Speaker 1: With as much information as police had on Victor Harrana,
Speaker 1: they were surprisingly little to go off of. An A
Speaker 1: p B All points bulletin was put out on what
Speaker 1: was believed to be the getaway car, a green seventy
Speaker 1: three buick less Saber with Connecticut plates. Fortunately, that's all
Speaker 1: they needed. A car matching the description of the vehicle
Speaker 1: used in the robbery had been spotted outside a nearby airfield,
Speaker 1: just five miles away from the Wells Fargo depot. It
Speaker 1: was Victor's rented Buick backed into a parking spot outside
Speaker 1: the Swiss Shell, a inn and now defunct two story
Speaker 1: motel chain within walking distance to Brainard Airport. Federal agents
Speaker 1: got a warrant to go inside the vehicle. The cash
Speaker 1: was gone, of course, along with any traces of Victor.
Speaker 1: Police reports show he had left the loaded thirty eight
Speaker 1: caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and twelve gage pump shotgun
Speaker 1: he used during the robbery in the car, fully visible
Speaker 1: with the safeties off in the trunk. Transmission parts and
Speaker 1: a black beret from a military equipment store in New
Speaker 1: York City began to realize from there he had he
Speaker 1: had away car there, like the clean car Victor Heraina
Speaker 1: couldn't have picked a better place to dump the car.
Speaker 1: In addition to being next to the airfield, the motel
Speaker 1: was adjacent to Interstate which runs from Connecticut all the
Speaker 1: way to Canada. Police recreating the drive said it would
Speaker 1: have taken Victor just twelve minutes to get to the
Speaker 1: motel from the Wells Fargo depot, and that's if he
Speaker 1: was going to speed limit. Detective Ken O'Brien helped with
Speaker 1: the investigation. There's some speculation about was there an airplane involved.
Speaker 1: It's a state airport, but it's a private planes flying
Speaker 1: and the towers wasn't always means at the time, and
Speaker 1: you can lean it's, you know, in the twin engine
Speaker 1: plane there easily, but there were no reports of Oh
Speaker 1: my god, So the guy puts seven million dollars of
Speaker 1: cash into a car and no one knows where he
Speaker 1: is right, no no idea And it's fiance a Ledgers,
Speaker 1: she has no idea wi she has any contact with him.
Speaker 1: Between the two consecutive car hanks, the security guards heard
Speaker 1: during the robbery presumed signal to someone waiting outside the depot,
Speaker 1: and approximately one thousand pounds of cash that needed to
Speaker 1: be transported. Police were working under the assumption that victor
Speaker 1: had some help but from home. Now everything's going to
Speaker 1: our minds that he has to rent a van, something
Speaker 1: else the suspect was. He fled the area and another vehicle.
Speaker 1: Now beginning to realize maybe he wasn't alone. Previously on
Speaker 1: White Eagle, I said, getting her right away. We just
Speaker 1: had a robbery at Wells Fargo and it's a huge robbery,
Speaker 1: and it looks like he had everything with it. He
Speaker 1: needed to restrain one person, but there were two people.
Speaker 1: I knew that that car was important in the case
Speaker 1: because it wasn't his and he could indicate a cole conspirator.
Speaker 1: Why do you beat the horn? He's not saying goodbye
Speaker 1: to these two guys. He's saying, I'm coming out. My
Speaker 1: name is Zem William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and
Speaker 1: author of more than forty true crime books. What you
Speaker 1: were about to hear is the true story of a heist,
Speaker 1: one that funded an international independence movement and sparked an
Speaker 1: investigation spanning nearly four day gates. This is White Eagle.
Speaker 1: The Wells Fargo depot robbery is arguably the most high
Speaker 1: profile case to come across the West Harford Police Department
Speaker 1: in Connecticut, an investigation ultimately involving the FBI's fifty nine
Speaker 1: field offices, scores of agents, other government agencies, and the
Speaker 1: Hartford and West Harford Police all putting in hundreds of
Speaker 1: hours of work. It was the biggest robbery case we
Speaker 1: ever had. We used all kind of manpower in this case.
