Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, Saren, what's up, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 2: I'm doing pretty good?
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been wearing all your hoodies?
Speaker 4: Have you?
Speaker 3: Is that where they all went?
Speaker 2: Totally? Have been a really fun week. People are like, dude,
Speaker 2: you've been dressing a lot better this week. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: I know, it's not always the same two hoodies.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, is that a good Dard quote?
Speaker 3: I was like, no, no, it's that's so you're the
Speaker 3: one who's been breaking in and stealing all my stuff?
Speaker 2: Cool this week?
Speaker 3: Cool?
Speaker 2: You know, it's ridiculous, I do, Elizabeth. Imagine this. Okay,
Speaker 2: in a place called Ashland County, which I think is
Speaker 2: in Virginia. I'm pretty sure it's in Virginia, there was
Speaker 2: this bandit, this mask bandit, who broke in to a
Speaker 2: liquor store and ABC store and that's what it's called
Speaker 2: by brand name ABC, and they drank up a bunch
Speaker 2: of bourbon, you know, and then they passed out drunk
Speaker 2: on the bathroom floor.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: The great part was that the mask bandit was a raccoon.
Speaker 2: Wait what Yeah, So the Hanover County Animal Protection they
Speaker 2: found a raccoon passed out in the toilet of the
Speaker 2: ABC starter. They broke like numerous bottles of bourbon drank
Speaker 2: up like I'm assuming licked it up. I don't think
Speaker 2: they're taking slugs out of the bottle, but maybe anyway,
Speaker 2: the trash panda was just trashed on the floor of
Speaker 2: the bathroom and then quote, after a few hours of
Speaker 2: sleep and zero signs of injury other than maybe a
Speaker 2: hangover and poor life choices, he was safely released back
Speaker 2: to the wild. That's from animal transport or animal protection rather.
Speaker 2: So there you go. I thought that was pretty good that,
Speaker 2: you know, it's ridiculous. You'd never expect, you know, to
Speaker 2: hear about a mass bandit and it's a.
Speaker 3: Raccoon and it's you got me there right there you go.
Speaker 3: It's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 3: Being the Napoleon of crime, can you do that?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: You can. This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd
Speaker 3: and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine
Speaker 3: percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Ah, you damn right.
Speaker 3: We love a non violent criminal, don't we, Folks?
Speaker 2: We do, Oh, we do.
Speaker 3: And we love a cast of characters, right.
Speaker 2: Gang, you say a cat of characters, oh cast, yes,
Speaker 2: them too.
Speaker 3: Hold on to your support, host, Zaren, I have a
Speaker 3: hum dinger for you.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm going to pull them up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this guy, right, his exploits take place at such
Speaker 3: an interesting time in history, especially from a crime perspective.
Speaker 3: So let's dig into this ridiculous Schmorgesborg.
Speaker 4: You do.
Speaker 3: I want to tell you about Adam Worth.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: He was born in eighteen forty four in Prussia into
Speaker 3: a German Jewish family whose exact town of origin we
Speaker 3: do not know.
Speaker 2: It probably has, like you know, changed over time.
Speaker 3: He's building a missigees.
Speaker 2: In the Prussian Empire, right, So yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean we all know immigration records from that era incomplete.
Speaker 2: Totally lost. So why I tell people count Laslow There.
Speaker 3: It is and they believe you as well they should.
Speaker 3: His parents immigrated to the US when he was really young,
Speaker 3: and they settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a tailor,
Speaker 3: a hard working family. Adam was like this quiet, intelligent,
Speaker 3: introverted child, didn't cause trouble, did well in school. He
Speaker 3: was something of like a math and logistics whiz ah yeah.
Speaker 2: And Cambridge just like Mit and Harvard.
Speaker 3: I right, yeah, yeah exactly, And so you know all
Speaker 3: of these things they would come in handy later in life. Okay,
Speaker 3: in his teens he worked in a dry goods store.
Speaker 3: He was like, did clerical work. He was a good boy.
Speaker 3: Sounds like he didn't break the law, didn't hang with
Speaker 3: the wrong crowd. Remember when you recently told me about
Speaker 3: that original bank robber.
Speaker 2: Guy, yeah, George Leon Leslie.
Speaker 3: Yes. And how the Civil War impacted crime in the
Speaker 3: US vastly. Yes, well we're about to see that again.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: I know you do. So when the Civil War broke
Speaker 3: out in eighteen sixty one, you.
Speaker 2: Know I loved nineteenth century crime.
Speaker 3: Waste Worth was seventeen. He enlisted in the Union Army
Speaker 3: by lying about his age. Okay, it's not clear, like
Speaker 3: why he was so like chomping at the bit to
Speaker 3: get out there patriotism?
Speaker 4: Was it?
Speaker 3: Teenage? Bravado? Restlessness? Who knows?
Speaker 2: My grandfather lied about his age. She joined the navy
Speaker 2: and to get out of Iowa. So it happened. He
Speaker 2: said he was seventeen when he's actually sixteen. Oh, interact,
Speaker 2: then you.
Speaker 3: Can get into. Who knows, maybe he just wanted to
Speaker 3: get out out of Massachusetts. What we do know is
Speaker 3: that army life was not for him. Yeah, yeah, he deserted,
Speaker 3: good for him. Then he re enlisted under an alias
Speaker 3: no even better, and then he deserted again.
Speaker 2: I love it, I know.
Speaker 3: So desertion was common in like the early years of
Speaker 3: the war. Everything super chaotic, like the training supplies, leadership,
Speaker 3: like there's it's all over the place, and.
Speaker 2: There were plenty of woods to run into.
Speaker 3: Oh it is so easy. And there were so many
Speaker 3: who were like conscripted, who had zero interest in being there.
Speaker 2: And they realized it sucked when they got there, Like
Speaker 2: I got a couple of hot meals, and how I
Speaker 2: realized I.
Speaker 3: Had two dirt farmer ancestors in Alabama and they certainly
Speaker 3: could not afford the men of the house, leaving a
Speaker 3: mom and a grandma and like a grip of kids
Speaker 3: to like scrape out a living in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3: So one of the men deserted and came home to
Speaker 3: keep the family fed. The other one came home missing
Speaker 3: a leg, lost cause indeed, So back to Worth August
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty two. So Worth, he when he re enlisted
Speaker 3: after desertion. The first time he used an alias. So
Speaker 3: he's serving under this alias.
