Which Lie Did I Tell? (36 page)

Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writer

A 78-year-old career bank robber, who once tweaked San Quentin guards by escaping with two colleagues in a prison made kayak named “Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Marin Yacht Club,” is in trouble again.

Forrest Silva Tucker, a reputed member of the real “Over The Hill Gang” in Boston is in custody on suspicion of robbing a Florida bank and later leading Broward County sheriff’s deputies on a car chase.

In trying to avoid arrest Thursday. Tucker Allegedly led officers on a chase, blundered into an enclosed schoolyard and war captured after he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a palm tree.

Deputies said the chase ensued after Tucker, wanted for a bank robbery earlier that day in the town of Jupiter, was spotter visiting his girlfriend in Pompano Beach.

“You don’t normally think of a 78-year-old man having a girlfriend, but apparently he had quite a way with the ladies,” said Kirk Englehardt, a spokesman for the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.

Tucker, a Miami native, may have that reputation in Florida, but he is best remembered in the Bay Area for engineering one of the most innovative escapes in San Quentin history.

With two other inmates. Tucker, a former boatyard employee who had a smattering of knowledge about marine design and construction, built a crude kayak and painted the blue prison caps

He and his accomplices wore a bright orange.

On Aug. 9. 1979, Tucker and fellow inmates William McGirk and John Waller launched their boat from a partially hidden beach on prison grounds.

Their flimsy craft, made of pieces of plastic sheeting, wood, duct tape and Formica, lasted just long enough for them to paddle several hundred yards to freedom right under the noses of several tower guards.

At one point, as they paddled frantically to keep the boat afloat, a tower guard called out to see if they needed help form the Coast Guard.

No problem, called back one of the kayakers: “My Times is still ticking.”

After the three turned up missing during the afternoon count, guards found the kayak beached beyond the prison walls. On one side was its name: “Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Marin Yacht Club.” That side, the one facing the prison, had been painted bright blue: the other side was left unfinished.

Within a matter of months, McGirk and Waller were back at San Quentin. They were tried twice for escape, but both times amused jurors refused to convict them.

Tucker, meanwhile, remained free.

The next time he surfaced was a few years later in a Boston credit scam. The judge hearing the case freed him on his own recognizance after chagrined Marin County prosecutors said they did not want to try him for the San Quentin escape Lost in the official correspondence between the two states was that Tucker still had years to serve on his original San Quentin sentence. Tucker walked out of the Boston court and never went back.

Tucker’s connections to the Bay Area go back to the early 1950s when he and a crime partner, Richard Bernard Bellew, were arrested for a half-dozen East Bay banks robberies.

At the time of his arrest for the Bay Area robberies, Tucker already had a rap sheet going back to a 1936 bicycle theft. There were also two other convictions, including a Florida bust in which be had escaped from the jail ward of a South Dade County hospital by picking the lock on his leg irons.

After being convicted for the East Bay holdups, Tucker was sent to Alcatraz to serve his term. During a medical visit to Los Angeles General Hospital in 1956, he escaped and managed to get as far as Bakersfield before he was captured by the California Highway Patrol.

He was later transferred to San Quentin. Where he engineered his greatest escape.

Over the next few years, Tucker was identified by law enforcement agencies as a member of a group of elderly criminals in Massachusetts called the “Over the Hill Gang,” which robbed supermarkets in Boston and its suburbs. He was suspected in 17 armed robberies over the years, most recently in a series of bank robberies in the part of southeastern Florida known as the Gold Coast.

Tucker’s 20 years as a California fugitive came to an ignominious end against a palm tree last week. Deputies who searched the vehicle after the crash said they found burglary tools, weapons, police scanners and large amount of cash.

He is scheduled for a court appearance later this week.

©1999 San Francisco Chronicle
Page A1

Some pretty interesting stuff there, yes?

I think so, anyway, which leads me to this, which seems like the most important of all questions:

Is it a movie?

The operative word in that sentence is “seems.” “Is it a movie?” is
not
even remotely a valid question. Here is what you must remember:

Anything can be a movie.

I’m not being cute. If
you
believe in a story, if
you
believe you can make the story play and make it interesting, then yes, it can be a movie. The question that should be asked, must be asked, before you start out to make a movie is:

Is it a movie I would like to write?

Lots of positives and negatives here. Tucker, the “old guy” of this chapter’s title, has a lot of appeal, at least he does for me. Before I get to specifics, I’m going to show you what I do when I’m interested in a piece of material.
I reread it, and mark stuff that I find particularly interesting or usable.
Just a line or a check in the margins. Remember, we may be starting on writing a movie here.

What I want you to do now is this: go back and reread the article and
make your own marks.
Anything that you think might be appealing for a flick.

Turn the page now and you’ll see what I liked.

Last of ‘Rub-a-Dub-Dub’ Fugitives Florida cops arrest robber who escaped from San Quentin 20 years ago in a kayak

Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writer

A 78-year-old career bank robber, who once tweaked San Quentin guards by escaping with two colleagues in a prison- made kayak named “Rub-a-Dub-Dub, Marin Yacht Club,” is in trouble again

Forrest Silva Tucker, a reputed member of the real “Over The Hill Gang” in Boston, is in custody on suspicion of robbing a Florida bank and later leading Broward county sheriff’s deputies on a car chase.