Speaker 1: During my research into the case, there were a number
Speaker 1: of people I knew I needed to speak with to
Speaker 1: get a better sense of how things operated among law enforcements.
Speaker 1: Detective kennel'brien was one of them. His resume is impressive.
Speaker 1: During his twenty eight years as a police officer with
Speaker 1: the West hard For Police Department, Ken was also on
Speaker 1: the Arson Task Force and studied forensics before being sworn
Speaker 1: in as a special federal agent with the State's Attorney's Office.
Speaker 1: Ken is now retired. He's originally from Boston, but his
Speaker 1: ties to Connecticut run deep. He's lived there with his
Speaker 1: wife of fifty four years since nineteen sixty seven. Thank
Speaker 1: you for the coffee. We had been in communication for
Speaker 1: months at this point, so he suggested we meet in
Speaker 1: person and do our interview at his house. So I
Speaker 1: have all the reports right here. Yeah, I have all
Speaker 1: the reports from the case. Yeah. Kenn O'Brien is a
Speaker 1: man of many words, sometimes too many when you get
Speaker 1: him going. But it's impossible not to love the guy,
Speaker 1: even when he screens his calls in the middle of
Speaker 1: an interview. It's it's a depth of office. Somebody's got
Speaker 1: one of us has a depth of appointment, So can
Speaker 1: I talk to that? Go ahead? So then that doggedness
Speaker 1: to finish the story is part of what made Ken
Speaker 1: such a great detective all those years. It's been nearly
Speaker 1: four decades and he still has a vivid memory of
Speaker 1: what happened after the robbery. He says, the gravity of
Speaker 1: the situation became utterly apparent when the FBI rolled into
Speaker 1: town just hours after the heist. By four am, the
Speaker 1: West Harford Police Station was ground zero. They come in
Speaker 1: with a team. I bet you that had to be
Speaker 1: a half dozen agents came in and we had a
Speaker 1: conference room. Well we all gathered together and it's like
Speaker 1: a briefing of his what we know, and everybody drew
Speaker 1: in a little bit of information they had, what they
Speaker 1: had done that night before to bring them off the
Speaker 1: speed By then Victor Haraina's photo was everywhere. I can
Speaker 1: remember as a six year old kid myself growing up
Speaker 1: in the area seeing that image of Victor's head shot
Speaker 1: from his Wells Fargo I D badge running across all
Speaker 1: the TV stations and printed above the fold in the
Speaker 1: newspapers day after day. You just could not avoid it.
Speaker 1: Since much of the stolen currency was Federal reserve money,
Speaker 1: the FBI took the lead. Whoever in the charge of
Speaker 1: the agents looked around and said where are the phones?
Speaker 1: And there was only one phone in the conference room
Speaker 1: sitting on a window sill, and he said, that's one phone.
Speaker 1: That's not our phone. We'll get more phones, I guarantee.
Speaker 1: Within a few hours there was like six or eight phones.
Speaker 1: Then they just make a call boom. I had six
Speaker 1: or eight phone, didn't no kidding, Yeah, unbelievable. They come
Speaker 1: in and they like the statue they have that's for me.
Speaker 1: It's committee town committee with him you know here' even
Speaker 1: message goes on and on. How was that relationship between
Speaker 1: the two apartments. We had a real good relationship with
Speaker 1: the agents. In fact, we had behind the police station
Speaker 1: was the old now it's called the town hall, but
Speaker 1: it was the old high school and had a track
Speaker 1: and the agents would come and go jogging on that track.
Speaker 1: And we had a locker room and lockers, the amend
Speaker 1: and woman agents male and female, and we had a
Speaker 1: gym and the Remember the FBI actually paid for a
Speaker 1: couple of pieces of equipment so they could use it.
Speaker 1: The FBI working alongside the West Harford Police Department wasn't unusual.