Speaker 2: And he's not flipping sides, he's just serving, just.
Speaker 3: Going yeah Ni precisely, So he's serving under an alias.
Speaker 3: At the time, he was mistakenly listed as killed in
Speaker 3: action at the Second Battle of bull Run. Oh.
Speaker 2: I love that. I report on that one.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was like a clerical error
Speaker 3: or if like someone misidentified him in the field of battle.
Speaker 3: Either way, this gave him an idea anassis. If he
Speaker 3: was already quote dead according to the US government, then
Speaker 3: he figured he had like basically been given a blank slate,
Speaker 3: and so he could reinvent himself. They had no legal
Speaker 3: accountability for desertion, totally couldn't draft him. I love him,
Speaker 3: So he seized the opportunity. He's now a dead man.
Speaker 3: So he heads for the Northeast, where, like the cities
Speaker 3: there rapidly changing, things are getting exciting. He dives right
Speaker 3: in New York in the mid eighteen sixties. It's full
Speaker 3: of new immigrants, corrupt politicians, massive wealth disparity, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: and so crime is just flourishing in areas like the
Speaker 3: Fourth Ward and the.
Speaker 2: Bowery little five points.
Speaker 3: Little five points gangs of New York era, so they're
Speaker 3: like pickpocket gangs, river thieves, burglars, fences, everything's operating out
Speaker 3: in the open. Yes, young Adam Worth he found himself
Speaker 3: drawn into increasingly sophisticated criminal circles. So he starts out
Speaker 3: in like the pickpocket gangs, and then he keeps working
Speaker 3: his way up. One of the most important figures in
Speaker 3: his early criminal development was Fredrika Marm Mandelbomb.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, we've we kind of touched on her. Should
Speaker 2: do a story.
Speaker 3: Well, that's I'm thinking she totally needs her own episode.
Speaker 3: She was like his own family. She was a German
Speaker 3: Jewish immigrant, but where his family was honest and law abiding.
Speaker 3: Marm ran the largest and most profitable fencing operation in
Speaker 3: the country, and she supplied tools to burglars. She financed
Speaker 3: really big jobs, and she bought stolen go like at scale.
Speaker 3: So she's this shrewd judge of talent too, and she
Speaker 3: really quickly she saw Adam Worth, and she's like, guys, smart,
Speaker 3: super pleasant to be around, and he stays so calm
Speaker 3: under pressure.
Speaker 2: That's super valuable.
Speaker 3: Huge, So she's like he's also he's not a brawler,
Speaker 3: he's not a drinker. Can recommend him soft spoken, he's calculating.
Speaker 3: He's like super methodical, logistical minded. Huh. So she starts
Speaker 3: giving him responsibilities that she usually wouldn't entrust to newcomers.
Speaker 3: She's got him planning robberies, supervising crews. You know, again
Speaker 3: with the logistic stuff. And because he had all this
Speaker 3: math and organizational skills, you combine that in. He also
Speaker 3: had an ability to like assume different identities. Really yeah,
Speaker 3: it was really easy for him. So he becomes invaluable
Speaker 3: to marm I bet So. His most important early partnership
Speaker 3: was with Charles Piano Charlie Bullard, So Pianolie, Piano Charlie.
Speaker 3: They like, he's believed to have been born in the
Speaker 3: eighteen forties, maybe in New York State, maybe in Ohio.
Speaker 3: Like he didn't tell anyone the truth. He was suave,
Speaker 3: he was charismatic. He was also a musically talented safe cracker.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, interesting, well it really was. He was musically gifted.
Speaker 3: He played the piano in saloons, in boarding houses. That's
Speaker 3: the name Piano Charlie, sometimes as like a legit job,
Speaker 3: sometimes as a cover to scout potential targets, and so
Speaker 3: he was this expert with lock picks and explosives. So
Speaker 3: you combine that with worse skills in planning, timing, evasion,
Speaker 3: these two are unstoppable. And there were stumbles along the way.
Speaker 3: Charlie got busted and locked up for stealing one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars worth of stuff from the Hudson River Railway Express.
Speaker 3: Marm Mandelbaum needed her safe cracker out of the clink. Folks.
Speaker 3: We got ourselves a good old fashioned jail break. Yes,
Speaker 3: So Marm rents an office across the street from the
Speaker 3: prison where Charlie's being held. She bribes some guards. They
Speaker 3: keep things quiet, and when the time is right, they
Speaker 3: helped kick off a riot. And it was then that
Speaker 3: Worth coordinated a crew to tunnel into Bullard's cell.
Speaker 2: Wow, so she's doing basically setting up what you do
Speaker 2: for a bank robbery, but to get out her piano Charlie.
Speaker 3: Right, But people weren't doing tunneling bank robbery, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 3: But the technique worked, and so they're like, you know what,
Speaker 3: let's run with this. And then that happened. The running
Speaker 3: with it happened that Boyleston National bank in Boston in
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty nine. So the Boyleston National Bank robbery is
Speaker 3: thought by like some historians, as one of the earliest major, professional,
Speaker 3: highly planned, technically sophisticated bank burglaries in the US during
Speaker 3: the post Civil War period, right up there with your guide,
Speaker 3: George Leonidis Leslie. So the robbery was significant for two reasons.
Speaker 3: It marked one of the first times that a crew
Speaker 3: tunneled into a bank, and it also it was what
Speaker 3: put Adam Worth on the radar of the Pinkerton Agency.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so this is no, this is a critical
Speaker 3: event in the evolution of organized burglary totally by eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine. So banks they're like relying on heavy iron
Speaker 3: safes with combination locks, like pretty simple vault rooms. They've
Speaker 3: got like a watchmen or two and then limited night patrols. Timelocks.
Speaker 3: Safes weren't really a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yale hasn't really reinvented the safe fault.
Speaker 3: So skilled safe crackers what they call boxmen like Piano
Speaker 3: Charlie could manipulate or like drill locks with enough time
Speaker 3: and quiet. All right, now, let's talk about Boston, right
Speaker 3: recovering from like all this wartime economic turbulence and things
Speaker 3: are in an upswing. So the banks brimming with merchant money,
Speaker 3: trade receipts, railroad financing.
