Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of My Heart Radio. Hey Saron,
Speaker 1: it's up, Elizabeth Dotton that so much. How you doing
Speaker 1: these days? It's been pretty good. How are your holiday
Speaker 1: is looking awesome? I guess nice. You're looking forward to. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you got that. You have to look forward to, Dude,
Speaker 1: I just had a wicked black Friday. Not really, I
Speaker 1: just just listened to a lot of soul music and
Speaker 1: I called it black Friday. Well you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Oh girl, I got one for you. Yes. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this the other day and I went and
Speaker 1: looked up because I wanted to be certain, and it
Speaker 1: was worse than I remembered. There are a bunch of
Speaker 1: names in New Zealand that are considered illegal, like illegal
Speaker 1: names like people have been denied the right to have
Speaker 1: the name Stallion or Yeah Detroit as a as a
Speaker 1: first name for a child. Another one fish and Chips.
Speaker 1: Then there was Keenan, Got Lucky and my one of
Speaker 1: my favorites, sex Fruite. But the reason why is because
Speaker 1: I remembered. Originally there was a nine year old girl
Speaker 1: who asked the court to emancipate her, and the court said,
Speaker 1: girl we got your back. Do you know why the
Speaker 1: court was so eager because her parents had named her
Speaker 1: Telula does the Hula from Hawaii. That was her that's
Speaker 1: her name, her first name, like Telula does the Hula
Speaker 1: from Hawaii. What's going on down there? Yeah? Now, interestingly,
Speaker 1: the ones I told you that we're made illegal were
Speaker 1: all those ones you know, sex fruit and yeah Detroit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Detroit is fantastic. There were a couple of others that
Speaker 1: they allowed through the New Zealand legal system because you
Speaker 1: have to appeal to apply and say can I have
Speaker 1: this name if you get some strange name, and so
Speaker 1: some of the names that they permitted were twins named
Speaker 1: Benson and Hedges. There was a girl named Midnight Shardonnay
Speaker 1: and finally, my favorite number sixteen bus shelter and permitted name.
Speaker 1: I think that I might new job needs to be
Speaker 1: the one who approves names because yeah, yeah, it's popping
Speaker 1: off down. But you know, our celebrities are pretty much
Speaker 1: like New Zealand offenders. I mean, what did Jason Lay
Speaker 1: the skateboarder name is kid Pilot inspector That's right, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who had a middle name They named the kid Treehouse
Speaker 1: so like I can't talk. Oh so you know that
Speaker 1: I don't want to judge, but I love to judge,
Speaker 1: So go with your Those are ridiculous, thank you. You
Speaker 1: know what else is ridiculous if you got some laid
Speaker 1: on me. I do getting caught for your crimes because
Speaker 1: you just look to fly. Oh word, this is ridiculous
Speaker 1: crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heist cons.
Speaker 1: It's always murder free and one ridiculous Zarin, Elizabeth, are
Speaker 1: you familiar with Sutton's law? Yeah? Wait, is that the
Speaker 1: one about the banks? No? That was that the Horton principle.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You robbed the banks success where the
Speaker 1: money is? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Sutton's law, Well, it comes
Speaker 1: from it's taught in medical school. Sutton's law is that
Speaker 1: when you're making a diagnosis, the first thing, first things first,
Speaker 1: you always consider the obvious. So, um, it's like the
Speaker 1: anti doctor House. I've heard that's a TV show. I
Speaker 1: don't I wouldn't know, I don't. So anyway, Sutton's law.
Speaker 1: They want to like, you look at the obvious. Um,
Speaker 1: and the best way to diagnose and treat things as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible is to like elimitate, because this is
Speaker 1: essentially a medical albums. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses,
Speaker 1: not zebras, it's like the one of the things they saying,
Speaker 1: it's a good one. The law, though, is named after
Speaker 1: a bank robber, a man by the name of Willie Sutton. Okay,
Speaker 1: And so it was said that he was asked by
Speaker 1: a reporter why he had done the things he done
Speaker 1: did and why did he rob the banks, and he said,
Speaker 1: because that's where the money is. Exactly. He was really
Speaker 1: brazen about it. It's basically the no doi theory, and
Speaker 1: so it makes sense. So Sutton, though he would later
Speaker 1: deny having ever said that. Yeah, but then he commented, quote,
Speaker 1: if anybody had asked me, I probably would have said it.
Speaker 1: That's what almost anybody would say. It couldn't be more obvious.
Speaker 1: So they love that expression in Washington. You always hear
Speaker 1: them say that. It's like a it's a political philosophy
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, yeah, so exactly what is it the
Speaker 1: it's keep uh, keep it simple, stupid? Oh yeah, we kiss. Yeah. Anyway, So, um,
Speaker 1: now we have these medical students who were being taught
Speaker 1: Sutton's law, learning to take things plainly confront the obvious,
Speaker 1: all thanks to a legendary bank robber like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love him. Bank robbery influences, you know, medical science
Speaker 1: is as it should be contin you think about it,
Speaker 1: medical science started with grave robbery. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just saying they're getting back to the very true full circle.
Speaker 1: Leonardo da Vinci and Dicapriod Leonardo's let's scratch our chins
Speaker 1: and say who was Willie Sutton? Okay, do it three
Speaker 1: to who was was Suton? William Francis Sutton Jr. Born
Speaker 1: June thirtieth, nineteen o one, So be ready to celebrate
Speaker 1: his birthday, Brooklyn, New York, third or five kids. He
Speaker 1: came from a really like hard scrabble tough family of
Speaker 1: Irish immigrants, and they lived in a really hard scrabble
Speaker 1: tough Irish neighborhood Brooklyn. Uh. He was taught really early
Speaker 1: on the importance of a code of silence, and he
Speaker 1: said that influenced his entire life. So he said later
Speaker 1: when he was talking about his life that if someone
Speaker 1: was picked up by the cops, quote, all they ever
Speaker 1: got out of him was the exercise, meaning that the
Speaker 1: cops could beat a person senseless, but they would never talk.
Speaker 1: Get that workout. That's how it worked in his neighborhood.
Speaker 1: He was arrested once and the police beat him for
Speaker 1: five days straight trying to get him to name his accomplices.
Speaker 1: This is I think before some of the reforms, yea, Miranda.
