Johnny and Carol Williams eluded the FBI for years throughout their record-setting financial institution robbing spree. He obtained hooked after their first profitable heist in 1987: "I made extra in 30 seconds than I had made the entire earlier yr."
NY Submit photograph comoposite
Johnny “The Shootist” Williams was born to steal.
He swipedpensfrom his faculty lecturers, snatched diamond rings from Zale’s, hotwired vehicles and drove off with them. However his favourite factor to steal was money. And he beloved taking it out of banks.
Aided by his getaway-driver spouse Carol Williams, he robbed a complete of 56 financial savings and mortgage establishments between 1986 and 1993. As recounted within the new documentary, “Carol & Johnny,” premiering on-line Tuesday as a part of the Tribeca Movie Pageant, that makes him America’s most prolific financial institution robber.
One heist stands out as his favourite. He remembers it as No. 11, the holdup by way of which he earned his nickname.
It happened at a financial institution drive-through in Solano Seashore, Calif., in November 1987. Johnny was in a foul temper as he waited for the teller to start exiting her sales space in order that he may push his approach in.
“I used to be delayed entering into the drive-up teller and was pissed off,” Johnny, now 71, advised The Submit. As soon as inside, “I advised her to provide me the cash. She mentioned the drawer was locked and he or she didn't have the keys. I noticed the important thing round her wrist. I mentioned, ‘You f–king b–ch!’ Then I shot a bullet into the ceiling. It appeared like a cannon going off. The colour drained from her face. She obtained the cash — $920 — and I knew I used to be on to one thing.”
Taking pictures a bullet into the ceiling turned Johnny’s signature transfer.
“After firing that first shot and placing everybody on the ground, I’d press the gun to the financial institution supervisor’s head and ask if he needed to be shot or needed to cooperate,” he recalled. “I’d say, ‘The selection is yours. Open the drawer and provides me the cash.’ It often took lower than a minute.”
Then Johnny would hustle out, together with his head down and carrying the money. Carol waited of their getaway automobile. As she explains within the doc, “I’d pop the trunk with my left hand, flip the important thing with my proper hand. He will get in [to the trunk], closes it gently. I put it in drive and I'm going. The factor about getaways is it's important to go gradual. I used to be at all times good cowl for [Johnny]. He’s the star. I used to be simply an adjunct. I used to be a damned good getaway driver.”
Initially, Carol, now 62,was not precisely an enthusiastic participant. As described within the documentary, Johnny noticed the necessity for her involvement as easy widespread sense: Based on him, many thieves go down as a result of their spouses get offended over one thing and switch them in. So he short-circuited that risk by making her a necessary participant.
However, he warned Carol, “If I get caught, I’ll know you advised [the authorities] and I do know your loved ones. I can take them one after the other.”
The couple met by way of a boyfriend of her sister Cindy in 1979. 9 years Carol’s senior, Johnny advised The Submit: “I used to be 11 months out of jail [for armed robbery] and he or she was 15 months out of highschool.”
They fell for each other — he describes the expertise as “like getting set unfastened in a sweet retailer; it was implausible” — and obtained married, in 1980, after only a yr of relationship. “The marriage,” Johnny mentioned, “was simply us, a preacher and a witness.”
Carol’s household was unimpressed by the ex-con. Her father tried to kibosh the connection. Within the movie, sister Cindy describes Johnny as “an unsightly son of a bitch.”
When documentary director Colin Barnicle asks Carol why she stayed with Johnny, regardless of his threatening to homicide her household, she says, “I assume I beloved him … He was actually neat.”
And it’s not like Johnny didn’t attempt to go on the straight and slim. Once they met, he was working as a carpet cleaner. However quickly he was struggling to make hire and, after totaling his truck, thought-about a brand new occupation. That was when Johnny went to the Dallas library and began researching financial institution robberies.
However issues didn't start easily. The couple’s first hit was in 1986, at a financial institution in Plano, Texas. Johnny obtained out with $10,000 and hopped into the ready automobile with Carol behind the wheel — just for an implanted dye-pack to blow up, rendering the immediately pink dollars nugatory. The second try was one other catastrophe by dye-pack. The third time, in Abilene, Texas, Johnny accidentallyshot the financial institution supervisor.
“I assumed she was useless,” he says within the documentary. “I beat toes. I used to be out of there. I get within the automobile and Carol mentioned, ‘How did issues go?’ I mentioned, ‘Not very effectively.'” (The supervisor survived.)
However the fourth bank-job was the attraction. “Quick ahead to ’87,” Johnny remembered. “It kicked off with $43,500. I made extra in 30 seconds than I had made the entire earlier yr. It was only a matter of timing.”
