Speaker 1: It's early January two thousand and Stephen Fishler is sitting
Speaker 1: in his office. You probably don't know the name unless
Speaker 1: you've ever been in the market for expensive comic books,
Speaker 1: very very expensive comic books. Titles that sell for millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. Comics that once cost ten cents got thrown
Speaker 1: away or left to us, and then go on to
Speaker 1: fetch an incredibly high price for their rarity. Fishler was
Speaker 1: and still is among the most well known brokers of
Speaker 1: such books. He's been collecting since he was five years old,
Speaker 1: a kid in Brooklyn, after stacks of superheroes. If you
Speaker 1: want a particular title in a particular condition, he can
Speaker 1: probably find it. And that's what Stephen was doing today,
Speaker 1: making deals for collectors from his place of business, Metropolis
Speaker 1: Collectibles in New York City, overflowing with rare books, first
Speaker 1: appearances of Spider Man, Captain America Archie, many looking like
Speaker 1: they just came off a news stand, even though they're
Speaker 1: decades old. This is the kind of place that even
Speaker 1: when the comics are sealed in plastic, they give off
Speaker 1: that distinctive smell of old, cheap paper. Well maybe not
Speaker 1: so cheap anymore, but today isn't going to be a
Speaker 1: normal day for Stephen. It's going to be the beginning
Speaker 1: of a situation and obsession really that will take up
Speaker 1: a good deal of his time, something that will one
Speaker 1: day have police instructing him on what to do in
Speaker 1: the event of a shootout, that kind of situation. And
Speaker 1: it begins, like many stories do, with a phone call.
Speaker 1: Nick called me very upset and said to me that
Speaker 1: somebody stole some of his comic books and was really
Speaker 1: in a panic. I must have been. I don't know
Speaker 1: that noon my time, and I sort of asked him
Speaker 1: to sort of slow down so I can understand what
Speaker 1: went on, and he gave me, you know, an account
Speaker 1: of what went on as best he could. Nick is
Speaker 1: Nicholas Cage, the star of huge movies like Face Off,
Speaker 1: Cohn Air and The Rock, an Oscar winner, a man
Speaker 1: who ate a live cockroach in Vampire's Kiss because he
Speaker 1: knew it would draw attention. He didn't win the Oscar
Speaker 1: for that one that was leaving Las Vegas. Cage is
Speaker 1: talking quickly in that distinctive twang that makes his sentences
Speaker 1: sound like melodies. He's calling because Stephen is his dealer,
Speaker 1: his comic book dealer. Well, it started many, many years ago.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine who was a friend in a
Speaker 1: comic collector, Miguel Ferrare currently was on some movie set
Speaker 1: with Nick Cage. This is in the eighties when he
Speaker 1: was not as well known, and they got into a
Speaker 1: conversation about comic books. And probably a month later, I'm
Speaker 1: at seeing Nick at a hotel. He was living at
Speaker 1: Hotel Rossmore and there he was in his crew cut
Speaker 1: and this is after like Valley Girl, I believe, and
Speaker 1: he had a giant fish tank in his apartment at
Speaker 1: the hotel with a shark in it, and that's where
Speaker 1: I first met him and started dealing with him way
Speaker 1: way back. Since then, Cage has bought hundreds of comics
Speaker 1: from Stephen, and now Cage is trying to explain that
Speaker 1: the worst possible thing that could happen to a comic
Speaker 1: collector has happened. His most valuable books have turned up missing.
Speaker 1: And not just valuable books. The most valuable book, the
Speaker 1: most sought after issue of them all, The Mona Lisa
Speaker 1: of Comics, Action Comics number one, the first appearance of
Speaker 1: a superhero, the first appearance of the Man of Steel, Superman,
Speaker 1: the most well preserved copy available, a comic so rare
Speaker 1: that even a rusty staple or some page flex from
Speaker 1: one can sell for hundreds of dollars to collectors desperate
Speaker 1: for even a small dose of its magic. Superman, the
Speaker 1: embodiment of morality and virtue stolen. Stephen takes a deep breath.
Speaker 1: He asks one of the world's most famous actors to
Speaker 1: tell him exactly what happened. Nick told me that there
Speaker 1: was some sort of party and that they disappeared during
Speaker 1: the party. That was it is house, a party, a heist,
Speaker 1: a frantic phone call, and as Cage talks, Stephen realizes
Speaker 1: it gets worse. Action Number one is missing, and so
Speaker 1: is Detective Comics Number twenty seven. That was the first
Speaker 1: appearance of Batman. Someone has run off with half the
Speaker 1: Justice League from right under the nose of a Hollywood superstar.
Speaker 1: And that's about all Stephen can get because Cage, in
Speaker 1: his indomitable cage fashion, is too upset to offer too
Speaker 1: many details on what will shape up to be the
Speaker 1: most unlikely artist of all time. Oh for I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: I'm Dani Schwartz. This is Stealing Superman, an I Heart
Speaker 1: original podcast now on my long running podcast noble Blood.
Speaker 1: I tell the true stories of historical royals, but occasionally
Speaker 1: I like to cover a different kind of royalty, Hollywood Royalty.
Speaker 1: Last fall we brought you Haileywood, a podcast about Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis buying up a town in Idaho in the es
Speaker 1: and the friends and enemies he made along the way.
