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Speaker 2: Jay Calpern. Here, before we get into this episode, I
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Speaker 2: All right, let's get into it. Previously on Deep.
Speaker 3: Marissa and I were in our respective rooms when I
Speaker 3: see a flashlight coming through my window, and then I
Speaker 3: see several flashlights, and then I hear dogs. They're all
Speaker 3: like knocking really loud, like O well the door, and
Speaker 3: you could just feel the pressure, like, dude, they're going
Speaker 3: to open this door if we don't open this door.
Speaker 3: The picture that was on Fox two News, you could
Speaker 3: see into the car from this helicopter shot and there
Speaker 3: was a cup. You're like, that's Dad's Emo's cup. I
Speaker 3: realized that my dad has done something wrong. And I
Speaker 3: immediately started feeling like this is going to change my
Speaker 3: life and my family dynamic forever.
Speaker 2: I'm in a darkened, dirt road in the Ozarks. I'm
Speaker 2: going like fifteen miles an hour because I keep getting
Speaker 2: stuff caught on the undercarriage of the car that's dragging.
Speaker 2: It's totally dark.
Speaker 1: Whoa wow.
Speaker 2: This is me last winter in a rental car in
Speaker 2: a remote part of Missouri, and even with my brights on,
Speaker 2: it was hard to see. The road kept twisting and
Speaker 2: turning and climbing. And just as I was navigating all
Speaker 2: of this, my phone rang, are you okay there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm fine. I'm actually I'm good. I'm almost there.
Speaker 2: That's my wife, Kasha, and she's been tracking my progress
Speaker 2: on her find My app. To her, it looks like
Speaker 2: I'm just a little too far off the grid.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm totally fine. I'm totally fine. We're good.
Speaker 4: We're good.
Speaker 2: But I need to focus on this road. That little beep,
Speaker 2: beep beep, that's the sound of my phone dropping her call.
Speaker 2: My GPS says I'm getting close to my destination, about
Speaker 2: to arrive, so it says we're six hundred feet This
Speaker 2: is crazy. Whoa. I'm just trying to slow down here
Speaker 2: to not destroy this.
Speaker 1: I mean, arriving.
Speaker 2: How could we be arriving there's nothing here, old on,
Speaker 2: there's a driveway.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just gonna hope this is right.
Speaker 2: I'd pull into this driveway, but I mean, honestly, it
Speaker 2: just looks like a break in the trees, like a clearing,
Speaker 2: nothing more, with a cabin at the edge of it.
Speaker 2: And then I see a shadowy figure emerge from the
Speaker 2: cabin waving his hand.
Speaker 1: Keith.
Speaker 2: Holy cow man, you guys live out here.
Speaker 4: I don't have any outdoor lighting yet.
Speaker 1: Good to see you, Jake.
Speaker 4: Nice to meet you, Jake.
Speaker 2: He's just pulling right there, all right. This is the
Speaker 2: man that I've traveled a very very long way to see.
Speaker 2: Keith Giamanco, dad of Elise and Marissa, the twin sisters
Speaker 2: who you heard from in the last episode. They described
Speaker 2: him as a loving but kind of mysterious father, and
Speaker 2: they told me they really had no clue what he
Speaker 2: was up to until one day when he appeared on
Speaker 2: the local news being hunted down by the police. As
Speaker 2: for how Keith got here to this remote spot deep
Speaker 2: in the ozarks, well, that's a very long story, and
Speaker 2: really it's the story i'd come to hear from myself,
Speaker 2: from Keith in his own words.
Speaker 4: Yeah, likewise, major, come here.
Speaker 2: Lots of dogs.
Speaker 4: Oh you're you're?
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, I've traveled some and you guys
Speaker 2: are you guys are back there.
Speaker 4: Sitting I'm right with you. Get an adjustment.
Speaker 2: Keith leads me towards the cabin. All around us their
Speaker 2: goats and dogs and heaps of snow. The cabin itself
Speaker 2: is very orderly. There's a set of rakes leaned up
Speaker 2: against the outside wall, perfectly aligned, arranged just so. Once
Speaker 2: we're inside, we sit down by a fire crackling in
Speaker 2: a wood burning stove.
