Speaker 1: Judy was boring.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 3: Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com.
Speaker 4: It's my little escape.
Speaker 1: Now Judy's the life of the party.
Speaker 2: Oh baby mama is bringing home the bacon.
Speaker 3: WHOA, take it easy, Judy, jump the chumba life. That's
Speaker 3: for everybody. So go to chumpacasino dot com and play
Speaker 3: over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play
Speaker 3: for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices.
Speaker 1: Jump chumpacasino dot com.
Speaker 3: Nope's necessary, poly, We're committed my eighteen plus terms and
Speaker 3: condition to plasy what sever details.
Speaker 5: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 5: gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: Lucky?
Speaker 1: In line at the deli, I guess.
Speaker 2: Ah, in my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I.
Speaker 6: Have to say?
Speaker 1: Yes? You do?
Speaker 6: In the car before my kids PTA meeting?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 6: I never win?
Speaker 1: And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 7: You could get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky landsloughts dot com.
Speaker 1: Play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 8: Nope's just necessary. Foid my long eighteen plus terms conditions
Speaker 8: of plus you want to say details?
Speaker 5: Lucky Land Casino, asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 5: gotten lucky?
Speaker 6: Lucky?
Speaker 2: In line at the deli, I guess ah, in my
Speaker 2: dentist's office more than once. Actually do I.
Speaker 6: Have to say?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: You do?
Speaker 6: In the car before my kids pta meeting?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 6: I never win?
Speaker 1: And tell Well, there you have it.
Speaker 7: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot
Speaker 7: com play for free right now?
Speaker 1: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 8: No, we're just necessary boy. Where we're gonna be my
Speaker 8: long eighteen plus terms conditions of plus you want say details?
Speaker 1: Okay? Round two? Name something that's not boring?
Speaker 8: Laundry, a book club, computer solitaire?
Speaker 1: Huh ah. Sorry, we were looking for Chumbuck Casino. Chum,
Speaker 1: that's right, Chumbuckcasino dot com as over one hundred casino
Speaker 1: style games joined today and play for free for your
Speaker 1: chance to redeem some serious prizes. Chum chumbucasino dot com.
Speaker 1: Nomberess for reading then what every redails?
Speaker 9: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 9: Killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 9: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 9: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 9: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with Your
Speaker 9: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 10: Good Evening nineteen eighty two, Oregon businessman Phil Champagne, age
Speaker 10: fifty two, dies in a tragic voting accident off Lopez Island.
Speaker 10: He survived by one ex wife, four adult children, an
Speaker 10: octagenarian mother, and two despondent brothers. Phil didn't know he
Speaker 10: was dead until he read it in the paper. All
Speaker 10: things considered, he took it rather well. So did Phil's
Speaker 10: brother Mitch, the beneficiary of a one point five million
Speaker 10: dollar policy on Phil's life. Nineteen ninety two, Washington restaurant
Speaker 10: tour Harold Stegeman, famous for his thick juicy steaks, is
Speaker 10: arrested by the Secret Service for printing counterfeit United States
Speaker 10: currency in an Idaho shed. In addition to the bogus bills,
Speaker 10: Stegeman also has a fraudently obtained passport, a fabricated Cayman
Speaker 10: Islands driver's license, and Phil Champaigne's fingerprints. When the uproarious
Speaker 10: reality of Harold Stegemann's secret identity hit the headlines. The
Speaker 10: Counterfeit Resurrection of Phil Champagne became one of the most
Speaker 10: celebrated and hysterically funny true crime stories of the twentieth century.
Speaker 10: And while every supermarket, tabloid and television talk show hounded
Speaker 10: after the untold story, only Edgar Award winner Burl Bear
Speaker 10: captured Champagne's confidence and received permission to detail Phil's post
Speaker 10: mortem career of fraud, deception, trickery, lies and fine prime
Speaker 10: rib bringing to life the exploits of a man his
Speaker 10: family thought dead over a decade ago. The book that
Speaker 10: we're featuring this evening is Man Overboard, The counter Counterfeit
Speaker 10: Resurrection of Phil Champagne, with my special guest journalist and
Speaker 10: author and podcaster Burrel Bear. Welcome back to IRAM, and
Speaker 10: thank you for grady to to do the legendary Burl Bear.
Speaker 10: It's always a pleasure to be on your show, Dad,
Speaker 10: and you know it's not easy being a living legend.
Speaker 10: I'm under more pressure than an astronaut and I do
Speaker 10: understand that pressure, and so I'm glad you have not
Speaker 10: succumbed to that pressure. And here we are now.
Speaker 4: I'm a strong man.
Speaker 10: Iron ironclad, iron man, the iron Man of true crime. Really,
Speaker 10: that's right. This was actually my first true crime book,
Speaker 10: and I think it's a source of amusement to me,
Speaker 10: not having done a true crime book before when I
Speaker 10: did this originally twenty years ago, and the one that's
Speaker 10: out now is a brand new twentieth anniversary edition and
Speaker 10: it's like one of those Criterion DVDs with the special
Speaker 10: bonus features. It has bonus features that the original book
Speaker 10: didn't have, including transcripts of the fed's interrogation of Harold's
Speaker 10: stegment alias to live for Phil Champagne, and also some
Speaker 10: other little tid vincid, a brand new afterward by Phil himself,
Speaker 10: who is now eighty four years old, just as charming
Speaker 10: as ever, and of course additional information, a new introduction
Speaker 10: by legendary Barrel Bear. And it's a snazzy new publication.
Speaker 10: It's both as an e book and a paperback, and
Speaker 10: I'm really glad the book's out again and people are
Speaker 10: getting kick out of it. Yes, absolutely so. I think
Speaker 10: you've corrected me in the nunciation. I should have checked
Speaker 10: with that when we had a couple of minutes beforehand,
Speaker 10: so it's Stegman or Stegman.
Speaker 4: It doesn't really matter. It's segment, you know. Uh, we'll
Speaker 4: get to the point of the story. We'll explain the alias,
Speaker 4: why he had that alias, and what a horrifying, inadverted
Speaker 4: mistake was to use that name.
Speaker 10: But we'll yes, yes, absolutely absolutely, this is a fascinating story.
Speaker 10: And as we mentioned, we might as well talk about
Speaker 10: this a little bit too. Is that I think it's
Speaker 10: interesting the background of this story as well, and of
Speaker 10: course the follow up to this story. So we'll be talking.
Speaker 10: We'll have that ability to talk about this, so not
Speaker 10: only the book, but some of the things like having
Speaker 10: Phil Champagne at a book signing, so that's that's very
Speaker 10: very unique. But also I want to talk about because
Speaker 10: you know, I love dropping names myself and tell us
Speaker 10: how you really came to write this book and and
Speaker 10: the and rule connection.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, this is a strange one. It was a
Speaker 4: Sunday night at home, minding my own business in Walla Walla, Washington,
Speaker 4: about that twenty one years ago, and I got a
Speaker 4: phone call out of as sky King was saying, out
Speaker 4: of clear blue of the western sky, I get a
Speaker 4: phone call from Buck Ormsby now Buck Oramsby is a
Speaker 4: very famous and highly regarded musician bass player for the
Speaker 4: legendary Pacific Northwest group of the Whalers. And he and
Speaker 4: I are not close personal friends, but I'd say we're acquaintances.
Speaker 4: You know, we've known each other on off for decades
Speaker 4: and for me to get a call from him at
Speaker 4: home was very surprising, and he says, there is this
Speaker 4: true crime case that I want to know if you're
Speaker 4: interested in writing about. Apparently Ann the Rule had been
Speaker 4: approached about the book and her play was pretty full.
Speaker 4: My name came up and he gave me a call.
Speaker 4: I said, well, facts for the information. Well, now you
Speaker 4: remember fax machines, the kind of a combination between a
Speaker 4: telephone and the printer, And all of a sudden they're
Speaker 4: getting all these newspaper articles. So this bizarre story of
Speaker 4: this guy Harold's Segment arrested for counterfeiting, and then they
Speaker 4: figure out he's not really Harold's Segment, but they don't
Speaker 4: know who he is. And it just got crazier from there.
Speaker 4: And it turned out he was a guy named Phil
Speaker 4: Champagne who had been dead for ten years. And I went, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is fascinating. I've got to find out what in
Speaker 4: the world this is about. So Phil consented to meet
Speaker 4: with me. Now, apparently several other authors had gone to Phil.
Speaker 4: And because this story at the time was one of
Speaker 4: those top of mind, everyone talking about it, all the
Speaker 4: tabloid talk shows, you know, wanted this story. I wanted
Speaker 4: to get in there and talk to Phil because people
Speaker 4: were just one of those things that captured people's imagination
Speaker 4: right off the bat well. I guess other authors had
Speaker 4: gone to see Phil in prison. He was his Geiger
Speaker 4: Correctional Center of federal prison but Spokane, Washington, and I
Speaker 4: figured in my mind that probably these guys showed up
Speaker 4: looking like authors. And he said, you know, hi, I'm
Speaker 4: an author. I want to do a book. I decided
Speaker 4: I'd take a different approach. He knew who I was,
Speaker 4: I knew why I was there. So I went to
Speaker 4: a Geiger correctional center. I was just wearing jeans and
Speaker 4: my Saints sweatshirt and it was a beautiful day and
Speaker 4: being in some minimum security federal prison, uh, you know,
Speaker 4: I was well, he wasn't behind plexiglass or anything. We
Speaker 4: went outside a little pictic table and got a cup
Speaker 4: of coffee in a styrofoam company. I just sat there
Speaker 4: for a minute and I didn't say anything to him.
Speaker 4: The first thing I said was Phil, how good were
Speaker 4: the bills? A friend? You know? How good were the
Speaker 4: counterfeit bills?
Speaker 10: He said, always?
Speaker 4: Just some of them made him all the way to
Speaker 4: the Federal Reserve Bank before they were caught. Well, he
Speaker 4: got busted because you know, they supposed to have been
Speaker 4: buying pies, you know, things like this. I said, why
Speaker 4: don't I just dan, Phils? Why didn't you take these
Speaker 4: bills down on spray gathering? Spoken when you got the dough,
Speaker 4: you know, drug dealers and stuff, you know, buy twenty
Speaker 4: bucks with a dove with a one hundred dollars billion
Speaker 4: gets you change. He said, well I would do that,
Speaker 4: but I'm sixty three years old. I know nothing about
Speaker 4: drug dealers. I know nothing about bad sort of things.
Speaker 4: So we bought pies instead. So we just started talking
Speaker 4: about criminal matters, criminal things, you know. Didn't even discuss
Speaker 4: a book until we were all done talking. He says,
Speaker 4: what are you going to do the book? I said, yeah,
Speaker 4: I've you the book, and so we hit it off.
Speaker 4: We just hit it off right away. Similar sense as
Speaker 4: of humor. I said, this is a nice correctional center,
Speaker 4: and he goes, yeah, well, are you going to correct
Speaker 4: my golf swing, my table manners?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah. He's a real character. He's eighty four now and
Speaker 4: he's every bit is charming. And this is one of
Speaker 4: the things about philm and why the secret Service agent
Speaker 4: who busted him will be the first to tell you
Speaker 4: a guy named Lyle when he's retired now this is
Speaker 4: his last case and his favorite one, and he said,
Speaker 4: I really like Phil is he is the last of
Speaker 4: the great gentleman crooks, as charming and polite as you
Speaker 4: could possibly imagine, who was like like you were in
Speaker 4: one of these old George Saunders Saint movies or a
Speaker 4: Falcon movie with Tom Conway or the great Ronald Coleman,
Speaker 4: you know, handsome, suave, debonair charming. And that's exactly what
Speaker 4: Phil Champagne was like. It is like and now he
Speaker 4: loved him.
Speaker 10: What's fascinating about this story is because when we talk
Speaker 10: about and you know, I think it conjures up that
Speaker 10: idea catch me if you can, or the sort of
Speaker 10: beneva and crook, the kind of criminal that really does
Speaker 10: have some compassion and sympathy for people sort of the
Speaker 10: robin hood of criminals, and everybody loves that kind of
Speaker 10: even people get behind that kind of criminal and help
Speaker 10: them avoid detect and conviction.
Speaker 4: I mean, Phil never had an evil, evil plot in
Speaker 4: his mind. What uh we were getting inhet of the
Speaker 4: story or not. But you know, basically, as you said,
Speaker 4: he falls off the sailboat. He's rescued by apparently an
Speaker 4: illegal fisherman who's not going to take him to the hospital.
Speaker 4: You know, it takes him back to his old cab.
