21. An Audacious Vagabond
Petty crook Wilhelm Voigt was a longtime vagabond, drifter, and petty thief. Born in 1849 in Prussia, he was first arrested at age fourteen for theft. He was prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned for two weeks, and expelled from school. That kicked off a lifelong criminal career. It was not a particularly successful career, however. Voigt was no master criminal, and was repeatedly caught. In the 27 years from 1864 to 1891, for example, he racked up sentences of 25 years for various offenses such as burglary, forgery, and theft. Then he received his longest sentence yet, 15 years, for armed robbery.
Released in February, 1906, Voigt tried his hand at an honest living, and supported himself in Berlin as a shoemaker. However, he was expelled from the German capital as an undesirable, and soon thereafter, resumed his criminal career. While in prison, he had mused to a fellow inmate: “with some soldiers, you could really do some business“. He now decided to turn his musings into action, and rob a suburban town hall by deceit that involved the use of unwitting soldiers. Voigt scouted several municipalities, and eventually picked the small town of Kopenick, near Berlin. His plan was to simply waltz in, and order town officials to hand him their town’s treasury. Amazingly, it worked.
