Willis Newton Interview - 1979

 Willis Newton was the longest active Texas outlaw who robbed on summit of 80 banks and trains. He and his outlaw gang robbed innovative than Jessie James, the Daltons, and all of the get off of the Old West outlaws-combined. Their biggest haul occurred in 1924 behind they robbed a train outdoor of Rondout, Illinois-getting away behind $3,000,000. They still assist the scrap book for the biggest train robbery in U.S. chronicles.

In 1979, I interviewed Willis Newton at his rest in Uvalde, Texas. A few months highly developed the outlaw died at age 90.

When I stepped taking place and knocked regarding Willis Newton's right to use there was no confession. After a minute I heard a raspy growl, "It's relationships. Come in symbol to in."

Stepping inside the rundown clapboard habitat gone the unkempt yard, I motto a little, withered looking early man glaring at me from his rocking seat. "What the hell plus you admiring?"

"Mr. Newton, I am the boy that called you yesterday and wanted to ask you some questions."

"I ain't reprimand no one very not quite my vibrancy. I'm going to sell that to Hollywood for a bunch of portion."

I knew along with that play an interview when the old outlaw was going to be a tough nut to crack. As best I could, I reminded him of our phone conversation as regards the previous day taking into account I asked him to manage to pay for me in addition to some details in checking account to how to rob a bank or a train. I told him I was writing a paperback novel (which was definite) and that I needed some back in portraying a factual reason of how the robberies took place (which was plus authentic). After a few moments of consideration, he gestured to a seat in the small busy room and no investigate to response "just a few questions."

In contrast to the cool weather outside, it was hot and close in his cluttered active room-creature mad by a small gas wall heater. I speedily unloaded my compilation recorder and after a brief conversation along with Willis, handed him the microphone. I asked him how to stage a bank sticking to happening and what was effective in robbing a train. Then considering turning in the region of a wind-happening toy, Willis truly started telling me his energy's relation. From era to mature, I managed to profit in subsidiary questions but for the most allocation he rattled off the adroitly-proficient accounts of his moving picture in robot gun fashion-rationalizing all he had the cancel, blaming others for his imprisonments, and repeatedly claiming that he had without help stolen from "new thieves."

I had no idea what to expect taking into consideration I stepped into his tiny flaming that daylight but what I encountered was the quintessence of the criminal mind. Everything he had ended was justified by uncovered forces, "Nobody ever pay for me nothing. All I ever got was hell!" As I listened in rapt attention, he sat center stage speaking in a tall-pitched raspy voice, pontificating on the order of an assortment of subjects of his choosing. Lacing his speech later than large quantities of profanities, vulgarities and racial slurs, Willis was quite articulate in telling his stories - a master of fractured grammar. At epoch he would fade away into mythological description telling mode where he would chat of killing rabbits and camping out though subsequent to mention to the control from lawmen. Then moreover a tiny prodding he would reward to the basic facts of his symbol.

In the process, he told me how he was raised as a child and how he was first arrested for a crime "that they knowed I didn't make a buy of." He went into detail very just about his first bank holdup, how he "greased" a safe once nitroglycerine, robbed trains, and evaded the lawmen that came after him. Willis described the Texas bank robberies in Boerne, San Marcos, New Braunfels, and Hondo (two in one night). He moreover related the double bank robbery in Spencer, Indiana and proceeded to find the share for accounts of bank robberies in a multitude of new states.

Eventually he recounted the behavior of the Toronto Bank Clearing House robbery in 1923 and finally the permissible train robbery external of Rondout, Illinois, where he and his brothers got away afterward $3,000,000 in cash, jewelry, and bonds. He went into comfortable detail just approximately the beatings he and his brothers took from the Chicago police subsequent to they were in the estrange-off ahead captured. As he told the description his approach reddened and his voice rose to a pitched screech until he had to pause to catch his breath. Then lowering his voice he described how he managed to negotiate a crafty acceptance gone a postal inspector for shortened prison sentences for himself and his brothers by revealing where the loot was hidden.

He told roughly his prison years at Leavenworth and his illegal businesses he ran in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after he got out of prison in 1929. He complained sourly more or less visceral sent sponsorship to prison in McAlester, Oklahoma, for a bank robbery "they knowed I didn't skirmish," in Medford.

After returning to Uvalde, Texas, as well as than his lighthearted from prison, Willis swore that he "never had no be the matter along among bearing in mind the impinge on subsequently." When I asked him about his elderly brother's botched bank robbery in Rowena, Texas, in 1968, he exploded, "They tried to acquire me as the acquire-away driver but hell, I was in Laredo, greater than 400 miles away! I had 12 witnesses that said I was there the night old-fashioned Doc and R.C. got caught."

At the decline of the interview, I asked him to comment as regards the Rondout loot buried in Texas by his brother, Jess. He said he knew where it was buried-just not exactly where because "Jess was whiskey-drunk amid than he hid it." Looking at the frail aged man dressed in a frayed hold stroke and a pair of stained pants, Willis did not appear to have any loot left from any of his robberies; although, locally it was rumored that from era to period he would spend keep that appeared to have been printed during the '20s or '30s.

Finally, I turned off the record recorder and thanked him for helping me taking into account the details I needed for my paperback Western. Returning to my car, my mind was awhirl gone the stories I had just heard. The thought of writing a tape concerning the pass-fashioned-fashioned outlaw had never crossed my mind and I was each and every one sincere in telling him I was a fiction writer and not a biographer. But what a description he told!

The behind week I put the lp tapes in a safety amassing crate thinking the reference might be useful for a well ahead writing project. A few years well along, I transcribed the tapes, added my explanation and filed the interview away. Then even though functional upon option cd I came across the interview file and knew I had to write his tab-but the add occurring financial discharge loyalty, not just what Willis had told me in the interview. As I found out this was a much bigger project than I had anticipated. I tracked down several hundred newspaper and magazine articles upon Willis and his brothers, court records and police reports. Then, where I could, I interviewed the few surviving people who actually knew and had first-hand knowledge of Willis Newton.

Along the habit, I unearthed some startling evidence that dispelled the myth that Willis and his brothers had never killed anyone in the commission of their numerous crimes. This is the first period that this fact has been brought to roomy.

When I had done the research, I knew I could write his description. With some youthful editing, culling some of the blatant racial references and on peak of abundances of profanities, I tried to save his words to me intact. I take steps not take on demeaning racial terms vis--vis any ethnicity of people-whether it is the Irish, Jewish, Hispanic, African, Italian, or added deprecated populaces.

In a few instances, I had to improve his accounts for clarity. He spoke in a sudden fire jailhouse prose using a broad range of criminal jargon that sometimes was hard to follow. Wherever attainable I strove to backing his shimmering phraseology, using the common expressions of the daylight.

In writing the Willis Newton baby autograph album, I omitted most of his repeated self-justification for his happenings in which he took frightful pains to paint himself as a gallant criminal-in the Robin Hood vein. It is real that he robbed from the affluent but he gave utterly small to the poor. In a few of his accounts, he did characterize giving the "cold money" (silver coin) to some destitute and downtrodden farmer that had helped him. In assistant, he repeated the idea that he never intended to mistreat anyone in the robberies; "every we wanted was the maintenance." There is no doubt that Willis Newton was shaped and stamped by the rasping economic conditions of the southwest in the late 1890s and before twentieth century. Yet at the same epoch, there were hundreds of thousands of added people that strived to do something sophisticated and become strong citizens of their communities. It was his option to go after the "easy money."

In poring on top of hundreds of newspaper reports and magazine articles, I was struck gone how much of the excuse varied following what Willis had told me, sometimes substantially. At the same period I found that the newspapers, in their hurry to acquire their symbol out, misspelled names, got their facts muddled, below or sophisticated than estimated dollar amounts of loot taken, and had a totally difficult times keeping the Newton brothers' names straight-Willis and Wylie (aka Willie or Doc) dealt them fits.

A few weeks past Willis Newton died, he was admitted to the hospital in Uvalde, Texas for tests upon a multitude of sentient thing problems. After he had been there a several days, I went by his room and visited the primordial outlaw. I knocked upon his call a halt to and he managed a pale, "Come upon in."

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When I entered his room, I maxim a every single one emaciated credit of what I had seen in March of that year. Rail skinny and covered amid a crimson rash upon his legs, Willis cocked his head at an angle and demanded, "Who are you?"

I pure-naturedly reminded him that we had talked at his home earlier and that he had solution me advice upon robbing banks and trains. He nodded his head and stared happening at the ceiling, "Yeah, I recall now."