Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio zero.
Speaker 2: Hey what's up? Hi? Smile making my day brighter?
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I'm making my day brighter too. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm all about me. Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Girl? Do I judge in Colorado determined that elephants are
Speaker 2: not people? No? Yeah, they did, like a whole rational
Speaker 2: thing all by themselves. They're like, wait, let me feel
Speaker 2: this around. Not a person, not a person. Still, not
Speaker 2: a person, keep going No. So it was actually a
Speaker 2: much more serious thing than that. There was these five elephants,
Speaker 2: African elephants stuck in Colorado, Missy Kimba, Lulu, Jambo and
Speaker 2: Lucky right. Yeah, and they were at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and rough apparently rough business a bunch of animal rights activists.
Speaker 2: They took the zoo to court and they cited a
Speaker 2: legal process one you probably know better than I habeas
Speaker 2: corpus Latin for have the body. They're like, you know,
Speaker 2: and they were basically protesting. They wanted to challenge the
Speaker 2: detention in court, yeah, you know. And they wanted to
Speaker 2: move the elephants to a sanctuary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because an African elephant probably shouldn't be in rockies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally in the rockies, all of that in the
Speaker 2: how do we even say in the zoo? Like I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of I'm a big believer because elephants they
Speaker 2: experienced menopause, you know, like, what is it? Toothed whales,
Speaker 2: killer whales, chimpanzees, elephants And if you do that, I
Speaker 2: think if you experienced menopause, you should not have to
Speaker 2: be in a zoo. It's a sign of intelligence. It's
Speaker 2: not a physical I'm saying, is it's a way. That's
Speaker 2: the whole idea of the theory, is that if you
Speaker 2: impart all that, sure, you know.
Speaker 3: So I just believe in let wild be wild?
Speaker 2: Oh well, definitely definitely phrase. So my point is is
Speaker 2: that the State Supreme Court Justice Marie and Birkin counter
Speaker 2: She ruled that it bears noting that the narrow legal
Speaker 2: question before this court does not turn on her regard
Speaker 2: for the three majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically,
Speaker 2: but rather it comes down to quote, whether an elephant
Speaker 2: is a person, which clearly they are not. So they
Speaker 2: cannot run their thing, which is I mean, it has worked,
Speaker 2: it is a legal thing the Colombia. Down in Columbia,
Speaker 2: cocaine hippos. They tried to run that saying that they
Speaker 2: were people so they could have rights, not to be euthanized,
Speaker 2: sterilized and all that. And they try to make rivers
Speaker 2: people down in Australia. We can't even make elephants people.
Speaker 2: When are we going to get civilized in this country?
Speaker 3: Why can't we deputize the orcas get.
Speaker 2: Them to free us? There you go, isn't that ridiculous?
Speaker 3: This is ridiculous? So do you want to know what
Speaker 3: else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I was praying you got something good.
Speaker 3: For me protesting via plane?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: Yes, this is ridiculous. Crime A podcast about absurd and
Speaker 3: outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent
Speaker 3: murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I know you don't heard that.
Speaker 3: So world's a little rough right now.
Speaker 2: Kind of rocky and Sandy.
Speaker 3: It's uncertain a little stressful for me. And I'm sure
Speaker 3: there are people out there who are loving it and okay,
Speaker 3: you know whatever, But you know, for me, I don't
Speaker 3: handle stress.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: I'm a low key person. I like calm yes, I
Speaker 3: like cozy.
Speaker 2: You don't like disturbances like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, you like action and getting wild right all right? Chaos, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you do like chaos, And when it comes to making
Speaker 3: a statement, I like to manipulate from behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Totally, totally all chas. I don't want to be like, hey,
Speaker 2: I root for anything of like destructive. I don't mean that.
Speaker 3: I'm an agent of chaos.
Speaker 2: So I like watching you work, which.
Speaker 3: Which is manipulate behind this scenes to cause chaos for others.
Speaker 2: Totally entertainment. I love.
Speaker 3: That's my specialty, gentle manipulation. But that's the time when
Speaker 3: it beens like.
Speaker 2: At a waffle bar in an embassy suit. Yes exactly.
Speaker 3: I like the mostly gentle manipulation for the benefit of others,
Speaker 3: benefit of all.
Speaker 2: You have a good heart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I try not to do it.
Speaker 2: For my spread. You're chaos.
Speaker 3: I'm a team player. I would imagine that you like loud,
Speaker 3: upfront statements, big gestures.
Speaker 2: Oh not necessarily. I like well made They can be succinct,
Speaker 2: they can be even a hand gesture, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. I just like something that's effective and efficient.
Speaker 3: It can't be mistaken.
Speaker 2: Like I want to be clear I want the intention
Speaker 2: and the message to be clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're also someone who does nothing for your
Speaker 3: own gain. You always do stuff for others. I've noticed that,
Speaker 3: hats off. It's unusual. A lot of people are self serving,
Speaker 3: and that's when statements become stunts.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, pelicity stunts, yeah.
Speaker 3: And selfish. This that impacts others. So you see where
Speaker 3: I'm going with this. I you see, I want to
Speaker 3: tell you about a guy who's loud and brash and
Speaker 3: crafty and crooked and stay with me. Stop stop giving
Speaker 3: me the cut hand signal. He was often called Zany
Speaker 3: in the press. He was part Emeric, part Tommy fits See.
Speaker 3: I pulled it up before crashing. Tree Top Flyer song
Speaker 3: by Stephen Still, I've mentioned it before. I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that song total.
Speaker 3: That's how I described like just barely making a deadline
Speaker 3: or getting something to fall in place.
Speaker 2: Every time you say that to me, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: you tree top flyer. It gives me this soul delight.
Speaker 3: Tree top flying. This dude I want to talk to
Speaker 3: you about is also a tree top flyer. So not
Speaker 3: in the sense of like a Vietnam vet who flew
Speaker 3: planes full of drugs. Out of the jungle.
Speaker 2: Not that kind.
Speaker 3: No, not a literal. He's more of a building top flyer.
Speaker 3: We'll get into that later. So who is this Zaney fellow?
Speaker 2: Who Elizabeth? Is this Zaney fellow?
Speaker 3: I can answer that. His name Robert Boden.
Speaker 2: I don't know his name.
Speaker 3: And the thing is like, if he were using it
Speaker 3: in the French, it would be Bodon, but it's Boden.
Speaker 2: Baud i m B A U D. Night.
Speaker 3: Some called him the flying Forger.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get into that. Yes, so he's from New Jersey,
Speaker 3: was born in nineteen eighteen. Yeah, exactly. His dad was
Speaker 3: a French professor at NYU. Okay, but not like the
Speaker 3: rich professor of movies and TV shows, like he was
Speaker 3: like a real professor.
