Speaker 1: This is great as Escapes, a show bringing you the
Speaker 1: wildess true escape stories of all time. Now, in this episode,
Speaker 1: we're telling the story of two escapees who had a
Speaker 1: true neck for smuggling tools into prison so they could
Speaker 1: cut their way out. I'm Marturo Gastro and I'm joined
Speaker 1: by a man who's talent on screen and behind the
Speaker 1: camera has been completely undeniable for decades. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite co stars of all time. Please welcome Joseph Gordon Levitt.
Speaker 1: It's Joseph Gordon Levit. Thanks, of course, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: And Joe, I got to tell you. You know in our
Speaker 1: audience you know this, but you are one of the
Speaker 1: kindest people I've ever worked with. And I mean that
Speaker 1: very sincerely.
Speaker 2: I feel the same way about you, man.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what it is, man, that you
Speaker 1: just like, no matter who it is on set that
Speaker 1: has a question, you always stop and make time to
Speaker 1: answer it, no matter how small it could be, Like
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Because I just love hearing myself answer questions yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If there's somebody recording it and an
Speaker 1: artist sort of drawing, you do it. At all times.
Speaker 1: You're just heard. I'll give you an example if somebody
Speaker 1: comes over and they're like, hey, so, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna make those curtains blue, and you're like, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: stop the roll. Yeah, okay, So I wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: even though it's kind of a hard question to ask
Speaker 1: while being honest, but you know, being in films for
Speaker 1: as long as you've been and still being such a
Speaker 1: well adjusted human being, what what do you attribute that to?
Speaker 1: How you've sort of kept your head straight all these years.
Speaker 3: That's I mean, so flattering that you would ask me that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a pretty simple answer. I think I
Speaker 3: got real lucky with the parents I got, And you
Speaker 3: know that's not my doing that.
Speaker 2: We all just roll dice and get who we get.
Speaker 3: And my parents were never very enchanted with all of
Speaker 3: the poisonous accoutremont they can come along with show business.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been working in acting and stuff since
Speaker 3: I was six years old, and my parents always just
Speaker 3: saw that I loved doing it.
Speaker 2: But anytime I.
Speaker 3: Didn't want to do it, if I didn't feel like
Speaker 3: going on an audition that day or something, my mom
Speaker 3: would always say and very sincerely, you really don't have
Speaker 3: to do this, will you know? We'll be so in
Speaker 3: love with you and proud of you no matter what
Speaker 3: you do. Wow, you did commit to this thing today
Speaker 3: and it's important that you honor your commitments.
Speaker 2: So let's go today.
Speaker 3: But if you after that, if you don't want to
Speaker 3: do this, you never have to do this.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I think it's it's more common that people feel
Speaker 3: pressure to do it, and that can be the beginning
Speaker 3: of the I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yes, of the end say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you something, what do you consider it
Speaker 1: to be your greatest escape?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, I honestly, I think what we did escaping the
Speaker 3: pandemic to New Zealand. And I feel half bad, you know,
Speaker 3: saying this, because it was such a privilege to get
Speaker 3: to do it.
Speaker 2: But that was an incredible escape.
Speaker 3: And just to tell the brief version of the story,
Speaker 3: you know, we were shooting this show, mister Corman, that
Speaker 3: i'd been you know, trying to put together for years
Speaker 3: is My Baby. We're three weeks into the shoot in.
Speaker 2: March of twenty twenty when the whole world shut down.
Speaker 3: We have to stop along with everybody else, and we
Speaker 3: were trying to get.
Speaker 2: The production back up.
Speaker 3: Everyone was running around trying to figure out how to
Speaker 3: shoot during the pandemic, and the intrepid producers over at
Speaker 3: A twenty four called me and said, would you ever
Speaker 3: consider spending a lot of.
Speaker 2: Time in New Zealand?
Speaker 3: And I was, I mean, I felt like I won
Speaker 3: the lottery. I had been literally, not exaggerating. My wife
Speaker 3: and I had been fantasizing. We'd been staying up at
Speaker 3: night looking at google Maps street view of New Zealand,
Speaker 3: picking where we wanted to be, just because it sounded
Speaker 3: like such a dream to be out of the pandemic,
Speaker 3: and when there was no COVID there at the time,
Speaker 3: and then we got to go, and I remember, and
Speaker 3: I got to bring my family and we spent a
Speaker 3: time there and a long time, and I remember when
Speaker 3: we got there. My older boy, who at the time
Speaker 3: was I think five, we got off the plane in
Speaker 3: the airport in Wellington and no one was wearing masks,
Speaker 3: and we got off and we took off our masks
Speaker 3: and my boy goes, we're out of the pandemic, and
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, that's exactly what happens.
Speaker 2: Leave it to a five or well.
Speaker 1: But it was an escape, right, It was just like
Speaker 1: we were able to I remember I would post stories
Speaker 1: or I send my friends videos of like just shopping
Speaker 1: at a grocery store without a mask, and it was
Speaker 1: like the biggest flex in the world. Okay, so are
Speaker 1: we ready to get into this? Do you want to
Speaker 1: hear some crazy escape?
Speaker 2: I want to hear this story. I love storytelling, so
Speaker 2: I can't wait.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna hate you.
Speaker 1: It's the summer of twenty fifteen, and we begin in
Speaker 1: a remote hunting cabin in upstate New York. The rooms
Speaker 1: are dark, quiet, musty. The cabin is empty. Footsteps approach, crunch.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do my own side effects. Two men
Speaker 1: come to the door. They try the handle. They're silhouettes
Speaker 1: loom in the windows. They force their way inside. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a break in. The men are looking pretty rough.
Speaker 1: They've been trekking through the woods near the Canadian border,
Speaker 1: living off the land and carrying their supplies in a
Speaker 1: battered guitar case.
Speaker 2: Of guitar case.
Speaker 1: A guitar case.
Speaker 3: They didn't mean to go living in the wilderness. Is
Speaker 3: they're carrying a guitar case?
Speaker 1: Well, no, they didn't. This wasn't part of their plan.
Speaker 1: They have ragged name tags they're still sewn into their clothing.
Speaker 1: It's they're called David and Richard.