Speaker 1: This year's tale involves a brazen comic book heist, Nicolas
Speaker 1: Cage and y two K. Let's get into it Episode one,
Speaker 1: Beads of Sweat. We need to turn the pages back
Speaker 1: a little. A few days prior to a house party
Speaker 1: at three sixty three Coppa de Laura Road in bel Air, California,
Speaker 1: the residents of Nicolas Coppola, known to most people by
Speaker 1: his stage name Nicolas Cage, New Year's Eve was something special,
Speaker 1: something peculiar. Remember why two K when people believed that
Speaker 1: computers wouldn't be able to understand the year two thousand
Speaker 1: and that it might cripple our infrastructure. Well, if the
Speaker 1: people in attendance at Cage's house were worried about it,
Speaker 1: they didn't act like it. And if this was the
Speaker 1: end of the world, Cage was going to make sure
Speaker 1: they had one hell of a good time On their
Speaker 1: way out. The scale of a Nicholas Cage party is
Speaker 1: hard to fathom. You'd have celebrities, actors, producers, directors, agents.
Speaker 1: Fresh food was laid out on the fade tables made
Speaker 1: from solid blocks of ice. Giant nutcrackers standing ten feet
Speaker 1: tall flanked the main entrance. Fake snow was blowing out
Speaker 1: of machines. Lightning professionals made sure everything looked perfect. At
Speaker 1: one party, someone brought Cage a pony as a gift.
Speaker 1: It would be found wandering around the yard the next morning.
Speaker 1: It was as though Cage were always starring in a
Speaker 1: party being directed by David Lynch. Yeah, he had amazing parties.
Speaker 1: I once got a cigar from Jack Nicholson, who was
Speaker 1: very intoxicated and gave me a cigar to give to
Speaker 1: my father. Yeah. I was there. I was there, and
Speaker 1: we were all there, all the staffs and all the people,
Speaker 1: and I met some really amazing people and I had
Speaker 1: a great time. That's Jen Bosworth Ramirez. Jen worked for
Speaker 1: Cage in the two thousand's and no she didn't steal
Speaker 1: the comics I did. Can you imagine? Jen was hired
Speaker 1: by Cage himself, who conducted the job interview with one
Speaker 1: of his ears blown off. Okay, And so then I
Speaker 1: get into this trailer, a small trailer. Wasn't like a
Speaker 1: fancy he must have been in the makeup trailer or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it wasn't like a big honey wagon.
Speaker 1: It was like small, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting across from this movie star. Also, he doesn't
Speaker 1: look like himself because he literally his ear is blown off.
Speaker 1: He has my resume backs in his hand that they
Speaker 1: had facts to his trailer, to the base camp or something,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, twenty four, I don't know what's happening.
Speaker 1: And then I said, I said, oh my god, your ear.
Speaker 1: I remember being really startled because the prosthetics were so
Speaker 1: good and wind Tucker's that's a John Woolf felt. I
Speaker 1: think anyway, the prosthetics were really good, and I said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, your ear go. Yeah, that's that's not real,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's a prosthetic. And I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: it was so awkward. The whole thing was so weird,
Speaker 1: so weird. I left. I didn't know if I had
Speaker 1: the jab or not. I had no clue was happening.
Speaker 1: Jen worked for Cages production company Saturn Films. Some perks
Speaker 1: were parties like this one in Cage's Grand Residents over
Speaker 1: a seven thousand square feet sitting on one acre in
Speaker 1: one of the country's most prestigious neighborhoods. Walk inside the
Speaker 1: house and you're created with a different kind of splendor.
Speaker 1: A real estate agent and architectural historian named Brett Parsons,
Speaker 1: who once toward the house, described the style as frat house,
Speaker 1: bordello or quote early American Adams family. Those sound like insults,
Speaker 1: and well maybe they were, But however you felt about it,
Speaker 1: it was undoubtedly a reflection of its owner. Originally built
Speaker 1: by famed architect Gerard Colcord in nineteen forty, it was
Speaker 1: once owned by Dean Martin and later Tom Jones, who
Speaker 1: sold it to Cage In Cage would make some improvements
Speaker 1: or changes. At least purple curtains hung from windows. A
Speaker 1: vintage nineteen fifty five jag war car had been painstakingly
Speaker 1: disassembled and put back together in one room until the
Speaker 1: pungent smell of oil overcame visitors and it had to go.
Speaker 1: There were even people who swore they saw shrunken heads.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, I never knew that. I never saw
Speaker 1: the shrunken heads I heard about that. That doesn't shock
Speaker 1: me either. I mean he had dinosaur bones. I think
Speaker 1: model trains were running above diners. In the breakfast room
Speaker 1: and throughout the house were bronze walsconces. Light fixtures, but
Speaker 1: not ordinary light fixtures. These were fixtures sculpted out of
Speaker 1: a cast made from Nicholas Cage's arm, his muscled appendages
Speaker 1: illuminating the home, the bell Air House. If my recollection,
Speaker 1: it's a huge Gothic mansion, meaning there's probably like ten
Speaker 1: bedrooms in there. I mostly hung out in the living area.
Speaker 1: It was like a probably a three story situation. Outside
Speaker 1: it looks like a regular you know, if I recall correctly,
Speaker 1: like a brick mansion that you'd see in Valor. But
Speaker 1: inside he had it decorated like super gothic, key and
Speaker 1: dark and ornate at points and not my style, like
Speaker 1: that's not my jam. But it was like a castle.
Speaker 1: That's what I could sort of say. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of a castle. A lot of rooms, a lot of
Speaker 1: twists and turns. It was not an open floor plan.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that, you know what I mean, There's
Speaker 1: a pool. But I didn't spend a ton of time there,
Speaker 1: but I do remember being like WHOA, I remember purple droops.
