Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey Hey, Elizabeth Dutt, Hey, Hey, hey, good to see
Speaker 2: my friend.
Speaker 3: How you been pretty good? Pretty good?
Speaker 2: Pretty good? Pretty good? Really good? Really neat? Yep, I
Speaker 2: got a question for you, bride.
Speaker 3: Asked, well, I got to ask you, how have you been?
Speaker 2: I'm still here. I'm not pushing up daisies.
Speaker 3: Above ground and getting paid.
Speaker 2: I'm on the right side of the grass. It is
Speaker 2: so question for you. Yeah, do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3: I do you like grilled cheese sandwiches?
Speaker 2: I love grilled cheese.
Speaker 3: Sandwiches, and you hate mayonnaise.
Speaker 2: I'm not a fan, but it does make a good
Speaker 2: spread on the outside, right.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm the one who convinced you of that.
Speaker 2: I think you're the one to push me over the top.
Speaker 2: I've had it try. I tried it once before, but
Speaker 2: I never incorporated into my game after you introduced me
Speaker 2: to it. Now I use it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell anyone I won't. It's it's I've been using
Speaker 3: like a hybrid when I make grilled cheese for my nephew.
Speaker 3: So you use like a little bit of butter, a
Speaker 3: little bit of mayonnaise, and then you. You know, grill
Speaker 3: the cheese.
Speaker 2: Can you use it for eggs too? Because I use
Speaker 2: butter for eggs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course you use butter for eggs.
Speaker 2: Can use mayonnaise f eggs.
Speaker 3: It's it's made of eggs. Sort of cannibalistic anyway, So
Speaker 3: tillamook cheese familiar though. Yeah, They're like, we know you
Speaker 3: love grilled cheese. Guess what what, We also know you're lazy,
Speaker 3: So we're going to combine butter and mannaise for you.
Speaker 3: This we got this coming at us from every you know, platform,
Speaker 3: people sending.
Speaker 2: How does everybody find these things? I never see online.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's like. If if something drops,
Speaker 3: we know about it because emails, Instagram, blue Sky, everything, voicemail.
Speaker 2: The only thing the algorithm does right for me is
Speaker 2: it shields me from all of this stuff.
Speaker 3: So, like you know, I always find out first everywhere.
Speaker 3: We're getting it every which way but loose right, And
Speaker 3: so I looked it up and I'm like, this isn't
Speaker 3: a lot of people like gross? Now it's not gross.
Speaker 3: It was limited edition. Fifteen dollars got you a pack
Speaker 3: of sliced cheese, a jar of this stuff. Butternaise. We're
Speaker 3: calling it butnaise, and it's it's they they teamed up
Speaker 3: with Cupie mayonnaise.
Speaker 2: Oh is that a good man?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's good mayonnaise. And so they they, you know,
Speaker 3: did this and it came with a little spreader. Oh
Speaker 3: so cute. Fifteen dollars sold out online in two minutes.
Speaker 2: You're getting much better at these mashups. This is now
Speaker 2: that I think the second or third mashup that I
Speaker 2: have not hated.
Speaker 3: I'd be better if I found out about these things
Speaker 3: before they happened, and then I could try and you know,
Speaker 3: get my grubby paws on something like that.
Speaker 2: But two minutes that's crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then this writer for food and Wine used
Speaker 3: it and said it was pretty good.
Speaker 2: So they got it. They got in that two minute window.
Speaker 3: No, I think because they're a writer for food they
Speaker 3: sent them right. Yeah, of course, which hello brands right here, totally.
Speaker 3: I'll make a grilled cheese read the word right, mash
Speaker 3: it up anyway. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It is ridiculous, Elizabeth. It is, well, you know, I
Speaker 2: got one for you.
Speaker 3: Oh nice?
Speaker 2: Oh, no, I guess is a fun one. I think
Speaker 2: you actually might really enjoy this. I could be wrong, though, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been wrong before. Yeah, I'll probably be wrong.
Speaker 3: You know what happens to the best of Elizabeth?
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine it's the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm doing that right now.
Speaker 2: You're a young married woman and let's say you go
Speaker 2: out one day in your model teed. You decide to
Speaker 2: rob one little old bank in Texas, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, everyone from coast to coast is calling you
Speaker 2: the Flapper Bandit.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
Speaker 2: ice and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 2: and one hundred percent ridiculous ridiculous. Yes, Elizabeth, Yes, zaren as,
Speaker 2: I promise I've got a fun little crime story for
Speaker 2: you today. It's about a woman known as the Flapper Bandit. Now,
Speaker 2: when I say flapper, what do you think of?
Speaker 3: Nineteen twenties, short haircuts, no petticoats?
Speaker 2: Can he be even more specific? Like here, I'll give
Speaker 2: you an example. I think of singing Sea Green Eyes.
Speaker 2: It came from Ayward. Now I think of singing in
Speaker 2: the rain and Debbie Reynolds when she's driving her nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties car and then Gene Kelly is like running from
Speaker 2: his adoring fans and he drops down from a street car,
Speaker 2: I think, into her car, and there she is all
Speaker 2: dressed like the ultimate twenties flapper girl, short hair, got
Speaker 2: on her little hat, her little shapeless dress. So like,
Speaker 2: do you have any images like that of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a flapper I think of like a specific
Speaker 2: well I had.
Speaker 3: I just keep thinking of those drawings from the era.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, those are fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fun, you know, because everyone can see them as
Speaker 3: as I speak, those drawings, those drawings see look.
Speaker 2: So as you well know, the nineteen twenties were a
Speaker 2: major turning point in the history of American women. That's
Speaker 2: basically like when women became.
Speaker 3: Modern, became people.
Speaker 2: Yeah's honestly like for the nineteen twenty American women one
Speaker 2: for themselves, the right to vote, correct, at least white women. Now,
Speaker 2: women also started to become a common sight on college campuses.
Speaker 2: They became more and more involved in the workforce. Young
Speaker 2: women ditched the Victorian and Edwardian fashions of the day.
Speaker 2: They started wearing their hair short. They preferred, as I said,
Speaker 2: those shapeless dresses. They weren't accentuating their curves as much.
Speaker 2: They ditched the exaggerated busts from girdles and the augmented
Speaker 2: rumps from bustles.
Speaker 3: Well, and the corset, you know, augmented the curves. That's painful,
Speaker 3: totally couldn't breathing. Women are fating, yes now.
Speaker 2: Some women even started in the twenties, started wearing men's
Speaker 2: clothes like suits, you get all that, they go sotal, yes,
Speaker 2: pants right on. So women they also leaped at the
Speaker 2: freedom all the new technologies that were on offer. They
Speaker 2: started watching also the new stars of the silent movies,
Speaker 2: so they're getting new images and role models. They listened
Speaker 2: to the radio, They drove cars, which only further liberated them.
Speaker 2: Women also got into devices.
Speaker 3: You know, I love that they're already in devices.
Speaker 2: I know. But they started smoking cigarettes. There's all the
Speaker 2: whole like yeah, like, but is it Paull Mall and
Speaker 2: not Virginia Slims. Is the Virginia Slims back then? I
Speaker 2: don't know they had the cigarette brands for women. And
Speaker 2: then they started drinking alcohol and smoking refrit jazz clubs
Speaker 2: and speakeasies. Pandemonium, Elizabeth now per our interests there was
Speaker 2: also a new wave of women getting into crime. Nice, right,
Speaker 2: these many changes for young women, they all get magnified
Speaker 2: as one one thing, a moral panic. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's like basically people were complaining young women are unrecognizable today, right,
Speaker 2: which we did not unfamiliar to us. Now. In the
Speaker 2: media of the day, they love to blame all the
Speaker 2: so called nonsense on the flappers, that was the term, right,
Speaker 2: So these flappers were ruining the sweetness and innocence of girlhood,
Speaker 2: and young women were sometimes also occasionally treated like, especially
Speaker 2: the criminal ones, is like a gangster's mall, like, oh,
Speaker 2: now you're helping these like serious hardcore criminals. You're a
Speaker 2: willing partner in crime, you know, like think like Bonnie
Speaker 2: and Clyde. Right, No, that's a little early, but anyway.