Speaker 10: Well, let's not burl, let's not quite go Let's not
Speaker 10: go that quick, because this story really really demands that
Speaker 10: we understand who Phil was and then who Phil became,
Speaker 10: because unlike a lot of guys that have a life
Speaker 10: of crime and then become a crook, this guy really
Speaker 10: goes to a metamorphosis of incredible total translation. But before
Speaker 10: this incredible event, he is this sort of a different character.
Speaker 10: So if they made the movie about this guy's life
Speaker 10: and he actually would have died as people thought, the
Speaker 10: chapter would have been written one way, but instead he's
Speaker 10: written about three different ways. So let's go back to
Speaker 10: Let's go back to the lifestyle and the life of
Speaker 10: Phil Champagne with his brother, Really, what was he involved with?
Speaker 10: What kind of guy was he? And what was he
Speaker 10: looking at and at what age and when? If he
Speaker 10: looked back at his life, really, what was his life
Speaker 10: like that? Well?
Speaker 4: He was a respected Portland, Oregon businessman and essentially crime
Speaker 4: for adult life, an excellent career and in otherwise lack
Speaker 4: loss or existence. If his life could be described in
Speaker 4: one word dull, two words dull and boring, he had
Speaker 4: he kind of grew up. He didn't grow up any
Speaker 4: sort of wealth at all, pretty much in poverty. He
Speaker 4: and his brother's Mitch and John Robin, born in Seattle,
Speaker 4: in a variety of jobs, worked as a milkman, you know,
Speaker 4: of delivering milk one thing and another. His brother Mitch
Speaker 4: and Phil and John Robin did form a rather successful
Speaker 4: construction company in Oregon, you know, building homes and that
Speaker 4: sort of thing. And he had a wife and kids.
Speaker 4: But the time of his demise he was going through
Speaker 4: a very difficult divorce. This was the nineteen eighties when
Speaker 4: I don't know if you were around them, but interest
Speaker 4: rates in the United States were astronomical. It was it
Speaker 4: became almost impossible to afford to buy a home because
Speaker 4: the interest rates on your home loan would be so high.
Speaker 4: This was really impacting the building industry. And you know,
Speaker 4: things were difficult all the way around, and Phil was
Speaker 4: getting pretty depressed. And so his brothers trying to cheer
Speaker 4: him up, you know, said come on, we're going to
Speaker 4: take you out on the sailboat. We're going to go up,
Speaker 4: you know, around the San Juan Islands, and we're just
Speaker 4: going to have a good time. You know, we'll drink,
Speaker 4: we'll swap dirty stories, we'll sail around and just have
Speaker 4: one of those weekends that brothers had where they forget
Speaker 4: all their troubles. That was the idea. They just wanted
Speaker 4: to cheer him up because, you know, might want to
Speaker 4: call a midlife crisis.
Speaker 10: Here.
Speaker 4: He is his early fifties, you know, just turned fifty
Speaker 4: short shortly before, and now things are bad at home,
Speaker 4: things are rough at work. He's well respected, he's a
Speaker 4: normal guy, you know, and he just needs a little entertainment.
Speaker 4: So they take him out of the sailboat. Unfortunately, he
Speaker 4: doesn't have his tech shoes on. He's drunk, and he
Speaker 4: falls overboard and that single splash pursued by search slights
Speaker 4: that came up with nothing. Coastguard search for thirteen hours
Speaker 4: for his body. Of course, he didn't find it, and
Speaker 4: it was devastating. I mean, the brothers were devastated here.
Speaker 4: They took about for a good time and he winds
Speaker 4: up dead. His wife, even though divorcing him, of course,
Speaker 4: was unamused, as were the children, four kids that were grown.
Speaker 4: They were adults, but you know, like so, when their
Speaker 4: dad dies in a boating accident, the wife sues the
Speaker 4: other two brothers for wrongful death and wins, of course,
Speaker 4: and Phil was heavily insured because he was a key
Speaker 4: man at this major reconstruction company. He was insured for
Speaker 4: one point five million dollar. Key man insurance wasn't Phil's idea.
Speaker 4: I talked to the insurance man who sold the policy,
Speaker 4: and he's the one who talked Mitch into getting the policy.
Speaker 4: He says, you know, you should have insurance on Phil,
Speaker 4: he's key man, just in case God forbid something happens. Well,
Speaker 4: when Phil died in that accident, the claim was put
Speaker 4: in federal temper life insurance. Peter Richter was the investigator
Speaker 4: on that. Due to the fact there wasn't a body recovered,
Speaker 4: they only paid half. I think it was about whatever
Speaker 4: half of one point five million is, you know, six
Speaker 4: seven hundred thousand. And that was that. And that was
Speaker 4: that for ten years as far as anyone knew Phil
Speaker 4: was dead.
Speaker 10: What about the what about the provision part of me?
Speaker 10: What about the provision in there though that if he
Speaker 10: were to turn up again, what was the policy? Like,
Speaker 10: they paid out half and they're going to keep paying,
Speaker 10: but what was the provision inside.
Speaker 4: If he turns up alive? Of course they have to
Speaker 4: give the money back, right right?
Speaker 10: But now, was there any suspicion when he fell overboard?
Speaker 10: Was was there suspicion that there was some sort of conspiracy,
Speaker 10: especially based on the one point five million payout? And
Speaker 10: with that suspicion, they must have investigated. And what did
Speaker 10: they find?
Speaker 4: Well, all they had all the Coastguard records at Search
Speaker 4: Chick and they said out a private investigator, MA, sure,
Speaker 4: this is kind of interesting. WI. I didn't find outuntil
Speaker 4: after I did the book. Phil and the brothers remembered
Speaker 4: the name of the waitress who were hitten on the
Speaker 4: waitress at this particular restaurant whether you know, of course
Speaker 4: where the boat was, Say, hey had to come out
Speaker 4: on the boat with us and all that, and she
Speaker 4: waved goodbye to them as they took off. They all
Speaker 4: remembered her name, and they remember the particulars. And when
Speaker 4: the private detective hired by the insurance company went back
Speaker 4: to the restaurant, he could not get any confirmation on anything,
Speaker 4: couldn't get a straight answer. There was another waitress, but
Speaker 4: the things didn't match up, but there was some aspects
Speaker 4: of the story didn't quite pan out. Found out afterwards
Speaker 4: that whoever the detective was that they sent out rubbed
Speaker 4: everybody the wrong way. I don't know whether he smelled
Speaker 4: a booze or what the deal was, but they didn't
Speaker 4: want to cooperate with him, and they didn't want to
Speaker 4: talk to him. They just got better. They didn't like
Speaker 4: the guy. Got a good quality for a private detective.
Speaker 4: And it turned out I was able to put together
Speaker 4: the pieces and find out that there was a temporary
Speaker 4: worker that evening they were shorthanded. They brought it a
Speaker 4: temp worker. One thing and another and so a Phil's
Speaker 4: story and the brother stories did check out and everything
Speaker 4: was cool. There was no real reason to doubt that
Speaker 4: Phil died in that accident, except for well, g we're
Speaker 4: only going to pay out half because the body wasn't recovered,
Speaker 4: you know, and if we ever fight out, this is
Speaker 4: this game. Of course you have to give the money back,
Speaker 4: which they never had to do actually, but you can
Speaker 4: get to that later.
Speaker 10: Now tell us about though this is important to the story,
Speaker 10: and let's not jump ahead because this is fascinating because
Speaker 10: you have access later to Phil Champagne. There's no other
Speaker 10: way this story could have been told. There's no way.
Speaker 10: There would just been a huge hole. And this story
Speaker 10: can't have any holes because it's a tenuous connection all
Speaker 10: the way through and this can only be explained through
Speaker 10: Phil Champagne. No one else knows. So campaign now tell us,
Speaker 10: and this creates problems for his younger brother, John Robbin.
Speaker 10: What is the drunken argument that these guys have? What
Speaker 10: is it? What kind of deal is it concerning.
Speaker 4: Y'all? You know, I'll have to look at my book
Speaker 4: and remind myself. I know they do. What stupid? Are you?
Speaker 10: Basically? What it? Basically? What it is? It's the argument
Speaker 10: over how he says, listen, uh, you are to blame
Speaker 10: for this cost overrun because.
Speaker 4: They didn't oh yeah yeah, yeah, they had water coming
Speaker 4: in as the Codwood condominium development in Portland suburb. Uh
Speaker 4: they cost overruns because drainage problems, which I thought was
Speaker 4: interesting that the problem revolved around water. They're out on
Speaker 4: the water arguing about water and Phil falls overboard. It's
Speaker 4: been one Uh yeah, it all has to do with
Speaker 4: coming down. It was a stupid discussion for two brothers,
Speaker 4: one of them rather tipsy to be having in front
Speaker 4: of a friend because they had this other buddy of
Speaker 4: theirs with him. Not just the brothers, but they had
Speaker 4: another buddy of theirs with them.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 4: As they say, it's the even the most pleasant evening
Speaker 4: per minute, and enough alcohol will turn sour. Old timers
Speaker 4: have a name for it, the darker drink. The one
Speaker 4: shot that puts the pall of death at a lively night,
Speaker 4: turns fellowship into fifth bites Loosen's petty demons, duck and
Speaker 4: men's cross and says brother against brother, and that's what happened.
Speaker 4: A couple of drunk guys get into a conversation and
Speaker 4: I think he says, you're trying to make Mitch's problems
Speaker 4: on my fault. Says Phil, don't blame me for things
Speaker 4: I can't control, and we'll blame, as Barlber says, it
Speaker 4: is only important to drunks and lawyers, and that's often
Speaker 4: the same thing.
Speaker 10: Now, now the search, we we just glossed over it
Speaker 10: a little bit. The brothers again, if you could just
Speaker 10: explain this one thing. How does it that they're on
Speaker 10: this big boat and he falls off, and how does
Speaker 10: no one notice off this boat?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, they were having this argument and still so
Speaker 4: the last thing I remember John saying is he didn't
Speaker 4: want to see me again. He turned and started to
Speaker 4: go blow or to the wheel. He stopped and turn
Speaker 4: back to look at me. You know what if the
Speaker 4: truth or no, I don't think any of the others
Speaker 4: the family want to see you again either. Well, John
Speaker 4: certainly done how to put a positive spin on a
Speaker 4: night of carefully camaraderie. He later said he didn't need
Speaker 4: to be so harsh. You know, Phil, still in his
Speaker 4: street shoes, turned towards the stern, slipped and went overboard. Now,
Speaker 4: according to John Robbin, his first reaction was, well, that's
Speaker 4: going to wake his ass up hitting that cold water.
Speaker 4: He stopped the boat, turned it around and thought he'd
Speaker 4: be able to just you know, see Phil right away
Speaker 4: and grab him but he didn't, so he grabbed the
Speaker 4: handheld searchlight. He jumps down from the wheel, still confident
Speaker 4: he's gonna, you know, see Pill at any moment. And
Speaker 4: as I got his quote here rightsed, I couldn't see
Speaker 4: him anywhere. I had a life ring on the back
Speaker 4: of the boat and a strobe light. I took the
Speaker 4: damn life ring, attached the strobe light, turned it on,
Speaker 4: dropped it into mark the spot. I was worried about
Speaker 4: the current and now we were drifting, and I went
Speaker 4: below what I call the coastguard, told them I had
Speaker 4: a man overboard and marked the spot and that we
Speaker 4: were circling. It took them about twenty minutes to an
Speaker 4: hour to show up. Now their buddy Larry willis Larry
Speaker 4: Wills Rather, who had join them for this fun event.
Speaker 4: He became panic stricken. I mean he was just totally frantic,
Speaker 4: you know, about Phil falling overboard. And he said, shut
Speaker 4: off the engine and so we could hear if Phil's
Speaker 4: yelling for help, which they did well. The coastguard brought
Speaker 4: it a helicopter, and they brought it a cutter called
Speaker 4: the polar Seat, and for thirteen hours they searched for
Speaker 4: the body of Phil Champagne.
Speaker 10: So in their experience after that thirteen hours and the
Speaker 10: ability like sometimes they're hindered in their ability to search,
Speaker 10: so it seems like they didn't. They had thirteen hours
Speaker 10: of search. What's their conclusion after that thirteen hours based
Speaker 10: on so that he was.
Speaker 4: Obvious stead In fact, they it was estimated actually by
Speaker 4: the coast guard that that you couldn't survive in that
Speaker 4: water at that water's temperature for longer than maybe fifteen
Speaker 4: to twenty minutes, and that after that they were looking
Speaker 4: for a body and not someone to rescue. And so
Speaker 4: it was a tragic situation all the way around.
