Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of Iheartradiobe.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Hi, So I have a question for you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I saw you walk in with this big smile
Speaker 2: on your face. I don't want to ruin it, so
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna ask you a question. Feels ridiculous, I do.
Speaker 2: I knew it from the look.
Speaker 3: I know what's ridiculous. You like corn? Right?
Speaker 2: Both the band?
Speaker 3: Yeah, both the vegetable the edible treat and then with
Speaker 3: a k the band. Do you like that the lead
Speaker 3: singer Jonathan Davis.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, totally. He and I are both style kings
Speaker 2: when it comes to the Didas tracksuit being our signature love.
Speaker 3: Yes. Well, here's another area in which he's a style king.
Speaker 3: He has a company called Freak on a Leash, which
Speaker 3: is the name of the band's song, one of.
Speaker 2: The songs, one of their big hits.
Speaker 3: Freak on a Leash is a pet accessory company.
Speaker 2: That's right there.
Speaker 3: That's right there. And so he has a new collaboration
Speaker 3: with some I don't know, some like celebrity stylist.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, is give me the first mashup? I like?
Speaker 3: I think so. Ashton Michael is Ashton Herona is a
Speaker 3: I guess he's a stylist anyway, Ashton Heroda Ashton. He
Speaker 3: has a company, Ashton Michael. They're doing a.
Speaker 2: Collab Ashton Michael.
Speaker 3: With freaking elish graphic bandanas, a ouigi plush toy, a
Speaker 3: suede tug rope toy.
Speaker 2: Maybe say aigi board like the what do they call it?
Speaker 2: A plank like the select type thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's that called it? Anyway?
Speaker 2: You know, boards mouse.
Speaker 3: It's happened to me a couple of times in my
Speaker 3: life where I have to remember what that word is.
Speaker 3: Plank at plank.
Speaker 2: Plantchett, planchet. Oh, that's what you're looking.
Speaker 3: For, Elizabeth, you did it again where you go? So, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can see that they A'm showing you a picture
Speaker 3: right now. Yes, huh. It's basically looks like those studded
Speaker 3: punk belts. Yeah, kind of, you know, you know, full disclosure.
Speaker 3: I've got two dogs now, it's true, and I don't
Speaker 3: think either of them would look appropriate in free condition.
Speaker 2: You don't think so. Even if I like split to
Speaker 2: them and like, I like, try this on, they're less
Speaker 2: corn your flesh Mama will love more.
Speaker 3: Like Grateful Dead seventy four.
Speaker 2: Mellows like you know they belong in like a.
Speaker 3: Garden, Yeah, like an Almond Brothers, like.
Speaker 2: A solo broken glass.
Speaker 3: No, no, they're not bad Boy Joneses. They're sweety pies.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so anyway, free condilish dog apparel. There's an
Speaker 3: entire website.
Speaker 2: Of course, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: You got me to like, I know, I found a
Speaker 3: mashup corn and dog collars.
Speaker 2: Collars.
Speaker 3: Well, they have like a harness that looks like a
Speaker 3: little like denim vest from the dirt bag, very fun
Speaker 3: from the ice cell sing lit cigarettesleveless gas station parking lot.
Speaker 2: We freighted yet took a jacket and cut the slee patches.
Speaker 3: For like corn. And then you go up to the
Speaker 3: dog and you're like, name three songs. You're not a
Speaker 3: real corn fans.
Speaker 2: The owner's looking at me all strange. What's wrong with you? Man?
Speaker 2: Hey man? You're your dog's always coming at me with this.
Speaker 3: You're the one with a freak on a leash. See,
Speaker 3: there's so much right there right there.
Speaker 2: Well, I got a question for you. That's not that,
Speaker 2: do you know?
Speaker 3: It's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: You know how they say what made the Mona Lisa famous?
Speaker 2: Isn't that it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
Speaker 3: Is Leonardo DiCaprio.
Speaker 2: No, that not that either, Elizabeth. Yeah, you need to
Speaker 2: go back to school, open the schools. And it isn't
Speaker 2: because it's a priceless masterpiece. It is. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a priceless masterpiece. But that's not why it's famous. Apparently
Speaker 2: it's famous because, as we've covered here on the show before,
Speaker 2: the Mona Lisa became famous when it was stolen. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: I guess what, Elizabeth, that's also the reason that the
Speaker 2: painting the Scream is famous. Oh really, at least that's
Speaker 2: the guy who stole it, says.
Speaker 3: And he would say that, he would.
Speaker 2: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous campers,
Speaker 2: heist sands cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 2: and one hundred percent ridiculous. Baby is Elizabeth Darren today.
Speaker 2: I would like to start our story by reading from
Speaker 2: a diary. I would, but don't worry, it's not my diary.
Speaker 2: I don't keep a diary. My Pops taught me you
Speaker 2: don't keep notes on a criminal conspiracy. Wait wait, I'm
Speaker 2: being told on my airpiece that was not my pops.
Speaker 2: Stringer Bell from the wire either way. I don't keep
Speaker 2: a diary, but you know who does, or rather who did?
Speaker 2: Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you know much about him?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well he was well and this is from the
Speaker 2: New York Times description of him, and I quote a
Speaker 2: troubled recluse who lived in only two rooms of a
Speaker 2: large house in Oslo, the rest of which was filled
Speaker 2: with storage boxes, clutter, and paintings that he refused to sell.
Speaker 2: When he died in nineteen forty four at age eighty,
Speaker 2: he willed his art to the city, which built the
Speaker 2: Munch Museum house.
Speaker 3: It dream setup now sadly, as the Time.
Speaker 2: Also notes, quote, city officials have been criticized for spending
Speaker 2: too little to protect and promote it. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 2: what about his artwork though, well.
Speaker 3: What about it? It's very very sensual, very not central
Speaker 3: as it's troubled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say, vivid colors, ving much like van
Speaker 2: Go where he is working with heavy brushstrokes, yes, and
Speaker 2: heavy mental heaviness. So yeah, he very much drew him
Speaker 2: from his experience of life. Right. So, for instance, the
Speaker 2: inspiration of his most famous work came from a sunset
Speaker 2: he saw one day. Story goes, he's out walking with
Speaker 2: a pair of friends. The sun is setting. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: He's overcome. The mood was severe. It captivates his mind.
Speaker 2: Right the sky looks like blood Edvard Munch pauses a moment,
Speaker 2: tells his friends, I need to take this all in right.
Speaker 2: He sits down or whatever, like on a fence, leans
Speaker 2: on it whatever. He's overcome by the beauty, the horror
Speaker 2: of this blood red sky. He says, it's like tongues
Speaker 2: of fire licking the heavens above a blue black fjord.
Speaker 2: Those are his words right now. We all know this
Speaker 2: because he recorded in his diary. On January twenty second,
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety two, Edvard Munch scribbled in his diary, and
Speaker 2: I quote one in the evening, I was walking along
Speaker 2: a path. The city was on one side and the
Speaker 2: fjord below. I felt tired and ill, and I stopped
Speaker 2: and looked out over the fjord. The sun was setting,
Speaker 2: and the clouds turning blood red, and a scream passing
Speaker 2: through nature. It seemed to me that I heard the scream.
Speaker 2: I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood.
Speaker 2: The color shrieked. This became the scream, Elizabeth, I can
Speaker 2: only assume that you were familiar with the painting the Scream.
Speaker 2: Do you like it?
Speaker 3: Uh, it's not it's not that I don't like it.
Speaker 3: I don't have, you know, strong feelings either way. I
Speaker 3: think it's hearing this story. It's really interesting because you
Speaker 3: don't really think of sunsets, at least I don't in
Speaker 3: that sort of sinister I mean, you can have it
Speaker 3: in kind of a melancholy way, but a scream go
Speaker 3: through nature. Yeah, it seems more urgent, and it's.
Speaker 2: Like we're in a Hertzog. Only he would hear the
Speaker 2: scream in nature, in a sunset exactly. Now, there's some
Speaker 2: theories that what Munch was experiencing that afternoon on his
Speaker 2: walk with his friends we would now call a panic attack.
