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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 4: Good evening. On a sunny September morning in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 4: men entered the Lincoln National Bank in Nebraska's capital City,
Speaker 4: armed with revolvers and Thompson some machine guns. In eight minutes,
Speaker 4: they emerged with more than two point seven million dollars,
Speaker 4: the largest take of any bank heist in history. A
Speaker 4: nationwide search for the bandits would lead Nebraska authorities through
Speaker 4: the rough gangland streets of Chicago and East Saint Louis
Speaker 4: and deep into the heart of the Capone organization. The
Speaker 4: Great heightst not only chronicles the search for the bandits
Speaker 4: and the trials that followed, but the incredible story of
Speaker 4: how they got the money back. The book that we're
Speaker 4: profiling this eving is called The Great Heist, The Story
Speaker 4: of the Biggest bank Robbery in History. With my special
Speaker 4: guest journalist and author Jeff MacArthur. Welcome back to the program,
Speaker 4: and thank you for greeing this interview.
Speaker 5: Jeff MacArthur, thank thank you for having me, Dan, I
Speaker 5: really appreciate being here.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Another incredible tale with an incredible
Speaker 4: cast of characters. So let's get to my favorite question.
Speaker 4: How did you come to write this story. I know
Speaker 4: you look for incredible stories, but tell us where you live,
Speaker 4: where you reside, tell us about your father, your grandfather,
Speaker 4: tell us about the incredible story behind the story of
Speaker 4: the Great Sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, I'm from Lincoln, Nebraska, where it happened,
Speaker 5: and it was a little known even there. I mean
Speaker 5: at the time it was it was front page news
Speaker 5: and everything, but it's sort of been a forgotten story.
Speaker 5: And the only way I learned about it was my
Speaker 5: father and grandfather, who were working together actually on the
Speaker 5: case that my other book was about. My grandfather just
Speaker 5: sort of one day casually turned to my father and said,
Speaker 5: you know, the largest bank robbery in history was here
Speaker 5: on Lincoln and it was Alcoholm's long lost brother who
Speaker 5: helped to get the money back, and my dad and
Speaker 5: his internet wisdom just went is that right? And kind
Speaker 5: of went back to what he was doing and never
Speaker 5: asked anything more about it. And then he casually told
Speaker 5: me about it years later after my grandfather passed away,
Speaker 5: and I said, okay, and and he's just like I
Speaker 5: guess I never asked about that, and so I had
Speaker 5: to kind of go out and figure it out myself.
Speaker 5: But just started doing research on it and started finding more.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is the story just grew. I mean
Speaker 5: at the beginning, it was like, Okay, they got away
Speaker 5: with the money and somehow they got it back. Okay, Well,
Speaker 5: now al Calahoma was involved, wow, Okay, then a long
Speaker 5: lost brother okay. And then as I learned more and more,
Speaker 5: it's just all these cats, the characters grew all of
Speaker 5: this stuff, This hunt, you know, National Manhunt. It just
Speaker 5: wound up becoming one of the most and in terms
Speaker 5: of the stories as well. As I was going through
Speaker 5: the archives of the newspapers, like I say, this was
Speaker 5: front page news every day for weeks, and yet somehow
Speaker 5: it just kind of got forgotten. No.
Speaker 4: It's also interesting too, is your grandfather. You have to
Speaker 4: piece together likely what happened and where your father got
Speaker 4: the information from, where your grandfather, your grandfather got the
Speaker 4: information from. You know where your father got the information from.
Speaker 4: Where likely you got your grandfather got the information from.
Speaker 4: And you uncover a guy named Max H. Mac tole.
Speaker 5: Yeah, was about Max tollright. Well, he was probably most
Speaker 5: colorful character in legal industry you could imagine. Uh. He
Speaker 5: basically ran bambling rackets in Lancaster County while being the
Speaker 5: county attorney. He became the county attorney where he was
Speaker 5: voted in there because he had been a quarterback in
Speaker 5: the Nebraska football team, which that is kind of like
Speaker 5: a religion in Nebraska. Uh, and he became captain. He
Speaker 5: became the quarterback by getting himself in. He's just basically
Speaker 5: while the coach wasn't watching, he substituted himself in, threw
Speaker 5: a winning pass. And then when he ran for office,
Speaker 5: they all want to warn him. So he becomes down
Speaker 5: of the journey and like was you know, the office
Speaker 5: itself was like a major gambling den. He would go
Speaker 5: down to the race tracks all the time. He even
Speaker 5: ordered some uh game cocks to be shocked the sent
Speaker 5: up from Mexico, but he didn't tell the secretary, so
Speaker 5: when they came in, uh, you know, for to do
Speaker 5: the cock fighting out of town, and so when they
Speaker 5: came in, she thought they were for a dinner to
Speaker 5: bribe senators, so she sent them to have flattered. He's
Speaker 5: spent one thousands of dollars on them, and she sent
Speaker 5: them off to be made into that nice dinner. That's
Speaker 5: you know, and that kind of gives Yeah, he kind
Speaker 5: of gives you the idea of what kind of person.
Speaker 5: I mean, he ran the place by and we basically
Speaker 5: became friends with anybody who was graduating from law school.
Speaker 5: He was there immediately supporting them, helping them sort of
Speaker 5: find those places to get work, which really was helpful
Speaker 5: to a lot of people. But then, of course it's
Speaker 5: kind of that whole I did you a favor, now
Speaker 5: you and me a favor, and he really got a
Speaker 5: hold over the entire county.
Speaker 4: Now, what is the what was the initial story that
Speaker 4: you heard and the character that did you did your
Speaker 4: father or your grandfather had spoken of? What was that
Speaker 4: kernel of information that sets you on your way? There
Speaker 4: really was that catalyst? He said, Okay, I yeah, I
Speaker 4: looked at this as an incredible story.
Speaker 5: Now I have this, Uh, he was the original inspiration.
Speaker 5: It was basically, I mean, it was it was partly
Speaker 5: the bank robbery, just the fact that it was the
Speaker 5: bank robbery, but also even more than anything, it was
Speaker 5: that long loved brother aspect. When I heard about that,
Speaker 5: I just went, well, now that is the heck of
Speaker 5: a story. There's got to be something in there, and
Speaker 5: that's what I really In fact, I actually mostly was
Speaker 5: going researching his life. He's a long lost brother of Alexapone.
Speaker 5: But the more I did research on that, the more
Speaker 5: I the bankrobbery kept coming up, and I just had
Speaker 5: to learn more and more about it.
Speaker 4: What's the brother's name, Richard Hart.
Speaker 5: His original name is the Vincenzo Patone, and he left
Speaker 5: the family when they lived in New York. He ran
Speaker 5: away at about the age of sixteen and lived this
Speaker 5: incredible life. I mean, he was a He was a
Speaker 5: decorated soldier in World War One, helped chase plent Trovilla
Speaker 5: in Mexico. He wound up becoming a Prohibition officer in
Speaker 5: Nebraska and continued to dress like a cowboy even though
Speaker 5: nobody else was wrote a horse, had two six shooters
Speaker 5: at his side, and was one of the most successful
Speaker 5: Prohibition officers in the entire country. But he had changed
Speaker 5: his name basically after he ran away from home, he
Speaker 5: changed it a couple of times, settling on Richard Hart.
Speaker 5: And that's what his family knew him as, is what
Speaker 5: the people of town new him as. And he was
Speaker 5: famous before al Alvin became famous. All he knew was
Speaker 5: there's this gang or there's this lawman sort of in
Speaker 5: his name in his way named Richard Hart, having no
Speaker 5: idea it was his brother. So yeah, and Richard was
Speaker 5: just doing his saying separate from him, and then they
Speaker 5: kind of clashed at this bank robbery.
Speaker 4: Now, what I found most interesting too is the would
Speaker 4: you take us back in history is the state of
Speaker 4: policing at that time previous to nineteen thirty, but more
Speaker 4: so you explores the actual laws at that time. This
Speaker 4: is the pre FBI was what it was called the
Speaker 4: Bureau of Investigation, so was not the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Speaker 4: and it had did not have an incredible amount of power.
