My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia HardstarkThis week, Karen and Georgia cover the murder of Sarah Everard and the 1978 Lufthansa Heist.
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Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder.
That is Georgia hard Star.
That is still Karen Kilgariff.
Still even though there's been a fascist takeover in this country.
Guys, remember when we recorded on a Monday and we were like, don't let us down everyone, and like, tell us in the future if we had nothing to be worried about.
Remember anyway, here we are here, We are in this fucking position again. Yeah, excuse my language.
No, it's a perfectly appropriate. I kind of don't. I kind of don't know what to do. Like I kind of am like, oh, you just like go on with the show normal.
Like, well, we do in the way that this is what we know how much it helped the first fucking time we did for who?
For us or for the listeners?
Well it's about them. Yeah, yeah, definitely. We're here in the service industry. Yeah, we are trying to give trying to make a difference. I feel like I didn't do enough last time. No, this time, oh yeah, that's I think that's uh, however, one feels that's the given right, Yeah, but I don't.
Think we could have changed that much anyway.
It's hard to say. Yeah, but yes, I totally know that feeling. I mean, it comes with the helplessness and the frustration, and look, we got a little bit of time, but then everybody needs to fucking take the gloves off and get ready, because that's what it's about.
It's nineteen thirty eight and you guys, we need to get get it together now. Yeah, it's nineteen thirty eight.
I'm sorry to say it, but there's a lot of people saying some great shit on TikTok that is really helping me. It's great, and it's just basically like, let's start planning. Read these books. Yeah, do these things. I think that people the point that I find that people are making over and overs. We've done this already, so we kind of know what's coming. Doom and gloom. You get to do it for a little while, block out some time, doom and gloom it up, and then start making plans, then start reaching out and making community activate. Yeah. Our newsletter this week is actually really good. I don't think I've ever bragged about the newsletter.
It's amazing. Alison Agusti, thank you for being our incredible she's our incredible copywriter. Yep, and she put it together in a way that's very like, how do you put a newsletter out for a podcast this fucking week, Clay go everyone promotion, chok out the merch store and instead it's.
Like, hey guys, here's some links that you might want to go to. So very impressive. When I read it, I kind of cried a little. I was like, thank you, yeah, thank you, because that's that's what we got to do.
We'll do it, you and I will.
Well, what's the word donate ten thousand dollars to the ACLU?
Absolutely, yes, Okay, what's the word? Though? When we all unite? Yeah? But the bye something?
I know what you're talking about's g galvanizer. We're gonna do it. This is a talking pod moment. It's a talking podcast, and we're not good at it together.
We're fine together one person.
That's right.
That's the wait. I mean, that's what I have half of the word you have been half Like, what the fuck is the problem?
I Those fucking Nick Terry MFM animateds come up on my TikTok fee now they do, and I'm like, am I one of those people that has drank my own bathwater? Because these are delightful they are and they're very fun. They are. They're really good. Nick, Terry will never be able to thank you enough for joining this family and making the funniest thing animated.
If you were not watching and following, my dad's watching and following. He's always telling you about how much he loves them. Hey, I think you voted wrong, but I'm not going to ask you hey, because I still need to love you.
It's tough, I mean there is there are people that are like they're going through parent breakups. Yeah, going through family breaks, breakups like I've die. I see my mom tomorrow. I'm really nervous about it. But yeah, well here's the thing. You're good at fighting with Janet.
I'm so good at it.
It's not like you're gonna lose that improv. You've done it. You know the words the song. I called my dad because I wasn't sure. I was just like, I'm gonna call my dad just to check in on him. But then I was like, I kind of can't deal with it if my if my dad's bummed, because you know it's Jim. Yeah, and uh, of course he was Jim. And I said, Dad, what the hell, what are we what are we gonna do? And he goes, what the hell. I don't know. We're gonna sally forth. We're gonna sally forth. That's Jim's plan.
I have not heard that term.
Yeah in decades.
Yeah, sally forth.
