Speaker 1: Pushkin. How's it going, doctor Jackie Cohen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, how about this Jacke co win, doctor Jackie co
Speaker 2: When So okay, So, now that I am officially in
Speaker 2: my late fifties, what do you think I could do
Speaker 2: to start improving my health?
Speaker 3: You can build up that little little body of yours.
Speaker 3: Get some meat balls on the spaghetti.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, Oh you're laughing?
Speaker 1: Is that a medical term? Why aren't you doing any weightlifting?
Speaker 1: Because I don't live near a gym.
Speaker 5: You don't have to.
Speaker 1: Like where I just go around the house and I
Speaker 1: like lift a couch or try to pull a toilet
Speaker 1: out or something. Yeah, not from Pushkin Industries. I'm Jonathan
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is Heavyweight today's episode the bank Robber.
Speaker 6: Right after the break, Hello, Hello, how are you hi?
Speaker 7: Good?
Speaker 6: How are you doing really well? Thank you good?
Speaker 1: Are you comfortable?
Speaker 5: I am. Yes.
Speaker 1: The story you're about to hear is from someone who's
Speaker 1: still figuring out how to tell it, or even if
Speaker 1: he should tell it.
Speaker 5: It just seems very crazy and it's it's kind of
Speaker 5: hard for me to talk about it.
Speaker 1: At this point, he's only shared the story with a
Speaker 1: couple of people, and he only agreed to share it
Speaker 1: with me after I promised not to use his real name,
Speaker 1: so we'll call him X. My communication with X began
Speaker 1: with an email he sent me over three years ago.
Speaker 1: It contained a lot of nervous preamble and throat clearing,
Speaker 1: but eventually he came to the point. In nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: he said, I committed an armed bank robbery. I was
Speaker 1: just one month past my fourteenth birthday. X begins this
Speaker 1: story by telling me about his family. He was raised
Speaker 1: on a dairy farm, the son of immigrant parents. He
Speaker 1: was one of seven children, all brothers. X was right
Speaker 1: in the middle, Right in.
Speaker 5: The middle, Yeah, three, older, three, younger. Yeah.
Speaker 1: X's home life wasn't an easy one.
Speaker 5: Well, you would call it abusive today. You know. The bell, tour,
Speaker 5: brunstick or whatever was handy was used as a corrective measure.
Speaker 5: My mom was a little more creative in the implements
Speaker 5: she would use, but it didn't hurt as much as
Speaker 5: one my dad said it.
Speaker 1: To illustrate, X tells me about the night he snuck
Speaker 1: out to the local junior high He noticed an open
Speaker 1: window and broke in. The police caught him and brought
Speaker 1: him home where his parents were waiting.
Speaker 5: They told me to remove all my clothing. So I did,
Speaker 5: minus my underwear, and then I just got like the
Speaker 5: beating of my life with a belt. But I just
Speaker 5: remember it hitting me all over my body. I remember
Speaker 5: it hitting my penis like it was. It was pretty brutal.
Speaker 1: X says there were other nights like that.
Speaker 5: I remember crying and lights are out and my younger
Speaker 5: brother trying to say something to comfort me, and me
Speaker 5: saying something like I hate them and I don't want
Speaker 5: to be here anymore.
Speaker 1: School offered no respite. X was small for his age
Speaker 1: and had a high voice. The bullies took notice.
Speaker 5: When they'd see me in the halls. They'd ask me questions,
Speaker 5: you know, kind of vulgar, like I heard you like
Speaker 5: giving head or something like that, and I didn't even
Speaker 5: know what that meant. Or I remember once they asked me,
Speaker 5: is it true you like to choke the chicken? And
Speaker 5: again I was like what, but I said not really,
Speaker 5: and they really keyed in on that not really, because
Speaker 5: it was like, oh, so you kind of like it.
Speaker 5: My strategy with him was just curl up at a
Speaker 5: ball and hope that they'd leave me alone, and that
Speaker 5: I think made them want to pick on me more.
Speaker 1: Between school and his home life, it felt like there
Speaker 1: was no safe place to be, so X retreated into
Speaker 1: a fantasy world. He'd come home from a day of
Speaker 1: being bullied and lye in bed, playing out scenes in
Speaker 1: which he was the powerful one, the one to be feared.
