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Home > Biography > Criminals & Outlaws > Crash Out-eBook

Crash Out

Goewey, David

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Crash Out

The enthralling and evocative story of tough Depression-era bandits who vowed to make something of themselves, even if that meant defying the stone walls of America’s most infamous prison, by a writer who grew up in Sing Sing’s shadow.

During an era of never-ending breadlines and corrupt cops, no place churned out budding crooks more efficiently than Hell’s Kitchen. Neighborhood loyalties bonded gangs of immigrant sons who were looking for a way out of 1930s New York, and waterfront kids like Whitey Riordan paid the bills with small-time hustling. But when enterprising crook Patches Waters invited Whitey into the Shopping Bag Gang, Whitey jumped at the big score. Bold black headlines announced the group’s string of successful heists, but the gravy train abruptly halted in 1939 when someone squealed and police captured most of the gang. Patches and Whitey were sent up the river to Sing Sing.

Westside connections couldn’t help much there, in the infamous Hudson River prison that had housed convicts for more than a century. In Sing Sing the boys had to answer to veteran warden Lewis Lawes, a revolutionary reformer who preferred trust and rehabilitation to old standbys like the lash and the yoke. Progressive indeed, but nothing changed the fact that Whitey and Patches, along with more than 2,800 other men, faced a future of endless days in a cage of limestone, cement, and steel. Perhaps inevitably, their thoughts turned to escape.

A string of well-publicized jailhouse riots and breakouts captured the country’s interest in the 1930s, and though prisons kept stepping up security, convicts continued to crash out. When Patches encountered an old cellblock crony who had stumbled upon a way out, he pieced together a daring escape plot involving purloined guns, counterfeit keys, precision timing, a complex network of outside accomplices, and the kind of outsize bravado that would have made Dillinger proud. Unable to resist the thought of freedom, Whitey signed on. On Easter Sunday 1941, the three embarked upon the most sensational breakout in the prison’s history. Leaving four men dead and indelibly staining the reputation of the nation’s most famous warden, the Westside boys transcended their wildest dreams, only to find themselves backed to the edge of a wide, dark river.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Crash Out is a gritty, page-turning saga that reveals how the career of one resilient hustler can illuminate a sliver of Americana.

A riveting account of the boldest escape in Sing Sing history and the gangster culture that birthed the defiant bandits, Crash Out is a gripping historical epic set against the fascinating backdrop of Depression-era New York.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Title of ebook: Crash Out
ISBN: 9780307337580
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Internet download file size: 2457 kb
Pages: 272
Released online for download: 11-08-2005
Author of eBook: Goewey, David

Crash Out

Chapter One

Chapter One:Robbers. Monday, May 15, 1939

Joseph “Whitey” Riordan, convicted thief, strong-arm, and current hiring boss on New York’s waterfront, stepped outside his family’s Isham Street apartment at dawn like it was any other workday. The Monday morning sky was clear, turning blue, with the night still close to the pavement. On spring days like this, Whitey could smell the new leaves in the breeze drifting down from Inwood Hill Park up the street—damp woods skirting the tidal flats on Manhattan’s northern tip. The city’s wildest park remained almost unchanged since the time of the American Revolution. You could still catch sight of deer, even fox, in the deeper groves. But now the year-old, gleaming steel Henry Hudson Bridge, spearing out of that wilderness into pricey Riverdale, gave New Yorkers another way out—an escape route north to the suburbs.

Whitey Riordan saw limitless possibility, too. But right here in Manhattan. By six that evening, he could be richer by a thousand dollars, maybe two thousand. Across Isham Street, Good Shepherd Church rose in thick granite blocks, lights from an early Mass sparkli ... read full excerpt from Crash Out ebook