Brady was adamant that Brooks not be harmed. When the robbery was done, they’d let him go and give him his car back. Then they would tie him up and stow him in a vacant house Boblit claimed to know about. Boblit would blindfold Brooks, since he would recognize Brady. He and Boblit decided to waylay Brooks as he came home from work after midnight. Brady had seen it-and coveted it-when he dropped by to visit. Less than two weeks earlier, Brooks had gotten his first new car: a blue, two-tone Ford Fairlane. He was living in a shack in some woods, not far from the plant.

Now Brooks had a good job working late shift at a small plastics factory in Odenton, about 20 miles southwest of Baltimore. He had been a hired hand on Brady’s grandfather’s farm and had recently stayed with Brady and his aunt while he recovered from surgery. William Brooks had one.īrooks, 53, had known Brady for most of his life. For a successful getaway, they needed a dependable car. Unfortunately, Brady’s old Ford wasn’t reliable, especially if they got in a chase. They’d do it on Saturday morning, because folks would have deposited their weekly pay on Friday afternoon. So they settled on the one bank in tiny Stevensville, Maryland, some 30 miles away just over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Nearby big cities like Baltimore and Washington, D.C., had too many cops and guards. Over the next few days, they hashed out a sort of plan. He decided to stick up a bank, with Donald Boblit’s help. No matter how much he thought, Brady could see only one way to get that kind of money. “Somehow,” he said, “in two weeks it’ll be in the bank.” Nancy asked no questions she put the check in her purse. It was a dream sum-a huge number just pulled out of the air that he guessed could solve all their troubles, if he could only make it real. That Sunday, when they were together, on an impulse he wrote her a check for $35,000, post-dated to July 6. She had planned a trip to New York to visit family for a week, leaving on Monday, June 23. But he wanted Nancy to know how much he was committed to her. He had recently bought a maroon 1947 Ford and was behind on his bills. He was working at a local tobacco packing company for $1.50 an hour.

Then Nancy got pregnant.īrady didn’t know what to do. Brady and the two siblings soon became close, and he and Nancy fell in love. Although both she and her husband, Slim, were living with her parents, they hardly spoke, and she let everyone know she intended to do whatever she wanted. Nancy was “just a dumb, good-looking blonde,” according to a friend, in the pre-feminist jargon of the ‘50s. Donald was 25, gawky, lonely and barely literate. In March of 1958, Brady met Nancy and her brother, Donald Boblit, because their parents were good friends with his aunt. Then, over the space of four years, his otitis stopped, he got married, left the service, earned his high school equivalency, got divorced and returned home to Maryland. At 19, in 1951, he enlisted in the Air Force and served as a military policeman at bases in Washington state and Greenland. This story was produced in partnership with Longreads.īrady gladly dropped out during the eighth grade to work full-time on his uncle’s farm.

Bad boys for life brady