Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon: Part III - Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

Trigger warning. This 3-part article contains quotations from John Wojtowicz, the major protagonist. The quotations contain frequent misgenderings, and in the latter 2 parts traditional English swear words. Caveat Lector.

Part I: Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery
Part II: Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding
Part III: Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

John Wojtowicz gave Carmen a yellow rose on her anniversary, and Liz a red one on hers.

The divorce of Carmen and John was finalized in 1983. Carmen reverted to her maiden name, and while working three jobs, put herself through college. She became an education associate for children with special needs.

Liz Eden was in a hit-and-run incident coming out of a gay bar late one night. She was rushed to St Clare’s Hospital in Hell’s Kitchen and they put pins in to save her leg. However apparently the blood transfusion was HIV+, and after a while and a couple of sicknesses Liz was confirmed to have AIDS.
 

One time while out, Wojtowicz and Liz were interviewed by gay film buff Vito Russo on his Our Time television show. Wojtowicz was still referring to Liz as ‘Ernie’ and Liz became quite infuriated.

Liz moved to Rochester, NY, and was said to be remarried. Liz died in September 1987 of Aids-related pneumonia – she was 41.

John and his mother

         John and his mother

Finally out for good, Wojtowicz returned to living with his mother and his developmentally disabled brother Tony in Brooklyn.

Despite claims that he was paid $100,000 or 1% of the profits of the film which took in over $50 million on a budget of $1.8 million, he received very little of it apart from the $2,500 that went to Liz for the operations. The New York State Crime Victims Compensation Board diverted tens of thousands to the hostages, and contested against Wojtowicz receiving anything right up to his death. Sometimes he was on welfare. Sometimes he worked at minimum wage jobs.

John was married for a fourth time to Chiclets, a 17-year-old trans woman. She was viciously beaten by a group of transphobes in the Village. They dumped her in New Jersey. She was in a coma for a month before dying.

Pierre Huyghe, the French artist, was doing a series of dual screen presentations combining a real event, its fictional remake and a first-person recollection of the original. He was intrigued by the Dog Day Afternoon scenario. In 1999, he travelled to Brooklyn and knocked on doors until he found Wojtowicz at his mother’s house. He invited John to go to Paris to re-enact the events. A copy of the bank as in the film had been built in a studio in a Paris suburb. This could not be done in the US as Wojtowicz did not own the copyright. The resulting film, The Third Memory, 2000, opens with the standard FBI warning against copyright infringement, with a voice-over:

“I tell the FBI to go fuck themselves. . . . It’s been twenty-eight years since I’ve been fighting Warner Brothers to try and get my money back. They keep giving it to the hostages while I’m a millionaire living on welfare. My name is John Wojtowicz; I’m the real Sonny Worcek and I’m the one that you see in Dog Day Afternoon.” 

It was shown at Huyghe’s first solo exhibition in New York. As Barikins’ book on Huyghe says:

“As Huyghe’s film demonstrates, neither Wojtowicz’s ‘self’ nor the details of his story are or were ever entirely his own. Not only was Wojtowicz’s original conception of the robbery influenced by Al Pacino’s performance in The Godfather (1972) (which he and his partners viewed on the morning of the bank robbery as a kind of motivational manual), but Pacino’s interpretation of the character later affected Wojtowicz’s reenactment of the siege.”

In 2005 there was the Australian film, Based on a True Story, which is mainly a study of the 1975 film combined with phone calls to Wojtowicz where he asks for money for further co-operation.

Instead he co-operated with Allison Berg & Frank Keraudren, local film makers who spent 10 years recording him and the other people in his story. It was released in 2013 as The Dog.

Wojtowicz died in 2006 of cancer, age 60. As he deteriorated, his brother Tony, despite his own disability, stepped up to become John’s carer. John was cremated and did not have the military funeral that he had hoped for.