Speaker 2: Right, of course you're getting seen all that come into play,
Speaker 2: all the big railroad trust.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's gold, negotiable bonds, like lots of loot, loose security.
Speaker 3: Perfect combination for Worth and piano Charlie. So just like
Speaker 3: if the jail break, they rented a room next to
Speaker 3: Boylston Bank. First things first, Worth watched the guards and
Speaker 3: got a sense of their schedules. He tracked and analyzed
Speaker 3: the access that bank employees had to the vault. And
Speaker 3: then speaking of the vault, he mapped the layout. He
Speaker 3: knew every inch of the place, so he established the
Speaker 3: timing that would work best. And then they started tunneling
Speaker 3: through that shared wall. Remember no one had really done
Speaker 3: this before.
Speaker 2: Territories brilliant.
Speaker 3: They worked late at nights so people wouldn't hear them,
Speaker 3: and then they put up special drapes to keep the
Speaker 3: the dust controlled so I wasn't showing out.
Speaker 2: And also you got like cops are walking around, so
Speaker 2: you need kind of like a screen to hide bar
Speaker 2: work from them.
Speaker 3: Exactly. So once in piano Charlie got to work, so
Speaker 3: he manipulated the tumble by sound and feel. They didn't
Speaker 3: have to blast their way in. It was clean, it
Speaker 3: was elegant, and this was a hallmark of the new
Speaker 3: gentleman burglar style that was emerging in American cities, George
Speaker 3: Leslie's style. So worth in Piano Charlie. They cleaned the
Speaker 3: place out. It's said that they came away with somewhere
Speaker 3: between one hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars damn, which
Speaker 3: today is two point four million to four point eight million.
Speaker 3: That's insane, that's an incredible amount of guys. Two guys.
Speaker 2: I would quitt done.
Speaker 3: Exactly Ruba, Jamaica. So they got cash, negotiable securities, bonds, gold,
Speaker 3: certificates of deposit. It's a perfect haul because it's easy
Speaker 3: to transport, difficult to trace. Boston police stunned. This didn't
Speaker 3: look like any of the robberies, any of the local
Speaker 3: gangs don't pull off too clean. They're like, you know what,
Speaker 3: whoever did this had to be from New York City,
Speaker 3: Like New York City, so they called in the Pinkertons,
Speaker 3: and the Pinkerton Agency soon linked the job to piano,
Speaker 3: Charlie and Worth. They couldn't prove it, but they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: and at this time the stories all over the papers,
Speaker 3: the press are loving it. But then like there's no
Speaker 3: real leads, interest tapers off. One thing the Pinkertons did
Speaker 3: uncover was that Worth and Charlie had shipped some trunks
Speaker 3: from Boston to New York. And that wasn't an actual lead,
Speaker 3: but it sent up red flags for the Pinkertons. Marm
Speaker 3: and Charlie and Worth. They knew the red flags were
Speaker 3: bad for business always, So with the heat increasing, Worth
Speaker 3: and Charlie headed to Europe. Marm had all these connections
Speaker 3: there who could get the pair plugged in. Off they go.
Speaker 3: They go to London, and this was the beginning of
Speaker 3: Worth's evolution from like skilled thief to criminal mastermind. Totally
Speaker 3: think about London in the early eighteen seventies. So it's
Speaker 3: the largest city in the world, center of an empire,
Speaker 3: and it was somewhere that a guy with like charm
Speaker 3: and money and false papers could easily blend in with
Speaker 3: the swells. So he was now going by the name
Speaker 3: Henry Judson Raymond, and he was a respectable American businessman
Speaker 3: he had the spoils of all his East Coast jobs,
Speaker 3: so he bought himself nice suits, he rented a fancy flat.
Speaker 3: He ingratiated himself with all the local American expats, and
Speaker 3: then he starts assembling this crew of specialists from the
Speaker 3: criminal underworld. Wow, let's take a break. When we come back,
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you about this new crime syndicate
Speaker 3: Worth was building and where that took him. Zaren Elizabeth Zarnabeth.
Speaker 3: When we left off, Adam Worth was living in London
Speaker 3: as Henry Judson Raymond love that name. Yeah, he was
Speaker 3: living the good life, setting up a new gang of thieves,
Speaker 3: and he had.
Speaker 2: A code and he was looking clean.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's looking so clean.
Speaker 2: He's he's got one of those little cigarette or like
Speaker 2: a cigar tampers, like on the gold chain.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, he's got everything. He's a fine dress man.
Speaker 3: Worth believed violence was the enemy of a successful criminal enterprise. Ooh,
Speaker 3: I like that. A violent crime always generated public panics
Speaker 3: and that brought on police involvement.
Speaker 2: Totally in anger and fear, all the things you don't want.
Speaker 3: So he was like, you know, non violent crimes, but
Speaker 3: especially ones discovered long afterward, could be quietly forgotten by
Speaker 3: both police and the press, and.
Speaker 2: So his he romanticized by the public.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah. He forbade his crew from carrying weapons.
Speaker 3: Smart can't do it, no enhancements for him. Well, and
Speaker 3: anyone who violated the rule got kicked out. I don't
Speaker 3: care how talented you are, how valuable you carry a weapon,
Speaker 3: You're out of here. And so this contributed to like
Speaker 3: this really unusually low arrest rate and almost complete absence
Speaker 3: of public attention during his peak years of operations Uber Smart.
Speaker 3: So just like back in the States, his operations were
Speaker 3: built on extended surveillance, perfect timing, forged documents. He thought
Speaker 3: of everything, all these like really specific secure escape routes,
Speaker 3: solid contingency plans. He was a logistics.
Speaker 2: Guy totally, and mathematical as hell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's a rare criminal who thinks things all the
Speaker 3: way through, you know, like we're always saying, is the problem?
Speaker 3: So Victorian police described him as quote the most patient
Speaker 3: burglar on record.
Speaker 2: Hm, I like that somehow a compliment the way they put.
Speaker 3: It, Yes, it was very much so. So his fencing
Speaker 3: system was also revolutionary for the time. He didn't sell
Speaker 3: stolen goods locally. He used multiple brokers across different countries. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so a diamond stolen in London would go through like Antwerp,
Speaker 3: Hamburg and New York before being sold in Cape Town.
Speaker 2: It's South Africa.