Speaker 2: The painting is an artist rendition of a panic attack. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't know if I agree with that or even
Speaker 2: really like that theory. I mean, it's fun to contemplate,
Speaker 2: but I really this diagnosing things retroactively, even if it applies,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, but you know me, I'm not a
Speaker 2: big fan of labels anyway. Edvard Munch he paints the
Speaker 2: Scream in eighteen ninety three. In fact, he painted it
Speaker 2: multiple times, twice in pastels, twice in oils, as if
Speaker 2: you were seeking a way to capture what he experienced,
Speaker 2: that scream of nature. Right, there's another interesting theory about
Speaker 2: the painting that Edvard Munch saw that day, the tongues
Speaker 2: of fire licking the heavens over the blue black fjord
Speaker 2: and those blood red skies, and there may have been
Speaker 2: a meteorological cause for it. Okay, So some scholars suggested
Speaker 2: Edvard Munch was so taken with the sky because of
Speaker 2: the eruption of the supervolcano Krakatoa. Like it was huge,
Speaker 2: It was massive when it erupted. People nineteen hundred miles
Speaker 2: away in Perth, Australia heard the explosion. People three thousand
Speaker 2: miles away, and Mauritius they heard the explosion, three thousand
Speaker 2: miles away heard the explosions. It destroyed seventy percent of
Speaker 2: the island of Krakatoa when it went off, right, So
Speaker 2: it turned sky's blood red with the ash and dust
Speaker 2: all around the globe, right, just darken skies, including as
Speaker 2: far away as Norway. Yeah, there's only one problem with
Speaker 2: this theory though. Edvard Moons painted the scream in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, and Krakatoa erupted in eighteen eighty three, a
Speaker 2: full decade earlier.
Speaker 3: Well, he could have been sitting on that idea for
Speaker 3: a decade.
Speaker 2: Sure, the skies were not blood red for a decade though,
Speaker 2: So it's doubtful that the super volcano. But perhaps he did. Wait,
Speaker 2: but he makes it seem as if he painted it
Speaker 2: very urgent.
Speaker 3: Yes, remember when the wildfire's here. It was during COVID time,
Speaker 3: so I think it was like what twenty.
Speaker 2: Twenty, Yeah, the Blade Runner Scots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're an entire day now that that is something
Speaker 3: that kind of was panic inducing for you. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: it was so unsettling. It was perpetual sunset all day long.
Speaker 3: Everything was orange and red. When he looked outside, that
Speaker 3: the entire sky, everything.
Speaker 2: It was gonna go away. So I love it, But.
Speaker 3: Then I kept thinking, what if it doesn't. That's the
Speaker 3: worst case scenario. And it was really unsettling, and it was.
Speaker 3: It was weird in terms of, you know, disrupting your
Speaker 3: circadian of them, your sense of time of day.
Speaker 2: Yes, overcast guys do that too.
Speaker 1: Me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't tell. But I used the sun to
Speaker 2: mark time. Okay a lot. It's no I do. But
Speaker 2: it's just a habit I got into as a house painter.
Speaker 2: You're outside all the time. You know exactly where the
Speaker 2: sun's at this point, it means that suns at this point,
Speaker 2: it means that you use the sun just subtly to
Speaker 2: kind of track your day.
Speaker 3: Yes, when it's overcast, you're just.
Speaker 2: Like, I'm screwed. I have no que They am, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm like a guy with a sun dial. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I can't tell you what time.
Speaker 3: It is, but I mean I could see how that
Speaker 3: kind of if it was Krakatoa, it would, you know,
Speaker 3: stay with you and then maybe.
Speaker 2: You know, five years from now you see it again.
Speaker 3: Really terrifying poem about this blade Runner Scott.
Speaker 2: There's another theory for what inspired the world famous painting.
Speaker 2: It's based on the view that the view of the
Speaker 2: painting like actually what you see. People figured out where
Speaker 2: he was standing for that picture. It was identified as
Speaker 2: this road in Oslo that looks out from the hill
Speaker 2: of Echaburg, and coincidentally, Edward Munch's sister Laura cap there
Speaker 2: and lived at the base of the Echoburg hill, So
Speaker 2: maybe he was visiting her. We don't know she lived
Speaker 2: in a mental asylum one that was next door to
Speaker 2: a slaughterhouse.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great place, right, So.
Speaker 2: Perhaps walking past where his sister was locked up in
Speaker 2: a lunatic asylum next to a slaughterhouse. Overcame him and
Speaker 2: the blood Red Skies were like, oh I hear the
Speaker 2: scream of nature.
Speaker 3: Oh God in Dublin, isn't the I think the Guinness
Speaker 3: factory is right by a hospital for alcoholics, is it really? Yeah?
Speaker 3: But it doesn't smell good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the war they used for the beer. It just
Speaker 2: it really had the malts and everything.
Speaker 3: Ye say, but you know you got it. It's location location.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you a slaughterhouse next to an asylum.
Speaker 3: Some bad zoning.
Speaker 2: What we do know is that on August twenty second,
Speaker 2: two thousand and four, the scream was stolen.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, out of all all these theories, Elizabeth, two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, August twenty second, two thousand.
Speaker 3: And four, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to tell you about that. So sit back,
Speaker 2: they're comfortable, and you know what, Elizabeth, closed your eyes.
Speaker 3: Wait, I want you to picture as you're pulling an
Speaker 3: early one like me.
Speaker 2: It's August twenty second, two thousand and four. It's been
Speaker 2: a quiet morning in the Moons Museum in Oslo, Norway. Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: you are a candy wrapper, one that was intended for
Speaker 2: the trash but slipped from a child's hand and you
Speaker 2: missed the waste receptacle. Now you sit on the museum floor,
Speaker 2: tucked up behind the trash band. Wrinkled and crinkled as
Speaker 2: you are, you still have quite the view of the
Speaker 2: museum's paintings on display, so you've been enjoying your day
Speaker 2: as a museum Goers circulate past you. No one stoops
Speaker 2: to pick you up. They're too focused on the artwork
Speaker 2: to notice a discarded candy wrapper. Laughing children, past couples
Speaker 2: on first dates, amble passed, engaged in that flirtatious appraisals
Speaker 2: of art. For the last few hours, you've done some
Speaker 2: people watching, but mostly you've been contemplating the pained anguish
Speaker 2: of the figure in the world famous painting The Scream,
Speaker 2: by the namesake of the museum, Edvard Munch. As a
Speaker 2: candy wrapper, you have little conception of the larger conversations
Speaker 2: of the art world, nor are you familiar with the
Speaker 2: developments of the expression movement of the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: But you know what you like, and you are captivated
Speaker 2: by Munch's use of color to convey his interiority. The
Speaker 2: emotional landscape becomes the physical landscape. If you could paint,
Speaker 2: you would like to paint like Edvard Munch. From your
Speaker 2: vantage on the floor, you also have a view of
Speaker 2: the front door to the museum. And around twenty minutes
Speaker 2: after eleven am, your reverie of artistic contemplation is disturbed
Speaker 2: when you see two men running up to the museum,
Speaker 2: right at the sliding glass door. And you know it's
Speaker 2: trouble because both men are wearing dark hoodies and balaklava
Speaker 2: face masks. They look like real criminals. You watch as
Speaker 2: they race up to the museum and slam into the
Speaker 2: sliding glass door. Both art thieves bounce off the glass, stunned.
Speaker 2: They pick themselves up like birds that have run into
Speaker 2: a window. They wait for the sliding glass door to open,
Speaker 2: and then they charge into the museum. You watch them
Speaker 2: start off to the right, but then they come back
Speaker 2: and run. They go to the left, then a moment
Speaker 2: later they come back into view. They look around a
Speaker 2: moment then they go back to the left, and then
Speaker 2: they finally come back into view and they locate what
Speaker 2: they've come for. It's right in front of you. Right
Speaker 2: there in the central room of the museum where you
Speaker 2: are is Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, And then, as
Speaker 2: if the painting itself has come alive, you hear a
Speaker 2: piercing scream. The shriek is likely due to the fact
Speaker 2: one of the art band it's is brandishing a hell
Speaker 2: of a handgun, more like a hand cannon. It's a
Speaker 2: nickel plated three fifty seven magnum pistols, and you don't
Speaker 2: see many of those in Europe, especially not in an
Speaker 2: art museum. Patrons shriek and scream. They gather up their children,
Speaker 2: others shield their dates from danger, while others just flee.
Speaker 2: Being a candy wrapper, you have no other options than
Speaker 2: to watch the art thieves get to work. One of
Speaker 2: the thieves grabs Edvard Munch's painting The Scream. He grabs
Speaker 2: hold of the paintings frame. It's wired to the wall,
Speaker 2: so the thief gives a good hard yank. The wires
Speaker 2: go spraying and they give loose the painting. You spot
Speaker 2: one of the security guards rush into the central room,
Speaker 2: drawn in by the screens and the street, but he
Speaker 2: stops running when he sees the art Bandit level his
Speaker 2: three point fifty seven magnum at the unarmed security guard's head.
Speaker 2: The man freezes in place. He stares at the gun
Speaker 2: pressed to his forehead. His eyes go cross. One of
Speaker 2: the art thieves speaks Norwegian. You hear him tell everyone
Speaker 2: to act cool and no one will get hurt. He
Speaker 2: starts at the security guard whose head he's pressing the
Speaker 2: barrel of his gun against. His second art thief starts
Speaker 2: for the door. The one with the handcannon slowly backs
Speaker 2: up and then follows him out, but as if he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to leave without a souvenir of his own,
Speaker 2: one of the other Munch masterpieces catches his eye, so
Speaker 2: he grabs hold of it with another hard yank. This
Speaker 2: one doesn't give so easily, so he pulls wirecutters from
Speaker 2: a pocket. Snip and the wires go scrying, and then
Speaker 2: he runs off with the stolen painting. He doesn't make
Speaker 2: it far before he stumbles drops the masterpiece. The other thief,
Speaker 2: the one with the scream, looks back to see what happens,
Speaker 2: and wouldn't you know what? He also trips and bails.
