Speaker 1: Campsite Media, stark Lash.
Speaker 2: Hey, they're good people.
Speaker 3: I'm Josh Deen, a journalist, and I'm Murray Scovel, a comedian.
Speaker 3: We're here to shamelessly plug our new weekly show, Crimeless,
Speaker 3: cooked up in the true crime comedy lab by the
Speaker 3: mad geniuses at SmartLess Media, Campsite Media, and big money Players.
Speaker 1: It's got everything, fake hit men, terrible alibis, and of course,
Speaker 1: gangs of angry, horny monkeys. And it's all coming your
Speaker 1: way in December. But before we hog up your earballs,
Speaker 1: we wanted to start things off with a palate cleanser.
Speaker 3: A wild eight episode romp about one of the dumbest
Speaker 3: and most outrageous heists in US history, perpetrated by some
Speaker 3: fine Southern goofballs.
Speaker 1: I actually prefer high functioning ding dongs, Josh. We call
Speaker 1: it Crimeless Hillbilly Heist, and we got the finest narrator
Speaker 1: of his generation to tell it to you, a man.
Speaker 2: So talented they named a city after him. That's right.
Speaker 1: I'd like to pass the mic to the patron saint
Speaker 1: of Jackasses, the one and only Johnny Knoxville, to bring
Speaker 1: you Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like watching a movie where the volume
Speaker 4: is kind of muted. There was so much adrenaline, so
Speaker 4: much sweat, so much stress, that there are bits and
Speaker 4: pieces of it that are just fragments of memory.
Speaker 5: It's the evening of October fourth, nineteen ninety seven, at
Speaker 5: a Loomis Fargo cash storage facility outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 5: David Gant is the vault supervisor at this building, where
Speaker 5: tens of millions of dollars in cash sit in a
Speaker 5: bank vault and armored trucks arrived frequently making deliveries and
Speaker 5: drop offs. David's the only one here this evening. He
Speaker 5: just told his trainee to go home. Now David's left
Speaker 5: to guard the money alone. He's a redhead in his
Speaker 5: mid twenties, tall and lanky, with bright blue eyes. He's
Speaker 5: worked at Loomis Fargo for a few years now, making
Speaker 5: a couple bucks more than minimum wage for dangerous work,
Speaker 5: and he's about to say fuck that. As soon as
Speaker 5: David knows the training is gone, he sashays back to
Speaker 5: the vault, where he's already left the heavy door propped open.
Speaker 5: The trainee didn't know to check for that. David hurries
Speaker 5: into the gray room, where as fate would have it,
Speaker 5: the cash is already shrink wrapped and stacked onto push carts.
Speaker 5: Each one is about two million bucks on wheels.
Speaker 4: I pop the seal on it, open it up, and
Speaker 4: it's just rows of twenty dollar bules about yea thick,
Speaker 4: hundreds of them.
Speaker 5: There's fifteen million dollars in the vault, maybe more a
Speaker 5: literal ton of cash, and David is going to take
Speaker 5: it all by himself. The facility is designed so an
Speaker 5: armored car can pull into the building and ride up
Speaker 5: to the vault entrance. David already has a company van
Speaker 5: park there ready to go. He starts rushing the carts
Speaker 5: into the back of the van. But even with the
Speaker 5: carts already loaded, this is exhausting work, as loading more
Speaker 5: than two thousand pounds into a van by yourself tends
Speaker 5: to be the.
Speaker 4: Pile of steady, growing and growing. I'm sweating, you know.
Speaker 4: Even my socks are working.
Speaker 5: And as if this isn't stressful enough, David's pager keeps
Speaker 5: blowing up with messages from his very nervous accomplices waiting outside.
Speaker 4: They're out there panicing because I think it's gonna be
Speaker 4: ten minutes.
Speaker 5: He's at it for an hour, back and forth, lugging cash,
Speaker 5: muscles aching.
Speaker 4: It's the worst hour, longest hour of my life.
Speaker 5: But finally he's got it, all of it, well, everything
Speaker 5: you get carried. David skillfully ejects the security tapes from
Speaker 5: the VCRs and throws him in the van along with
Speaker 5: the money. Then he sets a timer on the vault
Speaker 5: door so it can't be reopened for several days, an
Speaker 5: insider trick, creating an extra obstacle to slow down anyone
Speaker 5: who tries to trace his steps. David plans to be
Speaker 5: long gone by the time anyone can get back into
Speaker 5: the vault. He jumps in the van and drives to
Speaker 5: the automated gate at the back of the lot. He
Speaker 5: hits the button to exit, and this.
Speaker 4: Is where I have my first real mishap of the.
Speaker 5: Evening, because the gate won't Openvid's trapped. He knows he
Speaker 5: can't take back what he's done. The vault's locked, and
Speaker 5: he's the one who took the cash out of it.
