Speaker 1: Prologue, How to rob a bank. Here's the thing about
Speaker 1: robbing a bank. As soon as you walk in the door,
Speaker 1: every single second counts, so you better have a plan.
Speaker 1: When Greece's top bank robber does a job, he and
Speaker 1: his crew have it down to a science.
Speaker 2: Can press.
Speaker 3: The three of us enter the bank with our faces uncovered.
Speaker 1: As the other two step team. I stood near the entrance.
Speaker 1: Let's get a close up on this guy. He's in
Speaker 1: his thirties, medium build, handsome with a square jaw. His
Speaker 1: name is Costas Samaras. The press calls him the Artist
Speaker 1: because he designs these brazen yet perfectly heists, with every
Speaker 1: detail accounted for. The clock is ticking, but the Artist
Speaker 1: is relaxed. Focused. He hangs back by the door while
Speaker 1: his partners walk up to the teller and flash friendly smiles.
Speaker 1: They also wave the semi automatics their kring, you know,
Speaker 1: to move things along a little bit.
Speaker 2: Dam Good morning, how are you doing.
Speaker 3: We've come for a loan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not here for a loan. They keep it light,
Speaker 1: but move fast. They know they have about four minutes
Speaker 1: before the cops show up. And here in the small
Speaker 1: city of Columbaca, Greece. There really isn't anywhere to hide.
Speaker 4: A parents with them.
Speaker 2: My two friends go to the central cass here in
Speaker 2: the buck.
Speaker 1: His friends they're brothers, and they're kind of famous in
Speaker 1: these parts. Mikos is the older one. They call him
Speaker 1: the Ghost. He's got a real talent for avoiding arrests.
Speaker 1: He can't be god. Then there's the kid brother of Vasilis.
Speaker 1: He's actually the reason I'm telling you this story in
Speaker 1: the first place. Vasilis doesn't look like much, stocky, balding,
Speaker 1: a little unassuming, but they call him Robin Hood because
Speaker 1: he's the generous one. Whether he's a hero or a criminal,
Speaker 1: well that depends on your perspective, but right now he
Speaker 1: definitely looks more like a criminal. Robin Hood points his
Speaker 1: gun at the teller and notices the man is shaking,
Speaker 1: so he reassures him gently. Which is here to take
Speaker 1: the bank's money, not your lives. Still, this is a robbery,
Speaker 1: and they've got three minutes left the key.
Speaker 5: Key.
Speaker 1: Robin Hood and the Ghost walk over to the manager
Speaker 1: who's frozen behind his desk.
Speaker 3: Open the safe.
Speaker 1: Now they're down to two minutes. The artist has his
Speaker 1: gun tucked under his coat, and he's watching the front door.
Speaker 3: At some point, the lady offers starts walking into the bank.
Speaker 3: I'm standing next to her and say, come on in, lady,
Speaker 3: come on in, but se notices the other two holding guns.
Speaker 1: He turns back.
Speaker 3: No, I'm leaving. I'm leaving, she says.
Speaker 1: What this lady doesn't know is that these guys live
Speaker 1: by a simple do no harm code. No drugs, definitely
Speaker 1: no killing. They just want the cash. They don't want
Speaker 1: to get caught up with blood on their hands. I
Speaker 1: sawed to the brothers finish up. The brothers fill up
Speaker 1: a few canvas bags with cash, and then time's up.
Speaker 1: They need to exit.
Speaker 2: Now we go outside, We get in the car, we
Speaker 2: start driving, and within a few meters.
Speaker 1: Someone is soothing others instead of minding her business. The
Speaker 1: lady went for help, and now a cop has taken
Speaker 1: aim at their getaway car like he's some kind of hero.
Speaker 1: But these guys are pros. They don't even bother returning fire.
Speaker 1: They just laugh and hit the gas, speeding toward one
Speaker 1: of the stolen cars they'd stashed around town.
Speaker 3: We took the road north, where it's where the other
Speaker 3: getaway car was changed. Car changed close.
