Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth do Thearon Burnette. I love it when you're here, me,
Speaker 2: I love it when I'm here too. I've been wandering around.
Speaker 2: I got this question in my head, and your only
Speaker 2: prison I know who can answer that question is no.
Speaker 2: Do you know what's ridiculous? Yes?
Speaker 3: I do know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: What is it? Elizabeth? It's here, I'm ridiculous.
Speaker 3: The iconic track suit? What do you love track suits?
Speaker 3: You we legitimately you wear Adidas tracksuits all the time.
Speaker 2: All the time. You're wearing half of one.
Speaker 3: Half of one now, okay, just the top half, tolf
Speaker 3: nothing underneath.
Speaker 2: I'm not porky normal Okay.
Speaker 3: So you know who else makes an iconic tracksuit? Give
Speaker 3: me who else used to the coke sportis.
Speaker 2: Juicy Coto? There?
Speaker 3: It is there? It is? They had like the the
Speaker 3: lore ones? Right, yes, so they have not really, although
Speaker 3: she should.
Speaker 2: Be about Ben Affleck Is he doing one?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: They have a limited edition set and it's a one
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty nine dollars track.
Speaker 2: Suit okay, and it's it's a lot for tracks, a.
Speaker 3: Tomato red color, too red, and it has the Diamante
Speaker 3: detailing the custom crystal Dimante, like where it says it
Speaker 3: across your your rump, okay, juicy, sure, although this time
Speaker 3: it doesn't say juicy.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm paying for, Elizabeth. It says juicy or
Speaker 2: oh juicy okay, next level Okay, yeah, rebooted it. I
Speaker 2: got it, and you.
Speaker 3: Know it's a mashup. You know it's across is it?
Speaker 2: Did it have to be? Yes? But we just stop here.
Speaker 2: It's so good, so far, so good.
Speaker 3: You know who they're working with.
Speaker 2: No, I don't want to Red Robin. No.
Speaker 3: There, it's the Red Robin Juicy couture mashup. You can
Speaker 3: only buy them on the Red Robin Instagram shop one
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty nine dollars. As I said, No, all
Speaker 3: sales are final, no returns or exchanging. You know why,
Speaker 3: because you'll never buy another.
Speaker 2: You took it. They're like here, that's it.
Speaker 3: That's the juicier juicy on the caboose and then up
Speaker 3: on the breastical area it says red Robin in rhinestone,
Speaker 3: and I want all tracking information. I think it also
Speaker 3: has that on their hip. They're not very good about
Speaker 3: showing like full pictures of these tracks.
Speaker 2: Shore the button the chesticles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it says juicier on the back. I think
Speaker 3: to whatever. And so anyway, I want a full list
Speaker 3: of everyone who purchases this and that's going to be
Speaker 3: my special watch list.
Speaker 5: It's your list, but just watching them on these little
Speaker 5: Google How did.
Speaker 2: You hear about the newsletter? Do you get read it?
Speaker 3: What do you We have the most amazing network. People
Speaker 3: who have dudes who you know, They clew us in,
Speaker 3: they let us know. This one came off of Instagram.
Speaker 3: I think it us Yeah, and it came from esther faith.
Speaker 3: She wanted She wanted to know what our budget was
Speaker 3: because she wanted Dave. She said, look, I screencapped this.
Speaker 3: What's the budget for Dave to take this one and
Speaker 3: get both of them a set? I bet Elizabeth would
Speaker 3: say she hates it but actually love it. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: told you I love cozy. This is probably cozy. Although
Speaker 3: I feel like I like breathable fabrics. I don't really
Speaker 3: wear synthetics, and I feel like that would make me
Speaker 3: feel like I was gonna choke to death.
Speaker 2: I trade mine for a ride to Stockton.
Speaker 3: I think you get a free ride to Stockton when
Speaker 3: you you know that's where they do it for the clubs.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know I'm going to do it for.
Speaker 3: The club Okay, and I'm done.
Speaker 2: Well, that's ridiculous. It's also ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Tell me, it's.
Speaker 2: Gonna take me longer in a second. Yeah, do it, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: This is the story of your people. Oh yeah, special investigators.
Speaker 3: Like that could be a lot of group.
Speaker 2: I left that for you to fill in, Like, what
Speaker 2: kind of my people? Okay? It's nineteen eighty three, right,
Speaker 2: and one of the most wanted men in Europe was
Speaker 2: a thirty five year old millionaire playboy, a Danish actor,
Speaker 2: a man known as a master of disguises. They called
Speaker 2: him the rubber Faced Man. Yes, my people right. His
Speaker 2: criminal co ringleader and mastermind was a wealthy son of
Speaker 2: the Royal Navy. Oh yes. And both men were brought
Speaker 2: down by your people, a bunch of nosy Welsh lobster
Speaker 2: men and farmers wives.
Speaker 6: Oh yes, oh my goodness, yes, enjoy.
Speaker 2: This is This is a ridiculous crime A podcast about
Speaker 2: absurd and outrageous capers, heist and cons. It's always ninety
Speaker 2: nine percent murder free, ay and ridiculous. Yes, yes it is.
Speaker 2: Now this Elizabeth is the story of the drug baron
Speaker 2: as I'm calling him and the rubber face man.
Speaker 3: Wait, you're going to tell a story about drug.
Speaker 2: I know, right, I was shocking.
Speaker 3: I never heard such a thing.
Speaker 2: I swear to god. I was not looking for a
Speaker 2: drug story. I was looking for a story of like
Speaker 2: about like a master of disguise, and I found the
Speaker 2: rubber face man and I was so excited. I was like,
Speaker 2: what's he doing? They're like drug smuggling.
Speaker 3: I was like, you heard the word and you're like,
Speaker 3: oh well.
Speaker 2: It's this one's more than just cocaine. And Pablo Escobar
Speaker 2: will make no more appearances after me saying his name
Speaker 2: right now, Okay, that's it, Okay, okay. So the co
Speaker 2: rigging leaders were two men. Soren berg Arnbach he's the Dane, yeah,
Speaker 2: and Robin Boswell, the brit Now Boswell's you might have
Speaker 2: you know guessed the Englishman. Okay. So he's from London
Speaker 2: and for a living he was quote the master kind
Speaker 2: of the drugs ring in London proper. He was known
Speaker 2: to be quote ingenious, intelligent and determined. Could you get
Speaker 2: a little picture of him?
Speaker 3: Not really?
Speaker 2: Okay? Now Boswell, son of a wealthy English family. As
Speaker 2: I told you, his father royal Navy officer. Okay, right,
Speaker 2: so he's you know, you would imagine some level of
Speaker 2: discipline and upright for right, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 5: A lot of whistles now for school and coats for days.
Speaker 5: Nice sharp look, but the callers turned up, popped up
Speaker 5: whistle like Dylan Thomas over here. Now you gotta make
Speaker 5: a poetic anyway, this cabbing. He attended the ultra exclusive
Speaker 5: Marlborough School. You know, it's like one of the private schools.
Speaker 3: Like them roll the cigarette.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they teach him to roll smokes. So after that
Speaker 2: he went to university and he was really good at
Speaker 2: rolling smoke, so he said, why don't you study biology?
Speaker 2: So he did, and then after graduation he went off
Speaker 2: to see the world. Because he's rich. He's like, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go and mess about, and so he goes and
Speaker 2: you know, he travels widely, extensively. Then he comes back
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, that was amazing, world changing. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go settle down buys a place in notting Hill. Wow. No,
Speaker 2: but at that time notting Hill was basically London's hate Ashburys,
Speaker 2: right nineteen eighty three, Well, this is the seventies. Okay,
Speaker 2: this point for late sixties early.
Speaker 3: That's like a cool little place to must be nice
Speaker 3: to go and travel the world and come back and
Speaker 3: buy a place.
Speaker 2: Buy a place. Yeah, not just that, but one in
Speaker 2: a known drug scene. Or you're like, oh, I can
Speaker 2: hang out with all my friends. I don't have to
Speaker 2: go anywhere. They can come right here, they're down the street.
