The Redemption of Bobby Love

by Bobby Love

  “If you let me borrow your gun for two weeks,” I said, “I’ll give you two of these sweaters.”

  Sam thought it was a great deal and he loaned me his gun, and I gave him the sweaters. But then Sam got fired. He never came back to Clive’s, and so I kept his gun.

  Davone eventually kept his word and I started riding with him, his brother, and another kid. On the weekends we’d pick a neighborhood to hit up on the other side of the city, where we wouldn’t be recognized. Davone and Rudy were the ones who planned where we were going to go, and I helped grab the money and run. The whole time that we were robbing and stealing, though, I was still in school and still working at the Pentagon. One day my English teacher pulled me aside and said, “Curtis, you’re not keeping up with your work. What’s wrong? I know you can do better.”

  I didn’t have an answer for her because at that point I wanted to say, “I am doing better. I got my own apartment. I got money. I got girls.” Of course I didn’t say that to her because I knew the life I was living was nothing to brag about to a Black woman who had sacrificed so much for her education and was now trying to lift up my generation. I promised I’d work harder on my assignments and for a few days I did try, but the pull of my criminal pursuits was too strong.

  I felt invincible and my behavior grew bolder. I stole checks from the Pentagon, cashed them right there on the premises, and never got caught. Sometimes I stole just because I could. I wasn’t starving, and all of my needs were met. It was almost like I looked at stealing as a challenge. Just like I figured out the game of golf so I could be a better caddy, or how I figured out how to break out of Morrison, I liked to figure out how to get more fast money. It was all exciting to me, and my friends were all right there with me. Like most teenagers, I didn’t think about consequences or the future. I was just living day by day, taking advantage of every opportunity that came my way.

  * * *

  On the night of Richard Nixon’s inauguration in January 1969, I was eighteen years old and a senior in high school. It was also the day I got shot by police after trying to rob a pharmacy with Davone, Rudy, and one other guy from their crew. Rudy told us it was going to be a quick job. We were going to rob a pharmacy in Southeast Washington, DC, since he figured the entire police force would be preoccupied with Nixon’s inauguration festivities.

  He was wrong. By the time the four of us had collected the money from the register and the safe in the back, we could hear the sirens wailing.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Rudy shouted, and we all headed for the door. In front of the pharmacy there was a big parking lot. Our getaway driver had disappeared, so I ran between two cars in the lot, trying to stay low and remain out of sight, all the while keeping my gun up for protection. I was wearing black slacks and a navy-blue peacoat and hoped I wouldn’t be seen in the dark night. I looked both ways before I started to scoot over to the next car, but before I made it, I felt a burning pain rip through my leg. I’d been shot.

  As I fell to the ground and dropped my gun, I looked behind me and saw a cop with his gun still drawn walking toward me. As he got closer, I had the nerve to ask him, “Why’d you shoot me?”

  The doctors told me I was lucky because the bullet went through my right butt cheek and exited out the front of my leg. Still, they had to do surgery to repair the damage. When I woke up, I couldn’t even feel my leg, and I spent almost a month in the hospital doing physical therapy so I could walk again. Once they decided I was healthy enough, a hospital orderly wheeled me right across the street to the DC jail.

  I spent almost six months in jail awaiting sentencing. None of my family members were willing or able to post bail for me. In frustration, I watched other people who had done far worse crimes come in and get out of jail in a matter of days because they had good lawyers working on their behalf. I soon found out from other prisoners, though, that I could petition for my release by writing my own writ of habeas corpus. I had no idea what that meant, but I kept listening and asking questions and eventually figured it out. There was a law library at the jail, where I would go to find examples of what a successful writ looked like, and I copied those, substituting the details of my case for the ones in the examples I was using. Basically, I was just asking to be released on my own recognizance until my sentence was determined. The first writ I wrote was denied, so I submitted another one, and another one, and another one, until finally a judge accepted my request.

  During the few months when I was free and awaiting my sentencing for robbing that pharmacy, I lived with a friend because I couldn’t afford to get my own place. I got a job at a fast-food restaurant and did my best to stay out of trouble. I hoped that by living right, I might catch a break and avoid going to prison. I was trying to show the courts that I had learned my lesson. It didn’t work. Even though nobody from Morrison had ever come looking for me, I still had a record from there. It wasn’t supposed to factor into the judge’s decision, but he said he was denying my request for “leniency” because I’d been in trouble with the law before. But because I was only eighteen at the time of the crime, and because I had shown that I could stay out of trouble those last few months, instead of being sent to an adult prison, I was sentenced to thirteen months at a facility in Lorton, Virginia, for juvenile offenders.

  Compared to the danger and the grittiness I’d experienced at the DC jail, Lorton looked like a summer camp. The inmates were all twenty-one or younger. We slept in dormitories, not cells, and we had time to play sports and watch TV if we wanted. Still, it wasn’t the place where I was going to repent and change my ways. A lot of the guys in there just sat around bragging about the crimes they’d committed and talked about the crimes they were going to commit when they got out. Fights were common, and I lost a pair of shoes and even a pair of underwear to theft. I kept to myself and showed up for my assigned job in the kitchen and tried to be invisible. When I wasn’t on work duty, I was either in my bed or watching TV, just passing the time, waiting for my sentence to be over. At this point I wasn’t planning on returning to a life of crime. But I also had no specific ideas about continuing my education or starting a career. I didn’t even know what that would entail. I basically kept my head down and focused on getting out as soon as possible. I knew I’d come up with something when I had to. I always did.

  When I was released after thirteen months, I had no family members willing to take me in anymore, so I was remanded to a halfway house, where I was told I had to find a job. I found one at another fast-food restaurant, and within a few weeks I had enough money saved to leave the halfway house and rent a room from an old friend named Ulysses Love. I stayed away from anyone from Davone and Rudy’s crew and tried to keep focused on living right. I earned my GED so I could finally be done with high school. I spent time with Raymond and called my mother on Sundays and promised her I would come visit soon. I tried to play it straight. And for about six months, I did.

  But as I started to hang with my old crew of high school friends again, talk turned to stealing. I kept telling myself, “I can do this. I can stay out of trouble. I know I am better than that.” But everything we wanted to do—​party, show our girlfriends a good time, buy nice clothes—​required money we didn’t have.

  “What if we could pull off just one big heist?” my friend Jack said, and everyone nodded. We told ourselves if we could just make one big score and get enough cash, we wouldn’t have to steal again. In maybe the worst mistake of my life, I started plotting with them.

  We all agreed that DC was too full of cops, and Maryland and Virginia were out of the question for the same reason. I suggested Greensboro. I knew the layout of the city and I knew where the high-end businesses were. And so Greensboro became our target.

  Right away, my friend Dan and I got busy planning our first heist. The only problem was that neither Dan nor I had a car. But that wasn’t going to stop us. I could always find a way to work around a problem. It was kind of my superpower and my downfall. Once my brain star
ted working on how to pull off a caper, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My first agenda item to work out, before worrying about transportation, was deciding on the best places to hit. I knew banks offered the biggest possible return, but I also knew there was too much security and surveillance. That’s when I decided we should try credit unions. They had money, but they didn’t have the same level of security as a bank. I knew Greensboro had plenty of credit unions right in the downtown area, and I knew for a fact that they didn’t have anywhere near the same type of security as a bank or even the credit unions in DC.

  Dan and I ended up taking a bus down to North Carolina on a Friday night, and we arrived in Greensboro on Saturday morning. Once we got off the bus, we found a credit union right down the block from the bus station. Without hesitation or any further discussion, we walked right in and announced, “This is a stickup!”

  I ran behind the counter and got what money they had there. Dan watched the door and kept the people down on the floor. Then we ran out. It was fast and easy, just how I’d hoped.

  Dan and I stopped running as soon as we rounded the corner so as not to draw attention to ourselves. We were just two cats strolling through the city on a Saturday. From downtown, we took a city bus to the North Carolina A&T campus. I had a friend who went there, so we looked him up and met him at his dormitory. I didn’t tell him what we’d done, but I offered him a wad of cash if he could find someone to drive us out of town. His eyes grew wide when I showed him the money, but he didn’t ask any questions. He found a guy named Dennis to drive us to the town of Reidsville about twenty miles north of Greensboro. Needless to say, I gave Dennis a nice tip.

  Dan and I didn’t breathe easy until we were back at his house in DC, after taking a ten-hour bus ride back to the city. We ran into his bedroom, locked the door behind us, and counted our loot. We had stolen close to eight thousand dollars! This was the biggest haul we’d ever made. Dan and I looked at each other and just laughed like little kids.

  “We did it, man!” Dan said, grinning like a fool.

  “Yeah, man, we did,” I said. “Now let’s go celebrate.”

  The celebration after that robbery was epic. We hit up the clubs. We had girls. We had beer. We had reefer. I bought myself a new seven-hundred-dollar leather coat that I’d been eyeing for a while. And I loaned some money to my friend Al, who needed it to help his mother pay her rent. I quit my job at the fast-food restaurant and started thinking about the next caper. It was as if I had never considered going straight. I was back in business.

  My reputation as a thief grew, and more and more guys wanted in on the action. It looked easy to them because I made it look easy and fun. I went down to Greensboro a few more times and took different cats with me, choosing the kids who had a skill or asset that I needed, like their own car. But Dan was my true partner. In fact, he got mad when I went to Greensboro once without him, so I promised him the next time I planned a heist down south, I’d let him know.

  That next time came a few months later, in June of 1971. I had promised two younger guys—​Keith was sixteen and Vern was seventeen—​that they could come with Dan and me to Greensboro. With the two extra guys, I decided to try tying up the people in the credit union so they couldn’t get to a phone to call the police as soon as we were out the door. It would give us more time to get away. I put Vern and Keith in charge of tying everybody up because I didn’t trust them to handle a gun. I was getting more ambitious and brazen as a thief.

  Vern and Keith agreed to their roles, so the only thing I had to figure out was transportation, because nobody in our newly assembled crew owned a car. I had a solution for that, of course. The morning of the robbery, I stole a 1968 Dodge Charger from a DC parking lot. Then I picked up Dan, swung around and picked up Keith and Vern, and we were on our way to Greensboro. I was feeling lucky, and the mood in the car was upbeat.

  When we got to Greensboro, I knew which credit union I wanted to hit up. This particular one was on Elm Street, near Vanstory, the fancy clothing store where my mother used to take me shopping for special occasions. We parked the car on a side street behind the building. I walked in first, then Dan came in behind me. Keith and Vern followed after. I did a quick look around and saw only three employees in the place, two men and a woman. I pulled out my gun and said, “This is a stickup. You know what to do.” Without wasting a minute, we hustled the three people into a back room and forced them to tell us where the money was. I kept my gun out to let them know we were serious. I didn’t hesitate when I barked out my orders. And I didn’t pause when the woman looked at me with fear in her eyes. “Hey,” I said to Keith and Vern. “Get over here and tie these people up.”

  Keith and Vern got busy, and Jack and I went to collect the money. We moved quickly, and I stayed focused on the time, but I was pissed that there was less than one thousand dollars behind the counter. Jack and I ran back to the room where the employees were now all tied up.

  “Where’s the rest of the money?” I yelled.

  “There is no more,” one man mumbled, his face down in the carpet.

  “Well, empty your pockets then,” I said, and we collected a couple hundred more dollars, a watch, and a ring.

  “That’s all they got, man!” Dan said, pulling on my arm. “Let’s get out of here!”

  The four of us hustled out the back door of the building and ran around the block to the car.

  We jumped in the car, but I had a bad feeling. Nothing felt right about this job. All I was thinking was that I needed to get us out of Greensboro. Just get to the next city, where we could lay low and hide.

  “Don’t speed,” Dan warned me. “We don’t want to draw any extra attention to ourselves.”

  “I know, man,” I snapped back. I kept telling myself over and over again to stay cool. To pay attention to the traffic signals. Don’t get caught.

  I was heading for the highway and I kept my foot on the gas but was careful not to overdo it. It was about twenty miles to the next town, and that was all I needed to know. Once we made it to the highway, I knew I could pick up the speed and put some real distance between us and the scene of the crime.

  “There’s a cop behind us!” Vern cried out.

  I checked in my rearview mirror and sure enough, a Greensboro police car was now on my tail, but his roof lights weren’t on. He just followed me for a few blocks. I kept my pace right at the speed limit and told myself, “Don’t panic.”

  Then I saw another police car coming at us from the opposite direction. They were going to box me in. Suddenly their lights and sirens came on at the same time.

  I pulled the car over and quickly reached for my gun.

  “Man, put that gun down! Are you crazy? They’ll kill you!” Dan hollered at me.

  “I’m not stupid, man,” I said as I hid the gun under the seat.

  I turned around and looked at Keith and Vern. These cats were just kids. “Y’all be cool, okay? And don’t say nothing,” I warned them.

  They both nodded back at me. They looked terrified.

  One of the cops got out of his vehicle with his gun drawn and he came over to our car and ordered, “Put your hands out of the car!” Then another cop came from the back and opened my door and told me to step out. He looked in the back and said, “All of you, move out!”

  They lined us up against the car. Then they patted us down and asked us if we had weapons. I said that I didn’t have anything on me, but they started searching the car and found my gun. It was at that point that another officer back in the other car announced, “This car is stolen, too!” They moved us away from the car then and continued searching the vehicle. A few minutes later, another police car pulled up and the three employees from the credit union stepped out. One of the cops asked them if we were the people who had robbed them at gunpoint. They all said yes, and I knew what was coming next.

  “You’re under arrest for robbery. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you i
n a court of law.”

  As I listened to the officer read me my rights, I didn’t feel an ounce of regret for what I had done. I just kept replaying the whole incident in my mind, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. What I could have done better. On the ride to the jail and up through my sentencing, I replayed the robbery in my mind over and over again and kept finding the flaws that I should have fixed. I wasn’t the least bit remorseful. I was angry.

  Vern, Keith, Dan, and I were each given court-appointed lawyers, but we were tried all together that August. Once the trial started, it all went very fast. Jury selection was one day, and our trial followed for four days after that. Nobody testified on our behalf, but there were six witnesses who identified us as the thieves—​the three employees from the bank and three other eyewitnesses who had seen us on the street, jumping into the getaway car after the robbery. The jury deliberated for only thirty minutes. We were found guilty and sentenced all on the same day. Dan and I were sentenced to twenty-five to thirty years. Keith and Vern, who were treated as youthful offenders, got off with a shorter sentence and were sent to a juvenile facility.

  I remember when I heard my sentence, twenty-five to thirty years, I laughed. It was a loud and obscene laugh that probably made the judge and everybody else in that courtroom think they’d done the right thing in sending me away. But they didn’t know that I laughed because I had to. It was the only option as I contemplated spending the next twenty-five years of my life behind bars. That meant I wouldn’t get out until my late forties at the earliest. If I didn’t laugh, what was my other option?

  When they put me back in my cell at the jail, my laughter turned to tears. I started crying and couldn’t stop. All I wanted was to wake up from the nightmare I had made of my life. I knew I had done this to myself.