Speaker 2: Also then there was the political women, because you had
Speaker 2: you know, communists and anarchists. Some were called socialists or
Speaker 2: usually at worse was anarchists. These are all new ideas
Speaker 2: for America to be wrestling with. Now. I took a
Speaker 2: look back at the headlines of the day when I
Speaker 2: was doing research for this story, trying to get my
Speaker 2: mind right, and it's wild how nearly any young woman
Speaker 2: who was into crime or crime adjacent was called a
Speaker 2: flapper impress.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: So in order to kind of connect them to the
Speaker 2: horrors of modernity. It was an easy way to stoke
Speaker 2: that moral panic I was talking about, right, how women
Speaker 2: were changing now, they were becoming god forbid independent. Now
Speaker 2: enter into this nea millieu. Rebecca Bradley Rogers aka the Flapper.
Speaker 3: Bands flapper Banda.
Speaker 2: She was dubbed that by newspaper men of the day,
Speaker 2: and she is who I want to tell you about today.
Speaker 2: Nice Rebecca Bradley Rogers born Rebecca Bradley back in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh five and Texarkana, Texas, which by the way, has
Speaker 2: a mirror city across the border in Arkansas called Texar
Speaker 2: Canada Arkansas.
Speaker 3: Oh really there too, Yeah, I did not know the saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like cal Lexico and Mexicality. I love that,
Speaker 2: which is much more fun. Anyway. Her friends, then family,
Speaker 2: they all called her Becky, so we're gonna call her Becky.
Speaker 2: At age six, in nineteen eleven, Becky's parents picked up
Speaker 2: sticks and they moved west to Fort Worth, Texas. That's
Speaker 2: where she attends elementary school, high school. That's also where
Speaker 2: she meets her high school sweetheart, this ambitious, young plucky
Speaker 2: lad named Otis Rogers. Remember that name, he'll.
Speaker 3: Come back to Rogers, got it.
Speaker 2: After high school graduation, the young couple, they both moved
Speaker 2: to Austin, Texas to attend the University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 2: While they're there in college, the pair, they pop on
Speaker 2: down to the courthouse in Georgetown, Texas, and they get
Speaker 2: secretly married.
Speaker 3: Don't tell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The year is nineteen twenty five, Elizabeth, and no
Speaker 2: one knows about their secret and optials, not even the
Speaker 2: bride's mother, who Rebecca was actually rather close with, now
Speaker 2: officially known as Rebecca Bradley Rogers, the young co ed.
Speaker 2: She goes ahead. She pursues a bachelor's degree in history
Speaker 2: at the University of Texas at Austin. And I read
Speaker 2: that her annual tuition at ut was three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: a year, and she took out a loan to pay this.
Speaker 3: That's a lot back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I looked at U because I know you're always
Speaker 2: into this. Yes, So nineteen twenty five three hundred dollars tuition,
Speaker 2: This is annual tuition, right, So either both semesters or whatever,
Speaker 2: four quarters, three quarters.
Speaker 3: It's complicated, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, anyway, it would cost fIF fifty five hundred dollars today. Wow,
Speaker 2: it's an annual tuition full year of school. So now
Speaker 2: if like me, you're like, we're wondering how much that
Speaker 2: compared to the current tuition at UT.
Speaker 3: Okay, to keep in mind, this is a public institution.
Speaker 2: Yes, Now this is for an in state student, because
Speaker 2: that's what Becky was.
Speaker 3: And we're talking tuition only.
Speaker 2: No annual tuition costs eleven six hundred and eighty eight dollars,
Speaker 2: so basically it's doubled.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's not that's not that's just the tuition.
Speaker 2: If you add it all up tuition, books, room and board,
Speaker 2: as an on campus housing, you include the average really
Speaker 2: miscellaneous school life expenses. The toll that they tell you
Speaker 2: to prepare for life at UT for one year is
Speaker 2: thirty two thousand dollars for in state tuition in state. Yeahs,
Speaker 2: anyway back to nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's a real return on investment there.
Speaker 2: It wasn't easy to be a college student for a
Speaker 2: woman in the nineteen twenty because you know, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of limitations from professors from the just the
Speaker 2: culture at large. So for Becky Rodgers, in order for
Speaker 2: her to pay for school and her life as a
Speaker 2: young married woman, she had to work a bunch of
Speaker 2: different part time jobs, which is you know, I think
Speaker 2: is kind of super relatable for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, yeah, I've worked part time jobs in
Speaker 3: college totally.
Speaker 2: But also just the idea that hustle culture is nothing new.
Speaker 2: That's true, right, it just used to have a different name. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it wasn't such like, oh, we're gonna dub this hustle
Speaker 2: culture is just like, get a job called living.
Speaker 3: We put a lot of dumbnant adult no culture its.
Speaker 2: So what sort of part time jobs did Becky Rodgers
Speaker 2: have to do to pay for her life and her schooling?
Speaker 2: Great question, So glad you asked me. Well, for one,
Speaker 2: she worked as a clerk at the state capitol in Austin, Okay,
Speaker 2: got her right. And on campus she also had a job.
Speaker 2: She worked as an assistant to a university professor named
Speaker 2: Charles Ramsdell. He also was the head of the Texas
Speaker 2: State Historical Association smart connect.
Speaker 3: For I wonder what she needed to do with that teach.
Speaker 2: It doesn't show up in the newspapers. No one asked her, like,
Speaker 2: would you want to use.
Speaker 3: Your major for me in the ghost teaching?
Speaker 2: I would assume, but maybe she wanted to go get
Speaker 2: into the historical association like and do like you know,
Speaker 2: state history. I don't re enactments could do that too.
Speaker 3: Trying to break through that into that industry.
Speaker 2: It was a new industry at the time, a lot
Speaker 2: of openings on the possibilities. Now her secret husband Otis Rodgers.
Speaker 2: He did manage to graduate from the University of Texas,
Speaker 2: and he made plans to attend law school with obviously
Speaker 2: the ambition to one day become a lawyer. Sure, more
Speaker 2: on that later, But what this means for the young
Speaker 2: couple is that Becky Rodgers has to keep hustling while
Speaker 2: her husband is in law school and studying for the bar.
Speaker 2: She's working for for both of their feeds.
Speaker 3: Right, That's why he got married.
Speaker 2: I mean, let's be real, be real. She had to
Speaker 2: lock it down. She's like put a ring on it.
Speaker 3: Maybe all he was like, I'm going to get away.
Speaker 3: She can work while I go to school. Otherwise what's
Speaker 3: he going to do.
Speaker 2: That's a good point, you know, living at home.
Speaker 3: I'm onto him.
Speaker 2: So he did work in the oil fields in the summer,
Speaker 2: I can tell you that. So he was a little
Speaker 2: bit into anyway. Becky graduates with a bachelor's degree of
Speaker 2: her own starts working towards getting a master's degree in history.
Speaker 2: She's like, I'm gonna double up.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay.
Speaker 2: A lot of scrimping and saving in this family hustle
Speaker 2: and saying yesterday and all opportunities. All in all things
Speaker 2: that were going well for the young couple. That is
Speaker 2: until one day her mother loses her job in Fort Worth.
Speaker 2: That's when her now widowed mother goes to Austin and
Speaker 2: she plans to come live with her daughter, who, may
Speaker 2: I remind you, she does not know is married. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if her mother was like old
Speaker 2: fashioned or if she just never liked her daughter's high
Speaker 2: school sweetheart. I don't know what the deal was.
Speaker 3: Her mom probably was like, why don't you get your education?
Speaker 3: And then although I don't know that, like to marry
Speaker 3: him off early.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but my condolences to her on the
Speaker 3: loss of her husband.
Speaker 2: Can you let her know I will pass it on
Speaker 2: so be's keeps her marriage secret from her mother, and
Speaker 2: her mother did move in with her. Now I couldn't
Speaker 2: find in the news stories where her husband with he
Speaker 2: was in the house or if he was staying like
Speaker 2: you know, with his like law school.
Speaker 3: But they live together.
Speaker 2: They did until the mother showed up. I don't know
Speaker 2: if she if he stuck around then it's like, who's
Speaker 2: who's your male roommate? Why do you guys kiss in
Speaker 2: the morning?