Speaker 1: As guests wandered through the home, they would have noticed
Speaker 1: something else. Lining the walls on the second floor were
Speaker 1: comic books. Lots of comic books, the first appearance of
Speaker 1: Captain America and Green Lantern and The Justice Society, comics
Speaker 1: from the Golden Age of the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: science fiction comics and horror comics. Skeletons peering out at
Speaker 1: the reader, and scantily clad women gasping at probing alien marauders.
Speaker 1: Any comic book fan would have taken one look and
Speaker 1: seethed with envy. At least a hundred scattered throughout the house,
Speaker 1: one book in each frame. As you can probably imagine,
Speaker 1: Cage didn't just pin the comics to the wall. This
Speaker 1: was an ornate display. Each frame was nineteen and a
Speaker 1: half inches long by sixteen and a half inches wide,
Speaker 1: Each was made of stained maple. Each had a small
Speaker 1: lock that could only be opened with a key, and
Speaker 1: each was connected to a pressure sensor alarm. If someone
Speaker 1: had the key and were to open the frame and
Speaker 1: remove the comic inside cages security staff would be immediately notified.
Speaker 1: You couldn't easily pill for any of these books unless, well,
Speaker 1: hang up, We're almost there, but let's finish the tour.
Speaker 1: The hub of Cage's collection was in what he called
Speaker 1: a smoking lounge. It was originally a secret room used
Speaker 1: by Dean Martin, and accessible only if you knew how
Speaker 1: to get in from an adjoining bathroom through a panel
Speaker 1: door that pops open. It's kind of a clandestine deal.
Speaker 1: A spiral staircase curved up, and it's tight, so tight
Speaker 1: Cage had to bring up the furniture in pieces. This
Speaker 1: secret smoking room was, like other parts of the house,
Speaker 1: decorated heavily in purple, purple furniture, purple walls, a purple
Speaker 1: carpet with gold accents, a spiral staircase leading to the
Speaker 1: roof carpeted, and well, you get it. It was in
Speaker 1: this small room that Cage went to unwind, a respite
Speaker 1: from fame or even from hosting duties. It's a small,
Speaker 1: intimate room and the walls were lined with his most
Speaker 1: valuable comics. Hanging in one wall frame was Detective Comics
Speaker 1: Number twenty seven, dated May nine. The cover captures its protagonist.
Speaker 1: In the thick of it, Batman, a strange, masked vigilante
Speaker 1: readers have never seen before, is swooping into frame to
Speaker 1: put a criminal in a choke hold. As Batman cuts
Speaker 1: off the hoods corroded artery. He's hanging from a supported
Speaker 1: building outside of you. In the lower left corner, two
Speaker 1: crooks look on, one is armed. Both seem unsure of
Speaker 1: what to do about the man with violent tendencies dressed
Speaker 1: as a bat It's advertising sixty four pages of action.
Speaker 1: Once upon a time, it was ten cents in two thousand.
Speaker 1: It's thought to be worth up to a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars. It's actually why Cage went to Fishler
Speaker 1: in the first place. They wanted a Detective twenty seven,
Speaker 1: so that's what the conversation focused on. I had brought
Speaker 1: him a twenty seven to look at, but it had
Speaker 1: too much restoration, that particular copy. But that was the
Speaker 1: first meeting his interest in in a detective comics. But
Speaker 1: that was really just a warm up. As desirable a
Speaker 1: book as Detective Number twenty seven was and is, it's
Speaker 1: always taken second place in the comic book hierarchy to
Speaker 1: its bigger brother, The birth of the superhero genre. The
Speaker 1: comic that would change popular culture forever. Action Comics number one,
Speaker 1: dated June, but actually released a little earlier. You've probably
Speaker 1: seen the cover. It's part of our cultural iconography by
Speaker 1: this point. They're Superman hefting a call are clear over
Speaker 1: his head. His costume isn't much different from the one
Speaker 1: he sports today. Let's refined, sure, but the red cap, boots,
Speaker 1: and s insignia are all there Bystanders are fleeing from
Speaker 1: the scene, terrified of this man with super strength. In
Speaker 1: the lower left corner is a man who is positively hysterical.
Speaker 1: His hands are clasped to his face, like the figure
Speaker 1: in Edward Monks the screen. He's running away. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: part of the crew inside the car the crooked Superman
Speaker 1: is trying to bring to justice. Maybe he's not involved.
Speaker 1: Either way, he's got beads of sweat running down his forehead.
Speaker 1: Seeing Superman for the first time has to be stressful. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: people are happy to see him. They wave and clap.
Speaker 1: Not this crew. They were scared. Two hundred thousand copies
Speaker 1: of this comic book were printed in fewer than one
Speaker 1: hundred copies are believed to still exist, and even fewer
Speaker 1: in good condition cages. Copy is considered one of the
Speaker 1: most well preserved, With bright colors and an intact cover.
Speaker 1: Superman is still a deep red and blue. The pages
Speaker 1: inside are a creamy white. On the scale of one
Speaker 1: to ten, it's an easy nine. A comic over sixty
Speaker 1: years old to survive, to endure and look this good
Speaker 1: is remarkable. Unlike some comics that get restored, this Action
Speaker 1: number one hasn't had any work done. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: now much later, probably around and I'm gonna say nineteen
Speaker 1: or so, and an interest in buying an Action one
Speaker 1: in high grade. I knew a collector who had one,
Speaker 1: and I was able to was sort of a difficult deal,
Speaker 1: but I was able to put the deal together, and
Speaker 1: that was the book that Nick ended up with. It
Speaker 1: was just the mechanics of giving me the book, and
Speaker 1: I think the collector was enamored of selling it to Nick.
