Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cool People Who Did cool stuff, the
Speaker 1: show in which I declare myself the arbiter of what
Speaker 1: counts as cool. This is part two of our two
Speaker 1: part series in Honor of the Steel Day, which is
Speaker 1: a mediocre prison break about how to get the funk
Speaker 1: out of prison if you don't want to be in prison. Normally,
Speaker 1: here's where I tell you where you have to go
Speaker 1: back and listen to part one. But let's be honest,
Speaker 1: this week's episodes are basically like a listical and podcast form,
Speaker 1: so I don't know, go back and listen to part
Speaker 1: one because it's cool, not because you like me too.
Speaker 1: For context for today, my guest is the esteemable Christopher Wong,
Speaker 1: best known, at least on Twitter for having particularly negative
Speaker 1: feelings about the institution of Ice. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1: Pretty good? Still extremely don't like ice. It is a
Speaker 1: it is a bat is a bat is a bad institution.
Speaker 1: All the other institution that do similar things are also bad. Uh.
Speaker 1: Please stop telling me that I shouldn't just say abolish ice,
Speaker 1: and that I should in fact say abolished border. That
Speaker 1: is my stated position. I have said so multiple times.
Speaker 1: Please stop. Only Twitter would come up with the idea
Speaker 1: that someone says I don't like X thing, and then
Speaker 1: people say we'll do therefore like why things like no,
Speaker 1: that's my reference. Um and also with us is our
Speaker 1: esteemable producer Sophie fun Fact, I tried to call the
Speaker 1: show esteemable persons whose actions were also esteemable, but Sophie
Speaker 1: said it wasn't allowed. How are you doing to do Sophie,
Speaker 1: why do you hate the word esteemable? I mean, I
Speaker 1: just didn't think that a podcast I was producing deserves
Speaker 1: such a title because I I, you know, my, my, my,
Speaker 1: my lack of of of of self esteem here on
Speaker 1: that impostor syndrome. Yeah, I mean, but it is really
Speaker 1: fun to say. Can you say that one more time? Yes,
Speaker 1: estimable persons whose actions were also esteemable. I. I do
Speaker 1: think we should scrap the current title and just switched
Speaker 1: to that because it is very fun to stay. That's
Speaker 1: when we do a live show on an airship. There
Speaker 1: we go. Problem solved. We're saving it for a special occasion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh something with a transition to about special occasions
Speaker 1: about breaking out of prison. Anyway, last episode we talked
Speaker 1: about how sometimes you can just you know, leave prison
Speaker 1: by walking out the door. Or have friends storm the place.
Speaker 1: But let's say you you tried that, or just don't
Speaker 1: have enough friends and for some reason they didn't let
Speaker 1: you go. What now you can think about most jails
Speaker 1: is having four layers of security or so you get
Speaker 1: your physical cell right. Sometimes you're allowed out of it,
Speaker 1: sometimes you're not. Sometimes you have to start there. Pick
Speaker 1: the lock, break down the door, break the walls, dig
Speaker 1: through the floor, get out the window, crawl through the ventilation.
Speaker 1: Then there's the cell block or pot like the area
Speaker 1: you're often allowed in as a prisoner, and there are
Speaker 1: blocked doors throughout the prison to prevent free mobility by prisoners,
Speaker 1: so similar techniques would apply here. Break the wall, squeeze
Speaker 1: out through tiny spaces like ventilation, get access to areas
Speaker 1: you're not allowed in, get smuggled out with the laundry
Speaker 1: or the trash except round. Then you've got fences, usually
Speaker 1: multiple concrete walls or chain like fences with razor wire
Speaker 1: on top, razor wire in the space between, and a
Speaker 1: guard in the tower watching ready to shoot you. Some
Speaker 1: people climate, some people cut it. Some people dig under
Speaker 1: it while the guard has their back turned or is
Speaker 1: a sleep or got bribed or I guess, just do
Speaker 1: it really fast and hope for the best. I don't
Speaker 1: know a lot of Joe break stories involved prisoners picking
Speaker 1: up really nasty wounds on the way from razor wire
Speaker 1: or from the movie that stuff I had, I had to.
Speaker 1: I worked a job where there was like spared like
Speaker 1: razor wire around and one of the things when the
Speaker 1: co workers told me is that that stuff has like
Speaker 1: it's coated in anti clotting agents, so when when it
Speaker 1: cuts wounds, don't clot because again, and I cannot emphasize
Speaker 1: this enough, the people who use this stuff are evil,
Speaker 1: like on a level that he's like just unfathomable. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the wire, the wire is trying to murder you. It
Speaker 1: is not just trying to murder you by the fact
Speaker 1: that it's sharp, is trying to murder you by making
Speaker 1: you bleed the death. So yeah, it's careful. Also, I
Speaker 1: had a bunch of it almost fall on me, which
Speaker 1: is great and fun and not do I do not
Speaker 1: sometimes blink my eyes and have images if they raise
Speaker 1: your wire fence descending towards my head. It's great. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you don't have that. That would sound really bad
Speaker 1: if you did know them I'm sorry, but you've got
Speaker 1: one last layer of security, or just the guards patrolling
Speaker 1: the outside, usually in a vehicle. And we've all played
Speaker 1: video games or seeing a crime film, so you know
Speaker 1: that what you do is you wait until they're not
Speaker 1: looking and then get at all. And add to all
Speaker 1: of this surveillance cameras, video analytics systems that automatically look
Speaker 1: for people, motion detectors, thermal cameras, various alarms whenever doors
Speaker 1: are open, der fences are cut in some countries, people
Speaker 1: have to work tracking collars or anklets. There's anti tunneling sensors,
Speaker 1: all kinds of ship. But all this technology is still
Speaker 1: controlled by humans, and humans are controlled by emotions and desires,
Speaker 1: so an awful lot of jail breaks involve help from
Speaker 1: the outside, usually by bribery or occasionally by ideologically a
Speaker 1: lot end cards. And then you've got a fifth layer
Speaker 1: of security, which we talked a bit about before, which is,
Speaker 1: even though I said there was only four, I'm just
Speaker 1: adding a fifth one. And the fifth layer is how
Speaker 1: fucking hard they try to catch you. But some people
Speaker 1: trying to bypass as much security as possible by digging
Speaker 1: a tunnel, why go over or through a wall when
Speaker 1: you can just go under it. Honestly, I'm shocked by
Speaker 1: how often on this show I've already found myself telling
Speaker 1: stories about people who dig tunnels. It's like, I never
Speaker 1: would have thought minecraft would not only be an analogy
Speaker 1: for crime, but also the practice of crime. I've lost track,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm saying, Like tunnel count, I've lost track,
Speaker 1: Like genuinely, yeah, I I honestly don't remember. I feel
Speaker 1: like a decent number of our episodes have involved tunnels.
Speaker 1: Should we have named the podcast tunnel Talk because now
Speaker 1: m M yeah, I feel I feel I feel like
Speaker 1: that that's that's where you go with like, that's where
Speaker 1: you go with the shirts. It's cool people who did
Speaker 1: cool things. Tunnel Talk, which just two people podcasting for
Speaker 1: it and definitely isn't a sex podcast. Okay anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: So sometimes prisoners or their outside help dig tunnels. And
Speaker 1: let me tell you about a tunnel guy, Yeah, Moises texts.