Speaker 1: And just like that, the three men disappear into the
Speaker 1: dark mountains that loom over Columbaca. That was June nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, and they've made off with a crazy amount
Speaker 1: of money. It's the equivalent of about one point four
Speaker 1: million US dollars. In fact, it's the biggest bank robbery
Speaker 1: in Greek history. This wasn't their first bank job, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't their last either. To date, they've held up
Speaker 1: dozens of banks. They've evaded police with comical ease, and
Speaker 1: even when they did get caught, they broke out of
Speaker 1: prison not once, not twice, but ten times. These days,
Speaker 1: the artists and the ghost they're out of the game.
Speaker 1: But Vasilis Palio Coostas Robin Hood, he's still on the run.
Speaker 1: He's one of the most wanted men in the world,
Speaker 1: with a bounty of more than a million euros on
Speaker 1: his head. Despite the best efforts of the Greek police,
Speaker 1: various intelligence agencies, and even inner poll it's been fourteen
Speaker 1: years since anyone's caught a glimpse of him, and that's
Speaker 1: turned into a bona fide folk hero. He's like a
Speaker 1: storybook character with all these tales following him around. Of
Speaker 1: being a criminal with a conscience of sharing his lute
Speaker 1: with the poor mountain folk he grew up with. The
Speaker 1: thing is this Robin Hood. He isn't a character someone invented.
Speaker 1: He's actually real. I'm Miles Gray from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: This is the Good Thief Chapter one, Cops and Robbers.
Speaker 6: You know something, Robin.
Speaker 1: I was just wondering, are we good guys or bad guys?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I mean, are Robin the rich to feed the poor?
Speaker 1: Rob That's a naughty word. We never rob so to
Speaker 1: borrow a it from those who could have thought it.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, every kid I knew loved Robinhood,
Speaker 1: and there was no shortage of versions. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was the nineteen ninety one movie, you know, shout out
Speaker 1: Morgan Freeman, The Painted Man. There was the other nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one movie Robin Hood Men in Tights, and then
Speaker 1: there's that animated Fox. I mean, look, there's a lot
Speaker 1: to choose from. Obviously, the Og legend has been around
Speaker 1: a lot longer. For hundreds of years, people have composed ballads, poems, books, plays,
Speaker 1: and now a podcast about this idea of a lone
Speaker 1: swashbuckler who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
Speaker 1: It's an idea that just doesn't get tired, and these
Speaker 1: days we need it more than ever. You see it
Speaker 1: in the news all the time, rich and powerful people
Speaker 1: patting their pockets at everyone else's expense, and if they
Speaker 1: break a few laws along the way, they don't care.
Speaker 1: For every evil billionaire that gets caught, there's one hundred
Speaker 1: more getting away with it. But robin hoods, they give
Speaker 1: us someone to root for and something to believe in.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that we can take back what's ours.
Speaker 1: That's what drew us to Vasili's Paliocostas. He sounded like
Speaker 1: a crook with a conscience, a real life robin Hood
Speaker 1: who's out there right now. But Vasilis Paliocostas is a
Speaker 1: total mystery. Nobody knows where he is or who he
Speaker 1: really is, how he got this way. We don't even
Speaker 1: know if all the fantastic stories about his generosity are
Speaker 1: true or if people just want them to be true.
Speaker 6: So oh fuck may okay.
Speaker 1: We assembled a team in Athens and decided to find
Speaker 1: this robin hood ourselves.
Speaker 6: It's like three as a woman, and what looks like
Speaker 6: is that you can't see.
Speaker 1: One of my partners in cracking this case is Daphne,
Speaker 1: our producer and lead reporter in Athens. Daphne, I'm guessing
Speaker 1: you'd heard of us Elis before we reached out to you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, definitely. I mean, everybody in Greece really knows the
Speaker 7: name Palo Costas. When we were children. I remember hearing
Speaker 7: about them on TV, in the newspapers, you know, our
Speaker 7: parents mentioning their names.
Speaker 1: So what did you know about them?