Speaker 2: Name tags what like TGIF waiters or something.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes they both work. They work at Applebee's and
Speaker 1: this is just how do some crazy turn of events.
Speaker 1: They are now in the woods. So they're in this
Speaker 1: crusty cabin in the woods and it's a gold mic.
Speaker 1: They rummage to the cabinets and dressers. Do you have
Speaker 1: any guess what they're going to find their joe?
Speaker 2: I mean food, water, I don't know, like Nintendo.
Speaker 4: A TGI Friday store.
Speaker 1: They found a full so they open up a fully
Speaker 1: stocked pantry and begin to feast. But even better, they
Speaker 1: find a bottle of moonshine and a propane heater, and
Speaker 1: you also find plenty of choice weed. So one of
Speaker 1: them sleeps sweeps up the glass. The other one grabs
Speaker 1: the moonshine, rosa joints and settles on the couch. We
Speaker 1: get a glare from the sweeping guy and he just takes.
Speaker 2: The same marijuana and alcohol.
Speaker 4: Not my favorite, not a favorite thing to do.
Speaker 1: It's always seems like a good idea, you know when
Speaker 1: I was younger, Like you're drawing somebody that you want
Speaker 1: to hit. This and sudden one.
Speaker 2: What kind of evening do you want to have? Pick one?
Speaker 4: So something, I mean the couch and brain.
Speaker 1: Yo'll be like, oh, man, three years ago, it's kind
Speaker 1: of rude to that, Maarissa, I.
Speaker 4: Should call them.
Speaker 1: So this is when David and Richard's Great Escape started
Speaker 1: to go sideways. There were two murderers on the run
Speaker 1: after an epic prison escape, and the.
Speaker 4: Law was hot on their heels.
Speaker 1: Oh damn, So Joe, let's meet these two shady characters. Okay,
Speaker 1: we established they're not actually from TJA Fridays.
Speaker 2: Oh their prison name tags after all.
Speaker 1: Exactly, So these guys were worse than shady. These two
Speaker 1: guys were cold blooded killers. And so we're gonna start
Speaker 1: with David Sweat. Yeah. So he was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty and he grew up in a little town of Deposit,
Speaker 1: New York. Incidentally, it's not known for their deposits. They
Speaker 1: were all cash in hand. That's such a stupid joke,
Speaker 1: but I have to get it in there.
Speaker 4: So by the time he was eighteen.
Speaker 1: David had already had a long rap sheet, a list
Speaker 1: that included violent attacks and burglees and car crashes to
Speaker 1: his knee. What coind of parents, did he He did
Speaker 1: not have great parents. They all, yes, none of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they all believed in name text that wasn't even a
Speaker 1: prison thing. They just like it was just the thing
Speaker 1: he picked up from youth. So once while he was
Speaker 1: in prison, a guard found him making a list of
Speaker 1: future crimes that he hoped to commit one day. You
Speaker 1: got to admire the fucking audacity of this insane viition board.
Speaker 3: Is he writing down just like the actual offenses I
Speaker 3: want to perform armed robbery check, I want to perform
Speaker 3: arson check?
Speaker 1: Or is he like, yes, exact, I want to commit
Speaker 1: each and every one of these before my time is done.
Speaker 2: So, oh, he's ill. He's sick. He's mentally ill.
Speaker 1: He's a sick man. But when he first got out
Speaker 1: on parole, David started living out of a camper in
Speaker 1: the woods in upstate New York. He gathered some friends
Speaker 1: like minded prince, you could say, and they started boosting
Speaker 1: cars from the parking lots of nearby towns now.
Speaker 4: David, sorry, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: Let me go back to this for a second.
Speaker 4: Do you believe that some people.
Speaker 1: Even if they're not mentally ill or there's not something
Speaker 1: inherently wrong with him. Do you think there's just some
Speaker 1: people that are born.
Speaker 4: Cruel or their race cruel?
Speaker 3: I mean, cruel has the value judgment. I definitely think
Speaker 3: there are people who are born ill. And I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to get all serious here. We're trying to
Speaker 3: have a fun time telling an escape story. But like
Speaker 3: for sure, our world, especially our country, does not do
Speaker 3: a good job of taking care of mentally ill people.
Speaker 3: And the fact that someone who's clearly mentally ill has
Speaker 3: ended up in prison, that's probably not the right place
Speaker 3: for him.
Speaker 2: That's not going to help him.
Speaker 1: And to your point, through throughout these stories that we've
Speaker 1: been telling, a lot of them are prison escapes, and nobody,
Speaker 1: not one person in any of these stories gets reformed
Speaker 1: by going to the prison system.
Speaker 2: You know, it's supposed to be rehabilitation.
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's worth noting, you know, in sorry to
Speaker 3: get all geeky about this is something I'm.
Speaker 2: Quite interested in.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of prisons that they actually are private
Speaker 3: for profit companies, so it's in their interest that they
Speaker 3: have more prisoners, and so what incentive do they have
Speaker 3: to make sure that their prisoners rehabilitate and get out
Speaker 3: and go lead more healthy, positive lives.
Speaker 2: They don't, they have the incentive to bring them back.
Speaker 3: Like any good business, you want your customers to come back.
Speaker 3: I do think it speaks to the kind of larger
Speaker 3: values and understanding. And this goes back to the kind
Speaker 3: of meritocracy myth that we were talking about a minute
Speaker 3: ago when you asked like, Hey, how did you end
Speaker 3: up so lucky to be?
Speaker 2: You know, a happy person?
Speaker 3: And I think so much of it comes down to luck,
Speaker 3: whether that's who your.
Speaker 2: Parents are, or just the physiology and your brain.
Speaker 3: Are all the cylinders firing right, or are some of
Speaker 3: those cylinders firing in a way that drive you as
Speaker 3: a young person to think about crime and want to
Speaker 3: do that. I definitely think that that's luck. And you know,
Speaker 3: the there's a saying I forget the exact wording of it,
Speaker 3: but like the measure of a good kind society is
Speaker 3: how well you treat the unlucky people.
Speaker 1: Joe, because we're spending too much money spying on our
Speaker 1: own citizens. But he's like, you know, that gets expensive.
Speaker 1: People need to know who I'm fucking TEXTI man, you know.
