‘There’s no AA for trains’: New York criminal’s dark obsession costs him his life

ARRESTED 30 times, Darius McCollum has spent a third of his life in jail because of his dark obsession. It’s also made him a cult hero.

DARIUS McCollum is one of the most notorious criminals in New York City.

He’s been arrest 30 times, first at the age of 15, and has spent a third of his life in prison. All for stealing trains and driving them away. Buses too. Sometimes they’re empty. Other times they’re full of passengers.

One time, he stole a bus and drove the people in it to Kennedy airport. They didn’t mind. It’s where they wanted to go. And they probably didn’t notice behind the steering wheel was a criminal who didn’t have the license or authority to be driving them in the first place. McCollum’s official uniform and badge don’t raise many questions.

Over three decades, McCollum, 50, has become one of the city’s most infamous law-breakers as well as a folklore legend.

And his story has even attracted the attention of Hollywood. It was announced this week that Julia Roberts would play McCollum’s longtime lawyer in the upcoming film Train Man.

But while his crimes might seem humorous, his dark obsession with the city’s transit system is costing him his life.

Detectives walk Darius McCollum out of the Transit District at Columbus Circle on his way to central booking back in 2008. McCollum was arrested for trying to access restricted areas in the subway system while dressed as an MTA employee. Picture: Craig Warga/NY Daily News via Getty Images

THAT FEELING

While McCollum’s fascination with trains started as an eight-year-old, memorising the New York City subway map, it was getting stabbed in the back at the age of eleven that propelled the obsession. The incident, where a classmate stabbed him in the back with scissors and repeatedly opened and closed them as they pulled them out, punctured his lung. Not wanting to return to school, McCollum would ride the subway instead. Sometimes for days at a time. He kept detailed diaries about the trains, what he observed and what he did.

While his parents tried locking him in his room, arranging for a chaperone to school and hospitalising him for psychiatric treatment, nothing stopped him.

McCollum soon befriended terminal crews and started an apprenticeship with a motorman he called Uncle Craft. He quickly learnt the art of easing a train into the station, and progressed to doing “yard moves” and working a train as an operator and conductor.

It was in 1981 at the age of 15 that someone gave McCollum his first Metropolitan Transit Authority uniform. “I can’t compare that feeling to anything,” he said in a 2002 Harper’s profile. “I felt official. I felt like this is me, like this is where I belong.” It was the same year he received his first train-related arrest.

Taking over the controls of a subway one Thursday night, he operated the train for six stops between 34th Street to the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Both McCollum and the motorman in charge were arrested. According to a New York Times report, the motorman said he let McCollum take control because he was “violently ill”, but McCollum has since said that wasn’t the case.

His mother, Elizabeth McCollum, told the Wall Street Journal the teen interpreted the publicity that came with that case “in the wrong way”. He thought what he did was good.

Darius McCollum appears in court in 2015 after stealing a commercial passenger bus. Picture: Jesse Ward/The Daily News via AP

GOTCHA

By the mid-90s, McCollum had become notorious in New York. Thousands of “wanted” posters distributed around the city turned him into a cult hero.

Cops describe him as “great,” “endearing,” and “fabulous” in his profile for Harper’s.

“You’ll be talking to a fantastic person when you talk to Darius, and I hope prison never changes that,” Sergeant Jack Cassidy said in the profile. “Give him my best. But don’t tell him where I am, because he’ll probably come visit me.”

McCollum has a laundry list of transport-related arrests to his name.

After 1981’s bust, he was pulled up in 1983 for impersonating a subway worker. This was followed by an arrest two years later for driving a bus in Queens. And he didn’t stop.

Six charges in 1990, all transit-related. He admitted to stealing 13 buses that year. Five arrests in 1992. In 2000, he was arrested for signing out a train to carry out customary duties before signing it back in again — all while abiding by proper procedure. 2008 saw him arrested for impersonating a Long Island Rail Road employee and answering passenger questions.

His pattern has been the same for decades: Get arrested, serve two to three years, be released and then get arrested again — sometimes just months later.

By January this year, he’s been arrested 30 times for transit-related crimes and spent a third of his life in prison.

“If there’s one thing that really drew me in, it is his sacrifice,” filmmaker Adam Irving, who produced the McCollum-focused doco Off the Rails, told The Guardian. “I don’t know anyone that would give up 20 years in prison to do something that most New Yorkers would find extremely mundane. Collecting a subway fare? Driving a bus route?”

The accuracy of McCollum’s guise is detailed in an article for Harper’s, which followed him on the day of his nineteenth arrest in 2000.

McCollum has stolen several trains and buses. Picture: Alamy

Wearing a New York City Transit Authority conductor’s uniform, his transit-issue boots, transit-issue work gloves, transit-issue hard hat and goggles added authenticity. The NYCTA work orders and rerouting schedules in his pockets, ready for him to confidently whip out at a moment’s notice, were the perfect final touches.

It was while he was inspecting a technical problem with a train that he was picked up by some cops.

“All right, you got me,” the profile quotes McCollum as telling the officers. “You got me! I don’t work for the TA. The letter’s a forgery. I stole the letterhead and did the letter myself. The uniform and keys I got from people I know. I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s actually easy if you know what you’re doing.”

“Here’s some articles about me,” he added, showing them the press clippings detailing his past arrests.

AA FOR TRAINS

It wasn’t until 2001, when McCollum was charged with impersonating a transit worker, that it was considered there might be a psychiatric explanation for his behaviour. After various struggles with judges, a prison psychiatrist eventually suggested Asperger’s syndrome might be responsible. Not accepting it as enough of a defence, the judge sentenced McCollum to two-and-a-half to five years in prison.

Sally Butler, McCollum’s now longtime lawyer, took over his case in 2010 and got him a reduced sentence based on his diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

McCollum’s mugshot. Picture: Supplied

While McCollum was supposed to get cognitive behaviour therapy, he couldn’t afford it.

“I can’t seem to get myself out of this on my own,” he told The Guardian in an interview at Rikers Island jail. “But what am I supposed to do? There’s no AA for buses or trains.”

On November 11 last year, McCollum was arrested, for the thirtieth time, for stealing a Greyhound bus in Manhattan. He drove the bus for about two hours before he was arrested in Brooklyn. He showed police his law enforcement shield and badge, both fake.

Down at the 78th Precinct station in Brooklyn, the New York Times reports he told detectives he probably wouldn’t change his ways.

“I’m stealing a plane next,” he said.