Speaker 1: The Bureau would routinely assist officers and state and local
Speaker 1: cases investigating organized crime, drug trafficking, or in this case,
Speaker 1: the theft and transport of seven million dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: but the manpower in this case was different. The FBI
Speaker 1: had even sent in profile is up from its headquarters
Speaker 1: in Quantico, Virginia. A state arrest warrant plus two federal
Speaker 1: arrest warrants were signed, charging Victor Hereina with a number
Speaker 1: of offenses, theft from an interstate shipment of funds belonging
Speaker 1: to Federal Reserve member banks, theft of those funds, and
Speaker 1: using a weapon in the process of the crime, an
Speaker 1: unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. If Caughton convicted, victor was
Speaker 1: likely looking at decades behind bars in a federal prison.
Speaker 1: For Detective Kenn O'Brien, every little detail mattered. Take up
Speaker 1: five thousand piece puzzle and dumping on a table, and
Speaker 1: now I'm started to try to put pieces together. To
Speaker 1: each team, we'd go out, then at the end of
Speaker 1: the day we'd meet again at the Detective Division and
Speaker 1: there'd be exchange of information. Each day we put another
Speaker 1: piece at a puzzle together. They'd go out in teams
Speaker 1: the West Hartford PD, driving federal aigents around town serving
Speaker 1: as backup. They also looked into local leads, friends of Victor,
Speaker 1: former co workers, his excess, as well as his bride
Speaker 1: to be, twenty year old Anna Soda. I don't think
Speaker 1: he told any of his family what he was going
Speaker 1: to do, and she was devastated. I don't think she
Speaker 1: knew if she knew, she's a great actress, because she
Speaker 1: was devastated that night. During the first few days after
Speaker 1: the robbery, Anna Soda wavered between witness and suspect. She
Speaker 1: was engaged to Victor Harina. She had lived with him
Speaker 1: for two years. Could she have had some knowledge of
Speaker 1: his movements? Was he contacting her? Victor's bride to be
Speaker 1: said she had no idea where he was or why
Speaker 1: he'd robbed the depot in the first place. He was
Speaker 1: very nice, quite uh nervous, very nervous, but sto naive
Speaker 1: as Anna seemed. Investigators quickly learned she was hiding crucial
Speaker 1: details about Victor's getaway car. She claimed to have no
Speaker 1: knowledge of the rented Buick, but neighbors and friends they
Speaker 1: told a different story. One witness reported seeing Victor with
Speaker 1: the buick on Saturday the tenth, the same day he
Speaker 1: got it from the rental agency. She said he used
Speaker 1: it to pick up a pizza for dinner and even
Speaker 1: parked it on the street outside of his apartment, also
Speaker 1: enjoying the car's perks, Anna Soda. Others close to the
Speaker 1: couple told police Anna was seen riding in the car
Speaker 1: that weekend, and Victor even drove her somewhere the morning
Speaker 1: of the robbery. When police found the buick, they noted
Speaker 1: that Victor had put eighty seven miles on the car
Speaker 1: in just two and a half days, meaning he'd driven
Speaker 1: it a hell of a lot. She's the greatest flying
Speaker 1: in the world, and she's telling the truth despite the deception.
Speaker 1: To this a. Both detectives Ken O'Brien and Steve Luby
Speaker 1: describe Anna Soto as a nice person and think Victor
Speaker 1: left her in the dark. I didn't know it at
Speaker 1: the time, but other things were true about the marriage application,
Speaker 1: that you know, we're living together, all the other background
Speaker 1: stuff she gave me it was true. But the car
Speaker 1: became important because her lying about the car made us
Speaker 1: think that she obviously knew more about the case. Was
Speaker 1: determined that I would arrest her for hindering prosecution and
Speaker 1: giving a false statement. Uh and maybe use that as
Speaker 1: a chance to get more out of her. Anna Soto
Speaker 1: was arrested on September fift becoming the first arrest connected
Speaker 1: to the Wells Fargo robbery. Detective Luby says they were
Speaker 1: hoping the threat of jail time would convince Anna to
Speaker 1: offer more information, anything that might lead them to Victor.