Speaker 2: Living elbow style.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so you know, I like to set the
Speaker 3: stage there and give you a sense of the bands.
Speaker 3: Nineteen eighteen East Orange, New Jersey.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, is that the East Egg West Egg from
Speaker 2: Fitzgerald East Orange and West Orange is a parallel? No, okay,
Speaker 2: it's different.
Speaker 3: This is New Jersey.
Speaker 2: That's long Island, I know, but I mean I just
Speaker 2: wonder called Guyland.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, like like some of the other bad guys
Speaker 3: we've talked about. He got into criming early, and he
Speaker 3: just he wasn't born into a crime family. It was
Speaker 3: just in him. And so he did have some trauma
Speaker 3: as a young teen. Nothing I want to discuss here,
Speaker 3: but it may have influenced some of his behavior. Who's
Speaker 3: to say, witness or participants either way. As a teen
Speaker 3: he started forging checks and he got really good at it.
Speaker 2: Him.
Speaker 3: What did he do with the money?
Speaker 2: What did he do with the money? Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Good question. He went to brothels.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he was a teen. Yeah, he was with
Speaker 2: fast money.
Speaker 3: He's doing real crime, right, like fake checks, prostitutes and
Speaker 3: and it went from there. He was a thief, con man,
Speaker 3: a teen cons contint he was a continent. So he
Speaker 3: stole from his dad's work a k A N y U.
Speaker 2: Right. So he wasn't like robbing the payroll at the
Speaker 2: construction site. He was robbing in the university whatever.
Speaker 3: I don't know, books, pens, paper chairs, those greade books. No,
Speaker 3: he was a shoplifter to in essence, he had no
Speaker 3: regard for the law.
Speaker 2: It sounds like, I mean, I'm getting that from.
Speaker 3: Him, and that's a weird thing to me, as someone
Speaker 3: who's pretty low regard for the law, like I'm law
Speaker 3: abiding to a fault, like you believe in the real.
Speaker 2: Meaning of it, which is, if we do this, we
Speaker 2: can all live together.
Speaker 3: Well, right, exactly, Like I can't fathom flouting the law
Speaker 3: and just moving through the world with no fear of
Speaker 3: repercussions either. I fear repercussions. I don't want to go
Speaker 3: to jail. I don't want to pay a fine. And
Speaker 3: like you were saying, like laws were crafted for.
Speaker 2: A reason initially to me.
Speaker 3: If I break the social fabric, can just ignore the law.
Speaker 3: I'm crapping on the whole operation, not to mention the
Speaker 3: social contract, permanent record.
Speaker 2: I know you worry about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we live in a society and all that. So
Speaker 3: not Robert.
Speaker 2: Bowden, right, no, no, not.
Speaker 3: Bad bodies didn't hair not tethered, you know, to convention
Speaker 3: or when the Great Depression hit, he hit the road.
Speaker 3: He's had enough in New Jersey. He made his way
Speaker 3: west where San Francisco. Oh snap, God bless. So he
Speaker 3: hopped trains to get out here, and then he stole
Speaker 3: and he begged in order to make it out here.
Speaker 3: It was like some sort of crusty punk I could
Speaker 3: see that spare some change.
Speaker 2: He wore crusty punk.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He gets to the city. That's what we call
Speaker 3: it here, the city. And he pulled cons like buying
Speaker 3: cheap paste, jewelry or watches and passing him off is
Speaker 3: the good stuff at a steep price. He even sold
Speaker 3: his body, and not in the blue collar worker.
Speaker 2: Way, oh, the hustler way.
Speaker 3: The hustler he didn't care. It was like, whatever whatever
Speaker 3: it took to make a buck or stay alive, he'd
Speaker 3: do it. So after a while he tried, he joined
Speaker 3: the merchant marine. H he was a merchant Ahoy, merchant mariner.
Speaker 3: So was my great grandpa for a time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good guys, and all.
Speaker 3: These cornerman Bandini Brown he was one.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah Brown.
Speaker 3: David mammontt really, James Garner your man.
Speaker 2: I love James. These are all like the man at throw,
Speaker 2: Denver Pyle, really Uncle Jesse from the Dukes that Have.
Speaker 3: Yes, Sir Jim Thorpe, Oh why god? All American Jenny Cathree,
Speaker 3: what the heck? All the cool I got to get
Speaker 3: into that become a merchant American?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got what's wrong with you?
Speaker 3: So basically, you know they're working on ships transporting domestic
Speaker 3: and an international cargo and passengers, a lot of international waters.
Speaker 2: During peacetime totally.
Speaker 3: And then if war breaks out, they become part of
Speaker 3: the navy and they move personnel and.
Speaker 2: Supplies and yeah, supply line stuff. Remember how like some
Speaker 2: of the smuggling that the Navy needs done but doesn't
Speaker 2: want to have.
Speaker 3: On their exactly so because there's civilians. Remember how I
Speaker 3: told you about Shanghai, Kelly that, Yeah, totally, I love
Speaker 3: that story. San Francisco, fella, he would you know, bunk sailors.
Speaker 2: On the hedge, give us the term Shanghai.
Speaker 3: Ship him off to shang slaver well bowden self Shanghai.
Speaker 2: See did he hit himself in the head. He slipped
Speaker 2: himself on Mickey the head He dropped himself down to shoot.
Speaker 3: San Francisco got too hot for him, and like he's
Speaker 3: criming all over the place, and he was worried that
Speaker 3: it was going to all catch up with him.
Speaker 2: I got you. So he signed on.
Speaker 3: So he set sail for Shanghai.
Speaker 2: Picture him drop himself down the shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, off he goes. And so when he got to Shanghai,
Speaker 3: he joined up with the China Shanghai Constabulary.
Speaker 2: Okay, became a cop over there, the cop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is sometime in the thirties. That meant
Speaker 3: that he was given.
Speaker 2: Some rough characters. They're basically correctional office.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What meant that he was there probably just before
Speaker 3: or during the Japanese invasion. That was nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 3: and so at that time, Shanghai was the world's largest city. Really, yes,
Speaker 3: things got bad there, got the organization, and the city's
Speaker 3: criminal underworld just thrived in that oppression and chaos.
Speaker 2: He really earned its name.
Speaker 3: What happens and so you know what happens when you
Speaker 3: mix Bowden with.
Speaker 2: Crime a spark stars.
Speaker 3: And he's still a cop. So he's running scams and
Speaker 3: he's dealing with shady characters, and just like in San Francisco,
Speaker 3: he knew he had to skid out all because the
Speaker 3: block was getting hottians. Well, I think once more off
Speaker 3: he went. So he went from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
Speaker 2: Oh, so he's like, oh, let me keep the action going.
Speaker 2: Though I like working with these brids too.
