He was sentenced to six months in the Hagerstown State Reformatory, forcing him to drop out of Blessed Sacrament School on Old York Road in the seventh grade. 'But when the police got there, Bill was the one sitting on it.' 'Actually, his friends stole the bike,' says Carl Becker, 59. But his parents' union ended shortly after his birth, and his mother married a hard-working airplane mechanic named Becker, who adopted the 3-year-old boy and gave him his German name.īut Bill Becker's wiry black hair and dark skin would forever mark him as an Italian - a person apart in the pale-faced Irish-German enclave of Govans - a target of mean taunts from other kids.Īs his younger brother tells it, Bill Becker's problems really began at 14 when he and a group of his buddies from the old neighborhood on Alhambra Avenue ripped off a motor bike and took it for a joy ride. He was born in the teeth of the Great Depression in 1932. This, then, is the story of a Baltimore wise guy's last stand. But that doesn't mean he deserves to die in prison.' 'He is an extremely intelligent man with a natural gift for storytelling who has had a rather ornate life,' says Joseph diGenova, one of his lawyers. And, frankly, he looks like hell without his toupee. He's blown up like a balloon from eating starchy jail food. He's suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and a bad heart.
