Photo: Courtesy Brandon Stanton/Humans of New York
Cheryl Love recalls making tea in the kitchen of her Brooklyn home when police knocked on her door and then raced toward her husband, who was still in bed, and forced him to reveal a secret he’d kept for 40 years.
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“And in North Carolina, back in 1964, that was enough to get me arrested for disorderly conduct.”
He describes a short descent into teen delinquency, saying he “fell in with the wrong group of kids” after moving north to live with his brother in Washington, D.C.
“These guys were robbing banks — and getting away with it,” he says. “So I decided to tag along. We’d drive down to North Carolina because those banks had less security. And we got away with it a few times. After every score, we’d hang out on the strip at 14th and T, and act like big timers. We felt like gangsters. I have nobody to blame but myself. I just enjoyed the feeling of having money. But the fun didn’t last for long.”
A judge sentenced him to 25 to 30 years. His mom died while he was behind bars, “and that really shook me up,” he says. “Because my entire life she’d been praying for me to turn my life around. And she never got to see it happen.”
According to theNews & Observer, he was riding a prisoner transport bus to a work site outside a now-closed minimum security prison when he made his escape, hiding his civilian clothes under his prison uniform and then spending $10 on a bus ticket to Manhattan.
He assumed the name of an old friend’s son, and met Cheryl in the 1980s when both worked at Baptist Medical Center in Brooklyn, reports theDaily News.
The two were married in 1985 and had four children, according to theNews & Observer.
At the time of his 2015 re-arrest, his daughter Jessica, told theDaily News,“My father was determined to change his life, and for 40 years or so he did just that.”
source: people.com