Speaker 5: As an example, one of these guys makes fun of
Speaker 5: me in class, and I get up and I push
Speaker 5: them down and beat them up, like you know, le
Speaker 5: Stephen Sagal movie or something.
Speaker 1: X found himself drawn to movies like that about tough
Speaker 1: guys and outlaws, young Guns, Point Break, a favorite was
Speaker 1: actually called Tough Guys. At around this time, he discovered
Speaker 1: a book titled The Encyclopedia of Crime in the school library.
Speaker 1: He'd spend lunchtime there hiding from trouble and reading about
Speaker 1: criminals like al Capone, Babyface Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd.
Speaker 1: No one bullied them.
Speaker 5: So I started to fantasize daydream about robbing a bank.
Speaker 5: I had this image of going into a bank and
Speaker 5: getting a big bag of money, and the place that
Speaker 5: I dreamed about going to was New York. I thought
Speaker 5: of New York as being synonymous with the mafia, and
Speaker 5: I thought, well, maybe if I could go there. Somehow
Speaker 5: I could ingratiate myself to someone in that family, and
Speaker 5: that would become my new family as supposed to this
Speaker 5: family doesn't seem to want me, and who I can
Speaker 5: do nothing right for.
Speaker 1: It was all just a child's fantasy until one day
Speaker 1: in class when ex witnessed something that made him realize
Speaker 1: it might be time to act. A quiet, smaller kid
Speaker 1: said something to a bigger, tougher kid. The bigger kid pounced.
Speaker 5: He started kicking him and including kicking him in the face.
Speaker 5: That really shook me. On my way home on the
Speaker 5: bus that day, I remember thinking I got to get
Speaker 5: out of here.
Speaker 1: Like you're gonna you. Felt like there was more of
Speaker 1: an imperative, like you were next.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I saw myself as that powerless kid. And
Speaker 5: I even this is like years and years and years ago,
Speaker 5: and it still get so emotional about it. It's like,
Speaker 5: what a horrible way to, you know, go through a day.
Speaker 5: And I just thought, I don't want that to be me.
Speaker 1: And so he came up with a plan. There was
Speaker 1: a bank down town where his mom was a customer.
Speaker 1: In the movies, there was always a silent alarm, which
Speaker 1: meant he'd only have a few minutes to do what
Speaker 1: he needed to before the police arrived. He'd have to
Speaker 1: move quickly. He'd also need to hide out. It was
Speaker 1: a hotel about a block away from the bank. After
Speaker 1: the robbery, he could rent a room. Once the coast
Speaker 1: was clear. He called a taxi to take him to
Speaker 1: the airport, and then it was off to New York.
Speaker 1: And this is the part of the story that feels
Speaker 1: hardest for X to tell.
Speaker 5: Okay, I my dad owned a shotgun which he had
Speaker 5: used to hunt. It was in a closet and the
Speaker 5: first thing I did when I got home was I
Speaker 5: took that gun. I took it into my bedroom and
Speaker 5: with the hack saw, I saw the barrel off so
Speaker 5: it would be easy to carry. I remember, once the
Speaker 5: barrel came off and I had removed it, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 5: I don't really know if I want to do this.
Speaker 5: I'm kind of terrified. But now I'm in like I
Speaker 5: can't on this track. Now that I can't back up on,
Speaker 5: I have to go forward because I've now destroyed. My
Speaker 5: Dad's gone, and eventually that will come to light. I
Speaker 5: didn't sleep very well that night. I got up in
Speaker 5: the morning you know, after staring at the ceiling for
Speaker 5: what seemed like ours. I remember going out and my
Speaker 5: mom was putting breakfast on the table. The television was
Speaker 5: on and they were talking about the nineteen ninety two
Speaker 5: presidential campaign and the governor Bill Clinton, and I just
Speaker 5: remember thinking, like, this is a world I'm no longer
Speaker 5: part of. I don't none of that means anything to me. Today,
Speaker 5: I'm going into a whole different world and I'm leaving
Speaker 5: this one behind.
Speaker 1: It was October, the beginning of ninth grade. Ex it
Speaker 1: just turned fourteen years old. Xpact suitcase with some clothes
Speaker 1: and books and a few favorite CDs, iced tea. They
Speaker 1: might be giants. He stole a pair of his mother's
Speaker 1: pantyhose to pull over his face as a disguise. He
Speaker 1: put on a trench coat and hid the sod Off
Speaker 1: shotgun inside. As he got on the school bus, the
Speaker 1: driver asked about his outfit. It's for drama class, he said.
Speaker 1: When the bus arrived at school, he was the last
Speaker 1: to get off. All around him, kids were streaming out
Speaker 1: of buses and parents' cars, filing into school, going about
Speaker 1: another normal day.
Speaker 5: And there was a moment of standing there and if
Speaker 5: I turned left, I would be the crowd of kids
Speaker 5: and heading towards the entrance to the school. And if
Speaker 5: I turned right, I'd be off school grounds and walking
Speaker 5: towards where the bank was.
Speaker 1: Maybe it still wasn't too late to give up on
Speaker 1: his plan.
Speaker 5: Like I could just go to school and life could
Speaker 5: just go back to what it was yesterday and the
Speaker 5: day before. But I turned the other way, and I
Speaker 5: walked towards the bank.
Speaker 1: When X arrived, the bank was still closed. So at
Speaker 1: the back of the bank's parking lot, he waited behind
Speaker 1: some trees, and then at ten point fifteen he took
Speaker 1: a deep breath. Okay, he thought, here we go.
Speaker 5: And so I pulled stalking over my face and I
Speaker 5: ran through the parking lot and I entered the bank
Speaker 5: with the gun raised in the air, and I yelled
Speaker 5: something to the effect of everybody get on the floor,
Speaker 5: and this is a robbery. It was like a dream,
Speaker 5: or like watching someone else go through these actions, like
Speaker 5: I was a passenger and they were doing the driving.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I remember there was a guy, the first person who
Speaker 5: was standing in line, and he turned toward me and
Speaker 5: started laughing. I don't know if he thought it was
Speaker 5: a joke, or he just couldn't believe that this little
Speaker 5: pipsqueak voice kid was holding up a bank or something.
Speaker 5: But that really made me mad. I felt like I
Speaker 5: was being laughed at, and so I pointed the gun
Speaker 5: at him and said this isn't a joke, and he
Speaker 5: got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge
Speaker 5: of like, Okay, this is power.
Speaker 1: Had you ever used a gun before?
Speaker 5: No, I was actually kind of scared of him, Like
Speaker 5: I didn't load this gun because I was scared that
Speaker 5: I would get hurt or somebody would get hurt. I
Speaker 5: didn't want to hurt anybody.
Speaker 1: X knew that most of the money would be in
Speaker 1: the vault. He forced two bank tellers to bring him
Speaker 1: in there and told them the stuff stacks of bills
Speaker 1: into his bag. When the bag grew full, he picked
Speaker 1: it up and walked past all the customers still lying
Speaker 1: on the floor. Then he exited out the front door
Speaker 1: and made his way to a dumpster, where he threw
Speaker 1: away the shotgun.
Speaker 5: And I entered the hotel just a teenager with a
Speaker 5: green and yellow sports bag of over forty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Unbelievably, the plan had worked. Now X just had to
Speaker 1: wait out the police who would be responding to the scene,
Speaker 1: and then he'd be off to New York. He marched
Speaker 1: up to the hotel clerk and asked for a room.
Speaker 5: And she kind of looked at me, like what, and
Speaker 5: she said, I'm sorry. All of our rooms are rented
Speaker 5: by the month. This isn't like that kind of hotel
Speaker 5: where you can come and just get a room for
Speaker 5: a night.
Speaker 1: Daily versus monthly raids the one thing movies hadn't prepared
Speaker 1: him for. Ex panicked, he couldn't just hang out in
Speaker 1: the lobby. A kid playing hooky would draw attention, So
Speaker 1: he headed out the hotel door.
Speaker 5: And right on the corner of the street as a
Speaker 5: police officer.
Speaker 1: X had two options walk away from the officer, which
Speaker 1: might look suspicious, or walk towards him.
Speaker 5: And so I decided to walk towards him and try
Speaker 5: to act as cool as I could.