Speaker 5: He's already a criminal, a criminal who's just pulled off
Speaker 5: one of the largest cash heists in history, so close
Speaker 5: to escape, and now the only thing between him and
Speaker 5: freedom is basically a malfunctioning garage door opener. The thing is,
Speaker 5: David did everything right, had it all planned out. He
Speaker 5: was so close to paradise, so close to being a
Speaker 5: rich man boarding a plane to somewhere exotic.
Speaker 4: There's lost places to explore. I could go gold mine
Speaker 4: or looking for emeralds. I could live out romance in
Speaker 4: the stone or in there Jones, spend the rest of
Speaker 4: my life on a sailboat, Jimmy Buffett.
Speaker 5: So minor speed bump here. Surely there's another way out,
Speaker 5: because if David Gant went straight to prison without so
Speaker 5: much as exiting the property, it wouldn't be much of
Speaker 5: a story, and they probably wouldn't have hired me to
Speaker 5: tell this story. Right From Smartness Media, Campsite Media, and
Speaker 5: big money players in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. I'm Johnny
Speaker 5: Knoxville and you're listening to Crime List Bill Billy Heist,
Speaker 5: Episode one, Money stinks. If there's one thing in life
Speaker 5: I like is short sighted, some would say dumb criminals.
Speaker 5: And let me tell you, this group of thieves ain't
Speaker 5: the smartest outlaws in history. They ate the second smartest either.
Speaker 5: But wow, what a story. Eight episodes of Honest to
Speaker 5: God True Crime. We knew they were trying to kill
Speaker 5: David Khant. Massive screw ups.
Speaker 6: The perfect crime is probably impossible to commit.
Speaker 5: Screw ups attempting to cover up the previous screw ups.
Speaker 2: It was the perfect storm and a sewer.
Speaker 5: People discovering their true selves. I have been labeled with
Speaker 5: sociopathic tendencies, but that's also coming from over educated people
Speaker 5: with too many degrees and dreaming big dreams.
Speaker 6: I remember saying I'm a rich bitch now and kind
Speaker 6: of felt good.
Speaker 5: We also got folks gifting boob jobs to the relatives,
Speaker 5: stocking wine cellars with perhaps blue ribbon, and of course
Speaker 5: a velvet elvis painting. This was a huge story at
Speaker 5: the time, and it's damn near turned into a legend.
Speaker 4: It did feel kind of like Robinhood, except for the
Speaker 4: part where he steals from the rich and gives to
Speaker 4: the core. I guess that kind of works, but I'm
Speaker 4: not that generous.
Speaker 5: The point is this is a story about saying the
Speaker 5: hell with all the rules and going after the life
Speaker 5: you really want. It's about achieving the American dream, even
Speaker 5: if you have to steal it, even if you have
Speaker 5: to leave your old life behind. Our story takes place
Speaker 5: in the nineteen nineties, a simpler time when doctors thought
Speaker 5: that margarine was good for you. The Internet was still new,
Speaker 5: and people carried around these little pieces of folded up
Speaker 5: green paper to buy things. This paper was a big deal,
Speaker 5: big enough to risk your life for. The nineties were
Speaker 5: also boom times for the American economy.
Speaker 3: Every day America Online is making it easier for people
Speaker 3: to live, work, and play.
Speaker 5: This was before the dot com bubble burst, before the
Speaker 5: housing crash, before all kinds of things that made our
Speaker 5: lives kind of shitty. In the three decades since, the
Speaker 5: nineties felt like they could continue the prosperity of the
Speaker 5: nineteen eighties. Maybe even more than that, it seemed like
Speaker 5: just about any it could get rich. The nineties were
Speaker 5: about big time money, fu money, making it rain in
Speaker 5: a rap video money. And Charlotte, North Carolina, where our
Speaker 5: story takes place, was along for the crazy ride.
Speaker 7: Charlotte being touted at this gleaming city of the New South.
Speaker 5: That would be Jeff Diamond, a journalist who covered our
Speaker 5: story for The Charlotte Observer and wrote the definitive account
Speaker 5: in his book Heist. Jeff was there for every what
Speaker 5: in the actual hell twist in turn of this massive story.
Speaker 5: Jeff was a young reporter when all this happened. He
Speaker 5: was twenty four, about the same age as David Gant,
Speaker 5: and like a lot of young reporters, Jeff made his
Speaker 5: bones on the crime beat. This work often led him
Speaker 5: to a town just outside of Charlotte called Gastonia, the
Speaker 5: crown jewel of Gaston County.
Speaker 7: It was known throughout the Charlotte region for having kind
Speaker 7: of wacky things happened.
Speaker 5: But Jeff felt there was a lot to like about Gastonia.
Speaker 7: My favorite food pilgrimage here is a theft footage type
Speaker 7: place called the Shrimp Boat, which is actually known for
Speaker 7: its chicken.