Speaker 3: Wow, So his like crazy process made police recovery nearly impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they don't they don't know to be looking
Speaker 2: for it, because they don't know what's stolen and it
Speaker 2: was likely not in contact with the London PA.
Speaker 3: Everything in the operation was unprecedented. So he treated his
Speaker 3: associates with fairness and professionalism. He paid them promptly, He
Speaker 3: financed their legal defense when they got arrested very smart,
Speaker 3: protected their families if they went to prison. He's like
Speaker 3: took care of that ultimately. And so we had like
Speaker 3: this crazy loyalty that heah, it was so rare. So
Speaker 3: he himself, he had a ton of aliases and passports.
Speaker 3: He could pass as an American businessman, a German tourist,
Speaker 3: a French trader, a British gentleman, because he mastered all
Speaker 3: of these different languages. No, he was great with language.
Speaker 3: He would also learn like the various elements of etiquette
Speaker 3: for high society in all these places. Yeah, he was
Speaker 3: so convincing, like in any social context, and so the
Speaker 3: syndicate itself. Historians say that his London operations were like
Speaker 3: the first modern criminal corporation, I'd say. And so he
Speaker 3: had specialized crews for safe cracking, some that forged documents,
Speaker 3: the jewelry, theft, surveillance, and he made sure to really
Speaker 3: compartmentalize all the operations so that no single arrested member
Speaker 3: could expose the entire operation structure super siloed. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: he had all kinds of business fronts so he could do,
Speaker 3: you know, launder everything shipping, import, export businesses of course.
Speaker 3: And then there were the international associates, so he would
Speaker 3: recruit people from like all the criminal hotspots at the time,
Speaker 3: like Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, New York.
Speaker 2: I hope that Hamburg made the list exactly, and like
Speaker 2: his double life got more and more complex.
Speaker 3: So he socialized in all of like London's elegant salons,
Speaker 3: He went to the theater, he hated all the most
Speaker 3: fashionable restaurants, and he had this reputation as this charming
Speaker 3: cosmopolitan and he collected upper class acquaintances not just for
Speaker 3: pleasure but for information. And so he had you know,
Speaker 3: he's got these impeccable manners, this understated style. He's the
Speaker 3: last person any of these people would think would be
Speaker 3: a criminal.
Speaker 2: Oh he's super culture. They're thinking he's like a landering count.
Speaker 3: And he didn't. He didn't like flaunt his wealth. He
Speaker 3: didn't associate with hard men. So yeah, of course they're
Speaker 3: going to tell him things and never think that it
Speaker 3: you know, Oh, it can be traced back to he's
Speaker 3: the one who did something along the way. He got
Speaker 3: married Louise Margaret Balduc. She was a frenchwoman, had no
Speaker 3: knowledge of his criminal activities.
Speaker 2: Really, not just saying that in court, but.
Speaker 3: This truly did. And they wound up having two kids together.
Speaker 3: He kept his whole family, the wife and kids, totally
Speaker 3: shielded from his world of crime.
Speaker 4: They had no.
Speaker 3: Idea when he wasn't home. They thought he was traveling
Speaker 3: for business.
Speaker 2: Of course, and it made very international.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he ye had all the import export businesses and such.
Speaker 3: It was in this time that he pulled his most
Speaker 3: famous and audacious theft. Let's talk about Thomas Gainsborough's portrait
Speaker 3: of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
Speaker 2: Oh totally dude, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: So I wish we could have bendor on as a
Speaker 3: guest right now to talk about painting. Alas you'll have
Speaker 3: to make do with Lilo Me. Portrait was painted in
Speaker 3: seventeen eighty seven. Gainsborough is widely regarded as one of
Speaker 3: the most gifted portrait and landscape painters in British hist.
Speaker 2: I'll say one of the best, if not the best,
Speaker 2: in British history.
Speaker 3: Yes, he helped define the look and style of late
Speaker 3: eighteenth century British art. And he was known for like this,
Speaker 3: really elegant fluid brushwork, nuanced luminous color.
Speaker 2: Color is incredible.
Speaker 3: And he's best known for the blue boy painted in
Speaker 3: the seventeench.
Speaker 2: Colors are incredible. Yeah, you've seen him in person, Yes,
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, it's insane.
Speaker 3: And it was just like this day. Yeah, it glows.
Speaker 3: So he establishes the visual identity of George and Britain.
Speaker 3: So this portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, it
Speaker 3: was already a famous painting by the eighteen hundreds. Georgiana
Speaker 3: was glamorous, she was politically influential, she was fashionable, she
Speaker 3: was a writer, a talented musician and amateur scientist. In fact,
Speaker 3: she had a small labatter house where she conducted chemistry experiments.
Speaker 3: So she was also tragic. So she was a gambler
Speaker 3: and she got herself into incredible debt. In seventeen eighty four,
Speaker 3: her gambling debt was one hundred thousand pounds, which is
Speaker 3: like fourteen million pounds today. She had an affair with
Speaker 3: Earl Gray of the Teeth and got pregnant, so she
Speaker 3: was shipped off to France to have the baby, which
Speaker 3: then the baby was passed off to the Earl's family
Speaker 3: and she wasn't able to see her again. She was
Speaker 3: this beautiful woman who toward the end of her life
Speaker 3: had a tumor in her eye, went blind and had
Speaker 3: like a huge scar on her face as a result.
Speaker 3: Oh lord, and she was really sickly after that. She
Speaker 3: passed away when she was only forty eight years old.
Speaker 3: Tragic and perhaps that haunted her bloodline, as she was
Speaker 3: the great great great grand aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Speaker 3: Really yes, so anyway.
Speaker 2: She's on that Spencer line.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Her portrait depicting her in a plumed hat and
Speaker 3: having that famous Gainsborough luminosity yet it had a mythic reputation,
Speaker 3: so for year, for decades the painting was believed lost.
Speaker 3: No one knew where it was, but it was discovered
Speaker 3: in eighteen seventy six in the home of the dowager,
Speaker 3: Viscountess car Court. Okay, yeah, sure, lady, oh I just
Speaker 3: found it. I don't know behind it was a sheet,
Speaker 3: but it was returned to society and it was this
Speaker 3: huge sensation, so London newspapers called it the greatest portrait
Speaker 3: reappearance of the century many reappearances. The art dealer's Thomas
Speaker 3: Agnew and Sons was one of the most prestigious firms
Speaker 3: in Europe, and they purchased the painting at auction for
Speaker 3: ten thousand guineas, which was about you know, ten thousand pounds. Now,
Speaker 3: that was the highest price ever paid for a portrait
Speaker 3: up to that time. Its value, its fame, sudden cultural prominence.
