If anybody gets up, they're dead.
Anybody moves, they're dead.
Anybody makes a sound before I leave this movie,
they're fucking dead.
My name is John S. Wojtowicz.
You can call me The Dog because that's my nickname.
Hi. I'm Jeanne Parr, and this is John Wojtowicz.
Right now, he's in jail.
It was 5 1/2 years ago when he attempted
to rob a Brooklyn bank to get money
for his lover's sex change operation.
They made a movie about John.
It's called "Dog Day Afternoon,"
and Al Pacino played the part of John.
This is John's lover Liz Eden,
who wanted that sex change operation.
Well, she got it, and today she's living happily as a woman.
John is still in jail, and we'll reveal
for the first time in my exclusive interview with him,
his side of this very dramatic love story.
So stay with us. We're live.
That's the abbreviated version.
OK. The reason I call myself a pervert
is that I'm sexually oriented.
It's very easy because you got to look at it this way.
Most people drink. Most people smoke.
A lot of people do drugs, and they have sex.
So they have all these outlets, OK?
I don't smoke. I don't drink.
I don't do drugs. I don't gamble.
So I'm an angel... ha ha!... but I got horns,
OK, and the trouble is, when you got horns,
you only can do one thing, OK. And that's fuck.
I consider myself a romantic.
There's sex, and there's love. I'm a lover.
When I met Ernie for the first time,
it was love at first sight, and because I loved him,
on August 22, 1972, I had to do something.
All in all, August 22, 1972,
was a summer day just like any other summer day...
hot, humid, with everyone trying to get a bit of relief
from the oppressive heat and humidity,
and then it happened.
At 2:58 P.M. that afternoon,
two men entered a bank in Brooklyn
and began what turned out to be the most sensational,
most bizarre, most unbelievable bank robbery
in the history of crime, and before they were through,
what should have been an ordinary bank robbery
turned into a 3-ring circus.
Nobody would ever did what I did.
Nobody would ever rob a bank
to cutoff a guy's dick to give him a sex change operation.
That's why they made a movie about it.
You know something, people?
You're gonna be remembered
the rest of your lives for the day
you got held up and kidnapped.
We made history here.
We did it.
AI Pacino.
A true story.
OK. What you got to understand
is that in my lifetime, I have had 4 wives.
I also have 23 girlfriends
because, remember, I'm a pervert.
They all know each other because I'm like Prudential.
I'm the rock, OK,
and I give a piece of myself to everybody,
and you go, "How can you do that?"
I says, because, idiot... it's very simple...
you can love more than one person.
One of the strangest hijack attempts
to date began when two gunmen held up a bank
in Brooklyn, New York.
The gunmen got $29,000,
but before they could leave, police moved in,
and the bank robbers seized 8 hostages.
With his partner inside pointing a shotgun
at 8 employees, the other robber spent much of his time
pacing outside the bank, either negotiating with police
or screaming at them to back off.
Police, in turn, tried to keep the pressure down
by ordering the hundreds of spectators to move.
All right, fellas. You got to move back.
The more visible bank robber
is 27-year old John Wojtowicz,
an out-of-work New York City resident
and an admitted homosexual who left his wife
and two children 3 years ago.
That day, I was with my girlfriend
and my two kids on the beach in Rockaway.
It was a hot, hot day... oh, God... and I'm listening to the radio,
and I hear, "an admitted homosexual
has just robbed a bank in Brooklyn, Avenue P,"
and they said his name and everything,
and I'm listening to it.
I'm listening to it at the beach.
I listened to it on the train.
I went home and watched it on TV.
I'm listening and listening. I didn't hear Wojtowicz.
I heard John something.
So I says to my girlfriend,
"That sounds like my name, doesn't it?"
She starts laughing. We went in the back yard.
We had a barbeque, not realizing it's Johnny all the time.
After I graduated high school,
I met my female wife called Carmen Ann. Bifulco.
♪ We may never pass this way again... ♪
She worked for Chase Manhattan, as I did.
So we're your friends at Chase Manhattan.
I was a teller, and it's what I call love at first sight.
♪ If we never chance to meet again... ♪
He called me up to go on a date.
He picked me up with two other girls, and he says,
"One of you is going to be my lucky bride in the future."
I thought the guy was crazy already.
Then we started talking to each other
and dating, and then, boom, I got drafted.
I'm a Goldwater Republican, which means I'm conservative,
which means I'm also a warmonger,
So I was willing to go to the war and fight in the war.
I would remind you that extremism
in the defense of liberty is no vice.
When then I went to basic training,
that's when I had my first gay experience.
I met a hillbilly by the name of Wilbur.
One night, I was dreaming that I was getting a blow job,
and instead, it was the real thing,
and Wilbur was blowing me, and just before I came,
I woke up, and I go, "What are you doing?"
and he said, "Well, doesn't it feel good?"
and I go, "Yeah. It feels good."
He said, "Well?" I said, "Well, keep on going,"
and then we kept having this relationship
because he blew great.
He was like a summer breeze. Ha ha!
I went to Vietnam in October of 1966.
I first went to Saigon,
and a few months later, they shipped me up to Da Nang,
OK, up by the DMZ,
and that's where we got into action...
and then in February of 1967,
there was the first rocket attack
on the Da Nang Air Force Base,
and 90% of my fellow soldiers were killed.
So what happened is,
I went from being a Goldwater conservative in 1964
to a McCarthy peacenik in 1968
because if we're not gonna win the war,
why should all these young kids get killed and die for nothing?
We lost 50,000 people over there
because they wouldn't let us win it.
So if you're not going to win it,
let's get out and end it.
I married Carmen in 1967 in October.
We wanted to get married before I went to Vietnam,
but my in-laws said no
because they were hoping I didn't make it back.
Soto disappoint my in-laws, I lived through the Vietnam War
and came back and married her.
My father didn't want me to get married at all.
My relatives despised him, but I got married.
These are the pictures from my wedding...
October 21, 1967.
Got married at St. Rita's Church in Brooklyn.
The whole neighborhood was there.
♪ Forever and ever ♪
♪ Want to let you know ♪
There was a big thing at the end.
It was terrible.
My priest wanted to annul the wedding that night.
Annul it.
The night of the wedding, we almost broke up
because we had a fight over the wedding money.
The father wanted me to pay for part of the wedding.
So we got into a big fight, me and Carmen, that night.
So I took the money and just threw it at him
and walked the fuck out.
Ha ha ha!
I went home one night. Everything was gone.
My kitchen set was gone. My engagement gifts were gone.
"I left. Go to your mother." That was it. Ha!
Carmen and I broke up June 20,1969.
That's when the first man walked on the moon, Neil Armstrong,
and then they had the Stonewall riots on June 26, 1969,
and that's what they call the birth of the gay movement, OK?
So the gay movement happened at the same time
that the guy walked on the moon and I walked on Carmen.
So it logically follows that that's where I would wind up.
Homosexuals who acknowledge their homosexuality
and pattern their lives accordingly are known as gay,
and the gay liberation movement is challenging
a society that abhors homosexuality.
The Gay Activist Alliance is the largest
and most vocal of several homosexual groups.
I got interested in the gay movement
after the Stonewall riots.
So what happened is, I joined the Gay Activist Alliance.
We used to meet in different locations.
Then finally, they got their own headquarters,
which was called the Firehouse,
and it was on Wooster Street over in the Village.
The Gay Activist Alliance
holds dances every Saturday night
at its headquarters,
an old firehouse in Greenwich Village.
Upwards of 1,000 attend.
Many would not appear in this film.
Freedom of sexual expression is as much an issue
of the gay movement as civil and legal rights are.
Gay people want to be themselves,
flirt, hold hands, kiss,
and talk openly about sex just as heterosexuals do.
I was a member of the entertainment committee.
So I would meet and greet new gay people
coming into the scene.
I could have sex with them quicker than anybody else
because they were just coming out,
and in those days, we did a lot of getting down.
