Speaker 1: Basketball is a hugely popular sport in the Balkan States.
Speaker 1: If you're a professional basketball player in say Serbia, you're
Speaker 1: a big deal, a celebrity that said, no one can
Speaker 1: play basketball forever. But when your time as a professional
Speaker 1: athlete is over, there is another popular career you might
Speaker 1: be able to presume. If you have the right set
Speaker 1: of skills, the right connections, and the nerve, you could
Speaker 1: become a criminal. I'm Natalia Antalava. I'm a journalist based
Speaker 1: in Eastern Europe, and I'm going to take you into
Speaker 1: the world of Serbia's most brazen jewel thieves, the most
Speaker 1: daring and e says for diamond thieves in the world.
Speaker 2: Thirty to forty seconds, they're in, they're out.
Speaker 1: They've stolen half a billion dollars worth of valuables. Two
Speaker 1: well dressed men strolled into an exclusive jewelry store in
Speaker 1: London and walked out with sixty six million dollars in jewels.
Speaker 1: They're called the Pink Panthers. They're a loosely connected group
Speaker 1: of over educated, underemployed, ambitious young people who rose from
Speaker 1: the ashes of the Yugoslav Wars of the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: to commit elaborate smash and grab heists all across the globe,
Speaker 1: often in broad daylight. This is infamous international The Pink
Speaker 1: Panthers Story Episode five, Catch and Release. In the years
Speaker 1: following the Balkan Civil Wars, crime is one of the
Speaker 1: few steady lines of war available. Many ordinary citizens are
Speaker 1: forced to resort to some form of criminality just to survive,
Speaker 1: and the same goes for citizens who are not so ordinary.
Speaker 1: OLIVERI Tcherkovich is a truly impressive woman, over six feet tall,
Speaker 1: blond and beautiful. She radiates supreme confidence and once you
Speaker 1: know her story, you can understand why she has had
Speaker 1: a very successful career, actually at least two careers.
Speaker 2: In shebroked.
Speaker 3: That's my ex husband. He was a member of the
Speaker 3: Pink Painters and he still is member of the Ping Pents.
Speaker 1: Olivera mostly speaks Serbian. That's her son, Nicholas translating like
Speaker 1: she says, her husband was a Pink panther, but that
Speaker 1: was not the life he wanted for her.
Speaker 3: He didn't want me to do that stuff because I
Speaker 3: was the professional basketball player, so it was like unbelievable
Speaker 3: for me to step in that side of the world.
Speaker 1: You know, Olivera was a power forward for one of
Speaker 1: Serbia's tom basketball teams, the Novasatska ze Ka. She made
Speaker 1: good money and made smart investments around Belgrade.
Speaker 3: I have you private business which did well. I had
Speaker 3: a lot of funny all the time.
Speaker 1: But when the civil wars in the Balkans break out
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen nineties and sanctions are imposed on
Speaker 1: Serbian Oliveri's team can no longer travel to compete in
Speaker 1: international games. To continue playing professionally, she has to leave Serbia.
Speaker 2: So it all started when she first came to Greece.
Speaker 1: The Spina Papa Joryu is a freelance journalist in Greece.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety one, the water upted in Yugoslavia, so
Speaker 4: it was impossible for any kind of professionals to do
Speaker 4: some living there. So she came in Greece in the
Speaker 4: summer of nineteen ninety two to play professional basketball.
Speaker 2: Because she was quite a star in Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: Oliveri is hired by one of the top teams in
Speaker 1: Greece based in Athens. At first, she doesn't think of
Speaker 1: her adopted city.
Speaker 2: She wasn't very impressed.
Speaker 4: She found the city a bit dirty, but it.
Speaker 2: Was in Athens. Such a love noctio door.
Speaker 1: Love who has a way of leading to trouble. The
Speaker 1: man Olivera falls for in Athens has an interesting way
Speaker 1: of making a living and some interesting associates too.
Speaker 4: So it all starts now because the whole pink Panther's
Speaker 4: thing is connected with her husband, who she.