Speaker 3: It made this like instantly recognizable icon, and it was
Speaker 3: also then the perfect target for a criminal with a
Speaker 3: taste for symbol, someone like Adam Worth. So Worth he
Speaker 3: didn't steal it to sell it. He stole it because
Speaker 3: it was a symbol of prestige and daring. It was
Speaker 3: like a psychological prize.
Speaker 2: And to make a great gift someone.
Speaker 3: It would also serve as collateral if he ever needed
Speaker 3: leverage with criminal.
Speaker 2: Law enforcement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly so. Worth. He believed that the agnew price
Speaker 3: signaled vulnerability because he figured that the gallery's pride in
Speaker 3: its acquisition blinded it to security risks. So he later
Speaker 3: said that he viewed the painting as a kind of
Speaker 3: talisman or mascot, and he never intended to damage it
Speaker 3: or ransom it. So as we know, Adam Worth was
Speaker 3: never impulsive. His approach to the Gainsborough theft was like
Speaker 3: had the same meticulous attention of all his other jobs.
Speaker 3: He spent weeks studying the layout of the gallery, the
Speaker 3: entry and exit points, nearby patrol patterns, the habits of
Speaker 3: the night watchmen, how the painting was mounted, even the
Speaker 3: construction of display cases. He visited the gallery tons and
Speaker 3: tons of times disguised as a patron, and he could
Speaker 3: pull us off because he was known in London art
Speaker 3: circles at the time, because he would pose as this
Speaker 3: American collector and it wouldn't be unusual then for him
Speaker 3: to like hit up the gallery a bunch of times
Speaker 3: to see a famous painting with a cool backstory. And
Speaker 3: once he decided that he needed the painting, he got
Speaker 3: to work. So he got his paws on a set
Speaker 3: of duplicate keys for the gallery, and he mapped out
Speaker 3: the lighting conditions and the windows in the place. All
Speaker 3: of this was done with two unnamed to this day
Speaker 3: criminal associates. As with all his other work, there was
Speaker 3: no violence and no coercion.
Speaker 2: Do we think that these associates are insiders, like who
Speaker 2: work in somehow in the farm.
Speaker 3: And my guess is that's how he got the keys.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. You said, the duplicate keys and
Speaker 2: now he's got the lighting conditions.
Speaker 3: I was like, yes, probably insiders. Zaron, close your eyes
Speaker 3: to make Sarin.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's the night of May twenty sixth, eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: You are the portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
Speaker 3: You've recently been installed at the Thomas Agnu and Sons
Speaker 3: Gallery in London. You missed the Dowager's House where you'd
Speaker 3: been hanging out pun intended for a while. But this
Speaker 3: place is nice. The staff are so excited you're here,
Speaker 3: and so many people come through to give you the eye.
Speaker 3: They marvel at your beauty, your composition. They're proud of you.
Speaker 3: You are eating this up. The last employee of the
Speaker 3: gallery has just left. Do you hear the back door lock?
Speaker 3: And silence falls across the rooms in the gallery. Some
Speaker 3: time elapses, and then you hear keys open the back door.
Speaker 3: It's still dark out, middle of the night. Really, someone
Speaker 3: must have left something behind you. Hear light footsteps and
Speaker 3: the creak of the polished wood floors. Someone is approaching.
Speaker 3: The feet walk with steady determination purpose. They stop right
Speaker 3: in front of you. In the slight shard of moonlight
Speaker 3: coming through a skylight, you see a face. It's a
Speaker 3: man you've seen before, someone who's come to admire you
Speaker 3: a few times, always very well dressed. He's ruggedly handsome,
Speaker 3: full head of well claffed hair and a healthy mustache.
Speaker 3: He stares at you in no rush, not nervous, sure
Speaker 3: of himself. He reaches out and traces a finger along
Speaker 3: your frame. You feel a tingle in your canvas. Why, sir,
Speaker 3: you wish you could gasp. He takes a step back
Speaker 3: and then approaches again, this time lifting you off the wall.
Speaker 3: He turns you around and you now face the rich
Speaker 3: blue wall you feel and begin to unfasten the frame
Speaker 3: from around you. With a tender touch, he gently lifts
Speaker 3: the brackets used to keep you pent and stretched for display.
Speaker 3: In an instant, you are free, the tension removed, You
Speaker 3: flop forward, your midsection loose as gentle as ever. The
Speaker 3: man tenderly rolls you up, not too tight, but still firm.
Speaker 3: He slides you into a heavy, unbleached cotton sleeve and
Speaker 3: holds you under his arm. He uses his other arm
Speaker 3: to replace the empty frame on the wall where you
Speaker 3: just hung. Then he turns and heads for the back door.
Speaker 3: You know there is a guard up front. He has
Speaker 3: apparently heard nothing. The two of you reached the back door,
Speaker 3: he opens it, steps out into the night, closes the door,
Speaker 3: and then locks it with the set of keys produced
Speaker 3: from his pocket. Off you go into the night with
Speaker 3: this mystery man. You are sure more adventure awaits, and
Speaker 3: you feel no fear, no sense of danger. You believe
Speaker 3: your namesake the visage that launched you would agree, so
Speaker 3: Worth was able to steal what was the like the
Speaker 3: most famous painting in London at the time, never damaged
Speaker 3: the painting or the frame.
Speaker 2: This is like the Mona Lisa of London.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, he left everything undisturbed all around it, no
Speaker 3: signs of forest entry, no witnesses saw him, no police
Speaker 3: patrols notice anything. The disappearance wasn't discovered until the next
Speaker 3: morning they walk in, She's gone And it was one
Speaker 3: of the most humiliating unsolved robberies in London art history
Speaker 3: at the time. Exactly, so contrary to criminal custom, like
Speaker 3: I said, he didn't try and sell the painting. He
Speaker 3: kept it as this private trophy because that's what they
Speaker 3: kept thinking, Oh, this thing's going to pop up on
Speaker 3: the market somewhere. He carried it with him for years
Speaker 3: in a specially constructed case.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So by the late eighteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Are he like falling in love with it?