Speaker 1: Just after passing the officer and crossing the street, he
Speaker 1: heard the policeman cry out freeze. When X turned around,
Speaker 1: the cops gun was pointed right at him. X was
Speaker 1: arrested and from there things moved quickly. At the police station,
Speaker 1: he confessed to the crime and a date was said
Speaker 1: in juvenile court. X spent the next few nights in
Speaker 1: jail because his parents couldn't afford a lawyer, one was
Speaker 1: appointed to him. After the court proceedings, he was allowed
Speaker 1: to see his parents. It was his first time seeing
Speaker 1: them since breakfast on the morning of the robbery.
Speaker 5: They were just destroyed, Like I've never seen them cry
Speaker 5: as much and be so like it was hard for
Speaker 5: me to look at they were so upset, and yeah,
Speaker 5: they just looked broken.
Speaker 1: A few days later, X was sentenced to twelve years.
Speaker 5: I remember hearing that big, long number and thinking, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: I guess they're not going to let me off because
Speaker 5: I was a kid. And I remember going back to
Speaker 5: my cell and crying because it was like, Okay, this
Speaker 5: is really sinking in now, like I'm going to be
Speaker 5: here for a long time.
Speaker 1: X was sent to a youth facility, where he was
Speaker 1: one of the youngest inmates. He spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time reading, mostly the classics Dickens, Moby Dick, the Bible.
Speaker 1: He underwent an intensive treatment program of daily therapies and
Speaker 1: took his rehabilitation seriously. After three years, when his case
Speaker 1: came up for review, he was released at the age
Speaker 1: of seventeen. From here. Ex's story, and I mean this
Speaker 1: in a good way, is unremarkable. He went to college,
Speaker 1: he got married, and has had good jobs.
Speaker 5: I ended up at one point working in the bank,
Speaker 5: which wow, yeah, kind of funny.
Speaker 1: It's been over thirty years since the day of the robbery,
Speaker 1: and in many ways xis turned his life completely around.
Speaker 1: And yet when he thinks about that day.
Speaker 5: I really feel so ashamed and so regretful.
Speaker 1: So much so that it's almost like he's divided himself
Speaker 1: into there's the boy who is capable of committing that
Speaker 1: crime and the grown man to whom that boy is
Speaker 1: a stranger. A part of the reason it's been so
Speaker 1: hard for X to tell the story is because, in
Speaker 1: a weird way, it's like he's telling someone else's story,
Speaker 1: and it's a story that all his life he's been
Speaker 1: told no one wants to hear.
Speaker 5: My parents, in particular, just want to pretend like it
Speaker 5: never even happened. And they were very embarrassed and kept
Speaker 5: a very secret.
Speaker 8: It wasn't a matter of just don't tell anyone, it
Speaker 8: was if anybody asks. He went to go live with
Speaker 8: one of your older brothers.
Speaker 1: I spoke to several of X's six brothers to hear
Speaker 1: how the crime impacted the family.
Speaker 7: My mom, I think, was really embarrassed by this. The
Speaker 7: community would judge her. For years, I didn't tell people
Speaker 7: about it, like well into my adulthood.
Speaker 8: It wasn't until maybe my sophomore year of high school
Speaker 8: that I shared it with some very close friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and how did that feel?
Speaker 7: It was weird.
Speaker 8: I remember being really nervous, like, oh my gosh, are
Speaker 8: they going to judge me?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: You know, when you're told as a nine year old
Speaker 7: that this thing is really embarrassing and shameful, you almost
Speaker 7: absorb it as like your own.
Speaker 8: You take it on, you know, to feel compelled to
Speaker 8: keep up a lie, to feel shame.
Speaker 7: That's that's difficult for a nine year old.
Speaker 1: And it can remain difficult.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel comfortable breaking about silence.
Speaker 1: This is another of X's brothers, now a middle aged man.
Speaker 3: Even you know now my wife, I've been married to
Speaker 3: her for over twenty years. I've never told her about it.
Speaker 1: You've never you've never told your wife about your brother? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, until even now. Yeah, Wow, did you feel
Speaker 1: compelled to share it with her at any point.
Speaker 3: I could say, I don't know. Over the last couple
Speaker 3: of decades, it's probably been one or two instances where
Speaker 3: I thought about mentioning it. But after this interview I
Speaker 3: may tell her. Probably probably will, but it hasn't come
Speaker 3: up yet.
Speaker 1: Shame can be silencing, and so for thirty years X
Speaker 1: has kept quiet, but it hasn't prevented him from thinking
Speaker 1: about the people in the bank that day, which is
Speaker 1: why he's come to me.