Speaker 7: I mean, I'd heard that Vasilis specifically got started early
Speaker 7: in life, you know, in this kind of line of work,
Speaker 7: partly because it runs in the family. He's got a
Speaker 7: big brother, an older brother, Nikos, who he often partnered with,
Speaker 7: the one you called the ghost.
Speaker 1: And as we discovered, these brothers had a pretty wild upbringing.
Speaker 1: Here's Christina, a reporter on Daphne's team.
Speaker 8: Vasilisa Nikos grew up in a very poor farming family
Speaker 8: in the mountains of northern Greece. The brothers were very
Speaker 8: isolated until their teams and eventually they moved near the
Speaker 8: city Strikla, and when they finally got a taste of
Speaker 8: urban life, they well, they took advantage of it. Even
Speaker 8: early on. The petty crimes they committed were pretty daring.
Speaker 8: There's so many stories about them, but I think that
Speaker 8: my favorite one from their early years was how as
Speaker 8: Nikos was just starting in his life of crime, he
Speaker 8: robbed a jewelry store directly across the street from a
Speaker 8: police station. And what he did was that he padlocked
Speaker 8: the police station doors and then walked right across the street,
Speaker 8: smashed the window, and took off with a bunch of jewels,
Speaker 8: and the cops couldn't do anything about it because they
Speaker 8: were stuck inside.
Speaker 1: I mean, to be clear, I don't condone stealing from
Speaker 1: small businesses, but that's just funny.
Speaker 8: It's creative, which became the hallmark of the Palokostas brothers.
Speaker 8: They didn't just commit crimes, they did it with flair.
Speaker 1: Of course, not everybody buys into the hype, including Vasilis Fimiu,
Speaker 1: a cop who worked in the trica La police department.
Speaker 1: He spent years trying to track the brothers down and
Speaker 1: he knows better than anyone what they're capable of. So
Speaker 1: Daphne headed north to meet him.
Speaker 7: I'm with my team and we're driving to Tricarla, and
Speaker 7: I should say tri Calai is not the grease you
Speaker 7: probably know from tourist brush shaws. It's not like colin
Speaker 7: ruins and sparkling beachside villas. It's a bit more provincial.
Speaker 7: There's rocky green peaks, cliff top monasteries and these zigzagging
Speaker 7: dirt roads.
Speaker 8: Isn't it lovely how the mountains from a distance always
Speaker 8: look blue. It's a bit strange looking at those mountains
Speaker 8: whilst working on this project. I can't help but wonder
Speaker 8: if the silica is somewhere close. Rumors do suggest that
Speaker 8: he has secret hideouts all over, and there's others that
Speaker 8: say that a network of supporters is out there helping
Speaker 8: him stay hidden. The team was driving to Tricola to
Speaker 8: meet with the man who once led to the effort
Speaker 8: to catch Paalo Costas, retired police officer named Vasili Sefimu.
Speaker 8: In two thousand and three, he received a special assignment
Speaker 8: to scour those same mountains in search of the country's
Speaker 8: most wanted man.
Speaker 2: O Mother.
Speaker 9: The team was formed to chase a Costas brother had
Speaker 9: four people feeling this case on a daily basis around
Speaker 9: the Clockma.
Speaker 8: Is retired now, so we met with him at a
Speaker 8: cafe in the old tricala prison that's now been turned
Speaker 8: into a museum. He still maintains the gruffness of an
Speaker 8: old school cop. He started police work back in the
Speaker 8: eighties and proudly claims that during all that time he
Speaker 8: never picked up a pantophile a pre investigation report. He
Speaker 8: was always on the streets where the action was. In
Speaker 8: nineteen ninety nine, he was working the streets of Athens,
Speaker 8: but he decided to take his big city shops back
Speaker 8: to his hometown and well, it didn't really take him
Speaker 8: very long to find where the action was.
Speaker 9: Attend the Printristulian and it was right before Christmas. December
Speaker 9: two thousand and three, Sunday, we had intel that a
Speaker 9: car had been stolen.
Speaker 1: Ftmu and his partners are driving an unmarked car through
Speaker 1: the mountains when they hear the dispatch radio crackle.
