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Speaker 2: He used to call me when I'm back in California.
Speaker 2: Half the conversations, some guys were wondering about who was
Speaker 2: out trying to get him with the FPI looking for him.
Speaker 2: Don't talk to so and so, don't tell so and
Speaker 2: so where I am.
Speaker 1: Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson, the Surfer magazine photojournalists, kept
Speaker 1: in touch with Mickey after they left France in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, or he kept in touch with them. He'd
Speaker 1: always call from a certain phone booth.
Speaker 3: The phone booth was in in a was it bi
Speaker 3: own on.
Speaker 2: Board main Telecommunications and Biota.
Speaker 3: Right outside the main telecommunications building in byone, and it's
Speaker 3: a classic phone booth. And you would go in there
Speaker 3: and put in your frank pieces of coin and in
Speaker 3: there and try to dial internationally to different places.
Speaker 2: Remember Craig. There was a couple of dozen phone booths outside.
Speaker 1: The building, but Mickey's phone booth didn't work like other telephones.
Speaker 1: There was a trick to.
Speaker 3: It, but Mickey showed us the one that if you
Speaker 3: did it a certain putting your coins a certain way,
Speaker 3: and as the coin was dropping down, you hit it
Speaker 3: like on the side of the machine twice and once
Speaker 3: at the bottom or something, then it would be unlimited
Speaker 3: time on the phone.
Speaker 1: That phone booth by the main telecommunications building in Bayone
Speaker 1: was the way Mickey kept in touch with his network
Speaker 1: around the world.
Speaker 2: He would only go late at night when there was
Speaker 2: no one else around, and he liked to do it
Speaker 2: in the secret like that, you know, and be the
Speaker 2: guy making these calls, probably because of some time zone
Speaker 2: changes too.
Speaker 1: What he didn't realize was that he was being watched.
Speaker 2: He kept going there regularly at night and that after
Speaker 2: a while it aroused his suspicion of the French authorities.
Speaker 2: There were bass Separatists very active around the French Spanish
Speaker 2: border at that time.
Speaker 1: The Basque Separatists, a militant leftist group seeking independence from Spain,
Speaker 1: had carried out a number of high profile robberies kidnappings
Speaker 1: and terror attacks in the region, so the.
Speaker 2: Authorities thought, you know, if they're going to blow up something,
Speaker 2: it might be the telecommunications buildings, so let's keep an
Speaker 2: eye on it. Of course, Then after a while they
Speaker 2: noticed this guy end of showing up in his van
Speaker 2: the Florida going to this back to the well, what's
Speaker 2: he doing at this same phone making all these calls?
Speaker 2: You know. This went on for weeks and then months
Speaker 2: and going to gone and on, and they swooped in.
Speaker 2: One night he showed up, was making a call somewhere,
Speaker 2: and they busted him. And that was when all his
Speaker 2: past deeds caught up with him very quickly. Everything happened
Speaker 2: at once. They ran an international check on him, and
Speaker 2: it all came collapsed down his world, all because of
Speaker 2: this one little phone in France that he showed us
Speaker 2: that he just didn't know enough to stop using it,
Speaker 2: and he kept going back to it. And that's the
Speaker 2: single frank that led to his downfall.
Speaker 1: Mickey was busted in May of nineteen eighty one. He'd
Speaker 1: been a fugitive for nearly seven years now. He was
Speaker 1: headed for a moldy French jail cell and he was
Speaker 1: one step closer to seeing his long lost California coast,
Speaker 1: courtesy of the FBI, which couldn't wait to bring him home.
Speaker 1: I'm Dana go Year and this is Lost Hills episode ten,
Speaker 1: Aging Boy of Summer.
Speaker 4: Okay, here's a here's a box full of eight hundred
Speaker 4: pages of the FBI file. Enter at your OSK.
Speaker 1: This is David Renson again, the journalist who wrote the
Speaker 1: definitive oral history of Mickey Dora's life.
Speaker 4: I moved to California in nineteen sixty four with my family.