Speaker 2: So basically my point is this is before Julia Roberts
Speaker 2: and Hugh Grant, before they made it such a you know,
Speaker 2: popular scene with their movie of the same name, so
Speaker 2: apparently fake CD right CD drugs. Anyway, Boswell he had
Speaker 2: the demeanor of the ultra wealthy in the UK, so
Speaker 2: he was like kind of slumming it and sleezing it.
Speaker 2: But also he had the worst of that demeanor of
Speaker 2: the ultra wealthy in the UK, as in he was haughty,
Speaker 2: had no lips, not not not physically stood demeanor Elizabeth
Speaker 2: hat He quote, was evidently used to having his own way.
Speaker 2: So he was a spoiled brat right. Yeah, he was tall, slim,
Speaker 2: rather fine boned. He wasn't a rough and rugged athlete,
Speaker 2: so you weren't gonna like catch him winning respect on
Speaker 2: the football pitch. This was somebody who was quote an
Speaker 2: accomplished yachtsman.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So he was someone of a you know, an outdoorsman,
Speaker 2: I guess, and he quote lacked nothing in poise. He
Speaker 2: starting to get a little picture of him, maybe.
Speaker 3: Him underpants the Lady diapers.
Speaker 2: What I don't I'm unfamiliar with this product. Is that
Speaker 2: a mashup? I don't know this one. But basically this guy,
Speaker 2: he's a rich kid from old money. He likes boats,
Speaker 2: he likes acting superior to others. He wouldn't be much
Speaker 2: in a fight, but he would pay someone to beat
Speaker 2: you up, right, Okay, so that's Robin Boswell. Yeah, now
Speaker 2: there's co conspirator. Sore In berg Arnbach. He was known
Speaker 2: as the rubber face man, right, our Danish master of disguise. Now,
Speaker 2: as a young man berg Arnbach he had been an actor,
Speaker 2: but by the time he's thirty five, he was like
Speaker 2: he's like now, basically a knock about playboy.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Now, when I say knock about playboy, Elizabeth, I mean
Speaker 2: this cat bought himself a castle near the Italian port
Speaker 2: city of Genoa. He also owned a palatial villa in Switzerland.
Speaker 2: Dude was living clean. Wait what Yeah, he was also
Speaker 2: one of Europe's most wanted drug smugglers, so that's how
Speaker 2: he was paying for this. It's not like and he'd
Speaker 2: been on the run for a decade. That's his nickname,
Speaker 2: the Master of Disguise. That was not from his acting days.
Speaker 3: So oh, I thought maybe he was like an early
Speaker 3: Jim Carrey rubber faced man.
Speaker 2: No, it was more like he wore rubber face masks
Speaker 2: and you had to get on a boat and get
Speaker 2: the hell out of it.
Speaker 3: But he just would like make a crazy face trying
Speaker 3: to get through customs.
Speaker 2: Just try to hold it, like are you part dinosaurs?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like oh yeah, like you.
Speaker 2: Know your old man mask. You scare me with the
Speaker 2: the full face mask. Imagine that it was done. Well,
Speaker 2: that's not horrifying anyway. So the rubber Face Man that's
Speaker 2: his nickname, right, doesn't that sound like a nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: horror film, like one of the comedy duo, Like like,
Speaker 2: what is it a Abbin Costello meet the rubber face Man. Anyway,
Speaker 2: back to our Danish arco trafficker, sorenberg Arnbach. He'd personally
Speaker 2: seen the dangers of illicit drug use right, this cat
Speaker 2: had lost a brother to a heroin.
Speaker 3: Overdose and he goes around selling drugs.
Speaker 2: Didn't stop him at all. He goes smuggling. He's like,
Speaker 2: you know, it hurt my family's probably hurt other families.
Speaker 2: But I love castles. Yeah, that's why he became a
Speaker 2: narco baron Elizabeth. Also, he also loved yachts he happened
Speaker 2: to be. And I when I say yachts, I don't
Speaker 2: mean like big boats, I mean like I want you
Speaker 2: to picture him on a ship, right, a ship that
Speaker 2: was quote bigger but otherwise identical version of the Danish
Speaker 2: royal yacht with an onboard chef who hosted Denmark's most
Speaker 2: popular televised cookery program.
Speaker 3: So he's not like guy Fiery yes on his boat.
Speaker 2: Just poaling around with him like doing blows.
Speaker 3: So like the yeah, the equivalent, the Santa Roso equivalent
Speaker 3: is like a tug boat with Guy Fieri behind the grill.
Speaker 2: Be a tug boat of this boat. They are cute.
Speaker 2: So Sorenberg he wanted that kind of life, right, So
Speaker 2: this typically only comes from crime or great talent. He
Speaker 2: did not have great talent, so he went with crime.
Speaker 2: Now that's how you afford a castle in Italy. So
Speaker 2: the Danage authorities they catch up to this cat because
Speaker 2: he's not necessarily good at it. Berg Armbach has to
Speaker 2: go on the run. And as I told you, that
Speaker 2: lasted for a decade. So it means he also ran
Speaker 2: into trouble with the Swiss, because you know, Europe was
Speaker 2: pretty much the Interpol kind of like red notice, like
Speaker 2: oh like, oh you're in trouble in Italy, you're in
Speaker 2: trouble over here too, right, So it means he loses
Speaker 2: access to his palatial villa. He had to give up
Speaker 2: living in his Italian castle near Genoa. Life of a
Speaker 2: wanted Man, Elizabeth, it sucks. He goes fully on the lamb,
Speaker 2: stayed outside the law ten years. Where would you go
Speaker 2: if you had to give up everything and you have money, right,
Speaker 2: so you can pick something? Where would you go?
Speaker 3: Where would I go?
Speaker 2: You got to live with the life on the lamb.
Speaker 2: You don't want to get caught.
Speaker 3: I don't want to get caught. If you go to
Speaker 3: to a rural of an area, everyone's suspicious of you.
Speaker 2: Well, here, I'll give you, give you some time to think.
Speaker 2: Here's my answer. I would go and hide out by
Speaker 2: becoming a cop in a small town in Florida, because
Speaker 2: who would ever think to look for me amongst a
Speaker 2: bunch of cops.
Speaker 3: That's a really really good plan for.
Speaker 2: You, totally brilliant. And I gotta be in Florida's kind
Speaker 2: of nice me. I pick a time with good fishing.
Speaker 2: Who knows. Okay, what about you? I can I can
Speaker 2: surf in the morning, go be a cop in the afternoon.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I guess I have to stick in
Speaker 3: the United States so I don't stand out too much.
Speaker 2: That's my problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I have money.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I go somewhere where everyone's really eccentric and wants to
Speaker 3: be left alone. Bus in the Yeah, the Marine headlands,
Speaker 3: they're notorious for. Like they in Billinas. They take the
Speaker 3: signs down, like the way finding signs to tell you,
Speaker 3: like Billinas is here.
Speaker 2: This iss and this is the name with the row.
Speaker 3: They take it down, and like it's very rarely do
Speaker 3: properties come on the market. And so I, you know,
Speaker 3: i'd buy my way in there.
Speaker 2: Doren't you worry that those people might be a little
Speaker 2: suspicious of an outsider?
Speaker 3: Not when I have a meeting in town and I
Speaker 3: gather them together and I tell them what I'm doing
Speaker 3: and why they decided to run them over, and then
Speaker 3: they decided to protect Look, I'm on the run. I
Speaker 3: walk in with my crew of like wolves and bears
Speaker 3: and assorted dogs, and I'm like, look, guys.
Speaker 2: I'll pay all your house all your house taxes for
Speaker 2: a year if you guys just let me join the community. Cool.
Speaker 2: Cool exactly, by the way, call me Regina so Berg Armback.
Speaker 2: He decides I'm going to go live the life of
Speaker 2: a divorced dad. He decides to live on a boat.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, he get not some stinky thirty foot
Speaker 2: sailboat in the Marina Elizabeth, though. He lives on an
Speaker 2: enormous yacht that's bigger than the Royal Danish yacht right,
Speaker 2: So of course he would eventually get caught on that.