Speaker 2: Met in as.
Speaker 1: Olivera said in an interview that she saw her husband
Speaker 1: as a robin Hood figure stealing from the ridge, and
Speaker 1: well that's where the robin Hood analogy kind of falls apart.
Speaker 1: But it was her relationship with this man that leads
Speaker 1: Olivera into her next profession.
Speaker 4: When she got pregnant, she went back to Belgrade and
Speaker 4: then it started.
Speaker 2: So first she got in contact with the ring via
Speaker 2: her husband.
Speaker 1: This ring, as the Spina Papajoria calls it, is made
Speaker 1: up of fellow Serbians who are doing brisk business in
Speaker 1: Greece and across Europe.
Speaker 4: This ring was bringing stolen goods to Serbia from abroad,
Speaker 4: and it was mostly jewels and fashion brands, expensive fashion brans, clothing.
Speaker 1: The sanctions against Serbia had created a super charged market
Speaker 1: for stolen goods and it didn't just go away once
Speaker 1: the sanctions were lifted, the Serbian economy was still in shambles.
Speaker 1: On the streets of Belgrade, illicit merchandise was everywhere. Olivera's
Speaker 1: son Nicholas explains how she got involved.
Speaker 3: Through the relationship and marriage with him. She got closer
Speaker 3: to those kind of people. So the people who still it,
Speaker 3: they don't sell it like in real store, they sell
Speaker 3: it like three times less price.
Speaker 1: You know, Olivera can see there is an opportunity here.
Speaker 1: She's got the legitimate businesses she's invested in around Belgrade,
Speaker 1: and she certainly knows the right people.
Speaker 3: So in Oliveda's mind, it was good point to start
Speaker 3: buying the stuff from the criminals. And she already got
Speaker 3: to the content with the people with the friends with
Speaker 3: my father, so she got the idea to buy the
Speaker 3: stolen stuff from them from the less money, and then
Speaker 3: then sell them in the servia and earn like for
Speaker 3: one day, she earns like one year basketball contract, you know.
Speaker 1: With her fame, her looks and her connections, Olivera's business booths.
Speaker 1: She told the British newspaper The Independent, quote, I even
Speaker 1: had politicians, doctors and famous people coming to my makeshift
Speaker 1: showroom to buy the stolen goods end of quote. She's
Speaker 1: so successful that she outgrows her piecemeal suppliers. Here's Nicholas
Speaker 1: translating for her again.
Speaker 3: At the one point, they don't have so many goods
Speaker 3: as I want to buy because I'm selling it every day.
Speaker 3: So they don't have enough money to go to another
Speaker 3: country to steal something.
Speaker 2: They don't know where to go and what to steal that.
Speaker 3: I want to make it faster to get to the
Speaker 3: goods that.
Speaker 2: I need to sell.
Speaker 3: Then I'm going deeper and deeper to the crime.
Speaker 1: Soon, Olivera was running her own tea.
Speaker 2: Tea after a few months.
Speaker 3: I am the absolutely one who is organizing the group.
Speaker 1: She recruits the new crew members, and she has excellent
Speaker 1: instincts for who will be a good getaway driver, who
Speaker 1: is quick with tools, who will make the best team leader.
Speaker 1: At first, on the very plans of Heights from Afar,
Speaker 1: she carefully diagrams the store she's targeting, details the items
Speaker 1: she wants her crew to steal. She makes a map
Speaker 1: of the surrounding roads for their getaway. Her associates case
Speaker 1: the store for weeks before striking. It's all working.
Speaker 3: I have the people who are moving the stolen goods
Speaker 3: by the borders. So I already have two or three
Speaker 3: those personal stores in my own showrooms. So it's all circle.
Speaker 3: All the people from the crime trust me because I
Speaker 3: never come late to pay them. I always pay them
Speaker 3: on time, and I'm doing it as someone who is
Speaker 3: professional sports player, not a criminal. I have a sports discipline.