Speaker 10: Now for again the sort of investigation I think police
Speaker 10: are inherently going to be could be possibly suspicious, and
Speaker 10: insurance companies are even more suspicious and cynical. What was
Speaker 10: the reaction of John Robin and what was the reaction
Speaker 10: to Mitch Larry Wells? Like you say it was hysterical, Yeah, it.
Speaker 4: Was hysterical, frantic. I mean, you're your best friend falls
Speaker 4: off the boat, you can't find him, And I say
Speaker 4: the family was devastated. I mean, the whole reason for
Speaker 4: going out there was to put fill in a good
Speaker 4: mood not put it Davy Jones Locker, And it was
Speaker 4: supposed to be a fun event turned into a tragedy.
Speaker 4: And figure if you would have filled four kids all
Speaker 4: of a sudden Dad's dead, you know, and the wife
Speaker 4: even knows he's divorcing him, is not ecstatic about the
Speaker 4: fact that her soon to be you know, died in
Speaker 4: this bizarre accident. So all in all, it was not
Speaker 4: a pleasant thing at all for anybody. Phil of course
Speaker 4: is he's alive, but he doesn't know it, and he
Speaker 4: doesn't know he's dead either.
Speaker 10: Now they know. It's the most most fascinating aspect of
Speaker 10: this book. And I don't know if you want to
Speaker 10: do this and do it in this order, but what
Speaker 10: I found most fascinating about your book is that it's
Speaker 10: probably the most unique book in terms of how you
Speaker 10: lay out the order of this story. It's not how
Speaker 10: tell you why that is? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Tell that was a major challenge. This is purely from
Speaker 4: a writer's perspective, because that's what I am, and a storyteller.
Speaker 4: And in terms of construction, so action.
Speaker 5: Lucky Land Casino asking people, what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 5: gotten Lucky.
Speaker 6: Lucky in line at the Delhi.
Speaker 2: I guess ah in my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 2: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 6: You do in the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: Excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I
Speaker 1: never win? And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 7: You can get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 7: Play for free right now?
Speaker 1: Are you feeling lucky? No?
Speaker 8: We just necessary Fore we'renna be my long eighteen plus
Speaker 8: terms and conditions of plus. You wants every details.
Speaker 6: With Lucky land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 1: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen
Speaker 1: the bride and groom? Sorry?
Speaker 6: Sorry, we're here.
Speaker 1: We were getting lucky in the limo when we lost
Speaker 1: track of time.
Speaker 8: No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up
Speaker 8: quicker than a gets registered.
Speaker 1: In that case, I.
Speaker 6: Lucky land slots dot Com Daily bonuses are waiting.
Speaker 3: No purchase necessary board We're prohibited by lock eteam plus
Speaker 3: terms and conditions of flag.
Speaker 2: See website for details.
Speaker 4: Climax of the story comes halfway through the story if
Speaker 4: you tell it sequentially. I had to find a way
Speaker 4: of building up to two climaxes simultaneously that actually happened
Speaker 4: years apart. Otherwise, the book does not have forward motion
Speaker 4: to it. You know, it's not going to You're not
Speaker 4: going to turn the pages waiting to see what happens
Speaker 4: next if nothing's happening. So after scrutinizing this story, I went, Okay,
Speaker 4: the only way to tell this story is to go
Speaker 4: back and forth. Make it two stories, the story of
Speaker 4: Phil Champagne once he's once he's arrested, and the story
Speaker 4: of Phil Champagne from after when he falls off the boat,
Speaker 4: and go back and forth. And it worked. But one
Speaker 4: of the great joys of doing it, and I was
Speaker 4: being kind of tricky with it and taking some chances
Speaker 4: with my good friend Kathy Scott, who's a wonderful true
Speaker 4: crime writer right by all her books. I'm sure you
Speaker 4: probably have her on the show. He loved the transitions
Speaker 4: from going from one chapter to the next, setting each
Speaker 4: up each chapter even though the next chapter is not
Speaker 4: sequentially what happened next, but what happened in the past,
Speaker 4: so it moves forward even though you're going back in time.
Speaker 4: And that was the fun of writing it, and the
Speaker 4: great challenge of constructing it, and it came out.
Speaker 10: Okay, No, it's incredible because you do see that there's
Speaker 10: obviously a necessity, but obviously you're not explaining that this
Speaker 10: book is written in this form. It's just very entertaining,
Speaker 10: like you say, till at some point you realize, okay,
Speaker 10: here's this interest section. But you do appreciate that the
Speaker 10: book is quite unique and unlike just a movie where
Speaker 10: obviously go from some restrained scene to some chaotic scene
Speaker 10: and then back and forth, or you know, this is
Speaker 10: just a very unique format. I've never seen a book
Speaker 10: like that, so it adds to the entertainment either.
Speaker 4: But being as I could in writing this book, I
Speaker 4: had total complete freedom. There was I had no brilliant,
Speaker 4: talented corporate editor helping me. I was just I just
Speaker 4: wrote the book, and they published the book. I had people,
Speaker 4: you know. And the really strange thing, as I mentioned
Speaker 4: this in the introduction of the special edition that just
Speaker 4: came out, is that here this book comes out and
Speaker 4: it's getting really great reviews and people, you know, really
Speaker 4: enjoying it, and the book is not the one It
Speaker 4: was not the final version. The publisher sent the wrong
Speaker 4: disc to the printer. So things that I have labored
Speaker 4: over to fix, you know that you're doing page proofs
Speaker 4: weren't fixed. God spelled with with fall g. You know,
Speaker 4: few other errors and things that I mentioned in the
Speaker 4: introduction that I was concerned about the first nineteen pages
Speaker 4: of the book, you know, which are very important, and
Speaker 4: it was choppy and I was really having I mean,
Speaker 4: that was the part I was wrestling with the most
Speaker 4: of the first nineteen pages. Well E w count as
Speaker 4: an Edgar wardwin and true crime writer herself, very graciously
Speaker 4: reviewed the first nineteen pages and she made wonderful editorial
Speaker 4: suggestions on how to make the first nineteen pages easy,
Speaker 4: you know, more readable. And so I followed her suggestions
Speaker 4: and I rewrote the first nineteen pages and I was
Speaker 4: shocked when the book came out that that wasn't the
Speaker 4: final version, that the version that was printed as an
Speaker 4: earlier draft. And I bet Ellen probably felt offended by that,
Speaker 4: but it wasn't on purpose. So people. In fact, I
Speaker 4: read a brand new review of the book. They said
Speaker 4: the first nineteen pages were a little rough, but once
Speaker 4: I got past that. When I would autograph the book,
Speaker 4: I'd always write, if you make it get past the
Speaker 4: first nineteen pages. You've got him made, which.
Speaker 10: Is really true.
Speaker 4: He's going to make it past those first nineteen pages.
Speaker 4: Probably the finest compliment, and you know we all love compliments,
Speaker 4: is I was tracked down by the great Jack Olsen
Speaker 4: probably they call him the deed of true crime and
Speaker 4: American Treasure, by the greatest true crime authors, of real
Speaker 4: journalistic true crime we've ever had. And he tracked me
Speaker 4: down to tell me how much he liked the book
Speaker 4: and why he liked it, and he became a big
Speaker 4: supporter of my career. We would chat on the phone,
Speaker 4: email back and worth and he always could put right
Speaker 4: blurbs for my true crime books. So you notice my
Speaker 4: more serious true crime books from Kensington always contained a
Speaker 4: blurb on the front that says Barrel Bear writes true
Speaker 4: crime as best as Jack Olds, and that meant a
Speaker 4: lot up.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, it's a badge of honor because he didn't
Speaker 10: just throw out compliments and great reviews.
Speaker 4: That guy.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: In fact, a funny conversation with me was this huge
Speaker 4: article that was in the paper on the trouble with
Speaker 4: true crime today, and he just goes on this rant
Speaker 4: about how low true crime has sunk, you know, and
Speaker 4: all that, and I call it a jack. I said,
Speaker 4: I read your article. You're just complaining about the true crime.
Speaker 4: I said, would be nicest thing, as you say all
Speaker 4: these nice things about me, if you would have been
Speaker 4: with Pearl Bear. Is okay? And he laughed. He said, Burrow,
Speaker 4: He says, how many people do you think read that
Speaker 4: newspaper article compared to those that see across the top
Speaker 4: of your book above your name, you write true crime
Speaker 4: as best as Jack Olsen's. He says, that means more
Speaker 4: than my newspaper article. He was a great guy, great
Speaker 4: great supporter. And what it was it was the journalistic aspect.
Speaker 4: I come from a journalism background and the code of
Speaker 4: journalistic ethics, and so I did a lot of research
Speaker 4: and I had a lot of fun writing it. But
Speaker 4: I stuck. You know, the quotes are real quotes, the
Speaker 4: research is real research. And the boy I was lucky,
Speaker 4: Lyle Workman from the United States Secret Service had just
Speaker 4: retired and he had the entire Secret Service file on
Speaker 4: this case in his home and he handed it to me.
Speaker 4: And this was a test I found out. He gave
Speaker 4: it to me and he says, I'm going to entrust
Speaker 4: this Secret Service file to you to take and make
Speaker 4: copies of whatever you want. How fast can you have
Speaker 4: it back to me? We were in Spokane, Washington. I
Speaker 4: had to drive one hundred and forty miles to walla
Speaker 4: wall Off. The next day, go to a copy store,
Speaker 4: get everything, be then Federal Expression back to me. He
Speaker 4: had it back faather than thirty six hours, he told
Speaker 4: me later, says that was a test to see how
Speaker 4: honest and trustworthy and reliable you were. He says that
Speaker 4: you got that scause you got that back to me
Speaker 4: in perfect condition, exactly as I gave it to you.
Speaker 4: You couldn't have come back any faster. Who sent it
Speaker 4: by Federal Express for early morning delivery of the first day,
Speaker 4: he says it. So he wrote me. In fact, he
Speaker 4: wrote me a letter of introduction. It's beautiful.
Speaker 10: That says it that.
Speaker 4: Basically saying that I was I was trustworthy, and that's
Speaker 4: the highest compliments. So when the Secret Service can pay somebody,
Speaker 4: So that was great. Anyway, he has a whole file
Speaker 4: and gave it to me, so I was able to
Speaker 4: double check everything the Secret Service thought that turned out
Speaker 4: to be not true, and everything that thought was true.
Speaker 4: That was true, and compare it to what Phil would
Speaker 4: say and what everybody else would say. And I was,
Speaker 4: I was just the mid Atlantic Miss Tree conference. Uh,
Speaker 4: back in Philadelphia, and I'm hawking the book like a
Speaker 4: vegeomatic salesman. Lady, is this true crime? And I said, yes,
Speaker 4: it is. It says, well, I only buy fiction. I said,
Speaker 4: in that case, spam, you'll be delighted in the book
Speaker 4: as a pack of lies.
Speaker 10: That fact of life. Well, before we get into a
Speaker 10: little bit some of the antidotes about Phil Champagne, after
Speaker 10: this book is out and we talk about, well we
Speaker 10: further the story, the really the other character in this book,
Speaker 10: And again I alluded to that, to that this just
Speaker 10: because this Phil Champagne mild mannered, kind of boring life,
Speaker 10: maybe my kids won't miss me. Uh certainly my married
Speaker 10: life is sad and my and my brother just told
Speaker 10: me that you know, they're blaming me, and that it
Speaker 10: would be better if I left. Tell us about I
Speaker 10: get yeah, I guess you can tell us about the fishermen,
Speaker 10: which just seems no fiction has anything on this story here.
Speaker 10: But tell us about first before we do that, before
Speaker 10: we go backwards a little bit, tell us about Harold
Speaker 10: Stegment and his life.
Speaker 4: The real Harold's Stegment was a child born in Florida.
