# It's Just a Family Tradition: The Newton Gang

An episode of [Ridiculous Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1608230191), 27 Jan 2026, 59 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/0b4bcc39-7ba2-453f-aaac-ae510011dd80/e6375d5b-85ed-411c-a0ef-b3de016ba74c/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=3a4c50f5-ff69-4807-aa26-ae510011dd8e

Imagine some brothers. No, like a lot of them. Now imagine they love robbing banks and trains. But they also love fast cards and high living. Now imagine what Zaron would say about that. Yup, "my men." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:03] Speaker 2: And there she is ridiculous Crime.
[0:06] Speaker 3: Here I am. How are you captain ridiculous Crime?
[0:09] Speaker 2: I'm doing pretty well. I have to say this is
[0:12] Speaker 2: a good one for me. I like to hear that
[0:15] Speaker 2: you and.
[0:15] Speaker 3: You I am full of whimsy.
[0:18] Speaker 2: Oh. I love when you're full of whimsy and rice.
[0:23] Speaker 2: It's a combo. I got a question for you. Yes,
[0:26] Speaker 2: you know it's ridiculous.
[0:27] Speaker 3: I do you know that I'm really particular about sense?
[0:33] Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, either like fancy candles or perfumes and so,
[0:39] Speaker 3: I you know, I'm like I said, particular is probably
[0:42] Speaker 3: the kindest way I can put it.
[0:44] Speaker 2: How I would put it.
[0:45] Speaker 3: Yeah, And is with personal fragrance, you have to it
[0:51] Speaker 3: has to be something that people discover when they get
[0:53] Speaker 3: close enough to you. It can't enter the room before
[0:56] Speaker 3: you do.
[0:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with that. But I think that with some
[0:58] Speaker 2: people you can smellet from a few feet away and
[1:01] Speaker 2: it would be pleasant.
[1:02] Speaker 3: I guess. But you know you're not supposed to spray
[1:04] Speaker 3: it on your clothes. You spray it on your bare skin.
[1:07] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:08] Speaker 3: Anyway, so I have you know, I got a lot
[1:10] Speaker 3: of rules in life.
[1:11] Speaker 2: I give like seven pumps to my shirt. So that's
[1:13] Speaker 2: not what I should do.
[1:14] Speaker 3: That is perfect with the dreg ar noir.
[1:17] Speaker 2: Yes, cool water.
[1:22] Speaker 3: Anyway, So since right like it's I feel like you
[1:26] Speaker 3: get what you pay for a lot of times too,
[1:28] Speaker 3: I would totally agree. Yeah, so that said, uh, you know,
[1:33] Speaker 3: there are a lot of like celebrity perfumes.
[1:36] Speaker 2: So beyond Elizabeth Taylor.
[1:38] Speaker 3: Beyond white Diamonds. Yes, that's going to be the name
[1:41] Speaker 3: of my biography, Beyond white Diamonds, the other Elizabeth I got.
[1:47] Speaker 3: I got a celebrity perfume for you. And this this
[1:51] Speaker 3: comes to us from Sophia Smith on Instagram. Okay, so
[1:54] Speaker 3: I am, but the messenger Saren and I guess she
[1:57] Speaker 3: is too, because the real culprit here is Pizza Hut Canada.
[2:03] Speaker 2: I thought, for a second you were just going to focus.
[2:06] Speaker 3: On a like talk about a cool person who has
[2:08] Speaker 3: a cool.
[2:09] Speaker 2: I fell for it again. Check me out Charlie Brown
[2:13] Speaker 2: with the football.
[2:14] Speaker 3: I guess they hit one hundred thousand Facebook followers and
[2:18] Speaker 3: to celebrate that, they decided to come up with a perfume.
[2:22] Speaker 3: And it's called oh dey Pizza Hut, of course, and
[2:26] Speaker 3: it has top notes of freshly baked, hand tossed dough,
[2:31] Speaker 3: and so you know they they there's a press release.
[2:34] Speaker 3: Of course, all true celebrities deserve their own perfume, and
[2:37] Speaker 3: Pizza Hut is no different. And what began as a
[2:40] Speaker 3: fun Facebook post, okay, it goes on, it just gets
[2:43] Speaker 3: worse and worse. They only made one hundred and ten
[2:45] Speaker 3: of these and they only handed them out to the
[2:48] Speaker 3: dinglings who follow them on Facebook in Canada.
[2:53] Speaker 2: One hundred and ten of this Canada.
[2:55] Speaker 3: This is all Canadian and so okay, fine, so they
[2:59] Speaker 3: do one and ten.
[3:01] Speaker 2: It's like a Ryan Reynolds.
[3:02] Speaker 3: Perfume probably, and then here's going to make Here's here's
[3:08] Speaker 3: the absolute horror at the end of the press release. Right,
[3:12] Speaker 3: so they're talking about, oh, you know, you can smell
[3:14] Speaker 3: like when you're opening a box of pizza, and it's
[3:17] Speaker 3: so great and I think it's just like a doe
[3:20] Speaker 3: yeasty smell. Anyway, here's the bad part end of their
[3:26] Speaker 3: press release. Don't forget to check out Facebook dot com
[3:29] Speaker 3: slash Pizza Hut Canada to find out about great deals,
[3:32] Speaker 3: exciting new Pizza Hut product innovations open Parenz such as
[3:38] Speaker 3: hot dog stuffed crust pizza and I'm just I stopped reading.
[3:43] Speaker 3: I fell down, I lost time, I lost a time.
[3:46] Speaker 2: Yes, I was your punishment.
[3:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, hot dog, stuffed crust pizza.
[3:52] Speaker 2: Do we know who the celebrity is?
[3:54] Speaker 3: I thought I loved Canada?
[3:55] Speaker 2: Do we know who the celebrity is?
[3:57] Speaker 3: Pizza hut?
[3:58] Speaker 2: That's the celebrityelebrity or not they had like a partnership.
[4:02] Speaker 3: Eww, Now you were thinking celebrity zaren corporations? Are people
[4:09] Speaker 3: too currently there?
[4:13] Speaker 2: It is?
[4:13] Speaker 3: That's ridiculous.
[4:15] Speaker 2: I got something for you that's ridiculous. It doesn't involve
[4:17] Speaker 2: pizza hut.
[4:18] Speaker 3: Darn it.
[4:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, Elizabeth, this one is my kind of crime story.
[4:22] Speaker 2: In fact, this story could easily be like a movie
[4:25] Speaker 2: starring Matthew McConaughey. Okay, wait, I'm getting a signal from
[4:29] Speaker 2: one of the interns. Okay, I was just handed a note. Really,
[4:34] Speaker 2: is that right?
[4:35] Speaker 3: Huh? What's going on?
[4:36] Speaker 2: Cordedor interns? The story already was made into a movie
[4:39] Speaker 2: starring my man, Matthew McConaughey way back in nineteen ninety eight.
[4:46] Speaker 2: The Newton Boys.
[4:47] Speaker 3: The Newton Boys, like the creators of the fig Newton.
[4:51] Speaker 2: Like Isaac's brothers, Now here we are life imitating art.
[4:55] Speaker 2: That's imitating life. Okay, isn't that ridiculous?
[4:58] Speaker 3: I love that.
[5:18] Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
[5:25] Speaker 2: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
[5:31] Speaker 2: one hundred percent ridiculous. Oh yeah, Elizabeth Saron, Where should
[5:37] Speaker 2: we start with this one?
[5:38] Speaker 3: At the beginning?
[5:39] Speaker 2: Well, since I already mentioned the movie, I guess we
[5:41] Speaker 2: might as well start there.
[5:42] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[5:43] Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety eight, just a seven few years after
[5:47] Speaker 2: Point Break was released, the world was blessed with a
[5:50] Speaker 2: movie that was made to celebrate the lives and legends
[5:53] Speaker 2: of a family of Texas outlaws known as the Newton Gang.
[5:57] Speaker 3: Newton Gang.
[5:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, these brothers, they were all brother were wildly famous
[6:01] Speaker 2: and popular into the nineteen twenties nineteen thirties, but over
[6:05] Speaker 2: the ensuing decades their fame dwindled as it became just
[6:08] Speaker 2: yet another Texas legend.
[6:10] Speaker 3: Okay.
[6:10] Speaker 2: They were this healthy and rather unique mix of train
[6:14] Speaker 2: robbing wild West desperadoes but also bank robbing bigger than
[6:19] Speaker 2: life gangsters. Oh really, yeah, they rob banks and trains
[6:23] Speaker 2: from Texas to Canada and back again.
[6:25] Speaker 3: That's a long way.
[6:26] Speaker 2: Yeah. And the film The Newton Boys that I've just
[6:29] Speaker 2: been made aware of apparently sensationalizes the exploits of these
[6:32] Speaker 2: outlaw brothers. So there's the big brother Jess, middle brothers
[6:36] Speaker 2: Willis and Doc and baby brother Joe. Willis Newton in
[6:41] Speaker 2: the movie was played by Matthew McConaughey. Oh fun fact
[6:44] Speaker 2: both men were born in Uvalde, Texas. Really yeah, that's
[6:49] Speaker 2: curious right. Ethan Hawk played big brother Jess Newton Hawk
[6:53] Speaker 2: the yes and get this Vincent Dinafrio. What the other
[6:58] Speaker 2: middle brother Wiley aka Doc Newton?
[7:01] Speaker 3: I love him?
[7:01] Speaker 2: And lastly you had Skeet Ulrich. Oh stop it, baby
[7:05] Speaker 2: brother Joe Newton.
[7:07] Speaker 3: Wait, the late nineties of this just washed over, skeet Ulrich.
[7:12] Speaker 3: Now there's a name I haven't heard in a dog's age.
[7:14] Speaker 2: Juliana Margoleze plays a love interest. What yes? And the
[7:18] Speaker 2: film was directed by Texas filmmaker Richard link Letter co
[7:22] Speaker 2: wrote the script with a pair of authors who had
[7:24] Speaker 2: penned the definitive book on these Texas outlaw gangsters.
[7:28] Speaker 3: I've never heard of this, see neither.
[7:30] Speaker 2: Now despite the stellar.
[7:31] Speaker 3: Cast, Scott Skeet Origen, how do we skip that?
[7:36] Speaker 2: How big was the hole that this fell through? Despite
[7:40] Speaker 2: the you know, the stellar cast, the lauded filmmaker, expert
[7:43] Speaker 2: source material, the film is this forgotten movie of the nineties.
[7:47] Speaker 2: You can ask a lot of people and they've never
[7:48] Speaker 2: heard of it.
[7:49] Speaker 3: We have to have a screening, of course now.
[7:51] Speaker 2: Film critic Roger Ebert he gave the film two stars
[7:55] Speaker 2: out of four, so it's passing grade in a lot
[7:59] Speaker 2: of yes. In his review, he wrote that quote, the
[8:03] Speaker 2: film chronicles their criminal career in a low key, meandering way.