I mean I did send Nora text where I was just kind of like, hey, look, I know this is scary, but your great grandmother came here to this country when she was seventeen with her two sisters. She didn't know anybody to escape, to escape the black and tans. Yeah, and they built a family. And that's what you're made of. And that's what we're made of, and that's how we do it.
That's the stock you're made of.
Here we go, and that's the stock that all of the fucking immigrants in America are made of. So instead of trying to get rid of them, how about we all look to them because they have been through some real fucking shit, more shit.
Than the non fucking immigrants in a lot of fucking cases. Like what the fuck? Why are we? We're all human fucking beings. It doesn't like that's the class and the race that you should be thinking about, not this really fucking narrow, specific, weird, incestuous, fucking or divide.
It's dividing. Yeah, it's there. The intention is to divide us all. The intention is to divide Sally Forest. It's a great Roller Derby name. Oh my god, it exists in months months?
Does she listened? Can you Sally Forth? If you're Roller Derby queen and fucking shout us out Marfa Texas or whatever you let us know.
There used to be a comic strip called Sally Forth. Oh, but it was kind of like it was one of those ones that wasn't necessarily funny or not funny. I would always read it and go, what are we doing here? Is it a drama? But maybe I need to relook at that and see.
Well, speaking of fucking Sally Forth thing. So on Wednesday the six this past week, our episode of MFM Rewind came out, our new weekly show where we comment on and play original old episodes.
It's a recap recap thank you.
Yeah, and this one you covered Mary Vincent in it right day after the election, and so that was like, oh no, but it actually we got a lot of comments about that being powerful. And I have one from Instagram. I want to read. Read it from Katie Mayfield. It says like it chills every time I hear Mary vincent story, and I can't help but think how serendipitous it is to re listen to Karen telling this story today as I process the election results and think of an administration which wants to hack away at our freedoms and our democracy. The despair I feel today cannot compare to what Mary Vincent must have felt at the bottom of that ravine. And yet she packed those wounds and climbed out, telling ya, and she's built a beautiful life. Mary, you are triumphant. Thank you for showing us what's possible.
Incredible. Someone just wrote that as a comment. Yeah, who say the name again?
Her name is Katie, kat I Mayfield.
Incredible work, Katie, thank you. Oh no, we're crying on video. Shit. Look listen, these are sometimes we got to, you know, focus on what we can focus on one next step after next step and focus on Mary Vincent. Yeah, well, what are you gonna do?
Talk about the network. So we have a network? Highlight some other podcasts. Yeah, if you make some like comic relief for some true crime relief, we have those options. I don't know, go for it. That's true.
Over on Do you need a ride? Which is my other podcast. Do you know that I love podcasting? Really, It's really my one of my favorite things. And actually this episode, Chris and I drive around with comedian, writer and organizer Jenny Yang. She literally runs errands, but is a truly delightful episode. I didn't know her before we did that episode. I'd heard of her, but i'd never met her, and it was really fun.
It's awesome. And then I'm ghosted by raz Hernandez a wonderful show. Roz is joined by Sasha Colby, an iconic performer and winner of season fifteen of Rue Paul's Drag Race.
We have to give credit to the fact, but we do live in a timeline where Rue Paul's Drag Race and the stars from that show dominate entertainment. I fucking live for it. It is the best yeah drag queen world, and I fucking am very grateful for that. Yes, Daniel and Millie have another epic double future. Listen to this double feature. And I saw what you did Parasite from twenty nineteen and Triangle of Sadness.
That movie, Oh, Vincent, I were just sitting on the couch going, what the fuck? For real, what the fuck? The whole time.
It is so incredible. And that ending, Like, when that ending happened, I was like, you've done it, You've done the perfect ending.
This is unbelievable. What's his face's cameo in that as the ship Captain? Was it Woody Harrelson? Yes, chef's kiss so good? And then over on Buried Bones, Kate and Paul discussed the nineteen fourteen murder of Auto Cohler by one of his two mistresses.
