The Real Dog Day Afternoon - ATC International

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Australian True Crime

Episode: The Real Dog Day Afternoon - ATC International
Host: Bravecasting
Date: January 9, 2026

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Overview

This episode delves into the real-life events that inspired the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon, unraveling the complex, dramatic, and deeply human story of John Wojtowicz, his relationships, and the notorious Brooklyn bank heist. Drawing from interviews, archival recordings, and documentary material, the podcast explores not only the botched robbery, but also the social, cultural, and personal forces that shaped Wojtowicz’s life—particularly his experience as a gay man in post-Stonewall New York and his passionate, tumultuous romance with Elizabeth Eden.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Dog Day Afternoon and Its Roots

• The episode opens by recapping the classic film trailer, but the host points out that “the trailer doesn’t highlight the fact that it’s also a love story. A gay love story based on a true and complicated gay love story between a Vietnam veteran and a man desperate to transition and live as a woman.”
  (Narrator, 01:46–02:13)

• John Wojtowicz, the real-life inspiration for Pacino’s character, describes his early sexual experiences during military service, providing a candid, personal entry point to his story:

  “When I went to basic training, that’s when I had my first gay experience...He was like a summer breeze.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 02:57–03:27)

2. The Era: Being Gay in 1960s-1970s America

• The podcast rips away the veil on the medical, social, and legal persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals at the time, detailing conversion therapies, forced institutionalization, and even medical atrocities:

  “[Atascadero]…was known in gay circles as the dachsau for queers, and appropriately so…pharmacological waterboarding…”
  (John Wojtowicz, 04:23–05:41)

• John’s navigation between a traditional married life and the burgeoning gay counterculture at Greenwich Village is highlighted:

  “There was one street called Christopher Street where actually I could sit and talk to other gay people…”
  (John Wojtowicz, 06:44–07:17)

3. Stonewall and Awakening

• Vivid, first-person recollections of New York before, during, and after the Stonewall riots underscore the radical shift for the gay community.

  “What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there because we could feel a sense of love for each other that we couldn’t show out on the street.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 10:30–11:36)

• The intersection of the Stonewall riots with the death of Judy Garland and the role of mafia-owned gay bars is explored, blending context and personal testimony:
  (13:07–14:20)

• The slow build of tension and eventual uprising is described in gripping detail, including the moment of police fear and defiance by the crowd:

  “Our goal was to hurt those police...There was joy because the cops weren’t winning...the cops were barricaded inside. We were winning.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 21:35–23:38)

4. Love, Law, and Double Lives

• After Stonewall, John immerses himself in activism and the gay community, describing his pragmatic approach to encounters:

  “I could have sex with them quicker than anybody else because they were just coming out…”
  (John Wojtowicz, 08:39–09:05)

• The complex relationship between John and Elizabeth Eden forms the beating heart of the episode. The legalities and police harassment surrounding cross-dressing are detailed, highlighting the everyday fears faced by trans people:

  “3 Articles of clothing had to be of your gender or you would be in violation of that law. Mind you, socks didn’t count, so it was underwear and undershirt. Now the next thing was going to ruin the outfit.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 24:35–25:20)

• Elizabeth and John’s whirlwind romance, unconventional marriage, and heartbreak over Elizabeth’s need for gender-affirming surgery versus John’s reluctance is portrayed with raw honesty:

  “I at the time was interested in a guy with big tits and a little dick. But Ernie wanted to be a woman. And… I didn’t realize how badly he wanted to be this woman.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 27:49–28:20)

5. The Bank Robbery: Plans and Chaos

• The planning of the heist was haphazard—a desperate, last-ditch scheme to fund Elizabeth’s surgery after her suicide attempts and hospitalization.

  “They hadn’t chosen a bank before the day of the robbery. The three of them simply drove around the city with a car full of guns, checking banks out, looking for one that felt right.”
  (Narrator, 29:30–30:21)

• A comedic note: their ransom note featured a line from The Godfather, because they had seen the movie the night before for 'inspiration'.

• The heist’s failure is attributed to poor intelligence (the bank had little money) and a collapsed plan, leading rapidly to a hostage situation and massive police response.

  “The first snaggy hit was… there was very little money in the bank...an armored truck had carted a large amount of cash out...at around 11am.”
  (Narrator, 33:32–33:51)

6. The Siege and Media Circus

• John tries to play the crowd and media, alternating between tough guy, tragic lover, and entertainer, at times making confounding or comic demands.

  “We spoke to him. He's making demands for an escape route...he wants to take the hostages with him at this time.”
  (Senior policeman, 34:43–34:54)

• Elizabeth refuses to see John during the standoff, her reasons shifting in later accounts. A former lover, Patsy, is brought in instead—resulting in a tongue kiss in front of a national TV audience:

  “So Patsy comes down because Patsy really loves me. So I go outside and I walk over to him and I tongue him.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 35:52–36:16)

• John’s mother is allowed to entreat him to surrender, and crowds outside chant both support and slurs, reflecting the confusion and spectacle of the era:
  (Narrator, 37:21–38:04)

7. Climax and Collapse

• The police negotiate an apparent deal: a limousine to the airport, a plane, and allegedly money for Elizabeth’s surgery. Instead, it ends with a deadly FBI takedown at JFK.