You got to understand that the thing about the gay movement
is that it was more sexually driven than anything
because anybody can be straight,
but it takes somebody special to be gay.
OK. Now, you're now entering Christopher Street Park,
where gays from all over the world come
to see the famous statues
that are supposed to represent the gay movement.
OK. These two statues right here represent gay males, OK?
The only problem is that a lot of black gays
and a lot of Spanish gays hate these two statues
because, as you notice, they're all white, OK?
What this statue should be,
there should be a black face on this statue
and find some kind of colored clothes,
and this statue, the face should be more olive
so he can be like an Italian gay, right,
or a gay with a suntan or a Latino gay,
not to mention Chinese and all the rest.
I come here all the time.
I would say once or twice a month.
Usually, I come into the city for two things... money or body.
Usually, it's body, OK,
and usually, you would come to the park and sit down
and a lot of the people I know in the park
I have sexual relations with, OK,
and they enjoy it, and they have a good time, OK?
Also, if they need a meal or if they need a place to sleep
or they're just horny like I am, this is where you come.
I hope you enjoyed your tour.
Have a nice day. Enjoy yourselves.
♪ Easin' in ♪
♪ Slick as he can, mm-hmm ♪
Well, basically, I relate emotionally to men.
I like men emotionally.
I'm totally gay.
Yep.
When I joined the movement, I met people.
I liked the people, and we had sex,
and then, like, around '71, I became more active.
I went to more meetings, OK,
because I would meet a lot of people,
but they were more politically oriented than sexually oriented.
The Gay Activists Alliance, what we wanted to do
was to tell people that ultimately,
the key to our getting equal rights was to come out
so that everybody knew they knew gay people.
Justice! Justice! Justice!
It was a political, nonviolent,
militant organization.
"N"! "N"!
Give me an "O"! Ho"!
Give me a "W"!
I was actually one of the very early members.
They used to have a demonstration
once or twice a week...
Gay power! Gay power!
and I was one of the few people
that had a video camera,
and I caught all this fabulous stuff.
Hi. I'm Randy Wicker.
Today we're talking to Father Robert Clement
of the Church of the Beloved Disciple.
Father Clement, what type of church
is the Church of the Beloved Disciple?
Like all churches, it's basically, first,
a church for everyone, but our congregation
is primarily gay...
I'd say 90%, approximately...
and we exist for the needs
of the gay community,
and I am gay myself.
I see.
At the time in the gay activist community,
gay marriage wasn't even on the agenda,
but the city clerk of New York came out and said,
"You know, there's this guy in this gay church,
"and he's performing blessings of holy unions or something,
"but weddings are what they are, and if he doesn't stop it,
we're going to take action against him."
Well, at this point, on the one hand,
gay activists didn't want to do anything
with the issue of gay marriage because they would argue
among themselves about that, but they couldn't sit back
and have a city official attacking the gay community
and threatening a gay church.
I think that we should never
understand their point of view.
Any point of view which is opposed to gay rights
is a wrong point of view categorically
by fiat and word of God.
Ooh, ooh, ooh.
So they decided,
"Well, we'll go into the Wedding Bureau,
"and we'll take a big wedding cake.
"We'll take over the Wedding Bureau.
"We'll throw an engagement party.
We'll have made our statement,"
and that's exactly what they preceded to do.
We have two leaflets. One is an invitation.
It says, "The Honorable Herman Katz, City Clerk,
"invites you to an engagement reception
"for Messrs. John Basso and John C. Bond
"and Messrs. Steve Krotz and Vito Russo.
All are welcome. Dress optional."
Spokesman for this should be myself and Jim and John Basso.
When I was in the gay movement,
I didn't use the name Wojtowicz.
I coined the phrase Little John Basso, OK?
Little is because my prick is little, right?
So that's where I got the nickname Little John,
and them-being my mother was a Basso, B-A-S-S-O...
I used the name Basso so people would know I was Italian.
Are any people going to try to get marriage licenses?
John? Fine.
Now, a lot of what we do is playing to press.
This is supposedly,
aside from my terror, a very up action.
We're happy...
Everybody take some ups.
Give me a "G"! "Gil!
Give me an "A"! "All!
Give me a "Y"! "Y"!
Weddings, to me, is a holy institution.
Love is a holy institution, OK?
If I love somebody, I want to marry that person.
I want to make a commitment to that person,
and in straight society, the way you do that
is getting married,
and I don't see why gays can't do that.
Oh, this is definitely the Marriage Bureau.
Your mother and dad want to get married?
Are they gay?
Oh, I'm sorry. We can't help you.
Gay power!
♪ What's your name? ♪
♪ Who's your daddy? ♪
♪ Is he rich? ♪
♪ Is he rich like me? ♪
I met Ernie June 6, 1971.
It was St. Anthony's Feast,
and he was in what we call semi-drag.
He had pants on, but he had makeup on, OK,
and he was with two gay priests.
So I went over, and he caught my eye
because, like I told you, I'm one of those guys
when you first meet somebody, you become infatuated with them,
and the first time I saw Ernie, I knew I had to have him.
So we went to 250 West 10th Street,
and this is the first time that we had sex together,
which means I fucked Ernie, OK,
and then after that, our relationship started, OK?
I would bring him roses every week,
and I would come here every week and take him out.
I met John at St. Anthony's Feast,
and we sort of hit it off right away.
He was very, very romantic, never forgot a date,
never forgot a birthday, Christmas,
anniversary, or anything.
In the beginning, it was a dozen roses
almost every time we saw each other.
I first met Liz Eden in 1966.
Liz sort of dressed like a guy, but like a girl
because in those days, there were strict laws
about dressing like women.
She always had a loud, loud, loud mouth.
The wallpaper would curl off the walls when she started cursing.
Liz was the center of every scene,
and she had a lot of energy.
She was a great dancer.
He had a portable record player,
and he would play records over and over...
Judy Garland or Carmen Miranda and all of that.
He loved that, and then I remember
at the gay firehouse on Wooster Street,
Liz saying this Vietnam veteran was in love with him,
and I saw this guy, and he was short.
I said, "He's tiny next to you.
"What are you going to do with him? He's tiny."
"Oh, but he loves me," and blah, blah, blah.
He was sort of a troll, and he loved her.
There's a troll that loved her.
OK. After I first met Ernie, I started to court him.
I knew that he sold his body
because he told me about that to support himself.
We had a relationship.
We got closer and closer together.
I fell in love with him more and more,
and that's why I wanted to get married,
and he was against us getting married,
but, like I said, I convinced him into getting married.
I got a phone call from my priest,
the guy who married me.
He says to me, "Carmen, there's going to be
"a wedding coming in December.
You're going to get an invitation for this wedding."
I go, "Who's getting married?"
He says, "Are you ready for this? You ready?"
and he told me, "John is going to get married
to someone in the Village."
I said, "What do you mean, getting married to someone?
What kind of marriage?"
and he told me, "He's marrying a guy,"
who was Ernie.
OK. You ready?
Testing 1,2,3,4,5, right? Action?
OK. Now, in the old days,
this bar was called What's In A Name Café, OK?
We had the wedding reception here and the wedding.
A gay priest came in, right?
He did the ceremony. We were married.
GAA filmed it for the archives, OK?
The cops from the 6th precinct over here came out and say,
"What the fuck is going on out there?"
And the cops came out, congratulated us,
thinking we were all girls.
The whole wedding party was all guys,
and when we came out for the reception, they found out.
They said, "Hey, we didn't know this was all happening."
I said, "Neither did the priest."
I didn't know John, but I heard
there was going to be this wedding, and I said,
"I have to videotape this," because, first of all,
I don't think I'd ever heard of a gay wedding at that point,
and not only was it a gay wedding,
but the mother was going to be there,
which was also sort of like,
"Oh, wow, what would the mother be like?"
You are the groom's mother?
Yes.
And how do you feel today?
Is John your only son, or...
How about the rest of your family?
Will they be attending?
Any reason for that, or...