Speaker 1: Arena da Silva is a tunnel guy in Brazil. In
Speaker 1: two thousand one, he was serving a twenty five years
Speaker 1: sentence for robbery in Crandiro Penitentiary and South Paulo, Brazil
Speaker 1: and Karen Dierro wasn't a nice place. It's actually been
Speaker 1: destroyed now because of how not nice it was. Probably
Speaker 1: before Moises was there, but I'm not sure. Actually have
Speaker 1: no way of knowing. They could. I tried finding out,
Speaker 1: but I think it's before he got there. There was
Speaker 1: a prison riot. Cops stormed the place and gunned down
Speaker 1: a hundred and eleven prisoners. Jesus, yeah, that was That
Speaker 1: was a lot of people's reaction. Mascrow was so bad
Speaker 1: that some of the cops involved even eventually got convicted
Speaker 1: of murder, although it took twenty years and they still
Speaker 1: haven't gone to prison for it was was that tring
Speaker 1: thegittatorship or was that just like after the dictatorship? Because
Speaker 1: I do not know enough about the history of Brazil
Speaker 1: to a pine on this. I'm sorry. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing I don't want to be wrong about, and
Speaker 1: someone knows the answer and it's not me. So it's
Speaker 1: so bad that the cops even eventually get convicted twenty
Speaker 1: years later. And then the guy in charge of it,
Speaker 1: Uberaton Gimmas, his conviction was overturned though, because and I
Speaker 1: quote he was just following orders. He was so completely
Speaker 1: just following orders that he used the motto A hundred
Speaker 1: and eleven when he ran for political office Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: and he won, so some anti prison activists just murdered him.
Speaker 1: Fair Yeah, that rules. You didn't have to run for
Speaker 1: office on the basis of the fact that you murdered
Speaker 1: a bunch of prisoners. In two thousands six, he gets
Speaker 1: shot to death in his own apartment. Anyway. I don't
Speaker 1: know if Moyses was there during the massacre, but either way,
Speaker 1: he didn't like being there, so he and literally more
Speaker 1: than a hundred other prisoners just tunneled out. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: frustratingly a little information about this tunnel. I want to
Speaker 1: know more about this tunnel, but there's more information about
Speaker 1: his later tunnels because he's a tunnel guy. Yes, I
Speaker 1: like how often during this research I end up with
Speaker 1: like this guy is just like I'm a tunnel guy.
Speaker 1: I do crime with tunnels, and the other people are like,
Speaker 1: I'm a helicopter gal. I do crime with helicopters. Like
Speaker 1: people pick a stick and they stick with it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: look look you when you when you when you start
Speaker 1: a life of crime, you get assigned to class totally yeah,
Speaker 1: helicopter tunnel. What's up? Oh, I'm I'm probably a helicopter gal.
Speaker 1: What about you? I mean, yeah, helicopter gal the way,
Speaker 1: how about you? I'm definitely tunnels, Like frying doesn't get
Speaker 1: along with me. Great, alright, tunnel er, you're a level
Speaker 1: We probably all gouts started level one. We don't want
Speaker 1: to know a whole a long time. Margaret and I
Speaker 1: are just just like jumping out of helicopters with like
Speaker 1: nothing but like one rope. That's where we're at. But yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad was a pilot, and he would always say
Speaker 1: this thing that I think it supposed to be from
Speaker 1: like world were two bombers or something about like people
Speaker 1: who drop out of helicopters or people trobut of planes,
Speaker 1: which is like, why would you jump out of a
Speaker 1: perfectly good aircraft. It's always been my line on parach shooting,
Speaker 1: like I'm going to be one of those, like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna wait till I'm like seventy and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: parachute because I'm like at the moment that it's not
Speaker 1: that I think I would die if I did it.
Speaker 1: I think that I would have so much anxiety around
Speaker 1: doing it that it would not necessarily be worth it,
Speaker 1: but not nearly as much as anxiety as I would
Speaker 1: have in a very small tunnel helicopter. So Moises gets
Speaker 1: out in two thousand one with his tunnel, and he
Speaker 1: likes crime, so he goes back to doing it. In
Speaker 1: October two four eight robbers broke through into the bathroom
Speaker 1: of a money transport business out of a four d
Speaker 1: foot tunnel from a nearby They stormed into the main
Speaker 1: room wearing monkey and clown masks. Wielding a K forty seven.
Speaker 1: They forced seventy five workers who were in their Italian
Speaker 1: money for a t m S to instead of putting
Speaker 1: the money into the a t m S, to put
Speaker 1: it into bags, and then they made their way out
Speaker 1: with one point six million dollars worth of reis, which
Speaker 1: is the Brazilian currency that well, I guess, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess it's exchange of that feels like that feels
Speaker 1: like an amount of money that is like not large enough.
Speaker 1: Well you know who else thought it wasn't enough money? Moises?
Speaker 1: It's right, what're you gonna say? Just because for all
Speaker 1: the work, is what you're saying? Yeah, yeah, because like
Speaker 1: today you you can still you can still like thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars by like editing a jpeg and trading for
Speaker 1: a money like they they dug like a four ft tunnel.
Speaker 1: They had end well, last had a case. They get
Speaker 1: like one point six million dollars like that is oh
Speaker 1: we turned on that. I'm sad, but uh they go
Speaker 1: back out to the tunnel. They only spend ten minutes
Speaker 1: inside the building. Considered a warm up, considered a test, okay,
Speaker 1: a proof of concept. For his next trick, he performs
Speaker 1: the largest bank robbery in the Western Hemisphere has ever seen,
Speaker 1: and it's the fourth or so largest bank robbery in
Speaker 1: world history. Most of the larger ones come later. Actually,
Speaker 1: this guy was in the Guinness Book of World Records
Speaker 1: for a while for this next one, the two thousand
Speaker 1: five Banco Central burglary and Fortlas Brazil. I've heard of this,
Speaker 1: this guy with this guy, I thought he was that's awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a massive fucking conspiracy and that a ton
Speaker 1: of people are involved. Not like hush hush, but like
Speaker 1: actually the problem is not very hush hush anyway. It's
Speaker 1: both how they managed to steal so much money and
Speaker 1: probably why most of the bank robbers did so poorly
Speaker 1: as a result. But we'll get to that. Two different
Speaker 1: gangs from two different cities work together on this job. First,
Speaker 1: they secured investment from a fucking mayor. Of course. Former
Speaker 1: Mayor Antonio Arguay noon as Vieira was sorry, don't speak Portuguese,
Speaker 1: was the former mayor of the municipality of Boa Viegam, Recife,
Speaker 1: which is a rich beachfront neighborhood in the city of Recife.
Speaker 1: He invested a hundred thousand riya's in exchange for a
Speaker 1: promise of four million riyays. They rented a house and
Speaker 1: they set up a fake landscaping business. Their theoretically selling plants,
Speaker 1: grass and fake grass, but they didn't actually sell anything.