Speaker 1: And I met with Nick without the collector there, but
Speaker 1: I put Nick on the phone with this collector and
Speaker 1: then the deal went through. I think he just kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to meet him, just to be honest, But
Speaker 1: Nick really did value it was very excited about buying
Speaker 1: this book as well. He should, and I thought it
Speaker 1: would be sort of a fun deal to pull off
Speaker 1: selling it to him. Cage It paid one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars for Action Number one. That was a
Speaker 1: record for a comic book sale at the time, but
Speaker 1: three years later it's likely worth more, perhaps as much
Speaker 1: as two hundred thousand dollars. It's the crown jewel of
Speaker 1: Cage's collection. It would be the centerpiece of any comic
Speaker 1: book collection today. Right now, copies of both of these
Speaker 1: comics are worth two to three million each, if not more.
Speaker 1: They've only appreciated in value, but Cage appreciated them then.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, before comic book movies became the only
Speaker 1: thing playing in multiplexes, he grew up reading comics. He
Speaker 1: took his stage name Cage, partly after Luke Cage, the
Speaker 1: seventies Marvel comic hero with impenetrable skin, a good superhero
Speaker 1: for an actor who didn't always find kindness coming from critics.
Speaker 1: But the comics were something else for Nicolas Cage too.
Speaker 1: Like the House itself, they were monuments to Cage's success
Speaker 1: from turns as strange characters in Moonstruck and Raising Arizona,
Speaker 1: to winning an Oscar to becoming an action star. Cage
Speaker 1: had navigated Hollywood successfully, and he arrived at a time
Speaker 1: when the industry was paying record salaries. After the Academy
Speaker 1: Awards win, cages quote for a movie went from four
Speaker 1: million dollars to seven million dollars. Years before, Cage had
Speaker 1: asked the director of a small film he was going
Speaker 1: to make a cameo in Never on Tuesday, if the
Speaker 1: man could buy him an Action Comics Number one instead
Speaker 1: of paying him. The director couldn't afford to, But now
Speaker 1: Cage could afford to buy his own copy, and so
Speaker 1: he did. He love this book, I mean the actually
Speaker 1: one metal lot to him, which brings us to Stephen
Speaker 1: Fishler's phone ringing and Nicholas Cage telling him his comics
Speaker 1: were no longer there. It was a few days before
Speaker 1: Stephen could make it out to California, but he did. Stephen,
Speaker 1: of course, wasn't in law enforcement, but he was one
Speaker 1: of the few people in Caged circle who could understand
Speaker 1: the enormity of what had happened. Saying it was just
Speaker 1: a comic book theft was like saying a museum heist
Speaker 1: only resulted in some plaster going missing. And I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure as soon as he realized that they're missing, he
Speaker 1: called me. It seemed like you on the spot. He
Speaker 1: called me because I was this comic guy, so this
Speaker 1: is about a comic. He wanted, I guess advice, and
Speaker 1: that's what I gave him, and I offered to come
Speaker 1: out to help, which is what I did within maybe
Speaker 1: a week or two. According to Stephen, it had taken
Speaker 1: a day or two, perhaps longer for Cage to realize
Speaker 1: the comics were missing. A maid had been in the
Speaker 1: smoking room and noticed that three of the frames were empty,
Speaker 1: and something else that was curious. Those lockable frames hadn't
Speaker 1: been forcibly opened. So my brain went, oh, it's maybe misplaced.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were put somewhere. I went there it was described.
Speaker 1: I saw that I had sold Nick these shadow box
Speaker 1: frames that the books were located in, and the Action
Speaker 1: one in Detective were in the shadow box frames, and
Speaker 1: there are the frames with the label on it Action
Speaker 1: one with nothing in it. So the frames were opened
Speaker 1: and taken. But I went through yet too safe there
Speaker 1: and went through the safe and I went, huh, this
Speaker 1: may be actually stolen. The comics weren't just loose inside
Speaker 1: their frames. They were each in protective, hard plastic sleeves.
Speaker 1: It's called a fortress, and it's used by serious collectors
Speaker 1: to make sure comics didn't get bent, ripped, or otherwise damaged.
Speaker 1: Each fortress was held together in two pieces by screws.
Speaker 1: If a thief wanted to take the naked books, they
Speaker 1: would have needed to spend a little bit of time
Speaker 1: unscrewing each fortress, but the fortress sleeves were entirely gone.
Speaker 1: Whoever took them would have had to deal with a
Speaker 1: little extra book folk, as opposed to just rolling up
Speaker 1: the comics and stuffing them in a pocket, something that
Speaker 1: would have been unspeakable for a rare comic. It could
Speaker 1: also mean the thief or thieves didn't have time to
Speaker 1: remove the books from the fortress covers that they needed
Speaker 1: to move quickly. It's a little bigger than the book,
Speaker 1: but if you put in your jacket, it's not so big.
Speaker 1: It's not like taking a giant painting and taking it
Speaker 1: off the wall. Fisher noticed something else Cajun mentioned in
Speaker 1: their conversation. The thief had also made off with a
Speaker 1: third comic from a frame It was a copy of
Speaker 1: Detective Comics Number one from seven, an even older title
Speaker 1: than the Big two. While certainly valuable and worth ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or so, it wasn't nearly as desirable. No
Speaker 1: famous heroes made an appearance in it. The stories inside
Speaker 1: lacked real staying power. You probably haven't heard of Speed
Speaker 1: Saunders and the River Patrol or Cosmo the Phantom of Disguise.
