Speaker 1: Olla, mios. This is Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you
Speaker 1: the wildest true escape stories of all time. Today we're
Speaker 1: telling an iconic story of the Old West, getting into
Speaker 1: the life and escapes of Kid Curry, the wildness of
Speaker 1: the Wild Bunch. I'm Aartoro Castro, and my guest today
Speaker 1: is actor, producer and incredibly generous lover Ben Feldman. Ah wow, Ben,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Thank you for that incredible
Speaker 2: intro music. That was really it'd be really funny if
Speaker 2: you went straight from that into like a really kind
Speaker 2: of Maudlin sad like.
Speaker 1: Yes, So then everybody the story begins with everybody dying
Speaker 1: and how that has affected masculinity throughout the generations.
Speaker 2: So, Ben, what do you consider to be You're a
Speaker 2: great as escape. No, you know what's funny is I
Speaker 2: was thinking about it this morning because I was thinking
Speaker 2: about escapes, and I guess I'm constantly having to be
Speaker 2: reminded just sort of what a hashtag blast life I've had.
Speaker 2: I was like, have you ever been trapped? And I had,
Speaker 2: I mean, I've been trapped in like boring what like
Speaker 2: there's been like jobs that I've bailed on and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. But that's not interesting. I kept coming back
Speaker 2: to I got trapped in my head because I accidentally
Speaker 2: took mescaline at a concert.
Speaker 1: Yes, the year was nineteen sixty four. Well exactly, nobody
Speaker 1: takes messal what does can you hear? Mescaline is essentially peyote,
Speaker 1: And like I was at a fish concert.
Speaker 2: At turn of the century y two K, like the
Speaker 2: two thousand when we all thought the computers were going
Speaker 2: to kill us, and it was like a three day
Speaker 2: event and by the third day, no one could find
Speaker 2: any molly, like is what we were looking for? This
Speaker 2: feels wrong to tell guess whatever familiar, but we were
Speaker 2: looking around everything was you know, it was just like dry,
Speaker 2: like there was just nothing. And then we kept kind
Speaker 2: of yelling out for it, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: this guy dressed as the Grim Reaper and by the way,
Speaker 2: like I was like a theater major that like I
Speaker 2: should understand foreshadowing. The Grim Reaper literally shows up and
Speaker 2: is like, I've got all the molly you want, and
Speaker 2: he gave us these pills and so we started watching
Speaker 2: the show and I'm standing next to this guy who
Speaker 2: was like a huge he had a problem and I
Speaker 2: just happen to be standing next to him, so I'm
Speaker 2: kind of keeping up with him, and like he took
Speaker 2: his first one, and then he took his second one,
Speaker 2: and so I kept taking him. And then suddenly everybody
Speaker 2: was a demon, like everybody's faces, and I looked around
Speaker 2: and I was like, I got to get out of here.
Speaker 2: Everybody's turned into a demon. And so I guess there
Speaker 2: is an escape because I'm leaving my friends. But I'll
Speaker 2: take like one step and then I'll turn around and
Speaker 2: they're like twenty yards away from me, and then they're
Speaker 2: demons and people are melting into my shoulder. And then
Speaker 2: I looked down at the gun and I thought it
Speaker 2: was a battlefield because there's just bodies everywhere which were
Speaker 2: in retrospect, probably people just like laying down, but to
Speaker 2: me having.
Speaker 1: The time of their lives.
Speaker 2: So they to me, this was just a what post?
Speaker 1: Why are these soldiers dancing in rhythm?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all of these things. And then the sun
Speaker 2: came up and I saw everybody kind of wander back
Speaker 2: to the tent like zombies. And I don't really remember
Speaker 2: anything except the next thing I knew, I was in
Speaker 2: a car with my friend Lily and we drove back
Speaker 2: from Florida. Oh.
Speaker 1: Man, that's a great story.
Speaker 2: That's a great escape. That's that's like when I think
Speaker 2: about like getting trapped. Yeah, I'm trotted in my own head.
Speaker 1: That was a fantastic skit. In fact, we have one
Speaker 1: of the producers, Carl, you here to tell me that
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't do any of that.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: No, Carl is like is having PTSD from the time
Speaker 1: when him and I went to see an aqua concert
Speaker 1: in Sweden in nineteen ninety eight. Man, that was a
Speaker 1: fucking time, wasn't it. When they played I'm a Barbie Girl.
Speaker 2: I was a Barbie girl. I literally was a Barbie girl.
Speaker 1: Ah, let me ask you something. And have you ever
Speaker 1: considered robbing a train? Only?
Speaker 2: Every day? When I think of all the places i'd
Speaker 2: love to rob, which I do often, train is not
Speaker 2: high on the list. It does not seem like a
Speaker 2: very lucrative loot for me.
Speaker 1: Do you like westerns is out of things?
Speaker 2: Yeah, if it's a good one, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, today I'm going to tell you the greatest Western you've.
Speaker 2: Ever heard of? Yellow Stony. I like yellow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yellow stony. That's right, Kevin Cassler is coming on.
Speaker 2: Just like you're opening song.
Speaker 1: That's right, Well, let's escape, shall we ye? So Born
Speaker 1: in Iowa in eighteen sixty seven, Harvey Logan and his
Speaker 1: brother started out as wandering ranch hands and horse breakers,
Speaker 1: working across the West from Wyoming to Colorado and then
Speaker 1: down south all the way to Texas. No one knows
Speaker 1: exactly why he changed his name, to be honest, maybe
Speaker 1: it was just a line of work, but at some
Speaker 1: point Harvey decided it would be best to choose an alias.
Speaker 1: So when he arrived in Rocky Point, Montana in the
Speaker 1: fall of eighteen eighty four, he introduced himself as Harvey
Speaker 1: Curry ODI partner, Curry Curry. That's right. He was ahead
Speaker 1: of the game in the Southeast Asian food spice market.