Speaker 1: They didn't really do the homework for a really good
Speaker 1: fake front. But the proprietor, you gotta sell some crash
Speaker 1: to the community. I know, what if someone was like,
Speaker 1: I need my need my lawn. Um. But the proprietor
Speaker 1: of the business was a decent enough guy. Everyone knew
Speaker 1: he wasn't a local. His accent was from somewhere south,
Speaker 1: but he hung out the local bar and he would
Speaker 1: ocasionally buy everyone around, so people liked him and the
Speaker 1: gang spent three months tunneling. Finally we get some details
Speaker 1: about the tunnel. It was a crawler. That's how I'm
Speaker 1: going to classify this type of tunnel, because even though
Speaker 1: I'm a helicopter gal, I still care about the type
Speaker 1: of tunnels. It was twenty eight inches high. This is
Speaker 1: why I'm a helicopter gal. Oh yeah, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: a small tunnel. Yeah. It is twenty eight inches high,
Speaker 1: and it is thirteen ft below the bank vault, and
Speaker 1: it's two and sixty two ft long. There's wood panels
Speaker 1: and plastic sheeting and claud in the walls, and there's
Speaker 1: electric lights. And no one heard them tunneling because it
Speaker 1: went right under a busy road. Nice. I know. The
Speaker 1: whole thing is so claustrophobic. Yeah, Like, how how are
Speaker 1: they doing with air? I'm not sure because almost every
Speaker 1: other escape tunnel that I've ever read about they specifically
Speaker 1: talk about the ventilation. Yeah, this seems like I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I guess I'm
Speaker 1: really not trying to make any statement about how you should.
Speaker 1: I'm not a I'm a level zero tunnel learned. What
Speaker 1: would I know I guess. I guess I can advance
Speaker 1: a level one by saying, don't suffocate the death in
Speaker 1: your tunnel. Excellent, excellent, everyone gets XP on this show.
Speaker 1: I appreciate this, okay. So they they pop up under
Speaker 1: the floor of the vault and then they cut their
Speaker 1: way through fucking three point five feet of concrete and steel.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, which again, how do they do that
Speaker 1: without oxygen? There must have been ventilation. Maybe they're wearing oxygens.
Speaker 1: Well where you can't fit an oxygen tank like in
Speaker 1: that spot, carry it after you. I don't know. They
Speaker 1: probably ventilated it. Nothing sounds fun here um, And they're
Speaker 1: probably an inside person in the bank. Because the cameras
Speaker 1: and the motion detectors in the vault weren't operating. So
Speaker 1: they broke into five containers holding me as notes for
Speaker 1: inspection and basically these were the the used bills that
Speaker 1: the inspectors were going to go through and put some
Speaker 1: of them back into circulation and destroy the damaged ones.
Speaker 1: Then they go back out the way they came, no
Speaker 1: shots fired, none the wiser. They made off with around
Speaker 1: million dollars worth of you that that's a respectable hole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is a perfect crime. Except really really not. The heist
Speaker 1: went great, the rest did not go great. Someone left
Speaker 1: a prepaid phone card in the rented house by accident.
Speaker 1: Oh no, and the person who opened the landscaping business,
Speaker 1: I guess did it under his real name. Why guys,
Speaker 1: come on. In the end, a hundred and nineteen people
Speaker 1: get convicted something like that. Every again, every article is different.
Speaker 1: And also they kept catching people over and overgund even
Speaker 1: after fell out of the news cycle. And the whole
Speaker 1: thing is just swimming in corruption. The civil police force,
Speaker 1: which are like the regional FBI basically um is the
Speaker 1: best analogy. They skimmed off millions and kickbacks. Probably they
Speaker 1: took the majority of the money are still because the
Speaker 1: conspiracy was so large and so many people knew who
Speaker 1: was involved, other criminals started kidnapping the bank robbers and
Speaker 1: their families and held them for like huge ransoms basically like, oh,
Speaker 1: you got one point five million dollars, I got your kid.
Speaker 1: I would like one point five million dollars please. People
Speaker 1: started talking about the money like it was cursed, and
Speaker 1: I don't know many it was. But my my personal
Speaker 1: theory is that too many crooks spoil the broth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a hundred that that is that is too large conspiracy, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta keep your numbers down. There's just
Speaker 1: too many people, you know. So Moises was the last
Speaker 1: get caught. He spent four years on the run. He
Speaker 1: had surgery to thin his neck to change his appearance,
Speaker 1: and he has about hair transplants right amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: and he kind of does most things right. He changes
Speaker 1: his sim card constantly, he moves all the time. But
Speaker 1: basically being on the run is wearing him down, and
Speaker 1: he was actually considering turning himself in just like the
Speaker 1: week before he gets finally caught. I think in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. I didn't write it down, but I think
Speaker 1: it was two thousand nine. And when he was finally coughed,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, you took too long. I thought you
Speaker 1: guys had given up on me. Of the two point
Speaker 1: five million reas he had taken his payment, around one
Speaker 1: point five million of it had been extorted away by
Speaker 1: the civil police. He actually tried to I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: he'll rob your own bank. Come on, yeah, totally, this
Speaker 1: is my robbed this first. So he tried to retire
Speaker 1: from crime, saying he was focusing on raising his son
Speaker 1: with socially relevant values whatever that means. I couldn't figure
Speaker 1: out exactly what values he was he was going for.
Speaker 1: I liked because I kind of like this guy. I
Speaker 1: like to imagine the best possible values, you know. And
Speaker 1: his sentence was reduced to fourteen years and so he
Speaker 1: should be getting out any year now unless he gets
Speaker 1: himself out sooner. Yeah, we never know. I know that
Speaker 1: that is a man who loves his tunnels. I know,
Speaker 1: and you and else likes being underground potatoes. That's true.
Speaker 1: Potatoes like being underground, well known product that I is. Also,
Speaker 1: it can't really be a service. I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to make it a service. But no,
Speaker 1: just a product, but one of the things that supports
Speaker 1: to show. I like when people feed me French fries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, somebody mashing a potato for you,
Speaker 1: slicing seasoning, Yeah, beating potatoes yours. Ads, we're back from
Speaker 1: those ads that were all for potatoes. And if you
Speaker 1: heard any ads for anything else, you should complain. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter to complain at at I right, okay, yes,
Speaker 1: so let's move on to the best form of escape. Helicopters. Yes,
Speaker 1: The first time I researched this topic was like fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. For reasons. It was for a zine I
Speaker 1: was going to make gazine, and then I didn't make
Speaker 1: a scene because I figured it would look really bad
Speaker 1: in court. Um, and here I am making this podcast episode.
Speaker 1: But in the end I decided, Okay, basically this is
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. I was looking at it. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: the only way that people break out of prison anymore
Speaker 1: is helicopter, and that's that's actually a bit of an exaggeration,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely true that, especially in Europe, helicopters are
Speaker 1: one of the main ways to go. The classic technique
Speaker 1: is that your spouse or partner or whoever else rents
Speaker 1: a helicopter tour and then hijacks the pilot or takes
Speaker 1: flying lessons and hijacks the instructor or. And this one's
Speaker 1: putting in the most work, but it levels you up faster,
Speaker 1: uh straight up learns how to fly a helicopter, and
Speaker 1: then steals a helicopter. These are the main ways that
Speaker 1: people go. And then you land and you know, let
Speaker 1: your your person on the helicopter in the way you
Speaker 1: fly and then you usually both get caught and now
Speaker 1: you're both in prison. Although I will get to a
Speaker 1: successful helicopter escape he who's still on the run today.
Speaker 1: So the most prolific helicopter escape guy is a French
Speaker 1: robber named Pascal Payer, who I'm reasonably sure is tied
Speaker 1: in with organized crime, though of course newspapers tend to
Speaker 1: only hint at that kind of thing. He was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three. His pastimes included robbing and getting arrested.