Speaker 3: It was just it meant like everything. It meant like
Speaker 3: it was the symbol.
Speaker 2: But I mean it's also like, as.
Speaker 3: He called it, it was a talisman. So once he
Speaker 3: had that, that was like he had to carry it
Speaker 3: with him. Late eighteen seventies though he is the absolute
Speaker 3: unquestioned leader of the most sophisticated non violent criminal network
Speaker 3: in the Western world.
Speaker 2: Completely, I'm wondering why he's on this show.
Speaker 3: Well, London was only one component of his expanding operations,
Speaker 3: and so by the next decade he had like he
Speaker 3: had spread out far beyond Britain.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure he's working Russia and South Africa.
Speaker 3: Well let's take a pause for some ads. I know
Speaker 3: you love them ads. Yum yum, give me some. That's
Speaker 3: what you yelled during every ad.
Speaker 2: I got my wallet, Yeah, I start throwing money at
Speaker 2: the microphones.
Speaker 3: Back in the flash, Zeren adam Worth, Adam Worth. So
Speaker 3: he rocked to the east coast of the US, went
Speaker 3: to London, became a legend, and then he branched out
Speaker 3: further onto the continent. So records like you were saying,
Speaker 3: records from Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, all these police archives
Speaker 3: show the presence of his associates all throughout this place.
Speaker 3: His organization targeted high value jewelry shipments, banks and like
Speaker 3: wealthy travelers. So Paris at the time had this wealthy aristocracy,
Speaker 3: growing bourgeois class, so this was like a natural target
Speaker 3: for jewel theft, and his teams frequently operated during the
Speaker 3: summer social season, so he wasn't just fencing through these places.
Speaker 3: Now or drawing members of his syndicate cultural moments. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's going they're committing crimes there. So the French elite,
Speaker 3: they're vacationing at coastal resorts and they're bringing all their
Speaker 3: like lavish jewelry. Yeah, they want to show off to
Speaker 3: the Yes, exactly. In Belgium, the banking centers like in Antwerp,
Speaker 3: in Liege, they offered all these like fabulous opportunities for forgery,
Speaker 3: financial fraud. Then you have the German cities like Berlin
Speaker 3: Hamburg again were transit points for stolen goods and forged documents,
Speaker 3: and so he designed trans national routes for moving stolen merchandise,
Speaker 3: like we said. And then the biggest thing about that
Speaker 3: is that there was no cooperation between these nations. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the law enforcement couldn't track things once it left
Speaker 3: whichever country.
Speaker 2: They basically only communicate through the telegraph at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, he went to Egypt in the early eighteen eighties, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because he saw opportunity and strife there. So it's this
Speaker 3: really tumultuous environment after the Anglo Egyptian War. So European officers, diplomats,
Speaker 3: businessmen would go through Cairo and Alexandria carrying like tons
Speaker 3: of cash.
Speaker 2: Jewelry largely unguarded.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Worth's organization exploited those those vulnerabilities. He also
Speaker 3: leveraged like the bustling port activity there to move stolen
Speaker 3: goods really discreetly, because you could bribe anybody at Forge manifest.
Speaker 2: It would be so much fun to rob a modern
Speaker 2: major general of the British Empire in Cairo.
Speaker 3: Soup. Yes, I know, I can see it. And so
Speaker 3: then we have South Africa. So the diamond mines of
Speaker 3: Kimberly were notorious for theft, smuggling, corruption. So you have
Speaker 3: all these African laborers, they're under brutal conditions and like
Speaker 3: a lot of them would try and sneak diamonds out
Speaker 3: of the mines. Yeah, the stolen stones needed you needed
Speaker 3: a sophisticated fence network to get those to market. So
Speaker 3: he didn't personally participate in those mind thefts, but his
Speaker 3: org organization did a lot with in terms of like
Speaker 3: purchasing the stolen diamonds and moving him to Europe, so
Speaker 3: he would have anonymous purchasing agents, coded letters forged shipping papers.
Speaker 3: They really started this like international scale of laundering diamonds.
Speaker 3: So by the mid eighteen eighties, he's wealthy, respected by criminals,
Speaker 3: feared by police, loved by society. His visibility was increasing
Speaker 3: because he had like now he has more and more
Speaker 3: international travel patterns. It's starting to make him a person
Speaker 3: of interest for all these various European police forces.
Speaker 2: He's got to be starting to show up at too
Speaker 2: many places where there're exactly.
Speaker 3: And so because he's not, he's now he's branching out,
Speaker 3: branching out. And at the time too, surveillance techniques are improving.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right, because you now you started getting the
Speaker 2: modern detective work right.
Speaker 3: And as you said, telegraph communication, like that's how they're communicating,
Speaker 3: but it's faster and faster and worth He's now in
Speaker 3: his forties, he's starting to take greater risk. So his
Speaker 3: downfall came in Belgium during a robbery that fell way
Speaker 3: below his usual standards. So October fifth, eighteen ninety two,
Speaker 3: he and these two associates, they tried to burglarize the
Speaker 3: American Express office in Liege.
Speaker 2: Okay, which used to be like the Western Union where
Speaker 2: they're sending money and stuff.
Speaker 3: So they actually exactly and so police later testified that
Speaker 3: their actions were suspicious from the jump, and they made
Speaker 3: repeated visits. They asked really weird questions. They'd go in
Speaker 3: there and be like, oh, I don't know how much
Speaker 3: money did you have the counter right now? That's just
Speaker 3: I'm just curious.
Speaker 2: How big is your safe? Like roughly speaking in Cubic.
Speaker 2: Sit made a.
Speaker 3: Look and they they were behaving in a way that
Speaker 3: was totally uncharacteristic of his typical, meticulous planning. And some
Speaker 3: say that like he's starting to slip due to stress
Speaker 3: or financial pressure. Others are like, you know, he was
Speaker 3: just emotionally exhausted. He had no spoons left zarinving this
Speaker 3: double life. Plus his wife's health was declining, mainly her
Speaker 3: mental health, like she was having some issues. And then
Speaker 3: also like his criminal network as it grew, it started
Speaker 3: to get a little more fragmented. Whatever the cause, the
Speaker 3: robbery was a disaster. So the Belgian police they got
Speaker 3: a tip about this AMEX heist, so they were there
Speaker 3: waiting when Worth and his accomplices broke in and there was.