Speaker 1: And so when he was with with these like minded people,
Speaker 1: David bracked to others about the police scanner that he
Speaker 1: used to avoid cops, and he said that if they
Speaker 1: ever came at him, he would blow them away. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, on the fourth of July,
Speaker 1: David Sweat and two accomplices ran the truck through the
Speaker 1: back wall of a fireworks and gun shop. They ran
Speaker 1: through the store and they loaded up a duffel bag
Speaker 1: with guns and also fireworks and guns in the same shop.
Speaker 1: Is there anything more American than a flock sip store
Speaker 1: of everything that goes boom? You know? It's like, do
Speaker 1: you like guns?
Speaker 4: You like explosions?
Speaker 3: Why spend any time anywhere else when you're having fun
Speaker 3: there fireworks when it gets serious, we.
Speaker 1: Have weapons and when you don't know which, bury both,
Speaker 1: which is kind of incidentally the tagline for My King Senira.
Speaker 1: So with their loot, David raised to a tiny park
Speaker 1: three miles away where they were moving the gun to
Speaker 1: a second car. That's when a local sheriff's deputy pulled
Speaker 1: up in his cruiser and had them in the headlights. Now,
Speaker 1: the deputy got out of his car to confront the men,
Speaker 1: but David Sweat just started shooting man and he and
Speaker 1: the other Roberts shot the deputy fifteen times, stole his gun,
Speaker 1: and even this is fucking rough. They ran him over
Speaker 1: with their getaway car, the old bloody premated Tata murder.
Speaker 1: But and again not to go on another tangent of this,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's I'm sure for the family of
Speaker 1: this deputy, it's hard to understand this, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It's hard to have any sympathy for somebody
Speaker 1: just killed your fucking husband, of.
Speaker 2: Course, but that's just it.
Speaker 3: It's it's bad for the police too, Like why the
Speaker 3: first government intervention of like trying to handle this very
Speaker 3: sick person should not be a sheriff's deputy, a mental
Speaker 3: health professional talking to this kid a decade prior so
Speaker 3: that he doesn't kill the sheriff's deputy.
Speaker 2: That's exactly the.
Speaker 1: Problem, exactly. So then they made it their escape. But
Speaker 1: David could not stop bragging. And so within a week,
Speaker 1: David's it always fucking happens with criminals, with the criminals
Speaker 1: that we learned.
Speaker 2: About here, what is he writing about?
Speaker 3: He's like, they're gonna fucking talk about me on a
Speaker 3: podcast one David.
Speaker 4: So within a week, David's girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Told the police, and when they called him, David pled
Speaker 1: guilty to the murder. In order to avoid the death penalty.
Speaker 1: He received the life sentence without parole. Now they send
Speaker 1: him to Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, and
Speaker 1: that's where he would meet our next escapee, Richard Matt
Speaker 1: His story is a lot like David's. You know, he
Speaker 1: was another troubled kid who didn't get the help he
Speaker 1: needed When he was a kid. He actually ran away
Speaker 1: from a foster home by stealing a horse and riding
Speaker 1: off at the age of fourteen. He even tried to
Speaker 1: steal a houseboat man. You got to give this guy
Speaker 1: a credit for like niche getaway vehicle. You know. He
Speaker 1: was also well known for a penny farthing escape. You know,
Speaker 1: have you have you ever owned a unicycle or written
Speaker 1: a penny farthing?
Speaker 3: My wife can ride a unicycle. I've never owned one personally,
Speaker 3: and I've tried to ride it.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult, I'm sure it is. I don't think
Speaker 1: I could ride also ride one fast enough to like
Speaker 1: get away.
Speaker 4: I would love to see that.
Speaker 1: That should be our new reality show. So Richard's crimes
Speaker 1: only got worse from there, right felonius, felony weapon charges,
Speaker 1: felony assault, and plenty of misdemeter harassment charges. It's like
Speaker 1: he just couldn't meet somebody without attacking them, you know.
Speaker 1: So when he was caught, he often escaped heavy charges
Speaker 1: by pleading guilty to lesser crimes. What's the most trouble
Speaker 1: you ever got into as a kid?
Speaker 3: Uh? I? I remember shoplifting a greeting card once at
Speaker 3: the mall because there was a picture on the front
Speaker 3: that looked like my dog, and I wanted to show
Speaker 3: it to my mom and dad. But I also probably
Speaker 3: I think I had probably enough money to buy the thing,
Speaker 3: but I was tickled by the idea of, you know,
Speaker 3: stealing it.
Speaker 2: And what do you know, I didn't get caught.
Speaker 3: Like you, but even Jewish kid in the mall, no
Speaker 3: one punished me or sent me to foster care for shoplifting.
Speaker 1: Well, actually funny she should mention that because we have
Speaker 1: the shop owner here.
Speaker 4: With us today, come on out found him. We fucking
Speaker 4: found him us.
Speaker 2: It's hill on the refrigerator at my parent's house.
Speaker 1: I can give it back to you. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to speak right now, but he is
Speaker 1: very mighty myth. So the neglect was obvious though, you know,
Speaker 1: with with Richard's life. He made his first prison break
Speaker 1: the easy way. A guard left his prison so open,
Speaker 1: and he just kind of fucking walked out. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that that's you could do.
Speaker 2: He scaled this nice little guardian on it.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, he was just neglectful. You know, we
Speaker 1: also have him here. He's just giving me excuses. So
Speaker 1: this guy scaled a nine foot brick wall and slashed
Speaker 1: up his arms on the barbed wire in the process.
Speaker 1: He jumped the freight train to make his escape, but
Speaker 1: he didn't go far though. It only took him four
Speaker 1: days for police to catch up with him at his
Speaker 1: brother's apartment. So, you know, he's not the brightest dude
Speaker 1: at hiding, but he's good at like the first part
Speaker 1: of escape, but he lacks a little follow through, which
Speaker 1: is why we'll see later on the story. So every
Speaker 1: time he got out of prison, Richard committed horrible assaults.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty vicious cycle. And this part is nuts. Okay. Once,
Speaker 1: while he was in prison awaiting trial, he struck a
Speaker 1: deal with another inmate to kill the dude's wife.