Speaker 4: So even talk about the kind of firepower or there
Speaker 4: are firearms these guys had and had the ability to
Speaker 4: have and use. So tell us about this a little
Speaker 4: bit about at that time the state of policing and
Speaker 4: the state of basically fighting the criminals at that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, the criminals had really outrun and outgunned the
Speaker 5: police in a lot of places. The Thompsons and machine
Speaker 5: gun had been invented for use in World War One,
Speaker 5: but the war it ended before it got out there.
Speaker 5: So the guy who had built them or the company
Speaker 5: that built them needed somewhere to sell them, and the
Speaker 5: gangsters were all for you know, buying that, whereas the
Speaker 5: US government it didn't you know, get them so much.
Speaker 5: So you wound up with a lot of the police
Speaker 5: going around filled with pistols and the criminals going around
Speaker 5: with machine guns. So like, for instance, when this bank
Speaker 5: robbery happened, they went in there with machine guns with
Speaker 5: you know, basically very well armed. The officers in the
Speaker 5: town they you know, not only did they only have pippoles,
Speaker 5: but when they were went to check out the bank,
Speaker 5: they would have used the squad the squad card, not
Speaker 5: one of the squad cards, the one squad car they had,
Speaker 5: but it was in the shop. It had broken down
Speaker 5: for some reason that morning, so they had to one
Speaker 5: of them took a motorcycle, the other one had to walk.
Speaker 5: And that basically they had to work with against well
Speaker 5: armed and well organized criminals.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, okay, now that you've talked about it, let's
Speaker 4: talk about the whole thing in terms of let's talk
Speaker 4: about this incredible heist. Because again there's the police are called,
Speaker 4: but we have to explain how it is that they
Speaker 4: are called and the action of the actual six men.
Speaker 4: And I'm a little confused despite everything, so maybe the
Speaker 4: audience will be as well. There was a lookout, and
Speaker 4: there was a driver, and there was five men. Tell
Speaker 4: us about that, but tell us about the actual robbery.
Speaker 4: On that sunny September morning in nineteen thirty at the
Speaker 4: Lincoln National Bank.
Speaker 5: The bank had basically just opened, and this car just
Speaker 5: pulled up and one stated in the driver and another
Speaker 5: one jumped out of the car. Well, actually the other
Speaker 5: five jumped out of the car. One of them stayed
Speaker 5: outside and watched basically as the lookout out of the corner.
Speaker 5: The other four ran inside. Now the one that was
Speaker 5: outside it might have actually seemed confusing because the one
Speaker 5: outside kind of kept peeking in. So sometimes it was five,
Speaker 5: sometimes it was four inside. But basically that was the
Speaker 5: way it worked out. And they were so well organized.
Speaker 5: Clearly somebody had scoped the place out and they knew
Speaker 5: where everything was, and they knew what they needed, et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. When they got to the vault, the guy
Speaker 5: who was supposed to be there with the key or
Speaker 5: the combination, they records weren't quite certain. But anyway, person
Speaker 5: who could actually get him into the vault was out.
Speaker 5: I've learned since the publication of the book. He was
Speaker 5: actually across the street having coffee and saw the whole thing,
Speaker 5: but you know, sort of stayed away. They was it,
Speaker 5: so they weren't going to be able to get in
Speaker 5: the vaulved but someone hadn't turned the time lock on,
Speaker 5: so they were able to open it and get in.
Speaker 5: And when they got out out it was sort of
Speaker 5: a fluke. There was two point seven million dollars worth
Speaker 5: of cash and securities in there, negotiable bonds and non
Speaker 5: negotiable bonds. So they got in the car, zipped away
Speaker 5: and just literally kind of disappeared into thin air. Nebraska
Speaker 5: tried shutting down the borders and you know, all the
Speaker 5: bridges et cetera, et cetera, out of town or out
Speaker 5: of the state, but they you know, they couldn't see them,
Speaker 5: they couldn't find them. Somehow they had just kind of
Speaker 5: gotten away. So then it became like this whole national search,
Speaker 5: and without an FBI, it was much more difficult because
Speaker 5: now you're having to work with different you know, you
Speaker 5: just have the states, the individual police departments in each
Speaker 5: state or sheriffs office.
Speaker 4: So you're what we're saying too, is that the the
Speaker 4: Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was then just a Bureau
Speaker 4: of Investigation, didn't have the power to intervene on something
Speaker 4: like this, you say, unless there is evidence of an
Speaker 4: insight job. So let's go back just a little bit
Speaker 4: to the behavior of these gentlemen, because this is quite unusual.
Speaker 4: We're talking about nineteen thirty here. Maybe it's not unusual,
Speaker 4: but that's the thing. Maybe we'll talk about that the occurrence,
Speaker 4: the prevalence of these type of bank robberies, maybe not
Speaker 4: exactly like this, but bank robberies in general in a
Speaker 4: place like Lincoln. But these guys went in there with suits,
Speaker 4: no masks. Like you said, it's almost seemed military precision.
Speaker 4: They really knew what they were doing and they were
Speaker 4: in and out in eight minutes. The thing is with this,
Speaker 4: they knew that they knew they layout of the bank,
Speaker 4: and they also knew that this gentleman's name that had
Speaker 4: he would have the access or the code for the
Speaker 4: vault itself. So they knew that, but they grabbed another woman.
Speaker 4: She said, listen, this guy is not in. They lied
Speaker 4: at least if he was across the street having a coffee.
Speaker 4: They said he was not there that day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, apparently they thought he was further away. But anyway, Carraig,
Speaker 5: go ahead.
Speaker 4: Well, the you know I found it interesting is that
Speaker 4: they threatened her. They said, somebody said we should kill
Speaker 4: this woman because she said she didn't have the code.
Speaker 4: So tell us a little bit more about that. And
Speaker 4: then the idea that witnesses thought that this car was
Speaker 4: a cop car, that there was a siren. They used
Speaker 4: the siren later. So tell us about their entrance, their exit,
Speaker 4: this is, this is not typical, and this is uh
Speaker 4: so tell us just a little bit more about that
Speaker 4: and the experience with the woman and must have been
Speaker 4: terrifying for her.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I can imagine. And I think that they
Speaker 5: actually everybody in the bank thought he was out on business.
Speaker 5: What happened apparently is the guy came back said yes,
Speaker 5: I was out on business. But since the book has
Speaker 5: been published, the person's descendant has emailed me and said, yeah,
Speaker 5: he was supposed to be out on business and he
Speaker 5: always told everybody that, but actually this this the family's
Speaker 5: leader for all these years, has been years across the street.
Speaker 5: So they here's these people who are risking their lives.
Speaker 5: And I guess that's why he didn't tell them. He's like,
Speaker 5: you guys were you know, telling him? You didn't know
Speaker 5: where I was and I was over having coffee across
Speaker 5: the street. So it was like kind of kept, you know,
Speaker 5: hush hush anyway, but yeah, the way they went, and see,
Speaker 5: you're right, it's there has been a whole rash of
Speaker 5: bank robberies, particularly in Nebraska that week. It was you know,
Speaker 5: basically this was the start of the Great Depression and
Speaker 5: a lot of these This is kind of when a
Speaker 5: lot of those bank robberies started, a lot of organized
Speaker 5: crime places and even smaller groups. I means when the
Speaker 5: stage of Bonnie and Clyde and you know all of
Speaker 5: those guys. But this one had, like I say in
Speaker 5: the book, sort of a military precision to it. I mean,
Speaker 5: they were so organized everybody knew exactly where to go.
Speaker 5: It wasn't like them getting in there and like figuring
Speaker 5: out where to go. There was no chaos. They all
Speaker 5: had a very specific place to go. They got everybody
Speaker 5: on the floor, they and everything was a cloth work
Speaker 5: and there was even one of the guys was giving
Speaker 5: like amounts of time. Okay, this much time. Now, it's
Speaker 5: been this much time, et cetera, et cetera. They asked
Speaker 5: for one specific person, like I thay he was out, uh,
Speaker 5: and the woman was trying to you know, several people
Speaker 5: were trying to say the look, he's gone. There's no
Speaker 5: way to get in the vault. So they just grabbed
Speaker 5: one woman and said, uh, did you know you help us?