Films:

• Sidney Lumet (dir). Dog Day Afternoon. Scr: Frank Pierson, from the magazine article by P.F. Kluge & Thomas Moore, with Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik, John Cazale as Sal, and Chris Sarandon as Leon Shermer (roughly based on Liz Eden). US 124 mins 1975. Oscar for best screenplay; Sarandon was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Top grossing film of the year. The shooting script is online at: Archive.
• Pierre Huyghe (dir). The Third Memory. With John Wojtowicz as himself. US 10 mins 2000. A short documentary re-enacting the “Dog Day Afternoon” bank holdup.
• Walter Stokman (dir & scr). Based on a True Story. With John Wojtowicz and Sidney Lumet, with photos or clip quotes of Liz Eden, Al Pacino, John Cazale & Chris Sarandon. Netherlands 75 mins 2005.
• Allison Berg & Frank Keraudren (dir). The Dog, with John Wojtowicz, Liz Eden, Carmen Bifulco, Randy Wicker. US 101 mins 2013.

Other:

• Atthur Bell. “Mike Umbers: The Emperor of Christopher Street”. The Village Voice, July 22, 1971. Online.
• “Here Comes the Bride”. Drag: the magazine about the Transvestite, 2, 6, 1971: 9-12. Online.
• Paul Meskil. “An Insider Is Sought in Bank Holdup: FBI Agent Kills Bandit at JFK And 2d Thus is Nabbed”. Daily News Aug 24, 1972..
• “A Mobster is Linked to Bizarre Holdup”. The New York Times, Aug 26, 1972. Online.
• Arthur Bell. “Littlejohn & the mob: Saga of a Heist”. The Village Voice, August 31, 1972, XVII, 35. Online.
• “News”. Drag: Now! America’s No 1 Magazine about the Transvestite, 2, 8, 1972: 4, 6. Online.
• P.F. Kluge & Thomas Moore. "The Boys in the Bank". Life Sept 22, 1972, vol 73 (12). Online.
• “News”. Drag: The International Transvestite Quarterly, 5,17, 1975: 9. Online.
• “Gay Bank Robber’s Real Wife Sees Movie – and Red”. Drag: The International Transvestite Quarterly, 6,24, 1975: 3, Online.
• John Wojtowicz. “Real Dog Day hero tells his story”. Unpublished article written from prison for the New York Times in 1975, later reprinted in Gay Sunshine: A Journal of Gay Liberation, No. 29/ 30, Summer/Fall, 1976, and then again in Jump Cut, no. 15, 1977, pp. 31-32. Online at: www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC15folder/RealDogDay.html.
• Eric Holm. "Dog Day Afternoon, Dog day aftertaste". Jump Cut, 10-11. 1976:3-4. Online.
• Fredric Jameson, “Class and Allegory in Contemporary Mass Culture: Dog Day Afternoon as a Political Film” College English 38, April 1977: 854.
• “Elizabeth Eden, Transsexual Who Figured in 1975 Movie”. The New York Times, Oct 1, 1987. Online.
• Holly Woodlawn with Jeff Copeland. A Low Life in High Heels: the Holly Woodlawn Story. Martin's Press,1991. Harper Perenniel Pb. 1992: 111-2.
• Lisa Photos “The Dog and the Last Real Man: An Interview with John S Wojtowicz”. Journal of Bisexuality, 3,2, 2003: 43-68.
• Jefferson Cowie.  Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. The New Press, 2010: 200-5.
• Michael Schiavi. Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo. University of Wisconsin Press, 2011: 85-6, 218.
• Emily S Rueb. “A Wife Recalls Her Estranged Husband’s 1972 Failed Bank Robbery”. The New York Times, August 22, 2012. Archive.
• John Strausbaugh. “Liz Eden’s White Wedding”. The Chiseler, 2012. Online.
• Amelia Barikin. Parallel Presents The art of Pierre Hutghe. The MIT Press, 2012: 116-121, 138.
• Sean Manning. “7 Fascinating Things You Didn't Know About the Real Dog Day Afternoon”. Esquire, Aug 8, 2014. Online.
• Larry Getlin. “The bizarre true story that inspired ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ “. New York Post, August 3, 2014. Online.
• Sam Roberts. “‘The Dog’ Who Had His Day on Film”. The New York Times, Aug 4, 2014. Online.
• David Ehrenstein. “The wild Inside story of ‘The Dog’: How one failed bank robber shaped LGBT history”. Salon, Aug 6, 2014. Online.
• Cynthia Fuchs. “'The Dog' from ' Dog Day Afternoon' Would Do It All Over Again, Hell Ya”. Pop Matters, 08 Aug 2014. Online.
• J R Jones. “Revisiting the Brooklyn bank robbery that inspired Dog Day Afternoon: The Dog tells the sad story of a man trapped by his criminal past”. Chicago Reader, October 01, 2014. Online.
• Gina Dimuro. “The Real Story Of John Wojtowicz And The Bank Robbery That Inspired ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ “. Allthatsintering.com, June 27, 2018. Online.
• Emily S Rueb. “A Botched Robbery That Went Hollywood”. The New York Times, August 22, 2018. Online.
• Phillip Crawford Jr. “Real Life Mafia Story Behind Dog Day Afternoon Movie”. Reddit.com/r/Mafia, April 2020. Online.