Speaker 9: The car was seen on the mountain range of so
Speaker 9: my team and I drove into the mountains to locate
Speaker 9: him and track.
Speaker 1: The police accelerate up these steep inclines. Suddenly Ftmu spots
Speaker 1: the stolen car racing ahead and figures he can catch up.
Speaker 4: But then when he sezes in the mirror, he speeds
Speaker 4: up and drives higher again.
Speaker 1: Ftmu steps on the gas and the engine grinds into
Speaker 1: high gear. He's white knuckling it around a series of
Speaker 1: hairpin turns. He thinks he's going to catch them, and
Speaker 1: then he comes upon the car.
Speaker 4: Give me a U turn and turns the car the
Speaker 4: sideways bas The stolen car is just.
Speaker 1: Parked there, and for a moment Ftmu is convinced he
Speaker 1: has the fugitive trapped. But that thought only lingers for
Speaker 1: a second.
Speaker 4: We hear a barrage of shots. Bang, bang bang.
Speaker 1: It's a gun, and not just any gun.
Speaker 9: He had a scorpions, a machine gu The bullets were
Speaker 9: flying everywhere above us, to the right, to the left.
Speaker 1: Ftmu slams on the brakes. He opens a driver's side door, dusts.
Speaker 1: He's rolling out onto the dirt.
Speaker 4: We go out of the car and took cover.
Speaker 1: He reaches for his service weapon and then opens fire.
Speaker 1: Bullets fly. The police scramble for a ditch.
Speaker 4: One of our bullets hit his car on the passenger
Speaker 4: side and went through the windshiels then he refers to
Speaker 4: left for the mountain.
Speaker 1: If the Mu watches as the stolen car speeds away,
Speaker 1: disappearing behind a cloud of dust. The officer's heart is
Speaker 1: still racing. He looks around and notices something unusual. His
Speaker 1: car is fine, like none of the bullets got anywhere
Speaker 1: near him or his team. The crook, he realizes, was
Speaker 1: shooting toward them, not at them, and that confirmed f
Speaker 1: the MEU's suspicions. It has to be a Palocostis boy
Speaker 1: behind the wheel. Chapter two, Hometown Heroes. Officer Ftimiu has
Speaker 1: chased Vasilis Palocostis around Greece for years. There have been
Speaker 1: high stakes chases and bullets flying, but he has a
Speaker 1: funny relationship to his target. While he made clear to
Speaker 1: us that he does not like Vasilis, in fact, Ftmiu
Speaker 1: considers him a terrorist, he has come to have a
Speaker 1: level of admiration for Vasilis's skill. Vasilis, he tells us,
Speaker 1: isn't like other criminals. He's dangerous for sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: dude is armed to the teeth, but he never shoots
Speaker 1: to kill and his ability to get away every single
Speaker 1: time is frankly impressive. But Christina, my colleague that we
Speaker 1: met earlier, she discovered that in Vasilis' hometown, the admiration
Speaker 1: goes a lot further.
Speaker 8: As we were trying to get a read on how
Speaker 8: locals view the Palocostas brothers. We met with Valiant claud,
Speaker 8: a journalist who spent a lot of time in tricolars
Speaker 8: reporting on their ures. She told us that the first
Speaker 8: time she visited, she was struck by just how many
Speaker 8: people sympathized with Vasilis. The locals, they were very reluctant
Speaker 8: to talk to her, and the people who did talk
Speaker 8: they said really good things about both Vasilis and Nas.
Speaker 8: Apparently she encountered a man that was hitch hiking. They
Speaker 8: decided to pick him up and they introduced themselves. They
Speaker 8: said that they were journalists, that they wanted to do
Speaker 8: a story on Costas, and the man turned around and said.
Speaker 1: Vasilis is a good guy.
Speaker 8: We we were classmates at the sixth primary school. He said,
Speaker 8: I don't believe he's a common criminal. He's helping people,
Speaker 8: and he pointed at the value that Costas brothers hadn't
Speaker 8: killed anybody.
