This week in Philly history, ‘Slick Willie’ Sutton escapes — on his sixth try — from a Philadelphia prison

In the dark hours before dawn, “Slick Willie” Sutton and four other inmates, dressed in stolen guard uniforms, crossed the old Holmesburg Prison yard with a pair of ladders and confronted the castle-like stone walls.

The tower watchman shined a spotlight on the troupe.

“It’s all right,” Sutton recalled replying in his 1976 memoir, Where the Money Was. “It’s an emergency,” he said, alluding to repairs.

The confused watcher looked away, and on Feb. 10, 1947, the five prisoners climbed the first ladder up the wall, and climbed down the second to freedom.

Sutton, an adept bank robber and talented escape artist, finally and fully broke out of a Philadelphia prison — on his sixth try.

“The escape from Holmesburg was my masterpiece,” he wrote in his memoir, “because it was impossible. Nobody had ever escaped from there before.”

But his freedom was fleeting.

Cops and newspapers nicknamed him “Slick Willie” for his slippery nature, and later “The Actor,” for the dramatic flair streaking through his criminal portfolio.

He dressed well, and in disguises — mail carrier, florist deliveryman, police officer. He was an Irishman from Brooklyn, but he was also a gentleman when conducting his criminal proceedings. He carried, but didn’t use, a gun. And he was polite.

In 1934, Sutton was a fugitive from New York for having escaped from Sing Sing Prison, when he was arrested in Philly.

He participated in a $10,800 holdup of the Corn Exchange Bank & Trust Co. branch at 60th and Ludlow Streets, and was subsequently sentenced to 25 to 50 years at Eastern State Penitentiary in Fairmount.

After four failed attempts to escape, he broke out along with 11 others in 1945, by way of a 97-foot tunnel underneath the penitentiary. They were all rounded up quickly, and another 10 to 20 years were tacked on to Sutton’s previous sentence.

And to ensure his containment, he was sent to Holmesburg, which had earned the moniker “Terrordome.”

The Holmesburg escape plan began with an inmate faking an asthma attack and calling for a hospital visit, which required a two-guard escort. This left the prison short-staffed.

Two of the schemers cut through their cell’s locking bars with smuggled-in hacksaw blades, and surprise-attacked guards who were making their rounds. They stole the guards’ uniforms, tied them up in a boiler room, and headed for the wall with their ladders of freedom.

About five years after the escape, Sutton was captured in New York, where he was reincarcerated in a maximum-security facility.

Nearly 70, and suffering with emphysema, he was released on Christmas Eve 1969.

“Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it,” he wrote in his memoir.

Why did he break out?

“Because I was in,” he wrote. “But also, you know, because there’s a thrill that comes from breaking out of jail.”

He died in 1980 at age 79, having spent 37 of those years incarcerated.