Speaker 2: You know, I was expecting something a little more west.
Speaker 2: You know, they all had nicknames. I was about to say, what.
Speaker 2: Of course, he changed his name to steel Toe, bullet
Speaker 2: chewer or whatever they called it, and he was Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was just like Harvey Potpourrie was taking.
Speaker 1: So. Historians guessed that Harvey was trying to outrun the
Speaker 1: law because of a saloon brawl in Colorado. Also his
Speaker 1: older brother was trying to make sure that he couldn't
Speaker 1: be tracked down by his wife. Ben. Give me ah,
Speaker 1: there you go, I.
Speaker 2: Could do your sound effects. So anyway, this guy, this cowboy,
Speaker 2: mister Curry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the local Montana ranchers said that Harvey
Speaker 1: and his brother were the best cattle ropers around. They
Speaker 1: were known for being hard working and good natured. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like he's got a nice life of cattle
Speaker 1: ranching ahead of him. But all that changed in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four when Harvey tracked down his neighbor, Pike Lindunsky
Speaker 1: at a bar. Pike, that's right. So the two men,
Speaker 1: these two men, these two neighbors had been feuding and
Speaker 1: Harvey wanted to settle the score. We found Pike probably
Speaker 1: a fucking alien.
Speaker 2: So that's just great name though. I like the name Pike.
Speaker 1: So he found him drinking at a bar and tapped
Speaker 1: him on the shoulder and as he was turning around,
Speaker 1: Harvey bam hit him in the jaw. Give me a yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, give me a yeah. Yeah, that's okay, that
Speaker 1: won't hurt, Okay, that's is that the bar oo?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an audience, right, wow.
Speaker 1: Good. So Harvey hit him in the jaw with a
Speaker 1: right hook. Pike hit him back, and then the two
Speaker 1: men ended up rolling on the floor.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Harvey ended up on top of Pike, punching him until
Speaker 1: the bystanders begged him to stop. Right, that's right, they
Speaker 1: got there. They only have one level and that is shock,
Speaker 1: So that that might have been the end of things.
Speaker 1: But as Harvey was walking away, Pike drew his pistol
Speaker 1: and he pointed it to Harvey's back and he pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger. But the gun jam.
Speaker 2: No, no, I thought that only happened in movies.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some embellishment here from I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's fucking the West. Everybody's right, he's gun jammed, it responds.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't buy it, but fuck it, I'm
Speaker 1: saying it anyway. In response, Harvey shot Pike three times
Speaker 1: in the chest. Can you like that is such classic
Speaker 1: Western shit?
Speaker 2: Though? Is it a three times the amount of times
Speaker 2: he shot him?
Speaker 1: Like the gun jams and they're like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: beating him up and you were like walking away, all cool?
Speaker 2: Well, what I don't understand is like, if there are
Speaker 2: no rules, we can all use our guns and shoot
Speaker 2: each other. Why are they rolling around before they got
Speaker 2: to the rolling around on the floor part. I can't
Speaker 2: believe a gun didn't come out. Why did the gun
Speaker 2: not come out until sort of there he's exiting.
Speaker 1: I know, maybe they just wanted to like duke it out,
Speaker 1: you know, right, he didn't intend to kill Pike, but
Speaker 1: then you know, got he got bystanders. I mean we've
Speaker 1: heard him. They sounded fucking cool from whatever.
Speaker 2: You got to shoot someone if you want to hear
Speaker 2: the ooze and eyes.
Speaker 1: Exactly, I get it. I totally got it.
Speaker 2: Oh did someone drop something? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are those chains?
Speaker 2: There was total chaos. He had one of those chain
Speaker 2: wallets on and that was.
Speaker 1: Just he just kept beating on the floor as he's
Speaker 1: beating his ass. So Harvey's life of cattle ranching was
Speaker 1: over from then on, right, he went on the run,
Speaker 1: but he knew where he was going to go. He
Speaker 1: set out for a banded camp called Hole in the Wall,
Speaker 1: and he had some friends there. You see, while he
Speaker 1: was running cattle, Harvey met some extremely wild dudes, including
Speaker 1: a man who would served time for horse thieving in Sundance.
Speaker 1: And his name is Jasper Rebindo and his name is
Speaker 1: cho Lemons.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this was in Sunhans, Wyoming, Y. Of course, Sundance
Speaker 1: Kid that was there, it is. Yeah, So Harvey Curry
Speaker 1: now had a body to his name and met up
Speaker 1: with the one and only Sundance Kid. Right, so soon
Speaker 1: he had a new name to go with his new friend.
Speaker 1: They called him Kid Curry. Whoa wow, Kid Curry.
Speaker 2: Okay, that sounds really modern, that sounds yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and he had an awesome album, yeah exactly
Speaker 1: in twenty ten.
Speaker 2: He's like the liberal version of kid rock.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: He's on the trail for Biden.
Speaker 1: Not that's why he's seen the ways he used to
Speaker 1: be right now he's bar leve. So he was on
Speaker 1: the trail to become one of the most wanted criminals
Speaker 1: in America. So Kid Curry, a very liberal man of
Speaker 1: the twenty tents, and his friends started their outlet ways
Speaker 1: with a little cattle rustling. But bustling did you say that, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I rustling, I said, I said, well, which I assume
Speaker 1: is stealing cows, right, that's what it is. I never
Speaker 1: really bought it to ask, I mean, I thought they
Speaker 1: just to be honest, I just I just thought they
Speaker 1: like would tickle them, you know.
Speaker 2: I was just like the.
Speaker 1: Hair your little cow. But it turns out but stealing
Speaker 1: cows didn't really scratchy itch for him.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The more they got away with it, the more they
Speaker 1: wanted to try.
