You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can get with just a kind word.

The men carried two ladders across the prison yard to the wall after dark. On February 10 1947 Sutton and other prisoners dressed up as prison guards. In an ironic display he made a television commercial for New Britain Bank and Trust Co.

For his talent at executing robberies in disguises he gained two nicknames "Willie the Actor" and "Slick Willie. ". " Sutton is known albeit apocryphally for the urban legend that he said that he robbed banks "because that's where the money is.