Final Years
Gardner published his autobiography, "Hellcatraz", a sensational book that contains not only descriptions of his interesting life but also such familiar names as Al Capone. He attended crime lectures, and he and Louis Sonney made one of the first re-enactments on a short film called, "You Can't Beat the Rap". The ex-convict landed a job as a film salesman and an exposition barker. A 1939 movie called "I Stole A Billion" was based on his life. The movie was a failure.
On the evening of January 10, 1940, Gardner wrote four notes at his hotel room in San Francisco, one of which was attached to the door warning: "Do not open door. Poison gas. Call police." He sealed the door from the inside, then killed himself by dropping cyanide into a glass of acid and inhaling the poison fumes.
Read more about this topic: Roy Gardner (bank Robber)
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or sympathy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)