Also, we just you know, will take the time as the world is crumpling to sell you T shirts. We have no shame, but it's only because the holidays are coming and we have our first ever jewelry collaborations. So a listener and fine jewelry designer named Nina Palaccio at Saval Collective in Milwaukee, Wisconsin created a beautiful Stay Sexy and don't get Murdered necklace for us. They're very limited. Please head to my favorite murder dot com today if you want to see if you want to buy one.
I love when we do collabse with listeners. There's nothing better than that.
Also, I just went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for vacation to see to visit our Great Lakes office and see Bradford Blowski in the legal department. And I wonder if I went to Savall and looked around and just didn't know that we had collaborated with them. I'm going to look them up online. That all right?
You want you go first?
I want to tell you a story.
Okay, tell me a story.
You're not going to like this, so you might remember this. Today's story begins on March third, twenty twenty one, in the Clapham area of South London, around nine o'clock at night. Oh fuck, you know what I'm about to say. Thirty three year old Sarah Everard is walking home after spending a couple hours at her friend's house. She's headed back to her apartment in a nearby neighborhood called Brixton. It's like a fifty minute walk from Clapham. It's kind of a long walk, but it's still relatively early at night. But it's also that confusing part of the pandemic where the restrictions seem to be evolving by the day. People are actively kind of trying to figure out how to navigate public spaces. So Sarah's wearing her mask. She's taken a route that she's familiar with it's well lit, it's populated, it doesn't require close interactions with other people, so, of course, like all women seem to have to all the time, she has chosen the safest option available to her to just move around in public. Not long after setting up out, Sarah calls her boyfriend Josh. They chat for about fifteen minutes, they say good night, and then Sarah disappears. This is the story of a tragic, senseless crime that ignites a nationwide firestorm of anger over the lack of women's safety in public spaces and the failure of the systems that are supposed to protect it. This is the murder of Sarah Everard. So sources used in today's research are articles and reports from various British news outlets, including Bbc'sky Names and The Guardian, and the rest of the sources are listed in our show notes. So, like many of us, Sarah Everard struggled through twenty twenty. The pandemic sent her employer into a tail spin, so she wound up getting laid off and at the same time she and her then boyfriend broke up. But by twenty twenty one things are leveling out. She's gotten a new job in marketing. She has a new boyfriend named Josh. They're very happy together. They're actually planning to travel to Abitha with some friends in a few months. Her life is filled with people who adore her. Her close friend Rose says, quote, she has always been an exceptional friend, dropping everything to be there to support her friends whenever they need her. Her cousin Tom adds quote, Sarah's absolutely amazing. She's lovely, and she's fantastic, so sensible, so well loved by her family, by her friends, by everyone. And her sister Katie describes her as quote the very best person, with so many people who love and cherish her. Sarah's colleagues are surprised when, on March fourth, she does not show up for work and she does not call, which is of course entirely out of character for her. But what's even stranger than that is that no one can reach her. Her loved ones immediately send something is very wrong, so that day Josh reports her missing to the police. Sarah's parents travel down from her hometown of York to London to figure out what's happening, and meanwhile, her friends and family start distributing flyers and sharing posts on social media, just immediately doing everything they can to spread the word that their friend has disappeared. So the police immediately launch an investigation and they begin to piece together Sarah's route from the night before, using footage from CCTV, from security cameras, public buses, and doorbell cameras, so before long they have around eighteen hundred hours of footage to comb through. So they're also going door to door to ask residents if they remember seeing anyone fitting Sarah's description, and before long police have pieced together this timeline. Sarah left her friend's house around nine pm. Thirteen minutes later, at nine thirteen, she calls her boyfriend Josh. They speak until around nine twenty seven, and while she's on the phone, Sarah is captured by two different CCTV cameras as she walks. At nine thirty four PM, less than ten minutes after she gets off the phone, Sarah is spotted again, this time by a camera on a city bus as it passes by, and now she's not alone. It's hard to make out the details, so Sarah and another person kind of just look like blobs in this grainy footage, but the other person looks larger and taller than her, and in this footage, Sarah and the stranger seem to be facing one another. They're standing by a white car that's pulled over with its hazards on, and the stranger is holding something up as if they're presenting it to her. A few minutes later, at nine thirty eight pm, another bus passes by. The camera on this one captures that same white car, but now Sarah and the person are no longer