Speaker 1: It is that sports discipline. By the late nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: Olivera has become a major figure among the Serbian criminal class,
Speaker 1: one of the only women with her own crew. It's
Speaker 1: a new kind of celebrity for her.
Speaker 2: In the criminal circles.
Speaker 3: I get famous, kind of popular. We are doing well,
Speaker 3: and if you become a member of my group that
Speaker 3: you're going to be reach in a few months.
Speaker 2: So only one month you will.
Speaker 3: Buy the best car, two months you will got the
Speaker 3: new apartment in the luxury part of the city.
Speaker 1: My colleague Alan Greenberg says Olivera's decision to join the
Speaker 1: criminal world is not all that surprising.
Speaker 5: For people of her generation. They really were forced to
Speaker 5: get creative about how they were going to make a life.
Speaker 5: Serbia was so cut off, the sanctions from the West,
Speaker 5: just a general dismal economy, yeah.
Speaker 1: I get that, But what I don't get is like,
Speaker 1: why Olivera. She's in a much better position than most Serbians.
Speaker 1: I mean, she is famous, she's got money, she is
Speaker 1: kind of a star.
Speaker 5: Definitely, she's head of the game in post war Serbia.
Speaker 5: But when her basketball career was over, when she couldn't
Speaker 5: play anymore and she wanted to have a business career,
Speaker 5: she had to deal with the realities of life at home.
Speaker 5: So she did get.
Speaker 1: Creative, right, and we heard how they became very reliant
Speaker 1: on the black market because of the civil war, and
Speaker 1: that never really went away, did it, Right.
Speaker 5: It becomes entrenched. It's very common and a lot of
Speaker 5: the goods people need or want medicine, cigarettes, designer clothing, jewelry,
Speaker 5: it comes from the West. People steal it there and
Speaker 5: then they bring it home to Serbia and sell it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds familiar for so much of the region.
Speaker 1: But what makes Serbia difference is that anger towards the West. Right,
Speaker 1: they felt that they were being punished by the West,
Speaker 1: and it seems like a lot of people felt justified.
Speaker 1: Do you think it would be an exaggeration to say
Speaker 1: that for Serbians it was almost patriofic to bring things
Speaker 1: back from the wealthier countries to help people back home
Speaker 1: in Belgrade.
Speaker 5: I think that's true when you talk to people who
Speaker 5: live through this period, or even ask people in Serbia
Speaker 5: now about the pink panthers, there's this attitude like, sure,
Speaker 5: crime is bad, robbery is bad, but the West is
Speaker 5: rich and we have nothing, so the hell with them.
Speaker 1: Olivera is happily running her own successful team of Belgrade thieves.
Speaker 1: She and her husband have a son, Nicholas, but the
Speaker 1: marriage doesn't end up working out. She leaves him and
Speaker 1: finds a new love interest.
Speaker 4: The story continues because she then was receiving the best
Speaker 4: merchandise from a guy called Dragon Dragon yazid if I
Speaker 4: pronounced it correctly, and she was so intrigued by this
Speaker 4: personality of Dragon and she decided to come back to
Speaker 4: Greece and meet him in person.
Speaker 1: Dragon spelt drga n is a popular name in Serbia.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, this Dragon is not Dragon Mickage,
Speaker 1: the pink panther who is arrested in the train station
Speaker 1: in France after trying to buy a ticket with a
Speaker 1: five hundred euro note. This Dragon was running a team
Speaker 1: of jewel thieves in Athens. He and Olivera had been
Speaker 1: doing good business together. Then they meet in person and
Speaker 1: they fall in love. He's ten years younger than Olivera.
Speaker 4: Was probably something like very intense feeling the love at
Speaker 4: first sight, so she decided this way to participate in
Speaker 4: a robbery in a big hotel jewel resort. This was
Speaker 4: in the summer of two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Olivera agrees to help Dragon case the jewelry store in
Speaker 1: the luxury hotel. Like many of the female Pink Panthers,
Speaker 1: her role is together intel on their targets, identify them
Speaker 1: as merchandise, and assess the security. And like other women panthers,
Speaker 1: she looks the part impeccably.