  “The limo driver casually asked the robbers if they wanted food on board...the agent in the front passenger seat...grabbed the barrel of Sal’s shotgun. Within a split second, Sal had been disarmed and shot in the head. The handgun was then aimed at John. John surrendered immediately.”
  (Narrator, 38:56–39:41)

8. Aftermath, Hollywood, and Afterlife

• John is sentenced to 20 years but serves only five. The film rights bring in $15,000, which helps fund Elizabeth’s successful surgery, but their relationship does not survive her transition:

  “He said, ‘I will never see you again. It’s not good for me. It won’t help me. I have to leave, start my own life as a real woman and have nothing to do with you.’ And Ernie got up and left.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 41:40–42:22)

• John’s later life is portrayed with both dark humor and pathos—his relationships with “all three of his wives,” his mother’s support, Elizabeth’s periodic returns, and final deaths from cancer and AIDS.
  (Narrator, 42:32–44:50)

• Notably, the documentary "The Dog," released in 2013, preserves John’s unique personality and voice for posterity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the reality versus film:

  "If anything, Hollywood played down their personalities and the real drama for the silver screen."
  (Narrator, 02:31–02:40)

• On the atmosphere at Stonewall:

  “This chance to find love, you know, I had never seen anything like that. I never saw so many gay people dancing in my life. And I said to myself, oh my God, this will not last.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 11:17–11:36)

• On the desperation behind the crime:

  "And it was then that he made the decision to bust her out by any means necessary and to find the money for her sex change operation, which today we would call gender affirming surgery."
  (Narrator, 28:20–28:47)

• On his love for Elizabeth/Ernie:

  “He was very, very romantic. Never forgot a date, never forgot a birthday, Christmas, anniversary or anything. In the beginning, it was a dozen roses almost every time we saw each other.”
  (Elizabeth Eden via John Wojtowicz, 25:37–25:53)

• The aftermath:

  "She assisted filmmakers…in making a documentary about his colorful life called The Dog…His statements in this podcast have been taken from that documentary."
  (Narrator, 44:20–44:50)

• On John himself:

  “He was bad and he was good. I remember when he was good.”
  (John Wojtowicz, 44:50)

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Timeline of Major Segments

• 00:04–02:57: Introduction, film trailer, background on real-life case
• 02:57–05:41: Wojtowicz's early life, sexuality, and context of 1960s gay life
• 05:42–09:05: Early marriage, Greenwich Village, joining Gay Activists Alliance
• 09:05–14:20: The Stonewall era: raids, riots, Judy Garland, and burgeoning activism
• 14:20–23:38: First-hand accounts of the Stonewall riots
• 23:38–27:49: Wojtowicz's post-Stonewall activism and meeting Elizabeth
• 27:49–29:30: Relationship struggles and lead-up to the robbery
• 29:30–31:16: Planning and execution of the bank robbery
• 31:16–38:04: Hostage crisis, media frenzy, family & lover interventions, negotiation
• 38:04–41:16: Airport standoff, violent resolution, Wojtowicz's surrender and trial
• 41:16–44:50: Hollywood adaptation, impact on those involved, death and legacy

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Conclusion

This episode weaves together true crime, LGBTQ+ history, American social upheaval, and one man’s relentless, flawed quest for love against all odds. By blending Wojtowicz’s own words, contextual analysis, and candid reminiscence, the podcast humanizes the “Dog Day Afternoon” legend and illuminates the ways real life can be just as dramatic—and heartbreaking—as the movies.

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Transcript

[Narrator]

In this episode, we're going to the movies. We're looking at the real story behind the 1975 classic film Dog Day Afternoon, starring Al Pacino.

[John Wojtowicz]

You know something, people? You're gonna be remembered the rest of your lives for the day you got held up and kidnapped. At approximately 3pm on August 22, 1972, Sonny Wurtzig and Sal Naturale entered the first Brooklyn Savings bank and attempted a robbery.

[Narrator]

Please.

[John Wojtowicz]

Nobody move. Get over there. The attempt failed. There's no money here. They picked it up this afternoon. There's only 1,100. This is too much. It's for you. What? The police arrived. This is Detective Sergeant Eugene Moretti. What are you doing in there? For the people of the neighborhood, it was a sideshow, Sonny. Son. But for Sonny and Sal, the hostages and the cops, it was a dog day afternoon. I'm a Catholic and I don't want to hurt anybody. Understand? Hello, Sonny, you're on the air. Sonny. Jesus. I was watching it on tv. I'm here with my partner and nine other people. See? We're dying. You're gonna see our brains on a sidewalk. They're gonna spill our guts out. Shouldn't let something like that spoil your fun. Hey.