Speaker 2: So he's like, Okay, this isn't gonna last. I need
Speaker 2: to go somewhere deep. I need to take this boat
Speaker 2: life onto land. So where does he go? I need
Speaker 2: to go somewhere somewhere, Like I said, I'm going to
Speaker 2: hide where no one would look. He decided to relocate
Speaker 2: to Wales, a fishing village in Wales. It's like, who
Speaker 2: would ever look for me, a Danish drug smuggler in
Speaker 2: a tiny fishing village in Wales. So he picked a
Speaker 2: county in the southwest of Wales, a place called Pembrokeshire.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's pronouncing that incorrectly, Pembrokeshire. There you go. Now,
Speaker 2: the rubber faced man thought he could hold up there,
Speaker 2: and I said, hide out in a rural coastal out
Speaker 2: of the way Welsh town. And you know, he just
Speaker 2: keep right on drug smuggling, the heroine and the hash
Speaker 2: and the bales of marijuana that he'd been moving. That
Speaker 2: was also part of his plan. He wasn't going to
Speaker 2: give up his business.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So for a partner he picked Robin Boswell. Smart choice, right, Boswell,
Speaker 2: He's a.
Speaker 3: He'll fit right in in a Welsh fishing.
Speaker 2: Vas English Elizabeth. He knows this stuff. He's rich exactly.
Speaker 2: But this guy's like, it'll work. What's an Englishman to
Speaker 2: a Welshman? They're probably practice. Yeah, he misses the boat
Speaker 2: on that one.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: So, according to the book Drug War by Peter Welsh,
Speaker 2: no relation to the country, Robin Boswell quote never gave
Speaker 2: his name over phone lines used false identities when dealing
Speaker 2: with strangers, held at least eight passports. He kept his
Speaker 2: possessions under aliases or in the names of friends, and
Speaker 2: anyone trying to trace him came up against a bewildering
Speaker 2: morass of shell comp and he's accommodation offices, hotels, shops
Speaker 2: and not existent addresses. So this guys they call him,
Speaker 2: is the nowhere Man. Yeah, that's Robin Boswell, the rich Englishman.
Speaker 2: He's a made basically erased himself from record, okay, which
Speaker 2: isn't easy when you're rich. But he manages it, you know,
Speaker 2: because he's he's dedicated, like I really want to get
Speaker 2: into crime. Now he's got his buddy who's on the run,
Speaker 2: who's looking to stay out of the sights of the authorities.
Speaker 2: He's like, that guy is figuring it out. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go partner with him. Yeah, it seems like, you know,
Speaker 2: that's a great choice, right, No, because on the show,
Speaker 2: but Boswell he was a man of a particular habit,
Speaker 2: and that habit was not getting caught. As I told you,
Speaker 2: he had family money to shield his activities. He used
Speaker 2: old money tactics like shell companies for a layer of protection. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's keen to invest in massive profits into his real
Speaker 2: estate portfolio. Always smart when you're a criminal on the make.
Speaker 2: So not only did he buy a place in notting Hill,
Speaker 2: he also bought a whole block of apartment buildings. He
Speaker 2: also owned a twenty six bedroom building near some place
Speaker 2: called Guilford. It's an English town in Surrey. Now, the
Speaker 2: last time I spoke on English geography, I made a mistake,
Speaker 2: and how I referenced Surrey a right, so maya culper Batania.
Speaker 2: All right, so let me get this one all the
Speaker 2: way right. Guilford in west Surrey is in English town Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: It's roughly twenty seven miles south and west of London.
Speaker 2: The name of the town, it's speculated, derives from the
Speaker 2: local river way and a crossing of that river. The
Speaker 2: river Way Elizabeth continues on to join the River Thames,
Speaker 2: which runs through the quaint center of Guildford.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fun fact, yo, producer, Dave. You're a man Alfred
Speaker 2: the Great. He mentioned Guildford in his will. Whoa last Kingdom? Shoutout?
Speaker 2: Ughtred son of Utred Robin Boswell owned a stately twenty
Speaker 2: six room building in lovely Guildford, yes. The building wasn't
Speaker 2: in downtown, it wasn't an apartment building. Nope. It was
Speaker 2: set on acres, the kind of acres that feature gardens
Speaker 2: and surrounding woods. He probably had like a maze, built
Speaker 2: a super tall hedgeho, just like yes, yeah, do you
Speaker 2: know how much he paid for that spot? Five dollars
Speaker 2: practically back to the drug war the book by Welsh,
Speaker 2: Boswell bought the palatial home for and I quote two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand pounds in cash, a yacht, dinghies
Speaker 2: and a numerous vehicles. I'm assuming the original owner wasn't
Speaker 2: some landed Englishman like the fourth orl of Yardstick upon
Speaker 2: Acorns or whatever.
Speaker 3: Well maybe and they hit hard times like yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: take a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll take a boat. I want to go over
Speaker 2: to France or whatever. It's good point. So the policeman
Speaker 2: who eventually chased down the international drug smugglers he described
Speaker 2: Boswell quote as an almost unknown quantity on the fringe
Speaker 2: of a number of drug smuggling operations, but never in
Speaker 2: the net. So this dude he'd brushed up against the
Speaker 2: police then their attention in particular a number of times.
Speaker 2: And there was this one time, he was suspected of
Speaker 2: smuggling in a one million pounds and that's sterling of
Speaker 2: hash in from Katmandu and Nepal. Oh they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we think it's him, but they somehow let this one
Speaker 2: million pounds worth of hash slip through their fingers. Anyway,
Speaker 2: there was Taco Boswell being also quote a client of
Speaker 2: Lebanon's in miss Jafar Klan, so he was like in
Speaker 2: deep right, apparently in the hash trade. But none of
Speaker 2: this talk leads to an investigation or a bust. By
Speaker 2: the end of the seventies, the dude draws attention because
Speaker 2: he has more than one passport. They find that kind
Speaker 2: of suspicious, right, so, plus his banking records also a
Speaker 2: little hinky. In nineteen seventy six, dude raised his eyebrows
Speaker 2: when he converted a half billion dollars in Canadian dollars
Speaker 2: aka loonies and had the bank give him converted him
Speaker 2: out in Swiss francs. They're like, why do you want
Speaker 2: this in England? He was like, I don't worry about
Speaker 2: that now. The real suspicious part is how he went
Speaker 2: to a series of different banks and then attempted to
Speaker 2: deflect attention you know, he obviously did the opposite. He
Speaker 2: caught attention, so no criminal charges came of any of that.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: What saved him is that the drugs he smuggled mostly
Speaker 2: went to North America. So the English were like, what
Speaker 2: does it matter really, let them meet their souls or whatever.
Speaker 2: So one day around nineteen seventy eight or nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: he gets involved with Soren berg Arnbach, the rubber face Man.
Speaker 2: Now they would go on to make a fabulously wealthy
Speaker 2: life together and then ruin each other lives. Yeah, let's
Speaker 2: take a little break, Elizabeth, and after some ads, we'll
Speaker 2: talk about more about the drug baron and the rubber
Speaker 2: faced Man. And we're back high. He's still wearing the
Speaker 2: same pants. Well whatever, you remember when I mentioned what'd
Speaker 2: you call it? Pembrokeshire. Pembrokeshire, Yeah, okay, in the south
Speaker 2: east coast of Wales. Yes, there's a spot called Seal Bay. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's where our story takes place. Boswell, the drug baron
Speaker 2: and berg Arnbach, the rubber faced Man, the Danish master
Speaker 2: of disguise. Right, so they go into business together. They
Speaker 2: come up with a scheme to import drugs into the
Speaker 2: rough and rugged Welsh coast because that way, you know,
Speaker 2: burg Arnbach can continue working. Yeah, so they engineer a
Speaker 2: hell of a smuggling hole. They use two beaches in
Speaker 2: Seal Bay.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: One beach they drop all kinds of time, and they
Speaker 2: just plundered and spent money to dig into the earth
Speaker 2: just past the high water line, right and they dig
Speaker 2: in at the mouth of a cave, and then they
Speaker 2: dig straight down and they hollow out this huge cavern.