Speaker 4: Before I left, some young classmate said you'll be able
Speaker 4: to go surfing. I said, what's that? And so I
Speaker 4: got aboard and went with my friends, and I started
Speaker 4: reading the genre magazines in sixty four and sixty five,
Speaker 4: Surf Guide, Surfer, International Surfing. So that's how I discovered Mickey.
Speaker 1: He's been fascinated by Mickey Dora ever since he moved
Speaker 1: to southern California from New Jersey.
Speaker 4: I found out that, you know, from reading these magazines,
Speaker 4: he disappeared in nineteen seventy four, and so all of
Speaker 4: us wondered would happened. The rumors were always a lawyer
Speaker 4: in Century City. You know, he's living with the third
Speaker 4: Reich escapees in Argentina. He's doing this, He's doing that.
Speaker 4: Nobody knew.
Speaker 1: From most of the nineteen seventies. There were only rumors,
Speaker 1: all of them added to the Mickey Dora mythology.
Speaker 4: And then in nineteen eighty two, I saw a clip
Speaker 4: that said famous surfer health in Denver for credit card
Speaker 4: fraud Mickey Dora.
Speaker 1: Not only was Mickey Dora not a lawyer in Century City,
Speaker 1: he was about to be an inmate in federal prison.
Speaker 1: David was working for California Magazine at the time. He
Speaker 1: pitched his editor a profile of Mickey Mickey the felon,
Speaker 1: and he submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to
Speaker 1: the FBI.
Speaker 4: Water Coffee, he will say.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting at David's dining room table, looking out a
Speaker 1: big window at the ocean. On a chair, there's a
Speaker 1: box containing all the documentation of the criminal investigations into
Speaker 1: Mickey Dora. The FBI's file on Mickey Dora is eight
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy six pages long. That's a little longer
Speaker 1: than the FBI's file on the Zodiac Killer, and not
Speaker 1: much shorter than its file on and Clyde. But the
Speaker 1: contents of Mickey's file are a whole lot of nothing,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and seventy six pages of tracking and minutely
Speaker 1: documenting the worldwide travels of a surfer who had number
Speaker 1: one stolen some ski equipment and antiques and violated his probation.
Speaker 1: Number two allegedly filed false information on a passport application
Speaker 1: for a passport that was never issued, and number three
Speaker 1: defrauded the Diners Club while on said worldwide travels. David
Speaker 1: walks me through the first case, the ski equipment stolen
Speaker 1: from a shop in Mammoth in Mono County.
Speaker 4: Charges abroad. I believe he missed a few court dates,
Speaker 4: got there, finally pled guilty. You know, Judge Harry Roberts
Speaker 4: set up the repayment schedule, plus came on need credit
Speaker 4: cards and need permission to leave California.
Speaker 1: But instead of sticking around and doing what he was told.
Speaker 4: He applies for a passport in the name of a
Speaker 4: dead guy.
Speaker 1: So then he's on the run.
Speaker 4: So then he's on the run.
Speaker 1: That's the second case, the passport application in the name
Speaker 1: of Richard Austin Roach Junior. And that's what caught the
Speaker 1: attention of the FBI, and once they started looking at Mickey.
Speaker 1: They couldn't take their eyes off him. They interviewed people
Speaker 1: up and down the coast of California, staked out Mickey's
Speaker 1: father's house, intercepted mail agents, spent years interviewing his friend's family, x'es,
Speaker 1: and his quote blood enemies. In particular, they focused on surfers.
Speaker 1: Interviewing sources in Malibu and other beach cities, they got
Speaker 1: an earful about quote, the surfing god. They call him
Speaker 1: the cat. One informant told the FBI because quote, no
Speaker 1: one knows when he's coming or going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is all this stuff is just this route
Speaker 4: up the Where's Mickey? What's going on with Mickey? Where's Mickey?
Speaker 4: Some people know knew, but the interview is family and friends.
Speaker 4: Please let us know if you hear from him. It's
Speaker 4: illegal to harbor a criminal. People would either say I
Speaker 4: wouldn't tell you if I did know, or you know,
Speaker 4: just put out a bag of jewels in the center
Speaker 4: of the square and the Mickey door, A snake will
Speaker 4: slither out and grab it.