In a short time, worthwhile heists turned the norm. “After a job was efficiently accomplished and over, I used to be pumping with adrenaline,” he advised The Submit. “However whereas it went on, I seen it as a job.”
Johnny and Carol would land in a focused metropolis and scour the Yellow Pages for lists of banks. Then they’d start staking out spots. “Day-to-day, I went by way of the banks,” Johnny mentioned. “I checked out them and eradicated them, one after the other.”
They'd spend weeks on the search, searching for comfortable targets that allowed for simple getaways and restricted publicity. The couple’s work ethic even impressed FBI brokers, who had been shortly on the tail of the robbers.
In a 2005 episode of the TV present “The FBI Information,” a Fed marvels over the ingenuity of Johnny loosening fence slats behind a financial institution, previous to a heist, in order that he may make a clean escape to Carol within the ready automobile.
FBI agent Don Glasser was assigned to the case and, within the documentary, he tells director Barnicle about being pissed off by “The Shootist,” who often wore faux facial hair, a hat and sun shades. He additionally by no means left fingerprints.
“He was a ghost,” mentioned Glasser. “He disappeared. You play the ready recreation” till the following heist.
Within the meantime, Johnny and Carol lived it up, touring the nation. He loved nude seashores on the California coast. She was taken by Sea World and a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. Once they hit White Sands Nationwide Park in New Mexico,the place park laws forbid guests from eradicating the sand, Carol took some anyway however fretted about it being “towards the legislation.”
Heists had been adopted by celebratory journeys to Las Vegas or Reno, the place they used unwitting casinos to launder their ill-gotten positive factors. Johnny even had a bank card underneath the alias Robert James Corridor.
And the life was romantic. After a theft, they’d restore to a lodge, lay in mattress collectively and watchas the native information detailed the day’s heist. “They talked about my daring daylight theft. They mentioned I had 50 hostages,” he recalled of 1 report in La Jolla, Calif. Carol was so star struck she “levitated off the bed.”
“We weren’t billionaires however it was a really satisfying life-style,” Johnny mentioned. “We ate filet mignon in good eating places, drank wine, lived in a house that ignored the ocean.” Mockingly, “Our landlord was a jail warden.”
After taking on bowling and successful some tournaments, he contemplated going professional. There have been additionally ideas of entering into Cuban cigar smuggling, buying and selling inventory or doing pc crimes. However financial institution robbing paid the payments — till a very bold scheme led to the couple’s undoing.
This ploy was uncommon in that it required the participation of an outsider, an acquaintance named Bob. In 1993, the 2 started planning what Johnny described to The Submit as “a three-way theft. You are taking the financial institution supervisor and his household hostage [at their home]. Then my accomplice, Bob, would have stayed with the household. I might have gone with the supervisor to the financial institution [before opening hours] so I may rob the vault. Carol would cowl the police scanner.”
The kidnapping/theft by no means obtained previous the planning phases however, in line with Johnny, “Bob turned me in.” Requested how he is aware of it was Bob, he exploded: “I obtained the godd–n transcripts! He did it for a $35,000 reward.”
Lastly, FBI man Glasser had The Shootist’s actual identify and his alias. Brokers traced a getaway automobile to Carol, registered underneath her maiden identify. Following a financial institution theft in Kirkland, Wash. — the couple’s 56th — on July 1, 1993, they holed up at a Residence Inn close to the crime website.
“I used to be going to remain within the space by way of Labor Day,” mentioned Johnny. “I wanted to rob no less than three extra banks.”
After he paid for the room together with his bank card, the lodge was swarmed with legislation enforcers. As Johnny exited the room, Glasser had a gun leveled at him: “Freeze, asshole … You’re underneath arrest.”
Johnny later confessed to all the things. Based on the documentary, he mentioned to Glasser, “Simply shoot me. Save the federal government cash. I do know I'm by no means going to see the sunshine of day. Simply don’t harm my spouse.”
He acquired a 92-year jail sentence in 1995. Carol obtained 20 years. She suffered a stroke behind bars and emerged in 2011, worse for put on. Because the film ended, she was dwelling with the sister who helped introduce her to Johnny so a few years in the past.
Johnny was launched in early 2021, as a consequence of compromised well being through the Covid outbreak. He briefly jumped parole for a jaunt to Vegas, the place he gained some $11,000 on the slots, and is now again on parole, hoping for a profession in cloud computing. The couple stays married, however estranged. Ever optimistic, Johnny advised The Submit: “Carol and I are planning to get again collectively … It simply hasn’t occurred but.”
“I don’t know who the true Johnny is. I don’t know that he actually is aware of who he's,” Glasser advised the doc’s director. “However he’s the proper financial institution robber who simply occurred to get caught.”
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