William Sutton: Bank Robber, Prison Escapes, and Schuster Case

Willie Sutton was an American bank robber who, over roughly four decades beginning in 1930, reportedly stole more than $2 million from banks across the Northeast using elaborate disguises, polite manners, and a knack for walking into vaults as if he belonged there. Nicknamed “The Actor” and “Slick Willie,” he was credited with more than 100 bank robberies, escaped from maximum-security prisons six times, and spent most of his adult life behind bars. His 1952 arrest set off a chain of events that produced both an unsolved mob killing and a landmark New York tort ruling on the government’s duty to protect citizens who help the police.

From Brooklyn Petty Thief to Bank Robber

Sutton was born June 30, 1901, in Brooklyn, one of five children in a poor Irish-American family. He was involved in petty theft as a teenager. At 21 he was arrested and acquitted on a murder charge, and he served a prison term for safecracking from 1926 to 1927. His first bank holdup came in Manhattan in 1930, with Sutton disguised as a Western Union messenger.¹

How He Robbed Banks

Sutton’s method was theatrical rather than violent. He impersonated mailmen, police officers, postal telegraph messengers, maintenance workers, diplomats, and window cleaners, typically arriving at a bank or store just before it opened. One of his best-known jobs, the January 1934 robbery of the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company in Philadelphia, began with Sutton and his accomplices dropping through a skylight. They forced a night watchman to admit arriving employees one by one, handcuffed each, and emptied the vault.²

Witnesses described him as polite throughout. One victim compared being robbed by Sutton to “being at the movies, except the usher had a gun.”² He never shot or killed anyone during a heist, and the reliance on impersonation rather than force turned him into a figure of public fascination.¹

The Scale of His Career

Sutton’s record stretched across decades and jurisdictions, with more than 100 bank robberies attributed to him over his career.³ His major convictions and sentences included:

A 30-year sentence imposed in June 1931 for assault and robbery following his first Manhattan bank job.²
A 25-to-50-year sentence at Eastern State Penitentiary after his February 1934 arrest for the machine-gun robbery of the Corn Exchange Bank.²
A life sentence as a fourth-time offender imposed after his 1947 prison escape.²
A further 30-years-to-life term imposed by a Queens County Court jury in 1952 for robbing the Manufacturers Trust Company branch in Sunnyside. By that point Sutton owed a combined one life sentence plus 105 years.³⁴

Six Prison Escapes

FBI records credit Sutton with six prison escapes over his career.⁴ Three were particularly well-documented.

1932: Over the Wall

On December 11, 1932, while serving his 30-year sentence, Sutton scaled the prison wall with two nine-foot ladder sections joined together. He remained free until his arrest on February 5, 1934.²

1945: The Eastern State Penitentiary Tunnel

On April 3, 1945, Sutton and eleven other inmates broke out of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia through a tunnel conceived by fellow inmate Clarence Klinedinst. The project had taken nearly a year. The men dug 12 feet down and roughly 97 to 100 feet horizontally beneath the prison courtyard, using spoons and flattened cans as tools, and built wooden scaffolding, electric lighting, and ventilation. The entrance was hidden behind a panel in a cell wall concealed by a wastebasket.⁵ Early press accounts named Sutton as the ringleader, though museum historians now identify Klinedinst as the primary architect.⁶ Sutton was captured within minutes after police spotted him and he tripped while fleeing.

1947: Dressed as a Guard

On February 10, 1947, Sutton escaped from the Philadelphia County Prison in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania. He and several other inmates dressed as prison guards, carried two ladders across the yard after dark, and climbed the wall. When a searchlight beam caught them mid-climb, Sutton yelled “It’s okay!” and the guards in the towers let them pass.² He stayed free for nearly five years.

The FBI’s Most Wanted List and a Tailor’s Son

On March 20, 1950, the FBI added Sutton to its newly created Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list as the eleventh person ever named to it. Because Sutton was known as an immaculate dresser, the Bureau distributed his photo not only to police but to tailors across the New York area.⁴

On February 18, 1952, a 24-year-old Brooklyn man named Arnold Schuster, the son of a tailor, recognized Sutton on the subway after seeing an FBI flyer in his father’s dry-goods store.⁷ Schuster followed Sutton off the train, trailed him to a gas station in Park Slope, and alerted a patrolman named Joseph McClellan. Police arrested Sutton at 304 Dean Street.⁸

The Killing of Arnold Schuster and Schuster v. City of New York

Schuster’s role was widely publicized, and he began receiving death threats and threatening phone calls. He reported them to police, but neither the NYPD nor the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office provided protection. On March 8, 1952, less than three weeks after Sutton’s arrest, Schuster was shot four times near his home on 45th Street in Borough Park, Brooklyn — once in each eye and twice in the groin. Police Commissioner George P. Monaghan ruled out robbery, noting that $83.55 remained on the body. When Sutton heard the news on a prison radio, he reportedly said, “This sinks me.”⁸

The investigation produced more than 1,700 follow-up reports and interviews with over 4,000 individuals, but no one was ever indicted. The prevailing theory, supported by mob informant Joseph Valachi during the 1963 McClellan hearings, is that Gambino crime family boss Albert Anastasia ordered the killing after watching Schuster on television. Valachi testified that Anastasia shouted, “I can’t stand squealers! Hit that guy!” Anastasia had no known connection to Sutton; the hit was apparently about his hatred of informants. The suspected gunman was Frederick J. Tenuto, a convicted murderer who had escaped from Holmesburg with Sutton in 1947. Tenuto was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and stayed there for 14 years, the longest tenure at that time, before being removed in 1964. He was never found and is presumed dead.⁹

Schuster’s estate, represented by his father Max, sued the City of New York for negligence, arguing that police had recklessly publicized his role, failed to provide requested protection, and downplayed the seriousness of the threats. The city moved to dismiss, arguing it had no special duty to any one person and that police protection was a discretionary function. In 1958, the New York Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal. Justice Van Voorhis, writing for the court, held that although municipalities generally owe no duty to protect the public at large, a “special relationship” arises when the government actively solicits or uses a private citizen’s help in apprehending a criminal. The court wrote that “where persons actually have aided in the apprehension or prosecution of enemies of society… a reciprocal duty arises on the part of society to use reasonable care for their police protection.”⁷ Schuster v. City of New York, 5 N.Y.2d 75 (1958), has since been cited across the country in cases involving the government’s duty to protect informants and cooperating witnesses. The city eventually settled for $41,000.¹⁰

Release, a Bank Commercial, and Death

Sutton served 17 more years after his 1952 arrest. On December 24, 1969, New York State penal authorities determined that the 68-year-old Sutton did not need to serve his remaining accumulated sentences. He was suffering from emphysema and was preparing for major surgery on the arteries in his legs. He was released from Attica State Prison on Christmas Eve.²

In 1970 he appeared in a television commercial for Connecticut’s New Britain Bank and Trust Company, promoting their new photo credit cards, branded “The Face Card.” Sutton held up a card bearing his picture and said, “They call it the Face Card. Now when I say I’m Willie Sutton, people believe me.” An announcer closed with, “Tell them Willie Sutton sent you.”¹¹ He also co-authored two books: I, Willie Sutton, written with Quentin Reynolds, and Where the Money Was, written with Edward Linn and published in 1976. Sutton died on November 2, 1980, in Spring Hill, Florida, at the age of 79.²

“Because That’s Where the Money Is”

The line most people associate with Sutton is his supposed answer to why he robbed banks: “Because that’s where the money is.” Sutton himself denied ever saying it. In Where the Money Was he wrote that “the credit belongs to some enterprising reporter who apparently felt a need to fill out his copy,” and he claimed his real reason was simpler: he robbed banks because he loved it.¹²

The earliest known version of the logic dates to 1923, when confessed robber Paul Perritt told the Detroit Free Press, “We specialized on banks… because that’s where the money is.” The quote became attached to Sutton through a 1951 Saturday Evening Post article by Robert M. Yoder and a 1952 newspaper interview.¹²

The phrase took on a second life in medicine. In 1960, Dr. William Dock of Yale invoked it in a clinical discussion to argue for going straight to the most informative diagnostic test. The following year, Drs. Petersdorf and Beeson formalized it in a medical publication as “Sutton’s Law,” a principle recommending that physicians proceed immediately to the test most likely to yield an answer rather than running routine examinations in conventional sequence.¹³ It remains a staple of medical education, an unlikely legacy for a career criminal who insisted he never said the line that inspired it.

1
Britannica. Willie Sutton
2
FBI. Willie Sutton
3
EBSCO Research Starters. Willie Sutton
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FBI. Criminal History of Bank Robber William Sutton
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Smithsonian Magazine. The Daring Escape From the Eastern State Penitentiary
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PhillyVoice. Eastern State Penitentiary Prison Escape Tunnel
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OpenCasebook. Schuster v. City of New York
8
The New York Times. Man Who Spotted Sutton Slain in Brooklyn Street
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DNAinfo. Willie Sutton, Arnold Schuster Unsolved Case
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Websleuths. Frederick J. Tenuto, Ten Most Wanted
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Snopes. Willie Sutton
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Quote Investigator. Where the Money Is
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PubMed. Sutton’s Law