[8:07] Speaker 2: Were hanging out with them more than we're being told
[8:09] Speaker 2: a story. There are a lot of conversations about the
[8:12] Speaker 2: profession of bank robbery, which as a topic for conversation
[8:16] Speaker 2: is not a whole lot more interesting than double entry bookkeeping.
[8:20] Speaker 3: Did bank robbers hang out and talk about bank robbing
[8:23] Speaker 3: in this movie?
[8:24] Speaker 2: Yes, in that movie, but this wasn't enough of a
[8:26] Speaker 2: low key disc the whole double entry bookkeeping. Roger Ebert
[8:29] Speaker 2: also wrote that link letter quote just doesn't seem as
[8:32] Speaker 2: interested in the Newton boys. Sure they were great bank robbers,
[8:35] Speaker 2: but their very success may help explain why their legend
[8:38] Speaker 2: hasn't placed as high on the charts as Dillinger, Babyface
[8:41] Speaker 2: Nelson or pretty Boy Floyd. They were efficient professionals. And
[8:44] Speaker 2: the movie sits there on the screen like a biopic
[8:47] Speaker 2: of a traveling salesman who cracks safes instead of prospects.
[8:51] Speaker 2: Huh So, yeah, there he got another disc. He had
[8:53] Speaker 2: to get a couple in there, you know.
[8:54] Speaker 3: But Roger Ebert was a gem.
[8:56] Speaker 2: Oh I love, Oh my god. Yes, two thumbs up
[8:59] Speaker 2: for Roger. Now I promise not to repeat the storytelling
[9:03] Speaker 2: mistakes of Richard Linkletter. Apparently, because in the Newton Gang
[9:06] Speaker 2: are far more than traveling salesmen are boring double entry bookkeepers.
[9:10] Speaker 2: They are crime legends. From what I learned really in
[9:13] Speaker 2: the years between nineteen nineteen, just after the end of
[9:15] Speaker 2: World War One, in nineteen twenty four, just five years
[9:18] Speaker 2: before the stock market crash. Yeah think obviously kicks off
[9:21] Speaker 2: the Great Depression. The Newton Gang robbed somewhere between ninety
[9:24] Speaker 2: and two hundred banks. We got there, just very differing counsel.
[9:27] Speaker 3: That's a broad yeah swing.
[9:30] Speaker 2: Apparently, Yeah, some we're in there. I think it's closer
[9:32] Speaker 2: to two hundred.
[9:33] Speaker 3: They also, let's just let's say it's four hundred.
[9:37] Speaker 2: No, stay started two hundred they also.
[9:39] Speaker 3: Robe who's watching.
[9:41] Speaker 2: That's a good, good point, Admiral, iHeart can't see us.
[9:43] Speaker 3: You can't do anything about it now.
[9:45] Speaker 2: They also robbed at least six trains, because I said
[9:47] Speaker 2: train robbers now, including the largest train robbery in US history,
[9:51] Speaker 2: possibly in world history. I didn't check all the numbers
[9:53] Speaker 2: on that, but if you want to stack them up
[9:55] Speaker 2: against the other legends of outlaw life, the brothers stole
[9:59] Speaker 2: more money than Butch Casting and the Sun Dance Kid,
[10:02] Speaker 2: the Dalton Boys, as well as Frank and the Jesse
[10:04] Speaker 2: James Gang.
[10:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, put together, put together.
[10:07] Speaker 2: Yes, And I know you like this part. They never
[10:10] Speaker 2: killed anyone.
[10:12] Speaker 3: I love that.
[10:12] Speaker 2: In fact, they were known for being polite bank robbers.
[10:15] Speaker 3: Oh, I really love it, which might also.
[10:17] Speaker 2: Explain whether they're not remembered with the likes of John Tilling, Sure,
[10:19] Speaker 2: baby Face Nelson and pretty Boy Floyd Yeah, who'd soon
[10:22] Speaker 2: follow in their outlaw ways just a few years later. Anyway,
[10:25] Speaker 2: Big brother Willis Newton, he put it like this quote.
[10:28] Speaker 2: We never killed anybody. We never wanted to. All we
[10:31] Speaker 2: wanted was the money. Robin banks and trains was our
[10:34] Speaker 2: way of getting it. That was our business, okay, right, straightforward?
[10:37] Speaker 3: Very straightforward.
[10:38] Speaker 2: So what's the story of the Newton brothers and their
[10:40] Speaker 2: outlaw gang?
[10:41] Speaker 3: Great, what is the story? Let's ask Matthew mccomay.
[10:44] Speaker 2: As Willis Newton put it, quote, nobody ever give me
[10:48] Speaker 2: anything but hell in my life, and I've never done
[10:50] Speaker 2: anything I was ashamed of doing either. I love that spirit. Right.
[10:54] Speaker 2: At one point late in life, in nineteen seventy five,
[10:57] Speaker 2: at age eighty six, Willis said that quote, we were
[11:00] Speaker 2: just like doctors and lawyers and everybody else. It was
[11:03] Speaker 2: our business to do that. We never killed anybody, and
[11:05] Speaker 2: we never wanted to. All we wanted was the money
[11:07] Speaker 2: to make money. Now, why did the Newton brothers decide
[11:11] Speaker 2: robbery was their profession? You have to understand that Texas
[11:16] Speaker 2: in the turn of the century was a hard place
[11:18] Speaker 2: for a lot of people.
[11:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, their.
[11:20] Speaker 2: Family attempted to scratch out in existence in that unforgiving
[11:23] Speaker 2: Texas earth. The Newton family were known as cyclone farmers,
[11:28] Speaker 2: which is this term for people who moved from around
[11:30] Speaker 2: from place to place, always looking for a good place
[11:32] Speaker 2: to turn the earth and try to scratch out a living. Now,
[11:35] Speaker 2: the parents, Jim and Janetta Pecos Anderson Newton.
[11:39] Speaker 3: Pakos right, love that name.
[11:41] Speaker 2: If you're named after a river, let mean, come on, yeah. Now,
[11:43] Speaker 2: they were productive in one area, making babies despite their poverty.
[11:48] Speaker 2: They had eleven children. There was Ivy Bud, Henry Dolly, Jess,
[11:54] Speaker 2: Willis Wiley aka Doc Bill tall Isla, and the baby
[11:58] Speaker 2: of the family, Joe.
[12:00] Speaker 3: Well. The people had those whole litters of kids total.
[12:03] Speaker 2: I feel like goodwill hunting just naming off. What was
[12:05] Speaker 2: your name to all your brothers? Now, Although he was
[12:09] Speaker 2: younger than Jess, Willis Newton was the leader of the
[12:12] Speaker 2: Newton Gang. Born in eighteen eighty nine in hu Vaalde, Texas,
[12:14] Speaker 2: Willis was the one who led his brothers into temptation.
[12:18] Speaker 2: He was this smart kid, and consequently he had his
[12:21] Speaker 2: reasons to go into a life of crime. More on
[12:24] Speaker 2: that in a second, but first let's back up to
[12:26] Speaker 2: him being the genius of this litter of kids. As
[12:28] Speaker 2: he explained in an interview towards the end of his life,
[12:31] Speaker 2: Willis Newton said, quote, my mother's over in Cottonwood when
[12:34] Speaker 2: she met my school teacher and I'd quit, and she
[12:36] Speaker 2: asked her why. My mother said, well, his clothes got
[12:39] Speaker 2: so bad. He was ashamed to go but she said,
[12:42] Speaker 2: he's the smartest people I've ever had in my school.
[12:44] Speaker 2: And if you'll send you give him education, there's no
[12:47] Speaker 2: telling what he'll make out of hisself. And if you
[12:50] Speaker 2: don't give him an education, then no telling what he'll do. Well, right,
[12:54] Speaker 2: I can still relate to this guy. So the story
[12:56] Speaker 2: goes back around the turn of the last century. The
[12:58] Speaker 2: Newton brothers had this reputation in Cottonwood for being a
[13:01] Speaker 2: bit rough and tumble, as the children of dirt farmers
[13:04] Speaker 2: and kids who wore hand me down clothes to school
[13:06] Speaker 2: and were skinny from being undernourished. They soon took it
[13:09] Speaker 2: upon themselves to steal whatever they desired and their parents
[13:12] Speaker 2: could not provide. Yeah, they'd break into stores at night
[13:15] Speaker 2: and they'd steal what they coveted or they were shamed
[13:17] Speaker 2: not to have. And they did this often enough that
[13:20] Speaker 2: word starts getting around Uvalde and Cottonwood that them Newton
[13:24] Speaker 2: boys is trouble, as the Texans historians tell it. Quote,
[13:27] Speaker 2: before long, if something went missing anywhere within one hundred
[13:30] Speaker 2: miles of Uvalde, it was quickly presumed to have been
[13:33] Speaker 2: the fault of the Newton boys.
[13:35] Speaker 3: Oh no, Yeah.
[13:36] Speaker 2: So despite their early taste for walking the outlaw path.
[13:39] Speaker 2: If you ask Willis, the Newton boys didn't graduate to
[13:42] Speaker 2: bank robberies and train robberies. They were kind of pushed
[13:45] Speaker 2: into it, at least he was, and the other brothers
[13:48] Speaker 2: just kind of followed his lead. According to legend, brother
[13:51] Speaker 2: Wiley aka Doc went out one night and he stole
[13:54] Speaker 2: this load of cotton and it was like on a
[13:56] Speaker 2: loading dock of like a cotton processor.
[13:59] Speaker 3: So it's just like, that's a curious thing to go.
[14:01] Speaker 2: Steal totally but worth a lot back then.
[14:02] Speaker 3: Sure, but like in cotton country, they don't have warehouses
[14:07] Speaker 3: that the family.
[14:08] Speaker 2: No, So he turned around he sold it to another
[14:11] Speaker 2: cotton different cotton gin operation. I was like, I got
[14:14] Speaker 2: a bunch of loose cotton for you, and they bought it. Right,
[14:17] Speaker 2: So of course that first cotton gin operator they go
[14:20] Speaker 2: to the cops, who then track down the stolen cotton. Sure,
[14:22] Speaker 2: and they heard that it was one of the Newton
[14:24] Speaker 2: boys who'd sold the fleeced cotton. So the right, I thought,
[14:28] Speaker 2: you like that, And that says the cops couldn't find
[14:30] Speaker 2: Doc Newton and they could only locate his brother Willis.
[14:32] Speaker 2: They decided that's good enough. To hell with it. They
[14:34] Speaker 2: arrested him for the crime we got one of the
[14:36] Speaker 2: Newton boys yement work. Case goes to trial. Willis gets
[14:39] Speaker 2: tried before a jury of his peers. He's found guilty
[14:42] Speaker 2: sentenced to a year at hard labor at the Texas
[14:45] Speaker 2: State Prison O. The year was nineteen oh nine. Willis
[14:48] Speaker 2: was nineteen years old, on his way to being twenty.