Speaker 2: You know, cows are like they're like pringles. You can't
Speaker 2: just can't.
Speaker 1: It's like, we can only do about fifty a night.
Speaker 2: Once you pop, you can't stop.
Speaker 1: That's right. So Kid Curry heard of another outlaw named
Speaker 1: Butch Cassidy that had pulled off an eight thousand dollars
Speaker 1: heights from a coal mine, and they were super inspired.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's because the mind company was called castle Gate.
Speaker 1: So that heist became known by the badass name the
Speaker 1: castle Gate Robbery. And that, my friends, is brandame baby. Wow,
Speaker 1: all A Sadden didn't have somebody like Pikes Landusky or
Speaker 1: whatever being like can we name it after me? Like no,
Speaker 1: fucking no.
Speaker 2: They finally got it right with some branding. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for the target of his first big robbery, Kit
Speaker 1: Curry and his gang picked a bank in South Dakota.
Speaker 1: They knew it well because it was a place where
Speaker 1: cattle drivers would get together to deposit their money right,
Speaker 1: so the gang expected it would hold about thirty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which is about a million dollars in today's money. So
Speaker 1: three days after the reunion, Kit Curry and five of
Speaker 1: his cronies rode into town ready for a heist. But
Speaker 1: things started to go kind of wrong from the start
Speaker 1: because the man that they had sent us a lookout
Speaker 1: to scout the location, he scouted this way right into
Speaker 1: a fucking saloon. He was totally trash drunk. By the
Speaker 1: time others arrived, he was drunk. He was just like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna scout this. I think that was a problem
Speaker 1: a lot back then.
Speaker 2: I feel like like saloon's gotten away over a lot
Speaker 2: of bit, Like how many.
Speaker 1: Saloons would were they just in their place everywhere?
Speaker 2: I mean when I imagine the Old West, I just
Speaker 2: imagined saloons and like saloons porches. Yeah, everything has all
Speaker 2: just people shooting you from a slightly elevated porch in
Speaker 2: front of you from like winging awkwardly elevated.
Speaker 1: But it's not like not high enough where you have
Speaker 1: to take a big step, but it's just like a
Speaker 1: step from there. That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 2: And why the swinging doors. I have a lot of
Speaker 2: questions for them, but.
Speaker 1: That's why we will answer all of them after the show.
Speaker 1: So without this guy, the robbers didn't They just rushed
Speaker 1: into the bank with their guns drawn, demanding money. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't know what to expect, so they ordered everyone
Speaker 1: to put their hands up, but then they just had
Speaker 1: no idea what to do next. So afterwards, the bystanders
Speaker 1: said that they look really confused, like they didn't expect
Speaker 1: the plan to actually worked. And I I love the
Speaker 1: idea of like just the vicestanders giving them suggestions, you know,
Speaker 1: be like, uh, I.
Speaker 2: Think you're supposed to wave the gun around all of us.
Speaker 2: It would make us I'm not feeling really threatened back here, sorry,
Speaker 2: can we? There's just your voice lacks like a confidence.
Speaker 2: You need to own the room, you know yourself.
Speaker 1: That's right, call me a low life again, exactly like
Speaker 1: they started collecting money from from all the customers in
Speaker 1: the bank, but that took way too long because bystanders
Speaker 1: started to notice them from the outside, right.
Speaker 2: Right, So now I'm sorry to stop you here, but
Speaker 2: they're in a bank. Isn't there a vault? Like they're
Speaker 2: going around a forgot each person.
Speaker 1: One, one by fucking one. They asked them to give
Speaker 1: them their money, which doesn't make any sense, right because.
Speaker 2: They could have won to any They could have gone
Speaker 2: to the saloon and done that. That's right.
Speaker 1: But they're like, why is this fucking taking so long?
Speaker 1: I was like, because he didn't go to a fucking mault.
Speaker 1: Man Like, because you're literally there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love to imagine somebody be like, oh no, sorry,
Speaker 1: and they're like, okay, moving on. That one didn't work.
Speaker 2: You know, I only have a one? Is that okay?
Speaker 2: Or can you can you change the change?
Speaker 1: Okay, give her change and make it snappy. So this
Speaker 1: is when the drunk lookout finally sprung into action for
Speaker 1: some reason. Finally, you know, he was super drunk. So
Speaker 1: he's when when the bystanders from the outside started noticing.
Speaker 1: He just started shooting randomly at them right right in
Speaker 1: the street bystanders, and the bystanders looking into the bank like, oh,
Speaker 1: what the fuck's going on in the bank. So he's
Speaker 1: just like, ah, nothing to see here, shoot shoot at
Speaker 1: your bank, bank, bank, this is totally normal. You're good,
Speaker 1: You're okay, don't look here, just move along. So he
Speaker 1: started shooting randomly at them in the street, and the
Speaker 1: gunfires scared the robbers inside the bank.
Speaker 2: Uh, so they started.
Speaker 1: Shooting wildly out of the windows, and then they ran
Speaker 1: off before they could get into the bank safe. Right,
Speaker 1: So it was just a complete confusion caused by moonshine whiskey.
Speaker 1: So they rushed outside, they jumped on their horses and
Speaker 1: galloped out of town. They came away with less than
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars in cash, which is I don't know,
Speaker 1: like three thousand something in today's money.
Speaker 2: Right, so when they went between them, not a big
Speaker 2: not a big no no.
Speaker 1: So when the shooting started, though, it scared the drunk
Speaker 1: lookouts horse, which ran away.
Speaker 2: Of course, there it goes, there goes.
Speaker 1: That's that's the actual sound of the actual horse actually,
Speaker 1: and that horse's name was Sandwich McGillicuddy. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So it left him to get caught, right, Like, if
Speaker 1: you're the drunk guy by this point, and what do
Speaker 1: you what do you think you do? Like your horse
Speaker 1: ran away?
