Criminal Masterminds

by Anne Williams

  However, Leeson was not a quitter, and after these awful disasters, he confounded all expectations by surviving his cancer and remarrying. His new wife, Leona Tormay, was an Irish beautician who already had two children. The couple then had a baby boy together.

  Leeson went on to forge a new career for himself as an after-dinner speaker and became the commercial manager of Galway Football Club in the west of Ireland. In 2005, he wrote a book entitled Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress, in which he described how he fought his way back from the total breakdown of his world.

  PART EIGHT: Bank Robbers

  Butch Cassidy

  Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, was a notorious outlaw who, in the early years of the twentieth century, committed some of the most famous robberies and heists in North America. Together with his sidekick Harry Longabaugh, also known as The Sundance Kid, he and his gang The Wild Bunch managed to evade the law for many years. Later in their career, the pair had to decamp to South America to avoid arrest, and lived there for several years before they were killed in a shoot-out. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid have gone down in history as the last of a dying breed of outlaws and migrant cowboys whose flamboyant flouting of the law made them folk heroes of the Wild West.

  Cattle rustler

  Parker was born in 1866 and grew up in a Mormon family. His parents, Maximilian and Ann, were immigrants from England who had travelled to Utah Territory to escape persecution for their Mormon faith. The family were hardworking owners of a ranch at Circleville, Utah, about 125 kilometres (200 miles) away from Salt Lake City. Robert began to help them at an early age, but his parents’ strict Mormon principles appeared to have little appeal for him, and he became rebellious. As a boy, he met an old cattle rustler called Mike Cassidy, who impressed him greatly. He adopted the man’s surname, and under the influence of his new mentor, he stole a horse, much to his parents’ anger. Afterwards, he left home and began to travel around the country as a free agent.

  Parker worked at any job he could find, including as a butcher, which is where he derived the name ‘Butch’ (the term ‘butch’ is also used to describe a borrowed gun). ‘Butch’ Cassidy, as he was now known, soon tired of earning an honest living and took to stealing cattle. It was not long before he was caught and thrown in jail, at Laramie in Wyoming, where he served a sentence of two years.

  The outlaw life

  When Cassidy emerged from jail, he was a seasoned criminal and began to live the life of an outlaw in earnest. He had all the attributes of a leader: he was quick-witted, confident, fearless in a fight and had a natural charisma that drew people to him. He soon gathered a team of desperadoes around him, and became leader of a gang that was known and feared across North America: ‘The Wild Bunch’.

  Cassidy’s right-hand man was The Sundance Kid. Like Cassidy, Sundance had grown up in a strongly religious family. He had been born Harry Alonzo Longabaugh in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was the youngest of five children in a poor family. As a young man, he had left home and travelled around the country trying to earn a living. However, there were frequent periods when he had no job and no money, and during one of these, he stole a horse in the town of Sundance, Wyoming. He was caught, thrown in the town jail, and served eighteen months there, before emerging with a new nickname: The Sundance Kid.

  The Wild Bunch

  The partnership between Cassidy and Sundance became unshakeable, and they stayed together through many exploits as the leaders of the Wild Bunch. Other members of the gang included Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry, who joined the gang after pulling off a string of robberies with his own gang, and who was the scourge of the detective agency, Pinkerton’s. William Pinkerton, head of the agency, once described him as ‘the most vicious outlaw in America’ and said of him: ‘He does not have one single redeeming feature. He is the only criminal I know of who does not have one single good point.’ However, many of those who met Curry described him rather differently, as a gentleman: a quietly spoken, polite man who had many friends and was popular with women because of his courteous way of behaving.

  There were also several women among the Wild Bunch. One of these was Etta Place, about whom very little is known. She was Sundance’s woman, but there were rumours that she and Cassidy were also lovers. There has been much speculation about the relationship between the three, but it is known that she stayed with the outlaw gang for many years. Others who travelled with the gang included Ann Bassett, a young woman from a ranch in Brown’s Park, whose family had at one time been cattle rustlers.

  Other characters in the gang were Ben Kirkpatrick, known as ‘The Tall Texan’, who had a reputation as a womaniser, ‘Deaf’ Charlie Hanks, Tom ‘Peep’ O’Day, Bill Tod Carver and ‘Wat the Watcher’ Punteney. Together, with Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid at their head, the outlaws committed the longest sequence of successful robberies ever to take place in the Wild West.

  Heists and hold-ups

  Their first bank robbery took place at Montpelier, Idaho, in 1896, and after that, they continued their heists in Wyoming. Here they robbed an Overland Flyer train and, after a shoot-out, got away with $30,000. Encouraged by this success, the gang robbed another train, but this time they only managed to get away with about $50. So the Wild Bunch turned their attention to banks again and went to Nevada, where they stole over $30,000 from the bank at Winnemucca. The gang continued their robberies until 1901, when they held up a Northern Pacific Train in Montana and came away with $40,000.

  However, this was to be their last heist. For years, the Wild Bunch had been pursued by the private detective agency Pinkerton’s, and now they were coming close to being caught. With the agency hot on their heels, they decided to split up. Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and Etta Place travelled to South America, where they bought a ranch.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the gang were captured. Ben Kirkpatrick, ‘The Tall Texan’, was caught and jailed. When he had served his sentence, he took to robbing trains again, and was later killed in a shoot-out. ‘Deaf’ Charlie and Carver also met their ends in this way. Kid Curry was captured and held in jail in Knoxville, Tennessee, but he managed to escape. He is thought to have been shot to death in a train robbery, but some believe that, like Cassidy and Sundance, he escaped to South America and bought a ranch. Legend has it that he lived peacefully in Patagonia with a Spanish wife, who bore him eight children, until he finally died of old age.

  The end of the line

  Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid are believed to have lived quietly with Etta Place on their ranch in South America for several years before running out of money. When this happened, they reverted to their old way of life – robbing banks, trains and travellers. The story goes that they held up a payroll transport in the mountains of Bolivia and were pursued by troops in an attempt to recover the money. It is not entirely clear what happened after that: some maintain that the pair were shot by the troops, others that they committed suicide after being wounded. There is also a theory that the two outlaws who were shot were not Cassidy and Sundance at all, but a pair of common criminals whose names were unknown.

  After their death or disappearance, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid were remembered as folk heroes. Despite the fact that they and their gang, The Wild Bunch, were often ruthlessly violent during the course of their robberies, and often directed their violence against ordinary people such as bank clerks and train drivers, they were held in great affection by the public. This was mostly because they and the Wild Bunch represented an outlaw spirit, of men and women who were not prepared to live by small-town morality or conform to a dreary bureaucracy. They were also regarded as rebels fighting against the greedy profiteering of the banks and railroads, offering an alternative way of life – albeit rough and dangerous – that harked back to the early days of the Wild West.

  Heroes or villains?

  Although Cassidy, The Sundance Kid and the Wild Bunch were essentially criminals, they were seen in a romantic light by the pub
lic, who viewed them as carrying on a valued tradition at the heart of the American Dream. They represented the last of the pioneers, frontiersmen and early settlers who were born with nothing, but who staked their claims in the deserts and prairies of the land, took what they wanted from it, and built lives for themselves, free from government and state interference.

  Obviously, this was an idealised picture, and the reality of Cassidy’s life, and that of his associates, was somewhat more sordid, involving as it often did the brutal treatment, even murder, of innocent people. However, today, their legend lives on as tough, freedom-loving outlaws and rebels who helped to keep the independent spirit of the pioneers alive. Since their death, they have periodically been immortalised in popular culture, such as in the George Roy Hill film of 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

  Dillinger

  The bank robber John Dillinger was branded Public Enemy Number One by the FBI in the early 1930s. Regarded by the authorities as a violent, dangerous man, to others he became a hero, a latter-day Robin Hood, and even something of a celebrity. Along with other famous criminals of the day, such as Bonnie and Clyde, he was admired by the press because he was a thorn in the side of the establishment. This was a time of economic depression, when many banks had collapsed, taking their clients’ savings with them. In many cases, banks were foreclosing on their debtors and making people homeless by claiming their houses in return for debts. The banks were thought of as ruthless in pursuit of their own interests and lacking in sympathy for the poverty of the people, and thus the general public had become hostile to them. When outlaws such as Dillinger robbed the banks, many supported them, especially when records such as bank lists of mortage holders were destroyed in the process.

  Another aspect to Dillinger’s fame was that the media had expanded during the 1930s, ushering in the age of mass communication. For the first time, whenever news broke, radio reports and film newsreels could instantly be broadcast all over in North America. The exploits of the bank robbers were followed just as keenly as those of Hollywood film stars. The culture of celebrity had begun.

  Reckless living

  John Herbert Dillinger was born into a poor, hardworking family on June 22, 1903 in Brightwood, Indiana. His mother died of a stroke when he was only three years old. His father, a grocer, John Wilson Dillinger, treated him harshly but also spoilt him from time to time, buying him expensive toys. He was largely raised by his sister, sixteen-year-old Audrey, who ran the family after her mother died.

  John Herbert grew up to be a difficult, rebellious child. From a young age, he formed his own street gang, known as the Dirty Dozen. These children were the scourge of the neighbourhood, stealing coal from passing freight trains and getting up to all kinds of mischief. In one incident, he and a friend terrified another boy by taking him to a wood mill, tying him down and turning on the circular saw, stopping it only inches from his body. At the age of thirteen, he was involved in gang-raping a local girl. Thus, even from his childhood days, it was clear that he was a violent individual.

  Dillinger’s first job, came at the age of sixteen, when he was employed as a mechanic. With his new-found earnings, he lived a wild life of reckless drinking, and it became even more difficult for his father to discipline him. In despair, his father moved the whole family to a small farm near Mooresville, Indiana. However, it was not long before his wayward son was in trouble again. He was arrested for stealing a car in the neighbourhood, and subsequently had to join the Navy to avoid a court case.

