How lucky am I?

The last time I wrote, I promised to tell you about how I believe I won a 26 million dollar lottery in Texas.  It’s a long story that needs to be cut down.  In late November or early December 1993, I was driving through Central Texas, heading to El Paso, where I intended to drive across the border into Juarez, Mexico, park my car at the long term parking at the airport, fly to Mexico City, then catch the once-weekly flight by Japan Airlines to Tokyo, stay the night, and then fly on to Manila the next morning.

I stopped to fill my car with gas at one of those “Quick Stops”, and bought 10 lottery tickets to boot.  Then I drove to El Paso and never looked at the lottery tickets again.  I might have thrown them away or may have brought them to the Philippines.

Things did not go good for me when I got home in Baguio City.  The F.B.I. were waiting for me there.  I got to spend six weeks with my wife and son before I was tipped off to their presence.  So I fled back to El Paso using the same method of travel.  (This way I didn’t have to present my passport at a U.S. port of entry).

When I arrived back in El Paso in mid-January, I decided to stay a couple of days in order to catch my breath, it had been a harrowing trip.  The first thing I did was purchase a newspaper; a caption in that newspaper immediately caught my eye.  (I can’t recall the exact wording).  It read:  26 Million Dollar Lottery Prize Goes Unclaimed.  I read the article and it went on to say that the ticket was purchased at a Stop and Go (or some kind of Quick Stop) just outside Midland, Texas, one of ten tickets purchased by the same individual on the exact date that I purchased mine.

There was nothing I could do.  I looked in the clothes I brought back.  I checked through my car…  I couldn’t contact my wife because the F.B.I. were all around my house…

Now, I don’t know to this day whether it was one of those tickets that won the 26 million dollars.  I still don’t know if the money was ever claimed.  I believe, the winner had about ten days left to claim the prize.  I left El Paso a few days later, never finding out if it was claimed.

I would sure appreciate it if someone that’s reading this would use their search engine to find out if that prize was claimed, and let me know.  It’s been more than 12 years and I think about it often.  I purchased the ticket in late November or early December, 1993.  Would someone please check for me!

Paddy

P.S.  I had the computer select the 10 ticket numbers for me.

Cancer, screenplay, Reid and Wright

I didn’t start this website because I thought people liked me, but to sell my books. I know exactly who I am and what I’ve done with my life, and I’m not proud of the things I’ve done.   But suddenly I’ve been overwhelmed by the response from old friends, new friends and people just interested in buying a book and wanting to comment on it.

As you know, I’m in the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.  It’s a very nice place with all the amenities of a regular hospital:  good medical staff, all the very latest medical equipment, nice accommodations, good food, and except for a few inmates and one or two staff members – nice people around us.

Unfortunately, I’ve had a relapse and the cancer I thought was in remission isn’t.  I have had to go through three, 31/2 hour chemotherapy sessions in these past three weeks.  They are not so hard on me, so far.  I haven’t gone through what I’ve seen others go through: nausea, hair loss…the only side effect it’s had on me is that it zaps my energy and stops me from getting a good night’s sleep.

I have a great little screenplay I wrote – just before I broke down – making the rounds with a few movie producers.  I’m hopeful that something will come of it.  Remember the name “Out of Nowhere”.   Its based on a true story.  It’s a love story – that’s never consummated between a 17 year old girl and a 40ish male.  (Now, don’t get upset!).  I can’t explain it all here, suffice to say, it won’t offend anyone if it gets made.

Stephen Reid is still incarcerated at William’s Head Island in British Columbia.  He and I stay in touch.  He’s a good friend!  (Although we’ve had our differences over the years).  He and his wife, Susan Musgrove, have held together under some difficult circumstances.  Their daughter, Sophie, is 17 or 18 years old – a highly intelligent girl and quite independent.

Lionel Wright, the third member of our “gang” doesn’t communicate with Stephen and I; can’t say as I blame him.  He could be dead for all we know, because he has not kept in touch with anyone from the “old days”.  Lionel was arrested 26 years ago “today” in Sedona, Arizona, by the F.B.I. on a “tip” from someone he and Stephen Reid thought was a friend.  I won’t go into all that, it is in my book.