Speaker 5: The people that were there, I was hoping that I
Speaker 5: might be able to at least let them know in
Speaker 5: some fashion that I'm really sorry that I destroyed their
Speaker 5: peace and left them with a lot of trauma.
Speaker 1: In all those movies X love to watch, after the
Speaker 1: crime is committed, the camera remains on the criminal, the star.
Speaker 1: It never follows the customers, the employees. They're just extras.
Speaker 1: But X wants to know what became of them, how
Speaker 1: that day fits into their lives, and most of all,
Speaker 1: he wants to apologize.
Speaker 5: I tried to imagine what the rest of their day
Speaker 5: was like. I'm guessing they went home early and spouses
Speaker 5: were called, their children were called, and they had to
Speaker 5: tell that story, probably multiple times to police. To family
Speaker 5: and relive it, and how do they sleep that night
Speaker 5: and for the nights to come. It is just horrific
Speaker 5: to me. And I talked earlier about the students at
Speaker 5: the school who I saw get beat up. I empathized
Speaker 5: with the guy on the floor getting his face kicked.
Speaker 5: It never would have occurred to me that I would
Speaker 5: have been the bully in that scenario, that I would
Speaker 5: be the one metaphorically anyway, doing the kicking.
Speaker 1: After the break the day of the robbery. From the
Speaker 1: perspective of the victims, when X thinks about apologizing, there
Speaker 1: are three people he wants to apologize too. First, the
Speaker 1: bank tellers, the two women who led him into the
Speaker 1: vault that day.
Speaker 5: That vault was a very small room, and they were
Speaker 5: in very close proximity.
Speaker 1: To me, so close in fact, that at one point,
Speaker 1: while opening his gym bag, X unthinkingly leaned the shotgun
Speaker 1: against one of their thighs.
Speaker 5: They didn't know it wasn't loaded, they didn't know how
Speaker 5: unstable I was. They didn't know any and to feel
Speaker 5: the weight of that against their leg is just horrifying.
Speaker 1: The other person X wants to apologize to is the
Speaker 1: officer who arrested him that day.
Speaker 5: There's some stuff that's fuzzy, but I remember this very well.
Speaker 1: After the policeman yelled for him to drop the money,
Speaker 1: X reached into his back pocket where he had kept
Speaker 1: a few bills, dashed for his cab to the airport.
Speaker 5: Not thinking how a police officer might perceive someone reaching
Speaker 5: behind their back and pulling something out. I found out
Speaker 5: later that he came very close to shooting me, and
Speaker 5: that the cop was very distraught thinking that he almost
Speaker 5: shot a teenage kid.
Speaker 1: Team nabbed for bank theft, reads a local newspaper the
Speaker 1: day after the robbery. The article names the arresting policeman
Speaker 1: as Officer Roy Tupin. Our search for Officer Tupin is
Speaker 1: a few years too late, though. In twenty nineteen, Tupin
Speaker 1: died in a diving accident. My name is Nick Tupin.
Speaker 4: I'm the son of the arresting officer.
Speaker 7: On the day of the robbery.
Speaker 1: Nick says his dad told him stories about that day.
Speaker 7: It's mine all.
Speaker 4: That was the closest that he'd ever gotten to shooting anyone.
Speaker 5: It shook his world.
Speaker 4: He took some time off of work, you know, he
Speaker 4: wasn't sure that that was his career path anymore.
Speaker 9: I know that.
Speaker 7: It messed with him, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: One thing Tupin never shared with his son was what
Speaker 1: kept him from shooting acts when he reached into his pocket.
Speaker 1: But Nick has a theory.
Speaker 7: Fourteen years old. Yeah, I'm forty three now.
Speaker 4: I was born in seventy eight, So you do the math.
Speaker 1: Huh, Yeah, you would have been about the same age.
Speaker 4: I'd imagine he looked at that kid like he was
Speaker 4: looking at me.
Speaker 1: He kind of do. When I tell Nick about X's undertaking,
Speaker 1: how he's been hoping to make amends for that day,
Speaker 1: he offers this.
Speaker 4: I think Dad would have forgiven him a long time ago.
Speaker 7: I really do.
Speaker 1: What makes you think that.
