Oh What A Time... - #47 Criminals (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 19, 2024

It’s time to take a look at some of the most infamous criminals history has to offer; the story of Bonnie and Clyde, the infamous Al Capone and American crime boss Arnold ‘The Brain’ Rothstein. Also.. What were you doing during the great storms of the past? If you’ve got anything on that or anything at all! Do send us an email at: [e-mail] If you're impatient and want both parts in one lovely go next time plus a whole lot more(!), why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 per month to support the show, you'll get: - two bonus episodes every month! - ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can also follow us on:  X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was really just sort of quite silly. I'm Tom Crane. I'm Ellis James. And I'm Chris Skoal and each week on this show we're looking at a brand new historical subject and today we're going to be discussing, we've danced around it till now, criminals. Yeah that's right Bonnie and Clyde Al Capone and Arnold the Brain Rothstein. I'm really excited about this one. Can we just have an amnesty right at the top?

What crimes have we committed? What haven't I committed, I think is the question, to be honest. Crimes of the heart, no doubt. This is a true story. I used to have a paper round, and the guy would sell penny sweets, and the news agent that I worked at, and he often couldn't be bothered to count out what the penny sweets were, so he would just, like, honestly go, how much have you got in there?

And I would undercut it by sometimes as much as 5p. Really? Wow. Well, by comparison, Chris, check this out. I similarly would be allowed, what it was, 25p, whatever it was of penny sweets after school. I once came home, I counted them out, and I had 26. And I made my mum drive me back to Bathampton Village, which was a good 12-minute drive, and I returned that penny sweet.

Oh, that's very sweet. Yeah, so that's... The petrol alone! It's a really good point. I think I'm leaving it if my kids admit to that. Nothing major, I would say, just from the ages, yeah, from the age of 18 to 35, just, I don't know, 100 grand's worth of credit card fraud.

Nothing big, white collar, no one got hurt. Was it every month that would interest you? Yeah, but I got a couple of nice cars out of it. Yeah. A few lovely holidays. And some great memories, actually. Okay, do you know what? I think we'll be criminal.

We'll be criminal if we didn't have some correspondence. Oh, lovely stuff. And can I say, it's next week we will be choosing the correspondence thing. Keep them coming in. We want you to create your own little audio signature as we enter the correspondence section. It's up to you to create your own little audio signature as we enter the correspondence section. It's up to you to make it. I listened to one earlier,

and I couldn't believe the production on it. The production value of one of the music sets is like a full orchestra. And a choir. And that's not a lie. I don't know what's happened there. It must be something that's done on AI or something, but it just blew my mind.

And as we say, if you don't have access to a 300-strong gospel choir, then feel free just to sing something into your dictaphone or whatever you have, whatever recording equipment you have. Okay, correspondence. Jamie Shoesmith has contacted us on hello at owhattime.com because if you use that, we'll read it. God, I wonder what his ancestors did.

Shoesmith. Shoesmith. Our history teacher in secondary school, year seven, his opening gambit was, I might have mentioned this before. Yes. I have. Mr. Pratt. That's it, Mr. Pratt.

Your name tells you about what your family did. My name is Mr. Pratt. Big laugh. Palm of your hands. There you go. Straight in. My name is Mr. C***. go straight in my name is mr so 1987 and 1990 storms is the title hi chaps wonderful work with the show as always your episodes and weather sparked a double memory for me as the michael

fish great not a hurricane of 1987 is particularly significant for me personally as it happened on the day my little sister was born if ever a boy needed a violent omen from god as to the terror that was about to unfold uh this was it that's great but something that has somehow become lost in the nation's collective memory and i hadn't i wasn't aware of this i didn't know about this it's something called cyclone daria do you remember this aka the burns day storm yes it's generally agreed that the 1987 not a hurricane was more violent in terms of sheer wind strength but actually because cyclone daria happened during the daytime there were a lot more casualties and fatalities so i didn't know this i didn't know i've got a weird fact about this i what's the fact? I know the only thing I know about the Burns Day storm is that Gordon Kay from Alo Alo got injured while driving during it.

He did. Something went through his windscreen. It went through his windscreen. Yeah. That is correct. So that comes up in here. Oh, really? It does.