Speaker 2: Like you're like, I mean I'd go back into the saloon.
Speaker 2: I feel like I have friends in there. You know,
Speaker 2: you didn't shoot anybody in there, right, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: He did something similar but way like less discreet. He
Speaker 1: tried to act like he wasn't involved by running into
Speaker 1: an outhouse and throwing his gun and his knife down
Speaker 1: the hole, right, but like the townspeople have just watched
Speaker 1: him shoot at them, So.
Speaker 2: Make an id this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he took four steps to the outhouse. We're like,
Speaker 1: we just saw you. So he pushed over the outhouse.
Speaker 1: They raked through the ship, collected his weapons, and forced
Speaker 1: him to confess to the crime and describe the outlawst plans.
Speaker 1: I can imagine being like, fine, I'll tell you. Also,
Speaker 1: just stop waving that shitty gun in my face. That's
Speaker 1: fucking nasty, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it weren't the outlaws plans clear at this point,
Speaker 2: like why did why are these the townspeople asking him
Speaker 2: to explain the plan? The plans? What did they want
Speaker 2: to do? Did we went in to that bank with
Speaker 2: those guns? What did you want?
Speaker 1: Well, they wanted you saw it, you were there, you
Speaker 1: gave them suggestions and still how to do it. I
Speaker 1: don't know why you're asking me about it. So the
Speaker 1: authorities across the West were on the lookout for kid Curry,
Speaker 1: and he was recognized in Montana two months later while
Speaker 1: buying camp supplies, so soon a posse was on his trail.
Speaker 1: The posse was heavily armed and they caught up with
Speaker 1: Curry and the Sundance kid while they were setting up camp.
Speaker 1: Sundance was too far from his gear to make an escape,
Speaker 1: but Kid Curry ran to his horse. He jumped on
Speaker 1: and kicked into a gallop as he rode off, though
Speaker 1: one of the posse fired his rifle, scared me and
Speaker 1: shot a hole in Curry's wrist right. The bullet went
Speaker 1: straight through the horse's neck too, so the horse collapsed
Speaker 1: into a sand dune and Curry surrendered when the posse arrived.
Speaker 1: So I just keep in mind this shot in the
Speaker 1: wrist because it will be importantly. That's called foreshadowing. In September,
Speaker 1: the men were taking to Deadwood, South Dakota, where they
Speaker 1: were held in the jail to stand trial. This is
Speaker 1: exactly when Kid Curry made his first first jail break.
Speaker 1: One night, when the jailer was coming back from a
Speaker 1: date with his wife, good that they were keeping the
Speaker 1: marriage alive.
Speaker 2: Do you think they went to the saloon too or
Speaker 2: their restaurants.
Speaker 1: They went to the saloon and then they went to
Speaker 1: rob a bank real quick, and then they they checked
Speaker 1: literally it.
Speaker 2: They went to buy new swinging doors.
Speaker 1: Honey, what do you like these doors? They're kind of swinging.
Speaker 3: I feel like our doors don't swing, like, Oh, get
Speaker 3: you some swing doors, Jesus Christy they are so After
Speaker 3: the day, they chicked in on the prisoners and he
Speaker 3: saw that they were still locked in the building, but
Speaker 3: they had somehow gotten out of their cells.
Speaker 1: When he ordered them back inside so he could lock
Speaker 1: them in, they said that their cells were closed and
Speaker 1: that they were locked out. So confused the jailer, God
Speaker 1: bless them. The jailer opened the prison to check the
Speaker 1: locks on the cell doors, and the prisoners jumped him,
Speaker 1: which was not anticipated by anybody in history.
Speaker 2: Obviously, were so dumbe.
Speaker 1: What the fuck? He's like, hey, get back in there, Sorry,
Speaker 1: we're locked down. I was like, okay, I'll come in
Speaker 1: and lock you on our system. Yeah okay, yeah you
Speaker 1: get I'll come and figure it out for you. List once,
Speaker 1: but next time it happens again, you do it by yourself.
Speaker 1: So they beat his ass and they locked him and
Speaker 1: his wife in the cell. Thankfully they didn't know. They
Speaker 1: went on the date they got to go on, the
Speaker 1: date they got into day, and like afterwards, they're like,
Speaker 1: are you it's exhilarina? Is I you known escape? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He was like, I don't totally fine at all. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I didn't get you the swinging door. So you
Speaker 1: said you wanted some excitement in your life. So more
Speaker 1: than sixty men joined the search for the escapees over
Speaker 1: the next few days, but false sightings had the authorities
Speaker 1: running in circles. Es Kid Curry and the Sun Dance
Speaker 1: Kid stole horses and made their escape. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: get some really cool music because we're going to introduce
Speaker 1: chapter three.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, there you go there, very cool.
Speaker 1: Thank you, very cool. So the fact that Kid Curry's
Speaker 1: first bank heist didn't go very well didn't keep him
Speaker 1: from planning more robberies, right, So him and the Sundance
Speaker 1: Kid were treated to Utah, where they were welcomed by
Speaker 1: a new part in crime, their bandit hero Butch Cassidy.
Speaker 2: Right right there we go.
Speaker 1: We get famous people here, betchay, what's going on? He's like, guys,
Speaker 1: I just met a guy called Salvatory Peninsula. So when
Speaker 1: Curry's gang arrived at Butch Cassidy's hideout. It was the
Speaker 1: first official meeting of the group that would become the
Speaker 1: Wild Bunch, and for the next four years, Kid Curry,
Speaker 1: Butch and the Sundance Kid would carry out a string
Speaker 1: of the biggest, most balls out heists in American history.