FindaGrave(Liz)   FindaGrave(John)    IMDB(John)     IMDB(Dog Day Afternoon) 
IMDB(The Dog)    EN.Wikipedia(Liz)     EN.Wikipedia(John)     EN.Wikipedia (Salvatore) EN.Wikipedia(Dog day Afternoon)    EN.Wikipedia(The Dog)     Military.Wikia(John)   NNDB(John)      New York Times Slide Show      Getty Stock Images

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The FindaGrave site for John lists only his first spouse as such, although two others are mentioned in the text.

The Wikipedia page on Liz states that Liz had a second marriage, but does not give a source.

Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon: Part II - Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding

Trigger warning. This 3-part article contains quotations from John Wojtowicz, the major protagonist. The quotations contain frequent misgenderings, and in the latter 2 parts traditional English swear words. Caveat Lector.

Part I: Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery
Part II: Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding
Part III: Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

A month after the robbery there was an extensive write up in Life magazine, “The Boys in the Bank”, which prophetically described John Wojtowicz as having “the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman”.

Arthur Bell’s investigation of claims that Wojtowicz had been set up by the Gambino family brought bomb threats to the Village Voice. At Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) meetings

“conservative and radical gays debated over whether Wojtowicz was a counterrevolutionary lumpen adventurer victimized by the mob or a proud gay superfly caught in an act of righteous expropriation, but the debate was inconclusive.” (Holm, 1976)

A bartender friend of Sal Naturale asked GAA to help fund a burial.  They declined and Sal was interred in the gigantic pauper burial site on Hart Island off the Bronx coast (which contains over a million corpses).

While in The Bayview Correctional Facility, 550 West 29^th St, John Wojtowicz wrote a will in which he allotted a portion of the proceeds from his life insurance to pay for Liz Eden’s operations.

Warner Brothers wanted to turn the Life magazine article into a film.

“They came down to make the movie deal when I was in prison, and I told them, ‘I’m not making no movie, ’cos you’re gonna make me look ridiculous.’ So they brought Ernie down from the nut house, and they brought me in and let me fuck him in the warden’s office, at the old federal prison on West Street in the Village. They brought him down there, and Ernie had the paper, and he said, ‘Sign the paper.’ I said, ‘I ain’t signing that paper.’ He goes, ‘Well, don’t you want me to have the sex change?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Well, if you sign this, they’re gonna take me outta the nut house, I’m gonna get the sex change. And I’ll come and see you.’ And I says, ‘OK, let’s fuck.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ll seal the deal with a fuck.’ So the warden left, you know, and we stayed in there, and we got down. In fact, I fucked him on the warden’s desk.” (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 61)

Wojtowicz mug shot

Wojtowicz thinking that he had a deal pleaded guilty. He had sold his story for $7,500 and 1% of the net profit, but he had to sue (from prison) to get it. Liz was to get $2,500 for the operation. She returned to the West 10^th Street apartment. However, with the publicity about the film, the landlord realized who she was and evicted her.  She found a place in a gay rooming house in Brooklyn.

Wojtowicz was sentenced to 20 years, and placed in a federal penitentiary at Lewisburg. Pennsylvania.

As Carmen and John were still married, she visited him in prison. She was not pleased to encounter Liz Eden, also visiting. However the two somewhat became friends. Carmen called her when she had an orchiectomy with Dr Benito Rish in Yonkers in November 1972. She had a vaginoplasty the following March.

“He got out of the nut house . . . [but] they only gave him some of the money for the operation, not enough. So I had to have my mother and my wife [Carmen] give him more money. I signed the paper in November of ’72.”. After the operations Liz came to see John one last time, and explained that the doctors had told her to break off with him, and go somewhere else to be a woman. (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 61-2).