Speaker 2: Both art thieves are down, the masterpiece is on the floor.
Speaker 2: Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. If you could laugh, you would.
Speaker 2: But the art thieves are quick to their feet. They
Speaker 2: wave their handguns to remind the museum goers. Don't get
Speaker 2: any big ideas. No one makes the move. As I've said,
Speaker 2: the burglars grabbed their stolen booty and race for the
Speaker 2: sliding glass door. This time they don't run into the
Speaker 2: glass door. They wait for it. The slide open, and
Speaker 2: then the dawn. You spot a patron outside the museum
Speaker 2: as she snaps a photo of the art bandits as
Speaker 2: they flee. Meanwhile, back inside the museum, as museum goers
Speaker 2: breathed a sigh of relief, you marvel that this all
Speaker 2: happened in less than a minute and a half. Away,
Speaker 2: When it was all over and the art was heisted
Speaker 2: and no one was hurt, the museum director went and
Speaker 2: spoke to the press, because that's what they do. He
Speaker 2: applauded the security guard for insuring everyone's safety. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: made sure. As I said, nobody.
Speaker 3: Moved, nobody get hurt.
Speaker 2: Now the museum director even defended the guard's action, noting
Speaker 2: that if you have a pistol or a revolver pointed
Speaker 2: at your head, there is not much you can do
Speaker 2: in Norway, not even the police carry guns. Once the
Speaker 2: news broke, the nation was aghast. I mean, who steals
Speaker 2: their national treasure? Why?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, who do they.
Speaker 2: Possibly think they can sell this painting to the city
Speaker 2: Government's like sell it to us? So they offer a
Speaker 2: reward for the state of return of the painting. The
Speaker 2: reward was huge, big, two million Norwegian kroner. Wow, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: I know you love to know exchange rates and monetary
Speaker 2: conversions and inflation in this case, yes, so for this one,
Speaker 2: first I had to calculate the inflation of the Norwegian
Speaker 2: kroner and then convert that into dollars. But I did
Speaker 2: it for you. Thank two million Norwegian croners in two
Speaker 2: thousand and four would be about thirty one million now
Speaker 2: thirty million, six hundred and eighty six dollars. Yes, but
Speaker 2: that's really that's nothing for these This painting is worth
Speaker 2: an insane amount, So it's not it's like it sounds big,
Speaker 2: but it's worth hundreds of millions.
Speaker 3: So yeah, But if it's worth hundreds of millions, and
Speaker 3: you think about how much gets shaved off, Yeah, by
Speaker 3: fences and all this stuff. Like take a cool thirty
Speaker 3: one mill in the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I take it now. To help sweeten the offered reward,
Speaker 2: the candy maker M and MS offered that they would
Speaker 2: match that offer by the city of Oslo. Wait, yes,
Speaker 2: but instead of Kroner, they'd pay out two million eminems.
Speaker 3: Where are they getting up in the business.
Speaker 2: They love the painting, they love the screen.
Speaker 3: Wait what I know?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 3: They just just like, oh and we'll give you EM
Speaker 3: and MS or like when nobody asked.
Speaker 2: For We're just needing some free advertising here, all right.
Speaker 2: We got a new account executive. He just really wanted
Speaker 2: to move forward with this. We thought it was a
Speaker 2: good idea. Mean, come on, guys, who doesn't love M
Speaker 2: and MS.
Speaker 3: Why are you inserting yourself into a crime?
Speaker 2: Melts in your hand, not in your mouth?
Speaker 3: But I just don't understand. So yeah, like you're just
Speaker 3: this random brand. You find out something's been sold, You're like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm gonna how about this, I'll give
Speaker 3: you seven thousand tacos Taco Bell exactly do you hand
Speaker 3: that back over? What is that? What's this got to
Speaker 3: do midro business? Worry about yourself? No, no, no, I want
Speaker 3: in on this. I want my name associated with it.
Speaker 3: What I mean, like, you see the scream is on
Speaker 3: like socks dogs.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it's emoji.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's whatever, but it's like Emine.
Speaker 2: There's a whole series of movies with it. But that's
Speaker 2: the character the scream goes.
Speaker 3: That's supposed to be that one? Is it?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know. I thought it was,
Speaker 2: But was.
Speaker 3: There now I'm questioning was there like a tie in
Speaker 3: with the painting and the Eminem's. Maybe at the time
Speaker 3: I had like I would love to have my product, you.
Speaker 2: Know, you know me, this seems like ash and I
Speaker 2: just kept moving.
Speaker 3: I was like stuck in this. I love it.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll let you know. There were no takers. The
Speaker 2: art thieves also did not come forward.
Speaker 3: They're like thirty one mil not interested. Wait, how many eminems?
Speaker 2: So somehow the two of the most inet burglars we've covered,
Speaker 2: who ever managed to steal a masterpiece get away with it.
Speaker 2: But like, what's the deal with them? Obviously, as they said,
Speaker 2: they're amateurs. But was this like their first burglary ever?
Speaker 3: Sounds like it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it feels like it. Obviously, after
Speaker 2: the Scream was stolen, the whole nation of Norway was
Speaker 2: in an uproar. It's a national treasure. As I said,
Speaker 2: headlines around the world are playing with the obvious jokes
Speaker 2: of the world screams, you know, like oh yeah. But
Speaker 2: the people of Norway they're not in a laughing mood.
Speaker 2: So they want their master he's back, and they want
Speaker 2: the guilty brought to justice, even if they're a bunch
Speaker 2: of amateur burglars. The two idiots with a pair of
Speaker 2: wirecutters and just enough audacity to make off with the
Speaker 2: national treasure in a daytime snatching grab robbery, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just embarrassing. And not only that, this was not
Speaker 2: the first time the painting had been stolen, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Wait, really, yes, ten.
Speaker 2: Years earlier had been stolen the exact same way, pretty much,
Speaker 2: except they didn't do a daytime snatching grab, but they
Speaker 2: went in and just yanked it off the walls. But
Speaker 2: I'll tell you more about them and the earlier attempt
Speaker 2: a little later. Anyway, Now that the paintings are perlined
Speaker 2: and the police of Oslo are on high alert. All
Speaker 2: available officers are put on this case. They're gonna get
Speaker 2: the screen back, come hell or high water from whatever
Speaker 2: fjords they got. And to focus their investigation, they started
Speaker 2: with the usual suspects. Chief among them was one man
Speaker 2: pal Anger. He was a knockabout small time criminal, former
Speaker 2: professional footballer. He played in the Elite Syrian, which is
Speaker 2: the Norwegian version of the Premier League. Not a football star,
Speaker 2: but he was a pro gamer, right he saw time
Speaker 2: on the pitch. This whole thing. The reason why the
Speaker 2: Norwegian police were immediately focused on this former football or
Speaker 2: the former soccer player was and also just a general
Speaker 2: good time guy pal Anger, is that he was known
Speaker 2: to be rather obsessed.
Speaker 3: With Edvard Moonse's the greatest name ever totally.
Speaker 2: And you see he'd once been sent to prison for
Speaker 2: stealing a different Edvard Munch masterpiece, one called the Vampire.
Speaker 2: So the police state, the cops, they thought we got
Speaker 2: perfect good reason to go rouse them. So they go
Speaker 2: and they roused him and they questioned Paul Anger, and
Speaker 2: that's what they did. So what do you think, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: do you think Paull Anger said to the cops when
Speaker 2: they showed up asking questions about this missing Edvard Moonscheb masterpiece.
Speaker 2: You think he gave him the load? Do you think
Speaker 2: he died? What do you think? Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to tell me.
Speaker 2: I will tell you after these messages, which I hear,
Speaker 2: are both fresh and so clean. So you got that
Speaker 2: going for you, Yes, Elizabeth, ready for more Norwegian our crimes?
Speaker 3: I am I.
Speaker 2: Thought this would be fun for you. We hadn't done
Speaker 2: in our crime. I hadn't done in our crime in
Speaker 2: a while, like him, and this was Norwegian flavored.
Speaker 3: This is excellent.
Speaker 2: So at this point the Norwegian police are feeling the
Speaker 2: heat about their missing national treasure. So they turn, as
Speaker 2: they said, to the one guy poll Anger and they say, hey,
Speaker 2: pal what do you know? Or Paul it's p A
Speaker 2: A L paul A pall Anger. So when the police
Speaker 2: questioned him, he levels with them. He's like, hey, I
Speaker 2: got nothing to do with it, man, this not this time.
