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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening. Drawing on media reports, interviews, and court records, this book recounts the stories of women bank robbers in the United States from the time of the Revolutionary War to the present, ranging from sensational to poign it to comical. Heists of frontier outlaws, gun malls, insurrectionists, housewives, grandma's and young mothers literally robbing or pamps are narrated as part
of the social history of women in America. The book that we're featuring this evening is Put the Money in My Purse, A History of Female bank Robbers, with my special guest, journalist and author Judith A. Yates. Welcome back to the program and thank you for this interview. Judith A.
Yates, Hey, Dan, Hey you Dren. Thank you for having me on this show. I love your show. So I'm glad to be here.
Thank you very much. I love you having on, having you on. Thank you very much for joining us tonight with this incredible book about female bank robbers, very very interesting. Let's talk about the impetus why you decided. You've been involved in writing about female criminals for many, many years and lecturing about some of the issues facing women. Let's talk about what was the impetus for this book and some of the contents, some of the things you explore in this book.
Okay, Well, I was reading a study by the FBI on bank robbing statistics, and I wondered, as a female and as a criminologist who writes in studies on female perpetrators, I wondered about female bank robbers, and, like a lot of things that get me in trouble, I thought, I have an idea. And I've researched and written about female murder and female crime for so many years. Like you said,
bank robberies not so much. And I got to researching and there aren't any books specifically on female bank robbers as a whole. Now you're going to find all kinds of books on the Patty Hurst case, which I'm well versed in and I can tell you anything about Bonnie
Park that you care to know. So I just kind of just threw myself into it, and along the way, the book is sort of a journey, and you're taken from the first documented bank robbery by a female, which happened in eighteen ninety seven, to modern times.
So it's a history and a memoir of sorts. And along the storyline.
There's a discussion of what life was like for women during each time period, economically, socially, politically, because that impacted a woman's role in history and in bank robbery. And I thought it was sort of an interesting way to sort of explain their crime, because really crime is a reflection of society, which is a reflection of crime.
Right now, talk about some of the contents to basically demonstrate or illustrate the expanse of this book. What is all covered? You say, it starts off from the very first bank robber to modern times. So as you put in the contents in the chapter titles, tell us some of the contents that are covered in this book.
Well, I took it from the very first documented robbery that I could find. I took it way back to the eighteen hundreds, which was a lot of fun because I've always been interested in wild West outlaws, and I brought it forward to the most turbulent periods in law
enforcement and criminal justice. Took it to the nineteen twenties, the Roaring twenties, and sort of fast forwarded it to the fifties and the sixties, And of course the nineteen seventies were very turbulent time for law enforcement, what with the domestic terrorism going on, the Vietnam War happening, the time where we were sort of becoming mistrustful of the government, and we were educating ourselves on what was happening with the government, and you know, wait a minute, maybe it's
you know, maybe it's not going as as smooth as we thought, and we need to start questioning who's in leadership these days, and turned it and kept rolling it into modern times. And why are women, you know, robbing banks during modern times? And what are banks doing now to prevent these sort.
Of robberies, because you know, back in the day, you could get away.
With thousands and thousands of dollars, whereas today the average take is fifteen hundred. And what is the difference between women robbing and the eighteen hundreds, nineteen fifties, all the way up to now why were they robbing a bank? You know?
Was it to get fast cash, was it to.
Fund you know, some kind of important idealism, or was it just just pay a bill? So I'm breaking up the book in those time periods from you know, wild West and cowboys and cowgirls, up to the gun malls, and then to the fifties where women were figuring out their roles in societies, up to where we saw the Patty Hurst era, really what I call the you know, the bank robbers darling up to modern times.
You talk about the first bank robber recorded bank robber official, which was Cora Hubbard. Tell us about the first lady of bank robbery as you call her and as others have called her.
Oh well, Coorra was an interesting individual.
I liked her because she is just this tough, scrappy, little tiny woman that lived on the plains.
She was married once and he was very abusive and she left him.
Now, back in those days, there wasn't much left for a female to do, not a lot of chisses.
And she came from a farming family. The mother died early.
