Willie Sutton? Paul Perritt? Robert M. Yoder? Fred Curran? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: The famous criminal Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks, and his reported response was simple, eloquent, and humorous:
Because that’s where the money is.
Now, I have been told that Sutton never really said this. Instead, it was created by a journalist who was willing to bend the truth to write a more interesting story. Could you explore the genesis of this quotation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest instance known to QI of this type of remark delivered by a bank robber appeared in a 1923 article titled “Youths Admit Bank Holdups” published in “The Detroit Free Press”. Paul Perritt who was 26 years old confessed to a series of robberies. The slang term “iron” in the following excerpt referred to a gun. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Perritt, neatly dressed and evincing no little education, made his statement with unruffled composure.
“We specialized on banks,” he said, “because that’s where the money is. I used my head and went about the work systematically. Things were planned beforehand. Usually I carried the iron myself, but never meant to kill anybody. We used to say to ourselves: ‘If it comes to tough stuff, we’ll lay off.’”
The earliest citation QI has located attributing a version of the saying to Willie Sutton was published in “The Saturday Evening Post” in January 1951:2
Someone once asked Slick Willie Sutton, the bank robber, why he robbed banks. The question might have uncovered a tale of injustice and lifelong revenge. Maybe a banker foreclosed on the old homestead, maybe a banker’s daughter spurned Sutton for another.
Sutton looked a little surprised, as if he had been asked “Why does a smoker light a cigarette?”
“I rob banks because that’s where the money is,” he said, obviously meaning “in the most compact form.” That eye for the simple essential may be the secret of a singular success.
The reporter Robert M. Yoder did not state how he learned about this quotation and no details were given for its provenance. But see further below for an interview with another reporter published March 30, 1952 during which Sutton spoke the well-known phrase, “That’s where the money is”, when discussing banks. This quotation is controversial today primarily because Sutton himself denied that he ever spoke it. His denial was printed in his 1976 autobiography, and the specifics are given further below in this article.
Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
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