Speaker 4: I think his dad works in a watch for prayer
Speaker 4: shop or something. The kid died at the age of
Speaker 4: eight years old. Sad story, and the kid is buried
Speaker 4: there in Florida. And when Phil, years after his demise,
Speaker 4: needed a new identity, he went to his Florida graveyard
Speaker 4: and found the grave of this eight year old child,
Speaker 4: Harold's Richard Stegmann, who was born the same time Phil was,
Speaker 4: but who only lived to be eight years old. Well,
Speaker 4: with the information from the cemetery, he was able to
Speaker 4: get the birth certificate. With the birth certificate, he was
Speaker 4: able to get a driver's license. That he was able
Speaker 4: to get a Social Security number, and next thing you know,
Speaker 4: Phil Champagne is Harold Richard's Stegman. There was a problem, however,
Speaker 4: which Phil was unaware. He was not the first person
Speaker 4: to take that name from the Florida graveyard. That name
Speaker 4: had been taken, mind used, reused around the world by
Speaker 4: organized crime Senate Minority lead leader David Joel Friedland of
Speaker 4: New Jersey, who faked his death in a boating accent
Speaker 4: off the Bahamas and traveled to the Maldive Islands, traveled
Speaker 4: under the name Harold Richard's statement. When the Secret Service
Speaker 4: ran the name Harold Richard's statement and Phil's fingerprints, they
Speaker 4: got nothing on the fingerprints but the name Harold Richard's
Speaker 4: Stegman printed out smuggling guns, drug smuggling guns, smuggling fermenting
Speaker 4: revolution in Africa. He may have been providing tanks to
Speaker 4: rebels in the Congo. I mean, the list goes on
Speaker 4: and on and on. So when they had finally had
Speaker 4: this Harold Richards segment, they thought they had Kaiser. Sosee,
Speaker 4: they thought they had the mastermind of a vast criminal
Speaker 4: empire when all they had was Social Champagne.
Speaker 10: And the other name of that the organized crime was
Speaker 10: this Bob Callister guy, wasn't it. Oh?
Speaker 4: Ronald Callister was another fellow who used the name Harold
Speaker 4: Richards segment. He was a drug dealer in Florida and
Speaker 4: he got arrested for drug distribution and sales parole. Four
Speaker 4: months later he gets arrested again, and every time after
Speaker 4: that that he's arrested. It says if you look up
Speaker 4: his file released to another agency. What that means is
Speaker 4: the guy became a snitch. He became a double agent
Speaker 4: undercover working off his debt by you know, having all
Speaker 4: of his friends and associates arrested. One week after Phil
Speaker 4: Champagne got a driver's license in the name of Harold
Speaker 4: Richard's statement, Ronald Callister attempted to get a driver's license
Speaker 4: in the name of Harold Richard's statement. Phil had a
Speaker 4: very difficult time following his arrest. That they quite often
Speaker 4: people thought he was the same guy as this Ronald Callister,
Speaker 4: that he had the drug dealer, which he wasn't. Now
Speaker 4: while worker the Secret Service takes a look at this
Speaker 4: situation and goes, wait, a second, exact, same name, exact
Speaker 4: same everything, except the descriptions don't match at all. He's
Speaker 4: got pictures of both guys. I mean he's seen Phil
Speaker 4: face to face. There's photographs of as Ronald Calliser looks
Speaker 4: nothing like Phil Champagne. And I mean, how many other
Speaker 4: people use that name? We know of at least two
Speaker 4: that I can show you pictures of, but the list
Speaker 4: goes on and on. This name had been used by
Speaker 4: organized crime and criminals for decades. It was just Phil
Speaker 4: pat luck to pick the name Harold, which his segment.
Speaker 10: Now, before we get too far here, Harold's stegman is
Speaker 10: married to a woman named Barb, and they've got this
Speaker 10: Barb's country kitchen. So let's go back to Harold meeting
Speaker 10: Barb and who is Barb? And how do they get
Speaker 10: a country kitchen? And he's a successful, as we alluded
Speaker 10: to ida, a successful restaurant tour. Okay, in order to
Speaker 10: not have people totally be confused, Phil Champagne and Harold's
Speaker 10: segment are the same guy, all right? Yes, Harold is
Speaker 10: the name an alias that Phil use, but he didn't
Speaker 10: use that first. After he survives being drowned and is
Speaker 10: rescued out of the water by this illegal fisherman who's
Speaker 10: not going to take him to the hospital but takes
Speaker 10: him back to his cabinet of chorus, Phill has hypothermia
Speaker 10: and you know all that sort of stuff. He finally
Speaker 10: finally comes to actually I have it here. Eighty eighty
Speaker 10: hours eighty hours after the United States Coast Guard called
Speaker 10: officearch for a Phil, he woke up to sizzling bacon,
Speaker 10: fried eggs, and fresh fruit coffee. Bill Champagne showered, shaved
Speaker 10: the dress, cleaned his plate through the assistant jingle of
Speaker 10: the bearded Man's keys well before he swallowed his final
Speaker 10: triangle of toast. If this was the bum's rush, at
Speaker 10: least the bum was well fed. The guy drives Fill
Speaker 10: into end of Chordus. He says, I didn't see you,
Speaker 10: You didn't see me, and lets him out. Now I say, well, gee,
Speaker 10: what does Phil have any money?
Speaker 4: Anything? Yeah, I'll have fifteen hundred dollars. Why because Phil
Speaker 4: always kept his money in his pants instead of his wallet,
Speaker 4: the theory being it's a lot more difficult to lose
Speaker 4: your pants than I lose your billfold. So he had
Speaker 4: fifteen hundred rather soggy dollars in his pocket, and he
Speaker 4: knew where he could get some more he needed it.
Speaker 4: Kitches a ride back, not all the way home, but
Speaker 4: close enough for government work, down to Portland, and he
Speaker 4: only tells one person he's alive. That's his long time
Speaker 4: best friend. Going all the way back years and years
Speaker 4: and years. A guy in the book would call alias
Speaker 4: Mike and he tells Mike Man, I'm running away from home,
Speaker 4: and Mike tells him he's crazy. He says Alway says,
Speaker 4: by the look as my kids are growing and goes
Speaker 4: as bad divorce. You know. I talked to Phil just
Speaker 4: the other day and Phil said what a boilers out
Speaker 4: do was guys are born, they go to school, they
Speaker 4: grow up, to get a job, to get married, they
Speaker 4: have kids, they die, and that's all there is to
Speaker 4: their life. I didn't want that to be me. I
Speaker 4: wanted something different. And if this was my one chance
Speaker 4: to be in death what I hadn't been when I
Speaker 4: was alive, I had nothing to lose because I was
Speaker 4: already dead. He was just gonna go for whatever happened.
Speaker 4: Decided to be the one thing in death he hadn't
Speaker 4: been when alive, and that was to have a sense
Speaker 4: of adventure instead of a search for security.
Speaker 10: And was alias Mike supportive of this idea or did
Speaker 10: he say, hey, listen, you're crazy.
Speaker 4: He thought it was allows the idea, but Phil was
Speaker 4: his good buddy, so he gave him a couple grand
Speaker 4: and said, I think your nuts, but go ahead and
Speaker 4: do what you're gonna do.
Speaker 10: Now. There was something about what There was something about
Speaker 10: Phil believing that he had met somebody and it looked
Speaker 10: like John Prospect.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Phil, the one time and met a guy in
Speaker 4: a bar who was from Mexico, and the guy given
Speaker 4: the Philo's number, which was stuffed in his wallet or
Speaker 4: pants or god knows what. He had it somewhere. And
Speaker 4: so we could always use a cooperative gringo, you know,
Speaker 4: in our enterprise and our business and doing some work
Speaker 4: for us, you know. And Phil talked about his background
Speaker 4: and sailing and construction, and so I figured it was
Speaker 4: it's probably something rational. I'll go, you know, I'll check
Speaker 4: it out. In those days, unlike today, he got a
Speaker 4: FEUs in nineteen eighty two. It is so easy to
Speaker 4: make fake ID, fake driver's license, you know. They didn't
Speaker 4: have holograms on him, didn't have computer data banks to
Speaker 4: check hitting this stuff. He just got a letraset kit.
Speaker 4: And if you were in california'll caull you make a
Speaker 4: driver's license, says Rhode Island unless you know something from
Speaker 4: Rhode Island. And they even though what it looks like.
Speaker 4: So he made him film some fake ID, called himself
Speaker 4: Peter Donovan and made himself a fake driver's license. Took
Speaker 4: him about three days, he said, in the motel room
Speaker 4: of trial and error, and made it into Mexico and
Speaker 4: looks this guy up and uh starts doing some work
Speaker 4: for him and moving a boat here, moving the boat there.
Speaker 4: But it turns out they don't trust Phil. And how
Speaker 4: do you deal with people you don't trust? Hmmm, Well,
Speaker 4: their way of doing it was to kill him. A
Speaker 4: Fortunately for him, they weren't successful, but he sure got
Speaker 4: the hell out of there in a hurry, got the
Speaker 4: first plane to the first place, and it happened to
Speaker 4: be Miami, Florida.
Speaker 10: And and now what did you know? Part of this
Speaker 10: adventurer that he turns into, he also realizes something that
Speaker 10: it seems to be not so evident. Being married at
Speaker 10: a young age and doing what he had to do,
Speaker 10: and the kids and all the responsibility. Tell us about
Speaker 10: his new ladies men.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, if you see pictures of Phil,
Speaker 4: even if you look at pictures today at Phil at
Speaker 4: eighty four, and just take a look at that and
Speaker 4: just dial it back, and there you got it. Phil
Speaker 4: Champagne will be laughingly admit. He is good looking and charming,
Speaker 4: and he can do stuff. He can repare your deck,
Speaker 4: he can prepare your home, He can do all I mean,
Speaker 4: he can do all sorts of things. And he can dance,
Speaker 4: and he can romance. And he had no trouble with
Speaker 4: the ladies, especially with ladies of ladies of means, ladies
Speaker 4: with wealth. And as the old saying goes, the definition
Speaker 4: of charm is the ability to get the answer yes
Speaker 4: without ever asking the question. And Phil never had to
Speaker 4: ask for anything. He'd say, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 4: go back to wherever we're supposed to he's from. I'm
Speaker 4: going to go back to San Francisco. I'm going to
Speaker 4: do this. I'm going to do that, And they go,
Speaker 4: oh no, don't go he says, I know, he's I
Speaker 4: don't feel right. I'm not you know, I'm not providing money.
Speaker 4: You know, I just don't feel right about this. Goes, well,
Speaker 4: get as one lady's shown a company to make the wire,
Speaker 4: all every kind of wire you can think of, based
Speaker 4: out of New York or something. It's quite a lot
Speaker 4: of money. Said, I'll give you a job. He'll have income.
Speaker 4: You won't be sponging off of me. He said, Well,
Speaker 4: I don't know nothing or anything about wires. He says,
Speaker 4: you don't have to. You know, it's just a job.
Speaker 4: One hundred and fifty thousand a year. Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 4: I didn't have to ask for it. It was just
Speaker 4: given to him and when he was maybe done with
Speaker 4: a relationship and say say, hey, I'm going, I'm gone.
Speaker 4: There were no regrets here. Take this sale boat with
Speaker 4: you and there's that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 4: has you know, come visit me on occasional reminiscent old
Speaker 4: times and do it again, you know, And that he
Speaker 4: was telling me the story that's not in the book
Speaker 4: that they were talking. He never told me this story before.
Speaker 4: He Uh, he was feeling uncomfortable because the woman's kids
Speaker 4: didn't like him and they were there at the house
Speaker 4: and they was really uncompany. Wanted to leave, and so
Speaker 4: why don't you leave? And he's not going to go.
Speaker 4: And there were two cars in the drive with us,
Speaker 4: one with these little sports cars of gold wing you
Speaker 4: know where you get in it and your butts on
Speaker 4: the ground, and you know, he's like six foot two
Speaker 4: or something, so that was uncomfortable. There was some other
Speaker 4: vehicle that you know, he thought was dorky. I don't know,
Speaker 4: sees his way out. I can I'm not come from
Speaker 4: those cars. So what kind of car would be comfortable?
Speaker 4: And he said, I don't know, I don't you know,
Speaker 4: Lincoln Continental. Bang, next thing you know, delivered to the
Speaker 4: house is a new Lincoln Continental for him to drive
Speaker 4: him away. Tough life, tough life for Phil.
Speaker 10: But before go ahead, sorry, before before he meets Barb
Speaker 10: though he's like an example, you say that the woman.
Speaker 10: He splits up with the woman, there's no hard feelings.
Speaker 10: She gives them thirty thousand dollars to put in the
Speaker 10: bank and he wants to give it back. She won't
Speaker 10: take it, gives him the sailboat, and we're not talking
Speaker 10: a little sailboat. So he moves on a nice vote.
Speaker 10: Now tell us what tell us about Barb in her
Speaker 10: dream of the country kitchen?