Just a note:   I see the first couple of emails from September 16th – 06, have messed up my reply.  “Rick and Jack Gills – he trained horses for me”.   I don’t know what that’s about;  I’m sure I wrote more than that.

EMAIL REPLIES:

LISA HILL:   Okay, now I remember Rod.  Yes, he’s a very nice fellow.  And yes, of course, Kevin Moyer is a fine fine man.  Pass on a message for me that Mike Hyde arrived here about a week ago with a growth (tumor) in his throat.  He came from Colorado.  Doesn’t look good!  He’s very thin.  And he tells me that Tom Eastland, out of Texas (coach on the ball team and spent his time mostly in hobbycraft, making pottery) is on his way here as well – with pancreatic cancer.

JENNIFER CONNOLLY:   Thanks for the woohoo!

RICHARD PAQUETTE:   Thanks for replying.  “Tony Lupiano” that’s his name.  I couldn’t remember it.  He was a good guy.   Sorry to hear he’s deceased.  Have I already mentioned that I used your first name, “Richard” a couple of times when I was creating new (false) I.D.:  Richard Joseph Landry out of New Orleans and Richard Jordan Baird out of Orlando.  And, I named my son in the Philippines, Richard Michael Weber.  I always liked the name.  Did I get that right?  Peter Byers died in the ‘70’s?   Sounds like you’ve been having a good life.  And yes, I often wonder ‘what if’ had I not decided to be a crook; what else I could have done with my life.  Stay in touch, Richard!

JULIE HARTLEY:   You are my favorite gal!  Wow!  You are working hard for me and I sure do appreciate it.  God Bless you.  I have a good feeling about all of this.  Maybe this time.  Say hi to your Mom for me.

DEBBIE (MABALLEY):   What a nice letter you wrote, thank you.  Sorry to hear about your brother, 26 years old, what a tragedy.  We have dozens of guys here in their 20’s suffering from this terrible disease and it kills about half of them.  Happy to hear that you enjoyed my book.  I spent many a day on a beach reading a good book.  I’ve always loved to read.  God Bless you, Debbie.

CAROLE CHITOURAS:   Thanks for all you’re trying to do for me, Carole.   Proceed!   You mention 3 names that I’m trying to put a face to.  Jerry Bertrand, of course, I knew quite well.  He lived on Primrose St. about 10 houses from where I lived around the corner on Preston St.  He and I saw each other often and hung around together back in the ‘50’s  (Yes, that is:  the 1950’s).  If he’d been six feet tall and 200 pounds he could have been a top notch athlete.  He was a great hockey player – too small for the NHL though.  I knew a Carole Laflamme (I’ll take that back)  I knew a girl we used to call “Butch” who, if I remember correctly, was named Carole.   Would that be the same lady?  She’d be in her early 60’s now.  She’d still be a young chick.  Nice to hear from you, Carole.

STEPHAN:   Like father, like son!  Thank you for the “integrity” mention towards my son, Kevin.  You didn’t mention exactly what he did but you did say it had to do with you receiving my book, and your comment; “You’re in good hands here, and I hope everyone picks up a copy and reads this book.”  I have to assume that something went wrong with your order.  Happy to hear it’s been straightened out.  We’ve been selling the book for almost two years, and we haven’t had one unhappy buyer.  Everyone who has ordered it, received it!

KEVIN CLIFTON:   Always happy to hear from an old neighbor from Courtney Rd. in Hazeldean.  Yes, my son, Kevin, is a great guy – thank you for commenting on that.  You and he played together as kids – in a beautiful environment.  Too bad I couldn’t have lived all these wasted years, right there.  I’m still trying to figure it all out.  Would you pass a message on to your dad and tell him not to lose heart in me (writing him letters).  I enjoy his correspondence.  But I haven’t been able to write properly in freehand.   You should see the mess of these before they are typed up!  Thanks Kevin.  Say hi to Brian for me.

The Storm of the Century

I believe it was 1992 or 1993 and it was either March or April. I was living in a condominium on Wrightville Beach, on a beautiful scenic island just a couple of miles east of Wilmington, North Carolina. My purpose for being there was nefarious: I had discovered a couple of easy looking banks that I thought I might rob during the summer months when tourists flock to the area to spend a lot of money.

