When NC native and former Charlotte resident Edwin Dodson was interred recently in his hometown of Shelby, it marked the end of a bizarre and bittersweet journey. The story began in the early 70s when, after living in Charlotte for a few years, Dodson moved to California and opened a successful and trendy antique shop on Hollywood’s famous Melrose Avenue. For over a decade, he hobnobbed and partied with celebrities, models and designers. Unfortunately, Dodson also became addicted to cocaine and heroin — which led him to become the most prolific bank robber in history. Dodson robbed a record-setting 64 banks, including six in one day, and served close to 14 years in prison. He was released last October, and passed away shortly afterward on February 21 from liver failure related to Hepatitis C and cancer. Just A Normal Kid
Dodson was born in Shelby on Christmas Eve 1948. His father, an insurance executive, died when Dodson was a baby, and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. Although money was tight, Dodson’s mother worked hard at a textile plant to provide for her only child. Both his mother and grandmother were devout Christians and, while they were strict, they showered him with love and attention. As a youngster, he attended church regularly, played Little League baseball, and was in the school band.”He was just a normal kid,” says Marjorie Bass of Statesville, Dodson’s first cousin.
“He was a cute, sweet, chubby little boy,” says Janice Wilson of Blacksburg, SC, another cousin.
After graduating high school in 1967, Dodson enrolled at UNC-Charlotte to study art. By then he had fully embraced the hippie subculture, sported long hair, and lived with a couple of other like-minded folks in a big house (which has since been torn down) in Dilworth, at the corner of South Boulevard and East Boulevard. His mother and aunt, outraged at his lifestyle decisions, at times drove from Shelby and stood on the sidewalk outside Dodson’s “hippie house” and quoted scripture, urging Dodson to change his sinful ways.
It was during this time that Dodson and a young woman named “Susan” met at Freedom Park.
“What I remember of Ed is that he was overweight, had long, straggly hair, and wasn’t very attractive — basically a scruffy-looking hippie,” says Susan, who now lives in a small town south of Charlotte. “But he was a nice guy, he had a great personality, and was funny and kind. He was just sort of living day to day like so many other people.”
At the time, Dodson was a small-time drug dealer, selling pot and acid to folks like Susan and her friends.
“I had my first acid trip with Ed,” Susan says. “This was at the height of the whole hippie era in Charlotte. It was all kind of innocent.”
Dodson and Susan remained casual friends for about a year, until Susan went off to college in 1969 and later moved to Seattle. However, she would hear from Dodson one more time, seven years later in a surprise phone call.
Dodson, still living in Dilworth, was busted for marijuana possession during a traffic stop in 1971. Facing a drug conviction and possible jail time, he and his girlfriend hit the road and eventually landed in Los Angeles in 1972, with Dodson living under an assumed name. He took to his new surroundings, and landed a job helping out at an antique store.
His good fortunes continued when his lawyer back in Charlotte managed to get his drug case thrown out. Dodson dumped his alias and opened his own antique store on Melrose Avenue. His natural affability, charm and gift for gab helped make his antique shop a success. It also became a favorite hangout for an artsy bohemian crowd as well as celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Joan Collins, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Steve Martin, Liberace, Lily Tomlin, Tony Perkins, Timothy Leary, Steve McQueen and Jack Nicholson, who would become a good friend.
Dodson had indeed come a long way from his small hometown in North Carolina. But his adventures in La La Land would eventually take a big downhill detour.
The Gentleman Bank Robber
Timothy Ford, a writer and art dealer, arrived in LA in 1976. His buddy, “Bob,” who had recently moved to LA from Seattle, picked him up at the airport and took him to the apartment of Eddie Dodson, a charming, dapper and somewhat flamboyant fellow who owned a trendy, hip antique shop on Melrose. The three friends were talking when Bob mentioned his friend Susan from Seattle. The more Bob talked about Susan, Dodson realized it was the same girl he had befriended in Charlotte. They called her on the spot. “I was in complete shock,” Susan says of the unexpected phone call. “I figured I would never hear from Ed again. I asked Bob what Ed looked like, and he said he looked really good. He had lost weight, cut his hair, and was very stylish. He was even dating models and hanging out with celebrities. I just couldn’t believe it. He had completely re-invented himself.”