Speaker 1: Ah he was convicted of assault in conspiracy and in
Speaker 1: n seven he robbed an armored car and killed a guard.
Speaker 1: Or maybe someone else in his crew killed a guard.
Speaker 1: Either way, the robbery didn't go so well. He got
Speaker 1: caught about a year later and he was sent to prison.
Speaker 1: So two and a half years later, some of his
Speaker 1: friends showed up with a hijacked helicopter and he and
Speaker 1: another prisoner climbed aboard and went off to freedom. But
Speaker 1: our man Pascal, he was not content to just stay
Speaker 1: free himself because some of his his buddies, probably mafia buddies,
Speaker 1: were in jail. So in two thousand three, after two
Speaker 1: years as a fugitive, he organizes another helicopter break. This
Speaker 1: time it's not for himself, it's for three other prisoners.
Speaker 1: He hovered over the roof and the three prisoners climbed aboard.
Speaker 1: They all got caught three weeks later, while staying at
Speaker 1: some like super fancy law pretending to be athletes training
Speaker 1: for a bathlon, they were like, Oh, where can we
Speaker 1: go hide out in the mountains or whatever and like
Speaker 1: just like be bougie for a while, and they do,
Speaker 1: and then they all get caught. So now he's in
Speaker 1: jail and he's Mr. Helicopter escaped guy. So they start
Speaker 1: transferring him constantly. That's the thing I guess about being
Speaker 1: known for prison breaks. He gets transferred nine times in
Speaker 1: thirty months. Wow. And he spends most of his time
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement under particular scrutiny because like, hey, Mr
Speaker 1: helicopter escape guy, we're onto you. And he's like, what,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to escape by helicopter. That would just
Speaker 1: be wild. But he's got friends and he has a
Speaker 1: classy sense of timing, so he waits for but steal day.
Speaker 1: On this but still day in two thousands seven, three
Speaker 1: masked people show up at a helicopter tours place with guns,
Speaker 1: they grab a pilot. They don't even bother like rent
Speaker 1: the place first. I think I think they just like
Speaker 1: walk in. They're like, wow, yeah, that's kind of mean,
Speaker 1: Like at least at least give at least give the poor,
Speaker 1: the poor helicopter tour guide some money. Yeah, I mean, like, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't want to conjecture about this particular helicopter escape guy,
Speaker 1: but I sometimes think that they're like, Okay, we are
Speaker 1: a quote you can't see my air quotes. We are
Speaker 1: quote kid snapping you. But whatever. So within five minutes
Speaker 1: they show up at the fucking maximum security prison, showing
Speaker 1: up just during shift change while the guards are distracted.
Speaker 1: That's how clockwork. They are nice. That's that's that's impressive,
Speaker 1: I know. And since the pilot was a hostage, the
Speaker 1: guards couldn't like just shoot at the helicopter, which is
Speaker 1: this sort of unfortunate advantage of that particular method. So
Speaker 1: Pascal's friends use gas powered saws to solve the hinges
Speaker 1: off all the steel doors. That's sweet. And they break
Speaker 1: Pascal out out of like solitary confinement with and he's
Speaker 1: barefoot and in his underwear. He runs out into the
Speaker 1: helicopter and off they go, the whole thing five minutes. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess they found a crew of of
Speaker 1: of professional of professional jailbreakers. Like that is some There's
Speaker 1: a well oiled machine. Yeah, anything is possible if you
Speaker 1: set your mind to it, except staying free. That's apparently
Speaker 1: very hard. Yeah. Um, they land on the coast, the
Speaker 1: pilot was released unharmed, and Pascal gets caught a few
Speaker 1: months later in Spain, just north of Barcelona, and he's
Speaker 1: in prison again now, and for some weird reason, the
Speaker 1: state won't disclose exactly which prison. Yeah, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's not the best helicopter jail breaker. He has
Speaker 1: done it the most at three times, twice for himself
Speaker 1: and once for someone else. He's at three. But organized
Speaker 1: crime is not actually very cool. Thank you mafia for
Speaker 1: taking something that should be cool, like crime and making
Speaker 1: something just just another shitty power structure. Yeah, it's very sad,
Speaker 1: like it's crime. How how do you make crime bad?
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, you know, there's lots of ways
Speaker 1: to do it, but yeah, but it turns out crying
Speaker 1: legality is entirely divorced for morality, so crime is not
Speaker 1: inherently good and following the law is not it anyway.
Speaker 1: But the coolest helicopter jailbreaker is named Vasilius Paleokostas. Like
Speaker 1: most people aren't even in this guy's league. He has
Speaker 1: two nicknames. One is Greek robin Hood and one is
Speaker 1: the Uncatchable Yeah, because he's still Greece's most wanted criminal
Speaker 1: free and he's a fucking anarchist. Yeah. So he was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen sixty six in a tiny village in
Speaker 1: central Greece called mostro fielt Though, which I do not
Speaker 1: know to pronounce, and I actually get really annoyed when
Speaker 1: host like story, I don't know to pronounce that, and
Speaker 1: here I am doing it. But I'm genuinely sorry. And
Speaker 1: if you have an issue with that, you can complain
Speaker 1: on Twitter at I write, okay. Yeah. And so he
Speaker 1: was poor. He was like, I we don't own shoes
Speaker 1: level poor. His older brother Nikos used to carry him
Speaker 1: on his back to get to school when the snow
Speaker 1: is too deep for like the little kid to get there.
Speaker 1: And in that part of the country, banditry was sort
Speaker 1: of socially acceptable, like if you were stilling to feed
Speaker 1: the people you loved because Greece is kind of awesome.
Speaker 1: And when he was thirteen, his family moved to a
Speaker 1: nearby town, Tracla, and he worked at a cheese factory
Speaker 1: for two years. Not a cheesecake factory. At cheese factory.
Speaker 1: Oh good to know, very big, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I know that's what you were thinking. Um. And so
Speaker 1: he hated making his bosses rich for some weird reason,
Speaker 1: so he fucked off and he and his older brother
Speaker 1: started doing petty crime. Like Originally they were just like
Speaker 1: stealing video recorders, but soon they met a mentor and
Speaker 1: they moved up in the world and they were really
Speaker 1: freaking smart about it. Their mentor was a guy with
Speaker 1: a nickname The Artist, who I think maybe once broke
Speaker 1: out of prison by making a fake gun in the
Speaker 1: prison wood shop that was quote loaded with batteries so
Speaker 1: it looked like it was loaded when he pointed at
Speaker 1: guard spaces amazing. Yeah. I couldn't find a ton of
Speaker 1: details about that one. Um. The Sylist has probably got
Speaker 1: in a whole episode at some point. Um. Anyway, their
Speaker 1: first robbery Vasilus and Nicos and the Artist. They they
Speaker 1: put a giant industrial elevant in front of the doors
Speaker 1: of the police station so that the cops can't get
Speaker 1: out of the police station. And then Vassilla's climbs on
Speaker 1: top a nearby hill and fires a rifle into the
Speaker 1: air to get the cops attention while his brother and
Speaker 1: friend were robbing the jewelry store. And so the cops
Speaker 1: are trying to break out of prison, I mean, sorry,
Speaker 1: not break out prison, trying to break out of their
Speaker 1: own police station. And they finally do they get in
Speaker 1: their cars, but whoops, someone left all these spikes all
Speaker 1: over the road and all the cops blow their tires,
Speaker 1: and so begins their spree. And the cops couldn't catch
Speaker 1: them because the brothers gave all their money to the poor,
Speaker 1: so everyone fucking loved them, so no one would help
Speaker 1: the cops. The first prison break that I found was okay.
