THE NORTH HOLLYWOOD SHOOTOUT

2/28/1997 - Many people when they saw the movie Heat, believed that the big bank robbery and gunfight at the center of the 1995 were typical Hollywood exaggerations, a case excess and director Michael Mann's overheated imagination, but on this morning at the Bank of America in North Hollywood, the violent fantasy becomes terribly real. 

                                       
                                                          The movie

Meeting at Gold's Gym in Venice, California, 6'4" twenty-six-year-old Larry Eugene Phillips Jr. and Romanian born 6'2" thirty-year-old Emil Decebal Matasareanu bond over weight lifting, body building, and their desire to make money as master criminals.  Soon becoming known to authorities as the "High Incident Bandits," in 1993 the pair rob an armored car outside a bank in Littleton, Colorado, on June 14th of 1995, kill guard Herman Cook while robbing a Brinks armored car, and steal over $1.5 million in cash from two San Fernando Valley Bank of Americas in robberies in May of 1996.  Precise timing, heavy weaponry, a willingness to use excessive violence, and the wearing of body armor are the trademarks of the two outlaws.

             
                                  Phillips                                            Matasareanu

After months of planning and practice, on the morning of the 28th, Phillips and Matasareanu suit up in masks, body armor and gloves with time pieces sewn on their backs, load their equipment (five illegally modified automatic rifles, a pistol, and over 3,000 armor piercing rounds of ammunition in magazines and drums) into a white 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity, take hits of the muscle relaxer Phenobarbital as a calming agent, and head for the a branch of the Bank of America in North Hollywood located at the intersection of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Archwood Street.  At approximately 9:17 AM, with the entrance of the desperadoes into the bank, forty-four minutes of mayhem and madness begins.

                 
                                                           Robbery

Giving themselves eight minutes to loot the establishment before they believe police can respond, the bandits' time table is immediately thrown off when they are spotted by police officers Loren Farrell and Martin Perello, who happen to be driving by on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in a patrol car.  "15-A-43, requesting assistance, we have a possible 211 in progress at the Bank of America."  Beyond possible, actual, and before the robbery ends over 300 members of law enforcement agencies of southern California will respond to the call.  And soon a second call goes out ... Shots Fired!

                                       
                                                   One of the guns

Using their usual tactics, the outlaws fire rounds into the ceiling of the bank to cow the occupants (thirty patrons and employees), force their hostages to lay on the floor, and blast through a bullet proof glass door to gain access to the teller and vault areas.  Filling a large money bag, the robbers' take is $303,305.00 ... a nice haul, but less than the $750,000.00 in cash the pair was expecting to find (causing the reduction, the bank has just altered its asset delivery schedule).  Enraged at the lesser payday, Matasareanu takes his frustration out on the safe, firing a full drum of 75 rounds into the inanimate object.  Bile drained, loot in hand, the pair then exit the bank.  Outside, the police are waiting.

                 
                                                               Matasareanu

All four corners of the bank surrounded and helicopters buzzing about overhead, officers repeatedly request that the pair surrender, but instead, Matasareanu and Phillips open fire on anything that moves.  In the gunfight that ensues, most of the rounds fired by the police from standard issued Berettas and Smith & Wesson revolvers fail to penetrate the body armor of the bandits (the 12-gauge Ithaca Model 37 pump-action shotgun of Officer James Zaboravan is also unable to cause any serious damage) ... unfortunately it is not the same for the slugs that come from the outlaws' weapons and several officers and civilians become bloody casualties over the course of the first eight minutes of action as the robbers engage targets making their way over to their getaway vehicle.  The only safety available, a Brinks armored car will be commandeered by police to evacuate the wounded from the shootout.

                 
                                               Insanity in North Hollywood

For unknown reasons, at the Chevy the pair split up, Matasareanu gets behind the wheel, while Phillips slowly walk beside, continuing to fire in all directions.  Wild West raw, eighteen minutes after the gun battle begins, members of the Los Angeles Police Department SWAT Team begin to arrive (coming from an exercise run, several wear shorts and tennis shoes under their body armor), and armed with AR-15s capable of holing the armor of the outlaws, the tide of the violent contest begins to turn.