Speaker 4: Tell her.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, with even more of a now of a
Speaker 2: financial burden on her in order to pay for herself,
Speaker 2: her mother, her graduate studies, her law school husband, Becky Rodgers,
Speaker 2: takes on a new challenge, one that will, in her hopes,
Speaker 2: earn her even more extra cash. So her professor, the
Speaker 2: one that she worked for, old Professor Ramsdell, He decides
Speaker 2: to spend the summer away on sabbatical in nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 2: While he's gone, he leaves Becky in charge of the
Speaker 2: Texas historicals Association. Yeah, he asked her, see if you
Speaker 2: can grow the membership, You're really you know, charming people
Speaker 2: like you. See if you can get more members So,
Speaker 2: since he knows she needs to make money, Professor Ramsay
Speaker 2: also cuts a deal he's like, you know, we're gonna
Speaker 2: do like some real recruiting numbers here. He tells Becky,
Speaker 2: if she can increase the membership in the Texas State
Speaker 2: Historical Association, she can keep a dollar forty from the
Speaker 2: three dollars of new membership dues almost half.
Speaker 3: That's not bad, right, Why didn't he just go all
Speaker 3: the way to half?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: He's like, it's kind of feeling like an MLM totally.
Speaker 2: So Becky jumps at this offer since she sees as
Speaker 2: an opportunity to make more money, which she needs, and
Speaker 2: so she goes all in. Well, the professor is away
Speaker 2: on his summer time sabbatical. Becky hires part time stenographers
Speaker 2: to type up letters of solicitation meant to draw new members.
Speaker 2: She goes down to the library because, you know, in
Speaker 2: order to find folks to invite to the Texas State
Speaker 2: Historical Association, she uses the Who's Who of Texas to
Speaker 2: find luminaries and rich folks to increase membership. That's smart,
Speaker 2: super smart, right do you remember before, by the way,
Speaker 2: just side note, before the internet, flipping through the Who's
Speaker 2: Who book each year.
Speaker 3: It's such a scam. Who's Who books. Oh completely, people
Speaker 3: pay the fortune thirty kind of they send the thing like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know you qualify.
Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, how old are we that I
Speaker 2: can say to both of us, you remember before the internet. Anyway,
Speaker 2: in order to pay the part time scenographers that she hires,
Speaker 2: Becky uses her own money. She does the same thing
Speaker 2: in order to buy office supplies and you know for
Speaker 2: the for the stenographers, all the paper or the envelopes
Speaker 2: with the postage. Basically, she's like a schoolteacher today. She
Speaker 2: doesn't show get anything done her job. She's using her
Speaker 2: own money.
Speaker 3: She's spending all the money ahead of time.
Speaker 2: Totally. Basically good news for her is her gambit and
Speaker 2: her ambition work out. Kind of, she's able to drum
Speaker 2: up new members, a bunch of new members. However, she's
Speaker 2: kind of like me with money. She doesn't keep the
Speaker 2: best books right, so she's depositing money from the new memberships.
Speaker 2: She's keeping the dollar forty out of the three full
Speaker 2: dollars of membership dues. But once again, not great at bookkeeping.
Speaker 2: So she's trying to keep up with the you know,
Speaker 2: do the best with the records. But sometimes like she's
Speaker 2: putting her own money into the State Historical Association account
Speaker 2: for the new members and waiting for their dues to
Speaker 2: show up. Other times she's taking money out and she's
Speaker 2: using it to like drum up business and she loses
Speaker 2: track Elizabeth. The funds get all mixed up. Basically, what
Speaker 2: I'm saying is the Texas State Historical Association's ledger becomes
Speaker 2: a mess with a capital M. When the professor returns
Speaker 2: from his summer sabbatical, he discovers what she's done and
Speaker 2: he's like this, this is not good. This is this
Speaker 2: is really bad. He's like legally bad. So in a
Speaker 2: letter to her friend, he writes about Becky's creative accounting.
Speaker 3: He say he's gossiping about her.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and he's like explaining like why he had
Speaker 2: to like basically let her go. And she wrote a
Speaker 2: letter explaining like I didn't mean to do it, but
Speaker 2: this is what I was doing. It was all well intended.
Speaker 2: And so he tells his friend the girl was undoubtedly
Speaker 2: suffering from some sort of psychosis. Last year, many of
Speaker 2: the records were entirely gone and others said, I've been
Speaker 2: kept at all right, Like me I got telling he's
Speaker 2: just like I meant to write that down. It's in
Speaker 2: my head. So when the correct accounting is all done,
Speaker 2: the Texas State Historical Association determines that Rebecca owes the
Speaker 2: group twelve hundred dollars. Wait what that would be twenty
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: She's hiring all these people.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I know, right, she should have gotten some
Speaker 2: high school students with some typewriters, like an extra class.
Speaker 3: She could get herself to a type.
Speaker 2: You're an intern.
Speaker 3: That's what you're working to make that manch Now, remember.
Speaker 2: Her annual tuition is three hundred dollars per year, so
Speaker 2: Becky now owes the Texas State Historical Association the equivalent
Speaker 2: of four years of her annual college tuition. Be long
Speaker 2: story short, this struggling young woman is screwed. So after
Speaker 2: her summer debacle, Becky leaves Texas State Historical Association to
Speaker 2: pay off her new debts as well as her rent,
Speaker 2: her life expenses for her her mother, her husband, and
Speaker 2: also her graduate program. She gets a new job in
Speaker 2: the autumn. Becky gets a job as a stenographer.
Speaker 3: She was good at typing, she hired herself.
Speaker 2: She works at the office of Dan Moody, who at
Speaker 2: the time was the Texas Attorney General. He's this rising
Speaker 2: political star who within just a couple of years becomes
Speaker 2: the governor of the state.
Speaker 3: Who's looking to have employees guilty of financial milf.
Speaker 2: Exactly. I guess you didn't know about that part. Anyway.
Speaker 2: With her flashy new job, Becky still isn't making the
Speaker 2: kind of money that she can pay off her debt
Speaker 2: to the Texas State Historical Association, and pay off her
Speaker 2: student loan debts and take care been her mother herself.
Speaker 2: So she needs to get profitable. She's drowning in debt.
Speaker 2: Welcome to being a modern independent woman's sister. So to
Speaker 2: get a handle on her finances, Becky decides to mortgage
Speaker 2: her mother's house in Fort Worth. Right, She's gonna use
Speaker 2: the money from the mortgage home to pay off some
Speaker 2: of her debts, but it's not enough to pay off
Speaker 2: all of them. Plus she needs money to live. Also,
Speaker 2: she decides to take her mother on a trip. I
Speaker 2: think maybe to cheer her up after being widowed.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, sometimes she don't get to do those things.
Speaker 2: No, But also her mother is equally bad with money,
Speaker 2: like she was known to blow Becky's paychecks. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So when Becky returns home from her trip with her mother,
Speaker 2: she finds that she still has all these angry creditors
Speaker 2: waiting on their money. At this point, Becky's like, I'm desperate.
Speaker 2: I need more money. Meanwhile, at the same time, Midwest
Speaker 2: newspapers start having these stories that cover this new crime wave.
Speaker 2: So it's a big trend. It's the heyday of bank robberies.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, they're becoming this thing where bad
Speaker 2: would race into town, they'd rob a bank and then
Speaker 2: flee over state lines, can't be pursued. Brilliant crime. This
Speaker 2: is basically what jagg Or Hoover uses to grow the
Speaker 2: power of the FBI in the nineteen thirties. But we're
Speaker 2: still in the nineteen twenties. So reading the news, Becky
Speaker 2: gets a big idea. She's like, what if I rob
Speaker 2: a bank? I mean, I would solve all my problems.
Speaker 2: That's where the money is. So Becky looks around she
Speaker 2: finds the perfect bank to rob. Oh yes, sah nice, Okay, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: let's take a little break now. Use this time to
Speaker 2: think about how things change, but they all kind of
Speaker 2: stay the same, because how relatable is Becky's story. Becky,
Speaker 2: we get back after these ads. We'll get to the
Speaker 2: criming now, Elizabeth, we're back. Are you ready to hear
Speaker 2: about how Becky Rogers becomes the Flapper Band?
Speaker 3: I am ready.
Speaker 2: So there's this town just north of Boston called round Rock, Texas.
