Sutton
One of the most notorious criminals in American history is brought blazing back to life by a master storyteller.Willie Sutton was born in the squalid Irish slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the twentieth century, and came of age at a time when banks were out of controlOver three decades, from Prohibition through the Great Depression, from the age of Al Capone until the reign of Murder Inc., police called Sutton one of the most dangerous men in New York, and the FBI put him on its first-ever Most Wanted list. But the public loved him. He never fired a shot, after all, and his victims were merely those bloodsucking banks.Based on extensive research, Sutton is the moving story of an enigmatic man, an arch criminal driven by love, forever seeking the beautiful woman who led him into a life of crime, then broke his heart and disappeared.
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J.R. MOEHRINGER
Sutton
About the Book
One of the most notorious criminals in American history is brought blazing back to life by a master storyteller.
Willie Sutton was born in the squalid Irish slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the twentieth century, and came of age at a time when banks were out of control.
Over three decades, from Prohibition through the Great Depression, from the age of Al Capone until the reign of Murder Inc., police called Sutton one of the most dangerous men in New York, and the FBI put him on its first-ever Most Wanted list. But the public loved him. He never fired a shot, after all, and his victims were merely those bloodsucking banks.
Based on extensive research, Sutton is the moving story of an enigmatic man, an arch criminal driven by love, forever seeking the beautiful woman who led him into a life of crime, then broke his heart.
About the Author
J.R. Moehringer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000, is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Author of the bestselling memoir, The Tender Bar, he is also the co-author of Open by Andre Agassi.
For Roger and Sloan Barnett,
with love and gratitude
AUTHOR’S NOTE
After spending half his life in prison, off and on, Willie Sutton was set free for good on Christmas Eve, 1969. His sudden emergence from Attica Correctional Facility sparked a media frenzy. Newspapers, magazines, television networks, talk shows – everyone wanted an interview with the most elusive and prolific bank robber in American history.
Sutton granted only one. He spent the entire next day with one newspaper reporter and one still photographer, driving around New York City, visiting the scenes of his most famous heists and other points of interest in his remarkable life.
The resulting article, however, was strangely cursory, with several errors – or lies – and few real revelations.
Sadly, Sutton and the reporter and the photographer are all gone, so what happened among them that Christmas, and what happened to Sutton during the preceding sixty-eight years, is anyone’s guess.
This book is my guess.
But it’s also my wish.
I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.
—LEWIS CARROLL,
“THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK”
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Thus in the beginning all the world was America … for no such thing as money was anywhere known.
JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT
ONE
HE’S WRITING WHEN THEY COME FOR HIM.
He’s sitting at his metal desk, bent over a yellow legal pad, talking to himself, and to her—as always, to her. So he doesn’t notice them standing at his door. Until they run their batons along the bars.
He looks up, adjusts his large scuffed eyeglasses, the bridge mended many times with Scotch tape. Two guards, side by side, the left one fat and soft and pale, as if made from Crisco, the right one tall and scrawny and with a birthmark like a penny on his right cheek.
Left Guard hitches up his belt. On your feet, Sutton. Admin wants you.
Sutton stands.
Right Guard points his baton. What the? You crying, Sutton?
No sir.
Don’t you lie to me, Sutton. I can see you been crying.
Sutton touches his cheek. His fingers come away wet. I didn’t know I was crying sir.
Right Guard waves his baton at the legal pad. What’s that?
Nothing sir.
He asked you what is it, Left Guard says.
Sutton feels his bum leg starting to buckle. He grits his teeth at the pain. My novel sir.
They look around his book-filled cell. He follows their eyes. It’s never good when the guards look around your cell. They can always find something if they have a mind to. They scowl at the books along the floor, the books along the metal cabinet, the books along the cold-water basin. Sutton’s is the only cell at Attica filled with copies of Dante, Plato, Shakespeare, Freud. No, they confiscated his Freud. Prisoners aren’t allowed to have psychology books. The warden thinks they’ll try to hypnotize each other.
Right Guard smirks. He gives Left Guard a nudge—get ready. Novel, eh? What’s it about?
Just—you know. Life sir.
What the hell does an old jailbird know about life?
Sutton shrugs. That’s true sir. But what does anyone know?
WORD IS LEAKING OUT. BY NOON A DOZEN PRINT REPORTERS HAVE ALREADY arrived and they’re huddled at the front entrance, stomping their feet, blowing on their hands. One of them says he just heard—snow on the way. Lots of it. Nine inches at least.
They all groan.
Too cold to snow, says the veteran in the group, an old wire service warhorse in suspenders and black orthopedic shoes. He’s been with UPI since the Scopes trial. He blows a gob of spit onto the frozen ground and scowls up at the clouds, then at the main guard tower, which looks to some like the new Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland.