[Narrator]

Don't fire. Don't fire.

[John Wojtowicz]

Don't fire. Mom, what are you doing down here? Run, run, run. Son. Where am I gonna run? Al? We get a helicopter here. Two takes us to a jet. Three, I'm flying to the tropics. Al Pacino Dog Day Afternoon A True Story.

[Narrator]

It's a great movie from a golden age of Hollywood, a classic heist flick, but for whatever reason, the trailer doesn't highlight the fact that it's also a love story. A gay love story based on a true and complicated gay love story between a Vietnam veteran and a man desperate to transition and live as a woman. When he took on the lead role. Pacino had already made the first two Godfather movies and Serpico and been nominated for Oscars for all three. So you'd imagine it was a pretty exciting development for the man he was playing, John Stanley Joseph Waterwitz. Wojowitz is no ordinary man, though, and by his own admission, he saw himself as the star in every situation. So this is his story. The story of a truly singular individual and the individual he truly loved. If anything, Hollywood played down their personalities and the real drama for the silver screen. Whether you've never seen the movie or you know it, word for word, the true story and the real people behind it are equally compelling.

[John Wojtowicz]

When I went to basic training, that's when I had my first gay experience. I met a hillbilly by the name of Wilbur. One night I was dreaming that I was getting a blow job. Instead, it was the real thing, and Wilbur was blowing me. And just before I came, I woke up and I go, what are you doing? And he said, well, doesn't it feel good? And I go, yeah, it feels good. He said, well. I said, well, keep on going. And then we kept having this relationship because he blew great. He was like a summer breeze.

[Narrator]

In February 1967, John's unit came under rocket fire at the Da Nang Air Force Base in Vietnam, and 90% of his unit lost their lives. Like a lot of guys, John came home with a brand new plan. He has clearly included continuing to seek out sexual relationships with other men. But being gay in America in the 1960s was no joke. It was still considered by many in the medical profession to be a mental illness that could be cured.

[John Wojtowicz]

Dr. Charles Socaridis is a New York psychoanalyst at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine. They are taught that no man is born homosexual. And many psychiatrists now believe that homosexuality begins to form in the first three years of life. Homosexuality is, in fact, a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions. Gay people who were sentenced to medical.

[Narrator]

Institutions because they were found to be.

[John Wojtowicz]

Sexual psychopaths were subjected sometimes to sterilization, occasionally to castration, sometimes to medical procedures such as lobotomies, which were felt by some doctors to cure homosexuality and other sexual diseases. The most infamous of those institutions was Atascadero in California. Atascadero was known in gay circles as the dachshau for queers, and appropriately so. The medical experimentation in Atascadero included administering to gay people a drug that simulated the experience of drowning, in other words, a pharmacological example of waterboarding. Somebody that I knew that was older than me, his family had him set off where they go up and damage the frontal part of the brain. The last time I saw him, he was a walking vegetable because he was homosexual.

[Narrator]

Like many gay men of the era, John Wojtowitz got married and set up a traditional home life, complete with children. But he also started spending a lot of time in New York's Greenwich Village, which was the home of the city's increasingly visible gay scene. This is how the Village is remembered by participants in the PBS documentary Stonewall Uprising.

[John Wojtowicz]

There were always articles in, like, Life magazine about how the village was liberal and people that were called homosexuals went there. And then there were always Priests ranting in ch to certain places not to go. So you kind of knew where you could go by what you were told not to do. And I got to the corner of.

[Narrator]

6Th Avenue and 8th street, crossed the.

[John Wojtowicz]

Street, and there I had found Nirvana.

[Narrator]

There was all these drag queens and these crazy people, and everybody was carrying on. I made friends that first day.

[John Wojtowicz]

It was the perfect time to be in the Village. I mean, music was great, cafes were good. You know, the coffee houses were good. There was one street called Christopher street where actually I could sit and talk to other gay people beyond just having.

[Narrator]

The open. Gay people that hung out on the streets were basically the have nothing to lose types, which I was. A lot of them had been thrown out of their families. And that crowd between Howard Johnson's and Mama's Chicken Rib was like the basic of the gay community at that time in the Village. You gotta remember, the Stonewall Bar was just down the street from there. It was right in the center of.

[John Wojtowicz]

Where we all were. That was our only block. That was a world that block.

[Narrator]

John Waldowitz was an anomaly in the Village because he hadn't been thrown out of his family. His wife tolerated the fact that he was clearly living a double life on a don't ask, don't tell basis. And he'd always enjoyed the support of his parents, particularly his doting mum. John Waterwitz immersed himself in the Greenwich Village scene. He joined the biggest gay lobby group of the day, the Gay Activists alliance, and he became a member of the entertainment committee. He freely admitted his main motivation for doing so later on.

[John Wojtowicz]

The Gay Activist alliance holds dances every Saturday night at its headquarters, an old firehouse in Greenwich Village. Upwards of a thousand attend. Many would not appear in this film. I was a member of the entertainment committee. So I would meet and greet new gay people coming into the scene. And I could have sex with them quicker than anybody else because they were just coming out. And in those days, we did a lot of getting down.