Speaker 2: So the police are like, oh, okay, they roused him,
Speaker 2: they check him, they bring them in, they questioned him,
Speaker 2: they check his place, like damn it, he seems clean.
Speaker 2: So who is this pal Anger? Great question. I'm just
Speaker 2: loving how you're just right on my.
Speaker 3: Heel right, well, I'm scribbling down frantically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. So we've uh, we'll let the stolen
Speaker 2: masterpiece dangle in the wind while we get to know
Speaker 2: pal and age sixteen, Powlanger left his hometown to go
Speaker 2: seek his fortunes in the wide wide world. He was
Speaker 2: an ambitious lad. He was from Vita, which is a
Speaker 2: neighborhood of Alna, which is a suburb of Oslo, Sure, Norway.
Speaker 2: Now this was a rough neighborhoo. Apparently from everything I read,
Speaker 2: I've never been there. But young Pile wanted out. He
Speaker 2: figured he'd get out either via professional soccer stardom or crime.
Speaker 2: Kind of gives you an idea of the neighborhood, right,
Speaker 2: so it's like the whole basketball or crime idea soccer.
Speaker 2: So he was known to be a slender, fair haired
Speaker 2: boy who was often not at school. One of his
Speaker 2: classmates recalled how quote the hours he was present at
Speaker 2: school in the eighth year can be counted on one hand.
Speaker 2: When he came, it was only to play sport. Oddly enough,
Speaker 2: nobody seemed to care not about him playing sport, but
Speaker 2: him not going to school, so he kicked about for
Speaker 2: his adolescence. He studied his ball handling skills and his
Speaker 2: coked out tenacity and his goal scoring focus of his
Speaker 2: football hero Diego Maradona, Oh god right, And he studied
Speaker 2: the ways of his cinematic hero Don Corleone, Oh dear.
Speaker 2: He liked to dream about the movie that would one
Speaker 2: day be made about his life, either as a dashing
Speaker 2: and charming football star or an underworld Bob bust. Do
Speaker 2: you take your pick? Either one was cool withing oh Son.
Speaker 2: And when I say he studied Diego Maradona and Don Corleone,
Speaker 2: I mean as a teenager he wants flew to New
Speaker 2: York just to see the streets that Marlon Brando had
Speaker 2: walked on in The Godfather.
Speaker 3: And he knew he knows it's fake, yeah.
Speaker 2: But he wanted to see that little Italy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He's like, I want to see I want to feel that,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: OK.
Speaker 2: So, around that same time, his soccer goals were coming along.
Speaker 2: He joined the junior teams of a professional squad and
Speaker 2: so then think of it like minor league soccer. His
Speaker 2: teammates liked him and they thought he belonged on the team.
Speaker 2: He was good. He was clearly a professional grade player.
Speaker 2: He was genial, likable guy. He spread the ball around.
Speaker 2: He also drove super slick sports car, so he was
Speaker 2: kind of cool. His teammates also wondered how he had
Speaker 2: so much money for such flat He's like sixteen seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 3: He's like a minor league. Yeah he's not.
Speaker 2: People are barely able to pay their rent and he's
Speaker 2: over there like, oh yeah, I got a new Beamer,
Speaker 2: like you just had another one two months ago. So
Speaker 2: he had his one sports card that he had painted
Speaker 2: he Anger like pe the word letter P and then
Speaker 2: E N G E R, which is basically pale anger
Speaker 2: right painted on the side, Elizabeth. This would all be
Speaker 2: way funnier to you if you spoke Norwegian, because Penger
Speaker 2: is Norwegian for money. So he was driving around a
Speaker 2: sports car with the word money painted on the side
Speaker 2: p Anger. So Powell Anger used to love to boast
Speaker 2: anyone who would listen. There's only one Porsche in Oslo
Speaker 2: mine and on Sundays, people from the western edge, this
Speaker 2: was the rich part of Oslo. Came to Tita to
Speaker 2: watch me washing the car. Came to watch a new
Speaker 2: car washes. Yeah, I'm like, okay, so that's his lie anyway.
Speaker 2: So there he is, this young footballer with a taste
Speaker 2: for the fast life and an ion crime.
Speaker 3: Eighty people on the west side of town are like, hey, honey,
Speaker 3: I heard there's a Porsche.
Speaker 2: Just came to check. You did and steal my car?
Speaker 3: Kids in the Volvo and we're gonna drive over and
Speaker 3: kids who wants to go watch a guy wash a
Speaker 3: sports car?
Speaker 2: Brings next me me should we bring.
Speaker 3: The dogs, bring the kippers? Let's go.
Speaker 2: At eighteen, he makes his debut in the UFA Cup match.
Speaker 2: He came on as a substitute, right, so by twenty
Speaker 2: one he's on his way now to his legitimate soccer dreams.
Speaker 2: By nineteen eighty eight, at the age of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: he makes his professional debut on the soccer pitch for
Speaker 2: the five time champs of the Norwegian Professional League Etliticirian.
Speaker 2: The club called Vala Ranga. Okay's all right, so this
Speaker 2: club manager of that soccer team, the dag Vestland, said
Speaker 2: of Powell Anger, he was very talented. He was small, quick, tough.
Speaker 2: I liked him a lot. He was always very well behaved,
Speaker 2: in my dealings with him, always polite, very humble. Now
Speaker 2: his teammates had a slightly difference, a street level view
Speaker 2: of Powell. Yeah. One teammate said, what I remember about
Speaker 2: Powell is he never took the tube to the city.
Speaker 2: He would steal a car to make the journey instead.
Speaker 2: His specialty was porschous, BMW's and Mercedes. It was all
Speaker 2: a bit confusing because we had a policeman on the
Speaker 2: same team. Oh wow, So it wasn't all a big secret.
Speaker 2: And some folks clearly knew this, how this young kid
Speaker 2: could live so big as a backup professional soccer player,
Speaker 2: and most of them didn't seem to care much Like
Speaker 2: when he wasn't attending class, he just kind of slipped
Speaker 2: through the cracks right most of them. There were the
Speaker 2: two teammates who were part time cops, not one two,
Speaker 2: and they saw how Pollanger would never wear the same
Speaker 2: tracksuit twice because he would trash the old one and
Speaker 2: just always rock a brand new fit, and it just
Speaker 2: bothered them, like what the hell, So they get suspicious
Speaker 2: and they didn't like his answer that he hated to
Speaker 2: do laundry. So Knute Rold Loberg was one of the cops,
Speaker 2: and he later recalled how Powanger and his football prowess
Speaker 2: were well. As he put it quote, he was a
Speaker 2: good player. He had scored a lot of goals for
Speaker 2: the junior side. He was sharp, quick, technical, but to
Speaker 2: stay concentrated and be professional, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: challenges for him. I tried to help him. Everyone in
Speaker 2: the dressing room looked out for one another. So being
Speaker 2: a cop, the way he decides to help his teammate
Speaker 2: is to follow him after practice, after matches on off days,
Speaker 2: just generally snoop on him. He and the other cop
Speaker 2: teammate follow him all around Oslo. They clock how he
Speaker 2: spends large amounts of money. He's buying clothes, He's buying
Speaker 2: fancy watches. He obviously didn't need to buy cars, he
Speaker 2: just stole those. Yeah, but he did drop mad loot
Speaker 2: on expensive restaurants, hotels and vacations. He's living that luxfe.
Speaker 2: His cop teammates hate this, so they're surveiling him, surveiling him,
Speaker 2: and they're documenting this with photographs in like, you know,
Speaker 2: at eleven PM, he bought such and such. So they
Speaker 2: also see how he's not just so much of it
Speaker 2: being his money that he's spending. It's the people's money
Speaker 2: he's spending, Elizabeth because he was a burglar and a thief,
Speaker 2: and they watched him also do those crimes. They watched
Speaker 2: him steal jewelry, they watched him rob cash, and finally,
Speaker 2: when they thought they had enough evidence on their teammate,
Speaker 2: they turned it over to full time cops, who then
Speaker 2: rated their teammates home, and the cops found a veritable
Speaker 2: lair of stolen goods. Oh Man, what really shocked them
Speaker 2: was hanging there on one of the walls was they
Speaker 2: stole masterpiece, the Edvard Munch painting The Vampire what Yes
Speaker 2: painted the same year as The Scream. The original title
Speaker 2: for the work was Love and Pain. This man was
Speaker 2: going through it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The figure in the painting is a woman. She has
Speaker 2: this shocking red hair. She's embracing her victim and she's
Speaker 2: just about to plunge her fangs into his neck. Turns
Speaker 2: out the painting had been stolen from the Ostlo Munch
Speaker 2: Museum a few months earlier, and it was not like
Speaker 2: the rest of his stolen bounty. He didn't make sense
Speaker 2: to the cops. They're like, what the hell is this doing? Here,
Speaker 2: he's mostly just cut a young man would want. And
Speaker 2: then there's one stolen masterpiece and specifically why that won.