Speaker 2: It's underground chamber. The walls they line with fiberglass. The
Speaker 2: chamber was hidden from view by the natural elements, obviously
Speaker 2: because it's basically just a cave on the rugged coast.
Speaker 2: Who would look there. And it's also it's this coast
Speaker 2: is pockmarked with caves. So on the other beach they
Speaker 2: hid a small navy of dinghies and inflatable Zodiac style boats.
Speaker 2: So this is so they can make runs to faery
Speaker 2: drugs from yachts and small ships that come right and
Speaker 2: then they take them back to their pirate cave. Now, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: you know I love that show Black Sales. I know
Speaker 2: you You'll come into like rc Headquarridors and I'll be
Speaker 2: watching another episode and you or one of the interns
Speaker 2: gives me that annoyed look when you hear that intro
Speaker 2: song piping to Live and you're like, again, huh, Well,
Speaker 2: I want you to know I learned a lot from
Speaker 2: that show.
Speaker 3: I know you probably have.
Speaker 2: For instance, I know that if you're going to hide
Speaker 2: things in a cave, there are inherent risks with that.
Speaker 2: I would imagine maybe it work brilliantly. No, don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong, it can. Obviously if you plan to bring
Speaker 2: boats close to shore, there's gonna be problems with that
Speaker 2: part of it, right r under the cover of darkness.
Speaker 2: That also adds an element if you're there to offload goods,
Speaker 2: another element of danger because you don't want to lose
Speaker 2: your goods. But if you got a hardy crew, it
Speaker 2: can be done. Pirates did it back in the day.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also you talked about the high water mark. That's
Speaker 3: like an average high water mark.
Speaker 2: There you go. Sea is not consistent. No, no, the
Speaker 2: sea is a harsh doun forgiving mistresses. Yeah, and she
Speaker 2: will turn on you when you least expect it. Never
Speaker 2: turned your back on the ocean. In nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: in the autumn month of November, a ship smuggling bales
Speaker 2: of pot came in to offload some some contraband. Right now,
Speaker 2: some of the marijuana gets lost in the rough seas.
Speaker 2: Forty kilows of pot gets lost. That's about eighty eight
Speaker 2: pounds of jazz cabbage just washing onto the coast of Wales.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, now you see Elizabeth. As the sea taketh away,
Speaker 2: so doth the sea giveth somewhere else down the coast?
Speaker 3: Right, this is like those Garfield phones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wash totally, the rubber duckies and the Pacific on
Speaker 2: the Oregon coast. Yeah, this the pot equally buoyant, and
Speaker 2: so like rubber duckies bobs along and the bales wash
Speaker 2: ashore in a place called Newport, Okay, right, The locals
Speaker 2: confused by this sudden gift of eighty eight pounds of
Speaker 2: pot from the sea. So the local authorities are called
Speaker 2: to look into this, like, what's going on?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 2: Is it the French? What's going on? So one month later,
Speaker 2: Boswell he deposits three quarters of a million pounds sterling
Speaker 2: into a bank on the Isle of Man. He just
Speaker 2: walks into the bank with two suitcases and inside the
Speaker 2: two suitcases is seven hundred and fifty seven thousands, never suspicious, yeah,
Speaker 2: in notes in cash right, So boswell, he's been now
Speaker 2: making some small mistakes. Yeah yeah, right, he's getting sloppy,
Speaker 2: he's losing bales of pot, he's walking in with briefcases
Speaker 2: of cash. So it was only a matter of time
Speaker 2: until the drug baron and his buddy, the rubber face
Speaker 2: man were both doing something that they had not been
Speaker 2: doing for a decade, which she's getting caught. Yeah all right.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't exactly their fault though when it did
Speaker 2: start to go wrong, it was their men. You see.
Speaker 2: They had brought their men with them to this small
Speaker 2: Welsh fishing village.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well imagine how some hard men who are used to
Speaker 2: international drug smuggling are doing down at the pub, right,
Speaker 2: and this town has like four thousand people. Oh it's small,
Speaker 2: it's small, small, right, yeah, yeah, it has like it's
Speaker 2: separated down to the fishing village part and then up
Speaker 2: the road, a really steep road is the new modern
Speaker 2: section of towns. They have any money, you live on
Speaker 2: the hill, and everybody who works in the water and
Speaker 2: around the.
Speaker 3: Water, everybody knows everybody exactly.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in June nineteen eighty three, local police were alerted
Speaker 2: after a bunch of men were described by the locals
Speaker 2: as quote a gang, and they kept dropping big bills
Speaker 2: in the local pub. And by big bills, I mean
Speaker 2: fifty pound notes. They're like, who's got all the money
Speaker 2: over there?
Speaker 3: Usually?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So Sue Warner, that was a young woman
Speaker 2: at the time. She lived on the family farm near Newport,
Speaker 2: and she recalled how quote, there were guys staying in
Speaker 2: Dinah's Cross and spending an awful lot of money paying
Speaker 2: for drinks with fifty pound notes, and lots of partying
Speaker 2: going on, lots of money and nice big cars. People
Speaker 2: just started to put things together. Now, I know that's
Speaker 2: not a Welsh accent. I can't do a Welsh accent, right, So, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to Elizabeth. You spent considerable time in Scotland.
Speaker 2: I've never been to Scotland, but I have been to
Speaker 2: England and I've spent some time in Wales. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: guessing that based on your time in Scotland, you like me,
Speaker 2: aren't surprised that these locals were suspicious of outsiders. Not
Speaker 2: in the least, right, I mean, this is like it's
Speaker 2: par for the course from what I.
Speaker 3: Spend a small town in the United States, I can
Speaker 3: tell you like, yeah, outsiders come in and then radar
Speaker 3: goes up.
Speaker 2: What do you think they started doing next? Once the
Speaker 2: radar goes.
Speaker 3: Up, i'd keeping track of them. What would you do?
Speaker 2: They start surveiling them, right, So they start snooping on
Speaker 2: an Elizabeth style and suite. Back to Sue Warner, our
Speaker 2: young local farm girl. So one night my dad decided
Speaker 2: to camp up on the cliff top with neighbors. They
Speaker 2: found two men sleeping close to the side of where
Speaker 2: the gang we're planning on keeping the drugs, and then
Speaker 2: things started to unravel. So now the cutting man camping
Speaker 2: on the hilltop watching them off low drugs.
Speaker 3: Especially because it's not just like who's this new family,
Speaker 3: they're a little weird.
Speaker 2: This is like, yeah, who look rough and yeah they
Speaker 2: don't wear like sweaters and we've.
Speaker 3: All seen those kind of like Jason State the movies.
Speaker 3: You don't want to shoot out in the main town
Speaker 3: with the cars driving over sidewalks and the whatnots.
Speaker 2: Don't need to keep that to yourself. Take that back
Speaker 2: to Guilford.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't do that here.
Speaker 2: So okay, these land lovers were not the only ones
Speaker 2: who were suspicious. The fishermen and the lobstermen who worked
Speaker 2: the craggy coastline.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: They started watching these yachts and these boats coming close
Speaker 2: to the shore and offload something into smaller dinghies and
Speaker 2: then these the zodiac style inflatable boats. Right, so they
Speaker 2: get nervous these guys are trying to like poach their catch.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They're like, wait, we're got competition, right, is it the French? Anyway,
Speaker 2: So they contact the local authorities and they're worried about
Speaker 2: these men who are working at night and they think
Speaker 2: they're trying to their poachers, right, So they tell the
Speaker 2: cops you got to watch these guys. And then some
Speaker 2: of the lobstermen handle ourselves. So they go down and
Speaker 2: they confront the men on the beaches who are offloading
Speaker 2: the bales of pot. Wow, man, what are you doing
Speaker 2: in Wales?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: And so the drug smugglers they're like, oh, oh, calm down, no,
Speaker 2: well we're not from here. They're like, yeah, we know.