[Narrator]

Everything changed for John Wojowitz and for the world over after the event that became known as the Stonewall riots on June 28, 1969. That night, many say, was the beginning of the gay rights movement. There are a few contextual bits and pieces you need to know before we hear from people who were there. Firstly, the Stonewall was a gay bar right in the middle of the action in Greenwich Village. But not all gay bars are created equal. So what kind of place was the Stonewall?

[John Wojtowicz]

It was a down at a heels kind of place. It was a lot of street Kids and things like that. It was a bottle club, which meant that I guess you went to the door and you bought a membership or something for a buck and then you went in and then you could buy drinks. We knew that they were serving drinks out of and buckets of water and believed that there had been some disease that had been passed. I never bought a drink at the Stone. Never, never, never. Mafia house beer. I mean, does anyone know what that is?

[Narrator]

The bar itself was a toilet, but it was a refuge. It was a temporary refuge from the street.

[John Wojtowicz]

Stonewall pulled in everyone from every part of gay life, everyone from the street, kids who were white and black, kids from the south, all kinds of designers, boxers, big museum people. First you gotta get past the door. There's a little door that slides open with this power hungry nut behind it that you see this much of his eyes, he sees that much of your face, and then he decides where you're gonna get in. What was so good about the Stonewall was that you could dance slow there because we could feel a sense of love for each other that we couldn't show out on the street. Because you couldn't show any affection out in the street. The street. This chance to find love, you know, I had never seen anything like that. I never saw so many gay people dancing in my life. And I said to myself, oh my God, this will not last.

[Narrator]

Gay bars in New York city in the 1960s were run by the Mafia.

[John Wojtowicz]

New York State Liquor Authority had a rule that one known homosexual and a licensed premise made the place disorderly. So nobody was set up a place where we could meet because they were afraid that the cops would come in and close it. And that's how the mafia got into the gay bar business. The mob raised its head and said, oh, we'll volunteer, you know, we'll set up some gay bars and serve overpriced, watered down drinks to you guys. And the Stonewall was part of that system. The Mafia owned the jukeboxes, they owned the cigarette machines, and most of the liquor was off a truck hijacking. It was a hundred percent profit. I mean, they were stealing the liquor, then watering it down and then charging twice as much as they charged it one door away at the 55.

[Narrator]

And thirdly, the weekend the Stonewall riots broke out also saw the funeral of entertainment legend and gay icon Judy Garland, where fans turned out in their thousands to pay their respects as her coffin was driven slowly through the streets of Manhattan's Lower east side. Historians differ on how influential Judy's Funeral was on the events that took place later that night. But RuPaul made her thoughts known in episode eight, season four of RuPaul's Drag Race. All Stars. Hello.

[John Wojtowicz]

Hello, hello, hello. Hi, Paula.

[Narrator]

Lovely.

[John Wojtowicz]

Hey, All Stars. Hey, Mom. Now, this week, we are paying tribute to one of the greatest stars Hollywood has ever produced, Judy Garland. Judy was a sensitive soul whose magnificent voice and classic films move us till this day. Now, it's been 50 years since Judy passed away, and on the night of her funeral in June 1969, the Stonewall riots occurred. Wow. I didn't know that correlates. I didn't know that either. Fed up with police harassment, the patrons of the Stonewall used their grief over Judy's death to rise up and fight back. And the gay liberation movement was born. Amen. Wow. Now, in the past, asking, are you a friend of Dorothy's? Was a secret code to help closeted people identify each other. And still today, I call my closest friends, my best, Judy.

[Narrator]

Within hours of Judy's funeral on June 28, 1969, New York Police raided the Stonewall Inn. This is the way that night is remembered by those who were there.

[John Wojtowicz]

I remember being a clear evening with a big black sky and the biggest white moon I ever saw. It was incredibly hot. You throw into that that the Stonewall was raided the previous Tuesday night. So it was a perfect storm for the police. They didn't know what they were walking. Most raids by the New York City Police, because they were paid off by the mob took place on a weeknight. It took place early in the evening. The place would not be crowded. This was a highly unusual raid going in there the middle of the night with a full crowd. The Mafia hasn't been alerted. The 6th Precinct hasn't been alerted. We were in the back of the room and the lights went on.

[Narrator]

So everybody stopped what they were doing.