Speaker 3: It's working for him. And at the time that he
Speaker 3: was there, the economy wasn't so hot, which means crime,
Speaker 3: so He pulled scams there and then theft and that
Speaker 3: kind of thing, and then got a little too much
Speaker 3: for him. He's thinking, like they're going, they're on to me.
Speaker 3: So then he goes to Rangoon.
Speaker 2: Wow once again, right, that's.
Speaker 3: The yeah, present day yang Gun and Yonmar. So it
Speaker 3: was at the center of the Burmese independence movement and
Speaker 3: the hero and the heroin trick, lots of student protesters
Speaker 3: and so times of tumult, they bring great change and crime,
Speaker 3: and he crimed it up there.
Speaker 2: Do you know he did?
Speaker 3: Do you know who was born in yang Gun?
Speaker 2: My friend Steve, Yeah, Nick Drake.
Speaker 3: Nick Drake really was English singer songwriter Pink Moon and
Speaker 3: all that. His parents met there in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 2: Four the part of the Foreign Office.
Speaker 3: Maybe they were maybe they ran into Bowden while there.
Speaker 2: Who knows, not I not I either.
Speaker 3: So things get hot and Rangoon deep fried. And then
Speaker 3: he went to Delhi and you.
Speaker 2: Know what he did there, Delli knew Delhi, which Dellwi
Speaker 2: just DELI.
Speaker 3: You know what he did there?
Speaker 2: I don't know. He committed Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he committed crimes. So things are getting tense though
Speaker 3: World War twos on ther and he can see it
Speaker 3: bubbling up.
Speaker 2: Where he is in the east, terrible horizon.
Speaker 3: He knew it was time to head home. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: he made his way back to the States, this time
Speaker 3: to Los Angeles, LA. In the early forties.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, he's just going from crime spot to
Speaker 2: crime spot. Mickey Cohen.
Speaker 3: Okay, you got scammers, thievesamers, today, suckers, hustlers, merchant he's
Speaker 3: on American soil. Yes, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 3: we made our way into World War two, there was
Speaker 3: the draft. Yeah, and it had Bowden's name on it.
Speaker 3: He didn't serve how you say, Well, he said he
Speaker 3: was he was too crazy, held insanity. You don't hear
Speaker 3: that much, No, you really don't. Like most people are.
Speaker 2: Like about in Vietnam, Like the real hardcore draft dodgers
Speaker 2: would get like a candy bar and then like inserted
Speaker 2: their body and then go in and plead insanity by
Speaker 2: then eating eating it. Yeah yeah, in the draft room.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, no, I don't know. Maybe he did that.
Speaker 3: So he had to do something nuts.
Speaker 2: Yes, no one did that World War two, that was
Speaker 2: in but he did.
Speaker 3: He's liked, you're too crazy for this, But so he
Speaker 3: has to do something. He learns photography.
Speaker 2: Oh do you have a good eye?
Speaker 3: Crazy as you like learning photography in nineteen forties, La.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, get out of here. All the people
Speaker 2: you'd be working around, Like, imagine who's walking into that
Speaker 2: camera shop man Ray exactly, so.
Speaker 3: About it. He just couldn't learn a trade or a
Speaker 3: craft though he wants. There's always that rascally voice whispering
Speaker 3: in his ear.
Speaker 2: Hell with this steal something, do some crime con down?
Speaker 3: So he did. He did the crack. I feel like
Speaker 3: criminals like him, they're always looking for an angle, So like,
Speaker 3: how can they use a tool or a situation or
Speaker 3: a skill to do bad?
Speaker 2: It's like kind of like how do you leverage values?
Speaker 2: Not even like to use this, it's just like how
Speaker 2: do I what do I gotta do to flick that
Speaker 2: my way?
Speaker 3: And he just couldn't help himself. So towards the end
Speaker 3: of the war he gets into counterfeiting and it's.
Speaker 2: A lot more work than I would expect from it.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of stuff to counterfeit at the time,
Speaker 3: namely ration tickets.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, red and blues.
Speaker 3: And the one that he focused on were the gas tickets.
Speaker 2: Oh that's super smart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm not.
Speaker 2: Sure people are fighting. I listen old radio shows. They
Speaker 2: go nuts on those gas.
Speaker 3: But I don't think people these days understand what the
Speaker 3: rationing was like.
Speaker 2: Oh please, can you explain.
Speaker 3: That community effort to sacrifice for now at that moment,
Speaker 3: in the present, for safety and the greater good down
Speaker 3: the road was just so strong, and this selflessness was incredible.
Speaker 2: Well, they're buying war bonds, they've got their liberty garden,
Speaker 2: and they're willing to deny themselves. Butter melt make.
Speaker 3: A sacrifice for everybody.
Speaker 2: But the boys overseas they can use had to grease
Speaker 2: the tank axle.
Speaker 3: Now I wasn't there, of course, but I heard from
Speaker 3: my grandparents what it was like, and I've read and
Speaker 3: watched an incredible amount about rationing in the bridge. They
Speaker 3: didn't mess around. They had ten years post war.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, because you can hear that Keith Richards
Speaker 2: and Mike talking about that. They're like, oh yeah, like
Speaker 2: I didn't see like good bread Clovest thirteen.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally. In the US, here's what was ration,
Speaker 3: among other things, sugar, coffee, meat, canned fish, cheese, ketchup shoes,
Speaker 3: bobby pins because of the metal, metal, tinfoil, whiskey, chewing gum, nylons.
Speaker 2: They didn't make any cars for two years, yes, cigarettes cars,
Speaker 2: Every charactery was just making bombers or whatever else.
Speaker 3: Of course, then gasolines ration, so you could only get
Speaker 3: a certain amount per week unless you knew Robert Bowden,
Speaker 3: Oh Bobby So like most of those who trafficked in
Speaker 3: black market goods and like phony ration tickets during he
Speaker 3: got bussed. So it was such an affront to those
Speaker 3: fighting to get rid of the Nazis, Like you couldn't
Speaker 3: have luxury, sure, but it meant that fascists would be
Speaker 3: snubbed out. And it was a sacrifice that most were
Speaker 3: willing to make, and it you know, it paid off,
Speaker 3: as smart folks today say, to keep that traditional life
Speaker 3: see Nazi punch a nazis exactly that's what you do.
Speaker 3: So at the tail end of World War Two, Boden
Speaker 3: gets caught, he's charged.
Speaker 2: Oh, when they're trying to get after the war profiteers
Speaker 2: and people like that, there's this anger that.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. Yeah, like you might as well be,
Speaker 3: you know, just.
Speaker 2: Like he's getting thrown in with a much bigger group too,
Speaker 2: so people are really god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's convicted. He sentenced to eight months hard
Speaker 3: labor in a prison. Yeah, well on a farm. He
Speaker 3: break that he used that ruse that got him out
Speaker 3: of the draft and played mentally ill again.