Speaker 2: So paal Anger explained it to the cops. He's like, well,
Speaker 2: and I quote, I had no relationship with art other
Speaker 2: than in primary school we went on a trip to
Speaker 2: the munch Museum. I remember thinking his pictures were scary
Speaker 2: and I was dreaming about them at night. Maybe Much
Speaker 2: wasn't the only artist I had any relationship with. So
Speaker 2: he stole a painting. Yeah, I want one, I can't
Speaker 2: afford one. I'll take this one anyway. He gets tried, convicted,
Speaker 2: senate's to prison, does his time, and then in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four he gets released and almost immediately he goes
Speaker 2: right back to crime.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm good at only Yeah, what else is
Speaker 3: he going to do?
Speaker 2: So yeah, he's like, and I'm too old for soccer now.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't his fault, Elizabeth. He was trying to
Speaker 2: go straight though apparently. I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2: I'd just like to say it, but I do know
Speaker 2: that this crime that he was about to commit wasn't
Speaker 2: his idea. Someone approached him, he was commissioned to do
Speaker 2: a heist, since he had experience of stealing the Vampire.
Speaker 2: His client said, I want you to steal another Edvard
Speaker 2: Munch masterpiece. The client wanted pile Anger to steal the Scream.
Speaker 2: He's like, okay, well I don't care. I'm not a
Speaker 2: Norwegian patriot. I don't get ilse to steal that national treasure.
Speaker 2: Oh and I forgot to tell you up top. The
Speaker 2: reason why the police came to pile Anger when the
Speaker 2: Scream was stolen in two thousand and four is because
Speaker 2: he'd already attempted to steal it back in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: Oh he attempted, so he wasn't.
Speaker 2: The client promised he would be paid extremely well, but
Speaker 2: not only that he would keep the painting because like
Speaker 2: you keep it. Wait, yeah, he gets to keep the Scream.
Speaker 2: Ok So what's the client paying.
Speaker 3: For just to stick it to the music?
Speaker 2: What gives? Yeah? He an an old employee. He won
Speaker 2: the lottery. Why would if someone paid to steal painting
Speaker 2: in the level keep the painting?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Great question of.
Speaker 3: Liza, I know it is.
Speaker 2: Pal Anger didn't ask such questions. He didn't care, said
Speaker 2: he went out walking. He hired three accomplices for his
Speaker 2: art heist, which now brings us to the nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: four Winter Olympics. You're wondering, what does this have to
Speaker 2: do with the stories Erin, Do you remember the Lilla
Speaker 2: Hamer Winter Olympics. It was the seventeenth Olympic Winter Games.
Speaker 2: The games lasted from February twelfth to February twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. Okay, I know what might jog your
Speaker 2: memory of Lilla Hammer Winter Olympics. That's the game when
Speaker 2: Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped by Tanya Harding's husband, boyfriend or whatever,
Speaker 2: Jeff Goluli.
Speaker 3: That's right, right, And I didn't.
Speaker 2: Know his name. I had to look it up, right,
Speaker 2: But I knew you'd know his name. But I had
Speaker 2: to look this up because I needed something that maybe
Speaker 2: you didn't know. He subcontracted the job out to an
Speaker 2: underling the job. The guy who swung the beat down
Speaker 2: stick was Tanya Harding's bodyguard, Sean Eckert. Four Litlahammer Olympics
Speaker 2: are the ones Nancy Kerrigan missed out on. So wow anyway,
Speaker 2: February twelfth, nineteen ninety four, the opening ceremony of the
Speaker 2: Winter Olympics. They nicknamed it Elizabeth the Fairytale games. I know.
Speaker 2: There were dancers dressed as angels and shepherds, ancient ghouls,
Speaker 2: Nordic witches, all doing choreographs to moves as fireworks lit
Speaker 2: up the white fallen snow, just reflecting the explosions above.
Speaker 2: It was a wintertime merriment. That same day, early in
Speaker 2: the morning, two men propped a ladder up against the
Speaker 2: wall of the National Gallery in Oslo. They scurried up
Speaker 2: the ladder, then one of them fell off the ladder,
Speaker 2: so they scurried back up the ladder. Then one of
Speaker 2: them smashed a window pane. They pulled open the window.
Speaker 2: Then they just slipped inside and dropped onto the floor.
Speaker 2: They scanned the gallery, did anybody see us? Then they
Speaker 2: spotted what they came for, the scream. They pulled some
Speaker 2: wirecutters from a pocket snip snip paintings freed, liberated or
Speaker 2: in legal terms, stolen. Pall Ager pulled a note from
Speaker 2: his pocket, left it behind. The note because you seem
Speaker 2: to want to know this, Yeah, you read and I
Speaker 2: quote a thousand thanks for your poor security. After the
Speaker 2: note was placed, the thieves hustled back to their open window.
Speaker 2: They're waiting ladder, and one after the other they snuck
Speaker 2: back out this time. I don't think they fell. They
Speaker 2: got away with Edvard Munch's most celebrated painting, one of
Speaker 2: the most famous and recognizable paintings in the world. When
Speaker 2: they get back to the getaway car, they shove the
Speaker 2: painting down behind the driver's seat and just speed away.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: They were not prepared for this thing, did not have
Speaker 2: like a carrier case any of that. They're just like,
Speaker 2: this will fit bout your feet, bob. So later that day,
Speaker 2: when the museum staff discovered the missing masterpiece, they immediately
Speaker 2: checked the surveillance footage and they checked also, you know,
Speaker 2: all the way back to the night before. They scan
Speaker 2: the video, they find there are images of the thieves.
Speaker 2: Oh thank goodness. But the images are so blurry they're
Speaker 2: essentially useless. Oh, we should have got new cameras. So
Speaker 2: the chief investigator for the Oslo Police, a man named
Speaker 2: Leif Lear, he said, simply put, we had nothing to
Speaker 2: go on. So what do they do? Like, what do
Speaker 2: they have to go on? They got nothing. So the
Speaker 2: Norwegians can't let someone steal their national treasure and just
Speaker 2: get away with it. So they outsourced the investigation to
Speaker 2: real professionals who have some experience retrieving stolen artwork. They
Speaker 2: turned to Scotland Yard. Oh yeah, I thought you'd like that.
Speaker 2: They turned to a man named Charles Hill. He was
Speaker 2: he's an Englishman. He's a cop who was an undercover
Speaker 2: detective works for Scotland Yards Art and Antiques Division. I
Speaker 2: think you can get a spot.
Speaker 3: There that would amazing.
Speaker 2: Specifically, he worked under the aegis of the London Metro Police. So,
Speaker 2: as Powell Anger described this, detective Sherlock Holmes came to Norway,
Speaker 2: which was just kind of funny.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And Charles Hill equally had an assessment of Powell Anger.
Speaker 2: He said, of the wanna be master thief, In my experience,
Speaker 2: all thieves are the same. The minute they see money
Speaker 2: and smell it, the good sense disappears out of their skulls.
Speaker 2: Then they're hooked the way a fishermen would hook a fish.
Speaker 2: So what do you plan to do?
Speaker 3: Was I like the clarification of yeah, you mean like
Speaker 3: a fisherman.
Speaker 2: Oh not like you're a heroin pedaling. Well, you know, literally,
Speaker 2: when your nation has a history of pushing opium on
Speaker 2: other countries, you have to clarify hooked, You're like, no, no,
Speaker 2: I mean it like fishing, not like what we did
Speaker 2: to China. Anyway, all back to it. The British Bobby
Speaker 2: also decided he needed to play dress up. He needed
Speaker 2: a wig and some costume changes. Yeah, yeah, right, I
Speaker 2: figured it.
Speaker 3: Like that department, you.
Speaker 2: Should start wearing wigs. And you know, I'm not right now,
Speaker 2: that's very true. I actually cannot tell at all. It's
Speaker 2: so smoky in here now. His plan was he'd pretend
Speaker 2: to be a quote, dodgy mint Atlantic accented art dealer.
Speaker 3: Oh I love it. God, I really need to work.
Speaker 3: I want to do a character.
Speaker 2: The wig, the costume, the backstory is over there. I
Speaker 2: mean they got like a whole like method department. So
Speaker 2: as as I said, this guy, this brit Detective Charles
Speaker 2: Hills fully commits to the bit. He decides his dodgy
Speaker 2: art dealer was named Roberts. He worked for the J.
Speaker 2: Paul Getty Museum in LA. For his look, he decided
Speaker 2: Chris Roberts was a bow tie guy. He favored floral waistcoats.
Speaker 2: Chris Roberts also like to top with a cream blazer. Whoa yeah,
Speaker 2: so he also carried a suitcase which he claimed was
Speaker 2: stuffed with cash for art buys. So all of his
Speaker 2: prep work. He didn't think much of his quarry though,
Speaker 2: as he'll recalled of his targets, the screen was stolen
Speaker 2: by a bunch of Oslo no hopers. You could say
Speaker 2: it was Norwegian organized crime. Two men in a ladder.