In trying to avoid arrest Thursday, Tucker allegedly led officers on a chase, blundered into an enclosed schoolyard and was captured after he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a palm tree.

Deputies said the chase ensued after Tucker, wanted for a bank robbery earlier that day in the town of Jupiter, was spotted visiting his girlfriend in Pompano Beach.

“You don’t normally think of a 78-year-old man having a girlfriend, but apparently he had quite a way with the ladies,” said Kirk Englehardt, a spokesman for the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.

Tucker, a Miami native, may have that reputation in Florida but he is best remembered in the Bay Area for engineering one of the most innovative escapes in San Quentin history.

With two other inmates. Tucker, a former boatyard employee who had a smattering of knowledge about marine design and construction, built a crude kayak and painted the blue prison caps he and his accomplices wore a bright orange.

On Aug. 9. 1979, Tucker and fellow inmates William McGirk and John Waller launched their boat from a partially hidden beach on prison grounds.

Their flimsy craft, made of pieces of plastic sheeting, wood, duct tape and Formica, lasted just long enough for them to paddle several hundred yards to freedom right under the noses of several tower guards.

At one point, as they paddled frantically to keep the boat afloat, a tower guard called out to see if they needed help form the Coast Guard.

No problem, called back one of the kayakers: “My Times is still ticking.”

After the three turned up missing during the afternoon count, guards found the kayak beached beyond the prison walls. On one side was its name: “Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Marin Yacht Club.” That side, the one facing the prison, had been painted bright blue; the other side was left unfinished.

Within a matter of months, McGirk and Waller were back at San Quentin. They were tried twice for escape, but both times amused jurors refused to convict them.

Tucker, meanwhile, remained free.

The next time he surfaced was a few years later in a Boston credit scam. The judge hearing the case freed him on his own recognizance after chagrined Marin County prosecutors said they did not want to try him for the San Quentin escape. Lost in the official correspondence between the two states was that Tucker still had years to serve on his original San Quentin sentence. Tucker walked out of the Boston court and never went back.

Tucker’s connections to the Bay Area go back to the early 1950s when he and a crime partner, Richard Bernard Bellew, were arrested for a half-dozen East Bay banks robberies.

At the time of his arrest for the Bay Area robberies, Tucker already had a rap sheet going back to a 1936 bicycle theft. There were also two other convictions, including a Florida bust in which he had escaped from the jail ward of a South Dade County hospital by picking the lock on his leg irons.

After being convicted for the East Bay holdups. Tucker was sent to Alcatraz to serve his term. During a medical visit to Los Angeles General Hospital in 1956, he escaped and managed to get as far as Bakersfield before he was captured by the California Highway Patrol.

He was later transferred to San Quentin, where he engineered his greatest escape.

Over the next few years, Tucker was identified by law enforcement agencies as a member of a group of elderly criminals in Massachusetts called the “Over the Hill Gang,” which robbed supermarkets in Boston and its suburbs. He was suspected in 17 armed robberies over the years, most recently in a series of bank robberies in the part of southeastern Florida known as the Gold Coast.

Tucker’s 20 years as a California fugitive came to an ignominious end against a palm tree last week. Deputies who searched the vehicle after the crash said they found burglary tools, weapons, police scanners and a large amount of cash.

He is scheduled for a court appearance later this week.

©1999 San Francisco Chronicle
Page A1

You’ll notice, there’s a lot of usable stuff I did not mark this time around. I concentrated on four.

The first mark deals with Tucker’s capture. I think you’ve got to use it, though I’m not sure where it comes in the picture. Here’s how it might work as an opening.

Not a bad beginning. At least it’s not one of those ho-hum octogenarian car chases we’re all so used to.

It could also be the ending. What if Tucker’s finally, after a lifetime of crime and punishment, got enough to leave the world he’s inhabited all those decades, what if he’s on his way to pick up his lady fair and off they will go to live their final years somewhere glorious—

—and a cop spots him. And the chase. And the attempt to get away, ending so forlornly for an eighty-year-old in a schoolyard.

Not so terrible that way, either.

I think if I thought about it I could come up with a way to tuck it into the middle, but I don’t want to do that. You can already see why I marked those lines in the paper,
I can use this stuff.

Okay. My second mark is the obvious one, the San Quentin jail break. Tucker was sixty at the time and what a grand gesture for a guy that age stuck in the slammer again.

A kayak?

Fabulous.

That, boys and girls, is the crucial set piece in the film. Fifteen minutes, maybe more, exciting and funny and full of hope and the possibility of disaster never more than a second away.

My third mark involved his being freed by the judge in Boston when not only would the Marin County people not press charges out of humiliation, but Tucker also scoots to freedom because of the goof-up in correspondence between the two states involved.

Cannot help but be fun and exciting, that stuff.

My fourth and final mark involved the 1936 bicycle theft he was busted for. My calculations make Tucker about fifteen at the time and I don’t know why I want that, maybe as a credit sequence.

The reason I’m not sure why I want that is a symptom of my problem with the movie at this moment:
I’m not sure what it is.

Is it a Butch Cassidy–type story, fun and games but darkening as time goes on (and on)? Is it a gangster flick, where my guy, Tucker, gets more desperate and drained as nothing works out for him? It is a comedy about a goofball?

I think the material could encompass any of those attacks.