A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!

Odds are long you’ll encounter an escapee from six states away

By Ed Goldman

When you hear of a jailbreak that occurs at least two thousand miles from your home, does one of these thoughts ever enter your mind?

1. I should double-check all the locks and maybe add some. Also on the doghouse, Tuff Shed and fusebox. And a really desperate escapee could probably climb into my attic even though there aren’t any trees within 150 yards of my place. Better think about an electrified fence.

2. If he comes here I wonder if I’ll freeze, faint, capture him or compassionately talk him into turning himself in. Maybe mention that God’s watching, or something like that. I have to brush up on my priest-versus-convict movies. They usually featured Pat O’Brien or Spencer Tracy as the priest and John Garfield or James Cagney as the convict. Or, in my lifetime, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn in those respective roles (though Sarandon was a nun in “Dead Man Walking,” I seem to recall. Sister Helen. Something like that.)
3. On the other hand, maybe I’ll help the jailbreaker by offering him a hot meal, shave and shower—and lend him my car. 

4. Maybe I’ll also realize that my life would be a lot more exciting if I offered all of the above—but then threw in, “And I’ll drive.” Yes, I’ll be cutting myself in on an entirely new life but how much have I been enjoying this one, anyway? Well, pretty much. But I’m having a bad day today, so why shouldn’t I skip emptying the dishwasher and instead turn to a life of crime?

—Now, I realize none of this is the least bit amusing for anyone who’s ever been in a situation like this, so I hereby apologize to the 319.4 people per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants who’ve ever been robbed (roughly .0032 percent of the population). I’ve personally been burgled twice but wasn’t home to try out any of my theories. Since both events were what they call “crimes of opportunity,” which makes them sound like career planning, they probably weren’t committed by anyone with a gun. Odds are that they were neighborhood kids who’d noticed in each case that I’d left my door unlocked.

Full disclosure suggests I tell you that someone also broke into my car about 25 years ago as it sat in my driveway, making off with perhaps $1.45 in loose change I kept in my ashtray. In those days we all kept coins in our car in case we were going anywhere that had parking meters and we were reluctant to use our American Express cards to pay for a 15-minute stop, like to pick up a sandwich. Fuller disclosure suggests that nobody actually “broke into” my car. The perp merely opened the unlocked door, scooped up his swag and made his getaway. More than likely on a bicycle with training wheels.  

I end with a true crime story that impacted my family.

When my dad was a teenager he worked in a drug store on the lower east side of Manhattan for a kindly pharmacist named “Doc” Adler. One night when my dad stayed to lock up the place, he was held up by the wife of Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, an Irish-American gangster in the 1930s. (I mention his ethnicity to clarify that, as with Bonnie and Clyde in the 1920s, it’s really not incumbent upon racketeers to have Italian surnames.)   

I was about 16 when my dad told me about being robbed when he was the same age. “She pointed a gun and jabbed it into my belly,” he said.