Speaker 1: It didn't work. Anna Soto lawyered up and stop talking.
Speaker 1: He had an attorney, Mike Graham. Mike was a character.
Speaker 1: He was how can I say it nicely, He's a
Speaker 1: little slick. He was making early threats. You know, from
Speaker 1: the defense attorney's standpoint, they're good threats to be made,
Speaker 1: that we were harassing her, that we there was talk
Speaker 1: about how they took her out that night, out of
Speaker 1: her apartment and a nightgown at gunpoint to search the apartment.
Speaker 1: So Mike was threatening lossuit for all of us involved. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you're going to clear the house if he isn't there.
Speaker 1: We know he's armed if he isn't there, So I
Speaker 1: don't care if she was completely naked. She's coming out
Speaker 1: quick and we're going in. Anna was released on bond
Speaker 1: shortly after midnight. A little more than a month later,
Speaker 1: a state prosecutor dropped the charges, telling reporters at the
Speaker 1: time he was concerned it would hinder the federal investigation.
Speaker 1: I've reached out to Anna to see if she would
Speaker 1: be willing to share her story on the podcast, but
Speaker 1: I never heard back. She was young when she was
Speaker 1: engaged to Victor, just twenty and studying to be a beautician.
Speaker 1: Like Victor, she was deeply connected to her Puerto Rican roots.
Speaker 1: Anna had lived there for a time with relatives and
Speaker 1: returned to the States a few years before the heist.
Speaker 1: At first, it seemed as though Anna's relationship to Victor
Speaker 1: made her a major player in this story, but within
Speaker 1: days she turned into nothing more than a witness. With
Speaker 1: very little information upon In an elaborate chess game, the
Speaker 1: FEDS were still trying to win, and Victor Harraina seemed
Speaker 1: to be one step ahead. Unlike his amateurish work restraining
Speaker 1: the two security guards at the depot, Victor's moves now
Speaker 1: felt more professional and calculated, far more than the West
Speaker 1: Hartford police and FBI would have ever anticipated, promising leads
Speaker 1: would f allowed into nothing. Police reports detailed countless sightings
Speaker 1: of Victor, and yet none of them ever panned out.
Speaker 1: In all likelihood, was just someone who looked like the guy.
Speaker 1: There was an alleged sighting in Boston of a man
Speaker 1: fitting Victor's description. He was said to be high on
Speaker 1: drugs and sleeping on a park bench days after the robbery.
Speaker 1: Another weeks later from a man claiming Victor asked him
Speaker 1: for a ride to a West Harford apartment complex. One
Speaker 1: man even came forward and said he was good friends
Speaker 1: with Victor, speculating that he probably fled the country, maybe
Speaker 1: to Argentina. And another so called acquaintance who happened to
Speaker 1: rent a single engine airplane the night of the robbery
Speaker 1: and flew from Brainard Airport to Boston and back I
Speaker 1: believe the FBI followed up on that checking to see
Speaker 1: if the plane because they would have to do something,
Speaker 1: you know, before they could use the airport, they'd have
Speaker 1: to check in or do something a plane, and it
Speaker 1: would be some record of a plane coming to going,
Speaker 1: and soon they found nothing. There were several leads, however,
Speaker 1: that got law enforcements attention. Take for instance, an envelope
Speaker 1: that arrived in November that year, postmark from Buffalo, New
Speaker 1: York and sent to Victor's lawyer's office in Hartford. Inside
Speaker 1: were three letters purportedly from Victor to his attorney Mike Graham,
Speaker 1: fiance Anna Soto, and Victor's mother Gloria. In one, Victor
Speaker 1: thanks Graham for representing his fiance and others. He says
Speaker 1: he's fine and apologizes for any of the trouble the
Speaker 1: robbery may have caused. His mother and Anna. Graham told
Speaker 1: police the letters contents made Victor's family doubt he'd written them,
Speaker 1: but they did say the handwriting looked like his. Well.