OK. Well, I hope everything goes well,
and thank you very much.
John was the apple of her eye.
You could just see this woman just loved her son so much
that almost anything he did
would not cause her to reject him.
Ernie bought the most expensive dress
he could find on Grand Street.
Cost like almost $1,000, so he could look regal
and drive what we call all the butch numbers crazy.
So I said, "Well, he'll get over that bullshit."
So I put on my army uniform with all my medals
to drive all the girls crazy.
So it's always that rivalry,
and that's how it is in the gay life.
Everyone tries to one-up the other one,
and each one wants to be the star,
but there's only one star, and that's me.
Mother did get a little looped
by the end of the evening here.
The other thing I remember about the wedding is,
John was kissing everybody, everybody.
I mean, when I say kiss, I don't mean peeks.
I don't mean like you kiss the bride
on the way out of the church.
I mean, he was kissing everybody.
OK. After the wedding ceremony on December 4,
we lasted to April, and then we broke up, OK?
The reason we broke up is because we kept having arguments
and fights because he wanted the sex change operation,
and what a lot of people don't understand
is that I didn't want Ernie to have the sex operation.
Now, I, at the time, was interested
in a guy with big tits and a little dick,
but Ernie wanted to be a woman, and in the beginning,
I didn't realize how badly he wanted to be this woman.
There were a lot of people back then
who had had sex changes, and Liz was always talking
about having a change and how enjoyable it would be
and how wonderful it would be to be a woman.
They both tried very hard to have a life,
but I don't think she was happy that much.
I really don't.
She showed me her wrists once, come to think of it,
and I could see scars on her wrists,
and I said, "Why did you do that?"
and she kind of downplayed it, made it into a joke.
OK. Now, as I explained to you earlier,
after we got married around the corner, what we did is,
we moved out of the apartment where I got down
with the two gay priests and my first relations with Ernie,
OK, and then we moved into this fancy place, OK?
This is where our apartment was,
and about a month or two after we got married in December,
this is where Ernie first tried to commit suicide, OK,
because he still wanted the sex change,
which we agreed he wasn't going to have
because I was against it, OK,
and he said, "I can't take it anymore.
I want to have a sex change, or I want to die."
So he took a butcher knife out this long
and tried to stick it in him.
I grabbed the butcher knife from him,
and as we struggled, I got out in my hand, OK?
So we wind up getting into a fight because he wouldn't stop.
Somebody called the cops, right?
They came and arrested us, right, and they brought us
to St. Vincent's, to the nuthouse.
When we got there, Ernie turned the story around
and said that I had tried to kill him with the knife
because he didn't want to go in the nuthouse.
So then they tried to put me in the nuthouse,
but after the cops stopped and left,
I knocked down two of the security guards
and one restraining guy and ran the fuck out of the place
because I ain't going in no nuthouse, right,
but this was the apartment we lived in.
Ernie kept becoming violent.
He would take an overdose.
He would put his hand through a plate glass window.
He would cut his wrists, and he kept getting worse and worse,
and then his birthday came on August 19, 1972.
The doctor told me, "You know he's never getting out of here,
"right, and we're going to give him electronic shock therapy,
"and he's sick.
He wants to chop off his dick."
Then I got in to see him,
and that's when I made the decision right then
because they're never letting him out.
So I'm going to take him out by force.
OK. This was Ernie and I's neighborhood bar.
It was called Old Jimmy's, and it was owned
by a guy named Buddha, who was a fat guy, OK?
In this bar, Ernie and I used to socialize and meet everybody.
This is where I met Bobby Westenberg,
and he's the second guy that went with us
for the bank robbery.
He had a bad lung, and I offered him $50,000
to help get Ernie out of the nuthouse, OK?
That's why we robbed the bank, to get the money.
Also, in here is where I met the third partner
that robbed the bank with me.
His name was Sal Naturale. His real name was Masterson.
He was an escaped fugitive from New Jersey,
and he never wanted to go back to jail then, OK?
He had just turned 18, the way I understand it,
and Bobby Westenberg was about 20, and that's the story.
Cut.
So we went and got the guns, the rifles,
everything we needed.
Then we went to the Golden Nugget Motel
the night before the robbery.
OK. While we were in there, I grabbed a hold
of Bobby Westenberg, and I wanted to fuck him
because he used to dress up as a girl with a dress, right,
and he goes, "What are you talking about?"
I said, "I want to fuck you."
"Well, I don't want you fucking me."
I said, "I'm giving you $50,000, right?
"You're going to tell me I'm not getting a fuck out of it?
"You're out of your fucking mind.
Because I'm getting a fuck out of this."
So then I fucked him, and then Sal came over,
and he wanted to fuck Bobby.
Bobby tells him no.
So they start getting into a fight.
So I come out of the shower.
I says, "Hey, what are you two bitches arguing about?"
"Well, he won't let me..."
"Hey, what is it with you Bobby?"
I said, "We could all die tomorrow, so let's die happy,"
but Sal was pissed off at him
because Sal didn't get the booty.
Next morning, we get up.
We leave the Golden Nugget,
and then we started going to different banks.
We went down to one bank on Delancey and Essex Street.
So we park the car.
Bobby and Sal get out of the car to go,
and all of a sudden, I hear this boom.
I go, "What's this boom?"
I look out the side of the car window,
and the assholes dropped the shotgun.
It fell out of the back of the box.
They were carrying it in a Wrigley's Spearmint gum package.
It's about this big, and it says, "Wrigley's Spearmint gum."
It's pop art, like Andy Warhol, all right,
because, you know, if you walk into a bank with a package,
they're going to be suspicious, but if you walk into the bank
with a Wrigley's Spearmint gum package,
they just think it's pop art and you're bringing it home
to put on your wall or something, right?
At least it made sense to me, right?
So I get out. I pick up the shotgun.
I said, "You two assholes get in the car,"
and we drive away, and all these people
are standing there looking at us,
but, you know, who's going to say anything?
"Oh, you dropped your shotgun," right,
and we were gone in the wind,
and I said, "You dumb fucks, what's the matter with you?"
"Well, I told you the box was too heavy."
I said, "Oh, you fucking wimp, Bobby, be butch, will you?"
and then Sal gave him the, "Oh, he can't be butch.
He's a girl that don't get fucked."
I said, "Well, you can fuck him after the robbery.
Don't worry about it."
We went to this first bank... it was on Delancey and Essex...
The Manufacturers Hanover Trust.
Then we out down here on Howard Beach.
It looked like an easy hit.
There's a lot of money in that bank,
being that it's the only one around.
We walked in there, and my mother's friend,
her best friend, is, "How you doing, Bobby?"
while Sal is ready to take his gun out on the guard.
So we foiled that one.
Then we get into this other Chase Manhattan Bank
down in Manhattan.
Now we're driving all over, a series of banks,
and we get in front of this one bank,
and we're just doing a practice run.
Goes in for a silver dollar, comes back out.
"OK. "Lets try to get away."
Try to get away, we smack into a car,
and they're threatening to call the police and have the police.
They'll want to search the car, see the guns, the note, which...
The note was weird.
At the end of the note, it says,
"This is an offer you can't refuse," from "The Godfather."
Before we went to the bank,
we decided to go to 42nd Street to watch "The Godfather"
for inspiration, and it was the first time it was playing.
So I said, "Come on. Let's go get turned on."
It's just like a coach. You get your team ready.
You get them all fired up, and they go gung ho, right?
So we go and watch "The Godfather" for inspiration,
right, and then I write out the note.
I go to the bank manager,
"This is an offer you can't refuse," signed, the boys.
Ha ha ha!
After a while,
we foiled all these bank robberies.
So John says, "I know a bank."
I says, "OK. Let's not mess this one up."
My shift began at 5:00 in the evening.
I walked into the newsroom, and this was already under way.
They had walked into the bank at 2:50 that afternoon
and taken over, and the editor said,
"Start working the story by phone, see what you can get."