Speaker 5: Getting sends to the fault. She of course is Petri
Speaker 5: because she can't hit him. And there she you know,
Speaker 5: she isn't lying to them, she's not trying to hide anything.
Speaker 5: So they take her back there and like I say,
Speaker 5: they this turns out the false is open. Uh. I
Speaker 5: forget the exact reason, but one of them actually does say, yeah,
Speaker 5: I just go ahead and kill her. And these were
Speaker 5: ruthless killers. And it turns out later it turned out
Speaker 5: to be some of the same guys who committed the
Speaker 5: Saint Valentine's name ask her. Now they of course that
Speaker 5: the bank had no idea, you know, that they didn't
Speaker 5: know that that's who they were. But if you know,
Speaker 5: it's been proven later, Yeah, these guys were ruthless. They
Speaker 5: would have just killed her, but it just so happened.
Speaker 5: By that point, the second comp had come along outside
Speaker 5: and they were like, you know what, guys, that's starting
Speaker 5: to get a little bit hot here. Let's get out
Speaker 5: of here. And we got everything we need. So they
Speaker 5: just loaded everything, uh, and rushed outside, got it into
Speaker 5: the car. And again it was one of those things
Speaker 5: of just whole position. I mean, they did like a
Speaker 5: whole line of them, you know, handing from the door
Speaker 5: to the to the the door of the bank to
Speaker 5: the door of the car. You know, one of them
Speaker 5: jumped into the car, the others handed you know, the
Speaker 5: money out and jumped in. And yeah, they had a
Speaker 5: siren so that they were able to rush away, which
Speaker 5: is one of the signs that later on when they
Speaker 5: were like figuring out this was those gangsters who did
Speaker 5: the sin boundin them oscar, because it was the same
Speaker 5: kind of thing. They had driven up in a cop
Speaker 5: car done the murder, and then they got away in
Speaker 5: this particular case, they did something very similar where they
Speaker 5: disguised their car as a as a police car and
Speaker 5: drove it on out of there. But you know, it
Speaker 5: was to me, the funniest part is they here, they
Speaker 5: jump out of the bank. They're rushing there, all this
Speaker 5: military precisions. They you know, very away, siren blurring, and
Speaker 5: then get you a red light and stopangsters and then
Speaker 5: slowly took you know, a legal right turn. But I
Speaker 5: think it's how they got away. It was they just
Speaker 5: merged with traffic and faded into you know, the way
Speaker 5: everybody else was.
Speaker 4: Before we get into that, uh story, the little side
Speaker 4: story that's very very interesting and right again right out
Speaker 4: of out of movies. I'm sure somebody used this already
Speaker 4: or they will. Is W. A. Selleck as the bank
Speaker 4: president and he is not in the bank originally when
Speaker 4: they say everybody on the floor, and at first somebody
Speaker 4: thinks it's a joke, and so they give him a
Speaker 4: butt end in the in the head and he and
Speaker 4: he goes down, and now everybody goes down, so everybody's
Speaker 4: on the floor, but the bank president he comes to
Speaker 4: this lady comes out of the office. He had recently
Speaker 4: had a birthday, and so he thought again, he thought
Speaker 4: very much that they were joking, but they said, we
Speaker 4: are not joking. But he thought they were really joking,
Speaker 4: but really good at it. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about w A Sellick.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm glad you bring that up, because I forgot
Speaker 5: to mention that. Yet that's one of the most bizarre
Speaker 5: parts of the stories, and nobody took him seriously. Everybody
Speaker 5: just thought they were kidding them. They beat a couple
Speaker 5: of people, you know, to acrop the head until they
Speaker 5: went down. Then yeah, as you say, the b A
Speaker 5: Sella came out of his office late, sees what's going on,
Speaker 5: and he's like, you know, oh, that's this good guys,
Speaker 5: but you know, we got to get to work. The
Speaker 5: bank's open now. And they're like, no, we're serious, and
Speaker 5: he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, seriously, you guys have
Speaker 5: to leave because we got to open up for business.
Speaker 5: And he just would not realize this is serious until
Speaker 5: one of them beat him down almost you know, just
Speaker 5: apparently beat him pretty bad late, even once he was
Speaker 5: on the ground to kind of show everybody how serious
Speaker 5: they were. But then even when well was the one
Speaker 5: person escaped from the bank and another person almost got
Speaker 5: caught in, you know, when she was walking by the bank,
Speaker 5: almost grabbed. She ran across the street because she saw
Speaker 5: was happening right across the streets, told this other guy
Speaker 5: to call the police. When they called the police, the
Speaker 5: police thought it was a joke, and they were just like,
Speaker 5: you know, this is before sir, business only, and they're
Speaker 5: let you know, no prank calls, like, we're not joking,
Speaker 5: get down here. So that's why one of the officers
Speaker 5: he'd sent down was a junior officer, a guy who
Speaker 5: was intended to go and basically, you know, slack of
Speaker 5: kids who were pulling pranks. So everybody along the road
Speaker 5: thought this was a joke.
Speaker 4: Now, in terms of witnesses, they had witnesses to say
Speaker 4: that it looked like a cop card and it looked
Speaker 4: like there was cops inside. And then when they left,
Speaker 4: But in terms of direction and where they could have
Speaker 4: likely went and any kind of leads tell us about
Speaker 4: the police manhunt.
Speaker 5: Well, essentially, yeah, I mean it initially they should have
Speaker 5: taken it more seriously and gotten down there, although who
Speaker 5: knows what would have happened at that point. But basically
Speaker 5: when they uh, they finally realized it was serious. They
Speaker 5: apparently got into either The way it was written was
Speaker 5: that they went and got into their cars. And now
Speaker 5: it had already said that the one cop car was
Speaker 5: broken down to what's have been their own vehicles and
Speaker 5: drove down or a vehicle or whatever drove down to
Speaker 5: where the bank was. At that point it had gotten away.
Speaker 5: They tried asking around, but there were all these different
Speaker 5: stories that were in different parts of town or whatever. Immediately,
Speaker 5: they you know, called out, they had oh what was
Speaker 5: they had an airplane or two to go out and searching.
Speaker 5: I mean, it became a state matter immediately, and so
Speaker 5: they closed down the bridges, closed every single border, you know,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And this say figure especially they'd be heading
Speaker 5: to Kansas because you know that's the closest area, and
Speaker 5: they just went around questioning everywhere in town, and they
Speaker 5: just kept running across. They went across a couple of
Speaker 5: people who seemed pretty credible. But looking back, now that
Speaker 5: we know how it was done, it can't have been
Speaker 5: the case. For like somebody who saw someone with a
Speaker 5: gunt machine gun and kind of complimented on it and
Speaker 5: a nice gun, and the guy said, I can't remember
Speaker 5: what it was. He's did some smart alec remark in return.
Speaker 5: So yeah, but it was just unfortunately one of those
Speaker 5: reports everywhere. But as we now know, and I'm not
Speaker 5: sure if I should give it away because it's the
Speaker 5: last chapter of the book. Years later, the widow of
Speaker 5: somebody who knew the gangsters revealed that you know basically
Speaker 5: how they how they did it.
Speaker 4: But don't give it away. Don't give it now. Now.
Speaker 4: The thing is is that so the police don't have
Speaker 4: really too many leads, but they do have this Iowa
Speaker 4: license plate if that gives them any kind of help
Speaker 4: at all. But tell us how the investigation proceeds, and
Speaker 4: who comes into the picture. You introduce this sheriff. He
Speaker 4: becomes the state sheriff when prohibition they do a restructuring
Speaker 4: of policing. So tell us about Sheriff con and tell
Speaker 4: us a little bit about how the police proceed with
Speaker 4: this case.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Sheriff Conda takes over, and he really, you know,
Speaker 5: he's one of these people who's very much on the ball.
Speaker 5: He had not been there at the beginning when it happened.