Speaker 2: Like a struggle inside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, oh hey, what's up, and there's this
Speaker 3: little struggle ensues. But then Worth he's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: we don't use violence, all right, surrender peacefully and so.
Speaker 3: But he did give a false name. However, you know
Speaker 3: who shows up, the Pinkertons.
Speaker 2: What they crossed the Atlantic.
Speaker 3: They had been him for years, up stories about and
Speaker 3: they were in English, I'm looking for him. Then they
Speaker 3: hit the continent.
Speaker 2: Um, yeah, they.
Speaker 3: Were the ones who identified him. They heard about this.
Speaker 3: They show up. They're like, no, no, no, we know who
Speaker 3: that is. He gets convicted and sentenced to seven years
Speaker 3: in prison. And the prison was harsh there, but orderly,
Speaker 3: and he was like he was a perfect model prisoner,
Speaker 3: and so that got him privileges and like reduced some
Speaker 3: of the hostility from the guards. But with him behind bars,
Speaker 3: his empire was ruined. Like the syndicate totally fell apart
Speaker 3: without his leadership. Some of the members were arrested, others
Speaker 3: retired or like fled to South America. His wife suffered
Speaker 3: a total mental collapse and had to be committed to
Speaker 3: an institution. His two kids. I mean, because think about it,
Speaker 3: she's already struggling and then she finds out like her
Speaker 3: world is rocked. Yeah, the kids they get put into
Speaker 3: a boarding school, but they didn't know how they were
Speaker 3: going to afford this. His health starts to decline. He's
Speaker 3: like rapidly aging. So he once was this suave criminal mastermind.
Speaker 3: Now he's like a thin, sickly introspective schedule of who
Speaker 3: he was. Yeah. So he gets released in eighteen ninety
Speaker 3: seven early for good behavior. He's fifty three. He's diminished,
Speaker 3: but he is determined to rebuild some semblance of stability
Speaker 3: for his kids. He had one asset remaining, the Gainsborough
Speaker 3: portrait that he never no. He had left it with
Speaker 3: a trusted associate before his arrest, and so that was
Speaker 3: his bargaining chip. So he gets out. He goes to
Speaker 3: the United States and he seeks out Pinkerton. What Yes,
Speaker 3: the detective whose pursuit of him had spanned three decades
Speaker 3: at this point. So surprisingly, Pinkerton's like, yeah, I'll meet
Speaker 3: with you. I mean, at this point he's not he's
Speaker 3: done his time.
Speaker 2: Does Pinkerton write about him in one of his books?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So they meet and and they developed this like weird
Speaker 3: mutual respect. I bet, and Pinkerton was like he really
Speaker 3: admired Worth's discipline and how he was nonviolent. Worth respected
Speaker 3: how tenacious Pinkerton was, and so Worth proposes a deal.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'll return the Gainesboro if the gallery pays
Speaker 3: this huge amount to fund my children's care. And Pinkerton
Speaker 3: he wants to get his name on there as the
Speaker 3: one who resolved one of the most famous art thefts
Speaker 3: in history. So it's like, I will act as the
Speaker 3: intermediary to make this happen. So they go back and
Speaker 3: forth negotiations for months, and then finally the gallery agrees.
Speaker 3: So the handover took place in eighteen ninety nine in Paris.
Speaker 3: So Worth personally delivered the painting rolled up still in
Speaker 3: the protective case, in excellent perfect condition.
Speaker 2: And is he claiming that he stole it or he
Speaker 2: knows where it is?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: No, you want.
Speaker 3: To want it back. So the return of the portrait
Speaker 3: front page news worldwide.
Speaker 2: I bet so.
Speaker 3: With the funds from the settlement, Worth regained custody of
Speaker 3: his children. He moved them all to London, living quietly
Speaker 3: under his real name. In Kensington. He opened a modest
Speaker 3: private inquiry office. He became a PI and occasionally he
Speaker 3: worked with the Pinkertons on minor jobs. Hacker, yes, exactly,
Speaker 3: So he wasn't wealthy, but he was able to have
Speaker 3: like a stable life for his family. He he did
Speaker 3: still have ill health, and he would he loved to
Speaker 3: tell stories about his exploits. Oh yeah, and he would
Speaker 3: tell like trusted acquaintances. But he never betrayed former associates.
Speaker 3: He kept his like really strict criminal cod Pickerton operatives
Speaker 3: continued to visit him, but they came because they were
Speaker 3: fascinating by the wisdom and the perspective that he had
Speaker 3: gained and could share with them for their detecting totally,
Speaker 3: you know development.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like visiting Hannibal Lecter if you're an
Speaker 2: FBI agent, right, it's just like I need help on
Speaker 2: findingding the guy.
Speaker 3: About the Criminal Behavior Unit in the FBI came about
Speaker 3: of interviewing all those serials. Yeah, ida thing, so Adam Worth.
Speaker 3: He died on January eighth, nineteen oh two, at the
Speaker 3: age of fifty seven of complications of pneumonia. He's buried
Speaker 3: at Highgates Cemetery, which is one of London's most prestigious
Speaker 3: Victorian burial grounds. Karl Marx is.
Speaker 2: Buried just about say, as long as I know it,
Speaker 2: so is.
Speaker 3: George Michael Douglas Adams and Malcolm McLaren.
Speaker 2: George Michael okay when yeah, I just doing the math there.
Speaker 3: Adam Worth's headstone the first.
Speaker 2: I went with George sand I was like, that's not
Speaker 2: what you said.
Speaker 3: It's Orge Michelle. His headstone has his real name on it.
Speaker 3: Adam Worth. His kids, they you know, were very close
Speaker 3: to him, even though he was gone on so often.
Speaker 3: They're the ones who arranged for the grave and maintained
Speaker 3: it for years, so they didn't have there was no
Speaker 3: hard feelings.
Speaker 2: They you know, they forgave and forgot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so to speak, and know his death did not
Speaker 3: diminish his influence. Instead, his legend just grew. How so
Speaker 3: I can hear the masses yelling from their open windows
Speaker 3: so exactly. In eighteen ninety three, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Speaker 3: introduced Professor James Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes novel The
Speaker 3: Final Problem. So Moriarty is described as a mastermind controlling
Speaker 3: a vast network of criminals, a strategist who avoids violence
Speaker 3: but orchestrates brilliant crimes from behind the scenes. Victorian readers
Speaker 3: immediately recognized the parallel.