Speaker 1: So so older brother Nikos was in jail, and Silius
Speaker 1: was like, there's a wall that's got to come down.
Speaker 1: What kind of thing can I use to bring down
Speaker 1: a wall? Christopher, if you had to bring down a
Speaker 1: prison wall, what sort of object would you use? The
Speaker 1: thing that I beat he left to mind, is one
Speaker 1: of those craze of the wrecking ball on it. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good that's a good choice, Sophie. What would
Speaker 1: you pick machete? Okay, um, Vasilias didn't either of these things.
Speaker 1: Vascilla stole a fucking tank. Yeah wow, I'm like, what
Speaker 1: are rookies? We are? You know, well, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're if you're dropping out of a helicopter, machette looks
Speaker 1: good in your teeth, So I like where you're going, Oh,
Speaker 1: fair enough. Whereas like helicopter tank, It's like I've seen
Speaker 1: it in movies. But yeah, it's a little overdone, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so he steals a tank and he drives it
Speaker 1: through the wall. Unfortunately, this is not one of his
Speaker 1: successful escape attempts. He gets caught, and he spends nearly
Speaker 1: a year in prison until he ties bed sheets together
Speaker 1: into a rope and climbs over the prison wall and
Speaker 1: gets out. Oh my god, that's such a classic. I know,
Speaker 1: it's a classic for a reason. Yeah. The brothers stage
Speaker 1: the largest bank robbery in Greek history up until that point,
Speaker 1: and while the cops were on their way, the brothers
Speaker 1: threw money into the street to cause havoc. While they
Speaker 1: like both caused havoc and redistributed wealth, so cool. And
Speaker 1: then they stole someone's car to get away, and then
Speaker 1: later they polished the car and returned it to the
Speaker 1: owner with a hundred fifty thousand drachmas, which is like
Speaker 1: seven or something under the carpet. So this is why
Speaker 1: everyone loves them. Later, someone interviews the artist when he's
Speaker 1: in jail and they're like, did they really do all
Speaker 1: that Robin hood ship that people say? And the artist
Speaker 1: is like, no, seriously, Like I'm paraphrasing very badly here,
Speaker 1: but like, no, seriously. Sometimes we would be in a
Speaker 1: car chase running from the cops and they'd stopped to
Speaker 1: give money to people on the street. People. Ever, I
Speaker 1: am not aware of people who are cooler than them.
Speaker 1: Um okay, So I don't wanna tell you everything got
Speaker 1: up to because seriously, I want to do a whole episode.
Speaker 1: And also I have read his autobiography yet, because he
Speaker 1: just came out with an autobiography because he's still free
Speaker 1: and on the run. How how did he I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess it's grease, Like that's that's that's the thing
Speaker 1: you can do. Increase. It's like talk to people and
Speaker 1: be like, yo, here's my autobiography. Yeah. Well, actually everyone
Speaker 1: loves him, so I'm sure there's people who know where
Speaker 1: he is, but the anarchists increase. They don't like talking
Speaker 1: to the police much. Yeah, who what do I guess?
Speaker 1: I know? Um? Okay, So I'm mostly working off I
Speaker 1: haven't read his autography, and I'm mostly working off a
Speaker 1: bunch of different articles, including a rather good article that
Speaker 1: I would recommend from the BBC by Jeff mash. So
Speaker 1: they kidnapped a couple of industrialists. They redistribute millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: The facilisk gets caught after he crashes his car high
Speaker 1: out of his mind. Uh. He starts planning an escape
Speaker 1: and in two thousand three, the guards realize he's got
Speaker 1: a detailed plan of the jail in his cell, so
Speaker 1: off he goes to maximum security. In maximum security, gets
Speaker 1: a cell mate, an Albanian hitman named al qutt Rose,
Speaker 1: and they take a couple of weeks to plan an escape.
Speaker 1: When he was free, Vassillas spurged, splurged on only one
Speaker 1: item for himself with all of his riches, like he
Speaker 1: had only one like fancy thing for himself, which is
Speaker 1: a gold crucifix, And they didn't take it from him
Speaker 1: in jail. I guess, I guess because it was a
Speaker 1: religious symbol. It was also a handcuff key. Um. But
Speaker 1: the warden of the jail, who went by the nickname,
Speaker 1: check this out. It's super original. The warden, Wow, I know.
Speaker 1: The warden knew about the crucifix and the escape plans,
Speaker 1: and he also knew about the hidden file that Vassilius
Speaker 1: had squirreled away in a packet of spaghetti. So the warden,
Speaker 1: because I swear to God, reality better fiction than fiction,
Speaker 1: decides to let Vassilus file his way through the bars
Speaker 1: and into the hallway and then personally confronts him and
Speaker 1: beats the ship out of him. Oh no, because he's
Speaker 1: basically like, fuck this fake robin hood fucker who thinks
Speaker 1: he's better than us, or, for a non paraphrased quote,
Speaker 1: as quoted in that PBC article, he used poverty as
Speaker 1: an excuse to become a criminal. He started to believe
Speaker 1: this robin hood myth, and for that reason he like
Speaker 1: personally jumped him, says another failed Joe break from Basilus.
Speaker 1: But the thing is his brother wasn't in prison, and
Speaker 1: Vasilius had once driven a tank into prison to free Nikos.
Speaker 1: So Nikos wasn't going to leave him to languish. So
Speaker 1: in June two thousand six, Nicos rented a helicopter tour
Speaker 1: then he hijacked it with a handgun and a grenade,
Speaker 1: and he made the pilot fly to the maximum security
Speaker 1: prison the Siluss so mate al Quette later said that
Speaker 1: they thought about hiring a pilot instead, but they realized
Speaker 1: that a scared pilot was prepared to take more risks
Speaker 1: than a hired pilot. Anyway, the prison guards assumed it
Speaker 1: was some higher up showing up to do a spot
Speaker 1: inspection when they saw the helicopter landing. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: until the helicopter lands and the pilot screams they have
Speaker 1: guns and grenades that the guards realized what was happening
Speaker 1: in the dust kicked up by the spinning blaze of
Speaker 1: a Silus and al Quett climbed aboard the helicopter and
Speaker 1: off they go. They land in a quiet cemetery north
Speaker 1: of town. They give the higlot some worry beads for
Speaker 1: his trouble, uh, and then they funk off on stolen motorcycles.
Speaker 1: Nice if he had retired at this point, right he'd
Speaker 1: already have done enough and maybe a fucking legend he
Speaker 1: did not retire. Oh my god, alct Nikos. They get
Speaker 1: caught pretty quick, So actually the escape is kind of
Speaker 1: a wash. Alcotts stays in prison and one brother swaps
Speaker 1: out with the other. Vasillis goes back to criming. He
Speaker 1: kidnapped a billionaire named George Malona's and was super nice
Speaker 1: to him and then ransom him for twelve million euros.
Speaker 1: And then after the kidnapping, for whatever reason, Vasillias didn't
Speaker 1: like move out of the house that he kept Georgia,
Speaker 1: so he gets caught. Mm hmmm. I don't know, I know,
Speaker 1: although I will say I feel like it's impressive that
Speaker 1: he was able to do because I feel like that
Speaker 1: there's like a point in history where it gets way
Speaker 1: harder to do like both hijackings and like ransoming people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I'm really impressive he's doing this in like
Speaker 1: the two thousand's because that's like that's postline eleven. That's
Speaker 1: like that that that that's post like hyper militarization of everything.
Speaker 1: This is this is impressed. This is like, this is
Speaker 1: this is this is even more impressive than he would
Speaker 1: have been him doing the same stuff like the sixties. Totally,
Speaker 1: this is amazing, totally, and I my my personal guess
Speaker 1: is that it's like the large, very strong social movement
Speaker 1: that is allowing him to get away with it. But
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not sure. So he gets caught, he
Speaker 1: gets sent back to jail, and the cops gloated about
Speaker 1: it in the press and they're like, hey, we have
Speaker 1: had the last laugh. Spoiler alert, they do not have
Speaker 1: the last laugh. Knock on wood. So okay. He has
Speaker 1: this highly publicized trial in two thousand nine and farmers
Speaker 1: and peasants and anarchists are like chanting outside, like on
Speaker 1: the verge of rioty in the entire time. When Vasilius
Speaker 1: is sentenced, al Quett's girlfriend Seula Mitropia sobs like theatrically
Speaker 1: and then gives him a huge hug and then slips
Speaker 1: a watch into his pocket and in proper spy movie form,
Speaker 1: it's a cell phone watch. And then to the court,
Speaker 1: Vassilius is like, oh no, you got me with an
Speaker 1: imaginary hand the forehead, uh, or his direct quote, I
Speaker 1: played and lost. The police are victorious, which was all
Speaker 1: in act, uh, And he's he's in jail, and then
Speaker 1: I think the day before sentencing, he gets a call
Speaker 1: on his like super cool spy watch from Sula saying
Speaker 1: it's time. Then she fucking hijacks a helicopter by getting
Speaker 1: on board once she'd rented, pulling out a grenade and saying,
Speaker 1: and I fucking quote, we're going to pick up the kids,
Speaker 1: Cora Dallas prison or you die. So a helicopter hovers
Speaker 1: over the yard and throws down a ladder vassiliusent Alqutt
Speaker 1: climb aboard al Quette, you know, like saved by his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Al Qett fights back a guard with a kebab skewer
Speaker 1: at some point because the cops are not falling. I know,
Speaker 1: the cops are not falling for the like, oh, it
Speaker 1: might be an inspection thing this time, they're like they're
Speaker 1: like on the fucking lookout. It's like that sign. It's like,
Speaker 1: have you seen this man and it's a helicopter. If
Speaker 1: you see this man, shoot at it with guns, please,
Speaker 1: So they do. They shoot at it with MP five
Speaker 1: machine guns, even even with the hostage in it. Cops
Speaker 1: gonna cop I don't know, I mean yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: I it's eternally haunted by that picture of the cops
Speaker 1: trying to stop the guy in the FedEx truck and
Speaker 1: they have twelve human shields. Oh god, I haven't seen that. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's really bad. They're just like like they're just they're
Speaker 1: they're they're standing behind like a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are in their cars, and they're using they're using like
Speaker 1: the people in the cars as cover. Wait, it's the cops,
Speaker 1: are yeah, the cops are yeah, yeah, yeah. And I
Speaker 1: think they shot the hostages too, because it's the police. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. Great people. Yeah, So cops fire on the
Speaker 1: helicopter with their MP five sub machine guns and they
Speaker 1: sever the fuel line and the gas tank. There's a
Speaker 1: fucking YouTube video of it because the neighbor films it
Speaker 1: from a rooftop and you can hear the inmates cheering,
Speaker 1: and you can hear the guards firing and the robbers. Actually,
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention this earlier. The robbers take pride
Speaker 1: in the fact that through all of this they've never
Speaker 1: shot anybody, Like, no one ever gets hurt in their
Speaker 1: fucking bank robberies. And so even though they're heavily armed
Speaker 1: during this and they're being fired upon, they don't fire back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like that's wild. Like I feel like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like because like there are a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: like like revolutionary groups throughout like the seventies in particular
Speaker 1: in the eighties who like do this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: and they always shoot people. They almost always like shoot
Speaker 1: civilians too, And it's like that is that is incredibly impressive? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they they fucking take it seriously. They're like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not just like, wouldn't it be fun to do
Speaker 1: some crime? I guess we should throw some politics in,
Speaker 1: you know. I think they're like, all right, Robin Hood.
Speaker 1: Now it's Robin Hood. Yeah. So the three of them
Speaker 1: they get away and they rob a bank shortly after that,
Speaker 1: and al Cat and Suler caught thirteen years later, a
Speaker 1: Solus still free. At least three more bank robberies have
Speaker 1: been attributed to him, and there were three bank robberies
Speaker 1: that netted about half a million euros, and since no
Speaker 1: one was harmed in any of the actions, the police
Speaker 1: assume it was him. That's the best. Yeah, So there's
Speaker 1: the best helicopter folks. And all three of them are
Speaker 1: are honorary helicopter people as far as I'm concerned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you. And it's also he's a tank guy, the
Speaker 1: only tank. He's not a tank. He's a tank guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're look, we're we're taking the term
Speaker 1: tanky back. None of you are cool enough for it.
Speaker 1: You could only be a tanking. Now if if you
Speaker 1: personally rem a tank into a prison and break your
Speaker 1: friend out or your brother out. Sorry, them's the rules,
Speaker 1: all right. So there's more ways to break people out
Speaker 1: of prison. One is that okay, so if you plant
Speaker 1: a bunch of potatoes around the whole edge of the
Speaker 1: prison and then they break the walls down, that would
Speaker 1: slowly and ineffectively. Yeah no, no, that's a that's not
Speaker 1: a very good method. Hey, so sometimes you gotta play
Speaker 1: the long game. Yeah that's true. That's true. Well regardless,
Speaker 1: here are some advertisers, and we are back. Another way
Speaker 1: to break people out of prison is to start when
Speaker 1: they're not in prison, that is to say, while they're
Speaker 1: off at some work detail or being transported like to
Speaker 1: another prison, or to and from court, or to and
Speaker 1: from the hospital. So I've got two stories for you here,
Speaker 1: and first we'll start back in the day with one
Speaker 1: of the most important musicians in history. Blues and folk
Speaker 1: musician known named Huddy William lad Better far better known
Speaker 1: by his prison nickname Lead Belly. Like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially poor black people, born in the nineteenth century, There's
Speaker 1: some dispute about his actual date of birth, but probably January,
Speaker 1: probably eight or eighty nine. He's born in Louisiana and
Speaker 1: he grows up in Texas. He's a traveling musician in
Speaker 1: the auts and the teens, and in nineteen fifteen he
Speaker 1: gets into a bar fight and pistol whips some guy
Speaker 1: and he was sentenced to thirty days hard labor on
Speaker 1: chain gang. The thing as though led Belly didn't really
Speaker 1: want to do it for some odd reason. Yeah who
Speaker 1: who who would object to being forced to be on
Speaker 1: a chain gang? Inconceivable? I know? And so uh. Instead
Speaker 1: of being on the chain gang, he just ran, like
Speaker 1: he just outran the dogs that were chasing him somehow
Speaker 1: threw them off his scent and just got cleaned the
Speaker 1: funk away, changed his name, laid low, and paused his
Speaker 1: music career. Nice His freedom only lasted two years because
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen he was arguing with some relative named
Speaker 1: will Stafford about something probably a woman, and Stafford pulled
Speaker 1: a gun on him, so led Belly shot him in
Speaker 1: the head and killed him. Oh my god. Whether this
Speaker 1: is murder or not, it seems like a reasonable case
Speaker 1: for self defense here. But he gets convicted and sentenced
Speaker 1: to thirty years. So but but they don't they don't
Speaker 1: get they don't get him for the original crime though.
Speaker 1: Oh the thing, the chain gang escape or whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I think it's chain gang. Um, he only
Speaker 1: got sence the thirty days, so it might be that
Speaker 1: just like the prison. Maybe it's just like the murder
Speaker 1: thing so far eclipses that, like you ran away from
Speaker 1: the chain gang. Yeah, I don't know. But his next
Speaker 1: escape from prison was more poetic, and I guess in
Speaker 1: a literal sense. In prison, Lead Belly wrote a song
Speaker 1: called Please Pardon Me, and he started singing it every
Speaker 1: time Governor pat Neff visited the prison. The chorus was quote,
Speaker 1: if I had you, Governor Nef, like you got me,
Speaker 1: I'd wake up in the morning and I'd set you free.
Speaker 1: Oh and it worked. Wait, that's incredible. Governor pardoned him.
Speaker 1: So five years later he's back in jail. No, no,
Speaker 1: this time, the story goes he came up on some
Speaker 1: men singing a black spiritual incorrectly. It was like, I
Speaker 1: think it was both black and white people and they
Speaker 1: were singing a black spiritual incorrectly. So he joins in
Speaker 1: and corrects them, and a white singer kicked him. So
Speaker 1: it letally pulled a knife and cut the dude up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he killed him or not. I
Speaker 1: think not. He gets four years in jail, That's why
Speaker 1: I think not. Or he's in jail for four years.
Speaker 1: That's not what he gets sentenced to. He's in jail
Speaker 1: for four years. And then a musicologist is like, this
Speaker 1: guy is the most important repository of music in the
Speaker 1: US right now, Like he is the knowledge of folk
Speaker 1: music in this country. You actually have to let him go,
Speaker 1: and it worked. Look, the music is an incredibly powerful force,
Speaker 1: and I I have previously not believed this, but I
Speaker 1: have now seen this guy get out of prison twice
Speaker 1: by the power of music, and I now believe in it. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: But the problem is lead belly. The thing about lead
Speaker 1: belly and stabbing dudes. So no. So now it's nine
Speaker 1: years later, it's nine lead belly is fifty one years
Speaker 1: old and he goes back to prison for a maybe
Speaker 1: self defense stabbing, Like, just don't fucking cross Lead Belly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't even include the time. I forgot to mention
Speaker 1: this earlier. The first time he's in prison, besides the
Speaker 1: Shane Gang, some guy stabs him in the neck. So
Speaker 1: Lead Belly takes the guy's knife away and then stabs
Speaker 1: the guy right back. That's the hardest thing I've ever heard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't funk with lead Belly is where the blues come from.
Speaker 1: No one else getting sucking anyway. So this time it's
Speaker 1: his last stint in jail, and he served six months
Speaker 1: of his year since and his released for good behavior,
Speaker 1: and he fucking ruled. In his fifties, he tried to
Speaker 1: sign up in World War Two because he hated the
Speaker 1: Nazis and loved like he wanted to defend Jewish people. Uh,
Speaker 1: they didn't take him. I think he wrote a song
Speaker 1: against Hitler and in defensive Jews. He died at a
Speaker 1: round sixty. Again, no one really knows when he was born,
Speaker 1: so no one really knows how old he was when
Speaker 1: he died. He dies of lou Garrig's disease. After completely
Speaker 1: revolutionizing music and stabbing multiple people, some of whom deserved
Speaker 1: it and some of whom I couldn't promise you, And
Speaker 1: his count is hard to figure out. His prison break
Speaker 1: count Okay, so he definitely it definitely counts when he
Speaker 1: ran away. I think it counts when he sang his
Speaker 1: way out. Yeah that if that counts? Okay. Does famousing
Speaker 1: your way out count? Ah? I don't know. I don't.
Speaker 1: I I'm inclined to say no because I think, like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, I would say the specific aspect of
Speaker 1: the musicologist makes me more inclined to count it that
Speaker 1: it would be if it was just like a famous
Speaker 1: person being released because they're famous, Because this is like,
Speaker 1: this is like he has developed the key, he has
Speaker 1: such like a power mastery of the deep lure of
Speaker 1: folk music that that that that they had to let
Speaker 1: him go. All right. It's basically like, my skill level
Speaker 1: is so high. I put so many points into this
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, okay, okay, um, so he's at least
Speaker 1: two and a half and then his final one, his
Speaker 1: good behavior in his way out I believe does not count.
Speaker 1: But I would I would argue most of the time,
Speaker 1: the smartest way to get out of prison. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna tell you about another prisoner who decided
Speaker 1: to get the funk out, well technically not in prison.
Speaker 1: And this guy is a Puerto Rican independence activist named
Speaker 1: William Morales. And when I say activist, I mean bomb maker.
Speaker 1: But what the funk you want when someone you know,
Speaker 1: when you're when your country is under ford occupation, do
Speaker 1: you want? So? William Morales is born in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: and he grew up in East East Harlem. He went
Speaker 1: to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He got
Speaker 1: a degree in film studies, and then in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: he was part of the f a l N. The
Speaker 1: Where's Armadest de Libery on this you know? Puerto ric
Speaker 1: Kanya an underground paramilitary group that blew ship up and
Speaker 1: occasionally people and then takes credit for it. That's their
Speaker 1: basic strategy. They wanted independence and communism for Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: They were active from three They set off more than
Speaker 1: thirty bombs. I'm not really convinced that the seventies movements
Speaker 1: were right in their hypothesis. If we said a bunch
Speaker 1: of bombs, the results will be good. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think it ever worked. Anywhere, like at least not in
Speaker 1: the US. Yeah. Um, but you can't say they didn't
Speaker 1: give it their whole, that's true. They did set off
Speaker 1: a lot of bombs. So William Morales he's a bomb guy.
Speaker 1: He's also a joint liberal organizations and sliphing off money
Speaker 1: to support clandestine's actions kind of guy. And he worked
Speaker 1: with a charity called the National Commission on Hispanic Affairs,
Speaker 1: which was funded by the Episcopalian Church, and he helped
Speaker 1: siphon off their money to fund the f A l
Speaker 1: NDS actions, which is kind of genius. But he's mostly
Speaker 1: a bomb guy. And the thing about being a bomb
Speaker 1: guy is that bombs are kind of volatile. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: day he's hanging out in his flatting Queens, just doing
Speaker 1: his thing, and you know, by doing his thing, I
Speaker 1: mean building a bomb. July twelve, he's working on the
Speaker 1: timer and he sucks it up, like he shaves down
Speaker 1: the minute hand on the clock instead of the hour hand.
Speaker 1: So instead of the bomb going off in several hours,
Speaker 1: where you know, would blow up what he wants to
Speaker 1: blow up, it blows up in several minutes while he's
Speaker 1: holding it, blows up in his hands, which he loses
Speaker 1: both of his hands and an I and his jaws
Speaker 1: all fractured and fucked up. It doesn't go well for him.
Speaker 1: He comes to and he starts trying to destroy all
Speaker 1: the evidence in the apartment, and he figures, all right, look,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm fucked. So he decides to set a trap
Speaker 1: for the cops who are coming, and he tries to
Speaker 1: fill his apartment with gas from the stove, but the
Speaker 1: firefighters show up first. They noticed the gas. They break
Speaker 1: out the windows to ventilate the room. And no one
Speaker 1: else gets blown up that day besides him, and he
Speaker 1: goes off to Joel, well, actually goes off to the hospital,
Speaker 1: because this guy is seriously fucked up by the explosion.
Speaker 1: But his attorneys are all movement lawyers. One day, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do a whole episode about movement lawyers in the
Speaker 1: seventies because they were just fucking hardcore. One of them
Speaker 1: files a lawsuit about how the police had illegally confiscated
Speaker 1: their client's fingers. He gets found guilty, which fair, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know he was doing the thing. He gets senced
Speaker 1: to ninety nine years. He makes some statement, I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure to whom too, Maybe to the court or
Speaker 1: to the press or I don't know, maybe it's apocryphal,
Speaker 1: but he says, they're not going to hold me forever.
Speaker 1: He gets sent to the prison ward of Bellevue General
Speaker 1: Hospital on the third floor. But the cool thing about
Speaker 1: being part of a movement is you're not alone. So
Speaker 1: probably one of the physicians in the hospital is a communist,
Speaker 1: and that communist helps her buddy out, and an f
Speaker 1: a l and fugitive rents an apartment across from the
Speaker 1: hospital to do surveillance on the place and draw maps.
Speaker 1: And there's rumors that his movement lawyer uh smuggled him
Speaker 1: in some wire cutters by strapping them to her thigh
Speaker 1: under her skirt. But since she has one never been
Speaker 1: charged of this to denies it, and three is still alive,
Speaker 1: I will go ahead and say she did not do it.
Speaker 1: So he somehow ends up with wire cutters or bowlt
Speaker 1: cutters or whatever, fourteen inch bowl cutters. They're kind of
Speaker 1: in between two sizes, and he fucking cuts through the
Speaker 1: grate over the window even though he has no hands.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly impressive, how like, So he lashes the bolt
Speaker 1: cutters to his arms. Oh my god, he then makes
Speaker 1: a rope out of elastic medical bandages. Below the window,
Speaker 1: there's a waiting crowd from the F A l N
Speaker 1: and their buddies in the May nineteen Communist Organization and
Speaker 1: the Black Liberation Army the ladder. One of them stole
Speaker 1: a cherry picker from their work to help with the escape. Amazing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is is honestly about as cool as a tank
Speaker 1: in its own way, you know. So out the window
Speaker 1: he goes down the rope. One story says he felt
Speaker 1: twenty ft in the process onto an air Could I
Speaker 1: promised you an air conditioner? Yeah, so either way, he
Speaker 1: gets out. His buddies help him get to Mexico, where
Speaker 1: he lives safely for years. Then the Mexican police catch
Speaker 1: up with him. There's a firefight. Some of his friends
Speaker 1: as well as an arresting officer are killed. He's captured.
Speaker 1: Mexico refuses to extradite him to the US, even though
Speaker 1: they have an extradition treaty with US, and after five
Speaker 1: years in prison, he's released in Mexico lets him head
Speaker 1: off to Cuba, where he lives free to this day,
Speaker 1: having married and started a family. Oh good for him,
Speaker 1: you know, he's still in the FBI's most want a
Speaker 1: Terrorist list, but Cuba doesn't give a shit about that. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like that he's a fusion of two different
Speaker 1: kinds of guys who don't exist anymore. The leftist bomb guy,
Speaker 1: he's like not a thing anymore. And then also like
Speaker 1: the dud fleece to Cuba. Yeah, like we kind of
Speaker 1: stopped doing both of those, and it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're probably better off without the leftist bomb guy,
Speaker 1: but probably the dud too, flee to Cuba like that,
Speaker 1: that was that was a better time for most of
Speaker 1: the people who fled to Cuba. Thought it didn't go
Speaker 1: great for people. Yeah, Cubo is not actually like Paradise
Speaker 1: at this point. But yeah, they turned they turned people cops,
Speaker 1: which is not great. Yeah, but this isn't a show
Speaker 1: about bad people. This is a show about mostly good
Speaker 1: people who are at least cool, if not morally good.
Speaker 1: There's actually a painting of him at the MET done
Speaker 1: by David Wojan. Now it's called William Moralice, Patron Saint
Speaker 1: of prison Breaks. Incredible. Yeah, I think it's not currently
Speaker 1: on display at the MET. I like looked it up.
Speaker 1: It's like in the collection, it's a cool painting. So
Speaker 1: there's so many fucking cool jail breaks in history. Obviously
Speaker 1: these are only some tiny portion of them. Again, obviously
Speaker 1: most of them go terribly in the long run, and
Speaker 1: most of the time your best bet to jail break
Speaker 1: is by letting your lawyer set you free through the
Speaker 1: legal processes or waiting out the clock. But still, cool
Speaker 1: people are mostly cool people and cool stuff again mostly cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, hey, we there there. There is a large
Speaker 1: number of people in this episode who are free right now,
Speaker 1: so you know, yeah, good, good, good for them. I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope having a nice time if if they ever
Speaker 1: hear this, somehow high you're cool, have have have a
Speaker 1: good have a good life. Yeah, I'm sorry if I
Speaker 1: got any details wrong, but don't don't contact me to
Speaker 1: correct me. No, send all inquiries. I right, Okay. I
Speaker 1: mean that one's actually funny because I think that our
Speaker 1: friend Robert Evans would be better equipped to handle the
Speaker 1: kinds of communications. He's like an actual journalist, it's compared
Speaker 1: to the science fiction writer like me. But that's the episode.
Speaker 1: That's uh, that's Prison Breaks Parts one and two, our
Speaker 1: first inaugural prison breaks. I feel like this will be
Speaker 1: a trend because prison breaks are cool. Yeah, they are
Speaker 1: any any plugs for us at the end here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm at Twitter at b h R three or there's
Speaker 1: gonna be destroyed. Guy, I work on I work on
Speaker 1: a podcast. It's called it could Happen here. Um, you
Speaker 1: can find it Happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram. You
Speaker 1: can also find it wherever fine podcasts are distributed. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I technically mom behind the baschards occasionally. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so listen to that too. You're also on cool People
Speaker 1: who did cool stuff occasionally. That's true, and people should
Speaker 1: definitely listen to that. Yeah, every Monday and Wednesday. Margaret,
Speaker 1: Because this is coming out in July, do you want
Speaker 1: to plug your book? Oh? Yeah, I have a book
Speaker 1: called we Won't Be Here Tomorrow and Other Stories that
Speaker 1: is coming out from a K Press. It's a collection
Speaker 1: of my short fiction. Before I was a podcaster, I
Speaker 1: was just a writer of science fiction and fantasy. I've
Speaker 1: never been an actor, you might have guessed. And that
Speaker 1: book is coming out from a K Press on September.
Speaker 1: It is probably available for pre order by the time
Speaker 1: you hear this. You can also follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Magpie Killjoy where I wish I spent less time.
Speaker 1: Yeah and um. We'll be back next week on Wenday
Speaker 1: On Wednesday by cool People Who did Cool Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on
Speaker 1: cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.