Speaker 4: She visited the store before, pretending to be a wealthy
Speaker 4: customer and being also a very impressive woman. She was
Speaker 4: like a blonde one meter ninety two ninety three resuld,
Speaker 4: so she didn't have much difficulty in frusuading the staff
Speaker 4: in the junior store to show her the most expensive collections.
Speaker 4: At the same time, she was screening the place to
Speaker 4: see how security is like and pass the information to
Speaker 4: her associates.
Speaker 1: But after the robbery, oliver and her boyfriend hit a
Speaker 1: stroke of bad block. They're in a routine traffic stock
Speaker 1: when police discover incriminating evidence Dragon had left his cutting
Speaker 1: tools in the trunk of their car.
Speaker 2: She was arrested in them. She was really a starn.
Speaker 4: You know how the media, the tabloids, they were like
Speaker 4: the Amazon, the basketball. The Amazon was arrested and created
Speaker 4: was a big thing.
Speaker 2: So she found herself Jay.
Speaker 4: Although she kept the court of contact of the gang,
Speaker 4: she didn't give anue away in the court and she
Speaker 4: denied any involvement, but still she.
Speaker 6: Was in Jane.
Speaker 1: Olivera and Dragon are both sentenced to prison on the
Speaker 1: island of Crete. She serves six years, but when she
Speaker 1: and Dragon are released, are they reformed? They or not.
Speaker 1: In March twenty twelve, Olivera returns to Athens and teams
Speaker 1: up once again with her boyfriend Dragon.
Speaker 4: She decided to come to Athens this participate in a robbery.
Speaker 2: And this actually wasn't the best.
Speaker 4: Timing this particular moment they chose from the robbery because
Speaker 4: it was really very strange.
Speaker 2: There was another robbery taking place at the same time.
Speaker 1: Next stor another robbery taking place next door at the
Speaker 1: exact same time. It truly is terrible luck.
Speaker 4: So the police were there and shooting starts, which is
Speaker 4: not usually in Greece.
Speaker 2: It's highly useful.
Speaker 1: The Pink Panthers plan their heis carefully. They make every
Speaker 1: effort to avoid anyone being heard. But this is something
Speaker 1: no one could plan for. Olivera's boyfriend, Dragon is shot
Speaker 1: three times.
Speaker 4: So her boyfriend was wounded very very seriously, and he
Speaker 4: end it's up in the hospital and he was in
Speaker 4: a coma for forty days.
Speaker 1: Olivera manages to escape, but she is beside herself over Dragon.
Speaker 1: If there was ever a time to get out, it
Speaker 1: is now. But she can't.
Speaker 2: She apparently quite emotional.
Speaker 4: She couldn't leave him here like that, so she went
Speaker 4: back into the house they used, and the police raided
Speaker 4: the house and they found her in there, along with
Speaker 4: a lot of incriminating the evidence from its robberies.
Speaker 1: The police find masks, wigs, weapons, and fake identity documents.
Speaker 1: Olivera is arrested and lands back in a Greek jail,
Speaker 1: this time in the infamous Athens prison called Corrida Los.
Speaker 1: Olivera loves to tell stories of her time inside Corrida Loss.
Speaker 1: She claims that one cell made told her she had
Speaker 1: killed her husband and his mistress then serve them in
Speaker 1: a pie to the husband's parents, something out of a
Speaker 1: Greek myth. But Olivera is unfazed by her experience there,
Speaker 1: as she tells it, for many paying panthers, prison is
Speaker 1: sort of finishing school. To be truly respected, you have
Speaker 1: to do at least one stretch. Again, this is her
Speaker 1: son Nicholas translating.
Speaker 3: Every criminal believe in that you are so smart that
Speaker 3: there is no way for you to get into the prison.
Speaker 3: And you are thinking like that until your first time
Speaker 3: go to the prison, and then you learn that you
Speaker 3: were just an amateur and you didn't know nothing about
Speaker 3: the crime.
Speaker 1: Prison, it turns out, is a crucial aspect of a
Speaker 1: panther's credibility.
Speaker 3: I don't know anyone in the pink painters that has
Speaker 3: not a serious prison sentence behind his back. Those who
Speaker 3: say that they are so smart, they were pin ventors
Speaker 3: and they never went to prison, that's all the lies.
Speaker 2: That's not a true story.
Speaker 3: So destiny of one good ping ventor is a lot
Speaker 3: of money, a lot of fast money, prison one hundred
Speaker 3: percent for sure. After the prison, again fast money, and again.
Speaker 1: Prison Olivera makes good use of her time at Carida Loss,
Speaker 1: but she doesn't plan to stay long. Journalistic spinup a
Speaker 1: bar your you.
Speaker 4: She started painting in prison, and she discovered she was
Speaker 4: quite good to sea.
Speaker 1: Olivera Tchirkouture's artistic talent is more than a hobby. It
Speaker 1: becomes part of her plan to escape.
Speaker 4: So she had been thinking to escape since day one.
Speaker 4: The prison officer was persuaded to let your.
Speaker 7: Paint the prison governor's office while the governor was away,
Speaker 7: and this was golden opportunity because the office was fifteen
Speaker 7: meters from Colorida Lost prison entrance, that is, fifteen meters
Speaker 7: from freedom.
Speaker 1: As you might expect, Olivera has worked through the logistics
Speaker 1: carefully and she's patient.
Speaker 4: So since started painting endless hours and waiting for the
Speaker 4: right moment, she had notified the Pink panther gun members
Speaker 4: to come to others and rent an apartment.
Speaker 1: Olivera manages to get permission to buy art supplies from
Speaker 1: outside the present and have them delivered.
Speaker 2: And of course this was part of the plan.
Speaker 4: So her collaborators were strolling for weeks on ends outside
Speaker 4: the prison walls, and the day comes Olivera is now
Speaker 4: in the prison governor's office, so she gives a signal
Speaker 4: with her mobile phone, which she had managed to smuggle
Speaker 4: into the prison, and when the gate opened, her cellian
Speaker 4: associate enters holding a bag with art supplies, and everything
Speaker 4: happened within seconds. The man hit the prison officer on
Speaker 4: the head, and Olivera just walked out of prison and
Speaker 4: got on a motorbike that was waiting outside.
Speaker 1: After the escape, Olivera heads on foot to the mountains
Speaker 1: of Macedonia. A young accomplice is waiting there near the border.
Speaker 1: He shows her the route across the mountainous terrain. It's
Speaker 1: over one hundred and fifty miles. Olivera tapes her wrists
Speaker 1: and ankles as she would for a pro basketball game,
Speaker 1: and she makes the climb. She's been given a map,
Speaker 1: some money, and has set up meetings with contacts along
Speaker 1: the route to charge her phone and get more supplies.
Speaker 1: When she reaches the Serbian border, she finds a taxi
Speaker 1: to drive her the last few miles to Belgrade. The
Speaker 1: Greek press loved this story. Pink panther female prisoner vanishes
Speaker 1: into thin air, exclaimed one headline. They called her a
Speaker 1: spider lady and referred to her as an Amazon It
Speaker 1: made for terrific copy. For Oliver, it's a point of
Speaker 1: pride again.
Speaker 3: Her son translates, I'm the first and only woman ever
Speaker 3: escaped from the prison in Europe.
Speaker 1: But like every true team player, she shares the credit
Speaker 1: for the win.
Speaker 3: That's why I escaped from the prison. That's why I
Speaker 3: made it. I was smarked by the time to make
Speaker 3: a good plan for how to escape. But with all
Speaker 3: those people who are ready to give the life for you,
Speaker 3: you cannot escape from the prison.