Speaker 2: In this sleepy little town, there's a bank called Farmers
Speaker 2: State Bank that becomes Becky's perfect target for a one
Speaker 2: woman bank job. Doesn't bring in any of those scenographers
Speaker 2: in for this. She's like, I'm taking that bank down
Speaker 2: by myself. So one day, when she has some time
Speaker 2: to herself, she drives her model T Coop north from
Speaker 2: Austin to case the joint. The date is Wednesday, December eighth,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: When she hits town, Becky tells the locals what her
Speaker 2: name is, Grace Lofton. It just makes up a cover, right,
Speaker 2: So she arrives in town and to this Texas small
Speaker 2: town locals, she's this very fashionable, modern young woman of
Speaker 2: the roaring twenties. Yeah, so basically she's a threat to
Speaker 2: all the hold deer. Now anyway, Becky tells anyone who
Speaker 2: will ask that I'm a writer. I'm a journalist. I'm
Speaker 2: working for this newspaper down in Waco. They're like, okay,
Speaker 2: big city girl with modern problems, right, So this Texas
Speaker 2: small town the locals did kind of put them at ease.
Speaker 2: She asked them about farm business, like something really that
Speaker 2: they know. She asks how's the latest cotton harvest because
Speaker 2: that was like the big cash crop in that area
Speaker 2: at the time. So for a few days she's following
Speaker 2: this same routine. Becky goes down, arrives at the bank,
Speaker 2: she mills around the lobby. She asked the local farmers
Speaker 2: questions about how's the cotton harvest? Right, because it's December,
Speaker 2: so she's like asking them how they've just done, what
Speaker 2: they're looking forward to planning next year. If they're reluctant
Speaker 2: or suspicious of this modern, young flapper girl, she tells them, oh, no,
Speaker 2: it's for an agriculture report. And the newspaper down in
Speaker 2: wake Up people were like, Okay, I'm glad they're covering
Speaker 2: the issues we're facing. Nobody ever comes down here to Round.
Speaker 3: Rock and how.
Speaker 2: We're doing now. She wants readers to know how hard
Speaker 2: life is for this farming community. And as you know,
Speaker 2: the dust Bowl is coming well into view at this
Speaker 2: point in this area. And this is just before the
Speaker 2: Wall Street crash in twenty nine, but farmers in places
Speaker 2: like Texas are already feeling the economy tanking. So Becky
Speaker 2: says she wants people to know about their struggles, and
Speaker 2: they're like, thank you, sister, But anyway, so, like I said,
Speaker 2: this is of course all just her cover. Meanwhile, she's
Speaker 2: actually surveilling the bank. She's busy to getting like a
Speaker 2: read on. You know, when's the best time to rob
Speaker 2: the bank vault.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After two days of her news gathering, Becky decides there's
Speaker 2: no perfect time to bust this bank. People are coming
Speaker 2: in at odd hours, there's nothing regular. I can't figure
Speaker 2: out a nice window. So she decides, Okay, what's the
Speaker 2: next best way to do this. She's like, I got it.
Speaker 2: I need to stage a diversion. Oh okay, so well
Speaker 2: everyone's looking the other way. Boom, She'll pop in, rob
Speaker 2: the bank, hop at, get into her model t zip
Speaker 2: away bing bang, boom. Problem solved. Yeah, Becky looks around.
Speaker 2: What's a good diversion? She decides, what are people afraid of? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course fire.
Speaker 3: Wait, so she's still in Texas here round Rock tex
Speaker 3: She didn't go across state line.
Speaker 2: No, no, that she's not good at bank robbing. She
Speaker 2: only goes like twenty thirty miles away. Right, So she
Speaker 2: finds his vacant I.
Speaker 3: Feel like at night, she went back to her room
Speaker 3: and actually wrote the article for the paper, just.
Speaker 2: To really have a like a strong cover, so she
Speaker 2: can show people, like, here's the copy I'm working on.
Speaker 2: How did you spell that last name? Leftowitz? So she
Speaker 2: finds his vacant residence near the bank, right, and so,
Speaker 2: on Friday, December tenth, nineteen twenty six, Becky decides it's
Speaker 2: time to change her financial luck.
Speaker 3: Let's stack some felonies exactly.
Speaker 2: So she goes down. She goes to a local star.
Speaker 2: She buys just two things, matches in coal oil. Oh,
Speaker 2: and then just before the bank closes, Becky sneaks into
Speaker 2: a vacant house. And then she sets the vacant structure
Speaker 2: on fire. Now, however, unbeknownst to Becky, the next door neighbor,
Speaker 2: a busy body woman, sees this young woman duck into
Speaker 2: the empty home. Ten minutes later, she sees that same
Speaker 2: modern young woman leaving a rush. The flapper hops in
Speaker 2: her Model T Coop and speeds away, and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, that's not suspicious enough. Moments later, the
Speaker 2: empty house erupts in bright red flames. There's puffs of
Speaker 2: smoke coming out of the windows.
Speaker 3: Little fire bug.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So meanwhile, a few blocks away, Becky's now enacting part
Speaker 2: two of her grand plan. She parks her Model T
Speaker 2: Coop and leaves it, running rushes into the bank, exclaims
Speaker 2: fire fire. Becky's s outs for all to hear, right,
Speaker 2: and but her worried screams bank employees are nonplus They're like,
Speaker 2: stuff burns? Is it my house? And I don't care?
Speaker 2: So no one from the bank leaves, just your diversion.
Speaker 2: As Becky would later recall, quote, I told them I
Speaker 2: was sure I saw a house of fire up the street,
Speaker 2: but they didn't seem to be paying any attention to it.
Speaker 3: They're like, you have no idea, how oft?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Texas, baby, so burns the wind starts fired.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 2: So just like her big grand plan of a disversion failing. Now,
Speaker 2: she's like, what's a girl to do? So Becky just
Speaker 2: stands there in the lobby. She doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 2: So she waits for closing time at the bank. Maybe
Speaker 2: she can just like slide in right at the last minute.
Speaker 2: That doesn't work. The vault gets shut locked for the night,
Speaker 2: and you know, they have a time lock. So she's like,
Speaker 2: this isn't opening till tomorrow. She's like, I missed my chance.
Speaker 2: So there's no way to force her way into the
Speaker 2: vault rob the place. So, I mean, this is her
Speaker 2: first time. She's a newcomer at this, right, So she's like,
Speaker 2: I should go home and think harder about how I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do this. So, frustrated, Becky drives back home to Austin.
Speaker 2: She's got to make like, you know, dinner for her
Speaker 2: mother and her husband now, So the next day, she
Speaker 2: hops back in her model Tea coop, sneaks away from Austin,
Speaker 2: drives back up to round Rock, the town where she
Speaker 2: started a fire. Now, once he's there, she goes back
Speaker 2: to milling about asking people questions, gee, looking for some
Speaker 2: kind of opportunity to rob the bank. However, now she's
Speaker 2: a full on person of interest. Well yeah in this
Speaker 2: small town, Yeah, she's the only stranger. And she comes
Speaker 2: out of the flaming building. So now the locals are
Speaker 2: asking your questions like weren't you in that house down
Speaker 2: on Rainy Street?
Speaker 3: Or hold the questions about the cott, and I got
Speaker 3: questions for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got questions of my own now before the
Speaker 2: lock and get involved. Becky hops back into her Model
Speaker 2: T Coop and splits down. So it's the only good
Speaker 2: decision she's made so far.
Speaker 3: Oh, I keep saying, Oh, it's one thing after another.
Speaker 2: Becky drives back to Austin, but she doesn't stop. I
Speaker 2: don't think she wanted to go home and make dinner
Speaker 2: for her mother and husband again, since she just keeps going.
Speaker 2: She drives right past Austin. She continues south for fifteen miles.
Speaker 2: She gets this little town called Buddha, Texas. Buda Texas, Okay.
Speaker 2: She takes the newly constructed San Antonio Highway. So Buddha
Speaker 2: Texas another sleepy little Texas town. And like round Rock,
Speaker 2: it also has a farmer state bank. She's like, I
Speaker 2: recognize that bank. She's loyal totally. So the bank is
Speaker 2: like it's part of a stringer commercial buildings. It's located
Speaker 2: near railroad tracks, just like you know. She's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I think that there's not going to be as many
Speaker 2: high witnesses if I start another fire. So the bank
Speaker 2: catches the eye of Becky, right, so she's like, this
Speaker 2: looks like an easier score. Becky leans on her university education.
Speaker 2: She uses the same gambit. Becky claims to be a
Speaker 2: young reporter working on an agg report for a local paper.