[John Wojtowicz]

Because now the police started coming in, raiding the bar. They pushed everybody to the back room and slowly asking for IDs. Meanwhile, there was crowds forming outside the Stonewall wanting to know what was going on. And we were walking up 7th Avenue, and we were thinking that it was either Black Panthers or the Young Lords who were gonna start it. And we turned the corner from 7th Avenue onto Christopher street, and we saw the paddy wagon pull up there, and some people came out. And being very dramatic, I looked down the street and I could see the Stonewall sign. And I started to see some activity in front of. So I run down there, and as I'm looking around to see what's Going on, police cars, different things happening. It's getting bigger by the minute. And the people coming out weren't going along with it so easily. A rather tough lesbian was busted in the bar, but when she came out of the bar, she was fighting the cops and was trying to get away. And the harder she fought, the more the cops were beating her up and the madder the crowd got. Things started off small, but there was an energy that began to flow through the crowd. People were screaming, pig, copper. People started throwing pennies. And then everybody started to throw pennies, like, you know, like they were. This is what they were, nothing but copper, you know, coppers. That's what they were worth. So it was mostly goofing, really, basically goofing on them, getting them in the car and rocking them back and forth, calling them names, telling them how good looking they were, grabbing their butts, doing things like that, you know, just making their lives miserable for once. At a certain point it felt pretty dangerous to me. But I noticed that the cop that seemed in charge, he said, you know what, we have to go inside for safety. Your choice, you can come in with us or you could stay out here with the crowd and report your stuff from out here. I said, I can go in with you. He said, okay, let's go. He pulls all his men inside. I'm fully inside the stonewall. So then I got pushed back in into the stonewall by these plainclothes cops and they would not let me out. They didn't let anybody out. They were just holding us. Almost like in a hostage situation where you. You don't know what's going to happen next. But there were little tiny pinholes in the plywood windows. I'll call them the windows, but they were plywood and we could look out from there. And every time I went over and looked out through one of the pinholes where he did, we were shocked at how big the crowd had become. They were getting more ferocious. Things were being thrown against the plywood. We piled things up to try to buttress it. Someone at this point had apparently gone down to the cigar stand on the corner and got lighter fluid. And then somebody started a fire. They started with little lighters and matches. Incendiary devices were being thrown in. I don't think there were Molotov cocktails, but it was just fire being thrown in when the doors got open. Well, we did use the small hoses on the fire extinguishers, but we couldn't hold out very long. I was very anti police, had many years already. Of activism against the forces of law and order. This was the first time I could actually sense, not only see them fearful, I could sense them fearful. There was joy because the cops weren't winning. The cops were barricaded inside. We were winning. You could hear screaming outside, a lot of noise from the protesters. And it was a good sound. It was a real good sound to know that, you know, you had a lot of people out there pulling for you. Our goal was to hurt those police. I wanted to kill those cops for the anger I had of me. And the cops got that. They were very lucky because I was from the streets. So at that point, the police are extremely nervous, and a couple of them had pulled out their guns. I actually thought, as all of them did, that we were going to be killed. And if enough people broke through, they would be killed and I would be killed. They're going to come this way and we're going to be backing up, and who knows what will happen? We told this to our men, don't fire. Don't fire until I fire. And he went to each man and said it by name, like, joe, if you fire your gun without me saying your name and the words fire, you will be walking a beat on Staten island, all alone on a lonely beach for the rest of your police career. Do you understand me? We were looking for secret exits, and one of the police women was able to squirm through the window, and they did find a way out. All of a sudden, in the background, I heard some police cars, and we all relaxed. We heard one, then more and more. So the cops came with all these buses, like five buses, and they all were full of tactical police force. And they wore dark police uniforms and riot helmets, and they had billy clubs and they had big plastic shields like Roman army. And they actually farmed the phalanx and just marched down Christopher street and kind of pushed us in front of them. So finally, when they started taking me out arm and arm up to the paddy wagon, I jumped up and I.

[Narrator]

Put one foot on one side, one.

[John Wojtowicz]

Foot on the other, and I sprung back, knocking the two arresting officers knocking to the ground.

[Narrator]

All of a sudden, people started marching.

[John Wojtowicz]

Step by step, and the police started moving back. As the police moved back, we were conscious, all of us, of the area we were controlling. And now we were in control of the area because we were surrounded. We were moving in, they were moving back. And by the time the police would come back towards Stonewall, that crowd had gone all the way around a Washington place, come all the way back around and were back pushing in on them from the other direction. And the police would wonder, these are the same people or different people? All of a sudden the police faced something they had never seen before. Gay people were never supposed to be threats to police officers. There were supposed to be weak men, limp wristed, not able to, you know, do anything. And here they were lifting things up and fighting them and attacking them and beating them. The police weren't letting us dance. If there's one place in the world where you can dance and feel yourself fully as a and that's threatened with being taken away, those words are fighting words.

[Narrator]

Only five people were arrested on that night. And skirmishes between police and civilians continued to break out in the Village over the following days. On the 12 month anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the first gay pride parades were held simultaneously in Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, Los Angeles and Chicago. Like many others in the community, John Waterwit's life was changed by the Stonewall riots. In his case, he made the decision to commit himself to the community and the lifestyle in Greenwich Village. He left his wife and children and took a more political position in the Gay activists alliance. In 1971, John met the person who would become his lover, his muse, and who would ultimately define his life. He remembered it as meeting a guy in half drag. And there's a very good reason for that, a good legal reason for that.