Speaker 2: They went up the ladder and fell off when they
Speaker 2: went up again and broke in the window to go
Speaker 2: in and collect the painting.
Speaker 3: It feels like it's an offensive joke, right, what do
Speaker 3: you call organized crime?
Speaker 2: You got a ladder?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I feel like somehow there's a slur ball that we
Speaker 2: don't know about. It as a bridge going above my head.
Speaker 2: As non Europeans were like, is this like a whole
Speaker 2: like a Polish joke? But for the Norwegian?
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I've been. I had to quote the thank you for
Speaker 2: doing once he studied. When he could of these suspects,
Speaker 2: he starts to work the black market connections he has
Speaker 2: see if he'd get a back channel message to the
Speaker 2: art thieves to set up a meet and greet and
Speaker 2: to buy back the stolen masterpiece to help with his
Speaker 2: man hunt. The undercover detective partners with an underworld figure,
Speaker 2: but a small group of middlemen right through his criminal confederates.
Speaker 2: He gets an offer of a half million pounds for
Speaker 2: the stolen masterpiece, just spread out amongst the underworld.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Norwegian police, they're still working the case, but they've
Speaker 2: got their expert right. Some of them didn't want this
Speaker 2: brit to get all the glory for saving their national treasure,
Speaker 2: I mean fair. The Norwegian cops were working with the
Speaker 2: theory that the painting was stolen by a bunch of
Speaker 2: fame seekers who wanted to use the world's attention thanks
Speaker 2: to Lillehammer Winter Olympics, to guarantee they'd become famous or rich.
Speaker 2: That is, even if they got caught, they'd be famous,
Speaker 2: or if not, they'd be rich. That was their theory.
Speaker 2: Other Norwegian cops were convinced that there was a mister
Speaker 2: Big who'd hired thieves to steal the artwork for him,
Speaker 2: because that was the talk in the underworld. This is
Speaker 2: like some weird doctor no plot from James. Now. To
Speaker 2: complicate things, there was also an anti abortion campaign and
Speaker 2: a bunch of their most ardent supporters claimed they had
Speaker 2: stolen the painting, and in one of their propaganda videos
Speaker 2: that they released, they said if one of their propaganda
Speaker 2: videos was broadcast and released on Norwegian TV, then they'd
Speaker 2: returned the painting.
Speaker 3: So they got that problem over there too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, against the backdrop of competing theories and nonsense, it
Speaker 2: just strayed up weirdness. Undercover detective Charles Hills starts to
Speaker 2: stalk his criminal prey Wig on outfits locked.
Speaker 3: See in my head. He's played by Benedict cabbage Patch.
Speaker 3: Oh nice, And then the Paul Uh yeah, he's played
Speaker 3: by Chet Hanks.
Speaker 2: I did not see that.
Speaker 3: And the underworld like the doctor know that's Tom Hardy.
Speaker 2: Oh very good.
Speaker 3: I'm making a great movie.
Speaker 2: This is amazing. I love this. So he's now at
Speaker 2: this point assisted by an Amsterdam based gangster who has
Speaker 2: a predilection for high and art in the black market.
Speaker 2: This guy, Charles Hill is convinced it wasn't the anti
Speaker 2: abortion activists, not some shadowy mister Big or some thrill
Speaker 2: seekers trying to piggyback off the Winter Olympics. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: Dutch gangster and here are both convinced it's just some
Speaker 2: amateurs who got lucky.
Speaker 3: So Tom hardy and benefits cabbage patch. Yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: So Charles Hill remembers the man hunt period very well.
Speaker 2: And he said, and I quote and art thief catches
Speaker 2: the disease. You see, there is a madness that afflicts
Speaker 2: these people. They are not necessarily art lovers, but they
Speaker 2: view the work as trophies. So he considers himself a
Speaker 2: hunter of those who go after trophies. So he's a
Speaker 2: trophy hunter hunter. So then he catches a break right there.
Speaker 2: Is wasn't good surveillance video from the night of the robbery,
Speaker 2: but five days earlier there was clear distinct image of
Speaker 2: a very suspicious character wandering around the museum, clearly casing
Speaker 2: the joint. And that man looked just like pal Anger
Speaker 2: because it paling casing the joint. The suspect also looked
Speaker 2: a lot like a guy who'd recently posted a birth
Speaker 2: announcement in the newspaper that proclaimed his newborn son Oscar
Speaker 2: came into the world. Quote met ed screak, which in
Speaker 2: Norwegian means.
Speaker 3: With a scream, get out of town.
Speaker 2: Apparently he even capitalized the s in screek, so it
Speaker 2: looks like like a title. Yeah, So that that caught
Speaker 2: the attention of the cops and detective Charles.
Speaker 3: Scouring the paper the parts that people don't really read. Yeah, exactly, curious.
Speaker 2: Checking a misconnections. You wouldn't see me on the tube.
Speaker 2: So at this point Charles has been making headway in
Speaker 2: his back channel campaign in the underworld. His bait cut
Speaker 2: a bite he'd heard back that someone knew a guy
Speaker 2: who knew a guy who wanted to sell a certain painting.
Speaker 2: Wink wink, nudge nudge, know.
Speaker 3: What I mean.
Speaker 2: Relying on his mid Atlantic American accent, sounding like Catherine Hepburn,
Speaker 2: he reels in his purp takes him three months start
Speaker 2: to finish, and finally the wandering path leads to a
Speaker 2: chalet in the country. That's where he's to meet his
Speaker 2: thieves for an art buy. But the thieves have also
Speaker 2: negotiated for more money. They wanted seven hundred thousand pounds.
Speaker 2: The undercover cop agreed to their price. Now the trap
Speaker 2: was fully set, and we Elizabeth will take a break. Yes,
Speaker 2: and after these ads, I will tell you if the
Speaker 2: dodgy fake art dealer with the good wig game catches
Speaker 2: the former professional footballer turned art thief.
Speaker 4: Can't wait.
Speaker 2: And Rebecca Elizabeth so I got to ask you, you
Speaker 2: seem like you're on the edge of your seat. Do
Speaker 2: you think that the dodgy mid Atlantic art dealer who
Speaker 2: talks like Catherine Hepburn Charles Hill, was able to get
Speaker 2: his man?
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 2: Well, we got to kind of doubt you. We'd be
Speaker 2: hearing his name on the show if he didn't.
Speaker 3: This is the earlier theft of the painting. We know
Speaker 3: it's recovered in order to be stolen again.
Speaker 2: Well maybe remember I said there were four paintings. Ah see,
Speaker 2: I'm seating stuff it. So since he'd worked so diligently
Speaker 2: to set up his fraudulent art by slash raid, let's
Speaker 2: have Charles Hill recount what happens next in the Countryside
Speaker 2: Chalet over to you, DCI Charles Hill, and I quote
Speaker 2: from his interview with the BBC. What we did in
Speaker 2: this particular case was to go from a person who
Speaker 2: knew someone who knew someone else and just followed that
Speaker 2: chain until we eventually got to the people who controlled
Speaker 2: the painting. When I finally met the bad guys, I
Speaker 2: had to convince them that the Getty Museum would pay
Speaker 2: to recover the painting. The Norwegian criminals were on tenter hooks,
Speaker 2: and I spent the entire time trying to calm them down.
Speaker 2: Eventually they rang me quite late, about eleven thirty. So
Speaker 2: now the DCI Charles Hills on a lake my phone
Speaker 2: call with the thieves trying to control the exchange.
Speaker 3: Wait late it was eleventh It was me.
Speaker 2: So apparently when the alleged art thieves phoned him, they
Speaker 2: told DCI Hill quote, right, we're going to do it now,
Speaker 2: And I told them no way. I was going out
Speaker 2: at midnight to walk in the wild woods with them
Speaker 2: to get this thing back. We'd have to do it
Speaker 2: in the morning. In the morning, I said, so he
Speaker 2: is you if you can believe the art thieves are like, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: suppose that makes sense. You want to pop down to
Speaker 2: the chalet in the morning then, and they did so.
Speaker 2: DCI Hill was like, I will see you then when
Speaker 2: the sun's returned, and they make a plan to meet
Speaker 2: the next day. So back to DCI Hill. We went
Speaker 2: down to where the Dodgy art dealer had a summer home.
Speaker 2: In the summerhouse, the painting was downstairs underneath the carpet
Speaker 2: in the kitchen. It was a set of stairs down
Speaker 2: to the basement, and he asked me, did I want
Speaker 2: to get it? And I thought, well, I could do
Speaker 2: without being down there next Christmas. So I told him that,
Speaker 2: and you know that what's called Anglo Saxon vernacular, which
Speaker 2: he understood. So we went down and got the picture,
Speaker 2: brought it up and he laid it on the dining
Speaker 2: room table and bang, there it was. It looked like
Speaker 2: it was a masterpiece. It will tell you that it's
Speaker 2: a masterpiece. It just jumps out at you. So there
Speaker 2: you go. He found the painting, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Here it is.