Speaker 2: This time she mixes it up. She's like, people knew
Speaker 2: about that Waco paper, So she goes, yeah, the Beaumont Enterprise,
Speaker 2: like East Texas, which is about her choice. So now
Speaker 2: I haven't really described what Becky looks like. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: she stood five feet too, so she's petite. She weighs
Speaker 2: about ninety pounds. She's often described as being this attractive
Speaker 2: young woman in brown hair. But unlike those like fast
Speaker 2: big city girls, those actual truth flappers, she wears homemade
Speaker 2: dresses that she sows herself when she's True Texas. So
Speaker 2: Becky has though the same confidence of these modern young women,
Speaker 2: even in her homemade dress. She may not look like
Speaker 2: a flapper, but she damned your acts like one.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, relying on her cover story, Becky again once again.
Speaker 2: She's interviewing the local merchants, the farmers bank employees. She
Speaker 2: asks everyone about the local cotton crop. After she collects
Speaker 2: her sound bites and quotes for her story, Becky asks
Speaker 2: the bank employees for a little favor. She's like, can
Speaker 2: I use one of your typewriters just to like type
Speaker 2: up my notes and work on my story for the paper.
Speaker 2: And it's two male bank employees. They're charmed by the
Speaker 2: attractive young woman and they invite her to join them
Speaker 2: behind the teller's cage, like, yeah, you can use this
Speaker 2: typewriter right over here. So basically Becky is now sweet
Speaker 2: talked her way behind the bank teller's security cage.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So she gets situated starts typing up her notes. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: it's slow, no customers are in the bank. One of
Speaker 2: the bank tellers needs to like, you know, clean up
Speaker 2: his all the deposit slips, so he goes to make
Speaker 2: a deposit in the safe in the bank's vault, and
Speaker 2: when he opens the vault door, sweet little attractive twenty
Speaker 2: one year old Becky Rodgers realizes this is my moment.
Speaker 2: So she pulls out a thirty two caliber automatic pistol,
Speaker 2: whoa aims it at the two bank employs. The two
Speaker 2: male bank tellers, Frank Jamison and j R. Howe. They're
Speaker 2: both stunned to see the business end of a gun
Speaker 2: pointed at them, especially in the hands of this cute
Speaker 2: female reporter who's just a little slip of a thing.
Speaker 2: So Becky orders the bank tellers to open the safe
Speaker 2: inside the bank vault, and she says to him, dig
Speaker 2: that money out. Real flapper talk. Now, since she has
Speaker 2: the gun is encouragement. The bank tellers do as they're told.
Speaker 2: Once inside the bank vault, Becky sies like two stacks
Speaker 2: of cash, and she shoves this money in her purse.
Speaker 2: It's about somewhere. I saw different amounts. Some people said
Speaker 2: two thousands, some people said one thousands, some people said
Speaker 2: twelve hundred dollars. So it's enough that she will take
Speaker 2: care of the money she owes right, So it's like
Speaker 2: a little bit more than one thousand dollars, all in
Speaker 2: brand new five dollar bills. So at this point, Becky
Speaker 2: worries about the bank teller. So she asked the bank tellers,
Speaker 2: I leave you in this vault. Is there enough air
Speaker 2: for you to survive for like a half hour. They're like, yeah, sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: no problem. Yeah. She's like, like you it won't just
Speaker 2: be like ten minutes to pass out.
Speaker 3: No, it'll will instantly suffocate, So they look bil Hower.
Speaker 2: She closes the door, locks them in the vault. Then
Speaker 2: she like, you know cool and call me Steve the Queen.
Speaker 2: She crosses over through the bank, steps outside, walks over
Speaker 2: to her Model te coop fires that bad boy to life,
Speaker 2: and then she shimmys and shakes her way right out
Speaker 2: of town in her Model Tea. This is now her
Speaker 2: second attempted bank robbery, this time total success. Becky is
Speaker 2: elated nice and she knows like. She's like, okay, I
Speaker 2: need not to speed. I'm just gonna I don't want
Speaker 2: to get caught doing something dumb. So she gets back
Speaker 2: on the new San Antonio Highway and heads north back
Speaker 2: home to Austin. She's like, now I can make dinner
Speaker 2: for my mom and I husband. Meanwhile, back at the bank,
Speaker 2: a mere ten minutes after they're locked inside, the two
Speaker 2: bank employees they managed to use a screwdriver to free
Speaker 2: themselves from inside the bank vault. I was reading this,
Speaker 2: I'm like, what kind of janky bank fault do they have?
Speaker 2: You can open it? So then I realized people aren't
Speaker 2: ever trying to break out from inside of a dot
Speaker 2: need the best security. But you know what, it's probably
Speaker 2: actually even like a way for an employee gets trapped.
Speaker 2: It's like an actual ship release. Yeah, anyway, I don't know.
Speaker 2: They get they get free. The two bank employees they
Speaker 2: hop on the phone. They proceed to alert law enforcement
Speaker 2: in all four cardinal directions that the bank's just been
Speaker 2: robbed and be able to look out for a young
Speaker 2: woman moving through the world by herself driving a model
Speaker 2: T Coop. There's also one other important detail some of
Speaker 2: the suspicious locals, because of course Becky draws an ire.
Speaker 3: You go into any small town, oh yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: and you're not from there, they're going to clock you immediately.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So they were like definitely mad dog in
Speaker 2: her right. And they not only did that, they memorized
Speaker 2: her license plate. Yes, so they're like, oh yeah, her
Speaker 2: license plate is eight one zero dash eight six three
Speaker 2: and say, yeah, the two bank employees they give this
Speaker 2: detail to the police. The police put out an APB
Speaker 2: for this woman driving a model T Coop with license
Speaker 2: plate eight one zero eight sixty three. The flapper girl,
Speaker 2: you just rob the local Farmers State bank, right, So
Speaker 2: now will Becky escape the Texas Sheriffs, the Texas Rangers,
Speaker 2: they're all gonna be hot on her pursuit. Well, rather
Speaker 2: than me answer that question, Elizabeth, I'd like you to
Speaker 2: close your eyes close, and I'd like you to picture it.
Speaker 2: It's a crisp, quiet day in Texas in December of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty six, at the moment the thrill of speed
Speaker 2: whips through the open window of your model T Coop
Speaker 2: as you shimmy and shake down a two lane Texas highway.
Speaker 2: And you, Elizabeth, are the notorious young modern woman turned
Speaker 2: bank robber Becky Rodgers. You're enjoying a satisfied smile to yourself,
Speaker 2: thinking back to the look on the faces of those
Speaker 2: two dupe bank employees when you aimed your thirty two
Speaker 2: caliber automatic pistol at them and demanded cash from the vault.
Speaker 2: You weren't sure you get away with it, but you did. It,
Speaker 2: all went perfectly well, and now all you need to
Speaker 2: do is just get back home to Austin. However, you
Speaker 2: take your eyes off the road for just a moment
Speaker 2: as you reach into your purse to look again at
Speaker 2: that stolen loot. The answer to your felonious prayers, the
Speaker 2: money looks like a happy future for you and your husband,
Speaker 2: even your mother. And that's when you hear it, the
Speaker 2: sucking sound of a car tire going off the road
Speaker 2: and into the mud that runs alongside the road. The
Speaker 2: car tire pulls your model t Coop off the road
Speaker 2: and boom, just like that, You're stuck in the mud,
Speaker 2: left behind after a wintertime storm. You're done for, You're
Speaker 2: sure of it. How can your luck turn so fast?
Speaker 2: You don't know what to do. How could this happen?
Speaker 2: There's no way you can get out by yourself. It
Speaker 2: was all going so well. You're on the brink of
Speaker 2: hot tears wetting your cheeks. Then you see it, a
Speaker 2: horse drawn wagon. Looks like yes, it is a dairyman
Speaker 2: bringing milk to market. You thank your lucky stars is.
Speaker 2: The horse drawn wagon pulls closer and closer. You wave
Speaker 2: down the dairyman. He waves back. The horse drawn wagon
Speaker 2: pulls closer and then finally pulls to a stop. Ask
Speaker 2: why howdy? Everything okay there, young lady? You explain that
Speaker 2: you were driving along alone and you were silly. You
Speaker 2: took your eyes off the road just for a second.
Speaker 2: You leave out the part about clocking stolen loot. The
Speaker 2: dairy man. He offers to help pull you out of
Speaker 2: the mud, and you are quick to accept his kind offer.