standing there. Instead, the cars two front doors are open. About a minute later, the white car is seen driving away. So as investigators piece Sarah is an evening together, they also put out a call to any Londoners who might have seen her interacting with this stranger, and two witnesses who are a couple come forward claiming to have seen Sarah being handcuffed on the street. They figured she was being arrested by an undercover cop. So this is a solid lead. But because it's a missing person's case, time is of the essence of course, so people have to figure out who that second person is and fast. Fortunately, the buses that captured footage of Sarah are also outfitted with technology that automatically reads the license plates of passing vehicles, so it doesn't take long for police to suss out where the white car came from. It's a rental car from Dover, England, which is like about eighty miles southeast of London. When police follow up with a rental car agency, they learned that this white car was rented on the night of March third, and that the customer who rented it rented it under his real name, which made it very easy for police to find him, and he is now the prime suspect in Sarah Everard's dis appearance. This person's name is Wayne Cousins and he's a police officer. Wayne Cousins is forty eight years old and he lives with his wife and children in a town called Deal, which is eighty miles from the center of London in the county of Kent, and that's just north of Dover, where that car was rented. Cousins has spent the last several years working in law enforcement. He's bounced from department to department while undergoing the requisite background checks to varying results. Back in the two thousands, for example, Cousins starts out as essentially a volunteer officer called a special constable with the Kent Police. Then in two thousand and eight, he applies for a formal position with the same department, but the routine background check comes back with an odd red flag. Cousins has a lot of personal debt, so this is considered a risk factor because of bribery and corruption, so he doesn't get the job, but he is still allowed to continue his volunteer post. To years later, in twenty ten, he applies for a full time role with the Civil Nuclear Consabulary or the CNC, which is a specialized police force tasked with protecting nuclear sites across England. Yeah, so he's vetted once again by an entirely different team and his debt issues are flagged for a second time, yet he's still hired for this position. Of course, having debt is not uncommon and it's not particularly nefarious, but there will be many more, very big red flags. For example, while employed with the CNC, Cousins reportedly has a habit of making the women around him so uncomfortable that his colleagues give him the nickname the rapist.
I'm sorry, that's if you're called that once, that's not a nickname. You get to be called multiple times and keep your fucking job.
Now, well, it feels like a behind his back nickname, but then it is that kind of thing of like when do you get bad vibes to the point where you have to talk it to somebody totally?
I mean that's extreme.
In twenty fifteen, Cousins is reported to the police after he's seen driving around Dover naked from the waist down in his own CARCK investigators have Cousins plate information in a photograph which are captured by a passing bus. In that incident, he's investigated for indecent exposure, but the person doing that investigating is a police sergeant who is friends with Cousin's brother, so no charges are ever filed. Jess. The tiniest amount of due diligence could have ended Cousin's policing career, but instead, in twenty seventeen, he applies for a position with the Metropolitan Police the met as they call it, serving the Greater London Metropolitan Area, and Cousins manages to pass yet another round of betting and gets that job. But now that he's been identified in this footage with Sarah Everard, Cousins is finally starting to sweat. At first, when investigators question him about Sarah's disappearance, he remained silent, and then he suddenly just completely changes course. He claims that he's in serious trouble with an Eastern European gang and he racked up debts after visiting a gang affiliated sex worker, but he doesn't have the money to pay them back, so he claims that these gangsters ordered him to kidnap a woman so that they could eventually sex traffic her. He claims that if he failed to do so, this gang would come after his family, and that's the reason that he kidnaps Sarah. The story only gets more convoluted and confusing from there. He admits following this gang's instructions and ultimately handing Sarah over to them, but he tells police he doesn't have any identifying or contact information that could be used to track these men down. Unsurprisingly, the police do not buy this story in any way, and so when Cousins realizes he isn't fooling anyone, he stops trying and he simply repeats no comment to every question that they ask him. Meanwhile, investigators are digging deeper into cousins life and what they find is damning. They search his house in his car and they find plastic handcuffs, a handcuff key, plastic gloves, belcrost straps, blood and seamen stains are found in the backseat of his car, and when that blood is tested, it's a match for Sarah's DNA and the seamen matches Cousins. So investigators learned that in twenty nineteen, Cousins purchased a small piece of land in a secluded part of Kent called Hoades