Speaker 2: He goes back to which then they said, check my record.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they sent him to a psychiatric hospital. Honestly, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure which is worse. I think i'd choose backbreaking
Speaker 3: work on the farm. But anyway, let's pause.
Speaker 2: You don't want to keep up the ruse.
Speaker 3: No, let's listen to some ads, uncurated ads, and when
Speaker 3: we get back, we'll continue to follow the misadventures of
Speaker 3: Robert Boden. Yeah, zaren So when we left off, Robert
Speaker 3: Bowden in veteric criminal. He was doing time in a
Speaker 3: mental hospital for printing fake gas ration cards and he
Speaker 3: was only he was only sentenced to eight months, but
Speaker 3: I think they probably needed an empty bed, so he
Speaker 3: was paroled. Let it go. He had a choice. He
Speaker 3: could get out and get a job, or he could
Speaker 3: keep being a criminal.
Speaker 2: So duh. Yeah, he's got a tough decision, as you
Speaker 2: can see.
Speaker 3: So he's out of the clink. He's just a drift.
Speaker 3: He's hanging out in San Francisco, once again doing petty crime.
Speaker 3: One day, he has a meeting with his probation officer,
Speaker 3: and instead of going to said meeting, he headed for
Speaker 3: the docks and it was there that he tossed his
Speaker 3: probation papers into San Francisco Bay and boarded a ship
Speaker 3: bound for Sydney, Australia.
Speaker 2: Hope floats, but not those papers. Australia, Australia, Australia.
Speaker 3: Like I said, nineteen forty eight, Sydney's booming.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Population was growing exponentially thanks to a ton of immigrants,
Speaker 3: mostly Brits and post war baby boom.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: So there were tons of jobs too. It was the
Speaker 3: time to be there, and there he was. Boden was
Speaker 3: so to the public. He's just this yank setting up
Speaker 3: an aerial photography.
Speaker 2: He talks funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he meets and Mary's this really nice country
Speaker 3: girl named Betty, and they moved to a suburb of
Speaker 3: Sydney called Bowmain.
Speaker 2: Betty and Bobby Bowden and Bowmain.
Speaker 3: There it is. He didn't have a camera or a plane,
Speaker 3: but he did have a dream and he figured out
Speaker 3: a way to achieve. Remember, he was trained as a
Speaker 3: photographer and at some point he learned how to fly
Speaker 3: a plane and he used his photographer skills to make
Speaker 3: fake gas ration chips. So the fire was in him.
Speaker 2: Had to move those pieces around differently.
Speaker 3: He discovered a little loopholes what he did. It's illegal
Speaker 3: to print at the time. It's illegal to print your
Speaker 3: own Australian money when you're in Australia.
Speaker 2: I think that's still a rule.
Speaker 3: But back then it wasn't illegal to print American dollars.
Speaker 2: Wait, you could just go nuts. We don't care our money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he tried to make some Australian dollars anyway,
Speaker 3: but the deal that he had for this, the deal
Speaker 3: fell through for the Australian dollars, so he burned almost
Speaker 3: all of it. And he's but he's in this suburban
Speaker 3: house and he sets up shop for his real job,
Speaker 3: not aerial photography, a secret counterfeit printing setup. So he
Speaker 3: ran a printing press in his basement. Sure, and it
Speaker 3: was there that he printed up twenties hundreds, how many
Speaker 3: twenties and hundreds?
Speaker 2: How many twenties hundred of elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Two million dollars, I guess a lot. That's thirty one
Speaker 3: million Australian dollars today, which is almost like nineteen and
Speaker 3: a half million US dollars.
Speaker 2: And that's a lot of bills, I mean, just a
Speaker 2: lot of printing. Yeah, my elbow hurt. Imagine.
Speaker 3: Well, you know he's this hard worker. He hasn't give
Speaker 3: no attention to detail.
Speaker 2: I'll give you that.
Speaker 3: He'd crumple up the bills and he'd soak them in
Speaker 3: watered down glycerine to age them appropriately so that they'd
Speaker 3: be accepted. And he starts out doing this by hand,
Speaker 3: but then he's got so many he had to like
Speaker 3: get a dedicated washing machine to do that.
Speaker 2: We know if he's starting with all like pre made
Speaker 2: bills like a one dollar in printing.
Speaker 3: Because he's the photographer who would take a picture and
Speaker 3: then use that so to.
Speaker 2: Make his plates. And I'm saying what he's printing on
Speaker 2: is he printing on fresh paper? Okay, it's all the idea.
Speaker 2: People use smaller bills like a one or a five
Speaker 2: print much bigger bills.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to guess it's fresh paper because he's aged.
Speaker 2: That's what I was guessing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is what he said. Quote working on the
Speaker 3: tracing material was sheer joy. And since President Jackson's portrait
Speaker 3: seemed the hardest part, I tackled it first. I had
Speaker 3: a little trouble with his nose and eyes. I indulged
Speaker 3: in a few departures from government engraving to bring him
Speaker 3: back to normal.
Speaker 2: So they don't want so much that hawk mean face.
Speaker 3: Wanted to soften it out. He photoshopped him, so he
Speaker 3: moved a small amount of the fake bills in places
Speaker 3: like mom and pop shops or newsstands, drug stores, and
Speaker 3: I guess I think the US dollar was accepted everywhere.
Speaker 3: He pulled in Emeric, those.
Speaker 2: Military guys everywhere, so people are taking back in Germany
Speaker 2: and anywhere that you have like the Marshall Plan guys.
Speaker 2: And we were over in the Australia still.
Speaker 3: So he did like Emeric utener and was moving around
Speaker 3: and not spending it in the same area. Y sart
Speaker 3: and he tried to be like Emeric can be charming,
Speaker 3: but like Emeric was authentically charming. This guy he could
Speaker 3: turn it on, he could do the app was in
Speaker 3: the heart, so that printing press he had sure made
Speaker 3: a lot of noise, and he tried to blare the
Speaker 3: radio to cover it. Up and then his wife asked
Speaker 3: him about it. His neighbors asked, and.
Speaker 2: His wife doesn't know about it.
Speaker 3: Well, he had an answer for him. He was like,
Speaker 3: I'm printing up porn. What I am running a basement
Speaker 3: smut factory. And they were like, oh, okay, carry on. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were fine with that. Now he has all this cash, the.
Speaker 2: Noise makes sense. They're not asking questions after.
Speaker 3: That printing press. Well, that's why he can't. So he's
Speaker 3: got all this cash. It is, but there was more
Speaker 3: to his plan. So he shipped the money to Rome
Speaker 3: and then he made his way there to pick up
Speaker 3: the cargo. So now he's moved all these dollars to Europe.
Speaker 3: So for the yeah, crates of money, he goes to Spain, France,
Speaker 3: he would exchange fake US dollars for local currency dollars
Speaker 3: and high demand you know as the continent rebuilds, and
Speaker 3: then he'd wash the cash by exchanging it back into
Speaker 3: dollars that you know, the change that he gets. He's
Speaker 3: just constantly buying this stuff and getting all this change,
Speaker 3: and he's got too much, Like he doesn't want the
Speaker 3: stuff that he's buying the little things, so he's just dumping.
Speaker 2: Them, not giving it out to like kids.
Speaker 3: Well no, he would leave like a pile of it somewhere.
Speaker 2: But he doesn't come up with an intentionality. But I
Speaker 2: could donate these babbles.
Speaker 3: In it, because then people see him and they have
Speaker 3: an interaction. He just dumps it on the street or
Speaker 3: leaves it in a rented car. So in both Rome
Speaker 3: and Paris he narrowly escaped capture, either by wits or
Speaker 3: good luck. But he wasn't satisfied. Nothing was ever enough.
Speaker 2: I want to get caught.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he needed the adrenaline, right, So he
Speaker 3: leaves Europe.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing feeling getting away with things.
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: I mean, like when you're getting chased and you get away.
Speaker 2: It's there, it is.
Speaker 3: So he leaves Europe, he gets on the Queen Mary,
Speaker 3: goes back to the US. Remember he has a warrant
Speaker 3: out for that parole Violet, and that could send him
Speaker 3: away away, but he didn't care. Off he goes. And so,
Speaker 3: like in Australia and like in Europe, he's passing the
Speaker 3: bills at little places and he's using larger and larger
Speaker 3: bills to buy smaller and smaller stuff. Just got to
Speaker 3: break those bills, clean that cash. And so with the
Speaker 3: change that he gets, just like everywhere else, you know,
Speaker 3: he's he's you know, buying this stuff, ditching it, didn't
Speaker 3: care what happened to it. But all the change is
Speaker 3: adding up to almost two grand a day.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's like brewistered millions his way around, Like I
Speaker 2: got to spend this to make this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he figured if he did this scam for
Speaker 3: one hundred days, he'd never have to work or crime again.
Speaker 2: Score.
Speaker 3: Yeah. All of the cash he collected he put into
Speaker 3: a bank account in New York. He's just stowing it away.
Speaker 3: And it was a lot of legwork for one guy.
Speaker 2: That's a job. He's a jot it full time.
Speaker 3: Also, he recruited an accomplice, a woman named Terry, his
Speaker 3: ex girlfriend.
Speaker 2: And he's on the show. They went all no, he
Speaker 2: had a good thing going. He then he expands.
Speaker 3: He gets greedy it honestly, you'll see, so greedy. They
Speaker 3: go all over the US passing these fake bills, and
Speaker 3: he's meticulous. So they would drop into a place and
Speaker 3: start passing the bills, radiating out from like a randomly
Speaker 3: selected point, and that made it look like whatever the
Speaker 3: randomly selected point was was the counterfeitter's base.
Speaker 2: Sure, Then they leave town.
Speaker 3: Just before the authorities got wind of the phony cash.
Speaker 3: Then the cops are looking for a counterfeiter in town.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't exist. So, you know, they pull this
Speaker 3: all over the place. They're just banking, banking. Then the
Speaker 3: two of them crossed the Atlantic and Bowden found himself
Speaker 3: in Europe once again. So he and Terry they make
Speaker 3: themselves out to be these like wealthy, this wealthy American
Speaker 3: couple on the Grand tour money. Yeah. So and so
Speaker 3: they do that. They pull the same thing over there,
Speaker 3: you know, same scams. Then they come back to the
Speaker 3: US and they found themselves in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: On I thought he just needed tw hundred days he
Speaker 2: could never work again, Okay.
Speaker 3: Like he had. He's like, but I have all this
Speaker 3: leftover counterfeit cat. You. So they're in San Francisco and
Speaker 3: that's where he and Terry got busted for passing fake cat.
Speaker 3: But this wasn't the end, not even close.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: See, the San Francisco cops could be reasoned with. I
Speaker 3: mean they take a breath, Like my great great grandpa
Speaker 3: before them, they were on the take. Yeah, and quote.
Speaker 3: Starting with an offer of two thousand dollars for each officer.
Speaker 3: We entered into a round of haggling that didn't stop
Speaker 3: short of double that figure. The older Copp remark that
Speaker 3: eight thousand dollars for getting out of doing ten years
Speaker 3: was a real bargain. Bowden said, oh hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So slipping away from Johnny Law eight thousand dollars later,
Speaker 3: he heads off to the UK. Terry had ditched him
Speaker 3: to marry some rich lawyer and like, probably pursue her
Speaker 3: own scam.
Speaker 2: She has my read. She's like, he's getting too.
Speaker 3: Big, right, I'm just going undercover now. So Bowden he
Speaker 3: used some of his cash, the real stuff, to buy
Speaker 3: a little plane in the UK, and he wanted to
Speaker 3: get back to Australia and actually open an aerial photography
Speaker 3: business dag nab it.
Speaker 2: He planned to fly from like this, hopscotching his way
Speaker 2: to Australia. Yeah, oh god, it's so jealous. What a
Speaker 2: trip that would be.
Speaker 3: So he got the plane. He picks up two passengers
Speaker 3: who are going to go with They're totally unaware that
Speaker 3: there's five hundred thousand dollars in fake cash hidden on
Speaker 3: the plane.
Speaker 2: There his cover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then he starts the journey. They're hopping their
Speaker 3: way across the East to Australia. In Singapore, he managed
Speaker 3: to crash the plane.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: So he survived. The passengers survive, but a lot of
Speaker 3: his money faker otherwise didn't. Oh, and so the crash
Speaker 3: was this big deal in Singapore's all over the papers.
Speaker 2: Spread money across the ground or to catch fire.
Speaker 3: People didn't see it. And so but all they knew
Speaker 3: is this American dude crash the plane in in the harbor.
Speaker 2: We're in the harbor. He crashed, I guess.
Speaker 3: So everyone wants to know about this mysterious American who
Speaker 3: just like tumbled from the sky, can't fly for He
Speaker 3: gave interviews. He told him all about how he was
Speaker 3: this renowned aerial photographer and his plane was now gone
Speaker 3: and he needed to get back to Australia. He needed
Speaker 3: to raise capital for a new plane. He said his
Speaker 3: business was like crazy successful and anyone who wanted in
Speaker 3: on this incredible opportunity, you could buy shares.
Speaker 2: He's invented Patreon and go thunder all ones.
Speaker 3: And people bought him. People bought the shares, loads of shares.