[14:50] Speaker 2: A few months later, the law catches up to his brother,
[14:53] Speaker 2: Doc Newton, because he's still doing trouble, yeah, charge for
[14:55] Speaker 2: a different crime. The law then throws him into the
[14:58] Speaker 2: same state prison with his brother locked up together, the
[15:01] Speaker 2: brothers start scheming, how do we get free? There's two
[15:03] Speaker 2: of us who can work together. I trust you, you
[15:05] Speaker 2: trust me? So they did. They managed to escape the
[15:08] Speaker 2: state prison, likely while they were like out like clearing
[15:11] Speaker 2: brush or the like. To basically imagine like a scene
[15:13] Speaker 2: from like Cool Hand, Luke or No as you might
[15:15] Speaker 2: prefer Elizabeth to it's one of your favorites, imagine the
[15:18] Speaker 2: beginning of a brother Where art thou That.
[15:20] Speaker 3: Is one of the best movies I've ever.
[15:21] Speaker 2: Right, Yes, so that's basically what they do. They're the
[15:23] Speaker 2: chain gang running through the fields. Now out on the
[15:26] Speaker 2: lamb on the run from the law. Their taste of
[15:29] Speaker 2: freedom doesn't last long. The two Newton boys are caught
[15:31] Speaker 2: and returned to state prison with an added five year sentence.
[15:35] Speaker 3: See that's the thing that gets you. You don't want
[15:37] Speaker 3: to be locked up anymore, But they'll they'll find you
[15:40] Speaker 3: and make it worse.
[15:41] Speaker 2: After they're recapturing after spending many years behind bars, the
[15:45] Speaker 2: governor of Texas at the time, this guy, ob cole Quit.
[15:48] Speaker 2: He pardons the two brothers and they're released. So Still
[15:52] Speaker 2: angry about his wrongful arrest and hardened by his time inside,
[15:56] Speaker 2: Willis vows to make the law pay for their crimes
[15:59] Speaker 2: against him.
[16:00] Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
[16:01] Speaker 2: He decides he'll become the exact sort of outlaw that
[16:04] Speaker 2: the judge and the jury and the law said he was.
[16:07] Speaker 2: So nineteen fourteen, same year he's released from prison, Willis
[16:09] Speaker 2: Newton and a friend of his they hop on this
[16:11] Speaker 2: train on New Year's Eve, December thirty first right. Training
[16:15] Speaker 2: was not too far from Uvalde when they hopped on,
[16:17] Speaker 2: the locomotive gets near this place called Klein, Texas. The
[16:21] Speaker 2: pair of now newly minted outlaws they rob all of
[16:24] Speaker 2: the passengers on the train, then they hop back off
[16:27] Speaker 2: at a place called Spofford, Texas, down in Kinney County
[16:30] Speaker 2: for their debut as outlaw train robbers. The pair made
[16:33] Speaker 2: off with forty seven hundred dollars in loot, which doesn't
[16:37] Speaker 2: sound like much now, but in twenty twenty six dollars
[16:39] Speaker 2: that'd be about one hundred and fifty one three hundred
[16:41] Speaker 2: and thirteen dollars. Not a bad first score for a
[16:44] Speaker 2: couple of nineteen years.
[16:45] Speaker 3: You know what a New Year's Eve for the rest
[16:48] Speaker 3: of us folks hi living.
[16:50] Speaker 2: So after that first tastes of success, Willis Newton gets
[16:53] Speaker 2: hooked and soon enough he's dragging his brothers into the
[16:56] Speaker 2: outlaw life. Okay, now that we got this one a
[16:59] Speaker 2: rolld in Eizabeth, let's take a little break. Some ads,
[17:02] Speaker 2: chill out, think about Matthew McConaughey, and we get back.
[17:05] Speaker 2: The Newton gang will take shape and get into bank.
[17:08] Speaker 2: Rub and we're back.
[17:30] Speaker 3: Ay, We're back.
[17:31] Speaker 2: You ready to hop on a fiery steed, yank down
[17:34] Speaker 2: a bandana over your dust covered face and go rub
[17:36] Speaker 2: some banks.
[17:37] Speaker 3: Go hop on a steel horse and show them the
[17:40] Speaker 3: business end of a pointed finger.
[17:42] Speaker 2: Good good, I like that. Now, before we mosey in
[17:45] Speaker 2: and stick up the place. I wanted to give you
[17:47] Speaker 2: just a little more insight into the Newton boys in
[17:50] Speaker 2: their criminal ways born and they told you the children
[17:52] Speaker 2: are dirt farmers, ashamed of their poverty and the deprivations
[17:55] Speaker 2: wrongfully imprisoned. You might be able to see why they
[17:58] Speaker 2: chose a life.
[17:58] Speaker 3: Across their teacher predicts totally, But if you hear from them,
[18:02] Speaker 3: it's a little bit different.
[18:03] Speaker 2: In November of nineteen eighty, the last surviving member of
[18:06] Speaker 2: the Newton Gang, the baby of the family, Joe Newton,
[18:09] Speaker 2: went on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Wait stuff, yes,
[18:13] Speaker 2: and he reminisces about it.
[18:15] Speaker 3: For being a bank robber, not for something he'd done something,
[18:18] Speaker 3: just for being a bank robber, Okay, And he goes
[18:22] Speaker 3: he talks about his brothers in his lawless ways, and
[18:24] Speaker 3: he's like, you know, at the end of his life.
[18:27] Speaker 2: He was seventy nine years old at the time and nearing,
[18:29] Speaker 2: as I said, the end of his days.
[18:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, he had had seventy nine oh.
[18:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, and he had little reason to hold back. And
[18:34] Speaker 2: so he had Johnny in the audience in stitches as
[18:37] Speaker 2: he recounts his life as an outlawed desperado, bank robbing gangster.
[18:42] Speaker 2: Now it's Johnny.
[18:43] Speaker 3: This is when late night TV its peak, right.
[18:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, so Johnny Carson said in the set up quote,
[18:49] Speaker 2: it says in four years you robbed eighty banks, and
[18:52] Speaker 2: Joe Newton happily confesses, yeah, we robbed a lot of them.
[18:56] Speaker 2: So the crowd laughs at his candor. Johnny follows up
[18:59] Speaker 2: by saying, now you live pretty well, I suppose when
[19:02] Speaker 2: you were Joe Newton jumps in. He replies, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
[19:05] Speaker 2: we stayed in the best hotels, eat at the best cafes,
[19:08] Speaker 2: and drove the best cars available in them days. Now
[19:11] Speaker 2: this peaks Johnny's curiosity because you know he likes cars.
[19:14] Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, yeah, and a lot of women, like
[19:16] Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of women. And so Joe
[19:18] Speaker 2: Newton was still also one of Johnny's pastime. So Joe
[19:21] Speaker 2: Newton explained, well, there's always a way if you got
[19:24] Speaker 2: a good car, a pocket full of money, and you're
[19:26] Speaker 2: a young man, because now he's not a young man.
[19:29] Speaker 2: Great anyway, Johnny and the audience laugh. Joe Newton continues
[19:32] Speaker 2: his thought, Yeah, it'll make you popular there. Oh my god.
[19:38] Speaker 2: Ed McMahon is chartling through most of this.
[19:40] Speaker 3: I can only imagine so.
[19:41] Speaker 2: Since it's nineteen eighty and not the nineteen twenties, and
[19:44] Speaker 2: bank robbery is not something that the network NBC wants
[19:47] Speaker 2: to excuse or inspire any monitor to copycats. Johnny Carson
[19:50] Speaker 2: is quick to say, let me ask you something. Looking
[19:53] Speaker 2: back on this, if you had to do it all
[19:55] Speaker 2: over again, you wouldn't recommend this as a Joe Newton
[19:58] Speaker 2: once again quicktop and he entered ups and says, no, no,
[20:01] Speaker 2: we was crazy for doing it and looking back and
[20:03] Speaker 2: seeing then, but we was young then, so it's like
[20:07] Speaker 2: a half step back. So Johnny and the audience laugh again.
[20:11] Speaker 2: Joe Newton hearing he's got them all on his side,
[20:13] Speaker 2: he says, someone said, why didn't you invest that money
[20:15] Speaker 2: in something that would have made money? And I said,
[20:18] Speaker 2: who wants a better job than what we already got?
[20:21] Speaker 2: That's what we thought then. I mean, if we needed money,
[20:23] Speaker 2: all we need to do was go out and rob
[20:25] Speaker 2: another bank. And Johnny's like kind of losing it, but
[20:27] Speaker 2: he's stolen theirs and he wants to get viewers at home.
[20:30] Speaker 2: Another reminder why young uns shouldn't follow the Newton Gang's path,
[20:33] Speaker 2: no matter how good it sounds. And then Johnny says
[20:36] Speaker 2: to Joe, but you wouldn't recommend that people, and Joe
[20:39] Speaker 2: gets the point of this question replied, No, I wouldn't
[20:41] Speaker 2: recommend that would be crazy to do that. So now,
[20:44] Speaker 2: just a few years earlier, in this filmed interview not
[20:47] Speaker 2: on the Tonight Show, leader of the gang Willis Newton,
[20:50] Speaker 2: he explained his gang's reasoning, and they're like reisl and
[20:53] Speaker 2: de Etra. As Willis put it, quote, when I first
[20:56] Speaker 2: began to think of robbing banks, I never thought of
[20:58] Speaker 2: hurting anybody. And I knowed that all them bankers was
[21:01] Speaker 2: rich and they didn't care about hurting They didn't care
[21:03] Speaker 2: about hurting us poor farmers, So why should I care
[21:06] Speaker 2: about hurting them?
[21:07] Speaker 3: Punching up there it is, and Willis.
[21:09] Speaker 2: Later finished that same thought by adding that why shouldn't
[21:12] Speaker 2: I steal from them? It's just one thief stealing from another.
[21:16] Speaker 2: You can hear like the Revenuers era in nineteen thirties
[21:20] Speaker 2: is going to be coming around. So you know with
[21:22] Speaker 2: the dust Bowl area, it hit Texas and Oklahoma in
[21:24] Speaker 2: that area first, they were already basically in the Great
[21:26] Speaker 2: Depression in the twenties anyway, hard to argue with the
[21:29] Speaker 2: simple folks. He dust down home vest bowl logic. Anyway.
[21:33] Speaker 2: After Willis Newton and his friend had that initial success
[21:36] Speaker 2: with the train robbery, Willis crossed the Red River. He
[21:39] Speaker 2: heads on up to Oklahoma to join up with a
[21:41] Speaker 2: real outlaw gang. They become bank robbers, and so with
[21:45] Speaker 2: his new crew, Willis robs his first bank in a
[21:48] Speaker 2: town called Boswell, Oklahoma. The score was another hefty take Elizabeth.
[21:53] Speaker 2: They walked away with about ten thousand dollars, which again
[21:55] Speaker 2: doesn't sound like very much. Twenty twenty six dollars. That'd
[21:58] Speaker 2: be three hundred and eighteen dollars.
[22:00] Speaker 3: Wow, that's handy, good score.
[22:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's more than what's in the drawer.