So I said, "I'll call the bank."
So I called the bank, and, lo and behold,
this guy picks up the phone
and says he's one of the bandits.
So I started interviewing him.
He's giving me these great quotes.
I said, "Are you afraid of dying?
Could you really kill these people?"
and I'm sitting there listening to this, taking notes,
typing like crazy and my mind is going, "Wow! What a story."
They said, "All right. Why don't you go down there?"
So I went down to the bank. It was a circus.
I mean, obviously you had all the cops and the FBI,
emergency vehicles, ambulances,
even a fire truck in case they set the bank on fire.
You had snipers on rooftops, and then you had this crowd.
It was just a big mob. There was about 2,000 people.
They would cheer.
I mean, that was a Brooklyn crowd that night.
"YO!" Ha!
I didn't see any hot dog wagons or t-shirt guys,
but it had that same kind of atmosphere, TV cameras.
It was a full-blown show.
We heard sirens, so we knew something was happening,
and we all went.
Everybody was there... children, parents, everybody.
You know, one person told the other,
and before you knew it, it was a mob scene,
and the more they heard what was going on on the news,
the more people came from even further away.
You know people come. They're curious. We all are.
Oh, there was a mob.
There was a mob here.
You couldn't get down the street here.
You couldn't get down.
The street was completely blocked off.
On both sides, you couldn't go.
Of course, my neighbor Gino's...
They had all those news people.
It was loaded with news people.
But I had to go to the city,
Sloan Kettering, with my mother to see her uncle.
Everybody came from all over
to try to get over here, everybody.
When I came home, I said,
"So you don't know what's going on?
They even saw on television.
But the people that were outside, forget about it.
They were having a party.
It was funny, you know?
Not for the people in the bank.
What happened is, when we went inside the bank,
Bobby walks over to me and says, "I can't do it."
I go, "What?" He says, "I can't."
I said, "What the fuck do you mean, you can't do it?
We're in here."
"No, no. I got to go."
So Bobby says, "I'm leaving."
So then I got to make a decision.
Am I going to walk out the door,
or do I still rob the bank?
I go, "Fuck it."
So being I'm a Roman Catholic,
I go, "In the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
I pull the shotgun out of the package.
I says, "OK. Nobody move.
Back up. Nobody touch any alarms."
I said, "We're going to take the money,
"We're gone. We don't want no problems.
Everybody does what I tell them,
"and everything will be all right,
and we'll be out of here in 5 minutes."
So we go, and we start taking the money.
I think after 10 minutes, you knew they were amateurs.
They were not professional bank robbers.
They kind of let us know this.
Actually, this is when the ball started rolling.
I'm going, "What the fuck is going on?"
and I'm looking in the window.
Then I see them.
In the windows,
on the fire escape, there are cops.
On the roof, the cops are standing up,
coming around the corner.
I don't know what went wrong, but that's why
whenever you see bank robbery movies,
they go, "We only got a minute."
Now you know why.
So we're sitting there in the bank.
Then Sal comes over,
and we're looking at each other,
and he says "I don't know what we're going to do."
I says, "I know what I'm going to do.
"I'm going to get Ernie.
"I'm going to tell the cops to go to the nuthouse
"and bring Ernie down here.
"We're going to get on the plane.
"We're going to fly him to Denmark
and get him the sex change operation."
"You're crazy."
"Watch."
A bank holdup is under way at this time
in the Chase Manhattan Bank branch
at Avenue P and East 3rd Street in Brooklyn.
What's going on now?
We're waiting to negotiate the release
of the people so we can get out of here.
What are your terms for release?
Well, I want them to deliver my wife here
from Kings County Hospital.
His name is Ernest Aron.
It's a guy. I'm gay-
I put the news on.
I was watching it, and I hear,
"There's another bulletin out now.
He wants to see his wife, and this is his wife,"
and they put the picture on the television
of Ernie in the bride outfit, which I never saw before,
and my relatives never knew Johnny was gay.
Don't forget now,
this was broadcast like the World Trade Center.
This is on all day and all night.
They took Nixon off the TV to put Johnny on.
So tonight, my fellow Americans, I say...
So they all saw it, and then I get the phone calls.
"We told you not to marry him. You see? You see what you did?"
I was getting the blame for the robbery.
And just last morning...
Hoo hoo!
He told everyone in the world why he robbed the bank.
He was being honest, you know,
and I think it was a big explosion in people's eyes.
"What, a guy robbing a bank for his...
"Is that a guy he's robbing the...
I don't understand."
I mean, it was a big shocker.
It was like gay liberation right down your throat.
We blinked.
We said, "What?" and, "Sex change? My goodness."
This had never really happened before, to our knowledge,
anything like this.
This asshole is standing out there
with a bullhorn.
He said, "All right, you faggots.
We're coming in there, and we're going to get you."
I said, "What did he say?"
I said, "You call me a faggot one more time,
"I'll kick your fucking ass, and if you think
"you're so fucking bad, why don't you put down that gun
"and come over here and call me a faggot?
"Because I'll fuck you up.
"Come on. Put down the gun and come on over.
"You see me with a gun?
I don't got no weapons. Come on over. Let's go."
Then you hear the cops cracking up and laughing
because they know he ain't going to call me a faggot
because they done seen the artillery I got,
and then I knew I'm the man.
I think that there was a whole mantra
that he played very nicely into.
This was a guy who was wacko.
He's robbing a bank,
supposedly to finance a sex change operation.
Well, that's not robbing a bank
to take a vacation in the Bahamas.
You know what I mean?
That's not a selfish, but supposedly altruistic motive.
Then you have all these theatrics.
They had pizzas delivered. He threw money out the door.
Anybody would love. This is Robin Hood.
It's the little man against the system,
the little man trying to do something good.
Banks. Who loves banks? Anybody love a bank here?
But I don't think he was playing to the crowd.
He was too involved in getting him and Sal out of there alive.
We didn't know how this thing was going to end.
Was he going to start shooting?
Were they going to work their way
into that bank building somehow?
That was what made those hours tension-filled.
We did not know how this was going to resolve itself.
As the day wore on, we were becoming very depressed.
We were tired. We were hot.
We were hungry. We were frightened.
You name it, that's how we were,
and by a couple of the things that he said,
I realized that he was friendly, he wanted to be friendly.
I mean, there was a purpose why he was robbing the bank.
He really didn't think that it would take that long.
He thought that he would be in and out,
but the way things happened, he didn't get out.
We spoke to him.
He is making demands for an escape route.
The problems with the demands of the escape route
is that he wants to take the hostages with him at this time.
All of them? All of them.
And what does he want in exchange?
Does he want his lover?
He did, and he does.
We have his wife here.
That was the reason for the releasing the guard.
That was the way we got one guard out
on that bargain to let him talk
on the telephone.
The wife is right across the street
but refuses to go near him.
She believes John to be unstable
and will kill him.
That's his current wife, is it not?
Well, I believe so, unless he has 3 or 4.
All of a sudden, the cop gets on the phone.
"Somebody's here to see you."
So I think it's Ernie.
So I go outside. It ain't Ernie.
I said, "What are you doing here?"
It's Patsy.
Before I met Ernie, one of my relationships was Patsy.
So Patsy comes down because Patsy really loves me.
So I go outside,
and I walk over to him, and I tongue him.
Oh!
What people forget is, in those days in a gay bar,
you were not allowed to touch each other.
You couldn't walk down the Village holding hands
because the straights would beat you up, or the cops would.
The phone rings. I says, "Hello?"
He says, "This is the mayor." I said, "The mayor who?"
He said, "The Mayor of New York. This is Mayor Lindsay."
I says, "Yeah? What do you want?"
He said, "We will kill all the hostages to stop you
"because you're not making New York City look ridiculous.
"You're not letting the New York City Police Department
"look ridiculous.
The whole nation is watching us."
When he see me, he turned his head.
He felt more likely embarrassed
because he's very close to me, very attached.
He's not that rugged. He's timid.
