The Thief, The Bank Teller, and Justice

John Whitrock was less than a year away from the end of his prison sentence. He was serving 15 years for robbing 23 banks across Minnesota, when he received a letter from a stranger about sharing his story in a documentary. “I was assuming it would just be a short documentary,” said filmmaker Mark Brown, recalling his first interview session with Whitrock several months after his release from prison.

Now, seven years later, The Fishing Hat Bandit is premiering at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, detailing not just Whitrock’s crime spree, but the damage it inflicted on the bank tellers and his journey to forgiveness.

Director Mark Brown, John Whitrock, and producer Chris Newberry

Finding The Story

Prior to his letter, Brown had never met Whitrock but remembered the news stories about the ‘fishing hat bandit.’ “I remembered the story about his arrest years before. And I was just curious what happened to him.” He found him on the federal inmate locater in a medical prison in Rochester. “That’s how I found him and just sent him a letter.” Whitrock was receptive and happy to participate, thinking the movie might be good promotion for a potential memoir.

But it wasn’t until he started filming that Brown realized he might have a bigger story beyond interviews with Whitrock sharing his unusual past. “If there is some angle to the story that brings us into the present, then maybe it could be something more.”

In that first interview, Whitrock told Brown about a victim-impact class he took in prison. “He had kind of justified it to himself in the past, saying it was a victim-less crime,” Brown recalled. “It kind of opened his eyes for the first time to the reality that he traumatized people.” Whitrock had some regrets and wanted to make things right.

New Voices and themes

Brown started reaching out to the tellers that Whitrock had robbed to see if they’d be interested in sharing their side of the story. Most turned him down, but a few took him up on the offer, including Dawn Jukes. It was after that interview that Brown approached her about meeting Whitrock as part of the movie. “She didn’t hesitate at all and said yes.”

With Jukes interested in meeting Whitrock, Brown needed a framework to guide their meeting and allow the film to explore questions about justice and forgiveness. Specifically, Brown was curious about restorative justice and if that was a model that could serve all parties. “I just generally think it’s a really admirable approach to dealing with both sides of a crime.” Brown brought in Brenda Burnside, a practitioner of restorative justice in the Twin Cities, to come up with an approach and ultimately lead the session.

The Final Act

Both Jukes and Whitrock were onboard with meeting, but Brown was having some anxiety about filming it and feeling ill-equipped “to ensure that it doesn’t do more harm than good.” Burnside helped him overcome those fears. As long as everyone was prepared and clear-eyed, filming their meeting could help the audience visualize the restorative justice process.

The actual session lasted over an hour and a half, but was edited to just eight minutes for the movie. “My editor Nick Clausen did a great job condensing the meeting but also hitting the high points and the hard points of the meeting.”

John Whitrock walking around Spirit Lake, Iowa

Labor of Love

What started as a letter to a stranger turned into an seven-year odyssey and the first feature film for Brown. “When I started [the film] I was single and living on my own. Now I’m at the end and married and I have two kids.” The process was slowed down by Covid and a lack of resources. “If we hadn’t been able to raise money from so many supportive people, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the post-production that we did on [the movie].”

Brown also found joy in the actual filming process, including the re-enactment scenes depicting the robberies. “A lot of the stuff with John is very vérité, but the re-enactments of the robberies were very stylized—we have an actor playing John, we cast actors playing the bank tellers.”

By bringing together stylized filmmaking techniques and themes of forgiveness and restorative justice, Brown hopes to elevate the movie beyond the standard tropes of the true-crime genre. But the long history of heists and bank robberies shown on film are never far from his or Whitrock’s mind. “When [John] was a kid, you know, the hero of the movie was the person hunting down the bank robbers. And he always identified with the outlaw.”

The Fishing Hat Bandit is playing at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival on Friday April 19th and Saturday April 20th.

Story by: Tom Schmidt

Follow the latest news on The Fishing Hat Bandit here.

See other stories from our Spring 2024 Issue “Journey” here.