And she was left, of course, to ranch, and she hooked up with another man, and her brother lived nearby. So they've got this ranch that they're trying to hold together. And they have a man come to the ranch to work on the ranch with them, and he starts talking out bank robbery. Now, of course, bank robbery back in the day also meant train robbery, because the banks used the train to move the gold and the money and
the buyings from place to place. And everybody's all in the idea, and then the husband and one of the guys in the group says, you know what, this isn't such a good idea, and they back out, and Cora gets mad and she says, I will not live with the damn coward. And she's all about it. I mean,
she's in the forefront, you know. And she chops off all her hair and dresses like a man as part of her disguise and as part of this robbery, which I found interesting because you've had these folks like of course Bell Star and Pearl Hart and these kind of folks that everybody knew was a female and was committing crimes, and Cora dresses like a man. Now here's what I found interesting. Was the newspapers. Of course, they got caught, made a huge deal out of Coora dressing like a man,
and in their words, acted like a man. She could shoot, she could ride, she cussed, she smoked cigars and chewed chaw. Fast forward to robberies of today, where a female disguises herself as a man. That also makes the news first and foremost dressed like a man. So I think that's interesting now. Of course, back then, the newspapers and the eighteen hundreds, they were written with very florid pros and
they contained a lot of opinions. So the opinions wrote of Cora was that she was very coarse, She was not attractive, she was dark skinned. She resembled an Indian woman, which back then was not a good thing to be, they, I wrote of her now, she was glad to talk to the press. And they asked her when she robbed bank, you know, they said, were you scared? And she said, hell no, and I'd do it again. I'd shoot up the whole damn town if I got a chance. So she was fearless.
She was fearless, you say. Early on, a lot of the stories in this book, most of the stories in this book. The media takes real liberties with facts and always and goes out of their way to demonize these women, don't they They really.
Do, And I thought that was interesting too, you know.
They it's almost like, for example, you know, back in their roaring twenties or during this time period, Jay Edgar Hoover was one to really demonize these people, and he did it with mab Barker. Now, mab Barker never robbed a bank. I only mentioned her and Bonnie Parker because they were always associated with bank robbery, so I wanted to put those myths to bed. But what Hoover was doing was he was demonizing these petty criminals so that when his new FBI caught them, they were really made
to look like the heroes. So it was, okay, we can't catch these really bad eggs, but we can catch these smaller eggs, and we'll make these smaller eggs look like really bad guys, so we'll.
Come out the hero.
And I think that's kind of where it started with Jay Edgar's you know, lionizing these these you know, I mean, mab Barker was just this chunky old woman that spent the money that her boys made.
When they robbed the banks.
You know, she went to the moving picture shows while they planned the banks, and she helped tighter boys because she loved her kids.
And that's basically all she was really guilty of.
But you know, in Jay Edgar Hoover's eyes and on the paper boys, she was just this wild hell cat that was just vicious and wild and.
You know, gun total bloody mama. And I kind of think that's you know, that might where it had come from, is that's when it started.
You talk about that the vast majority of bank robbery is exclusive to men, so this is very very rare. Yet at some point in the book you talk about that it's a growing trend in America. Let's get back to the wild wild West and a famous story about Eda, which the media called her but ethel Place and the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy.
Yeah, and she's an interesting person too, because there's just not a whole lot known about her prior to her hooking up with Sun Dance.
You know, some say that she was a school teacher that you know.
Turned bad. Some say that she was a prostitute, which might be the real story that hooked up with Sundance. But nonetheless, she and Sunday were definitely an item, and she was only one of two women who knew where Robert s rust was located. And that's really something to say, because you know, this was a man's world. She was stepping into a man's world, and she was still very much I think, do you understand what I say when I say she was very much a woman. She dressed
a very ladylike, she acted very lady like. She loved pretty things and was a very attractive woman. But she was an expert horseman and she could fire a crack shot, very educated, very well spoken. So you kind of wonder, okay, where exactly did she come from? And you know, I'd love to go back in time and saw that mystery.
But nonetheless, she and Sundance did hook up, and which Cassidy of course, being Sundance's pal, and they trusted her exclusively so that she knew where Roberts roost was and she knew how to keep her mouth shut, and she did it because she loves Sundance.
It's very interesting when people's most people's idea of what really happened is based on butch casting and the Sundance Kid, Robert Redford and Paul Newman. And what was interesting in the true story is that the charms of her Charms and Sundance, the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy on this
Shariff Humphries. So Sheriff Humphreys is employed to go get them arrest them in Argentina, but he's charmed by these people and so warns them and hence loses his job, and they escape very right, and he's getting.
Sweet on her. I mean, she was a very pretty woman.
If you look at her photo, and you can even see she has this aura of like you said, of charm about her and grace, and there are only two photos known of her, but you can still see it in her. And of course they were good looking guys and they probably had the same same are about them. And he sent to go arrest them, but instead he gives them the one up and off they go, and that's when she assists in robbing the bank and they.