That's amazing. It failed an estimated three million trees, power outages, flooding and collapsed buildings, not to mention actor Gordon K from Aloe Lo came a cropper when a plank of advertising board was blown through his car's windscreen. Wow. Yes, I know. I do remember that because I was a massive aloha lover. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but the real shocker about this 1990 storm was it was on my fifth birthday and the only guest who could come to my party was the boy who lived next door to me. You'd think this would be a downer, but far from it. He and I simply scoffed down the food, chocolates and sweets that my parents had prepared for 20 kids. Between just the two of us. I love this quote. As the house took a battering outside. Happy days.

All the best, Jamie. So on his fifth birthday, during Cyclone Daria, him and his next-door neighbour ate the food for 20 children. That is, that's so funny. I've just Googled Gordon K. Because I do vividly remember,

this was a big news story because he was, Lola Lola was huge, it was absolutely massive, and in an odd bit of serendipity, I've now discussed it on about three separate podcasts in the last two weeks, which is really, really odd. What, Gordon Kaye? Yeah, Mike

Burbind is obsessed with Gordon Kaye. So if you fancy listening, if this isn't enough, hello, hello, hello, Gordon Kaye content for you, do check out some of my other work, The Socially Distant Sports Bar. Writing his memoirs,

aloha aloha co-writer Jeremy Lloyd said he visited K in hospital, adding, I believe part of his recovery was due to his agent getting a video

and showing reruns of aloha aloha to remind him who he was. No way! Because he needed brain surgery because he had terrible injuries

sustained in the accident. However, Rene, who Gordon Kaye played, was a womanising French cafe owner. That's not Gordon Kaye. Gordon Kaye was born in Huddersfield in Yorkshire. So who did he become? Did he become Rene? That's a really good point, yeah. Did the accident change?

Or was he Gordon again? That's incredible. And another fact about Aloalo, that Tom and I once worked at a radio station and one of the other DJs was Vicky Michelle. No. Yes, she was. That's true.

God, the influence of Aloalo really looms large in my career. It just casts such a long shadow. If I mention it on Eris and John now, I'll have done the treble. If you want even more Oh What A Time than a regular listener, you can join the Oh What A Time full-timers fan club and you'll get extra bonus episodes. Two bonus episodes a month from now on, ad-free listening, episodes a week of everybody else.

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Al Capone, a notorious Chicago gangster. I will be talking about Arnold the Brain Rothstein. And first of all, I'm going to be talking to you about the infamous duo, Bonnie and Clyde. This is one of my favourite things I've researched since we started this show. But were they real? I don't even know that much. So they were real. we've started this show but were they real i don't even know that much so they were real so bonnie and clyde were a real duo a pair of gangsters essentially or became gangsters who created havoc across the central united states with their gang during the great depression so they are of course in movies and in stories and books and all this sort of stuff but they

were real people so i i'm going to start with a little bit about who this pair were so Bonnie Parker was born in October 1910 in Texas and she grew up in Cement City which is a suburb of Dallas in the home of her mother her mother was called Emma and as a child she developed an interest in poetry photography this is a sort of vibe she had but otherwise was a frustrated and lonely individual who wasn't even five foot tall now ellis have you found being unusually small has left you feeling frustrated and lonely out of interest how do you feel about that yeah i i in a charity football match on saturday i missed a header and the whole crowd went oh and i felt like saying what what could i have done about that? Incidentally

very briefly that was in front of 5,000 people is that right? Yeah What was that like? We haven't talked about this It's an anxiety dream Chesham United in front of 5,000 people. Yeah basically yeah it was across from deep the ball bounced over

me awful. Yeah okay Never again. Would you want to do it again to sort of like rectify the wrong? Yeah, yeah. But I'm... Training begins tomorrow. Okay. And I will not let Saturday, what happened last Saturday,

become the prevailing narrative. What listeners can't see is you're doing keepy-uppies throughout this record, actually. You've always got... You've got a ball juggling on your right foot. So Bonnie first met Clyde, whose full name was clyde barrow around january 1930 when he was just a small-time criminal okay clyde as a teenager he hadn't sort of started out with his criminal intent he'd attempted to enlist in the u.s navy but lingering effects from a serious boyhood injury resulted in

his medical rejection which was particularly tough for him. And this is quite a choice on his part, because he'd already had USN, as in US Navy, tattooed on his arm. Now, you have to be pretty sure you're going to get a job to get the name of the company tattooed on your arm. The idea of lifting that up in an interview. I'm sure you're going to give me a job in Starbucks. Check this out.