Speaker 4: My day is pretty much spent here. I tend to,
Speaker 4: you know, the animals, and cleaning up the house, doing
Speaker 4: laundry and things like that. And I'm good with that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I did it before, you know, when I
Speaker 4: was a single parent. So it's not anything that that
Speaker 4: I begrudge doing. What do you do with the animal,
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, everything. I watch him have fun a lot
Speaker 4: that they like to have fun, especially the dogs. They
Speaker 4: go in and out a lot and play outside. And
Speaker 4: I love him to death.
Speaker 2: If Keith sounds like a jolly old grandpa kind of guy.
Speaker 2: H he kind of is. He's got this friendly Midwestern look,
Speaker 2: short gray hair, neatly combed, a bright, almost boyish smile.
Speaker 2: He looks like the kind of guy who'd stop and
Speaker 2: help jumpstart your car. But appearances can be deceiving, and
Speaker 2: I knew from speaking to his daughters that there was
Speaker 2: so much more to Keith. In many ways, he was
Speaker 2: the sphinx that drew me into this story, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to know who lived beneath that veneer.
Speaker 4: Life is about you choices and moving forward. That molds
Speaker 4: how you live your life. Those choices I personify that.
Speaker 4: I'm not immune to it, that's for sure. People say, oh,
Speaker 4: you made a mistake. No, I didn't make a mistake.
Speaker 4: Making a mistake is putting salt in your coffee instead
Speaker 4: of sugar. I made bad choices. Those things were a choice.
Speaker 4: They weren't a mistake. I purposely did what I did.
Speaker 2: These choices that Keith made, they're what brought a small
Speaker 2: army of law enforcement to his front door, and what
Speaker 2: led to that police chase with the helicopter overhead, and
Speaker 2: what many years later, ultimately ended with him here in
Speaker 2: a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere. I'm Jake
Speaker 2: Halbern and this is deep cover The Family Man, Episode two,
Speaker 2: The Gamble. Keith was raised by a single mom. He
Speaker 2: says he was always very close with her. She raised
Speaker 2: Keith and his three siblings on her own. Keith was
Speaker 2: the youngest by a lot, and in many ways, he
Speaker 2: grew up as an only child, living a very solitary life.
Speaker 2: His mom worked long hours at a restaurant, and with
Speaker 2: the other kids grown up and gone, Keith spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time alone in the house. He says he
Speaker 2: barely knew his father at all.
Speaker 4: He was a nonexistent in my childhood. He left when
Speaker 4: I was six months old, so I only knew a household.
Speaker 1: With my mother. What kind of impact did that have
Speaker 1: on you?
Speaker 4: It had a huge impact, because I made a vow
Speaker 4: to myself and to them that I would be there for.
Speaker 2: When Keith had children of his own, he wanted his
Speaker 2: girls to have the kind of storybook childhood that he
Speaker 2: didn't have, a real classic family life. At the center
Speaker 2: of this life was Keith's wife, Becky.
Speaker 4: She was a very fun, loving person. She was an
Speaker 4: excellent wife and mother, for the first seven years of
Speaker 4: our marriage. She was a stay at home mother. She
Speaker 4: was very attentive to the children. She was a wonderful
Speaker 4: housekeeper and cook, and a good friend.
Speaker 2: Though Keith was quick to add their marriage it wasn't perfect,
Speaker 2: especially as the girls got old.
Speaker 4: There was some rocky moments, of course, because our personalities
Speaker 4: classed in a lot of ways, and she was sometimes
Speaker 4: a difficult person for me to get along with. How So,
Speaker 4: I guess I would.
Speaker 1: Say her.
Speaker 4: Her love for the home life wasn't constant.
Speaker 2: Keith told me about the moment when he realized all
Speaker 2: was not as it seemed with Becky.
