Willie Bosket | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

this episode contains descriptions of violence and language that may not be suitable for everyone please use
discretion When Willy was very young he didn't know anything about his father his mother
made up a story that his father was in the military this is journalist Fox Butterfield he's
talking about a little boy named Willie basket Willy basket was born in New York City
in 1962 and as Butterfield says he didn't know his father if Willie asked about him his mother and grandmother
would say he's a bad man and you're just like him When Willy was about six years old he
found out the truth he was in his grandmother's apartment and he saw a picture of a man wearing uh pants that
would look like part of some uniform and he was lifting weights and Willie said who's that and his grandmother told him
that's your father that sent this chilled out his spine I'm very excited him and he said well what's he doing
where is he and she said he's in prison and really said what's he imprisoned for
and she told him that he murdered two men William basket senior committed the murders during a botched pawn shop
robbery he was in prison in Wisconsin but then he escaped and ended up on the FBI's most wanted list he was caught and
sent back to prison where he learned computer programming he put himself through college and became the first
prisoner ever elected to the academic Honor Society Phi Beta Kappa when he got out of prison he got a job
with an aerospace company but was back behind bars pretty soon for molesting his girlfriend's daughter
he escaped from prison again with the help of his girlfriend who pretended to be a prison nurse
seemed like it was going to work they made it about 900 miles and then police caught up to them there was a shootout
and William boss gets senior used his last two bullets to shoot his girlfriend and then shoot himself
he never met his son Willie Willie's mother Laura was pregnant with Willie when William basket was sent to prison
she's in her mid-70s now she says Willie was the spitting image of his father eggs
exactly he looked like his father he was tall good looking nicely built and mean
When Willy was little Laura worked in a candy store and also as a teacher's aide
at Willy's School but she had a lot of trouble managing him when he was in second grade Willie
broke into a school's store room and threw a typewriter out the window it almost hit a pregnant teacher three
floors down when he was about eight years old he attacked his sister Safi their friend
was there she doesn't want us to use her name he was like I'm gonna shut her mouth once and for all and he ran in the
kitchen and got the long cooking utensil and he pulled her over she was trying if
she was struggling and she was fighting with him trying to get away and he held her down held her mouth open
and he stuck the fork down her throat the school told Willie's mother to take him to the children's psychiatric ward
at Bellevue the Doctor Who evaluated him called him the saddest little boy she'd ever seen
not only did Willie's father spend time in prison so did his paternal grandfather
When Willy was nine years old his grandfather was released from Rikers where he'd been serving time for
kidnapping and sodomizing a child Fox Butterfield interviewed Willie basket many years later and Willie said
that after his grandfather got out of prison he raped Willie repeatedly he started skipping school started small
fires he picked Pockets he stole a car his mother knew that he was out of control and had no idea what to do
after some prodding from the Department of Child Welfare she petitioned a judge to have Willie declared a person beyond
the lawful control of a parent the judge said to Willie your mother is worried about you for nine years old
you're turning out to be quite a problem that roused Willy you're a lying [ __ ] he told the judge you can
go [ __ ] yourself and I don't need no motherfuckering white lawyer neither spending any time with him at all you
knew that he was brilliant he could charm anybody he had that magic and I don't know how
many people said to me people who had worked with him social workers psychiatrists had remarked at the time
when they were working with Willie he could grow up and become president one of those social workers was Carol
Darden at wiltwick school for boys over form school that was said to be able to rehabilitate the worst Boys in New York
City the exact same reform school Willie's father had gone to many years before when he was Willy's age
it was just a beautiful setting an enormous property a wooded property a lake and with people who were really trying
very hard to meet a need she remembers meeting Willie when he arrived she did his intake interview he
just seemed very sophisticated which ordinarily wouldn't set off alarms it was just interesting
most children coming into an intake interview are not that self-assured they don't know where they
are what's going to happen next he didn't seem to have those anxieties so he was a child that one would hope
could be reached because he was obviously so intelligent and the what if of taking that
intelligence and putting it toward positive expression what if you could do that
in the 70s wiltwick was known for having a cutting-edge therapeutic program they
didn't use medication they believed that the boys who ended up there had been in some way or another
unsupported by their family and by Society wiltbrick wanted them to know that the
school would be there no matter what the director of Psychiatry was Dr Joel Katz he wrote in a memo shipping a boy
out means the staff has flunked he felt the problem was that a lot of kids had grown up in families where the parents
couldn't deal with them and then when at school the teachers couldn't deal with them the principal couldn't deal with
them and they'd been in other juvenile institutions the institutions couldn't deal with their uh their behavior and so
would transfer them on to somebody else and what that did was he felt it just created more and more intents and bigger
feelings of grandiosity by acting out by being aggressive and impulsive and horrible that they would they would be
transferred on they would they it just it built up their egos Willie learned to read and write it was
the first time he'd consistently gone to school in his life but he also got into a lot of fights he
threw a chair at his social worker wiltwick made an exception to their no drug policy and put Willie on Ritalin
and then Thorazine but it didn't work he stole a van kicked a pediatrician and wrapped a phone cord
around a nurse's neck Dr Katz wrote that the most disturbing aspect of Willy's Behavior was that he
seemed to be in control of it at all times and after all of that Wilt Wick did the
one thing they said they wouldn't they kicked him out I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal
[Music] hi Kari hi Phoebe this is Kari Pitkin a reporter for WNYC radio they have a new podcast about the
Juvenile Justice System it's called caught Kari you've been reporting this story about Willie for months yes I have