Wood, around fifty miles from London. Cousins cell phone pings in the area the night Sarah goes missing, and so officers start combing those woods. Then, on March tenth, a full week after Sarah is last seen in London, her remains are found in Hoades Wood. Her body's been badly burned and placed in bags and put into a nearby pond. Her phone is also eventually found by police in a river roughly thirty miles away. So investigators try to theorize what happened on the night of March third when she went missing, and this is what they the kind of time frame and the story they come up with, which is that Earlier in the day, Cousins rents a car in Dover, ten miles from his home and deal. He drives his car to London, he sees Sarah walking alone. It's believed that he then stops Sarah pretending to be an undercover cop. He seems to have put a lot of thought into this kind of scheme. He actually specifically rented a car that looks like an undercover cop car. In the footage, Sarah appears deferential, her head's down as if she's being confronted by an authority figure. Cousins is also seen presenting something to Sarah. People are assuming it's his badge because he's a cop.
Right.
As far as what Cousins might have been telling Sarah, the most prominent theory is that he was citing COVID rules to her, possibly name checking actual ordinances or maybe making them up. But he likely convinced her that she'd done something wrong and he was now placing her under arrest. Yeah, that's so terrifying. In any case, Sarah gets into cousins rental car and almost certainly assumes she's going to be taken to a nearby police station, but instead she's driven fifty miles out of town, Cousins ditches his rental car and then forces Sarah into his own vehicle that he has left in a specific spot earlier that day, so he's planned this to the point where he's changing cars. He then drives her to the property and hoods wood, rapes and strangles her to death. Hours later, at eight fifteen am, Cousin stops at a coffee shop and then returns to the rental car at eight point thirty. He then drives out of town to throw Sarah's phone into the river. Around two pm, he's captured on CCTV footage buying two huge bags, the kind that they use to carry debris on construction sites, and they're the same ones that her remains will be found in later. So to give himself time to dispose of Sarah's body, Cousins calls out of work. He cites exhaustion and emotional stress, and then he calls his wife and lies telling her that he is at work.
He's got a wife and kids.
It's so disturbing. It's so disturbing. Yeah. So around eleven am the next day, March fifth, he spotted buying gasoline, and that afternoon, residence near Hoadeswood report seeing a large orange and yellow flame. So then on March seventh, just days after he murders Sarah, Cousins inexplicably brings his wife and children to hodes Wood. What that's psychotics? It is kind of like right in the definition. So two days later, on March ninth, Cousins, who's probably sensing the walls closing in on him, wipes his phone of all data. He is arrested hours later. So this is an enormous amount of evidence against Cousins, both physical and circumstantial. It's so overwhelming that in June of twenty twenty one, he actually pleads guilty to Sarah's kidnapping en rape, and then a few weeks later he admits to murdering her. Because Cousins pleads guilty these to these charges, he has never brought to trial, meaning that Sarah's family doesn't have to experience the media blitz and the traumatic testimony that often accompanies these horrible cases. But Sarah's loved ones will have a chance to confront him during his sentencing hearing, and that takes place in September of twenty twenty one. As Sarah's loved ones share victim impact statements. They repeatedly ask Cousins to look them in the eye, but like a true coward, he can't. These statements are heartbreaking and they drive home the senselessness and the brutality of Sarah's murder, along with the pain felt by all of them, all of her family and loved ones who miss her so dearly. Her father, Jeremy says, quote, mister Cousins, please, will you look at me. The impact of what you have done will never end. The horrendous murder of my daughter Sarah is in my mind all the time and will be for the rest of my life. She was saving to buy a house and looking forward to marriage and children. We were looking forward to having grandchildren. We loved being a part of Sarah's world, and we expected her to have a full and happy life. The closest we can get to her now is to visit her grave every day. Cousins is ultimately handed a whole life sentence, which is very rare. It's reserved for the UK's most violent offenders, and it means that he'll spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole. So, of course this sentencing does nothing to ease the pain of Sarah's loved ones or to restore the faith the British public would have had in their systems, especially British women. People are completely outraged that a man like Wayne Cousins was able to rise to a position of power and then abuse it in such a horrific way. And there were so many instances where Cousins should have lost his job. Talked about some of them already, but there are more. In fact, just days before Sarah's murder, Cousins exposed himself to two different women that were working at the drive through at McDonald's in Kent. These were two separate instances. Fuck. So this is a sexual predator who can no longer control himself just driving around town.