Speaker 1: But one of the craziest things about Oliver's story is
Speaker 1: the fact that just a few months after escaping prison
Speaker 1: and walking back to Serbia, she returns for another job
Speaker 1: in Athens.
Speaker 3: After I escaped. Three months later, I came back to
Speaker 3: the same city and we did the armed robbery of
Speaker 3: the jewelers store. Four days after we did it, well,
Speaker 3: they arrest me.
Speaker 1: Police raide Oliver's rented safehouse and find her with sixty
Speaker 1: five pounds of gold.
Speaker 3: Oh I was convicted organizer of the criminal gang named
Speaker 3: Pink Panthers.
Speaker 1: This time, Oliver is sentenced to thirty two years on
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixteen charges of aggravated theft and three
Speaker 1: armed robberies. The authorities value the looted goods at more
Speaker 1: than five hundred million dollars. Back in prison again, she
Speaker 1: is deprived of her art supplies naturally, so instead she
Speaker 1: turns to creative writing. She chronicles her criminal exploits in
Speaker 1: a kind of diary, but on appeal many of the
Speaker 1: charges against her are actually dismissed and her sentence is commuted.
Speaker 1: After five years, she's again out of prison, this time
Speaker 1: banned from returning to Greece.
Speaker 3: I am free from the prison since twenty seventeen, so
Speaker 3: I decided to change my life. I serve my prison sentences,
Speaker 3: so I don't own anything to anyone. Any country is
Speaker 3: not looking for me.
Speaker 2: Anymore, Oliver.
Speaker 1: She's done with the life of crime.
Speaker 3: To step up out of the crime, it's really really hard.
Speaker 3: You need a lot of money to continue the life
Speaker 3: that you get used to by doing that crime stuff.
Speaker 1: And so she's turned the story of her criminal past
Speaker 1: into a new enterprise. She has speaking engagements, she's a
Speaker 1: YouTube star. And remember that prison diary she kept, She's
Speaker 1: turned it into three books. They're called I Pink Panther,
Speaker 1: I Pink Panther two and I Pink Panther three all
Speaker 1: have sold quite well in the former Yugoslavia. There's even
Speaker 1: a TV series based on her books that's being developed
Speaker 1: in Serbia. Olivera told the Greek journalist that she hopes
Speaker 1: Uma Thurman will play her in the Hollywood version.
Speaker 3: I'm representing not just the crime story. I'm representing my
Speaker 3: life and my character, and my character is the character
Speaker 3: of the winner.
Speaker 1: Oliveri. Tcherkovich says that prison is a necessary part of
Speaker 1: the criminal education of any pig Panther, but there is
Speaker 1: a limit to how much time behind bars a panther
Speaker 1: is willing to spend, and as Oliveri's story shows, a
Speaker 1: prison break is not that different from a heist. Both
Speaker 1: involved tight security and armed guards. To pull either of
Speaker 1: them off, you need careful planning, precision, and ingenuity, and
Speaker 1: Oliveri is not the only Panther to stage an escape
Speaker 1: that has all the flare and theatrics of one of
Speaker 1: their heists. Over the years, the Panthers carried out prison
Speaker 1: breaks all across Europe. In two thousand and nine, a
Speaker 1: Panther from Bosnia was arrested after robbing a jewelry store
Speaker 1: in Switzerland and given a six year sentence, but he
Speaker 1: decided he would rather not stay the full time, and
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen he was sprung from his Swiss prison
Speaker 1: by his fellow Panthers. The story was a sensation, like
Speaker 1: in this report from ABC News, the media just could
Speaker 1: not get enough of it.
Speaker 8: Today, two vehicles crashed through the perimeter, pushed through layers
Speaker 8: of barbed wire, got ladders up over the last of
Speaker 8: the wire so their guy could climb over to them.
Speaker 1: And so the Pink Panther gang strikes again. The trucks
Speaker 1: barreling through the gates, the ladders thrown over the wall,
Speaker 1: the prison yard paralyzed by gunfire. But if you take
Speaker 1: a closer look at the actual operation, much of it
Speaker 1: starts to seem like a spectacle designed to draw the
Speaker 1: attention of the media. Jack Johnson is an American expert
Speaker 1: on prison systems who's worked for the Federal Bureau of
Speaker 1: Prisons for the past twenty three years.
Speaker 9: I will tell you that what you described to me
Speaker 9: is just people practicing a trade, having a career criminal orientation,
Speaker 9: and the escape is part of the trade. This is
Speaker 9: rod interrelated organized criminal activity that's very regimented and very
Speaker 9: methodical and so as brazen as it sounds, it probably
Speaker 9: was calculated.
Speaker 8: It was to be overkill, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: They didn't even need all that firepower. The guards didn't
Speaker 8: have guns, So like a sensational as the escape sounds,
Speaker 8: they know that they're not going to get resisted.
Speaker 1: The po wasn't in. Panther who made this dramatic escape
Speaker 1: had only two years left on his sentence. In another
Speaker 1: Panther prison break, the men who escaped had just one
Speaker 1: year remaining. Like stealing jewels who can't easily sell, these
Speaker 1: prison breaks seem as much about the Pink Panther's own
Speaker 1: mystique as anything else.
Speaker 8: I keep going back to the oneywhere the person's a
Speaker 8: year from release, you know, So what's the motivation for
Speaker 8: something like that? Has to be more than just getting
Speaker 8: somebody out of prison, So I think maybe it is
Speaker 8: a lot of this is by design for the publicity,
Speaker 8: for the sensationalism and the publicity.
Speaker 1: Captain rve Konnon of the Paris Police had arrested the
Speaker 1: Pink Panther, named Dragon Mikage after a high stat a
Speaker 1: ski resort in the French Arms. Mikitch is a big
Speaker 1: man six foot six and his fit. Conan had heard
Speaker 1: that he did two thousand push ups a day. That's
Speaker 1: why Conan had immediate doubts that the French authorities would
Speaker 1: be able to secure their prisoner. And he told them, so,
Speaker 1: I've been to.
Speaker 10: The prison to interview this guy. Okay, he was two
Speaker 10: met as tall. That was impressed because the guy, he
Speaker 10: was just a muscle. And I disc got after that
Speaker 10: with the god of the prison. I said, okay, guys,
Speaker 10: you know the guy.
Speaker 2: Is very very fit.
Speaker 6: You should be very careful.
Speaker 10: And one week after that, at Conando attacked the prison
Speaker 10: with a K forty seven.
Speaker 1: It was the afternoon of October sixteenth, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Mikitch had just entered the prison yard for his daily
Speaker 1: exercise when two pink panthers pulled a venop outside the
Speaker 1: prison walls, threw a ladder and wirecutters over the wall,
Speaker 1: and then while the shop at the guards with an
Speaker 1: AK forty seven, Mikitch climbed the ladder, jumped into the
Speaker 1: van and they all drove off.
Speaker 10: They shot on the prison and they liberate the guy,
Speaker 10: and the gay disappeared nothing.
Speaker 2: He was totally lost.
Speaker 1: It's widely assumed that dragon, Mikic went straight back to Serbia,
Speaker 1: where he could live openly beyond the reach of French
Speaker 1: law enforcement, much to Captain Connan's frustration. Another person who
Speaker 1: proved difficult to keep behind bars is Milan le Poya.
Speaker 1: In our last episode, we said that Milan had also
Speaker 1: managed to escape prison before his dramatic arrest in the
Speaker 1: French border town of Jacques in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Here's how he ended up in jail that first time.
Speaker 1: Milan was wanted for the heist at the Hooper watch
Speaker 1: and jewelry shop in Liechtenstein. He was caught during a
Speaker 1: border crossing when Swiss police were able to match his
Speaker 1: fingerprints to the Liechtenstein robbery.
Speaker 6: Milan Librier was first arrested in two thousand and six
Speaker 6: when he entered Switzerland from France, and he was extraducted
Speaker 6: to US.
Speaker 1: Robert Wallner is the prosecutor General for Liechtenstein. After Milan's
Speaker 1: arrests and extradition, he was held in the country's only
Speaker 1: jail well he awaited trial.
Speaker 6: We thought we could bring him to trial, but he
Speaker 6: didn't have the intention to stay with us and our
Speaker 6: polices is not really very often confronted with criminals of
Speaker 6: black calaber. So what he did was he had meticulously
Speaker 6: planned to flee our small jail.
Speaker 1: Liechtenstein is tiny population just under forty thousand, and the
Speaker 1: single small jail is all they have. The police there
Speaker 1: are more used to dealing with white collar crime. Serious
Speaker 1: criminals are typically exported to Austrian prisons, and Milan happened
Speaker 1: to know that the jail he was in did not
Speaker 1: have a hospital on its grounds.
Speaker 6: He one morning went to the fitness room in the
Speaker 6: jail and he smashed his hand with a weight and
Speaker 6: he was taken by two policemen to our local hospital here,
Speaker 6: and that's when two men entered the hospital with kalashnikovs
Speaker 6: and they managed to free him, and then it was gone.
Speaker 1: Despite its reputation as a finishing school for pink panthers,
Speaker 1: prison was not where Milan Lipoye wanted to be. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, he had plans, and just a
Speaker 1: few months later the world would see those plans come
Speaker 1: to life as he and Boyana Mitch drove a pair
Speaker 1: of Audis through the plate glass doors of the Waffi
Speaker 1: Moll in Dubai. Milan's escape from the Liechtenstein jail might
Speaker 1: have been a sore point for Robert Walner, but Warner
Speaker 1: would see his prisoner again.
Speaker 6: But he was re arrested later and extradited us again
Speaker 6: in twenty ten, and this time we looked after him
Speaker 6: very carefully until the trial and he wasn't able to
Speaker 6: escape again.
Speaker 1: Lalipoe was convicted for his role in the Lectinstein heist
Speaker 1: and sentenced to nine years in prison. This time he
Speaker 1: served his time. Coming up next on Infamous International, The
Speaker 1: Ping Panthers Story.
Speaker 2: Guys are hungry, they want to make some money.
Speaker 1: When it comes to the Ping Panthers, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know if this is a highly organized criminal syndicate.
Speaker 2: You have a bunch of these organizations.
Speaker 5: They're like sales, you know.
Speaker 1: Or an informal network of thieves.
Speaker 11: It doesn't necessarily make sense that there's this one centralized hierarchy,
Speaker 11: either very complicated it's very hard to follow the money.
Speaker 1: Or something else entirely.
Speaker 3: We can say it was some kind of joint venture
Speaker 3: business between organized crime and the state.
Speaker 1: That's next time on Infamous International, The Pink Panthers Story.
Speaker 1: Infamous International. The Pink Panthers Story was produced by Best
Speaker 1: Case Studios in association with Koda's Story, hosted by me
Speaker 1: Natalia ant Lava and written by Katrina Wolfe, Adam Pinkis,
Speaker 1: Suszanne Myers, and David Markowitz, with help from Brent Katz
Speaker 1: and Matt Levin. For Best Case Studios Executive producer Adam Pinkis,
Speaker 1: Senior producer David Markowitz, producer Katrina Wolfe, associate producer Hannah
Speaker 1: Libovitz Lockhart, and consulting producers Julie Goldstein and Louis Spiegeler.
Speaker 1: For Koda Story, reporting by Land Greenborough with associate producer
Speaker 1: Rebecca Robinson. Edited and sound designed by Gaylon Mullins and
Speaker 1: Max Michael Miller. Music by Dave Harrington. Archival producers Mac
Speaker 1: Degora and Paul Dallas. This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1: Executive producers Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hart Stark, and Daniel Kramer,
Speaker 1: with consulting producer Kyle Ryan