This Wild ‘Humans Of New York’ Story About A Prison Escapee Has Everyone Hooked
Walter Miller escaped from prison in 1977, and happily lived his new life as Bobby Love – that is until police knocked on his door in 2015.
Humans Of New York has managed to do it again.
Just two months after blessing the world with the compelling story of Tanqueray, the ex-stripper with huge secrets, the photoblog has shared a new equally thrilling story. Telling the story of a man named Bobby Love, Humans of New York published an 11-part series on the mystery man with a turbulent past.
In the first part of the series we learn that Bobby Love’s real name isn’t actually Bobby at all ––something that his wife, Cheryl, learned when the police came to arrest him five years ago. Despite the pair being married for 35 years, Cheryl had no clue that Bobby — real name Walter Miller — was a fugitive who had been running from the law for 38 years.
Leaving the story on a huge cliffhanger, the post ended: “At this point I’m crying, and I screamed: ‘Bobby, what’s going on?’ Did you kill somebody?’ And he tells me: ‘This goes way back, Cheryl. Back before I met you. Way back to North Carolina.’”
North Carolina And The Death Of Walter Miller
The story left everyone on the edge of their seat.
People began wondering what exactly Bobby Love could’ve done to have the police chasing him after so many years. So Bobby elaborated further, discussing growing up poor in a large family and his early run-ins with the law. First, with his disorderly conduct at a Sam Cooke concert, then his fascination with stealing whatever he could which landed him in a juvenile detention centre.
“I lifted purses from unlocked cars. I was stealing government checks out of mailboxes. I got bolder and bolder, until one day I got busted stealing from the band room at school… they shipped me off to a juvenile detention centre” Bobby shared. After hearing the freight trains as he lay in his bunk, Bobby decided that he wanted to know where the train was going. “So one night, when the guard turned his back to check the clock, I ran out the back door — toward the sound of that whistle. And that was the first place I ever escaped from.”
Turns out that escaping from places became Bobby’s thing. After following the tracks all the way from North Carolina to Washington DC, Bobby tried to straighten his life out but then fell into the wrong crowd. After a bank robbery gone wrong, Bobby was shot while trying to escape and ended up landing a 25-30 year sentence at a maximum security prison.
Realising his new fate, Bobby tried to stay straight and narrow because he knew there was no way out. “I became the perfect inmate. I never had a mark on my record. My behaviour was so good that they transferred me down the hill to a minimum security facility… I was relaxed. I was feeling good. I had no plans to escape,” Bobby shared.
That all changed when the prison captain started picking on Bobby in a case of mistaken identity. Thinking he heard Bobby’s voice calling him a “punk ass”, the captain continued to give Bobby negative reports until it became too much. After being placed on rubbish pick-up duty on the road, “the worst job in the prison”, Bobby decided he had enough and was going to escape.
“I started planning and plotting. I saved up my money. I memorised the bus route. I noticed that we always stopped at a certain intersection — right next to a wooded area. And I figured I could make that distance in no time at all. I also noticed that the guard who worked on Tuesday never searched the prisoners as they boarded the bus,” Bobby recalled. “So one Monday night, while we were watching the Colts game on TV, I made the decision. That was going to be my last night in prison.”
Thanks to Bobby’s radio prison show, he had a pair of civilian clothes. Enacting his master plan, he put his normal clothes on under his prison gear, cleared out his personal effects and sat at the very back of the bus — right next to the emergency exit. “It was a five minute drive to the wooded area. As we slowed down for a stop, I swung open the back door — and I was gone. I could hear the alarm blaring behind me, but I didn’t look back. I peeled off my green clothes and just kept running,” he recounted.
Once Bobby found the bus station, a man bought him a one-way ticket to New York. “I jumped on the bus right as the driver was closing the door. Then I slunk down in my seat while we drove out of Raleigh. Once we got on the highway, the girl next to me started making small talk. She asked me my name,” Bobby said, “I thought for a moment, and said: ‘Bobby Love.’ And that was the death of Walter Miller.”