[22:04] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[22:04] Speaker 2: Now he bounces around the Texas, Oklahoma area for the
[22:07] Speaker 2: next two years. And remember keep in mind Oklahoma is
[22:10] Speaker 2: recently a new state. In nineteen twelve, becomes the state
[22:13] Speaker 2: it used to be Indian Territories. People are used to
[22:15] Speaker 2: having outlaws run through it, so that's what they're thinking,
[22:18] Speaker 2: and Willis Newton was arrested. He gets arrested in nineteen
[22:21] Speaker 2: seventeen doing a bank job, and this starts a run
[22:25] Speaker 2: of bad luck for him. He's arrested again in Texas
[22:27] Speaker 2: and he gets sent back to the state prison. At
[22:30] Speaker 2: this point, in nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen, four out of
[22:33] Speaker 2: the five Newton brothers are locked up in various prisons
[22:36] Speaker 2: in the state of Texas. Oh yeah, there's Wiley aka Doc,
[22:40] Speaker 2: as well as Jess and Joe, all of them behind
[22:42] Speaker 2: bars along with Willis. But get this, his luck flipped
[22:45] Speaker 2: right back around, because the next year, in nineteen eighteen,
[22:48] Speaker 2: Willis is given a second pardoned by a Texas governor.
[22:52] Speaker 3: Oh I love it.
[22:53] Speaker 2: So a man named William P. Hobby with that second part,
[22:56] Speaker 2: and he's released from the state prison and goes off
[22:59] Speaker 2: to you know, re engaged with his life. Once he's free,
[23:02] Speaker 2: Willis goes right back to criming. He's like, I ain't done.
[23:05] Speaker 3: What else is he gonna do?
[23:06] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean exactly. He didn't never get that education.
[23:08] Speaker 2: So he joins up with a new gang in Nard
[23:11] Speaker 2: Wells and they start committing a series of nighttime robberies
[23:14] Speaker 2: of local stores in places like Dennison and Abilene and
[23:17] Speaker 2: Walder and even in Dallas, Texas. Right around that same time,
[23:21] Speaker 2: Doc Dwton, his brother escapes from prison, he high tails
[23:24] Speaker 2: it over the border up to Oklahoma, where his brother
[23:28] Speaker 2: Willis and Joe are now hold up and pulling jobs
[23:30] Speaker 2: of their own. Soon enough, by the turn of nineteen twenty,
[23:32] Speaker 2: Jess Newton it gets released from prison, so he rejoins
[23:36] Speaker 2: his brothers in Oklahoma, and Willis convinces them all that
[23:38] Speaker 2: they should start their own gang. He's like, I've been
[23:41] Speaker 2: bumping around with all these numbskulls and we could do
[23:43] Speaker 2: this right, right. They got enough of them, So once
[23:46] Speaker 2: the Newton brothers are all reunited, they formed their own
[23:48] Speaker 2: outlaw gang. They decide to bring in one outsider to
[23:51] Speaker 2: round out their crew. When Willis is working with the
[23:53] Speaker 2: other crew breaking into stores, pulling bank jobs and whatnot,
[23:56] Speaker 2: he learned about how to use nitroglycerin to blow a
[23:59] Speaker 2: bank vault, so he tells his brothers that they need
[24:02] Speaker 2: to get their own nitro man, right, So they bring
[24:04] Speaker 2: in a man. He knows this demolitions expert named Brent
[24:08] Speaker 2: slash John Glascock. So you see, his name is John
[24:12] Speaker 2: Glasscock and Brent Glascock, so we'll be going with both
[24:15] Speaker 2: the anyway. It's a curious name for a demolitions expert.
[24:19] Speaker 2: Now that we have their nitro glycerin guy, the Newton
[24:21] Speaker 2: Gang gets to work robin banks like true pros. Starting
[24:25] Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty, they rob banks in Texas, Oklahoma. They
[24:28] Speaker 2: even manage their way up to Iowa. At one point
[24:31] Speaker 2: they steal roughly a half million dollars in victory and
[24:35] Speaker 2: liberty bonds still from the Warriors. Only problem for them
[24:39] Speaker 2: they didn't know is the war is over and the
[24:40] Speaker 2: bonds have been registered, which makes them essentially worthless to
[24:43] Speaker 2: cash in. So they got all this worthless paper. They're like,
[24:46] Speaker 2: we need to stick to coin and actual cash. Newton
[24:49] Speaker 2: Gang undaunted, they keep robbing banks. They keep bouncing around
[24:52] Speaker 2: the country, never staying in any place too long. They're
[24:54] Speaker 2: basically now cyclone bank robbers. From November twenty one to
[24:58] Speaker 2: December of nineteen twenty two, in roughly one year's time,
[25:01] Speaker 2: the Newton Gang hits banks in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri,
[25:06] Speaker 2: even on up into Canada.
[25:08] Speaker 3: Busy boys, oh right.
[25:09] Speaker 2: Their specialty is a tactic that would soon be made
[25:11] Speaker 2: famous by pretty boyd Floyd Babyface Nelson John Dollinger, which
[25:15] Speaker 2: is they buy extra fast cars. They're really particular fans
[25:19] Speaker 2: of Studebakers and this one model called the Big six
[25:23] Speaker 2: or the Special six. Okay, as you might imagine, the
[25:25] Speaker 2: Big six had a big six cylinder engine. You see,
[25:28] Speaker 2: in nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen, Studebaker produced this convertible
[25:32] Speaker 2: car with a three hundred and fifty four cubic inch
[25:35] Speaker 2: straight six engine. Good god, it was extremely popular with
[25:39] Speaker 2: folks who like to go fast. Yeah, so bank robbers,
[25:42] Speaker 2: rum runners that sort right, Big six could get up
[25:45] Speaker 2: to eighty miles per hour or for folks across the pond,
[25:47] Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty kilometers per hour. Meanwhile, the cops
[25:51] Speaker 2: they were still pretty much rocking Ford Model Ts. Yeah,
[25:54] Speaker 2: so that old ten Lizzie wasn't nearly as fast enough
[25:57] Speaker 2: to keep up with the Studi Bakers.
[25:58] Speaker 3: Then they're like, oh, hitting the horn space seriously.
[26:02] Speaker 2: The top speed for a Model T in nineteen nineteen
[26:05] Speaker 2: was about how fast did your grandfather say, forty five
[26:08] Speaker 2: mile per hour or seventy two kilometers an hour. That
[26:11] Speaker 2: made it real difficult for the coppers to catch a
[26:14] Speaker 2: Big six Scoter Baker on country roads in high pursuit.
[26:17] Speaker 2: So from November twenty one to December twenty two, the
[26:20] Speaker 2: Newton gang. They robbed bank after bank after bank, and
[26:23] Speaker 2: they always got away. They robbed a mail train in Bells, Texas,
[26:27] Speaker 2: another one in Bloomberg, Texas. They hit up banks in
[26:29] Speaker 2: San Antonio. Then in one night they hit two banks
[26:33] Speaker 2: in Hondo, Texas, like basically across the street.
[26:35] Speaker 3: Two and one night.
[26:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, and they're blown up a nitro glicering at
[26:38] Speaker 2: like two thirty in the morning.
[26:39] Speaker 3: This town loses two banks in one night.
[26:42] Speaker 2: Small town.
[26:43] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[26:43] Speaker 2: They also rob banks in San Marcos, New bron Foals,
[26:46] Speaker 2: burn pearsall Texas. Then they headed north and hit a
[26:49] Speaker 2: bank in Gallatin, Missouri, and another in Lafayette, Colorado. Doubled
[26:54] Speaker 2: back east. They robbed banks in tab and later Spencer, Indiana.
[26:57] Speaker 2: Not done, they hopped over the border into Canada. They
[27:00] Speaker 2: went on a run of bank jobs in our neighbor
[27:02] Speaker 2: to the north. They hit a bank in this town
[27:04] Speaker 2: called Melita, another one in moosemin Manitoba. Like small towns
[27:09] Speaker 2: out of the way nowhere. Then they hit a bank
[27:11] Speaker 2: in the big city of Toronto, Ontario. They're like, let's
[27:13] Speaker 2: just turn Look.
[27:14] Speaker 3: Are there fast cars just crammed with cash?
[27:17] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean they're also spending cash real fast.
[27:20] Speaker 2: There's a bunch of them so and they're breaking it
[27:23] Speaker 2: up and then they're using it to buy whatever they wantasoline,
[27:26] Speaker 2: nice suits, going out to the best restaurants. The brother
[27:30] Speaker 2: I'll get back to that company. Oh you know it. Now.
[27:34] Speaker 2: The brothers often rob banks after hours and they could
[27:36] Speaker 2: work undisturbed, and then they would use their nitroglisser and
[27:38] Speaker 2: to blow the bank vault. Other times they went in
[27:41] Speaker 2: during business hours when they just walk right in. The
[27:43] Speaker 2: brothers were known to be polite to both customers and
[27:46] Speaker 2: staff alike. They weren't just like preferential. Yeah now, bank
[27:49] Speaker 2: managers not so much, but anyway, bank employees, various customers.
[27:52] Speaker 2: They would tell the police that the Newton gang seemed
[27:54] Speaker 2: to go out of their way to not only to
[27:56] Speaker 2: not hurt anyone or use violence, but they were exceedingly polite,
[28:00] Speaker 2: good like Texas boys, and very charmed. They took great
[28:02] Speaker 2: care to make sure anyone older, perhaps distressed or say pregnant,
[28:06] Speaker 2: was made to feel comfortable during the robbery. Look, let
[28:08] Speaker 2: me get you padded seat and all that kind of stuff.
[28:10] Speaker 2: I mean, basically crime aside. They've been raised to have
[28:12] Speaker 2: good manners. That's what I'm trying to say. Well, now,
[28:15] Speaker 2: like I said earlier, and it should be reiterated, they
[28:18] Speaker 2: never killed anyone in all of their hundreds and hundreds
[28:21] Speaker 2: of bank chops, So kudos to them for being so
[28:23] Speaker 2: professional and well disciplined.
[28:24] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[28:25] Speaker 2: Now, as for their use of explosives like nitroglycerin, the
[28:27] Speaker 2: Newton Boys would typically use that at night when no
[28:30] Speaker 2: one else was in the bank. Then they knew they
[28:31] Speaker 2: wouldn't have to worry with hurting anybody. Yeah, sometimes they
[28:34] Speaker 2: might use a bit too much. For instance, there's a
[28:36] Speaker 2: couple of times when their explosives expert was still tinkering
[28:38] Speaker 2: with his recipe because they're using liquid nitroglitcer and they're
[28:41] Speaker 2: polling it on like rags and into the cracks of
[28:44] Speaker 2: the vault. Okay, And then they would use like a
[28:47] Speaker 2: dynamite to like bust the vault door open and the
[28:51] Speaker 2: nitroglitcer and we'd catch it and we blow the hinges
[28:53] Speaker 2: and blow them. You get the idea. There's this town
[28:56] Speaker 2: called San Marcos, Texas, and there's apparently a bronze plaque
[29:00] Speaker 2: that celebrates one of the Newton Gang's bank robberies in
[29:03] Speaker 2: the town.
[29:03] Speaker 3: Are you kidding?
[29:03] Speaker 2: You know, like we were robbed by them. It's like
[29:05] Speaker 2: a George Washington slept here. It was like Newton gang
[29:08] Speaker 2: Robb does so. At the intersection of West Hopkins Street
[29:11] Speaker 2: and North Guadalupe Street, there's a marker located near one
[29:14] Speaker 2: hundred West Hopkins Street if you happen to be close
[29:16] Speaker 2: in the area, and it reads and I quote. About
[29:19] Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen, the Newton brothers Jess, Willis, Doc and Joe
[29:23] Speaker 2: were getting tired of facing mules rumps as they plowed
[29:25] Speaker 2: their daddy's Callahan County farm, so they drifted in into
[29:28] Speaker 2: train and bank robbery in a four year career that
[29:31] Speaker 2: took them through the Midwest and central Canada. In nineteen
[29:33] Speaker 2: twenty three, they broke into this building in the early
[29:36] Speaker 2: morning of January fourth, through rob the old State Bank
[29:39] Speaker 2: and Trust Company. They poured so much nitro on the
[29:41] Speaker 2: vauldor that the side of the bank was partially blown
[29:44] Speaker 2: away and coins showered across the street as they made
[29:48] Speaker 2: their haul and casually escaped. Consequently, the Texas legislature dramatically
[29:52] Speaker 2: increased the penalty for the illegal use of heavy explosives
[29:55] Speaker 2: so good. They were so good they changed Texas state
[29:58] Speaker 2: law typically Willis was the brave one. He'd climb up
[30:02] Speaker 2: the telephone poles and he would cut the telephone polled lines. Okay,
[30:05] Speaker 2: then they would break into the bank at night. They'd
[30:07] Speaker 2: pour the liquid nitroglycerin into any cracks or gaps. As
[30:10] Speaker 2: they said, then they're explosives experts, glasscock. He would sight
[30:13] Speaker 2: it all off with sticks of dynamite. After the smoke
[30:16] Speaker 2: and the dust cleared, the Newton gang would then gather
[30:18] Speaker 2: up the loot, rush back to their STUDI Baker Big six,
[30:21] Speaker 2: and tear away into the night, knowing the local cops
[30:23] Speaker 2: couldn't catch them in their far slower tin lizzies. Yeah,
[30:26] Speaker 2: and if anyone tried to like phone or telegraph to
[30:28] Speaker 2: the other police down the road, they'd find, Oh, the
[30:31] Speaker 2: wires have been cut. The town has cut off the
[30:34] Speaker 2: whole town. There's only so many wires back then. So
[30:38] Speaker 2: to help along their targeting of which banks to hit,
[30:41] Speaker 2: Willis he bribed this insurance company insider who worked with
[30:44] Speaker 2: the Texas Association of Bankers, who then handed over to Willis.
[30:48] Speaker 2: A list of banks that used older safes for their
[30:51] Speaker 2: bank vaults. Stop the kinds that would be susceptible to
[30:54] Speaker 2: nitro glicer in.
[30:55] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[30:56] Speaker 2: So on July twenty fourth, nineteen twenty three, during their
[30:58] Speaker 2: cross border run of bank jobs in Canada, the Newton
[31:01] Speaker 2: Gang they're up in Toronto where they doubled up their tactics.
[31:05] Speaker 2: They robbed the bank messengers in broad daylight, who are
[31:08] Speaker 2: just walking around with currency and coins they had on them.
[31:10] Speaker 2: They're like and then they're like, wait, where are you
[31:12] Speaker 2: guys going? Where are you taking this? So then they
[31:14] Speaker 2: head on over to the Toronto currency clearing house, Oh
[31:17] Speaker 2: my god, and they try to like rob the whole place,
[31:20] Speaker 2: like rather than one in in a time in it
[31:21] Speaker 2: and they're like all of them.
[31:23] Speaker 3: That sounds like, you know, go to the source.
[31:25] Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, totally. And so the Newton Gang they find
[31:28] Speaker 2: that a few of the Canadian bank messengers they weren't
[31:31] Speaker 2: like those pushovers down in Texas. Yeah, apparently the Canadians
[31:35] Speaker 2: were tougher.
[31:35] Speaker 3: Than the Americans to tussle.
[31:37] Speaker 2: There was a squabble over the coins. A few of
[31:39] Speaker 2: the Canadian bank messengers just wouldn't hand over their bags
[31:42] Speaker 2: of gold and silver coins and instead they refused things
[31:45] Speaker 2: get heated and so heat. In fact, sometime later the
[31:48] Speaker 2: Canadian bank messengers they get into it. The Newton Gang
[31:51] Speaker 2: fists turn into gunfire, oh, which mushrooms into a full
[31:55] Speaker 2: on gunfight, the firing back and forth each other. Newton
[31:59] Speaker 2: Gang escapes unscathed. The messengers none of them are killed.
[32:03] Speaker 2: A couple get winged, but no one gets killed. And
[32:06] Speaker 2: you know, like I said, it's their mo They don't
[32:08] Speaker 2: take a life. Once they flee the dangerous Canadian streets.
[32:12] Speaker 2: The Newton Gang returned to US with about eighty four
[32:16] Speaker 2: thousand dollars of Canadian loot. And that doesn't sound like
[32:19] Speaker 2: a lot necessarily, but that'd be one point six million
[32:22] Speaker 2: in twenty twenty six dollars from that clearinghouse. Yes, wow,
[32:26] Speaker 2: so it was so much money to enjoy. The Newton
[32:28] Speaker 2: boys enjoyed the high life down in Chicago, as Joe
[32:31] Speaker 2: Newton had explained to Johnny Carson. They did, indeed eat
[32:34] Speaker 2: at the finest restaurants. They drove the fastest, coolest cars,
[32:38] Speaker 2: they wore the cleanest suits. They lived it up like
[32:41] Speaker 2: as much as you can in nineteen twenties luxury. They
[32:43] Speaker 2: went to the Kentucky Derby and they enjoyed the parties there.
[32:46] Speaker 2: They sipped on mint julips and whatnot. They hit up
[32:49] Speaker 2: nightclubs and speakeasies and numerous downtowns from Kansas City on
[32:53] Speaker 2: on up. They did it up nineteen twenty stars. Now,
[32:56] Speaker 2: despite their towering success as an outlaw gang, they were
[33:00] Speaker 2: not the focus of any multi state manhunt.
[33:02] Speaker 3: You're kidding.
[33:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, one, the FBI didn't really exist yet. But yeah,
[33:06] Speaker 2: the more famous bank robbers that would follow them would
[33:08] Speaker 2: then make the FBI more of a necessity to be
[33:10] Speaker 2: able to cross state lines, because in nineteen twenty two,
[33:13] Speaker 2: if you cross state lines, it was like your crimes
[33:15] Speaker 2: were forgiven. It was like yeah car Blanche, right, Yeah,
[33:19] Speaker 2: until you robbed a bank in that state, you were fine.
[33:21] Speaker 2: You're like, I don't care what you do in Missouri.
[33:23] Speaker 3: Well, and their contemporaries were, you know, lighting places up there,
[33:28] Speaker 3: opening fire and killing people, and that's going to give
[33:31] Speaker 3: a lot more attention and heat totally.
[33:33] Speaker 2: And they're also remember just a couple of years ahead
[33:36] Speaker 2: of the like the real like Tommy gun toting, like
[33:39] Speaker 2: like Babyface Nelson, like shooting the place up. These guys
[33:43] Speaker 2: are coming in. They're they're almost like technological where they're
[33:46] Speaker 2: cutting off the communication. They go in, they blow the vault,
[33:49] Speaker 2: they clear out in a super fast car. Yeah, you
[33:52] Speaker 2: converted this all to like modern technology and be like
[33:54] Speaker 2: if you had like your own helicopter that's super fast.
[33:57] Speaker 3: And if you're a bank, you don't want to say like,
[33:59] Speaker 3: oh they got It's a different thing if they came
[34:02] Speaker 3: in and they sprayed the place with bullets and what
[34:04] Speaker 3: can we do? This was just what we didn't think
[34:06] Speaker 3: about that.
[34:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to get a new new vault. I
[34:09] Speaker 2: guess now. Also, can I just say just really quickly yes.
[34:12] Speaker 2: When I was reading about this, I just kept thinking,
[34:15] Speaker 2: this is my dream. I mean to be a bank
[34:18] Speaker 2: robber and outlaw a desperado in a fast car, not
[34:22] Speaker 2: on a horse. They can get like ornery with you
[34:24] Speaker 2: or throw like a shoe, right, but like just a
[34:27] Speaker 2: fast car and a straight six Studi Baker working the
[34:30] Speaker 2: Midwest in Canada in the nineteen twenties when there's little
[34:33] Speaker 2: to no federal law enforcement like before technology was so dominant.
[34:36] Speaker 2: They're not like calling ahead. They're barely able to telegraph ahead.
[34:40] Speaker 2: And you know you could just basically if a big
[34:42] Speaker 2: six Studi Baker is your key to freedom. Oh my god,
[34:45] Speaker 2: dream time for me?
[34:46] Speaker 3: When and if we get a time machine we know
[34:50] Speaker 3: where you're going.
[34:51] Speaker 2: Oh one hundred, yes, and it won't be I won't
[34:54] Speaker 2: be as successful because I'll kind of stick out a
[34:55] Speaker 2: little bit more, but I'm still trying it anyhow. This
[34:59] Speaker 2: is how the Newton Gang largely stayed off any federal
[35:02] Speaker 2: most Wanted lists. They were not violent. They were really
[35:05] Speaker 2: technologically savvy for the time, and so they got to
[35:08] Speaker 2: enjoy the fruits of their crimes. They enjoyed the laughter
[35:10] Speaker 2: of ladies who liked bad men. They got to gamble
[35:13] Speaker 2: and drink and cheer on race horses and you know,
[35:15] Speaker 2: dine on fat steaks and guzzled delicious illegal booze. Right.
[35:19] Speaker 2: Of course, even if the law wasn't necessarily hot on
[35:22] Speaker 2: their tail, they did also draw the attention of other criminals,
[35:25] Speaker 2: namely the organized crime syndicates in the Chicago Land area.
[35:29] Speaker 3: Oh they're getting a little close.