[John Wojtowicz]

There were a whole basket of crimes that gay people could be charged with. One was the 1845 statute that made it a crime in the state to masquerade. You could definitely get arrested if someone had clocked you or someone spooked that you were not really, you know, what you appeared to be on the outside. 3 Articles of clothing had to be of your gender or you would be in violation of that law. Mind you, socks didn't count, so it was underwear and undershirred. Now the next thing was going to ruin the outfit.

[Narrator]

So when John met Elizabeth Eden, she was still mostly using her birth name, Ernie, and she was most often wearing men's pants with women's blouses, full makeup and women's hairstyles so as not to break the law. This is her recollection of that meeting.

[John Wojtowicz]

I met John at St Anthony's Feast and we sort of hit it off right away. He was very, very romantic. Never forgot a date, never forgot a birthday, Christmas, anniversary or anything. In the beginning, it was a dozen roses almost every time we saw each other.

[Narrator]

It was a whirlwind romance. But some of Elizabeth's friends were Worried it was all happening too fast. They weren't convinced that John was the white knight she'd been waiting for.

[John Wojtowicz]

And then I remember at the gay firehouse on Worcester Street, Liz saying, this Vietnam veteran was in love with him. And I saw this guy and he was short. I said, well, he's tiny next to you. What are you gonna do with him? He's tiny. Oh, but he loves me and blah, blah, blah. And he was sort of a troll, you know, and he loved her. There was a troll that loved her.

[Narrator]

History, though, was moving very quickly around John and Elizabeth. The Gay Activists alliance teamed up with a progressive Catholic church to lobby for the right of gay couples to marry. This in 1971.

[John Wojtowicz]

Hi, I'm Randy Wicker. Today we're talking to Father Robert Clement of the Church of the Beloved Disciple. Father Clement, what type of church is a church? The Beloved Disciple. Like all churches, it's basically first a church for everyone. But our congregation is primarily gay. I'd say 90%, approximately. And we exist for the needs of the gay community. And I am gay myself. I see.

[Narrator]

John decided that he and Elizabeth should set the gold standard for marriage in the gay community. And they hastily set about planning a grand ceremony. Although the union would never be legally recognised, it was a stunning affair. The bride wore a beautiful, expensive white wedding gown and the groom was resplendent in his army uniform. The couple took up residence in an apartment in the Village. John was over the moon. But Elizabeth, whom John still referred to as Ernie, was increasingly troubled. She desperately wanted to undergo full gender reassignment and to live out the rest of her life as the woman she felt she truly was. John did not support this idea.

[John Wojtowicz]

Okay. After the wedding ceremony on December 4, we lasted to April and then we broke up. Okay? The reason we broke up is because we kept having arguments and fights because he wanted the sex change operation. And what a lot of people don't understand is I didn't want Ernie to have the sex operation. I at the time, was interested in a guy with big tits and a little dick. But Ernie wanted to be a woman. And in the beginning, I didn't realize how badly he wanted to be this woman.

[Narrator]

The couple remained close over the following months, reconciling and breaking up several times. But Elizabeth also attempted suicide twice, saying that she just couldn't live in the body she was in. After the second attempt, Elizabeth was admitted to the psychiatric unit of Kings County Hospital, where, according to John, doctors prescribed shock treatment as the first step to helping her overcome the sickness. They Said was making her want to mutilate her own body. And it was then that he made the decision to bust her out by any means necessary and to find the money for her sex change operation, which today we would call gender affirming surgery. John found two accomplices, Bobby Westerberg and Sal, naturally. And together they planned a bank robbery. Although planned is probably gilding the lily. They hadn't chosen a bank before the day of the robbery. The three of them simply drove around the city with a car full of guns, checking banks out, looking for one that felt right. Here's Bobby Westerberg describing the day.

[John Wojtowicz]

We went to this first bank. It was on Delancey and exit the manufacturer's Hanover Trust. Then we cut down here in Howard Beach. Looked like an easy hit. And a lot of money in that bank, being that there's only one around. We walked in, my mother's friend, her best friend. How you doing, Bobby? Well, Sal's ready to take his gun out on the guard. So we foil that one. Then we get into this other Chase Manhattan bank down in Manhattan. Now we're driving all over a series of banks and we get in front of this one bank and we're just doing the practice run. Goes in for a silver dollar, comes back out. Okay, let's try the getaway, try to get away. We smack into a car and they threatened to call the police, to have the police. Then we'll search the car, see the guns with a note, which the note was weird. At the end of the note, it says, this is an offer you can't refuse from the Godfather.

[Narrator]

The reason the note included a quote from the Godfather was that the three would be robbers had gone to a cinema the night before to watch the movie for inspiration. Eventually, John suggested a bank he thought could work. It was getting late in the day and many failed attempts had whittled away at their nerves. When they made it to the Chase Manhattan bank in Gravesend, Brooklyn, not far from his mother's apartment. At around 2:58pm on Tuesday, August 22, 1972, John, Bobbie and Sal stormed the bank.