Speaker 4: As he got older, just some of the rhetorics that
Speaker 4: you know, people make mistakes and you just hope, like Hill,
Speaker 4: that they don't have life changing consequences.
Speaker 1: For what it's worth, After speaking with Nick, I turned
Speaker 1: my attention to the bank tellers. They aren't identified in
Speaker 1: any of the articles, and the police reports have redacted
Speaker 1: their names, And since the courthouse records have been sealed
Speaker 1: and the bank itself no longer exists, I decide that
Speaker 1: my best bet is to post a sort of missing
Speaker 1: person's notice the local paper. I ask if there's anyone
Speaker 1: who might remember the bank robbery from over thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: or the bank employees from that time. One person responds,
Speaker 1: she doesn't know the tellers, but she does know about
Speaker 1: the robbery. Even though my ad didn't mention X by name,
Speaker 1: she knew who it was immediately. I sat behind X
Speaker 1: in Spanish class, she says, and so the day after
Speaker 1: the robbery, when a photo of X lying face down
Speaker 1: was published in the newspaper, she recognized him because her
Speaker 1: desk was behind his. She knew the back of his
Speaker 1: head well. He had a small bald spot, and the
Speaker 1: bullies teased him about it relentlessly. I emailed because I
Speaker 1: was thinking, if X wants to talk about why he
Speaker 1: did it, he probably would say he was bullied. I
Speaker 1: want to back him up.
Speaker 7: She says.
Speaker 1: She can understand why X felt so desperate. She was
Speaker 1: a target of the same bullies. She too, spent her
Speaker 1: lunches in the library, in her case, reading science fiction
Speaker 1: and imagining a life in a different world. It makes
Speaker 1: me sad, she says. If he stuck around, maybe we
Speaker 1: would have been friends. Because the missing person noticed yields
Speaker 1: no leads. I start combing through old articles for names
Speaker 1: that might connect me to the tellers.
Speaker 9: Hi, I'm William and I was a customer in the
Speaker 9: bank on the day.
Speaker 7: Of the robbery.
Speaker 1: Not only was William a customer, but in one of
Speaker 1: the articles I read, he's described as chasing X after
Speaker 1: he fled in hopes of apprehending him.
Speaker 9: Anytime you're facing somebody in a combat situation, everything else
Speaker 9: around you disappears. But it just went tunnel vision on
Speaker 9: this guy, who is the son of a bitch.
Speaker 1: What inspired you? Are you a risk taker kind of person?
Speaker 9: Many years of martial art training, that's where that comes from.
Speaker 1: No fear. Before I can ask William about the bank tellers,
Speaker 1: we're interrupted. But just one second.
Speaker 9: We're going to order something from a drive in.
Speaker 1: William is talking to me from his car. He's with
Speaker 1: his wife. The two of us hadn't eaten the.
Speaker 9: Doctor's office all day. So I'm going to interrupt you.
Speaker 5: Here, gonna place his order.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't mind me. Where's that button? O?
Speaker 5: Hi?
Speaker 4: Yes, this is a small order of nuggets or six.
Speaker 1: Just for quickly, I do the math. Four divided by
Speaker 1: two is two two nuggets per spouse. For those of
Speaker 1: you unfamiliar with nugget abortioning or nuganomics, eating two nuggets
Speaker 1: is like eating two grapes, two peanuts. It's like eating
Speaker 1: two nuggets. With my microphone muted to William, I process
Speaker 1: my feelings of judgmentalness to my producer Stevie, like you're starving,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, I haven't need all day.
Speaker 1: We'll share. We'll share four nuggets and like a nugget's
Speaker 1: that big?
Speaker 7: Okay, thank you?
Speaker 1: All right, so go right ahead. I proceed with the
Speaker 1: most pressing question is that that's all you're getting.
Speaker 9: Well, well, we have a nice dinner plan, so we
Speaker 9: don't want to wreck at the dinner, you know. So
Speaker 9: I'm just going to get a little appetizer.
Speaker 1: William has no fear, save the fear of ruining his appetite.
Speaker 1: With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, I
Speaker 1: ask William if he remembers the names of the tellers.
Speaker 1: He says no, but he does remember X.
Speaker 9: He yelled at everybody to get on the effing floor
Speaker 9: or I'll blow your heads off.
Speaker 1: Did he sound like a child.
Speaker 9: No, he sounded very menacing, and he did not look
Speaker 9: like a child.