Speaker 4: Okay, different sizes of the United States. Phil's in Florida,
Speaker 4: Barb's back in Shelton, Washington. Right when Phil leaves Florida
Speaker 4: after show, Wes say, what has to be one one
Speaker 4: of the more exciting aspects of the book where there
Speaker 4: is lots of adventure as like an action movie in
Speaker 4: his gunplay and all manner of mayhem. And that's when
Speaker 4: Phil takes the name Harold Stegma. Is when he's leaving
Speaker 4: Florida with about a half a million dollars, he comes
Speaker 4: all the way back to the West Coast, goes to Sheldon,
Speaker 4: stops into a place for a cup of coffee. There's
Speaker 4: this waitress there. The waitress's name is Barb Frailey, cute
Speaker 4: as a button, five kids, but she doesn't tell Harold
Speaker 4: about filled. But his new name is Harold, doesn't tell
Speaker 4: him about final sees. After their dating quite a while,
Speaker 4: it's getting kind of serious. He says, you know, I
Speaker 4: got five kids. Says I knew that, as you know.
Speaker 4: He says, I could cramp the number of noses pressed
Speaker 4: against the glass, and I come to pick you up.
Speaker 4: But he had money. He built her a brand new home,
Speaker 4: gave the kids anything they needed. They needed school clothes,
Speaker 4: one kild Weill a dirt bike, Finder's a dirt bike.
Speaker 4: And he builds her her own restaurant, Barb's Country Kitchen
Speaker 4: and the Stickys Blue Room, and he becomes well known
Speaker 4: for his thick, juicy steaks. And everything's just going along swimmingly.
Speaker 4: As Barber said, there was She never had to ask
Speaker 4: for anything the kids and didn't want for anything. The
Speaker 4: restaurant employment taxes did want, the sales tax payments did want.
Speaker 4: Phil was not that good at show. He's say, running
Speaker 4: a restaurant, real good at being generous, real good at
Speaker 4: being kind and no heart getting good help. And Sheldon.
Speaker 4: Little side note that you may get a kick out of,
Speaker 4: and this is in the book, is that Barb's former
Speaker 4: husband was the father of her children, was a correctional
Speaker 4: officer at the Sheldon Correctional Facility minimum security prison in Sheldon, Washington.
Speaker 4: Prior to being a correctional officer there, he had been
Speaker 4: an inmate under a different name. Wow, I mean changed
Speaker 4: names and identities run rampant in this story, sot fake ideas.
Speaker 4: In fact, I got a call from Peter Richter, who
Speaker 4: was the investigator for Federal Kemper Insurance, because I had
Speaker 4: gone I'd spent an afternoon with him about this case
Speaker 4: back when they were still trying to get their six
Speaker 4: hundred grand back. And he starts telling me about his life. Anyways,
Speaker 4: he was complaining about phise is philled, you know this
Speaker 4: and that, and his fake names and his fake ID
Speaker 4: and his false passports and all this. And you turn
Speaker 4: the page in the book and it says the documents
Speaker 4: that got three year old Peter Richter out of East
Speaker 4: Germany or whatever it was were forgeries he escapes to
Speaker 4: the West with with fraudulent documents, just as Phil did,
Speaker 4: and he got a He called me up and said,
Speaker 4: I just read your book. He says, very funny, he says,
Speaker 4: you got me. It's all you know, it's all dependent
Speaker 4: how you look at it.
Speaker 10: You know. Uh.
Speaker 4: The fact that he had forged documents that allowed him
Speaker 4: to escape from Czechoslovakia, whatever it was, was a plus,
Speaker 4: But when Phil Champagne used fraudulent documents it was a negative.
Speaker 4: It all depends on what side you're on.
Speaker 10: Sure, absolutely, who's looking at it? Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Yeah, who's looking at it? Yeah? Now Phil's father, you know,
Speaker 4: Phil's father died in a boating accident a lake.
Speaker 10: I know, it's a lot of incredible amounts.
Speaker 4: Of the things that just all these things that just
Speaker 4: keep the same issues coming up over and over again.
Speaker 4: It's just such a stranger than fiction true story. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's amazing. So when the restaurant goes under, when finally
Speaker 4: Barb's Country Kitchen in the Stagi's Blue Room bites the
Speaker 4: cosmic dustin Sheldon and they're reduced to staying with Barb's
Speaker 4: sister Mary and a trailer in Idaho, And Phil says,
Speaker 4: what can I do to make some money that isn't
Speaker 4: going to hurt people I don't want. He's not going
Speaker 4: to rob somebody that gun. He figures counterfeiting. And then
Speaker 4: he told me something last Saturday. They'd never told me before.
Speaker 4: And that is all of his life he had the
Speaker 4: fantasy of being a counterfeiter. Never told me about. So
Speaker 4: we thought about when he got books on it, read
Speaker 4: about it. He figured, if you pass one hundred dollars
Speaker 4: bill at one store, it's not going to hurt him.
Speaker 4: But what are they ninety five dollars and boy, the
Speaker 4: insurance covers or you know, it's not going to impact
Speaker 4: it's not going to hurt you know, a chain store
Speaker 4: to them all that much. So if you have, say
Speaker 4: twenty bills and you hit twenty stores in a shopping
Speaker 4: mall in a different state one day, Like if you
Speaker 4: go from Idaho to Bellevue, Washington, you go to Bellevue
Speaker 4: Square and or go to you know, one of the
Speaker 4: shopping malls there, bang bang, bang bang, and go home.
Speaker 4: You've got your money. And that money was the seed money.
Speaker 4: I think he was looking at a dry cleaning franchise
Speaker 4: or something, you know, a respectable you know legal business,
Speaker 4: and he was going to do this one illegal thing
Speaker 4: to make the money to do the legal thing, and
Speaker 4: they figured that was the path of illegality of least
Speaker 4: damage to other people. Sadly, on the way, they stopped
Speaker 4: for pancakes and waffles at Perkins Cake and Steaks in Richfield, Washington,
Speaker 4: and Barb accidentally pays for the breakfast with a counterfeit
Speaker 4: hundred dollars bill, which would have worked if they'd had
Speaker 4: sufficient change in the register. They didn't, so Linda Bright,
Speaker 4: who is the waitress, hands the bill to her manager
Speaker 4: and he takes it back in the office to open
Speaker 4: the safe to make change. Well, this means he has
Speaker 4: the bill in his hand long enough to become suspicious
Speaker 4: that this bill isn't real and he makes the call. Now,
Speaker 4: a lot of people don't know what the process is
Speaker 4: when you think you've got a counterfeit bill. So the
Speaker 4: comps can't come and arrest you for a counterfeit bill,
Speaker 4: it has to be the Secret Service. They are They're
Speaker 4: only charge with two things in the United States, protecting
Speaker 4: the security of the United States currency and being willing
Speaker 4: to take a bullet for the president, vice president or
Speaker 4: other dignitaries, you know, and getting hookers in Guatemalas.
Speaker 10: The obligation is.
Speaker 4: But those are the two things. Security and of the
Speaker 4: currency is a major thing, that's all. And if you
Speaker 4: pass in the United States of America, if a counterfeit
Speaker 4: bill is passed anywhere, within twenty four hours, every Secret
Speaker 4: Service office and agent in the entire country knows about it,
Speaker 4: knows what it's like, its characteristics, and chances are where
Speaker 4: it came from. Well, it's a facet fascinating intelligence system
Speaker 4: that the United States Secret Service has. And a lot
Speaker 4: of people mistakenly think this ties in with murders as well,
Speaker 4: as you may know. When people murder for some reason,
Speaker 4: when they run away in America, they go to Las Vegas.
Speaker 4: For some reason. Killers think if I go to Las Vegas,
Speaker 4: they'll never find me. I'll blend in with all the tourists.
Speaker 4: No one would think of looking for me there. Know
Speaker 4: that the first place they look for you. The United
Speaker 4: States Secret Service has its major office, a major facility
Speaker 4: in Las Vegas, Nevada, simply because so many idiotic criminals
Speaker 4: think that the best place to pass phony bills or
Speaker 4: pass fake money orders is Las Vegas. It is the
Speaker 4: worst place to try that, because they're waiting for you, sitting,
Speaker 4: they're waiting for you. Well, when the Secret Service showed
Speaker 4: up at Perkins Cake and Steak, they see Barb and
Speaker 4: they see her son is you know, wasn't obviously not
Speaker 4: the brains of the outfit, and they see Harold, and
Speaker 4: Harold just doesn't seem to fit. As Lyle worked on,
Speaker 4: the Secret Service agent says, I look at this guy,
Speaker 4: says that all my years in the Secret Service, I
Speaker 4: have never ever encountered a woman who was the head
Speaker 4: of a counterfeiting ring. One she may pass them, she
Speaker 4: may store them, but the one running the operation there
Speaker 4: may be an exception, but I haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 4: Is it's going to be some guy. And here is
Speaker 4: this guy that doesn't look like he fits with these people.
Speaker 4: And in Lyle's words, is here is this guy who
Speaker 4: looks like he's Ronald Coleman, the famous factor, you know
Speaker 4: from the thirties and forties. Swall, there's a slight British accent.
Speaker 4: He's very polite. They have no reason to hold him
Speaker 4: because he didn't pass the bill. All they could do
Speaker 4: is fingerprint him, and they run the fingerprints and nothing
Speaker 4: comes up because the guy has no criminal record, but
Speaker 4: the name, the name Harold Stegment bing bing bing bing
Speaker 4: bing bing. So now they go, wow, we may have
Speaker 4: the John Dillinger of the nineteen nineties here, we may
Speaker 4: have an international criminal mastermind. And so they they start
Speaker 4: following Harold, and finally they d raid the trailer and
Speaker 4: they find some of the counterfeiting stuff, and so he's
Speaker 4: charged with conspiracy to counterfeits. But then they find out,
Speaker 4: figure out whatever that so many people have been Harold's
Speaker 4: Stegment at the real Harold Stent. Harold Richard's statement died
Speaker 4: when he was eight. So who is this guy? Who
Speaker 4: is this mystery man who was calling himself Harold's statement,
Speaker 4: who says he's from the Cayman Islands and he won't
Speaker 4: say he won't say who he is. But his attorney says, listen,
Speaker 4: my client has no previous criminal history, despite having used
Speaker 4: the name of someone who, you know, maybe the biggest
Speaker 4: criminal in the universe. So tell you what. Give him
Speaker 4: the lowest possible sentency on everything, because he has no
Speaker 4: criminal record first offense, and he'll tell you everything about
Speaker 4: his vast criminal empire. So they sit Harold down still
Speaker 4: think he's here. You know, they got one thing. You
Speaker 4: have to call it of any other name, and it's
Speaker 4: Lyle Workman's. In fact, you can read this yourself. The
Speaker 4: interrogation by Phil Champagne is one of the bonus features
Speaker 4: that comes along with the book, the actual transcript of
Speaker 4: the interrogation. And they sent him down. One of the
Speaker 4: first questions they ask is what kind of copy camera
Speaker 4: did you use to take the picture of the nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety series Z American one hundred dollars bill you counterfeited?
Speaker 4: And he looks at them and says, general, and if
Speaker 4: I could have afforded a copy camera, there would have
Speaker 4: been no reason for me to be a counterfeitter. And
Speaker 4: I just look at him and what, well, how did
Speaker 4: you take the picture? I built a box camera out
Speaker 4: of a cardboard box. I poked a hole in it
Speaker 4: with a pin. I got a lens from this, you know,
Speaker 4: Saint Vincent de Paul for a light source, I used
Speaker 4: a regular light bulb. Well, to build a box camera
Speaker 4: like that old fashioned, you need frosted glass, he said,
Speaker 4: where did you get the frosted glass. I couldn't afford
Speaker 4: to buy frosted glass. I just took an old, broken
Speaker 4: pane of glass and put Scott's Magic Cape on it.
Speaker 4: They're sitting there drop jawed listening to this guy describe
Speaker 4: how his counterfeiting operation was a cardboard box with a
Speaker 4: pinhole in it. And then they have, wow, how come
Speaker 4: you printed so few bills? All I couldn't afford more
Speaker 4: than one rim of paper was twelve bucks or so.
Speaker 4: And then he hand painted the bills with like what
Speaker 4: of these little sets you used for painting model cars?
Speaker 4: But some of them made them all the way to
Speaker 4: the Federal Reserve Bank before they were caught. Amazing, amazing
Speaker 4: story point they were at the point they were dumbfounded.
Speaker 4: The point is he did some incredible work having no
Speaker 4: technology at all. I mean no, I mean he's the
Speaker 4: ultimate low tech. They thought they were getting a criminal mastermind,
Speaker 4: you know, who was using a high tech copy camera.
Speaker 10: And this, that and the other.