[35:30] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because around they were like, hey, those guys
[35:32] Speaker 2: are kind of good. And if you know anything about
[35:34] Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties bank robbers, pretty Boy Floyd baby Face
[35:37] Speaker 2: and else, they start also migrating John Dillinger and dealing
[35:39] Speaker 2: with the Chicago syndicates with Capone's boys. I remember, like
[35:42] Speaker 2: when I was telling you about Capone's chauffeur. They were
[35:45] Speaker 2: using the same mechanic actually to get their fast cars
[35:49] Speaker 2: from him. So there's overlap. And they're like, OK, we'll
[35:51] Speaker 2: see when we get these guys to pull a job
[35:53] Speaker 2: for us, And unfortunately they agreed, oh boy, and ultimately
[35:57] Speaker 2: that would lead to their downfall. See, they got a
[36:00] Speaker 2: little greedy. They weren't like Robin Hood where they were
[36:02] Speaker 2: like heroes of like the working class. They weren't giving
[36:04] Speaker 2: out the money. Yeah, so they didn't really have like
[36:07] Speaker 2: all the people on their side they have to say
[36:09] Speaker 2: to say how Capone did with like oh turkeys at
[36:11] Speaker 2: Thanksgiving all that, so they couldn't hide out as well. Anyway,
[36:15] Speaker 2: they get talked into pulling a job robbing a mail
[36:18] Speaker 2: train outside of Chicago, and that one decision would change
[36:22] Speaker 2: everything for the Newton Boys. The first Let's take a
[36:24] Speaker 2: little break, Elizabeth. Yes, and after these messages we'll hear
[36:27] Speaker 2: how it all goes wrong for the Newton Gang. Oh boy,
[36:50] Speaker 2: and we are back. Okay. So at this point, my
[36:55] Speaker 2: dudes are still living the high life and getting away
[36:58] Speaker 2: with it all, bouncing around living my dream tames, my
[37:00] Speaker 2: best life, not hurting nobody, living your aspirations as a criminal.
[37:05] Speaker 2: So how does it all go wrong? Great question, Elizabeth, Well,
[37:09] Speaker 2: I kind of already told you. They broke their pattern.
[37:11] Speaker 2: They went back to robbing trains, which they'd robbed in
[37:14] Speaker 2: the past. That wasn't a new thing for them. But
[37:16] Speaker 2: working with other gangs, especially the Chicago Syndicate, the Racketeers
[37:20] Speaker 2: as they were recalled at the time, that was kind
[37:23] Speaker 2: of new for them because mostly, you know, when they
[37:25] Speaker 2: robed trains, they just robbed the passengers and they got
[37:27] Speaker 2: whatever was in the safe on the train. Well, this
[37:29] Speaker 2: time they decided to rob a mail train. And it
[37:32] Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily their idea. And you know how we always say,
[37:35] Speaker 2: don't f around with the US Postal Service or you
[37:37] Speaker 2: will find out. Yep, Well they did and they did.
[37:41] Speaker 3: So.
[37:41] Speaker 2: It was June twelfth, nineteen twenty four. Newton Gang was
[37:44] Speaker 2: an Illinois they'd partnered up with some folks from a
[37:46] Speaker 2: Chicago crime outfit. Then they had their own plans to
[37:49] Speaker 2: rob a US mail train that was rumored to be
[37:51] Speaker 2: carrying three million dollars back then. Oh, that'd be about
[37:55] Speaker 2: fifty seven million dollars today. WHOA, if they pulled it off,
[37:59] Speaker 2: it'd be the largest train robbery in US history, possibly
[38:02] Speaker 2: a world history. Now, their partners were Chicago racketeer, two
[38:05] Speaker 2: guys from the syndicate, and an insider, a postal inspector
[38:09] Speaker 2: who told the gangsters all about this possible score. He's
[38:11] Speaker 2: it's going to be on this train on this day
[38:13] Speaker 2: at this time. So the plan was to hit the
[38:15] Speaker 2: train at a spot called round Out. It was and
[38:19] Speaker 2: remains an unincorporated area where there's this big train junction
[38:22] Speaker 2: outside of Chicago. Because remember Chicago was the big like
[38:25] Speaker 2: clearinghouse for meat and commodities back then, so they had
[38:28] Speaker 2: to get trains in and out of there. So this
[38:29] Speaker 2: was just outside of town, a place where you could
[38:32] Speaker 2: essentially you could turn a train around, you could redirect them,
[38:35] Speaker 2: you could have them crisscross trains. It was a spider
[38:37] Speaker 2: web of train tracks right, and this US Mail train
[38:40] Speaker 2: would be pulling through round Out and there it would
[38:43] Speaker 2: have to slow down enough that they could like hop on,
[38:45] Speaker 2: tell a guy to stop the train, then rob it
[38:48] Speaker 2: at their leisure, get back in their big six Studa Baker,
[38:52] Speaker 2: and tear off into the night. The target was this
[38:54] Speaker 2: thing called the Milwaukee Road. That's one Milwaukee road that
[38:57] Speaker 2: was the brand fast mail train, a Milwaukee Road Fast
[39:01] Speaker 2: mail train.
[39:02] Speaker 3: That sounds made up totally.
[39:04] Speaker 2: But you know what, Rather than me tell you more
[39:06] Speaker 2: about this, Elizabeth, close your eyes.
[39:08] Speaker 3: My eyes are closed.
[39:08] Speaker 2: I'd like you to picture it. It's a summer evening
[39:17] Speaker 2: in June of nineteen twenty four, and you are aboard
[39:20] Speaker 2: on Milwaukee Road Fast mail train car. You're happy to
[39:23] Speaker 2: have the work after your time working with a traveling
[39:25] Speaker 2: flea circus. That sounded like it would be fun. But
[39:28] Speaker 2: after a few weeks of fleecing families to see the
[39:30] Speaker 2: fleas perform in the circus, you decided to move on
[39:33] Speaker 2: to greener and more stable pastures. Your brother in law
[39:37] Speaker 2: connected you with someone he knows and got you a
[39:39] Speaker 2: job working as a postal worker on the mail trains
[39:41] Speaker 2: rolling out of Chicago. Seems like safe work. Tonight, it's
[39:45] Speaker 2: your fourth day on the job and you're looking forward
[39:47] Speaker 2: to ride in the rails west to deliver an express
[39:49] Speaker 2: car of mail. You heard that you'll be carrying a
[39:52] Speaker 2: sizable load of currency aboard the mail car, somewhere around
[39:55] Speaker 2: to the tune of roughly three million dollars. When the
[39:59] Speaker 2: train slows to change tracks and round out Illinois. You
[40:02] Speaker 2: figure it'd be a good time to take a coffee break.
[40:04] Speaker 2: You crack open your thermos. You pour yourself still steaming cupajava.
[40:09] Speaker 2: As the train slows to change tracks, and just after
[40:12] Speaker 2: you enjoy that first sip of the steam and brew,
[40:14] Speaker 2: you hear a commotion outside. You slide open the security
[40:18] Speaker 2: window to see what all the noise is about. There
[40:21] Speaker 2: is a gang of masked men pointing heavy weaponry at
[40:24] Speaker 2: the train car. The slow moving train comes to a
[40:28] Speaker 2: complete stop. Then the shouting begins. One of the masked
[40:32] Speaker 2: bandit shouts whoever is in the armored mail car to
[40:35] Speaker 2: throw out the mail sacks with the three million. He
[40:38] Speaker 2: means you, You and that other postal worker who is
[40:41] Speaker 2: also in the mail car with you. You both look
[40:43] Speaker 2: at each other, unsure what to do. More shouting from
[40:47] Speaker 2: outside the train car ensues again. They demand the three
[40:51] Speaker 2: million dollars in mail sacks to be tossed out of
[40:54] Speaker 2: the train car, or else a quiet dread takes hold
[40:58] Speaker 2: of you, or else. You're pretty sure you know what
[41:02] Speaker 2: that means. One of the masked men says he'll start
[41:05] Speaker 2: counting if you don't throw out the mail sacks with
[41:07] Speaker 2: the three million dollars in it. The masked men will
[41:10] Speaker 2: start blasting, and woe be unto you and anyone else
[41:14] Speaker 2: in that train car. The decision is yours. They begin
[41:18] Speaker 2: counting ten, nine eight. You and the other postal worker
[41:24] Speaker 2: lock eyes. He says, where are the mail sacks? Let's
[41:27] Speaker 2: do as they say. Is he in on it? You
[41:30] Speaker 2: wonder the outlaw bandits keep counting five, four, three, You
[41:37] Speaker 2: don't know what to do. Two one. No guns sound
[41:45] Speaker 2: that good. Maybe they're bluffing, you think. But then a
[41:48] Speaker 2: tear gas canister is lied into the armored train car.
[41:52] Speaker 2: It smokes and fills the air with a choking haze
[41:55] Speaker 2: of tear gas. The masked men shout, throw out the
[41:58] Speaker 2: mail sacks, or we start. The other postal worker faints
[42:03] Speaker 2: dead away. He hits the table where your coffee is sitting,
[42:06] Speaker 2: which sends your thermost cup of coffee into the air.
[42:09] Speaker 2: It lands with a tiny metal sound and the splash
[42:11] Speaker 2: of your coffee. You bend down to check on your coworker.
[42:15] Speaker 2: Lucky you did, because from the backside of the train
[42:18] Speaker 2: car you hear the rat tat tat sound of a
[42:20] Speaker 2: tiny gun and the big booming sound of a forty
[42:23] Speaker 2: five pistol. As both fire in unison, bullets begin to
[42:28] Speaker 2: pierce the weak points of the armored car. You lie
[42:31] Speaker 2: still on the floor. When the gunfire finally stops, you
[42:35] Speaker 2: hop up and shout, I'm tossing it out. You quickly
[42:38] Speaker 2: grab the mail sacks and start shoving them out the
[42:40] Speaker 2: window sloped one at a time. The mail sacks hit
[42:43] Speaker 2: the ground with a soft weighted thud, one after the other.
[42:48] Speaker 2: The masked men sound jubilant at the sight of the
[42:51] Speaker 2: mail sacks, until you hear one of them shout, Wiley,
[42:54] Speaker 2: you okay, they shot Doc. You don't know what they're
[42:58] Speaker 2: talking about, because neither you nor the other postal worker
[43:01] Speaker 2: drew a weapon, let alone fired one. You lie back down,
[43:04] Speaker 2: expecting the train car to be pierced by a fresh
[43:06] Speaker 2: round of bullets, but the guns never sound. Instead, you
[43:10] Speaker 2: hear the throaty engine of what sounds like a Studebaker
[43:14] Speaker 2: roar to light. The car drinks down gasoline as it
[43:17] Speaker 2: zooms off into the dark of a summer night. Later on,
[43:21] Speaker 2: when the authorities arrive, you dutifully report that you never
[43:24] Speaker 2: saw the faces of any of the masked men They
[43:27] Speaker 2: left in one car, but you did hear one of
[43:30] Speaker 2: the bandits shout for Willie or Wiley and that Doc
[43:33] Speaker 2: had been shot. Turns out this one piece of evidence
[43:36] Speaker 2: is all the authorities need to hear to begin their manhunt.
[43:41] Speaker 3: Good job you, good job me, I'm so good at
[43:44] Speaker 3: this yew.