Yeah, and doesn't have to worry about it because he's not going to get reprimanded in any way.
Seems like he never has been. His license plate was clearly captured by the restaurant CCTV footage and was passed along to the Metropolitan Police, again his employer at the time. They did not investigate further. After Sarah's death, the met promises to do better.
Oh my god, tell me someone got fucking in trouble for not.
Their initial response. Hold on their initial response makes things worse. One of the largest demonstrations held after Sarah's death takes place at Clapham Common, a park near where she was last seen. Thousands of people gather for a peaceful vigil to honor Sarah's memory and duly raise awareness about violence against women, but the police, citing COVID restrictions, forcefully break up the event. Images of women being restrained and arrested are circulated throughout the media, adding to the fury and frustration of what the people are already feeling. So an enormous social media movement begins online with British women sharing their own stories of being violated in public spaces. The same month that Sarah's killed, a report is released by UN Women, which is the arm of the UN that deals with gender equality and women's empowerment, and it finds that more than seven percent of British women have been sexually harassed in public Sarah Evard's case is horrific, heartbreaking, and perhaps the most notorious murder of a British woman in a public space that's happened in recent years, but this case is not the only one. There's another one from twenty twenty involving the murders of twenty seven year old Nicole Smallman and her forty six year old sister, Biba Henry, who were killed by a man they did not know in a London park in a random attack. That crime in and of itself is terrible, but it reached a horrifying level of notoriety after the two responding police officers took selfies with the women's bodies, circulated them in a WhatsApp group and described them as quote dead birds. God what, there's no bottom.
No.
There's also the case of twenty eight year old Sabina Nessa in September of twenty twenty one. Sabina, who is a beloved school teacher, was murdered by a stranger, a male stranger, in a sexually motivated attack. She was on her way to meet up with a friend, and she was passing through a London park. And both of these cases happened to women of color, which is why most people say these deaths did not receive as much media attention as Sarah's. But they're all shocking, senseless murders that are being perpetrated or handled so callously by the police. That it really shows how much danger women are on a regular basis. It's a difficult truth, but it really shows how much women need to come together, need to join together, need to transgress and confront the racial issues and the class issues and actually come together to fight this violence.
I mean, what do you do when, like your very own life is not taken seriously by the people who are paid, be it taxes to protect it.
We paid in this city billions of dollars.
Like what do you even fucking where do you even start? You just have to rely on each other to try to be loud. Yes, yes, to be as loud as possible.
Yep. Yeah. We'll end this with Sarah's mother, Susan's impact statement. I yearned for her. I remember all the lovely things about her. She was caring, she was funny, she was clever, but she was good at practical things too. She was a beautiful dancer, She was a wonderful daughter. She was always there to listen, to advise, or simply to share with the minutia of the day. And she was also a strongly principled young woman who knew right from wrong and who lived those values. She was a good person. She had a purpose to her life. What I do know is that Sarah will never be forgotten and is remembered with boundless love. And that's the story of the tragic murder of Sarah Everard.
Wow, that's a big one to tackle.
Good job, thank you. Mareon mcclashan is our researcher. Alejandra Keck is our producer who also helped pick that story. And what's crazy is because the day after the election, I called Maren. It was like eight in the morning. I was like, hey, uh, what do you think if we just read out like Project twenty twenty five and we just go over all the plans of what's about to happen and what's about to happen to women? And Maren's like, yeah, sounds cool and just like just starts getting into it immediately. And then I get to work and Alejandra's like, hey, yeah, so you actually have a really good story. I think you should do this story you have And I'm like, okay, okay, because I was like I'm just making it up. It feels like something big needs to be done. That is and that is it. Well, that's just it is. That's what this podcast is totally we don't sometimes realize that, and yeah, you know, we've definitely done it wrong.
We started out rough.
We started out basically doing this podcast the way we were taught to ingest this kind of media by the media. But we got taught by our listeners. We got taught by victims and people on the outside of like, actually, here's how you should be doing this. And it actually matters to tell these stories definitely, and like women need to hear these stories. Young women need to hear these stories. It's important. It is.
Well, this story just couldn't be further from your story, okay, which is okay, that's how we do this now true, are we going.
To get the bends? It's so extremely different? Okay, yes, you know why?
Why because we're hanging out with a mafia now, okay, like classic mafia, classic, you know all of it.
Can you sing the opening theme song to the sopranos while you start.
The love bo Oh? No, that's a different one. This story is like what the movie Goodfellas was based off of.
Oh yes, Henry Hill. Yes, nice.
So I'm going to tell you the story of the Luftanza heist. And I've seen Goodfellas, But I forgot that that's what this is about.
I did too.
Yeah, So, the movie Goodfellas is based off the book by Nicholas Pelegi. But but what I know better and know and loves so much more and like has a special place in my heart is a different movie that was lightly based off of this story. And that story was written by She's wife, whose name was Nora Efron Oh, and she wrote the fucking nineteen ninety classic My Blue Heaven, which was literally one of my favorite fucking movies growing up. I still quote it sometimes, like if you know, you know. So this is the story of one of the largest cash robberies in American history and possibly the best known mafia crime. The story of the Luftanza Heist beautiful, So let's just go in a totally different direction. The main sources used for the story are a book called The Luftanza Heist written by mafia and foremant Henry Hill and Daniel Stone, and an article from when the heist happened from Time magazine, and the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes. But definitely go watch My Blue Heaven or Goodfellows whatever, Yeah, whatever, you like both their classics. All right, So here we are. It's three in the morning on Monday, December eleventh, nineteen seventy eight. A great year stolen black Ford van is driving the perimeter of JFK Airport in Queens.
New York.
It pulls to the side, not by the passenger area where you'd like pick up and drop off passengers, but by a cluster of cargo terminals. Three men hop out and use bolt cutters to cut the chain and open a gate in the chain link fence separating their road from the terminals. So already here we go.
Yeah.
They get back in the car and drive toward a ramp that leads to the loading dock at the cargo terminal for the German airline Louftanza. There a Louftanza employee named Carrie Whalen, who is driving a truck around the terminal, spots them, and as Carry gets close to the passenger side door, one of the men gets out of that van and pistol whips him and then those men drag Carry into the van. They lion down on the floor and then proceed up the ramp. Once they are at the top of the ramp, the men put on masks, and they are met with three other masked thieves who have somehow already gained entry into the building. It's not clear how so these six thieves have met up at the exact moment when all of the employees and the cargo terminal are taking their coffee break. So it sounds timed, doesn't it Like they had insider info?
Don't they knew when to do it? That's right.
They round up all these poor fucking employees who are just trying to have a coffee break and get through their fucking airport job night shift. It's three in the morning. They're just trying to get through their day night whatever.