Get away with it.
You're write in the book that things change in World War two, and you talk about that it's called a turning point. Gun girls, child brides, and showgirls. So tell us how everything changed in World War Two and women's role changed and how that led to bank robbery.
Okay, okay, well, you've got the men going off to war, which at the same time, this is leaving jobs open. Now we've got to have somebody working those jobs because we've got to keep it busy on the home front. Plus we have to have airplanes, we've got to have weapons, we've got to have ammunition.
Well, who are going to fill those roles?
Women are stepping into these roles and they do everything from create victory gardens, to fly.
Airplanes, to test ammunition. I mean, women step up and they have learned that there's a new role for them out there. They don't have to be mommies and wives and cooking dinner and keeping the house pretty. They can go out there and they can repair an airplane. They can join the military. They can go to a.
Factory and repair a machine that's five times the size of the house that they go home to. So they're learning all of these new roles and with this comes in.
A new found freedom.
And with this new found freedom, as I explained, you know crime being a reflection of society, being a reflection of chrome, well, you know it's going to bleed over into the criminal side of life. So here come the men back from war, and they're not going to say, you know, society is not going to say, oh, well.
We don't really have a job for you.
They're going to boot these women out because we don't have equal rights amendments yet. And it's perfectly legal to tell a woman, well, a man needs that job, see you. Oh, by the way, he's going to make a lot more money than you in that job, so see ya.
And so she's going to get booted out.
I mean, a woman couldn't even serve in the military if she were married and or had a child, So what is there to do. Then we have, you know, guys coming back from the war that are going to have PTSD, which they didn't know what was. You know, back then, they didn't have any resources to speak for these fellas. And this means problems in the home front.
So here are these you know, suffering this domestic violence at home, which, by the way, they don't have a word for that yet either, because they didn't have domestic violence shelters for women until the nineteen eighties. So you know, a woman's going to have to have money or some kind of a financial nest to escape.
How are you going to do that if you can't land a job, if.
You don't have a nest day, because the man's going to control the finances.
You talk about also as well, the advent of cameras, the first cameras in banks, despite being grainy photographs. You talk about the first bank robbery caught on camera.
Yes, and that's a really interesting story. I spoke to the folks at the museum where that camera is being held, and as soon as I can, I'm going to go up there and look at it.
But this camera had.
Been used during military times and bank robbery was on the rise, and they got to thinking, you know, why don't we use this in banks to catch robbers?
So they decided to try it in this one bank.
They put it up in the walls. Now we're talking about this huge, cumbersome, blocky thing with all these wires, and you know, it was just a pain to put up in the wall and a pain to remove. And they were, you know, the officials first saying Okay, we're gonna put it up in the wall. We're gonna set it up, we're gonna put the buttons down by the registers to I'm sorry that the teller's registers to push a button to start recording, and tomorrow we're going to come back and.
We're going to test it. So that's what they did.
Well, they didn't have to test it because that next day they had a do a bank robbers walk in, wanted them being a female, and they robbed the bank and they leave. They jump in a car driven by a female and they take off and what's he Here's another rub to the story is the woman who pushed that button to start that camera whirling that made history. She didn't even hit that button to record the bank robbery.
She hit that button because when the bank robbers walked in, the man started using the F word and nasty language, said this was a stick up, and there were some elderly ladies in the lobby as patrons of the bank, and the teller got mad and she was like, he is not going to use that kind of language in this bank, and she hit the button so the police could identify him for using that kind of language. And the next thing, you know, rippling out guns, robbing the place.
How did they get around the grainy photographs because you write that they were very poor quality.
Oh yeah, if you look at them, they really are.
And you know, there there were several pictures taken and in the book there's only two out of those several and honestly, I don't even understand how they got anything out of those photos. It was truly a gum shoe effort. They posted those photos, you know, in the media and asked for assistance, and one by one, by going to these lunch counters, in the next lunch counter in the movie house.
Then the place where the girl was renting a room, in.
The place where her friend was, they found out who the perpetrators were. But it really was I'm thinking that at the time they were considered good pictures.
And maybe the I were trained. That's the only thing I can think of, because you know, I was.
Even told these pictures aren't good enough for the book, but they were all we had to work with, so and I wanted them in the book because I wanted to show the readers just you know, they were their history.
That the first photos of a bank robbery and a female was an involved.
Absolutely. You talk about in this same chapter about Esther and Patsy Whiting, the family that robs together you know, stays together. This is a fascinating story encompassing many issues as well. They are illustrated in this one story.