Speaker 1: EXIT told me that he looked like a pipsqueak kid.
Speaker 1: That people laughed, but William says he doesn't remember any laughter,
Speaker 1: only screaming.
Speaker 9: I found out the next day that he was fourteen
Speaker 9: years old.
Speaker 6: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that takes hood spot or is real desperate.
Speaker 1: My name is Lujan.
Speaker 5: I was a former manager of the hotel.
Speaker 1: In the Hope. There might be someone who can connect
Speaker 1: me to the tellers. I spend my days speaking with
Speaker 1: anyone vaguely associated with the robbery.
Speaker 9: My name's Merritt, and I represented in the juvenile court
Speaker 9: Michus George. I wrote for THEE my name.
Speaker 1: Is Jane and I used to be the librarian at
Speaker 1: high school. My name is Bail and I was a
Speaker 1: police sergeant at the police department there. But now no
Speaker 1: one can recall the tellers. Did you bank at that
Speaker 1: bank across the street?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: I did not.
Speaker 9: I wish I could help you, but I don't really remember.
Speaker 1: Did you know any of the people that worked there?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 9: No, no, no, Sorry, I can't help you.
Speaker 1: But then, after two months of phone calls, I call
Speaker 1: a restaurant across the street from where the bank used
Speaker 1: to be. The owner of the restaurant is now eighty
Speaker 1: four years old. When I ask if she remembers anyone
Speaker 1: who worked at the bank back then, anyone she was
Speaker 1: friendly with, she gives me the names of two people,
Speaker 1: two tellers, Darlene and Judy. It takes me a few weeks,
Speaker 1: but eventually I find Darlene and Judy, and as it
Speaker 1: turns out, incredibly, they were the very same tellers working
Speaker 1: on the day of the robbery. After months of searching,
Speaker 1: we found them. Judy is now in her eighties and
Speaker 1: living in a retirement home, but when I speak with
Speaker 1: her daughter, she tells me her mother isn't interested in talking,
Speaker 1: that she wants to leave the past and the past.
Speaker 1: As for Darlene, at first she seems open, but then
Speaker 1: her husband grows ill and she stops returning my calls.
Speaker 1: I can't tell if it's because her husband is sick,
Speaker 1: or if she's changed her mind about revisiting that day.
Speaker 5: Hey Jonathan, how are you?
Speaker 1: Hey good?
Speaker 6: How are you?
Speaker 1: It's been over a year since I first spoke with X.
Speaker 1: I tell him the bank tellers don't seem to want
Speaker 1: to speak with him. X is disappointed, but says he understands.
Speaker 1: He says it though, like he's starting to feel that
Speaker 1: maybe this whole undertaking was to them.
Speaker 5: I'm just still that same guy that did that thing.
Speaker 5: It's hard for me to blame them, I guess.
Speaker 1: I suggest to X that maybe he should try writing
Speaker 1: a letter to Darlene, since she'd seemed open to talking
Speaker 1: this way, maybe he can at least offer her as
Speaker 1: words and she could decide what to do with them. Darlene,
Speaker 1: X writes, I understand that words alone cannot undo the
Speaker 1: pain I caused you and the others in the bank
Speaker 1: that morning. Still, X expresses his regret, tells Darlene how
Speaker 1: he's thought of her often. He apologizes many times. After
Speaker 1: the letter is mailed off, two years passed, during which
Speaker 1: X receives no response, and that's where I think our
Speaker 1: story ends.
Speaker 6: Hey Jonathan, Hey, how are you?
Speaker 5: A lot has happened since we lost full Yeah well
Speaker 5: yeah film.
Speaker 1: But then in May five, X reaches out.
Speaker 5: A year ago in November, I got a call from
Speaker 5: one of my brothers, and he doesn't usually call me
Speaker 5: on the phone, so I picked up and I found
Speaker 5: out that my dad had passed away.
Speaker 1: Oh so jeez, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: X says it was while helping write his father's obituary
Speaker 1: and listening to his father be eulogized at the funeral,
Speaker 1: hearing the people who loved him speak about all he'd
Speaker 1: done in his life, that something happened.
Speaker 5: It reminded me that this person was more than an
Speaker 5: unequipped parent, or he was more than just the worst
Speaker 5: experiences I had with him.