Speaker 5: In fact, the Lincoln Chief of police got fired over it,
Speaker 5: but condit immediately started he essentially started. I mean he
Speaker 5: basically organized the initial let's block out everything and try to,
Speaker 5: you know, stop them from getting away. But once it
Speaker 5: became clear, okay, well now they've they've gotten away. Well,
Speaker 5: first of all, actually quick background on Condit. He's actually
Speaker 5: a pretty interesting character as well. Unfortunately I wasn't able
Speaker 5: to find I wanted to find out more about this guy.
Speaker 5: But a little mount that I found on his past
Speaker 5: he had he had been somebody who was so he
Speaker 5: was very, very dedicated, to the point where at one
Speaker 5: point he was taking a prisoner somewhere and the prisoner
Speaker 5: tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of train.
Speaker 5: He had saved the prisoner by jumping out and pushing
Speaker 5: him away. He got hit by the fan himself off
Speaker 5: his leg, but still actually he went away from the
Speaker 5: force for a while, but then he came back to
Speaker 5: it and was one of the better you know, sheriffs
Speaker 5: of the state had had even in his h in
Speaker 5: his condition. And one of the things that he uh
Speaker 5: that he did was he really he believed in having
Speaker 5: connections and utilizing those connections, and he had a lot
Speaker 5: in these different states. And so once he started on
Speaker 5: this investigation. He immediately just started writing to everybody, including uh,
Speaker 5: the the like the Bureau of Investigation where goshoot, what
Speaker 5: is his name now? I can't think that he's now
Speaker 5: from it for Edgar Hoober, thank you. Edgar Hooper was
Speaker 5: now there and he was writing to him and trying
Speaker 5: to information. Hooper kind of essentially said, well, if you
Speaker 5: can find out that somebody with that it was an
Speaker 5: insight job, that somebody in the bank uh was part
Speaker 5: of this, then we can get involved. And now at
Speaker 5: that point conduct is Eddie been shared. He could have
Speaker 5: tried to kind of put a finger on somebody because
Speaker 5: there was there was some incompetence there, somebody had left
Speaker 5: the vault or open, and that really does end up
Speaker 5: looking like it was an inside job. But to his credit,
Speaker 5: he really investigated thoroughly and found that and people for
Speaker 5: years that decades after that we're standing up for them saying, no,
Speaker 5: we really believe it was an accident because there's just
Speaker 5: nobody there who either a was the type of person
Speaker 5: to do it, and be ever showed any having profited
Speaker 5: from it. You know, you'd think at least years later
Speaker 5: maybe they'd show up with like a really nice house
Speaker 5: or whatever. But so he apparently was not, and he
Speaker 5: didn't try to put the finger on any of them
Speaker 5: or whatever. And let's see what I'm trying to think of. Essentially,
Speaker 5: he wound up empty handed. I mean he had sent
Speaker 5: as he's put it in one of his letters, we've
Speaker 5: turned over heaven and hell here and can't find anything.
Speaker 5: But of course, there were so many suspicious characters in
Speaker 5: so many states. That'd like to say at this time,
Speaker 5: this is when a lot of bank robberies were starting
Speaker 5: to happen in all kinds of areas, and he started
Speaker 5: really looking at Texas as a primary sources. There was
Speaker 5: a lot going on there, a lot of serve organized
Speaker 5: crimes starting to take place down in like East Texas, Oklahoma,
Speaker 5: that kind of area. But he just he could not
Speaker 5: get any solid leads. And that's kind of when mac poll,
Speaker 5: the county attorney, came in.
Speaker 4: What was though officially, what did they determine with obviously
Speaker 4: nothing conclusively, but how did they reconcile the idea that
Speaker 4: they knew the guy's name that had access to the vault,
Speaker 4: and they seemed to know the layout of the entire bank.
Speaker 4: That's why they could do it. In such a short order,
Speaker 4: and they knew that there was a fair amount of
Speaker 4: money available there too, so well, they recognized immediately that
Speaker 4: it was an inside job in terms of these guys
Speaker 4: having that information. How could they have had that information?
Speaker 5: And that, Yeah, that was one of the things that
Speaker 5: really made it very suspicious, like, Okay, well there must
Speaker 5: have been somebody involved, because yeah, they knew all this information,
Speaker 5: but they really grew to suspect and actually the biggest
Speaker 5: suspicions that they had, and it turned out to be correct.
Speaker 5: Again years later, it was revealed that essentially they had
Speaker 5: sent was always a few months earlier. I think it
Speaker 5: was a few months earlier. Someone had come along supporting
Speaker 5: to be in a security like he ran the security
Speaker 5: company or whatever and could make their bank part secure,
Speaker 5: and so the bank had given this person a tour
Speaker 5: of everything and the person that kind of learned to
Speaker 5: lay out from that, and that was the person that
Speaker 5: then gave the information to the and they hurt you, you know,
Speaker 5: they basically mentioned this. Tesslain suspected. He was like, you
Speaker 5: know what, I think that's the most likely saying. Even
Speaker 5: though if he had continued down the road of the
Speaker 5: inside job, he could have gotten the safe gear of investigation.
Speaker 5: He just really believe that was the most likely thing
Speaker 5: to have happened. And yet again, sure enough, decades later,
Speaker 5: we've learned that that was indeed the case. It was
Speaker 5: this other person who who would kind of case to
Speaker 5: joint by saying, oh, yeah, I'm a security person and
Speaker 5: I can do a better job with your security. Show
Speaker 5: me what you currently have, which again sounds like it's
Speaker 5: raight out of a movie, but apparently the way it
Speaker 5: really happens.
Speaker 4: So how does Conditt proceed and what is the I
Speaker 4: guess the reaction by the media about this, and no,
Speaker 4: what I found interesting too is not only the media,
Speaker 4: but the general mood of the people and why in
Speaker 4: terms of reaction to the bank robberies and the bank
Speaker 4: robbery like this, I found this very surprising.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean they were outraged because of course,
Speaker 5: there had been several bank robberies already earlier that month
Speaker 5: in Nebraska or that week, I mean in Nebraska, and
Speaker 5: there are a couple more after that, and they were
Speaker 5: upset about how this could happen, and it was so
Speaker 5: much money that this could really bankrupt the area. I mean,
Speaker 5: this was like you know, say the beginning of the
Speaker 5: Great Depression. Uh, you didn't have the fd I seed
Speaker 5: ensuring a lot of money. It was gonna put a
Speaker 5: lot of people, uh make a lot of people destitudes
Speaker 5: and so you know, the the the bank itself and
Speaker 5: ended up having to close, having to uh basically go bankrupt.
Speaker 5: There's another term for them going bankrupt. But you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, they ended uving shut down. But uh
Speaker 5: w a uh uh we were just talking about him.
Speaker 5: Uh Sell Sell was he He was somebody who really
Speaker 5: had a lot of credibility. He did not want to
Speaker 5: or integrity this word it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: He really was concerned about the people, and so he
Speaker 5: worked tirelessly to get their money back. He started working
Speaker 5: for another bank, and he would just basically take at
Speaker 5: times his own money to make sure that people got
Speaker 5: their money back. And he was doing that, you know,
Speaker 5: for for a while until they finally got the real
Speaker 5: you know, amount of money back. But yeah, he really
Speaker 5: he wanted to make sure that people weren't hurt by it.
Speaker 5: But of course, you know they were, and they were
Speaker 5: very upset by what it was doing to their e
Speaker 5: army and that this could happen there and it was
Speaker 5: very frightening too, that you know, such armed criminals could
Speaker 5: just enter the middle of town broad daylight and do
Speaker 5: this and so, and of course that the police were
Speaker 5: so under equipped, and so that was there was a
Speaker 5: big outcry for that. So that's when a lot of
Speaker 5: things started happening, like they got radios, they got better weapons,
Speaker 5: really started to arm themselves. And this not only happened
Speaker 5: in Lincoln, but other places too because this was huge news.
Speaker 5: So other banks, frost nations started arming or police department procrastinations,
Speaker 5: started arming themselves.
Speaker 4: Wasn't there sort of an attitude from a lot of
Speaker 4: people though that had been it almost seemed parallel now
Speaker 4: that the banks had done some shenanigans and people had
Speaker 4: been burned, so there was a and you said, a
Speaker 4: lot of people didn't really have any money in the bank,
Speaker 4: and so there was a sort of an animosity, to
Speaker 4: say the least about the organized banks, and then a
Speaker 4: sort of romanticism about some of the gangsters. Was a
Speaker 4: little bit of that at that time, Oh yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, now not even not quite so much here,
Speaker 5: but in general, there was a feeling around the nation
Speaker 5: of yeah, kind of romanticizing the criminals. You see it
Speaker 5: from a lot of the gangsters at the time or
Speaker 5: the bank ruppers at the time, there was one in particular,
Speaker 5: trying to think of his name. Shoot, there was this
Speaker 5: movie recently made actually about five years ago, maybe six eight,
Speaker 5: something like that, with Johnny Depp playing Dillinger. Dillinger was
Speaker 5: a really good example of it in that the people
Speaker 5: were almost were more on his side than they were
Speaker 5: the thoughts, even though they were he was robbing the
Speaker 5: banks because so many people had lost their money, their
Speaker 5: money to the banks, and their banks themselves seemed fine.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: There was kind of a you know, cheering on of
Speaker 5: bank roppers as well, and a lot of them became
Speaker 5: you know, sort of folk heroes, you know, and that
Speaker 5: sort of thing. I don't know there would be so
Speaker 5: much in the case here, but of course you wound
Speaker 5: up with because of that heroizing of the criminal sort
Speaker 5: of in general, I think that kind of grew more
Speaker 5: bank ropper or responded to more bank robbers because they're like, hey, people,
Speaker 5: you know, I can be pretty boy Floyd, I can
Speaker 5: be John Dillinger. I can be Bonnie and Clyde, whose
Speaker 5: lives were portrayed in these you know, exciting kind of ways.
Speaker 5: In a weird time.
Speaker 4: That sounds like history repeats itself. Oh, it sounds like
Speaker 4: kind of a hip hop career into making.
Speaker 5: I think so. I think that's exactly right. I mean,
Speaker 5: you saw, you see today a lot of resentment for
Speaker 5: the banks and bankers and that sort of thing, and yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, they're really Unfortunately, that's kind of been a
Speaker 5: thing with our culture where people tend to hear wise
Speaker 5: the troublemakers more than the lawmen. I mean, you don't
Speaker 5: hear about as many great lawmen in society, even though
Speaker 5: there have been wonderful ones, But you do hear about
Speaker 5: those those criminals who you know, hurt people oddly enough,
Speaker 5: but it's almost like, well, as long as you're not
Speaker 5: hurting me, kind of a thing, you know.
Speaker 4: Now, getting back to lawmakers and people that made a
Speaker 4: significant difference we get. Let's get back to the salesman
Speaker 4: that the conduct basically concludes that must have been sort
Speaker 4: of an advanced scout for the gangsters. So what does
Speaker 4: he what does he do from that point? D I
Speaker 4: guess that's his first foothold. He says, listen, this is
Speaker 4: the evidence I have. What they do in response to that.
Speaker 5: Research lead, Yeah, you know, he isn't really able to
Speaker 5: do a lot with the person who had sort of
Speaker 5: been the scouts kind of person because that's Efferson's sort
Speaker 5: of gone and they don't really know uh where. But
Speaker 5: the eyewitnesses did manage to identify the person who had
Speaker 5: been the lookout because he had been out there and
Speaker 5: broad daylight right in the middle, so he was easily seen,
Speaker 5: and several people, including one of the cops who came
Speaker 5: up very close to him and they, you know, had
Speaker 5: a face to based conversation with him, uh identified him
Speaker 5: as Fred quote unquote Killer Burke. His nickname was Killer. Basically,
Speaker 5: they give you an idea of what kind of person
Speaker 5: he was, and he was believed and it's been since
Speaker 5: somewhat semi verified or at least there's a strong belief
Speaker 5: that he was one of the major organizers of, like
Speaker 5: I said, the Saint Valentine Day massacre, and so you know,
Speaker 5: once that but they you know, whether he was definitely
Speaker 5: involved in that or not. They knew he was a
Speaker 5: gangster out of Chicago. They knew that he had involvement
Speaker 5: there and East Saint Louis and basically these heights of
Speaker 5: criminal activity or of organized crime and so once he
Speaker 5: figured that out, so he knew that that was the
Speaker 5: route to first start taking. About this time is when
Speaker 5: Max Ple kind of took over the investigation. I was
Speaker 5: kind of surprised. I guess the reason is because they
Speaker 5: coming because to me, I would have expected the sheriff
Speaker 5: to continue on and he did sort of continue to
Speaker 5: help with the investigation. But about the time that they
Speaker 5: figured out it was Fred Burke, that's about when conduct
Speaker 5: started taking a back seat and mac full the county
Speaker 5: attorneys started taking the front seat. And I don't know
Speaker 5: if that's because Tol just simply said, you know, I'm
Speaker 5: taking over, or if that's sort of a natural thing
Speaker 5: of that time. You know, once it goes across the
Speaker 5: state lines, maybe it's more the county attorney it takes over.
Speaker 5: I'm not a Hundleton cert and I've never able to
Speaker 5: figure that out. But yeah, at that point then and
Speaker 5: we start sort of finding out, you know, some of
Speaker 5: these these come home there, and he really wanted to
Speaker 5: go after Fred Burke. But then that becomes the whole
Speaker 5: nother story. Should I go start going into.
Speaker 4: That, Well, lead us into that, because that's that's important,
Speaker 4: that's the that's the response basically.
Speaker 5: Exactly, Yeah, that's the trail essentially, he he yeah, he starts,
Speaker 5: you know, essentially trying to figure out how to you know,
Speaker 5: to make sure that it is him and that he
Speaker 5: can basically both case against him, et cetera. Of course, meanwhile,
Speaker 5: they don't really know where he is. A lot of
Speaker 5: these criminals they've got, you know, an entire organization keeping
Speaker 5: them hidden. And he had been actually uh hiding at
Speaker 5: that time. Anyway, he had not really been doing a
Speaker 5: lot of jobs because again of the same Valentine's Day master.
Speaker 5: He keeps coming back to that. After that, he and
Speaker 5: a lot of them had been you know, hiding out
Speaker 5: and doing bank you know, coming out only in th
Speaker 5: bank robberies, and then hiding again. And this was a
Speaker 5: whole long color story about where it turned out he
Speaker 5: was essentially hiding out in a small town. He'd gotten
Speaker 5: married under an assumed name, and everybody in this town
Speaker 5: thinks he's this upstanding citizen, completely a different guy, except
Speaker 5: for one guy who was like this total conspiracy theorist
Speaker 5: who kept saying, no, he treads Burke, and nobody believed
Speaker 5: him because this is the guy who normally, like you'd
Speaker 5: see him around town, and you know, like the instant
Speaker 5: today's world, he'd be wearing tinfoil on his head, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's like the total conspiracy theorist pleeds in
Speaker 5: every you know conspiracy out there. But then he just
Speaker 5: happened to be right, and nobody believed him for a
Speaker 5: long time, until after a while the police were like,
Speaker 5: wait a second, I think that is him. So he
Speaker 5: finally gets caught by the police out there, but by
Speaker 5: that point he's murdered a confess out there. He's also
Speaker 5: done all these other gangs and things. There are so
Speaker 5: many states that want him for all of these bicker
Speaker 5: crimes that Max Tole is not able to get him.
Speaker 5: And at that point Tole kind of realizes, I'm never
Speaker 5: these guys were so big. There's once they're caught, there's
Speaker 5: no way I'm going to be able to get them.
Speaker 5: That means I can't them to justice. I don't look
Speaker 5: like the hero to you know, this length of being
Speaker 5: an unsult case, and the people of Nebraska blame me
Speaker 5: and they won't vote me in next time. Of course,
Speaker 5: the Max goal, that's everything for him. It isn't even
Speaker 5: the morality aspect, it's how can I keep myself re elected?