[John Wojtowicz]

Nobody will get over there. Okay. All right, get away from those alarms now. Get in the center. He moves, take his head off.

[Narrator]

Okay, that's from the movie. But just like in the movie, Bobby Westerberg lost his nerve within minutes of entering the bank and ran away, leaving John and Sal to continue with the robbery. According to a friend of John's who was also a reporter for the Village Voice, back in the day, the whole idea of the bank robbery formed in John's head months earlier after a chance encounter in a gay bar with an executive from the Chase Manhattan banking group. The loose lipped exec apparently let John in on a little banking industry secret. He said that late Tuesday afternoons were the best times to rob a bank because they almost always had a week's worth of cash delivered by armored trucks. Earlier on Tuesday afternoons. It was this tip off that led John to believe he could get in and out of a Chase Manhattan branch on a Tuesday afternoon with upwards of $150,000. From there, he planned to drive straight to the Kings County Hospital, where he'd demand Elizabeth's release at gunpoint. Then he'd book in that gender reaffirming surgery and the two of them would live happily ever after in wedded bliss. If it sounds like I'm oversimplifying the idea, I'm really not. As the afternoon unfolded and the obstacles began to mount, John was actually chastised by some of the bank tellers for the lack of forethought he'd put into the robbery. The first snaggy hit was the rather upsetting news that there was very little money in the bank. His intel, or perhaps it was his memory, had let him down and in fact, an armoured truck had carted a large amount of cash out of the building at around 11am that morning. Bank staff hurriedly stuffed around $29,000 into bags for the deflated robbers. But they were interrupted by the sound of sirens. The bank was surrounded by police cars before John and Sal had even made it out of the vault. The poorly planned bank heist suddenly became a hostage situation. When John and Sal peered out through the blinds of the big front windows of the bank building, they were stunned to see hundreds of cops. They were standing behind cars with flashing lights. They were positioned on fire escapes, across the street and on the roofs of buildings, all pointing guns back at those windows back at them. They were understandably terrified, and John feared the police were preparing to do an Attica on him. He was referencing the recent riots at the Attica prison, during which police had chosen not to negotiate with the prisoners, but instead to storm the building and retake it by force. 43 prisoners and 10 hostages died in the offensive. Alongside the many police, throngs of curious onlookers started gathering around the bank. As the afternoon turned into evening, the crowd grew to hundreds and then to thousands, and John realised that the crowd was his best chance at survival. So he started entertaining them, at first by shouting through the window and Then by pacing back and forth outside the front doors of the bank while Sal kept watch on the hostages inside. Trapped but emboldened, John made his demands. Here's a senior policeman on the scene, bringing the media up to speed, although doing it through a poorly suppressed grin.

[John Wojtowicz]

We spoke to him. He's making demands for an escape route. The problem with the demand for the state, the escape route, is that he wants to take the hostages with him at this time.

[Narrator]

All of them?

[John Wojtowicz]

All of them. And what does he want in exchange? Does he want. Does he want his lover? He did and he does. We have this, his wife here. The wife is right across the street, but refuses to go near him. She believes John to be unstable and will kill him. That's his current one, is it not? I believe so, unless he has three or four.

[Narrator]

Elizabeth told conflicting stories later about why she wouldn't go to John that night. She sometimes said it was because she was so sedated before she left the hospital that she didn't understand what was going on. On other occasions, she said John had threatened her life, and the fact that he was armed and holding hostages frightened her immensely. With John refusing to budge until he'd seen Elizabeth and her refusing to go anywhere near him, police improvised and found a former lover to try to bridge the gap.

[John Wojtowicz]

All of a sudden, the cop gets on the phone, somebody's here to see you. So I think it's Ernie. So I go outside. It ain't Ernie. I said, what are you doing here? It's Patsy. Before I met Ernie, one of my relationships was Patsy. So Patsy comes down because Patsy really loves me. So I go outside and I walk over to him and I tongue him. What people forget is in those days in a gay bar, you were not allowed to touch each other. You couldn't walk down the Village holding hands because the Straits would beat you up or the cops would. The phone rings, said, hello. He says, this is the mayor. I said, the mayor who? He said, the mayor of New York. This is Mayor Lindsay. I says, yeah, what do you want? He said, we will kill all the hostages to stop you, because you're not making New York City look ridiculous. You're not letting the New York City Police Department look ridiculous. The whole nation's watching us.

[Narrator]

After Patsy, John's mother was allowed to approach the bank to speak to him. It was very late at night by then, and she pleaded with him to give himself up before he was killed. But he assured her that he was going to get out of there without anyone getting hurt. He reiterated his demands, including Elizabeth's gender affirming surgery, even though she hadn't agreed to speak to him during the siege. The crowd hung in almost all night long to see how this story was going to end. They cheered for John and Sal. They chanted Attica at John's encouragement. But they also catcalled and chanted the word fag too. It was, as many described later, a circus. Eventually, police negotiators convinced John that they had met his demands. That a plane was standing by, complete with extra money on board for the surgery. Everything they said was in place.