Speaker 2: What are you doing. They're like, we're filming a documentary,
Speaker 2: you know, a nature movie. Everybody loves nature movies, right,
Speaker 2: they tell them, Yeah, our movie is about seals and
Speaker 2: whales and stuff in the ocean. And we're gon, we're
Speaker 2: planning on filming in Greenland, so we're practicing off loading
Speaker 2: and loading up equipment for the documentary. We take to
Speaker 2: get really good at this because we're gonna be in
Speaker 2: a rural place. And the guys were like, uh huh yeah.
Speaker 2: So basically the local fishermen, the lobstermen, hey, like they're like,
Speaker 2: that's a festering pack of lies. I'm not buying a
Speaker 2: single bit of that. Like, trust me, mate, I'm a fisherman.
Speaker 2: I know when something is fiscally unsound. Now you thought
Speaker 2: I would say fishy, didn't you know, Elizabeth. Fisherman know
Speaker 2: how to be fiscally sound. They have to be if
Speaker 2: they're gonna make it. And a documentary crew practicing for
Speaker 2: months to offload equipment is hinky and not fiscally sound.
Speaker 2: So anyway, the locals they go to their dified powe's
Speaker 2: maybe pronouncing that incorrectly, apologies Welsh, but it's d y
Speaker 2: fowys okay, that place their police department, and reported what
Speaker 2: all they'd seen, right, and what the men on the
Speaker 2: beaches and the boats in the yachts were actually doing
Speaker 2: was to prepare the pirate code for a major load
Speaker 2: that was coming in on a consignment sale. It wasn't
Speaker 2: even their dope a huge day. They're gonna like, oh,
Speaker 2: we got this thick, great thing running in Wales. Just
Speaker 2: give us your big load and we'll offload it for you.
Speaker 2: And the connect. Yeah, high stakes deal entered DCI Don
Speaker 2: Evans of Diffid Poe's Police. Now. DCI Evans led the investigation,
Speaker 2: which was dubbed Operation Seal Bay. Really imaginative, took title
Speaker 2: right anyway, the cops they get to work. And he
Speaker 2: wasn't alone, Elizabeth. You see, he didn't call in some
Speaker 2: crack team of investigators. He didn't establish some war room
Speaker 2: to catch these drug smugglers. Nope, not him. Instead, he
Speaker 2: knew he had all the local amateur talent he needed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: your people, Norsey busy bodies who say things like I
Speaker 2: just want to take a look and see what they're
Speaker 2: doing over there. Yes, right, your people. So DC I
Speaker 2: haven't seen knew with my special army of special investigators,
Speaker 2: I can get this task done. So we went out
Speaker 2: and he spoke with them and DCI Don Evans. He
Speaker 2: told the press, quote, these villains totally underestimated the local
Speaker 2: people and how observant they were, and all we took
Speaker 2: five hundred and forty statements from people living in the area.
Speaker 2: There's like thirty eight hundred people, so I'm pretty much
Speaker 2: every seventh person's like, oh my got something. So many
Speaker 2: people are children, so obviously you discount the children to
Speaker 2: people who are like house bound, they don't leave, they
Speaker 2: don't have Almost every adult had something to say anyway.
Speaker 2: So the police they follow the clues from the five
Speaker 2: hundred and forty witness statements, they determine a zone of
Speaker 2: interest to investigate. They're like, oh, pretty much centered around
Speaker 2: these two beaches. Then the cops go out and they
Speaker 2: walk the coastline, searching through the sand the pebbles for
Speaker 2: signs to drug smugglers. They also have like people with them,
Speaker 2: But you were like, no, right over here, look right there, right,
Speaker 2: there's this one farmer. He leads a pair of officers
Speaker 2: over to the mouth of a cave and he wanted
Speaker 2: to show them what he'd found. He's like, no, no, but
Speaker 2: you got to see what I found. It's very importantright
Speaker 2: he drags him over there. He picks up a stone
Speaker 2: and tosses into the cave. They're like, what are you doing,
Speaker 2: old man? And all of a sudden, it doesn't make
Speaker 2: the expected sound. Anybody would think that a stone going
Speaker 2: into a cave would make. Instead, you hear this really large,
Speaker 2: hollow sounding metal tung kind of like yeah. They're like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute. And even the police are curious, so
Speaker 2: they investigate the ground. They part's pushing around, They push
Speaker 2: back sand, they move pebbles and everything out of their way. Boom,
Speaker 2: they find something. What if they find Elizabeth a hatch
Speaker 2: like a submarine kind of hatch, right, the cops they
Speaker 2: twist the handle and they open the hatch. They can't
Speaker 2: see the bottom. Farmer grabs another stone. He's like, gosh,
Speaker 2: this chucks it in there. Boom once again. It takes
Speaker 2: a while to hit the bottom of When it does,
Speaker 2: their rings, they're like wait a minute. They go down,
Speaker 2: they climb in. It's an enormous subterranean chamber. The police
Speaker 2: climb in and find all sorts of stuff in this
Speaker 2: hidden drug smuggling bunker. DCI don Evan said quote, it
Speaker 2: had obviously been a long time to build it was
Speaker 2: held up with timber and totally lined with fiberglass. Resin
Speaker 2: would have taken ages to dig out the sand and
Speaker 2: rock and build, and they would have had brought all
Speaker 2: the materials in by boat.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So yeah, like you're building.
Speaker 3: When you were talking about fiberglass earlier, I was like,
Speaker 3: did they just like bring a camper shell and like
Speaker 3: shove it in a cave and.
Speaker 2: Force it into the earth. Now? No, they dug a
Speaker 2: huge cave hole for themselves under a cave and then wow,
Speaker 2: plastered it all in. Essentially. Now that the police they go,
Speaker 2: they find all the equipment that you would need for
Speaker 2: a modern professional drug smuggling operation.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: For instance, the cops discovered quote a gargantuan inflatable that
Speaker 2: could carry twenty four men and six tons of equipment,
Speaker 2: powered by a two hundred and thirty five horsepower outboard motor.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: The chamber was large enough that an average sized man
Speaker 2: could stand up at full extension comfortably. Yeah. And since
Speaker 2: this is nineteen eighty three, the local Welsh police did
Speaker 2: not immediately assume this was international drug smuggling. Instead, they're like, IRA, right,
Speaker 2: this is IRA, this is a weapons cash right, So
Speaker 2: they assumed with all these you know, this would be
Speaker 2: a brilliant place to launch an attack on the English
Speaker 2: coast side, so no one would see it coming from
Speaker 2: whales anyway. They did notice though, some cops like, wait,
Speaker 2: what remember the eighty eight pounds of pot that washed
Speaker 2: up down the shorty thing? They might be related. And
Speaker 2: somebody's like, that's a good point. Wait to go, dcibob
Speaker 2: now all the reports of offloading of larger boats and
Speaker 2: yachts and so forth. It filters in and they go, okay,
Speaker 2: bounce that against the IRA gun running. Okay, probably drugs,
Speaker 2: and they give up on the IRA gun running right,
Speaker 2: and the police investigate. And then as they're investigating that
Speaker 2: big load that I told you before that they were
Speaker 2: planning for, it comes in and uh the one when
Speaker 2: it arrives. It arrives on a seventy five foot fishing
Speaker 2: trawler named Minnow Okay and Elizabeth. On that night, the
Speaker 2: seas were stormy and pitched the ocean angry like an
Speaker 2: irishman who's been mistaken for an Englishman. Now in those
Speaker 2: dangerous and storm rexes came this fishing trawler. No fisherman
Speaker 2: in his right mind would be out there in those
Speaker 2: waters at night, right, So that alone makes it suspicious.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: Then they get close to the rocky stars that like,
Speaker 2: are they an idiot or is this like a criminal
Speaker 2: And they're like, it's definitely criminals because they also I
Speaker 2: forgot to mention Hurricane four winds. Oh god, yeah, like
Speaker 2: this pushing the boat around like a child's toy. Right,
Speaker 2: So the drug smugglers are fighting against the sea, fighting
Speaker 2: against the winds, trying to deliver their load to shore.