He might've been or try to be, but he's not.
He's very harmless, no meanness in him.
He's always been good-hearted. You know what I mean?
He's never been gambling or drinking or anything like that.
Very interesting quote made by the other man...
Wojahowitz, whatever his name is.
He said, "The Supreme Court will let me get away with this.
"There's no death penalty. It's ridiculous.
"I can shoot everyone here,
and they can't put me in the electric chair."
I wonder what your response to that would be?
I have no response to that, really.
Later, the two bank robbers demanded
a plane at Kennedy Airport and a car to get them there.
Finally around 3:30 this morning,
an airport limousine pulled up at the bank
with an FBI agent at the wheel.
Only then did the second gunman come out of the bank,
a rifle slung over his shoulder.
26-year old Salvatore Naturale then joined Wojtowicz
and their hostages in their limousine
and headed for Kennedy Airport.
Along the way, they had plenty of company.
Perhaps 40 cars followed carrying police
and relatives of the hostages.
The caravan would pass through an airport gate
leading to a secluded runway.
The bank robbers had hoped to make their escape
in a small jet plane.
They failed.
The aircraft was rolling up,
and as we were making plans to depart from the limousine,
we had a driver in the limousine, an agent,
and Mr. Baker and Mr. Feld charged the men
and diverted the shotgun and the machine gun,
and in the meantime, the agent had a chance to shoot him
and when one was shot, the other immediately gave up.
Naturale was killed by the FBI.
Wojtowicz is in jail.
OK. We're in Brooklyn, New York.
This is my brother Tony.
He's been away since he was 5 years old
because he has epilepsy and he has seizures and he forgets things.
Yeah.
And when he forgets things,
he has to start all over from the beginning like he was just born.
Yeah.
So if he has a seizure, it's like going back to zero
and then they got to re-teach him everything.
So once a year, he comes down to New York to visit us
and we take him out sightseeing and to different places.
Yeah.
Today we took him to Western Beef,
a couple of blocks from my mother's house.
Yep.
Then we're going to be going to Coney Island to put him on the rides
and show him some of the sights in New York while he's here visiting.
Yeah, well, we know that.
I have two brothers, one older and one younger,
so I'm the middle one.
My older brother, Tony... the court took him away from my mother
and put him in a state institution that he's still in now.
Have you two been to Coney Island a lot together?
Nope, never. First time.
For him.
No, I don't know what you're talking about.
You're out of your dick.
We never went to Coney island... stay in the middle lane.
Always in the middle.
'Cause these assholes don't know where they're gonna get off.
You do? See what it says here?
Home of the Dog Eating Contest.
All the way down, right?
You see, that's the ocean out there?
Yeah. Right?
And you see the Wonder Wheel?
That's the way they play the game.
I'm telling you.
That's what they do.
It's called the system, and the system doesn't give a fuck.
I can't believe we can't get a fucking ride and they got no ice cream.
My mother says I'm crazy.
I say, "Well we know that."
I said, "You got to remember,
"they only put the nuts that are pretending in the nuthouse.
The real ones, they don't want."
Yeah. Yeah.
I've been in a couple of them.
Yeah, they're not too bad.
Yeah.
The cops for robbing.
No, I did.
Yep. We're gonna pass it.
Yeah, we should drive by it.
Avenue P and East 3rd.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, we got almost a quarter of a million dollars.
Quarter of a million dollars.
From the bank.
No, no, no. A quarter of a million dollars.
That's $250,000.
Yeah.
You know, being we're down here, we'll take a peek.
Yeah.
OK. Let's see what they did.
Where, down here?
OK, that... let's see.
That red awning that's across the street,
that should've been where the bank is.
Do you believe they changed my bank into a...
The bank I robbed right here.
They changed it into a Brooklyn Medical.
I'm here since 1929. I had a ladies fashion store.
Well, anyway, when I had my store there, I was having a check certified.
And I went into the bank not realizing these...
So I understood, they were waiting for the last one to leave the bank, which was me.
The guy who did it, I think he's still alive.
Where he is, the detective may know.
You know where he is, this guy?
Yeah.
Oh, you can tell me. I'm not gonna...
Well, he's actually across the street right now, with us.
I don't know if you'd want to meet him.
Oh, I don't care.
How do you do?
Good, Good. And you?
Stan.
Tony. How do you do, Tony?
Big John, how are you?
How's everything?
OK. how are you?
I give two. I'm Italian.
OK. Now, wait a minute, were you Al Pacino in the movie,
or was the other guy? Who was Al Pacino?
I'm the bank robber. Fuck Al Pacino.
I'm like Babe Ruth, but I'm the gay Babe Ruth, right?
I hit a home run.
Know why I hit a home run?
Because I beat the fucking system.
I won.
I didn't lose. I won.
Ernie got the sex change.
Ernie lived.
Ernie was happy.
Ernie survived, and I'm happy for that.
Am I rattling too much?
No, no.
Oh, you want detail.
OK.
OK. hold on a minute.
I have to clarify one thing.
I have skin cancer of this ear, which is my right ear.
I have breast cancer.
I ain't gonna go through that crap.
I'm waiting for them to tell me how many days,
so I can go party.
OK. Let's go.
Quiet on the set.
Scene 5.
OK, they took me to the Port Authority Headquarters
at Kennedy Airport.
Then the Port Authority police accompanied me to FBI headquarters
on 69th Street in Manhattan,
and that's where they grilled me further.
They wouldn't believe the true story...
that I was robbing the bank to get my lover a sex change operation...
so I had to invent a story, and then I signed the confession
that it was the Vice President of Chase Manhattan Bank
that told us everything and how to do it.
From there, they took me to the Federal Holding Pen
in Lower Manhattan on West 11th Street.
There was someone else that had walked in with them,
and he ran out, he chickened out.
So, there's a third man?
Mm-hmm.
This individual, the third arrested,
is Robert Arthur Westenberg.
He was arrested by FBI agents today.
We're charging that Westenberg fled from the scene
before the police actually moved in.
This was the story of the hour,
but the reaction of the Gay Activist Alliance
was one of horror.
They would simply say, we don't want to be involved with him
in any way 'cause he's a mentally ill person.
I mean, that was generally the consensus of the gay community.
He was nuts.
At the time, we thought it was a terrible thing, you know?
The fact is, he terrorized however many people were in the bank,
and he was the direct cause of somebody being blown away
and witnessed by some of these hostages, also,
whatever that did to their heads, you know.
That's not a Robin Hood to me.
That's a very sick person.
So I was the only voice in the gay activist community.
I mean, I felt that John was being railroaded to some degree
because he was homosexual and no one seemed to care.
As a gay reporter,
I wanted to go out and find out what I could.
So I met Bobby Westenberg and I talked to friends of Sal's in the Village,
who said he wasn't the nasty person everyone portrayed him to be.
He just hated jail, because I guess he had been raped in jail or whatever,
said he'd rather die than go back to jail,
and I wrote these long, detailed articles about this.
So I had a whole different take.
Today, I'm Randy Wicker and I'm talking with Ernest Aron,
the boy who John Wojtowicz demanded be brought to the scene of the robbery.
Now, do you consider yourself a homosexual or a transsexual or what?
No, I'm a transsexual.
I'm attempting to pay for a sex change which is in the...
right now, it seems impossible but I'm attempting to do it.
I have to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,500,
and, uh... l just hope I can do it.
I know John wants it now.
He never did want it before, but now he wants it more than anything.
Liz Eden, suddenly she has this national fame
as a pre-operative transsexual.
So now, if you're gonna live that moment of fame out, you've got to have the operation.
I understand that John was very opposed to this operation
when you first told him that you wanted it a few months ago.
Yes, he was.
He didn't want me to have it because he didn't know
what his reactions would be to me after the sex change,
but now he feels that he could love me either way,
as a man or as a woman.
I understand that John is still married to Carmen,
his wife, and they have two children
and in my conversations with his wife Carmen,
she feels that John isn't really a homosexual.
