Frank Wills (security guard)
 Ballad of a Watergate Security Guard, 2:32, sung by the Reverend Douglas Kirkpatrick, WNYC
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Frank Wills (February 4, 1948 – September 27, 2000) was the security guard who alerted the police to a possible break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C.. His actions eventually led to the discovery of the truth about the Watergate scandal and led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.
Frank Wills was born in Savannah, Georgia. His parents separated when he was a child and he was primarily raised by his mother, Margie.
After dropping out of high school in eleventh grade, Wills studied heavy machine operations in Battle Creek, Michigan and he earned his equivalency degree from the Job Corps. He migrated north and found an assembly-line job working for Ford in Detroit, Michigan. He later had to give up his assembly-line job due to health issues, namely asthma. Wills then traveled to Washington D.C. and worked at a few hotels before landing a job as a security guard at the Watergate hotel.
In June 1972, Wills, at the age of 24, was working as a private security guard at the Watergate office building on the shores of the Potomac River. This was the location of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters. In the one year that Wills had worked here, there had been only one attempted burglary so his job was not of major importance. It was also considered so safe that security officers in the building only carried around a can of mace.
On the night of June 17, Wills noticed a piece of duct tape on one of the door locks when he was making his first round. The tape was placed over the latch bolt to prevent the door from latching shut. He removed the tape and continued on his patrol. Thirty minutes later, Wills came back to the door and he noticed there was more tape on the door. Without hesitation, Wills rushed up to the lobby telephone and asked for the Second Precinct police. Five men were found in the DNC offices and arrested. Details that emerged during their questioning and trials triggered the Watergate scandal. The five men arrested were Bernard L. Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord Jr., and Frank Sturgis.
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