Speaker 1: Taking a broader view of his father's life helped X
Speaker 1: to zoom out on his own. There was the day
Speaker 1: of the robbery, but then there were all the days
Speaker 1: after too. If his father's legacy didn't have to be
Speaker 1: defined by one bad thing, perhaps his own legacy didn't
Speaker 1: have to be either.
Speaker 5: You know, when we initially started talking, my hope was
Speaker 5: that I would be able to speak to the people
Speaker 5: who were there, and that didn't work out, And it
Speaker 5: was hard for me, I think, because I almost felt
Speaker 5: like until they forgave me, I wasn't allowed to forgive myself,
Speaker 5: that that was like a luxury that I didn't deserve,
Speaker 5: or something like that.
Speaker 1: Over the past three years, I've sought out the tellers,
Speaker 1: the customers, and even the policemen who almost shot X,
Speaker 1: all in service to ex finding forgiveness, but there was
Speaker 1: always one person's forgiveness that he discounted.
Speaker 5: I was a kid, you know, my head wasn't on straight,
Speaker 5: and I was dealing with a lot of pain, and
Speaker 5: I felt like that's what I needed to do to
Speaker 5: get out of that pain. And I think the closure
Speaker 5: I've come to realize that needs to happen here is
Speaker 5: my own. That's the little mini journey I went on
Speaker 5: was like I don't have to keep lying or hiding
Speaker 5: or running from this or pretending like this was a
Speaker 5: different person.
Speaker 1: When X first came to me, he was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to tell his story. But in everything
Speaker 1: from witness accounts to confessions, from Great Expectations to Moby
Speaker 1: Dick stories begin by asserting who the person telling the
Speaker 1: story is. How can you tell your story if you
Speaker 1: can't even say your name?
Speaker 5: You know, I'm going through the trouble of like asking
Speaker 5: you not to call me by my name and worrying
Speaker 5: about people finding out.
Speaker 1: But it's me.
Speaker 5: It's my story, and I'm not proud of it. But
Speaker 5: I'm also not trying to run away from it. I've
Speaker 5: done it. For long enough.
Speaker 1: That's really wonderful to hear you say that. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's such a mini journey, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So do you think all that being said, you think
Speaker 1: you're you think you're okay with just coming out and
Speaker 1: saying it.
Speaker 5: My name is John Paul, and when I was fourteen
Speaker 5: years old, I robbed a bank for forty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: How does that feel.
Speaker 5: Like there's a lightness in it? I don't know that
Speaker 5: I've ever said those exact words. I almost hesitate to
Speaker 5: say it because it's like I said, I felt like
Speaker 5: I wasn't allowed to not wallow in shame, but I
Speaker 5: feel relieved.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, it's really John Paul. That's a very
Speaker 1: nice thing to hear.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's kind of surprising to me how I've just been
Speaker 5: saying words right, Like I'm just talking, Like how could
Speaker 5: words make that much of a difference.
Speaker 1: Words allow us to tell the story of who we are,
Speaker 1: and telling that story can feel like a burden, but
Speaker 1: it can also help lay that burden to rest.
Speaker 5: It feels like a new chapter in my life or
Speaker 5: a new story. And I'm kind of allowing myself to
Speaker 5: be excited about it.
Speaker 1: Now that the furnitures returning.
Speaker 5: To its goodwill home, now that the last month's rent
Speaker 5: is scheming with the damage to poss take this moment
Speaker 5: to dissolve.
Speaker 7: If we message, if we.
Speaker 1: Talk felt around from far to.
Speaker 4: From things that accidentally talked.
Speaker 1: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie
Speaker 1: Lane and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Khalila Holt. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Sean Cole, Chris Neary, Ben nattf Haffrey, Lydia,
Speaker 1: Jane Kott, Connie Williams, Katherine Reinhardt, and especially Moheiney mcgaucher.
Speaker 1: Em Amonger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,
Speaker 1: John K. Samson, and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue
Speaker 1: Dot Sessions. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans,
Speaker 1: courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight
Speaker 1: Podcast or email us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot Fm.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with a brand new episode in two weeks.
Speaker 1: Luetta Chantier, Luette Jack Owen, Johante Plumeri Jackie Cohen wil
Speaker 1: at Tete Jackie Cohen, while at Tete