Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey, Lost Hills listeners, it's Dana. I wanted to
Speaker 1: let you know that you can hear the entire new
Speaker 1: season of Lost Hill's ad free, along with other great
Speaker 1: binge listens by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin
Speaker 1: Plus on the Lost Hills Show page in Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
Speaker 2: Nearly twenty five years ago, Diner's Club introduced the first
Speaker 2: executive credit card. Today around the world, Diner's Club is
Speaker 2: still the first card.
Speaker 3: We're on it.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, the accessory to a life of luxury,
Speaker 1: travel and access was the Diner's Club card. At least
Speaker 1: if you believe it's advertisements, you've got off outsign writing service.
Speaker 2: You'll spend love money without getting nervous. It's easy to
Speaker 2: spot a member of the club. Last year, Diner's Club
Speaker 2: members had over ten million fine meals, took over five
Speaker 2: hundred thousand vacations, and save it many helpings of chop suey.
Speaker 1: That was the kind of life that Mickey Dora wanted
Speaker 1: and felt he deserved.
Speaker 2: I don't see a Diner's Club member. If you want
Speaker 2: to be one, call eight hundred five, two, five, seven thousand.
Speaker 1: Back in the late fifties, Mickey had applied for a
Speaker 1: diner's club card. He studied a book called Credit Cardsmanship
Speaker 1: about how to builk credit card companies and reap the rewards.
Speaker 1: With the world a wash in plastic, it was almost
Speaker 1: too easy to take out a bunch of cards, spend freely,
Speaker 1: and split for a new life far far away. By
Speaker 1: the early seventies, Mickey had set his sights on New
Speaker 1: Zealand that would be a good place to sit out
Speaker 1: World War III. Visiting New Zealand, he wrote to Linda
Speaker 1: kai quote, I found it the perfect place for our
Speaker 1: future together. Finally, a peaceful country to live in, friendly
Speaker 1: people and good surf. I love you, Mickey. The only
Speaker 1: problem was he was in New Zealand with his other girlfriend, Marcia,
Speaker 1: and Linda back at home in Los Angeles had taken
Speaker 1: up with someone else, and not just anyone. Mickey's rival,
Speaker 1: who is an even more flamboyant con artist than Mickey was.
Speaker 1: I'm Dana Goodyear and this is Lost Hills episode eight
Speaker 1: aka Fugitive Oh Nda, Hi, No it's not, Linda.
Speaker 3: I just work here.
Speaker 1: You're kidding me, because I here I'm data good here.
Speaker 4: You guys are late.
Speaker 1: Sorry. Linda Kai is in her seventies now. She's married
Speaker 1: to a surfer, of course, and lives in a cute
Speaker 1: mobile home ten minutes from the ocean in Ventura County.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, I thought we couldn't paintings. They're online.
Speaker 5: You made these?
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, yeah, I just finished this one. This is
Speaker 4: my friend's dog that we watch all the time. We
Speaker 4: babysit her when they go out on their boat, and
Speaker 4: she's a wonderful.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, she's an artist. Her place is full
Speaker 1: of her paintings, mostly surf breaks, but there are also photographs,
Speaker 1: including one of Linda in her twenties in a camber
Speaker 1: van somewhere in the world. Her dirty blonde hair is
Speaker 1: pulled into a thick braid and there's a hard look
Speaker 1: in her eye. Back when Linda met Mickey Dora, she'd
Speaker 1: been twenty two, living on her own in a VW
Speaker 1: van at the beach. Mickey was thirty seven, just like
Speaker 1: Diane before her. When she was young and innocent and
Speaker 1: Mickey was a full on adult. Linda was Mickey's little secret.
Speaker 1: He gave her a key to his house on Gretna
Speaker 1: Green and Brentwood. The lair filled with strange treasures and
Speaker 1: used airline tickets, suggesting a jet setting world traveler. But
Speaker 1: he didn't take her out with his friends, and often
Speaker 1: Mickey spent the night elsewhere, and sometimes Linda did too.
Speaker 4: There's another wrangler in this mix, Don Wilson, who set
Speaker 4: the thing alight. Now, if it wasn't for this other
Speaker 4: care this is not all about Mickey, because Don jumps
Speaker 4: into the fray, and you know, things get nasty.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, Linda published a book about her adventures.
Speaker 1: She called it The surf Sting Travels with Mickey, Dora
Speaker 1: the Cat and Don Wilson. Pirate Captain Don Wilson was
Speaker 1: another Malibu surfer. Don and Mickey had been friends and
Speaker 1: then they'd become enemies.
Speaker 4: I didn't know it at the down, but those two
Speaker 4: had a big fall out at Malibu at one time
Speaker 4: because Mickey hated Don because you would show up in
Speaker 4: pink Cadillacts and fill his car full of girls and
Speaker 4: go drive off.
Speaker 1: Linda happened to meet Don at a time when she
Speaker 1: and Nicky were temporarily split up.
Speaker 4: Don Wilson came along when Nicky kind of threw me
Speaker 4: out of the apartment. I was at the beach at
Speaker 4: State Beach Lane in the sand, just kind of like
Speaker 4: I'm not really I'm a mass now, you know. I
Speaker 4: blew it. And I heard two guys sitting next to me,
Speaker 4: kind of a little bit further over, a couple of
Speaker 4: towels over. You know.
Speaker 1: These two guys were talking about a friend of Linda's.
Speaker 1: So Linda piped up and.
Speaker 5: They both looked over at me. That was Don Wilson.
Speaker 4: And they looked over at me and they said with
Speaker 4: the hell the hell are you? You know like, and
Speaker 4: I said, oh, it was Mickey's girlfriend, you know. And
Speaker 4: boy Don's had come up with the sand like this,
Speaker 4: you know, like what and he says, hey, he says,
Speaker 4: I'm having a barbecue tonight. He says, come on up,
Speaker 4: And there it was.
Speaker 5: I went up to the barbecue.
Speaker 1: And Don Wilson, aka the Pirate Captain. And why was
Speaker 1: he called the Pirate Captain?
Speaker 5: Well, I should be obvious he was a thief.
Speaker 1: For much of the decade that Linda was with Mickey,
Speaker 1: she was also intermittently with the Pirate Captain. She even
Speaker 1: married Don at one point for a year playing type
Speaker 1: of war over Linda. The two men became sworn enemies.
Speaker 4: Don was complete opposite of Mickey. Mickey was dark haired
Speaker 4: and dark handsome, this heavy, heavy, hungarian darkness, beautiful, you know.
Speaker 4: Don was Scottish, fair skinned, blue eyes, and white white hair,
Speaker 4: not gray but really white. Now. Don was not the
Speaker 4: better surfer, but Don was the better talker.
Speaker 1: But in some respects, Linda's two boyfriends were incredibly alike.
Speaker 1: They were both con men. Don had even been to
Speaker 1: prison for his schemes.
Speaker 4: He was a famous rubber check writer. I heard a
Speaker 4: story where he invited everybody to a big party in
Speaker 4: a big, fancy restaurant and then wrote a big, big
Speaker 4: check to the waiter. And then, evidently I heard that
Speaker 4: the waiter ran out right away and put a down
Speaker 4: payment on a car. I say, wow, you know, but
Speaker 4: then nothing was paid for.
Speaker 5: It just bounced.
Speaker 4: Don come from a very wealthy family in Palisades. His
Speaker 4: dad owned most of Santa Monica and Montana Boulevard where
Speaker 4: all the boutiques are. And I think Mickey hated this
Speaker 4: because I think Mickey's dad was very wealthy also. But
Speaker 4: Mickey had no chance to touch any of the money.
Speaker 1: And Linda. The pirate captain saw an opportunity to mess
Speaker 1: with the cat. So when you meet Don, the thing
Speaker 1: that gets his attention is that you say, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: Mickey's ex.
Speaker 4: Yes, Dad, da da da, Here comes the bugles and horns.
Speaker 5: He goes, this is going to work.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy two, Mickey was still stringing Linda along
Speaker 1: about going to New Zealand. He was spending a lot
Speaker 1: of time traveling with his other girlfriend, a non surfer
Speaker 1: named Marcia. She was the heiress to a gold mine fortune.
Speaker 1: In her book, Linda writes that while she was waiting
Speaker 1: on Mickey, Don was arrested for writing bad checks. He
Speaker 1: jumped bail and fled to Mexico. From there, Don flew
Speaker 1: to Tahiti and told Linda to meet him. Linda had
Speaker 1: turned Don on to Mickey's book about credit card fraud,
Speaker 1: so with a bunch of new plastic they went on
Speaker 1: a world tour.
Speaker 4: Don was a champion on this because you could tell
Speaker 4: Mickey flailed a bit. You know, he was just a
Speaker 4: bit nervous. You know, it wasn't really like good. But
Speaker 4: with Don, he was a champion. You know, it was
Speaker 4: just like, come on, you know, let's.
Speaker 5: Do this, do this, you know, let's get this going.
Speaker 1: Traveling with Don, Linda doctored credit cards, license plates, and
Speaker 1: government documents. But when Linda and Don got back to California,
Speaker 1: Linda fell in with Mickey again. She and Don parted
Speaker 1: ways and she didn't hear from him until one day
Speaker 1: she went to her parents' house in the valley and
Speaker 1: there was a letter from him from prison. When she
Speaker 1: visited Don, she says he blamed Mickey for his arrest.
Speaker 4: This whole story, I got to tell you right now,
Speaker 4: was never about love.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: I might have thought so, being young and naiven stupid,
Speaker 4: but this was never about love. This is never about like, oh,
Speaker 4: Mickey's gonna overpower me with his love, or Don's going
Speaker 4: to love me and romance me and you know, take
Speaker 4: me away.
Speaker 5: This was about rivalry.