Speaker 2: Totally, even down to the being a mathematician, you like
Speaker 2: being good at math.
Speaker 3: In Scotland, Yards inspector John Shore had publicly called Adam
Speaker 3: Worth quote the Napoleon of crime. That exact phrase is
Speaker 3: used to describe Moriarty in the Final Problem.
Speaker 2: That's why I was wondering, how can you be that
Speaker 2: that's moriorty.
Speaker 3: So Doyle adopted the phrase directly. And though Moriarty was
Speaker 3: a mathematician rather than a thief, the structural similarities discipline, invisibility,
Speaker 3: organization unmistakable to everybody. And this made sense because there
Speaker 3: were a lot of London crime reporters who corresponded with
Speaker 3: detective agencies and covered the Worth story who were also
Speaker 3: part of like Doyle's professional orbit. So George Salah, he
Speaker 3: was a journalist for the Daily Telegraph. He wrote about
Speaker 3: Worth and you know, quote the Napoleon of the underworld.
Speaker 3: Doyle admired and followed Sala's writing. He also mingled with
Speaker 3: all these journalists and editors who wrote about real crime syndicates.
Speaker 3: Worth's name frequently appeared in those discussions, and Doyle's editor,
Speaker 3: Herbert Greeno Smith definitely knew the Worth legend. And then
Speaker 3: there was Pankerton. I love this so The clearest bridge
Speaker 3: between Work and Moriarty is Pinkerton. So as we know,
Speaker 3: he tracked Worth for decades and he amassed the most
Speaker 3: complete file on him. And Doyle was part of the
Speaker 3: same upper middle class London social world that Pinkerton moved
Speaker 3: in when he traveled to England, so they crossed paths.
Speaker 3: Worth didn't just influence literature, he also contributed to the
Speaker 3: development of international policing cooperation. Yeah, it's like his ability
Speaker 3: to slip the borders expose the weaknesses of having all
Speaker 3: these fragmented police systems. The Pinkertons in particular used their
Speaker 3: pursuit of Worth as a model for creating trans national
Speaker 3: investigative practices.
Speaker 2: So wait, did they kind of not like singularly but
Speaker 2: inspire interpots?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Wow, he you know, he was one of the
Speaker 3: main contributors. So hit like all of his meticulous planning
Speaker 3: inspired Scotland Yard to adopt more systematic surveillance techniques. They
Speaker 3: started up with dossier's and they started, okay, we'll coordinate
Speaker 3: with foreign agencies.
Speaker 2: We'll come up with a flying squad.
Speaker 3: His story has inspired books, documentaries, fictionalized portrayals. He's like
Speaker 3: the archetype of the gentleman, criminal, cultured, non violent, intelligent, enigmatic,
Speaker 3: and he gets you know, romanticized.
Speaker 2: He's the archetype, one of the best criminals of all times. Yes, Mariarty, like.
Speaker 3: His crimes are real. His ability to exploit the weaknesses
Speaker 3: of global capitalism is so profound. Aaron, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 2: That was great? They well the fact that I have
Speaker 2: to admit I did not know this guy's criminal career,
Speaker 2: or did he inspired Moriarty. I didn't know he was
Speaker 2: inspired by a real person. And I love Mariarty obviously.
Speaker 2: I'm not like reading the Wikipedia page of Moriarty. I'm
Speaker 2: just reading this the Conan Doyle stories and appreciating him
Speaker 2: as a character, watching the movies, appreciating as a character,
Speaker 2: and had no idea, never even thought to think, wow,
Speaker 2: I want to read Bay he's not a real guy.
Speaker 2: I just assumed he was, Like, it's so fantastically he
Speaker 2: had to come out of Coden Doyle's imagination.
Speaker 3: Right, No real guy, I thought.
Speaker 2: In a lot of ways, I always thought it was
Speaker 2: him portraying himself as a villain, like this is what
Speaker 2: I would be Like.
Speaker 3: I have no idea, And then I stumbled upon this guy.
Speaker 2: What's your tis Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: This is again one of those cases where we can
Speaker 3: kind of admire a criminal because he's non violent. He's
Speaker 3: punching up, yeah, and he's just a fascinating character. Plus
Speaker 3: he hung out with a guy piano Charlie.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, and he's walking around with a
Speaker 2: very famous painting in a special case he created as
Speaker 2: a lucky child.
Speaker 3: Absolutely pristine.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, an unbleached cotton cloth.
Speaker 3: I love it. I think I need to talk back
Speaker 3: after that.
Speaker 2: I think we both.
Speaker 5: Oh my god. I hey is Aaron and Elizabeth. This
Speaker 5: is Sarah from Texas and like this week's Flapper bandit,
Speaker 5: I attended the University of Texas at Austin. My tuition
Speaker 5: was completely covered by my parents' military benefits, and somehow
Speaker 5: I still came out with fifty thousand dollars in student loans.
Speaker 5: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 6: Sorry, Yeah, welcome to higher education in the United States.
Speaker 6: I love that it got covered, but not loving the Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's it for today, My condolences. You can find us
Speaker 3: online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime on Blue Sky Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime Pod Fun Little Animations, fun for you and me.
Speaker 2: You got producer D on there now he's telling a story.
Speaker 2: Did you see that a producer D. If you want
Speaker 2: to see what he looks like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, check that out. Email us at Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com and as always, leave a talk
Speaker 3: back on the iHeart app. You can share what your
Speaker 3: student debt is. We start it, we can start a calculator.
Speaker 3: Either way. It's on the iHeart app's free reach out.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett,
Speaker 3: produced and edited by the Napoleon of Podcasting Dave Cousten,
Speaker 3: starring Annalys rutger Is Judith. Research is by nonviolent catalytic
Speaker 3: converter Fee from Marisa Brown and Pinkerton whose heart Really
Speaker 3: Isn't in It Jabari Davis. The theme song is by
Speaker 3: lock picking specialist Thomas Lee and master of disguise Travis Dutton.
Speaker 3: Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair
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Speaker 3: Scotland Yard Detectives Just one week from retirement, Ben Bollen
Speaker 3: and Noel Brown. Crime say It one more time. Udiquious Crime.
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