I never expected to get caught up in a storm that would devastate the whole eastern part of the United States, dump a foot of snow, cause electrical outages to millions of homes, blow down signs and houses and trees, cause many deaths and strand me on the island without electricity, heat, and hot water for coffee or bathing. I didn’t even have a candle for several days. And the police set up a roadblock leading on and off the island and were checking the identity of everyone coming and going in order to prevent looting. And, although I always had a good set of ID, I never knew if it had blown up and I’d been made. So I couldn’t take a chance of trying to drive off the island until the roadblocks came down, which was two or three days and freezing nights.

I continued to live there until the end of June. I would drive daily about 60 miles to Myrtle Beach to look at a bank that received the weekend receipts every Monday, delivered by an armoured truck (every bank receives armoured truck deliveries; most put the money right in the vault where it’s more difficult and time-consuming for a bank robber to extract, but some don’t put it right in the vault, wanting to count it before they do - that’s where I come in!).

This bank in Myrtle Beach didn’t put it away. It was left with the Commercial Teller. I cased this bank for three or four months, walking in to conduct some business (four or five times) while the armed courier was delivering the deposit, and they never varied the procedure.

I stole a car and put it in a storage shed and let the heat wear off it for a couple of months. The money was coming from a large “Kroger” grocery store in the area, and I went to that store every weekend to watch what kind of business they were doing. A weekend in mid-June was idea, so on the Monday morning afte rI drove the hot car to a parking lot adjacent to the bank, waited for the delivery of the morning, and when the armoured truck made the delivery and drove away, I put on my mask, pulled on my gloves, and hopped, skipped and jumped into the back door of the bank, pointed a gun at the Commercial Teller and demanded that she put the money that was just delivered into my large bag. She complied and in less than a minute I exited with more than $100,000.

I had a getaway route that I’d gone over dozens of times, changed cars about four city blocks from the bank, got into my personal car, drove two blocks and etnered a four-story parking garage, got out of my car and got into the trunk where I stayed for about twenty hours. The next morning I drove to my storage shed and left all the bank-robbing paraphanalia (including the money), then drove to the airport an dflew to Columbia, South Carolina. I spent a week at the Holiday Inn, flew back exactly a week later, and drove back to Wrightsville Beach. The heat was off the bank robbery, there were no road blocks…and  I was a hundred thousand dollars richer.

P.S. I confessed to this robbery years later, making what I thought was a deal with an FBI agent to get an innocent man out of prison - but the agent didn’t keep his word. But that’s another story! I’ll tell you about it next time.

Paddy

Breakfast, chemo, Muslims & banks

It’s Sunday morning. I’ve been up since 7:00, have been to breakfast - consisting of a bowl of bran flakes, a whole wheat bagel, cream cheese and jelly, crushed pineapple, coffee and milk - came back to my room, made a cup of coffee and listened to a one hour segment of National Public Radio news. The story I’m most interested in is the Pope’s up-coming visit to Turkey. I’m worried that those crazy Muslims might try to assasinate him for telling the truth.

I’m not prejudiced about Muslims, I have good friends who happen to be Muslims. But I tell it as it is: most of the violence in the world today is perpetrated by them; you can’t believe a word they say, everything they say is a lie; they live like animals. But don’t get me started on that subject!

Anyhow, did I mention I smuggled two bagels, two cream cheeses and a bag of pineapple out of the chow hall? Sometimes I get caught, so I put on the “poor old 64 year old man with cancer, just trying to keep my weight up” - which doesn’t work with some of the meaner cops, but works with some. The truth is chemotherapy give me an appetite that I have trouble controlling: the opposite to how most people react to the drug.

The good news is today the temperatures will climb into the mid-70s and nary a cloud will appear overhead. This is winter in North Carolina! I spent a winter here in the early 90s, casing banks, and just my luck got hit with a nor’easter that was labeled “The Storm of the Century.” I’m here to tell you it was all that and a bag of chips. I’ll tell you about it, and maybe about the bank I knocked off, tomorrow.