so what happens to Willie next well Willie spends the next three and a half years breaking the law and being sent to
juvenile institutions and then getting kicked out and you know in this time there were people who really tried to
help Willie there was one woman who even wanted to adopt him but nothing seemed to make a difference he was very very
difficult to manage and then when he was 14 a family court judge ordered Willie to the Brookwood Detention Center in
Upstate New York Brookwood was a state facility one of two high security juvenile detention
centers there was no therapy aside from some group sessions you know how I used to feel I didn't
care about nothing that's actually Willy's voice this is from Alan and Susan Raymond's 1978 documentary film
Bad Boys the thing is this everybody lives right now right here man hey the staff at
Brookwood didn't have a lot of training but with Willie they tried something new
they tried to create incentives to reward good behavior to lead with a carrot not a stick
here's Sylvia honig she was a social worker at Brookwood all the other boys had to go to school but Willie was given
a special job even though he was 14 he did not have to go to school I'd be on my own
if I feel like uh the grass across the road need to be cut I don't have to tell nobody where I'm
going I just go cut the grass I was over there today driving a oh the riding lawnmower I didn't tell
nobody where I was going you know I feel free even though I'm locked up I feel free
Sylvia believed that brookwood's director Tom pottenberg who was six eight was actually afraid of 14 year old
Willie he didn't like to be alone with Willie And Willie seemed to be calling the shots Tom pottenberg started to push
to have Willie released and sent to a halfway house but Sylvia was worried so she wrote a letter to the head of the
state's division for youth saying Willie was still too dangerous to be let go in the end the state did not intervene
to stop Willy's release do you think this time you can stay out for good yeah I feel you know like since I've been
working downstairs you know with maintenance I you know learned a lot uh you know I realize now you know that uh
you have to you know be a man sometime you know and you gotta grow up soon after this interview with
filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond Willie suddenly smashed the camera in Alan's face giving him a black eye
Dad don't do that oh [ __ ] Willie was released a few days later in September of 1977 when he was driven
away in a van one of the supervisors said to Sylvia honig Willie will end up killing someone
he was taken to a halfway house operated by the division for youth the halfway house was only two blocks from Willy's
home on 145th Street and after one night Willie just walked out and went home he spent his time riding the subway and
looking for what he called bums people who are asleep or passed out and easy to Rob
the subway becomes a real object of Fascination to Willie it was where he could go to see life and have Adventure
it was kind of his Wild West in March of 1978 Willie was riding the subway home from his grandmother's
apartment he noticed that a man on the train was wearing a gold watch the man was asleep as the train traveled Uptown
people got off until eventually there was no one in the car but Willie and the sleeping man
as Willy told Fox Butterfield the first thing he did was go over and kick the man's feet
he didn't wake up Willie began to remove his watch then the man woke up and Willie took out a gun and shot him in
the eye will he shot him a second time in the temple the man's name was Noel Paris
Willie took the watch and also a ring from his finger over the next 10 days Willie sometimes with his cousin
Herman's Bates robbed other Subway Riders he shot a maintenance worker in the back and murdered a second Subway
passenger foreign cops now have two tough kids and two slains on the IRT to use aged 15 and 17
described by police as real tough guys were arrested yesterday for the late night Subway slains of Two Men and the
wounding of a third police said the two netted 3.68 in one of the shootings and were so indignant that one of their
victims was penniless they kicked his body after shooting him I did not think that he could be
rehabilitated Robert silbering was the prosecutor in Willie's case I think he was the most
violent Fender that I had ever come across in 25 years as a prosecutor I mean I I you know in all my experience
I I think that there were certain cases where for the protection of society an individual has to be warehoused I
thought he was one of those Willie pled guilty to three separate felonies two counts of murder and one of
attempted murder the judge gave Willy the maximum possible sentence placement in a youth facility for five years
the tabloids called Willy basket the baby-faced Butcher and mayor Ed Koch called him a Mad Dog
it was a very specific time in New York City's history police officers circulated a so-called Survival Guide
for visitors it had a picture of the Grim Reaper on the cover and said welcome to fear City
it offered nine tips for making it out alive things like don't go out after 6 PM don't leave Manhattan and stay off
the subway New York's Democratic governor Hugh Carey had come into office in 1975
promising that he'd help people feel safe a government that does not protect people against violence is a government
that fails it's very justification for existence [Applause] [Music] every policeman on the beat every
citizen on the street knows that he is not alone when his life or safety is threatened
three years after that speech Kerry was running for re-election he was a liberal and he had recently
vetoed the death penalty and extremely politically unpopular move his Republican opponent started calling him
soft on crime and right in the middle of all of that came the Willie basket case
when Governor Kerry learned that Willie basket had gotten the maximum possible sentence and that it was only five years
he was Furious faith has me outraged I am aroused I feel that it points up the failure of the criminal justice system
that I've been talking about for three and a half years and then Kerry announced that he was going to change
the law as far as sentencing is concerned as a practical matter if this person is
mentally unfit to be in society the person will stay within secure lock up for life
[Music] New York State changed its law and would now treat kids as adults you know an
enormous flip-flop from More Than A Century of judicial precedent the juvenile offender Act of 1978 meant
kids as young as 13 and 14 years old would be tried in adult Criminal Court when they were charged with 14 specific
crimes some violent and some not like burglary in the second degree it became known as the Willy basket law and
Governor Kerry won his re-election foreign law passed a New York state many other
states changed their own laws to punish juveniles more harshly according to the latest numbers from the
campaign for youth Justice every year between 200 000 and 250 000 Americans under the age of 18 are charged as
adults 13 states allowed children of any age to be charged as adults it became common after Willy bosque's crimes