Speaker 2: They've got eighty bales of pot loaded onto two zodiac
Speaker 2: style boats. That's what they meant. That's the progress they
Speaker 2: managed before things go afoul. The ropes tying the boats
Speaker 2: to the fishing trawler they give way in the storm.
Speaker 2: The sea's iron froth takes the boats, flips them. The
Speaker 2: heavily overloaded with pot, right, so it's easy to flip,
Speaker 2: yea flip. Now they've got eighty bales of pot sprinkle
Speaker 2: into the ocean. Oh that's just it's like rubber duckies,
Speaker 2: just imagine. Anyway, So along with all this snoop spinach,
Speaker 2: the spugglers also watched a couple of them overseas, right,
Speaker 2: So now we got people in the water so the
Speaker 2: police are like, oh, crime, I need do we need
Speaker 2: to save them, but we're under cover. We can't go
Speaker 2: and save them. It'll blow our cover, right, So they're
Speaker 2: trying to decide what they should do. They decide, we
Speaker 2: got to reveal our investigations. So the cops watching this beach,
Speaker 2: they rush out. They decide to do the right thing.
Speaker 2: Dci Ron Davies, he was on a twelve hour shift
Speaker 2: out there in the cold and the wet and the
Speaker 2: dark of that night. He remembers the decision that they
Speaker 2: tried to make about should we save the drug smugglers
Speaker 2: or not? And I quote when the Dinghies broke free,
Speaker 2: we had to break cover and rescue the gang members
Speaker 2: that were in the sea. When rescued, both were in
Speaker 2: a poor condition and there's no doubt in my mind
Speaker 2: that they were left to drown. The crew of the
Speaker 2: boat made no attempt whatsoever to rescue them. They were
Speaker 2: regarded as being expendable. Yeah, so the police were like,
Speaker 2: we can't have that, all right, let's go save the underlings.
Speaker 2: Who wants to grab some henchmen? So they go out
Speaker 2: there and then a couple other beachcombing cops they grab
Speaker 2: a couple of guys who get washed ashore. All in all,
Speaker 2: the cops now they also try to run and gun
Speaker 2: and grab the actual boat. Maybe we can catch the minnow.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: Also, they go racing off to London because they've been
Speaker 2: told by the guys they capture some names. So the
Speaker 2: cops just start scattering trying to take these leads and
Speaker 2: do whatever they can.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: So, as I told you, the minnow is starting to
Speaker 2: get away as the cops are headed to London to
Speaker 2: grab people who are in homes who don't know what's
Speaker 2: gonna happen. Because they don't have cell phones, they can't
Speaker 2: be warned. Right. They also have to call to the RAF.
Speaker 2: They're like, launch a helicopter. Yeah. The refs like, oh blimey,
Speaker 2: let's do it, right, So they send out helicopter to
Speaker 2: chase this fishing trawler, the minnow.
Speaker 3: The minnow wasn't that the Gilligan's Island?
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a French one because it ends in
Speaker 2: a year, Yes, exactly. They launch a sea king helicopter.
Speaker 2: It's a big helicopter, doesn't matter, and so yeah, imagine a.
Speaker 3: Big long day in the visual.
Speaker 2: So it's given chase, right, The fishing trawler. Imagine like
Speaker 2: a big seventy five foot like a boat you t
Speaker 2: off the coast of Alaska, right, okay, okay, So that
Speaker 2: thing's just hauland as fast as it can, but it
Speaker 2: can't go that fast. But it manages to slip away
Speaker 2: in the night because it's that foggy and dark the
Speaker 2: helicopter cannot. Finally, weather's absolutely terrible. It does manage to
Speaker 2: get spotted the next day at Cork Harbor in Ireland,
Speaker 2: so power over, it went that way, okay, exactly. So
Speaker 2: the same night though, Robin Boswell doesn't know any of
Speaker 2: this is going down, and so he gets arrested when
Speaker 2: he when he does see cops coming for him, he
Speaker 2: tries to make a run for it, or so it seems,
Speaker 2: because two young boys and their mother spotted him and
Speaker 2: they phoned the police. So he's like out in the town,
Speaker 2: like walking along. The cops a catch up to him easily.
Speaker 3: See. I'm like a mind where everyone should just mind
Speaker 3: their own business, except for you know, their times when
Speaker 3: under discretion you realize, no, I can't mind my own business.
Speaker 2: Well you just you keep saying it your own business.
Speaker 2: This town is their business business. There you go. So
Speaker 2: they're minding their own anyway, DCI Evans. He recalled how, quote,
Speaker 2: Robin Boswell was arrested, a man who gave us seventeen
Speaker 2: false names and addresses. He was a mystery man and
Speaker 2: clearly not up to any good. It transpired after arresting
Speaker 2: Boswell that he wasn't going to tell us anything. So
Speaker 2: these poor cops, they're up against her, right. So, of course,
Speaker 2: to a veteran cop like DCI Evans, this is no
Speaker 2: real big surprise. But he was kind of hoping maybe
Speaker 2: they'd be you know, forthright.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: However, as he put it later on, but what was
Speaker 2: unique he was wearing walking boots with specs of fiberglass resin.
Speaker 2: So now boom, they've connected ron CSI Yeah, exactly. Oops,
Speaker 2: the fibers gave me away. As d c I Evans
Speaker 2: puts it, quote, we thought that's what we needed to
Speaker 2: link him to the bunker at the cave. Right, So
Speaker 2: now they've got d c I Evans. Now, however, he
Speaker 2: was still denying Boswell, still denying that he was the
Speaker 2: man they were looking for, so instead he insisted he
Speaker 2: was an innocent property developer who happened to be out
Speaker 2: on a walk looking for new investments on a rainy, stormy.
Speaker 3: Night, because you want to see it under its worst
Speaker 3: condition exactly.
Speaker 2: I want to see if there's any rain damage that's
Speaker 2: happening right now. So the cops were like, that's a
Speaker 2: cute story. You have any others. So his co conspirator, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: the rubber face man, what's up with him? He's still
Speaker 2: on the run right soon, Well, let's take a little
Speaker 2: break and after that I'll tell you about sorenberg on
Speaker 2: bach Ak, our master of disguise, Elizabeth. Yes, Saren, we're back. Hi.
Speaker 2: I promised you a manhunt. Yes you did. Yeah, you're
Speaker 2: ready to get stupid? Where? Yes? Where is the rubber
Speaker 2: face man? Okay, are you really really ready? Ready?
Speaker 3: I'm ready ready.
Speaker 2: No, if you're that ready, I'd like you to close
Speaker 2: your up a clue. I'd like you to picture it. Ike, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: you are a body an English copper Johnny Law and
Speaker 2: the Land of Lords and Ladies. You're a member of
Speaker 2: the Flying Squad. Oh my god, ess DC I Dutton
Speaker 2: to investigate as part of a multi agency task forse
Speaker 2: the Flying Squad send out their best, which is you.
Speaker 2: At the moment, you're near the Welsh coastal town of Fishguard.
Speaker 2: It's a brisk night, A stiff wind chops at the
Speaker 2: waves and blows a cold, wet breeze on shore. A
Speaker 2: storm is a bruin. You can tell you're a good
Speaker 2: detective now. In Welsh the town is called Abergwan, which
Speaker 2: means the mouth of the River Gwan. It's a tiny hamlet,
Speaker 2: a fishing village situation in a deep v in the
Speaker 2: hills that runs down to the coast. There's not much
Speaker 2: to this town. Their main business district is called High Street.
Speaker 2: There's a parish church and that's about it. There are
Speaker 2: thirty two hundred souls that call Fishguard home. You've learned
Speaker 2: from the locals that there was a nineteen fifty five
Speaker 2: film version of Moby Dick' darring Gregory Peck that was
Speaker 2: shot in Fishguard. Huh right, the lo cow. It's idyllic
Speaker 2: if you want to imitate New England or you know,
Speaker 2: show the reality of the rough and royal coast of Wales. Anyway,
Speaker 2: a manhunt is under way. You are a crack member
Speaker 2: of the Flying Squad, sent out here, as I told you,
Speaker 2: from London, and you always find you're a man You're
Speaker 2: like Tommy Lee Jones and the Fugitive, only you have
Speaker 2: an English accent, and unlike mister Tommy Lee Jones, you
Speaker 2: do care. Your police radio crackles and sounds. A pair
Speaker 2: of bobbies has spotted a man with a rocksack heading
Speaker 2: out of town. You huff it. You run, your feet
Speaker 2: slap at cobblestones as you race against the wind, which
Speaker 2: is now growing quite lusty. Then you see something, or
Speaker 2: rather someone, walking along a fence. You spy the stranger
Speaker 2: with the rocksack. You call out to them. You there stop.
Speaker 2: The stranger is the rubber face man, Sorenberg on a bach.
Speaker 2: He looks back, takes one good eye full of you,
Speaker 2: and then turns and sprints in the other direction. Berg
Speaker 2: Armbach is in good shape for a middle aged drug smuggler.
Speaker 2: He tosses his rucksack, hops a low fence and sprints
Speaker 2: across the fields. You radio in his position and his
Speaker 2: direction of escape. Then you hop the low fence, splash
Speaker 2: down in a mess of fresh mud. You regain your
Speaker 2: footing and chase after the rubber face man. He's running
Speaker 2: at full speed. He approaches the edge of the farmer's field.
Speaker 2: There's a line of hedges. Standing low and squat like
Speaker 2: a thick leafy fence. The rubber face man heads for
Speaker 2: the hedges. When he draws closer, he spies the barbed
Speaker 2: wire fence that runs along the hedges. At full stride,
Speaker 2: the rubber face Man leaps up and over the hedgerow
Speaker 2: and the barbed wire fence. You are also at full pace,
Speaker 2: charging after him. The rubber face Man disappears over the hedges.
Speaker 2: You lose sight of him in a moment. You're at
Speaker 2: the hedges. You pull up, though uncertain if you want
Speaker 2: to go leaping into the unknown. You look over the
Speaker 2: hedges and thank god you did. You spy on the
Speaker 2: other side a sheer drop seventy feet straight down into
Speaker 2: a quarry.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Then you hear some dirt and soil ship pebbles come loose.
Speaker 2: That's followed but grunts and the sound of a man
Speaker 2: desperate not to die hill. He shouts. You look over,
Speaker 2: and you spy the rubber face man hanging there off
Speaker 2: the side of the cliff, clutching at a thick exposed
Speaker 2: tree root. The cliff face runs below him. You tell
Speaker 2: them to stay calm and you'll radio back to the
Speaker 2: other coppers and the man hunt. You tell them where
Speaker 2: you are and who you've got trap Hanging above the quarry.
Speaker 2: The tree root is strong, but not strong enough. As
Speaker 2: you direct the cops to the bottom of the quarry,
Speaker 2: you hear the snap. Your head spins fast, and you
Speaker 2: catch sight of the rubber face Man as he falls
Speaker 2: and plummets into the quarry. Luckily for him, he hits
Speaker 2: the sloping cliff face and he bounces and rolls harmlessly
Speaker 2: down the quarry wall until he comes to a rest
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the old quarry. Waiting officers rush
Speaker 2: over and arrest him. Nice work, DCI Dutt't hey, once again,
Speaker 2: you got your man. DCI Pickles would be so proud. Yes,
Speaker 2: now this arrest ends sorenberg Arnbox eleven year run as
Speaker 2: a wanted man.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: After the cops, yeah, nabbed old rubber face Man. They
Speaker 2: search his backpack, or as the British press would call it,
Speaker 2: a rucksack, and they I have to admit, that's a
Speaker 2: much more fun word, rucksack. I'm like, I want to
Speaker 2: call it. I don't want to be pretentious. Americans were like,
Speaker 2: who are you trying to be? Burnette feel like I'm
Speaker 2: being me. It's rucksack like the Germans taught it to me.
Speaker 2: Is that cooler anyway? So the cops they go tearing
Speaker 2: through dude's rucksack and they open up and they find
Speaker 2: a short band radio. The cops were like, oh, this
Speaker 2: looks like fun. You want to see if it works.
Speaker 2: Come on, Nigel, and they go on up and they
Speaker 2: climb to the highest hill in the area and they
Speaker 2: set up the short band radio. They flip it on,
Speaker 2: they listen, nothing, They listen some more more nothing. They
Speaker 2: keep listening though, because they're British, and finally, after a
Speaker 2: few hours of plucky determination, the radio does indeed crackle
Speaker 2: to life. Back to DCI Evans, the radio equipment came
Speaker 2: to life in the words mother, mother, I want to
Speaker 2: come in and to get the dirt off my hands
Speaker 2: were heard. That communication was enough. We knew there was
Speaker 2: a vessel out in the bay wanting to come in
Speaker 2: and to get rid of the drugs that were on board.
Speaker 2: So now the cops they searched the horizon of the seat.
Speaker 2: There's a boat out there. Yeah, So they're like they're
Speaker 2: scanning it like like someone walking the Widow's walk.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, if you're like, I'm sorry, but if you're
Speaker 3: the if you're going to come up with code, the
Speaker 3: kid is like, mother, but like no, like you're not
Speaker 3: going to listen to a radio and hear that. You
Speaker 3: have to say something like, you know, I got like,
Speaker 3: however much fish, all this mackerel whatever, fresh load of
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know, speak the language of the people.
Speaker 2: Mother. I want to come in, get the dirt off
Speaker 2: my hands.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's what kids radio their moms all the time,
Speaker 3: Crackley radio. She's all come in over like a.
Speaker 2: Whiskey soak voice to come in. So dark and stormy
Speaker 2: and foggy as that night was and where they were,
Speaker 2: they could not see the boat on the horizon right now,
Speaker 2: Quincy deadly. Not long after this one thousand pounds of
Speaker 2: primo Lebanese hash washed up on the sandy beaches of Scandinavia.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so interesting, all the currents that would take
Speaker 3: right Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Thought you'd dig that. So the cops assumed that the
Speaker 2: smugglers must have just dumped their load of a gold
Speaker 2: hash at sea. Now that they had their two masterminds
Speaker 2: and their mini underlings and associates the local police, they
Speaker 2: follow the threads of this network, right, they go, this
Speaker 2: has got to go lots of places. The connection they
Speaker 2: spanned from this tiny Welsh like fishing village, they connect
Speaker 2: to London, then over to France, to Denmark, to Spain.
Speaker 2: They start going around the international real quick, right. As
Speaker 2: one local detective put it, it was a coup for
Speaker 2: the smallest police force in the country to take on
Speaker 2: the biggest drug gang at the time.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So Operation Seal Bay phenomenal success. Waiting go guys, good
Speaker 2: for them. Now, as the cops chase leads, they also
Speaker 2: followed the money trail, right, and this led them back
Speaker 2: to the Isle of Man And I remember how I
Speaker 2: told you Boswell walked into that bank with the two suitcases. Correct,
Speaker 2: Remember how memorable that was? Yes, it was for the
Speaker 2: p at the bank too, imagine. So they went to
Speaker 2: the bank staff and DCI Evans is like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 2: so you guys have anything strange you want to tell
Speaker 2: us about. We've been following bank records and they all
Speaker 2: lead to your bank. And as he put it, quote,
Speaker 2: we asked the bank manager why he didn't think of
Speaker 2: reporting it to the authorities, and his face reddened and
Speaker 2: he said, mister Evans, it's not unusual for people to
Speaker 2: come in carrying a shopping bag with fifty pounds in cash.
Speaker 3: Oh, then i'm the cops. I'm like, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: set up shop out here, right, it's happening.
