Dad loved me and my brother but he loved to rob banks & escape jail even more

Gaile was a mum of four and Tucker a doting grandad. “He adored my kids and they loved him so much,” she says.

“I never got a call from San Quentin. I never got a call from the FBI. I never had anybody knock at my door.”

But police in Texas and Oklahoma began reporting a strange series of holdups. A group of old men would go to a store or bank with a gun and demand money. Dubbed the Over The Hill Gang, in one year they were suspected of at least 60 robberies. Tucker was finally caught and returned to San Quentin.

He was released aged 73 and settled into life with third wife, Jewel, in Florida. But the lure of crime was too much.

Some five years later, dressed all in white, he drove 50 miles to the Republic Security Bank in Jupiter town, pulled out a gun and calmly made off with $5,000.

The 78-year-old, who had undergone a quadruple bypass, thanked the staff on his way out. Chased by police, Tucker crashed his car into a tree.

The ailing crook was sent to FMC Fort Worth, Texas. This time he would never leave. Gaile has mixed feelings about Tucker as an absent father.

“As a child, I didn’t understand. But much later in my life, I realised this is just what he loved, the thrill of the chase,” she says.

“I think maybe I resented him a little bit for loving his lifestyle better than he loved his children.”

Tucker was in his 80s when he died in jail in 2004 without knowing that his dream had come true. He had always wanted his life story to be turned into a movie.

The Old Man & the Gun is out in cinemas now. have his appendix out. After the operation, he picked the lock on his shackles and walked out.

Sent to Alcatraz in 1953, Tucker spent years smuggling tools to dig his way out. But he took his chance to flee during a transfer. Spending the night in county jail before a court appeal in 1956, Tucker was taken to hospital with kidney pains. They had to remove his leg irons after he stabbed himself in the ankle with a pencil. As he was wheeled in for an X-ray, Tucker leapt up, overpowered the guards and fled.