Speaker 1: The FBI agreed. A handwriting analysis and other lap tests
Speaker 1: confirmed that Victor Harraina was the author of the letters,
Speaker 1: yet there was no way to tell when the letters
Speaker 1: were actually written, which now raises the question was Victor
Speaker 1: even still alive, and even if he was, why in
Speaker 1: the world would he risk getting caught. Because of this,
Speaker 1: law enforcement stepped up at search at least twenty FBI
Speaker 1: agents who are assigned to Canvas Buffalo's Latino neighborhoods. The
Speaker 1: Bureau even asked Canadian authorities for help. They agreed and
Speaker 1: promised to search the area as far north as Toronto.
Speaker 1: From the outside, it doesn't make much sense, really. A
Speaker 1: twenty five year old who is engaged to be married
Speaker 1: overcomes two of his coworkers, steal seven million dollars in
Speaker 1: cash and drives away no guarantee of contact with his
Speaker 1: loved ones ever again without going to prison. Who was
Speaker 1: this person? He was clean. Whiston was perfect guy for
Speaker 1: the drop. It should come as no surprise that news
Speaker 1: of the Wells Fargo depot heist was everywhere. The thief
Speaker 1: had so much money to steal from here that he
Speaker 1: couldn't even haul it all away. Police estimate that he
Speaker 1: left about a million dollars behind. Everyone, including law enforcement,
Speaker 1: was baffled. A tabloid in Boston called the robbery the
Speaker 1: Big Sleep Heist, a reference to Victor Harain has failed
Speaker 1: attempt to drug his co workers. It was huge news.
Speaker 1: I mean it was all over the front page of
Speaker 1: every place in the world. Ed mahoney is the harf
Speaker 1: for Current Reporter. You heard in the last st episode.
Speaker 1: Everybody figured that they knew that Victor Herain, it was
Speaker 1: the inside man, and everybody was waiting for his body
Speaker 1: to pop up someplace because they figured Weber pulled this
Speaker 1: thing off Houston and he would prove to be expendable.
Speaker 1: Years before Ed began investigating Victor Haraina's role in the
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo robbery, he helped expose one of America's most
Speaker 1: notorious violent organized crime figures, James Whitey Boulger. Whitey was
Speaker 1: under investigation for a million years in Boston to kill
Speaker 1: all kinds of people when he was responsible for all
Speaker 1: kinds of mayhem and violence and law enforcement corruption. But
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that really put him
Speaker 1: on the national map was his involvement in the murder
Speaker 1: of two or three figures associated with a company called
Speaker 1: World Highlight. The World Highlight murders would end up being
Speaker 1: one of the stories that defined Ed Mahoney's career. Victor
Speaker 1: Haraina was another, and for anyone who thought they knew
Speaker 1: Victor Haraina, a broader picture was beginning to emerge. Victor was,
Speaker 1: you know. He was from the Brooks in New York,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, his mother moved the family from
Speaker 1: the Bronx two Hartford, presumably in search of a more tranquil,
Speaker 1: better safer life. They ended up in UH one of
Speaker 1: the housing projects, and Victor ended up being a good kid.