Speaker 4: The dude paid for Richard's bail.
Speaker 1: But once Richard got out, he turned the tables and
Speaker 1: told the authorities about the plot.
Speaker 4: But wait, it gets it gets crazier.
Speaker 1: Wasn't this guy the married to the heir of the
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers fortune overlords. That is correct?
Speaker 3: Wait wait, wait, the guy that was hiring Richard to
Speaker 3: kill his wife while in prison, That guy, the wife
Speaker 3: that he wanted to kill, was the great granddaughter of
Speaker 3: the actual Warner Brothers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So she was an heiress of
Speaker 4: the Warner Brothers family.
Speaker 1: Can you believe?
Speaker 2: Oh wow?
Speaker 1: So he got out because he rad it on this guy.
Speaker 1: But his next rhyme was the only one that would
Speaker 1: finally get him locked in maximum security. Now, it started
Speaker 1: when he took a job with a business dealing with
Speaker 1: kid this nearly expired meat, so they would buy a
Speaker 1: cheap and they were selling it to new customers.
Speaker 3: Oh so it's the thing, nearly nearly expired meat.
Speaker 1: Nearly yeah, keto, it was the old keto version. So
Speaker 1: have you ever had any sketchy jobs?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm an actor, so it is kind of
Speaker 2: a sketchy job.
Speaker 1: I hear. So Richard made his expired meat job even
Speaker 1: more sketchy. He started stealing the meat, smuggling over the
Speaker 1: border into Canada for cash that he would then take
Speaker 1: the strip close, right, So who's buying all this fucking
Speaker 1: expired me? By the way, I don't want to know.
Speaker 1: So after strivers, Yeah, not the stripper, I hope. After
Speaker 1: only a few weeks, the boss caught him and fired Richard. Now,
Speaker 1: unfortunately for the boss, Richard had overheard him make a
Speaker 1: comment one time about one hundred grand that he had
Speaker 1: buried in the basement. So Richard thought it was real
Speaker 1: and he wanted that money. So he got a friend
Speaker 1: and the two of them rolled up on the meat
Speaker 1: dealer at his house. They beat him up, They stuffed
Speaker 1: him into the trunk of Richard's car, and they drove
Speaker 1: around for hours, stopping to interrogate and beat the guy.
Speaker 1: They never learned anything from him, so Richard eventually just
Speaker 1: killed him. But here's the most gruesome ploy. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the most gruesome part. Richard cut him up into pieces
Speaker 1: and dumped him in a river.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he went to Mexico, but like David Sweat,
Speaker 1: he just couldn't keep quiet. He went berserk and killed
Speaker 1: another man in a bar. Jeez. Richard did nine years
Speaker 1: in a Mexican prison before he got shipped back to
Speaker 1: the United States. Oh so, how bad do you have
Speaker 1: to be for the Mexican jails to be like? Nokout
Speaker 1: you know what you can't have No, no, you can
Speaker 1: have him. This is two wiki for us.
Speaker 4: No like it. I don't like the vibe. I don't
Speaker 4: like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I just don't give him to us.
Speaker 4: Yeah no, no, we had him.
Speaker 1: No, this guy just keeps pissing on us. I don't
Speaker 1: like it. He keeps telling us experiment. Where does he
Speaker 1: get it from? Where does he get You're.
Speaker 2: Gonna take him and you're gonna pay for it?
Speaker 1: Oh god, damn it. Fine? Uh speaking in Mexico, alrities
Speaker 1: might not know that you speak Spanish.
Speaker 2: Yop yo in no noise noise.
Speaker 1: He just insulted me and my whole family for Spanish speakers,
Speaker 1: and I do.
Speaker 4: Take event do you wait?
Speaker 1: Sorry?
Speaker 4: Just quickly, Spanish French.
Speaker 2: French would be French better than Spanish.
Speaker 4: Okay, Spanish, French and English.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that's impressive. Man. When are we starting with Dutch?
Speaker 1: You and I just like just throwing it out there
Speaker 1: on the weekends. We can learn it in a year,
Speaker 1: will be great for ends.
Speaker 2: Let's do Chinese.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I would love to Why I would
Speaker 1: look to Japanese that I would really really love.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Back in the States, they have Richard back with him,
Speaker 1: and Richard finally stood trial for murdering the meat boss,
Speaker 1: and this time they really tried not to let him escape,
Speaker 1: so they put him in a stun belt and even
Speaker 1: posted snipers on the roof to the courthouse. A stun belt,
Speaker 1: what is that? I'm guessing it's like a stun caller
Speaker 1: for dogs, but like you just you just have it
Speaker 1: around your body, like.
Speaker 3: What while he was in court or while he was
Speaker 3: he was sitting there in a in a belt and
Speaker 3: someone's got a button when.
Speaker 1: Thinking while they're transporting him. It's my guess, but let
Speaker 1: me get my overlords on this. What do we mean
Speaker 1: by a stun belt? You guys, Joe is correct, he
Speaker 1: was sitting in the court and somebody has a button. Yes,
Speaker 1: Oh that wow?
Speaker 3: Okay, uh, well sounds like a good fair trial if.
Speaker 4: You're at the trial.
Speaker 1: But he was easily convicted and they sent him to
Speaker 1: Clinton Correctional facility, and that's where he met David and
Speaker 1: the two of them started planning their great escape. Now
Speaker 1: we're in two thousand and eight when David Sweat and
Speaker 1: Richard Matter are serving their respective prison sentences in Clinton
Speaker 1: Correctional Facility. So David had been there for eight years
Speaker 1: and Richard was a new arrival. But Richard even came
Speaker 1: with a new nickname, Hacksaw.
Speaker 4: I want to think that David.
Speaker 1: I want to think that David was extremely jealous of
Speaker 1: what a hard ass nickname he wanted. He wanted to
Speaker 1: make up one up for himself. But I never called on,
Speaker 1: you know, like call me lion Eater. No, sorry, dude,
Speaker 1: you just kind of.
Speaker 2: David hex On, David, David and Haxaw. That's our shots, right.
Speaker 4: He just never He's like, we can call you Sweat.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have a nickname?
Speaker 4: Joe?