Speaker 1: It started in July and eighteen ninety eight with a
Speaker 1: train robbery in Nevada. Two robbers on the train forced
Speaker 1: the engineer and the brakeman to stop at a mile
Speaker 1: marker where Kit Curry was waiting with the horses. There,
Speaker 1: they used explosives to blow open the safe, demolishing an
Speaker 1: entire train car in the process, which seems successive. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to say that, So.
Speaker 2: There's a safe on the train.
Speaker 1: There's a safe on the train, and that's the money.
Speaker 2: That the people paid to get on the train.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's like they're transporting money.
Speaker 2: They're transporting money. It's going from one place to another. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a specific train. They didn't specific train. They
Speaker 2: weren't like trains have a lot of money. Let's go
Speaker 2: rob a train. I'm tied.
Speaker 1: These banks, man, these trains they're just like the banks,
Speaker 1: so predictably lucrative let me make it, let me work
Speaker 1: for it, let me work for this.
Speaker 2: Let's take a chance, maybe this train.
Speaker 1: So newspaper said that they made off with anything from
Speaker 1: nine thou to twenty six thousand dollars, which in today's
Speaker 1: world would be almost a million dollars. So that's not bad.
Speaker 2: And there's thilly of them, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, listen, listen. If this show was named the
Speaker 1: Greatest Heists, we might go into detail about them, but
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna quickly name you what they were. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: So we have the Wilcox train robbery. Sh there you go,
Speaker 1: the Fullsome train robbery, the Tipton train robbery, the Exeter
Speaker 1: Creek train robbery, and all the other train robberies. Okay,
Speaker 1: so listen. Over the next couple of years, Kid Curry
Speaker 1: and the gang used to same method to pull off
Speaker 1: a string of infamous train robberies, and after each one
Speaker 1: he would just kind of lie low and chill for
Speaker 1: a few months and just enjoy himself. I mean, in
Speaker 1: today's money, they were each getting like four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a pop. I don't know if you had that
Speaker 1: much money drop into your lap all at once, how
Speaker 1: would you spend it.
Speaker 2: I would have paid fish to come play in my
Speaker 2: backyard and not do that whole thing all over again,
Speaker 2: y two K and everything. So listen.
Speaker 1: So between jobs, the gang would split, it would split up, right,
Speaker 1: Kid Curry would travel from town to town playing cool,
Speaker 1: drinking apricot brandy and telling people that he met that
Speaker 1: he was a railroad man. What can we assume with
Speaker 1: a dude who drinks apricot brandy, Like, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Day, Yeah, it's very And that was pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 1: Yes, he'sds twirling his mustache and you know, in my
Speaker 1: he really had a sick ass mustache.
Speaker 2: I mean didn't I guess everybody had a mustache back then. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, they had different trademarks.
Speaker 1: And that was one of his.
Speaker 2: Why are they why are they both? Kid? By the way,
Speaker 2: what's the deal? Like? How old are these guys? Do
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 1: Seventy two?
Speaker 2: Geriatric? Kid?
Speaker 1: Kid Curry actually partied the hardest. He was the kind
Speaker 1: of a bad boy of the wild Bunch, and he
Speaker 1: got a reputation both as the infamous killer of the
Speaker 1: crew but also as the most frequent lover. Yes yeah,
Speaker 1: women across the West claim that he was the father
Speaker 1: of their children, and if all the stories were true,
Speaker 1: he would have had like eighty five kids. Wow, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that fucking thing plays in my head if
Speaker 1: I play, Like if somehow I leave the computer on
Speaker 1: and I hear that in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: I will die of a heart attack. You know how
Speaker 1: they say that there's no more beautiful sound than that
Speaker 1: of a baby's laughter unless you live by yourself, and
Speaker 1: there is no baby, you know.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I have two children, and I
Speaker 2: can't stand babies, and I hate and that sound is
Speaker 2: trauma regering for me too.
Speaker 1: Oh man, So this guy's this guy's going around.
Speaker 2: He's banging left and rights, he's having sex.
Speaker 1: He's a railroad man. He's drinking.
Speaker 2: She's got the Is he the one with the appercop Brandy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he loves the apracom venny.
Speaker 2: So okay.
Speaker 1: Every now and then the Wild Bunge would get back
Speaker 1: together and for some harmless fun, right Like in December
Speaker 1: of nineteen hundred, Kid Curry, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Speaker 1: Kid all got together with a few of the other
Speaker 1: friends for a wedding where they took the now very
Speaker 1: famous picture. So It shows them in perfectly tailored suits
Speaker 1: with show we watch chains ties and waistcoasts, and apparently
Speaker 1: they'd all gotten new bowler hats and they tossed them
Speaker 1: on their head at jaunty angles because they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: are you doing? Are you doing, johnd Angle? I'm doing, John.
Speaker 2: These guys are adorable. They're so cute.
Speaker 1: So the string of successful robberies by the Wild Bunch
Speaker 1: was of course drawing a lot of attention, and that
Speaker 1: included the attention of the railroad's favorite protection service, the
Speaker 1: Pinkerton Detective Agency, which I don't know why they spoke
Speaker 1: like that, but that's historically accurate. When the photographer gave
Speaker 1: his negatives to the Pinkertons, that famous photograph became the
Speaker 1: wanted poster for the Wild Bunch. It was printed all
Speaker 1: across America.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I heard some people started to send their loved ones
Speaker 1: the picks that they want used if they ever go missing.
Speaker 1: You know. But I'm wondering, like, is there one that
Speaker 1: you would not want to be stuck with ever?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, if you google image me pre two thousand,
Speaker 2: let's say nine, any of those pictures that was just a.
Speaker 1: Huge yes, you can smell the X bodiespoke exactly.
Speaker 2: It was ever mean. Everybody was a disaster back then,
Speaker 2: but I I was not the exception.
