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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Photo by Lisa Hyman
Attila Ambrus in prison.
He made bank tellers swoon. He was madly pursued by the Mound of Asshead. In a rare prison interview, the Robin Hood of Hungary looks back at his wild ride through the ruins of the Soviet bloc.
Dec 23, 2005 | Three and a half hours northeast of Budapest by train, in a quaint village in a rural, hilly part of Hungary near the famous Tokaj wine region, sits a rarely visited tourist attraction. Were it easier to enter the hulking yellow limestone building on Satoraljaujhely's Main Street, perhaps more people would have heard of the place. But the former underwear factory, situated between a barber shop and a pizza parlor, now serves as the country's maximum security prison. And among its inmates is the man who may be the world's most popular living folk hero.
As if something out of either a Coen brothers comedy or a Shakespearean tragedy, the "gentleman bandit" Attila Ambrus grabbed a piece of post-Iron Curtain history and ran with it so outrageously through 1990s Budapest that he has inspired a cabaret theater show, a hit song, a Hollywood film deal and a worldwide following that continues to grow. On Oct. 6, 2005 -- a full six years since his capture following the largest manhunt in modern Eastern European history -- supporters in 12 cities around the world toasted the so-called Whiskey Robber's 38th birthday.
"Too bad I won't be able to clink glasses with anyone," Ambrus told Salon in a visitor's room in the prison where he is serving a 17-year sentence. "But I'm not a folk hero."
In fact, Ambrus, who hails from a one-street village in Transylvania, is the very definition of such a figure, a man whose legend came to symbolize his countrymen's frustration with their corrupt leaders. From 1993 to 1999, he robbed 29 formerly state-owned banks, post offices and private travel agencies in a crime spree that played out like a serialized satire of the times. Like the rest of the former Soviet bloc, Hungary was struggling with byproducts of democracy it hadn't before seen: unemployment, homelessness and a spiraling crime rate.
Wearing a flea-market selection of bad costumes and hairpieces, Ambrus handed flowers to female bank tellers during his heists, mailed bottles of wine to the police chief and once disguised himself as the head of the robbery division to pull off a job. Since his identity was then unknown, the media dubbed him the "Whiskey Robber" because witnesses always spotted him downing shots of Johnnie Walker in a pub across from the bank before shaking the place down. "He didn't rob banks," editorialized the Hungarian daily Magyar Hirlap after Ambrus' arrest. "He merely performed a peculiar redistribution of the wealth that differed from the elites only in its method."
In Hungary today, popular support for Ambrus has dipped from its 80 percent peak in 1999, when his streak came to a wild end. But he is enough of an antiestablishment figure that his name is still invoked at protest rallies. His man-of-the-people image, good looks and "bandit honesty" have given him a universal third-party-candidate appeal. He is often referred to as the "modern-day Robin Hood," even though he did not share his loot with the poor. And he is distinct from other internationally known modern folk heroes such as John Dillinger and Ned Kelly, in that he never hurt anyone in the commission of his crimes.
Not that that has won everyone's heart. "I can't believe that several million people exist who can be a fan of a criminal," says Lajos Varju, the robbery-division chief of the Budapest police department who unsuccessfully tracked Ambrus for six years. "But the social situation created this."
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Today, Ambrus resides in a small cement cell in the Satoraljaujhely (pronounced roughly as sha-toh-rai-oh-hay) maximum security prison, along with several hundred of Hungary's most violent criminals. Ambrus, despite having never seriously injured anyone, is treated as a major security threat, mostly because of the cartoonlike escape he made in July 1999, rappelling from a bedsheet from a fourth-floor window of the Budapest city jail.That event made his story international news, with coverage of the frenzied hunt for him making papers from London to Sydney to New York (and in Salon.) After three more outlandish robberies -- he once had to outswim police in the Danube River -- Ambrus was finally captured, convicted and sentenced.
I first interviewed Ambrus four years ago in the Budapest Municipal Courthouse during a break in his sentencing hearing. On that occasion, when I asked if he'd ever consider escaping again, he said, while eyeing the flock of armed guards hovering over us, "I couldn't say. I wouldn't be sincere."
Today he's mellowed, but the fighting spirit that took root in his rocky childhood doesn't need much provocation to show its face. When the prison guard, who was smoking a cigarette outside the small glass-partitioned booth in which we are speaking, tells us we have only half an hour left, Ambrus immediately begins arguing that more time should be added because of the wasted minutes bringing him down from his cell. (He eventually loses the argument, turning to me and rolling his big hazel eyes.)
Even dressed in thick prison-issue black-spotted shirt and gray pants, it is easy to see why Ambrus has had a Stockholm-syndrome effect on those around him, particularly women. (One female teller, who was a victim before Ambrus thought to bring roses with him to the banks, was quoted in the Hungarian media as saying, "It's a shame we were at the beginning, because we didn't get the flowers.")
Bearing a close resemblance to Colin Farrell (though Johnny Depp is reportedly interested in portraying him in a Warner Bros. production), Ambrus has a strong jaw, an easy, knowing grin and an athletic build befitting the day job he held during the years he was robbing: goaltending for one of Hungary's biggest professional hockey teams.
Ambrus' exploits on the ice, however, were not as successful as off. "I was a disaster as a goaltender," he admits. Which is something of an understatement. In a single game in 1995, he gave up 23 goals, needless to say in a losing effort. During one five-game stretch, he gave up 88. But he was kept on because the team had no money to pay better players and also because he was so devoted -- never missing a practice -- that his discipline and maniacal work ethic were legendary around the league.
Now, because of his notoriety as a bank robber, a flag flies above the dilapidated outdoor UTE stadium where he played, reading "Tallyho Whiskey Robber!" His jersey, or replicas of it, are regular items at Budapest auctions, reportedly garnering a few hundred dollars apiece.
"I can't believe how many times they've sold 'my' jersey now," he says, shaking his head and comedically raising his combable eyebrows. For all of his exploits and derring-do, he is humble and down-to-earth, sheepishly admitting his inability to be faithful to any of his girlfriends and the justice of his being incarcerated. "I'm a criminal in every bone of my body," he says.
But he clearly thinks of himself as distinct from the rest of the prison population. "I don't mean it as a claim," he says, "but the people here aren't exactly graduates of the National Science Academy." Nor of course is Ambrus. But for an autodidact refugee, he has come a long way. He recently finished his general equivalency high school degree (with straight A's) and is trying to figure out if he can continue on to college via correspondence courses.
Although his mood is decidedly better and he is no longer threatening suicide, as did when I first began visiting him, he is still bitter about the government's attempt to try him for attempted murder. "The one thing I swore I would never do was hurt anyone," he says. But what really gets him on a roll is the news. He watches CNN on a 14-inch color set mounted in the corner of his cell and reads six or seven newspapers a day from the library. While I'm turning a page in my notes, he mentions Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, saying, "What's the story with the New York Times? You can't trust that paper, can you?"
This feeds into a rant that seems to go on as long his robbery spree. "It's the same throughout history," he says. "Whoever has the money has the power. They are the establishment and they fix the system, make the rules ... Hungary is not so different now than it was under communism. As soon as someone new gets into power, they eat up everything. Sometimes there's no other way to fight." He mentions that gangs from Sicily and Marseilles and outlaws from Che Guevara to the IRA all supported their political causes by robbing banks.
In retrospect, however, he says that his streak continued at least in part because he "got caught up in the consumerism ... In America for instance, I wouldn't last 15 minutes without being arrested," he says, meaning the temptation to steal something would be too great. "But I can't say that I regret it. I tried a lot of other paths that didn't work out. I guess this was my destiny."