Speaker 2: As the local milkman hops down and ties his wagon
Speaker 2: to the front end of your Model T Coop, you
Speaker 2: say a little prayer that no cops drive by. Once
Speaker 2: the dairy man is set, he tells you he's gonna
Speaker 2: give the horses a signal to pull, so try not
Speaker 2: to fall out. You grip the steering wheel and you
Speaker 2: aim the car tires back at the road. The dairy
Speaker 2: man yells yeah yeah to his team of draft horses.
Speaker 2: The tremendously thick horses heaved too, and you feel their strength.
Speaker 2: As your Model T Coop yanks forward. The dairyman shouts again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: A second good tug at your Model Tea Coop. It's
Speaker 2: pulled back on to the dry road. You thank the
Speaker 2: dairyman with a big smile. He tells you it was
Speaker 2: his honor and pleasure to help a fair and maiden
Speaker 2: in distress. He unhooks his team of horses from the
Speaker 2: front end of your Model Tea and he tells you
Speaker 2: keep your eyes on the road, little lady, and you
Speaker 2: should be fine. You thank him again. You start up
Speaker 2: your car engine. He waves you good buy. As you
Speaker 2: hit the gas. Your model Tea Coop shimmys and shakes
Speaker 2: its way on down the road. So back on the road.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Becky stops again at a cute little confectionery shop.
Speaker 2: She buys herself a box of candy. Wait, job well done.
Speaker 3: She's on the run from the police, and she's like.
Speaker 2: I need, I need, I need some chocolates.
Speaker 3: I need a chocolate covered caramel.
Speaker 2: I gotta be honest, though she doesn't plan to eat
Speaker 2: the sweets. In fact, I don't even know if she
Speaker 2: throws him out, but she empties the box of candy
Speaker 2: and she secrets her thirty two caliber automatic pistol on there.
Speaker 2: And then she puts in the one thousand or so
Speaker 2: dollars of the stolen bank job loot, and puts that
Speaker 2: in the candy box of.
Speaker 3: Candies, and she put a.
Speaker 2: Big heart, like a big end. Yeah. So then she
Speaker 2: takes the candy box to a department store to be
Speaker 2: wrapped up as a gift. Smart girl.
Speaker 3: Now she's suddenly smart.
Speaker 2: Now she's thinking. Once it's gift wrapped, Becky takes the
Speaker 2: box of candy and heads to the Austin Post Office.
Speaker 2: That's where she plans to send the fakes box of
Speaker 2: candy to herself at the university. Okay, as Becky recalls it, later,
Speaker 2: I told the man at the window it was an iron.
Speaker 2: Some women would call a gun an iron, so you see,
Speaker 2: I didn't yarn about it. I addressed the package to
Speaker 2: the university station because I didn't want it to get
Speaker 2: back too soon. Amazing exact, she now secured her gun
Speaker 2: and her stolen loot in the mail. Backy drives over
Speaker 2: to her local garage. She asked the guy there to
Speaker 2: give her car a wash and she'll come and get
Speaker 2: it later. The reason is simple. There's all this drying
Speaker 2: mud from when she got stuck in the mud in
Speaker 2: the side of the farm road. This, Elizabeth is her
Speaker 2: big mistake, well other than robbing the bank, right, but so,
Speaker 2: because there's this eagle eyed patrolman walking around, he spots
Speaker 2: the license plate of the model T coop license plate
Speaker 2: eight one zero dash eight sixty three. It matches the
Speaker 2: APB for the bank robber down in Buddha. The Austin
Speaker 2: rollman walks over to a little phone, calls in two
Speaker 2: other police officers come out and join them. Together, they
Speaker 2: create an improvised sting operation. Oh no, all three high
Speaker 2: there and they wait for the person to come back
Speaker 2: and claim this car. Now, if Becky had checked the
Speaker 2: local newspaper, the Austin Statesman, she would have seen that
Speaker 2: her bank job, the one she pulled in Buddha, was
Speaker 2: already in the news. Yeah, they had it by the afternoon.
Speaker 2: The evening extra right, the Austin Statesman runs a story
Speaker 2: with the headline Flapper seventeen takes two thousand dollars in
Speaker 2: currency at gunpoint. Eyewitnesses that estimated her to be younger
Speaker 2: than she was. Obviously, she's this is the little thing.
Speaker 2: So they see this cute, petite bank robber and they go,
Speaker 2: that's a high school girl. So Austin Statesman also mints
Speaker 2: the phrase that becomes Becky Rodgers's new nickname, her gnom
Speaker 2: de crime. The paper dubs her the Flapper Bandit. Now,
Speaker 2: instead of reading up on her bank job, Becky instead
Speaker 2: walks over to her apartment, the one she shares with
Speaker 2: her mother. She freshens up, and when it's time, she
Speaker 2: walks back to get her car from the garage. When
Speaker 2: she returns to the garage around five point thirty in
Speaker 2: the afternoon to pick up her freshly washed and wax
Speaker 2: a little model t coop. That's when she sees three
Speaker 2: cops waiting for her. They spring their trap. They arrest Becky.
Speaker 2: Down goes the Flapper Bandits, one successful boom. Things are
Speaker 2: about to get way worse before they get any better
Speaker 2: for old back one bank job. That's all. It's all
Speaker 2: Flapper band everything.
Speaker 3: I still I'm impressed with how quickly that story made
Speaker 3: the wire, right.
Speaker 2: I was too. Now, Elizabeth, let's take a little break
Speaker 2: and after these messages, we'll see how this all plays
Speaker 2: out for the Flapper Bandit. And we're Elizabeth, yes, we are,
Speaker 2: so you digging the Flapper band I love this right,
Speaker 2: It's like such a mix of like, yeah, go Becky,
Speaker 2: all back, It's a roller coaster, Okay, So you ready
Speaker 2: hear how the Flapper band It makes out when she
Speaker 2: gets dropped into Texas.
Speaker 3: Justice, I am ready.
Speaker 2: And also, by the way, she's now about to become
Speaker 2: a national news headline. So once she's busted by the
Speaker 2: Austin p D, the local Texas papers try to get
Speaker 2: their journalistic arms around her story and like, what is
Speaker 2: going on with modern young women, only it's not so
Speaker 2: nicely put. Now they're robbing banks. So anyway, the newspaper
Speaker 2: men they hit up her college and they interview anyone
Speaker 2: who claims to know Becky Rodgers. The Fort Worth Star
Speaker 2: Telegram they published this story that reports that her former
Speaker 2: friends and classmates are all stupefied by the news that
Speaker 2: Little Becky Rodgers is in the notorious Flapper Bandit not
Speaker 2: little Becky Rodgers, the history major. So they insist that
Speaker 2: the Becky they know would never do anything like that.
Speaker 2: So there was also a little side to Becky Rodgers
Speaker 2: at her friends and former classmates never really got to know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not just like the robbing the bank's part, but she
Speaker 2: also had a really dark sns of humor because the
Speaker 2: local Texas law enforcement they did get to know this
Speaker 2: unknown side of Becky.
Speaker 3: Oh really yes.
Speaker 2: On the way down to San Marcos. But down there
Speaker 2: in Hayes County, it's like the Sheriff's taking her to
Speaker 2: arrain her. The sheriff's man named George Allen, doesn't really
Speaker 2: matter anyway, he's driving along with Little Becky Rodgers, and
Speaker 2: along the way they passed through Buddha and sheriff would
Speaker 2: later tell newspaper reporters that when she saw Buddha again,
Speaker 2: Becky quote burst out laugh and it said, I have
Speaker 2: a whole lot to live down, but not as much
Speaker 2: as those men back there who let a little girl
Speaker 2: hold them up with an empty gun. Oh, she had
Speaker 2: no bullets in her gun, and she's bragging about it.
Speaker 3: Come on, don't talk.
Speaker 2: I know your audience back. So the next day, following
Speaker 2: her arrest and arraignment, her employer comes in bails her out.
Speaker 2: So the like, yeah, we're talking the which employer? This
Speaker 2: is the thing. I think it's the professor, not the
Speaker 2: attorney general. So are for employer? Yeah, So there are
Speaker 2: more charges coming because a few days later she's arrested again.
Speaker 2: Why great question.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth request The folks from around.
Speaker 2: Rock recognize her as the flapper arsonists to hit their
Speaker 2: town and felonies.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I love that she's got an attitude about it too, Right, girl,
Speaker 3: you're the one in the police car, in.