Speaker 3: I was doing a movie about soldiers and we all
Speaker 3: were doing a simulated boot camp, which is about the
Speaker 3: you know, that's as hard ass as I get a
Speaker 3: simulated boot camp. I hear it was like crazy ass
Speaker 3: Chan because he is sort of a crazy person, smoking
Speaker 3: ass iron because he smokes a lot, and it was
Speaker 3: they called me regular Joe because they were all they
Speaker 3: were all too prissy to ship in the outhouse and
Speaker 3: they wouldn't ship. And I don't care like I'll go
Speaker 3: take ship. I'm not gonna not take a ship. Everybody
Speaker 3: we don't has to go.
Speaker 1: We just you know, on set, I noticed this. We
Speaker 1: just had to look away. If Joe has to go,
Speaker 1: this man will not walk two feet. He would just
Speaker 1: fucking drop.
Speaker 2: Stay regular man.
Speaker 3: I eat a lot of vegetables. I'm gonna go ship
Speaker 3: in the outhouse.
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 3: So I was regular Joe. There you go, and that
Speaker 3: name kind of stuck. Some people still call me regular Joe.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. So let me tell you about
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about this person that they were
Speaker 1: in right so as and I want to check in
Speaker 1: with you. Is this is? How do you feeling?
Speaker 3: This is?
Speaker 1: It's a hard story to hear, isn't it?
Speaker 2: It's just hard for me.
Speaker 3: I have to admit I have a hard time enjoying
Speaker 3: the horrendous misfortunes of these terribly tragically ill people and
Speaker 3: the pain they cause. But I've run the moral calculation
Speaker 3: in my head as we're doing this, and that's exactly
Speaker 3: where I net it out. It was like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: if we can make a podcast where yes, we're telling
Speaker 3: a story that's crazy to hear, but we're also actually
Speaker 3: breaking it down and trying to understand what are the
Speaker 3: larger problems in our world that are leading to these things.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a fair way in to have some
Speaker 3: important conversations.
Speaker 2: So I'm down.
Speaker 3: I'm in full support to be going through the story
Speaker 3: and having this conversation.
Speaker 1: Awesome, man, thank you, And you know I agree, and
Speaker 1: you know I think it helps to tell these kinds
Speaker 1: of stories with some context. Right, So let's go back
Speaker 1: a little bit and get into the history of the
Speaker 1: person that they were in. So the prison was called
Speaker 1: Clinton Correctional Facility and it was originally built by labor
Speaker 1: gangs of prisoners in the eighteen hundreds. The Cold Winters
Speaker 1: gave the prison its nickname Little Siberia Labor Gangs.
Speaker 2: Wow, sorry, I just said labor gangs.
Speaker 3: Then it's an important thing to note the American prison
Speaker 3: system is there's there's not even a dotted line between
Speaker 3: the American prison system and the American slavery industry.
Speaker 1: From not even a dotted line.
Speaker 3: It's not even it's a solid line. It's not even
Speaker 3: a very long line. It was like as soon as
Speaker 3: slavery was outlawed in whatever it was, eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: very very shortly thereafter, they started figuring out, okay, well
Speaker 3: then how are we going to get all this work done?
Speaker 3: And prisoners was exactly one of the biggest answers and
Speaker 3: it's still happening today.
Speaker 1: And for our listeners, if you want to hear more
Speaker 1: about it, Ava Duverne did an amazing documentary called The
Speaker 1: Thirteenth Yeah, which you can find on Netflix, which was
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful. Yeah. So you know, imagine the conditions of
Speaker 1: any place when it gets compared to a fucking Soviet
Speaker 1: gulag like little Siberia too, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: that's when you're really fucking up. So the guard tower
Speaker 1: in the sixty food concrete walls dominate the surrounding streets.
Speaker 1: Now in two thousand and eight, the people locked up
Speaker 1: there were put to work in an assembling office. They
Speaker 1: were making furniture, clothes, license plates, and road signs in
Speaker 1: an industrial building inside the prison walls. It's like a
Speaker 1: fucked up Etsy shop, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 1: it's just like wrong, Yeah, so most people in this
Speaker 1: and this is another thing, right, most people in the
Speaker 1: surrounding town called then dan Mora were jobs in the prison.
Speaker 1: They were guards, clerks, cooks, and supervisors for the prison labors.
Speaker 1: For instance, take Tilly, and she's going to be essential
Speaker 1: to our story. She and her husband both worked in
Speaker 1: the prison, and Tilly had been a supervisor since two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. She ran the show in the tailoring shop,
Speaker 1: and that's where she met David and Richard. So there
Speaker 1: are conflicting stories about what happened in the tailor shop,
Speaker 1: including whether the sexual acts were consensual. Even Tilly's own
Speaker 1: account has changed over time, Like what she told the
Speaker 1: state investigators differs from the accounts that she's giving to
Speaker 1: the press. You know, it's possible that Tilly herself was
Speaker 1: a victim of sexual violence and coercion. And we just
Speaker 1: want to make it super clear for our listener that
Speaker 1: there are multiple sides of this story and the facts
Speaker 1: are not one hundred percent clear, you know, But first
Speaker 1: maybe it seemed like there wasn't much to worry about.
Speaker 1: After all, David and Richard lived in Cell Block A,
Speaker 1: which was known as the Honor Block. So inside Clinton correctional.
Speaker 1: Richard and David had taken up painting and build themselves
Speaker 1: a good reputation, because if history has taught us anything
Speaker 1: it's that people who take a planting class never do
Speaker 1: anything wrong like ever. Ever, so in the Taylor's shop
Speaker 1: where they work, David had also become really good at
Speaker 1: sewing and was even made shop instructor. Now other workers
Speaker 1: started noticing that Tilly had made friends with David. She
Speaker 1: started bringing him contraband treats. And at first there was
Speaker 1: things like homemade brownies or cookies, but once Tilly even
Speaker 1: brought him a big mac from a McDonald's that was
Speaker 1: almost an hour away from prison. Wow, that is fucking commitment. Dude.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend and I like argue about who's going to
Speaker 1: like shut the lights out like four feet away from
Speaker 1: our band.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was gonna say our long big mac run.
Speaker 1: That's not just that's not friendship. No no, no no.