[43:45] Speaker 2: There you go. That would be the final robbery of
[43:47] Speaker 2: the Newton gang. Wow. Years later, baby brother Joe Newton
[43:51] Speaker 2: recalled for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in nineteen
[43:53] Speaker 2: eighty how he remembered it all going sideways. So Johnny
[43:57] Speaker 2: Carson asked him, when did they catch you? Right after
[44:00] Speaker 2: the nineteen twenty four and Joe jumps in right right
[44:03] Speaker 2: after that one of our men. It wasn't us, but
[44:05] Speaker 2: if this one man was working with us, he got
[44:07] Speaker 2: excited and he bound. It had to be excitement because
[44:10] Speaker 2: he went up and went across on the other side
[44:12] Speaker 2: where he wasn't supposed to be, and he shot my brother.
[44:15] Speaker 2: Johnny Carson is concerned and has killed him, and Joe
[44:18] Speaker 2: Newton sort of lasts and no, no, no, he shot
[44:21] Speaker 2: him five or six times, with forty five he should
[44:23] Speaker 2: have killed him.
[44:23] Speaker 3: WHOA.
[44:24] Speaker 2: This wins far more laughter from the Ed McMahon and
[44:27] Speaker 2: Johnny Carson in the audience when he says his brother
[44:30] Speaker 2: got shot five or six times with a forty five
[44:32] Speaker 2: and it should have killed him.
[44:33] Speaker 3: That's incredible.
[44:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, So Johnny Carson has forty five is a big
[44:38] Speaker 2: boar weapon that showed pretty well, and your brother recovered
[44:41] Speaker 2: from that, and Joe Newton sort of brags on his
[44:43] Speaker 2: big brother. Yeah, he recovered and lived to be eighty
[44:45] Speaker 2: three years old. So the story goes the explosives expert
[44:50] Speaker 2: glass Cock was standing on the other side of the
[44:52] Speaker 2: train car from Doc in some of the Newton gang.
[44:55] Speaker 2: He misunderstood what was happening with the whole countdown or whatever.
[44:58] Speaker 2: He just starts firing his forty five pistol and he
[45:00] Speaker 2: ends up shooting Doc a few.
[45:01] Speaker 3: Times friendly fire.
[45:03] Speaker 2: Yes. And so after that debacle with Wiley aka Doc
[45:06] Speaker 2: Newton and where you the bystander hear his name, it
[45:09] Speaker 2: didn't take the authorities long to track down the Newton.
[45:11] Speaker 2: Gag says, there's only so many Wiley aka Docs in
[45:14] Speaker 2: the book. So the law finally launches this multi jurisdictional manhunt.
[45:19] Speaker 2: Local authorities, state authorities, federal law enforcement. They all team
[45:22] Speaker 2: up to bring him to justice. And this is like
[45:25] Speaker 2: right before we're gonna get like Bonnie and Clyde level
[45:27] Speaker 2: of a communication. So they're bringing in that guy, Charles Hammer.
[45:31] Speaker 2: He's like, they bring in all these people, like Texas
[45:33] Speaker 2: law guys all day. Right, Soon enough, with local Chicago police,
[45:37] Speaker 2: they get a tip there was a report that a
[45:39] Speaker 2: wounded man with possible gunshot wounds or maybe possibly a
[45:44] Speaker 2: wound either way, he was holed up in a north
[45:46] Speaker 2: side Chicago house. Cops race up to the address off
[45:50] Speaker 2: this tip, and Doc Is there gets caught, as is
[45:54] Speaker 2: Willis and Joe. They also get hemmed in by the cops.
[45:56] Speaker 2: And now they got three of their four brothers. Yeah,
[45:59] Speaker 2: eldest brother Jess. He manages to flee Chicago. He heads south,
[46:04] Speaker 2: racing for the Texas border and the land he knows
[46:06] Speaker 2: far better than the muggy summer time of a Chicago suburb.
[46:09] Speaker 3: Right.
[46:10] Speaker 2: Apparently, he makes it out with a cut of the
[46:12] Speaker 2: stolen loot about one hundred thousand dollars, and he indeed
[46:15] Speaker 2: made it home to Texas. He made it all the
[46:17] Speaker 2: way down to San Antonio, which is low in Texas.
[46:21] Speaker 2: He proceeds there to get drunk. Once he's home, right,
[46:24] Speaker 2: but he also knows that he needs to like hide
[46:26] Speaker 2: his cut of the stolen money and all the coins everything.
[46:29] Speaker 2: So he hires a cab driver to take him out
[46:31] Speaker 2: of town out to like a small hill or a
[46:33] Speaker 2: small mountain, and drunk as he was, he climbs at
[46:36] Speaker 2: the top of this small mountain, he buries the stolen loot.
[46:40] Speaker 2: Then he returns to town. He gets more drunk, eventually
[46:42] Speaker 2: passes out. Next morning, or rather I should say the
[46:45] Speaker 2: next day that he got up before noon. He plans
[46:48] Speaker 2: to keep running and head over the border to Old Mexico.
[46:50] Speaker 2: So he's like, I need to go head back out
[46:52] Speaker 2: and find that loot I buried last night. Yeah, only
[46:55] Speaker 2: once he's sober, he can't remember where he buried it.
[46:58] Speaker 2: He's like this hill, that hill, and a lot of
[47:00] Speaker 2: the hills look alike in Texas. So he did manage
[47:03] Speaker 2: to hire the same cab driver who took him out.
[47:06] Speaker 2: He's like, you remember where to go? Trouble was, the
[47:09] Speaker 2: taxi driver had been drinking with him and was drunk
[47:12] Speaker 2: as he was. He couldn't remember where he drove about too.
[47:15] Speaker 2: Oh no, I remember we were both sipping on that
[47:17] Speaker 2: whiskey pretty good now. So rather than since neither man
[47:20] Speaker 2: can remember what small mountain he dropped him off at,
[47:23] Speaker 2: nor which one he climbed, or where he might have
[47:25] Speaker 2: hid in the lute Jess Newton. He's like, well, I'm
[47:28] Speaker 2: gonna try to find it. He doesn't give up easily.
[47:30] Speaker 2: He searches, he searches, he digs, he digs. He cannot
[47:34] Speaker 2: find the stolen money. Eventually he just has to give
[47:37] Speaker 2: up on the Bury Treasure and get to step in
[47:39] Speaker 2: before the law tracks him down to Texas. He manages
[47:42] Speaker 2: to sneak over the border into Mexico, but down there
[47:45] Speaker 2: a federal agent follows up and manages to catch him
[47:47] Speaker 2: in the town to see that akuna, which is like
[47:50] Speaker 2: basically right across from del Rio Texas, so where the
[47:53] Speaker 2: Rio grand is acting as the border that separates Texas
[47:55] Speaker 2: from Mexico. He's just across. So once all eight men
[47:59] Speaker 2: so the racket, the two guys with Chicago outfit, the
[48:01] Speaker 2: Postal inspector, and the four Newton gang. They all get busted.
[48:05] Speaker 2: The go to stand trial. The Postal Inspector, William Fahey.
[48:10] Speaker 2: He catches the stiffest sentence of the ball.
[48:12] Speaker 3: Yeah he had been trusted.
[48:14] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, So it's most likely a warning to the
[48:17] Speaker 2: other trusted federal employees like don't you dear trigger. So
[48:20] Speaker 2: he gets sentenced to twenty five years behind bars at
[48:23] Speaker 2: Levenworth Federal Penn in Kansas. Oh yeah, Jess Newton, he
[48:27] Speaker 2: catches a nine year stretch at Levenworth. Doc gets sentenced
[48:30] Speaker 2: to six years. Willis gets sentenced to four years at Levenworth,
[48:34] Speaker 2: and baby brother Joe, he just gets one year inside
[48:37] Speaker 2: at Levenworth. Doc would have gotten just one year, but
[48:40] Speaker 2: they added five years for his prior prison to escape
[48:43] Speaker 2: because that was still.
[48:43] Speaker 3: On the book, another five forgetting shut exactly.
[48:47] Speaker 2: So most of the stolen lute was returned to the Feds,
[48:50] Speaker 2: all except what was spent in a few days while
[48:53] Speaker 2: they were on the run, and of course the money
[48:55] Speaker 2: that just hid in the Texas Mountains outside San Antonio. Yes. Now,
[48:58] Speaker 2: after their time in the Federal penn and the Newton
[49:00] Speaker 2: brothers all reunite back home in Uvallde, Texas. Willis kept
[49:04] Speaker 2: himself in the criminal underworld. He did go back inside
[49:07] Speaker 2: after he was busted bootleg and whiskey and hauling it
[49:10] Speaker 2: over the border, and he gets thrown in jail and
[49:12] Speaker 2: texts arcana. Eventually, both he and baby brother Joe. They
[49:15] Speaker 2: were again wrongfully arrested and in prison for a bank
[49:18] Speaker 2: robbery they did not commit, and in nineteen forty three
[49:21] Speaker 2: Willis is locked up in an Oklahoma prison for seven years.
[49:24] Speaker 2: Baby brother Joe catches a sentence of ten years. Oh yeah.
[49:28] Speaker 2: When he gets at Willis starts running nightclubs. In the fifties,
[49:31] Speaker 2: He's owns a couple of gas stations which provide kind
[49:33] Speaker 2: of cover for his illicit activities. At this point, he's
[49:35] Speaker 2: a hard and criminal, so there was talk of him
[49:38] Speaker 2: getting into the so called nightclub wars, which led to
[49:41] Speaker 2: rumors of arson that he may have been involved with.
[49:44] Speaker 2: At one point around that same time, someone tried to
[49:46] Speaker 2: assassinate Willis. He was in his bathroom at the time.
[49:49] Speaker 2: Someone poked a gun inside the window and took their shot.
[49:52] Speaker 2: He survived that shooting because these Newton boys are hard
[49:54] Speaker 2: to kill. Apparently, in nineteen sixty eight, at the age
[49:57] Speaker 2: of seventy seven years old, their brother Doc Newton gets
[50:00] Speaker 2: arrested in Rowena, Texas. He was busted for what Elizabeth
[50:04] Speaker 2: bank robbery no, which he did comit. The judge took
[50:09] Speaker 2: pity on him and figured he wasn't likely to try
[50:11] Speaker 2: it again at his advanced age, so he let him
[50:14] Speaker 2: go without a prison sentence. Also, the law had beaten
[50:16] Speaker 2: up on a pretty bad I wanted the story to
[50:18] Speaker 2: go away, so due to his outlaw passed and the
[50:20] Speaker 2: humor of his failed outlaw present. In April of sixty eight,
[50:23] Speaker 2: Doc Newton was featured in a story in Life magazine
[50:28] Speaker 2: National News all over again this curiosity. In seventy four,
[50:31] Speaker 2: Doc Newton passed away at the age eighty three. Jess
[50:34] Speaker 2: Newton had already passed away in a VA hospital back
[50:36] Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty. In seventy three, Willis Newton gets implicated
[50:40] Speaker 2: in a bank robbery that went down in Brackettville, Texas,
[50:43] Speaker 2: and just like with Doc, the authorities chose not to
[50:45] Speaker 2: press charges the like you're too much of a Texas legendary.
[50:47] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[50:48] Speaker 4: So.