Speaker 2: Well, Nigel, you're staying here. Eventually, the cops they get
Speaker 2: all their charges in order. Boswell gets charged with conspiring
Speaker 2: to import large quantities of Class B drugs. During his
Speaker 2: arrest period, police kept finding heidi holes of cash. While
Speaker 2: they were going through all the stuff. They found money
Speaker 2: buried under gardens and drugs hidden in smaller underground chambers.
Speaker 2: They also seized lots of his cars. They grabbed a
Speaker 2: rolls Royce, a ranger over, a Ferrari, his wife's portia,
Speaker 2: his cars, his boats for that matter as well. They
Speaker 2: often had hidden smuggler compartments. Right, So this was all
Speaker 2: brought up during his lengthy trial in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 2: and Boswell he had a ready answer for him, like,
Speaker 2: I know this looks suspicious, guys, but let me explain,
Speaker 2: And he said, and I quote, Look, I'm a wealthy Englishman,
Speaker 2: so of course I'm also a bit of an eccentric.
Speaker 2: The reason why my boats and cars all have smuggler
Speaker 2: compartments is I was trying to hide Nazi gold. Wait, what,
Speaker 2: that's not a direct quote. I made that up. Oh
Speaker 2: that was his plan. He went in and he said,
Speaker 2: basically went in doubt, Elizabeth. If you're a certain age
Speaker 2: of England, you're like, oh, it's muddy the waters with
Speaker 2: some Nazi gold. People will believe it. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like we have in the in California, like Spanish gold.
Speaker 2: So they have Nazi goldis everywhere on this coast and
Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh yeah, I totally get that. Boswell. He
Speaker 2: claimed that he'd hired all these men and dug all
Speaker 2: these holes and built the secret chamber and had ships
Speaker 2: offloading trial runs for when he finally found the gold.
Speaker 2: He was searching for unsunk in Nazi U boats from
Speaker 2: World War Two, right, and you see old chap. But
Speaker 2: the reason I kept to so hush hush it because
Speaker 2: the notts a gold player may not have been legal
Speaker 2: to scavenge. Come on, obviously, you know it's all been
Speaker 2: a terrible misunderstanding drugs. Now, the judge and jury in
Speaker 2: the Crown Court, they listened to his side of the story,
Speaker 2: and then they unanimously decided to not listen to a
Speaker 2: single word he was saying. All right, the judge, mister
Speaker 2: Justice Mars Jones, can I pause for a second to say, hot, damn,
Speaker 2: that's the name and a half, mister Justice Mars Jones.
Speaker 2: Mars Mars like as in the planet mister just me.
Speaker 2: He sounds like he's a black man and he's got
Speaker 2: like one of those white wigs on, mister Justice Boss Jones. Now, okay,
Speaker 2: back to it. Justice Mars Jones ruled in almost record
Speaker 2: speed guilty. Then he told Boswell, you also have lots
Speaker 2: of money, of which I have no general power to
Speaker 2: deprive you. Only wish I could, now, my man, mister
Speaker 2: Justice Males Jones, he sentenced the ring leader Boswell to
Speaker 2: ten years in prison. Oh he was thirty seven at
Speaker 2: the time, gonna miss out on some of the best
Speaker 2: years of his life. Now was co ring leader, the
Speaker 2: man on the run, the rubber faced man aka sorenberg Arnbach.
Speaker 2: He gets jailed to eight years. Okay, yep, finally caught
Speaker 2: Boom and now Boswell, of course, being a true old
Speaker 2: money britt, what does he do. He appeals the rule,
Speaker 2: expecting it to go his way, always gets his way.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth of course, after his appeals court trial, the court determined, quote,
Speaker 2: the mind boggles at what might have been happening in
Speaker 2: that lonely places the months and years rolled by if
Speaker 2: this conspiracy had not been uncovered. So they basically has
Speaker 2: the original prosecution stated, and I quote, these greedy schemes
Speaker 2: were brought to light because of the neighborliness or nosiness
Speaker 2: of local people, the interest and curiosity shown by decent people. Yes,
Speaker 2: aka your people, Elizabeth, Yes, nosy lobstermen and fishermen and
Speaker 2: farmers daughters. Yes, So there you go, Elizabeth. What is
Speaker 2: your ridiculous takeaway from this tale?
Speaker 3: My ridiculous takeaway is, if you are going to smuggle
Speaker 3: something out of Lebanon, it should be white gold. And
Speaker 3: by that I mean tomb.
Speaker 2: Could you imagine garlic spread?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like how much beauty be sharing in the world.
Speaker 3: Of course, Lebanese tombs.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's technically illegal, No, but you know,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: Really need to smuggle it with all sorts of exercise
Speaker 3: taxes and who knows, and you know whatever. That's my
Speaker 3: ridiculous takeaways there, And what is your ridiculous Are.
Speaker 2: You feeling all right? Yeah? Okay to give me a second.
Speaker 2: It feels really nice. Feel heard if you listened to
Speaker 2: hang my ridiculous take away, Elizabeth, the rubber Face man
Speaker 2: really disappointed me because he's got this great name. You
Speaker 2: think he's gonna do stuff, and all he does is
Speaker 2: just nothing. He's like, got I got a plan. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna hide out my buddy, and my buddy's gonna rubber face.
Speaker 2: Come on, rubber face man, when you try to get away,
Speaker 2: you just try to walk out of town.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's just like he's a disappointment.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm a developer. Yeah that's a ticket mother. Okay, So
Speaker 2: I got a question for you. Yeah, you have in
Speaker 2: the mood for a talk back? Yes, Producer Dave hit it.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: I w.
Speaker 7: Hi Elizabeth and Zarin. My name is Rachel. I'm from
Speaker 7: Fort Worth, Texas. I love your podcast. I think y'all
Speaker 7: have such a great report together. You're so funny, Elizabeth.
Speaker 7: I found a mash up today while I was walking
Speaker 7: in Target. It's Native Times Girl Scout cookies. Do you
Speaker 7: order it body wash, shampoo, et cetera? That smells like
Speaker 7: Girl Scout cookies? I found it highly ridiculous.
Speaker 6: I love it.
Speaker 3: If you feature it. Bye girl, I'm gonna let you
Speaker 3: do it per gross.
Speaker 2: There you go. That's how I feel.
Speaker 3: Every time to be on the receiving.
Speaker 2: You're just like, why is that pile of mess in
Speaker 2: my lab?
Speaker 3: I like to be the mischief maker, the mischief taker.
Speaker 2: There you go. Girls just too sweet.
Speaker 3: I don't like sweet scents like that.
Speaker 2: No, I want to smell like butter.
Speaker 3: I want to smell like an angel's sneeze.
Speaker 2: Well you can find us smelling sweet like angel sneeze
Speaker 2: is online always a Ridiculous Crime on Twitter, Instagram and
Speaker 2: all the other socials. Maybe who knows. Good luck trying
Speaker 2: to find us. We have a website though. You can
Speaker 2: find us at ridiculous Crime dot com. Go there, hit
Speaker 2: it up. We got all sorts of little tricks and
Speaker 2: treats for you. Also, as you can tell, we love
Speaker 2: your talk back, So please go to the iHeart app
Speaker 2: and hit us up there, or you can email us
Speaker 2: if you like, at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: As always, it's dear Elizabeth and then say whatever you want.
Speaker 2: Once again, thanks for listening and we'll catch you in
Speaker 2: next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 2: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by the vegan Leatherface Man
Speaker 2: Dave Kuston. Research is by Marissa the Drug Baroness Brown
Speaker 2: and Andrea the Pirate Queen of the Smugglers. Song Sharpened
Speaker 2: Tear our theme song is by Thomas Shortman Radio Lee
Speaker 2: and Travis Cbe Radio Dutton. The host wardrobe provided by
Speaker 2: Botany five Hundred. Executive producers are Ben the Welsh Beachcomber
Speaker 2: Boldlin and Noel notting Hill is a Good movie.
Speaker 4: Brown, Ridicous Crime, Say It One More Timequeous Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
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