                        
                                                   Holed police vehicle

Peeling away from the protection of the getaway vehicle, Phillips is hit in the shoulder as he turns east down Archwood Street.  Hoping to kill right until the end, the outlaw continues to fire at police with his AKM until the weapon finally jams.  Throwing the rifle away, he fights on with a Beretta 92FS pistol until a round strikes him in the hand, causing him to drop the gun ... then over and out realized, he picks up the gun, places it under his chin and commits suicide ... suicide as several killing rounds from the police also hit his body (ten SWAT rounds penetrate his armor).  It is roughly 9:52 in the morning.

                
                                                              Phillips after

Getaway vehicle rendered useless, holed, its windows blown out, all four tires flat, in a residential area of North Hollywood three blocks away from where his partner has just died, Matasareanu attempts to carjack a new ride, a yellow 1963 Jeep Gladiator pickup truck.  Unable to start the Jeep however, he soon finds himself engaged in a fresh gun battle with SWAT members.  A lifetime in the seconds of two-and-a-half minutes, the Romanian battles from behind the Jeep and Chevy until multiple hits to his legs put him down on the pavement.  Cuffed and swearing at the officers that have bested him, he will bleed out from over twenty leg wounds before an ambulance can make its way through the chaos to his position.  It is roughly 10:00 in the morning when the gunfire ceases. 

                      
                                                     Last Stand

Battle over, millions that have watched the event live on local TV can't believe what their eyes have taken in ... approximately 2,000 rounds have been exchanged between outlaws and authorities, numerous buildings and cars have been damaged or destroyed, eleven police officers have been injured, seven civilians have been wounded, and two stone cold killers are meat morgue dead.  

                               
                                                     Gunfight

An incredible incident, in 1998, nineteen officers of the LAPD will receive the organization's Medal of Valor for their heroic actions in thwarting the robbery.

                           

LESTER GILLIS GETS AWAY

2/17/1932 - Already serving a sentence of one year to life for a series of Chicago crimes, Lester Joseph Gillis, better known to criminal history as Baby Face Nelson, is found guilty in Wheaton, Illinois, of the 1930 robbery of the State Bank of Itasca, a job that netted the bandit and his partners $4,678.00. 

                  
                                                      Lester Gillis

Trial over with another year to life sentence added to the time he is already doing, twenty-three-year-old Nelson will be behind bars at the Illinois state prison at Joliet for many moons unless some drastic change in his fortune takes place ... a drastic change like an escape from custody.

           
                                                             Joliet

Led to a conference room after judgment has been rendered, the outlaw is allowed to say goodbye to his family before being frisked by two deputies and then turned over to corrections officer R. M. Martin for transportation back to the prison, a journey that will take place with Nelson's right wrist handcuffed to Martin's left.  It is an overcast and snowy day in Illinois.  Hoping for a chance to give additional goodbyes to Nelson, the Gillis Family follows the pair as they drive to the Wheaton train depot.  There, another set of farewells are indeed exchanged, but from several yards away as Martin keeps an eye on his charge until it is time for the train to leave.  The ride is uneventful and upon arrival at the Joliet train station, Martin commissions a taxi driven by Joseph Candic to finish the journey back to the prison, a trip of only a few short minutes.

                
                                                        Train Station

During the ride, Nelson seems preoccupied with thoughts of how many years he will have to spend behind bars before he gets to experience freedom again, but it is just an act to get Martin to relax his guard.  In sight of the prison. the outlaw suddenly jams a .45 automatic into his guard's ribs.  "Don't give me a reason to shoot you.  Nice and easy now, take off the cuffs."  Sure that Nelson isn't bluffing, Martin does as he is told.  So does Candic when he is told to head the cab towards Chicago and the pistol is moved to his temple.  As a chill dusk descends on the countryside, about four miles southwest of Cicero, Nelson has Candic turn down a side road until the trio reach the Resurrection Cemetery near the town of Summit.  Divesting himself of his traveling companions, the bandit steals a ten dollar bill out of Martin's wallet and then continues on towards the bright lights of Chicago glittering off in the distance.  He will never be under arrest again.

