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Radio Free Montone: Yay, Bad Guys!

By John Montone, 1010 WINS

Admit it. Sometimes you root for the bad guys.

It's easy in the movies or on TV. Like those charming con men played by Redford and Newman in, "The Sting," or the old and new "Oceans 11," crews. Or even when Tony Soprano exacted revenge on Phil Leotardo whose skull got squashed like a melon by his wife's SUV. Remember the FBI agent dogging Tony doing a little celebrating when he learned that "his" mob family had prevailed. And don't tell me you weren't cheering when Clint Eastwood escaped from Alcatraz. I mean that warden was a weasel.

When the news bulletins broke about the Dannemora duo drilling and slithering their way to freedom, I was jazzed up. Breaking out of that fortress took the type of initiative that had the two stone cold killers applied in law-abiding society might have made them comfortable lives. But they were such twisted, malicious mutants that my allegiance quickly shifted to the cops and troopers and sheriffs' officers who diligently combed the wilderness for weeks, putting their lives on the line.

Radio Free Montone: Yay, Bad Guys!

And with Richard Matt dead and David Sweat wearing bandages over the bullet holes in his body, I moved on to the guy 1010 WINS anchor Brigitte Quinn introduced as, "Willie Sutton in a wheelchair." On a morning when the big news stories were a rent freeze for New York City tenants and Chris Christie finally announcing for president, I was parked outside the Santander Bank on Broadway in Astoria, Queens. I called it, "The Handicapped Caper."

It was a tale of a guy who I said "didn't have to get out of his get-away vehicle." Using the ramp the "wheelchair-bound bandit," rolled into the bank, handed a note to a teller and rolled back out with 1200-bucks sitting in his lap. The only glimpse of the robber came as he wheeled himself west on Broadway and was seen on a store's surveillance video. The shopkeeper thought the cops were kidding when they told him who they were looking for. And a young guy from the neighborhood in one of those deliciously New York understatements told 1010 WINS, "I believe the bank has lackluster security."

As "Wheelchair Willie Sutton," rolled out of sight the NYPD sent a chopper up to find him. Too late.

And while it may turn out that the bad guy was not handicapped, he was simply using the wheelchair as a diversion or even that the teller was an accomplice, as I reported the heist that morning I kept thinking, "The Handicapped Caper," he pulled it off.

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