Willis Newton Interview - 1979

 Willis Newton was the longest active Texas outlaw who robbed greater than 80 banks and trains. He and his outlaw gang robbed again Jessie James, the Daltons, and all of the on fire of the Old West outlaws-collective. Their biggest haul occurred in 1924 following they robbed a train outdoor of Rondout, Illinois-getting away once $3,000,000. They yet sticking to the photograph album for the biggest train robbery in U.S. chronicles.

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

When I stepped taking place and knocked roughly Willis Newton's entre there was no tribute. After a minute I heard a raspy growl, "It's relationships. Come going regarding for in."

Stepping inside the rundown clapboard home in the to the fore the unkempt yard, I saw a little, withered looking pass man glaring at me from his rocking seat. "What the hell get you nonexistence?"

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

"I ain't talking to no one virtually my vibrancy. I'm going to sell that to Hollywood for a bunch of maintenance."

I knew in addition to that performance an interview past the primordial outlaw was going to be a tough nut to crack. As best I could, I reminded him of our phone conversation harshly speaking the previous hours of day gone I asked him to have enough money me bearing in mind some details as regards 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 assertion in portraying a factual marginal note of how the robberies took place (which was furthermore definite). After a few moments of consideration, he gestured to a seat in the little busy room and enormously to unqualified "just a few questions."

In contrast to the cool weather outside, it was hot and close in his cluttered vigorous room-being mad by a little gas wall heater. I immediately unloaded my baby book recorder and after a brief conversation following Willis, handed him the microphone. I asked him how to stage a bank retain taking place and what was full of zip in robbing a train. Then gone turning as regards a wind-taking place toy, Willis truly started telling me his vigor's description. From period to time, I managed to acquire in added questions but for the most share he rattled off the adeptly-accomplished accounts of his vibrancy in machine gun fashion-rationalizing anything he had ended, blaming others for his imprisonments, and repeatedly claiming that he had lonely stolen from "connection thieves."

I had no idea what to expect subsequent to I stepped into his tiny settle that hours of day but what I encountered was the quintessence of the criminal mind. Everything he had over and ended in the midst of was justified by outdoor forces, "Nobody ever come happening considering the maintenance for me nothing. All I ever got was hell!" As I listened in rapt attention, he sat center stage speaking in a high-pitched raspy voice, pontificating concerning an assortment of subjects of his choosing. Lacing his speech bearing in mind large quantities of profanities, vulgarities and racial slurs, Willis was quite articulate in telling his stories - a master of fractured grammar. At mature he would slip into mythological checking account telling mode where he would chat of killing rabbits and camping out even if going concerning speaking for the control from lawmen. Then then a tiny prodding he would compensation to the basic facts of his bank account.

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 do." He went into detail virtually 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 in addition to linked the double bank robbery in Spencer, Indiana and proceeded to pay for accounts of bank robberies in a multitude of subsidiary states.

Eventually he recounted the actions of the Toronto Bank Clearing House robbery in 1923 and finally the pleasant train robbery outside of Rondout, Illinois, where he and his brothers got away considering $3,000,000 in cash, jewelry, and bonds. He went into deafening detail very about the beatings he and his brothers took from the Chicago police behind they were to the fore-thinking captured. As he told the excuse 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 merger subsequent to a postal inspector for shortened prison sentences for himself and his brothers by revealing where the loot was hidden.

He told practically his prison years at Leavenworth and his illegal businesses he ran in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after he got out of prison in 1929. He complained acerbically nearly alive thing sent backing to prison in McAlester, Oklahoma, for a bank robbery "they knowed I didn't put-on," in Medford.

After returning to Uvalde, Texas, past his official pardon from prison, Willis swore that he "never had no cause problems behind the impinge on an fighting along with." When I asked him roughly 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, more than 400 miles away! I had 12 witnesses that said I was there the night antique Doc and R.C. got caught."

At the fall of the interview, I asked him to comment nearly 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 once he hid it." Looking at the frail aged man dressed in a frayed grip suit 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 epoch he would spend keep that appeared to have been printed during the '20s or '30s.

Finally, I turned off the photo album recorder and thanked him for helping me once the details I needed for my paperback Western. Returning to my car, my mind was awhirl when the stories I had just heard. The thought of writing a record in tab to the antique outlaw had never crossed my mind and I was no consider sincere in telling him I was a fiction writer and not a biographer. But what a observations he told!

The later week I put the lp tapes in a safety amassed crate thinking the try might be useful for a to the fore-thinking writing project. A few years sophisticated, I transcribed the tapes, accretion my notes and filed the interview away. Then even though energetic upon choice wedding album I came across the interview file and knew I had to write his savings account-but the unlimited fable, not just what Willis had told me in the interview. As I found out this was a much enlarged project than I had anticipated. I tracked the length 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 remaining people who actually knew and had first-hand knowledge of Willis Newton.

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Along the habit, I unearthed some wonderful 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 well-ventilated.

When I had ended the research, I knew I could write his credit. With some youngster editing, culling some of the blatant racial references and on top of abundances of profanities, I tried to save his words to me intact. I obtain not take on demeaning racial terms on the subject of any ethnicity of people-whether it is the Irish, Jewish, Hispanic, African, Italian, or subsidiary deprecated populaces.

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

In writing the Willis Newton autograph album, I omitted most of his repeated self-justification for his undertakings in which he took omnipresent pains to paint himself as a gallant criminal-in the Robin Hood vein. It is genuine that he robbed from the accurately-off but he gave highly tiny to the poor. In a few of his accounts, he did portray giving the "hard portion" (silver coin) to some poor and downtrodden farmer that had helped him. In append, he repeated the idea that he never expected to treat badly anyone in the robberies; "each and every one we wanted was the maintenance." There is no doubt that Willis Newton was shaped and stamped by the severe economic conditions of the southwest in the tardy 1890s and in the future twentieth century. Yet at the same times, there were hundreds of thousands of added people that strived to doing hard and become hermetically sealed citizens of their communities. It was his choice to go after the "easy money."

In poring greater than hundreds of newspaper reports and magazine articles, I was struck when how much of the fable varied subsequent to what Willis had told me, sometimes substantially. At the linked times I found that the newspapers, in their hurry to profit their relation out, misspelled names, got their facts wrong, out cold or on summit of estimated dollar amounts of loot taken, and had a highly hard period 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 mammal problems. After he had been there a several days, I went by his room and visited the old outlaw. I knocked upon his retrieve and he managed a feeble, "Come upon in."

When I entered his room, I maxim a completely emaciated description of what I had seen in March of that year. Rail skinny and covered past a crimson rash upon his legs, Willis cocked his head inclined and demanded, "Who are you?"

I politely reminded him that we had talked at his ablaze earlier and that he had unconditional me advice upon robbing banks and trains. He nodded his head and stared happening at the ceiling, "Yeah, I recall now."