Speaker 2: And he also did go down to the basement to
Speaker 2: be there till next Christmas, said Anglo Saxophone action. Yeah,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I caught that part. He was getting field dressed,
Speaker 2: get got down there. He wasn't going to be not
Speaker 2: just there until next Christmas, the one after.
Speaker 3: That Christmas to come, Elizabeth DC I.
Speaker 2: Hill had done it. So at this point he's found
Speaker 2: Norway's stolen national treasure. Good outsourcing by them, and now
Speaker 2: he's got to get it out of the summerhouse with
Speaker 2: both the painting and himself still intact, which somehow he does.
Speaker 2: And I guess he'd earned the art thieves trust. He
Speaker 2: signals the cops. They raid the home. Now he's able
Speaker 2: to bounce out of the chalet with the stolen masterpiece.
Speaker 2: He high tails it back to his hotel room, where
Speaker 2: he barricades himself in his room until proper authorities come
Speaker 2: to take it. He doesn't even trust the other coups
Speaker 2: for him, right, so he waits in case anybody gets
Speaker 2: to get to any acute idea trying to steal this
Speaker 2: painting bag. Everyone seems a want and it's like a
Speaker 2: really sticky painting. I don't have to tell you, so
Speaker 2: Dcihill does have this to say, and I quote. I
Speaker 2: rang back to Oslo and told him I had it,
Speaker 2: and barricaded myself in the hotel. Sure enough, after an
Speaker 2: hour or so, the central detective unit in Oslo turned
Speaker 2: up and I unbarricaded the room, and there was the picture.
Speaker 2: Then I walked down actually onto the pier, and I
Speaker 2: felt to myself done. It felt it felt good. It's
Speaker 2: exhilarating to get the what you're going for back. I
Speaker 2: can actually recover these things and feel as if I'm
Speaker 2: doing my bit for creation. Wow, doing my bit for creation.
Speaker 3: I love that It took him an hour to respond.
Speaker 2: Total emergency. I'll got there just second. Found finished and
Speaker 2: we got some bake goods over here, really good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Pal's mom made them cruss. She's been coming by the station.
Speaker 2: So there you go, cop for all creation, protect your
Speaker 2: humanity's most beautiful treasures. Once the scream was recovered, Elizabeth
Speaker 2: and the Oslo PD could take a collective breath of relief.
Speaker 2: What happened to Powell Anger? Yeah, what happened to Well,
Speaker 2: he was captured by the police obviously during the handover.
Speaker 2: He was arrested. And this is where things get a
Speaker 2: little weird, mostly because Norwegian justice is so different than
Speaker 2: our American ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Poal Anger and.
Speaker 2: His accomplices all they all get arrested, they get tried.
Speaker 2: Anger was found guilty, sentenced to six and a half
Speaker 2: years behind bars. All straightforward so far. His accomplices were
Speaker 2: also sentenced, found guilty, sent to prison. Once again, straightforward
Speaker 2: so far, except for they then appealed their judgments and
Speaker 2: were later released. Why were they able to do this? Yeah,
Speaker 2: they cited a rare Norwegian law about how they were
Speaker 2: arrested by a UK cop and not by a Norwegian
Speaker 2: cop and therefore they were not properly handled and gone
Speaker 2: through the Basically it was like a you know, a
Speaker 2: chain of custody issue. Yeah, so that therefore their bus
Speaker 2: didn't follow proper Norwegian law and protocols and they were
Speaker 2: able to get sprung on this. It's all four were
Speaker 2: sprung free except for Powell Anger. He doesn't this somehow
Speaker 2: doesn't apply to him because he gets arrested separately. Somehow,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's annoying everybody.
Speaker 2: That So in nineteen ninety nine, five years into his
Speaker 2: six and a half year bid, pow Ager decides he's
Speaker 2: had enough of prison, so he escapes.
Speaker 3: Oh right, was it five and a half into the
Speaker 3: six or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he escapes. But Elizabeth, you have to hear how
Speaker 2: he escaped. You worked in a federal prison. I did
Speaker 2: so imagine this next sentence happening in America. According to
Speaker 2: the BBC and I quote, he did manage to escape
Speaker 2: while on a field trip, but he was captured twelve
Speaker 2: days later, wearing a blond wig and dark sunglasses and
Speaker 2: trying to buy a train ticket to the Danish city
Speaker 2: of Copenhagen. In Norway, apparently they let the prisoners out
Speaker 2: go on field trips. Trips like to the like glue factories,
Speaker 2: or like to the flute makers and the I don't know,
Speaker 2: extuege drum makers. Like it's mister Rogers.
Speaker 3: At the at the federal facility, now, they didn't let
Speaker 3: anybody walk out of the State one. The state one
Speaker 3: was like horrendous. I'm sure at the Federal one. One
Speaker 3: day I saw an inmate getting into a car, are
Speaker 3: driving off.
Speaker 2: I gotta work for we had to go no.
Speaker 3: One of someone was explaining to me that, yeah, he
Speaker 3: was working. He would go and like pick someone up
Speaker 3: and bring them back. Sure, and it's like, but he
Speaker 3: was trustee.
Speaker 2: But it was one guy. One guy in like seventeen
Speaker 2: twenty guys voted in a bus and going to like
Speaker 2: an amusement park.
Speaker 3: You're going to just let this guy get in the
Speaker 3: car and drive. And they're like, there's so many security
Speaker 3: protocols in place that like he takes one, he changes
Speaker 3: lanes at the wrong time America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're going to be marked. And then also the
Speaker 2: prole officers are on them, and then it also becomes
Speaker 2: just like a fun game for them bust this guy pettings.
Speaker 2: I'm not against this practice. I'd like to be clear.
Speaker 2: I would want this for our inmates. Yeah, you know, like,
Speaker 2: but it just sounds wild to my American ears, like
Speaker 2: we got to let them on a bus to go
Speaker 2: on a field drip. The guys have been good this month.
Speaker 3: They're actually I think we've talked about it before. San
Speaker 3: Quentin is having a full overhaul that they have what's
Speaker 3: called the California model now, which is you know, emphasis
Speaker 3: on you know, abilitation and education and such. But now
Speaker 3: they're taking like all these other uh Scandinavian influences, and
Speaker 3: that's what they're going to be doing. Like it's going
Speaker 3: from as a high security to medium security. Their whole
Speaker 3: thing is how do we make good neighbors for when
Speaker 3: they get out?
Speaker 2: Oh? I like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, it's a it's an interesting experiment because right
Speaker 3: now we're just making better criminals.
Speaker 2: So it's just criminal education. It's like university for Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 2: After his wig and sunglasses prison escape attempt failed, pal
Speaker 2: Anger finished his sentence in two thousand. He was subsequently released.
Speaker 2: He was at this point thirty three years old. I
Speaker 2: remember how I told you up top about the second
Speaker 2: time the screen was stolen by the Norwegian art thieves
Speaker 2: who ran into the door. Yeah remember how else? Just said?
Speaker 2: The Oslopedia immediately went to pal Anger and questioned him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they ran into a door, this could be powered.
Speaker 2: It looks like he wasn't involved, and he said this
Speaker 2: was that was true, but it wasn't the whole story.
Speaker 2: Well he wasn't involved, he was the inspiration. Oh really,
Speaker 2: so what's the deal with the two thousand and four
Speaker 2: theft of the screen? Great question, Elizabeth. After the police
Speaker 2: question pal Anger and found out it wasn't him, they
Speaker 2: had to consider new theory. So someone out there, someone
Speaker 2: was like, what if it wasn't pal Anger? But what
Speaker 2: if he was the inspiration? What if they were like
Speaker 2: pulling a pal Anger? Amazing? Right, So like Elizabeth in
Speaker 2: My world, Caps and Criminals, they both talk like the
Speaker 2: guys from Ocean's eleven, twelve and thirteen, where it's like
Speaker 2: you were you know, you know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 2: Like when Brad Pitt's like off the top of my
Speaker 2: head and say you're looking at a Bowski, a Jim Brown,
Speaker 2: a Miss Daisy you, Jeff Rows, and a Leon Spinks.
Speaker 2: Not to mention the world's biggest Ella Fitzgerald. Ever, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I look this up because I could never figure out
Speaker 2: that last one, the biggest Ella Fitzgerald Ever, What does
Speaker 2: he mean when he says that, you know, I couldn't
Speaker 2: remember this one. You probably couldn't remember. You definitely couldn't
Speaker 2: remember this when in the seventies there was a series
Speaker 2: of commercials for the MEMORYX cassette tapes and Ella Fitzgerald
Speaker 2: hits a high sea while she's singing and breaks a
Speaker 2: wine glass.