Speaker 1: And you were upon.
Speaker 5: I was the middle. I was the fox.
Speaker 4: You know, here's the two guys running out into the woods.
Speaker 5: I didn't know it then, Uh.
Speaker 4: I was kind of caught up too close and enjoying
Speaker 4: some of it, you know, let travel and enjoying the attention.
Speaker 4: But I thought it was about love periodically, and I'd
Speaker 4: break down.
Speaker 1: With Don out of the way in prison, the path
Speaker 1: was clear for Mickey and Linda, and Linda had some
Speaker 1: new skills in her repertoire.
Speaker 4: I was a valuable asset, you know, to have.
Speaker 1: So you'd been traveling around the world with Don Wilson,
Speaker 1: the pirate captain, doing these kinds of schemes with him. Yes,
Speaker 1: And Mickey knows you're trained up by Don. Yes, and
Speaker 1: now you know how to do this stuff.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, oh yes.
Speaker 1: After years of talking about the decline of Malibu, of California,
Speaker 1: of the entire country, Mickey was finally going to leave.
Speaker 3: I really feel the Americans or something has happened to them,
Speaker 3: but they've become barbaristic, barbaristic, and I'm sure that's the term,
Speaker 3: but I think we're having a nervous breakout in this country.
Speaker 3: I don't want to spell it out for you, but
Speaker 3: it is difficult to live to surrounding a middle class,
Speaker 3: mediocre beach and wade.
Speaker 1: That's Mickey in an interview he gave for the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy film Placific Vibrations. The golden days of Malibu were over.
Speaker 1: According to Mickey, he was going to see if he
Speaker 1: could recreate them somewhere else.
Speaker 3: No evolution, was it all going? Was it coming to
Speaker 3: an end? Or is it just beginning? When the one
Speaker 3: fellow gold Malibu quite well at a certain time in history.
Speaker 3: And I doubt if few people who are able to
Speaker 3: find these type of conditions again through crowds and controls
Speaker 3: and much bureaucracy. But there are other areas which are magnificent.
Speaker 3: The are treasures in this world.
Speaker 1: So long Malibu Mickey's exile was finally about to begin.
Speaker 1: In October of nineteen seventy four, a man named Richard
Speaker 1: Austin Roche Junior applied for a new passport in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: He submitted a photograph of himself wearing a sport coat
Speaker 1: and tie. Roche was a surfer friend of Mickey Dora's.
Speaker 1: He was in the business of building tennis courts. But
Speaker 1: the passport office flagged the application and didn't issue the document.
Speaker 1: That's because eighteen months earlier, Richard Austin Roach Junior had
Speaker 1: driven his car into a trash truck and died. And
Speaker 1: as the FBI discovered later, the person in the passport
Speaker 1: photo submitted with the application was Mickey Dora. When that
Speaker 1: passport application got flagged, the FBI set up a sting,
Speaker 1: dropping off a registered letter for Richard Austin Roach Junior
Speaker 1: at the address provided, but no one was there to
Speaker 1: sign for it. So why did Mickey leave.
Speaker 5: Malibu crowds Adventure? Was he also on the run? Probably?
Speaker 4: Yeah? That good.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: About eighteen months before he left Malibu, Mickey he had
Speaker 1: been arrested for stealing ski equipment. In January nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: Mickey went on a ski weekend with some surfer friends.
Speaker 1: They went to Mammoth that same ski mountain he took
Speaker 1: Gidget to back in the fifties. Mickey bought four hundred
Speaker 1: and one dollars in eighty nine cents worth of equipment
Speaker 1: and services. He paid by check made out to the
Speaker 1: Mammoth Mountain ski area. Mickey had adequate funds in his
Speaker 1: account to cover the check, but claiming that the check
Speaker 1: had been lost, Mickey put a stop on it and
Speaker 1: apparently kept the equipment. He was charged with felony fraud
Speaker 1: in rural Mono County, some three hundred miles north of Malibu.
Speaker 1: He was found guilty and put on probation. While his
Speaker 1: case was being processed, Mickey had packed up the house
Speaker 1: on Gretna Green, stuffing all his belongings into a VW van.
Speaker 1: For years, Mickey had been decrying the desecration of Malibu,
Speaker 1: talking about finding some place quiet and clean where he
Speaker 1: could lie low. He was shipping all his possessions to
Speaker 1: New Zealand, probation or no probation. Good luck to the
Speaker 1: Mono County Sheriff's Department finding him there.
Speaker 5: He was packing up a van to ship over there.
Speaker 5: What was he plating in the van? Everything?
Speaker 4: Clothes, all his antiques, tiger skins, tiger skins.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the whole show. Everything was going in.
Speaker 1: Mickey had invited Linda to New Zealand, but it also
Speaker 1: invited Marcia, the non surfing heiress, and on the day
Speaker 1: he was packing up, Marcia was there helping him. Linda
Speaker 1: was there too, strategizing.