John then attempted suicide, the evening before he was to be sentenced.

The working title of the film was, like the Life magazine article, Boys in the Bank, a riff on the successful pre-gay-lib gay drama, Boys in the Band, 1970. Director Sidney Lumet did not like this, and wanted something that suggested a hot, stuffy day near the end of summer. Thus it became Dog Day Afternoon – although without accuracy in reference to the rising of Sirius at the hottest days of summer. However the film was shot in late autumn, and the actors had to chew ice cubes so that their breath would not be seen. Sidney Lumet, the director was quoted as saying that Pacino was at risk because “no major star that I know of had ever played a gay man”.

The trans component in the film is quite small. The Liz-John wedding is not shown. The lover, Leon (=Ernest, and played by Chris Sarandon, Susan’s then husband), who appears for only a few minutes, is presented as a mid-70s gay stereotype, who has been informed by the shrinks that he is a woman trapped in man's body. He does not seem to be too happy with this conclusion. Despite its dubious portrayal of Leon, the film was much applauded for featuring a sympathetic, fully-rounded bisexual male. There is no mention of mafia contacts. Wojtowicz may, as Life Magazine said, have resembled Al Pacino, but the connection was secured as Pacino was cast as Sonny Wortzik (=Wojtowicz). Wojtowicz afterwards became known as the Dog because of the film. John Cazale, who had starred with Pacino in the The Godfather films, was cast as Salvatore despite being 37 rather than the real Sal’s 18. The film Sal insists that he is not gay – in contradistinction to the real one. Sal is the only character in the film to have the same name as the corresponding real person.

Wojtowicz commented on the film:

“Well, they never tell you I was against him having the operation all along. And the only reason I decided to let him have the operation was because I wanted to save his life. Therefore, saving his life was the number one thing, and as long as you’re trying to save somebody’s life, whatever you’re doing’s not wrong. And I loved him enough to do that. That never comes across in the book or the movie. It’s just like, they make fun of my fat wife, Carmen, and they [implicitly] say, well, if you had a wife that was fat and had a big mouth, no wonder you went with the drag queen. But that’s a lie. I didn’t go with the drag queen because my wife was fat or ugly. To me, my wife was beautiful. And I like big women! ’Cos I like the Sophia Loren/Elizabeth Taylor type. The reason I broke up with my wife is because of our in-laws, and because I’m what you call an old-fashioned Italian: I’m the boss. Her parents would always interfere with us, and she would always take the parents’ side over me. And that’s what led to the breakup. …  And [Sal] was gay, not like the movie tells you. He never said, “Tell them there ain’t two homosexuals in there,” ’cos he was a chicken hawk. He liked young guys and he had an apartment in the Village and he used to bring kids up there.” (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 54, 57.)

Pacino took the film to Lewisburg Penitentiary before the official release intending to introduce the film. However the warden initially refused to allow the film to be shown even though Warner Brothers were offering it without cost. Wojtowicz made a fuss, and was supported by gay and straight newspapers on the outside, and the warden relented. However several of the other inmates after seeing it took the film to be saying that he had sold out Sal. Wojtowicz was subsequently beaten up and his cell set on fire. He had to be moved to a different prison.

Carmen visited him in the prison hospital. An attendant said to her: “Oh, you’re the other wife”, and she was informed that Liz was listed as next of kin. That was it. She went to see a divorce lawyer.

Liz

Carmen Wojtowicz sued Warner Brothers for invasion of privacy and unauthorized used of her and her children’s names and portraits.

Liz Eden sued Warner Brothers for libel and they settled out-of-court. Word was that Liz received somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000. For a while she had an agent and there was talk of a book deal, a nightclub act and even a discotheque to be called ‘The Garden of Eden’.

Wojtowicz started an affair in prison with George, a jailhouse lawyer, black, Irish and Jehovah’s Witness. They were married in the prison yard by a Jesus Freak. George got Wojtowicz’ sentence reduced and he was released in November 1979, but was then returned for parole violations such as still seeing George.

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$2,500 in 1975 is $14,500 now.

It was standard practice at the time for sex-change doctors to tell their patients to break off all gay contacts and go live somewhere where their prior self was not known.