Speaker 4: But things that didn't make sense to them, like why
Speaker 4: were there so few bills? You know? Uh, Well, it's
Speaker 4: because he couldn't afford any more paper, you know. And
Speaker 4: he'd bought an old printer, you know, crank printer. Uh
Speaker 4: he just managed to uh uh pull it off, you know,
Speaker 4: And they think they have a criminal mastermind, and no
Speaker 4: they don't. They just had this real low tech guy
Speaker 4: that wanted to make a few bills.
Speaker 10: When it's finally revealed who Phil still Champagne is, yeah,
Speaker 10: what does what's the Obviously we talked about what the media.
Speaker 10: The media just jumped on this story and loved it. Yeah,
Speaker 10: well what about what about Phil's family?
Speaker 4: Well, you see how they found out it was Phil
Speaker 4: Champagne was a very bizarre fluke Lyle Workman was getting
Speaker 4: so frustrated. The FBI could not figure out who he was.
Speaker 4: Inter Pole couldn't figure it out, Secret Service couldn't figure
Speaker 4: it out. No fingerprint match, nothing anywhere. Well, this is
Speaker 4: a Spokane, Washington. He goes across the street over to
Speaker 4: the Spokane Police Department, just purely on out of frustration,
Speaker 4: hands them the fingerprints. He says, you got anything on
Speaker 4: this guy? They shouldn't have, because Phil Champagne at this
Speaker 4: point it is like sixty four years old. When he
Speaker 4: was nineteen, he took a car without permission and was fingerprinted.
Speaker 4: That shouldn't even have been in their system. It should
Speaker 4: have been you know, done away with decades ago. Why
Speaker 4: it was even in there they don't know, but they
Speaker 4: got a match. By the way, he said, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: this is Philip Wendell Champagne. Who Philip Wendell Champagne. What's
Speaker 4: this criminal record? He doesn't have any. The only reason
Speaker 4: we have his fingerprints is when he was nineteen years
Speaker 4: old he got in trouble for taking a car without
Speaker 4: permission and brought it back. But we, you know, fingerprinted
Speaker 4: him and that's it. Not even any major traffic violations.
Speaker 4: But now they knew who he was. Well, once they
Speaker 4: knew who he was, that meant he'd have to get
Speaker 4: hold of his brothers and his kids and say, uh, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm not dead, because it was gonna come out, you know,
Speaker 4: all over the news. So he said, down with Lorning.
Speaker 4: He wrote a letter. He said, well, you guys probably
Speaker 4: hate me, he says, but u this is the story,
Speaker 4: and some of them were mad as hell. His kids
Speaker 4: still don't talk to him, although one of the daughters
Speaker 4: did actually babysit Barba's kids while Barb and Phil Harold
Speaker 4: over the Elliotts were in the Slammer for eighteen to
Speaker 4: twenty one months minimum security work release, but they got
Speaker 4: into a tiff later on. I guess anyway, so his brothers,
Speaker 4: he's still close with his brothers. They kissed him, made up.
Speaker 4: His brothers maybe were furious with him, but Mitch was
Speaker 4: really upset. First he was upset that his brother died,
Speaker 4: and then he was mad as hell that his brother
Speaker 4: was alive. But he got over that John Robbin. He
Speaker 4: just was eager to see his brother, you know. And
Speaker 4: in the new edition of the books, the brand new
Speaker 4: twentieth Anniversary Special Edition of Man Overboard, there is a
Speaker 4: picture of all three brothers taken recently on a little
Speaker 4: fun vacation in Mexico, Whereas Still said, this time there
Speaker 4: was no one trying to kill me, although he did
Speaker 4: have trouble getting into Mexico for this family reunion because
Speaker 4: one of the questions they asked is have you ever
Speaker 4: had a passport under another name? Well, if he lies,
Speaker 4: he'll be in big trouble. So he told the truth, Yes,
Speaker 4: I had a fraudulent passport, partially if they had passport
Speaker 4: the name of Harold's segment, Well, they denied him a
Speaker 4: passport for a long time until he finally got an
Speaker 4: attorney said, listen, the guy went to prison. He paid
Speaker 4: his debt to society. You know there's no charges hanging
Speaker 4: over him. Give him a passport. So he did. Now
Speaker 4: he has a real passport and the name was phil Champagne,
Speaker 4: and he was able to go down to travel down,
Speaker 4: and he and his brothers had a wonderful time. No
Speaker 4: one got someone got drug a least no one fell overboard.
Speaker 10: Now what about the what about his good friend alias Mike?
Speaker 10: Because I won't we won't give it away because but
Speaker 10: with Alias Mike has a little role in this story too.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we're not giving away the how where Field
Speaker 4: gets the half million dollars? Uh uh there gets to
Speaker 4: leave Florida. But suffice it to say, it's like something
Speaker 4: out of out of the movies. Yeah, it's like an
Speaker 4: action movie. Here we get into a whole thing of battle, murder,
Speaker 4: sudden death and jumping out of planes and god knows
Speaker 4: what else. Uh No, Mike's kind of perked at him. Uh.
Speaker 4: He and Mike don't talk much anymore. Mm because the
Speaker 4: way he looks at it is that well, as people
Speaker 4: want to read the book will understand, Mike pretty much
Speaker 4: gave Philip's life back before he became Harold's segment and uh,
Speaker 4: before he came back and because as he gave me
Speaker 4: my life back and I screwed it up by the
Speaker 4: counterfeiting thing, and so he's hasn't you know, It's like, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm done.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: I told you it was a bad idea, a runaway
Speaker 4: from home in the first place. And then they have this,
Speaker 4: by their life threatening adventure in Florida, that ties that.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's amazing how everything tied together. And people say,
Speaker 4: is this a pack of lies? You know? And I
Speaker 4: call the Book of Raton. Sheriff done a book of Raton,
Speaker 4: And I laid out to him the scenario that's in
Speaker 4: the book as far as the gunplay, this to that,
Speaker 4: one thing and another, and he said, makes perfect sense
Speaker 4: to me. He says, this kind of stuff happens down here,
Speaker 4: and we'd be the last to know about it, he says,
Speaker 4: So I can't say it isn't true. And it sounds
Speaker 4: pretty you know, pretty nineteen eighties Florida to me. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And then everything after that checks out. So I mean,
Speaker 4: because when the Secret Service got him and they got
Speaker 4: all of his stuff, they had his bank cards from
Speaker 4: his old bank accounts in the Florida and Texas, So
Speaker 4: I mean the stuff the things that I could verify
Speaker 4: by investigative poor investigative techniques and with the help of
Speaker 4: the United States Secret Service and law enforcement and the attorneys.
Speaker 4: Everything that was verifiable was verified. The things that weren't
Speaker 4: verified in these little gaps fit too well to be
Speaker 4: one hundred percent of lies. It was too much, you know.
Speaker 4: It was just if this is a lie, then how
Speaker 4: did this happen afterwards that matches up to it, that
Speaker 4: is verified, so you know, if it's a scam.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 4: I can't say whether it worked or not, but everyone
Speaker 4: lived happily. Ever after what happened to the six hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollars, I mean it said that if Phil ever
Speaker 4: showed up alive, that federal keeper would get their money back.
Speaker 4: They never got their money back and they're not going
Speaker 4: after it. They did go after my publisher, however, my
Speaker 4: original publisher, trying to get money, thinking maybe it was
Speaker 4: going to fill and they said, hell, no, we don't
Speaker 4: even know the guy. We just know we got a
Speaker 4: guy right talk about him. And they made some mistakes
Speaker 4: in their serving in their filing that they made on
Speaker 4: their claim because they were serving Phil and John Robert
Speaker 4: at the same time, and the long story short, they
Speaker 4: messed up, it was thrown out, and they just decided
Speaker 4: to drop the whole thing federally. I got a phone
Speaker 4: call from Peter Richard Federal Kemper Assurances is going back course,
Speaker 4: you know, like eighteen nineteen years ago, saying, you know,
Speaker 4: we're not trying to get the money back anymore. You know,
Speaker 4: we're not going after it. They got a fair and square.
Speaker 10: Yeah. Tell us about the experience of having the actual
Speaker 10: Phil Champagne after he gets out of prison at the
Speaker 10: book signing and how that was. Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 10: who got the biggest kick out of that is a
Speaker 10: great guy, GM Ford as Jerry for he's a mystery
Speaker 10: writer author. Here's been some great books, Bum's Rush and
Speaker 10: Deaded thet Her and several others. Great guy, former high
Speaker 10: school english teacher, and it just cracked him up. And
Speaker 10: if you went to the signing, the book signing the
Speaker 10: Seattle Mystery Bookshop for Man Overboard Counterfeit Resurrection Phil Champagne,
Speaker 10: you got the book not only autographed by the author
Speaker 10: but also by the criminal Phil Away because Bill was
Speaker 10: out of prison by then, and so Phil Champagne and
Speaker 10: Barb Frailey came to the book signing the autographed books,
Speaker 10: and I can tell you that I know for a
Speaker 10: fact that a copy of a copy of the original
Speaker 10: hardback edition of Man Overboard, signed by Burl Bear, Phil
Speaker 10: Champagne and Barb Frailey is in the private collection of
Speaker 10: former presidents of William Jefferson Clinton. Yeah, that's appropriate. And
Speaker 10: Barb Frailey there too is. Barb being there is pretty
Speaker 10: wild as well. Yeah, Barb is a real kick.
Speaker 4: She really is a kick. And she showed up and
Speaker 4: she's lighting her cigarettes with a lighter that looks as
Speaker 4: if it's made out of one hundred dollars bill.
Speaker 10: Had she broken.
Speaker 4: The only guy that was cranky and the whole thing
Speaker 4: was their defense attorney. The defense attorney was mad at
Speaker 4: the prosecution for how they presented their case. He was
Speaker 4: mad as hell. He thought they violated various and sundry things.
Speaker 4: And we're trying to get away a little bit too much.
Speaker 4: So even just mentioning him and it's some close to
Speaker 4: him in there, but he was ticked. He was ticked
Speaker 4: with with the prosecution, with the Secret Service and the prosecutor,
Speaker 4: Tim Almes. He's a real nice guy. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: the strange thing that here you had this case that
Speaker 4: everyone found vastly amusing, including the Secret Service and the prosecutor,
Speaker 4: and they all liked Phil. Why did they find the case?
Speaker 10: Why did they.
Speaker 4: Well, it's funny, I mean, the whole case is funny.
Speaker 4: It's it's so bizarre because what they originally thought they
Speaker 4: had was, like I said, they thought they had this
Speaker 4: criminal mastermind and they're going to find out all about
Speaker 4: his vast criminal empire. And he's just Phil Champagne, a
Speaker 4: guy who fell.
Speaker 10: Off a boat.
Speaker 4: Who decided, you know, who had all these bizarre adventures.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's really like the Walter Midti sort of thing.
Speaker 4: You know, Like Phil says, does he have regrets?
Speaker 10: Well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you know, his kids, you know, there's
Speaker 4: that whole issue and his brother's sign. He's dead for
Speaker 4: ten years, but he had ten years really of living
Speaker 4: the life that people only imagine. What if what if
Speaker 4: I was handsome enough to have wealthy women, you know,
Speaker 4: taking care of me, doing this, that and the other.
Speaker 4: What if I was brave enough to do something so
Speaker 4: insane and so daring. Is what Phil Champagne does as
Speaker 4: the climax of the of the uh of so, I mean,
Speaker 4: here is a guy that had a fear of flying
Speaker 4: at one time who actually jumps out of an airplane
Speaker 4: and the static line, jump into a drug lord's layer
Speaker 4: to liberate over a half million dollars in money at
Speaker 4: risk to his life, something no sane, rational person would
Speaker 4: do unless they were already dead and had nothing to lose.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's incredible. What what he like, I say, what
Speaker 10: he really becomes is so much different. It's there's certain
Speaker 10: people that obviously we talk about serial killers and they
Speaker 10: have this veil of normalcy and meanwhile, you know they
Speaker 10: had a wife and kids, and the wife is saying, geez,
Speaker 10: what a great guy.
Speaker 4: And meanmore everyone blood every night. Yeah, but I've always
Speaker 4: said anybody do this.
Speaker 10: I never said anybody do such a purposeful change of life.
Speaker 10: It's almost it's uh, it's very movie esque in terms
Speaker 10: of somebody changing their character. Almost seems unrealistic that they
Speaker 10: would change their character that much. This guy that is
Speaker 10: sort of not timid but really does do things that.
Speaker 4: Are he was he was a ladies man before he
Speaker 4: was married. He was a guy who was obviously bright
Speaker 4: enough to be involved in this major construction company, those
Speaker 4: Champagne said, because I don't care what the IQ test
Speaker 4: for what he was a kid, say, this guy is
Speaker 4: smart and he's resourceful. You know, he could have just
Speaker 4: done anything. And here's a guy in a situation where
Speaker 4: I got to complaining with the plane is a perfect
Speaker 4: example he'd had if he had a fear of flying
Speaker 4: before he died. Afterwards, he's going to jump out of
Speaker 4: an airplane and whatever it was that he didn't do
Speaker 4: before that. He was afraid of her, too, timid of
Speaker 4: what the hell? You know? You only live once, and
Speaker 4: I was I'm supposedly my life supposedly ended. This is
Speaker 4: my second chance, this is my chance ants to be
Speaker 4: other than what I was, he said. Didn't want to
Speaker 4: be the guy who just born, went to school, had married,
Speaker 4: got married, had kids, died, and you know, what do
Speaker 4: you take with you? Maybe except your memories, you know,
Speaker 4: He says, if I had ten years of adventure, ten
Speaker 4: years of living under the shadow of the sword, of
Speaker 4: having people chasing me trying to kill me, you know,
Speaker 4: the wealthy women, beautiful exotic women, sail boats, an adventure
Speaker 4: and then he meets Barb, falls in love with her,
Speaker 4: and he says, she stuck with me through everything, and
Speaker 4: he says in her love is worth more than all
Speaker 4: the real money and account of money put together. And
Speaker 4: they're so happily married and she still give gives him
Speaker 4: crap and slaps him around and he laughs and they
Speaker 4: have a wonderful time, and they got grandkids and you know,
Speaker 4: it's social Security. He's eighty four years old and just great,
Speaker 4: great fun. We had about an hour conversation last Saturday,
Speaker 4: and he's just a delight.
Speaker 10: Now not it just hopefully this doesn't give anything away,
Speaker 10: but and if it does, then we just won't answer it.
Speaker 10: But when is it that Barb realizes that she has
Speaker 10: been with this other person?
Speaker 4: Oh, that's not giving too much away. It's a very
Speaker 4: funny part of the story. She thinks she's with Harold.
Speaker 4: She knows she's been arrested for passing a counterfeit bill,
Speaker 4: and she's going, what that holds it all about? You know?
Speaker 4: And she has a story that they've told the trailer
Speaker 4: and Phil says, you know, Harold said, I sold this trailer.
Speaker 4: Here's some money. Let's go, you know, let's go on
Speaker 4: a little trip over to the Pacific Northwest here, or
Speaker 4: let's go over to Belgiue and she's played in ignorance. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: he's saying that she's in on it. Now, that doesn't
Speaker 4: seem to make much sense, except I found out from
Speaker 4: a legal standpoint it did for her to deny involvement,
Speaker 4: but for him to claim she was involved for some reason,
Speaker 4: which is explained legally in the book. It was to
Speaker 4: her advantage, it was to protect her, and it was
Speaker 4: some lawyer explained it to me. But it sounds weird
Speaker 4: at first, Blush, but anyway, she does not know anything
Speaker 4: about Harold not being Harold, and tell they're in court
Speaker 4: and he is scheduled Harold is there to testify on
Speaker 4: her behalf. And when he gets jump on the stand
Speaker 4: and they say to him, will you please say your name?
Speaker 4: Whatever spell I said, was that your real name? Nope?
Speaker 4: Who are you? I refuse to answer, and grants me
Speaker 4: to to incriminate me. And she's going what she does
Speaker 4: not know that he is in Harold, that she's who
Speaker 4: the hell he is, And then they promptly get married,
Speaker 4: get me, after all, her husband and wife can't testify
Speaker 4: against each other. She will you marry me? She says yes.
Speaker 4: He says, well, I don't care what your name is.
Speaker 4: Harold or Phil. I married marrying a man not a name.
Speaker 4: I'll figure out who you are too earlier, he says, yes,
Speaker 4: he proposes to He says, yes, I'll marry you. I
Speaker 4: don't know quite who you are, but yes, I'll marry you. Yes.
Speaker 4: She didn't know until they were sitting in the courtroom
Speaker 4: when they put him up on the stand and said
Speaker 4: what's your real name? And he wouldn't tell him.
Speaker 10: Yeah. Yeah, it's It's an incredible story of a man
Speaker 10: reinventing himself and living separate lives and then coming back
Speaker 10: to another Life's not like.
Speaker 4: He became a He did become a bad guy by
Speaker 4: any stretch of the imagination. He just decided to like
Speaker 4: he says, I'm walking down, I'm debating with myself do
Speaker 4: I go back to my old life or do I
Speaker 4: just go? And you know, in his mind, the kids
Speaker 4: are grown, the wife is divorced, came his brother lasting her.
Speaker 4: None of us want to see you again. Your screw up?
Speaker 4: So what the hell? And you know, I've done research
Speaker 4: on this since then, and there's been This is a
Speaker 4: a very typical fantasy for a lot of guys going
Speaker 4: through a midlife class life divorce is god. I want
Speaker 4: to run away from home, and he said he was
Speaker 4: walking down the street down, of course, weighing the pros
Speaker 4: and cons. Do I say, hey, I'm not dead here
Speaker 4: I am folks, Or do I just roll with it,
Speaker 4: just keep going? And once he started going, he didn't
Speaker 4: stop to the area. He'd go through ballots of going, gosh,
Speaker 4: I feel horrible that my brothers think I'm dead, Abb
Speaker 4: but they didn't know, but they didn't want to see
Speaker 4: me anyway. You know, I feel bad my ex wife
Speaker 4: thinks I'm dead. Well, she was divorcing. He was able
Speaker 4: to justify it back and forth. So he said, I
Speaker 4: have good good times and then bad times at nights.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you think about it and one of your is
Speaker 4: doing the right thing. But well, it's been six weeks,
Speaker 4: it's been six months, it's been two years, he's been
Speaker 4: three years, four years. And then when he meets Barb,
Speaker 4: falls in love with her and they have the restaurant,
Speaker 4: it just seems like, well, it's all going to work
Speaker 4: out just fine. You know. The strange thing is Dad,
Speaker 4: it did all his Burl Bear says, it all comes
Speaker 4: out in the wash. It's just the spin cycle that
Speaker 4: makes you crazy, and it has all come out in
Speaker 4: the wash. Phil is happy, Barb's happy living and you
Speaker 4: know they got social security. You know, they got grandkids.
Speaker 4: He's tied with his brothers. He is not tied with
Speaker 4: his kids, but they weren't too tight with him, you know,
Speaker 4: first time when he died, so they had plenty of
Speaker 4: time to get away from him. But on a day
Speaker 4: to day basis, he's healthy, he's happy. And of course
Speaker 4: now this the twentieth anniversary special edition of ban Overboard
Speaker 4: Counterbeit Resurrections of Phil Champagne with special Bodus material. Now
Speaker 4: that this has come out in a book paperback at
Speaker 4: an ebook for instant download, he's getting some more publicity
Speaker 4: again and he kind of gets a kick out of that.
Speaker 4: There's been two songs written.
Speaker 10: Yeah I heard that.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Darryl Elmer Rogers has written the Ballad of Phillip Champagne,
Speaker 4: which is also available for a high quality MP three
Speaker 4: download for a buck from Darryl Elmer Rogers' website and
Speaker 4: us up on YouTube, and a lower quality one. Who's
Speaker 4: just Ballad of Phillip Champagne's got a folk ballad? What
Speaker 4: would you do if it happened to you would you
Speaker 4: go back to your old life or would you just
Speaker 4: start a new You know, that's a good question. And
Speaker 4: then the other versions by Willie Fasts Rockmore. The rap
Speaker 4: artist is doing a rap man Overport song about Phil
Speaker 4: Champagne that's coming out here real soon. So you got
Speaker 4: a rap artist doing Phil story, and you got Daryl
Speaker 4: Rodgers doing it, and I just get the biggest kick
Speaker 4: out of it, So to Phil, and I love the
Speaker 4: all people's response to the book. You might want to
Speaker 4: tell the audience about when the news is when this
Speaker 4: story first broke after you know, it was off when
Speaker 4: the book first came out, the original version, and Phil's
Speaker 4: face was splash in full color on the front page
Speaker 4: the newspaper in Idaho, Cortline or whoever it was, and
Speaker 4: it was a big story, you know. And Phil's walking
Speaker 4: down the street. This lady recognizes him for the newspaper
Speaker 4: and she just starts giving him hill. They make you
Speaker 4: out some sort of adventure stars, some sort of an
Speaker 4: action hero. You're nothing but a two bit cook at
Speaker 4: a criminal counterfeiture and you're worthless, And she just goes
Speaker 4: on and on because he runs out of steam and
Speaker 4: runs out of insults. In Phil Charmus Ever just looks
Speaker 4: at her and says, I bet your husband wishes he
Speaker 4: could fall off the sailboat too. It's a it's a
Speaker 4: fun story, and I really I love hearing from people
Speaker 4: who read the book to get their response to it,
Speaker 4: because everyone who reads it he that says, is this true?
Speaker 4: You know, is this is the wildest story I've ever read.
Speaker 4: For a true crime book to be funny is unusual,
Speaker 4: and it is probably I don't know if there's any
Speaker 4: other funny true crime books out there, but people do
Speaker 4: find this one vastly amusing.
Speaker 10: There's probably not too many anyway, that's sure. There was
Speaker 10: anybody that to If there was anybody to bring a
Speaker 10: little bit of humor to true crime, it's you, and
Speaker 10: you do it every week on your show True Crime Uncensored.
Speaker 4: I've never tried to be intensive to the stories, but
Speaker 4: we just try to have fun amongst ourselves, Harold and
Speaker 4: Harold Howard, Howard Lapitis and Mark Boyer and Matt Allen
Speaker 4: and I said, we'll have a good time doing the show.
Speaker 4: And I think, well, you've been a guest on the
Speaker 4: show when Donald Oldwen was the co host, and I
Speaker 4: think our guess, have good time.
Speaker 10: Absolutely, it's it's it's irreverend, I guess and and like yeah,
Speaker 10: and and what I wanted to ask you too, is
Speaker 10: we can tell our audience is that this is a
Speaker 10: Wild Blue Press release, and tell us a little bit
Speaker 10: about your tell us a little bit about your relationship
Speaker 10: with Wild Blue Press, and what do you have for
Speaker 10: the future and the books that authorling things coming up.
Speaker 10: I am so excited about this stuff, but I just
Speaker 10: you know, it was almost too good to be true.
Speaker 10: And I always worry and things are too good. But
Speaker 10: and I'll see how how things go with Man Overboard.
Speaker 10: But uh, it's Steve Jackson, who was a great true
Speaker 10: crime writer himself, right, and put this thing together. And
Speaker 10: we've got some starting off with a core group of
Speaker 10: authors that people know, that people know they're hopefully geting
Speaker 10: good you know, they know they're going to get a
Speaker 10: good book. Got Kaitlyn Rother, who, by the way, I
Speaker 10: went to this party with Kaitlyn the other night. She
Speaker 10: looks like she's graduating from middle school.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize he was. She looks like a kid.
Speaker 4: I mean, she's older than that, you know, but I
Speaker 4: never better in person. I talked on the phone and
Speaker 4: had her on my show several times. She just looks
Speaker 4: like he lets put her in a schoolgool uniform. But anyway,
Speaker 4: Steve Jackson, Caitlin rother Ron Francell of Fred Rosen has
Speaker 4: a couple of books with him, and it was just
Speaker 4: starting off this core group of people, you know, people
Speaker 4: you respected, and re releasing some of these classic books
Speaker 4: that haven't been available and some new ones. Well. Two
Speaker 4: things that I'm excited about with Wild Blue Press had
Speaker 4: great books, great covers, are printed beautifully, and they're doing
Speaker 4: promotion which I've never had a publisher do before, and
Speaker 4: got coming out in the coming year my private high
Speaker 4: novel Headlock, which has been out of print forever. It
Speaker 4: was a book they got internationally great rave reviews and
Speaker 4: due to the fact they used a technology that's now common,
Speaker 4: but back then it was new. I think I made
Speaker 4: fifty six dollars on the book. So now it'll come
Speaker 4: out to a whole new audience. And we have a
Speaker 4: new true crime book that I've been working on, or
Speaker 4: actually should have been working on. But Frank Gerardo Junior,
Speaker 4: is an award winning journalist, is doing all the research
Speaker 4: and the basic writing on the case of a woman
Speaker 4: who murders her husband by putting anti freeze in his gatorade,
Speaker 4: actually has her daughter put the anti freeze and gatorade.