Speaker 4: My mind was working overtime as to what to say
Speaker 4: to get him to not do it. With Marcia, I
Speaker 4: had a couple of long talks with them by myself,
Speaker 4: and I said, you go to New Zealand with her.
Speaker 4: I said, you are not. You could be waiting on
Speaker 4: her hand and foot. He's got loads of money.
Speaker 5: She's going to be.
Speaker 4: One to shop. You'll be wanting to surf. I said,
Speaker 4: down there, there'd be nobody around. I said, who's going
Speaker 4: to be your friend to go surfing with? I said,
Speaker 4: that's me.
Speaker 1: But he didn't take Linda. Mickey left La with Marcia
Speaker 1: and they didn't go to New Zealand. A few months later,
Speaker 1: Mickey told Linda to meet him in Switzerland. This was
Speaker 1: in January of nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4: He summonsed me in Zurich. Marcia was going to leave.
Speaker 4: She was going to I think Greece. That was the
Speaker 4: split up. Then we continued right on to New Zealand.
Speaker 1: On the way to New Zealand, they went to London, Athens, Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut,
Speaker 1: New Delhi, Gawa, Sri Lanka and Sydney. They looked for
Speaker 1: surf antiques and rugs along the way. Linda had a
Speaker 1: job to alter Mickey's Diners Club card. She already knew how.
Speaker 4: I was assigned to take a little razor blade and
Speaker 4: change some numbers, and we did and make it good
Speaker 4: for another month. Because the way it worked back then,
Speaker 4: these credit cards went through a kachunker, as I call them.
Speaker 4: They're big machines and they go over the top and
Speaker 4: they make a copy of the numbers. So my job
Speaker 4: was it to glue them back on the numbers and
Speaker 4: letters and whatever we took off to change.
Speaker 1: In New Zealand, Mickey and Linda looked for a place
Speaker 1: to hide, somewhere clean and safe with empty waves. The
Speaker 1: plan was stop the paper trail and spend the rest
Speaker 1: of their lives in peace.
Speaker 4: Micky picked a place at Opatama. It was on the
Speaker 4: Mahia Coast. It was actually an older gentleman who lived
Speaker 4: next door, would you believe, And he was selling the house,
Speaker 4: and Vicky went with the pretense to do just go
Speaker 4: to buy it and started paying him.
Speaker 5: I guess some rent it was. He's a cute little blaze.
Speaker 1: But what they didn't realize was that the FBI was
Speaker 1: looking for them, hunting a fugitive who had tried to
Speaker 1: get a passport in a dead man's name. In March
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy five, a federal warrant was issued for
Speaker 1: John Doe aka Richard Austin Roche Junior, aka Fugitive. Around
Speaker 1: the same time, a bench warrant was issued by a
Speaker 1: judge in Mono County, California for Michael Chapin. He was
Speaker 1: a probationer convicted of stealing ski equipment who had absconded
Speaker 1: whereabouts unknown. Then in June, agents showed a source the
Speaker 1: photograph from the passport application. The source immediately recognized the
Speaker 1: person in the picture as Mickey Chapin. The source told
Speaker 1: the agents Mickey was dangerous and unpredictable and would put
Speaker 1: sugar in your gas tank. He said, Mickey carried a
Speaker 1: large knife end quote, used to have a following of
Speaker 1: wild kids on surf Rider Beach. He had a large
Speaker 1: ego and was idolized by these kids. For the capers
Speaker 1: he pulled off unquote. The source asked the agents to
Speaker 1: protect his identity. He was scared of what Mickey and
Speaker 1: his friends would do if they found out he'd talked
Speaker 1: for the FBI. The picture was coming together. Richard Austin
Speaker 1: Roche was Mickey Chapin and Mickey Chapin was Mickey Dora.
Speaker 1: The FBI requested a check for weapons registered to Michael S.
Speaker 1: Chapin and Miklo Stora, but they had no idea where
Speaker 1: this person was.
Speaker 4: We got involved with some one of the local Maori guys.
Speaker 4: He said, let's go down to the beach and we
Speaker 4: went down on the beach and there were wild goats.
Speaker 4: So we shot one of those, brought that up and
Speaker 4: hung it in the garage for about a week, you know,
Speaker 4: letting it meat tender. I don't know what it was doing,
Speaker 4: but we ended up eating stuff like that. Our best
Speaker 4: thing was roadkilled. We drove out the road, dirt road,
Speaker 4: and then we come back. This is surf surf checking.
Speaker 4: Come back the other way and there's a rabbit hit
Speaker 4: picked the rabbit up and skin them and throw them
Speaker 4: in the pot. And we were eating bait fish. We
Speaker 4: were skimping, you know, we were really careful. We just
Speaker 4: macrolled and stuff. People would, you know, throw away off
Speaker 4: of the side of the boat and it was the
Speaker 4: other guy, the quid. That's it. Calamari would cut him
Speaker 4: up and eat him.