Speaker 1: Maybe the thief just saw an opportunity to take it.
Speaker 1: Maybe he saw a Detective and number one and thought
Speaker 1: any issue with that title was prized. But that still
Speaker 1: wasn't the biggest news. There was an alarm in the
Speaker 1: back of each frame, and I guess the box was open,
Speaker 1: and maybe the alarm was not set for they want
Speaker 1: to be triggered when the box is open, but apparently
Speaker 1: that was the idea behind it. I saw there was
Speaker 1: a wire attached to the back of each shadow box,
Speaker 1: attached to the wall. A lot of money setting this up,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately, somebody was able to open up these frames
Speaker 1: and take the books out. Probably understood these are the
Speaker 1: most valuable books. What Cage liked to do was take
Speaker 1: the books out of their wall frames and rearrange them
Speaker 1: show them off to people, that's what collectors do, and
Speaker 1: then he'd leave them unlocked and the alarm disengaged. That's
Speaker 1: sometimes what happens when people installed alarms. They become a
Speaker 1: nuisance and so they're deactivated. That meant that, at least
Speaker 1: in theory, anyone could walk up and grab a piece
Speaker 1: of comic book history and disappear into the throngs of
Speaker 1: a Nick Cage New Year's Eve party. But it would
Speaker 1: have been bold to take the books without some sort
Speaker 1: of knowledge that they were unlocked and disarmed. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what this individual knew or didn't know. I
Speaker 1: think that this individual saw Nick open up the case
Speaker 1: and show the book to somebody, and he probably went
Speaker 1: opened up. It doesn't bring if that's what happened, it's
Speaker 1: not likely they would have been stopped. Not at a
Speaker 1: Cage party and one of those parties, especially, Are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? You have to understand, like everyone's drinking, it's
Speaker 1: a huge party. Everyone's trying to make business deal and
Speaker 1: get to know the famous people. Oh sure, there's so
Speaker 1: much stuff in those houses. You'd have to have security
Speaker 1: guards watching every rook like a museum them all of course,
Speaker 1: and Also, there is this thing of you let people
Speaker 1: into your house you trust. The problem with that is
Speaker 1: you let two other people into your house, you can't
Speaker 1: trust them, all right, So oh, yeah, someone would be
Speaker 1: able to leave. Are you kidding me? But Stephen wasn't
Speaker 1: entirely convinced a crime had been committed, not yet. First
Speaker 1: he diligently searched the enormous house. It was certainly possible
Speaker 1: Cage had taken the books out and set them down
Speaker 1: somewhere without remembering, or maybe a party guest had picked
Speaker 1: them up and left them in another room. Maybe a
Speaker 1: thief considered taking them, then panicked when they ran into
Speaker 1: someone and decided to leave them behind. All were reasonable possibilities.
Speaker 1: But the more Stephen looked, the more he realized that
Speaker 1: nothing innocent had taken place. And I really, after probably
Speaker 1: spending six or seven hours in the house, said yeah,
Speaker 1: and now we're understanding that this was in this case,
Speaker 1: and it's not there. Nobody took it out. That works
Speaker 1: for nick, and but it's somewhere else. It would be unusual.
Speaker 1: He couldn't find a trace of them, not a page,
Speaker 1: not a screw, not anything. So if this was a crime,
Speaker 1: and it was looking that way, who were the suspects.
Speaker 1: It was incredibly unlikely a burglar had somehow made their
Speaker 1: way into the home undetected, forcing their way in through
Speaker 1: a window or door. It had to have been the
Speaker 1: party where dozens of people had filed through Cage's home
Speaker 1: like they were on a museum tour. To make matters worse,
Speaker 1: Cage had more than one gathering around that time. It
Speaker 1: could have been his New Year's party, or it could
Speaker 1: have been a birthday or Christmas bash. It was impossible
Speaker 1: to know the exact night the comics had disappeared, but
Speaker 1: Cage's guests were always friends or friends of friends. Robbing
Speaker 1: the actor seemed pretty out of character for wealthy, connected people,
Speaker 1: But Fishler was told that there was another possibility. There
Speaker 1: was talk of somebody who worked at the party selling
Speaker 1: some alcohol, almost like a bodyguard or somebody who worked
Speaker 1: at his house. It seemed like just for that day,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem like a regular employee, and that person
Speaker 1: was selling alcohol in the back of a car, and
Speaker 1: that alcohol seemed to have been taken out of Knick's
Speaker 1: house as well. So there was the belief that this
Speaker 1: is the thief that took the books a transient worker
Speaker 1: of sorts. They're just for the party, someone who had
Speaker 1: access to Cage's home but wasn't a friend or associate.
Speaker 1: It made sense, but nothing came of it, and nothing
Speaker 1: came up. Speaking with Cage's many employees, security staff, a chef,
Speaker 1: cleaning staff, drivers, all had varying degrees of access to
Speaker 1: Cage's home. In theory, one of them could have used
Speaker 1: the party as a cover a way too deepen the
Speaker 1: suspect pool to help avoid detection. Or someone could have
Speaker 1: used that information and given it to a third party
Speaker 1: a kind of tip. What was it likely? Was someone
Speaker 1: really going to steal from Nick Cage and then just
Speaker 1: continue reporting for work as if nothing had happened in
Speaker 1: the gated exclusive community of bel Air. Well Yeah. Flash
Speaker 1: forward about a year. Movie producer Peter Goober, who also
Speaker 1: lives in bel Air, discovers he short one Picasso drawing
Speaker 1: titled fun From taken from his wall. A glass entry
Speaker 1: door appeared to be kicked out, just like at his
Speaker 1: Picasso was gone like Cage. Uber had a full time
Speaker 1: staff twenty nine employees to be exact, and all were questioned.
Speaker 1: Nothing turned up, nothing until five months later when a
Speaker 1: man named Tony walked into Christie's, the famed auction house,
Speaker 1: and asked if they'd be interested in purchasing in authentic
Speaker 1: Picasso drawing fonn He was going through a divorce, he said,
Speaker 1: and wanted sixty dollars for it. And then Tony said
Speaker 1: something odd. He said the drawing by one of the
Speaker 1: world's most famous artists was quote ugly. The Christie's employee
Speaker 1: furrowed her brow and told Tony to hang on for
Speaker 1: just a second. On a hunch, she got online and
Speaker 1: checked out the Los Angeles Police Department's database of stolen art. There,
Speaker 1: alongside a note about Nicholas Cage's missing be of Action
Speaker 1: comics number one, was a notice about the missing Picasso.
Speaker 1: Tony was arrested, and that wasn't as you may have
Speaker 1: guessed his real name. He was a driver for Peter Goober,
Speaker 1: who snuck into the house and smashed a window to
Speaker 1: make it look like a break in. He had seen
Speaker 1: the Picasso, he gave in to temptation. If Tony could
Speaker 1: do it, well, why not someone working for Cage, someone
Speaker 1: who knew the comics were often unlocked, unarmed, and easily accessible.
Speaker 1: Was it like Goober's drawing an inside job. But the
Speaker 1: thing to know about in his life then is that
Speaker 1: there were so many people working for him. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: He had a staff I would say of like maybe
Speaker 1: of a round. I mean, it was crazy. It's hard
Speaker 1: to keep track of everybody. There's such an enabling thing
Speaker 1: of celebrities that, like, my first thing when you say
Speaker 1: about the comic is like, well, what if this is
Speaker 1: an inside job? Totally an inside job at the house.
Speaker 1: That's Jen Bosworth Ramirez. Again, Jen has some ideas about
Speaker 1: how Cage found himself in this position. First, there's the
Speaker 1: house itself, the Purple Palace. That house is huge. I
Speaker 1: don't think he still owns it. I think he lives
Speaker 1: in Vegas. But like, that house was so big and
Speaker 1: had so much stuff in it. It was like this
Speaker 1: gothic mansion obviously in bel Air, but it also had
Speaker 1: twist and turns in that house, and he had what
Speaker 1: I believe is the first danger Will Robinson Robot in
Speaker 1: the house, which I remember being really weirded out by
Speaker 1: from what was it lost in space? I think, And
Speaker 1: it was like a museum. So it doesn't shock me
Speaker 1: that something walked off from that house. If it did.
Speaker 1: That's what actually happened. Other sources say the robot was
Speaker 1: a replica, but still so. The Cage Museum of Modern
Speaker 1: Art is one factor, and the other is people in
Speaker 1: cages orbit, the employees, associates, hangers on. The other thing
Speaker 1: to note about this time, and maybe it's all times
Speaker 1: with celebrities and kind of interesting weird celebrities, is that
Speaker 1: they always have a cast of characters around them. They
Speaker 1: sort of elect people, people that are in the industry,
Speaker 1: people that are not in the industry. I could totally
Speaker 1: also see how someone like Nick could get involved with
Speaker 1: someone who could be a little shady, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Because everyone's shady here in Hollywood in some way, right,
Speaker 1: and Cage had undoubtedly run into them. So you have
Speaker 1: a party at your house, there's an object worth at
Speaker 1: least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that's small enough
Speaker 1: to fit inside of a jacket. Two of them. Actually,
Speaker 1: people can wander around freely. Employees come and go, and
Speaker 1: you're away for maybe half the year shooting movies. Would
Speaker 1: you just leave it unlocked and available for anyone to
Speaker 1: pick up? If you're Nicolas Cage, yes, yes you do.
Speaker 1: My understanding of him is that he started acting so young,
Speaker 1: and because he was from kind of a famous family,
Speaker 1: you know, the Coppolas, And because of all these things,
Speaker 1: he was sort of like protected from a lot of
Speaker 1: the harsh truths of the world that people can take
Speaker 1: advantage of you, which is something actually I've seen over
Speaker 1: and over with celebrities, but especially with Nick. I was
Speaker 1: struck by the fact that he was super earnest in
Speaker 1: a way that shocked me. It was like he wanted
Speaker 1: to believe the best in people. But more than that,
Speaker 1: I don't think he thought people would do that to him,
Speaker 1: steal from him. It's really weird because you would think
Speaker 1: that people would be like, Oh, I have money and
Speaker 1: fancy things, and I have random people in my house.
Speaker 1: This could be a big problem. I'd never experienced him
Speaker 1: that way. It was so interesting during that time. I
Speaker 1: remember being like, Oh, he really takes people at their word.
Speaker 1: The famous cage eccentricity you probably figured we'd address this
Speaker 1: cage has always been perceived as slightly odd. What other
Speaker 1: actor has bought a dinosaur skull for two hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six thousand dollars and then had to give it
Speaker 1: back when it was discovered that it was stolen from Mongolia.
Speaker 1: Who else has described his own acting style as no
Speaker 1: voo shamanistic and again we remind you of eating a
Speaker 1: live roach. So Cage is not exactly playing by any
Speaker 1: particular rule book. And it's fair to say he experienced
Speaker 1: the world in a very different way. And it was
Speaker 1: like he couldn't understand that there were consequences financially. I
Speaker 1: don't know that he knew that if you don't pay
Speaker 1: a parking meter, there's a ticket, and if you don't
Speaker 1: pay the ticket like increases, because I think everyone just
Speaker 1: did things for him all the time. He didn't know
Speaker 1: certain things. But by his own admission, Cage was often
Speaker 1: interested in building up a mythology around himself. Why else
Speaker 1: by a two headed snake and share the fact that
Speaker 1: you had to feed it with a spatula between the
Speaker 1: heads to keep them separated. Why else stand up in
Speaker 1: a restaurant and throw a ketchup bottle against the wall
Speaker 1: to impress a date, Or get on a plane intercom
Speaker 1: and pretend to be an ill pilot losing control of
Speaker 1: the plane. Why else appear on a talk show in
Speaker 1: the UK and stripped down to your bare chest. Cage
Speaker 1: seemed to enjoy testing the boundaries of personality, creating his
Speaker 1: own alter ego like Superman created Clark Kent, so that
Speaker 1: it became difficult for anyone to compare the real Cage
Speaker 1: to a part because well, who was the real Cage anyway? Well,
Speaker 1: there was a story. I used to get beat up
Speaker 1: on the bustle of a way. I went to a
Speaker 1: correctional school for juvenile delinquents and I wasn't a big guy.
Speaker 1: I was ten years old. I got kicked out of
Speaker 1: school because I was, you know, the class clown, coming
Speaker 1: up with pranks and whatnot, fried grasshoppers and people's egg
Speaker 1: salad sandwiches and uh, I used to get beat up
Speaker 1: on the bus every day. And then then I was
Speaker 1: Nikki Coppel, that was my name. So one day I
Speaker 1: went to school and I dressed up, put my cowboy
Speaker 1: boots on, put my black leather jacket on, put my
Speaker 1: sunglasses on, and UH said, I was Roy Richards and
Speaker 1: if you if you mess around with my my cousin,
Speaker 1: Nicki Coppel, I'm gonna kick your ass. So after that
Speaker 1: they never screwed around with me anymore. So that was
Speaker 1: really my first acting experience. The eccentricity probably gets exaggerated,
Speaker 1: but it's also true that Cage, like many stars, is
Speaker 1: somewhat distanced from the normal burdens of life. There was
Speaker 1: the time he bought a Bentley, a beautiful Bentley, and
Speaker 1: had it cussed demised so that it had every available
Speaker 1: amenity you could think of, plush seats, televisions, a stereo,
Speaker 1: a bar, luxury. When Cage got it back, he found
Speaker 1: he couldn't fit inside of it anymore. There had been
Speaker 1: too many additions. It became too opulent to contain him.
Speaker 1: It also just didn't occur to Cage that anyone would
Speaker 1: mean him any harm. He was, by the account of
Speaker 1: people who worked for him, generous kind, far from the
Speaker 1: egocentric star stereotype. It probably never occurred to him that
Speaker 1: action number one could be taken, because who would want
Speaker 1: to do that to him? Too many people? Do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like, why don't you know these people?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It was such a weird time. He
Speaker 1: had tons of people working for him, tons, and then
Speaker 1: that doesn't include his agents, manager, and then all of
Speaker 1: the publicists. I mean, it's a huge team of people,
Speaker 1: and he's paying for all them, and you're probably wondering
Speaker 1: security footage. Nope, no cameras inside, no one guarding the doors,
Speaker 1: no one searching bags or patting people down. It was
Speaker 1: a party, not a t s a checkpoint. Being at
Speaker 1: the house and seeing sort of the grandness with which
Speaker 1: he lived in terms of how much stuff he had
Speaker 1: and collectibles, it was a whole new world to me,
Speaker 1: and I can easily see how that world, as glorious
Speaker 1: as it could be and as fun, could also be
Speaker 1: a huge burden, and to keep track of everything and
Speaker 1: everybody in your life would be almost impossible. That's the story.
Speaker 1: It's just being in his house. You're playing pool with
Speaker 1: Tom Waits and Jack Nicholson just gave you a cigar,
Speaker 1: and this is this guy's house, and yet nobody really
Speaker 1: knows you. It's very him, it's very weird. It's a
Speaker 1: weird life. But that I think would be it's just
Speaker 1: being the grandness of the whole thing and all the
Speaker 1: things that people are being like, Oh, but who really
Speaker 1: are these people and what are they doing here? And
Speaker 1: what are we doing here? And what is this kind
Speaker 1: of a life. It seems like it'd be very overwhelming
Speaker 1: and unmanageable. But Stephen Fishler thought he could help manage
Speaker 1: at least one part, the stolen comic part. He understood
Speaker 1: that if these books were going to surface, there was
Speaker 1: a very good chance he would hear about it. So
Speaker 1: no one went to the media, and that was on purpose.
