Dad loved me and my brother but he loved to rob banks & escape jail even more
Detective Gary Vance, left, and Officer Bill Hamilton take Tucker into custody in Modesto, California in 1978 escape he faked stomach cramps was taken to hospital, where they oved his appendix. “A small price to Tucker later said. the hospital prison, he unpicked his ckles and walked out unnoticed. ker headed to California, where he ed out a string of robberies. s luck ran out when the FBI surrded him as he retrieved loot from a ty deposit box in San Francisco. hey searched his apartment and d his second wife Shirley Storz, who she had never heard of Forrest ker. She thought she was married to ealthy songwriter. They a baby, Rick. hen officers showed her a ure of Tucker, he was ed her husband. ucker was sent to Alcatraz. n the great escape artist ught The Rock had him
. So he began appealing nst his 33-year sentence, in November 1956 was ted an appeal hearing and sferred to county jail. gain, he feigned illness and ped while in hospital. He was caught soon after, still in his hospital gown. But it was not until 1979 that Tucker would make his greatest escape.
He was in San Quentin maximum security prison in Marin County, California, which jutted out into the ocean.
Tucker and two other inmates stockpiled scraps of wood and pieces of Formica for months before building them into a boat. They wore sailor hats and sweatshirts which Tucker had painted bright orange with the logo of the Marin Yacht Club, which he had seen on boats that sailed FORTRESS San Quentin State Prison in California by. The group set off, but the boat sank. They were spotted by a guard in a tower who, thinking they were from the yacht club, asked if they needed help.
But they got to shore, with Tucker heading to Miami in disguise. Gaile had no clue he was then using her home as a base to create a gang of thieving OAPs.
“I was never afraid,” she says. “Maybe I was too young and naive. People say, ‘Oh, you were hiding a criminal’, but I just never thought about it like that.
“We spent a lot of time at the breakfast table and having dinner with everyone. We were just a regular family.” By then, Forrest Tucker made 30 escape attempts in all and 18 were successful, including these:
■ In 1979, while in San Quentin, Tucker and two inmates smuggled items from the prison workshops to build a 14ft kayak. When guards were not looking, the trio paddled away until waves sank them. They swam to shore, and pretended to a they were local yachtsmen.
■ His early escapes involved hidden hacksaw blades. But when jailed for a stick-up in 1950, he feigned illness and was taken to hospital to 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.