Speaker 5: It was true, though, that the nineties boom times had
Speaker 5: left Gastonia behind. People there felt like the whole damn
Speaker 5: town hadn't been invited to the party. And Gastonia, of course,
Speaker 5: was David Gant's old stomping grounds.
Speaker 4: People would look at Gastonia, they called it the gas House,
Speaker 4: and that's where all the worker bees came from. All
Speaker 4: the people blue collar. If you lived in Gastonia, they
Speaker 4: pretty much considered you trailer park trash and if you
Speaker 4: lived in one of the small communities between here and there,
Speaker 4: you were much better.
Speaker 5: At the time. Jeff is working the crime beat. David
Speaker 5: Gant spends his days behind the wheel of an armored
Speaker 5: truck carrying millions of dollars at a time, a glamorous
Speaker 5: job for a country.
Speaker 4: Kid'striggling with that amount of money is exciting, and then
Speaker 4: you realize that money stinks. It smells because people hide
Speaker 4: it and they put it in there. They put it
Speaker 4: in their underwear, and they keeping their socks, they put
Speaker 4: in their brazier, and oh, people treat money horribly. Even
Speaker 4: brand new money has a stinch to it. After a while,
Speaker 4: the truck gets this mix of booty, short money and
Speaker 4: new money. This job is filled with wonderful aromas.
Speaker 5: David carts around a lot of other people's money, but
Speaker 5: he has very little of his own. He makes eight
Speaker 5: dollars and fifteen cents an hour. Technically speaking, he has
Speaker 5: less than zero dollars because he and his wife, Tammy,
Speaker 5: are in debt. And as David drives his route day
Speaker 5: after day through the streets of the town he grew up,
Speaker 5: and he can't help but think a lot about how
Speaker 5: his life was supposed to work out differently. Growing up
Speaker 5: in Gastonia, David spent a lot of time squirrel hunting
Speaker 5: and drag racing, figuring out how to make his own fun.
Speaker 4: To my mindset, if you're bored, you're not creative enough,
Speaker 4: and so we would. We would invent stuff. We made
Speaker 4: our own wine.
Speaker 5: It was horrible. Another hobby was sneaking into the lakeside
Speaker 5: properties where the rich folks kept their vacation homes and
Speaker 5: hauling a cheap illuminum fishing boat straight past the note
Speaker 5: trespassing signs.
Speaker 4: People come out on their docks and yell at us,
Speaker 4: and that's that was just part of growing up.
Speaker 5: But life wasn't all homemade wine and trespassing. He'd also
Speaker 5: go to church with his parents and have long sit
Speaker 5: downs with his dad for what they called the man's
Speaker 5: breakfast eggs bacon, sausage, plus coffee and good conversation over
Speaker 5: the breakfast table. David's dad taught him about the world,
Speaker 5: how to act, how to present himself, what to expect
Speaker 5: out of life.
Speaker 4: You meet so and so's daughter, and if they find
Speaker 4: you suitable, you get a good introduction. Next thing you know,
Speaker 4: you've got a good job. You got a good wife,
Speaker 4: you got the three point five kids, two dogs. You're
Speaker 4: doing great.
Speaker 5: David's dad had survived combat in World War Two before
Speaker 5: coming home to raise a family. He made a solid
Speaker 5: middle class living as a trucker, and his company once
Speaker 5: gave him a plaque for pulling a couple out of
Speaker 5: a burning car. His mom was another strapping American individualist.
Speaker 5: One of David's chief memories of her is when she
Speaker 5: gashed her arm wide open on her broken fruit bowl
Speaker 5: and then drove herself to the hospital. Come on, boy,
Speaker 5: I gotta go to doctor hardcore. His parents had life
Speaker 5: down pat They didn't need a thing from anybody.
Speaker 4: I wish I could be as tough as they were,
Speaker 4: you know. That's one of my wandest wishes to make
Speaker 4: them proud, and I struggled with that.
Speaker 5: David earned his high school diploma, and then he joined
Speaker 5: the military. He served in Desert Storm as a mechanic
Speaker 5: fixing Apache helicopters. While he was deployed, he started getting
Speaker 5: letters from acute cashier he met at the wind Dixie
Speaker 5: grocery store back home, a girl named Tammy. They wrote
Speaker 5: back and forth, and soon they were trading love letters.
Speaker 5: David married Tammy soon after finishing his tour in the army,
Speaker 5: and they eventually settled back in Gestonian. He played by
Speaker 5: the rules just like his dad had taught him, and
Speaker 5: he expected to be rewarded with a life just like
Speaker 5: his parents had. But while he had the girl, he
Speaker 5: still didn't have the other pieces to the puzzle. Turns
Speaker 5: out no civilians had an Apache helicopter for him to fix.
Speaker 4: The economic opportunities were kind of slim, and I was
Speaker 4: struggling financially and I had a new wife, and I'm
Speaker 4: thinking in the back of my head and eventually we're
Speaker 4: going to have kids. We're not going to make it
Speaker 4: on this, and I started really sol search being a
Speaker 4: married man and trying to be like my dad. To me,
Speaker 4: I felt like a failure. And I did some really
Speaker 4: menial jobs that didn't pay anything, didn't mean nothing to me,
Speaker 4: and that's where I ended up working for Wells Fargo.
Speaker 5: It's actually Loomis Fargo, a private company that drives the
Speaker 5: big bank's money around.
Speaker 4: Being a driver Wells Fargo is getting up at the
Speaker 4: same time every morning, putting on the same uniform every morning,
Speaker 4: getting in the same truck with the same person every day,
Speaker 4: What do you do the same route every day.
Speaker 5: That route began and ended at the Loomis Fargo facility,
Speaker 5: a nondescript building outside of town, surrounded by a chain
Speaker 5: link fence. Besides the vault where the money was kept,
Speaker 5: there was also a cash room where the money was counted.
Speaker 5: And everyone in there was making shit pay, and there
Speaker 5: were a lot of jokes about, you know, like snatching
Speaker 5: as much cash as they could.
Speaker 4: We would joke with them about running off to you know,
Speaker 4: Jamaica or whatever. The management at Loomis Fargo did not
Speaker 4: appreciate any type of dark humor in that industry.
Speaker 5: David did, however, have one personality trait beloved by all
Speaker 5: bank managers.
Speaker 4: I'm very impulsive. It kind of brings me a weird
Speaker 4: sense of joy to do something. Just if I see
Speaker 4: something interest me, I might just go do it.
Speaker 5: But David kept his impulsive side and check. He kept
Speaker 5: up with the grind, never missing a payment on the
Speaker 5: mobile home he shared with Tammy. Then one day at
Speaker 5: Loomis Fargo, he met a new employee, a woman who
Speaker 5: broke up the monotony and threatened to set David's impulsive
Speaker 5: side free.
Speaker 6: I remember one day pulling in when I was still
Speaker 6: a driver, and David Gant comes up to the vehicle
Speaker 6: and I opened the door. He says, I'll be your
Speaker 6: friend if you'll give me a cigarette. I said, I
Speaker 6: don't need any more friends, but i'll give you a cigarette.
Speaker 5: Kelly Jane Campbell had certain desirable qualities.
Speaker 6: I did know that I was good looking. I mean,
Speaker 6: of course, I had a lot of attention from a
Speaker 6: lot of guys.
Speaker 5: In other words, she's the ideal character for any Loomis
Speaker 5: Fargo employee to imagine running off to Jamaica with.
Speaker 6: And then we just kind of became friends from there
Speaker 6: and started talking and stuff. I knew he was attracted
Speaker 6: to me.
Speaker 4: We chit chatted and talked, and we shared a lot
Speaker 4: in common. We had grown up similar from similar areas,
Speaker 4: similar backgrounds, blue collar words, lots of talk around and
Speaker 4: that's where our friendship sort of began. And after that
Speaker 4: it kind of grew. And I don't know how to.
Speaker 5: Explain it now. A polite Southern man, especially married one,
Speaker 5: doesn't talk about this sort of thing without beating around
Speaker 5: the bush.
Speaker 4: A little good look a woman, blonde hair, blue eyes,
Speaker 4: I don't know, but she was very pretty warm, and
Speaker 4: I was attractive tour.
Speaker 6: I was not physically attracted to him, but he was funny.
Speaker 5: He was funny oof. For all their differences, Kelly and
Speaker 5: David did have one thing in common. They wish their
Speaker 5: lives had worked out differently. They were already swimming in
Speaker 5: regret and they were just in their twenties.
Speaker 6: I got married when I was eighteen. My mom tried
Speaker 6: to talk me out of it. Is she of course,
Speaker 6: your mom knows you better than anybody else. I got
Speaker 6: married to Jimmy Campbell. He had had a crush on
Speaker 6: me all through junior high. His the nickname of Spanky.
Speaker 6: Everybody knowed him as Spanky even in school, and he
Speaker 6: said it was because he looked like Spanky from the
Speaker 6: Little Rascals when he was a kid.
Speaker 2: It stug.
Speaker 5: Spanky drove a cement truck and later operated a bulldozer
Speaker 5: at a landfill. Kelly worked off and on while taking
Speaker 5: care of her two kids.
Speaker 6: Money wasn't plentiful. We basically lived from paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker 6: I mean, he was a hard person to get along
Speaker 6: with sometimes.
Speaker 5: Kelly also had a son from before she and Spankey
Speaker 5: were together, and Spanky and the boy did not get along.
Speaker 5: David had his own problems, of course, and the struggles
Speaker 5: of adult life, of bad marriages, low paying jobs drew
Speaker 5: Kelly and David together.
Speaker 6: When you're not happy and you're marriage, it's just it
Speaker 6: starts out with you know. It was just nice to
Speaker 6: have somebody to talk to that's different, somebody you convent
Speaker 6: to that's not in the situation.
Speaker 4: We talked about a lot of different things. It was
Speaker 4: kind of like a breath of fresh air to have
Speaker 4: somebody that you could talk across to. At least for me,
Speaker 4: we spoke the same language.
Speaker 5: This continued on for about a year, David nurturing a
Speaker 5: serious crush Kelly eh enjoying a friendly ear, willing to listen.
Speaker 5: But then Kelly left Lumis Fargo for another job. She
Speaker 5: and David stayed in touch a bit, but neither of
Speaker 5: their circumstances really changed much. David was still married to Tammy,
Speaker 5: still in debt, still feeling like a failure, while Kelly
Speaker 5: kept moving along with her own life, marriage troubles, financial woes,
Speaker 5: and then Kelly started hanging out with another guy she
Speaker 5: kept in the friend zone over the years, a guy
Speaker 5: named Steve Chambers. For all the so called unwanted attention
Speaker 5: Kelly got from guy She tended to get along with
Speaker 5: them better than women.
Speaker 6: It's sad to say, but a female stab you in
Speaker 6: the back a lot quicker than male will.
Speaker 5: So Steve declined to talk to us for the story.
Speaker 5: By the way, we contacted his lawyer and followed up,
Speaker 5: but never heard back. He and his then wife Michelle
Speaker 5: are the only main players from this gang of yahoos
Speaker 5: you won't hear from directly.
Speaker 6: Steve. He could talk good talk. After high school, there
Speaker 6: was a lot of years where we didn't see each other,
Speaker 6: and then when he started coming back around, he said
Speaker 6: that he had these connections with people, and he always
Speaker 6: fancied the movie Godfather, and I think that's where a
Speaker 6: lot of his persona came from. He liked to talk
Speaker 6: bigger than what he really was. I think he had
Speaker 6: a very good imagination.
Speaker 5: Steve did give a brief interview to Jeff Diamont back
Speaker 5: in the day.
Speaker 2: Steve had to go.
Speaker 7: He he was kind of a burly guy. He often
Speaker 7: borrowed language from gangster movies like Goodfellas. He also had
Speaker 7: a history of various petty crimes that had maybe familiarized
Speaker 7: him with certain ways of operating.
Speaker 5: In other words, Steve wasn't all talk when it came
Speaker 5: to his criminal persona. Although he was a bit of
Speaker 5: a professional squealer.
Speaker 7: He was somebody who would call the FBI about crimes
Speaker 7: that had not yet happened, but which he knew were
Speaker 7: being planned, and the reason he knew they were being
Speaker 7: planned with because he was helping plan them.
Speaker 5: As part of his made man persona. Steve liked to
Speaker 5: entertain people in his trailer. He'd serve steaks, pass out drinks,
Speaker 5: and generally talk bullshit. One day, Kelly went over to
Speaker 5: Steve's house for beers in a game of Uno, which
Speaker 5: would turn out to be the most consequential game of
Speaker 5: Uno in history. At first, Kelly didn't think much of
Speaker 5: it when Steve made a bold proposal.
Speaker 6: Steve started talking about, have you ever.
Speaker 5: Thought about doing something big, like real big at Loomis Fargo?
Speaker 6: And I'm like, well, I don't. First, he says, and
Speaker 6: I'm sure he's seen it in a movie somewhere. He says, well,
Speaker 6: what do you think about You take a hangarnaid and
Speaker 6: put it on the window and they'll run out of
Speaker 6: the vehicle and then you can rob it, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 6: that wouldn't work. I said, it's armor. I don't even know.
Speaker 6: That's too dangerous. So he just, you know, we start
Speaker 6: throwing around ideas about how you could rob a.
Speaker 5: Truck, just your run of the mill uno chit chat.
Speaker 6: Most of his were outlandish like that. But then when
Speaker 6: he found out that David Gant was attracted to me,
Speaker 6: and he's like.
Speaker 5: Well, do you still talk to him?
Speaker 6: I said, yeah, I still talk to him sometimes. He's like, well,
Speaker 6: you think about he would rob the place? I said,
Speaker 6: m maybe I could probably talk him into it. He
Speaker 6: does work in the vault.
Speaker 5: Since Kelly left Loomis Fargo, David had been promoted to
Speaker 5: work in the vault, but all his problems were still
Speaker 5: hanging around.
Speaker 4: My job beating me up. Now it's not just morning,
Speaker 4: it's beating me to death because I'm getting up at
Speaker 4: three point thirty four o'clock in the morning, driving from
Speaker 4: King's Mountain to Charlotte, opening up And when I say
Speaker 4: opening up, far Ago, I'm the first guy to put
Speaker 4: on body armor, going with a shotgun and a flashlight.
Speaker 4: Cut the lights all on, check every room all the
Speaker 4: way to the back. Make sure there's no bad people,
Speaker 4: and that's mildly stressful because if you do run into
Speaker 4: a bad guy, it's you and him.
Speaker 5: David was working such long hours that he barely had
Speaker 5: time to keep his work pants clean. A new manager
Speaker 5: gave him crap about it one day, and David snapped.
Speaker 4: He said something about you need to respect me. I said,
Speaker 4: respect is earned, not given, and then I went on
Speaker 4: a little rant. I said the only thing that is
Speaker 4: given is sympathy, and if you want sympathy, look between
Speaker 4: shit and syphilis in the dictionary and walked off.
Speaker 5: I thought I was fired, but fired he was not.
Speaker 5: He kept working long hours and then going home to
Speaker 5: Tammy so they could argue.
Speaker 4: Our problem with money was we just didn't have enough
Speaker 4: of it. It's like a brick would drop on you
Speaker 4: every day because you understand the credit card company's charging
Speaker 4: you well, I'm good at math twenty four percent interest
Speaker 4: every month, that little clock is running, and my brain's
Speaker 4: keeping tally of the math.
Speaker 5: David realized with minimum payments they were barely keeping up
Speaker 5: with anyway. It would take thirty years to pay that
Speaker 5: debt off.
Speaker 4: And one day that just slapped me in the face.
Speaker 4: I'm like, we're never going to get out from under this,
Speaker 4: never ever. And it put me into like a today
Speaker 4: I understand it, and me into a depression. And it
Speaker 4: really affected my marriage, even though I hid it well,
Speaker 4: and I probably didn't treat Tammy as good as I
Speaker 4: should have. I didn't give her the attention that she needed.
Speaker 4: I didn't give her the emotional support she probably needed.
Speaker 4: I was there physically, but mentally and spiritually I wasn't there.
Speaker 4: My brain had already checked out.
Speaker 5: And then one day out of the blue, David's old crush,
Speaker 5: Kelly calls. She has an idea something. She and her
Speaker 5: pals Steve of just been kicking around.
Speaker 4: She calls me up and we're still chit chatting. She goes,
Speaker 4: what do you think about Robin Wells Fargo? And I
Speaker 4: thought about it for a second. I said, if you
Speaker 4: pick the right day, pick the right time, it'd be easy.
Speaker 4: She said, think about it and get back with me.
Speaker 5: David didn't have to think about it for too long.
Speaker 4: I was mentally drowning, and so when my co worker
Speaker 4: approached me about Robin Wills Fargo, it was like somebody
Speaker 4: thumia loading a lifeline something. And you know, my impulsiveness
Speaker 4: my desire to just get the sea of pressure off
Speaker 4: of me.
Speaker 5: I said, yeah, the heist was still just a notion.
Speaker 5: Each figure the other might just be joking about running
Speaker 5: off with the money, just like all the employees at
Speaker 5: Fargo used to do. But David took the lifeline and
Speaker 5: ran with it. He started planning, a skill he was
Speaker 5: taught in the military.
Speaker 4: I had a drill shart to tell me, we don't
Speaker 4: even take a pooh. He didn't users word pooh, but
Speaker 4: he said, we don't even take a pooh without a plan, words.
Speaker 2: To live by.
Speaker 5: He didn't know whether Kelly was actually in or out,
Speaker 5: but that didn't stop him from thinking it all through.
Speaker 5: The best time to rob the place would be one
Speaker 5: of his weekend shifts, when there were fewer employees around
Speaker 5: but still a fair bit of money in the vault.
Speaker 5: He started to keep track of the money to see
Speaker 5: exactly how much might be sitting around, and what he
Speaker 5: observed was pretty crazy. There was always more than ten
Speaker 5: million dollars in cash just sitting there, all stacked up,
Speaker 5: sometimes fifteen millions, sometimes even more. They were basically begging
Speaker 5: someone to take it. The next time she and David talked,
Speaker 5: Kelly was impressed by what she was hearing, well as
Speaker 5: impressed as Kelly can get.
Speaker 6: There was not a lot of extensive planning that went
Speaker 6: into it. I mean, it was just, you know, how
Speaker 6: much planning do you really need for somebody that works
Speaker 6: in the ball to load the money in the truck
Speaker 6: and drive away.
Speaker 5: As things developed, David realized he wasn't just doing all
Speaker 5: this to pay off his credit card debt. He was
Speaker 5: planning an entirely new life with Kelly.
Speaker 4: She'd call or she'd call me on my pager and
Speaker 4: we'd meet, chit chat. You know, it felt very cleaned
Speaker 4: this time, because we're both sneaking and we're plotting against
Speaker 4: the big corporation. It's all cloak and dagger. It's kind
Speaker 4: of fun, and my impulsive brain is just eating it up.