Speaker 1: Valia kept hearing stories like this. People told her that
Speaker 1: Jaaliocosta stole cars and returned them in mint condition with
Speaker 1: wads of cash on the passenger seat. Others have reported
Speaker 1: that he put young women through school, helped poor farmers
Speaker 1: pay off loans. One time he stole a farmer's tractor
Speaker 1: and returned it with the wagon filled with fresh hay.
Speaker 1: Others said that when he robbed banks, he tossed money
Speaker 1: out the window of his getaway car to the pedestrians.
Speaker 1: It struck Valia that nobody had any real criticisms of
Speaker 1: this guy, I mean, with stories like that. Of course,
Speaker 1: Vassilis and his brother were celebrities here, but Valia noticed
Speaker 1: that nobody seemed to have first hand experience with all
Speaker 1: this generosity. Either it was always from a cousin's neighbor
Speaker 1: or a friend of a friend, which felt suspicious. And
Speaker 1: also she couldn't really nail down the details. The stories
Speaker 1: are always a little vague, and when she pushed for more,
Speaker 1: it seemed like there was something they didn't want to say.
Speaker 4: In the perier, It's a strange thing.
Speaker 8: It was as if they were trying to protect the
Speaker 8: brothers and Vandigotta's feeling that they didn't want to say
Speaker 8: too much. They only wanted to say the best things
Speaker 8: about them. She would push back, but what do you think.
Speaker 8: You know, they've lived a life of hard crime, and
Speaker 8: they would always answer, I'm sure, but they've also been
Speaker 8: helping lots of the locals.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but this made my ears
Speaker 1: perk up, Like why was everybody so tight lipped? Is
Speaker 1: it possible they knew where Vasilis was hiding? After all,
Speaker 1: this is his home turf. Those rugged mountains outside the city,
Speaker 1: they're the perfect place to hide if you know your
Speaker 1: way around. So is somebody watching out for Vasilis Palo Coostas.
Speaker 1: We asked Vali if she ever got to the bottom
Speaker 1: of it, but she said no. Every time she raised
Speaker 1: the question of his whereabouts, she always got the same answer.
Speaker 1: Vasilis Palio Costas is untouchable.
Speaker 8: They were talking to Valley about Robinhood Balo Costas, and
Speaker 8: they said, Vasilis is gone. The man knows the mountains,
Speaker 8: he knows how to hide, he knows how to disguise himself.
Speaker 8: He's brilliant, and no matter what happens, they will never
Speaker 8: find him.
Speaker 1: Chapter three, The Artist's Apprentice. For the past fourteen years,
Speaker 1: Vasilis Palo Costas has been m i a, avoiding the
Speaker 1: spotlight and the Greek prison system. Some say he's in Athens,
Speaker 1: Others say he's hiding in the mountains of northern Greece.
Speaker 1: Still others suggest he's kicking back, sipping on Margarita's on
Speaker 1: one of the many far flung islands where Greeks go
Speaker 1: to disappear. It's all hearsay. Daphne and her team spent
Speaker 1: months pulling on threads, chasing internet leads and hitting dead ends,
Speaker 1: but one name kept popping up. Of course, that's Samaras
Speaker 1: oh Cosa Samaras Yamara.
Speaker 7: We interviewed dozens of people, handful more that spoke off
Speaker 7: the record, but many of them kept mentioning the name Samaras.
Speaker 1: Coursta Samaras, also known as the Artist. Does the word
Speaker 1: artist ring a bell, well, you should costa. Samaras is
Speaker 1: the Artist, the criminal mastermind who was guarding the bank
Speaker 1: entrance at the top of this episode.
Speaker 6: Samaras is a career criminal. He spent twenty one years
Speaker 6: in prison. He's seen the inside of twelve or thirteen
Speaker 6: different jails, and he's also a bona fide escape artist.
Speaker 6: He's escaped prison five different times.
Speaker 1: George, another reporter on Daphne's team, dug deep into Samaras's
Speaker 1: background to find out why this guy is so important.
Speaker 6: Turns out Samaras actually played quite a big part to
Speaker 6: Vasilis's origin story. Samaras is one of the main people
Speaker 6: that help Vasillis go from poor Mountain kit to one
Speaker 6: of Greece's most wanted criminals. And the trajectory is actually
Speaker 6: kind of funny because originally Samaras was actually friends with
Speaker 6: the older brother Nikos, but eventually he take Vasillis under
Speaker 6: his wing.
Speaker 1: And this was when in the in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, Vasillis was about twenty years old. And
Speaker 6: what's really interesting is that, you know, in addition to
Speaker 6: teaching him how to pick locks and steal cars, Samaras
Speaker 6: apparently taught Vasillis that the crime doesn't always need a victim.
Speaker 6: You know, that crimes can be done morally and that
Speaker 6: there can be this real honor amongst thieves in a sense.
Speaker 6: We wanted to learn more about this so called moral
Speaker 6: code to crime, so we track down somebody who wants
Speaker 6: interview Samaras. An investigative journalist from Reporters United named Doloris
Speaker 6: jdro Janos or Cos Samarass told us cost Us Samaras
Speaker 6: obsessed with fighting any system that hurts the week and
Speaker 6: He told us that what struck him is how Samaras
Speaker 6: and the Palo Costas brothers were always thinking of things
Speaker 6: in moral terms, Like he gave us this example of
Speaker 6: a bank robbery and the fact that they're robbing a bank.
Speaker 6: They're not, you know, robbing the people. They're not stealing
Speaker 6: grandma and grandpa's pension. They're stealing from the strong. And
Speaker 6: a lot of people would see that as a positive thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, think about it. What have big, faceless corporate banks
Speaker 1: ever done for you except try to nickel and dime
Speaker 1: you with overdraft fees that don't make sense. A good
Speaker 1: old fashioned bank robbery is kind of a perfect crime.
Speaker 1: The banks are ensured the customer's personal accounts aren't touched,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile the execs are probably committing white collar crime
Speaker 1: literally as we speak. At least that's what Vasili Sin
Speaker 1: Samaras thought, and that's what made them such a good team.
Speaker 1: They punched up up, never down. Besides, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: some of US's philosophy that impressed the Ladis. He was
Speaker 1: also blown away by someone Us' determination to be free,
Speaker 1: Like even when he got caught, he always found a
Speaker 1: way to break out. Oh, somebodras. I'd better this for this.
Speaker 6: So Thoris loved the facts that Samaras never gave up.
Speaker 6: You'd expect that he commits a crime, gets caught, goes
Speaker 6: to jail, and it's over. But no, he never let
Speaker 6: the system or un arrest anyway get the better of him.
Speaker 1: He just had this crazy never say die attitude, which
Speaker 1: obviously rubbed off on Vassilis. One time, some of us
Speaker 1: had just done a robbery and as he's racing away,
Speaker 1: he gets cornered on a rooftop with nowhere to jump. Caught,
Speaker 1: he ends up cuffed and taken down town. But just
Speaker 1: a few days later, some of us puts his natural
Speaker 1: charms to work. He befriends this prison guard and starts
Speaker 1: shooting the breeze with him. They even share a meal together,
Speaker 1: grubbing on chicken. When Samaras looks down at his hands,
Speaker 1: where Greece has collected on his fingers.
Speaker 4: Or go to samarasda idiot.
Speaker 6: Samaras sees the opportunity. He asks the guard if he
Speaker 6: can go wash his hands, and he lets him go
Speaker 6: very calmly. Samaras goes into the bathroom and he heads
Speaker 6: out of the bathroom window, and he goes out, hops
Speaker 6: onto the roof terrace, looks around and heads to the stairs,
Speaker 6: and at some point there's this lady and she's shouting, hey,
Speaker 6: one of them is trying to get away police, but
Speaker 6: he just jumps off the stairs and makes a run
Speaker 6: for it. Samaras hadn't even been in prison for more
Speaker 6: than a week, and he's already got his sight set
Speaker 6: on freedom. You know, he wants to get out. He's
Speaker 6: got this fire to be free.
Speaker 1: And that's not even like one of the better Samaras stories.
Speaker 1: One time he broke out by digging through walls and
Speaker 1: hiding in the pits below vault toilets. Another time police
Speaker 1: were transferring him by truck and he chiseled a hole
Speaker 1: in the bottom of his holding cell while the truck
Speaker 1: was speeding down a highway like Looney Tune style. He
Speaker 1: just sawed his way onto the road and made a
Speaker 1: break for it. And after that escape, who do you
Speaker 1: think he called to come get him? That's right, his
Speaker 1: young pupil Vasilis Palio Costas. For years, Samadas mentored Vasilis.
Speaker 1: He taught him everything he knew how to commit an
Speaker 1: ethical crime, one where no one got hurt how to
Speaker 1: plan a heist and get away when there was no
Speaker 1: exit in sight, and he taught him how to do
Speaker 1: it with flair. But long after these lessons were over,
Speaker 1: and long after the pair had parted ways, Vasilis paliokosa
Speaker 1: Us would one up his mentor, hatching the jail break
Speaker 1: that would make him a legend. Chapter four, A Great Escape.
Speaker 1: Vasimply Spilio Costas is the legend he is today because
Speaker 1: his mentor, Costas Samaras, taught him the ropes. Together they
Speaker 1: perfected the art of the bank robbery. But here's the
Speaker 1: strange thing. When Samadas talked to journalist told hodro Janos,
Speaker 1: he was downright humble about his role.
Speaker 6: He was actually surprisingly modest. He didn't take any credit
Speaker 6: to teaching Greece's most wanted man. He just indicated that
Speaker 6: there was this unbreakable bond between him and Vasilis. For Samaras,
Speaker 6: when you're living in a legal life, it doesn't really
Speaker 6: matter who teaches who, you know, what's more important is
Speaker 6: that the camaraderie lasts.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a phrase thickest thieves for a reason.
Speaker 1: After all those years of stick ups and escapes of course,
Speaker 1: he's not just gonna go and snitch on his boy.
Speaker 1: But the Laris wondered if it was something deeper than that,
Speaker 1: Like maybe there's something else some of us doesn't want
Speaker 1: to talk about, like how Vasili's escaped prison with more
Speaker 1: panache than anyone before him, how he secured his place
Speaker 1: as Greece's greatest living folk hero. Because forget the bank
Speaker 1: robberies and the stories of his generosity, this is the
Speaker 1: part that no rider could make up. Vasilis Paliocostas has
Speaker 1: pulled off not one, but two of the most absolutely
Speaker 1: insane prison breaks of all time, and once you hear
Speaker 1: this story, it's easy to see why some of us
Speaker 1: might be just a little jealous of his pupil Cut
Speaker 1: to Athens, February two thousand and nine. Corridalos the biggest
Speaker 1: maximum security prison in Greece. Corridaalos is Greece's Alcatraz. It's
Speaker 1: where the countries of most dangerous criminals are detained, and
Speaker 1: among them is Vasilis Paliocostas. He's been locked up for
Speaker 1: just a few weeks on trial for a pass that
Speaker 1: finally caught up to him. The verdict is coming soon,
Speaker 1: and he knows he's probably facing a life sentence. Vasilis
Speaker 1: is under heightened surveillance, kept in solitary with armed guards
Speaker 1: and cameras monitoring his every move. Around three in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: the beat of helicopter blades creates this Inside the jail cells,
Speaker 1: a helicopter is hovering just above the roof of the prison,
Speaker 1: right on top of the roof covering the solitary confinement
Speaker 1: with a rope ladder drops from the chopper. People in
Speaker 1: nearby apartments lean out their windows to see. Some grab
Speaker 1: their cameras and start filming. Suddenly guards appear on the roof.
Speaker 1: They start chasing after a shadowy figure scrambling up the
Speaker 1: rope ladder into the helicopter, and then the chopper begins
Speaker 1: to rise. The guards open fire, brace they're too late.
Speaker 1: The helicopter rises above the hail of bullets and keeps climbing.
Speaker 1: It reaches altitude, rotates northeast, speeds off towards downtown Athens,
Speaker 1: and then the prison yard erupts with shears. Every inmate
Speaker 1: knows who just escaped, and soon the world will.
