Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here.
Speaker 1: Willis Newton and his three brothers are not, for the
Speaker 1: most of us, as easily identifiable as Pretty Boy Floyd,
Speaker 1: Baby Face, Nelson, or al Capone. They certainly weren't as
Speaker 1: renowned as Bonnie and Clyde, but that may go a
Speaker 1: long way toward explaining why Willis Newton and his gang
Speaker 1: were just about infinitely more successful than any of those others.
Speaker 1: For much of their career, nobody, even the cops knew
Speaker 1: who the Newtons were. In a blink of about five years,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, the Newtons and an occasional accomplice
Speaker 1: pulled off some seventy bank heists, give or take a dozen,
Speaker 1: and ripped off six trains, including a single haul of
Speaker 1: somewhere around three million dollars. It remains the largest train
Speaker 1: robbery ever. Accounting for inflation, that single three million dollar
Speaker 1: take in nineteen twenty four would be a fifty three
Speaker 1: million dollar getaway today. As old men, after their thieving
Speaker 1: was mostly over, they surfaced in a nineteen seventy five documentary,
Speaker 1: but coming off is both proud and practical. Willis said,
Speaker 1: straight face to the camera, just like a doctor and
Speaker 1: lawyers and everybody else. It was our business to do that.
Speaker 1: The youngest of the Newton brothers, Joe, even made his
Speaker 1: way onto Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: and was downright charming. When Carson asked him about his
Speaker 1: appeal to women as a bank robber, Joe said, well,
Speaker 1: if you've got a good car and a pot full
Speaker 1: of money and you're a young man, yeah. However, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, Willis Newton, just a few months before
Speaker 1: his death at the age of ninety, sat down in
Speaker 1: his home in Uvalde, Texas, for a wide ranging and
Speaker 1: sometimes contentious interview about his life and crimes with historian
Speaker 1: and author G. R. Williamson. Before the article this episode
Speaker 1: is based on How Stuffworks, spoke with Williamson, who walked
Speaker 1: away from that interview with an entirely different impression of Willis.
Speaker 1: He said, I truly believe he was a flat out
Speaker 1: evil person. The four Newton Boys, Willis, Wiley aka Doc, Jess,
Speaker 1: and Joe were the sons of poor Texas sharecroppers growing
Speaker 1: up at the turn of the twentieth century. They mostly
Speaker 1: left school early and fell into petty crimes and stints
Speaker 1: in jail. Willis was about twenty five with a lengthy
Speaker 1: rap sheet already to his name when he first robbed
Speaker 1: a bank, making off with about four thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: dollars from a job in Kline, Texas. That's about one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty four thousand in today's dollars. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, with some other outlaws, Willis took a share
Speaker 1: of around ten thousand dollars from a robbery the about
Speaker 1: two hundred and ninety five thousand dollars today. Willis was hooked,
Speaker 1: and he eventually brought his brothers into the new family business.
Speaker 1: Early on, as the brothers and occasional accomplices lined up jobs,
Speaker 1: Willis laid down some ground rules. Williamson said, they were
Speaker 1: full blown criminals. But here's the thing. Willis had the
Speaker 1: wisdom to know that if they killed somebody, that would
Speaker 1: change everything about how the police came after them. So
Speaker 1: it was his mandate to his brothers that they never
Speaker 1: kill anybody. It's a rule that may have been broken.
Speaker 1: They were involved in a few messy gunfights in Canada
Speaker 1: in a rare daytime heist, they were involved in a
Speaker 1: shootout during morning rush hour that sullied their reputation for
Speaker 1: clean hits and easy getaways. But normally, with a little preparation,
Speaker 1: plus some nitroglycerin, perhaps to blow the door off of
Speaker 1: a safe, the Newtons would be on their way quick
Speaker 1: and quiet, loot in hand. At its height, the gang
Speaker 1: was the four brothers and an explosives expert by the
Speaker 1: name of Brent Blascock, and they robbed banks and trains
Speaker 1: across Tech, Oklahoma, through the Midwest, and even into Toronto, Canada.
Speaker 1: On at least one occasion, they robbed two banks in
Speaker 1: one day. Williamson said, compared to the Newtons, Jesse and
Speaker 1: Frank James were mere amateurs, but Cassidy was a small fry.
Speaker 1: The Newtons made blowing safes and robbing trains a big business.
Speaker 1: They wanted to fly under the radar. They didn't want notoriety.
Speaker 1: Bonnie and Clyde they had actual photographs of them, and
Speaker 1: they did all sorts of stuff that kept taunting the police.
Speaker 1: So did pretty Boy Floyd. Because the public did not
Speaker 1: know what the robbers that were doing these bank jobs
Speaker 1: and train robberies looked like. The Newtons weren't having to
Speaker 1: run from the law. At one point, Willis said, we
Speaker 1: wasn't mugs like Bonnie and Clyde. We was just quiet businessmen.
Speaker 1: What we wanted was the money. It helped too that
Speaker 1: the Newtons mostly did their work at night. They didn't
Speaker 1: generally barge into banks branching shotguns, and banks compared to today,
Speaker 1: were much easier to rob. Many of the banks of
Speaker 1: the Newtons knocked over were in small towns with little security.
Speaker 1: Williamson said, Remember, the only communications in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: was telegraph and telephone, no Internet, no national database of fingerprints,
Speaker 1: no national database of mug shots or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So they could pull these things off and nobody knew
Speaker 1: it was the Newtons. In between jobs, when it was convenient,
Speaker 1: they'd go back to the family home in Uvalde and
Speaker 1: lay low until they needed more money. Williamson said the
Speaker 1: general opinion of the people in Uvalde at the time
Speaker 1: was that all the Newton boys were near Dowells. They
Speaker 1: were probably up to criminal activity, but nobody knew that
Speaker 1: they were the robbers. When they were on business trips
Speaker 1: outside of Texas, they'd stay in the nicest hotels and
Speaker 1: eat at the best restaurants. At least two of the
Speaker 1: brothers regularly attended sporting events like the Kentucky Derby and
Speaker 1: Indianapolis five hundred. They spent lavishly until their money ran low,
Speaker 1: then planned the next job. The Newton Gang's biggest heist,
Speaker 1: that three million dollar one, was also the one that
Speaker 1: brought them down. It was a train robbery outside of Chicago, Illinois,
Speaker 1: on June twelfth of nineteen twenty four. The Newtons, along
Speaker 1: with Glascock and a few newcomers, stopped a train on
Speaker 1: its way to dropping off cash to several banks along
Speaker 1: its route. The gang quickly loaded sixty three bags of
Speaker 1: loot into four stolen cars, but in the confusion of
Speaker 1: the nighttime raid and after a train brakeman escaped and
Speaker 1: alerted authorities, Glasscock mistook Doc Newton for a guard and
Speaker 1: accidentally shot Doc several times. The men all got away,
Speaker 1: placing the wounded dock atop bags of cash, but authorities
Speaker 1: quickly found the men. A corrupt postal inspector who was
Speaker 1: in on the job gave himself away under wire tap,
Speaker 1: a tip that led authorities to the doctor who had
Speaker 1: treated the wounded. Doc Willis made it across the border
Speaker 1: into Mexico, and Jesse escaped for a while to Texas
Speaker 1: with about thirty five thousand dollars that's six hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty one thousand dollars today, money that was never officially
Speaker 1: found and is the source of some local legends about
Speaker 1: buried treasure. But at the time, within months everyone involved
Speaker 1: was arrested and headed to trial, including the convalescing Doc,
Speaker 1: who was taken into the proceedings on a stretcher. However,
Speaker 1: although eight men were convicted in the end, and the
Speaker 1: amount of money that they stole was enormous, most of
Speaker 1: their sentences were light and all were eventually released on
Speaker 1: good behavior. Later in life, Doc and Willis tried to
Speaker 1: rob a bank in Rowena, Texas, when Doc was well
Speaker 1: into his seventies and Willis was eighty, But the Newton
Speaker 1: brothers spent the rest of their lives mostly on the
Speaker 1: right side of the law. Their exploits are now often
Speaker 1: considered when the Newtons are acknowledged at all, as brothers
Speaker 1: simply trying to make a living. Willis told his documentarians,
Speaker 1: I knew all them bankers was rich, and they didn't
Speaker 1: care about hurting us poor farmers. So why should I
Speaker 1: care about hurting them? Why shouldn't I steal from them?
Speaker 1: It's just one thief stealing from another. But the romanticized
Speaker 1: story as told by Willis, his brothers, and many historians,
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily the true one. Williamson points out that in
Speaker 1: at least a few of their robberies a lot of
Speaker 1: gunplay was involved, and the lack of planning could have
Speaker 1: been disastrous. He said, a majority of the times when
Speaker 1: they got into these robberies where they actually had guns
Speaker 1: out and so forth, they screwed up so bad they
Speaker 1: should have been killed. Willis was good at planning, but
Speaker 1: the execution sometimes was completely out the window. In his research,
Speaker 1: Williamson uncovered damning newspaper accounts of a shootout during one
Speaker 1: of their train robberies in Illinois, in which he claims
Speaker 1: a black porter by the name of Moon died three
Speaker 1: days after the robbery from gunshot wounds. Though the Newtons
Speaker 1: swore they never killed anyone, that may not have been
Speaker 1: the case. The last living member of the gang, Joe,
Speaker 1: died in nineteen eighty nine. Today, the Newtons retain their
Speaker 1: status as folk heroes to many. There was even a
Speaker 1: dramatized film made about them in nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 1: they remain unquestionably the most successful bank robbers the country
Speaker 1: has ever seen. Joe told Carson in nineteen eighty we
Speaker 1: was crazy for doing it, but you're young then. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article the Newton Boys were
Speaker 1: the Baddest bank robbers You've Never heard of on how
Speaker 1: Stuffworks dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com
Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.