Right right Esther was a divorced woman, she has some kids. She's got a son that comes back from the army, and he's just kind of one of these ne'er dwells that would rather steal and you know, take other people's things than make an honest living. And he and his buddies decide bank robbery is a good idea, and his little sister helps rob the bank. She tucks her hair up under a hat and everybody thinks she's a young man,
and his mama drives the getaway car. So it's just sort of like this whole family affair thing of bank robbing. And besides robbing banks, he's also a burglar. And when the sister appears in the newspaper days later, because of course they're caught, his sister is wearing a coat that he stole in one of his pargaries. So one of the women reading the article she says, that's my coat. And so not only you know, do the readers get to read this salacious story about a mom, her son,
and her daughter who all rub them back together. But they also get to identify some stolen property too.
But they were an interesting family.
And then when they were waiting to be transported to jail, and the reporters are saying, hey, how about a smile.
For us esther and she got mad.
You know, she's telling them to mind their own business, and it was an interesting story. She was actually perturbed that they're willing to take her picture because it's a story. It's you know, mother, daughter.
And son all bank rubbing together.
Yeah, incredible. You have a part five Power to the People and you write that you were involved and partnered with the FBI with this radical animal rights group. Tell us about this undercover initiative that you undertook and what happened.
It wasn't PETA, It wasn't an animal rights activist group that I don't even believe they exist anymore. But I was working as a private investigator and we partnered with the FBI. It was an animal rights group that had originally started in England, and they had killed at.
Least one person. They had blown up a couple of cars, a couple of.
Buildings, and they were targeting people who worked at these businesses. Organizations that were doing animal testing, and then they were over in the United States and they were doing the same. They were finding out where these people lived, they were targeting their homes, and not only were they targeting the people's homes but also their neighbors. So they were destroying property. They were destroying cars and throwing eggs at the houses and setting fires, and it was a scary time for
these folks. And I went undercover to join this group, and they had put a poster and flyer out that they were going to all meet at night time in this I guess it was kind of like a park in the middle of this very upper crust neighborhood, and they were going to strategize their next move. And the way they wrote it, it sounded all very clandestine, and it sounded like very frightening actually, because he didn't know
what these people were capable of. They'd already killed one person, they'd already blown up cars, very serious destruction of property, and so we really didn't know what their next move was going to be.
So I go undercover with this group, and they really were a bunch of wealthy.
Kids and wealthy people that were pretending to be poor it was very, very interesting, very educated driving Alexis driving cars like that, and they wanted to believe in something, so they believed what they were doing was the right thing. But when they all decided they were going to sit and strategize, basically what they were going to do was just go to a local club and drink a bunch
of beer and listen to local musicians. It had nothing to do with planning what they were going to do to anything.
You saw that many of these groups. Why you included this story is, I'm thinking is that it showed that despite these very very serious intentions, murderous intentions, that they were really unorganized, unfocused, and unrealistic about what they were doing.
Right, It's like they had no idea. It was a strange ecotomy.
It's like they could organize something bad, like blowing up a car, but they were doing it for reasons that they thought they understood. They weren't really educated on the cause.
They just thought they knew the cause.
Yes, And.
I was really thrown off by the way they talked. It was like they were trying to appear poor. It was like they were trying to appear low socio economic un educated. But they would flip into the language and the body language, and like, you know, two of them were talking about you know what, they pulled up in this brand new it's Alexis, it's brand new off the showroom, and I'm thinking, okay, you and they're they're talking about
this car like you know, it's their baby. But then they'd slipped back into this this talk and this walk and I'm thinking okay. And it was it was a long it's a long, sordid story. But my cover was blown. And then I got targeted and they were putting notes in my mailbox. They were driving by it all hours, yelling in bullhorns. I had to have the cops watching
my house. They started harassing my neighbors, and I slept on the couch with my gun for quite a while because we had no idea what these people were capable of. You know, we knew what they could do, we knew what they had done, so they were just they were unpredictable. But they were just so uneducated on the facts. And it wasn't just animal testing that they were protesting. It was a lot of different pro animal things that they didn't even know what was truly happening.
It was just based on conjecture and idealism and such.
But they reminded me a lot later on in life of the sla who kidnapped Patty Hurst and all these other organizations like Weather Underground and such.
You know, they thought they knew what was going on in the.
World of the an educated, low sex economic and they really didn't have a lot of grasp of what truly was going on.
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free today on the App Store or Google Play. That's Friends with without the R Best Fiends Now, Judis, we were talking about misguided people in organizations and groups, and you have a story about Susan Sachs and Katherine Ann Power, and these were radicals that were much more organized and very, very dedicated to their cause. Tell us about Susan Sachs and Katherine Ann Power.
Well, these were two.
Young women that were highly highly educated. And it's interesting because if you look at people that joined these radical organizations in the seventies, all of them were highly educated individuals. But they started out and this is another interesting thing that when they were in high school, these people were also involved in pep squads and different groups of organizational support and.
Behavior of the schools or of other groups.
They were always the people that welcomed new students in I thought that was interesting too. But nonetheless, these two girls were so so intelligent, and they are going to college and they are listening to these speeches about anti Vietnam war and educate prisoners inmates, educate in particular black inmates. You know, instead of prisons being places of punishment, they should be educating and uplifting these inmates so that when they are let out of prison.
They do have a future.
And they're listening to these presentations and these speeches, and they start listening and saying, you know what, I believe in this, I agree with this cause. And they get to be friends with this fellow that's there at the college on a special program for.
Returning Vietnam soldiers and for.
Inmates, and they start following him because he knows where it's at. He's been there, you know, he's he knows what it's at. Now. Mind you, these two women have never been around anything illegal. But again, this misguided idea of what it's like to be a poor quote unquote downtrodden black individual. You know, they believe they know what this is and what it's like to be an inmate. So they're listening to his stories and you know what goulogs we have in the United States and by way
of prisons. And they decide that they're going to make a difference in the world and they're going to stop the Vietnam War and they're going to take over because the man, meaning the government or anybody over a certain age, has really screwed up the world and it's up to their generation to make the change. And so that's what they decide they're going to do, like so many other domestic organizations at this time, and somehow or other, they decide the way to do that is to arm the black panthers.
How are we going to arm the black panthers? Well, we need money, Okay.
How are we going to get the money, Well, we're going to go to the bank. And that's what they do, and they start robbing banks in order to make money so that they can buy guns to arm the black panthers, so they can take over the country and show the world how to run itself.
And that's the idea, and Susan's entering entering a bank with an interesting I guess weapon, and it's a Molotov cocktail. A whiskey bottle with a wick.
Isn't it right? Right? You know? And in hindsight you think a Molotov cocktail, I mean, okay, but you think at the time period, you know, in these protests in the streets, that was a you know, that was a utilized weapon because you throw this, the alcohol spreads things blow, you know, you can't control fire.
So there she is with her mama top cocktail.
They rob the bank and they find it down the street where she tossed it intact. So it's not like they're the most sophisticated bank robbers.
At the end of what you talk about, though, is that they rob several banks and they get off with a fair amount of money, significant amount of money. But there is a Boston police officer, Walter A. Schroeder, and this guy had won Medal of Valor before involving bank robbers. So he goes to the crime scene and from there he spots what he thinks are the perpetrators from this. What happens after that.
Officer Schroeder, his story just breaks my heart. He had, as you said, had caught bank robbers before, and he goes to stop these roberts and one of the group turns in fires and murders in cold blood. This officer, well, arming the black panthers. There goes that idea. Now they're cop killers, Now they're bank robbers. And they all scattered, and the two fellows.
Of the group.
This is again what I found interesting.
The two men of the.
Group, they go their separate ways and they get caught within days, you know, one of them within hours. But the two women, they go underground. They tear up their identity, they take on new identities. They start living in communes, They drift from place to place to place. They give up all communications with their families and friends, and they
stay on the run for some time. Meanwhile, Officer Schroeder has left many children, several actually who went on to become police officers and detectives.
And he's you know, he was very short of retirement.
But they killed him, they killed him in cold blood.
Now they're on the run. They're fugitives.
There.
You talk about the FBI and fbis most Wanted, and they had another designation before that, public Enemy number one. And so these people go on the run. How successful are Susan and Catherine on the run?
Quite successful? Maybe because they you know, again, they tore up all their identity. They're smart, they move place to place, they don't stay in one spot very long.
They've got friends that will help them.
They stay. They don't stay in touch with their families or their friends, people that don't know them. They stay out of the public eye, change their appearance. They don't take public jobs. And the FBI, boy, they're hot for them, and so are a local police because they've taken one of their own, and rightfully so, so they're looking for them. And of course, you know, the mentality with a lot of people during that time period was so against law enforcement,
the man, anybody that was in charge of something. So many people were willing to hide them and.
To help them.