Speaker 1: And so eventually the violations were too obvious, you know,
Speaker 1: an anominumous letter to the prison administrators got David kicked
Speaker 1: out of the tailoring shop. And that's when Tilly got
Speaker 1: close to David's prison friend, Richard, like very very close Okay.
Speaker 1: As we noted earlier, there are some differing accounts about
Speaker 1: whether or not the relationship became sexual. By the spring
Speaker 1: of twenty fifteen, the State Investigation reports that it was
Speaker 1: Tilly and Richard who were going into the empty room
Speaker 1: for sex. Tilly would also give Richard sexual notes to
Speaker 1: pass along to David, including nude photos of herself. Later,
Speaker 1: in at least one interview, Tilly said that she was
Speaker 1: worried about her safety in her husband's life.
Speaker 4: But we'll come back to that later.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, So she's married during this, she's married turing
Speaker 1: this to a guy that works at the prison. Wow. So,
Speaker 1: because despite all of this special treatment inside the prison,
Speaker 1: Richard and David were determined to get out, So listen.
Speaker 1: Once David and Richard had Tilly tangled up in the
Speaker 1: most bizarre thrutle ever, they had the plan to use
Speaker 1: her as a means for escape.
Speaker 4: Richard until he started to trade.
Speaker 1: At first, it was just small things, you know, paint
Speaker 1: brushes for their art, stuff like that. But then it
Speaker 1: started to get a little more elaborate. He said he
Speaker 1: needed some glasses with built in flashlights because it would
Speaker 1: help him paint tonight. He then said he needed some
Speaker 1: hacksaw blades. What do you think she had?
Speaker 4: Like she thought he needed this for.
Speaker 2: Like he was just jealous of the nickname.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to be hacks off too, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm tired of being sweaty sweat I'm a sweaty Dave.
Speaker 4: So until he brought in the.
Speaker 1: Blades secretly and stashed them at Richard's workstation in the
Speaker 1: tailory shop. Then to get them out of his cell,
Speaker 1: Richard taped them to his body and underwalk and this
Speaker 1: is important. On the walk back to the tailory shop,
Speaker 1: the guard let him go around the metal detector. Right,
Speaker 1: So this was honor block, after all, What reason did
Speaker 1: they have to be suspicious of Richard? But this just
Speaker 1: seems like gross neglect or he was in on it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if there's a metal detector there, what's
Speaker 2: the why don't you just.
Speaker 1: Go fucking through it? Yeah. So, once he was back
Speaker 1: in his cell, Richard passed half of the blades of
Speaker 1: David next door and the two men went to work.
Speaker 1: They started to slowly cut the steel walls of their cells.
Speaker 1: They will wait until the evening when other inmates from
Speaker 1: other blocks were allowed to use the common recreation areas. Now,
Speaker 1: Richard and David would hang back and they all say
Speaker 1: they always said they were painting or something like that. So,
Speaker 1: night by night, inch by inch, the men cut holes
Speaker 1: into the back walls. They covered the holes with their
Speaker 1: own paintings, and that's when the plan really began.
Speaker 2: Hold on, they're cutting a wall. They're cutting a hole
Speaker 2: in a wall.
Speaker 3: The wall is made of How do you how do
Speaker 3: you cut a hole in a wall, even if you
Speaker 3: have a hacksaw?
Speaker 2: How do you even do that.
Speaker 1: With a lot of patients? Joe, Yeah, no, no, no, overlords,
Speaker 1: was this a what they were hacking at?
Speaker 4: The concrete?
Speaker 2: Was it the bars? No, they couldn't do it the
Speaker 2: bar the bars.
Speaker 4: Yes, their cell walls were made of steel.
Speaker 2: Wow, and you can do that with a hacksaw, with
Speaker 2: a hacksaw blade, yes, jeez. And you're right.
Speaker 1: Patients, Yes, absolutely, patients And yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they just this is a long term project.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of when when you hear about
Speaker 1: a lot of these escape stories, there is this sort
Speaker 1: of sense of shame of like man if like. Some
Speaker 1: of these require a lot of mental fortitude and planning
Speaker 1: and patience and hard work, and you can just imagine
Speaker 1: what people under different circumstances with more help might have
Speaker 1: been able to do had they applied this to something else.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, that's exact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's entrepreneurial to do to pull all that shit
Speaker 3: off and take the initiative and like plan ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. So behind the back walls
Speaker 1: there was a whole nest of pipes and conduits for
Speaker 1: plumbing and electricity that went to every cell and along
Speaker 1: with them there were catwalks that spread through the prison
Speaker 1: to allow for maintenance. David was able to then walk
Speaker 1: all the way from Honor Block, through the next prison
Speaker 1: laundry and even under the next cell block. But you know,
Speaker 1: the whole prison was like a maze. So now that
Speaker 1: they were outside of their cells, David and Richard needed
Speaker 1: to find a route all the way out of prison,
Speaker 1: and they needed to do it at night. Now do
Speaker 1: you remember what tool might come in useful here?
Speaker 2: Uh? The glasses with the Yes.
Speaker 1: There you go. So they were using the flashlied glasses
Speaker 1: they got from Tilly. Then Richard and David started planning,
Speaker 1: all planning way through. They slowly selected cement walls and
Speaker 1: metal grates for their escape, and then night by night
Speaker 1: they spend time cutting holes into each one, so over
Speaker 1: time they carved the path through the various buildings toward
Speaker 1: the outer wall. Tilly continued to pass them more and
Speaker 1: more tools, and eventually they gave a ball pretense. They
Speaker 1: just wanted heavy heavy duty workloves concrete, drill beats, chisels,
Speaker 1: more hacks aw blades, and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3: And no one's noticing this is everyone Tilly's rooting for
Speaker 3: them to get out, which is a little confusing because
Speaker 3: it seems like she's on I don't know, having a
Speaker 3: positive experience with them being in jail.
Speaker 2: So does she.
Speaker 1: Maybe when they're out of jail, they can continue this
Speaker 1: on their run, right, Maybe.
Speaker 2: That's the she thinks they're gonna stick around.
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean, by this point, if you're
Speaker 1: so psychologically addicted to somebody, which is what it sounds like, right.