Well, I don't even consider him a homosexual
as long as he goes to bed with women.
I think he's bisexual.
I think he leans heavily towards women,
otherwise he wouldn't want me to make such a drastic change in my life.
He continued going to bed with women
even after he was married to you?
Yes.
He saw his wife at least once or twice a week.
Sexually?
Oh, yeah, sexually.
I believe that John sometimes uses his friends to fight his battles.
He sort of makes sure that each person knows that he's in love with him only,
and then, of course, when they get together,
they fight over him.
I think it's a wrong thing he's doing,
but unfortunately, there are a lot of people
that do care for John and if we have to fight over him,
we have to fight over him, and that's all there is to it.
My lawyer came to me, I think in October and said
people have been talking about making a movie and if I was interested.
Right?
And I told him, "Hell no, I don't want no movie." Right?
Then Liz came and said, "Hey, hey, hey, they want to make a movie," you know.
"We're gonna get money, you know. I gotta get the sex change," you know.
"You make the movie, you get the money, I get the sex change," you know.
And then I says, "Yeah, all right,"
and then I signed the paper.
And the last time I saw him was after he had the sex change.
OK, he had it on March 27, 1973.
He came to see me and he said, "I talked to my doctors and my psychiatrist."
And he said, "I will never see you again. It's not good for me.
"It won't help me. I have to leave, start my own life as a real woman
and have nothing to do with you."
And Ernie got up and left.
So on Saturday, April 26th, I went to confession.
On Sunday, I went to communion.
Then after that, I out my wrists
and sat on the toilet bowl and cut my forearms,
like the Romans used to do, and tried to bleed to death.
Instead, I became unconscious and passed out.
And they took me to the hospital and stitched me up.
Then they brought me back to the prison on a Monday,
and they said I had to go to be sentenced.
So they took me to the Federal Court,
and I don't remember what happened.
He was so out of it.
He was all bandaged up and he was like this.
"Mr. Wojtowicz," Travia asked,
"do you have anything to say before I pronounce sentence?"
And Wojtowicz says, "Love is a very strange thing."
Wojtowicz began in a low, even tone.
"Some feel it more deeply than others do.
"I love my wife Carmen, my son, my daughter, my mother, and I love Ernie.
"I love all of them.
"I know it was wrong to rob the bank,
but what is money compared to human life?"
I said, "Don't you love your wife?"
He goes, "Yeah
I said, "Well, imagine your wife is dying of cancer
"and you didn't have the money and you needed $10,000,
"and you couldn't get it, you tried everything to get it.
"You tried to borrow it, tried to make deals, nothing worked out,
wouldn't you do something illegal to get the $10,000 to save your wife?"
He said, "No.".
I said, "Well, then you don't know anything about love.
"In fact, you don't fucking love your wife, because if you loved your wife,
"you would kill for her, you would do anything for her to save her.
"So don't talk to me about love because you don't love your fucking wife.
You don't even know what the fuck love is all about."
And then he sentenced me.
Terry yelled out in court, "Have mercy on my son, Your Honor."
Like that, she was screaming, and he got sentenced to Lewisburg Penitentiary.
I was like, "Wow, he's there forever now," and that's all I thought. That's all I thought.
That was it.
OK. we told Liz that John would be speaking directly to her
from jail on today's show,
so let's hear what he has to say.
This is to you, Liz.
Do you have any message you'd like to give Liz today?
If you do, would you like to do it right now?
- Yeah. - OK.
I love you a great deal,
and I did what I did because I loved you
and I wanted you to be happy, and I don't regret doing it
because it saved your life.
And all I want you to do is to be happy.
And I know I don't see you, and I know I don't hear from you,
but as long as you're happy, that's all that counts
because I love you.
That's it.
Are you happy?
Not as happy as I would be if he was out here.
What was so special about Ernie?
How did you fall in love with him in the first place?
I don't know.
My wife, Carmen, always asks me that question,
and I said, "I don't know."
Because if I knew why I loved him, then maybe I could stop loving him,
but when you don't know why you love somebody...
because he's lousy in bed.
Out of all the guys and girls I've been to bed with, he's one of the worst.
Do you ever think of him in that prison?
I mean, when you're getting ready to go out at night,
do you ever think of John being locked up in his cell?
There isn't a day that doesn't pass that I don't think of John.
When I got to Lewisburg, they beat me up because they told me
I was in the big house now.
And I said, "it doesn't look so big to me."
So they beat me some more, and that's where I met George.
He was a jailhouse lawyer.
He did the legal work that got my time cut.
He was also black and Irish.
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, is a very rough, tough facility.
More than half the inmates carried weapons,
and when I got to Lewisburg,
they were getting ready to kill John.
There was a time when they were killing an inmate every month.
There were times when inmates were being stabbed every day in the place.
When your door opened up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning,
you didn't know if they were going to come in and beat you,
rape you, rob you, or whatever.
John was very vulnerable.
Someone like myself, that carried a knife all of the time,
they didn't bother because I was considered a tough guy.
I was arrested for bank robbery, kidnapping, the whole works.
Of course, John, he couldn't associate with anyone
because of the fact that they considered him gay.
He was gay. They didn't like him.
They were making a movie about him, so they were jealous of him.
They were just, "Oh, let's do something to him.
Maybe we can get a name for ourselves."
So he had to fend for himself.
I was working in the laundry, OK,
and I was raped by 3 guys from Washington, D.C.
They hit me in the head with a lead pipe, right,
knocked me out, and they raped me repeatedly.
I still have dreams to this day.
I woke up, I was in the hospital.
They operated on me.
I was in tremendous pain.
Then they finally let me back out into population.
I felt sorry for John.
So when I took John under my wing, they left him alone,
but they would nag at him occasionally if I wasn't around.
I don't think that he realized the consequences
of things that he would do or say.
He didn't care about what might occur.
He was just there and not there mentally.
The 7 years I was in prison, I spent more time in segregation
than I did out in actual population,
but I don't linger on that too much.
My attitude is, I'm from the old school and I'm old-fashioned Italian,
I'm a male chauvinist pig, and I'm the fucking boss,
and I run things.
You run the prison, you do your thing.
I run me. I do my thing.
You don't bug me. I don't bug you.
You bug me, we have a problem, and that's it.
He was bad.
John was, to me, a bad, crazy individual,
but the thing I liked about John... he had a lot of heart.
George and I got married in the prison yard in 1974.
I met him on July 16th, OK, and that's also my wife Carmen's birthday,
my female wife, and I married him 2 weeks later on the 31st.
I considered it a marriage because John was on the marriage trail.
He loved to be married.
He had to have a wife.
So I became his third wife.
I've always been in the gay life to some degree.
I had been in drag, I had been in shows, and John immediately gravitated towards that.
His wife came up, and John would have me wave out the window to her and stuff like that.
I don't know if he actually described me as his new wife,
while she was coming up, but she did come with the kids.
I considered him my husband up until 1978.
He would send me flowers from the prison,
and it would be yellow roses or flowers for an occasion or something like that.
Always with the flowers, you know.
Letters, constant letters,
and then he'd give me orders what to send him, what he wanted.
He would want this, he would want that, you know,
things he wanted to eat like chips, the joy of a Jewish candy, the jelly rings.
Get me a couple of candy bars, you know, like Snickers.
You know, I prefer Mounds. I like Junior Mints and Mounds.
Not Almond Joy. Mounds.
Mars Bars and then the 3 Musketeers.
Just put like Chuckles next to it.
Like what kind of stuff?
Mom, what are you doing down here?
Run. Run. Run.
Where am I gonna run?
I was in prison with John when the movie came out,
and they showed it to John first in private
and then they showed it to the general population.
For the people of the neighborhood, it was a sideshow.
Sonny.
Sonny!
But for Sonny and Sal, the hostages and the cops,
it was a "Dog Day Afternoon."
The warden said, "We're not showing this."