While Wojtowicz was not in any way co-ordinating with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the date of the rising has moved – because of the precession of the equinox – from 19 July at the time of the Caesars to the third week of August now.  If you are 50° north or more, it is on 21/22 August.

“no major star that I know of had ever played a gay man”. Presumably Lumet, although in the film-biz had not heard of Dirk Bogart in Victim, 1961. However this was a New York film being edgier than anything from Los Angeles.

Sidney Lumet has made many great thrillers and crime films, and is known for his social concerns and depictions of minorities, however the gender variant persons in his films are either minor or get killed: a mannish lesbian briefly glimpsed in The Group, 1966; Jack Doroshow (Sabrina) in mufti in The Anderson Tapes, 1971; heterosexist female impersonator, Gypsy Haake has a cameo in The Morning After, 1986; International Chrysis' character is killed, and the other trans women are humiliated by Nick Nolte's bad cop in Q & A, 1990.

Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon: Part I - Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery

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Trigger warning. This 3-part article contains quotations from John Wojtowicz, the major protagonist. The quotations contain frequent misgenderings, and in the latter 2 parts traditional English swear words.  Caveat Lector.

I wrote a short account on this topic 12 years ago, August 2008.   More information became available in the intervening years, so here is the revised version.

Part I: Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery
Part II: Imprisonment, the Movie and onemore wedding
Part III: Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

228 West 10th St today

Liz Eden (1945 – 1986), “Jewish, English, German, and a Leo” as Wojtowicz put it, was raised with the name Ernest Aron in Ozone Park, Queens, New York. She was at the Stonewall riots. In 1971 she was in transition and living in a rooming house, 228 West 10^th Street at Hudson in Greenwich Village in Manhattan – the building was only a short walk from what had been the Stonewall Inn.  Another resident was  Holly Woodlawn.

John Wojtowicz (1945 – 2006), a New Yorker of Polish and Italian descent, had met a cis woman, Carmen Bifulco, in early 1966 - both working in a Chase Manhattan bank, they went on the same employee ski trip in Massachusetts.  They were quickly engaged, but he was drafted.  He had his first gay experience while in base camp. He was also deeply affected when he was one of only a few survivors of a rocket attack on his base in Vietnam. On his return home in 1967, John and Carmen married and had two children. However in 1969, he walked out on her “the day a man walked on the moon.” The couple had been at a baseball game and “Johnny” left early. When she arrived home with their 8-month-old girl, the apartment had been cleared out. Even the baby’s crib and stroller were gone. A $10 bill was on the table. Cab fare, she said, to get to her mother’s house.

John became a regular on the gay scene, and especially at the Firehouse, the headquarters of the Gay Activists Alliance( GAA) from May 1971. He used his mother’s maiden name and was known as Littlejohn Basso.

“I was a member of the entertainment committee, so I would meet and greet new gay people coming into the scene. I could have sex with them quicker than anybody else, because they were just coming out.”

Mike Umbers was the landlord of StarHouse, and owner of the nightclub, Christopher’s End. With fellow associate Ed Murphy, also in the Gambino crime family, Umbers ran a prostitution ring pimping underage boys to wealthy pedophiles. Wojtowicz/Basso became Umbers' source for what was happening in GAA. He also went to GAA dances and told customers that there was more action at Christopher’s End.

The gay journalist, Arthur Bell, wrote of Wojtowicz/Basso:

"pleasant, spunky, a little crazy, and up front about his high sex drive. Once, during a Firehouse dance, he balled with a guy on a mattress in the basement.” 

Randy Wicker, activist and journalist said that many GAA members regarded him as a “crazy, obnoxious, unlikable bisexual”. Even before meeting Liz, he had asked if he could be married at the Firehouse. This prompted a debate as to whether marriage is good for gay liberation.

On 29 June 1971, two days after the Second Christopher Liberation Day, the Italian-American Civil Rights League which argued that the Mafia did not exist (and was run by Godfather Joe Colombo) held its second annual public rally at Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. Colombo was being filmed by an African-American, Jerome Johnson, who then pulled out a gun and shot Colombo – leaving him paralyzed. Johnson was immediately shot dead by someone who quickly disappeared despite a heavy police presence. Johnson had been employed by Mike Umbers to make pornographic films, and Johnson’s last known address was 180 Christopher Street, upstairs above the Christopher’s End bar.

