How to Win Friends and Influence People

Dale Carnegie

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On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New York City had ever known had
come to its climax. After weeks of search, “Two Gun” Crowley - the killer, the gunman
who didn’t smoke or drink - was at bay, trapped in his sweetheart’s apartment on West
End Avenue.
One hundred and fifty policemen and detectives laid siege to his top-floor hideaway.
They chopped holes in the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the “cop killer,” with
teargas. Then they mounted their machine guns on surrounding buildings, and for
more than an hour one of New York’s fine residential areas reverberated with the crack
of pistol fire and the rut-tat-tat of machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an over-
stuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand excited people watched the
battle. Nothing like it ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New York.
When Crowley was captured, Police Commissioner E. P. Mulrooney declared that the
two-gun desperado was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered in the
history of New York. “He will kill,” said the Commissioner, “at the drop of a feather.”
But how did “Two Gun” Crowley regard himself? We know, because while the police
were firing into his apartment, he wrote a letter addressed “To whom it may concern, ”
And, as he wrote, the blood flowing from his wounds left a crimson trail on the paper.
In this letter Crowley said: “Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that
would do nobody any harm.”
A short time before this, Crowley had been having a necking party with his girl friend
on a country road out on Long Island. Suddenly a policeman walked up to the car and
said: “Let me see your license.”
Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut the policeman down with a