| John Wojtowicz | |
| Birth Name: | John Stanley Joseph Wojtowicz |
| Birth Date: | March 9, 1945 |
| Birth Place: | New York City, U.S. |
| Death Place: | New York City, U.S. |
| Conviction: | Bank robbery |
| Conviction Penalty: | 20 years imprisonment, served five years. |
| Children: | 2 |
John Stanley Joseph Wojtowicz (;[1] March 9, 1945January 2, 2006) was an American bank robber whose story inspired the film Dog Day Afternoon.[2] [3] [4]
Wojtowicz was the son of a Polish father and an Italian-American mother (Terry Basso). [5]
Wojtowicz married Carmen Bifulco in 1967. They had two children and separated in 1969.
In 1971, Wojtowicz met transgender woman Elizabeth Eden at the Feast of San Gennaro in New York City. The two had a public wedding ceremony that year.[6]
Wojtowicz was at some point a member of the Gay Activists Alliance. He used at that time the alias "Littlejohn Basso" (Basso being his mother's maiden name).[7]
On August 22, 1972, Wojtowicz, along with Salvatore Naturile and Robert Westenberg, attempted to rob a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank at 450 Avenue P in Gravesend, Brooklyn.[2] [3] Westenberg fled the scene before the robbery got underway after he saw a police car on the street. Rather than quickly obtaining the money and fleeing as planned, Wojtowicz and Naturile ended up holding seven Chase Manhattan bank employees hostage for fourteen hours.[2] [3] Wojtowicz, a former bank teller, had some knowledge of bank operations.
Naturile was killed by an agent of the FBI during the final moments of the incident. Wojtowicz was arrested.[8]
An article in Los Angeles Times reported the heist was meant to pay for Eden's gender-affirming surgery (male-to-female).[6] However, reporter Arthur Bell, a veteran The Village Voice columnist who knew Wojtowicz (and was tangentially involved in the hostage negotiations), reported that paying for Eden's surgery was only peripheral to the real motive. The attempted heist was, Bell stated, a Mafia operation that went horribly wrong.[7] [9]
According to Wojtowicz, he was offered a deal for pleading guilty, which the court did not honor, and on April 23, 1973, he was sentenced to 20 years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, of which he served five.[10]
Wojtowicz was released from prison on April 10, 1978, but was arrested again and served two more sentences in prison for parole violations in 1984 and from 1986–87.[11] He was released in April 1987. Eden visited Wojtowicz in New York about once a month.[6] [12]
Eden, who married and divorced during the time Wojtowicz was imprisoned, died of AIDS-related pneumonia at Genesee Hospital, in Rochester, New York, on September 29, 1987.[6] [13] Wojtowicz attended her funeral and delivered a eulogy.[12]
Wojtowicz's story was used as the basis for the film Dog Day Afternoon (released in 1975), starring Al Pacino as Wojtowicz (called "Sonny Wortzik" in the film) and John Cazale, one of Pacino's co-stars in The Godfather, as Naturile. Elizabeth Eden, known as "Leon" in the film, was portrayed by actor Chris Sarandon.[14]
In 1975, Wojtowicz wrote a letter to The New York Times out of concern that people would believe the movie version of the events, which he said was only 30% accurate. Wojtowicz's main objection was the inaccurate portrayal of his wife Carmen Bifulco as a plain, overweight woman whose behavior led to his relationship with Eden, when in fact he had left Bifulco two years before he met Eden.[15]
Other concerns he had that were fictionalized in the movie were that he never spoke to his mother and that the police refused to let him speak to his wife Carmen. In addition, the movie insinuated that Wojtowicz had "sold out" Naturile to the police, and although Wojtowicz claimed this was untrue, several attempts were made on his life following an inmate screening of the movie.
Wojtowicz praised Pacino and Sarandon's characterizations of himself and Elizabeth Eden as accurate. In a 2006 interview, the movie's screenwriter, Frank Pierson, said that he tried to visit Wojtowicz in prison many times to get more details about his story when he wrote the screenplay, but Wojtowicz refused to see him because he felt he was not paid enough money for the rights to his story. Either way, the film was very successful, receiving good reviews and winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay at the 1975 ceremony.[16]
In 2001, The New York Times reported that Wojtowicz was living on welfare in Brooklyn.[17] He died of cancer on January 2, 2006, in his mother's home, aged 60.[18]
Wojtowicz was the subject of multiple documentaries: