Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. How
Speaker 1: does Zarin? What's up, Elizabeth? You know it's ridiculous, Oh girl,
Speaker 1: do I? Okay. So there's this movie called The Conqueror.
Speaker 1: How much you've ever heard of it? Okay? So it
Speaker 1: stars John Wayne as Mongolian Conqueror. Oh I've actually seen that? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So it's like a vie. It is known as the
Speaker 1: deadliest movie ever. It's terrible. Oh yeah, it's definitely bad.
Speaker 1: You know why I was also deadliest? Well, they filmed
Speaker 1: it in Nevada. That was supposed to be the desert
Speaker 1: that's supposed to take place for Central Asia, and the
Speaker 1: desert that they filled it in was right where the
Speaker 1: Department of Energy was doing nuclear tests open air above
Speaker 1: ground nuclear tests. So by night one of the two
Speaker 1: d and twenty cast members had contracted cancer. What and uh?
Speaker 1: Then forty six of them died. This includes Agnes Moorehead
Speaker 1: from Bewitched fame, John Wayne obviously Susan Hey, we're a
Speaker 1: bunch of the stars of the film. It's considered the
Speaker 1: deadliest film ever because they filmed on a nuclear testing site.
Speaker 1: And he also did the same thing with You Are
Speaker 1: Yellow ribbon apparently, but is that maybe uh, sort of
Speaker 1: bad mojo from doing yellow Face. That's what I'm just
Speaker 1: saying is it was a cursed film all the way around.
Speaker 1: It's bad. It was a ridiculous idea for a film,
Speaker 1: and a ridiculous place to shoot a film, and a
Speaker 1: terrible recovery of like you know what happened after? That's crazy?
Speaker 1: That is you know what that is straight up ridiculous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. You know what else is ridiculous? But you
Speaker 1: got one for me. Hit me with it. Bad wigs,
Speaker 1: getting drunk and wearing bad wigs. Okay, my jam, getting
Speaker 1: drunk and wearing bad wigs and robbing banks. I have
Speaker 1: yet to do this. I'm Elizabeth Dutton, and joining me
Speaker 1: is Zarin Burnett. I'm just letting you know you're joining me.
Speaker 1: And this is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and
Speaker 1: outrageous capers, heists, cons It's always murder free and one ridiculous, Zaren, Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: You and I often find ourselves rooting for criminals who
Speaker 1: are entertaining and don't hurt anyone. That's yes, that's kind
Speaker 1: of my motto, my mantra, my jam. If you will
Speaker 1: I feel like I've hit the jackpot here. Um. This
Speaker 1: guy's story that I'm gonna tell you today is delicious.
Speaker 1: It makes me dizzy. I want to tell you, I
Speaker 1: want to tell you the story about the whiskey robber,
Speaker 1: Attila and Bruce. I would never have known about this
Speaker 1: king if it wasn't for listener Alex w emailed us
Speaker 1: the hot tip. I need to start with a little
Speaker 1: historical background before we dive in them. Please set the stage,
Speaker 1: of course, so as you know, the nation of Hungary was,
Speaker 1: following the defeat of the Nazis in World War Two,
Speaker 1: a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Yes, behind the
Speaker 1: Iron Curtain. We were establishing that. We know that, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: From the sixties to the eighties it was had some
Speaker 1: like free market introduced into the economy. Um, and it
Speaker 1: was referred to as the happiest barrack in the Eastern Block.
Speaker 1: The happiest barrack in the Eastern not the happiest place
Speaker 1: on Earth, the happiest barrack in the Eastern Block. They
Speaker 1: had a really high well not really, they had a
Speaker 1: higher standard of living. Things were a little bit looser
Speaker 1: in terms of travel and expression compared to East Berlin
Speaker 1: and Ze Republic. Hungarian art and culture is already so
Speaker 1: lush and elegant. Um. So they kind of resisted the
Speaker 1: brutalism as communism and so the highest standard of living
Speaker 1: makes sense. It wasn't something that they would want to
Speaker 1: ever reject, so it was easy for them to kind
Speaker 1: of keep keep in their pockets. So in the eighties
Speaker 1: we had a global recession and that made times tough,
Speaker 1: and because even the Soviets got hit with it, um,
Speaker 1: and it kind of opened people's mind in the Eastern
Speaker 1: Bloc satellite what would you call them Soviet states, um,
Speaker 1: it opened their mind to the possibility of revolution. So
Speaker 1: this is like when they were falling in love with
Speaker 1: rock and rolling beligions and Coca cola. UM and so uh.
Speaker 1: In Hungary dipped out of the Soviet Union. They were
Speaker 1: one of the first. Yeah. So like before the scorpions
Speaker 1: were singing, winds have changed before their bella like us
Speaker 1: saying um. And so the eight nine they dip out,
Speaker 1: and that kicked off the chain reaction through the Eastern
Speaker 1: Bloc that eventually led to the fall of communism. The
Speaker 1: exit was peaceful, as it was in many of these
Speaker 1: UM all of them, and it eventually, you know, leads
Speaker 1: to the fall of communism, rings about serious economic trouble. However,
Speaker 1: because Soviet subsidies went away, so everything is also privatized
Speaker 1: like basically overnight, and then prices wildly changed exactly. So
Speaker 1: that's just a quick primer to get you situated. Thank
Speaker 1: you in the landscape for catching me up on Hungary's
Speaker 1: recent history. It's very base, completely surface level assessment, all
Speaker 1: pre Victor or Bon. Yes. And so this brings us
Speaker 1: to Attila and Bruce the whiskey robber. He comes from tough,
Speaker 1: tumultuous times, hard living. People had to get creative to survive.
Speaker 1: Howdy duty was he creative? I was hoping Romanian culture.
Speaker 1: I need you to do a little imagination exercise with me.
Speaker 1: Should I maybe close my eye? I want you to
Speaker 1: close your as as a close girl. It's January twenty two, Budapest, hungry.
Speaker 1: You're at the post office on Village Street, and that's
Speaker 1: on the Buddha side of Budapest by the way. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the Danube splits it into Buddha, and I
Speaker 1: did not know that. Actually I did not know that.
Speaker 1: That's great, though I'm not making that up. I know,
Speaker 1: I totally believe. I've never heard that before. The trees
Speaker 1: are bear It's just like the post office is on
Speaker 1: a typical Hungarian tree lined boulevard, wide boulevard on the
Speaker 1: trees are bare. Just before closing time at the post
Speaker 1: office January. You've just run in after work to pay
Speaker 1: your electric bill. I'm always running late. It's a common
Speaker 1: thing in Hungary and in many parts of Europe. You
Speaker 1: can pay your bills in cash at the post office.
Speaker 1: So that's why you're there. Uh. You know, you're making
Speaker 1: small talk with the ladies in the shop. You leave
Speaker 1: the shop and you pass another man walking in. It's
Speaker 1: got a big mustache. He's wearing a very obviously cheap,
Speaker 1: long brown wig. And you know, who are you to judge?
Speaker 1: Just let him do his thing. I mean, you're wearing
Speaker 1: ladies panties under your quarter right pants, so I don't
Speaker 1: use to say they've fit in front of my shoe.
Speaker 1: So there you are. He's got the wig on. He's
Speaker 1: also wearing like a bright red pointy ski hat that
Speaker 1: has ear flaps, and it's cold. We'll give him that. Um.
Speaker 1: You look down at his feet, they're enormous, like clown feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then you notice when he's walking, it's not that
Speaker 1: his feed are enormous. The shoes are enormous and they're
Speaker 1: way too big. And he reeks of whiskey as he
Speaker 1: walks by. So you know, you're just a responsible guy
Speaker 1: paying your bill. You look over it an old man
Speaker 1: or an old like you know man walking by, and
Speaker 1: you kind of raise your eyebrows at him, and then
Speaker 1: you pull your collar up on your coat and you
Speaker 1: just go off into the cold Hungarian evening. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this guy, he gets to the door of the shop
Speaker 1: and this bewigged man. He tries to enter, but a
Speaker 1: woman who works there stops him, and she says, look,
Speaker 1: we're closed. You gotta come back. He said, no, I
Speaker 1: gotta send a letter to my girlfriend. I have to
Speaker 1: do it. No gotta come back monday is it's a Friday.
Speaker 1: I think gotta come back Monday morning. He pushes her
Speaker 1: aside and enters the post office. From his coat pocket,
Speaker 1: he produces a small toy gun and he raises it
Speaker 1: into the air. This is an armed robbery. Now the
Speaker 1: cashier just stares at him. She's annoyed because he she
Speaker 1: can see it's a toy guns. Yellow. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a squirre gun. And actually it was a cap gun,
Speaker 1: so it kind of looks but she can tell. I
Speaker 1: mean she's around the block, she's you know, uh, and
Speaker 1: he's totally drunk. So she's just like, are you for
Speaker 1: real right now? I'm not worried? This is what you do.
Speaker 1: Um shoves her out of the way, nearly tripping over
Speaker 1: his clown shoes, goes behind the counter, and another woman
Speaker 1: who works there says, where are you doing this? And
Speaker 1: he says, shut up, please instant regret. So then what
Speaker 1: does he do? He pulls a Joe Camel Duffel bag
Speaker 1: out of his coat pocket and empties the contest of
Speaker 1: the register into it his coat pockets, and then he
Speaker 1: demands that these women open the safe and they do
Speaker 1: and it's empty. Yeah, So the man turns and he
Speaker 1: just runs from the shop and he stops only to
Speaker 1: pull a combination lock out of his pocket. There are
Speaker 1: so many things in his pockets, and he locks the
Speaker 1: door to the store from the outside and takes off.
Speaker 1: How he's running in these shoes, I don't know. He's
Speaker 1: sprinting down the road the giant shoes. He rips off
Speaker 1: his hat and his wig tosses him in a trash can.
Speaker 1: He pulls a disposable razor out of his endless coat pocket,
Speaker 1: spits into his hand and like rubs it on his lip,
Speaker 1: and he proceeds to shade his mustache while running down
Speaker 1: the street. This is just like I'm imagining, like the
Speaker 1: Benny Hill music playing in the background, like banjo scramble.
Speaker 1: I'm imagine James Brown. He makes it all the way
Speaker 1: to his apartment, locks the door behind him, empties the
Speaker 1: contents of the Joe camelbag onto the kitchen table. It's
Speaker 1: five yeah, five thousand, four iNTS, which is about six grand.
Speaker 1: Attila Ambrose has just committed his first robbery. That was first.
Speaker 1: That was Baby's first robbery. How did we get here?
Speaker 1: How did he become this desperate, ridiculous criminals running down
Speaker 1: the street. So here's a little bio. Mattila born in
Speaker 1: a tiny village outside of a small town called Chicks
Speaker 1: being in Hungary. That's a very common name. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, but still just keeping it traditional. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: The hunt, He's like the Hunt of huns Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Chick c is a tiny little village in Transylvania. And
Speaker 1: he lives in a smaller village outside this town. Um
Speaker 1: the area is technically a part of Romania's. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: he speaks Hungarian is his first language. He considers himself
Speaker 1: Hungarian and but also really proudly Transylvanian Wallachia, like they're
Speaker 1: like their own little like region where they're going to say,
Speaker 1: we're not really part of either Romania or Hungry we
Speaker 1: are Wallachia. If you say so, I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: one of those areas, it's all shifting sands, right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's so um the village that he lives in, no cars,
Speaker 1: no electricity, no running water. Can I get a place?
Speaker 1: It's essentially he lives in a field right next to before.
Speaker 1: So he got into a lot of trouble as a kid.
Speaker 1: When he was seven, he got arrested for quote, climbing
Speaker 1: too high in a tree. Really looking for crimes, aren't they?
Speaker 1: There's nothing in this town. There's a tree. He's like
Speaker 1: his house, get out of there. Gets in trouble for
Speaker 1: racing a horse, like literally he was running horse. He um.
Speaker 1: He had a hockey scholarship to a nearby boarding school,
Speaker 1: but he got expelled for short circuiting the electricity on
Speaker 1: exam day. But he doesn't know electricity from Adam. What
Speaker 1: does he know? Well, he grew up with no electricities,
Speaker 1: like totally did well, because he later admits in an interview,
Speaker 1: he says, saying that I was a kleptomaniac is an understatement.
Speaker 1: I took everything that wasn't made a concrete He's honest.
Speaker 1: He got excommunicated from his small Catholic church after he
Speaker 1: ate a bunch of Communion wafers, drank a bottle of
Speaker 1: Communion wine, and then was found passed out on the
Speaker 1: altar by a priest. Drunk. On God sixteen, he stole
Speaker 1: musical instruments from a popular local wedding band. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then he gets released. He goes into the army for
Speaker 1: about sixteen months, and then he comes back to his
Speaker 1: town avoid prison time. Yeah, I think. So he's sixteen. Um,
Speaker 1: there's nothing, no work in the town, and so um,
Speaker 1: life for Transylvanians in Romania at the time was getting
Speaker 1: more and more oppressive. So he decides, I'm going to Hungary.
Speaker 1: He gets a job is what's called a church painter
Speaker 1: in near the Romanian Hungarian border, and this job was
Speaker 1: specifically given to people trying to cross over from Romania
Speaker 1: to Hungary because the church provided like the tallest place
Speaker 1: to look for on routes. So you know, you could
Speaker 1: go there and be like, yeah, i'll paint the church,
Speaker 1: wink wink, and you work there for a little bit
Speaker 1: and then you coordinate to go to the next stop,
Speaker 1: the next stop. Oh that's smart. I was thinking, like,
Speaker 1: we let him paint and we just pray. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that happened to Um. So at this time
Speaker 1: they're both Soviet satellite states, Romanian hung Hungry of course,
Speaker 1: more progressive, very appealing. Um. After a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: working at the church, he makes it across and he
Speaker 1: enters Hungary. October. He has just turned twenty one years old.
Speaker 1: Congratulations exactly. So cracks are showing in the Eastern Bloc
Speaker 1: and people are starting to realize that peaceful revolution is possible.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, he's twenty one. Um. Now, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned he was. When he was a kid, he
Speaker 1: played hockey and so well, yeah, I had a scholarship,
Speaker 1: but the last time he played was when he was fifteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was pretty good at him from what everyone
Speaker 1: When you have a passion, you never let it die.
Speaker 1: It's in the body, in the muscle memory, and that's
Speaker 1: that's how he was feeling. So he called up Hungary's
Speaker 1: championship pro hockey team Ute and asked them to play
Speaker 1: like just literally was like, what's up? He went to it,
Speaker 1: goes to a pay phone, calls the facility, says, can
Speaker 1: I speak to the general manage? Guy gets on the phone.
Speaker 1: This is what he says to him. Hello, comrade, I'm
Speaker 1: Attila Ambruce from Transylvania. I'm a goalie and i'd like
Speaker 1: to try up straight up. The manager thinks he's getting pranked,
Speaker 1: so he's like, now, come on now, and he realizes, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, he's using this construction of comrade, and
Speaker 1: like he sounds like he's got like a rural accent
Speaker 1: to him. So he's all right, we know what we
Speaker 1: actually kind of do need a goalie. I'll pick you
Speaker 1: up tomorrow and you can come to practice. So he
Speaker 1: picks Attila up. Attila has no equipment zero, I mean,
Speaker 1: don't forget well he doesn't. He didn't bring anything with
Speaker 1: him and they fled essentially a refugee, so I'm not
Speaker 1: expecting him to have his full ice kig. The amount
Speaker 1: of equipment he had was equal to the amount of
Speaker 1: skill that he had. So he doesn't make the team,
Speaker 1: but they love his moxie. Yeah, they like the spark
Speaker 1: in this guy, so they give him a job as
Speaker 1: a janitor slash zamboni driver slash handyman job. Can I
Speaker 1: just say that right now and let him sleep in
Speaker 1: a closet like job comes with your own requorters and
Speaker 1: so he then he winds up getting kicked out of
Speaker 1: that closet because he got drunk and he crashed the
Speaker 1: zamboni into the closet just you know it, just doing donuts.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, ghost riding the whip drunk driving
Speaker 1: his zamboni is awesome. Let me just say that. But
Speaker 1: they didn't fire him. They just wouldn't let him sleep
Speaker 1: there anymore. So he's like, what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: I need money for a place to live. So he
Speaker 1: gets a side gig as a grave digger. He's like,
Speaker 1: what is the most ridiculous thing I could do? Grave digging? Um.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the team made him the unpaid second
Speaker 1: string goalie, so they basically just said, like, here have
Speaker 1: a promotional T shirt. So He's like the rudy of
Speaker 1: their hot He never misses a practice, never really played,
Speaker 1: and it frustrated him. So he quits his janitor gig
Speaker 1: in pro in protest, but he stays on as the
Speaker 1: unpaid goalie. So he finds odd jobs. He sells expensive
Speaker 1: pens door to door. Um. He manages to meet this
Speaker 1: woman who comes from really rich family, and he goes
Speaker 1: on a ski vacation to Austria with this family. The
Speaker 1: owner of the hotel there knew a little bit of
Speaker 1: Hungarian and when he found out that Attila was from Transylvania,
Speaker 1: he asked Attila to smuggle pelts for him, like for
Speaker 1: like first, yeah, but not like to make not for
Speaker 1: like a furrier to make coats. He wanted like bear skinned,
Speaker 1: boar skin, deer like rugs and stuff and the hotel
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. So Attila goes back to Transylvania and his
Speaker 1: uncle connects him with a pelt dealer. I mean, whose
Speaker 1: uncle doesn't know a pelt dealer? Come on now, uh
Speaker 1: that he drives. He then drives eight and fifty miles
Speaker 1: on crappy roads back to Austria, paying off border guards
Speaker 1: along the way with a trunk full of bear skin
Speaker 1: and uh, he did this over and over again. It
Speaker 1: was making really good money. He was also spending really
Speaker 1: good money. He got a taste of it. Um. He
Speaker 1: owed a lot of money by and he was totally
Speaker 1: ready to call it quits on the smuggling game, but
Speaker 1: he owed this money. So he's like, I got one
Speaker 1: last run. But it gets canceled because all the border
Speaker 1: guards that he'd been bribing got fired them, all of them.
Speaker 1: And he had that side gig of selling pens door
Speaker 1: to door, fancy pens. Someone broke into his car and
Speaker 1: stole all the pens. So he's like desperate, he needs
Speaker 1: cash and he needs it quick. And that's where we
Speaker 1: met him at the post office that day in the
Speaker 1: winter of nine. Ah, so he just borrowed the shoes,
Speaker 1: grabbed like a Joe. Cammell looked around and was like,
Speaker 1: I need money. So let's take a break here, listen
Speaker 1: to some advertisements. I know that you know. I've kept
Speaker 1: you waiting on that because they're your favorite part of
Speaker 1: the show. It's why I'm here. Yeah. Um, when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll tell you more about how Attila blossomed
Speaker 1: into a truly ridiculous criminal nice. I'm gonna get cozy
Speaker 1: and listen to these ads. Okay. So when we last met,
Speaker 1: I was talking about Attila am Bruce, Attila the Ambers,
Speaker 1: and he had a bunch of debt that he had
Speaker 1: to pay off because he'd had crazy living due to
Speaker 1: his pelt smuggling, living high on that fur money. And
Speaker 1: he robbed a post office with a Joe camel bag
Speaker 1: and a fright wig and clown shoes. So he stole
Speaker 1: enough in that heist to pay off his debts. But
Speaker 1: you know what, he's not going to give up his lifestyle.
Speaker 1: He wants more. So a couple of months later he
Speaker 1: hits another post office. No weapons, no weapon, just bluster.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, he's just all bravado um. And from there
Speaker 1: he moves on to travel agents. He's hitting cash businesses
Speaker 1: and I would have never thought travel I know. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. He targets one Mayne. He went to
Speaker 1: a travel agent to rob it, specifically because he was
Speaker 1: mad at travel agencies, and that's because he'd had he'd
Speaker 1: taken this trip to Tunisia and they messed it up,
Speaker 1: and he was just like, you know what, all of
Speaker 1: you guys pox on your house, bunch, of scam. So
Speaker 1: he's like, can't really remember where the one was that
Speaker 1: sold him the bum tickets. He's like, well there's a
Speaker 1: travel agent. Good enough slap him. So he goes in.
Speaker 1: He robs a travel agency. Uh what does he get
Speaker 1: like travelers checks? Like, what do you cash? They have cash? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that wasn't I think that they weren't really running on
Speaker 1: a lot of credit there. So people are using cash
Speaker 1: for a large amounts Yeah, packages, okay, so um. The
Speaker 1: Hungarian tabloid covered this theft and said, quote, well wish
Speaker 1: he robbed the place. Quote, While wishing the office manager
Speaker 1: all the best and kissing her hand, he swiftly left
Speaker 1: the office. What a gentleman, Just shut up? Please money, darling.
Speaker 1: So he gets away with twelve thou o. He's doubling. June.
Speaker 1: Next month he robs his first bank graduated look at
Speaker 1: this every time. Going up. August, he robs another post
Speaker 1: office with a fellow Transylvanian hockey teammate is his accomplice.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, Bud, I got a little hometown tried.
Speaker 1: Let's do this. Take off these gates and follow me
Speaker 1: to this come with me. They have electricity. Um, they
Speaker 1: get thirty six thousand dollars off of that one, so
Speaker 1: they got you know, eighteen apiece. Um. You're probably thinking
Speaker 1: to yourself, well, what's going on with his hockey career?
Speaker 1: I was, I was just wondering, what did you get
Speaker 1: like a rookie card um. A few months after teaming
Speaker 1: up to hit the post office um with his teammate,
Speaker 1: in October nine, Attila sees his very first ice time nice.
Speaker 1: The team was up fourteen to nothing when he came
Speaker 1: on the ice. Hockey comes on the ice, he gives
Speaker 1: up three goals, but they still win because they were
Speaker 1: up by fourteen. A few days after that, after his debut,
Speaker 1: he robs again, this time another travel agency. And he
Speaker 1: does it so tell Anger to work out. He's just processing.
Speaker 1: It's part of his journey. This is what he considers therapy.
Speaker 1: He goes to a crowded train station where there's a
Speaker 1: travel agency and he does this during rush hour. It's like,
Speaker 1: what would be the most ridiculous time. He's wearing a wig,
Speaker 1: but of course the employees so they just started screaming
Speaker 1: and people gathered outside. He got away, but he didn't
Speaker 1: get money, so they started screaming before he had even
Speaker 1: like said, hey, here's my pop gun. And well I
Speaker 1: think he like he said, you know, this is a
Speaker 1: stick up, and they're just and then because it's a
Speaker 1: crowd station, they're like, what's going on there in the
Speaker 1: travel agency? Um? But so he gets away December ninety three,
Speaker 1: so that was October December ninety three. He finally gets
Speaker 1: his revenge and he steals about from the original travel
Speaker 1: agency that wronged him. That clears the deck is on
Speaker 1: that February, he dresses as a businessman and he attempts
Speaker 1: his first solo bank robbery. Oh yeah, he successfully takes
Speaker 1: about dollars first time effort. March strikes again. He gets
Speaker 1: bucks from another bank. What is he spending this on?
Speaker 1: He had a gambling problem. He liked the drink, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he liked to go to Tunisia, and so he
Speaker 1: likes Tunisia, the ponies and a good whiskey. He does
Speaker 1: another travel agency in July nine. Um dressed as a businessman,
Speaker 1: puts on a wig. This time. He had a couple
Speaker 1: of drinks at a nearby bar to comms nerves beforehand,
Speaker 1: but he got so drunk that he forgot to put
Speaker 1: up the closed sign and the agency's entrance after he
Speaker 1: walked in, so like people just kept walking in, like, hey,
Speaker 1: kind of curious about your next let me finish like
Speaker 1: these timing year. Um, So one of the agents rings
Speaker 1: a silent alarm. Are people still going to take a terra?
Speaker 1: They agent rings a silent alarm, and then he can't
Speaker 1: access the safe. Um and as he's leaving, though he
Speaker 1: does get money. He gets as he's leaving, the cops
Speaker 1: are there, but they're entering the adjacent building that has
Speaker 1: the same address that's a supermarket because they think that's
Speaker 1: what's getting robbed. They're like, who would rob a travel technically?
Speaker 1: January he robbed his next bank, scored over with that.
Speaker 1: One July he steals another twenty grand from another bank,
Speaker 1: just ping pawing in between banks. He's like freelancing where
Speaker 1: he's just get sees these checks and just keeps, you know,
Speaker 1: living his life. Bills are yeah, basically um. When he
Speaker 1: steals the twenty thousand from another bank that they had
Speaker 1: surveillance video and so a still framed photo of him
Speaker 1: was published in the newspapers and featured on a local
Speaker 1: crime show called Sounds Amazing. Um, he's wearing the wig
Speaker 1: and he wore a wig specifically that resembled the lead
Speaker 1: detective on the case, like because he was annoyed the
Speaker 1: detective had called him quote unquote lucky in an interview,
Speaker 1: and he's like, no, this ain't luck, baby, and you
Speaker 1: want to see luck, So Hi, how about this? Luck?
Speaker 1: Is what I do on the ice, skill is how
Speaker 1: I bring the ridiculousness. So yeah, he's like, sees this
Speaker 1: guy's like mullet or whatever. It's like, totally, I'm styling
Speaker 1: my wig like that. You imagine him like he's got
Speaker 1: the wig like on one of those like mannequin heads.
Speaker 1: He's like cutting the mullid looking at the photos, cutting
Speaker 1: the mull looking at the photo. Okay, now, very perfect,
Speaker 1: perfect son. So that just of course really cheeses off
Speaker 1: the detective. Um. But wait, hold on hockey career. At
Speaker 1: this time, he actually gets named U t s starting goalie.
Speaker 1: But he was so stressed out about being caught that
Speaker 1: he started playing really really badly, even for him. In
Speaker 1: a six game stretch, he gave up goals. It's like,
Speaker 1: seasons I could do better than I just lay across
Speaker 1: in front of the net and just take my hits.
Speaker 1: You could just go back and forth post to post
Speaker 1: and do a better job. Just a random luck. When
Speaker 1: you gave up twenty three goals in one game, how
Speaker 1: many did he score on his own? Just like I
Speaker 1: just knocked this one and I'm tired. I bet I
Speaker 1: bet that some of them were. I need a break.
Speaker 1: Go ahead. So he leads his team to a zero
Speaker 1: to three loss. Um. But let's get back to the criming, right,
Speaker 1: just a little time out On that one March, Attila
Speaker 1: robs another post office gets around six. I'm he's glad.
Speaker 1: He's good at something. Now back at u t E
Speaker 1: at the team, they have a new coach and he
Speaker 1: has a kid. The kid's name is Gabby. Gabby orbon
Speaker 1: like Victor, so Gabby is the son of the new coach.
Speaker 1: He's also a teammate because apparently if you if you're related,
Speaker 1: get out there on the ice. Um. He had been
Speaker 1: hanging around Attila because Attila's got money. They don't make
Speaker 1: money on this team, like they make pennies. It's like,
Speaker 1: what you know, I want to hang out with this dude. Um.
Speaker 1: He befriends him, and then in the summer of ninety six,
Speaker 1: Untila finally relents and it's like, all right, let me
Speaker 1: tell you my secret, my secret to success wigs. And
Speaker 1: so they're like, let's do this, And there was a
Speaker 1: montage and music and they ran through the streets buying collections,
Speaker 1: draws back the curtain, giant shoes. In August, they robbed
Speaker 1: a post office together. Now, in this case, Attila was
Speaker 1: pretty drunk by the time they arrived at the post office.
Speaker 1: I like that, like whiskey is his dumbost feather. He's like,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in me, give me a couple of whiskey. Well,
Speaker 1: he shows up drunk and an employee recognizes him immediately,
Speaker 1: and it's also like, you guys, it's a warm sunny day.
Speaker 1: It's a little suspicious that you have raincoats on. So
Speaker 1: these two drunks and raincoats, not three boys in one raincoat.
Speaker 1: Two drunks and each of their own. This is a
Speaker 1: stick up. So the employee calls the cops and it's like,
Speaker 1: we got we got the whiskey robber up in here,
Speaker 1: and he's talking about his his goaltending. The operator thinks
Speaker 1: it's a joke. When they help, we have the whiskey
Speaker 1: robber in this post office. She's like, yeah, you do,
Speaker 1: weren't weren't um, So she tells the employe, look, if
Speaker 1: you want to be serious, call back and hangs up
Speaker 1: on the employee. Well, at the same time, Attila and
Speaker 1: Gabby are like, everybody away from the phone's everybody in
Speaker 1: the corner. This is a stick up. So the phone
Speaker 1: starts ringing and no one answers, and instead of being like,
Speaker 1: oh snap, I think there's something to float at the
Speaker 1: post office, the operators like nothing going on. There must
Speaker 1: be busy. If it was real, you would call back.
Speaker 1: I won't even answer the phone. Ain't got nobody today.
Speaker 1: I come on now. Attila and Gabby get away with
Speaker 1: thirty four thou dollars in that case. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: was after this incident that the press gave Attila the
Speaker 1: nickname the Whiskey Robbers. So I guess before they're like,
Speaker 1: you know it was the drunk Yeah, the guy with
Speaker 1: the wig and the drink um. And so he gets
Speaker 1: that name because like bars that are near the robberies
Speaker 1: are reporting a disguised man downing drinks right before the
Speaker 1: thefts take place, and they're like, there's this guy wearing
Speaker 1: a wig. He came in, he had a bunch of whiskey.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be judging, but you know, and
Speaker 1: he's not showing up sober to these bars. There's another
Speaker 1: reason he's drawing attention to himself because he rolls up
Speaker 1: having pre partied with the Joe camel Bag at home,
Speaker 1: and then it's just like getting loose at the bar.
Speaker 1: He just needs a couple of to top off his energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now he's referred to as the whiskey robber. He's
Speaker 1: high profile baby. So September, the Dynamic Duo, that gruesome tosome.
Speaker 1: They robbed a bank and took just about fifty grand
Speaker 1: a bank. These are they're doing numbers. He's getting pretty good.
Speaker 1: November they robbed another bank. He's getting boring at this point.
Speaker 1: They dressed for this robbery. They dressed in wigs and
Speaker 1: trench coats. Keep it fresh. Well, he's he's can't Attila
Speaker 1: wearing a wig, wearing a trench coat, drunk as a skunk.
Speaker 1: Just as as they're about to begin this robbery, Attila
Speaker 1: realizes that he forgot to bring a bag to put
Speaker 1: the money in. He doesn't have his Joe camel bag,
Speaker 1: doesn't even have anything. So he's like hold on. He
Speaker 1: runs to a nearby supermarket and he buys a loaf
Speaker 1: of bread and they put it into bag for him,
Speaker 1: and then he runs to the bank. He goes in.
Speaker 1: They robbed the bank at ninety grand, put it in
Speaker 1: the bag, and he leaves the bread in the safe
Speaker 1: even trade, even trade. What was going on in his
Speaker 1: hockey life? You're wondering enough with the criming, so he's
Speaker 1: good at robbing. How is the goaltending? Well later that evening,
Speaker 1: after that robbery, but the bread robbery and hockey practice,
Speaker 1: he was so drunk at that point that he missed
Speaker 1: like a super easy goal in A frustrated teammate got
Speaker 1: so mad that he hit him in the head with
Speaker 1: his hockey stick. And then the report I read was
Speaker 1: he hit him, to quote so hard that a nail
Speaker 1: from Attila's helmet lodged inside his skull. Attila hardly noticed
Speaker 1: a nail from his That's what jumped out, like, great,
Speaker 1: guy's got a nail in his skull, He's pickled. Whatever
Speaker 1: what is going on with a nail in the helmet?
Speaker 1: And they mean like a metal nail, not like a fingernail.
Speaker 1: Right now, like a metal nail went into a skull
Speaker 1: in Soviet Russia nail hammers. You what is going on
Speaker 1: with that that the teammate is so mad at the
Speaker 1: drunk goalie just beat him us and Antila is just
Speaker 1: like sitting there all how drawing. So January robs another
Speaker 1: bank Grand March. This litany is incredible. He robs he
Speaker 1: had another bank. This time they dressed as cops and
Speaker 1: they were like, you know, we found we heard that
Speaker 1: there's some smuggling going on. There's some business. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: it's all legit. So they're like, fulled you, we're not cops.
Speaker 1: Were the robbers put it in there? Fifty two grand?
Speaker 1: Off they go. So the cops are rushing to that
Speaker 1: bank and they're already gone. Attila and Gabby went to
Speaker 1: grab lunch. So they got lunch while the cops were
Speaker 1: like descending on the bank like oh my god, he
Speaker 1: hit again, and the people are all traumatized in there.
Speaker 1: So they're grabbing lunch, and then they went to a
Speaker 1: post office on the other side of town, and we're like, look,
Speaker 1: we're dressed for it, we might as well just you
Speaker 1: got a minute, Yeah, what do you think? So they
Speaker 1: like they actually they in this case, they were dressed
Speaker 1: as cops. They changed their they had a costume change,
Speaker 1: so um they put on suits, long wigs and baseball caps.
Speaker 1: So it's like zz top um and they stole twenty
Speaker 1: two grand, so that's a two for those are athletes.
Speaker 1: These are endurance athletes though. The performance this is what
Speaker 1: peak performance looks like. So at the next robbery April,
Speaker 1: he and Gabby only managed to steal about a two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars because the bank had just handed off most
Speaker 1: of its cash to an armored vehicle. I can't win
Speaker 1: them all. Bad timing, kind of like how he is
Speaker 1: on the ice. Um the following month way more money.
Speaker 1: So they've got their outfits on business suits and wigs. Um.
Speaker 1: They stole one hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars from
Speaker 1: a Budapest bank. Yeah. Um the bills the police had requested,
Speaker 1: Hey listen, you got a lot of cash on hand,
Speaker 1: let's mark the bills. They're like, sure, they marked the bills.
Speaker 1: The problem was is that banks and post offices didn't
Speaker 1: have an ability to read the marks. They just put
Speaker 1: smiley faces on there, so they were like and no
Speaker 1: one knows to look for it to like, oh look
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of smile face on. That's funny. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're able to pass the money, no, no problem,
Speaker 1: they can't be tracked. Um Now, Attila, after this huge hall,
Speaker 1: he's like, you know what that was it? That was
Speaker 1: my final bow. Yeah, he's like, but hold on, what's
Speaker 1: going on at the hockey career that year? Despite his
Speaker 1: dedication until it was dropped from the hockey team? What
Speaker 1: this out of all the stuff you told me, this
Speaker 1: is just not that injustice? This is just wrong. How
Speaker 1: did he find out the beatings he's endured. He found
Speaker 1: out because he was reading the paper and he saw
Speaker 1: the team's roster and his name wasn't on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did manage to get a spot on the team's
Speaker 1: cross town rival, but the teammates didn't like him and
Speaker 1: it didn't last. Um so December, n right, just a
Speaker 1: couple of months later. Uh, he's They're like, you know what, hey,
Speaker 1: Gabby Gabs, I'm a little short on cash. Let's come
Speaker 1: out of retirement. Let's do this. And they did. They
Speaker 1: came out of retirement and did another job. Now I
Speaker 1: need to take a break. I need to think about this.
Speaker 1: I need to think about hockey. I do you think
Speaker 1: about injustice? And when we come back, I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you what happens next. Little Attila, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: this damboni for a loop. Okay, So Gabby and Attila,
Speaker 1: out of retirement, back at it again. Uh. They stole
Speaker 1: almost forty four thousand dollars from the same bank that
Speaker 1: they robbed the previous May. Boys are back in town.
Speaker 1: This time though he used a gun. That's a one.
Speaker 1: He escalated. He hadn't been doing that, never had to.
Speaker 1: He fired three shots at a surveillance camera had pause
Speaker 1: in there. Um. So in February of night they robbed
Speaker 1: another bank, and in that case they told the employees
Speaker 1: they had a bomb. They're getting desperate. But the bomb
Speaker 1: was just two cigars wrapped with transistor radio wire to
Speaker 1: a battery, a bullet cartridge, and the face of a
Speaker 1: digital watch. It's a trust me. Don't touch it. It's fine.
Speaker 1: Don't check. Don't check, guys, don't check. Um. The next
Speaker 1: month they robbed another bank, but Attila then they used
Speaker 1: a tank. This time he's wearing this long wool coat.
Speaker 1: He's wearing a blonde wig and a beret, mixing it up. Glasses,
Speaker 1: but he was really distracted because he'd recently broken up
Speaker 1: with his girlfriend. His emotional time him getting dropped from
Speaker 1: the hockey steal in his stealing the wigs he's wearing
Speaker 1: all her. So because he's so distracted, he takes a
Speaker 1: lot longer than the three minutes that they usually allotted,
Speaker 1: And by the time they left the entrance outside was
Speaker 1: surrounded by a group of who do you think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go with Jehovah's witnesses. No, wait a second, guess
Speaker 1: Canadian tourists there for a whiskey thon so close vegetable vendors,
Speaker 1: green grocers, so they there's this to do going on,
Speaker 1: and all the vegetable nearby vegetable vendors surround the outside
Speaker 1: and they're like, we're going to apprehend the whiskey robber.
Speaker 1: Pickle peddlers and cucumber pushers trying to chase you down.
Speaker 1: The cops are closing in Attila, he's got the gun.
Speaker 1: He runs out and he shoots twice into the air
Speaker 1: and then starts running and all the vendors are chasing him.
Speaker 1: They chase the man who fired the gun in there
Speaker 1: like this, well, and the guy in a heavy coat,
Speaker 1: blond wig beret and glasses. It's like a Wes Anderson.
Speaker 1: The green grocers follow him and then everyone goes running by.
Speaker 1: I can see the shot well. A cops starts chasing
Speaker 1: him too, and then with it ed Norton as the
Speaker 1: cop yes it was. And then Attila carjack someone and
Speaker 1: takes the car. They go on a high speed chase.
Speaker 1: The car's windows get shot out American. He escaped, though
Speaker 1: I had no doubt dollars uh. I don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to Gabby. I guess Gabby went with him. Gabby
Speaker 1: was in the wind on this one. Good. Let's check
Speaker 1: back in on the hockey career, because it's not over,
Speaker 1: thank good. I keep hoping that that's going to pull
Speaker 1: him back to a life that is more fulfilling. Well,
Speaker 1: he got his unpaid goalie job back at ut E,
Speaker 1: but he was playing so badly and generally so drunk
Speaker 1: that they told him not to come to practice for
Speaker 1: a while. Just counted the game. He had just taken
Speaker 1: up space here. But let's get back to the robberies. January,
Speaker 1: Attila and Gabby they robbed another bank, but guard decided
Speaker 1: to fight him like fist fight. Yeah, like over the toaster,
Speaker 1: that free toaster. You can hate the money, but I'm
Speaker 1: keeping the free toaster, he said, debate me. So the
Speaker 1: guard is like grappling with them. He delays them enough
Speaker 1: that he only takes about bucks from the register or
Speaker 1: from the teller sorry, because this is a bank. Um,
Speaker 1: so he gets about bucks. And now you know, these
Speaker 1: two are getting low on money despite all their spending money,
Speaker 1: like well, imagine they're living big, buying first pelts. They're
Speaker 1: draped in pelts, uncured. So they decide, okay, you know what, Okay,
Speaker 1: one more bank and then we call it quippause just
Speaker 1: for us. Yeah. Well, they end up getting almost eighty
Speaker 1: thou dollars off this one. But they took so long
Speaker 1: to do it in there that the cops were like
Speaker 1: they wanted the moment to laugh. Yeah, the cops were
Speaker 1: on their way. The cops were almost there. Attila got away,
Speaker 1: Gabby did not. Yeah, and the coach knows who hangs
Speaker 1: out with his boy. Yeah, Attila doesn't know where Gabby is,
Speaker 1: but he knows he doesn't have a lot of times.
Speaker 1: He makes a break for it, and so he gets home.
Speaker 1: He decides he's going to leave the country or just
Speaker 1: you know, go to the mattresses as they say, right, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what they do say. Help me check my crimical life.
Speaker 1: Who does he take with him when he goes on
Speaker 1: the run? Um the I don't know, the enforcer from
Speaker 1: the hockey team. He took his Burmese mountain dog named Don.
Speaker 1: I was close named Don Don. This is the first
Speaker 1: mentioned of the dog in the coverage of it is
Speaker 1: this And it's like, wait, hold on, why is this
Speaker 1: not the first thing that's ever told about him. I
Speaker 1: have a Burmese mountain dog named Don. Um so he
Speaker 1: and Don took off and sped to the Romanian border.
Speaker 1: I wonder what Don Don is named after. We're in
Speaker 1: the late nineties and tiny bubbles, the tiny bubbles. It's
Speaker 1: definitely not Don Johnson. It's probably not Donald could be
Speaker 1: I mean it is Eastern Bloc. Yeah, but it's the
Speaker 1: late nineties. Yeah, so I'm thinking, like, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's probably not Donald Duck, probably not Donald Sutherland. Maybe
Speaker 1: he missheard Dom DeLuise. There you go. I like that
Speaker 1: he named his talk after Tom Deelwise, but he missheard it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so he uh it was actually a sports journalist
Speaker 1: who first outed Attila publicly. Well, he figured, like, okay,
Speaker 1: this robbery went down. I've been noticing that the goalie
Speaker 1: is rich and he didn't show up. And he didn't
Speaker 1: show up. There was a robbery today and he almost
Speaker 1: got caught. And now, hold on a second. So he
Speaker 1: starts like clocking all the stuff. Attila makes it to
Speaker 1: the Romanian border. Um, but the guards were all waiting
Speaker 1: for him. He tried to go over on the road.
Speaker 1: He goes on the road and he shows up with
Speaker 1: his passport. He's like coming to you know, don show
Speaker 1: your passport, um, don want to see the hometown. Just
Speaker 1: homesick um. So Attila immediately confesses to all of the robberies, uh,
Speaker 1: twenty six of them at this point. And he even
Speaker 1: told him like, these are the disguises that I wore.
Speaker 1: Here's my look book, Here's how much I took. He
Speaker 1: had laid it all out in all at this point,
Speaker 1: he'd taken about six dred thousand dollars. And that's like
Speaker 1: if you're exchanging the exchange rates for forens dollars um.
Speaker 1: Over a thousand people stepped forward to adopt don. I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. I'll taked on um. Attila
Speaker 1: spent the next six months in a Budapest jail awaiting
Speaker 1: his charges. He was split down the middle. Um. He
Speaker 1: gave a bunch of interviews when he was in jail,
Speaker 1: including to criminalis Um and that just like fortified his
Speaker 1: whiskey robber pathology and made him a total folk hero
Speaker 1: because he wasn't hurting people. It was just you know. Um. July,
Speaker 1: they finally formally charge him. So besides the robberies, he
Speaker 1: was accused of attempted murder because of the fire and
Speaker 1: the gun uh and he um. You know it's bad
Speaker 1: to fire guns around vegetable vendors. They're very sensitive people,
Speaker 1: are you could have bruised the cabbage. Um. The morning
Speaker 1: of July, he had this you know, usual routine. He's
Speaker 1: led outside to the jail's exercise facilities. Zaren, I want
Speaker 1: you to picture it. I'm going I'm going for to
Speaker 1: come here. Attila is out in the yard. It's a
Speaker 1: hot day. He's wearing heavy jeans and a long sleeve shirt.
Speaker 1: At this prison, each inmates given a small private space
Speaker 1: to work out in. There's a door that locks, but
Speaker 1: the space is open to the sky. The guard locks
Speaker 1: the door. Attila reaches under his clothes and pulls out
Speaker 1: a rope that he's made from sheets, shoe paces, and towels.
Speaker 1: He scales the wall, and just as he suspected would
Speaker 1: be the case, there's no one in the guard tower
Speaker 1: looking form, no one, no one on on watch. He
Speaker 1: crosses the interior courtyard to the jail's administration building. Now,
Speaker 1: his plan was to find an unlocked office on either
Speaker 1: the first or second floor and then pop out the
Speaker 1: window lower himself down with this amazing rope that he
Speaker 1: has crafted. Um, but he hears people on those floors,
Speaker 1: so he has to go up to the fourth floor.
Speaker 1: Waight up to the fourth like on the outside of
Speaker 1: the building. No, no, no, he's inside, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I got to get to the outside of the jails
Speaker 1: and find a window. Well, he has to go up
Speaker 1: to the fourth floor. Um, the rope not long enough,
Speaker 1: but you know, he didn't have a whole lot of options. Uh,
Speaker 1: So he descends nearly fifty ft to the ground, severely
Speaker 1: sprains both ankles, and then just rips his palms to shreds.
Speaker 1: Like he just gets mess. He's basically just sliding down
Speaker 1: a rope with his hands, taking all the s off
Speaker 1: yea like shoe lace rope um. It was the first
Speaker 1: time anyone had ever escaped from this jail before. So
Speaker 1: with the help of a contact, he found an apartment
Speaker 1: in Budapest. I don't know which side to hide out
Speaker 1: in um, but first he had to celebrate with a
Speaker 1: couple of beers. You know. He goes to a bar
Speaker 1: and goes in the bathroom, gets rid of the clothes
Speaker 1: you've been wearing, shaves his face, and then the bartender
Speaker 1: like sees him and it's like, hey, are you a
Speaker 1: whiskey robber shrugs. He's like, I get that a lot. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: good non answer at eleven am, because this is like
Speaker 1: in the early and the first in the morning where
Speaker 1: he's getting his workout. At eleven am, they put Budapest
Speaker 1: on an emergency lockdown and it was the largest man
Speaker 1: hunt in post communist Eastern Europe's history at this point. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: not long after his escape, his attorney makes a statement
Speaker 1: and he says that he wants to an o ounce
Speaker 1: that Attila would be at the center of an advertising
Speaker 1: campaign for a new energy drink. Did I just have
Speaker 1: a stroke? I was saying you're listening to you, and
Speaker 1: I did none of that. Mads tense. So instead of
Speaker 1: saying I've asked my client to turn himself, this is
Speaker 1: a great misunderstanding, He's like, I'm glad you were all
Speaker 1: gathered here today. A really important announcement. I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about a new drink called Attila Pow. It's
Speaker 1: a very rare brand partnership. It's there and he says, look,
Speaker 1: promotional t shirts, buttons, souvenirs, they're already in production. An
Speaker 1: alcoholic is the precursor to like vodka and Red Bull exactly.
Speaker 1: It goes really well with whiskey. So they did. They
Speaker 1: had all these promotional things in place, and there was
Speaker 1: a partnership with like a Western European manufacturer and they're
Speaker 1: going to distribute it. Um. So you know the attorney
Speaker 1: is doing that. He obviously has the best attorney possum.
Speaker 1: There's also a reward of one million four ins. That's
Speaker 1: like about so for anyone who wants to help catch him,
Speaker 1: Red Bull gives you wigs. Sorry, I was just thinking
Speaker 1: I just need to rest in that from it, and
Speaker 1: that was great. Um. So there's this one million fourans
Speaker 1: reward for any help in catching him. Hungarians uninterested. They're like,
Speaker 1: we're not helping you with this. Look what you you
Speaker 1: bunched this up? Do I look like a snitch? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why you got to insult me? They're like chugging their
Speaker 1: Attila juice and just looking like, look somewhere else. Pal
Speaker 1: Attila calculated that he'd need between eighty five thousand and
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten thousand dollars to start a new
Speaker 1: life somewhere else, and he was considering Brazil. Always a
Speaker 1: good choice, right, Argentina maybe so um, he didn't have
Speaker 1: that kind of money. So what does he do? Steals it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: end of July robs a bank. So he's on the run.
Speaker 1: He robs a bank the best time to rob. And
Speaker 1: my favorite is that he's like, Okay, everyone knows who
Speaker 1: I am. I need this money. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: back to a bank I've robbed before. I like the
Speaker 1: comfort of it. They'll probably respect me. You know what
Speaker 1: I do. They know what I'm working with. So he
Speaker 1: goes in to this bank that he'd robbed previously, and
Speaker 1: you know, they're just oh godly, and so he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, can you heal your money? Open the safe
Speaker 1: but the safe had been moved since he'd been there last,
Speaker 1: so it was very confusing for him. And he was drunk.
Speaker 1: He allegedly yells, you know who I am. I have
Speaker 1: nothing to lose. I'm talking about care. He was only
Speaker 1: able to get before he escaped. And how did he escape.
Speaker 1: He swam across the Danube to an island to evade
Speaker 1: the police, across which divides Buddha. And there we go.
Speaker 1: September does it again. He gets, he buys a moped
Speaker 1: and he drives the mop head to the bank. But
Speaker 1: he's him murk. He drank an entire bottle of whiskey,
Speaker 1: and he was so drunk that when he walked in,
Speaker 1: the tellers started laughing. He's drooling, and he's like, I
Speaker 1: can only keep one eye open. He's like, listen, I
Speaker 1: love you guys so much. Don't give me the money please.
Speaker 1: He only got two sixty bucks out of this one,
Speaker 1: and the cops were like, you know, that's less than
Speaker 1: the price of the scooter. That you've forgotten the parking lot,
Speaker 1: and that you left your helmet on. He left the
Speaker 1: keys in the moped. Everything he left the moped, keys, helmet, whatever,
Speaker 1: So he gets less than that's worth. He's like, all right,
Speaker 1: October rolls around him, gonna try it again, different bank.
Speaker 1: He wears a baseball hat and jacket and brand new loafers.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like your first day of school and
Speaker 1: you just want to get fitted um the shoes, though
Speaker 1: they sliced the back of his ankles so badly that
Speaker 1: he had to abort the mission. He it back to
Speaker 1: his apartment and he had to let his feet heal.
Speaker 1: He's just like got his toad season some ice and
Speaker 1: he's like, we should I should have broken these in.
Speaker 1: Really I didn't think that through. He probably forgot to
Speaker 1: like sand down roughen up the souls to these loafers
Speaker 1: and sliding around. He's walking around his house and his
Speaker 1: ice skates and don't hurt. A week later, he gives
Speaker 1: himself a week to rest up. October eighteenth, he gets drunk.
Speaker 1: He enters a bank. They're about fifteen customers. They're about
Speaker 1: fifteen customers in there. He forgets again to put the
Speaker 1: clothes sign on the door. So by the time the
Speaker 1: robberies in progress, forty new people have entered, singing closing
Speaker 1: time time. Do you give me all the money you
Speaker 1: guys that deserves an arrest. Um. It took him sixteen minutes.
Speaker 1: That's a long time, but he got two dollars. He
Speaker 1: got away, yeah, well kind of yeah. He leaves right
Speaker 1: when the cops are getting there, and he would have
Speaker 1: been they would have gotten there sooner, but the two
Speaker 1: separate police cars got an unrelated accidents on the way over,
Speaker 1: and so he gets out the back. He's outside, he's running,
Speaker 1: he's looking for a place to hide. He jumps um
Speaker 1: into a nearby back yard. He jumps a fence, but
Speaker 1: he falls head first over the fence and he breaks
Speaker 1: two of his fingers and knocks himself unconscious. So he
Speaker 1: spent the night in the yard and the next morning
Speaker 1: he gets but he's wakes up unconscious, Yes, and like
Speaker 1: a dog lookscept sniffs on him, peas on him, goes
Speaker 1: back inside. He goes back to his apartment and the
Speaker 1: next morning he thought he got away with it, but
Speaker 1: in the whole kerf fluffle, he dropped his phone card
Speaker 1: and police were able to trace a call to his
Speaker 1: Transylvanian apartment owner, who was in the process of getting
Speaker 1: Attila a new passport, and they figured out where he
Speaker 1: was hiding. So October Attila is cooking his friend the
Speaker 1: thank you dinner, thank you for being a friend, and
Speaker 1: the Budapest police arrive. Um, they arrest him. He had
Speaker 1: been on the lamp for a hundred and nine days
Speaker 1: at this point, and so in all over the course
Speaker 1: of six years, he committed twenty nine successful robberies, one unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: Um he stole around one point nine million four iNTS,
Speaker 1: which is about UM eight hundred and forty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in exchange rate in today would be almost one point
Speaker 1: five million dollars UM. Sewing all that drunk. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: other bank robbers just must hear this story and just
Speaker 1: hang their heads. He was just consistent. It was like
Speaker 1: trying to get on the hockey team. He's consistent. He's
Speaker 1: just gonna keep hammering at it. Just showed up, success, success,
Speaker 1: showing up. So but here he gets arrested. They're not
Speaker 1: going to put him back in the jail. Instead, they
Speaker 1: housed him in a government building. Quote in a special
Speaker 1: all glass cage built five years earlier for the country's
Speaker 1: most notorious serial killer, Magda Marinko, a convicted butcher of
Speaker 1: four Wow, So they actually put him in like a
Speaker 1: life size whiskey ball. They put him in like a
Speaker 1: bond villain or a life sized whiskey. They poured him
Speaker 1: on in Um, he's licking the bottom of it. He
Speaker 1: was charged with sixty counts of robbery. He was charged
Speaker 1: with attempted murder. He was charged with violations of personal
Speaker 1: freedom for the people that he temporarily held against their will.
Speaker 1: Dimly charged with the abuse of a green grocer. Yes,
Speaker 1: he played guilty to all the robberies, and he was
Speaker 1: mad though he was mad about attempted murder. He's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't aim that at any It was just you know,
Speaker 1: with all this booze, right is livers all who um
Speaker 1: he The trial lasted six months. There were seventy witnesses, everyone,
Speaker 1: everyone turned up for it, and despite asking the judge
Speaker 1: for leniency, in December of two thousand he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to fifteen years in a maximum security prison. And that's
Speaker 1: more than at that point what murders were getting. Um.
Speaker 1: He was acquitted on the attempted murder charges, but found
Speaker 1: guilty on forty six robbery charges. The prosecution and the
Speaker 1: defense both appealed to the Hungarian Supreme Court, like no
Speaker 1: one's happy here. There are no winners. The court like
Speaker 1: they agree prosecutions appealing, like, yeah, damn it, give me
Speaker 1: another shot. Well, I guess because they wanted the attempted murder.
Speaker 1: The court is like, you know what, No, we're going
Speaker 1: to acquit him of the attempted murder. But let's put
Speaker 1: two more years on this. Let him steal. He won't.
Speaker 1: He's drunk. He got out of prison in January. Welcome back,
Speaker 1: and he is going to hunt me down. And he
Speaker 1: was released early for being for good behavior. And today
Speaker 1: he works in ceramics. He learned how to, you know,
Speaker 1: throw pottery in prison. He sells his pottery at art
Speaker 1: fairs and around hungry and he does workshops. He's also
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Can I get some of his well, he's
Speaker 1: You can buy his stuff through Instagram. His handle is
Speaker 1: at t E Underscore r E A L Underscore v
Speaker 1: I s z k I S the real VIC. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not smart enough to know the how
Speaker 1: to say the last word. Um, you can buy his wares.
Speaker 1: I want a mug. He does these ceramic fake whiskey bottles.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's does he sign him? Can I get
Speaker 1: like a custom piece? I bet? I bet what's your
Speaker 1: ridiculous takeaway on this, Oh man, my ridiculous takeaway. Look
Speaker 1: what you know a wig can do for a man's confidence?
Speaker 1: You know this. You put him on a hockey ice,
Speaker 1: couldn't even stand up. You give him a wig all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, and he's like, you know what, Suddenly,
Speaker 1: now I can do the rhymes that have only dreamed
Speaker 1: of six Sampson. Yeah, exactly. So you know you care
Speaker 1: about a man who's having a little bit of a problem,
Speaker 1: Maybe get him a wig, Get him a fright wig
Speaker 1: about fun, mix it up, not just one wig. If
Speaker 1: that doesn't work, get him some whiskey. Let's just try
Speaker 1: it all. I think Attila is the apex ridiculous criminals
Speaker 1: so far in our young show. Really well, he doesn't
Speaker 1: hurt people. He don's silly disguises. He does stuff like
Speaker 1: rob the same place twice, or rob a place because
Speaker 1: they messed up his travel arrangement. He has a ridiculously
Speaker 1: unhealthy relationship with alcohol. He can't play hockey, but somehow
Speaker 1: also plays it professionally. Uh. He is the living embodiment
Speaker 1: of my grandma's advice of act like you know, and
Speaker 1: he just bungles his way to success. Plus he gets
Speaker 1: extra points for owning a dog and naming that dog
Speaker 1: don because human names for dogs. That's the way to go.
Speaker 1: You've made your case. Thank you. That's my takeaway. That's excellently.
Speaker 1: I'm done here. I'm over here, sweat dripping delicious, right
Speaker 1: are you dizzy? Dizzy, delicious and drunk? It's amazing. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you all, thank you, thank you, thanks you.
Speaker 1: With the academy. Um, that's it. So you can find
Speaker 1: us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Do you have a tip for us about a ridiculous
Speaker 1: crime you'd like to hear about. Do you want to
Speaker 1: confess to a ridiculous crime? And when I say like
Speaker 1: a crime crime, give it to me, give me good crime? Uh?
Speaker 1: Stuff that like you're going to confess it and pray
Speaker 1: I don't pass it on to the authority. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: if you and your grandfather once I had like a
Speaker 1: pot field and then you had to rob a bank
Speaker 1: to be able to afford to get the pot field market,
Speaker 1: that's a ridiculous that's no no one dead, no one hurt,
Speaker 1: but ridiculous. But like, legitimately you could have been arrested.
Speaker 1: Email at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Tune in
Speaker 1: next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 1: Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Kusten. The Transylvanian
Speaker 1: Terror researches by Austrian pelp magn Marissa Brown. The theme
Speaker 1: song is by Hungarian hustler Thomas Lee and Romanian renegade
Speaker 1: Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Buddha Volan and Noel
Speaker 1: pest Brownde. Say It one more Time, We Dequeous. Ridiculous
Speaker 1: Crime is a production of iHeart Radio. Four more podcasts
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.