Speaker 3: So he was able to buy not one, but two planes,
Speaker 3: what with all the money he raised. And I guess
Speaker 3: he had the second one flown back for him. You
Speaker 3: can't do the thing like you do with bikes where
Speaker 3: you hold the handlebars and the empty bike to get
Speaker 3: the extra one.
Speaker 2: You can't do him like on top one.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work, doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Like a big rope. And then dragon the plane can't
Speaker 2: do that either. Planes are so difficult.
Speaker 3: He has all this paper, all these shares printed.
Speaker 2: Up like stocks shares.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he has people's inform me on him, and
Speaker 3: he takes off for Australia. Their hopes and dreams attached
Speaker 3: to the success of his business. Everything in those stock certificates.
Speaker 3: And those are the same stock certificates that he tossed
Speaker 3: out of the window and into the ocean on his
Speaker 3: way home the Pacific.
Speaker 2: YEA like one of those like soda cops when you're
Speaker 2: driving you're like, forget this thing, not you.
Speaker 3: I would never I knew that at so Bowden he
Speaker 3: reaches Australia, things change time for ads. When we come back,
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you what changed. So there's Robert.
Speaker 2: Bowden littering in the Pacific littering.
Speaker 3: His way across. He'd flown a small plane from London
Speaker 3: to Sydney with an unexpected crowds landing in Singapore along
Speaker 3: the way, but he made it to Sydney by golly.
Speaker 3: He built people into investing in an aerial photography business
Speaker 3: that didn't exist, But when he got back to Australia
Speaker 3: he actually did start one. He just didn't cut the
Speaker 3: investors and he ran that business for nine years, no counterfeiting.
Speaker 2: He finally got the job, he won, finally got the job.
Speaker 3: This he did the old one last heist thing and
Speaker 3: actually stuck to it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amazing self control. Like I think maybe he got
Speaker 3: it all.
Speaker 2: Out of his system, finally did.
Speaker 3: Finally, but it wouldn't last. Zaren. Nothing is ever dead
Speaker 3: and gone, especially crime.
Speaker 2: Or that impulse, that little voice.
Speaker 3: Well, one day in nineteen sixty eight, the cops came calling.
Speaker 3: It seems an old accomplice of his had stored a
Speaker 3: bunch of fake cash under his house and the dude's
Speaker 3: adult son found it one day and just went bananas
Speaker 3: with it, like major shopping spree.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I got a ton. It was kind of
Speaker 2: like a large adult son like.
Speaker 3: He's both physically. No, he was.
Speaker 2: I mean, like it's like a full grown man, or
Speaker 2: is it more like like a twenty two year old
Speaker 2: twenty two year old stuff?
Speaker 3: I just I'm gonna imagine he's probably like in his
Speaker 3: early twenties. So he's buying all this stuff. He goes
Speaker 3: on a huge, huge shopping spree. It attracts a ton
Speaker 3: of attention. The guy squeals Bones caught. When the police
Speaker 3: searched bones house, they found two hundred and sixty five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in phony US bills that he'd hung on too.
Speaker 3: They found some of the Remember how he said, I
Speaker 3: said he made the Australian bills but then burned them.
Speaker 3: The ones that didn't burn he hung onto, so they
Speaker 3: found those. He confessed to absolutely everything.
Speaker 2: What's the point now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he gets booked and then he was released on
Speaker 3: bail to await trial, and he was facing twenty years
Speaker 3: behind bars.
Speaker 2: So was his confession just basically yep, yep, yep, yep,
Speaker 2: you got it to do that, yep, that's yours, yep, yep,
Speaker 2: that's yours too, yep.
Speaker 3: So he yeah, he's looking at twenty years. He's out
Speaker 3: on bail. February nineteen sixty nine, comes up with an idea.
Speaker 2: I'm going to become a hippie.
Speaker 3: Call no, He's like, I'm going to stage a protest. Protest, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's and he's going to use his talents to do this.
Speaker 2: What's he protest?
Speaker 3: Well, his sentence charges.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm protesting.
Speaker 3: He's protesting his charges. And so the talent he had
Speaker 3: was flying. So his protest, he was going to fly
Speaker 3: his plane over Sydney and then he told people he
Speaker 3: was going to crash the thing unless the charges against
Speaker 3: him were dropped. Oh.
Speaker 2: I thought he's going to treat some fake money like
Speaker 2: shareholder stops jumping out the windows.
Speaker 3: So like he's buzzing buildings and cruising all lows.
Speaker 2: He's playing chicken with skyscrapers.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, swooping all around. He's like, I'm going to
Speaker 3: fly under Harbor Bridge. They're like, don't do it, don'
Speaker 3: don't do it.
Speaker 2: He does it.
Speaker 3: They're begging him to stop. No, he no, you, but
Speaker 3: you know you can't tell me what to do.
Speaker 2: Actual he's swooping.
Speaker 3: All over the place. He's up there for hour hours
Speaker 3: telling like air traffic control, I'm going to crash this.
Speaker 3: Maybe in the harbor, maybe out at sea.
Speaker 2: I'm going to an opera house. You got shame of
Speaker 2: a plane crashed into it.
Speaker 3: I'm going to end it all, end it all unless
Speaker 3: the charges are dropped. Quote. I figured the masses would
Speaker 3: be sympathetic to someone who was fighting the law in
Speaker 3: the sky above their biggest city, rather than in a courtroom.
Speaker 3: Only crash, Yeah, only if the crash. So the And
Speaker 3: he wrote that in his autobiography Fake The Passing Fortunes
Speaker 3: of a Counterfare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he got his book deal.
Speaker 3: Just you wait. So the crazy stunt brings the city
Speaker 3: to a standstill, and it introduced the city to its
Speaker 3: wildly criminal resident.
Speaker 2: Now everyone, oh yeah, it's like a publicity stunt for
Speaker 2: this guy, right, and since.
Speaker 3: The crimes weren't violent, he became kind of a folk
Speaker 3: hero at that point.
Speaker 2: So they did like him.
Speaker 3: They did like him. Okay, so did he crash? Well no.
Speaker 3: As he flew around this city, Bowden was able to
Speaker 3: get a message to New South Wales Commissioner of Police
Speaker 3: Norm Allen, and he explained his thinking and why the
Speaker 3: charges should be dropped. His fuel's getting low and he
Speaker 3: was like, look, man, I'm running out of gas. Here
Speaker 3: I need an answer. Yeah, suddenly a message comes over
Speaker 3: the radio. Your conditions are agreed to, you can land.
Speaker 3: And he did beat the charges sort of, so they
Speaker 3: showed leniency because he'd been above board for the last
Speaker 3: decade on him, but he got new ones for the
Speaker 3: stunt flight. He gets sentenced to five years for everything.
Speaker 3: Remember it was supposed to be twenty.
Speaker 2: And all right, five but then they.
Speaker 3: Paroled him after fifteen That really was born in nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: in his fifties. Yeah, and so he gets he gets
Speaker 3: paroled after fifteen months. What is absolutely hilarious is that
Speaker 3: he did most of his fifteen months in prison working
Speaker 3: in their print shop.
Speaker 2: He's got a town, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So eight years after maybe.
Speaker 2: A crime to not let him work in the.
Speaker 3: Princeship exactly, he's so good at it. Eight years after
Speaker 3: his flight, he did something else. He released that autobiography,
Speaker 3: another one for the Ridiculous Crime Library Fake The Passing
Speaker 3: Fortunes of a Counterfeiter. So the book is a hit
Speaker 3: in Australia.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think he's a good writer. Just a crazy story.
Speaker 3: It's a crazy story. And then naturally US publishers come calling.
Speaker 3: Harcourt braced Chavanovich. They bought the book and put it
Speaker 3: to market, and like, they made some cuts to it
Speaker 3: and they changed the name. But it sold six thousand
Speaker 3: units and it got pushed to book clubs. But Bone
Speaker 3: was irate.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, those are low numbers for what imagined he was
Speaker 2: really he was imagining.
Speaker 3: That's not what was Megan the mad. Now I have
Speaker 3: to say that, as someone who can't stand the publishing industry,
Speaker 3: he won my heart with this. Every writer I know
Speaker 3: has some complain about publishers totally. The industry is so
Speaker 3: poorly run.
Speaker 2: They're good in worthwhile complaints.
Speaker 3: Right, So, in nineteen seventy nine, in the middle of
Speaker 3: his one sided beef with his publisher, he decided to
Speaker 3: do something he'd done it before. Saron. He got on
Speaker 3: a plane. Who zaren close your eyes, I was wondering,
Speaker 3: I want you to picture it. Yes, it's Tuesday, October ninth,
Speaker 3: in eighteen seventy nine. You are a New York City
Speaker 3: police officer. You're assigned to the aviation unit as you
Speaker 3: are a decorated helicopter pilot, having honed your skills in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: Today is going to be a busy one and you
Speaker 3: are ready see Fidel Castro's in town to speak at
Speaker 3: the UN. Tensions are high. You straighten the tie on
Speaker 3: your uniform and adjust your ball cap. You are unflappable.
Speaker 3: Let everyone else be anxious about this, your stone cold.
Speaker 3: As you and two other pilots sit in an office
Speaker 3: at Floyd Bennett Field in southeast Brooklyn, listening to radio chatter,
Speaker 3: you get a call, get your bird in the air.
Speaker 3: We got us a situation. Two of you dash out
Speaker 3: to your choppers. Immediately you're both up in the air.
Speaker 3: You've been told that there's a plane buzzing UN headquarters.
Speaker 3: Possible terrorist. What with Castro in town and all? You
Speaker 3: head up to midtown Manhattan and take stock of the
Speaker 3: situation and see what can be done. As you approach,
Speaker 3: you see a red and white plane gliding around and around,
Speaker 3: back and forth, up and down around the tall, mirrored
Speaker 3: glass UN building. You look down and see that your
Speaker 3: fellow officers have blocked off First Avenue in East River
Speaker 3: Drive for about seven blocks in front of the UN
Speaker 3: There are ambulances and fire trucks lining the now empty streets,
Speaker 3: and you see the steady stream of people filing out
Speaker 3: of the building evacuating for their safety. You attempt to
Speaker 3: contact the plane on your radio. You expect either silence
Speaker 3: or an angry person barking demands at you. Instead, you
Speaker 3: hear a man's voice crapple to life. He tells you
Speaker 3: he's there to make a statement. Obviously, you think the
Speaker 3: plane banks left to make another turn around the building.
Speaker 3: You follow. He dips down a little too close for
Speaker 3: comfort to the ground. You keep right beside him and
Speaker 3: check your altimeter two hundred and fifty feet. Listen, You
Speaker 3: tell him Castro and the un are covered with security.
Speaker 3: They've already shoveled him away, and there's no use trying
Speaker 3: to get him this way. The man chuckles, Castro. What's
Speaker 3: this got to do with Castro? You're confused. You ask
Speaker 3: him why he's doing this. They took out the raunchy parts,
Speaker 3: he tells you, raunchy parts of what you ask, my book.
Speaker 3: He begins to loop around the building again, with you
Speaker 3: and the other helicopter pilot following on either side of them.
Speaker 3: He tells you that he wrote a book and that
Speaker 3: the publisher cut out the good parts, even changed the
Speaker 3: title to Confessions of a Promiscuous Counterfeitter garbage name. He says,
Speaker 3: and you have to agree with him. He goes on
Speaker 3: to tell you about how Harcourt Brace was stiffing him
Speaker 3: on his royalties, how he wanted to send a message
Speaker 3: and make them take him seriously. You all bank turn again.
Speaker 3: As Boden makes yet another loop, You ask him, why
Speaker 3: is he buzzing the UN?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 3: How does the UN fit into this. I'm not buzzing
Speaker 3: the UN, he tells you. I'm buzzing Hardcourt Brace offices.
Speaker 3: You look down and you realize that they're just a
Speaker 3: couple blocks over from the UN. You sort of remember
Speaker 3: seeing that building once the tower's been listening the whole time.
Speaker 3: They tell you the UN has asked NYPD to take
Speaker 3: quote positive action. You mean shoot him down, you ask,
Speaker 3: I guess that's what they want, But that's not happening.
Speaker 3: You're told debris would rain down on the eight thousand
Speaker 3: people that have been evacuated and wait anxiously along the
Speaker 3: police barricades. You just keep them talking, and you do
Speaker 3: for hours. As Boden's fuel supply starts to get low,
Speaker 3: you get a message. The head of Harcourt Brace, Ryan Dumain,
Speaker 3: has agreed to me with this guy. You tell Bowden,
Speaker 3: and he agrees to land his plane at LaGuardia. You
Speaker 3: tell him you'll be right there with him the whole way.
Speaker 2: Why does this always work?
Speaker 3: It always works. So it really didn't because as soon
Speaker 3: as he landed, he gets arrested. There's no meeting with
Speaker 3: the publishers. Oh yeah, they're just like, yeah, tell me
Speaker 3: if you get down here. So they yank his pilot's
Speaker 3: license on the spot, and they charged him with aggravated harassment,
Speaker 3: which was a New York City charge, and extortion in
Speaker 3: interstate commerce, a federal charge.
Speaker 2: Whep.
Speaker 3: So that federal charge could get him twenty years and
Speaker 3: a ten thousand dollars fine. That's like forty three grand today.
Speaker 3: So the New York Daily News reported that the New
Speaker 3: York Post was in on it with him what like.
