The Millionaire Bandits: John and Mabel Carrol
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The 1920s, the Jazz Age. A world war had just ended and prohibition had just begun. The stock market was booming along with organized crime. Al Capone was just beginning his rise through the Chicago mob. Ma Barker was waiting for her sons to get out of prison so they could terrorize most of the Midwest.

George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, all were cutting their teeth on petty crimes before their real exploits had even begun. These names evoke a dark nostalgia for the days when criminals were sensations and front-page news. But for every Scarface or Pretty Boy, there were hundreds of other criminals who blazed bright, then faded away into obscurity, their stories lost to time.

Such is the fate of John and Mabel Carroll, known as the Millionaire Bandits. Although some accounts only gave the moniker to John specifically, but Carroll's criminal exploits began in the 19th century, well before the Jazz Age, with John being sent to the Wisconsin Industrial School for Boys at the age of 20 on a forgery conviction.

Because the Carrolls' story would slide into obscurity over the decades, very little is known about when they met or how long they were married. What is known is that John did time for larceny, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and fraud. What were Mabel's crimes before she met John? Unknown.

That is, until she and John stole 70 blank money orders from a post office in Cartersville, Montana, suddenly putting the both of them squarely in the sights of federal authorities. The two lovebirds would spend the next few months crisscrossing the country, spending the money orders here and there while also supplementing their income through a rash of burglaries, thefts, and cons.

It is not known if the name "Millionaire Bandits" started during this time or later on when their notoriety was at its peak. But what is known is while John had the guts and confidence to pull off any job he put his mind to, Mabel was the true brains of the couple, easily spotting wealthy targets that the two could either con or rob. While John did have an assault conviction on his criminal record, it has been noted that neither of the Carrolls was ever considered dangerous or violent.

That would have been a crude way to make a living and an insult to both their intellects. There were much more subtle ways to take people for all they were worth. With thousands of dollars if illicit gains under their belts, the Carrolls continued their classy crime spree until their Cartersville crime finally caught up with them. In 1926, federal officials arrested both John and Mabel Carroll for the robbery of the Cartersville Post Office.

they'd each receive a seven-year federal sentence, as fate would have it. Those sentences would make them famous across the nation, but not in a way anyone could have seen coming. Part one, the capture and sentencing. Cartersville, Montana is nothing but a crossroads.

Now there's only farmland for as far as the eye can see, and there's no longer any trace of the bustling town that held a train depot, schoolhouse, blocks of residential houses, a bank, and a post office. Once a bustling community, trains would pull into the depot daily where new supplies were unloaded for the residents and grains were loaded up to be shipped and sold to places as far away as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Missouri, and Chicago.

It was said kids used to race the trains on foot, throwing rocks at the wheels to see if they would ricochet off into the landscape. It was a tight-knit community, and everyone knew everyone else. So when the postmaster at the local post office unlocked his doors one morning in 1926, he was surprised to see a couple of strangers waiting to be let in. "Morning," he said to the couple.

"Morning," the attractive woman said, giving the postmaster a wide smile and a little wink of her eye. "How are you this morning?" "Doing well, thank you," the postmaster said, then stepped aside to let the couple in. The first thing he would notice was the age difference. The man was in his late 50s at least, while the woman could have only been in her 30s. Yet it was quick to see that this was no marriage of convenience.

The couple were affectionate with each other, laughing and joking as they studied the new stamps plastered in the display case on the wall of the post office. "Do you have any of those Harding stamps left?" the man asked, referring to a limited run of stamps commemorating the election of President Warren Harding. The stamps had only been expected to be available for about three months, but their popularity extended the sale for twice that.

Yet even with the extension, they were close to impossible to find. And John Carroll knew this. "I don't believe we have any left," the postmaster said. "We only had a few sheets delivered to us, unfortunately." "Oh, that's all right," John said, then turned to his wife with the most sincere look on his face. "Well, darling, we tried."

"I'm sorry." Mabel, seemingly unable to not look stunning, held back huge tears and gave the postmaster a small smile. "Thank you," she said to the postmaster, choking back a sob. "We'll leave you be now." The postmaster, taken by the woman's display of emotion, and an ardent Republican himself who had voted for Harding, as did most of Montana, took pity on the poor woman and looked her husband in the eye.