Speaker 1: One FBI informant offered to provide information on Mickey, quote
Speaker 1: for the right price. Another went on at length about
Speaker 1: illegal operations Mickey was supposedly the mastermind of jewelry heists
Speaker 1: in Central and South America, smuggling counterfeit US currency from
Speaker 1: Singapore to New Zealand and Australia. According to another FBI source,
Speaker 1: Mickey had been smuggling drugs into New Zealand using quote
Speaker 1: hollowed out surfboards. The more the FBI asked around about Mickey,
Speaker 1: the more interested they got. Agents had been keeping close
Speaker 1: tabs on Linda Kai when she was traveling with Mickey.
Speaker 1: When she left Mickey and came back to California, they
Speaker 1: swooped and.
Speaker 5: I was sick. I'd just come back from somewhere I
Speaker 5: can't remember where now, some long trip.
Speaker 1: She was recuperating at her parents' house.
Speaker 5: I was in the front room and the dog was
Speaker 5: barking like nuts. There was some guy ran around through
Speaker 5: the back gate to be sure nobody was back there
Speaker 5: with a gun drawn. And a guy comes to the front,
Speaker 5: you know, plain clothes, and he goes, where's Mickey door here?
Speaker 5: And I said, no, he doesn't live here, why would
Speaker 5: he be here. Well, you're Linda right and Nicai and
Speaker 5: I said yes, And he said, well, we almost caught
Speaker 5: you in Kenya. And I was like, well, I don't
Speaker 5: know anything about any of that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: He says, yeah, we caught, we were close.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. I was like, what else?
Speaker 5: I said, I'm not feeling real good, you know, I'm sick.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: He goes, where's Mickey? And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I said, I haven't seen him at all. And it
Speaker 5: was just a real like a quick kind of scarer
Speaker 5: and you know, I said, you don't need to have guns,
Speaker 5: you know, come on, this is scary.
Speaker 1: And did you call Mickey right away?
Speaker 5: There's no where to call.
Speaker 1: Where was he? I have no idea, so you really
Speaker 1: didn't know where he was.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 1: The FBI also visited Jim Kempton. He's now the president
Speaker 1: of the California Surf Museum, but back then he was
Speaker 1: editing Surfer magazine.
Speaker 6: I got a visit from the FBI.
Speaker 1: First, the agent showed up at his parents' house.
Speaker 6: And of course, my parents, being you know, the greatest
Speaker 6: generation forties people, immediately told him right where I was.
Speaker 6: You're right, not like, oh you don't know, you know, like, oh, no,
Speaker 6: my son lives right down here. You'll be able to
Speaker 6: find him right away. No, assuming that, like I was
Speaker 6: a total good guy, you know, which probably wasn't the
Speaker 6: greatest assumption to make. But so they came and they
Speaker 6: asked me all about Mickey and what I knew, and
Speaker 6: I went out of my way to give them as
Speaker 6: little information as I possibly could without lying to them,
Speaker 6: because I knew that lying with the FBI was a crime,
Speaker 6: so I wasn't going to tell him anything untrue, but
Speaker 6: I was I was going to I don't recall as
Speaker 6: many times as I could, or I don't know as
Speaker 6: many times as I could without being obvious, but Mickey
Speaker 6: heard about it.
Speaker 1: For a guy hiding out in a van in the
Speaker 1: south of France, Mickey was pretty connected.
Speaker 6: So a few weeks later at Surfer magazine, this box
Speaker 6: arrives that I open. It's from Mickey, dressed on the
Speaker 6: outside so i'd be sure to open it right. And
Speaker 6: it's a dried turn with a relatively threatening note in it.
Speaker 6: And all it did was really make me angry, because
Speaker 6: it made me angry that he would think that I
Speaker 6: would do that, and the fact that I had gone
Speaker 6: out of my way not to do that and wasn't
Speaker 6: being credited by him for having protected his position was
Speaker 6: very aggravating.
Speaker 1: To me, the FBI seemed to really want Mickey, but why.
Speaker 4: I thought it was really interesting how vociferously the FBI
Speaker 4: pursued the Richard Austin roach thing. It seemed like, so
Speaker 4: what I mean, it's a crime and making a false statement.