Speaker 3: They said that the paper had forget up no because
Speaker 3: like all the other papers though, including the Post, they
Speaker 3: asserted that this audio tape from Bowden had been delivered
Speaker 3: to the Post that morning, right before he got in
Speaker 3: the air. The New York Daily News was like, no,
Speaker 3: he They've had that tape for a week and they're
Speaker 3: the ones who coordinated. They're just telling tales anyway, the
Speaker 3: tape that it was like this wild accusation that just
Speaker 3: suddenly gets ignored. Totally, totally is But so this audio
Speaker 3: tape detailed his grievances and like maybe the Post sat
Speaker 3: on it a bit, but they eventually shared it with authorities. Okay,
Speaker 3: Boden did a night in jail, then he got out
Speaker 3: on bail. The papers were loving this, absolutely loving it.
Speaker 3: Hardcourt Brace was not. They released a statement that said
Speaker 3: that they had recently rejected this like ten page outline
Speaker 3: that he gave them for a murder mystery. And then
Speaker 3: but they said, quote, our relations with mister Bowden have
Speaker 3: been correct and not unpleasant. Okay, yeah, So anyway, Harry Steinberg,
Speaker 3: who he did the book reviews for Newsday, he described
Speaker 3: the autobiography as quote an interesting story, not very well told.
Speaker 3: It was the kind of book you want to for get,
Speaker 3: kind of out you want out. So the painters all
Speaker 3: picked up on the story of his Australian stunt as well,
Speaker 3: and so like the speculation about his punishment was just
Speaker 3: absolutely rampant. They also went out of their way to
Speaker 3: portray him as insane. He's like this zany. They kept
Speaker 3: calling him zany loopy guy. Who pulled idiotic stunts. They
Speaker 3: used these wild pictures of him with like crazy hair.
Speaker 2: Zane. I mean that picture like you know the screwball comedies.
Speaker 2: I imagine like the heroines like you know, Catherine Hepburn
Speaker 2: trying to drive Carrie Grant nuts. That's my picture.
Speaker 3: They're just like this guy's absolutely.
Speaker 2: This guy's threatening people with a plane.
Speaker 3: But the insanity comes up again because the court ordered
Speaker 3: him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Yeah, but that gambit
Speaker 3: that he used in the past and hold he still
Speaker 3: he had to stand trial and a grand jury indicted
Speaker 3: him on February fourth, nineteen eighty, but on March third,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty he was acquitted of all charges by a
Speaker 3: jury acquitted fully acquitted. He passed away in April of
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three, at the age of sixty five, in
Speaker 3: San Diego. I'm not sure why he was in San Diego,
Speaker 3: although he did tell the papers in New York after
Speaker 3: the un incident that he had a house in Australia
Speaker 3: and a house in Cucamonga, California. I'm guessing that's Rancho Cucamua, Yeah,
Speaker 3: right outside of La not San Diego either way, So
Speaker 3: I couldn't find an obituary for him in either the
Speaker 3: US or Australia. I know, and he died because there
Speaker 3: was a notice to creditors in the paper in Australia saying,
Speaker 3: if you're after he died, this guy died on the
Speaker 3: state and if you you know, get in touch if
Speaker 3: he owes you money. So he made this wild name
Speaker 3: for himself in life, but there's not a final tribute
Speaker 3: to him in death, which I just think is fascinating nothing. So, Saren,
Speaker 3: what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: This guy makes so many interesting choices as out of
Speaker 2: the box thinker. But I have to say say that
Speaker 2: playing your your hits again of like, oh I didn't
Speaker 2: get what I want. I'm going back to the skies
Speaker 2: in a plane. I'm gonna make it right.
Speaker 3: It made it kind of right the first time, the first.
Speaker 2: Time it did, But that's not something. Kind of my
Speaker 2: point is that I don't think you can repeat. I
Speaker 2: don't think that lightning strikes twice, you know. So like
Speaker 2: the fact that he thinks that after having such success
Speaker 2: reading people and knowing how to play the moment, it's
Speaker 2: like he just got old and lazy, or he just
Speaker 2: wanted to play one of the old hits and like
Speaker 2: go out with some glory. Remember when I did this
Speaker 2: was Wild is Killed in Sydney.
Speaker 3: I can't even talk about impulse control with him because
Speaker 3: there's a lot of planning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he spends a lot of time thinking about a lot.
Speaker 3: Of time to think, oh maybe not. But he has
Speaker 3: that addiction to the adrenaline them it obviously and.
Speaker 2: The getting away with that, and like you can't tell
Speaker 2: me what to do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly what.
Speaker 2: Yours, Elizabeth? What's your ridiculous take ony?
Speaker 3: My ridiculous takeaway is this is another reason why people
Speaker 3: shouldn't fly small planes.
Speaker 2: No, stop it with that. That is that it's mean
Speaker 2: and unfair to those of us who want to fly
Speaker 2: small planes and are not musicians, so we're not at risk.
Speaker 3: That's true. You know what I need right now?
Speaker 2: What talk bag? Oh?
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, hit me Dave.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, sp.
Speaker 3: I love get.
Speaker 4: A Elizabeth Sarah. Then producer d thanks so much for
Speaker 4: always producing such a great show. I am that person
Speaker 4: who would love to be into true crime because of
Speaker 4: the intrigue and the narrative and the character elements, But
Speaker 4: then I just can't get into it because I don't
Speaker 4: like when dogs and cats get hurt, or people get maimed,
Speaker 4: or other terrible things happen. So you guys hit that
Speaker 4: perfect sweet spot where I can be entertained but still
Speaker 4: fall asleep. Keep up with great work.
Speaker 3: You're very welcome. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Of your people wants to know if the dog or cat.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure the animals turn out okay.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure the people survive.
Speaker 2: You're a good person, so were you.
Speaker 3: We we do that here all the time. Twice a
Speaker 3: week we deliver. I'm so glad that that That's right.
Speaker 3: That's that's all we have for today. You can find
Speaker 3: us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. There is not
Speaker 3: password protected anymore.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, you can get back.
Speaker 3: We're also a ridiculous Crime on Twitter, Instagram, blue Sky, Bluesky,
Speaker 3: Sorry it's yeah. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com and number one. Leave a talk back on
Speaker 3: the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Raunchy
Speaker 3: part Appreciator Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research
Speaker 3: is by Counterfeit Bill ader Marissa Brown and u N
Speaker 3: security expert Alex French. The theme song is by Duped
Speaker 3: Dime store owner Thomas Lee in Australia's number two aerial
Speaker 3: photographer Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany. Five
Speaker 3: hundred guests Haron, makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive
Speaker 3: producers are the Cruising counterfeiter Ben Bolin and Driving Dud
Speaker 3: dollar dealer Noel Brown.
Speaker 2: We dis Clime, say It one More Times.
Speaker 1: Cry Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
Speaker 1: My heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows