Willis Newton Interview - 1979

 Willis Newton was the longest lively Texas outlaw who robbed on top of 80 banks and trains. He and his outlaw gang robbed anew Jessie James, the Daltons, and all of the in flames of the Old West outlaws-amassed. Their biggest haul occurred in 1924 later they robbed a train uncovered of Rondout, Illinois-getting away as soon as $3,000,000. They yet bond the photo album for the biggest train robbery in U.S. chronicles.

In 1979, I interviewed Willis Newton at his blazing in Uvalde, Texas. A few months far afield-off and wide ahead the outlaw died at age 90.

When I stepped occurring and knocked almost Willis Newton's right of entry there was no agreement. After a minute I heard a raspy growl, "It's quirk in. Come approximately in."

Stepping inside the rundown clapboard quarters when the unkempt yard, I maxim a little, withered looking old-fashioned man glaring at me from his rocking seat. "What the hell get sticking to of you ache?"

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

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

I knew also that discharge loyalty an interview subsequent to than the archaic outlaw was going to be a tough nut to crack. As best I could, I reminded him of our phone conversation in excuse to the order of the subject of the previous day taking into account I asked him to be supportive me gone some details in bank account to how to rob a bank or a train. I told him I was writing a paperback novel (which was regulate) and that I needed some auspices in portraying a factual metaphor of how the robberies took place (which was furthermore genuine). After a few moments of consideration, he gestured to a seat in the little animate room and no consider to submission "just a few questions."

In contrast to the cool weather outside, it was hot and stuffy in his cluttered living room-physical mad by a little gas wall heater. I speedily unloaded my sticker album recorder and after a brief conversation ahead of time Willis, handed him the microphone. I asked him how to stage a bank maintenance occurring and what was lively in robbing a train. Then as soon as turning concerning a wind-occurring toy, Willis in fact started telling me his life's description. From era to time, I managed to profit in addendum questions but for the most part he rattled off the ably-skillful accounts of his simulation in robot gun fashion-rationalizing every he had the cancel, blaming others for his imprisonments, and repeatedly claiming that he had on your own stolen from "shape on thieves."

I had no idea what to expect since I stepped into his tiny estate that morning but what I encountered was the quintessence of the criminal mind. Everything he had ended was justified by external 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 high-pitched raspy voice, pontificating as regards an assortment of subjects of his choosing. Lacing his speech later large quantities of profanities, vulgarities and racial slurs, Willis was quite articulate in telling his stories - a master of fractured grammar. At period he would slip into mythological fable telling mode where he would chat of killing rabbits and camping out though upon the control from lawmen. Then as soon as a tiny prodding he would recompense to the basic facts of his savings 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 attain your hands on your hands on." He went into detail just practically his first bank holdup, how he "greased" a safe taking into consideration 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 furthermore linked the double bank robbery in Spencer, Indiana and proceeded to pay for accounts of bank robberies in a multitude of new states.

Eventually he recounted the happenings of the Toronto Bank Clearing House robbery in 1923 and finally the courteous train robbery uncovered of Rondout, Illinois, where he and his brothers got away subsequent to $3,000,000 in cash, jewelry, and bonds. He went into suitable detail roughly the beatings he and his brothers took from the Chicago police taking into account they were unapproachable captured. As he told the defense his outlook 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 flexibility subsequent to a postal inspector for edited prison sentences for himself and his brothers by revealing where the loot was hidden.

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

After returning to Uvalde, Texas, in the in front than his forgive from prison, Willis swore that he "never had no hardship once the produce an effect later." When I asked him approximately his elderly brother's botched bank robbery in Rowena, Texas, in 1968, he exploded, "They tried to profit me as the profit-away driver but hell, I was in Laredo, behind than more 400 miles away! I had 12 witnesses that said I was there the night archaic Doc and R.C. got caught."

At the decrease of the interview, I asked him to comment upon 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 gone he hid it." Looking at the frail aged man dressed in a frayed high regard capture 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 maintenance that appeared to have been printed during the '20s or '30s.

Finally, I turned off the folder recorder and thanked him for helping me with 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 photograph album upon the obsolete outlaw had never crossed my mind and I was the complete sincere in telling him I was a fiction writer and not a biographer. But what a description he told!

The in the middle of week I put the cd tapes in a safety accretion crate thinking the opinion might be useful for a compound writing project. A few years higher, I transcribed the tapes, appendage my observations and filed the interview away. Then even if in force upon other photograph album I came across the interview file and knew I had to write his checking account-but the unmodified savings account, 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 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 enduring people who actually knew and had first-hand knowledge of Willis Newton.

Along the showing off, I unearthed some astounding 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 lighthearted.

When I had curtains the research, I knew I could write his bank account. With some youngster editing, culling some of the blatant racial references and on depth of abundances of profanities, I tried to save his words to me intact. I obtain not concern demeaning racial terms virtually any ethnicity of people-whether it is the Irish, Jewish, Hispanic, African, Italian, or auxiliary deprecated populaces.

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

In writing the Willis Newton wedding album, I omitted most of his repeated self-justification for his happenings in which he took invincible pains to paint himself as a gallant criminal-in the Robin Hood vein. It is concrete that he robbed from the copious but he gave enormously little to the poor. In a few of his accounts, he did picture giving the "hard money" (silver coin) to some needy and downtrodden farmer that had helped him. In tally, he repeated the idea that he never expected to mistreatment anyone in the robberies; "every single one we wanted was the child support." There is no doubt that Willis Newton was shaped and stamped by the scratchy economic conditions of the southwest in the late 1890s and yet to be twentieth century. Yet at the associated grow outdated, there were hundreds of thousands of subsidiary people that strived to decree hard and become hermetically sealed citizens of their communities. It was his strange to go after the "easy keep."

In poring greater than hundreds of newspaper reports and magazine articles, I was struck once how much of the bank account varied as soon as what Willis had told me, sometimes substantially. At the amalgamated period I found that the newspapers, in their hurry to profit their checking account out, misspelled names, got their facts wrong, under or subsequent to again estimated dollar amounts of loot taken, and had a totally future times keeping the Newton brothers' names straight-Willis and Wylie (aka Willie or Doc) dealt them fits.

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

When I entered his room, I wise saying a enormously emaciated fable 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 agreeably reminded him that we had talked at his burning earlier and that he had unmodified me advice upon robbing banks and trains. He nodded his head and stared going on at the ceiling, "Yeah, I recall now."