In July 1971 Umbers confronted Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in that they had not paid three months' rent for a rundown property that he owned. He threatened violence, but settled for eviction. Christopher’s End was raided Thursday the 15^th, and again on Sunday the 18^th. Arthur Bell wrote about Umbers’ influence in straight and gay pimping and in the gay bar scene in The Village Voice, 22 July, and shortly afterwards GAA organized a protest campaign outside Christopher’s End. Wojtowicz/Basso had become out of favor at GAA as it became known that he was associated with Umbers – and he even turned up at the demonstration holding a sign supporting Umbers.

Wojtowicz/Basso was one of the GAA activists whose protests were included in the credits sequence for the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft. He was also in the zap of the office of the city clerk towards the goal of issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. John Wojtowicz met Liz Eden at the Feast of San Gennaro (19 September 1971), a few days later.

Liz and John

When the question of John marrying Liz came up, GAA, thinking of Liz as a man, decided that ‘drag’ and fake Catholicism would constitute a freak show. John and Liz approached the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) but they would not permit what they considered to be “drag”. The ceremony was held in Liz’s rooms at 228 West 10^th St in a Catholic ceremony on 4th December 1971 – by an ordained priest, newly back from Rome whom Liz met through a friend. He was  later defrocked. Randy Wicker was there, as was John’s mother Theresa, and Liz’s father. Drag Magazine covered the event; and, a novelty at the time, it was recorded on a video camera – one of the first available – for the GAA library. The wedding was even featured on the Walter Cronkite CBS evening television news. The bridesmaids were gay men, and lesbians were in tuxedoes. Arthur Bell estimated that the wedding had cost $2,000. It was marred only by John referring to Liz as ‘Ernest’ and ‘he’.

By April they were living apart. Liz wanted to go for completion surgery, but neither of them had the money.

Whether for the wedding or otherwise, Wojtowicz apparently owed money to the Gambino crime family, probably directly to Umbers.

The New York Times (Aug 26, 1971) later reported: “five men, including Wojtowicz, began planning the robbery last April, but that two of the men later bowed out. Wojtowicz was pressed to carry out the robbery by the underworld figure, who owns Greenwich Village bars and is involved in pornography… Wojtowicz owed the gangster money”.

As John later wrote of Liz:

“I was unable to obtain the funds for his birthday on 8/19/72 and so, on Sunday, 8/29, he attempted suicide while I was out of the house. He died a clinical death in the hospital but was revived. While I went to get his clothes, he was declared mentally sick and sent to the Psychiatric Ward of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. I went to see him and I tried to obtain his release on 8/21, but was told he would not be released and would stay there for a long time until he was cured.” (Wojtowicz, 1977) 

On another occasion John said:

“But [Ernie] kept trying to kill himself. So then I finally said to him, “Alright, I’ll try and get the money for your birthday,” which was August 19th, which is the same as [Bill] Clinton’s. So I did something to get the ten thousand he needed to get the sex change. And what happened is, the person that was supposed to deliver the money for his birthday party took off with the money. So then the next morning he took an overdose. … they had him in the prison psychiatric ward. He said he didn’t want to be there. I talked to the doctors, and they said, “He’s gonna be here for years, because he wants to chop his dick off, and he’s whacked out.” (Lisa Photos interview with Wojtowicz, 2003: 52-3.)

Wojtowicz recruited associates that he knew from gay bars to help rob a bank: Bobby Westenberg and Salvatore Naturale. He had met Sal, who had been in and out of institutions since age 11, at Danny’s, a bar at 140 7^th Ave, and moved him into his apartment. The night before in a hotel room Wojtowicz very pushily had sex with Bobby. Sal wanted to do so also but was rejected. The next day, August 22, 1972, they went to see an early showing of The Godfather in a Times Square cinema. They then set off to rob a bank. At the first one a gun was dropped and went off, and they fled. At the second they ran into one of their mothers’ best friends, and they fled. At a third they crashed into another car and they fled.

They then attempted to rob a Chase Manhattan Bank branch at 450 Ave P, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, just before closing. Westenberg ran off at the last minute when he saw a police car nearby. Wojtowicz and Naturale held the bank employees hostage. The bank branch had less money than they hoped for, but they did get $38,000 cash and $175,000 travelers’ checks.