Football fans now, for clicks, will get, you know, I don't know, Tottenham Hotspur Premier League winners 2022-23 tattooed before the season has ended. So confident that their team are going to win the league and then obviously it doesn't happen.

And they end up with lots of likes on Instagram, etc. He was doing that in the pre-click age. That was just hubris. If you had to have the name of a company that you work for and a point in your life tattooed on your arm, what would it be? What are you going for?

I've actually done it, technically. Have you? I do have a West Ham tattoo. Technically an employee. Yeah. What do you think, Al? I'd go Safeway, which is a supermarket chain

that no longer exists in the UK. So I think it's got a sort of nostalgic quality to it. Tandy. Tandy. Where have you worked? You worked for a pipe company, didn't you, Al?

What was it called? Yeah, Independent Pipelines Limited. I didn't get the tattoo. I actually worked for two pipe companies and then I then had a bit of time at Transco and got sacked for not fitting in, which I then had a bit of time at Transco and got sacked for not fitting in

Really? In what way did you not fit in? You just hated pipes, what was it? I hated the work and my line manager's friend came into the toilet and I was leaning my face against the mirror muttering no, no, no, no, no to myself.

And he saw that, turned around, told my boss, and within an hour, I was at the door. Doing the same in your bathroom mirror in your own home. Yeah. So, incidentally, Bonnie also had a tattoo. Hers was above her right knee, where she had Roy and bonnie uh tattooed which was commemorating her first marriage to her teenage sweetheart roy thornton who by that point

if you're if you're interested was in prison on a murder charge um imagine seeing that on a new suitor's knee go who's who's that whose name is that oh it's your ex where's he prison for murder okay nice knowing you guys i think that would be the parting bit of information i'd need as i head for the door uh clyde his early crimes were relatively slight he got rejected from the navy started going into petty crime he was first arrested in 1926 for car theft after failing to return a car he'd rented in dallas when he was visiting an estranged high school girlfriend so small things then three weeks later he was arrested again alongside his older brother Ivan Buck Barrow for being in possession of a truck full of stolen goods um do you want to

try and guess what these goods were it's not a cool crime it's one of the least cool crimes what the hell is this so this is in um 1926 is when it's happening okay what have you gone for chris cakes cakes okay no not cake something less charming that pork chops not far off it was just loads of turkeys do you know what i all bizarrely almost said turkeys that would have been an incredible guess in his defense he was in the run-ups of christmas so that's not a lot that's not a joke. They were planning on selling them. But yeah, he's found with all these turkeys.

That's sort of the vibe at the beginning of his criminal career. However, he meets Bonnie. They fall for each other immediately. And when Barrow decides to form his own gang in 1932, Bonnie joins. Now, a brief side note on this. And I think this is one of the most annoying things that could possibly happen to anyone. This is mind-blowing okay. In January 1932 Clyde is sentenced to 14 years at Eastham Prison in Texas for robbery and car theft. There prisoners had to

do brutal work on notoriously tough Eastham Prison farm. So in an effort to get himself off this work and transfer to a less harsh prison he intentionally severed his big toe and a portion of the second one with an axe okay he cut off his own toe to get out of work thoughts on that yeah do the time would you yeah would you do the work on the land? Oh, God. Especially then as well when it's like, you know, they're not popping that back on, are they? No, it was gone forever. He had a limp for the rest of his life.

Thoughts on that, Al? A strangely high proportion of people saw that as a solution slash way out of things around that time. Right, yeah. During the First World War, people shoot themselves in the foot to get out of things around that time. During the First World War, people shooting themselves in the foot to get out of the trenches. I just can't imagine bringing myself to do that. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think if it was manual work, I would just get on with it. Maybe First World War, I might actually. Now you mention it. That's preferable. You could say it was an accident. Yeah, I think I'd rather lose a toe than fight in the Somme. I think that's probably fair, isn't it? I'm too much of a natural optimist.