Speaker 2: Then it's believe anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah you're And so Tilly had a unique way to
Speaker 1: get them inside right at home. She packed the tools
Speaker 1: inside blocks of ground beef and put them into the freezer.
Speaker 2: And the really beef comes back into this story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ma'am, dude, this is we are sponsored by the
Speaker 1: beef industry.
Speaker 2: It wasn't nearly expired, hope.
Speaker 1: So let me make a little segue to think our
Speaker 1: sponsors and e m right, nearly expire meat for all
Speaker 1: the masses. Yes, it's cheaper than regular meat and only
Speaker 1: slightly more dangerous.
Speaker 4: It's what's for dinner, button beef.
Speaker 1: What's for dinner? The next morning? Is he carry the
Speaker 1: frozen meat into the tailory shop. Then she arranged for
Speaker 1: a prison guard to deliver the loaded meat to Richard's cell.
Speaker 1: It went so she got another prison guard to deliver
Speaker 1: the meat. That's fucked up, so it went without a hitch.
Speaker 1: So next time they put in an order for tools,
Speaker 1: she did the exact same thing. Now. Eventually, Richard and
Speaker 1: David found a steam pipe system and that connected to
Speaker 1: a power plant outside the prison wall. So David cut
Speaker 1: a hole in the side of a pipe that was
Speaker 1: large enough for men to crawl in, and at last
Speaker 1: they had a clear path to the outside. The final
Speaker 1: plan for the escape was drawn up like this. Richard
Speaker 1: and David would leave life sized dummies in their beds,
Speaker 1: made from bundles of old clothes so the prison guards
Speaker 1: wouldn't notice they were missing. It's like Ferris Vieler kind
Speaker 1: of and they loved eighties coming of age movies. Step two,
Speaker 1: with a guitar case full of supplies, they would climb
Speaker 1: through the holes in the back of their cells and
Speaker 1: onto the catwalk and follow the path through the walls
Speaker 1: and tunnels that led to the outside of the prison walls.
Speaker 1: They would then crawl through a manhole up to the
Speaker 1: nearby street and flee the prison.
Speaker 4: Step three, This is fucked up.
Speaker 1: Tilly would drug her husband with narcotics that Richard had
Speaker 1: been prescribed by the prison doctors. That way, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: notice when she left in the car to pick up
Speaker 1: Richard and David.
Speaker 4: Step four.
Speaker 1: When the two escapees hopped into Tilly's cars, she would
Speaker 1: drive them home. Then the pair of them would murder
Speaker 1: her husband, and the three of them would then collect
Speaker 1: the life insurance policy and write right off into the sunset.
Speaker 2: Good lord, Wait.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that the whole fucking reason that she was helping
Speaker 1: them because she was afraid they might hurt her husband?
Speaker 4: Like, doesn't that that just doesn't you.
Speaker 1: Know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, you did say that she was scared for
Speaker 2: the safety of her house.
Speaker 4: It just seems like an I think she was just
Speaker 4: all in.
Speaker 1: Also likely, like how long do they think it takes
Speaker 1: a file an insurance claim? Like how were they just
Speaker 1: going to like wait inside the fucking house for money
Speaker 1: for months? You know?
Speaker 3: And I guess then they have to make the murder
Speaker 3: look like they can't cut them up and throw them
Speaker 3: in the river. Yeah, I have to do something else
Speaker 3: pretty tricky if they're going to get the life insurance money.
Speaker 4: It's so macarv Am I saying that word correctly? My uh,
Speaker 4: I don't know macarv.
Speaker 2: There is no correct way to say that.
Speaker 4: Okay, macabre. It is incredibly macabay.
Speaker 3: That was the most correct I've actually ever heard that
Speaker 3: word pronounced.
Speaker 1: So Richard and David packed their guitar cases with the
Speaker 1: necessities Pepperoni sticks, toilet paper, and electric shaver and forty
Speaker 1: granola bars because they were watching their figure. That's just kidding.
Speaker 2: I don't know what before shaver. This based on a shaver.
Speaker 1: Also, Also, I would not have thought of toilet paper,
Speaker 1: but it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: That sounds more necessary than the shaver.
Speaker 1: I would expect regular Joe to thinker that up, you know,
Speaker 1: because regular show take a shit in the bud. I
Speaker 1: just wouldn't have thought of it. Also, an electric shaver,
Speaker 1: maybe to change their look. That would make more sense.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So Tilly even brought them in a compass, the New
Speaker 1: York State, pages of an atlas, and.
Speaker 4: Lots of black pepper.
Speaker 1: They were hoping to use the black pepper to keep
Speaker 1: dogs off their scent, which I have to admit, it's
Speaker 1: pretty fucking clever.
Speaker 2: Does that work?
Speaker 1: I don't know if it worked or not. Did it
Speaker 1: work everything?
Speaker 2: As if I need to keep dogs off myself?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's so shady. I get every other way
Speaker 1: You're like, but what was the success rate for that?
Speaker 1: So Richard gave So Richard gave Tilly the narcotics he
Speaker 1: had saved up, and the tunnels were complete and everything
Speaker 1: was ready to go. So on the night of June fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Richard and David left their prison cells for
Speaker 1: the last time. As they made they were through their
Speaker 1: escape route, they left notes at the spots that had
Speaker 1: been difficult to overcome. At a pipe between B Block
Speaker 1: and C Block, they left a picture of an alien
Speaker 1: and a little tagline that said, are you trying me punk.
Speaker 1: I think they would have workshopped that time if you're king,
Speaker 1: yeah one percent.
Speaker 2: Wow. Also they're having fun doing that.
Speaker 4: They're having fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, Like, I don't blame you, dude. Like most
Speaker 1: people's conundrum with me is that they never know when
Speaker 1: I'm fucking serious, you know, So I would make a
Speaker 1: terrible doctor. I'm like, no, man, you really have to
Speaker 1: go now there I this fucking gut At the final
Speaker 1: outer wall, where they had spent thirty nights sawing through
Speaker 1: the steam pipe, their notes said have a nice day.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So then Richard and David got to the manhole
Speaker 1: cover and this was it. They were free. But thank
Speaker 1: you for that manhole cover opening outside. Yeah, but when
Speaker 1: they popped out into the street, there was no one there.