New York City And The Birth Of Bobby Love
In the seventh part to Bobby’s Humans of New York series, he explained how he was able to start his new life in November, 1977. After arriving with nothing but $100 in small bills, Bobby survived on “hotdogs and marijuana” for two weeks in a run-down hotel. Following that, he began sleeping on trains as he tried to get the necessary papers to build his new life.
He managed to get a social security number by telling a woman a sob story about having lost everything, and managed to fake a believable birth certificate with his new name. By altering a real birth certificate and photocopying it enough times to look real, Bobby Love became an official person in the eyes of the law. A funeral worker notarised it with a stamp, and another at the DMV let the lack of signature slide which enabled Bobby to get a drivers license. With all his new papers, Bobby was able to start working in the cafeteria of the Baptist Medical Centre, where he met his wife.
While Cheryl was the total opposite of Bobby, that’s what he wanted in a partner. The pair married in 1985 and had four children, but Bobby ignored the advice of his family in North Carolina to tell Cheryl about his past. However, Bobby did share that he grew up in the South and had moved to New York for something new, which was all technically true. He just chose not to tell Cheryl about Walter Miller.
As a “righteous woman”, Bobby knew telling Cheryl about Walter Miller would create unnecessary strain on his wife. “[She’s] not the kind of woman who could keep a secret like this. I’m not trying to say that she’d have called the cops on me. But she’d have made me call the cops on myself. She’d turn up the heat,” Bobby explained. “So I just couldn’t tell her about Walter Miller. And there was no need… that part of my life was buried back in North Carolina. And it wasn’t coming back.”
Unfortunately for Bobby, that part of his life did come back when the police showed up on his doorstep 2015. Cheryl explained that when it all happened she felt like “the whole city was laughing at me”. But even though she was embarrassed, hurt and angry, she never hated Bobby. “I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to hold his hand. I told Bobby later, ‘That’s how I knew I loved you. Because even in the worst of it, I was thinking about you,’ she shared.
Even while in prison, when Bobby thought his wife would leave him, Cheryl remained loyal. “His head was in his hands, and he told me: ‘I know, you’re going to leave me,” Cheryl recounted. “I told him: ‘No Bobby Love, I married you for better or for worse. And right now this is the worst.’”
In the final instalment of the Bobby Love chronicles, Cheryl explained how she got her husband out of prison. With writing letters to the governor, gathering testimonials and testifying on his behalf, Bobby was released after just a year in prison. “I didn’t know a thing about Walter Miller,” Cheryl said. “But I told them all about Bobby Love. And the parole board took mercy.”
Once home, Cheryl had Bobby legally change his name and set some ground rules for their life going forward. Despite holding some resentment, Cheryl said just one thing. “I said: ‘Bobby, I’ll take you back. But I’m not taking a backseat to you no more.’ Because I got my own story to tell. I can write a book too,” Cheryl concluded. “I might not have escaped from prison, and started a whole new life, and hid it from my family. But I forgave the man who did.”
What’s Next For Bobby Love And Cheryl?
The captivating story of Bobby Love and his wife Cheryl gathered keen followers quickly, with people refreshing their browsers hourly for the newest instalment. The story even gained some celebrity following, with Jennifer Garner calling the 11-part series “the most beautiful, inspiring love story I have ever watched as a 10-hour mini series.”
With almost two million likes in the last 12 hours on Instagram alone, people have suggested that Bobby Love’s story be turned into a movie or biopic, at the very least.
The streets need this #BobbyLove biopic.
— Nyasha Junior (@NyashaJunior) February 5, 2020
Humans of NY needs it’s own Netflix series. This whole Bobby Love story is crazy!! @humansofny
— Rafranz ⁷ (@RafranzDavis) February 6, 2020
If you want to read the Bobby Love and Cheryl Love story for yourself in full, head over to the Humans of New York Instagram page.