  Bank robberies

  Dillinger’s rebellious spirit earned him no favours in the navy, however, and within months he had deserted his ship. He returned to Mooresville and married a local girl, sixteen-year-old Beryl Hovius. He attempted to settle down, but he could not hold down a job, and ended up throwing his lot in with a man named Ed Singleton, the town pool shark. Together, the pair tried to rob a grocery shop in the town, but were caught doing it. Singleton pleaded not guilty, but was convicted and sent to prison for two years. Dillinger, on his father’s advice, pleaded guilty, was convicted and received a prison sentence of ten to twenty years, despite the fact that he had no previous convictions. The harshness of his term, especially as it had been increased because he had been honest about his crime, seems to have embittered him against society, and from that time on he lived outside the law. While in prison, he learned to become a criminal, meeting some of the most notorious bank robbers of the period while serving his sentence.

  Much of his time in prison was spent planning his escape, which finally came on May 10, 1933, when he was paroled because his stepmother was ill. While at home, Dillinger laid plans to help his friends escape from jail, and he also robbed a bank in Bluffton, Ohio. He was arrested and sent back to jail, but while he was inside, eight of his prisoner friends escaped, using guns that had been smuggled into their cells and shooting two guards on their way out. Later, on October 12, these friends helped Dillinger escape, shooting a sheriff in the process. Bound together by these experiences, The Dillinger Gang, as it now became known, embarked on a series of daring bank robberies around the country.

  Escape attempts

  First, the gang raided police arsenals at Auburn and Peru, Indiana, stealing machine guns, rifles, ammunition and bullet-proof vests. They then committed several bank robberies, but it was not until a police officer was killed at a raid in Chicago, Illinois, that the heat was on. From that point, the FBI swore to track down the killers.

  However, it was not so easy to catch up with them. The robbers now had plenty of money and spent Christmas in Florida, living the high life. They then headed down to Tucson, Arizona, robbing a bank in Gary, Indiana, on the way. As he made his getaway, Dillinger shot and killed a policeman. By the time they got to Tucson, the word was out and the gang were arrested. They were found in possession of three sub-machine guns, two rifles, five bullet-proof vests, and more than $25,000 in cash. Not even Dillinger could argue his way out of that one: they had been caught red-handed.

  Dillinger was taken to an ‘escape-proof’ prison in Crown Point, Indiana, to await trial. However, despite the high security, he managed to escape, making a replica gun out of wood and then colouring it black with boot polish. Waving the replica gun, he managed to force a prison officer to surrender his own gun, and then, with the help of another inmate, took several hostages before making off from the prison in the governor’s own car.

  Shoot-out

  J. Edgar Hoover, head of the newly formed FBI , was incensed by the news of what Dillinger had done and ordered his capture as a number one priority. A massive manhunt began. Dillinger teamed up with his old comrades and formed a gang, this time including Lester Gillis, also known as Baby Face Nelson. Gillis was known as something of a psychopath, a man who liked machine guns, liked shooting and liked killing. The new gang set off on a series of ever more outrageous bank heists. On one memorable occasion, they engaged in a massive shoot-out with the FBI, in St Paul, Minnesota.

  Time was running out for Dillinger and his band of desperadoes. He had been wounded in the St Paul shoot-out and his health was failing. The band robbed another police arsenal, taking more guns and bullet-proof vests, and headed out to a resort lodge at Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Their plan was to hide out there until the heat had died down. However, news of their whereabouts reached the FBI, and soon officers arrived in large numbers at the lodge. Outnumbered by police, it looked as though the game was up for Dillinger and his men: but once again, they got away.

  In the chaos of the shoot-out that ensued, three innocent onlookers were killed. Baby Face Nelson also shot an FBI agent. The gang members all managed to escape, making the FBI look foolish indeed. Afterwards, there was a public outcry against the FBI, not only for letting the small band of robbers go free, but also for shooting the bystanders through sheer incompetence. Hoover’s FBI was now at the nadir of public opinion, while Dillinger’s gang was enjoying celebrity status.

&
nbsp; Final ambush

  It was at this point that Dillinger let fame go to his head. He went to Chicago and underwent minor plastic surgery to change his looks, and began to frequent the nightclubs and brothels of the city right under the nose of the authorities. He also appeared in public to watch baseball games, supporting the Chicago Cubs. Even then, the FBI somehow failed to find grounds to arrest him.

  But the end was near, and on July 22, 1934, Dillinger attended a film, Manhattan Melodrama, in Lincoln Park. With him was his girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, and a brothel-keeper, Ana Cumpanas, also known as Anna Sage. Sage was facing deportation charges, and unbeknown to Dillinger, had worked out a deal with the FBI so that the charges would be dropped. When the friends left the theatre, Sage tipped off the FBI by wearing a dress that showed up red in the night. The FBI, who had set up an ambush, opened fire, shooting Dillinger in the back and killing him instantly. They had finally got their man.