Ford and Dodson hit it off, and the two friends dove headfirst — and nose first — into LA’s raucous party scene. “It was the 70s and 80s in Hollywood, and there was a lot of drugs, especially cocaine,” says Ford, who is working on a book about Dodson. “There was also a flood of Persian heroin in LA during the 80s. So coming in the wake of all that nerve-rattling cocaine was this nerve-soothing heroin. A certain percentage of people got involved with both. Ed was one of them.”
For over a decade, Dodson lived the high life, both literally and figuratively. Eventually, the drugs started to take their toll and his friends, loved ones and business all suffered.
By 1983, he was so strung out on drugs he started robbing banks to support his habit. Over the next nine months he robbed 64 banks (the most single-handed bank heists in the recorded history of the world), including six banks on a single day — November 29, 1983. Dodson mostly robbed banks in affluent areas, used only an unloaded starter pistol, and was known for his soft-spoken, courteous and friendly manner. Dodson’s old LA friends would later say they couldn’t believe the emaciated, sickly looking figure shown on the banks’ surveillance tapes was the once vibrant and fashionable antique shop owner. The law finally caught up with Dodson in 1984, and he was arrested at the Farmer’s Daughter Motel in Hollywood.
“It was hard to believe,” says Ford. “Everyone knew he was using drugs, but the idea that he could pull off all these bank robberies seemed impossible. He was having trouble getting his store open, how could he rob six banks in one day?”
Dodson was sentenced to 15 years, and served a little over 10. When he was released, his old friend Jack Nicholson hired him as a “caretaker” for his mountain retreat in Santa Monica.
“It was a beautiful hideaway home with hundreds of white rose bushes, a spa, tennis court and swimming pool,” Ford says. “Ed lived there and worked as the housesitter. Jack was basically just taking care of him.”
But Dodson couldn’t stay clean. On several occasions, Ford helped get him into rehab, but it never lasted. Ford says Nicholson finally had enough, and two weeks before Dodson’s parole was over, Nicholson told him he had to go.
A month later, in 1999, he started robbing banks again, eight in all. He was arrested again, and this time was looking at 120 years in prison. Around that time, he was also diagnosed with Hepatitis-C. Partly because the court thought he didn’t have long to live, Dodson got only 46 months, although he had six additional months tacked on for drug use. He was released in October 2002.
After spending nearly 14 of his 54 years in prison, Dodson died February 21 at UCLA Medical Center.
“Ed was very charming, flamboyant and irresistibly engaging,” says Ford. “He had a wonderful quality to make people feel like they were the center of the universe when he was talking to them, all the while making him the focus of attention. He was the perfect salesman. But he was also somewhat exasperating. He very much wanted to be in control of things. Sometimes we have to let life bring us what it brings us. He didn’t have a lot of faith. I think that was his downfall.”
Dodson’s funeral in Shelby on February 26 was a small, somber affair. Most of his immediate family had passed away, and he had long ago lost touch with his friends in the Carolinas. Many newspapers, including the Shelby Star, ran an Associated Press blurb about his passing, calling the NC native and Hollywood shopowner one of the most prolific bank robbers of the last century.
“To us he’s family, he’s ours,” says Wilson, Dodson’s cousin in South Carolina. “We really don’t want to capitalize on his notoriety. It’s heartbreaking. When we heard he was involved in drugs and robbing banks we didn’t believe it. We loved him. It’s just sad that drugs can do you that way.”
“He was raised in a loving home,” says Bass, Dodson’s cousin in Statesville. “Nobody could understand why he did the things he did. But someone introduced him to cocaine and heroin, and I think that’s why he got into trouble. I loved Eddie; I’m not ashamed of him. He’s my own blood kin. I wish he hadn’t done the things he did, but who am I to judge?”
Contact Sam Boykin at 704-944-3623 or sam.boykin@cln.com.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2003.
