The next day I arrive at the Arby’s restaurant about forty minutes early, checking out the scene. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Man or other family members. When you’re a skip tracer being paranoid at times is your best tool. The paranoia can keep you one-step ahead. After assessing that, all was cool I walk in a sit down, shortly after walks in the kindest looking person I ever met, Man brother to JW and Clarence.
As Man was sitting down, he asked if I was going to make him rich and famous, I laughed. Although Man was not joking, he told me how the media pretty much used him and spit him out. He told me everyone else made money off his brother’s infamy but the Anglin family never received a dime from books, TV shows and movies made. My answer was simple, how bout we start with a cup of coffee I am buying. Man smiled, he preferred bottle water.
I wanted to know about the brothers, how they found themselves in a place like Alcatraz. Clarence and JW robbed a bank in Alabama, what most people do not realize is a third brother was with them and the supposed ringleader Alfred Anglin. Man told me that Alfred was always in trouble and prior to the bank robbery in Alabama Alfred was on the lamb for several years living in the middle of Florida working a farm picking fruit and vegetables.
While hiding out in Florida Alfred fell in love with a sixteen-year-old beauty named Jeanette. Like Romeo and Juliet it was a forbidden love, the couple crossed the state line and married.
Not far from the Arby’s restaurant is a small graveyard with Alfred’s headstone and an old photo of Alfred and Jeanette announcing their marriage for all to see, quite brazen for a man on the run. That was just the way Alfred was, he feared nothing and wanted to give his new bride more in life so he devised a plan.
While Alfred was picking fruit under the hot Florida sun, Clarence was working a road gang somewhere around Ft. Meyers. Turns out Clarence’s mother Rachel and another of her sons’ went to visit Clarence in the jail. Clarence told them not to come next week that he would be visiting them at home. The mother and brother shrugged it off to Clarence’s usual banter.
The following week, Clarence true to his word escaped the road gang with two other prisoners. Clarence was barefoot and made his way up the Gulf Coast, wading and swimming for more than sixty miles.
Man told me that Clarence and JW were thick as thieves and since childhood, they had a unique way of communicating between each other, secret destination to meet up at, phone calls with certain amount of hang-ups determined locations. JW received such a message and met up with Clarence when he escaped the Florida road gang and took him to stay with Alfred on the farm. Farm life was no life for Clarence, he had a tough edge to him and preferred easy money for the day as opposed to a weekly paycheck also picking fruit never paid that much.
The plan, Man told me that originally, Clarence and Alfred were going to rob the bank in Alabama, and originally JW wanted no part of the crime. JW was a ladies man, sharp dressed and loved fast cars. A fast car was needed for the bank robbery, JW refused to lend his car and eventually decided that he would go along and drive the getaway car. What the brothers did not know was Alabama supposedly still had the death penalty for bank robbery.
My meetings with Man became weekly, more like a Tuesday with Morrie but in an Arby’s sipping bad coffee and him the usual water. Man was always cautious about how he answered my questions; in his late seventies, he was sharp. One time he was bold and told me he had to watch what he said, he didn’t want to get in any type of trouble. Not sure, what he meant I pushed on, but his big southern smile always brought the conversation to another topic.
In another meeting with Man, he implied that I might be a US Marshal trying to capture his brothers and wanted to know if I was wired. I told him I was not, he asked me to take off my shirt and prove it to him. That afternoon in the Arby’s I stood and took off my shirt as the patrons looked at me as if I was crazy. Man, pulled out a business card of a US Marshal, forty years after the escape the US Marshals actually approached Man and asked him to take a polygraph test. They picked him up from his small lot where several trailers housed Man and a few siblings. The Marshal drove him to an office asked him thirteen questions, drove him back home and never discussed the results of the test.
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