Speaker 2: The box, in cuffs. You got on them metal bracelets.
Speaker 2: So the county arraigns Becky on charges of arson. In
Speaker 2: September nineteen twenty seven, her first trial begins down in Georgetown,
Speaker 2: which is the county seat for Williamson County, located here
Speaker 2: in central Texas. At this point, her story has gone national.
Speaker 2: The headlines they're coming fast, furious. Everybody's loving the story.
Speaker 2: This like plucky little Becky Rodgers, aka the Flapper Bandit.
Speaker 2: That's what everybody from coast to coast is reading about
Speaker 2: the trial of the Flapper Bandit. In the courtroom, the
Speaker 2: jurors have to listen to eyewitness accounts. They're trying, you know,
Speaker 2: they're told not to follow the news stories. I don't
Speaker 2: know how well they do. Anyway, they're considering the evidence.
Speaker 2: And then after they do all of this and they're
Speaker 2: listening to eyewitness accounts, listening to the police listening. They're
Speaker 2: considering all the evidence. They retired to the jury room
Speaker 2: to deliberate, but the jurors cannot come to a decision,
Speaker 2: a unanimous decision. The trial ends with neither a conviction
Speaker 2: or an acquittal. As a result, a second trial is scheduled.
Speaker 2: They're like, we're going to have to do this all
Speaker 2: over again, jury exactly. So meanwhile, Becky's put on trial
Speaker 2: for the gun charges from the bank robbery and Buddha.
Speaker 2: So the first trials. The arson second trial ends up
Speaker 2: being the gun charges. Keep in mind, armed robbery in
Speaker 2: Texas at this time was a capital offence as she's
Speaker 2: facing the death penalty.
Speaker 3: Oh dear, Oh yeah, yeah, real bad.
Speaker 2: I don't even think she did any reading. I guess
Speaker 2: for somebody who studies history, she was not.
Speaker 3: Too up on the present they used to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, she should know, like downtownas what.
Speaker 3: Her area of emphasis was in her studies research.
Speaker 2: So the national newspapers at this point are having a
Speaker 2: field day with this story about this girl down in
Speaker 2: Texas is about to get sent to the electric chair
Speaker 2: for like robbing one bank. So as the Oregon Daily
Speaker 2: Journal reports with their choice headline flapper abandon and shadow
Speaker 2: of the electric chair. Oh no, her after sitting in
Speaker 2: the gallery for the first trial, her secret husband Otis Rodgers,
Speaker 2: who's now been unmasked as her legal husband, decides to
Speaker 2: put his education to the test. He joins his wife's
Speaker 2: defense team and he fights to free as young bride.
Speaker 3: I can't tell that this is a good idea.
Speaker 2: Oh, I not tell you. Since it's a capital offense,
Speaker 2: the court takes it quite seriously, as does her husband.
Speaker 2: He's like I don't want to lose her to the chair.
Speaker 2: And since it's difficult to secure it unbiased jury, her
Speaker 2: second trial gets relocated to a new county, Fayette County,
Speaker 2: in this town called Lagrange. Doesn't really matter anyway. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: so December, Oh there you go, look at you cultured
Speaker 2: pretty much. December seventeenth, nineteen twenty seven. The jurors are
Speaker 2: listening to eyewitness testimony, they weigh the evidence. They listen
Speaker 2: to her husband's closing arguments.
Speaker 3: Which are.
Speaker 2: It's great, going for maximum drama. He tells the jury
Speaker 2: if they convict his wife, hanger high.
Speaker 3: Wait what y he says in court?
Speaker 2: And I quote hang her high? And then I, as
Speaker 2: the son of my life sinks to setting, will come
Speaker 2: to cut her down and bury her with the last
Speaker 2: of my dreams, a victim of man's inhumanity to man.
Speaker 3: The way to make it about you, right.
Speaker 2: Like maybe talk about the purpose anyway. So he was
Speaker 2: a member of the debate team in college, so he's
Speaker 2: like trying to bring to bear all the eloquence and
Speaker 2: drama he can muster.
Speaker 3: He wins under his belt.
Speaker 2: Apparently he was really good that he had, like he
Speaker 2: had like trophies and stuff. So after his closing argument,
Speaker 2: the jurors retired to deliberate. This time, the jurors are
Speaker 2: able to come back with a clear decision. Well, I
Speaker 2: guess what it.
Speaker 3: Was, uh curtains for Becky.
Speaker 2: Guilty of sin. So way to go there. But I
Speaker 2: don't want you to worry, Elizabeth. They do not hang
Speaker 2: her high. Okay, So there's no like state murder in this,
Speaker 2: even though her.
Speaker 3: Own husband, slash since attorney, was like, you know what, guys,
Speaker 3: kill my client if you think she's guilty, just kill
Speaker 3: her right here in front of me. Hold the body.
Speaker 3: I'll pull down on her boots and then we can
Speaker 3: all talk about me and how tragic this is for me.
Speaker 2: What a sad boy I am. So instead of dropping
Speaker 2: her into the hot seat of the electric chair, the
Speaker 2: judge sentences Becky to fourteen years in the state pen.
Speaker 2: Her husband Otis immediately appeals the decision.
Speaker 3: She's like, no, no, no, I told you kill her.
Speaker 2: The appellate trial is heard by the Texas Court of
Speaker 2: Criminal Appeals in Austin, like the state capitol, so far
Speaker 2: more than a member of the defense team, her husband
Speaker 2: now becomes her lawyer. Oh gets rid of the other
Speaker 2: ones like I can do it. It's all my own.
Speaker 2: You guys help me.
Speaker 3: Bast like entertainers have a spouse as a manager. It's
Speaker 3: not a good.
Speaker 2: Idea, he alone argues before the state appeals court. He
Speaker 2: attacks the legal grounds on which his wife's convictions rest
Speaker 2: and the legal argument that was leveraged by the DA.
Speaker 2: Her husband's defense this time is stellar. He claims his
Speaker 2: wife is insane. Well, he leans into this suspicions that
Speaker 2: all these modern young women, these crazed flapper girls, and Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: It works beautifully. The appeals court overturns the previous ruling,
Speaker 2: but the couple there still aren't done with their legal fight,
Speaker 2: because remember, she's got arson charges too. So Becky is
Speaker 2: retried on the previous charges of armed robbery that she
Speaker 2: has right. So, in May of twenty nine, Becky stands
Speaker 2: trial in Lagrange, Texas for the armed robbery that went
Speaker 2: down in Buddha. Now, before her new trial gets going,
Speaker 2: the judge opts to stop the trial.
Speaker 3: Why because she crazy?
Speaker 2: Great question, Elizabeth, Yeah, I know. The judge says, it
Speaker 2: would now be impossible for her to get an unbiased
Speaker 2: jury in Fayette County because she's already been tried there
Speaker 2: everyone knows about her. I know you guys have all
Speaker 2: been reading the newspapers. So he moves a trial to
Speaker 2: New Bronfels in Comal County or Comyle County. In September
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine, aged twenty four, Becky sits for her
Speaker 2: third trial for armed robbery twenty four years Yeah. This time,
Speaker 2: her twenty seven year old husband, Otis Rodgers becomes her
Speaker 2: lead defense lawyer again. For his team, he brings along
Speaker 2: two of his law school classmates.
Speaker 3: Couple buddies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The press has a field day with this. The
Speaker 2: counselors are dubbed the quote youngest ever defense team to
Speaker 2: quote try a capitol case in Texas, like these crazy kids, right.
Speaker 2: The main legal argument for the youngest ever defense team
Speaker 2: to try a capitol case in Texas is the same
Speaker 2: as before. They argue that their client is insane. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at least at the time of the robbery. Still national
Speaker 2: news sensation years into this at this point, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: the Flapper bandit is selling papers from sea to shine
Speaker 2: and sea across the Nited States. Right when the trial
Speaker 2: reaches its conclusion in late September twenty nine, the case
Speaker 2: of the Flapper bandit confounds the jury of her peers,
Speaker 2: as the Carbondale Free Press in Carbondale, Illinois reports on
Speaker 2: its front page failed to convict flapper, bank robber or insane.