I think I'd be like, I'll be all right, though. Charge! I might win the Somme. What I would do, I would go, I'm not going to chop my toe off. I want my big toe.

I'd go and fight in the Somme. I'd get trench foot and my big toe would fall off. And now I'm in the Somme and I don trench foot, and my big toe would fall off. And now I'm in the Somme, and I don't have a big toe. Double whammy. The worst of both worlds. Now, I said this is one of the most annoying things that can happen to someone.

I should explain why. Because this is the bit, this is the real kicker. Without his knowledge, Barrow's mother had already successfully petitioned for his release. He was paroled six days later. Oh, my God. So he chopped off his toe and he didn't realise he was already up for parole and it was going to be fine.

That's so embarrassing. It's one of the worst things I've ever heard. That is so embarrassing for him. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. It's the kind of thing you may do. Your first drink as a free man after doing your time. It's the kind of thing all your mates would say,

you fucking twat. It's a great pub story, though, for the rest of your life, isn't it? Yeah, it is a good pub, I like to call it, actually. However, prison left him a changed man, and not just in the tow department. His sister, Marie, said something awful sure must have happened to him because he wasn't the same person when he got out. And his fellow inmate, Ralph Fultz,

said he watched Clyde change from a schoolboy to a rattlesnake, is the way he described it, which was definitely true. Just two years later, in 1934, when Bonnie and Clyde were killed in a final fatal shootout, they had racked up at least a dozen murders and countless other violent crimes so they went for this petty sort of turkey stealing thing he goes to prison within two years they've killed 12 people and they've gone on shootouts around the country it's funny how prison's like

a bad system for that isn't it yes i think there was less of a rehabilitative sort of quality to prison it was like it's a meeting place it's a workshop for criminals yeah it's like crime finishing school it's a place of rehabilitation but also it's a place for let's put all the worst criminals together and just see see if they can inspire each other yeah yeah give each other tips i don't think there was any real feeling for rehabilitation back then either that's the thing as well it's also worth mentioning he had a very bad experience in the way he was treated being assaulted and stuff like that in prison he was found it really really difficult and i think that really affected him obviously came out and then they committed a dozen murders in two years but two of those murders act as the

real turning point for bonnie and clyde and they ensured that the days were numbered. On the 1st of April 1934 at an intersection near Grapevine in Texas two highway patrolmen stopped to aid what they thought was a motorist in need. In fact it was Bonnie and Clyde's gang. They were lying in ambush. Both officers were killed. A reward was put on the bodies of the gang members after that. Not just a capture with a thousand dollars offered another five hundred dollars for each of bonnie and clive now normally as westerns and things will show us it's normally wanted dead or alive you know you've screwed up when it's just wanted dead that's what it was that's really they just wanted them dead that's what the posters were wanted dead don't worry about normally that's the second option just the line through or alive yeah exactly

yeah scrap that and then on the 23rd of may 1934 which is 90 years ago this week they were ambushed by a posse led by texas ranger frank hamer in gibsland louisiana and bonnie this is how they described her after she'd been killed she was riddled with bullets holding machine gun a sandwich and a pack of cigarettes. I think it's quite impressive to be shot loads of times and still be holding your sandwich, isn't it? It's quite incongruous, isn't it, among that list of items. How do you not drop your sandwich? If you're going to go to the trouble to note down she had a sandwich, can you provide history with a filling?

Yes, good point. Imagine if it was plain ham. Plain Yes, good point. Imagine if it was plain ham. Plain ham, no butter. And an egg mayonnaise sandwich. Briefly, I have thought about this. What would you want to be holding if you were killed in a shootout with the police? Just a big box of milk tray, I think. People thinking, was he the milk tray man?

What a rumour. On his most dangerous mission yet. Exactly. Now, things are going to get a little bit dark now. A macabre addition to this, and one that shows quite how infamous they've become, because they had become these huge names as they went on this spree. In the minutes after the killing, members of the public appeared at the scene and tried to leave with souvenirs from the bodies of the outlaws.

According to Geoff Ginn's book go down together one man tried to cut off clyde here with a pocket knife and another attempt to sever his trigger finger before the lawmen intervene so people come in trying to lop off bits of these guys body to keep us crinkets or probably sell on or whatever happens to be it never fails to amaze me how weird people can be. Yeah. This is actually something that I've thought a lot about through history. It's like people grabbing souvenirs from bodies. I remember reading about when Charles I was executed,

when they chopped his head off, people rushed to the executioner's platform and were dabbing handkerchiefs in his blood to keep a secret because they thought it would bring them good luck. Really? Sod that. And what are you going to do with his trigger finger? Stick it on the mantelpiece? A common complaint you hear now on social media is when there's some awful crime being committed. And say in public, like in the street, and it's being filmed. You'll always get thousands of comments saying, oh God, it's awful, isn't it?

So-and-so is happening. And yet there's just a load of people filming it for social media. Why aren't they getting involved? It's such odd behaviour. Chop it off someone's trigger, a criminal's trigger finger. As soon as he's died, with your pocket knife. What sort of maniac thinks like that?

I will say in their defence, this was pre-Netflix and podcasts. So it's got less to do. So at least you can look at the finger. Gives you something to look at in an evening. Put it in the corner of the room where the TV would be. Gather the family round.

After supper, should we go and look at the finger? Well, I suppose it's better than just sort of staring into the middle of the distance where the TV would be. Gather the family round after supper. Shall we go and look at the finger? Well, I suppose it's better than just sort of staring into the middle of distance. Let's do that, Father. Yeah. That's great. People come around the house. Sometimes there are some thought processes that I just cannot relate to at all.

And that is one of them. This wasn't the only attempt to monetise the pair after death, it's worth saying, by sort of taking their body parts and hoping to sort of sell them on um the louisiana sheriff attempted to claim the bullet riddled ford v8 sedan that they'd been killed him for himself however a federal judge ruled that it has as it had been stolen by bonnie and clyde it should be returned to its former owner uh someone called ruth warren of topeka in kansas um interestingly warren then leased and eventually sold the car to a guy called charles stanley who was an anti-crime lecturer

who then toured fairgrounds with as he called it the death car with the mothers of bonnie and clyde in tow as i chose no bonnie and clyde's Mums What? Went around the country With this bullet ridden car And that became Their job afterwards Their job? Yeah So what are they

Doing a talk Or are they just Literally just It doesn't say I imagine they probably Would have spoken to The visitors Well a Q&A

Like I used to do At stand up gigs When I'd run out of material Still covered in bullet holes The death car is now if you're interested on display at whiskey pizza resort and casino near las vegas so you can still go and see the death car now um and to finish i think it's worth asking did bonnie have any sense that this might be her fate well we said she was into poetry. Two weeks before her death,

she handed a poem that she'd written to her mum entitled The Trail's End, which finished with this verse. Someday they'll go down together and they'll bury them side by side. To few it'll be grief, to the law a relief, but it's death for Bonnie and Clyde.

So she did see this coming. However... That's five minutes for her mum at the Q&A. I'd absolutely kill for that at the 2019 Machynlleth Comedy Festival. Exactly. But she was wrong, and they weren't buried side by side.

And this is the final point, because Bonnie's mother, who had always disapproved of her relationship with Clyde, which I can kind of see why, had her daughter buried... You just have an instinct, don't you, as a parent? You just have an instinct. She had her

daughter buried in a separate Dallas cemetery. She didn't want them side by side. So while Clyde was buried next to his brother Marvin, underneath a gravestone with his hand-picked epitaph, gone but forgotten, Bonnie, as I say, was buried elsewhere. So this dream that she had, they'd be buried side by side,

did not happen because of her mother, who was probably busy making loads, going around fairgrounds, stood by a bullet-run riddle car. What a weird life that is. Roll up! So, there you go. The story of Bonnie and Clyde.

I mean, I'm just Google imaging it now and I can't believe what I'm seeing. Anyway, that is the end of this part. We've got the second part of this episode for you tomorrow. However, if you want everything all in one big, gorgeous lump of audio, why don't you go to OhWhatATime.com and then you can become an Oh What A Time subscriber. And what are we talking about in part two?

A little tease for those who might want to click on it now. Chris? I'm talking about Al Capone. And I'm talking about Arnold Rothstein, the brain. Fantastic. See you guys tomorrow. Thank you.