Speaker 5: They'd meet in the grass field behind the shooting range,
Speaker 5: a place David used to go four wheeling with his
Speaker 5: buddies when he was in high school. It was hard
Speaker 5: to say whether the plan would ever really come together,
Speaker 5: but as the weeks went on, it started feeling more
Speaker 5: and more real to David, like this is possible. He
Speaker 5: read books about the FBI and learned that the number
Speaker 5: of agents on a case went down after one year,
Speaker 5: and it became a cold case after two. He thought
Speaker 5: that if they could lay low long enough, this crazy
Speaker 5: thing just might work. About a month before the highst
Speaker 5: Kelly went so far as to give him a kiss,
Speaker 5: just a little peck, but in a way it was
Speaker 5: what turned this theoretical plan into a reality.
Speaker 6: We'd go out there in the woods and sit on
Speaker 6: the tailgate and drink and talk, and we never really
Speaker 6: got physical with each other. I think there was maybe
Speaker 6: the only one or two kisses. I insinuated that we
Speaker 6: were going to be an item. The plan was for
Speaker 6: once he got into Mexico and everything settled a little bit,
Speaker 6: then I would come into Mexico and David Gant and
Speaker 6: I was going to start a life together and be happy.
Speaker 6: I guess, of course, never really had any intention of
Speaker 6: leaving my family and going down there, but it made
Speaker 6: it really easy to talk him into doing what he did.
Speaker 6: I guess some people were just more easily persuaded than others.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, Kelly convinced David that Steve was an important part
Speaker 5: of the plan. She said he had mafia ties, and
Speaker 5: he could launder the money, and he could get David
Speaker 5: a fake id on this particular item he delivered. Steve
Speaker 5: procured a birth certificate from a buddy, and David got
Speaker 5: a brand new identity. Steve also put together a crack
Speaker 5: Hei screw, a veritable who's who of who's available, some
Speaker 5: to help move the literal tons of money, others with
Speaker 5: no discernible role other than to make Steve look more
Speaker 5: like the boss. Keeping up with his crime movie inspiration,
Speaker 5: Steve took the idea from Reservoir Dogs, you know, where
Speaker 5: all the patsy's involved in the job only knew each
Speaker 5: other by color coded names, and.
Speaker 6: Not mister Purple some guy at some other job as
Speaker 6: mister Purple, you're miss the pink.
Speaker 5: David was never supposed to meet Steve, so they couldn't
Speaker 5: identify each other to the police. Through all this, Kelly
Speaker 5: pretty much just kicked back and watch it all happen.
Speaker 5: And yet she was the crucial piece of the whole thing,
Speaker 5: maybe even more important than David, who worked in the vault.
Speaker 7: Without Kelly, this would not have happened. He was the
Speaker 7: person who connected Steve to David.
Speaker 5: David got his shift schedule, he took the final step
Speaker 5: in his planning and picked the day for the heist.
Speaker 4: I was keeping track of it, and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 4: this next coming weekend is fourth I'm working.
Speaker 2: I want to do it.
Speaker 4: Then get your people ready. We're doing it. And I
Speaker 4: don't think they really believed I would do it, And
Speaker 4: there were moments when I didn't think I would do it.
Speaker 4: It's kind of hard to explain how my pride got
Speaker 4: involved that once I said we're going to do this,
Speaker 4: there was no more backing out.
Speaker 5: David Gant was about to take the biggest leap of
Speaker 5: his life, but it meant leaving his old life behind.
Speaker 5: All this time, he had kept this whole thing a
Speaker 5: secret from Tammy, his wife of five years, and his parents,
Speaker 5: the people he was so determined to live up to
Speaker 5: that it was driving him crazy. He'd have to say
Speaker 5: goodbye to his own name and to every person he
Speaker 5: ever knew, refriend every familiar face, every childhood lake and
Speaker 5: forest and mountain, every previous day of his life. David
Speaker 5: had to make a choice. Either he stays and lets
Speaker 5: his soul get ground to dirt by his job, by
Speaker 5: the shitty food he can afford on his salary, by
Speaker 5: his depression, or he can leave it all abandoned his
Speaker 5: family in the dead of night and become an outlaw.
Speaker 4: I'm either on the path of destruction physically or spiritually.
Speaker 4: And I said, let's go with the money.
Speaker 5: But you know what they say about money and problems.
Speaker 2: That was dumb.
Speaker 4: People do not follow my example. That was one of
Speaker 4: the huge mistakes. It was either a Hell's angel or
Speaker 4: Ben Franklin said three can keep a secret if two
Speaker 4: are dead, and I wish I'd known that.
Speaker 5: Then did we really know how to go about it?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. You know the dangers, but you
Speaker 2: do it anyway.
Speaker 5: It's definitely a fucking mentality.
Speaker 6: So where Sarah like, God, what do we do? What
Speaker 6: do we do?
