Extraordinary Find: 1941 Willie Sutton Prison Escape Head & Hand
APPRAISER: I know everyone's been asking me, and at the table, all I wanted to say was, "What's in the box?"
HOST: In 2017, a guest headed to ROADSHOW in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with surely one of the most bizarre items collectibles expert James Supp has ever unboxed.
APPRAISER (voiceover): I tend to specialize in the odd, strange and obscure things. And it takes a certain kind of insanity, frankly, to talk about weird props or weird cultural pop icons from obscure things.
GUEST: I don't know if anyone has heard of Willie Sutton. He was a famous bank robber, well-known bank robber. He was also well-known for breaking out of prisons. This was his that he used in an attempted breakout. He had made this himself in prison.
APPRAISER: It is such a TV show and movie trope of prisoners, uh, making these fake dummy heads and dummy bodies to aid in their escape. So they'll put together a bunch of pillows and put 'em in their bed while they try to escape. Well, these are actually based on real facts, which is crazy to me. And this particular escape head, uh, belonged to Willie Sutton, who was kind of a gentleman thief. He had reportedly robbed over 100 banks. He had escaped successfully from prison three times. And this is a dummy head and dummy hand that he used in an unsuccessful escape from prison.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And the prison was run by your grandfather?
GUEST: Yes. After he was released, uh, from the Eastern Penitentiary, they sent it up to the Camp Hill prison where my grandfather was located, and then he simply kept it upon his retirement.
APPRAISER: Now, reportedly, what Sutton had done was over the course of several months, possibly even years, he made this false head using hair from the barbershop. And this is actually real human hair. Same with the eyelashes.
GUEST: As far as the plaster, I heard he went to the dentist a lot. (laughs)
APPRAISER (voiceover): This prison escape head was a masterwork. If you look at pictures of Willie Sutton, this head really looks like him. He fashioned this wonderful head. And left it in his bed, left in the hand, clutching a corner of the bed sheet. You know what happened that night when he tried to escape?
GUEST: Unfortunately, unbeknownst to him, two other inmates in another area of the prison also attempted to escape at that point, at about the same time. And that set off all the bells and whistles and alarms. He ran back to his cell.
APPRAISER: This escape attempt was in August of 1941.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And it was just a few years later when he-- that-- managed to finally escape for several years. And in 1950, he was actually the 11th person to be added to the FBI's Most Wanted list. There's not a lot of these things that were used by prisoners to help them escape come up for auction. Without the box and the provenance of the label on the box, it's just a creepy, plaster head. We were able to give it a very conservative auction estimate of $2,500 to $3,500.
GUEST: Wow, that's nice. That's very nice. That's surprising.
APPRAISER: One of the cool things about it is we were able to find photographs of the escape head, the hand, being held by the superintendent of the prison. We saw it photographed in place in Willie Sutton's cell. You cannot get better documentation than that, and that is the kind of documentation we live for. As an appraiser, we can't always be right. We can give an opinion of value. And with the Willie Sutton head, I will wholeheartedly admit I was wrong in the value. That was way low; and over the last few years, I've often wondered whatever happened to the head. And recently the owner sent us a couple of photos, and it looks like he's still having fun with it. But I know that if it came up on the market today, it'd be worth far more than the $2,500 or $3,500 that I originally appraised it for. It would be more in the $20,000, $25,000 range.
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episode
Extraordinary Finds 3
Revisit remarkable ROADSHOW finds whose stories didn’t stop even after we yelled "Cut!"
Understanding Our Appraisals
Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.
Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.
Verbal approximations: The values given by the experts on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW are considered "verbal approximations of value." Technically, an "appraisal" is a legal document, generally for insurance purposes, written by a qualified expert and paid for by the owner of the item. An appraisal usually involves an extensive amount of research to establish authenticity, provenance, composition, method of construction, and other important attributes of a particular object.
Opinion of value: As with all appraisals, the verbal approximations of value given at ROADSHOW events are our experts' opinions formed from their knowledge of antiques and collectibles, market trends, and other factors. Although our valuations are based on research and experience, opinions can, and sometimes do, vary among experts.
Appraiser affiliations: Finally, the affiliation of the appraiser may have changed since the appraisal was recorded. To see current contact information for an appraiser in the ROADSHOW Archive, click on the link below the appraiser's picture. Our Appraiser Index also contains a complete list of active ROADSHOW appraisers and their contact details and biographies.