And I said, "if you don't show this in the prison, I'll go to the press
"and I'll hang you by your fucking cannolis,
"and I'll start the biggest prison riot you ever saw.
"I want the fucking movie shown and I want it shown to the inmates
"because I promised them for years, because nobody
believed there was gonna be a movie."
A lot of people from all over the country wrote to John
because of the movie.
A lot of people liked what John stood for in the movie.
He would try to answer as many letters as he could,
and I think that he picked out a lot of letters that were more romantic,
and he enjoyed it.
Everybody knew who he was. Everybody.
You would see everybody turn around, looking, you know, "That's the guy from "Dog Day."
You know, everybody in the prison.
People would come up for autographs, and he would love that.
Oh, yeah. He was... ooh!
We never became cellmates.
He was too hot.
He was a hot potato
because of the publicity that he was generating
and the publicity that I was generating also for him
in terms of his criminal case.
Because at the time of sentencing, he had swallowed pills.
He's already crazy, so he definitely was out of his mind at the time of sentencing.
So on a legal level, he really was deprived of his right to due process,
and the court did reduce his sentence when he went back for re-sentencing.
New York City is a place of contrast and contradiction.
Studio 54 here is a shrine to the city's celebrity cult.
People who come here are either famous or want to be famous,
but just 50 yards down the street here
is a building which people enter for very different reasons.
The Hotel Bryant is a federal prison halfway house.
One man living in this fleabag hotel
can lay claim to being one of the most celebrated losers in recent times.
The story of the life of John Wojtowicz is so bizarre
that even the jaded people of New York and Hollywood
find it unbelievable.
OK. what happened is that after the judge out my sentence to 15,
he recommended that the parole board release me.
So at the end of '78, I was sent to the Bryant Hotel.
You're only allowed to stay there for so long,
and you have to get a job or they send you back to prison.
OK. I finally got a job cleaning toilet bowls on Park Avenue for the rich people,
and then finally, I went back to my parents.
I was released in 1978,
and I must have lived with John and Terry for 9 or 10 months
at their Flatbush Avenue apartment.
John still saw me as his wife,
and we stayed with each other while we were out for 2 years.
Eventually, John got work with Project Return.
This was an inmate organization that helped ex-cons.
I only got to work at Project Return for a couple of months,
and then they had to lay me off because of a budget crunch and
then they threatened to lock me back up
because I wasn't working.
I guess everybody don't want to hire me 'cause I'm an ex-con,
but they can't use that excuse because of the law,
so they always say I'm not qualified.
You're a former bank teller?
Yeah, for 8 years.
Specifically, what type of a job would you like to have?
Well, anything that's got to do with bookkeeping or anything
that's got to do with finance, but a lot of people don't like you
handling money because you were away, you know, for bank robbery.
I went to Chase Manhattan when I first was out
at the halfway house,
and I wanted to be a security guard.
My reference was "Dog Day Afternoon".
I says "I'm the guy from "Dog Day Afternoon,"
"and if I'm guarding your bank, nobody's going to rob the Dog's bank.
OK. also I could sign autographs for people that open up new accounts."
So it took them 3 weeks to finally get somebody to tell me
that I couldn't be a security guard.
Just like I was gonna drive Dog Day's Disco Limousine.
And in the limousine, you would watch my movie and disco music would play,
but my parole guy refused to let me get a license.
Also I had to be kept under a psychiatric care,
and then I refused to see the psychiatrist as part of my parole.
Because how can they claim I wasn't crazy when I did it
and now that I'm out on parole, now I'm crazy?
But the judge ruled that parole is not a right, it's a privilege,
and if I want to be out, I gotta see the psychiatrist.
His life was pretty much of a mess when he got out of prison.
For him, prison was really horrible.
Some people use prison to pull their lives together.
John, I think it helped cement the personality that he was becoming.
When the movie came out, that became the essence of his life.
He then became The Dog,
and there was a real personality change of a major degree.
So it was easy to slip into this notoriety rather than settle down.
When Johnny got out of prison, the week he got out,
he didn't come straight home to my house.
He went to visit Ernie or whoever else he went to visit,
and when he was good and ready, he came to visit, to stay over that night.
And nothing happened.
And I was upset, because if you come out of prison and you're not with me in 8 years,
why didn't you come to me and the kids first?
And I would always say, "Well, he's gay, but he'll get over it and he'll come back to me"...
always hoping for that white picket fence that we always used to talk about.
Mm-mmm.
My name is John Stanley Joseph Wojtowicz.
I'm the one they made the movie about, "Dog Day Afternoon,"
that Al Pacino portrayed,
and I'm the husband of Carmen Ann Wojtowicz,
who is the mother of my two children.
I'm also the husband of George Heath, who got me out of prison by cutting my time,
and I'm also the husband of Ernest Aron,
the guy that I robbed the bank for to get the sex change for.
New York gave John a lot of respect.
People wanted to get to know him,
to see what kind of person he was.
So everyone wanted to take him back to the bank,
to get a picture of him in front of the bank,
and John would do anything for a couple of dollars.
I remember when he tipped everybody,
threw a lot of bills out on the sidewalk.
Oh, that's for the pizza.
That's when they brought the pizza.
How much did you pay for the pizza?
A couple thousand dollars.
$2,000.
I find this a very sad commentary...
Why?
On our civilization that 1, 2, 3, 4 technicians,
all of whom I assume are reasonably paid,
should be sent down here to interview somebody
who has become a celebrity because of crime.
It's ridiculous!
I mean, young kids of today see that,
and they're gonna want to rob banks just for the attention that they get,
and it's not fair.
Have you ever talked to him?
No.
Are you scared of him now?
He's just standing over there.
I still get the jitters just remembering that whole night.
It was no laughing matter.
I mean, he acted crazy.
You didn't know which way he was gonna go or what way he was gonna turn,
so you did what he said.
And now he's out signing autographs.
Yeah.
Signing autographs and becoming a big star.
Making money on an ordeal he put a lot of people through.
One time, we went to the actual bank,
and some of the people that were involved with the bank
or, in fact, maybe one or two of the hostages, approached us
because John's wearing this T-shirt saying "I robbed this bank."
A lot of people in the neighborhood didn't like the fact
that John was coming back to make more money off the bank robbery.
So they ran us out of the neighborhood.
Society has got a right to condemn you
for expecting to make money
out of committing a crime after you've been caught.
Yeah, but see, you're forgetting one thing, right?
What about Hollywood?
Hollywood can make a movie... namely Warner Bros...
make $50 million off of it,
get 6 Academy Award nominations and win an Oscar for it.
They can make money off of crime.
Why can a big company and a big corporation make millions and millions?
They gave the hostages a hundred dollars, couple hundred dollars each.
My wife Carmen got $50.
I got a couple of thousand, which I used to get Ernie his operation.
I never got a nickel out of it.
Not yet anyway.
Warner Bros. recently paid Wojtowicz a cool $100,000 as a final settlement.
Legal disputes have temporarily blocked that money.
And to this day, I'm still in court with my wife George
trying to get the money.
My name is George Heath.
My relationship with John Wojtowicz is that I am his lover.
I've also been known as his wife.
He uses the term "wife."
Everybody was out after money.
I'm the wife of John Wojtowicz.
My name is Carmen Ann Wojtowicz and I have two children, Dawn and Sean.
Carmen got paid, I got paid, John got paid...
And, of course, Liz was trying to make money herself.
How much did the whole sex change operation cost?
My last operation was 2 1/2 weeks ago,
and it's now up to about $54,000.
Liz was smart.
Now she's got a personal agent.
We had to pay him to get this interview.
She's trying to write a book,
but then, so is almost everyone else involved.
Liz and I... we didn't have a relationship at that time.
I would see her in different clubs, and she would tell me not to show her guy pictures.
I said, "You don't fucking tell me what to do."
And then she told a lot of people that different guys are the real Dog
so they'd get treated to celebrity status, and I would
come there and spoil it all for them
because I'm the real motherfucker.