Speaker 4: I remember, there is a like a Founder's Day parade
Speaker 4: in my hometown of flor Sent, Missouri, and everybody gathers
Speaker 4: and you have the family over, and I wanted to
Speaker 4: pick up a few things for entertainment purposes, and I
Speaker 4: went to get a credit card out of my desk,
Speaker 4: and she broke the news to me when I was
Speaker 4: getting in my desk that every single one of them
Speaker 4: were charged to the hill. We had nothing. We had
Speaker 4: no credit of any kind because she had ran it
Speaker 4: all up with drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 2: Not long after this, Becky moved out. I kept thinking
Speaker 2: about how Keith had described his wife to me, how
Speaker 2: he'd paused and then very carefully chosen these words. Her
Speaker 2: love for the home life wasn't constant. This, as I
Speaker 2: came to learn, was a classic Keithism, a Midwestern riddle
Speaker 2: of banality whose darker and truer meaning had to be
Speaker 2: ferreted out. And I also realized that this was probably
Speaker 2: the type of thing that Keith had said to his
Speaker 2: daughters when they were growing up, a sanitized version of
Speaker 2: the truth that was so sanitized that it was no
Speaker 2: longer really the truth at all. Keith says that he
Speaker 2: quickly embraced the role of being a single dad. He
Speaker 2: cooked the dinners and did the laundry. Also put his
Speaker 2: daughters into therapy because he understood that they needed someone
Speaker 2: to talk to about what had happened. He also transferred
Speaker 2: them to an all girls Catholic school, where he felt
Speaker 2: they could get more support emotionally and academically. Without his
Speaker 2: wife around, Keith felt that all of this was on
Speaker 2: his shoulders.
Speaker 1: What's that like for you?
Speaker 4: Rewarding and fulfilling in a lot of ways, but also
Speaker 4: very stressful and a lot of anxiety, and especially when
Speaker 4: there's not the resources there to provide the way you want.
Speaker 1: To for your children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk about his resources. Keith had started
Speaker 2: out as a regular blue collar guy. When his girls
Speaker 2: were little, He worked at a printing press, coming home
Speaker 2: each night with ink stain hands. Then, in the early
Speaker 2: two thousands, around the time that his wife moved out,
Speaker 2: Keith reinvented himself as a day trader. He cashed out
Speaker 2: his retirement plan and started buying and selling stocks at
Speaker 2: the time the market was booming. He says he did
Speaker 2: well day trading, though Keith says that sometimes he lived
Speaker 2: beyond his means. For a while, he dated a dentist,
Speaker 2: and he spent money to impress her, going on trips
Speaker 2: and dining out, trying to create an image of wealth
Speaker 2: and success. For a while, it worked. Keith attributed his
Speaker 2: financial success to how closely he studied the stock market.
Speaker 2: He prides himself as someone who understands how systems work.
Speaker 4: A lot of people like to say, well, it's like gambling. No,
Speaker 4: it's not like gambling. Gambling is a non calculated risk
Speaker 4: trading the market. Anybody who knows anything about the market
Speaker 4: and the way it moves it is a calculated risk.
Speaker 2: Keith told me there was only one real trap, wishful thinking,
Speaker 2: believing the version of things you want to be true.
Speaker 4: In the trading industry they call it you know you
Speaker 4: don't want to make a trade, and then smoke hopium on.
Speaker 2: It, smoking hopium. I hadn't heard that phrase before, but
Speaker 2: the meaning it landed immediately.
Speaker 1: Hope.
Speaker 2: It's useful, it's necessary even, It's what gets people to
Speaker 2: try things that might fail. But Keith, he was talking
Speaker 2: about something else. He was talking about the moment when
Speaker 2: hope mixes with desperation and suddenly you're no longer seeing
Speaker 2: things as they are, but as you need them to be.
Speaker 2: By the fall of two thousand and seven, the economy
Speaker 2: had begun to slide into what would become the Great Recession.
Speaker 2: The market was faltering, and so were Keith's finances. He
Speaker 2: was a forty three year old single dad and broke.
Speaker 2: He owed about forty five thousand dollars in back taxes,
Speaker 2: He was behind several months on his mortgage payment, and
Speaker 2: he couldn't afford the tuition at his daughter's private high school.