Speaker 1: Then the FBI put another piece in place. Mickey Dora
Speaker 1: had been on a worldwide spending spree. September fourth, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy FBI teletype two director Washington Field from Los Angeles
Speaker 1: quote as of August twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five, Dora,
Speaker 1: through the fraudulent counterfeit use of a diner's club card,
Speaker 1: was in debt to the Diners Club in the amount
Speaker 1: of nineteen thousand, seven hundred and eighty five dollars and
Speaker 1: ninety one cents. That's about one hundred and ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars today. One more thing quote. Mickey was accompanied by
Speaker 1: a white female described as redacted age about redacted. Her
Speaker 1: name was not known. Their mystery man was traveling with
Speaker 1: an even more mysterious woman. Back in New Zealand. Mickey
Speaker 1: and Linda were making it work.
Speaker 4: The stove was actually a wood fired stove to keep
Speaker 4: that thing going and for the heat of the house too.
Speaker 4: And I was good at it, you know, I could
Speaker 4: do it. I wasn't a good cook like Marsha, but
Speaker 4: you know I could, you know, make soup and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. But that was good.
Speaker 1: Life was simple and pretty sweet and as far as
Speaker 1: they knew they had successfully dropped out.
Speaker 4: We'd go in to like a local gym and play
Speaker 4: badminton and trying to play tennis, which was one of
Speaker 4: Mickey's favorites, walking down to the little beach down there
Speaker 4: and enjoying surf.
Speaker 1: But one day the person they least expected to see
Speaker 1: showed up, not law enforcement, someone who posed a much
Speaker 1: greater threat.
Speaker 4: Well, we're gonna knock on the door. I see this
Speaker 4: car drive up and I'm like, who the hell's uh?
Speaker 4: You know, I see this blonde come out as dawn.
Speaker 4: I said, Mickey, down's here, and he goes what He
Speaker 4: had a rifle of course, because we were hunting, you know,
Speaker 4: and he had it behind the door. He picks it
Speaker 4: up and he says, get rid of him, he.
Speaker 5: Said, got him out of here.
Speaker 4: So he comes to the door and I opened it
Speaker 4: and he went, what the hell you know, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 4: come on, as you got to get out of here,
Speaker 4: you know. He says, I'll just take a spin for
Speaker 4: this talk, you know. So I didn't have any of
Speaker 4: my stuff. He say, come on, he says, grab your purse,
Speaker 4: you know. So I grab my purse, go out. He says,
Speaker 4: do you like living here? And I said, you know yeah,
Speaker 4: and he says, come.
Speaker 5: On, let's go. I got blends. So we get we
Speaker 5: lie laughed. I had my purse. That's it.
Speaker 1: You didn't feel bad you were leaving Mickey?
Speaker 4: Well here it was the adventure thing again' you know.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it was me pulling it off
Speaker 4: or I guess I got tired of new Zealand, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of war. I just took off, you know, and
Speaker 4: then we get to I think it was Wellington, but
Speaker 4: I hadn't my passport wasn't in my purse. Mickey of
Speaker 4: course immediately figured out she's got to take off. He
Speaker 4: took my passport.
Speaker 1: Mickey knew Linda couldn't get far without a passport, and
Speaker 1: he knew the first place she'd have to go.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, Don was wanted by the Inner pol
Speaker 4: And Micky had called someone in the upper departments of
Speaker 4: passport divisions and said, Hey, this girl's coming. She's with
Speaker 4: a guy who's wanted by the FBI.
Speaker 5: Get them. So they did.
Speaker 4: They got Don, Yeah, and they had to let me go.
Speaker 1: They arrested Don.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he got He got clinked.
Speaker 1: The New Zealand authorities gave Linda a temporary passport and
Speaker 1: in four armed her that she was going to be
Speaker 1: deported unless she left immediately.
Speaker 4: My flight was Pango Pango, Los Angeles. And when I
Speaker 4: got to Pango Pango, I went to the tourist office
Speaker 4: and changed my ticket and went to New Caledonia.
Speaker 1: Where is that And why do you go there?
Speaker 4: Because it's right above New Zealand, and I was going
Speaker 4: to go back and kick Mickey's ass.
Speaker 1: Linda was furious, but she still wanted to warn Mickey
Speaker 1: of the danger he was in.
Speaker 4: So I talked to him, Mickey, and I said, I'm
Speaker 4: in New Caledonia and I said, they're going to come
Speaker 4: after you next because you know, I said, Don is
Speaker 4: going to tell them that you're there. You better join
Speaker 4: me in New Caledonia. And I'm not telling a lie. Now,
Speaker 4: this is the truth. This wasn't like to scare Mickey.
Speaker 5: He knew.
Speaker 4: So he's going to lose everything, his whole, all his
Speaker 4: everything that he owned. Get on a flight and get
Speaker 4: the hell out of the well. He stole me out.
Speaker 4: I was there for thirty days. He didn't show up.
Speaker 1: Mickey was punishing her. He believed Linda had been writing
Speaker 1: to Don and led him to their hideout.