                    
                                                              Nelson

Authorities will never conclusively determine how the desperado acquired his pistol, but later that year while hiding out in Minnesota, Nelson will tell fellow bank robber Alvin Karpis that his freedom has come by way of an "angel" ... an angel in the form of his sister Leona, who has planted the .45 in a rest room on the train.  Or more accurately a devil, because with the freedom Nelson has remaining before his death in November of 1934, in addition to seriously wounding several individuals, he will do away with banker Roy John Frisch so the man can't testify against the killer's organized crime friends in Reno, Nevada, murder a thirty-five-year-old paint salesman named Ted Kidder in front of the man's wife for cutting him off on a Minneapolis road, shoot to death Department of Investigation Agent Carter Baum during the government's bungled Little Bohemia Lodge raid on the Dillinger Gang, and kill two more government agents, Sam Crowley and Herman Hollis, in a gun battle near Barrington, Illinois.  The cause of many tragedies to come in the months ahead, Nelson will die as the nation's Public Enemy #1 as chosen by the Federal Department of Justice ... a designation he richly deserved!

                                             

OUTLAW HENRY STARR'S END

2/18/1921 - On a cold morning of sleet and rain, the long and storied outlaw career of Henry Starr comes to a violent end at the People's State Bank of Harrison, Arkansas.

                                     
                                                                     Starr

Born in 1873 in the Indian Territory, Starr's destiny as a badman seemingly is in his DNA ... his grandfather is the outlaw, Tom Starr, and his uncle is the notorious Sam Starr, the mate of the woman known as the "Outlaw Queen," Belle Starr.  He begins following in their footsteps at the age of sixteen when he is arrested for carrying whiskey into the Indian Territory for distribution.

                               
                                                                  Family

In the thirty-two years that follow, Starr will steal horses, rob stores, trains, and banks, engage in numerous shootouts with authorities, kill Deputy Marshal Floyd Wilson, have a hanging sentence overturned by the United States Supreme Court, receive a pardon for breaking up the jailbreak of Cherokee Bill, work in his mother's restaurant, study for a law degree, write his autobiography, "Thrill Events - Life of Henry Starr," while serving time in the Colorado State Prison, father a son, transition from escaping on horses to fleeing in cars, star in a silent movie about his life called "A Debtor to the Law," and marry three times.

        
                                                                   Movie Star

Too much wild flowing through his veins, in 1921, after a brief attempt at going straight, he is a real life bandit once more.

                                            
                                                                      Starr

Seeking an easy score, Starr and two companions (gunman Rufus Rowlans and getaway driver Dave Lockhart) hit the Harrison bank, but the bank hits back.  In charge, holding a rifle, Starr orders Manager William J. Myers into the bank's vault as a prelude to removing the several thousand dollars it contains, but sadly for the outlaw, it also contains a .38-caliber Winchester on a rack that has been waiting twelve years for just such an emergency.  Grabbing the weapon, Myers fires on Starr just as the bandit is about to enter the vault and scores a hit that drops the outlaw to the floor.  Leader down, the other two outlaws immediately run outside and jump in their Nash, with Myers in close pursuit.  Firing as he runs and accurate again, the banker knocks out the car's windshield and holes a tire of the bandit's escape vehicle as it limps out of town across Crooked Creek Bridge.  The robbery, such that it was, is over.

                                                         
                                                                    Starr

In the same building two-story brick building as the bank, Starr is taken upstairs to the office  of Dr. T. P. Fowler and placed on a cot for examination ... an examination that reveals the bandit is not long for the world as a result of the slug that hit him, severing his spine and destroying his right kidney.  After being patched up as much as is possible, the outlaw is taken to the city jail to await his end.  Before it comes however, Starr, ever the showman, gives a speech about crime not paying and conducts an interview with a reporter from the Harrison Daily News.  On the 22nd of the month, four days after the attempted robbery, he passes in the presence of his mother, Mary, his wife, Hulda, and his seventeen-year-old son, Theodore Roosevelt Starr.

         
                                                             Finally at rest

His last words are, "I am satisfied to die.  I have found peace with God."  Starr is forty-seven-years-old ... and with his death, the Wild West era of American History comes to an end.

              

A MADMAN NAMED ZANGARA

2/15/1933 - Born in Ferruzzano, Calabria, Italy, thirty-two-year-old naturalized citizen Guiseppe Zangara decides since he is having a miserable life, why shouldn't someone else ... many someones in fact, someones like the friends and family of newly elected President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  His method of evening things out will be assassination.

                            
                                     The 32nd President of the United States

An unemployed bricklayer and anarchist that believes "the rich" should be killed, Zangara suffers from severe abdominal pains, mental delusions, and the hates that come with a Napoleonic Complex based on his slight stature of five-feet-nothing and one-hundred-five pounds.  The future president is a big hate and when the maniac finds out that he will soon be giving an impromptu speech at Miami's Bayfront Park, he joins the crowd and waits for his moment.

                             
                                                             Maniac

Taking some much needed time off from the political grind before his scheduled inauguration on March, 4th, Roosevelt is freshly returned from twelve days of fishing on Vincent Astor's yacht, Nourmahal, when his motorcade makes its way into the city.  A warm evening, the park filled with flags and illuminated by red, white, and blue lights, music from an American Legion drum and bugle corps filling the air, everything is in place for Miami to welcome the next president ... unfortunately however, one of the 25,000 people in the park waiting to greet Roosevelt is Zangara.  Arriving shortly after 9:00, Roosevelt addresses the crowd from atop the back seat of a green Buick convertible about his recently concluded fishing trip ... a speech of 145 words that lasts only a minute.

               
                                                           Bayfront Park

Speech done, Roosevelt then talks with nearby dignitaries, invites Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak to ride with him to the train station that will take the president-elect back to New York, and is about to accept a six-foot long "WELCOME" telegram signed by 2,800 citizens when five shots disrupt the night.
     
                       
                                             Cermak - Mortally Wounded

Armed with a five-shot .38 revolver he has bought for the princely sum of $8.00 from a local pawnshop, because of his height, Zangara has to stand on a wobbly metal folding chair to see his target.  His one clear shot is taken just as Cermak steps in front of Roosevelt, then, saving Roosevelt, Lillian Cross, the wife of local physician strikes the assassin's arm with her purse and the rest of his shots go awry.  Awry, but not without causing damage ... Mabel Gill, the wife of the president of the Florida Power and Light Company is hit in the stomach, Margaret Kruis, a twenty-three-year-old nightclub entertainer from New Jersey has a bullet go through her hand, Bill Sinnott, a forty-six-year-old New York policeman who has served as a Roosevelt bodyguard for years, receives a glancing wound to his forehead and scalp, Russell Caldwell, a twenty-two-year-old from nearby Coconut Grove, is hit by a spent round that embeds itself under the skin of the lucky chauffeur's forehead, and Secret Service Agent Robert Clark is grazed by a slug on his right hand.  The worst hit individual though is the mayor of Chicago.

                              
                                                           Cermak

Struck in the right side of his rib cage by a round that penetrates his lung, Cermak is rushed to nearby Jackson Memorial Hospital in Roosevelt's car.  There, nineteen days later, Cermak will die of peritonitis brought on by the bullet and an ulcerative colitis condition he suffers from.  He is fifty-nine when he passes and almost immediately conspiracy theories begin being discussed about the possibility that he was the actual target and that the hit is contracted to Zangara for the offense of Cermak meddling in the rackets of Chicago mob boss Frank Nitti.  Nonsense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                      
                                                                  Nitti

As for Zangara, upon firing his last bullet the assassin is yanked from his perch, has most of his clothes, a brown pair of pants and a brown print shirt, torn off, and is beaten to a bloody pulp by unhappy Miami citizens and a police officer wielding his night stick with righteous idignation.  Pleading guilty to four counts of attempted murder, he will be sentenced to 80 years of hard labor (though taunting the judge, he asks for an even 100), but when Cermak dies, he is hauled back into court to face a murder charge.  Again pleading guilty, Zangara gets what it appears he wanted ... death, by way of the state's electric chair.  A sentence that is carried out on March 10, 1933, one of the quickest examples of capital punishment in United States history, only thirty-three days from the time of the crime to its punishment.  Leaving as the nutzoid he is, Zangara's last words are, "Viva Italia!  Goodbye all poor peoples everywhere!  Pusha da button!  Go ahead, pusha da button!"  No button is pushed, but a switch is gladly pulled by the state executioner and at 9:27 in the morning Zangara goes to Hell for the rest of eternity to work on his English diction.

                               
                                                 Squirt after the shooting

REAPING TIME FOR MACHINE GUN JACK

2/15/1936 - The short life of Vincenzo Antonio Gibaldi comes to a violent conclusion shortly after midnight in a Chicago bowling alley.

              
                                       Avenue Recreation Bowling Alley

Gibaldi begins life in the small rown of Licata, Sicily in 1902, and as a youngster, immigrates to America with his parents.  Growing up on the mean streets of Chicago, he will quickly discover he has a talent for violence, and as a teenager trying to break in to the boxing business, he will start going by the name of Jack McGurn, his thought being that Irish boxers receive more and better matches than Italian pugilists do.  Looking for easy money and excellent with his fists, he will then come to the attention of Al Capone for his potential as a bodyguard ... and from bodyguard it is just a short step to becoming a hitman for the gangster and adding "Machine Gun" to his moniker.

                          
                       McGurn watching the crowd from directly behind his boss

During his busy career as chief blaster for Scarface, though never convicted of a single killing or assault, McGurn is believed to have killed the three men who murdered his stepfather, Angelo DeMory, cut Joey Lewis to ribbons when the comedian refuses to renew his performance contract with the nightclub the mobster is a part owner in, planned and carried out the machine gun death of rival North Side gangster Hymie Weiss, and been the brains behind the notorious St. Valentine's Day Massacre (he will be arrested for the crime, but released soon afterwards for a lack of evidence, and in part because his former showgirl girlfriend and future wife, Louise Rolfe, forever after known as The Blonde Alibi, testifies he was in a hotel room making love to her at the time of the killings).

                                        
                                                              McGurn

McGurn's career ebbs however when Capone, his friend and patron, is sent to jail for income tax evasion and Frank Nitti takes over running The Outfit.  By the 1930s, McGurn is reduced to making money off small drug deals ... and he has also developed a drinking problem in which he becomes verbose on topics the underworld would rather not have discussed in public.  Eventually, somebody decides to shut him up for good.

                                        
                                                               Nitti

Skipping a prize fight he has tickets for, McGurn decides instead to spend an evening bowling at a mob hangout with friends, though going to the boxing match would have been a far better decision.  Surrounded by people he believes he knows and can trust, when two individuals pull pistols and start shooting, McGurn goes out the way most of his victims have, surprised and leaking crimson from multiple bullet wounds.  And adding insult to injury, or to throw the cops off, after the killing the executioners place a nickel in McGurn's hand, the calling card he has left on so many of the bodies he has bloodied, and at the front desk, a comic Valentine's Day card that reads: "You've lost your job; you've lost you're dough; Your jewels and cars and handsome houses!  But things could get worse , you know ... at least you haven't lost your trousers!"  

                                   
                                                           Headlines

Despite twenty witnesses being in the bowling alley, no accurate description of the killers can ever be formulated and the crime will remain unsolved to this day ... however, there are three theories as to what has happened, all bearing some degree of credibility.  With the clue of the Valentine's Day card and the timing of the killing, McGurn's death could have been a retaliation murder by members of Bugs Moran's gang.  It is thought the killing might have been hit by Nitti's men to shut him up and warn off others members of the organization not to become involved in running drugs.  And some believe the shooting is done by James Gusenberg, the brother of two of the victims in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.  

                                 
                                                    Over and Out

Only one person seems to actually know what happened ... the day after the killing, McGurn's half-brother, Anthony DeMory, proclaims he will slaughter the killers of his beloved relative.  Not taking any chances he might, three masked gunmen send DeMory permanently packing when the youth visits a pool hall on March 2, 1936 ... it too goes in the Chicago Police Department's unsolved cases file.

                                       
                                            McGurn in better times

THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE

2/14/1929 - Kisses, hugs, and candy give way in Chicago to bullets, blood, and death as Al Capone tries to end his feud with the North Side Gang by killing its leader in an event that will go down in the annuals of crime as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

                     
                                                          Big News

Planned for weeks, Capone's men rent rooms across the street from the headquarters of bootlegger George "Bugs" Moran to observe his comings and goings and those of his gang, the assassins practice their roles in the coming crime, a hook is set that a highjacked load of Old Log Cabin whiskey will be available for delivery at low price of $57 a case, and Sir Scarface, the man everyone will know is responsible, gives himself an alibi by being on vacation on Palm Island in Florida.  Everything is in place on Valentine's Day, 1929.

   
                                                              The Hook

Ready to take delivery of the bargain booze at the scheduled time of 10:30 in the morning, in eighteen degree weather as snow flakes drift about on the wind, a group of men gather at "S.M.C. Cartage Company" ... a dingy brick one-story brick building located at 2122 North Clark Street.  The coming unfortunates consist of:

*John May, thirty-five, father of seven, with a record of being arrested for larceny and robbery, he deliveries booze for the gang.
*Adam Heyer, operating by the name of Frank Synder, forty, married to his second wife for seven months, Moran's business manager and accountant.
*Albert Kachellek, thirty-nine, calling himself James Clark, a hitman for the gang.
*The Gusenberg brothers, Frank, thirty-six, and Peter, forty, both killers for Moran.
*Reinhart H. Schwimmer, twenty-nine and recently divorced for the second time, a friend of Dion O'Banion and other North Siders, just stopping in for a chat and a cup of hot coffee.
*Albert R Weinshank, thirty-six, owner of a North Side speakeasy and the man Moran has selected to infiltrate the city's garment rackets, a man who looks and dresses like his boss. 

Absent is the boss himself, Moran, the man Capone most wants ... leaving his Parkway Hotel apartment late in the company of gang member Ted Newberry, the gangster sees a police car pull up at the rear of his headquarters and decides to wait until they leave at nearby coffee shop before making an appearance at "the office."  It is a wise decision that saves the mobster's life.

                                              
                                                          Bugs Moran

The police car that has arrived after receiving the erroneous information that Moran is inside, a seven-passenger black Cadillac complete with siren, gong on the running board, and a gun rack on the back of the driver's seat, contains five men ... none of them are police, though two are attired in street cop uniforms.  The two "cops" enter the building, and thinking they are legit officers of the law about to make an arrest, Moran's men immediately comply with an order that is given to put their hands in the air and face one of the structures large brick walls.  Victims in place, the men then signal their companions outside.  Four shooters ready, two Thompson machine gun flanking two shotguns, the killers then open up on Moran's men. 

               
                                                  Police recreation

The first sweep of fire targets the victim's lower backs up to their neck and heads, then the men reload and one machine gunner, squats and puts extra rounds in the heads of the men, his misses hitting the already downed bodies in the feet.  Over 150 bullets fired, the massacre is over in seconds, and to insure a safe exit is made, the "cops" then pretend to arrest the two machine gunners.

         
                                                        The Real Thing
  
                                                        Transfer of bodies

Amazingly, though hit fourteen times, when the real police arrive at the crime scene they find Frank Gusenberg still alive ... but not for very long, too grievously wounded to survive, the mobster passes away three hours later at the nearby Alexian Brothers' Hospital, his last words are in answer to a police query as to who has shot him, "I won't tell."  The only other witness to the crime other than the killers will never tell authorities anything about the murders either ... he can't since he is victim May's frightened and shivering German Shepard, Highball.

                            
                                                   Frank Gusenberg

"Only Capone kills like that!" Moran will state once he discovers what has happened while he was in the coffee shop, and though the world will agree, neither he, nor any of his men are ever found guilty of the crime.  The closest the authorities will ever come to tying anyone to the murders takes place later in the year when police conduct a raid on the hideout of hoodlum Fred "Killer" Burke and discover two Thompson's there, serial numbers 2347 and 7580, the machine guns used in the slaughter ... lacking any other evidence though, Burke is never charged with participating in the massacre and he dies of a massive heart attack while serving time for other crimes never admitting to being a Capone gunman.

                                        
                                                            Burke

The crime of the century at the time the slaughter takes place, only the ghosts of North Clark Street now know who actually pulled the triggers on that cold Valentine's Day morning in 1929 ... and like Highball, they aren't talking.

         
                                                 Chicago - 2/14/1929

WHY HE WAS THE TRI-STATE TERROR

2/13/1927 - On the run after his January escape from the jailhouse of Okmulgee, Oklahoma, where he was awaiting trial for armed robbery and murder, badman Wilbur Underhill decides an easy target for some travel money would be raiding a movie theater of it's night's receipts ... he is tragically wrong in that determination.

                                             
                                                              Underhill

At the Mystic Theater in the Oklahoma mining town of Picher, Underhill arrives moments after its owner, J. D. Wineland, has gone upstairs and deposited $800 in his office strongbox.  Pulling a pistol, the outlaw demands cashier E. E. Burkholder turn over the cash she has.  The frightened woman complies, but the desperado's take is only five dollars in change.  Watching unobserved from his office over the movie hall's foyer, Wineland contemplates pulling his pistol from his desk and shooting the bandit, but decides a few measly dollars are not worth the sacrifice of human life ... Underhill however is not operating with the same type conscience.

       
                                                       Picher, Oklahoma

As Underhill rushes away from the theater with his loot, Wineland calls Constable George Fuller and gives him details about the robbery.  Searching town for the culprit, at around 9:30 in the evening Fuller, accompanied by a twenty-one-year-old miner sworn in as a deputy named Earl Robert O'Neal, spots an individual matching the description of the robber at the counter of Owl Drug Store, only a block away from the theater.  Approaching the man as he exits the pharmacy with a milkshake in one hand and a detective magazine in the other, Fuller orders the suspect to put his hands in the air, turn around, and place them against the front window of the drug store.  With Underhill seeming to be in the process of complying, Fuller tosses his bracelets to O'Neal and tells the deputy to put the outlaw in cuffs.  Stepping forward to do as he is told, O'Neal also puts himself between the constable's gun and Underhill, a serious error in judgment.  The shielded split second is all the time the rattlesnake bandit needs to strike.  Pivoting, in one motion Underhill smashes his elbow into O'Neal's face, draws a pistol from his belt, and begins firing.  Hit several times, O'Neal will be rushed by an ambulance to the nearby American Hospital, but dies on the operating table from the massive internal bleeding caused by the damage he has taken to his abdomen.

As O'Neal goes down, Underhill breaks away and runs into a parking lot where he uses the cars there as cover ... and cover is needed because Fuller, and just arrived on the scene Night Policeman George Norton, fire over a dozen shots at the fleeing killer, a barrage that shatters the plate glass window of a furniture store and blows a large hole in the front door of a second hand shop, but fails to hit Underhill with a single round.  Vanishing into the night, Underhill makes good his escape from the town despite the efforts of local authorities and roughly a hundred irate miners to catch the killer ... a sad set of circumstances that will allow the outlaw to continue his murderous ways for another seven years.

               
                                      Underhill Comic

WILLIE SUTTON'S LAST ARREST

2/18/1952 - A tragedy begins when twenty-four-year-old crime buff Arnold L. Schuster spots bank robbing fugitive Willie "The Actor" Sutton riding on a New York Subway and informs police (the nickname is picked up due to the elaborate costumes and disguises he uses on many of his jobs).  The trigger is a dead car battery that sets the deadly dominoes of Fate falling. 