Speaker 2: He felt desperate, and he would soon act on that
Speaker 2: desperation in a way that would change the course of
Speaker 2: his life forever. When his day trading started to flounder,
Speaker 2: Keith finally decided he had to open up to someone
Speaker 2: about how bad things had gotten. Someone who had under
Speaker 2: stand the pressures of being a single parent, someone who
Speaker 2: wouldn't be too judgmental, someone who truly loved him, And
Speaker 2: what better person than his own mother, Margie, who lived
Speaker 2: right in the neighborhood. When Keith opened up, Margie listened patiently,
Speaker 2: and at some point she made a joke, kind of
Speaker 2: off handedly.
Speaker 4: She just said, well, I hope you don't do something
Speaker 4: crazy like, oh, rob a.
Speaker 2: Bank, explicitly warning you not to do this. Yes, So
Speaker 2: how do you flip that on its head and decide
Speaker 2: that that's a good idea?
Speaker 4: Because I started to do research, tell me, looking at
Speaker 4: the FBI website specifically, and looking at how people got
Speaker 4: caught and basically learning what not to do in order
Speaker 4: to get away with robbing a bank.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Around this time, when Keith was really in the hole,
Speaker 2: he decided that he should focus his efforts on learning
Speaker 2: how to rob a bank. He soon became an expert
Speaker 2: on all manner of things, including the use of die packs,
Speaker 2: the positioning of security cameras and the best getaway routes.
Speaker 2: Keith even figured out the ideal time to strike midday,
Speaker 2: right after lunch when people were a little sluggish. Keith's
Speaker 2: plan was not to carry a weapon, just a demand
Speaker 2: note saying give me all the money in both drawers
Speaker 2: and we'll all go home safe. Now you might be thinking, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 2: hold up, there's got to be another way. Why not
Speaker 2: get a job, any job at all, working the counter
Speaker 2: at McDonald's or burger king, anything legal.
Speaker 1: I asked Keith about this.
Speaker 4: You're going to work this menial job and it's not
Speaker 4: even going to come. I'm close to covering what is due,
Speaker 4: and you're still going to lose everything and you're still
Speaker 4: going to be working at burger king. It made more
Speaker 4: sense in football terms to get chunk yardage instead of
Speaker 4: two yards in a cloud of dust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's like you're going for it on fourth
Speaker 2: and seventeen. Yeah, absolutely, fourth and seventeen. That's football speak
Speaker 2: for a long shot, a big play born out of desperation.
Speaker 2: But that keeps you in the game. And that's what
Speaker 2: Keith wanted, a big payday that solved everything. Only problem
Speaker 2: was his whole life and his daughter's lives hung in
Speaker 2: the balance. Eventually, Keith settled on his first target, a
Speaker 2: Bank of America in Saint Charles, Missouri, and in November
Speaker 2: of two thousand and seven, he decided.
Speaker 1: It was time.
Speaker 2: He dressed for the occasion in a green fatigue jacket
Speaker 2: and a cameo hat with a wide brim that shadowed
Speaker 2: his face. Keith parked a safe distance from the bank
Speaker 2: and then got out of his car. Did you have
Speaker 2: any last minute doubts before you walked in?
Speaker 4: Sure? Absolutely, there were thoughts of aboording it, of course,
Speaker 4: should I or shouldn't I do this?
Speaker 2: But in the end he walked into the bank. He
Speaker 2: looked around, and he felt relieved to see that no
Speaker 2: one was paying any attention to him. So he got
Speaker 2: in line like any other customer, and he waited to
Speaker 2: see the teller.
Speaker 4: I went up and I handed her the note, slid
Speaker 4: her across a Manila envelope. She filled it with money,
Speaker 4: and I turned around and casually walked out across the
Speaker 4: parking lot to the car, which was behind the gas station,
Speaker 4: and pulled straight out onto the exit of the highway
Speaker 4: and drove home.
Speaker 2: There's something so humdrum about the way he tells this story,
Speaker 2: this total absence of drama, which is precisely what Keith
Speaker 2: had been hoping for. This was his proof of concept.