Speaker 1: So certainly he never talked five days getting whipped on,
Speaker 1: tell me who you're working with? Silence. So he got
Speaker 1: his irish up the other way, and then he had
Speaker 1: it at home, right, so that his family once gave
Speaker 1: him the literal silent treatment. Um he uh. He stole
Speaker 1: his teacher's lunch money when he was twelve, and they
Speaker 1: were His family was so appalled that he would steal
Speaker 1: a teacher's lunch money that no one in the family
Speaker 1: spoke a word to him for an entire week. He
Speaker 1: was just like a blank space to them. He said
Speaker 1: it was the worst punishment he'd ever had. He'd rather
Speaker 1: take a beating. Yeah, I've been given not for that long.
Speaker 1: That's a week. So he's this tough little kid, right,
Speaker 1: and he swam in the East River with his friends
Speaker 1: like you know, amongst untreated sewage trash, Like yeah, he's
Speaker 1: just George Carlin medical advice exactly. So he gets out
Speaker 1: of high school when he's fifteen, and no one else
Speaker 1: in his family had ever completed their schooling, and you know,
Speaker 1: which is common at the time, but there was a
Speaker 1: big deal for him to graduate from high school. He
Speaker 1: gets a job at a bank as an office errand boy,
Speaker 1: and like he's super chill, nice guy, personable. He becomes
Speaker 1: pals with all the cashiers, the tellers, and it was
Speaker 1: from them that he learned like the inner workings of
Speaker 1: a bank, all like the various processes and the vault
Speaker 1: protocols and such like that. So he becomes this insider.
Speaker 1: And then World War One approaches and he gets a
Speaker 1: job at a munitions factory in West Virginia, so he relocates.
Speaker 1: So one day he's there, he gets a telegram from
Speaker 1: his mom telling him that the draft board had ordered
Speaker 1: him to report for induction. He's been drafted. He right,
Speaker 1: and he's actually, you know, pretty excited about this. So
Speaker 1: he leaves the munitions factory job heads back to New York.
Speaker 1: As he's getting off the train there, he keeps hearing
Speaker 1: people say this word that he had never heard, and
Speaker 1: he didn't know the meaning of it. Armistice, So he
Speaker 1: asked around and they're like, um, it meets the wars
Speaker 1: over So yeah, he finds out. Um he's thrilled, but
Speaker 1: he's a little disappointed that Europe. Yeah exactly, he didn't
Speaker 1: get to go over there. Three months later, he gets
Speaker 1: arrested for the first time. He's like, well, let me
Speaker 1: get the crime and then well and listen to this.
Speaker 1: He's charged with burglary, grand larceny and abduction a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old girl named Bessie Ender. Was she into it
Speaker 1: and they just threw the book at him because you
Speaker 1: know they could, and yeah, oh yeah, So here's what happened.
Speaker 1: He's seventeen when exactly they were in love the moment
Speaker 1: they met each other. It was just instant. And her
Speaker 1: mom had died when she was little, and her dad
Speaker 1: was like really controlling and only let her spend time
Speaker 1: with other girls. That's all who she could play with,
Speaker 1: hang out with. No boys allowed. Um. So they meet though,
Speaker 1: and they're just like stars, little hearts floating in the
Speaker 1: air around them. They're like the sid Nancy there Will
Speaker 1: and Bessie. Yes, exactly, they knew the only way that
Speaker 1: like a sheltered girl with a single dad and the
Speaker 1: young bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks
Speaker 1: could make a go of it. They decided to elobe.
Speaker 1: So how are they going to do this? Well, they
Speaker 1: go into her dad's office and steal money. She's like,
Speaker 1: I know where the safe is, I know the combination.
Speaker 1: Let's do this. They walked out with six dollars. Yeah
Speaker 1: so little dowry. Yeah. So like all right, look, let's
Speaker 1: start our lives together. They walk out on the street.
Speaker 1: Willie sees this guy. Excuse me, sir, um, can you
Speaker 1: tell me where the nearest marriage license bureau is? The
Speaker 1: guys like looking at him, recognizes them. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: the man had seen a bulletin about a guy from
Speaker 1: Brooklyn who said that he'd been robbed and his daughter
Speaker 1: had been kidnapped. Willie fits the description. He turns out
Speaker 1: Willie had asked the chief of police. Chief of police
Speaker 1: immediately an So Willie gets jail, goes to trial, ordered
Speaker 1: to never associate with Bessie again. But they're married. They
Speaker 1: didn't make it, so you know they're they're split up.
Speaker 1: They did see each other one more time, but it
Speaker 1: was an accidental thing. It was at the dance hall
Speaker 1: where they had first met. So they're there, Um, Bessie's
Speaker 1: there with a bunch of girlfriends and Willie's you know,
Speaker 1: looking cool in a corner. Um. They see each other
Speaker 1: and they like walk towards each other, like out of
Speaker 1: a Lifetime movie. And then he says, I'm gonna leave,
Speaker 1: and if you want to talk, I'll be waiting two
Speaker 1: blocks away. And then just like cool guys out the door,
Speaker 1: which direction of two? She had to go in a
Speaker 1: two block radius. It took a long time. Um, So
Speaker 1: she shows up. She finds him right, she sniffs, she
Speaker 1: smiths the air um and then he sees that the
Speaker 1: engagement ring he'd given her was on a chain around
Speaker 1: her neck. So she's still wearing it, but just like
Speaker 1: in secret. And she's like, you know, my father has
Speaker 1: arranged for me to marry this guy, Jack String, you know,
Speaker 1: heir to the Straying warehouses, the Crown the Crown Heights Strings,
Speaker 1: not the Crown Heights. She like, Bessie, her dad arranges us.
Speaker 1: She says her dad, Look, I'm on love with his
Speaker 1: Jack String. I mean no offense, Jack, but whatever. The
Speaker 1: Dad's like, look, you are no longer a woman of
Speaker 1: virtue after hanging out with Willie. We know what what happened,
Speaker 1: and no one's going to marry you, so I had
Speaker 1: to arrange this brutal and so they like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess that's just how it's going to work out. And
Speaker 1: they parted ways and he was just heartbroken. Damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you kind of wish around for a while. He
Speaker 1: winds up getting a job at the Ptmoors Shipyard as
Speaker 1: an apprentice burner. What was I like that. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people have been apprentice burners. I know
Speaker 1: some actual journeyman burners and some full unionized burners. I
Speaker 1: know you do. Um. So he's like cutting steel plates
Speaker 1: with a settling torch. Um, he's a super hard worker,
Speaker 1: really well liked. I mean that's like something you'll see
Speaker 1: is this guy is just everyone likes. This guy is
Speaker 1: a good dude. Um. He learns really quickly, picks up
Speaker 1: a ton of overtime. He had a really good work ethic.
Speaker 1: But then he starts to realize that burner knowledge might
Speaker 1: kind of mesh well with the bank knowledge that he has.
Speaker 1: He's like, have torch will travel. So in four he
Speaker 1: became an apprentice to Edward Doctate, a master burglar and safecracker, like,
Speaker 1: check us out, I know banks, I know burning Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were burning in it was it okay. So Tate
Speaker 1: had this rule when it came to safe cracking, always
Speaker 1: work out of town, don't work at home. So the
Speaker 1: first time they worked together was in Boston. They broke
Speaker 1: into a drug store to crack open the safe um.
Speaker 1: Sutton was like, you know, apparently they worked in New
Speaker 1: York together, Pennsylvania. So Tate and his crew, including Sutton,
Speaker 1: they pull off jobs all over the East Coast. It
Speaker 1: was good while it lasted, but you know, he was
Speaker 1: only with Tate for like a year. They parted ways
Speaker 1: in Over the next five years, Sutton just goes into overdrive.
Speaker 1: He robs a bunch of places. He's working by himself
Speaker 1: at this point. He would pick up like one or
Speaker 1: two guys here or there. Yeah he's got like he
Speaker 1: does banks, jewelry stores, a life insurance company, a florist store. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's going the Tom McCann. Nothing was safe. He goes into.
Speaker 1: Any time they've got like a register or safe, he's
Speaker 1: on it. So it was the October robbery of the
Speaker 1: Rosenthal and Son jewelry store that led to his first
Speaker 1: major arrest. So he gets all dressed up as a
Speaker 1: telegraph man. Hello, that's that's how they sound. And he
Speaker 1: goes all the casual like up to the store. Hello,
Speaker 1: there was a singing telegram man. Yes, yes, So the
Speaker 1: porter opens the door for the telegram and really pulls
Speaker 1: out a gun and works with that little round pillbox
Speaker 1: hat and like a little short jacket, A little short
Speaker 1: jacket looks like maybe like and no pants of course,
Speaker 1: of course, want to pure appropriately picture it. That's what
Speaker 1: it is. So he forces his way, and he's got
Speaker 1: this accomplice, Marcus Bassett with him, who's a Bassett Hound.
Speaker 1: He's got a dog dressed up as a telegram so
Speaker 1: they pushed their way in. He's got a gun. He
Speaker 1: forces his way in. I should note that like he
Speaker 1: carried a gun on all these things, but it was
Speaker 1: never loaded. Yeah, I'm smart, you know. So, um, each
Speaker 1: employee as they are arrived for the day, he'd find
Speaker 1: out what their job was and if they had access
Speaker 1: to the safe and then if they didn't. And they're
Speaker 1: arriving at work, he has like he has like a clipboard.
Speaker 1: He's like name position, okay, and do you know no,
Speaker 1: you don't tie them up over there. He's got like
Speaker 1: a partition rope next. So he as they come in,
Speaker 1: they're like that, you know, I'm just the window wiper.
Speaker 1: I don't know to a bank in a while. Have
Speaker 1: you is a jewelry store, whatever jewelry store. Every jewelry
Speaker 1: store has a window wiper, a lot of glass. You
Speaker 1: got a fair point there. So they're like, come on
Speaker 1: and like so he ties them up over the side
Speaker 1: until someone who comes in. It's like, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: do the safe. I mean, I don't know which is
Speaker 1: wiser to say yeah, I can do it and just
Speaker 1: get rid of it, or be like, I have no idea,
Speaker 1: I just vacuum here. True. So he finds someone who
Speaker 1: could open the safe. They come in, he forces them
Speaker 1: to open her up, gets out with a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty nine thousand dollars worth of jewelry. That's like two
Speaker 1: and a half million dollars today. That's a fat score. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so there were apparently like undisclosed clues at the
Speaker 1: scene of the robbery that led the detectives to Sutton
Speaker 1: and Bassett. Um. The cops trailed Bassett's wife to a
Speaker 1: diner where she was meeting up with Sutton, and Sutton
Speaker 1: gets arrested and sentenced to thirty years in Sing Sing prison,
Speaker 1: just north of New York City, right on the banks
Speaker 1: of the Hudson. When we come back, I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: you know how Sing Sing panned out for Willie Sutton's
Speaker 1: Aaron Elizabeth, welcome back. Thank you, glad you could join
Speaker 1: me quite the host. Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Please have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?
Speaker 1: Number three so I don't know if I'm next, No, no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to wait. When we left off, Willie
Speaker 1: Sutton gaining cred as a serious robber man. That's the
Speaker 1: officials been sent up to Sing Sing Sing Sing robber man.
Speaker 1: He had an accomplice. Um, they just robbed a jewelry
Speaker 1: store for almost a hundred and thirty thousand dollars in jewelry. Um.
Speaker 1: He gets caught sent to Sing Sing. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: He escaped from Sing Sing December eleven. So he remember
Speaker 1: he's just thirty years so he lasts like to um.
Speaker 1: He and another inmate, guy named John Egan, they used
Speaker 1: hack saw blades to remove the lower bars of their cell.
Speaker 1: I can't be easy. No, cannot imagine that's easy because
Speaker 1: if you just have the blades, because you got to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to hold the blade and going
Speaker 1: back and forth. Right now, at this point, like Sutton
Speaker 1: because of his work with doctorate, he's a skilled lock pick.
