| John Stanley Wojtowicz | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 9, 1945 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | January 2, 2006 (aged 60) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Conviction(s) | Bank robbery |
| Penalty | 20 years imprisonment |
| Status | deceased |
| Spouse | 1) Carmen Bifulco (divorced) 2) Elizabeth Eden (deceased) |
| Children | two |
John Stanley Wojtowicz (March 9, 1945 - January 2, 2006) was an American bank robber whose story inspired the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.[1]
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Wojtowicz, the son of Polish immigrants, married his first wife, Carmen Bifulco, in 1967. They had two children, and separated in 1969. Wojtowicz later met Ernest Aron (later to be known as Elizabeth Eden) in 1971 at an Italian feast in New York City. The two were married on December 4, 1971 in Greenwich Village.[2]
On August 22, 1972, Wojtowicz, along with Salvatore Naturile and Robert Westenberg, attempted to rob a branch of the Chase Manhattan bank on the corner of East Third Street and Avenue P in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The heist was meant to pay for Aron's sex reassignment surgery.[2] Wojtowicz and Naturile held seven Chase Manhattan bank employees hostage for 14 hours. Westernberg fled the scene before the robbery was underway when he saw a police car on the street. Wojtowicz, a former bank teller, had some knowledge of bank operations. However, he apparently based his plan on scenes from the movie The Godfather, which he had seen earlier that day. Ironically, Al Pacino, star of The Godfather, would later go on to portray Wojtowicz in Dog Day Afternoon. The robbers became media celebrities. Wojtowicz was arrested, but Naturile was killed by the FBI during the final moments of the incident.[3]
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 14. He made $7,500 selling the movie rights to the story and 1% of its net profit, and helped finance Aron's sex reassignment surgery with these funds. Wojtowicz was released from prison on April 10, 1987. Elizabeth Eden (Wojtowicz's girlfriend's post-surgery name) died of AIDS-related pneumonia at 41 in Rochester on September 29, 1987.[4]
Wojtowicz's story was used as the basis for the film Dog Day Afternoon. The movie was released in 1975, and starred Al Pacino as Wojtowicz (called "Sonny Wortzik" in the film), and John Cazale, one of Pacino's co-stars in The Godfather, as Naturile. Eden, known as "Leon" in the film, was portrayed by actor Chris Sarandon.[5]
In 1975, John 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 Elizabeth Eden, when in fact he had left her two years before he met Eden. 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 intimated that John 'sold out' Sal Naturile to the police, and although he claims this to be untrue, several attempts were made on John's life following an inmate screening of the movie. He did however praise Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon's characterizations of himself and Ernest Aron as accurate. In a 2006 interview, the screenwriter of the movie, Frank Pierson, said that he tried to visit John Wojtowicz in prison many times to get more details about his story when he wrote the screenplay but Wojtowicz refused each time to see him because he thought he was not paid enough money for the rights to his story.[6]
Wojtowicz was also the subject of two documentaries, The Third Memory in 2000 and Based on A True Story in 2005. In 2001, The New York Times reported that he was living on welfare in Brooklyn.[7]
Wojtowicz died of cancer on January 2, 2006.[8]