Speaker 1: So once everyone started to recognize their faces, members of
Speaker 1: the Wild Bunch started to get picked off. Some were killed,
Speaker 1: others were caught and locked up for their crimes, and
Speaker 1: eventually Butch and the Sundance Kid decided to take their
Speaker 1: money and leave the country. They thought if they could
Speaker 1: make it to South America, they could become like legitimate
Speaker 1: farmers there. So in March of nineteen oh one, they
Speaker 1: boarded a ship for Argentina carrying twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: In gold, which I imagine is heavy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. They probably had a bunch of chests.
Speaker 1: And I love that people in the steamer are being like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, they seemed perfectly normal to have twelve
Speaker 1: chests of heavy shot.
Speaker 2: They don't seem to change into a lot of different clothes,
Speaker 2: but they packed a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't know what kept striking that pose of that
Speaker 1: of those wild Wold Bunch guys.
Speaker 2: They were taking picture.
Speaker 1: They came once with the Apple brand. Another picture again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: carry on the other side. Yeah, he believed this one
Speaker 1: at sunset. Yeah, this whe in moonlight.
Speaker 2: The guys are adorable.
Speaker 1: So Kid Curry, on the other hand, believed that there
Speaker 1: were still places in the United States where he could
Speaker 1: hide out, living under a false identity, and he might
Speaker 1: even try to pull off another heister through things had
Speaker 1: gone according to Plant so far, so he thought he
Speaker 1: was untouchable. But he was wrong. So with Butch and
Speaker 1: the Sundance Kid off the scene, Kid Curry became the
Speaker 1: biggest name of the Wild Bunch still at large in
Speaker 1: the USA. In September nineteen oh one, Kid Curry was
Speaker 1: traveling across the South and he was staying in luxury
Speaker 1: hotels and entertaining himself at Brothels and pool halls.
Speaker 2: By the way, you asked me what I would do
Speaker 2: if someone just dumped a bunch of money into my lap.
Speaker 2: I think Kid Curry and I would be would be
Speaker 2: pretty similar hotel.
Speaker 1: Also, also, I'm noticing that nineteen oh one now has
Speaker 1: pool hall, So we moved on from Saloons and that
Speaker 1: was there's Brothels pool How is the diversifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just sort of an old Vegas. It just
Speaker 2: sounds like everything.
Speaker 1: It's just everything goes. But Kid Curry ran into some trouble.
Speaker 2: Don't don't dunt.
Speaker 1: He was traveling with a girlfriend when she was arrested
Speaker 1: at a Nashville bank trying to exchange some of the
Speaker 1: money that they had stolen from a train. The Pinkertons
Speaker 1: and the police they had kept a strict account of
Speaker 1: the numbered bills that they were missing, right, so now
Speaker 1: they knew someone connected with the train robberies was attempting
Speaker 1: to spend money in Nashville, so they closed in. So
Speaker 1: when his girlfriend didn't come back from the bank, Kid
Speaker 1: Curry got spooked. He was sure that the detectives had
Speaker 1: nabbed her, so he hiked into the Tennessee Mountains to
Speaker 1: hide out. But you know, Kit Curry isn't really cut
Speaker 1: out for the quiet life, and after a few weeks
Speaker 1: he started to get wrestless. So you're Kid Curry, you're
Speaker 1: chilling in the Tennessee Mountains. You're bored out of your mind.
Speaker 1: How do you cook up a little excitement? What do
Speaker 1: you do? How do you fill your time?
Speaker 2: Maybe write a musical? Is that? Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes? And that's what he did? Okay, f.
Speaker 2: Music The One Man's show yey.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome everybody to that huh came.
Speaker 2: Out whoaa, And this is how Oklahoma started exact hu
Speaker 2: Jegman started that in nineteen oh one.
Speaker 1: So he waited until he thought that the investigation had
Speaker 1: blown over, and he decided to go for another round
Speaker 1: of good times in Knoxville. On Friday, December the thirteenth,
Speaker 1: Curry was at the Knoxville Central Bar when he had
Speaker 1: some mad luck For Kit Curry, he made the trouble himself.
Speaker 1: So he was playing cards with other regulars when something
Speaker 1: set him off and he attacked two of the other players,
Speaker 1: choking and hitting them, and they just started Yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go, there's a bar bystanders. They started brawling and
Speaker 1: the noise of the fight brought in two police officers
Speaker 1: who were walking by on the street. When they got closed,
Speaker 1: they tried to ask him questions. Kit Curry pulled out
Speaker 1: a gun from his jacket and started shooting. Yep, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: The two officers were close enough to club him with
Speaker 1: their sticks.
Speaker 2: And what terrible aim he has if they're close enough
Speaker 2: to club him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why are he's getting well across Brandy? I think
Speaker 1: is to blame him much afric Yeah, so one even
Speaker 1: splintered his club over Curry's head, but both men ended
Speaker 1: the fight with bullet wounds from Curry. So Kid Curry
Speaker 1: ran out into the dark knight trailing blood. The local
Speaker 1: shaff brought in dogs and tracked him through the night,
Speaker 1: and police calmed the area. Kid Curry was finally caught
Speaker 1: thirty miles north walking the railroad tracks, and once he
Speaker 1: was in custody, they worked to identify him. Remember how
Speaker 1: they would have identify him the rest The gunshot wound
Speaker 1: in his rest gave him rind of a buzz everybody wow, yeah, gloves,
Speaker 1: So they realized that he was He had been captured
Speaker 1: in Montana, and they were super ecstatic. Right, the prisoner
Speaker 1: was Kid Curry. The wildness of the wild Bunch. When
Speaker 1: he was finally brought to Knox County jail, ward had
Speaker 1: already spread. He was met by a crowd of hundreds
Speaker 1: just there to watch him get thrown into jail. Wow.
Speaker 1: It took almost like a year and a half for
Speaker 1: Kit Curry's case to go through the courts. The local
Speaker 1: sheriff had to fend off visitors and intercept packages of
Speaker 1: escape tools like hacksaws, etc. Now, clearly Curry had friends
Speaker 1: on the outside who were trying to get him out. However,
Speaker 1: nobody actually liked him in the courtroom because in November,
Speaker 1: kid Curry was sentenced to one hundred and thirty years
Speaker 1: of hard labor in the federal penitentiary. So kit Curry
Speaker 1: decided to take his freedom into his own hands. A
Speaker 1: few days later, as the jailer was making his rounds
Speaker 1: to check in on the prisoner, kit Curry called him
Speaker 1: to look out the window, but when he did, the
Speaker 1: jailer found a loop of wire whipped over his head,
Speaker 1: dropped down over his neck, and kid Curry pulled it tight.
Speaker 1: With the wire cutting into his throat, the guard was
Speaker 1: forced to put his hands through the bars, where kit
Speaker 1: Curry tied him in place. Now, once the guard was bound,
Speaker 1: kid Curry pulled a long makeshift grappling hook from its
Speaker 1: hiding place in the prison bathroom and from the jail hallway.
Speaker 1: He was able to reach through the bars and hook
Speaker 1: the sh shoe box that held the guard's weapons. Like
Speaker 1: this is like some cartoon shit, right.
Speaker 2: I'm so silly because I'm expecting this sort of andy
Speaker 2: de frame kind of like like smart shawshank, you know,
Speaker 2: escape and no, this is my man, kid, He's gonna
Speaker 2: be it's gonna be blunt force.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna be bothered by the mathematics.
Speaker 2: No math, yeah, no, no crawling.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna reach for that shoe. Oh so, police station,
Speaker 1: you have your shit in like a shoe box like thing,
Speaker 1: and like it's in visibility for other prisoners. Probably not
Speaker 1: the best idea. So he pulled it over and now
Speaker 1: he had a cold forty five and then he waited.
Speaker 1: A second guard had the prison keys. So at four
Speaker 1: point eighty that afternoon, the man arrived and kid Curry
Speaker 1: was held on the second floor and as soon as
Speaker 1: the jailer reached the top of the steps, he was
Speaker 1: looking down the barrel of a pistol. The choice was clear,
Speaker 1: opened the prison door immediately or die. Oh yeah. Curry
Speaker 1: gathered his things, holding the man at gunpoint, and when
Speaker 1: he was he put the gun in the guard's back
Speaker 1: and walked him downstairs and out to the stable. Kid
Speaker 1: Curry forced the guard to prepare him a horse, and
Speaker 1: he chose the one belonging to the local sheriff, James Fox.
Speaker 1: Why that's insult to injury, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Like? Why take the share him a horse? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I said a course, and I was like, of course,
Speaker 2: this is this dude's.
Speaker 1: I needed to take a quick course on how to.
Speaker 2: Probably a course like a part of a meal, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 2: the guy had to prepare him.
Speaker 1: He wanted to.
Speaker 2: Make me a bo bay.
Speaker 1: Yes, he wanted a course on musical theater writing skills.
Speaker 1: So once a horse was ready, Kid Curry jumped into
Speaker 1: the saddle and trotted out of town. He was seen
Speaker 1: by people all along the road. Some of them didn't
Speaker 1: recognize him, but since he was riding slowly, he didn't
Speaker 1: raise suspicions. There's some accounts that a few Knoxville residents
Speaker 1: didn't know who he was and called their friends to
Speaker 1: come and see. As the infamous Kit Curry rode out
Speaker 1: of town. As usual, pose gathered, but they weren't able
Speaker 1: to track him down. For more than fifteen miles. Before
Speaker 1: that lost his trail, Kid Curry vanished into legend. You're
Speaker 1: ready for the last bit of this, riding off into
Speaker 1: the sunset? Yes, yes, sunset, thank you. So what happened
Speaker 1: next for Kid Curry is a mystery right all through
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four. Stories and legends from across the West
Speaker 1: placed him in Unsolved train robberies and shootouts where the
Speaker 1: gunman wasn't identified and among the thieves when horses went missing.
Speaker 1: Other papers reported that he was in Wyoming or Montana.
Speaker 1: A letter actually arrived at the Knoxville jail and said,
Speaker 1: tell the boys not to follow my footsteps and keep
Speaker 1: out of trouble. It had a California mailing address and
Speaker 1: sent the pinkertons on a cross country wild goose chase.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: After one Colorado train robbery in nineteen oh four, sheriff
Speaker 1: deputies arrived quickly on the scene. More than one hundred
Speaker 1: men with horses and bloodhounds hunted down the bandits, and
Speaker 1: rainfall made their tracks easy to follow in the mud
Speaker 1: with the posse close after them. The bandit stopped at
Speaker 1: arranged to steel fresh horses, but the owners somehow didn't
Speaker 1: like that weird, so the men exchanged gunfire with the
Speaker 1: bandits and one of the robbers was hit in the chest.
Speaker 1: Now before his buddies could stop him, he raised his
Speaker 1: gun to a semple and he shouted, don't wait for me,
Speaker 1: and he fired now. When the body was brought to
Speaker 1: Glenwood Springs, Colorado, it was actually identified by locals as
Speaker 1: a man named J. H. Ross and buried in a
Speaker 1: poor man's grave. Except there were two things that raised
Speaker 1: some questions about the real identity of the body. Number
Speaker 1: one the fact that the real J. H. Ross arrived
Speaker 1: in town a few days later to prove that he
Speaker 1: wasn't dead. He was like, what the fuck you, guys,
Speaker 1: and why's my wife with somebody in two days?