Speaker 4: I didn't tell Don where I was, you know, he
Speaker 4: found out through my parents.
Speaker 1: But he thought you tipped on off to wear his
Speaker 1: own whereabouts. Yeah, and then he was mad because you
Speaker 1: left with Don.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, So.
Speaker 1: How cute tangled web?
Speaker 5: What a web she weaves?
Speaker 1: Linda waited for Mickey for a month, running up a
Speaker 1: hotel bill she could not afford. She had to call
Speaker 1: her parents back in California for help, but then surprisingly,
Speaker 1: the New Zealand authorities permitted her to return.
Speaker 4: I went back to Mickey's. I saw him on the
Speaker 4: beach and I kneeled him. I said, hey, you know
Speaker 4: you're in trouble. I said, we'll both get in trouble
Speaker 4: because they're going to come. You know.
Speaker 5: We had to go.
Speaker 4: But he was mad, you know, he was mad at me,
Speaker 4: and I was mad at him.
Speaker 1: But as they'd done many times before, Mickey and Linda
Speaker 1: made up and put it behind them. Mickey put all
Speaker 1: his possessions in a storage facility and he and Linda
Speaker 1: left the country. When eventually authorities searched the unit, they
Speaker 1: found a stash of antiques, gold coins, and other valuables
Speaker 1: worth in excess of one hundred thousand dollars, a loaded rifle,
Speaker 1: a loaded pistol, a twelve gage shotgun, twenty four fake
Speaker 1: airline tickets used, and sixty credit cards quote, many of
Speaker 1: which were altered or defaced, all in the name of Dora.
Speaker 1: There were also quote documents indicating large scale fraudulent purchasing
Speaker 1: of goods throughout the world. A third warrant was issued
Speaker 1: for Mickey's arrest, and now Interpol was involved. After Mickey
Speaker 1: and Linda left New Zealand, the world tour started all
Speaker 1: over again. Linda's book includes a folio of pictures Mickey
Speaker 1: and Hyde, Park in a leather jacket, Mickey in a
Speaker 1: Jackey cap at an ancient ruin in Greece, Mickey on
Speaker 1: a camel in the Valley of the Kings, Mickey and Kenya,
Speaker 1: Mickey in Medayene.
Speaker 4: I actually went around the world three times at one time.
Speaker 5: So there's Australia, New.
Speaker 4: Zealand, Bali, Thailand, Malaysia, India, I'm probably missing a few,
Speaker 4: all of Europe, Tahiti, Costa Rica, Venezuela.
Speaker 1: This time, though the FBI was tracking their movements with
Speaker 1: help from Interpol and the Diners Club. Mickey and Linda
Speaker 1: were evading law enforcement, but the circuitest path they took
Speaker 1: was dictated by something else Entirely.
Speaker 4: This was this whole search of looking for waves that
Speaker 4: weren't ridden at places, you know, early in the early days,
Speaker 4: just the discovery and pioneering stage, and Micky had all
Speaker 4: these crazy ideas of leaving here to go somewhere else
Speaker 4: where you could ride waves like he did in the
Speaker 4: past at Malibu at some other place like Malibu.
Speaker 1: Linda was using everything she'd learned from Don Wilson, as
Speaker 1: well as her skills as an artist, to doctor credit
Speaker 1: cards so she and Mickey could keep on moving. But
Speaker 1: they were starting to feel hunted. Mickey's passport had expired.
Speaker 1: When he went to reinstate it, the clerk tried to
Speaker 1: detain him. He was wearing tennis shoes for exactly this reason.
Speaker 1: He ran out of the building and escaped to Linda,
Speaker 1: who was on the street with the motor running. Mickey
Speaker 1: and Linda were scared to use their own passports, and
Speaker 1: they were running low on cash, so they did what
Speaker 1: they knew how to do. They pulled more scams, passport scams.
Speaker 4: Switching passports around with names and stuff.
Speaker 1: To insurance scams.
Speaker 4: Mickey was an expert at this and passed it down.
Speaker 4: He said, what you do is you get travels insurance
Speaker 4: and take a bag, go into Bustipo and stand there
Speaker 4: like you're on the phone, and then go over to
Speaker 4: security guard and say my bag was just stolen, get
Speaker 4: a police rip, take it to the insurance company, claim
Speaker 4: your insurance money.
Speaker 1: Travelers check scams.
Speaker 4: American Express had what was called travelers checks, where you
Speaker 4: get a packet of.
Speaker 5: Them, and then Mickey said.
Speaker 4: What you do is you go back and tell them
Speaker 4: that you lost them or somebody stole them, you lost them,
Speaker 4: and then you get that amount again. So instead of
Speaker 4: five hundred and now you have a thousand.
Speaker 5: I didn't do any of that.
Speaker 4: When you're doing stuff like that, everything you know is
Speaker 4: on the line.
Speaker 1: Linda never lost sight of why she was taking these
Speaker 1: enormous risks with Mickey. It was for the surf.
