Posted on 09/27/2006 11:57:50 AM PDT by Borges
FORT SCOTT, Kan. (AP) – Willie Radkay, a former bank robber who was assigned a cell next to prohibition-era gangster Machine Gun Kelly while serving time at Alcatraz, died on his 95th birthday.
Radkay, who died Sunday at Mercy Health Center at Fort Scott, had told reporters he was given the number 666 when he began a seven-year stint in 1945 at the San Francisco island prison dubbed "The Rock."
In his later years, Radkay returned to the island for several reunions, where he was interviewed by documentary makers and newspaper reporters.
"We used to hijack bootleggers and stick up gambling houses," he told the San Francisco Chronicle during a 2000 reunion. "When Prohibition ended, we lost our victims, so the only thing left to do was rob banks."
He told the paper he hung around with George "Machine Gun" Kelly and Pretty Boy Floyd and was friends with Baby Face Nelson's driver.
Radkay, who was born in Kansas City, Kan., turned to crime after his father died of pneumonia. His mother was left with four children to support, and Radkay was placed in a foster home.
By the time he was 16, he was committing armed robberies, said his niece, Patty Terry, who wrote her uncle's story in a self-published book, titled "A Devil Incarnate: From Altar Boy to Alcatraz."
While researching his crimes, she came across a newspaper account of a 1935 jewelry store robbery in which her uncle was shot 12 times. She inquired about it, but her uncle said he couldn't recall the shooting.
"I asked how can you get shot 12 times and not remember. He said: 'Tough skin, soft bullets and they didn't hit anything important,"' she recalled in his obituary.
Radkay turned his life around after he was freed in 1969. He married the next year and began working as a custodial supervisor at the Prairie View School District in the small Kansas town of LaCygne.
Radkay spent his final years in a Fort Scott nursing home, after breaking first one hip, then the other.
"A number of people would say a criminal's life should not be glamorized in print ... and maybe this is true but my uncle is a part of history that needed to be recorded," Terry said. "The mere fact he did all those years of incarceration in the worst prisons of the era and mingled with gangsters who became his friends, was released after paying his debt to society, married and became an upstanding citizen of the community in itself is remarkable."
Radkay was cremated. He will be buried Thursday alongside his late wife, Louise, at Mount Calvary Cemetery of Kansas City, Kan.
Captain Morgan..........
but that would be boring.......
Very interesting visit. I took this ferry boat over from pier 39. There are these rock formations in the bay where the sea lions hang out. When the wind blows the wrong way you will wish you were somewhere else.
RIP.
Don't forget Austrlia, which was populated by English prisoners. They count them among their ancestors. Makes doing your genealogy quite interesting.
I found it interesting. I have been through Fort Scott many times.
If I were you I'd demand that all posts pass your judgment.
Jean Valjean?
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