I knew Eddie, and dated him for about 6 months. This was in 1982. I met him in his shop on Melrose, bought a table from him, and later that day he delivered it to my home from the trunk of his big black car (was it a Lincoln?) He had a bottle of Dom under his arm and invited himself in for a drink….that’s how it started. He was quite a character, and we had many interesting evenings. Little did I know that he was spending his days robbing banks. I only found out a year after I went back to Canada when someone mailed me a news clipping of the Yankee Bandit. I was shocked. He was so sweet and charming but there was an underlying cynicism and deep sadness. He seemed very “deep” as well, but now I think maybe it was the drugs talking. I just googled Eddie last year wondering if he was out of jail and doing ok and was very sad to hear of his death. I pray that he knew the Lord and perhaps I will see him again, under much better circumstances. Carol Mills (nee Lockhart)
This is blowing my mind. Ed was a good friend of mine. I was driving through LA in 1972 and Ed and his girlfriend, Lane, were the only people I knew in southern California. I pulled off the freeway on Sunset Boulevard to try to call him and the only Ed Dodson in the phonebook had died just before I called. It wasn’t him (Edgar, instead of Edwin), so I drove out onto the freeway to drive up to SF and PULLED IN BEHIND HIM AND LANE IN HIS MGA! It still gives me chills to think about it. They took care of me because I had just had my heart broken by a girl I met in Grand Canyon whose mother spirited her away in the middle of the night. Ed and Lane took care of me. The girl later found me, but I lost contact with Ed the very next year. Wow. I am so sad I couldn’t have talked to him before he died. The weirdest thing about this is that I have been writing a short story about this experience and just finished it when I found out about the movie and tracked down Lane, as well. Proof of a higher power in my humble opinion. God bless Ed Dodson!
I remember Eddie as a child. He along with several other kids in the neighborhood of Liveoak Street and McBrayer Extension would gather at the side of his house and play tackle football. His mother would not let him leave the yard as I recall so we would all gather at his house. All the kids in the neighborhood like him. My folks moved away from that neighborhood and I lost contact with him. Just today learned what happened to him. Such a tragic end to a kid who was loved by all around him.
I’m glad THE ELECTRIC SLIDE didn’t premier at Cannes and was canned at the premier instead. It would be sad to see a poor interpretation filling peoples’ heads with cliches, exaggerations and made up stuff. A movie about Ed has to be a GREAT movie about Ed.
Before I discovered his infamous junkie robbing spree and sad demise he had already found his way into a chapter in my recently completed memoir, THE SPY FROM WEIRDSBORO, which is about my life and travels in and out of Chapel Hill when girls got the pill and boys got drafted. Discovering the fate of people I loved and who loved me and who I’d lost contact with over the decades has been part of the process and is documented in the work. Ed is among several very close friends who passed without me knowing, but who were somehow always on my mind, sometimes to the point of obsession. In the journey of writing and researching to check facts and dates, I made a personal discovery. It is simply that these spirits of the dead wanted me to know they had gone, so they lingered with me until I finally discovered they passed long ago and that was why I could not find them. When I finally cried for each person, knowing I would never see them again in the flesh, the ghost and the obsession fell away. So, if you want a cure, “knowing” is an effective exorcism. Most people don’t even know they have a ghost following them, but we all have our angels. In my research I discovered that my cat, that is very much like the cat I had in 1972 that Ed loved so much, was born the week Ed died. He is eleven years old now and he is the sweetest cat on Earth. Ed Dodson was one of my angels in life and in many ways he has been with me in death. Thank you, Ed. God bless your family and friends who know what a blessing you were!
I dated Ed a short while in 1970-1971 and still have 3 letters with art work he wrote to me. He was a bit chunky, long haired and definetly developing his charming personality when I knew him. He was just a little too much for me and we parted friends and lost touch. He moved to LA and a mutual friend living there would speak of him ever so often. It’s heartbreakingly sad to hear his story of total dependence on drugs, money and trying to keep up with the “It’s”. I’m glad he had a friend in Jack Nicholson who tried to help him the best he could. I still can’t fathom Ed robbing banks but can see him wheeling and dealing. Rest in peace friend.
Jack Nicholson should make a movie about Ed .
I didn’t know Eddie but my current wife did. She hung out with him often. At one point as they were hanging out Eddie borrowed a toy pistol from her son. Later on he use that toy pistol to rob banks. I visited Eddie in the hospital a few days before he died he seemed like a great guy had a great personality even though he was almost dead. Beer that’s basically all I knew about Eddie Dodson the good gentleman bank-robber who robbed 67 banks in one day.