The bank manager was able to indicate to another branch by giving a wrong answer to a question on

the crowd across the street

the phone that something was wrong.  The police were called. The media arrived.

Wojtowicz gave his reason as paying for his lover’s sex change, and admitted being homosexual. A gay and lesbian contingent from Manhattan arrived shortly afterwards to cheer him .

The cops had Liz brought to the scene. Supposedly she knew nothing about the heist, although Wojtowicz had talked to her about it. She later told Arthur Bell that she had taken the pills hoping to stop him from doing the robbery. There was talk of exchanging her for a hostage, but that never happened.

While Wojtowicz did most of the talking and was obviously the lead robber, the police were actually more concerned about Naturale who, although he was only 18, had a criminal record.

Arthur Bell, the Village Voice journalist, phoned the bank and Wojtowicz answered. The story that he told Bell was that he had spoken to a Chase-Manhattan executive in Danny’s, the same bar where he met Sal. The executive had given a date when the Flatbush branch would receive a shipment of over $200,000 in cash that could be easily taken. Bell understood that Wojtowicz had shared his plans with Mike Umbers who supplied guns in exchange for 50% of the take. The problem was that the delivery had been at 11am and the robbers did not arrive until closing time.

Carmen had taken the children to Rockaway Beach for the day. She had heard something on the radio about “an admitted homosexual” robbing a bank, but paid it no mind. Back home a neighbour called to say that her husband was robbing a bank. She watched the situation on television a while. Then took a tranquilizer and went to bed.

The standoff lasted 14 hours and was continuously played on local television – where it even pre-emptied coverage of Richard Nixon’s acceptance speech at the Republican national convention.

After negotiations, at 4 am the next day, a bus took Wojtowicz and Naturale, together with seven hostages and an FBI driver to Kennedy Airport. Wojtowicz and Sal thought that they were about to get a flight to Europe. Then when a code phrase was uttered, the driver turned and shot Naturale, the supposedly more dangerous robber – he died soon after. Wojtowicz was taken into custody.

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Ancestry.com says: Wojtowicz (Polish) is a patronymic from the personal name Wojciech (or Voytek), which in turn is from wójt ‘village headman’ (see Wojcik).

EN.Wikipedia(Wojtowicz) says “from Volhynia (plural form: Wojtowiczowie) was a part of the nobility of Poland (the family's roots were probably in the Lithuanian-Ruthenian nobility). The village of Wojtowice of Ostróg County in Volhynia is the origin of this house.” While it lists prominent members of the family, it does not include John.

228 or 250 West 10^th Street? Most accounts say 250, but the address on the wedding invitation as printed in Drag Magazine says 228. It may be that John lived at 250 and Liz at 228, but I could not find a clear statement to that effect.

If, in fact, Wojtowicz had been informed by a bank executive, and had been planning for months to rob a specific bank, why then was it only the fourth bank that they attempted to rob on that day?

Further information about Salvatore Naturale:  He was also known to the police as Donald Matterson, and had been arrested under that name for possession of narcotics and burglary tools five months before the Dog Day Robbery.  His intention was to use the proceeds to finance his two sisters’ removal from foster care and removal from their alcoholic mother.

Wojtowicz, in his interview with Photos claimed (p48): “it’s the first gay, public drag wedding in American history”.  Okay, ‘drag’ is the wrong word, and Wojtowicz is no historian, but let us mention:

Drag marriages: 

1886 Charles and Anna Ryan, Grand Rapids Michigan.
1935 Jean Acker and Vernon Long at the Cabin Inn, Chicago
1950 Jackie Starr and Bill Scott, Seattle

Trans women marriages: 

1912 Frances Thompson and Frank Carrick, Indiana
1955 Tamara Rees and James Courtland, Los Angeles
1959 Charlotte McLeod and Ralph Heidal, Miami
1969 Dawn Langley Hall and John-Paul Simmons, Charleston, South Carolina


Some of the US gay histories that mention GAA and the Firehouse, but have not a word about either John Wojtowicz or Liz Eden:

·        Martin Duberman. Stonewall, 1993
·        Charles Kaiser.  The Gay Metropolis, 1997
·        David Carter. Stonewall, 2004
·        Lillian Faderman.  The Gay Revolution, 2015