[50:48] Speaker 2: Willis Newton eventually died in Augustus of seventy nine at
[50:51] Speaker 2: the age of ninety years old. And lastly, baby brother
[50:55] Speaker 2: Joe Newton died on February third, nineteen eighty nine, at
[50:57] Speaker 2: the ripe old age of eighty eight. Now if he's right,
[51:01] Speaker 2: Texas strong.
[51:02] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[51:02] Speaker 2: Now, if you were wondering, Jess Newton never did remember
[51:05] Speaker 2: where he buried that stuf I was best he could recall.
[51:08] Speaker 2: It was Atapa Hill or a small mountain outside of
[51:10] Speaker 2: San Antonio, somewhere along the road to Bandera. So if
[51:14] Speaker 2: you know the area, you want to go looking. There's
[51:16] Speaker 2: a bunch of gold coins sitting out on top of
[51:18] Speaker 2: a mountain, and there's a very large rock he placed
[51:21] Speaker 2: atop the hole that he dug. Those are all the
[51:23] Speaker 2: clues that we have. So if you go looking for
[51:25] Speaker 2: the lost Newton gang lout, good luck, and if you
[51:27] Speaker 2: find it, let us know because we'd love to hear
[51:29] Speaker 2: from you.
[51:31] Speaker 3: I'm wondering if it has been discovered and someone just
[51:33] Speaker 3: kept real quiet.
[51:34] Speaker 2: About it, that would be the smart play. You know,
[51:36] Speaker 2: some prospector out there, like maybe someone with a metal detector,
[51:40] Speaker 2: like eighties or.
[51:40] Speaker 3: Nineties, if there's like a housing development.
[51:43] Speaker 2: I don't think I think it was in the dry hills.
[51:44] Speaker 2: I don't think it was in like the hills where
[51:46] Speaker 2: the people want to be living on, Like only coyotes
[51:49] Speaker 2: or prospectors.
[51:49] Speaker 3: Would find it that someone stumbled upon.
[51:51] Speaker 2: It may curious kids and they just do like a
[51:54] Speaker 2: stranger things kind of thing. I don't know, So what's
[51:56] Speaker 2: our ridiculous take.
[51:59] Speaker 3: I'm really blown a way by how long their lives
[52:02] Speaker 3: were considering how hard totally live.
[52:04] Speaker 2: Yes, and they're starting from where they started hard scrabbled
[52:08] Speaker 2: dirts and dirt farmers, a bunch of them. So you
[52:10] Speaker 2: know they were eating like half a biscuit for breakfast.
[52:13] Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm My takeaway is that I'm in all
[52:16] Speaker 3: of these guys. They're fascinating, and the fact that they're
[52:19] Speaker 3: not household names, right, and they are.
[52:21] Speaker 2: The most prolific of all of them. And you know
[52:24] Speaker 2: why they're not household names. It's the American curse. They
[52:26] Speaker 2: didn't kill anyone, they weren't violent enough to be celebrated.
[52:30] Speaker 3: Is that your takeaway? No takeaway.
[52:34] Speaker 2: I gotta see this Matthew McConaughey movie now totally. But
[52:38] Speaker 2: my takeaway is a man can dream, you know, I would.
[52:42] Speaker 2: I would love to have been in the nineteen twenties,
[52:44] Speaker 2: maybe not in this body, but in the nineteen twenties
[52:47] Speaker 2: robbing banks with these guys, because oh man, does that
[52:50] Speaker 2: sound fun, especially if you're non violent? Right?
[52:53] Speaker 3: You know, yeah, that's true, you know that is true.
[52:55] Speaker 2: So you want to wash this all down with a
[52:57] Speaker 2: talk back in a move for I would love who
[53:00] Speaker 2: is a can you favors? With a talk bag?
[53:08] Speaker 3: Super?
[53:10] Speaker 2: I love get.
[53:15] Speaker 4: Hey, guys, my name is Lisa. I'm from Browns Mills,
[53:18] Speaker 4: New Jersey, and I want to tell you I loved
[53:21] Speaker 4: a little kid at the end of the show. And
[53:24] Speaker 4: the only problem is that when the when he says
[53:27] Speaker 4: it the first time, he sounds very like happy and proud,
[53:31] Speaker 4: and then when he's asked to repeat it, he sounds dejected.
[53:37] Speaker 4: And I don't like that.
[53:38] Speaker 3: I hope he wasn't.
[53:39] Speaker 4: But I love your guys show and I will listen
[53:42] Speaker 4: forever and ever.
[53:43] Speaker 2: Oh thank you.
[53:45] Speaker 3: I can assure you he wasn't dejected. I think he
[53:47] Speaker 3: was trying to be serious guy.
[53:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, trying to get it right. He's a buoyant spirit.
[53:52] Speaker 2: And also he likes to do things right.
[53:53] Speaker 3: That's exactly. Oh that's so sweet though. Thank you for
[53:57] Speaker 3: that sweet message. Hey, I'm going to cut in here
[54:01] Speaker 3: with a brief message, an email from a rude dude
[54:04] Speaker 3: that we want to share with everyone goes like this.
[54:07] Speaker 3: This email is heavier than anything I would normally share
[54:10] Speaker 3: with my three favorite podcasts, but I feel it's important
[54:14] Speaker 3: to share. I promise there is a bit of light
[54:16] Speaker 3: at the end of it. I live in Minneapolis, and
[54:19] Speaker 3: things here are worse than what others on the outside
[54:22] Speaker 3: probably realize. I won't go into details, but suffice to
[54:26] Speaker 3: say it's like nothing I've ever experienced or could have
[54:29] Speaker 3: imagined here in the US. I've never felt so scared, abandoned,
[54:33] Speaker 3: and mentally and emotionally drained. Things that would normally be
[54:37] Speaker 3: a larger deal, like getting laid off this past Friday
[54:40] Speaker 3: due to downsizing, since our local economy is also suffering,
[54:44] Speaker 3: seemed trivial. Now I think about helping escort terrified neighborhood
[54:48] Speaker 3: kids to and from the bus stop, or if other
[54:51] Speaker 3: neighbors have enough food because they're scared to leave the house.
[54:54] Speaker 3: I've listened to all three of your podcasts for a
[54:56] Speaker 3: varying amount of time. I've interacted with some of you email,
[55:00] Speaker 3: Instagram or seeing you live. You've all been a part
[55:03] Speaker 3: of my life on a near daily basis. You've accompanied
[55:07] Speaker 3: me on work trips, vacations, and throughout my daily life,
[55:10] Speaker 3: and now you provide me with a bit of comfort
[55:13] Speaker 3: most nights when I try to quiet my brain enough
[55:16] Speaker 3: to sleep. I want to thank you all for a
[55:18] Speaker 3: needed distraction and what feels like nearly impossible times. The
[55:22] Speaker 3: next time you sit down to record, I hope you
[55:24] Speaker 3: can take even a brief moment to reflect and know
[55:27] Speaker 3: that what you do is important to a lot of us. Sincerely,
[55:31] Speaker 3: Mark mccobbin, Minneapolis, Minnesota. So I'm reading this here because
[55:36] Speaker 3: we need to know and understand that we are not
[55:39] Speaker 3: alone in this. All of us luckily have each other,
[55:42] Speaker 3: and we all need moments of distraction and sanity in
[55:46] Speaker 3: the face of the horrors and the hard work we
[55:48] Speaker 3: have in front of us. All of us are in
[55:51] Speaker 3: a cold winter, and we're trying to make ends meet,
[55:54] Speaker 3: trying to live our lives under this constant barrage of
[55:57] Speaker 3: the news of cruelty and pain, and idiocy and hypocrisy
[56:01] Speaker 3: and just pig ignorance. But let's all spare a thought
[56:05] Speaker 3: for those in the thick of it, the people carrying
[56:08] Speaker 3: the weight of this in person and in real time,
[56:12] Speaker 3: those with the targets on their backs, and the ones
[56:14] Speaker 3: who stand in front of them to block the blow.
[56:17] Speaker 3: We're all fragile right now, and we need to acknowledge that.
[56:21] Speaker 3: Here's the thing. Making this podcast is always fun for us.
[56:26] Speaker 3: It's a good escape when the world is chaos, but
[56:29] Speaker 3: right now it feels like a mission of mercy. It's
[56:32] Speaker 3: us reaching out to you humans, to humans, telling silly
[56:36] Speaker 3: stories about silly humans. And when you reach back and
[56:40] Speaker 3: let us know that what we're doing is in any
[56:43] Speaker 3: way helpful, that means a lot. We're not in this
[56:46] Speaker 3: alone and we'll get through it together. So on behalf
[56:49] Speaker 3: of the whole Ridiculous Crime crew. Thank you all for
[56:53] Speaker 3: listening and being brave and letting us be silly in
[56:56] Speaker 3: your ear for two hours a week. We love and
[56:59] Speaker 3: appreciate you all more.
[57:00] Speaker 2: Than you know. As always. You can find us online
[57:04] Speaker 2: a Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky Instagram. You can also
[57:08] Speaker 2: email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. And
[57:12] Speaker 2: you can find us on Ridiculous Crime Pod on YouTube
[57:15] Speaker 2: if you prefer to get your podcasts there. And we
[57:18] Speaker 2: have our website Ridiculous Crime dot com and uh go
[57:22] Speaker 2: check it out. It's got gifts and merch and all
[57:24] Speaker 2: sorts of fun stuff. And we were also nominated for
[57:27] Speaker 2: Best Beta Tape of nineteen eighty three, so I'm really
[57:30] Speaker 2: excited about that.
[57:31] Speaker 3: So good.
[57:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought VHS, but it turns out we were
[57:34] Speaker 2: nominated for us. It's the higher quality format.
[57:36] Speaker 3: Apparently you know, it was like flipping a coin which
[57:38] Speaker 3: was going to be the hot one.
[57:39] Speaker 2: And we also obviously would love your talkback, so please
[57:41] Speaker 2: go to the iHeart app download it, leave us a
[57:43] Speaker 2: talk back, and we'd love to hear your voice here.
[57:45] Speaker 2: Maybe you'd enjoy to hear your voice here too, and
[57:48] Speaker 2: there you go, Thank you for listening. As always, we
[57:51] Speaker 2: will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is by Elizabeth
[58:00] Speaker 2: Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Matthew McConaughey's
[58:04] Speaker 2: body double Dave Cousten, and starring Annalise Rutger as Buddic
[58:09] Speaker 2: Research is by Texas Outlaw plaquemakers Marissa Brown and Jabbari Davis.
[58:13] Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Johnny Cash Robbery and the
[58:16] Speaker 2: Texas Two Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. The host wardrobe
[58:20] Speaker 2: provided by Botany five hundred, guest Tarn makup by Sparkleshot
[58:23] Speaker 2: and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Richard Linkletter's personal Texas
[58:28] Speaker 2: Outlaw historians Ben Bolin and Noel Brown.
[58:39] Speaker 3: Why Say It One More Time? Geek Cry.
[58:44] Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
[58:47] Speaker 1: My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
[58:51] Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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