Speaker 1: But I guess that they're like, we just got a
Speaker 1: star way out of this one. But so they cut
Speaker 1: out of cells and then Willie uses his lock pick
Speaker 1: skills to go through the subsequent doors. Um. There is
Speaker 1: speculation that he had inside help from a prison guard,
Speaker 1: but it's it's cooler to imagine that he just pulled
Speaker 1: a bobby pin out of his hair or a Kirby
Speaker 1: grip for those across the pond, and just made quick
Speaker 1: quick work of the locks. That's way more fun. Get
Speaker 1: no help. Um, So Willie and John Egan, they're creeping
Speaker 1: out when they run into a trustee, and a trustee
Speaker 1: is an inmate who is it has a job, and
Speaker 1: it's usually like if you don't have a violent crime
Speaker 1: and you've been like well behaved, you know they'll let
Speaker 1: you do it. Um run into him. They tie him
Speaker 1: up and left him in the basement under the mess
Speaker 1: hall and just kept going They're like, don't tell a word,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So they tie him up. Then they find two ladders
Speaker 1: and they tie them into one ladder using wire and
Speaker 1: they go over the west wall. So um. And then
Speaker 1: at that time of night, the area really wasn't under
Speaker 1: the watch of guards like the one that they jumped
Speaker 1: out of, and they had to get a way car
Speaker 1: waiting for him because Willie's wife had visited a couple
Speaker 1: of days before, and the two of them cooked up
Speaker 1: this whole plan. So at this point, he's married, he's
Speaker 1: gotten over Bessie. You can see my face. I'm over here.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, is best No, Bestie's got a boring life.
Speaker 1: So they get in the getaway car. Four days into
Speaker 1: their newfound freedom, Sutton and Egan, they get to work.
Speaker 1: No time to waste. You know, is there in these
Speaker 1: banks aren't going to rob themselves? I've heard that about banks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Target Manufacturers, Trust Company. Yeah. So on December fifty two,
Speaker 1: Willie Egan and then these two other dudes that they
Speaker 1: picked up headed into the bank. So you said December
Speaker 1: what day? So like four days after he breaks out,
Speaker 1: four days, four days right, he's like, I need some
Speaker 1: some road money exactly, and he's just itching for it.
Speaker 1: So the four of them they get in there. They
Speaker 1: have revolvers, a machine gun, and tear gas and this
Speaker 1: is like the twenties, right, It's like a Thompson machine
Speaker 1: gun is one of those. Yeah, that's the sound it
Speaker 1: made because they didn't have bullets in it. Um, So
Speaker 1: that's what they had to yell, po po um. So
Speaker 1: they walk out with thirteen thousand dollars pretty good. They
Speaker 1: had a getaway driver waiting, not the wife, someone else,
Speaker 1: and as they left to like tossed the tear gas
Speaker 1: grenade behind them into the bank for good measure, yours
Speaker 1: and then exactly. So the next bank job was the
Speaker 1: corn Exchange National Bank and Trust in Philadelphia. My bank
Speaker 1: corn Exchange. So that was on February three. So Sutton
Speaker 1: he gets dressed up as a postman and he talks
Speaker 1: his way into the bank before it opened. He tells
Speaker 1: the banker, look, I really I got to deliver this man, manager, like,
Speaker 1: I I got I have so much corn on the
Speaker 1: cob in my truck, so that there's corn in this bank.
Speaker 1: And that's the corn Exchange. So they're like, I've got
Speaker 1: corn and then I exchange it for corn? Can I
Speaker 1: get baby corn? Change? Yeah? You want it broken up?
Speaker 1: Can I get these cobs of corn broken up into
Speaker 1: baby corn? Do they do? Is baby corn? That's just
Speaker 1: like an eighties thing baby Cornyea, I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: much not really a thing anymore because it's like, not
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go get a can of it, just go
Speaker 1: to town on it sitting the driveway. Um anyway, so
Speaker 1: where was that corn exchange? So they are like, we've
Speaker 1: really got to deliver this mail, bro And they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: come on in, it's corn time. And so then Willie
Speaker 1: and Egan they tie the guard up and they wait
Speaker 1: for the bank manager to arrive to open the vault.
Speaker 1: Here's the problem. The bank guard total pro He gets loose,
Speaker 1: and not just that, he gets his hand on one
Speaker 1: of their tear gas bombs blue like sets it off.
Speaker 1: So Willie and Egan they had to make a run
Speaker 1: for it. They didn't get any sweet corn. They just like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. So the guard sets it off for
Speaker 1: all of the Yeah. He was just like yeah, he
Speaker 1: was like we're one, Like we're all going down with
Speaker 1: the ship here. I just want about it here. So, yeah, foiled.
Speaker 1: Later that same month, Willie he goes after another bank,
Speaker 1: the Lafayette National Bank in New York. Um. He had
Speaker 1: to give up on that one too the day of
Speaker 1: because Egan didn't show up at the getaway car. Where
Speaker 1: was Egan in the morgue he got he was shot
Speaker 1: and killed in a shooting at a speakeasy. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to count that as point five percent murder because yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was not part of the story, wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't Willie Sutton who did it. It was like, it's
Speaker 1: an adjacent it's point five it's a half a percent, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: As then Willie like after that, he just cools his
Speaker 1: heels for six months. He's rocked by this. It's upsetting,
Speaker 1: it's traumatic. Yeah. So but like he at the same time,
Speaker 1: he just couldn't resist the robbing in the ceiling. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta do what you could. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: a lizard can't be and stop being a lizard exactly.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing I should mention that Willie had
Speaker 1: a certain philosophy the how of bank robbing. So he
Speaker 1: told the people who was robbing everything he was going
Speaker 1: to do. He laid it all out, like, here's what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Your joker coworkers are going to come
Speaker 1: in and I'm going to very respectfully ask them what
Speaker 1: they know. And he did it in like a super
Speaker 1: calm way. Don't forget he's got this really magnetic cool
Speaker 1: personality that people don't automatically like yeah, robbery. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he felt like alleviating stress would keep people obedient and
Speaker 1: less likely to do something stupid. They're going to make
Speaker 1: better decisions. Yeah, and he's giving them a little bit
Speaker 1: of control, like I'm gonna let you exactly people, and
Speaker 1: I am all about find the calmest way to do something,
Speaker 1: eliminate the stress, be chilled. So yeah, that is my
Speaker 1: life skull. Uh So. Someone who witnessed one of the
Speaker 1: robberies said that it was kind of like going into
Speaker 1: the movies, except the usher had a gun one time, like,
Speaker 1: your seat is right here down, I'm gonna ask him
Speaker 1: to say, I have this gun, You're gonna need to
Speaker 1: sit I'm coming back. So one time there were these
Speaker 1: three painters that arrived unexpectedly while he was brobbing a bank.
Speaker 1: They were there to paint um Willie so chill and
Speaker 1: chatty that the painters just like obeyed when he instructed
Speaker 1: them to lay out the drop pluts get to work there.
Speaker 1: And so he's got all these people tied up and
Speaker 1: got a gun on him. He's like just yeah, set up, guys,
Speaker 1: and like he joked with them about how he wished
Speaker 1: that bank robbing had as strong a union as the
Speaker 1: painters did, and he like he made sure everyone had
Speaker 1: a good time. He's just like, you know, cutting up,
Speaker 1: working working out bits with were talking about four inch
Speaker 1: block brushes. So like by the time Sutton and the
Speaker 1: team and finished robbing that banks, the painters had already
Speaker 1: completed painting one wall, like they and they were happy
Speaker 1: about it. Like you know what, we all we all totally.
Speaker 1: So there's Willie looking to rob another bank, um with
Speaker 1: the patented Willie Sutton chill method, and he did right.
Speaker 1: He decides to hit another corn exchange, this time in
Speaker 1: New York. So he dresses up as a cop and
Speaker 1: they all thought he was a male stripper. He's dresses
Speaker 1: the birthday um. He tells all the bank employees to
Speaker 1: sit and wait while the combination holders to the vault.
Speaker 1: We're coming to work. I'm not imagining. That's the dance
Speaker 1: music behind it. I need you guys to all do
Speaker 1: but I can't. The music so infectious. So the bank
Speaker 1: manager and then the head teller each had half of
Speaker 1: the combinations. He's got to wait for those two to
Speaker 1: show up. Once they get there, he forces them to
Speaker 1: open the vault. His gang made out with almost four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which is like five dollars today, half a mill.
Speaker 1: That's not a bad day at all. He liked the
Speaker 1: corn Exchange in Pennsylvania though, so that was New York,
Speaker 1: but that one in Pennsylvania was just calling to him.
Speaker 1: The remember Attila and Bruce. He robbed a couple of
Speaker 1: places twice. You know, he just really want to nail it.
Speaker 1: He's get nostalgic. You're like to go back there and
Speaker 1: do that again. We live in this one. He kind
Speaker 1: of flugged the first one. He's like, I just I
Speaker 1: won't feel right until I just completed do it right.
Speaker 1: So he decides to try again at the corn Exchange
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania January for thirty four. So this time, though
Speaker 1: he drops in through the skylight, he's mixing it up.
Speaker 1: He gets in, he tells the guard to let the
Speaker 1: employees in. As usual, he loves popping in before the
Speaker 1: work they starts. He's an early riser. And then he
Speaker 1: and his accomplices handcuffed, and they didn't tie them up.
Speaker 1: Now they handcuff him near the vault. Bank manager arrives,
Speaker 1: forces him to open the vault. They get away with dollars,
Speaker 1: so you know they're making good cash on this. Um.
Speaker 1: I bet he had his heart set on additional corn exchanges,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't to be because the cops caught his accomplices.
Speaker 1: So like a month later, they bust into Willie's apartment
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. They pinched him for escaping, sing, sing and
Speaker 1: robbing all the corns. He gets tried, the sentence to
Speaker 1: fifty years, but then the sentences later converted to life
Speaker 1: in prison. Since he was a fourth time offender, they
Speaker 1: locked him up. You'll like this, Zaren. Between ninety six
Speaker 1: and ninety seven, he made six escape attempts from prison,
Speaker 1: with two of the six being successful. I like this
Speaker 1: like every other year he's like, okay, time to give
Speaker 1: it a shot, Give it a shot, so that my
Speaker 1: favorite is August sunshine on my face. Come on, let's
Speaker 1: do this and they go yeah, and they jumped in
Speaker 1: the air to frame August one. I love this. He
Speaker 1: Um spends what must have been an incredible amount of
Speaker 1: time making a fake head in hand in preparation for this.
Speaker 1: So he uses plaster, He gets a bunch of hair
Speaker 1: from the prison barber, and he creates a seriously lifelike
Speaker 1: fac simile of his own head. It's amazing. I don't
Speaker 1: know how he got the bigness in your own shaping
Speaker 1: is so impressive. It looks so good. It's not like
Speaker 1: all you know, Yeah, no, this is it's crazy. He
Speaker 1: makes a hand that looks super realistic. It's like if
Speaker 1: I had it more time, I had another career. Well right,
Speaker 1: so like he has the hands kind of poke out
Speaker 1: from under the blanket to make it look realistic. He
Speaker 1: makes these decoys, He sets everything up to sneak out. However, Um,
Speaker 1: there were some other inmates who were working on their
Speaker 1: own separate escape plan at the time. Oh yeah, they
Speaker 1: were all going on concurrently, and they didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: look at the calendar and schedule these out. Oh you're
Speaker 1: doing years, okay, well then I'll put mine off for
Speaker 1: like two weeks, okay, Um and those guys weren't subtle.
Speaker 1: So Willie is like in the process of doing the
Speaker 1: sneakings when the alarms go off and the guards are
Speaker 1: coming after the escapees, and he has to like sneak backwards,
Speaker 1: frustrating that worked so long, and some jacket and he
Speaker 1: runs back to his cell and asked to act like
Speaker 1: nothing happened. But he's got a head in the hand
Speaker 1: and the bed with them, and they're like, son, okay,
Speaker 1: so what's super cool is that the war the son
Speaker 1: of the warden At that time, he later appeared on
Speaker 1: Antiques Road Show with the head in the hand. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's in like a custom wooden box that has a
Speaker 1: label of Providence. It's amazing. It was like a couple
Speaker 1: of grand and you can see he was kind of
Speaker 1: disappointed because I thought it was it's priceless, but really
Speaker 1: it's priceless. Yeah, no, it's amazing. It's amazing. So Willie
Speaker 1: tries and fails again to escape. In April oft he
Speaker 1: and eleven other inmates spent eleven months digging a ninety
Speaker 1: nine ft tunnel. So they're all into like the multiples
Speaker 1: of eleven eleven eleven months, nine ft tunnel, but like
Speaker 1: a ninety nine ft tunnel is like el Chopo level.
Speaker 1: You need like actual scaffolding instructure to bar collapses. So
Speaker 1: it's almost a year of work, but it goes down
Speaker 1: the drain in minutes because they were almost immediately caught.