Speaker 2: The Asheville Citizen Times in Asheville, North Carolina keeps it
Speaker 2: more sucsync with their front page headline. It reads flapper
Speaker 2: bandit victor and fourth court trial. In these places, although
Speaker 2: the prosecutor had argued that quote insanity is a disease
Speaker 2: that criminals get when they are caught, the jurors see
Speaker 2: it differently. Her husband's legal wranglings in the insanity defense
Speaker 2: that he tries, it works, it frees his wife. Yeah,
Speaker 2: otis Rogers very keenly uses expert opinions of three psychologists
Speaker 2: to like leverage all the biases and stereotypes of the day.
Speaker 2: He basically uses sexism to paint his wife as a crazy,
Speaker 2: young modern woman. The defense works brilliantly. Even the judge
Speaker 2: falls victim to it. He says that Becky Rodgers is
Speaker 2: quote too attractive to be a bank robber. As he
Speaker 2: put it, quote, she was so pretty that there is
Speaker 2: no way she could be a criminal.
Speaker 3: Well, right there, I mean that's how you tell good air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like you look at the criminal. You're like,
Speaker 2: is she hot? Definitely not a criminal, can't be a criminal.
Speaker 2: Must have quit. So in the end, must have quit,
Speaker 2: thank you. So they convinced not of the twelve jurors
Speaker 2: that Becky Rodgers is indeed legally insane, at least temporarily,
Speaker 2: because they don't put her in the state hospital. They're
Speaker 2: just like, it was a moment, she just got a
Speaker 2: little crazy. Then flappers to go, lord, remember look at it.
Speaker 2: She wears the homemade dresses. She can't be all crazy.
Speaker 2: So they vote to a quote on criminal charges. The
Speaker 2: remaining three jurors they wanted a guilty verdict. They're like, no,
Speaker 2: she's a high guilty. Nope. So the trial concludes, hung
Speaker 2: Jerry again. Flapper Bandit gets off All in all, Becky
Speaker 2: Bradley Rodgers. She's now faced four trials for bank robbery
Speaker 2: and for arson and collectively beats them all. The local
Speaker 2: journalists and court watchers put forward their theories of what
Speaker 2: went wrong? How come we couldn't like bust the Flapper Bandit.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They opine about how modern times are radically changing what
Speaker 2: is considered reasonable and what is considered insane nic and
Speaker 2: it's making it difficult to see her cure a guilty
Speaker 2: verdict against the Flapper band is.
Speaker 3: It's so difficult.
Speaker 2: So there's editor of the local new Bronfells Herald newspaper.
Speaker 2: He writes the quote, there seems to be a very
Speaker 2: wide bread sentiment that failure and four attempts to convict
Speaker 2: probably means the conviction can never be secured. This newspaper
Speaker 2: editor also suggests a quote, it would seem that justice
Speaker 2: tempered with mercy matt will apply here. So they basically
Speaker 2: are like, once again, if she's fit, we got so. Basically,
Speaker 2: he determines that the jurors are going to keep taking
Speaker 2: pity on the Flapper Bandit for being a misguided modern
Speaker 2: young woman, or they'll be persuaded by the innocence of
Speaker 2: her beauty. And either way they're like, no electric chair
Speaker 2: for her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, save becks exactly.
Speaker 2: So eventually the two Texas counties they concede defeat. In
Speaker 2: September twenty nine, Williamson County ends their prosecution. They're like,
Speaker 2: we're not going to another trial. The next month, the
Speaker 2: stock market falls and the Great Depression begins. So the
Speaker 2: era of the Flapper Girl comes to a swift and
Speaker 2: sudden end. Sure news stories. They move on. Texas Justice, however,
Speaker 2: does not because it takes the folks down in Hayes
Speaker 2: County longer to get over the whole armed bank robbery.
Speaker 2: Four years later, in nineteen thirty three, they're like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: we will not come up with another case, so they
Speaker 2: let her go on the armed robbery charges. So now
Speaker 2: Rebecca Bradley Rodgers, aka the Flapper Bandit, walks free on
Speaker 2: all charges. The very next day she joins the ranks
Speaker 2: of motherhood. Becky gives birth to her first child with
Speaker 2: her courtroom badass of a husband, Otis Rogers. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: greet a baby girl into the world, which becomes the
Speaker 2: first of their three children. As their family grows larger
Speaker 2: and larger, the Flapper Bandit puts her rough and rowdy
Speaker 2: ways behind her. She settles down, gets to work for
Speaker 2: her husband in his office as his legal secretary. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: his reputation in textsll legal circles begins to grow and grow.
Speaker 2: Otis Rodgers becomes known as the little giant who quote
Speaker 2: always got in the last word. Oh yeah, people liked
Speaker 2: him anyway. King Short total short king energy, the flapper
Speaker 2: bandit and her little short king of a lawyer husband.
Speaker 2: They remain happily married until the time of her death
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty. Wow, at the very young age of
Speaker 2: forty five.
Speaker 3: Wow, the very next.
Speaker 2: Year dies what neither of them makes it to the
Speaker 2: age of fifty?
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 2: I wish I could give you the answers they just.
Speaker 3: I wish she could yea.
Speaker 2: For a few years back in the Roaring twenties, this
Speaker 2: pair were a viral national sensation, and together they kind
Speaker 2: of embodied the dizzying spirit of this radical decade. As
Speaker 2: the Flapper Bandit Becky Rodgers, basically she challenges what America
Speaker 2: expected from its young women. She stokes the flames of
Speaker 2: moral panic, and then she settles down and becomes a
Speaker 2: dutiful wife and mother and her husband's secretary. Right.
Speaker 3: I thought for sure that she'd get off and then
Speaker 3: like they would have her on like stage shows, going
Speaker 3: around touring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, She's like, but I suppose if.
Speaker 3: When the economy tanks, those things aren't.
Speaker 2: So Once the depression hit, all these stories of the
Speaker 2: twenties are just dead on arrival, right, So they basically
Speaker 2: discovered there was really nothing ever to worry about with
Speaker 2: the Flapper Band and all the moral panics or for not,
Speaker 2: they were just selling newspapers other than, of course, Becky's
Speaker 2: difficulties with bookkeeping, which does the pair Merrit hadn't mentioned,
Speaker 2: But there you go. So what's a ridiculous takeaway here?
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. You know we talk about planning execution.
Speaker 3: What's gonna you know, thinking it through. Becky obviously was
Speaker 3: a smart lady. Yeah, uh not street smart, crime smart. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I'm also really fascinated as to why they both
Speaker 3: passed away so young.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was a little bit like I didn't
Speaker 2: want to dwell on their deaths. Yeah, sorry, I can't
Speaker 2: provide you with answers. Maybe check out newspapers dot com.
Speaker 3: I think I'm going to look her up dig around
Speaker 3: an ancestry. Yeah, that's your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2: Mine is like I wish people would realize that moral
Speaker 2: panics are always about the moment and it's just a
Speaker 2: paper thin thing and do not fall like I know that,
Speaker 2: Like you have to respond when people are saying like
Speaker 2: these people need to be thrown in the ocean or
Speaker 2: whatever they're saying in the moral panic. Sure, but just
Speaker 2: know that this too will pass. Yeah, you know, because
Speaker 2: it's really not attached to anything, and as soon as
Speaker 2: the world changes, they're on to a new thing exactly,
Speaker 2: and then they're worried about like what's going on in
Speaker 2: Europe or right? So you ready to wash this all
Speaker 2: down with say a delicious talkback? Produce a d Can
Speaker 2: you favor us with one?
Speaker 4: Oh God, I love you.
Speaker 5: Hi. My name is Kat. I currently live in New
Speaker 5: Hampshire and I just wanted to thank Zarn for bringing
Speaker 5: up the movie Clifford. My sister Liz and I watched
Speaker 5: it repeatedly as children. We never broke our VCR, but
Speaker 5: I think we might have broken our parents' spirits a
Speaker 5: little bit with how frequently we watched it. Thank you
Speaker 5: for the unlock of that core childhood memory.
Speaker 3: Lots of love to all of you.
Speaker 2: I love it. I love to be in service of
Speaker 2: an unlocked memory that is great. Clifford is a great
Speaker 2: one spirit. If you have a VCR on the VHS day,
Speaker 2: pop that bad boy, you know break some spirits well. Obviously,
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Speaker 2: and we will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime his
Speaker 2: host by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, Produced and edited
Speaker 2: by Friend to all Felonious Flappers mister Dave Kusten and
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