Speaker 5: So he kind of gives up on going after the
Speaker 5: real guys, and he finds out that there are these
Speaker 5: gangsters in East Saint Louis who are going to be grabbed,
Speaker 5: you know, basically for some questioning or whatever anyway, and
Speaker 5: so he goes there to just sort of frame them,
Speaker 5: and they are bank robbers and they are criminals, but
Speaker 5: he knows they are not these criminals. Oh, I forgot
Speaker 5: to mention. Also one of the reasons he wanted to
Speaker 5: catch people like birth or someone you know, from there
Speaker 5: was to kind of then figure out who else today.
Speaker 5: If he could catch one person, of course, you know,
Speaker 5: as an officer, then you can start making deals to
Speaker 5: get everybody else. But if he can't even charge them
Speaker 5: with anything, then he can't use any leverage. So he
Speaker 5: goes up to these other people who might know the
Speaker 5: real criminals, but he knows or not. He charges them,
Speaker 5: starts shaking them down to try to get the information
Speaker 5: from them, and brings them back to Nebraska, starts sort
Speaker 5: of manipulating the witnesses into pointing the finger at them,
Speaker 5: and they're you know, all along he knows that he
Speaker 5: even admits them I know you're not guilty of this,
Speaker 5: but I need to find the real criminals, so I
Speaker 5: need you to help me find them or you're gonna
Speaker 5: go to jail so that I look good. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 5: second the contray.
Speaker 4: Oh, I just said, Wow, that's uh, you can get
Speaker 4: that kind of candidate. That's pretty candid.
Speaker 5: I would say, you're yeah, he really, I mean Max
Speaker 5: Toll is just one of those you know, uh, one
Speaker 5: of the guys who's he basically was the law version
Speaker 5: of al Capone, and you know in Nebraska because he
Speaker 5: kind of had his whole network and everybody's kind of
Speaker 5: around him. But he was willing to do whatever a
Speaker 5: took ticket to do and he are just basically to
Speaker 5: stay in power. Meanwhile, the assistant US Attorney, now the
Speaker 5: US attorney was the involved in this, but the assistant
Speaker 5: US Attorney, Robert Van Pelt, just happened to have an
Speaker 5: office in the building of the bank that was robbed,
Speaker 5: and so he's he's in charge, you know, he's helping
Speaker 5: with this. He is assistant or he's working with mac Pole.
Speaker 5: Mack Pole is the one who's actually in charge of
Speaker 5: the investigation. But Van Pelt is really uncomfortable with the
Speaker 5: way things are doing, because you know, he's very he's
Speaker 5: got a guy with a lot of integrity. He's somebody who,
Speaker 5: you know, I want to catch the real criminals, et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. So when he sees what Tol is doing,
Speaker 5: Toll isn't quite telling them, Oh, I know these guys
Speaker 5: are innocent, but Van Pelt can tells they aren't the
Speaker 5: real criminals. So he continues an investigation and he kind
Speaker 5: of goes away for a while because he figured out
Speaker 5: somewhere in Missouri. He gets on this lead somebody's sister.
Speaker 5: He starts following that leads, et cetera, et cetera, and
Speaker 5: his support is very slow investigations that he's following up,
Speaker 5: whereas mac Pole is like, really on it, I mean,
Speaker 5: or I shouldn't say on it, but he's he's things
Speaker 5: are moving with him because he's now getting them on charges. He's,
Speaker 5: you know, the court cases starting everywhere they go. There
Speaker 5: are huge amounts of armed guards everywhere they go. I mean,
Speaker 5: the press is on it. The in fact, the newspapers
Speaker 5: themselves were referring to them as the Yangster's not the suspects,
Speaker 5: but you know they they would refer to them oftentimes
Speaker 5: as the gates. So and that's where that kind of goes.
Speaker 5: And then since finally gets it, the fourth guy named
Speaker 5: Gus Winkler, who is al Capone's favorite's or one of
Speaker 5: Alcohn's favorites, to take over after he goes to prison,
Speaker 5: because by this time it's kind of becoming clear that
Speaker 5: he's going to go to jail for tax evasions, and
Speaker 5: so he's kind of grooming this magnetism Gus Winkler to
Speaker 5: be one of the people who really takes over the organization. Well,
Speaker 5: Winkler winds up in a car accident and while he's
Speaker 5: under while he's unconscious, he ends up kind of muttering
Speaker 5: about the bank robbery and or you know, sort of
Speaker 5: in his sleep. I mean, he mutters about the Lincoln
Speaker 5: bank robbery and apparently he wasn't involved in it, but
Speaker 5: he knew the people involved in it, and so you
Speaker 5: can imagine Max Ple like right on top of it.
Speaker 5: He's charging the guy. He's you know, starting to build
Speaker 5: a whole case against him, and he basically says to Winkler, look,
Speaker 5: I know you didn't do this, but if you don't
Speaker 5: give me the money, you don't give me the guys
Speaker 5: who did do it and the moneys they stole. You're
Speaker 5: gonna spend the next year, I think a twenty years
Speaker 5: in jail. And so that you know, so that now
Speaker 5: Winkler is involved in trying to get this money back.
Speaker 5: Capone being one of them wanting to have him out
Speaker 5: of jail, he starts helping. And now you have Max
Speaker 5: Toll the there's Zanchester County Attorney and al Capone working
Speaker 5: to get this money, working together to get this money back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, amazing, amazing. So so how does those go? What
Speaker 4: is there any snags to this negotiation?
Speaker 5: I yeah, you know, I mean it well centially it's
Speaker 5: the amount of my first of all, a toll Uh
Speaker 5: put put them on too. Was it a hundred thousand
Speaker 5: dollars to look at it? I believe it was one
Speaker 5: hundred thousand dollars to fail, which is a huge amount
Speaker 5: of money in nineteen thirty. Oh, by the way, I
Speaker 5: just met him. To this two point seven million that
Speaker 5: they sold in today's money would come out to thirty
Speaker 5: two million dollars. The amount that for fail was so
Speaker 5: much I believe it's since it is one hundred thousand
Speaker 5: dollars comes out to you know, more than a million today.
Speaker 5: And this is right when the phone is on trial,
Speaker 5: and he's, you know, he needs the money himself for
Speaker 5: you know, his various things, and he's you know, it
Speaker 5: does not the time when he really wants to be bothered,
Speaker 5: but he does it because he wants this guy out
Speaker 5: of jail and he knows that this needs to happen.
Speaker 5: He gets the guy, the guy gets out, and he
Speaker 5: knows the guys who have the money. Now remember it's
Speaker 5: all negotiable bonds, so Winkler has to go to them.
Speaker 5: They all want They're all like, okay, we'll sell it
Speaker 5: to you before this larger amount because none of them
Speaker 5: like like win Cler because he's you know, he's the
Speaker 5: teacher's favorite kind of thing. And Winkler doesn't have that
Speaker 5: kind of money, so he once again needs it from
Speaker 5: the pone. Capone's not sure if he wants to get
Speaker 5: any more involved in this because he needs tending some
Speaker 5: money himself. That's when his long lost brother steps in
Speaker 5: and goes, yeah, you're going to do this because you
Speaker 5: you agree to stay out of my territory and your
Speaker 5: boys entered my territory. So anyway, and that's where Yeah,
Speaker 5: Richard Hart comes back, it comes all full sirtle. He
Speaker 5: comes back into his life and says, you're gonna get
Speaker 5: his money back and out sure enough al did and
Speaker 5: you made sure they got the money back and basically
Speaker 5: saved the economy in Nebraska.
Speaker 4: Yeah, incredible. Now, how much was there was reports of
Speaker 4: a fair amount of silver? How much silver was in
Speaker 4: this hall as well? Is that just included? That's just
Speaker 4: included in the two point seven million?
Speaker 5: I think it was just involved, you know. I think
Speaker 5: there was some these amounts. And somebody even pointed out
Speaker 5: to me at one point that they're, yes, it was
Speaker 5: hard to tell exactly uh the amounts of is. And
Speaker 5: I think that was part of the confusion because I
Speaker 5: was never able to find it either. I was going
Speaker 5: through everything trying to figure out the exact amounts and everything,
Speaker 5: but unfortunately I don't think it's said with the silver,
Speaker 5: how much there was m.
Speaker 4: So so how was this so? How was this money returned?
Speaker 4: I didn't know that under the conditions, But tell us
Speaker 4: the actual under what circumstances this money was finally returned.
Speaker 5: That's where the secret six comes in, where those people
Speaker 5: who don't know who the secret six were essentially they
Speaker 5: were basically imagine six Batman.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: There was six really wealthy guys in Chicago who got
Speaker 5: set up with uh, with organized crime in their city.
Speaker 5: So they pooled their resources. In fact, one of them
Speaker 5: was the head of fears. Yeah, in fact, his last
Speaker 5: thing excers anyway, in charge of serious robots, and you know,
Speaker 5: the others were equally uh powerful, and they basically pulled
Speaker 5: their money together to fight Drive. And they were both
Speaker 5: the Secret Six because at the time their names were
Speaker 5: not revealed since kind of come out which ones they
Speaker 5: they seem to have been, but they had been going
Speaker 5: after the pone. They had basically financed a bunch of things,
Speaker 5: including the untouchables. Elliott Ness was basically one of their guys.
Speaker 5: In fact, he was a cousin of one of the
Speaker 5: of one of them and see oh yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 5: so they've been going after him and all that thing.
Speaker 5: And so when they found a lout about pistoling on,
Speaker 5: they kind of helped in the investigation and helped put
Speaker 5: pressure on the Phone and you know, help pushure on
Speaker 5: some of these other people. So they wound up being
Speaker 5: the mediators between the Phone and Max Pohl. Essentially the
Speaker 5: organization brought the money to the Secret six or they
Speaker 5: got the uh the bearer bonds to the Secret Six
Speaker 5: and whatever cash there was and et cetera, gave it
Speaker 5: to them and then they passed it on to Max
Speaker 5: Full who then came back and made up this whole
Speaker 5: story about how they had left it on a dark alley,
Speaker 5: you know, like street corner in a big bag just
Speaker 5: did he had drafted and you know, I think part
Speaker 5: of it was sort of the key the indity of
Speaker 5: this Secret six secrets, but also it was just very
Speaker 5: max Hole to kind of embellish and create this whole
Speaker 5: surious kind of story.
Speaker 4: So what what of course he has political aspirations as
Speaker 4: a result of this, this victory for him, What are
Speaker 4: the political ramifications for him?
Speaker 5: Well, he got to stay in office for quite a
Speaker 5: bit longer, you know, essentially having gotten the money back
Speaker 5: for you know, people, but it was too late for
Speaker 5: the bank. The bank had already closed. But the people
Speaker 5: all got you know, their money back in the businesses,
Speaker 5: you know, they got their money back and et cetera.
Speaker 5: So he was kind of praised, and he also had
Speaker 5: enough money sort of mysteriously, you know, wound up with
Speaker 5: enough money to build himself a nice, big home. So
Speaker 5: it's almost think he was very clear he had some
Speaker 5: sort of brides as well.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: He continued to have power in Nebraska until a couple
Speaker 5: of days later when my grandfather sort of accidentally ended
Speaker 5: up getting him, uh to or cause them to lose
Speaker 5: an election. Uh, surely by accident. He was trying to
Speaker 5: help him, but he wound up. He was trying to
Speaker 5: was at one point max Ball at them essentially to
Speaker 5: run for office because he thought that his opponent's votes
Speaker 5: would be split between my grandfather and him, but instead
Speaker 5: it's the Toll vote up is split between him and
Speaker 5: my grandfather. Uh. Somehow, I don't know how they got
Speaker 5: associated together, but anyway, and that was how mac Ball
Speaker 5: finally lost. How Nebraska was.
Speaker 4: Thanks to your relatives.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's kind of that's how we believe this.
Speaker 5: My grandfather finally learned the story was because they even
Speaker 5: though he knew the Toll was just a crook, and
Speaker 5: my grandfather was about as far from that as as
Speaker 5: you could be, he kind of liked the guy. And
Speaker 5: that's kind of the way was of everybody. That's why
Speaker 5: I kind of compare him to Al capone because you
Speaker 5: look at both of them, you looked at someone like opponent.
Speaker 5: He was so well liked by people, even though everybody
Speaker 5: knew he was a criminal. And it was the same
Speaker 5: with Pall I mean, you know, so many people liked
Speaker 5: him and he was such an enjoyable guy, but they
Speaker 5: were like, yeah, but he was to feel your he'd
Speaker 5: feel your watch when you weren't watching, you know, mm hmm.
Speaker 4: How did the media play this? How did how did
Speaker 4: the story play out in the media? How did they
Speaker 4: what was their take on this entire ending of this story?
Speaker 5: The Yeah, the ending of it, you know, it was well,
Speaker 5: it was one of those things because of the fact
Speaker 5: that essentially, once he dies, the money back. He had
Speaker 5: made the deal with Dus Winkler that if you if
Speaker 5: you help me get his money back and then get
Speaker 5: through Well at that point he wasn't even trying to
Speaker 5: get the real guys, but he's like, if you can
Speaker 5: get me the money back, uh, you know, I'll release you. Well,
Speaker 5: once the money was back, all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 5: because Winkler made that deal very secretly, Once the money
Speaker 5: was back, all of a sudden, Winkler was like, oh,
Speaker 5: you know, what we just we found this a new
Speaker 5: at this new evidence that says that he didn't do
Speaker 5: any These other witnesses they're not very credible, even though
Speaker 5: they're the same witnesses that put the other people behind bars.
Speaker 5: He's like, oh, they're not This guy really isn't uh Well,
Speaker 5: these witnesses aren't really credible for you know, Gus Linklin.
Speaker 5: And so it became very obvious and very clear that
Speaker 5: he had uh made a deal with Compones, and the
Speaker 5: the mayor was uh or was this Gus Well mayor
Speaker 5: and the governor actually, I believe we're not you know,
Speaker 5: we're not happy with him, and wound up being like
Speaker 5: this big fight. Ironically, if anybody knows about WILLIAMS. Brian
Speaker 5: and who was one of the sides of the Scopes
Speaker 5: trial that was a whole historic incident of itself. It
Speaker 5: was his brother was in office. It was very much
Speaker 5: a critic of troll and they wound up having this
Speaker 5: big argument. And the person who kind of came in
Speaker 5: between and sort of mediated it was the father of
Speaker 5: the head speech writer of John F. Kennedy. So he
Speaker 5: had all these people who like wound up being in
Speaker 5: some way, you know, very famous in their own right.
Speaker 5: But anyway, so there was this big art debate going
Speaker 5: on between the three of them. But told got to say,
Speaker 5: and I mean, while people were very uncomfortable with what
Speaker 5: he did, and it was very blatant what he had done,
Speaker 5: and the press was sort of against them, you know.
Speaker 5: Then the people were sort of unhappy with what he did,
Speaker 5: at the same time, they're like, but he saved our economy,
Speaker 5: so they voted him in anyway, even though, and the
Speaker 5: press just continued to be more and more critical of
Speaker 5: them through the years, even but people just kept voting
Speaker 5: for him anyway.
Speaker 4: What was the fate of al Capone's brother, mister.
Speaker 5: Hart, Well, that actually you'll be able to see more
Speaker 5: of in the next book. That's one I'm actually coming
Speaker 5: out with at the very beginning of next year. He
Speaker 5: basically he continued to live in Nebraska. He was, like
Speaker 5: I said, one of the more successful pearl Bish officers
Speaker 5: in the country. Wound up being a b A VI
Speaker 5: I A officer. Then just settled down in Homer, Nebraska,
Speaker 5: which is a real small town, and you know, raised
Speaker 5: his family and he had a few other kind of
Speaker 5: exciting adventures. But it's you know, like I say, a
Speaker 5: very long story and stuff like that. But it goes
Speaker 5: on fre sale and October it will be called two
Speaker 5: Gun Hearts.
Speaker 4: Sit against stories of the title.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's going to be called two gun Heart, which
Speaker 5: is obviously like the number two, and then gun Heart
Speaker 5: because that was the nickname he went by. Apparently, because
Speaker 5: he went around, you know, with his two pistols at
Speaker 5: his side, he got the and his last name with heart,
Speaker 5: so they gave him the nickname two gun Heart.
Speaker 4: And what happened to Shariff condit? What was his fate?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: Unfortunately I was never able to find out he essentially,
Speaker 5: I do know that he was an avid photographer, and
Speaker 5: he wound up, uh that wound up becoming kind of
Speaker 5: like his big copy. I mean, he was you know,
Speaker 5: continued his sheriff for a while and then apparently what
Speaker 5: it got known for in his later years was his photography.
Speaker 5: Took pictures of all of his own items from you know,
Speaker 5: the police force and of the police force. Apparently they
Speaker 5: I mean they've actually been on the gallery and link
Speaker 5: and et cetera, and it's all in this one person's
Speaker 5: private collection. And I tried over and over to get
Speaker 5: hold of that person, so I could find as much
Speaker 5: as I could, but unfortunately he wouldn't get back to me,
Speaker 5: and so I had to get information sort of secondhand.
Speaker 5: So that's that's about as much as I know.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, and the three accused. What was the eventual fate
Speaker 4: of those people as a result of this.
Speaker 5: Well, one of them wound up beating the raft his lawyer.
Speaker 5: It's going to be a whole story, you'll almost have
Speaker 5: to read about it, but essentially they found a way
Speaker 5: to well. The first the first two who went on
Speaker 5: trial were both convicted, went to jail for twenty years.
Speaker 5: One of them died in prison. The other one managed
Speaker 5: to get all the way through and got out of prison.
Speaker 5: And he basically he would say several times, it's like, look,
Speaker 5: I probably deserved much worse than what I got, because
Speaker 5: he was a hit man. He had murdered people, he
Speaker 5: had brought to other banks. He just but he was
Speaker 5: always like, you know, but I probably got off easy.
Speaker 5: But I didn't deserve to go to jail for this
Speaker 5: one robbery. This is one of the only things I
Speaker 5: had not done. The third one, the third trial, it
Speaker 5: came along. The lawyer figured out this very clever way
Speaker 5: to get around things and managed to make it so
Speaker 5: that they couldn't prove that he had actually actually he
Speaker 5: made them prove that the bank had actually been robbed
Speaker 5: in the first place, which was a bizarre kind of
Speaker 5: legal maneuver, but he managed to get hints. They went
Speaker 5: through three trials and they were all mistrials or not
Speaker 5: miss trials. They were hung juries until finally told just
Speaker 5: gave up. The guy got you know, got off scot free,
Speaker 5: and within weeks or maybe a couple of months, he
Speaker 5: was killed out on the streets somewhere, just gangline activity.
Speaker 5: So it's like the other two probably survived longer just
Speaker 5: because they got they went to prison. Wow.
Speaker 4: Incredible, Yes, incredible side stories to the basic story. Wow.
Speaker 4: What as a result of doing this, I'm sure you've
Speaker 4: come away from it being affected. What was something that
Speaker 4: really either surprised you or most affected you about covering
Speaker 4: this story or finding discovering information and up that was
Speaker 4: gained in this story?
Speaker 5: You know, the really good question that's you know, I'd
Speaker 5: say it's the fact that it was front page news.
Speaker 5: I mean, you should have seen when I was at
Speaker 5: the Historical Society, because I expected to go there and
Speaker 5: just maybe find a little bit information of information since
Speaker 5: it has been so buried and lost in history. When
Speaker 5: I went to the Best of Historical Society, it looks
Speaker 5: for the newspapers that this was, you know, like a
Speaker 5: newspaper article. I figured maybe I'd find a story about
Speaker 5: bank robbery and then somewhere else and be like a
Speaker 5: side story on page twelve or whatever, you know. So
Speaker 5: I went there expecting that. Instead I go there, I
Speaker 5: go just into the basic area and front page news
Speaker 5: every day, and like additional information inside of the paper,
Speaker 5: and they were like pages dedicated to this. In the trial,
Speaker 5: I have the entire transcripts written inside, you know, these
Speaker 5: whole pages. I ended up bringing my mind mom and
Speaker 5: dad back the next day because they're really interested in history.
Speaker 5: Is that if you guys can help me be my
Speaker 5: research assistant. So the three of us were different microfilm machines,
Speaker 5: and you could just hear us throughout the whole place going,
Speaker 5: oh my god, here's exclaiming through the whole thing about
Speaker 5: we just couldn't believe how expansive and huge this story
Speaker 5: was at the time, and yet nobody knows about it today.
Speaker 5: And here was the largest bank robbery in history. And
Speaker 5: yet it's not listed. I mean mostly because those records
Speaker 5: ated being taken in nineteen thirty five along with the FBI.
Speaker 5: But you know, but because it was before that, nobody
Speaker 5: knows about it. We're all just like, how, how is
Speaker 5: it my grandfather was the only person who knew about this?
Speaker 4: Well, thank god for your grandfather, that's certain. It's amazing though,
Speaker 4: so that it seems to be a phenomena to that
Speaker 4: some people have done some mystical, incredible crimes, like Carol Checkter,
Speaker 4: and he has said the same sort of thing, that
Speaker 4: some of these stories are huge at the time but
Speaker 4: really disappear for some reason. So it is great that
Speaker 4: you had the good journalistic sense to pursue this and
Speaker 4: the end result is this incredible book, The Great Heist.
Speaker 4: So I want to commend you on that and incredible
Speaker 4: fascinating read too, and quite funny. And some of the things,
Speaker 4: how are completely ironic. Some of these things are to occur.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it really is a lot of the ironies.
Speaker 5: And I mean I hate to laugh about you know,
Speaker 5: bank robbery, its where you know, sometimes people are killed
Speaker 5: and stuff. But it's just so bizarre. I can't do
Speaker 5: anything else. It's the laugh. It's just the most bizarre
Speaker 5: story I think I've ever heard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very comic with the President coming out to me.
Speaker 4: I thought I laughed out loud that the President coming
Speaker 4: out and really saying, listen, I know this is a
Speaker 4: joke because he had the birthday party before that, and
Speaker 4: yet still still claiming no, no, no no, and you
Speaker 4: guys are doing a great job. And so they have
Speaker 4: to get into the base, and then a couple more
Speaker 4: times till he finally gets the idea, buddy, this ain't
Speaker 4: a joke.
Speaker 5: So yeah, incredibly.
Speaker 4: Now, for those of them might want to contact you,
Speaker 4: they be so inclined after listening to this interview to
Speaker 4: use the Facebook. Tell us about your website, tell us
Speaker 4: about where they might be able to get this book.
Speaker 4: Tell us a little bit about your contact information.
Speaker 5: Jeff, all right, well, yeah, I have all my stuff
Speaker 5: is on Bandwagon online dot com. All my books, including
Speaker 5: this one. Of course, you can find it on Amazon,
Speaker 5: and it's on all the EU eaters, Barnes Noble, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 5: You can even order them from Barnes Noble stores now
Speaker 5: and if you're in certain areas, they actually have them
Speaker 5: on the shelves. Yeah, and if you know, anybody wants to,
Speaker 5: I'm under Jeff MacArthur on Facebook, although I know there
Speaker 5: are a few others. So you go there and you'll
Speaker 5: find covers of books on on there, and that's that
Speaker 5: one's me. I also have Bandwagon Books as a Facebook group,
Speaker 5: so you know, anybody can find me there.
Speaker 4: Have to look, they can find you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. I've tried to make myself as visible as possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you certainly have. And thank you very much for
Speaker 4: coming on and talking about the Great Heist again. Another
Speaker 4: incredible read. It's really a lot of fun and you've
Speaker 4: dug up another incredible, incredible story. Thank you very much,
Speaker 4: and you have a great evening, Jeff, thank you too,
Speaker 4: and thank you for having me. Thank you. Good night, Jeff.
Speaker 5: Take care,