Willie scrambled up the hill as fast as he could, practically on his hands and knees. He was expecting to hear shouts from the prison guards at any moment. He and Johnny kept going blindly in the darkness until they could make out the silhouette of their getaway car. Willie's ex-wife, Louise, sat behind the wheel, ready to finish their escape.

When they reached the top of the hill, Willie turned back to shake his fist at the sleeping prison. Then Willie and Johnny jumped into the car and Louise drove them away from Sing Sing.

Willie had coordinated the escape plan with Louise during her visits to the prison. They also placed coded messages in the personal section of the New York Times. After months of slow, careful organization, Louise came through in the clutch. She had divorced Willie while he was in prison, but she still helped him break out. And now she had a suitcase with fresh clothes for Willie and Johnny in the back seat.

As they changed out of their prison uniforms, Louise drove the back roads toward New York City. Sing Sing Prison sits on the banks of the Hudson River, about 20 miles north of Manhattan Island. Louise dropped Willie and Johnny at a hotel where they planned to hunker down and stay out of sight. But on December 15, 1932, just three days after the breakout, four men with guns robbed the Manufacturer's Trust Company in the Washington Heights neighborhood on the northern part of Manhattan Island. Two of the robbers were later identified as Willie Sutton and Johnny Egan.

And even if the early identifications were questionable, Willie proved later in his career that Manufacturer's Trust was one of his favorite targets. The other was a chain of banks called the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company.

In the new year of 1933, Willie Sutton was back on his own. Just a couple months after Willie began his new life, the future public enemy number one and most wanted outlaw in the land, John Dillinger, was released from prison and began the most incredible year in the history of American outlaws. In the South, Bonnie and Clyde were wanted for robbery and murder, and they were about to get into a shootout in Joplin, Missouri. In New York, Willie Sutton surveyed the bank-robbing landscape and noticed some changes in the three years he had been gone. The biggest one was that the motorcycle division of the NYPD now guarded banks.

in the mornings. As Willie walked around the city casing banks, he often saw a motorcycle parked along the curb and an armed police officer standing nearby. Before long, Willie decided to leave his home city. He went to Philadelphia, which would become his second home. For the rest of his career, he would bounce back and forth between Philly and New York.

And two months after his escape, he started operations in Philadelphia. On February 15, 1933, Willie went back to his old ways and chose the uniform of a mailman for an upcoming robbery. It was the first of three times that he would target the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company. He and Johnny Egan, and possibly Eddie Wilson, though his involvement is still murky, started with a branch of the bank that was four miles west of downtown Philadelphia. Willie dressed up as a postman and walked up to the bank at about 7.45 a.m.

before it opened to the public. He rang the bell and told the guard he had a special delivery letter. Willie handed the guard an envelope and a book to sign for the letter. With both of the guard's hands occupied, Willie pulled a gun and pushed his way into the bank. John Egan hurried inside behind Willie and they closed the door to the bank.

After that, it appears as though a combination of two things happened. One, a woman outside spotted Willie at the very moment when he pushed his way into the bank. Two, when Willie and Egan or Wilson were inside, they tied up the security guard, but he managed to free himself and release a tear gas canister. Whatever combination or sequence of bad luck events happened, Willie and his accomplice or accomplices were forced to flee empty-handed. That branch of the Corn Exchange Bank was safe for now, but Willie and his crew would return 11 months later with a daring new tactic.

In the meantime, they planned a return trip to New York to target a branch of the Corn Exchange a few blocks from Central Park and Columbia University.

By the time the next major robbery rolled around, Willie Sutton had been forced to replace a member of his three-man crew. In Willie's autobiographies, he portrayed his partner and fellow prison escapee, John Egan, as an unreliable team member who had a drinking problem. Whether it was true or not, Egan met his end just five days after the attempted robbery in Philadelphia. On February 20, 1933, he was one of three victims in a triple murder at a speakeasy in Manhattan. After that, Willie and Eddie Wilson recruited Joe Perlango to be the third man in their crew.

Joe, whose last name is sometimes spelled Perlongo, so there's still some lingering confusion there. all these years later, was a New York hustler who was a connection of Eddie's, and he picked up where John Egan left off.

A little after 7.

30 a.

m. on July 8, 1933, Willie walked up to the branch of the Corn Exchange Bank on 110th Street in New York. The bank was about three blocks from Columbia University and about four blocks from the north end of Central Park. Today, the address is a building of condominiums with businesses on the street level, but in 1933, it was the site of Willie Sutton's second-to-last robbery. before a long cooling-off period.

Willie put on the costume of a policeman and walked up to the front door of the bank. He rang the bell and asked the porter if he could use the bathroom. When the porter let him in, Willie pulled out his gun and told the porter this was a heist. Eddie and Joe quickly joined Willie in the bank, and they waited for the employees to trickle in to begin the day's work. Over the next hour, as each employee arrived, he or she was greeted by Willie and then ushered into the custody of Eddie and Joe.

A little after 8.

30 a.

m.

, the assistant manager arrived. He had one half of the code that opened the bank vault, and the head teller had the other. The teller had already been captured, and now Willie directed the two men to the vault. The hostages used their combined knowledge to open the vault, and the robbers collected nearly $24,000 in cash from the safe. Thus far, it was smooth sailing, but as soon as the robbers stepped outside, the siren over the bank's door started blaring.

A policeman up the block, turned the corner and headed toward the bank. He must have believed that Willie was a cop and didn't question the fact that Willie was moving away from the action because he passed right by Willie and Eddie without a word. The robbers made a clean getaway, and Willie later remembered that the heist was one of the most fun of his career.

Next time on Infamous America, Willie and his crew return to the Corn Exchange in Philadelphia and succeed where they previously failed. But the success is short-lived, and Willie soon finds himself in the Pennsylvania prison system. But rather than being a permanent impediment, Pennsylvania prisons are just challenges. Willie Sutton proves there's always a way out. Sometimes it just takes a while.

That's next week on Infamous America.

Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once, with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. 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.