Speaker 2: When he got home, Keith counted the money, over six
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in cash. After that first robbery, Keith watched
Speaker 2: the local news and there he was captured by the
Speaker 2: surveillance cameras in the bank. Did it stress you out
Speaker 2: to see yourself?
Speaker 4: No, it would have stressed me out. If I was recognizable,
Speaker 4: that would have stressed me out. There was literally a
Speaker 4: feeling of relief when I knew that they didn't have
Speaker 4: a make on the vehicle, nor did they have a
Speaker 4: good picture of me that somebody that I knew would
Speaker 4: recognize me for the five thousand.
Speaker 1: Dollars reward or whatever it was.
Speaker 4: At that particular time.
Speaker 2: Keith felt emboldened, and so he just kept on going,
Speaker 2: robbing more banks and quickly became a middle aged Midwestern
Speaker 2: master of disguise. He kept changing his outfits and he
Speaker 2: swapped headgear, baseball hat, bucket hat, boonie hat like he'd
Speaker 2: also rob the hat store and was now trying on
Speaker 2: the whole inventory. Sometimes he wore a fleece, other times
Speaker 2: a sweater or a sport coat. And then of course
Speaker 2: there's what he did with his facial hair.
Speaker 4: I would dye my hair jet black sometimes, and then
Speaker 4: of course when I got home, I would pull in
Speaker 4: the garage and go in and wash my hair. There
Speaker 4: was even a couple of times where I would grow
Speaker 4: a beard and then shave in the car, right in
Speaker 4: the car, right in the car.
Speaker 1: Afterwards, would like an electric shaver, no.
Speaker 4: With just water and a regular razor, so I would
Speaker 4: immediately become clean shaven.
Speaker 2: By early spring of two thousand and eight, Keith had
Speaker 2: robbed half a dozen banks and taken home about sixty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in cash, and for a while the authorities
Speaker 2: seem clueless. But after the sixth robbery, a detective for
Speaker 2: the Saint Louis County Police named John Bradley took notice.
Speaker 2: One thing that I learned about Bradley right away. This
Speaker 2: guy he plays to win. He's a competitor well into
Speaker 2: his thirties and forties. He played ice hockey, played hard too.
Speaker 5: Just being the type of detective I am, I'm confident
Speaker 5: that I will get them, and I hope I'm the
Speaker 5: one that gets them. I believe most cases can be solved.
Speaker 2: Bradley responded to the scene of one of Keith's robberies
Speaker 2: at a Bank of America in Fenton, Missouri. One of
Speaker 2: the first things that he did was talk to the teller.
Speaker 2: Her name was Shannon, and she was shaken up, frightened
Speaker 2: by what had happened.
Speaker 5: It's a very emotional experience when something like this happens,
Speaker 5: when you're a victim of this, and that's who I
Speaker 5: believe is the victim. Of course, the bank is a victim,
Speaker 5: but it's just money. The tellers are the ones of
Speaker 5: the true victims, because other ones face to face with somebody,
Speaker 5: not knowing how desperate this individual is, and not knowing
Speaker 5: if this individual, for one reason or another, would suddenly
Speaker 5: become violent and hurt them.
Speaker 2: Shannon shared a detailed account of what unfolded that day.
Speaker 2: She said the man reached out his hand and gave
Speaker 2: her a note that read empty. All the money out
Speaker 2: of the top and bottom drawers. She noticed that he
Speaker 2: had thick fingers, dirt packed under the nails, and what
Speaker 2: seemed like a freshly dyed beard.
Speaker 5: She could see that he was very nervous. He was trembling.
Speaker 5: That's a bad sign, you know, because when you have
Speaker 5: a suspect that is nervous, he's unsettled, that can lead
Speaker 5: to violence quickly.
Speaker 2: In some ways, it was an odd combination of facts.
Speaker 2: On the one hand, the robber seemed to be a
Speaker 2: savvy operator who knew all the right things to ask
Speaker 2: and say. On the other hand, he seemed wildly nervous
Speaker 2: and slightly unkempt, with his dirty fingernails and poorly dyed beard.