Speaker 4: This woman is such a piece of work. I don't
Speaker 4: want to give away too much of the story, but
Speaker 4: it's one of the most This woman is one of
Speaker 4: the most horrific individuals. She had a horrific life, even
Speaker 4: got knocked up by her grandfather when she was sixteen. Well,
Speaker 4: but it's going to be a pretty amazing story and
Speaker 4: we're going to have that coming out this year. I
Speaker 4: just talked to Frank today. He's been doing all the
Speaker 4: you know, she always said, the research and the journalist
Speaker 4: sick writing, and then I'll come in when he's got
Speaker 4: his part that and I go to and put in
Speaker 4: my commentary and we gas what we did with the
Speaker 4: Manley Williams Deadly Sins, which was just a quick, little,
Speaker 4: you know, two star ebook we put out real quick
Speaker 4: to go along with the Deadly Sins episode where he
Speaker 4: I provided it. On that one, he wrote the thing
Speaker 4: that I came in at the end with my commentary
Speaker 4: on this one, we're going to do it together, where
Speaker 4: he writes the basic initial research and then I come
Speaker 4: in and add so we say my color commentary, and
Speaker 4: I think we make a great team. He's a true
Speaker 4: old school you know, shoe leather. He's almost like a
Speaker 4: Raymond Chandler character himself, real old school investigative journalist with
Speaker 4: great cred and a great guy to work with. And
Speaker 4: so I'm pretty excited with the things that we got
Speaker 4: coming out for Wild Blue this year. I'm gonna have
Speaker 4: my Private Eye novel, brand new true crime book because
Speaker 4: Man Overboard. And then some of the the things I've
Speaker 4: been writing. I did some deadly Sins shows that'll be
Speaker 4: on season four. I just did two episodes like cases
Speaker 4: I had to investigate it. They just like my commentary,
Speaker 4: and so we're writing up some mini books on those,
Speaker 4: and then we'll combine them all together. And I think
Speaker 4: the original the eventual idea, which I think is great,
Speaker 4: is that in time, you will be able to go
Speaker 4: on I say, the Wild Blue site and pick, like
Speaker 4: picking from a menu. Yeah, I'd like this story by Taylor,
Speaker 4: and I'd like, well, this thing by Ron looks interesting,
Speaker 4: and well this thing Burl did, Oh yeah, and then
Speaker 4: you got this by so and so and the other
Speaker 4: artists we're adding and like put checks next to the
Speaker 4: boxes and they'll turn that into a book for you,
Speaker 4: you know, the different things by the different authors, whether
Speaker 4: there's short things or longer things, and it's all come
Speaker 4: to you your own personalized book. You know, the dan
Speaker 4: Zoopansky True crime collection book with articles by you know,
Speaker 4: Caitlin and Burl and Ron and just with that one,
Speaker 4: that one to your personal specifications put together, it's the
Speaker 4: way you would like it.
Speaker 10: And I got them comes.
Speaker 4: Down the road.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he's I know that Steve and his partner and
Speaker 10: the authors in combination as well, because you guys do
Speaker 10: all do editor editing stuff for each other and help
Speaker 10: each other as well. I mean, like you said, Kathy Scott,
Speaker 10: And so what I wanted to say too is that
Speaker 10: it seems like a completely different approach with Steve saying listen,
Speaker 10: this is you know, for once a publishing company really
Speaker 10: run by authors and really looking at what was wrong
Speaker 10: with the publishing companies and their approach, like not advertising
Speaker 10: and probably having twenty people when maybe they should have
Speaker 10: four and concentrate.
Speaker 4: On pretty much like I'll plug to another publishing company
Speaker 4: that I'm not with, but I'll plug anyway, and that's
Speaker 4: Brash Books, which is my nephew Lee Goldberg, and they're
Speaker 4: not doing true crime. They're doing mystery fiction with great names,
Speaker 4: great authors and great deals. And so I'm very you know,
Speaker 4: I'm supportive of all these new adventurous ways of doing it.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you this is the first time I've
Speaker 4: ever had a publisher say write the book you want
Speaker 4: to write and won't publish it. I've never had that before.
Speaker 4: It with the exception of Man Overboard, where they said, okay,
Speaker 4: we like the idea, you go ahead and write it
Speaker 4: and just let us know when you're done. It has
Speaker 4: been twenty years since I've had that sort of with
Speaker 4: exception of my private eye novel Headlock, which was done
Speaker 4: for the now defunctently Alibi Press, which was another wonderful
Speaker 4: group to work for, but unfortunately they were too They
Speaker 4: were the right idea too soon, which is unfortunate. But
Speaker 4: it says so far everything's in delight, the pleasure and
Speaker 4: be happier. Yeah.
Speaker 10: What what I found too is that with your book
Speaker 10: with this like I got to say it again, and
Speaker 10: that your voice that I know of you from interviewing
Speaker 10: you and from speak and listening to you on True
Speaker 10: Crime Uncensored, is that that sense of humor is really
Speaker 10: unbridled in this first book. And I thought it was
Speaker 10: surprising that there was more of the real Burrow Bear
Speaker 10: in this book than in the true crime And what
Speaker 10: was your explanation for that?
Speaker 4: Well, the exilation for that is to say that the
Speaker 4: true crime books, which I'm very proud of that I've
Speaker 4: done for Kensington's is his body Count and Headshot and
Speaker 4: Murder of the Family and Fatal Beauty, et cetera, follow
Speaker 4: particular format, and there's there are always say rules in
Speaker 4: quotes the true crime the way they are from Kensington
Speaker 4: or Berkeley or Saint Martin's, where they follow kind of
Speaker 4: a law and order sort of format. And the narrator,
Speaker 4: the unmissioned narrator, does it break the fourth wall. He
Speaker 4: doesn't do commentary at the end. He could have his
Speaker 4: office comments at the end, but mostly you're just kind
Speaker 4: of Joe Friday. There were no such rules as far
Speaker 4: as Man Overboard was concerned. It was the first true
Speaker 4: crime book I wrote. I didn't care about what the
Speaker 4: rules were of traditional true crime books because I wasn't
Speaker 4: writing one. I was writing this so and if you
Speaker 4: will read my commentary on The Little Book of Manling
Speaker 4: William's Deadly Sins, My writing in there is much more
Speaker 4: like it is in Man Overboard. It's just me writing
Speaker 4: the way I normally write when I'm not trying to
Speaker 4: be Joe Friday the ow in fact Murder in the Family.
Speaker 4: I was only able to get one questionable line on
Speaker 4: the entire book, and that was.
Speaker 10: It was true.
Speaker 4: Is the seamen sample flipped through the prosecution's fingers and
Speaker 4: landed in the defense's lap? Yeah it was might have
Speaker 4: an issue, Yeah, but you can't be too smart ass,
Speaker 4: and you know, the more traditional field. But there are
Speaker 4: a variety of ways of telling stories. It's just as
Speaker 4: there's many different kinds of authors with different styles. And
Speaker 4: it's the same with my Private Eye novel, the closest
Speaker 4: thing to because I always wanted to be a hero
Speaker 4: of a book, and my Private Eye novel Headlock, where
Speaker 4: the character's name as Jeff Reynolds, but everyone knows it's
Speaker 4: not his real name. I wrote that in the first person,
Speaker 4: present tense, which is a nightmare to write, but GRAY
Speaker 4: had great fun doing it and I got to be
Speaker 4: the hero of the book. I always wanted to be
Speaker 4: a hero. Sure, I even get be the hero in
Speaker 4: the gun battle and everything. I'm so proud of myself.
Speaker 4: And I did it all without leaving my.
Speaker 10: Chair, right, as long as you don't have to do
Speaker 10: it in nonfiction. Steve Jackson seemed like he almost did
Speaker 10: it in real life center so.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Well, Steve had a situation where quanted criminals
Speaker 4: show up at his door the gun and wanting to
Speaker 4: use the phone, but not really, Yeah, could I use
Speaker 4: your phone here? All coldine won won for you know,
Speaker 4: you won't everybody a gun in your face, I told you,
Speaker 4: and you'll probably write an e book about it, makes
Speaker 4: the money off of it.
Speaker 10: Well, I hope. So I told Steve you got to
Speaker 10: you got to stop taking your homework home, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 10: that's really taking on research, way.
Speaker 4: Too way too serious, I think, you know, taking I
Speaker 4: got to meet Ron Francella and Steve Jackson and Kaitlyn
Speaker 4: Rother all at the same time, and here I go,
Speaker 4: had these folks on my show and talked on the phone.
Speaker 4: But we were all together the party of Saturday night
Speaker 4: at San Diego, and it was quite a kick, uh to.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well that was fantastic. Yeah, you got to you
Speaker 10: gotta post some did you post some photos of that?
Speaker 4: I posted a picture of Caitlin. I'll have to get
Speaker 4: the rest of them off of my girlfriend's phone here.
Speaker 4: I called her child prodigy Caitlin rot there the first
Speaker 4: she looked like she's gonna graduate middle school.
Speaker 10: It's incredible. Now, Burrell U, there is a program and
Speaker 10: I did miss it this Saturday, so I'm hoping waiting
Speaker 10: for it to come into archive where you actually interview
Speaker 10: the Phil Champagne and talk about man time oncensored.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a true crime on censored. I was just
Speaker 4: about to post it on on Facebook. Uh why only
Speaker 4: due to my bizarre recording uh methods. Uh. The recording
Speaker 4: crashed after about a half hours. Only got half of
Speaker 4: the show, which is unfortunate, but so I'll say here's excerpt.
Speaker 4: If anyone else recorded it, please let me know. But
Speaker 4: I actually got half of the show. But Phil was
Speaker 4: on Saturday for an hour with us where we grilled
Speaker 4: him like a swordfish, and then we got we have
Speaker 4: the Fellow I don't want to get the Whitechapel murders, yeah,
Speaker 4: the Bank Holiday murders, yeah, and then very uncharacteristically but
Speaker 4: kind of. You've heard of PF Sloan, a big hit
Speaker 4: song by Rumor. You know, I've been seeking PF Sloan,
Speaker 4: but no one knows where he has gone. I said, well,
Speaker 4: I'm going to find PF Sloan. So I found him
Speaker 4: and I said, hey, PF Sloan, will you come out
Speaker 4: of invisibility, grab your guitar and come down all radio,
Speaker 4: and much to my eternal gratitude, he said yes, I'll
Speaker 4: be there. So the real, honest to god, real live
Speaker 4: PF Sloan, who has just been nominated to the American
Speaker 4: Songwriters Hall of Fame, will be live on True Crime
Speaker 4: Unsensor and the reason I persted from a crime standpoints
Speaker 4: of what happened to his career was a crime, he says.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And so anyway, hope you on my show. And Matt
Speaker 4: Allen showed on the twenty fifth of October. So anyway,
Speaker 4: now my dinner is ready, so I'm going to leave now,
Speaker 4: is that right? Well?
Speaker 10: Thanks very much? Yeah, sure, certainly we don want any
Speaker 10: burnt food. I think last time we had some burnt
Speaker 10: cuisine there, so we.
Speaker 4: Control yeah. Yeah, so thank you so much, San, Thank.
Speaker 10: You very much, Burrell, and and for those listening you
Speaker 10: have other true crime books? How many do you have
Speaker 10: under your belt? Now?
Speaker 4: Oh? I have us all together. In terms of how
Speaker 4: many books I got out there, it's probably about depends
Speaker 4: on about thirteen. Not all true crime. I've got science
Speaker 4: fiction with the Stealth Drones over America and some other
Speaker 4: you know, the History of the Saint to Complete History
Speaker 4: and Capture the Saint, and some other novels. A lot
Speaker 4: of true crime from Kensington, but right now, the one,
Speaker 4: of course I'm most excited about is Man Overboard, the
Speaker 4: counterfeit Resurrection of Phil Champagne, which makes wonderful holiday gifts
Speaker 4: no matter what the holiday may be.
Speaker 10: Yes, absolutely greats. Great stocking stuffer for sure. And thanks
Speaker 10: very much, Burl.
Speaker 4: For those of white are always had to be on
Speaker 4: your show. I'm always going back on again.
Speaker 10: Absolutely, I'm working on it. I'm working on it.
Speaker 4: Good, good, But I thank you very much, Burl. Wow,
Speaker 4: great book. Thank you so much, Bye bye, thank you, goodnight. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah