Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  Dillinger was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis. The FBI afterwards reneged on the deal with Sage, and she was deported back to Romania, where she lived until her death in 1945.

  Willie ‘The Actor’ Sutton

  William Sutton made his name with a string of notorious bank robberies, totalling about 100, between the 1920s and the 1950s. He had two nicknames, ‘Willie the Actor’ and ‘Slick Willie’. The first was derived from his habit of disguising himself to make a raid; the second from his dandified style of dress. Sutton was far from the stereotype of the bank robber as a brutal thug; instead he was charming, well-dressed and polite, which made him a favourite with women. During his thirty-year career, he stole about two million dollars, a phenomenal amount of money for the period he lived in.

  Expert safe cracker

  Sutton was born into an immigrant Irish family in Brooklyn, New York. The fourth of five children, he left school after he had completed the eighth grade, and went on to work in a series of jobs: as a driller, a gardener and a clerk. A restless soul, he never stayed in a job for much more than a year, and eventually quit working to concentrate on his main talent in life: stealing.

  From the age of nine he had a reputation as a thief and as a teenager began to break into houses. In one instance, he broke into his girlfriend’s father’s place of business and stole enough money and goods to elope with her. Not surprisingly, the father was furious and Sutton ended up in the dock, charged with robbery. He received a short prison sentence for the crime, during which time he did as much as he could to learn more about the world of professional robbery.

  In prison, Sutton met a seasoned safe cracker called Doc Tate, who introduced him to the world of organised crime. He now graduated to robbing banks and jewellers, becoming an expert safe cracker like his mentor Tate. He carried a pistol or a sub-machine gun on his escapades, but he always swore that it was not loaded and he had no intention of hurting anyone. Asked why he still carried the gun, given that he was not prepared to use it, he quipped, ‘You can’t rob a bank on charm and personality’.

  Master of Disguise

  Sutton continued with the traditional approach of storming banks waving a gun until, one day, he had a better idea. While staking out a bank, he watched as uniformed guards drove up outside with a marked van, then walked inside to pick up the day’s takings. He realised that if he could disguise himself as a guard or other official, he would not have to go to the trouble – and risk – of robbing banks by threat of violence. Thus, he began to mount a series of raids dressed in a variety of disguises: as a security guard, a mail man, a messenger and a maintenance worker. This was how he gained his nickname, Willie ‘The Actor’ Sutton, attracting admiration from the press and media by showing a modicum of intelligence and flair in the execution of his robberies, rather than committing them by using the usual brute force.

  From this time on, whenever Sutton committed a bank robbery or raided a jewellery shop, he made a habit of dressing up for the occasion. As befitted the characters he was disguised as, whether mailmen or maintenance workers, he was polite to all those he met. He still carried a gun, but he prided himself on never having to use it. One of his victims commented that, far from being traumatised by the robbery, he felt as though he was in a movie during the experience – except that the usher had a gun.

  Daring escape

  Sutton was living the high life, spending his stolen money and jewels on expensive clothing and other luxuries. In 1929, he got married, but by now his luck was running out. He was finally caught, and in June 1931, he was convicted of assault and robbery. He received a sentence of thirty years, and his wife promptly divorced him.

  Sutton was sent to the notorious Sing Sing Prison in New York, which was thought to be a high security institution. But Sutton thought otherwise, and had no intention of spending the next thirty years of his life languishing in jail. Instead, after serving only a year of his sentence, he made a daring escape. On December 11, 1932, using a smuggled gun, he held a prison guard hostage and then managed to climb up a thirty-foot prison wall, using two ladders joined together. Amazingly, he got clean away, and once back in circulation, he returned to his previous way of life.

  Sutton’s next bank raid was on February 15, 1933, when he made an attempt on the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He arrived disguised as a mailman but a passer by noticed what was going on and raised the alarm. The police were called, but Sutton managed to escape.

  The following year, on January 15, 1934, he and two associates broke into the same bank through a skylight. The robbery was successful, but a month later, the police caught up with him. Sutton was arrested, charged, brought to trial and convicted. He received a prison sentence of twenty-five to fifty years in Eastern State Penitentiary, Pennsylvania.

  Life sentence

  Once again, Sutton tried to escape from prison – four times, to be exact. Each time, he was caught and punished until finally, on April 3 1945 he and twelve other prisoners managed to escape through a tunnel. However, his freedom was short-lived; once outside the prison, he spent a day on the run, and was then captured by the Philadelphia police and returned to the prison.

  As a punishment, Sutton received a life sentence and was transferred to the Philadelphia County Prison in Homesburg, Pennsylvania. Undeterred, he continued his escape attempts, and finally managed to break free on February 10, 1947. That night, Sutton and his friends dressed up as prison guards and walked across the prison yard to the high wall on the other side. They carried two ladders with them. Unfortunately for them, just as they were walking across, a searchlight caught them in the act. With his characteristic panache, Sutton called out, ‘It’s okay,’ hoping that the searchlight operator would take them for prison officers. He did, and they were allowed to continue. Once again, ‘the actor’ had calmly persuaded everyone, in the heat of the moment, that he was a normal workman going about his everyday business.

  Ten Most Wanted

  By now, Willie Sutton was a well-known figure in the press, much admired for his cool demeanour under pressure, and for the fact that he seldom resorted to actual violence in his bank robberies and prison escapes. He continued to rob banks and jewellery shops, and became such a menace that the FBI added him to their list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. When his picture was released, his stylish way of dressing was noticed – but not in the way that Sutton had intended, unfortunately for him.

  Sutton’s photograph was circulated to tailors in New York, as well as the police, and one day Arnold Schuster, a twenty-four-year-old tailor’s son, recognised the notorious criminal on the subway. He alerted the police, and on February 18, 1952, Sutton was arrested. With the glare of publicity now on him, Sutton enjoyed his last few moments of freedom. Asked by a press man why he robbed banks he replied simply: ‘Because that’s where the money is.’ (This line was later attributed to a journalist.) The public loved him, and found his ease in front of the cameras beguiling. Such was his popularity that he gained a reputation as a kind of latter-day Robin Hood, although in actual fact he never gave any of his money away and clearly loved spending it – on himself.

  But while Sutton was playing the role of gentleman thief to the gallery, a more tragic tale was unfolding. Schuster, the young man who had turned Sutton in, was murdered by mob assassins, who wanted to let the world know that informing on wanted criminals carried with it a heavy price.

  New career

  Sutton was brought to trial once more and convicted. He was sent to Attica Prison in New York to serve the rest of his life sentence, and received an additional sentence of 105 years. This time, when he went to prison, he did not escape. In fact, he went on to spend most of his adult life in jail.

  On Christmas Eve 1969, Sutton was finally released from Attica Prison. He was ill with emphysema and other health problems, but he was too poor to get proper medical attention. For some months he lived on welfare payments, but he later regained his health
and began to rebuild his life. In his later years, he began to lecture about prison reform and also advised banks on how to protect themselves from robbery. He even made a television commercial for the New Britain Bank and Trust Company, promoting their new photo credit card.

  Willie Sutton spent his declining years in Spring Hill, Florida, with his sister. He finally died at the age of seventy-nine, and was buried quietly in his family’s plot at a cemetery in Brooklyn.

  Great Train Robbery

  The Great Train Robbery took place in Buckinghamshire, England, on August 8, 1963, and became one of the most famous crimes in British history. A total of £2.3 million was stolen, most of it in used bank notes. To the outrage of the nation, the bulk of this money was never recovered. (Today, the equivalent amount would be about £14 million.) One of the most remarkable aspects of the heist was that no guns were used; however, although it was often painted as a victimless crime, it was not: during the heist, the train driver was hit over the head with an iron bar, which left him bruised and bleeding. To the delight of the tabloid press, who saw the robbery as an exciting adventure story, the fifteen-strong gang of London criminals who had hijacked the train, led by Bruce Reynolds, made a successful getaway, and later hid out at nearby farmhouse. Here, they passed the time by playing the board game Monopoly, and ironically, it was this that proved to be their downfall: their fingerprints on the paper money were later discovered by police, and led to the identification and arrest of thirteen members of the gang.

  Heist at the bridge

  The train that the robbers made their target was a ‘travelling post office’ train, or TPO, that was operated by the Royal Mail on the London to Glasgow line. The plan had been initiated by Bruce Reynolds, an antique dealer who drove an Aston Martin and liked to show off his wealth. Also prominent in planning the robbery and putting it into operation was John Wheater, a solicitor, who came from a middle-class background and was able to act as front man for the group. It was Wheater who rented the farmhouse where the gang hid out after the robbery. Another member was Buster Edwards, a con man who had had a previous career as a boxer; Phil Collins later played Edwards in the film Buster, based on the robber’s life. Charlie Wilson, a bookmaker, also featured in the gang, along with the ‘brawns’ of the operation, Gordon Goody and Jimmy Hussey. Also part of the gang was Ronnie Biggs, a junior member with a fairly insignificant role, who was later to become one of the most notorious Great Train Robbers when he escaped from prison.

  Bruce Reynolds made it his business to study the comings and goings of the postal trains in and out of London. He also managed to get hold of information concerning large amounts of cash that were occasionally carried on the trains. He chose a spot to hold up the train, near a bridge known as Bridego Bridge, which was situated outside Cheddington in the county of Buckinghamshire. This was a quiet place, and it was thought that the train would slow down as it came to the bridge, so that the robbers could flag it down and climb aboard. Another advantage to the spot was that it was near a military base; large supply trucks were often to be seen on the roads nearby, so the robbers’ truck would not seem particularly conspicuous as it drove away from the train loaded with money.

  Train driver attacked

  In the early hours of August 8, 1963, the robbers drove to the spot and set up the ambush. It was a few minutes after three o’clock in the morning when the raid began. Dressed as railway men, wearing overalls, the gang rigged up some temporary signals on the line, using large batteries to power the lights. As the train driver, Jack Mills, neared the bridge, he noticed a red ‘stop’ light, and slowed the train down to a halt. David Whitby, a fireman, got out of the train onto the track to see what was going on. Buster Edwards, one of the robbers, pulled him off the track and into the scrub nearby. Once Whitby realised what was going on, he offered no resistance and was left by the side of the track. However, Mills, the train driver was not so lucky. When he got off the train, the robbers attacked him, hitting him over the head with an iron bar. Mills collapsed by the side of the track.

  Hideaway farmhouse

  Up to that point, the robbery had been committed without violence, as had been the plan. There had been no real need to attack Mills, but in a panic, the robbers had beaten him over the head. Next, they made another mistake. Ronnie Biggs had brought in a retired train driver to drive the train into a place where the mailbags of money could be easily shifted onto the robbers’ truck. But the elderly driver did not understand how the train worked, as the design had changed since the days when he was employed. Thus, Mills was brought back in to drive the train, even though he was injured.

  Once the train was in position, the gang worked as quickly as they could, forming a human chain to unload over 100 sacks of money into the truck. Then they drove away, leaving Mills to his fate. They drove to their hideout at Leatherslade Farm, and here they sat tight until the fuss had died down, playing Monopoly and drinking cups of tea. However, the police were soon on their trail.

  Eventually, the gang left the farmhouse, when they felt it was safe to do so. But they foolishly left their fingerprints all over the paper money on the board game. When the police raided the farmhouse, this gave them a very useful set of clues. Most of the gang members had been involved in crime before, and were well known to the police. It was a simple enough matter to identify the fingerprints and match them to the ones held on their records. In this way, thirteen members of the gang were caught. In a highly publicised trial, the robbers were brought to justice, convicted and sentenced on April 16, 1964.

  Dramatic escapes

  That was by no means the end of the story. Charlie Wilson and Ronnie Biggs were both imprisoned, but they later made dramatic escapes from jail. Wilson went to Montreal, Canada, and lived quietly there until he was tracked down via a telephone call that his wife made to her parents in the UK. Buster Edwards fled to Mexico, but gave himself up in the end. Bruce Reynolds went on the run for five years, but the law caught up with him and he served a ten-year prison sentence.

  Ronnie Biggs had not played a large part in the Great Train Robbery, but eventually he became the most notorious member of the gang. After serving a year of his prison sentence, he escaped from prison by scaling a wall with a rope ladder. He underwent plastic surgery and travelled around the world, eventually settling in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with his Brazilian wife and child. Under Brazilian law, as the father of a Brazilian child, he could not be extradited to the UK, so he lived openly in Rio with them.

  However, in later years, Biggs became seriously ill, and announced his intention to return to the UK. He had become tired of living abroad, with mounting health-care bills, and said that he was prepared to risk being imprisoned once he arrived in the UK. He was duly imprisoned when he arrived back, even though he had suffered several strokes and was in a very poor state of health.

  The aftermath

  The legacy of the Great Train Robbery makes sad reading. The train driver, Jack Mills, died from leukaemia in 1970. There was never enough evidence to convict any of the train robbers with the attack, so his case was never brought to court. Buster Edwards, on his release from jail, became a flower seller in Waterloo train station until he committed suicide in 1994.

  Today, the Great Train Robbery is viewed in some quarters as an exciting adventure story involving colourful members of the London underworld, and in others as a rather shameful episode in which an unarmed man was brutally attacked for no reason. For many people, whether sympathetic to the robbers or not, it continues to hold a fascination. For years, the exploits of Ronnie Biggs and the other train robbers were constantly recounted in the tabloid press, while one of the detectives on the case, Chief Superintendent Jack Slipper (known as ‘Slipper of the Yard’) became so involved in it that he continued to try to track down the culprits long after he had retired from the police force.

  One of the post office carriages that was targeted for the robbery was restored and went on display at Nene Valley Railway. As a
result of the Great Train Robbery, the rule book of the British rail postal train services was changed, so that instead of climbing out onto the track at an unexpected red ‘stop’ signal and walking across the line to see the signalman, train drivers were directed to stay in their cabs with the doors locked. Had Jack Mills done that, the Great Train Robbery would quite probably never have happened.

  Mesrine

  Jacques Mesrine was a notorious French bank robber who operated in the 1960s and 70s. He committed a string of burglaries, jewellery shop robberies and bank robberies during that time, and was also involved in kidnapping and arms smuggling. He was also known for his audacious escapes from prison, in one case attempting to help over fifty inmates of a prison escape. He became ‘public enemy number one’ in France and remained the scourge of the authorities, until eventually, the French police unified their efforts to track him down, and ambushed him in his car on the outskirts of Paris. On November 2, 1979 police opened fire and gunned him down, killing him instantly.