Fight for freedom that proves Love really does conquer all
HOW WIFE STUCK BY HUSBAND OF 40 YEARS — WHO WAS SECRETLY AN ESCAPED ARMED ROBBER
Bobby Love started out as Walter Miller, a troubled youth who had robbed a series of banks at gunpoint in North Carolina.
“I fancied myself a gangster as a young man,” admits Bobby, who endured a tough childhood as the son of a w ife-beating alcoholic. When his father abandoned the family, Bobby was just six years old.
“I started young, breaking into cars and stealing things,” he recalls.
He was first sentenced to juvenile detention at 13. “With friends we started robbing credit unions. I was 18 when a cop shot me in the buttocks after a bank robbery. I was sent to prison, and lucky not to be paralysed or killed.
“I was just a stupid kid at the time. You’d think being shot would have straightened me out, but no.”
Released after 13 months behind bars, Bobby returned to armed robbery, but following a bank heist in 1970 he was captured and sentenced to 25-to-30 years in a maximum security prison in North Carolina. “That was soul destroying,” he admits. “Being in jail is the worst.”
Frustrated at the arbitrary cruelty of guards who crushed
ON SCREEN LOVE: Kerry Washington
his chances for early parole, Bobby escaped from the back of a prison bus taking him to work on a road crew in 1977. He had served only six years.
“I ran and ran and ran,” saysBobby.“Ididn’tever want to go back to jail.” Finally scared into going straight, the fugitive Walter Miller made his way to New York, invented his fake name of Bobby Love, and worked at a Brooklyn hospital where he met nutritionist Cheryl, 12 years his junior.
“She was young, pretty and intelligent,” he says. “By the time I met Cheryl I’d spent 10 years of my life in different jails, but I’d been going straight for seven years.”
Guard
Cheryl recalls: “He was tall, handsome, and made me laugh. He always treated me well, and we fell in love.”
Bobby says: “My first years on the run I was looking over my shoulder, expecting the police to catch me. By the time I met Cheryl I could relax, but I never let my guard down.”
They married in 1985 and had four children but Bobby was always too scared to tell his wife that he was a bank robber on the run.
“If I’d told Cheryl the truth, she’d have told me to turn myself in,” he says.
“That’s true,” she laughs.
Bobby says: “When they arrested me it felt like my life was over. I still had19to24yearslefttoserve.I thought I’d lost Cheryl, lost my kids, lost everything. I was devastated.
“I apologised to Cheryl, and told her I wouldn’t be surprised if she divorced me. But she said she loved me. My kids said, ‘ We want our daddy!’ They never wavered.”
Cheryl’s anger at the imprisonment of Bobby attracted widespread publicity, and, against all odds, Bobby was granted parole in 2016 after less than a year behind bars. Cheryl was waiting with open arms.
“She redeemed me,” says Bobby,. “Love conquers all. God’s put me in the best place I can be.”
The Redemption of Bobby Love: ●
The Humans of N ew York Instagram Sensation, by Bobby & Cheryl Love is out now.