It's very much like you right in the beginning that when people were robbing banks after the depression, people saw the banks as being representative of the oppressive government or the failing government. So many of the people that were bank robbers were hailed as sort of a robin hoods at that.
Time, right they saw this bank as this nameless, faithless institution. And you're not hurting anyone.
You're walking in, you're taking money, and you're leaving, but you're not thinking about.
This poor teller that you've got a gun to a person's face, who's you know, hoping that this indivad is not going to fire this gun at them or in one case throw them Alotov cocktail. You've got people screaming and waving guns. I mean, think about the Symbionese Liberation Army where they rubbed the bank with Patricia Hurst and they're screaming and they're yelling at waving automatic weapons.
That was cause for fear, you know, great fear, and.
They're but they're seeing these spaceless institutions and so many people think, well, the money's insured anyway, so it's almost like I'm robbing a building.
We talk about Susan. She pled to manslaughter in January nineteen seventy seven, manslaughter rather than murder, and two armed robbery counts. She got twelve years, with two years for time served. But she was defiant right to the despite being arrested. She was defiant right to the end in her attitudes.
Wasn't she Oh, yes to the end?
I mean, she was just thoroughly convinced that she was in the right, and she was someone that I just I would not have liked because she just she had no feelings for that poor officer that they took his life, and was just convinced that they were in the right and the government was in the wrong.
And of course the government.
Encompassing everybody from the officer with the badge who lay in his own blood, to the President of the United.
States, to anyone connected with the bank.
You know, just this attitude, just like you know Emily with the SMLA, who kept the same attitude the entire time, where they had the right to do what they did, again under this guise of thinking they are thinking they know the truth or thinking they know why they're doing. What they're doing is righteous and good and you know, screw everybody else.
SLA Army, though that Patty Hurst was involved with it does not resemble so much the Susan and Catherine story that we just heard, though it is different. And tell us more about the what Patty Hurst, why they put her in a position to rob Banks, and just tell us a little bit more about what you found about her role in all of this.
Well, the Cymbidese Liberation Army.
Again, here's this group that thinks they understand the cause, and they've created a cause rather than embrace one. Cymbids wasn't even a real word. They kidnapped Patricia Hurst because she was a representative of the people, and they robbed the bank not so much as an act.
But as a show. Part of it was showing off their prize, Patricia Hurst.
And it wasn't so much as showing off their prize that they had kidnapped her, but that they had turned her, that she was now one of them, and that was their coup.
Of course, their leader.
Sink, who called Donald de Friese, who called himself Sink and he pronounced it coop.
But as part of their.
As part of their coup, they showed off Patricia Hurst as now being a member of the SLA. And that's why they robbed that bank, and that's why they placed her where they placed her, because they wanted her to be right in front of the cameras, front and center, you know, showing off that look, she's left the pigs, you know, the people of power and government and such, and she is now one of ours. So it's more of a showcase than it was a bank robbery. Of course,
getting the money didn't hurt. It funded their cause whatever, you know, God knows what their cause was. I don't even think they got it, but that was why they robbed that bank.
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Now we talk about part six and you title it what Little Girls Aren't Made Of And you talk about some perpetrators here. One of those is Gail Simpson and her son is Big Punisher or Big pun This is a fascinating story. I didn't know anything about. But you call it Big pun Little Mama Gail Simpson tell us about this fascinating robbery.
Big Punisher was this just millionaire rap star, and literally he was one of the very few. And I say this as a huge Tupac fan.
He was just one of these very few true rappers that made it out of the ghetto and made something of himself. He wasn't a how you say, a produced rapper. He truly was a fellow that made it out of the ghetto. And he came from a very very tough situation. One of the situations was his family and his mother had already been in trouble for numerous council welfare fraud.
His mother, unfortunately, we you know, Big Punisher died from his He was a very big guy and his great game portrayed his early demise.
But his mother had robbed several banks.
And she was this little, tiny lady who walked into the bank and produced a note, a threatening note, and walked out with money. Now, the rule of the bank is, you don't become a hero, you don't try to stop anyone. You do what the robber says, right, and you worry about money could be replaced. People cannot you observe, You take notes, You do what you can to, you know, identifying the perpetrator and let them move on.
But that's what she did. She walked in, she produced a note, and she walked out.
You talk about other cases in this book. You have the granny bandits, you have the youngest bandit, you have a one arm bandit. But you also have a a part seven called diapers and electric bills. I know what you're saying. What are you saying about the motivations for a lot of these bank robberies, especially more modern bank robberies females.
Well, that's interesting because the difference.
Is between male bank robbers and female bank robbers differ so greatly. It's always about money. It's always going to be about money. Sometimes you got love thrown at the bank bag. But you see how women needed money to survive more so than for political causes. They needed money to escape a role in society, to feed an addiction, and finally to pay the bills. And I spoke with several women that I interviewed for the book, and I said, what did you spend the money on to pay the bills? Okay,
what do you mean pay the bills? Electric bill? I had an electric bill. I had to pay my rent. I had to buy the baby some clothes.
And at first I thought it was a joke.
You know, you rob a bank, but you go buy yourself something nice, you know, for all your trouble.
But that's what they were dropping the bank for. For males, you know, a male's.
Role in society has always been kind of defined, and a woman's role in society has evolved, and males are usually feeding a habit and they're getting easy money when they rob a bank. Women are doing it to pay a bill, and that's been the last X number of years, is what they're doing. And another female that I spoke to, she said, yeah, I became addicted to crack. Cocaine was my new drug, a choice, and I was stealing, you know, to pay for that. But I also had to pay
for my apartment and I was behind. So it's just this interesting kind of back and forth. I guess that I was seeing with the guys where you know, they're brandishing the clothes and the jewelry and such, and the women are saying I needed pamps, And I thought, what kind of world, you know, where we're seeing these women robbing a bank to pay for these general necessities. Now, the older women that I spoke to or that I researched, most of them were paying for a drug habit and
it was usually prescription drugs. Right.
What all of these women had in common, or at least a lot of these women that you wrote about, Even though these are famous or relatively famous or well known crimes that you've come up with, they were at times the media latched onto these stories, then they faded.
But what seems to be characteristic of them is how on one hand, they were very unrealistic about their approach to the crimes and getting away with the crimes, and also, as you mentioned with a couple of these examples, quite pathetic kind of stories in terms of their backgrounds before they decided to rob the banks and then what happened afterwards to them in terms of pretty stiff sentencing in most cases as well, not so much understanding from the
courts about some of these social conditions that would lead to this for them to be considered robbing a bank.
Right, And some of these like you know, the woman who had one arm, she was missing an arm from the elbow, down.
You know, she walks into the bank.
With a steak knife and she tells the teller, this is a robbery, give me all the money, and the teller says no and hits the alarm and the woman runs out, and all of these jokes and all of these stories, you know, pop up and just be rating this poor woman, and you know, come to find out she has some mental illness going on, and she has an addiction happening. They caught her, you know, hours later, she admits right away it's her. And when they catch her,
she's just terrified. It's it's you know, it's sad. And then we have you know, this this girl that called herself chick bank robber that got Hi fell afterwards, videotapes herself, puts it on YouTube with all the money and the keys to the car she stole, and people just started calling her right away, you know, world's dumbest criminal. And I mean, this poor girl just got raked over the coals in the media and socially, you know, she and I still talk, and she is this poor girl has
so many problems. She's mentally ill, she has aids from a rape, she has a child, she's in prison, when my personal opinion, she should be in a mental health hospital getting some care that she needs, and you know, she just she's made some very stupid or decisions based on not being on her medications and self medicating through illegal drugs. So you see these stories and you think, Okay, that opposed to somebody who just says, I want a
lot of money, I'm gonna go rub a maink. I'm gonna, you know, wave a gun in somebody's face and I'm not saying that they're completely innocent and should just get a pat on the hand and turn to lose.
Sure, you think these stories and you're like, Okay, there's so much more to.
This than what meets the You say that despite this being very rare, women in bank robbery, despite this being predominantly male endeavor, you talk about that it's a growing trend. There is an op check. There is an increase in bank robbery by women, isn't there right?
Not by much because the numbers are still pretty low. But you're seeing a little bit of a spike last year, particularly this year, I'm sorry year before a spike, and then last year the numbers were a little bit lower. But it's become really an easier crime because all you have to do is walk in, hand over a note, and walk out. Now, I'm not saying everybody should go oh well then right through, no doubt right now.
What I'm saying is, you know, it's an easy crime to commit.
However, third times the charm you're very lucky for going to get away through times.
And it's not worth it.
Yeah, you talk about some you talk about many of the women in this book. We're not very fortunate, and we're captured quite soon and imprisoned and sentenced. So there was no happy endings in almost any of these stories, whatsoever? Were there?
No, there's never a happy ending.
I mean, there's a school teacher who days after the semester ended in the high school, she takes off and she goes robbing restaurants and robbing banks.
That's what she did on her summer vacation, you know, is starting to rob banks.
