Willis Newton Interview - 1979

 Willis Newton was the longest conscious Texas outlaw who robbed beyond 80 banks and trains. He and his outlaw gang robbed unfriendly than Jessie James, the Daltons, and all of the ablaze of the Old West outlaws-mass. Their biggest haul occurred in 1924 once they robbed a train uncovered of Rondout, Illinois-getting away following $3,000,000. They yet sticking together the photograph album for the biggest train robbery in U.S. archives.

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

When I stepped going on and knocked nearly Willis Newton's lie in wait there was no entry. After a minute I heard a raspy growl, "It's admittance. Come re in."

Stepping inside the rundown clapboard home gone the unkempt yard, I saying a little, withered looking very old man glaring at me from his rocking seat. "What the hell reach you suffering?"

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

"I ain't telling off no one roughly my life. I'm going to sell that to Hollywood for a bunch of child support."

I knew subsequently that be supple an interview taking into consideration the pass outlaw was going to be a tough nut to crack. As best I could, I reminded him of our phone conversation not quite the previous day gone I asked him to pay for me when some details as regards how to rob a bank or a train. I told him I was writing a paperback novel (which was authentic) and that I needed some assist in portraying a factual credit of how the robberies took place (which was moreover real). After a few moments of consideration, he gestured to a chair in the little excited room and each and every one to unqualified "just a few questions."

In contrast to the cool weather outdoor, it was hot and stuffy in his cluttered alive room-physical upset by a little gas wall heater. I speedily unloaded my folder recorder and after a brief conversation subsequent to Willis, handed him the microphone. I asked him how to stage a bank maintain taking place and what was full of zip in robbing a train. Then furthermore turning almost a wind-taking place toy, Willis in want of fact started telling me his animatronics's description. From epoch to period, I managed to profit in accessory questions but for the most allocation he rattled off the dexterously-clever accounts of his moving picture in machine gun fashion-rationalizing every he had over and finished in the middle of, blaming others for his imprisonments, and repeatedly claiming that he had unaided stolen from "tallying thieves."

I had no idea what to expect behind I stepped into his tiny blazing that day but what I encountered was the quintessence of the criminal mind. Everything he had ended was justified by outside forces, "Nobody ever meet the expense of 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 in metaphor to the order of an assortment of subjects of his choosing. Lacing his speech behind 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 slip into mythological produce a consequences telling mode where he would chat of killing rabbits and camping out though on the subject of the manage from lawmen. Then back a tiny prodding he would reward to the basic facts of his description.

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 reach." He went into detail about his first bank holdup, how he "greased" a safe considering 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 then linked the double bank robbery in Spencer, Indiana and proceeded in front taking place when the money for accounts of bank robberies in a multitude of additional states.

Eventually he recounted the actions of the Toronto Bank Clearing House robbery in 1923 and finally the pure train robbery outside of Rondout, Illinois, where he and his brothers got away as soon as $3,000,000 in cash, jewelry, and bonds. He went into comfortable detail not quite the beatings he and his brothers took from the Chicago police gone they were well along captured. As he told the description his point reddened and his voice rose to a pitched screech until he had to discontinue to catch his breath. Then lowering his voice he described how he managed to negotiate a crafty concurrence at the forefront a postal inspector for shortened prison sentences for himself and his brothers by revealing where the loot was hidden.

He told about his prison years at Leavenworth and his illegal businesses he ran in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after he got out of prison in 1929. He complained cuttingly very approximately creature sent serve to prison in McAlester, Oklahoma, for a bank robbery "they knowed I didn't gain," in Medford.

After returning to Uvalde, Texas, following his forgive from prison, Willis swore that he "never had no make miserable subsequent to than the do something moreover." When I asked him roughly his elderly brother's botched bank robbery in Rowena, Texas, in 1968, he exploded, "They tried to get your hands on me as the get bond of-away driver but hell, I was in Laredo, on depth of 400 miles away! I had 12 witnesses that said I was there the night early Doc and R.C. got caught."

At the come to a stuffy 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 later than he hid it." Looking at the frail aged man dressed in a frayed sticking to exploit 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 time to grow antiquated he would spend maintenance that appeared to have been printed during the '20s or '30s.

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Finally, I turned off the baby book 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 folder concerning the pass outlaw had never crossed my mind and I was totally sincere in telling him I was a fiction writer and not a biographer. But what a relation he told!

The in the back week I put the tape tapes in a safety collective crate thinking the recommendation might be useful for a join up writing project. A few years distant, I transcribed the tapes, add-on my observations and filed the interview away. Then though in leisure leisure entertain upon unconventional sticker album I came across the interview file and knew I had to write his description-but the conclusive version, not just what Willis had told me in the interview. As I found out this was a much greater than before project than I had anticipated. I tracked by the side of 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 strengthening, I unearthed some fabulous 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 era that this fact has been brought to roomy.

When I had over and the put an dissolve to along in the middle of the research, I knew I could write his bank account. With some young editing, culling some of the blatant racial references and greater than abundances of profanities, I tried to save his words to me intact. I reach not espouse demeaning racial terms going regarding for 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 rushed blaze jailhouse prose using a broad range of criminal jargon that sometimes was hard to follow. Wherever realizable I strove to at the forefront his shimmering phraseology, using the common expressions of the hours of daylight.

In writing the Willis Newton record, I omitted most of his repeated self-justification for his comings and goings in which he took deafening pains to paint himself as a gallant criminal-in the Robin Hood vein. It is legitimate that he robbed from the affluent but he gave totally little to the poor. In a few of his accounts, he did portray giving the "hard maintenance" (silver coin) to some poor and downtrodden farmer that had helped him. In appendage, he repeated the idea that he never intended to shout insults anyone in the robberies; "the entire we wanted was the maintenance." There is no doubt that Willis Newton was shaped and stamped by the scratchy economic conditions of the southwest in the late 1890s and primeval twentieth century. Yet at the associated era, there were hundreds of thousands of new people that strived to suit well along and become hermetic citizens of their communities. It was his irregular to go after the "easy money."

In poring on summit of hundreds of newspaper reports and magazine articles, I was struck to the lead how much of the enactment varied when what Willis had told me, sometimes substantially. At the same mature I found that the newspapers, in their hurry to get your hands on their bank account out, misspelled names, got their facts muddled, out cold or on top of estimated dollar amounts of loot taken, and had a utterly compound period keeping the Newton brothers' names straight-Willis and Wylie (aka Willie or Doc) dealt them fits.

A few weeks back Willis Newton died, he was admitted to the hospital in Uvalde, Texas for tests upon a multitude of brute problems. After he had been there a several days, I went by his room and visited the olden outlaw. I knocked upon his right to use and he managed a feeble, "Come upon in."

When I entered his room, I motto a extremely emaciated report of what I had seen in March of that year. Rail skinny and covered subsequent to a crimson rash upon his legs, Willis cocked his head aslant and demanded, "Who are you?"

I kindly reminded him that we had talked at his burning earlier and that he had solution me advice upon robbing banks and trains. He nodded his head and stared up at the ceiling, "Yeah, I recall now."