"I am fairly certain that we have sold all of our sheets," the postmaster said to John. "But let me check the safe in the back. Sometimes we hold a sheet of special stamps just in case people of importance ask for one." "Well, we're hardly people of importance," John said. "Just a married couple passing through on our way to Wisconsin. Please don't let us be a bother." "No bother at all," the postmaster said and walked toward the back room. "I'll be right back."

But it turned out that the postmaster would never need to return to the post office's counter. Because instead of waiting in the lobby, John and Mabel Carroll quietly followed the postmaster into the back room. When the postmaster had opened the safe, he didn't find any sheets of Harding stamps. What he did find was the barrel of a .38 pressed against his back. "What's the meaning of this?" he cried.

"No stamps I see," John said, holding the pistol against the man. "But you have a few other bobs and ends we might be interested in. Mabel, if you would." And Mabel would. She found a small mailbag and filled it with cash and jewelry that some of the employees kept in there for safekeeping, and a stack of blank money orders.

"Have a seat," John told the postmaster once the safe was empty and the contents were secured in the mailbag, which was then hidden under Mabel's coat. Mabel took the pistol and held it on the postmaster while John tied the man to his chair. Then he stuffed a rag in the man's mouth, secured it with coil after coil of packing twine, and patted the man on the shoulder. "What time do the others arrive?" Mabel asked the postmaster.

The man tried to talk around his gag, which made Mabel laugh. "Use your fingers, silly!" He held up all his fingers. "10 AM," John said and found a clock on the wall. "Well, looks like you only have to wait another 30 minutes. Good for you." The couple quickly left the man alone to wait for the other post office employees to arrive while they casually walked out to their car parked on the street and escaped into the unpopulated vastness that was Montana.

Just like the rail line that stopped in Cartersville, the Carrolls traveled all across the Midwest, hawking the jewelry, spending the cash, and writing forged money orders. While there is no record of the crimes they committed during this road trip, authorities estimated they weren't simply spending their ill-gotten gains, but were stealing thousands and thousands of dollars from people they met and conned along the way.

Unfortunately for the Carrolls, having switched from stealing from wealthy victims to stealing from a post office meant they had committed a federal crime. They were now targets of the FBI and it didn't take long for the feds to track them down as they left the trail to follow cashed money orders that were easily traced back to the post office in Cartersville, Montana. Apprehended and soon convicted, John and Mabel were sentenced to seven years each in federal prison.

Since there was no federal prison for women until 1938, Mabel began serving her sentence at the Women's Reformatory at Leeds, Missouri. John, on the other hand, was sent to one of three federal prisons for men: the escape-proof Leavenworth Federal Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. His initial stay would not last those full seven years, not even close.

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to start saving and investing for your future today paid non-client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote acorns investing involves risk acorns advisors llc and sec registered investment advisor view important disclosures at acorns.com crime mob part 2 leavenworth by authorization of the united states congress in 1895 the federal prison system was created

Yet it wouldn't be until after the turn of the century that the three first-generation prisons would officially make up the new federal prison system. One in Atlanta, Georgia, one in McNeil Island, Washington, and one in Leavenworth, Kansas, only a mile or so south of the Fort Leavenworth Army Post.

In 1897, prisoners from the military prison in Fort Leavenworth were marched to the site of the new prison where they would work from sunup to sundown, building what for many would become their new home.

In 1903, 418 prisoners were moved into the new federal penitentiary. It was far from complete, but there was enough space under the roof to be considered livable. It wasn't until 1904 that the first cell house was completed and not until 1919 that the construction of all the cell blocks was actually finished.

Designed by the architecture firm Eames & Young out of St. Louis, Missouri, the same firm that designed the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, Leavenworth Prison was a simple format based on the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York.

Instead of the radial design used in prisons such as the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, which had cell block wings radiating out from a central building, the Auburn design put all cell blocks under one roof in a huge rectangular building that sat in the center of the prison grounds. The main building even had a dome-like, rounded roof, giving it the nickname "The Big House," a name that would soon become an interchangeable slang term for all prisons.

Once talking movies came along, it was common for audiences to watch criminal characters and afternoon serials and matinees get sent to the big house, no matter which prison that may have been referring to. With over 20 acres of land, the prison was surrounded by more than 3,000 feet of wall. With a height of 40 feet and another 40 feet buried below the ground, Leavenworth's wall was considered impenetrable. No one was busting in or out.

Yet more than a few ambitious criminals tried, and a few even succeeded.

In 1906, while construction was still going on, six prisoners hijacked a railroad engine and smashed through the prison's gates. Five of the inmates were quickly captured, except for one Frank Grigware. It wouldn't be until much later in the century that Grigware was found living in a small town in Alberta, Canada. In fact, he was not only living there, but had been the town's mayor.

US authorities declined extradition and let Grigware live out his last days in Canada, where he died in 1977 at the ripe old age of 91. He wasn't the only person to escape from Leavenworth. Later, during the heyday of what the newspapers dubbed the "public enemy era," due to the FBI's constant use of press releases alerting the public to high-profile criminals they were hunting, Leavenworth would be the center of another famous prison break.

On December 11th, 1931, seven inmates took Warden Thomas B. White hostage and used him as a shield to escape the prison. Normally, it would be unbelievably hard for seven inmates with an angry warden in tow to just slip off into the night. But those seven inmates had some notorious outside help.

Frank Nash, one of the most successful bank robbers in history, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, kidnapper and toter of the criminally popular Thompson submachine gun, and Thomas James Holden, a bank robber considered a menace to every man, woman, and child in America by the FBI. Back then, it helped to have friends in low places, but the most daring escape

one which would become a media sensation, even spawning a 1928 silent film called The Last Hour, also known as The Man Who Came Back, has been nearly forgotten. The escape of one John Carroll, the millionaire bandit. But the man didn't just escape, he was on a mission. A mission to free his wife, who, to John's horror, only had a short time left to live. Part 3. Looking for a way out on day one.

March 28, 1926 was the day John Carroll began serving his seven-year federal sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary Leavenworth. Yet despite the U.S. Attorney General approving the construction of a separate cell block for women in 1910, Leavenworth remained a men's prison when that plan was later abandoned. That meant Mabel Carroll was sent to the Women's Reformatory at Leeds, Missouri, just outside Kansas City, Missouri, to serve out her seven-year sentence.

The two prisons were less than 50 miles apart, but they may well have been on the other side of the earth from each other. For John Carroll, that distance was too much. Almost from day one, John began to formulate a plan to escape. Well, several plans. Leavenworth was considered escape-proof. Forty-foot high walls that also descended 40 feet below ground. One way in and one way out.

and almost daily shakedowns by guards as they tore into a prisoner's cell and removed everything, hoping to find contraband or evidence that the inmate was looking to make his way outside the walls without the approval of the court. And then there was the rigid schedule that ruled Leavenworth. Inmates were roused by a prison bell at 5 am every morning. Those slow to wake would be roused by a guard's baton.

The morning wake-up was followed by a prison-wide roll call, where a head count was taken and the cleanliness and hygiene of each prisoner was inspected. Those who didn't meet standards were marched to the showers and would miss the next part of the morning routine: breakfast. Not that many of the men would consider missing a Leavenworth breakfast a hardship. More than often, they would only be served some bread, rarely toasted, maybe some porridge, and hopefully some coffee.

although the latter was weak and watery, intended to only wake up inmates' gastrointestinal systems, and not in a good way. By 7:00 AM, inmates were to report to their respective work duties. Most inmates had steady jobs assigned to them. Leavenworth boasted a multitude of labor opportunities for inmates, from farm work to prison maintenance. There was carpentry, blacksmithing, and even printing.

Many inmates worked construction since, while Leavenworth was open, it was far from finished. The brush and broom factory needed to be completed, and Leavenworth still did not have a barbershop, which was intended to be used not just by inmates, but by guards and prison staff as well.

inmates would work for four or five hours then break for lunch at noon. Just like with breakfast, the meals were meager affairs: bread, stew, and maybe a slice of salt pork. Once the small meal was finished, inmates were returned to their work assignments where they worked another four or five hours. Dinner was served at 6 p.m. and was only a slightly larger version of the midday meal. Again, bread, stew, and possibly some meat.

Then it was off to the cell blocks for the evening roll call. When the headcount was finished and everyone was accounted for, inmates were required to be confined to their cells. Cell doors were locked down by 8pm and lights were out by 9pm. Then at 5am the next morning, the routine began all over again. For John Carroll, the routine was nothing new.

By the time he'd been sentenced to Leavenworth, he'd spent time in the Wisconsin State Prison, the State Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, the State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and time in the State Penitentiary in Stillwater, Minnesota. Doing time was almost as second nature as burglary and larceny to the man. Not that he enjoyed being incarcerated,

John Carroll was a free spirit, and even though he acted like a stretch in prison, whether three months or seven years was no big deal, getting out of Leavenworth as soon as possible was his number one priority. So John put the daily routine to work.

Every morning, he'd study the guards' patterns. Who worked which cell block, who worked which days and what shifts. Who seemed like they loved to abuse inmates. And who seemed like they somewhat admired and were awed by the inmates around them. John studied each and every guard he came across with the same attention he would put into a robbery or con. Did this guard like chocolate chip cookies over apple pie? Or did that guard like chewing tobacco instead of cigarettes?

When the shifts changed, he watched which guards were slow to come on duty, and which guards were eager to get their batons out and start cracking heads. He noted the frequency and patterns of the shakedowns. He logged how many guards were in one part of the prison at any one time. The guard's behavior wasn't his only interest.

During the rare free time moments, when inmates were allowed to walk the yard in order to get some fresh air and exercise, John made a mental note of every spot along the wall where a weakness may have existed. He paced off the distance between watchtowers, then paced off the distance from any given watchtower to any given spot in the yard. He double-checked sight angles and paid careful attention to the back-and-forth sweep of the spotlights at night.

After several months, John came to a depressing realization: he was not going to break his way out of Leavenworth on his own. If he was going to escape, he would need help. But not help from any of the other inmates. Why would he enlist them? They were in the same prison he was, which meant the same limitations applied: regular schedules, impossible to climb walls, and every single angle and foot of the yard watched at all times.

No, what John needed was an inside man. A guard he could befriend and maybe get a little sympathy from. After all, he was charming, funny, smart, and had just turned 61. He was like a witty uncle or someone's fun granddad. But no matter how hard he tried, not one of the guards would take the bait. He'd offer cigarettes and be told to go away. He'd ask about a guard's family and be told to mind his own business.

He'd even started to learn some of the guards' birthdays and would get inmates to sing "Happy Birthday" only to be told to shut the hell up. Frustrated by his lack of social progress with any of the guards, John Carroll set his sights on someone different. Someone who wasn't working at the prison, just a lord over the inmates. Someone who maybe didn't see working at Leavenworth as a civil duty, but as a regular day-in and day-out job, and a less than satisfying job at that.

Enter Charles Thompson, assistant foreman of the newly built shoe factory housed within Leavenworth's walls. Little did Thompson know that the day John Carroll stepped inside that shoe factory, his life would be changed forever. Part Four: The Plan Finished in 1926, the shoe factory was really a connected series of shops that were used to manufacture all types of shoes, from women's boots to men's loafers.

But despite the various types and designs made in each shop, the shoe factory was considered one industry and was overseen by a foreman, an assistant foreman, and a handful of inmate supervisors who had gotten their positions by modeling good behavior. It is unknown whether the charming John Carroll was ever in a supervisory position. What is known is that sometime in early 1927, most likely in January, considering the timing of events yet to come,

John Carroll decided to stick around the shoe shop he was working in until all inmates had left. Charles Thompson was the manager on duty, and he quickly noticed that John had stayed behind. "What the hell are you doing in here?" Thompson snapped. "Get on! Get going with the rest of them!" John, never known for subtlety or patience, decided right then and there to make a calculated decision and replied, "How would you like to make 50 grand?"

Now, some accounts have the specific amount as less, and some have it at more. But regardless of the actual amount, anyone at that time who knew who John Carroll was would also know that he'd stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, cash, and money orders over the years. If anyone could make good on a question like, "How would you like to make 50 grand?" it was John Carroll. So Thompson replied, "Oh yeah? And how do I do that?"

"I have a hundred grand buried on the outside," John said. "You help me get out of here, and I'll split it with you. Is that so?" The assistant foreman replied and shook his head. Thompson wasn't a rookie. He'd had inmates approach him over the years with all sorts of schemes. So after looking John up and down for a few silent minutes, he finally smacked the man on the shoulder, then pointed to the exit. "Go on," he ordered the inmate. "You'll be late for chow."

In order to be the criminal and conman that he was, John Carroll had to study people. He knew basic human behavior and how people were motivated. So instead of worrying that the man would turn him into the warden or use his brazenness against him and extort something out of him, John simply went about the rest of the evening and night as if nothing had been said at all. The next day, when the afternoon shift was over, John's instincts paid off.

"Hold up," Thompson said as soon as the rest of the inmates had left the shop. John, knowing he had the assistant foreman on the hook, had been slow in finishing his duties, making sure he was the last inmate left. "What are you thinking?" Thompson asked John, but before the man could answer, Thompson got in real close and made sure John was paying close attention.

And don't even think of lying to me. Accidents happen a lot around here. It'd be awful if one happened to you." Not a fan of accidents, John laid out his thoughts in as charming and sincere a way as he possibly could. In 2024, it's hard to turn down 50 grand. In 1927, when that much cash was worth over $900,000 in today's dollars, turning down an opportunity like that was close to impossible.

Hearing John's plan, Thompson only had to think about it for a minute before he agreed. Part 5: The Note Once John knew that Thompson was on board, he finalized his plan. Part of the way the shoe factory was set up was so it not only made shoes that were sold at department stores all across the Midwest, but the inmates had to also build the packing crates those shoes were shipped in. This part was key to John's escape plan.

"You see those crates there?" John said one day to Thompson. "Add maybe a couple inches to each side and an inch to the top, and a man could wriggle himself inside, snug as a bug in a rug. So what? You think you can fit inside that or something?" Thompson replied. "I know I can," John said with the utmost confidence. "Yeah, and how will that work? Where will you ship yourself to?" Thompson laughed at the plan.

"That's where you come in," John said, and he laid out the rest of his plan. Thompson would adjust the dimensions of the design of some of the packing crates so they would accommodate John's new specifications.

Within a few shifts, boxes that were 3 feet long, 3 feet wide, and only 13 inches tall started to appear in the stacks of empty crates, waiting to be filled with shoes so they could move on to their destination in Kansas City, St. Louis, and even Chicago. With the problem of how to get John outside of Leavenworth sorted out, John told Thompson the next phase of the plan, the phase that required a good amount of faith on John's part.

Because once John was shipped out of Leavenworth, where was he to go? "You're gonna ship me to your apartment," John told Thompson. Thompson was staying in a boarding house in the town of Leavenworth, not an apartment. But that was a distinction without much significance. "You need to have someone there to fetch the crate from the sidewalk to your apartment," John continued. "You got somebody you can trust? I know some neighborhood teens who will do it for two bits each," Thompson said.

In 1926, a quarter could buy close to a week's worth of groceries if spent carefully. "You trust them?" John asked. "No, but they'll do it if I ask them to," Thompson said. "You just have to be quiet and not make them suspicious of what they're carrying." John pantomimed, zipping his lips. They quickly hashed out the rest of the plan. Once in Thompson's boarding room, John would be forced to wait until Thompson was off shift. The problem with that was the headcount.

As soon as the guards on John's cell block realized he was missing, the prison would be shut down and searched from top to bottom, which could take all night. That meant John could be cooped up in the packing crate for at least 18 hours, if not a full 24, if Thompson didn't get it out immediately after his shift. It was John's least favorite part of the entire plan, but no matter how he worked it out in his head, he couldn't find an alternative solution.

Thompson suggested he pay the teens another two bits each to pry the lid off the crate, but in the end, it was just too risky. If either teen decided to squeal to the police, then the plan would fall apart before John even stepped foot outside that boarding house. So it was decided that John would stay cramped in that small, 3' x 3' x 13" space until Thompson was able to leave the prison and get home to free him.

With the details hashed out, John and Thompson debated when the escape would take place. There were several different dates that John put forth, knowing the pattern of the guards and knowing that certain days didn't have a full amount on shift. Thompson suggested some other dates and times due to the shipping schedule arranged with the post office. Back and forth they went, and John actually started to wonder if Thompson had the guts to go through with it. That's when fate intervened in the form of a note.

Even though the women's reformatory at Leeds was 40 miles away, somehow information flowed back and forth between the two institutions. Utilizing what was called the prison grapevine, Mabel Carroll was able to get a note smuggled from Leeds to Leavenworth. And on the morning of February 27th, 1927, that note was slipped into John's hand.

In a very brief moment when John was alone and unwatched, John unrolled the tiny note and instantly recognized the handwriting. "Your mall has TB real bad. I'll die if you don't get me out. I'm in Dormitory D at Leeds." John read the note over and over again, then hurried to his work assignment in the shoe factory. When he reached his assigned shop, he made his way over to Thompson to give him the news.

"Today," he said. "Today?" Thompson asked, surprised. "Today," John said, and risked showing the note to Thompson. Thompson, to his credit, did one smart thing and immediately destroyed the note after reading it. Then he nodded to John. The escape was on for that very day. When the other inmates broke for lunch, John stayed behind and crawled inside a waiting box the moment the shop was empty.

Thompson applied an address label, had the box carried to the waiting mail truck, and before the rest of Leavenworth had finished eating lunch, John Carroll was being transported by shipping crate to the town of Leavenworth. Set down outside the boarding house, the crate waited in the sun until the two teens arrived. Having gotten word from Thompson, they carried the crate up two flights of stairs where they found the spare key to Thompson's boarding room and left the crate inside.

Unfortunately for John, the room was so small that the teens didn't want to leave it in the middle of the floor. So they propped it up against a wall, lengthwise, and left. The problem was, they had set the crate upside down, and John was inside. His feet pointed up and his head pointing downward. Within an hour, he'd passed out from too much blood flow to the brain.

When Thompson arrived and saw the crate upside down on its side and not flat, he feared he was opening a coffin, not a packing crate. But when the top came off, John was alive and well, although suffering from a headache that he wouldn't shake for days. It would turn out that the headache would play in John's favor. It made him look weak in Thompson's eyes. It made him look non-threatening. It made Thompson let his guard down a little bit.

That night, Thompson and John loaded up into Thompson's car and drove all night to a motel in Indiana. Now, this is where accounts differ. Some reports have John telling Thompson that he had $100,000 in cash buried in southern Indiana, while other accounts have him telling Thompson that the cash was buried somewhere in Tennessee. Either way, John charmed Thompson into loaning him his car with the promise to meet him in Fulton, Indiana later the next day with the money.

As John closed the hotel door, Thompson had no idea that would be the last time he'd see the man. Part 6: Breaking In Never intending to make good on his deal with Thompson, John Carroll backtracked along dirt roads to Kansas City with only one goal in mind: break his wife out of Leeds. Finding a painter shop along the way, John jimmied the lock and stole a ladder and a good amount of rope.

With those supplies procured and the latter strapped to the car, John then stopped at a hardware store and broke into that shop as well. There he stole a hacksaw, several replacement blades, and a bar of naphtha soap. On his way out, he happened to notice a jar of cayenne pepper which would be perfect for hiding his and Mabel's scent from bloodhounds.

Within hours, John went from leaving a hotel room in Indiana to pulling up to the exterior wall of the Leeds prison yard. John set the ladder in place, secured the needed supplies to his body, then climbed to the top of the wall where he lay flat and looked about to see if he had been noticed. When no alarm was raised, he strained and lifted the ladder up over the wall and placed it on the other side.

After climbing down to the grass below, John waited for the coast to be clear, then sprinted directly over to Dormitory D. He stood below and let out a very specific, high-pitched whistle that he knew his wife would recognize instantly. In seconds, Mabel's face appeared two stories above, and she beamed at the sight of her husband. It took several attempts, but John was finally able to throw the rope up so Mabel could catch it.

Tying one end to a bed leg inside the cell, Mabel gave John the all-clear and the man quickly climbed up to the barred window. Once he reached Mabel, they kissed and then got right to work. John secured the rope around his waist so he could use both hands. He handed Mabel the soap, which would be used on the hacksaw blades to lessen the noise their cutting would make.

Mabel took one end of the hacksaw, John took the other. And working together, they sawed and sawed and sawed until all but one bar was loose in the window. John carefully helped Mabel through the tight gap, and with some acrobatic flair, she clutched to his back while he climbed back down the rope and onto the grass below. The reunited spouses raced across the prison yard with John sprinkling cayenne powder after them.

They quickly reached the waiting ladder, climbed it, made sure they hadn't been spotted, then heaved the ladder up over the wall and climbed down to the car on the other side. In less than three days' time, John Carroll had broken out of prison and then broken into another prison, all so he could have his sick wife by his side. To him, the risks were well worth it, and his later statements would prove that without a doubt. Part 7: The Brief Outside

The Carol's reunion was brief, but spectacular. Within a month, newspapers all across the Midwest were reporting stunning burglaries, prompting federal agents to exclaim, "The Yellow Mask Mob again!" Referring to the name of the gang John and Mabel had led now and again before their arrest for the money order theft. The couple was not just returning to their old tricks, but operating with a boldness and speed unlike anything law enforcement had seen before.

Which was completely understandable, considering Mabel's affliction. In the 1920s, a tuberculosis diagnosis was a death sentence.

The only question was when death would come knocking at Mabel's door. So, with the Grim Reaper on their heels, the Carrolls perpetrated daring burglary after stunning con. A wealthy Mississippi couple even reported that they had met a lovely couple named Mr. and Mrs. Pendergast on a train trip to New Orleans. The two couples hit it off splendidly. The men were close in age, and the women were both younger and very attractive.

Although the couple noticed Mabel's troubling cough, they didn't think a thing about inviting the Carrolls to their cotton plantation for an extended visit. Parties were thrown, games were played, and memories were made. For the wealthy couple, the worst memory was when they were awakened one morning by a banging at their bedroom door from one of their servants. "The house has been robbed! The house has been robbed!" the servant cried.

When the couple were dressed and able to hurry into their office where most of the servants were waiting, all they found was an empty safe that had been removed from its hiding place in the office's wall. The safe had contained more than 20 grand in jewels and over 8 grand in cash. There was no sign of the loot or the Pendergast.

For four months, newspapers reported a string of burglaries not just in the Midwest, but up and down the East Coast. By the time the crime spree was in full swing, the old moniker of millionaire bandits had returned, and the Carrolls were front-page news. Unfortunately, no amount of successful heists could ward off what afflicted Mabel Carroll.

On June 12th, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John Carroll was arrested outside an apartment he was using temporarily. Inspector William J. Connolly and Captain Charles Beckman each took an arm and hauled John to a waiting police car. "Leavenworth called and they missed you, John," Connolly said as they drove to the nearest police station. "They missed you so much, they have your cell ready and waiting for you."

John said nothing for a while. Then just as they reached the station, he looked Connolly in the eye and said, You think you've won, and maybe for you, you have. But I won also, gents. I rescued my wife from prison, and I took care of her until the day she died. I wish only I could have done more for her. Then in a quiet voice, as the car doors opened and John was helped from the back of the car, he said, Mabel was buried yesterday. Part 8

The Long Lost Legacy. For such a sensational story, it's a wonder that the tale of John and Mabel Carroll, the millionaire bandits, the leaders of the Yellow Mask Mob, has been lost to obscurity. Yet, it isn't surprising. It was 1928 by the time the Carroll story was over, and only a year later, the stock market would crash, plunging the United States into the Great Depression.

A time of desperation that spawned a new type of criminal: Public Enemy Number One. The Public Enemy Era, as it was called, was when Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, John Dillinger, and Bonnie and Clyde became legends of American crime. Their stories are still told today in countless movies and TV series. But the Carols didn't exactly end up forgotten.

Less than a year after John broke Mabel out of prison, a silent movie titled "The Last Hour," also known as "The Man Who Came Back," was released in 1928. And on December 6th, 1942, P.L. Trussell of the Detroit Evening Times wrote a piece called "The Case of the Romantic Rogue," detailing the Carol's exploits, specifically John's breakout of Mabel from Leeds Prison.

What neither the movie nor the much later article noted was that John Carroll's prison break days were far from over. On July 1st, 1929, Leavenworth guards noticed that John's clothes were wet as he crossed the yard going from one of the workshops to the cell block. The guards immediately investigated and found that Carroll and another prisoner had cut into the prison's sewer lines and had managed somehow to make 114 feet of rope out of bed sheets.

Realizing that John was too familiar with Leavenworth, the Bureau of Prisons decided to send him to Atlanta, where it was intended he would serve out the remainder of his seven-year sentence, plus the new eight-year sentence he'd received after he was convicted for stealing money orders as an escapee with his wife. John was not happy about the transfer, and even wrote a letter to the Bureau of Prisons where he said,

While inmate requests were rarely granted, Johns had extenuating circumstances.

While in Atlanta, guards had found two mechanical spreaders hidden in the mattress. Spreaders that could easily be used to bend bars. In December of 1933, John was returned to Leavenworth and immediately placed on a transfer list to a prison that would prove tough to escape from, even for a criminal of John Carroll's capabilities.

the Leavenworth staff wrote a statement justifying the man's transfer in no uncertain terms. "He is an inveterate criminal and there is no hope he may be reclaimed. He has escaped from here. Since his return from escape, he has constantly been plotting further escapes. He is a menace within and without a penal institution and always a menace to the public safety when at large. His transfer to Alcatraz is recommended."

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