And Okay, now she's lost her career that she went through, you know, six years of college, four she's lost her good name, you know, six years over life, friends, family, I mean, you think of.
Everything that you put on the line, everything.
You put on the line before I let you go. There is a story that's quite interesting where a couple twins at fourteen years old decide to rob some banks and they have feisty characters and they have an interesting getaway driver. Tell us about the bank robs.
Oh, those twins. You know, their family was having some financial difficulties, and these twins were already saucy girls.
I'll put yea And so they decided that they were going to.
Help their family because they're about to foreclothes on their house. Now they had half a dozen people at least living in this house. My dad, my mom, did my steps, friends of my mom's friends, of their friends, some friends that came in, some people.
That need you know.
So this house was step full of peace, and they still couldn't make the rent. So, okay, what are we going to do?
Well, the same answer throughout this book. We'll rob a bank. We'll make a bunch of money. Well, they're only kids, so they don't even have driver's license, so they're going to have to have a driver. And their mom tells them, you're not going to get away with this and this is a stupid idea, and they said, well, we're going to do it, whether you want us to or not, but they need a driver. The driver they get away
car for them, Oh, I'm sorry. The driver who takes them to the bank waits and then drives them away from the bank is her mother. Yeah, they can't drive a third sister. Their stepsister was going to go in on it. Halfway there, she says, uh, this isn't such a good idea, and they're like, all right, then we'll take you home, but you better keep your mouth shut. So they go back, dump her off, and head back to the bank.
So what happens at the bank, Well, first.
They say a prayer, then they put their sche masks on. They have their brother's pellet gun that they had painted with nail polish on the end of the gun so it wasn't right pink. And they go in and they rob the bank and they stop and one of them says, that's all the money you're going to give us. They asked for more. They leave the bank. The mama drives them home and they're telling their stepdaddy, who's the only daddy they have that they've ever known.
You know, look what all the money we got, And the stepdaddy is furious.
Then he says, well, you better burn everything, So they burn all their clothes and the pillot case and everything they've got, and then they said, well, we've got all this money, we're going to pay all our bills.
We're going to catch up, and.
We're going to get our house mortgage back, you know where.
It needs to be. The first, let's go shopping.
So they go to the mall and they go to the casino, and the idea was to laundry the money at the casino. The first the girls went shopping and they bought themselves some outfits and something pretty to wear. But of course it was the next day they got busted because cameras were up and people made phone calls.
Now, despite their age of fourteen, how did the courts treat these young girls.
Well, they weren't real happy with them because one of them was pretty mad on you know, she was pretty snarky on the stand.
So they both got sent to juvenile detention I'm.
Sorry, juvenile jail. And one of them decided that she didn't need to be there anymore, so the horn of her friend just took off. So they got sent to jail and they ended up doing some time, and they were basically treated as adults.
I mean, this isn't you know. They weren't real happy with their attitudes.
Yeah, and they waved uns the you know again, you wave a gun to the person and you always ask somebody that's ever had a gun pointed at their face, big was the.
Gun, and that person's going to tell you it was a big gun.
It doesn't matter it was a shotgun or a pea shooter, because that's what a gun looks like when it's pointed at your nose and the person on the other end means business.
Yeah, it seemed that the judge took into consideration the stories that they told, but the crimes were the crimes, and they were sentenced accordingly.
Yep. Yeah, you know, the judge wasn't going to play and it was time to stand up take it like an adult it, you know. And you notice in this book that the juveniles, a lot of them, were treated like adults because this is an adult crime. You don't just walk into a bank, wave a gun and say give me all your money and then when you get caught they patch your hand and say, well, they're just a kid.
And it's a serious crime. It's a federal crime. It's taken very seriously.
I want to thank you very much, Judith for coming on and talking about your latest put the Money in My Purse, h story of female bank Robbers. For those that might want to take a look at your other work, do you have a Facebook page or a website, I take a look.
I have a website. You can go to True crimebook dot net. You can pick up any of my books. You can pick up a book that's signed. Just check out the website, and you can always friend me on Facebook. And I have social media all over the place. But I haven't learned TikTok yet. Yeah, I haven't gotten on Harry.
Welcome to the Welcome to the Club.
I'll probably I'll probably.
Learn that in a couple of years, because that's usually how long it takes me to learn social media.
But by then it'll be old news.
Yeah. Well, I want to thank you very much Judith for coming on and talking about put the Money in My Purse, A History of female bank Robbers. It's been a delight and you have a great evening. Thank you so much.
Safe, good night,