Speaker 1: Victor attended Buckley High School in Hartford. He was popular
Speaker 1: and well liked, a fairly good student. If you met
Speaker 1: him in the early seventies, you'd probably see him as
Speaker 1: a kind of guy who was going places. He played
Speaker 1: varsity football and was captain of the wrestling team. He
Speaker 1: was a trained peer counselor and a member of the
Speaker 1: Human Relations Club. He had little interest in politics, but
Speaker 1: was a member of the student council. He was a
Speaker 1: kid from a very very immodest background in a touch life,
Speaker 1: and he was making something in it himself. Victor's junior year,
Speaker 1: he was selected to participate in Upward Bound, a federally
Speaker 1: funded youth advancement program that allowed him to take an
Speaker 1: intensive curriculum of courses at nearby Trinity college. By senior year,
Speaker 1: he was awarded a thousand dollar scholarship and was chosen
Speaker 1: to be a legislative intern at the General Assembly. He
Speaker 1: get a job as some kind of an intern at
Speaker 1: the state capitol with a woman who was kind of
Speaker 1: a famous figure in the democratic politics. That woman was
Speaker 1: Maryan Delaney, a strong willed figure in politics who for
Speaker 1: twenty seven years helped run the clerk's office at the
Speaker 1: Connecticut House of Representatives. According to Ed Mahoney, Delaney took
Speaker 1: to Victor and advised him on everything from what he
Speaker 1: wore to how he spoke. Took him under a wing,
Speaker 1: and that was what went wrong. Victor had his choice
Speaker 1: of colleges to attend. He was reportedly considering the University
Speaker 1: of Connecticut and Trinity College, but Marion Delaney became a
Speaker 1: powerful influence over Victor and convinced him to go to
Speaker 1: her alma mater. She got him into this kind of
Speaker 1: really weird, strict Catholic college in Woodstock, Connecticut called Annehurst College,
Speaker 1: you know, which was run by a bunch of nuns
Speaker 1: and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The former all
Speaker 1: women's college was in such financial despair that they had
Speaker 1: recently expanded the student body to include men. In the
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen seventy six, Victor was one of two
Speaker 1: dozen male students among two hundred female classmates. A quarterly
Speaker 1: con kid from inner city Hartford just didn't fin in
Speaker 1: a place like this. Woodstock, Connecticut is only a forty
Speaker 1: five minute drive from Harvard, yet for a kid from
Speaker 1: the pro objects, it might as well be a world away.
Speaker 1: Woodstock is rural with rolling green hills, large estates, and wineries.
Speaker 1: And there's Victor, you know, penniless, stuck out in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere in the woods, with no money, no car,
Speaker 1: no nothing, and it just kind of fell apart. Victor
Speaker 1: left Annhurst without finishing his freshman year, and from that
Speaker 1: point on things took a turn. He jumped from one
Speaker 1: job to the next. Police reports show he worked at
Speaker 1: the state capitol, where he had interned as a student,
Speaker 1: before finding work as a roofer, a special education counselor
Speaker 1: at the Harford Board of Education, an apprentice at a
Speaker 1: local aerospace company, and at one point he even joined
Speaker 1: the National Guard. There were a series of relationships as well.
Speaker 1: In Victor left his longtime girlfriend Maggie not long before
Speaker 1: she was due to give birth to their daughter for
Speaker 1: an old friend from high school named Pamela. The two
Speaker 1: married and split up that same year, when Pamela was
Speaker 1: three months pregnant with Victor's second child. Pamela told police
Speaker 1: the marriage ended because it was clear he still had
Speaker 1: feelings for Maggie. For the next few years, Victor went
Speaker 1: back and forth between the two women. They eventually joined
Speaker 1: forces to get him to pay child support, and by
Speaker 1: two he was paying them and planning a new life
Speaker 1: with Anna Soda. Both exes described Victor as a loving father,
Speaker 1: though not always present. They said he was traditional. He
Speaker 1: liked to be the breadwinner, even though he had trouble
Speaker 1: holding down a job. Even the Wells Fargo depot job
Speaker 1: wasn't a given. Victor's brother told police Victor had actually
Speaker 1: been suspended for a month earlier that summer over an
Speaker 1: issue involving some missing money. Detective Steve Luby says police
Speaker 1: thought Victor saw an opportunity and seized on it. You know,
Speaker 1: some local kids saw this money. He's dealing with this
Speaker 1: money every day, figures this is gonna be an easy heist.
Speaker 1: These armored car people, they were notorious for being careless
Speaker 1: with money. I mean, we had reports in the past
Speaker 1: of five thousand dollars dropping off the rear bumper in
Speaker 1: a bag and these things when the guys drove off
Speaker 1: and forgot to put it in the truck. You know,
Speaker 1: they handled large amount of moneys. But the security, if
Speaker 1: you look back at the security, it was not that
Speaker 1: good at a lot of these companies. Pamela, Victor's ex
Speaker 1: wife and the mother of his second child, said she
Speaker 1: never understood why he went through with the robbery, but
Speaker 1: didn't think he could have pulled it off alone. She
Speaker 1: said she wouldn't be surprised if he wound up dead
Speaker 1: somewhere and maybe, just maybe he'd gotten in over his head.