                                 
                                                                The Actor

Going to a service station around the corner from one of the apartments he uses as a hideout, Sutton discovers that the mechanic that replaces batteries is late for work for the first time in ten years ... and the other attendant can't drive the tow truck around the block to help with a charge because then there would be no one available to watch the station.  Not wanting to miss a meeting in Union Square he has scheduled with his criminal partner Tommy Kling to discuss the upcoming robbery of an armored car, Sutton decides to get there by way of the subway, a short, fifteen minute ride.  At the meeting, Kling is surprised when Sutton shows up on foot as he wants his friend to drive him on to a meeting with a lawyer that owes him money.  Sutton agrees to get his battery fixed and return, and heads back to the subway, barely getting on the next ride to the station near his home ... a ride Schuster is also on.

               
                                                              Wanted Poster

A robber that had plucked over $2,000,000 out of banks, stores, and armored cars over the course of a career begun in the 1920s, and an escapee from numerous jails and prisons, Sutton is a notorious criminal wanted by authorities across the country, on the loose and in the news since his departure from a life sentence at the Philadelphia County Prison at Holmesburg five years and one week before.  Because he is known to like expensive clothing, his photo has been sent to tailors up and down the east coast ... one of which has been looked at daily by Arnold Schuster for the two years he has pressed pants in his father's shop. 

                                              
                                                         Schuster

Sutton has less than a minute left until his home destination when the subway stops at Delkalb, and Schuster, who has been shopping in downtown Brooklyn, gets on and instantly recognizes the outlaw.  Unobserved, Schuster follows Sutton to his car, where to save time, the bandit has decided to take the battery out of the vehicle himself prior to going around the corner for a charge or replacement.  Location noted, the citizen crime fighter then goes in search of the nearest cop.  He finds two in a nearby cruiser, Patrolmen Donald B. Shea and Joseph McClellan.  Investigating, Sutton shows identification and sweet talks the officers, convincing them he is just a law abiding citizen trying to service his broken vehicle.  The men drive off, but when they mention to Detective Louis Weiner (a man that has been harassed by a friend for years about why doesn't he do something of value and catch Willie Sutton) that they just came from a false alarm involving a Willie Sutton look-a-like, the police investigator decides another look might be in order.  Another look indeed!  Chat and papers produced again, the officers convince Sutton to stroll down the block to the police station to resolve his identification so there will be no more future mistakes, and the outlaw goes, believing he can con his way past handcuffs (although armed with .38 pistol, unlike many of the desperadoes of the 20s and 30s, Sutton keeps his weapon holstered).  He is wrong, and when fingerprints are taken there are no more doubts as to who the police have in custody.

            
                                                              Under arrest
                                               
                                                              Behind bars
                       
                                                  Interviewing "The Actor"

In the wake of the arrest, Schuster becomes a celebrity and is held up in print, on television, and over the airwaves as an example of what good citizenship should be.  It is a concept that Murder, Inc. boss Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia finds alien and repugnant.  Known throughout the underworld for his explosive temper and murderous ways, despite having no personal connection to Sutton, the mobster goes ballistic and orders a hit on the crimebuster for being "a squealer."  Contract given, Schuster has only eighteen days left to live. 

                         
                                                                   Anastasia

For Sutton, the arrest is the end of his criminal career.  Found guilty of the 1950 robbery of a branch of the Manufacturers Trust Company in Queens, the outlaw is sentenced to 30 to 120 years in the Attica State Prison.  

                                               
                                                              In custody

On his best behavior throughout his stay at the facility, Sutton will eventually be released on Christmas Eve of 1969.  Finally free, he will spend the last years of his life speaking up for prison reform, giving banks tips on how to prevent robberies, penning a best-selling autobiography called Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber, and even making a credit card television commercial for a Connecticut bank.  Suffering from emphysema and circulation issues in his legs, in 1980, the legendary bandit will pass away at his sister's home in Spring Hill, Florida at the age of seventy-nine.
                                       
                                                          
                                                        Commercial Willie