Since finding fame, Ted Williams has been open about the low points of his life, including the stints that he did in prison, even going so far as to say that he’d spend multiple months a year inside a cell. A life of crime wasn’t unfamiliar to him.
As he explains in “A Golden Voice,” he needed the money to help fund his addiction, and so he turned to petty theft. It started right after he lost his job with the radio station, when he did his best to swipe all their CDs on his way out the door; his dealer at the time really loved music, and that mattered more than any burned bridges. From then on, he turned more and more toward shoplifting, cobbling together $20 at a time, even as news spread that he was a petty thief and more store owners recognized his face.
But this wasn’t some thrilling life of crime, the kind of thing depicted in movies. Sure, he’d use his charms to talk his way past cashiers and take his spoils to local nightclubs, where he’d become known as a small-time supplier. He even kept a list of clients in his head and took jobs as they came in. But this was just shoplifting at the request of normal people — nothing glamorous. As Williams wrote: “Robbing banks? No, not me. I stole detergent, deodorant, toothpaste, and soap from drugstores. My big score was Oil of Olay face cream, because it was a small container.”
