Running from the law does not belong to America. It is, rather, as human as our own skin. The very first people to ever waltz the earth, Adam and Eve, went on the lam directly after eating that forbidden fruit. Their son went on the lam after killing his brother, sweet Abel. Abraham, father of nations, went on the lam to Egypt. Moses went on the lam out of Egypt, four hundred years later, after killing a whip-happy Egyptian guard. Etc., etc., and on up to this modern American minute.
America didn’t invent the outlaw, no, though the Land of the Free did turn outlaws into proper, transcendent stars. And by “proper” I mean famous with movies, television shows, serialized podcasts, etc. Dillinger, who we’ve met, played by Johnny Depp. Billy the Kid, played by Kris Kristofferson, Emilio Estevez, Val Kilmer, and Dane DeHaan, among others. OJ Simpson in the back seat of Al Cowlings’s white Ford Bronco running from justice in slow motion—with Cuba Gooding Jr. to later play OJ, even though OJ was already famous, and Malcolm-Jamal Warner to play Al Cowlings.
I don’t know that it gets better than Theo Huxtable driving OJ Simpson very slowly in front of a phalanx of cop cars except, of course, for Indiana Jones-cum-Mosquito Coast Harrison Ford playing Dr. Richard Kimble. The 1993 cinematic version of the television hit The Fugitive set the bar for keeping one step ahead of the law through brains, guts, and sheer audacity. Sure, Dr. Richard Kimble was innocent, but Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard, brought spectacularly to life by Tommy Lee Jones, didn’t know that. Justice, to those sworn to uphold it, is blind, and running from justice strongly suggests guilt.
The lam.
A thrilling expanse where each of the variances of a normal, dull life are heightened to a maximal degree. Where going to the grocery store, trying to get a job, solving the murder of a wife, or going out on Tinder dates are all laden with severe consequence. The phrase “being on the lam” or “going on the lam” has been in America’s English vernacular for more than a hundred years, as it relates to running from the law, but its specific etymology is not altogether clear. Some believe it is derived from Old Norse, where the word “lemja” means “to thrash,” which altered in the sixteenth century to lam, or “beat soundly.” Thus, to head out on the lam meant to escape a good sound thrashing.
Others believe it finds its roots in Victorian England, where the word “lammas,” a bastardization of “nammou,” which was somehow related to the word “costermonger” or “one who steals fruits and vegetables from an outdoor vendor.”
Mark Twain used the word twice— “lamming the lady” in 1855 and “lam like all creation” in 1865—both meaning “to beat. The world’s first private eye, Allan Pinkerton, wrote in his 1886 memoir Thirty Years a Detective, “After (a pickpocket) secures the wallet, he will utter the word ‘lam!’ This means to let the man go and to get out of the way as soon as possible.’’
Nonsense, certainly, and while Pinkerton might have been an epic detective, he was no applied linguist, and his contribution to language is the worst sort of folk etymology categorized as legitimate. A real semantic knot that will likely never be untangled, but, for our purposes and also our fathers and grandmothers, the definition is clear. “To lam” meant exactly what “being on the lam” means today, i.e., running from the law.
In 1950, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its very first FBI Ten Most Wanted list featuring the ten most dangerous, or adept, criminals currently at large. Published in the International News Service, this first list was such a sensation that J. Edgar Hoover immediately made it a regular feature. Grisly mug shots of toughs staring down from post office walls, the frisson of danger while buying stamps, was so intoxicating that it led to a television show, America’s Most Wanted, that became the second-longest-running show in Fox’s history, after The Simpsons.
The very first fugitive on that sensational list was Thomas James Holden, who had been locked up in the 1920s for robbing mail trains before graduating to banks. He escaped the famous Leavenworth penitentiary after the equally famous George “Machine Gun” Kelly took a guard hostage, though was caught weeks later on a golf course in Kansas City.
After being paroled in 1949, he killed his wife and her two brothers, then fled. Hoover posted his mug shot, a relatively unremarkable photo of Holden in a white button‑up shirt looking at the camera with an inscrutable expression, in the International News Service. He was caught thirteen months later, in Beaverton, Oregon, after the FBI were tipped off by a local man who had seen Holden’s unremarkable photo in The Oregonian. Holden, then going by the name John McCullough, was working as a plasterer; he died in prison two years after capture.
James Earl Ray was the first fugitive to make it to the list twice. First, he was wanted for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Ray had been spotted fleeing a boarding house across the street from the Lorraine Motel, where King had been gunned down. A package was found there with a rifle and binoculars besotted with Ray’s fingerprints. He had made it to Canada, flown to England, and was arrested at Heathrow Airport two months later, when he was attempting to fly to South Africa. Ray initially confessed, but days later recanted, suggesting some grand conspiracy involving a French-Canadian named Raul.
Second, he was wanted for escaping Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, later made fictionally famous when Hannibal Lecter requested a transfer to it in exchange for information on Wild Bill. Ray was free for three days, but the Most Wanted List did him quickly in; he died twenty years later in a Nashville prison, insisting that he be cremated and his ashes flown to Ireland since he had been so wronged by the United States government.
Billie Austin Bryant is famous for spending the least amount of time on the list. The convicted bank robber had been working in the prison’s automobile shop and escaped custody by crashing a car through the prison’s fence. Agents sent out an all-points bulletin, quickly racing the description of a maroon Cadillac up the chain, until the FBI had it blasted out on the Ten Most Wanted.
What sort of person gets a maroon Cadillac fixed in a prison? Bryant fled to his wife’s apartment, anyhow, in style, shooting and killing two FBI agents who attempted to enter, then fled again, ending up trapped in a neighbor’s attic after he was unable to free the latch. The whole mess took two hours from Most Wanted to police custody and a lifetime incarceration.
Victor Manuel Gerena has spent the longest amount of time on the list, first being included in 1984. The Puerto Rican man, described as stoic and dedicated, worked for Wells Fargo in West Hartford, Connecticut, but was also secretly a member of the Boricua Popular Army, a resistance group that sought to free Puerto Rico from the United States’s dirty, interfering paw. One September morning, he tied up two coworkers, loaded $7 million into the trunk of his car, and disappeared.
Reports had him going to Mexico, then Havana, where much of the money was deposited and used for various revolutionary projects. It was the largest cash heist at the time, and Gerena is believed to still be in Cuba—but all leads have run cold. He would be sixty-three now, maybe enjoying his retirement years, washing tender ropa vieja down with exquisite rum punches.
Leslie Isben Rogge gets credited with being the first fugitive on the illustrious list who was captured with help of the internet. The Seattle-born man, dubbed “The Gentleman Bank Robber” for his dashing appearance and calm demeanor, robbed more than thirty banks during a twenty-year stretch. He was polite and genteel by all accounts, and the bank managers he robbed spoke highly of him. Once, one of them fainted during the process, and Rogge revived her before fleeing with his haul. Once, one tried to stand in his way as he attempted to flee in his car, and instead of running her over, he hopped a median in reverse, almost dropping his transmission. He was unique in that he consistently went for the vault, and once made a getaway on a sailboat.
As things happen, though, he was eventually captured in Florida, tried and sentenced to thirty-odd
years. Being gentlemanly, he bribed a guard while being held in Moscow, Idaho, and went on a six-year run, continuing to rob banks but also going on a fabulous Central American journey, sailing, dancing, enjoying the pura vida except that dang internet.
The FBI began posting fugitives online, and poor Leslie Isben Rogge was top of the list. A Guatemalan man enjoying the wonders of Netscape in 1996 recognized Rogge as “Bill Young” from down the street. Guatemalan officials launched a robust manhunt, and Rogge turned himself into the US Embassy, feeling that noose tightening. He was transferred back to the United States and is set to get out of prison, legitimately, in 2048, when he is 108.
Americans, and apparently Guatemalans too, are fascinated with fugitives, both lining the streets and cheering them on when they’re in flight, aiding and abetting them when they can, but also turning them in with reckless abandon. Since the FBI began publishing its ten most-wanted, 94 percent have been captured, 31 percent with the public’s assistance.
The odds of eluding justice are far worse than the odds of getting away with a bank robbery, but both occupy a similar romanticized rung of American criminality. Even completely unlovable sociopaths like Boston’s Whitey Bulger retained an amount of charm, of underdog appeal, on their run from the law. The organized crime family boss and FBI informant was set to be arrested in 1994 but was tipped off and fled all the way across the country to Santa Monica, California, with his mistress. He lived there for fifteen years while the FBI put a $2 million price on his head, second only to Osama bin Laden’s, before being turned in by an Icelandic model.
Five years before his arrest, Bulger, loosely fictionalized, was played to the hilt by Jack Nicholson in the Academy Award– winning film The Departed. His character says, “When you decide to be something, you can be it. That’s what they don’t tell you in the church.”
Except they do tell you that. Cousin Danny heard it often in sermons covering both Old and New Testaments, and while Cousin Danny maybe wanted to crack the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted, he failed, though he did make Tustin’s Top Ten Most Wanted. Tustin, the most perfectly bland town ever crafted in south Orange County, California—which is a feat, considering Aliso Viejo, Irvine, and Laguna Niguel are also in south Orange County. Costco is the fourth largest employer. Rockwell Collins, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, the second largest. An outdoor shopping mall called The Market Place its most definable
landmark.
Cousin Danny was smiling broadly in his mug shot—square jaw, close-cropped hair—next to Angel Sanchez Roman, wanted for burglary. Below Nemir Nasri Tashman, wanted for murder for hire. Catercorner from Shadi Jamal Abbasi, wanted for attempted murder. Who knew that Tustin had such an exotic mixture of criminals on the run from the law? On that lam. The netherworld of dreamy hide-and-seek, with proper stakes, odds certainly not in the fugitive’s favor, but still, the fugitive maintaining a puncher’s chance—and
the puncher’s chance is pure Americana.
But not a peep from Max Taylor, Scott E. Taylor, Max Robert Taylor, Mark Pavlik, Jeremy Penrod, Cousin Danny.
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‘Excerpt from the new book Blessed are the Bank Robbers: The True Adventures of an Evangelical Outlaw by Chas Smith published by Abrams Press ©2022’