Speaker 2: When Bradley examined the surveillance video from the heist, he
Speaker 2: was struck by one detail in particular. After the handed
Speaker 2: over the demand note, he tucked his hand into the
Speaker 2: middle of his jacket, almost the way you'd see in
Speaker 2: those old Napoleon portraits, and he just left his hand there.
Speaker 5: And by doing that, you're implying or indicating that you
Speaker 5: have a weapon, you just are not displaying it. My
Speaker 5: thought was, well, if he wants you to believe he
Speaker 5: has one, he probably has one.
Speaker 2: How worried are you that that's going to go sideways
Speaker 2: and result in actual violence?
Speaker 5: Very worried. I mean, you have so many things that
Speaker 5: can go wrong that result in tragedy.
Speaker 2: All of which made Detective Bradley think that now more
Speaker 2: than ever, he needed to drill down and find the
Speaker 2: man who was robbing all of these banks. Detective John
Speaker 2: Bradley started digging through recent Saint Louis bank robbery reports,
Speaker 2: looking for any details that might connect them. He also
Speaker 2: starts talking to other agencies sharing info, and eventually a
Speaker 2: pattern emerges. There are a bunch of heists where the
Speaker 2: robber is a bearded, middle aged white man with glasses
Speaker 2: who uses a demand note. He always asks the teller
Speaker 2: to empty both drawers, and typically he wore a hat,
Speaker 2: either a baseball cap, a bucket hat, or what Detective
Speaker 2: Bradley called a boonie hat. Can you just describe to
Speaker 2: a Connecticut Yankee what a boonie hat is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, It's like a It's like a hat you would
Speaker 5: wear to go fishing. It's like a brimmed hat, you know,
Speaker 5: lures and things attached to the hat. Something that blocks
Speaker 5: the sun kind of blocks your identity.
Speaker 2: Detective Bradley became convinced that he was dealing with a
Speaker 2: serial bank robber. Two weeks later, there was a similar
Speaker 2: robbery in the same county. This time, the robber walked
Speaker 2: away with almost ten thousand dollars in cash. Afterward, a
Speaker 2: local paper ran the headline the Boony Hat bandit blamed
Speaker 2: for seven heists, and that nickname the Boony Hat bandit
Speaker 2: quickly caught on, turning this mysterious figure into a folk villain.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you think about the type of person
Speaker 5: that can walk into a bank, threaten somebody, and take
Speaker 5: money and walk out and then do it again and
Speaker 5: again and again, that's a very confident bank robber.
Speaker 1: And what do you read into.
Speaker 5: That somebody that probably isn't going to stop until he
Speaker 5: gets caught, and hopefully he gets caught before somebody gets hurt.
Speaker 2: The problem was, this guy really seemed to know what
Speaker 2: he was doing. He had eluded the authorities pretty masterfully.
Speaker 2: Each time he'd exit the bank, loot in hand, and
Speaker 2: melt back into the suburbs. Just another forty something white
Speaker 2: guy with a dad bod driving through a vast, mind
Speaker 2: numbing expanse of Best Buys and Panera breads. Throughout the
Speaker 2: fall of two thousand and seven and into the spring
Speaker 2: of two thousand and eight, Keith continued robbing banks. He
Speaker 2: did it about once a month. Sometimes the payoff was
Speaker 2: a lot bigger than others, but on average, each of
Speaker 2: these robberies earned him about ten thousand dollars, And I
Speaker 2: really wondered how he just went home and slipped into
Speaker 2: the role of being dad. Did you find it difficult
Speaker 2: at all to look your daughters in the eye while
Speaker 2: this was happening.
Speaker 4: I wasn't very good at looking anyone in the eye
Speaker 4: at that point. It's hard to look anybody in the
Speaker 4: eye whenever you have this type of thing going on,
Speaker 4: this dark secret that you can only share with yourself.
Speaker 4: You can't share anything like that with someone else if
Speaker 4: you do your head.
Speaker 2: This made sense to me that he wouldn't be able
Speaker 2: to look his own kids in the eye. But what
Speaker 2: I still couldn't fathom was how did he allow himself
Speaker 2: to get to this point in the first place.