Speaker 1: She also told pal Lae something that stuck with me,
Speaker 1: a potential motive even She said Victor had a tendency
Speaker 1: to run. He left mag when she was nine months pregnant,
Speaker 1: He left her when she was three months pregnant, and
Speaker 1: now it seems he ran out on Anna before they
Speaker 1: got married. The big question at the time, where would
Speaker 1: Victor run too? And all the stuff are getting early
Speaker 1: on him. It was like a longe wolf. He he
Speaker 1: would He was never involved in much of anything that
Speaker 1: we could determine. It's like, all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: guy just existed and there wasn't a lot of background,
Speaker 1: a bottom to be had. Police thought Victor saw an
Speaker 1: opportunity and he took it. They didn't think for one
Speaker 1: minute was some kind of mastermind criminal. Then about six
Speaker 1: months after the heist, police got a lead they could
Speaker 1: not ignore. We got a cough from Massachusetts State Police
Speaker 1: and some d OT Massachusetts Primate Transportation workers cleaning a
Speaker 1: rest area, the first one right off of four couple
Speaker 1: of miles up from this at the border, and they
Speaker 1: were cleaning up there and they found a wallet and
Speaker 1: identification and with Victor Nu's So first of all, now
Speaker 1: we know two things. He's heading to Boston. And also
Speaker 1: in your mind at the same time is if the
Speaker 1: wallace there is your body remains nearby. Mass State police
Speaker 1: were there, the FBI think went up there too. Sure,
Speaker 1: finding Victor's I D near Boston was a solid lead,
Speaker 1: but it also can't be ruled out that anyone could
Speaker 1: have planted that wallet to throw police off Victor sent
Speaker 1: so to speak, that is, if he was even still alive.
Speaker 1: The FBI and State police didn't get much information from
Speaker 1: the wallet discovery, giving them really little to nothing to
Speaker 1: go on. After that, leads slowed to a trickle. The
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo Armored Service Corporation, which had initially offered a
Speaker 1: three fifty thousand dollar reward for information, bumped it up
Speaker 1: to half a million dollars. It was the largest reward
Speaker 1: ever offered for a single crime in the United States.
Speaker 1: Even that didn't work. But just when the FBI thought
Speaker 1: all roads to Victor lead nowhere, the unthinkable happened. Victor
Speaker 1: went public. On September twel exactly one year after the heist,
Speaker 1: three handwritten postcards arrived at various news outlets around the country.
Speaker 1: One to the Harvard Current in Connecticut, had an image
Speaker 1: of the Statue of Liberty on the front. It arrived
Speaker 1: inside an envelope postmarked from New York City. FBI forensic
Speaker 1: experts confirmed the postcards were written by Victor, yet once
Speaker 1: again there was no indication when they were actually written. Still,
Speaker 1: based on what he wrote, Victor not only wanted to
Speaker 1: set the record straight about the robbery, he also wanted
Speaker 1: to send a message quote, I will clear up any
Speaker 1: confusion that still exists about me or what happened to
Speaker 1: the money. Shortly, be on the lookout. Next time I'm
Speaker 1: White Eagle and the money shows up. That was traceable money.
Speaker 1: It's sounded to think of something organized here, we follow
Speaker 1: the money. White Eagle has written in executive produced by
Speaker 1: me Em William Phelps and Diheart Executive producer Christina Everett.
Speaker 1: Additional writing by our supervising producer Julia Weaver. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer and script supervisor is Darby Masters, Audio editing and
Speaker 1: mixing by Jackie Huntington's. Our series theme forms Regal or
Speaker 1: Grand is written by Aaron Kaufman, and special thanks to
Speaker 1: Arlene Santana and Will Pearson at I Heeart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.