We did a thing called "Let's Talk Dirty" with Mark Stevens,
the big porno star on Channel J.
They're here at Studio 11 B,
and I'm going to be talking to John Warzinski.
Did I say that right?
No, no, no.
I shouldn't...
Wojtowicz.
John Wojtowicz. I'm sorry, John.
OK. I'm going to call you Dog from now on.
OK now, with the "Jeanne Parr" show,
Liz is telling me how much she loves me
and she wants to get back together with me,
but then when we did the TV show with Mark Stevens,
she starts accusing me of all kinds of stuff
and starts turning it around.
I talked to Liz a few weeks ago
about Dog robbing the bank for Liz's sex change,
which I think is incredibly amazing, right, don't you?
No, not really.
Well, why? Don't you think it's incredible?
Because I don't think John really robbed the bank for me.
I never have.
I really honestly believe he was in debt to the mob
for unknown amount of money for my wedding.
All you have to remember is that I robbed the bank
to get Liz the sex change
even though I was against her getting the sex change,
and that was the only reason I robbed the bank.
Didn't you leave anything out?
Nope.
Give me a break.
I feel like I'm playing ping-pong here.
I can't give you a break.
Never mind. Go right to...
Oh! She's getting slick.
Come on, Liz, right?
It is incredible, isn't it?
If you had gotten caught, what was the contingent plan?
What were you gonna do when I came in
and kissed you in the doorway of the bank?
The truth John. Remember, we don't lie.
The truth, John.
Who? Who lies?
You do. Go ahead.
I very rarely lie.
OK, the truth is, if Liz wasn't going on the plane with me
to get the sex change operation, I would have blew her fucking ass away.
You would have blown her away?
See, Mark, you didn't know us during that one-year period
between the time we met and the time after we got married
that he robbed the bank.
I mean, it's all right to say you're in love with somebody
and it's all fine and good.
But he also put me through a whole year
of getting letters every day that said,
"You have 28 days to live," "You have 26 days to live,"
"you have 15 days to live" because I left him.
The thing that led me into the mental institution,
which everybody talks about, is the fact that I got these threatening notes
all the way down to number one,
and I figured since it was my birthday and everything else was fine,
I said, "Why don't I just kill myself?
It would end all this," and that's just what I did.
I tried to kill myself.
And you think I really wanted a person to rob a bank?
I got the shaft.
I might have got the sex change, but I got the royal shaft.
I can't enjoy it.
Dog was obsessional with Liz, and Liz said,
"You know, I don't want to be with him,
"but he's there all the time, he like, tracks me down.
I don't know what to do."
I mean, they had this link, you know, this symbiotic link.
And there was nothing she could do to release her from this mock marriage.
Well, I told her, I said, "Liz, you wanted to get married."
"Oh, thank you, thanks a lot."
Liz was talking about how the sex change really wasn't what she should have done to herself
and how she thought it would make her happy
and it didn't make her happy,
and it opened up a new series of problems for her.
She started prostituting, and she moved to Rochester eventually,
and she hustled there until she got AIDS.
She would write to me, and I says, "Are you ill?"
"No, I'm fine.
I've been diagnosed. I'm fine."
And then, time just moved ahead
and she was dead, you know, and that was it.
At that point, it was a question
of how he was going to live his life.
He settled into this pattern, sleeping most of the day,
going out late, and going down to West Street
where there were lots of transsexuals
and regarded himself as a kind of protector, watching out for them.
When crack took over the Village,
that's when I started getting people I never got before.
They would come to my mother's house a lot.
Then they would eat spaghetti dinner a lot.
They used to sleep over, because most of them were street people.
Terry really didn't care.
She was like fairy godmother to these guys.
I never got a clear-cut idea of what the father was like.
Almost like he was the little man that wasn't there.
He worked, he came home, he watched television, he had dinner.
Whereas, the mother was a much more vibrant force in John's life.
It was a mother/son combo,
and if you want to talk about his great love,
that's the great love of his life.
His mother.
Ma!
What?
Come here!
John and Terry were like husband and wife.
Terry would button up his coat, help him with his clothes,
and when he wanted something, he rang a bell.
I got a good memory.
OK.
Quiet on the set.
1, 2, 3,Action.
Good morning.
I'm "Dog Day Afternoon," the real one,
who Al Pacino portrayed in the movie "Dog Day Afternoon."
He always wanted to impress people.
He always wanted to look like he was the main character,
but after all that he put me through, he's my past.
That's all I can say.
Here's a guy who probably had a hard life
but really led a twisted life.
I think for his own sense of self-worth,
this is what he spun in his own mind.
That here is someone, you know, what I did, wow.
But you know, give us a break, he robbed a bank.
He was a criminal...
a romantic criminal, but he was a criminal.
He had to make it a fantasy in his mind,
because what else did he have in reality?
It's what you do to survive mentally.
There. There's your autograph.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Have a nice day.
I'm going to frame this.
And don't rob no banks without me.
All right. Ha ha!
I think that John wanted to be somebody,
but I don't think that he really ever found himself.
Thank you very much.
Any time.
At the end, he may have come to a confession with saying,
"Well, I'm sorry for this, I'm sorry for that," but John was always John.
He would never change.
How are you, buddy? How are you?
Not so good.
How you been? How are you?
Not good, not good, not good.
I talk to Tony, but he don't understand nothing.
He doesn't understand what dying is.
He doesn't understand about cancer.
That's why nuts have more fun.
Come on, you asshole. Get up here.
Ha ha ha!
That's so funny.
I'll blow you, if you come back.
OK. here he is.
Come on, you know you want that blow job!
Yes, you do, you big devil.
See that, see that?
Bent over right in front of me.
Yeah, don't tell me I ain't got it.
All right, let's go.
Life is too short. So there is no "no."
Thank you...
If you want to do something, do it.
Don't let anybody tell you, "No you can't do this, you can't be that,
you're no good, you're rotten."
Whatever they say to you, fuck them.
Do what you want to do, because tomorrow you could be dead.
So live every day as if it's your last, and whoever don't like it
can go fuck themselves and a rubber duck.
OK?
You understand?
♪ Strange ♪
♪ Life is strange ♪
♪ Oh, life is strange ♪
♪ Oh, God, life is strange... ♪
A man doesn't regret what he does.
And I used to tell everybody, "if I had a dream the night before, and in that dream
"I saw everything that happened, exactly how it happened,
"would I still go out and do it?
You're damn right I would still go out and do it."
♪ Strange ♪
♪ Life is strange ♪
♪ Oh, my life is strange ♪
Cut.
♪ Lately, I been thinking ♪
♪ Just how much I miss my lady ♪
♪ Amoreena's in the corn field ♪
♪ Brightenin' the daybreak ♪
♪ Livin' like a lusty flower ♪
♪ Runnin' through the grass for hours ♪
♪ Rollin' through the hay ♪
♪ Whoa, like a puppy child ♪
♪ And when it rains, the rain falls down ♪
♪ Washin' out the cattle town ♪
♪ And she's far away somewhere ♪
♪ In her eiderdown ♪
♪ And she dreams of crystal streams ♪
♪ Of days gone by when we would lean ♪
♪ Laughing fit to burst upon each other ♪
♪ And when it rains, the rain falls down ♪
♪ Washin' out the cattle town ♪
♪ And she's far away somewhere ♪
♪ In her eiderdown ♪
♪ And she dreams of crystal streams ♪
♪ Of days gone by when we would lean ♪
♪ Laughing fit to burst upon each other, whoa ♪
♪ Lately, I been thinking, whoa ♪
♪ Just how much I miss my lady ♪
♪ Amoreena's in the corn field, whoa ♪
♪ Brightenin' the daybreak ♪
♪ Livin' like a lusty flower ♪
♪ Runnin' through the grass for hours ♪
♪ Rollin' through the hay, whoa ♪
♪ Like a PUPPY 5
♪ Like a puppy child ♪
♪ Whoa Baby♪