Speaker 1: Turns out the Tilly, the accomplice in their ghetaway driver,
Speaker 1: got cold feet.
Speaker 4: She did didn't feel so confident in.
Speaker 1: The plan after all, at the last second, something about
Speaker 1: drugging her husband and running off with these murders.
Speaker 2: Killing and killing him. That was part of the plan.
Speaker 1: Too, right, Yeah, I just didn't sit right.
Speaker 2: Good for Tilly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, instead of hitting her husband with a roofye, Tilly
Speaker 1: had a panic attack at nine pm. Her husband drove
Speaker 1: her to the hospital where she was admitted for observation.
Speaker 1: Later she would say that she never intended to drug
Speaker 1: and kill her husband. It just took her this long
Speaker 1: to finally abandon the plan. Who that was really at
Speaker 1: the eleventh hour to Tilly. But that left these two
Speaker 1: escapees standing in the middle of the street at midnight
Speaker 1: with no driver and no Golden Life insurance policy on
Speaker 1: their side for their dumb plan. So they decided to
Speaker 1: haul ass into the nearby forest of Little Siberia. And
Speaker 1: this is where we come full circle. Okay. So once
Speaker 1: they were out into the woods, they started breaking into
Speaker 1: hunting cabins. Remember the moonshine and the weed and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Oh yeah, okay, So at one hunting cabin
Speaker 1: they even found a transit to radio, which was lucky
Speaker 1: for them because the cops started a huge manhunt. It
Speaker 1: was the US Marshalls, it was the forest rangers, it
Speaker 1: was everybody, border patrol, helicopters, the whole thing, right, And
Speaker 1: that's where the to escape he split. Now, David wanted
Speaker 1: to run for the border, but Richard was just done caring.
Speaker 1: So instead of heading back into the forest, he actually
Speaker 1: took a shotgun down to the road and started shooting
Speaker 1: and passing cars. Man he hit a family camphor Ban
Speaker 1: and they called in the location.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, wildly fucked up.
Speaker 1: But that also meant that the cops knew exactly where
Speaker 1: he was, so they closed in and they actually killed
Speaker 1: him before he had.
Speaker 4: A chance to shoot at them too.
Speaker 1: And as for David, he did try to make a
Speaker 1: break for it, but he was caught on the road
Speaker 1: to Canada before he could escape across the border.
Speaker 2: He survived.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he had been shot, but he survived. So
Speaker 1: he was brought in and he told the story of
Speaker 1: his escape in great detail to the investigators, to the police,
Speaker 1: and to the prison officials, resulting in over five hundred
Speaker 1: pages of interview transcripts. You know, he even compared their
Speaker 1: escape to Shoshank redemption, but he said, Shashank ain't got
Speaker 1: shit on me. So after such a quazy escape, there
Speaker 1: was a scramble to figure out how it had all happened.
Speaker 1: Investigators interviewed one hundred and seventy people to help peace
Speaker 1: together the puzzle. According to the report, there were many
Speaker 1: points of failure.
Speaker 3: Can I just pause and be the nerd for a second,
Speaker 3: one more time. If we're talking about, oh, hey, we
Speaker 3: don't have money to pay for mental health treatment of kids.
Speaker 2: That's too expensive. How are we going to spend that money?
Speaker 3: Okay, cut to now X years later, the kid didn't
Speaker 3: get mental health treatment, And now how expensive do you
Speaker 3: think it is for them to be conducting this investigation
Speaker 3: with how many people?
Speaker 1: Did you say? They're interviewing one hundred and seventy people?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, I don't know what the number is,
Speaker 3: but that's so expensive now that they're they're having to
Speaker 3: clean up this.
Speaker 1: So much power, so expensive, so deliberate.
Speaker 3: Right, it's the it's the old thing of like if
Speaker 3: you don't want to, you know, spend a lot of
Speaker 3: money on your doctor's bills, just like eat healthy. Right,
Speaker 3: If we just spent some money up front on taking
Speaker 3: care of people who are mentally ill, especially like you said, kids,
Speaker 3: I thought that was a really important point you made.
Speaker 3: Maybe we wouldn't be spending the enormous budget it must
Speaker 3: have taken to clean up this fucking mess of this
Speaker 3: guardank people, to.
Speaker 1: Accuse people, to interview people, and then to put them
Speaker 1: back into prison.
Speaker 3: Right, the practical, cold, hard like dollars and cents of
Speaker 3: it would actually make so much more sense if we
Speaker 3: were helping people earlier instead of trying to incarcerate and
Speaker 3: punish and shit later on.
Speaker 4: And it's such a powerful note to end on, my friend.
Speaker 1: That's our story, and I hope the takeaway for our
Speaker 1: audience is that there is such a bigger conversation here
Speaker 1: about not just a prison system, but like how you know,
Speaker 1: it's just really easy to wash our hands on people
Speaker 1: that are just that we just see as the dejective
Speaker 1: ones from society. But it's just so important. And also, listen, man,
Speaker 1: this is a great credit to you. I got to
Speaker 1: tell you before we have to let you go. We're
Speaker 1: firing you. Apparently I don't know way how to hire you.
Speaker 1: But you're so well versed in the business of empathy.
Speaker 4: You understand what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a big credit to you, man,
Speaker 1: And I think we need more people like you in
Speaker 1: a position in positions and power. Man. And so when
Speaker 1: you run for president, I would like to put myself
Speaker 1: off vice president.
Speaker 3: Let's do it perfect. You mean you president, I want
Speaker 3: to be VP. You're your president?
Speaker 4: No, all right, brother, much love to you. Joe We'll
Speaker 4: see you next time.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, brother, love you dude, good to
Speaker 3: see you. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 4: Bye.
Speaker 1: Greatest Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation
Speaker 1: Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: me Or Turo Castro, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka from
Speaker 1: Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Witning Donaldson from Gilded Audio,
Speaker 1: and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show was produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chug, who are also, respectively,
Speaker 1: our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Tory Smith, who our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our
Speaker 1: technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riiseek, Sarah Joyner, nicki Stein,
Speaker 1: Olivia Canny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop
Speaker 1: a rating or review. My mom will call you each
Speaker 1: personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next week.