Speaker 4: After we had a good session somewhere, we'd say, ah,
Speaker 4: look at that, you know, how would we do that?
Speaker 1: You must have felt like you were getting away with
Speaker 1: the most amazing heist of all time.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, Bonnie and Clyde, here we are.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Don Wilson had ruined Mickey's plan to duck all his
Speaker 1: creditors and law enforcement and surf empty waves in New
Speaker 1: Zealand for the rest of his life. Now New Zealand
Speaker 1: was burned, Mickey had to find a different place to hide.
Speaker 1: He decided on the south of France. There was a
Speaker 1: small town there called Getori. It reminded him of Malibu
Speaker 1: as it had been in the fifties. In France, he'd
Speaker 1: be beyond the reach of US authorities. The French did
Speaker 1: not tend to extradite, Plus, he could spend his winters
Speaker 1: skiing in the Alps. Mickey and Linda flew to Germany,
Speaker 1: where Mickey bought a new, fully loaded Mercedes Campravan dark Green.
Speaker 1: According to Linda, he paid for it with a dividend
Speaker 1: from gold styf he owned, or something like that. Linda
Speaker 1: wasn't sure. He kept his stock certificates and gold coins
Speaker 1: in a safety deposit box in Switzerland. While they were
Speaker 1: in Germany, Linda felt sick and threw up so many
Speaker 1: times she got dehydrated and had to go to the hospital.
Speaker 1: Mickey ran out on the bill. In the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, Miklo Stora, Mickey's father, was going to
Speaker 1: be in France meeting with Baron Philippe de Rothschild. Miklos
Speaker 1: had been working for the Rothschild since the mid sixties,
Speaker 1: distributing their wines in California. At one point he was
Speaker 1: the sole US importer for the company. The Rothschilds were
Speaker 1: among the wealthiest and most respected families in Europe. They
Speaker 1: were the first Jewish family to be invited into the Peerage,
Speaker 1: and they had a huge chateau in vineyards outside of Bordeaux.
Speaker 1: Mickey and Linda showed up in the camper van. By
Speaker 1: this point Mickey had a new scheme in mind. Do
Speaker 1: you remember anything about Mickey's search for the episodic wave.
Speaker 5: That's all blown. There is no episonic wave.
Speaker 4: It's all a ploy, you know, to just keep traveling.
Speaker 1: According to Mickey, the episodic wave was quote a Bermuda
Speaker 1: triangle like phenomenon, supposedly accountable for the mysterious disappearance of
Speaker 1: many ships. It is a wave of enormous proportions not
Speaker 1: caused by any of the usual means e g. Storms,
Speaker 1: earth tremors, or quakes. The episodic wave, sometimes known as
Speaker 1: the Rogue Wave or the Ninth Wave, is a real phenomenon,
Speaker 1: but Mickey's expedition probably wasn't. He wanted to go looking
Speaker 1: for it in New Guinea with Jacques Cousteau and maybe
Speaker 1: some money from Rolex. Years later, in letters to Linda,
Speaker 1: Mickey would use the episodic wave as code for a boondoggle,
Speaker 1: a reference to their outlaw adventures in Bordeaux. Mickey and
Speaker 1: Linda were hanging around the campground stealing food from the
Speaker 1: local market when they finally got an invitation to the
Speaker 1: Rothschild's chateau for lunch.
Speaker 4: And the baron we were sitting at the table and
Speaker 4: he was so excited talking and to have me and
Speaker 4: Micky there with him, and he was moving his arms
Speaker 4: around and talking and knocked over a bottle of wine
Speaker 4: and it was probably a five hundred dollars bottle of wine,
Speaker 4: you know, went on the floor, and all these beautiful
Speaker 4: tiles and all the maids and everybody came running in
Speaker 4: to clean it up, you know, before it stained the dials.
Speaker 1: Mickey asked the baron if he would fund an expedition
Speaker 1: to find the episodic wave.
Speaker 4: The baron wasn't going to bite on that, you know,
Speaker 4: he was like, what, no, No, it wasn't going to help.
Speaker 1: And the relentless pace of being on the run with
Speaker 1: Mickey was starting to wear Linda down.
Speaker 4: There was the amazing, amazing, beautiful places and hotels and opulence,
Speaker 4: and then down to the absolute rough garbage, just roughing
Speaker 4: it and flies coming after you, and you're trying to
Speaker 4: run away on the beach and here comes this pack
Speaker 4: of flies and fishing off the beach, and here's a
Speaker 4: couple of you know, catch a couple of god, you know, well,
Speaker 4: they'll put that on the barbecue and eat that. There
Speaker 4: was times when it was rough, and there was times
Speaker 4: when the weather was bad. There was times when I
Speaker 4: had malaria and almost died. There was a full at
Speaker 4: least five lifetimes packed into one.
Speaker 1: When you look back and think about your younger self,
Speaker 1: who you know, you said you were naive, but you're
Speaker 1: sounding less naive by the minute. You're you're getting some.
Speaker 5: Worldly experience out there.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about it? Do you feel like
Speaker 1: angry that these guys got you to do this stuff
Speaker 1: that could have gotten you in real trouble in places
Speaker 1: you couldn't have gotten out of.
Speaker 4: People got mad at me a little bit because they
Speaker 4: said you were stupid, you know, but actually I don't
Speaker 4: think I was. You know, I think I was kind
Speaker 4: of in there too, working it. And the reason why
Speaker 4: is I figured out I'm a surfer.
Speaker 5: And I mean that says it all.
Speaker 4: I mean, when you see it, I mean, if you
Speaker 4: do it and see it and you understand it, you
Speaker 4: can see how it kind of pushed me to kind
Speaker 4: of work it more.
Speaker 5: There's the surf, there's the adventure.
Speaker 1: So you were pulling these scams so that you could
Speaker 1: surf the world and survive. Yeah, but Linda restless and
Speaker 1: more important, she didn't trust Mickey.
Speaker 4: I never felt that he did have my back.
Speaker 1: You were on your own, yes, even though you were
Speaker 1: with Mickey.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: He used to kind of say to me too a
Speaker 4: little bit. You know, if you get caught with Don
Speaker 4: pulling shit like this, he said, He's got a lot
Speaker 4: of money. You know, he'll bail himself out, but you won't,
Speaker 4: he says, you know, you know you're not going to
Speaker 4: get bailed out. So he used to kind of like
Speaker 4: put the teeth in with that, you.
Speaker 1: Know, manipulating of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, mental, little bit of mental girl.
Speaker 1: And Mickey could be aggressive. One time, toward the end
Speaker 1: of their relationship, Mickey crossed a line with her. They
Speaker 1: were in France, staying in Mickey's Capra van.
Speaker 4: He threw a pot of hot tea at me and
Speaker 4: we were in the little van, the Mercedes. That's when
Speaker 4: I jumped out of the door and everything was getting frayed.
Speaker 4: Everything was like coming apart at the threads. There was
Speaker 4: too many obstacles, barriers, people, circumstances. I was seeing clutter.
Speaker 4: I wasn't focusing on what I really wanted to do anymore.
Speaker 4: I wanted to just surf and have peace. As a
Speaker 4: friend of mine used to say, I wanted to trim
Speaker 4: in peace. And this wasn't happening.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: There was too many poles and tugs.
Speaker 1: At some point it all became too much.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you when I lost it. I was in France.
Speaker 4: Mickey was stuck there because he had no means to
Speaker 4: get anywhere with the passport.
Speaker 5: It burnt out everything.
Speaker 4: France was going to be the place, and I got
Speaker 4: tired of France, and I got tired of the whole thing. Well,
Speaker 4: two Irish guys came down from Ireland and kind of
Speaker 4: talked about surf and we were talking and talking, and
Speaker 4: I said, when you're going up there? And he goes
Speaker 4: next week and I said, can I come? Hecause you
Speaker 4: got money for gas.
Speaker 5: I said yes. I left.
Speaker 4: Mickey was left city. I told him, I said I'm leaving.
Speaker 4: He was in a stairwell in Beuritz. It was a
Speaker 4: chamborda more. He was in the stairwell, and he broke
Speaker 4: down cried, Now, I gotta tell you. I don't know
Speaker 4: if it was real tears or if it was the
Speaker 4: game's not over yet tears, But mine were over. I
Speaker 4: was done.
Speaker 1: Linda relocated to a desolate beach in County Sligo, on
Speaker 1: Ireland's Atlantic Coast. She moved into a broken down VW
Speaker 1: bus and spent the winter surfing alone. Mickey also found
Speaker 1: himself alone in France. He'd been there before, left behind, abandoned,
Speaker 1: but Mickey was a survivor. He'd park his Mercedes camera
Speaker 1: van in the little town of Gettory, keep his head
Speaker 1: down and wait for someone else to come along next
Speaker 1: time on lost Hills. Mickey can't hide.
Speaker 6: The editor called or publisher called is into his office
Speaker 6: and he said, okay, you guys are going to France.
Speaker 6: And we know Mickey dor is hanging out in France.
Speaker 6: He's been dropped off the radar now for a few
Speaker 6: years and no one's heard anything of him, are from him,
Speaker 6: but we know he's there, and you guys are going there,
Speaker 6: and no matter what, you know, what did he say
Speaker 6: to you?
Speaker 3: He said, if Mickey even farts, I want a picture
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 6: That's how let's say what it coverage from Vicky right,
Speaker 6: so we said, okay, we're on it.
Speaker 1: That's next in episode nine, The Fall Guys. Lost Hills
Speaker 1: is written and reported by Me Dana Goodyear. It's created
Speaker 1: by me and Benadere and produced by Western Sound and
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can binge
Speaker 1: the entire season right now. Add free. Find Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot fm, slash plus