Willie Radkay, Bank robber had a cell next to Machine Gun Kelly while serving time at Alcatraz, dead at 95
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Associated Press
FORT SCOTT, Kan. - Willie Radkay, a former bank robber who was assigned
a cell next to prohibition-era gangster Machine Gun Kelly while serving
time at Alcatraz, died on his 95th birthday.
Radkay, who died Sunday at Mercy Health Center at Fort Scott, had told
reporters he was given the number 666 when he began a seven-year stint
in 1945 at the San Francisco island prison dubbed "The Rock."
In his later years, Radkay returned to the island for several reunions,
where he was interviewed by documentary makers and newspaper reporters.
"We used to hijack bootleggers and stick up gambling houses," he told
the San Francisco Chronicle during a 2000 reunion. "When Prohibition
ended, we lost our victims, so the only thing left to do was rob
banks."
He told the paper he hung around with George "Machine Gun" Kelly and
Pretty Boy Floyd and was friends with Baby Face Nelson's driver.
Radkay, who was born in Kansas City, Kan., turned to crime after his
father died of pneumonia. His mother was left with four children to
support, and Radkay was placed in a foster home.
By the time he was 16, he was committing armed robberies, said his
niece, Patty Terry, who wrote her uncle's story in a self-published
book, titled "A Devil Incarnate: From Altar Boy to Alcatraz."
While researching his crimes, she came across a newspaper account of a
1935 jewelry store robbery in which her uncle was shot 12 times. She
inquired about it, but her uncle said he couldn't recall the shooting.
"I asked how can you get shot 12 times and not remember. He said:
'Tough skin, soft bullets and they didn't hit anything important,'" she
recalled in his obituary.
Radkay turned his life around after he was freed in 1969. He married
the next year and began working as a custodial supervisor at the
Prairie View School District in the small Kansas town of LaCygne.
Radkay spent his final years in a Fort Scott nursing home, after
breaking first one hip, then the other.
"A number of people would say a criminal's life should not be
glamorized in print ... and maybe this is true but my uncle is a part
of history that needed to be recorded," Terry said. "The mere fact he
did all those years of incarceration in the worst prisons of the era
and mingled with gangsters who became his friends, was released after
paying his debt to society, married and became an upstanding citizen of
the community in itself is remarkable."
Radkay was cremated. He will be buried Thursday alongside his late
wife, Louise, at Mount Calvary Cemetery of Kansas City, Kan.