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 1: And the second is that the body had the scar
Speaker 1: of a bullet wound on his right wrist. Motherfuckers, my goodness.
Speaker 1: But people just didn't want to believe that kid Curry
Speaker 1: was dead, you know. They wanted to believe that he
Speaker 1: made it through the firefight and that he lived on
Speaker 1: in secret. A lot of denial, you know. So one
Speaker 1: story says that Kit Curry actually died in an asylum
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven. Another one says, no, no, actually
Speaker 1: he settled down in Spokane, Washington and lived until the
Speaker 1: late nineteen fifties. Another one says, no, he moved to Guatemala,
Speaker 1: became an actor, it got dimples, and it's still living.
Speaker 1: It like, wait, what the fuck? But then there is
Speaker 1: one last I was referring to myself, okay, but there's
Speaker 1: one last toice to these myths. Okay, some of Kit
Speaker 1: Curry's descendants have wanted to dig up the body in
Speaker 1: Colorado to do some genetic testing to verify where he's buried,
Speaker 1: but when they arrived, the body could not be found.
Speaker 2: Ah, I knew it.
Speaker 1: The records of the burial plot were lost. And that's
Speaker 1: a story of Kit Curry. Everybody, ye ya, wow.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I'm still stuck on how old is this?
Speaker 2: How old is kid? Because he's he's doing all these
Speaker 2: robberies and everything, and at the turn of the century,
Speaker 2: and then some accounts have him living until mid century nineteen.
Speaker 1: So let's say he was doing the robberies robberies in
Speaker 1: his uh late teens or eighteens, it would have to
Speaker 1: be well, but you're right, though, because if he was
Speaker 1: arranging for ten years, he must have been older than that.
Speaker 1: So let's say, like from twenty five to thirty five,
Speaker 1: and then if he died in the fifties, he must
Speaker 1: have been.
Speaker 2: What if he's a bunch of people, you know, like
Speaker 2: what if he's not just one guy eight algamation like
Speaker 2: doctor Strange, like Doctor Strange or Shakespeare. But isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 2: That is that's pretty that's pretty crazy. And his buddies
Speaker 2: who I know who I've heard of way more are
Speaker 2: just off in South America ranching and they just have
Speaker 2: accents now and they took like this and they like it,
Speaker 2: like they immediately adopted the accents immediately.
Speaker 1: What do you think?
Speaker 2: What are what are ridiculous Latin names that you think
Speaker 2: they chose as their alias?
Speaker 1: Dansa they didn't really like high round.
Speaker 2: They didn't do they didn't change.
Speaker 1: You know, like they really they.
Speaker 2: Added maybe one more syllable that was about it.
Speaker 1: Then how can people find you?
Speaker 2: Do you want my address? Yes?
Speaker 1: How can How can people.
Speaker 2: Coming from the one oh one?
Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like people to check out or
Speaker 1: or be aware of?
Speaker 2: No? I mean there's the things that I've done. There's
Speaker 2: things I've got coming up that I that aren't talk
Speaker 2: about able yet. I mean, I've got a I've got
Speaker 2: an animated show called Monsters at Work on Disney. It's
Speaker 2: super that's the Monster's univer Monsters And that's awesome.
Speaker 1: I wrote, Yeah, I love the monsters.
Speaker 2: It so fights me and and it's all that you know,
Speaker 2: It's like Billy Crystal and Jen Goodman and all the
Speaker 2: it's like Mindy Kayling and I Winkler.
Speaker 1: It's such a cool of course, sweetest guy in the world,
Speaker 1: and he is the best listen. I always believe that,
Speaker 1: like old timey Western country songs are just kind of
Speaker 1: describing what you're doing at that present moment. You know,
Speaker 1: this is like a comedian said this joke before. But
Speaker 1: what what I've noticed is that they're just running out
Speaker 1: of shit to say about their days. So now it's
Speaker 1: getting even more mundane. So as an outdro we would
Speaker 1: like to have Ben play some music and us to
Speaker 1: make up some really stupid lyrics to that.
Speaker 2: Would you be up for that? Yeah, it's just stuff
Speaker 2: we're doing right now.
Speaker 1: Stuff we're doing right now. What we think about the episode,
Speaker 1: fuck it whatever, that's, whatever goes. If it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: we'll totally cut it out.
Speaker 2: Sure, No, we won't.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ben, give us some good So this is like
Speaker 1: old timey country, but it's like Neil Young kind of.
Speaker 2: Okay soft, there's heart to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Argentina in the distance, can you see it?
Speaker 2: Butch oh? Are we the characters from the story?
Speaker 1: Yes? Butch can you see what I see? I see
Speaker 1: the hole in your wrist. It's getting deeper and deeper.
Speaker 1: But a day should put a bend aid on in
Speaker 1: rapper called whiskey, the Apricott whiskey. I've had all the fruits.
Speaker 1: I've tried with cranberry and it didn't work. That Brandy
Speaker 1: t is nice Apricot Brandy for live.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: God, this has been such a pleasure, Ben, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, brother, And we'll give you the rights of
Speaker 1: the music once we played.
Speaker 2: Oh, that song is gonna be huge. That's gonna be
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to come up
Speaker 2: with like a music like I'm Kid Feldman.
Speaker 1: Now you're kidman who likes Kurt.
Speaker 2: Massamon Feldman.
Speaker 1: Brady's Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation
Speaker 1: Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio or Executive producers for
Speaker 1: me or Turo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Papelka from
Speaker 1: Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Witning Donaldson from Gilded Audio,
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show was produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chug, who are also respectively,
Speaker 1: are Research Overlord and Music Overlord. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
Speaker 1: technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riiseek, Sarah Joyner, Nicky Stein,
Speaker 1: Olivia Canny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
Speaker 1: a rating or review. My mom will call you each
Speaker 1: personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next
Speaker 1: week