Speaker 1: And so at that point they transfer him from Eastern
Speaker 1: State Penitential. They make it out, but they get caught
Speaker 1: once they get out of the mid tunnel. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're like back in there. They just flooded the tunnel
Speaker 1: and they had to swim back out. Um no, I
Speaker 1: don't know how it all went down. Okay, So he
Speaker 1: gets transferred from Eastern State penn in Philadelphia to Holmesburg
Speaker 1: County Prison in Philadelphia, and that's where he made his
Speaker 1: final escape February two So he's got two years later,
Speaker 1: zaren closure. I want you to picture it. You're doing
Speaker 1: time in Holmesburg County Prison in Philly for stealing a
Speaker 1: truck and going around shoplifting food and essential items and
Speaker 1: distributing them off the back of the truck to the
Speaker 1: poor and needy. I should have got more gas before
Speaker 1: I did. See how I made you a good jail bird.
Speaker 1: I like that, thank you. So it's a cold evening
Speaker 1: at the prison, the wind howls outside the walls and
Speaker 1: snow whips through the air. You have two weeks left
Speaker 1: on your sentence and you're just counting the hours at
Speaker 1: this point, am You hear a thump of some louder coughing.
Speaker 1: People start yelling when an inmate is having an asthma attack,
Speaker 1: and the guards start shouting for help. You know, though,
Speaker 1: that the inmate and question does not have asthma, and
Speaker 1: that that isn't what an asthma attack sounds like, so
Speaker 1: you watch as the inmates starts to like comically gasp
Speaker 1: for breath. There's no doctor on duty, so some of
Speaker 1: the guards have to load them up and run him
Speaker 1: to the hospital. There are now just two guards on
Speaker 1: your whole cell block, and you hear the unmistakable sound
Speaker 1: of a saw. Some inmates are cutting their way out
Speaker 1: of their cells. One of the men pulls out a gun,
Speaker 1: which you figure must have been smuggled in with the
Speaker 1: hacks off. They take the remaining guards hostage, shuffle them
Speaker 1: down the corridor, forced them to unlock some other cells,
Speaker 1: and in one of those cells sits none other than
Speaker 1: Willie Sutton. So the inmates they stripped down the guards
Speaker 1: and put on their uniforms and leave the guards tied up.
Speaker 1: They then grabbed two ladders and tied them together. Well,
Speaker 1: I would think that it wouldn't be wise to leave
Speaker 1: two long ladders lying around a prison. And this seems
Speaker 1: to be a common theme, like there's two two ladders
Speaker 1: in a spool of heavy wire. I don't know something.
Speaker 1: So anyway, everyone makes their way to the prison wall.
Speaker 1: Don't forget huge snowstorm outside. Suddenly the spotlight hits them
Speaker 1: from the tower and it focuses in on the two
Speaker 1: guys dressed as guards. Sutton yeels, it's okay, we just
Speaker 1: have to do some repairs. Not bad. You know what
Speaker 1: they did. They acted like they knew and they just
Speaker 1: kept on doing what they were doing, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: even like they paused to get an Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: we're just making some repairs. And then just exactly they
Speaker 1: were supposed to be there, so they make their escape.
Speaker 1: It was the first prison break since the place opened
Speaker 1: in Yeah, they're out on the road and a milk
Speaker 1: truck rumbles by, so they carjack it and actually they
Speaker 1: common deer. They celebrated by toasting each other with bottles
Speaker 1: of milk. They were super excited. The milkman who was
Speaker 1: in there complained that he was going to get his
Speaker 1: pay docked for all the milk. So Willie gives him
Speaker 1: five bucks. He's like, knock yourself out. He's a freeman
Speaker 1: until his ultimate capture five years later, so he stopped
Speaker 1: for five years. He did two more bank jobs between
Speaker 1: that escape and his eventual capture, and both were at
Speaker 1: branches of the Manufacturers Trust Company, and the first one
Speaker 1: was in Queens. He got sixty thou from that one,
Speaker 1: and the other ones in New York City. That one
Speaker 1: failed because members of his crew were captured before they
Speaker 1: could finish the job. And but all told, he stole
Speaker 1: approximately two million dollars in his career. Let's take a break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'm going to tell you how
Speaker 1: he wound up back in the clink. Hey, Aaron, so
Speaker 1: good those ads right, I'm just tucking my wallet back
Speaker 1: in my pants because I was just buying three things.
Speaker 1: You were really, really good. I'm just gonna go back
Speaker 1: and listen to more later, just over and over. Not enough.
Speaker 1: We don't have enough in this That's why we refused
Speaker 1: to pay for YouTube. Is I just want the ads, yea,
Speaker 1: And what would I do without? Yet that's why I
Speaker 1: love network television. Yeah, same, I don't watch TV, but
Speaker 1: I mean if you did, that's what you would watch.
Speaker 1: So Willie Sutton much like yellow Kid Vile. While Willie
Speaker 1: Sutton loved dressing sharp, so I find that to be
Speaker 1: a commonality in the convent. And he's yeah, he's like
Speaker 1: really gregarious and and friendly and looks good of the walk. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: well I think you have to have that in order,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look all like disheveled people are,
Speaker 1: you gotta give him some show and you gotta say, hey,
Speaker 1: look I know where I'm going. Look at me. You
Speaker 1: want to see where I'm going? Right? You wanted on this.
Speaker 1: So he has his skill at bank robbing, He created disguises,
Speaker 1: he has super charming manner. He always looks sharp. He
Speaker 1: earned him the nickname the could Yeah, great artistic talent.
Speaker 1: They also called him slick Willie. And so why does
Speaker 1: that combination always well, yeah, but I mean prior to
Speaker 1: the Slick Willie, like Bill Clinton got the slick will
Speaker 1: from Willie Sutton, like it would just be a yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: but the idea of it's like Willie, who was the
Speaker 1: first slick Willie. Yeah, and why is like and is
Speaker 1: he free? Is it an innuendo? I'm sure it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything is an innuendom if you wanted to be so.
Speaker 1: In order to track and don't forget, okay, he's escaped
Speaker 1: from prison, he's on the run. In order to track
Speaker 1: him down in his element, the wanted poster that they
Speaker 1: put up, they distributed to Taylor's and so like, you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about criminals before who get plastic surgery. He got.
Speaker 1: He did that. He got plastic surgery to try and
Speaker 1: change his appearance, very common mid century. It was like
Speaker 1: the thing, cut me up, let's do this. In the
Speaker 1: end though, it doesn't matter, because it was his love
Speaker 1: of fashion that was his ultimate undoings. For so many
Speaker 1: of us, this has been true, isn't that so? In
Speaker 1: ninety two, almost five years to the day after his
Speaker 1: snowy escape, a Taylor's son, twenty four year old Arnold Schuster,
Speaker 1: recognized Sutton on the New York subway and he looked
Speaker 1: at his immaculate dress knew right away, He's like, this
Speaker 1: has to be him. Arnold had seen the wanted poster
Speaker 1: in his dad's shop. But he was also like he
Speaker 1: kind of fancied himself an amateur sleuth. Yeah, so for
Speaker 1: the win once again. So um Arnold follows Sutton to
Speaker 1: a gas station in Brooklyn and where Sutton, Willie was
Speaker 1: there to buy a car battery, you know, just popping
Speaker 1: out for an errand um Arnold rings the fuzz. Willie
Speaker 1: Sutton scooped right up. So he was carrying a thirty
Speaker 1: eight caliber gun in a handmade holster. But you know,
Speaker 1: went quietly, like, didn't put up any kind of fight.
Speaker 1: He denied who he was until fingerprinting confirmed his identity.
Speaker 1: You got me, Um, They on him. He also had
Speaker 1: like almost eight thousand dollars in small bills that's like
Speaker 1: cargo pockets. And then they later searched his house and
Speaker 1: found like three grand in cash and another thirty eight
Speaker 1: So you know, he was strapped up by the way,
Speaker 1: he only lived three blocks from police headquarters. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: this detective was quoted as saying that Willie Sutton was
Speaker 1: the nicest crook he ever locked up. UM. Reporters were
Speaker 1: absolutely dying to know how did you evade capture? Um?
Speaker 1: And he said that he never contacted any old friends
Speaker 1: or any family. Something we've talked about with these guys. Um,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a big drinker, so he didn't make mistakes.
Speaker 1: He didn't make mistakes, and yeah, I didn't get drunk
Speaker 1: and tell people's stuff. He quit gambling and he avoided women.
Speaker 1: He was became rather monastic. Um. He said his life
Speaker 1: was a lot like prison, that he sat alone in
Speaker 1: his room reading all day. So he escapes prison to
Speaker 1: live in a prison of his own making. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: and he said that he really enjoyed reading about all
Speaker 1: the copycat bank robberies. That said that he was the
Speaker 1: mastermind behind it because he wasn't involved. He's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing any of this stuff. Now here's this episode's
Speaker 1: other half a percent murder. So remember Arnold Schuster, the
Speaker 1: Taylor's son who spotted soon he got shot and killed
Speaker 1: outside of his home in two and it was um
Speaker 1: umberto Anastasia, like Albert Anastasia, the mafia boss of the
Speaker 1: Gambino crime family. Um, he was absolutely irate that Sutton
Speaker 1: was captured because of a rat. Now, Sutton had no
Speaker 1: gang ties, no exactly professional curt Someone rat it on
Speaker 1: him and he orders a hit on Schuster, and you
Speaker 1: know he's the head of murder inc a hit. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, it's got happened with Flourish exactly. So that's
Speaker 1: what happens. Willie has absolutely nothing to do with it,
Speaker 1: doesn't know what's going to happen. I'm sure you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't even agree to it and wanted to it's all.
Speaker 1: This is revealed by Joe Velachi, mafia renegade first government informant.
Speaker 1: So according to Velachi, Anastasia saw Arnold being interviewed regarding
Speaker 1: his part in Sutton's capture, became enraged and allegedly said, quote,
Speaker 1: I can't stand squealers. Hit that guy, just like as
Speaker 1: he's watching the news, like that guy out of here,
Speaker 1: he's like mafia Elvis's shooting the TV. Like well. So
Speaker 1: Sutton finds this out and is absolutely heartbroken. Remember he
Speaker 1: never had bulletin. It's a chill guy, one of your
Speaker 1: school and it was like fair play, you know, like, okay,
Speaker 1: you caught me. Um. He tried to give. Willie tried
Speaker 1: to give ten thousand dollars of his own personal savings
Speaker 1: as a reward to capture Schuster's killer, but the police
Speaker 1: persuaded him not to There like, that's not going to
Speaker 1: look right, that's going to be weird. We didn't tell
Speaker 1: you right now, that's about that's weird for all of us.
Speaker 1: And then I'm dangerous for you. So let's not um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but he was just devastated by that. Um.
Speaker 1: At the time of his arrest, Willie still owed one
Speaker 1: life sentence plus a hundred and five years. How do
Speaker 1: they work out? Never understand like six life sentence. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: well you're reincarnated, got to come back to prison. He
Speaker 1: spent half his adult life in prison. He's not a
Speaker 1: good way to spend half your adult life. But while
Speaker 1: he's incarcerated, he wrote two books about his life. Getting
Speaker 1: ready for his book That's all Everyone does, he wrote
Speaker 1: I Willie Sutton like I Claudius, I Willie Sutton. That
Speaker 1: was published in nine, and then he wrote Where the
Speaker 1: Money Was There? It is seventy six. They're actually really
Speaker 1: interesting accessible reads, like they read pretty well. Um, it's
Speaker 1: two more for the book club. We have got a
Speaker 1: big um. He didn't have any interest in writing about
Speaker 1: his life until the police officers are told him, like
Speaker 1: totally disgusted that kids were running up to him chanting
Speaker 1: we want Sutton like the kids loved him, and then
Speaker 1: the cops said, you know, the kids are making a
Speaker 1: hero of you. This is this is messed up. It
Speaker 1: bothered Willie that kids thought he was someone to look
Speaker 1: up to. Wrote the book as like a cautionary tale.
Speaker 1: He all the money that he made was given to
Speaker 1: organizations that helped troubled wayward kids. So he didn't want
Speaker 1: people to follow in his footsteps. Yeah. Yeah, So in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, his health was pretty poor, and he
Speaker 1: had also been a really model prisoner. So despite that
Speaker 1: life plus so he made it through the summer. Love
Speaker 1: is real hard on the prison. They let him out
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve nineteen sixty nine on compassionate release um, and
Speaker 1: he went on to become a figurehead for prison reform,
Speaker 1: really passionate about it. He also acted as a consultant
Speaker 1: on theft prevention for banks, so he would talk them
Speaker 1: through like these are the weak spots, like the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a white hat hacker. But so in seventy he
Speaker 1: stars in a television commercial for Connecticut's new Britain Bank
Speaker 1: and Trust company. Uh, they had the world's first ever
Speaker 1: credit card with the account holders photo on it. Remember
Speaker 1: when they did that again, like in the yeah you
Speaker 1: have the picture I don't know on the back of
Speaker 1: the card. Um. So he's in this commercial. He had
Speaker 1: two lines. One said they call it a face card
Speaker 1: and then the other Now when I say I'm Willie Sutton,
Speaker 1: people believe me. The commercial and the announcer says, tell
Speaker 1: him Willie Sutton sent you. So new Britain bank and trust,
Speaker 1: small bank, small ad budget. Uh, they're competing against all
Speaker 1: these major banks with monster marketing departments. How could they
Speaker 1: get the most exposure for this new, groundbreaking product with
Speaker 1: the least amount of money. So this Louis van Lewen,
Speaker 1: president of the Van Lewin advertising agency, has this idea,
Speaker 1: let's use a famous bank robber. And the bank is
Speaker 1: immediately like, no, what is wrong with you? Where did
Speaker 1: we find this guy? And they kick him out. But
Speaker 1: then they like start thinking about it, like, actually, that's
Speaker 1: kind of dope, come back, come back. What is just
Speaker 1: so crazy? It just might work. So they shoot the
Speaker 1: commercial over the course of two weeks in Miami, which
Speaker 1: is where Sutton lived at the time. Um, he said
Speaker 1: of the experience, quote it's an unusual relationship, all right,
Speaker 1: but it's a very pleasant way to make money, which
Speaker 1: I got. You know, hey, hey, you're handed to him.
Speaker 1: He himself really didn't understand why he loved robbing banks
Speaker 1: so much that I was just trying to get to this.
Speaker 1: He did it. He did it even when he didn't
Speaker 1: need the money. Was compulsion. Yeah, but he said after
Speaker 1: a successful robbery, he didn't feel happy about it. He
Speaker 1: felt disappointed. And he said he once read a Clarence
Speaker 1: Darrow quote popping up again for us here that resonated
Speaker 1: with him. Quote the expectation of doing something gives you
Speaker 1: much more happiness than you can ever get from actually
Speaker 1: doing it. To the fantasy that is pleasing more than
Speaker 1: the reality. And yeah, that that that energy, that like
Speaker 1: adrenaline of it. Yeah, everything is perfect in your imagination.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, the money was the chips,
Speaker 1: that's all, okay. Yeah. He died at the age of
Speaker 1: seventy nine in Florida and he's buried in Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: the family plot um our researcher Andrea brought up something
Speaker 1: really interesting. Um She wondered how different his life would
Speaker 1: have been if he had gone to war, either like
Speaker 1: he was too young for World War One, incarcerated throughout
Speaker 1: all of before he got to the World War One.
Speaker 1: Then he's in prison for World War Two, and that
Speaker 1: was something that he really wanted, Like could he have
Speaker 1: gotten his adrenaline that way? Um, what if he had
Speaker 1: been able to marry Bessie, That's my question. I think
Speaker 1: that would have been good for us. Like, so he
Speaker 1: could have been a hero in like maybe two World wars,
Speaker 1: possibly like a sergeant York. You don't know, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: could have been a husband and a father. Don't forget
Speaker 1: then like when he's on the run, he doesn't he
Speaker 1: has no relationship. I don't know what happened to the
Speaker 1: wife that he comes to monastic after Bessie essentially, yeah,
Speaker 1: when he was but she kind of like floats off
Speaker 1: into ether on these Um. I mean the thing is
Speaker 1: like we could we could think about this for almost
Speaker 1: every person on earth, you know, just like what are
Speaker 1: those moments, those defining moments that if it had gone
Speaker 1: a different way, Like how your life could have gone
Speaker 1: in a totally different direction, both good and bad. You know.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting when you see someone's life plotted out
Speaker 1: like that. You know, these two like big turning points
Speaker 1: of a life. I'm of a mind that with Willie Sutton.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that marriage or military service would have
Speaker 1: changed who he was. I think that he would have
Speaker 1: maybe had different outlets, but I think that like there
Speaker 1: was something in him that drove him to do this.
Speaker 1: But I think that the point is well made that
Speaker 1: the military service combat, it requires everything of a person,
Speaker 1: so they are their experiences like the you know, although
Speaker 1: how you filter out life, you know that that process
Speaker 1: gets changed when you're in combat. Were're gonna be like
Speaker 1: trying to stay alive, so you're gonna be taking in
Speaker 1: all your information so you're fully alive, just like robbing
Speaker 1: a bank, you're fully alive. So I think that being
Speaker 1: fully live sensation would have satisfied and he could have
Speaker 1: found that hard wiring and it would have given him
Speaker 1: whatever that sensation he was chasing after, and then he
Speaker 1: would have had that as the framework that's how you
Speaker 1: get that feeling. And instead he doesn't. He goes to
Speaker 1: crime and then he says, this is how I get
Speaker 1: that feeling. So I think that if he would have
Speaker 1: found a framework for that feeling, he would have picked
Speaker 1: that framework and not shifted. I don't think the crime
Speaker 1: from what you described, it sounds like a gave him
Speaker 1: any moral pleasure. He wasn't fighting against the man. If
Speaker 1: we talked about all these people who have enemies there,
Speaker 1: who they're always robbing in a sense, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be one of those. It seems that he's
Speaker 1: trying to wrestle with himself. It's an interesting character totally,
Speaker 1: way more than just his willly sudden principle. They always
Speaker 1: just here referred to him like he's always been boiled
Speaker 1: down to basically a criminal philosopher. Yeah, and that's where
Speaker 1: the money, like, you know, but there's so much more
Speaker 1: behind him, So it gets I like, I like his
Speaker 1: story gives you a lot to think about. Uh that
Speaker 1: that's all I have as far as Willie Sutton goes.
Speaker 1: That's me for today. Thank you, Thank you. I invented
Speaker 1: him completely out a whole cloth, just kidding. Um. You
Speaker 1: can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Email us if you want a ridiculous crime
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com and other than that, tune in
Speaker 1: next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 1: Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Dapper Dave coust In,
Speaker 1: chief designer of the eponymous house of Coustan. Coulture Research
Speaker 1: is by felonious fashion influencer Andrea's song Sharp and Tier.
Speaker 1: The theme song is by the tailoring Empire of Thomas
Speaker 1: Lee and Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben What's Your In?
Speaker 1: Scene Bowland and Noel Why do You Want to Know?
Speaker 1: Brown Dass Quiet Say It one more Time? We Dequeous Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. Four
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.