legislators across the country decided that we no longer needed to think about children as individuals but instead we
should think about them as a class of young people who should be treated with the same kind of harshness and
severity that is usually reserved for adults who commit crimes Dwayne Betts is a lawyer but when he was 16 he and a
friend were arrested for carjacking he was charged as an adult and spent eight years in prison remember those laws were
passed when he was 15 16 years old when they knew that he would be getting out of
prison nobody even imagined who Willie basket would be when he got out of prison after that first stretch in
December of 1983 a few days after his 21st birthday Willie basket was released that March he was arrested again for
assault and attempted robbery he was sentenced to seven years in prison where he set fire to his cell over and over
attacked guards nine times and attempted several escapes and then while he was being interviewed
by a newspaper reporter Willie suddenly pulled out a homemade knife and stabbed a prison guard in the back the guard
survived it was so Random so senseless and stupid the reporter said he didn't even know
the guard that was in 1989 and Willie basket has been in solitary confinement ever since
the commissioner of the Department of Corrections said the only noise Willie basket is going to hear is the sound of
his toilet flushing we don't ask ourselves what amount of Ruin is acceptable for somebody who we
send in prison and in fact we take that question off the table based on how serious the crime is
so we don't even wonder who Willy Bosque is today [Music] you know we get up late five four in the
morning get to the bus station around six we'd arrive about 7 30 it's like an hour and
a half two hours away this is his niece Danielle she was raised by Willie's mom Laura and when
Danielle was a kid they would go see him we have to go through a long hallway and
then once we go past there we would go upstairs a little bit further and then his was like through his secondary cell
after the special housing unit and then through the another little block and then once we get through that gate he
was behind another gate and then he would come out of that his room which was locked and then into the special
cell they built for him visiting the Department of Correction built a Plexiglas cell just for Willie it was
like a Plexi class with holes in it but even the holes didn't match up so he could hear but he'd never be able to
stick anything through the glass if he wanted to through the Plexiglas Willy taught Danielle to read and write and
the names of the 206 bones in the human body I remember you know when it was time to
leave I didn't want to leave a lot of times I just wanted to stay I asked Danielle what she thought about
the law created after the murders I think that changed in the lowest to to um have juveniles charges and adults
somewhat necessary because they are children that are incorrigible something is wrong
like there are signs and we don't say what do we do to fix it today Willie basket is 55 years old in
solitary confinement at Five Points Correctional Facility in Upstate New York Corey Pitkin drove up to speak with him
when she got there it'd been so long since he'd had a visitor that his records weren't up to date in their
computer system they agreed to let Kari go in but not record the conversation you know we kind of went through all the
security and everything and we went into this big long room with lots rows and rows of tables and there's kids doing
coloring books and I saw a couple making out and you know families eating and spending time together and then down
sort of at the end of the hall was where the no contact visits happen and that section was completely empty and we were
brought into this kind of booth that was totally enclosed and waited for about 10
minutes and then they brought Willie down a kind of separate Hall and brought him into the adjoining booth and he sat
down in front of us uh did he kind of say you know who are you I mean did he have any idea who you
were no I mean he the definitely the most awkward moment was the kind of that look
of who are you and what do you want from me um but the fact is you know the few people who do visit Willie have tended
to be journalists so he's kind of used to sitting down and talking about his life so the second he knew who we were
and what we were interested in he kind of clicked into a mode and he was incredibly welcoming and as everyone had
said quite charismatic and really easy to talk to what did you talk about well you know for one thing I had talked
a lot with his family members and they are not in touch with him because you know I think for a while they maybe
wrote letters but didn't hear back and they really haven't visited him in probably about 15 years so
you know I was curious what they would want to say to him and they said that they really do miss him and they think
about him all the time and they still really love him so I had these messages to kind of relay to him
um and I you know I did that and he was interested to hear about their lives and
what was happening but he also said he really didn't want them to think about him because he would just be a burden on
on them 29 years in isolation I mean I can't imagine what what that does to someone
it's really that was actually something that I was very interested in talking to
him about to get a sense of how does he survive that because he is very engaged and sort of intelligent and someone who
obviously is curious and wants to talk to people so what what does that mean then if you have been in in a box
for almost three decades um what he said is that he lives completely in the present he can't think
about anything in the past and he can't think about anything in the future he has to just deal with what's right in
front of him in that moment foreign 1996 Fox Butterfield published an almost 400-page book about Willie basket
it's called All God's Children the basket family and the American tradition of violence
was he red fox Butterfield's book yeah I asked him about that and he said he said yeah it's a good it's a really
good book I I have I have one problem with it and I said oh oh what's that and he said it doesn't provide any solutions
and I thought that was kind of poignant in a way that that he was interested in thinking about how things could have
been different for a kid like him wnyc's Corey Pitkin you can find their new podcast caught
when it debuts March 12th caught follows a group of kids as they navigate their way through our criminal justice system
from the experience of being arrested charged and punished to attempts at Rehabilitation and how they move forward
foreign is produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob Byers matild
erfelino is our intern Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at
thisiscriminal.com or on Facebook and Twitter at criminal show criminal is recorded in the studios of
North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around
special thanks to adserc for providing their ad serving platform to radiotopia I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal
[Music] s

Before he was 10 years old, Willie Bosket had skipped school, started fires, picked pockets, and stolen a car. A psychiatrist at Bellevue called him the “saddest little boy she’d ever seen.” By the time he was 16 years old, he was known all over New York City as the “Baby-Faced Butcher.” His crimes led to the passing of the Juvenile Offender Act of 1978 and changed how juvenile offenders are punished all over the country.

This episode was reported in collaboration with a new podcast from WNYC about the juvenile justice system: Caught.

Music in the episode “Scaffoldings” by Podington Bear “Solemn Oath” by Podington Bear “Slate Tracker ” by Blue Dot Sessions “Minor Islands” by Podington Bear “Refraction” by Podington Bear “Rain on Glass” by Podington Bear “Up Up Up” by Podington Bear “Threshold ” by Podington Bear

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode 86 originally published 3/9/2018 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-86-willie-bosket

Brief Summary

Willie Basket's violent life and criminal legacy led to significant changes in juvenile justice laws in New York.

Key points

The Truth About Willy's Father. Willy discovers his father is a murderer in prison, changing his perception of family.
Willie's Violent Childhood. Willie's early years are marked by violence and mental health struggles, leading to institutionalization.
The Willie Basket Law. New York State changes laws to treat juveniles as adults after Willie's crimes.
Life in Isolation. Exploring the impact of 29 years in isolation on an individual.
Living in the Present. He shares how he copes by focusing on the present moment.
Critique of a Book. He reflects on a book about his life, noting its lack of solutions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He's a bad man and you're just like him.

Willy's mother telling him about his father.

0:34WatchJan 7, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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