Speaker 4: They would chase him all over the world and send
Speaker 4: all those telicxis back and forth, And that FBI file
Speaker 4: is heavy, heavy, heavy with that stuff.
Speaker 1: The alleged crime they wanted him for making a false
Speaker 1: statement in a passport application for a passport that was
Speaker 1: never issued, would have meant at the most five years
Speaker 1: in prison or a fine of a couple thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't seem to justify all this effort. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Mickey was denying he'd done anything wrong, So what was
Speaker 1: really going on. The third case against Mickey had to
Speaker 1: do with all those doctored credit cards Linda says they
Speaker 1: were using in their travels. The Diners Club was alleging
Speaker 1: large scale fraud, and Mickey, in absentia, had been indicted
Speaker 1: in federal court. By the late seventies, Mickey's father was
Speaker 1: speaking regularly to the FBI. He would sometimes confront Mickey
Speaker 1: with the allegations against him. Mickey insisted he was innocent.
Speaker 1: Mickey said he was being framed. Dear father, Mickey wrote
Speaker 1: to Miklosch, there is this creature by the name of
Speaker 1: Don Wilson, the poor man's dillinger of our times. This
Speaker 1: person is an escaped convict, a record of forgery, credit
Speaker 1: card theft, and many other offenses. I'm quite sure he's
Speaker 1: been dashing around the US and elsewhere using my checks
Speaker 1: and credit cards and identifications. Don Wilson the pirate captain,
Speaker 1: Linda's old con artist boyfriend who'd shown up at their
Speaker 1: doorstep in New Zealand. Mickey said Don was impersonating him,
Speaker 1: committing crimes in his name. According to a memo in
Speaker 1: Mickey's FBI file, Mieklos spoke to Mickey about the passport fraud,
Speaker 1: saying he'd seen the photo submitted with the passport application
Speaker 1: for Richard Austin Roch Junior, and he recognized Mickey. Mieklos
Speaker 1: told the agents that Mickey had said someone else must
Speaker 1: have done the fraud and was trying to put the
Speaker 1: blame on him. The memo goes on to state that
Speaker 1: Mickey claimed that back when he was living in Brentwood,
Speaker 1: an old friend from the Pacific Palisades. I e. Don
Speaker 1: Wilson had somehow gotten into his house and stolen his
Speaker 1: credit cards and some other documents. Don Wilson, Mickey said,
Speaker 1: was likely the person behind the passport fraud, and Don
Speaker 1: Wilson was probably the one using doctored credit cards with
Speaker 1: Mickey's name on them. Don had been pulling scams in
Speaker 1: Mickey's name, Mickey was the victim. It's intriguing, mostly because
Speaker 1: Mickey and Don seemed to sabotage each other whenever possible.
Speaker 1: But I struggle to believe that Don Wilson's mischief explains
Speaker 1: Mickey's legal trouble. Mickey's storage unit in New Zealand, for example,
Speaker 1: it was filled with one hundred thousand dollars worth of
Speaker 1: antiques and other valuables, twenty four used fake airline tickets,
Speaker 1: and sixty credit cards, many of them altered or defaced,
Speaker 1: that had been taken out in Dora's name. I don't
Speaker 1: think even the pirate captain could have managed to get
Speaker 1: inside Mickey's storage unit and plant that incriminating evidence. But
Speaker 1: there is something that doesn't make sense about the case
Speaker 1: against Mickey. Why is his file so fat? Why did
Speaker 1: agents trace his movements around the world on such flimsy
Speaker 1: and insignificant charges. Some people say the reason Mickey was
Speaker 1: so on their radar was because he was working for them.
Speaker 1: That he wasn't a target of the FBI. He was
Speaker 1: an asset. The file, all the dirt they gathered on him,
Speaker 1: the gossip and the rumors that was collateral. They let
Speaker 1: him run so far and for so long, not because
Speaker 1: they were inept and couldn't nab him, but because he
Speaker 1: was gathering useful information for them in India, Africa, Indonesia,
Speaker 1: everywhere he went on his search for the perfect wave.
Speaker 1: This theory turns the whole Mickey story inside out.
Speaker 4: David Ran, You've got all that stuff about people saying
Speaker 4: he wasn't really working for the FBI. You've heard of that.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to make of that, because I
Speaker 4: believe the idea was noticed how he ends up in
Speaker 4: these hotspots coincidentally.
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to think that this is pure myth making.
Speaker 1: Mickey's fanboys trying to glamorize his exploits give a James
Speaker 1: Bond varnish to Mickey's chintzy three card monty approach to life,
Speaker 1: but David says there's some reason to give credence to
Speaker 1: the idea that Mickey had a special status with the FBI.
Speaker 1: He says, while Mickey was still a fugitive, he'd somehow
Speaker 1: gotten access to his own FBI file.
Speaker 4: My friend Jerry said he was in Beeritz one day
Speaker 4: when before the the repatriation to America, and Mickey had
Speaker 4: his FBI file and said to Jerry, here, look at
Speaker 4: here it is. And Jerry said, I don't know how
Speaker 4: he got that. And he looked through it and he
Speaker 4: saw sorts of stuff that is obviously I don't know
Speaker 4: how Mickey got it, which leads to the I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think Jerry's telling the truth. And I talked to
Speaker 4: a friend of mine who's an FBI agent, who did
Speaker 4: describe to me that sometimes informants, you know, get some privileges,
Speaker 4: but no guarantees, you know, if they screw up, they
Speaker 4: could just it's just a total guess that it's possible
Speaker 4: Mickey cut a deal, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Who or what would he have had info on that
Speaker 1: they wanted.
Speaker 4: Stolen passports, smuggling, drug smuggling, a credit card fraud. I
Speaker 4: don't know, but that's the nature of Mickey Dora, you
Speaker 4: never know what's true, or there.
Speaker 1: Could be a little tiny.
Speaker 4: Bit, so you took the words out of my mouth.
Speaker 1: Whatever the truth is about Mickey's relationship with the FBI,
Speaker 1: the longer he stayed in exile, the more he began
Speaker 1: to unravel. The records in Mickey's FBI file painted dark
Speaker 1: picture of his time and gettory. Leading up to his arrest,
Speaker 1: Linda told agents Mickey was quote totally paranoid and emotionally unstable,
Speaker 1: and that she was quote scared to death of him. Mickey,
Speaker 1: she said, had hidden her passport and her money to
Speaker 1: try to keep her from leaving. She told the agents
Speaker 1: she was done with him. Back in France in his
Speaker 1: green Mercedes Benz camper van, Mickey was losing it. Quote
Speaker 1: subject recently returned to France from South Africa, believed to
Speaker 1: be using altered expired passport in his own name, and
Speaker 1: believed heavily involved in narcotics. Unquote quote subject becoming paranoid
Speaker 1: and erratic unquote quote. Subject appears to be undergoing nervous breakdown,
Speaker 1: has alienated a number of friends, and believed to be
Speaker 1: financially desperate. Unquote. Mickey was arrested at the rigged phone
Speaker 1: booth in May of nineteen eighty one. His first instinct,
Speaker 1: formed of lifelong habit, was to try to get out
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 7: He said, well, you know, I'm just calling some friends
Speaker 7: and I put my fifty so teams in and I
Speaker 7: don't know, it doesn't ask for more money.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Simpson, an American lawyer who knew Mickey
Speaker 1: in France.
Speaker 7: So I just keep talking. I don't know what the
Speaker 7: problem is with this thing, but I use it all
Speaker 7: the time. I thought maybe this was made available for
Speaker 7: foreigners or something, so he made up all sorts of stories.
Speaker 1: The French police took Mickey to a damp stone prison
Speaker 1: known by locals as Villa Chagrin.
Speaker 7: They took him to jail in Bayjun, where he was
Speaker 7: for several months, and when they were there, the police
Speaker 7: discovered that he was wanted by Interpol and that there
Speaker 7: was an international arrest warrant out from the United States
Speaker 7: from California.
Speaker 1: According to Bob, they found eight fake passports with different
Speaker 1: names on them. Mickey no longer had a valid passport,
Speaker 1: and authorities in France gave him a choice go back
Speaker 1: to the United States and deal with the outstanding warrants
Speaker 1: or go to another country of his choice.
Speaker 4: He made the choice. As far as I know, Niklos
Speaker 4: convinced him to come back. It's some suggestion that get
Speaker 4: it over with now and it'll be okay.
Speaker 1: Mickey, after consulting some lawyers for the Rothschilds who were
Speaker 1: helping out, decided to surrender himself. Miklos sent him a
Speaker 1: first class ticket. He made a reservation on Air France
Speaker 1: flight zero zero three, NonStop from Paris to lax A.
Speaker 1: U S Marshal was dispatched to meet him. The US
Speaker 1: Marshal watched as every single passenger got off that plane
Speaker 1: and Mickey wasn't there. A few days later, the FBI's
Speaker 1: man in Paris sent a telex to the director of
Speaker 1: the FBI. Quote. It would appear that Dora, best described
Speaker 1: as a quintessential, albeit aging boy of summer on a
Speaker 1: perennial quest for the legendary ninth Wave, may have returned
Speaker 1: to Beurritz or some other surfing site instead of too
Speaker 1: Los Angeles as originally planned, given his surf compulsion and
Speaker 1: legendary lack of responsibility unquote. A short time later, the
Speaker 1: FBI learned Mickey had booked a new flight. The bureau
Speaker 1: telex noted quote Paris aware of Dora's hidonic pilgrimage. Magniloquently described,
Speaker 1: heretofore realized he may alter his plans unquote. Then the
Speaker 1: FBI lost track of him. The next bureau communication read
Speaker 1: quote Paris assumes Scintillating Sandor has surfed into the sunset
Speaker 1: and sunk unquote. Sandor was Mickey's middle name. The FBI's
Speaker 1: man in Paris was calling him Scintillating Sandor, an aging
Speaker 1: boy of summer with a legendary lack of responsibility on
Speaker 1: a quest for the ninth Wave. What is this guy
Speaker 1: his handler? He sounds more like a press agent than
Speaker 1: an FBI agent. And why is he so invested in
Speaker 1: Mickey's persona and his quest? Maybe Mickey was working for
Speaker 1: the FBI. Either way, they'd lost him. Mickey was in
Speaker 1: the wind. Micky Dora didn't surf into the sunset and sink,
Speaker 1: though he probably would have loved to. It took another
Speaker 1: two weeks, but Mickey did eventually arrive in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: on September one, nineteen eighty one. He was arrested by
Speaker 1: an FBI agent who took him to a medium security
Speaker 1: federal prison at Terminal Island. He was forty seven years old.
Speaker 1: The first thing Mickey had to do was go up
Speaker 1: to Mono County and face the judge. He was sentenced
Speaker 1: to three years in state prison, suspended he'd need to
Speaker 1: serve less than six months in county jail. In the
Speaker 1: passport case, the FBI's handwriting analysts failed to match Mickey's
Speaker 1: sample with the writing on the Richard Austin Rose Junior application.
Speaker 1: The fingerprint analysis failed too, so the case was dropped
Speaker 1: due to insufficient evidence. That just left the charge over
Speaker 1: the alleged Diners Club fraud, which had been whittled down
Speaker 1: to almost nothing. That case was being heard at a
Speaker 1: federal court in Denver. Mickey's lawyer, a Public Defender, later
Speaker 1: represented Terry Nichols, a conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Speaker 4: Essentially, the charge was reduced to throwing away your own mail.
Speaker 1: Mickey's biographer David Renson.
Speaker 4: Diners Club sends you a bill, you don't pay it,
Speaker 4: and if you don't pay it or don't open it
Speaker 4: or don't receive it, it's sent back to diners Club,
Speaker 4: but you throw it in the garbage, so you've thrown
Speaker 4: away the mail and interfered with That's what he ultimately
Speaker 4: got nailed.
Speaker 1: For throwing away his own mail. The judge in Denver
Speaker 1: sentenced Mickey to approximately six months at Lompok, a low
Speaker 1: security federal facility in California, and the Diners Club auctioned
Speaker 1: off the one hundred thousand dollars worth of loot in
Speaker 1: his storage facility in New Zealand. Among the auctioned items,
Speaker 1: according to Renson's book, there were six trunks full of tuxedos, cashmere,
Speaker 1: a pink Paisley silk sleeping bag, the street sign from
Speaker 1: the corner of Hollywood and Vine, and the SS leather
Speaker 1: trench coat. A Mawori guy named Mickey bought all of
Speaker 1: Mickey's clothes throughout all this. No matter what he told
Speaker 1: the judges, Mickey insisted that he was innocent. Someone had
Speaker 1: broken into his house and stolen his credit card, leading
Speaker 1: to all those charges. Don Wilson had framed him on
Speaker 1: the passport fraud. He'd returned the ski equipment to the
Speaker 1: shop he couldn't pay restitution because of an accident. He
Speaker 1: had the probation officer's permission to go to Europe, he
Speaker 1: had amnesia and hypoglycemia. Mickey didn't feel sorry, not then,
Speaker 1: not ever, not that he would admit. But when he
Speaker 1: wasn't saying he didn't do it, he was bragging about
Speaker 1: his accomplishments. He'd write. Quote, from nineteen seventy four to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, I covered well over two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: miles over four continents, ninety percent of the time, reconnoitering
Speaker 1: the coastal areas of India, Africa, the Far East, Indonesia, Australia,
Speaker 1: New Zealand, South America, and hundreds of islands. Only in
Speaker 1: Europe did Interpol or the FEDS ever get close. Only
Speaker 1: after five sports and millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on
Speaker 1: the hunt, did I, with a gun pointed at my head,
Speaker 1: volunteer to return to the USA just visiting thanks, thus
Speaker 1: ending the most extraordinary surfing odyssey in the history of mankind.
Speaker 1: While Mickey was waiting to begin serving his time, he
Speaker 1: was sent to a prison medical facility for a psychiatric evaluation.
Speaker 1: At his dining room table, David pulls a page out
Speaker 1: of Mickey's file.
Speaker 4: Subject is alert and displays some intertention during the interview,
Speaker 4: but he remains composed in a good conditioned contact. He
Speaker 4: has no health complaints except for asthmatic condition. Has to
Speaker 4: be careful in neither smokes nor drinks, which I think
Speaker 4: is true. He states the only drugs he uses a
Speaker 4: prescription plus enormous amounts of health vitamins. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: sounds like Mickey. He's defensive and talking about his arrests
Speaker 4: becomes at stated. When he's asked about the Diner's club matter,
Speaker 4: he denies he's involved in that as an upset because
Speaker 4: of his personal property was confiscated to pay off the
Speaker 4: diner's club charges. It appears he's shown some asocial behavior
Speaker 4: in the past, unwilling to admit responsibility. It does appear
Speaker 4: at the present time he has now developed a sense
Speaker 4: of conscience. He's willing to at least face the music
Speaker 4: and get things straightened out.
Speaker 1: The psychologist noted Mickey's hang dog expression and gave him
Speaker 1: a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.
Speaker 4: Narcissistic personality Well, okay, that's bandied about a lot these days.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure what that is. But if it's care
Speaker 4: only about yourself and see people's extension of yourself and
Speaker 4: know how to wind them around your finger when you
Speaker 4: need to help yourself. Okay.
Speaker 1: While he was at the prison medical facility for his psychovaluation,
Speaker 1: Mickey ran into someone he'd known back in the sixties,
Speaker 1: another notorious Malibu character, Charles Manson. FBI file one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six pages to Dora's eight hundred and seventy six.
Speaker 7: This is the story that he told us here in
Speaker 7: France later. And I've been told so many times. Is
Speaker 7: it true? Is it not true? I don't know, but
Speaker 7: he told it to everybody.
Speaker 1: Bob Simpson, the ex pat lawyer.
Speaker 7: He said, this man came over and talked to me
Speaker 7: and he said, I want to thank you for that
Speaker 7: tip you gave me. And Mickey said, what are you
Speaker 7: talking about? And he said, well, you know, I'm Charles Manson,
Speaker 7: and you know, back in the day when you were
Speaker 7: doing your little thefts in Los Angeles areas at the
Speaker 7: celebrity parties with your girlfriends, you gave me a tip
Speaker 7: to go to one party and I went there with
Speaker 7: my friends and we got a good heist and I
Speaker 7: just thank you, thanks for the tip. So Mickey says, okay,
Speaker 7: you're welcome, and you know, but he didn't really want
Speaker 7: to have anything to do with Charles Manson. And everybody
Speaker 7: saw that Charles Manson knew him, and I said, so
Speaker 7: Mickey all of a sudden became the biggest star in
Speaker 7: the prison, even more so than Charles Manson. He said,
Speaker 7: I don't like this. I needed to get out of here.
Speaker 1: Well, Mickey was serving his sentence. David started trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get to him.
Speaker 4: So I spent you know, many months talking to people
Speaker 4: who knew him, who liked him, who, according to Mickey,
Speaker 4: later didn't like him.
Speaker 1: But of course he needed Mickey.
Speaker 4: So now my editor said, well, you've got to talk
Speaker 4: to him. I said, you don't know Mickey he is.
Speaker 4: You got to talk to him. Whut it's published, And
Speaker 4: I found him three days after he got out of
Speaker 4: Lompock Men's Penitentiary.
Speaker 1: David had gotten to know some of Mickey's friends, and
Speaker 1: he asked one of them to act as a go between.
Speaker 1: After months of back and forth, Mickey told David to
Speaker 1: meet him in the library a small community college in
Speaker 1: Orange County. David didn't know what to expect. It was
Speaker 1: May nineteen eighty three, you know.
Speaker 4: He was had a wispy beard goatee looked disheveled. He said,
Speaker 4: why have you taken any interest in me? And I
Speaker 4: don't know. I probably should have been more afraid or
Speaker 4: nervous about it, but I was something. You know how
Speaker 4: it is when you interview someone, you just sort of
Speaker 4: click in. And I said, well, I've taken an interest
Speaker 4: you because where have you been.
Speaker 1: What he remembers is that Mickey was angry at me
Speaker 1: Kloch for being the one who convinced him to return
Speaker 1: to the US and face his accusers.
Speaker 4: In my interview, I said, you came back, and he goes,
Speaker 4: I didn't want to come back, but he did come back,
Speaker 4: and he did have to stay in prison for a
Speaker 4: little while, and that he felt as a betrayal.
Speaker 1: So you think he was changed by his experience in prison.
Speaker 4: I do. I think he said I'm never going back.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to risk that stuff. I just, you know,
Speaker 4: I just sensed a whole change in Mickey.
Speaker 1: After prison, Mickey went back to Gittory, determined not to
Speaker 1: repeat his mistakes. That meant no more funny business with
Speaker 1: the credit cards. With no honest source of income, Mickey
Speaker 1: seemed to be living hand to mouth. He got his
Speaker 1: van back, but it was falling apart. After years of
Speaker 1: being left outside in the salt air, Mickey was showing
Speaker 1: where too. According to Renson's book, he got tossed out
Speaker 1: of a health club for cleaning his clothes in the
Speaker 1: jacuzzi and putting them in the sauna to dry. The
Speaker 1: cat it seemed had used up all his lives. But
Speaker 1: then one day, as Mickey was lying in his van
Speaker 1: in a youth hostel parking lot, there was a knock
Speaker 1: at the door. It was someone from the surf apparel
Speaker 1: company Quicksilver. They were offering a lifeline, an entree to
Speaker 1: the world of professional surfing and the professional surfers. He
Speaker 1: would have once despised. Mickey had relentlessly mocked the surf
Speaker 1: industry for years, but this time Mickey was in no
Speaker 1: position to be choosy. Next time on Lost Tails, Mickey's
Speaker 1: being recorded.
Speaker 8: I mean Chili in the coastline in a little town
Speaker 8: called Pechi Limo. I'm in the little one bedroom hotel room,
Speaker 8: Nicky Dora. Enter, Nicky Dora.
Speaker 1: That's next. In episode eleven, Writing on the Wall Lost
Speaker 1: Hills is written and reported by me Dana Goodyear. It's
Speaker 1: created by me and Ben Adair and produced by Western
Speaker 1: Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you
Speaker 1: can binge the entire season right now ad free. Find
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm slash plus