[John Wojtowicz]

Later, the two bank robbers demanded a plane at Kennedy Airport in a car to get them there. Finally, around 3:30 this morning, an airport limousine pulled up at the bank with an FBI agent at the wheel. Only then did the second gunman come out of the bank, a rifle slung over his shoulder. 26 year old Salvatore Naturelli then joined Wojtowicz and their hostages in the limousine and headed for Kennedy Airport. Along the way they had plenty of company. Perhaps 40 cars followed, carrying police and relatives of the hostages. The caravan would pass through an airport gate leading to a secluded Runway. The bank robbers had hoped to make their escape in a small jet plane. They failed.

[Narrator]

Before allowing his accomplice Sal Naturali and their seven hostages to climb into the limousine that was to take them to the airport, John Waterwitz ordered the driver out. He checked him, the FBI agent he'd agreed to allow along for the drive and the car thoroughly for weapons. As a veteran, he was confident in this task, but indeed he missed one. When they all climbed into the limo, they ensured that Sal was sat directly behind the FBI agent with a gun pointed at the back of his head. And John and his guns were in the backseat where he could see everyone. What could possibly go wrong? The answer is probably exhaustion and relief. When the car reached the tarmac at JFK airport, it pulled up alongside a small jet. It seemed as though they'd actually made it. The limo driver casually asked the robbers if they wanted food on board for their flight. And as they took a second to consider the question, the agent in the front passenger seat glanced backwards to assess the situation. He simply said yes, which was the driver's cue to grab the hidden handgun. While the agent grabbed the barrel of Sal's shotgun. Within a split second, Sal had been disarmed and shot in the head. The handgun was then aimed at John. John surrendered immediately. He was held in custody until his trial eight months later in 1973, where he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. It wasn't long, though, before Hollywood came calling in the form of director Sidney Lumay. John claimed later that he wasn't interested at first, but Elizabeth talked him into the idea.

[John Wojtowicz]

My lawyer came to me, I think, in October and said, people have been talking about making a movie and if I was interested, right? And I told him, hell, no, I don't want no movie, Right? Then Liz came and said, hey, hey, they want to make a movie. You know, we're going to get money, you know, I got to get the sex change. You know, you make the movie, you get the money, I get the sex change, you know, and then, as I says, yeah, all right. And then I signed the paper.

[Narrator]

John was paid $15,000 for the rights to his story. He gave $4,000 to his first wife, Carmen, and $11,000 to Elizabeth so that she could have the surgery she needed. Sadly for John, though, Elizabeth's medical team helped her reach some conclusions that were probably very reasonable and wise, if heartbreaking for him.

[John Wojtowicz]

And the last time I saw him was after he had the sex change. Okay, he had it on March 27, 1973, he came to see me and he said, I talked to my doctors and my psychiatrist, and he said, I will never see you again. It's not good for me. It won't help me. I have to leave, start my own life as a real woman and have nothing to do with you. And Ernie got up and left. So on Saturday, April 26, I went to confession. On Sunday, I went to communion. Then after that, I cut my wrists and sat on the toilet bowl and cut my forearms like the Romans used to do, and tried to bleed to death instead. I became unconscious and passed out, and they took me to the hospital and stitched me up.

[Narrator]

Dog Day Afternoon was released in 1975, three years after the bank robbery and two years after Elizabeth's surgery and John's attempt on his own life. It was another hit for Pacino and nominated for six Academy Awards. By then, John had moved on. As far as he was concerned, he was married to his third wife, a fellow inmate at Lewisburg State Prison called George. George is my old lady from the joint, John used to say cheerfully, telling people they had much in common. For example, they were both serving time for robbing banks and taking hostages. George saved his life, he said, and eventually, after serving just five years of his 20 year sentence, George helped John get out of jail. Thanks to his intelligence and knowledge of the law, George was released soon after, and together they moved into John's mother's apartment in Brooklyn. For his part, John didn't see why he shouldn't be able to maintain relationships with all three of his wives when he got out of prison. His first wife, Carmen, didn't love it, but she continued to indulge it to a certain degree. And Elizabeth never truly broke off contact with him altogether. It's hard to know the truth from their various versions of events, but we do know that John and Elizabeth were interviewed together several times after he was released from prison, and that John delivered the eulogy at her funeral in 1987. He said at that time that although she'd been living in Rochester in Massachusetts, Elizabeth had visited him about once a month in New York until she died of AIDS related pneumonia. He and George had broken up by the time Elizabeth died. John continued to live with his beloved mother until his own death from breast cancer in 2006. His mother, Terry, doted on him until the very end and nursed him through his illness. She kept his ashes in her apartment and she assisted filmmakers Francois Ken and Alison Berg in making a documentary about his colorful life called the Dog, which was released in 2013. His statements in this podcast have been taken from that documentary.

[John Wojtowicz]

He was bad and he was good. I remember when he was good.