I don’t know how appropriate it is for me to be writing about my bank robberies on this site. But if I don’t write about those then I’ll have very little to say - robbing banks is what I did!

Paddy (november 26/06)

Moods, Writing, Inspiration and Old Friends

Howdy Folks,

It has been more than a week since I have picked up a pen and written something. I get in moods; not bad moods - just moods - about writing, talking to others, making phone calls, exercising, etc. etc. I know (if I want to regain some writing skills) I should write every day. Most days this past week I either read or just stared at the ceiling, thinking: I should get up and do some writing - but didn’t. Last night, while laying in bed reading a magazine I came across an article that so inspired me that had my room-mate not been sleeping, I would have hopped up and wrote.

The article was a one-page essay written by Bernadine Healey, M.D., in the US News and World Report, about and 80 year old man named Art Buchwald, a very famous author, columnist and humorist for the Chicago Tribune, who had been hospitalized several months earlier and given only weeks to live by his doctor. They had amputated one of his legs and he had been placed on a dialysis machine because of kidney failure.

Mr. Buchwald decided he didn’t want to die this way, hooked up to machines, in hospital, so he ordered his treatment stopped and asked ot go to a hospice to die in peace.

The strangest thing happened though - his kidneys began to function without the need for dialysis and his general health and spirits improved. After a month or two in hospice he decided to move back to his home and write a book about his experience, and six months later the book was released and has become a best seller! (”Too Soon to Say Goodbye.”)

His story has become an inspiration to me. Before I broke down with this illness I was more than 60 pages into a novel I was writing and now I’m going to dig it out and finish it.

And you must be getting tired of hearing me write about the novel I wrote almost five years ago - The Great Plane Robbery” and getting it published. I haven’t made any effort to get it in print - not because it’s not a good book, it is - I’ve just been concentrating on selling my autobiography. It’s all that we can handle at this particular time (but I intend to do something with it soon).

I spoke to an old friend this past week on the telephone: Willy Stewart. He’s my oldest friend. He and I grew up in the same Preston Street area: he on Elm Street at the corner of Booth Street, and me on Preston Street at the corner of Elm Street. He’s 70 years old now - he probably doesn’t want me to mention that - with some health problems. He sounded pretty chipper! I can’t go into detail about the things we were involved in over the years, suffice to say they were interesting. There was a time when we had our fingers into everything (back in the 60s and 70s and 80s).

Gotta go - I’ll get this in the mail.

God Bless,

Patrick

(November 18, 2006)

RESPONSES TO LETTERS AND COMMENTS:

MIKE CAIN: Thanks for staying in touch. I haven’t been a whiz with my letter writing lately, hoping my emails will make up for it.But I can’t get enough said in these. That’s very kind of you, Mike, for your offer of help for my son, Richard. We’ll see! That’s interesting: You made a DVD about my escapades. Kevin has kept all those tapes over the years, maybe he hasn’t got one that you have or vice-versa.

FRAN TREMBLAY:  Thanks Fran.  But it’s really not the Canadian Judicial system that’s the problem, I’m sure Canada will take me back – they’ve already indicated that they would years ago.  It’s the U.S. Judicial system that keeps saying “NO”.  Thanks for your wishes for me and my son.

FIONA: Thanks for your comments about my book.  I love to hear how much people love it.   Capones Restaurant has sold 100’s of them for me, more than any book store.  They have been good to me.   They are great people.   It’s a great restaurant, I’m told.

MAUREEN CREIGHTON:   Hank was 54 back in 1974, Maureen.  But years don’t mean anything.  I received photos of Hank and he’s still the same as I remember him in 1974 – he keeps himself spiffy!  Thank you for the “Backward” ageing thing, I enjoyed it!

HANK REID:   Good to hear from you, Old Friend.   We go way back, don’t we?   They were good days – few bad.   A belated Happy Birthday, Pal.P.S. I hope you enjoyed the article by Jeff Bell “When Van Sings Moondance”.  Jeff is my Palliative Care worker.  He’s a wonderful guy and a great writer.

GOD BLESS,

PADDY