Speaker 9: Too feistinish sociality that the europo le Vai costas.
Speaker 5: Vo escaping the Greek Alcatraz by helicopter is impressive, But
Speaker 5: the most incredible thing is this wasn't the first time.
Speaker 1: Just two and a half years earlier, Vasilis Palio Costas
Speaker 1: had broken out of the exact same prison the exact
Speaker 1: same way. Whatever heightened security measures were in place, they
Speaker 1: weren't enough, because he managed to catch people off guard.
Speaker 1: It's like a magician who performs a trick, explains how
Speaker 1: he did it to the audience, then somehow does it again,
Speaker 1: astonishing everyone. On February twenty second, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: Vasilis Palio Costas disappeared into the sky. Since that afternoon,
Speaker 1: fourteen years ago, nobody's seen him. The Greek police, Interpol,
Speaker 1: even the world's top intelligence agencies. None of them know
Speaker 1: where he's hiding, but that hasn't stopped them from looking.
Speaker 1: Because Vasilis Paliokostas is much more than a clever fugitive
Speaker 1: on the run. He humiliated the people who were supposed
Speaker 1: to keep him behind bars. He is widely considered a
Speaker 1: genuine threat to the rich and powerful. The authorities aren't
Speaker 1: gonna let that slide, and yet so many people are
Speaker 1: rooting for him to stay free. Maybe even me. There's
Speaker 1: just something about a heroic outlaw getting one over the system,
Speaker 1: a living, breathing exception to the rule that the rich
Speaker 1: get richer. Maybe it doesn't have to be this way.
Speaker 1: Maybe we just need the fairy tale to come to
Speaker 1: life every once in a while. Either way, I want
Speaker 1: to go deeper. I want to get lost in the
Speaker 1: Greek mountains trying to find this guy. I want to
Speaker 1: understand his motives, his instincts. But the first step has
Speaker 1: got to be with the man who inspired the Greek robinhood.
Speaker 1: We need to find his mentor the man they call
Speaker 1: the artist Kostas.
Speaker 6: Some of us.
Speaker 1: This season on The Good Thief. Would this have been
Speaker 1: a place that Panel Costas would come and hang out
Speaker 1: in these villages?
Speaker 8: If you say anything bad about Polo Costas, they will
Speaker 8: kill you.
Speaker 9: We went over to the embassy and there's this big,
Speaker 9: humongous six foot rocket smoldering.
Speaker 1: One of the reactions is to look for in a
Speaker 1: robin hood. You put your hope in this robinhood.
Speaker 8: It's brilliant and no matter what happens, they will never
Speaker 8: find him.
Speaker 1: The Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. It's hosted by me Miles Gray. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Mangesh Chatikadur Kosaslinos Oz Wollashan and Kate Osborne.
Speaker 1: From My Heart executive producers are Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etor.
Speaker 1: We are so grateful to our partners at the Greek
Speaker 1: Podcast Project in Athens, without whom this show would not
Speaker 1: be possible. That's executive producer Daphne Carnesis, field producers Christina
Speaker 1: Pilioni and George Miatis, and sound designer Nikos Sclavenitis, who
Speaker 1: edited and mixed this episode and provided the English voice
Speaker 1: of Kosa Samaras. Here in the US, Mary Phillips Sandy
Speaker 1: is our supervising producer and Shane McKeon is our producer.
Speaker 1: The show is written in research by Lucas Riley. Donya
Speaker 1: Suleman is our fact checker, sound design and final mixed
Speaker 1: by Soundboard. This episode featured the voice of George I. Valiotis.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be a lot of great music in this series,
Speaker 1: and that's thanks to a Mom Baldi who wrote our
Speaker 1: theme song and Botany who composed additional music. If you
Speaker 1: want to hear more from them. We've put links in
Speaker 1: the show notes, or you can find them on your
Speaker 1: favorite music streaming service. Last, but not least, you want
Speaker 1: to thank Will Pearson, Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman, and John
Speaker 1: Mary Knapolis. Thanks so much for listening.