Speaker 4: I felt such desperation. I felt it was what I
Speaker 4: had to do. And I know that's got to be very,
Speaker 4: very difficult for people to understand. Yeah, it is, And
Speaker 4: I really don't know what to say to that, because
Speaker 4: at the time, it's what I felt like I had
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 2: At the time. Did it seem like a crazy idea?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seemed very crazy, But also I felt a
Speaker 4: sense of being so desperate that I felt it was
Speaker 4: the quickest, easiest way out.
Speaker 2: Did you allow yourself to think about how it could
Speaker 2: go wrong, on what that might look like.
Speaker 4: No, I didn't want to manifest that. I was trying
Speaker 4: to manifest success. I know it sounds simplistic, but that's
Speaker 4: the truth.
Speaker 2: It may sound simplistic, but this whole idea of manifesting
Speaker 2: it was very much in vogue at the time. There
Speaker 2: was a wildly popular self help book published the year
Speaker 2: before called The Secret. Keith had read it and embraced
Speaker 2: its full lifelosophy. The book boldly proclaimed what you think
Speaker 2: you create, what you feel you attract, what you imagine
Speaker 2: you become. In many ways, it's a classically American sentiment.
Speaker 2: What Keith imagined, as far as I can tell, was continuity,
Speaker 2: the same house, the same school for his kids, the
Speaker 2: same version of himself, mild mannered, self employed, holding it
Speaker 2: all together in his mind. Protecting that life required only
Speaker 2: a brief deviation, ten minutes of controlled risk executed through
Speaker 2: the system that he built.
Speaker 4: It all seemed very surreal, but the whole process at
Speaker 4: that point got straight back to business of Okay, I
Speaker 4: need to deposit this money out checks, and then I
Speaker 4: got to go pick up the girls from school, and
Speaker 4: then I have to mow the grass, you know, So
Speaker 4: just get back to life at normal, like.
Speaker 2: Literally, nor that was your checklist, Like, yeah, rob bank,
Speaker 2: pick up girls at school, mowgrass.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's pretty much what it was. Were you anxious
Speaker 4: about it? Once I watched the news, I knew I
Speaker 4: wasn't gonna get caught.
Speaker 2: Even with the money that he made robbing a bank.
Speaker 2: About once a month, Keith came up short. He fell
Speaker 2: behind on the mortgage, and he was in danger of
Speaker 2: losing the house, the one he'd raised his kids in.
Speaker 2: The bank gave him a date pay up or they'd foreclose,
Speaker 2: So on the day of the deadline, May fifth, two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, he robbed yet another bank in Chesterfield, Missouri.
Speaker 2: It goes smoothly, no problems at all. The teller puts
Speaker 2: the cash in the envelope and Keith walks out the door. Keith,
Speaker 2: by the way, never counted his money until he got home,
Speaker 2: and when he did this time, he saw it was
Speaker 2: just three thousand bucks, which he says is not enough
Speaker 2: to pay what he owes the mortgage company. So he
Speaker 2: makes a really bold decision. He decides to rob another
Speaker 2: bank that same day, just a few hours later. Was
Speaker 2: there any concern that you had that robbing the second
Speaker 2: bank would put you an additional risk if you did
Speaker 2: it in the same day.
Speaker 4: No, Oh, in fact, just the opposite.
Speaker 2: What he I'm not sure I follow me?
Speaker 4: Meaning if you had never robbed two banks and went
Speaker 4: on a one day spree. My feeling was that it
Speaker 4: would be least it's back did to happen. Hmm.
Speaker 2: And his planned it gets even bolder. He decides to
Speaker 2: rob a branch of Bank of America in Saint Peter's,
Speaker 2: Missouri that he'd already robbed five months prior. So he
Speaker 2: was going back to the scene of a previous crime.
Speaker 2: It almost seemed like he was daring them to recognize him.
Speaker 2: But the crazy part is it works. Keith walks in,
Speaker 2: does his whole routine, hands the telleran note demanding payment,
Speaker 2: telling her to empty both drawers, and he walks out
Speaker 2: with nearly eleven thousand dollars. Keith nets about fourteen thousand
Speaker 2: dollars total that day, which is more than enough to
Speaker 2: cover his mortgage payments, and so cash in hand, he
Speaker 2: races to his own bank so he can get a
Speaker 2: cashier's check and pay off his mortgage company in time
Speaker 2: so he doesn't lose his house. He arrives at his
Speaker 2: own bank, not as the booney hat bandit, but as
Speaker 2: Keith Giamanco, smiling, easygoing single dad of two, all very
Speaker 2: normal except for the fact that he was carrying a
Speaker 2: burgundy leather briefcase with fourteen thousand dollars worth of freshly
Speaker 2: stolen bills. As breezily as he can, Keith explains to
Speaker 2: the bank teller that he needs a cashier's check. She hesitates,
Speaker 2: like she's not sure about this request. Then the teller
Speaker 2: calls over the bank manager, and now Keith feels a
Speaker 2: flicker of worry, like, hmmm, this might not be good.
Speaker 2: The manager looks over the teller's shoulder, studying the computer screen,
Speaker 2: then lifts her eyes to Keith.
Speaker 4: She said, my, it looks like you've been making a
Speaker 4: lot of cash deposits lately. I needed to think quick
Speaker 4: with an answer, which was I was gathering money to
Speaker 4: save our home from foreclosure, which was an honest answer. Now,
Speaker 4: by omission, there's a lot of dishonesty there.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, that you had robbed two banks earlier that day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But the answer itself, on face value
Speaker 4: was honest, and that's why it came so quickly. Just
Speaker 4: tell the truth.
Speaker 2: In the end, the manager signed off on the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Keith got his cashier's check, he paid off the mortgage,
Speaker 2: and headed home, just another day in the Double Life
Speaker 2: of Keith Giamonco. I was struck by what Keith said,
Speaker 2: how helpful it was to tell the truth in this moment.
Speaker 2: Lies in the truth have strange relationship with one another.
Speaker 2: In order to lie well, you need to adhere to
Speaker 2: the truth as much as possible, with a kind of
Speaker 2: rigid discipline. You need to back the lies into the
Speaker 2: corners or the gaps. Keith told me that he had
Speaker 2: an end goal of one hundred and forty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: and that once he hit this it would be enough
Speaker 2: to pay off his debts and then he'd quit. Spoken
Speaker 2: like a true gambler. I'm always skeptical when gamblers tell
Speaker 2: me this kind of thing. It feels like a line,
Speaker 2: something you tell yourself to reassure yourself that you have
Speaker 2: a plan governed by logic and that you are in control.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of deception in this story, Keith, he
Speaker 2: deceived a lot of people through his lies of omission,
Speaker 2: as he put it, his neighbors, his friends, his kids.
Speaker 2: But his story kept on reminding me that the most
Speaker 2: dangerous lies are always the ones we tell ourselves.
Speaker 1: Next time.
Speaker 5: On Deep Cover, my partner and I at the time,
Speaker 5: you know, we would go out during different times and
Speaker 5: just kind of ride the area. That day, I think
Speaker 5: we were out already when the call came out.
Speaker 4: It was an all out onslaught of police cars, helicopters,
Speaker 4: cars in front of me, cars behind me, blocked in,
Speaker 4: weapons drawn.
Speaker 3: I just was angry at the living of a double
Speaker 3: life because that's what he was doing. There's the Booney
Speaker 3: Hat bandit, and there's Keichiumanco.
Speaker 2: Deep Cover The Family Man was produced by Isaac Carter
Speaker 2: and Amy Gains McQuaid. Our show is edited by Karen Chakerjee.
Speaker 2: Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Sound design by Jake Gorsky.
Speaker 2: Original scoring and our theme were composed by Luis Gara.
Speaker 2: Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking
Speaker 2: by Anica Robbins. Our story consultant was James Foreman Jr.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Daphney chen Sonya Gerwit, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posey,
Speaker 2: Jake Flanagan, Corinn Gilliard Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, and
Speaker 2: Greta Cone.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Halpern in
Speaker 3: The game A