Speaker 4: And you hear all the news, the Diamond Ring, the
Speaker 4: new Boobs, the Ridiculous House BMW. But they had re
Speaker 4: upholstered knows jobs.
Speaker 5: That's coming up on this season of Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.
Speaker 2: Hey, folks, it's Josh Gen again.
Speaker 3: Rory Scoville and I are going to take a few
Speaker 3: minutes here to digest what just happened there.
Speaker 2: It's a public service we like to.
Speaker 3: Do, oh boy, because no one pays attention anymore. You're
Speaker 3: all on your phones, that's right. My immediate takeaway is
Speaker 3: that I absolutely love David Gant. Yes, I worked on
Speaker 3: the series, so I'm aware of what's coming for him,
Speaker 3: but I still feel so nervous for the guy.
Speaker 2: He just wants Kelly to love him and to party
Speaker 2: a little. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If I got to say, my main takeaway from just
Speaker 1: this first episode of getting to know him, it's that
Speaker 1: you're unhappy with your life and you want to make
Speaker 1: a change and do something else. I almost don't even
Speaker 1: see him as a criminal. I don't even hear criminality
Speaker 1: in his voice, even though he committed a major crime.
Speaker 1: This sounds so weird to say committed a massive theft.
Speaker 1: I almost don't even blame him. I'm like, ah, wait,
Speaker 1: you stole from the banks. We the people have been
Speaker 1: stolen from so many times. I almost see this guy's
Speaker 1: living out the fantasy we all kind of have.
Speaker 2: Totally.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I know how this ends, but I'm
Speaker 3: still rooting for him because he's so likable.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: So give me your honest assessment of the plan, like
Speaker 3: as a as a master plan to steal money, how
Speaker 3: do you feel like they're.
Speaker 1: Doing There were moments where I thought, oh, David Gampt
Speaker 1: is not that he doesn't seem to be as dumb.
Speaker 1: It does seem like he did think of certain things.
Speaker 1: He just didn't think of certain things all the way through.
Speaker 1: It seemed like David gant on his own with his
Speaker 1: military style thinking. Maybe had he drawn the whole plan
Speaker 1: up and didn't just decide that he was going to
Speaker 1: him up with morons, it maybe would have had a
Speaker 1: different outcome, or he maybe could have been on the
Speaker 1: lamb a little longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The problem is that I think Steve thinks he's actually
Speaker 3: a brilliant criminal.
Speaker 1: I know, but it is not actually, Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: hasn't thought about for someone who is so obsessed with
Speaker 1: criminality in the mafia and scarface and all of this
Speaker 1: type of stuff, it just seems like has no education
Speaker 1: from watching all that stuff to even know the basic
Speaker 1: details of you know, how to hide the money, how
Speaker 1: to escape, how to pull off this heist. It was like, literally,
Speaker 1: let's all sit side by side in a parking lot
Speaker 1: across the street and wait.
Speaker 2: I feel like we've all known as Steve.
Speaker 3: He's the guy who like talks confidently about something he
Speaker 3: knows actually nothing about.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I also got to say in Steve's Behalf,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who have dreams and they
Speaker 1: don't follow through with them. Steve, Steve was never going
Speaker 1: to get up on following his dream.
Speaker 3: Fly High, Steve. Will they get away with it? I
Speaker 3: actually know, but I'll never tell. If only we could
Speaker 3: listen to episode two, Oh wait we can?
Speaker 2: Oh my God Magic.
Speaker 5: Crimeless. Hillbilly Heist is a production of SmartLess Media, Campside
Speaker 5: Media and Big Money Players in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 5: Bill Billy Heist is narrated by me Johnny Knoxville and
Speaker 5: created by Liz Elkington and Stuart Bailey. Written by Michael
Speaker 5: Kenyon Meyer with Liz Elkington and Stuart Bailey, Produced by
Speaker 5: Lane Rose and Sierra Franco. Additional production help by Rajeev Gola.
Speaker 5: The series was sound designed and mixed by Ewin l Tremwen,
Speaker 5: fact checking by Gray Lanto and a special thanks for
Speaker 5: our operations team Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara and
Speaker 5: Destiny Dingle, iHeart Podcasts and Big Money Players. Executive producers
Speaker 5: are Jack O'Brien, Lindsay Hoffman and Matt Appadaca. Campsite Media's
Speaker 5: executive producers are Josh Steen, Vanessa Grigoriatis, Adam Hoff, and
Speaker 5: Matt Cher. Executive producers are Liz Elkeaton and Stuart Bailey
Speaker 5: from SmartLess Media. The producers are Will Arnett, Jason Bateman,
Speaker 5: Sean Hayes, and Richard Corson. Bernie Kaminski is the head
Speaker 5: of production. The associate producer is Mattie McCann.
Speaker 2: If you've enjoyed
Speaker 5: Crimeless Hillbilly Hies, please rate and review the show wherever
Speaker 5: you get your podcasts.