Speaker 1: If you make it very public, then somebody's going to go, oh,
Speaker 1: it is very public. And I can't publicly sell these
Speaker 1: books because everybody knows. But if they steal them and
Speaker 1: they're not able to find references to the theft, then
Speaker 1: they may believe that nobody realized and now they're free
Speaker 1: and clear to sell. But I think the word might
Speaker 1: have gotten around about this theft in l A. Instead
Speaker 1: of calling the Los Angeles As Times, Stephen picked up
Speaker 1: the phone and began dialing Los Angeles area comic bookshops.
Speaker 1: He told owners that some valuable comics had been taken,
Speaker 1: but not who they had been taken from. Perhaps the thief,
Speaker 1: like with Tony and the Picasso, would be brazen or
Speaker 1: ignorant enough to just walk into Golden Apple Comics and
Speaker 1: present an action number one with some concocted story. Comics
Speaker 1: were after all found in attic. Sometimes it was a
Speaker 1: long shot and here's the thing about property crimes. Unless
Speaker 1: someone is an eyewitness to the theft, or unless someone
Speaker 1: is stupid enough to admit to being in possession of
Speaker 1: stolen property, it's not too hard to stay out of handcuffs.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that just ten of art thefts see the
Speaker 1: items recovered. But then, speaking to one dealer, Stephen heard
Speaker 1: something too good to be true. Yes, the store owner
Speaker 1: said someone had just called asking about the value of
Speaker 1: an action number one and a detective number twenty seven,
Speaker 1: but he didn't leave his name, and as the days
Speaker 1: ticked by, it became clear that person wasn't going to
Speaker 1: phone back. Please hang up and try your call again. Please.
Speaker 1: There's a working theory about art crime. When something is stolen,
Speaker 1: it will either surface immediately to get some quick cash,
Speaker 1: or in about ten years, just long enough to hope
Speaker 1: the victim has forgotten or has died, or the cops
Speaker 1: are no longer actively investigating. It's the difference between a
Speaker 1: fast score and playing the long game. So which was
Speaker 1: it going to be? Was someone trying to move these
Speaker 1: books fast? Were they going to go deep underground until
Speaker 1: cage was onto other things? Was the l a shop
Speaker 1: call a sign of things to come. This is just
Speaker 1: the beginning of the story of one of the most
Speaker 1: audacious art heists in modern history. Taken from one of
Speaker 1: Hollywood's most famous actors, it moves from Los Angeles to Connecticut,
Speaker 1: to Memphis and Paris and ropes in two Billionaires. It's
Speaker 1: Nicolas Cage's own real life version of National Treasure, a
Speaker 1: search for the birth of modern popular culture and the
Speaker 1: person or persons who took it from his frat house
Speaker 1: Bordelo Fortress of Solitude. And it really begins with one question,
Speaker 1: the one that you might have caught yourself asking when
Speaker 1: we started. When Nicolas Cage called Stephen Fishler, it was
Speaker 1: the first question Stephen asked Cage. He actually told him,
Speaker 1: did you call the police? And yet not so? I said, well,
Speaker 1: get off the phone with me. Let's get the police involved.
Speaker 1: Cage hadn't phoned the police right away. It was Stephen
Speaker 1: who called them and gave them the advice of right
Speaker 1: police to get them involved. Get him over there, went on.
Speaker 1: They may be able to certainly help, but could they
Speaker 1: This was no conventional art theft. Stephen was about to
Speaker 1: put l a p d s finest to the test
Speaker 1: when he discovered that there weren't just three comics missing,
Speaker 1: there were four, and that's when the beads of sweat
Speaker 1: really started rolling this season on Stealing Superman, the fact
Speaker 1: he went to the Dayla first rather than the place
Speaker 1: as an investigator, that would indicaite to me that Nicholas
Speaker 1: Kaige knew more than what he let on and he
Speaker 1: didn't want really a lot about being my public. You
Speaker 1: hear the gossip that it could have been the butler,
Speaker 1: could have been security guard, and I just remember that
Speaker 1: showed us everything, and then in the end it was like,
Speaker 1: well the police is going to come and everything. And
Speaker 1: then Jeff and I were like, well we touched everything
Speaker 1: because he had said something about fingerprints. We're both like,
Speaker 1: we just touched everything. We touched the door coming into
Speaker 1: your room and we never go up there. K you
Speaker 1: just one of our people. He's one of my people.
Speaker 1: I understand exactly what he must be thinking half when
Speaker 1: that happened, how it felt to him. We all do.
Speaker 1: And it's like, that's why Mark was more piste off
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, just because it's like, why are
Speaker 1: you bringing something around to my warehouse? Now I can
Speaker 1: go to prison for but this is because it's so
Speaker 1: specific both the man and his interests that it just
Speaker 1: feels like another world, right, Like it feels like fiction
Speaker 1: because someone targeted this very specific, very talented actor and
Speaker 1: stole something that is very specific to his interests, but
Speaker 1: that we're all aware of. As if it was a Monai.
Speaker 1: That feels more relatable than if it was like someone
Speaker 1: stole a two thousand dollar car from that damon, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be interesting. I think they should make a movie
Speaker 1: this and just talk about all the weirdos that worked
Speaker 1: for him and like who could have done this? And
Speaker 1: maybe it turns out that in the end he did
Speaker 1: it to himself. Stealing Superman is written by Jake Rawson,
Speaker 1: sound design scoring by Josh Fisher, additional editing by Jonathan Washington,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Baheed Frasier. Original music by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson,
Speaker 1: with production support from Lulu Philip. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host
Speaker 1: Danish words. If you're enjoying this show, check out Haleywood
Speaker 1: and Noble Blood and give us a nice review. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next week. Stealing Superman is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Rate Yeah.