Speaker 3: Oh, I've seen clips here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a historic ad. They used to be
Speaker 2: excited all the time. So commercial narrator then says, is
Speaker 2: it live or is it memor x? Right, So that
Speaker 2: was a reference to the bank fault part of the job,
Speaker 2: and how spoiler alert they made a mock up of
Speaker 2: the vault rob that recorded and played it back. Aka,
Speaker 2: is it live or is it memorized? Oh? Erld is?
Speaker 2: I thought you'd get back to our starts movies? Are
Speaker 2: I love them? So what happened to the cats in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four who also got lucky and walked
Speaker 2: away with the scream just like their inspiration pal Anger?
Speaker 2: So once the aus of the Police considered new theories,
Speaker 2: they came up with a winner. What if the two
Speaker 2: thousand and four thieves were doing a poll Anger and
Speaker 2: they were what he was a distraction for other criminals
Speaker 2: to hit jewelry stores in banks because all the cops
Speaker 2: are focused on the scream. Turns out that's exactly what
Speaker 2: it was. A gang of street criminals who pow Anger
Speaker 2: was loosely affiliated with, decided to go old school and
Speaker 2: give the cops something to investigate that wasn't them. So
Speaker 2: they commissioned some idiot amateurs who weren't pal Anger to
Speaker 2: steal the scream and pull a pall Anger so the
Speaker 2: street criminals could operate in peace. They could raid banks
Speaker 2: without hassle for months, which is what they did. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the mastermind for the copycat crime slipped out of the country.
Speaker 2: He turns up in Madrid and that's where he, it's believed,
Speaker 2: linked up with a notorious Norwegian hash smuggler, a guy
Speaker 2: who could get that sweet. Now, this mastermind exchanged his
Speaker 2: cut of the bank raids for some of that sweet
Speaker 2: sweet Afghani hashish and plan to smuggle his way to freedom,
Speaker 2: Except for the pair were both busted in a hotel
Speaker 2: room in Malaga's Spain because I think the Norwegian hash
Speaker 2: smuggler was under surveillance. So they get busted in Andalusia.
Speaker 3: The Spaniards don't play.
Speaker 2: Do they do not? Dating back to Franco, they do
Speaker 2: not play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is the last place you wanted to do
Speaker 3: some smugglings.
Speaker 2: So once he's in custody, the alleged mastermind of the
Speaker 2: bank raids and the second theft of the Scream confesses
Speaker 2: his involvement. He names the four men he hired to
Speaker 2: pull the job. He's like, you can find him here, here,
Speaker 2: and here. Paul Anger gets questioned, taken into custody, and
Speaker 2: that's when he gets exonerated for any part in the
Speaker 2: copycat theft, and the paintings were recovered.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After that, Anger went the other way with art, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Instead of stealing it, he started creating it. Oh, just
Speaker 2: like your guys, this warm football or street criminal art
Speaker 2: thief becomes a fine art painter himself.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: He prefers to work in abstract forms. His work is
Speaker 2: considered reminiscent of Edvard Munsch's use of color and tonality.
Speaker 2: In fact, some folks believe they can see a ghostly
Speaker 2: image of the screen painted into many of Pale Anger's works. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 2: down in the corner of his painting, he signs them
Speaker 2: p Anger, which, as you recall, is money in Norwegian.
Speaker 2: So he's still that kid in the Stolen Beamer. Wow.
Speaker 2: He refuses to sell his story, by the way, because
Speaker 2: the UK cat tabloids came calling. Oh sure, one even
Speaker 2: offered him one hundred thousand pounds to tell his story
Speaker 2: in their pages as an exclusive. Powell Anger thought better
Speaker 2: of it. Yeah, because he didn't want to betray or
Speaker 2: piss off his underworld associates.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's like Vladimir Stop.
Speaker 2: He smart about it. There's the one choice he looked
Speaker 2: out for him in this one moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He did also occasionally speak about the burglary that made
Speaker 2: him Norway's most famous art thief, and he did share
Speaker 2: what it felt like to steal the scream as how
Speaker 2: Anger said, and I quote, this is the coolest painting
Speaker 2: in the world. I just drove around for hours thinking
Speaker 2: about what I should do and what would happen. It
Speaker 2: was really electric. It was just a great feeling. It
Speaker 2: was magical. Even though he was fifty three at the
Speaker 2: time of a very late interview, the newly minted fine
Speaker 2: art painter was still something of a scoff log because
Speaker 2: he was facing nineteen traffic offenses, ranging from stealing a
Speaker 2: taxi sign to driving without a license, so he was
Speaker 2: still kind of about that life. Yeah, for a final
Speaker 2: word from Pile Anger, he once told a Norwegian newspaper
Speaker 2: that from his life in crime he learned one all
Speaker 2: important lesson, and I quote, you should not live in
Speaker 2: movies and get bad role models.
Speaker 3: That's a very good right.
Speaker 2: We hear there's a lot on the show about how
Speaker 2: movies were in inspiration for these kids and we had
Speaker 2: become criminals. And you know whatever, who am I to
Speaker 2: say where we should draw our inspirations. Art imitates life,
Speaker 2: life imitates art, crime imitates movies. All that, right, two
Speaker 2: way street. But if you're going to choose crime movies
Speaker 2: as your rule book for life, yeah, try to pick
Speaker 2: ones where the criminal role models get away with it.
Speaker 2: Yes they're rare, I know, but you can find them.
Speaker 2: Think to Shawshank redemption. So Elizabeth, what's a ridiculous takeaway here?
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, I am still casting the film in
Speaker 3: my head. But no, I think that it's curious this
Speaker 3: notion of a big crime to distract from all the
Speaker 3: little crimes. Right, I think that a lot. I think
Speaker 3: I've talked about it before, like my suspicions. When I
Speaker 3: see those big crimes, it's clever. That's very clever.
Speaker 2: That's the move.
Speaker 3: Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: Hmm, let me think about them. I don't have one. Okay, cool, No,
Speaker 2: I'm kidding. I think wig game. We need to get
Speaker 2: into wigs. We do, we do the shows. We both
Speaker 2: show up in a wig.
Speaker 3: Yeah, down, down, So there you go.
Speaker 2: That's all I got for you. Producer Deed, you got
Speaker 2: to talk back, because I'm in the mood to wash
Speaker 2: this down with something fropthy.
Speaker 5: I went, Elizabeth, I've been waiting to send something to you.
Speaker 5: This is Vanessa from Texas. I'm gonna send it now.
Speaker 5: It's not what I wanted to send. It's mama, don't
Speaker 5: like your babies grow up to drive cybertrucks. And the
Speaker 5: reason why I didn't want to send that is because
Speaker 5: it could have been better. But you told me Banksy
Speaker 5: might have been a woman. Ah'm freaking out.
Speaker 3: Listen, girl got to First of all, that was perfect,
Speaker 3: It was beautiful, and mama should not let their babies
Speaker 3: grow up to drive cyber trucks.
Speaker 2: I think William Whalen would both.
Speaker 3: Be on board with that. And yeah, Banksy maybe.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: You know, my theory is Banksy's everybody.
Speaker 2: We're all banks By the way, you're Banksy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks girl.
Speaker 2: So there you go. You can find us online Ridiculous
Speaker 2: Crime on social media's there go. Look, and we have
Speaker 2: a website, Ridiculous Crime dot com, which is I think
Speaker 2: now up for Monopoly Role Playing Game of the Year.
Speaker 2: Oh really, very rare award, but I'm very excited. Yeah,
Speaker 2: tabletop games.
Speaker 3: They get those every ten years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, and obviously we love your talkback, so please
Speaker 2: go to that herd app downloaded record one. Maybe hear
Speaker 2: your voice here, do it. It's fun. Also, emails you
Speaker 2: like a Ridiculous crime at gmail dot com. Lease start
Speaker 2: at the email DA producer d. And we also have,
Speaker 2: by the way, a new YouTube channel which apparently I
Speaker 2: told you that the wrong place last time. Go to
Speaker 2: Ridiculous Crime Pod.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just ridiculous crime Pod. I've said it the wrong way,
Speaker 3: You've said it the wrong So there you go, Ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime Pod. I don't know, I just work here.
Speaker 2: We're about that pod life, so thanks for listening. We
Speaker 2: will catch you next. Crime Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Speaker 2: Elizabethutton That's Her and Sarah Burnett That's Me. Produce and
Speaker 2: edited by the man who made Screaming famous, Dave Houston,
Speaker 2: and starring Annelie's Rugger as Judith. Research is by the
Speaker 2: inventor of the Edvard Munch multi color mood, ring Marissa Brown.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by the house band The Stolen
Speaker 2: Beamers aka Norway's favorite sinister rock duo Thomas Lee and
Speaker 2: Travis Dunny. The host wardrobe provided by Botny five hundred.
Speaker 2: Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshock and mister Andre. Executive
Speaker 2: producers are the men who've made making others famous famous,
Speaker 2: Ben Boleen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 3: Why Say It one More Times?
Speaker 1: Crime Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts.
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.