It's like that thing when you have to like when you have to work at night, and so you have to drink coffee and you feel kind of like hollow, but you're rattling yeah, and you're just kind of like, how am I going to do this?
Everything's a little dreamlike and woozy.
And then when you get off at like seven am, by that time, you're like, forget it now, I have energy, yeah.
And you can't sleep, whiting to sleep till two. And then what they round up all the employees is poor employees and handcuff all of them. They happen to have brought the exact amount of handcuffs needed for the job. They didn't just happen, by No, they didn't. Then they pick out the manager. They find the manager, hold a gun to his head and bring him to the terminal's high security vault. They drive the van right up to the vault and then, threatening to kill this port manager, they get him to open the vault and they load the vault's contents into the van. What's in the vault, you ask, nondescript boxes. There's a ton of them, and it takes them forty five minutes to load all of those into the stolen black van. These boxes have arrived on a plane from Germany on Friday. What's it for Germany? The boxes had been scheduled to be transferred to Chase Manhattan Bank first thing the morning when they arrived, but they had been stalled and had stayed over the weekend instead. These boxes, and the boxes everyone knows, contain cash and jewelry. It's like a known thing, but nobody knows how much. So the van is loaded up, the thieves take the security tapes, which they know the location of another insider info and they drive away. End of the robbery. It's four twenty am at this point, and the employees are instructed not to call the police until four thirty, which they comply with. And at some point Carrie Whalin, the man who got pistol whipped, is let out of the van and no one's been killed. He's the only person who had been injured at all, and he ends up being okay good. So right away investigators are like, Hi, inside job, They're fucking totally aware of it. The Luftanza employees are able to tell the police that all six of them had quote strong Brooklyn accents is like, hey, the police are right that the thieves had someone helping them on the inside. A man named Louis Werner is a supervising shipping clerk at the Luftanza cargo terminal at the airport, and he, unfortunately it turns out, is a gambler and he owes twenty thousand dollars to a man named Martin Krugman.
I don't want to be judgmental, but it sounds like Lewis is a little bit of a nerd.
Which part of because he's a supervising shipping clerk.
Yeah, and he's kind of like, it's probably the guy I no one I would expect. So they're just like, oh, they're like, hey, Lewis, how you know what you're gonna do right that nobody's ever going to think you would ever do? Right, He's all nervous. I'm probably getting that from the movie right totally.
But twenty thousand dollars is a fucking lot of money in nineteen nineteen, Tony, that is it. That's a ton of money now that you owe someone like God. But guess how much it is in today's money?
Is it three hundred thousand dollars?
Its one hundred thousand dollars? I know, I always go way over. So the guy he owes money to Martin Krugman is a whig salesman. Oh that's so innocent, right, No, he's also an associate of certain mobsters named Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke. They are both associated with the Lukezy crime family.
Sorry, whig salesman, Like, come on in everybody, we got Bob's we got long hair?
Yeah? I think so okay, like back then when they had like wig shops. Yeah, but like he's in with the.
Mob though, Yeah, you know he actually doesn't know anything about which probably not.
What do you have to know about them? Put them on?
Yeah, just pull it on, you know, try to pull it back a little so it looks normal.
Right now, we're into goodfellows because this Henry hill fellow is played by Rayliota Rip and Jimmy Burke. This guy is played by Robert de Niro. So like, that's how important they were is they're played by two of the most like classic actors.
Big deal guys, big deal guys.
So Lewis Werner's situation owing all that money is not good. Clearly when gamblers can't pay Martin the Whig salesman, he sticks his enforces on them. His enforcer goes by the name Spikey just immediately.
Bad or it's one of those like opposite nicknames where he's like real round and facts, the opposite of a spike.
His fun specialm o like thing. He's like, this is my mob thing is to take people into his basement and break their hands with advice. No, that's gonna be my thing.
Spiky fuck. That's the piece where when we when I talk about like the mob, I just want to turn away because you've got Spikey's doing stuff like that where it's just like.
Oh, they're not the beautiful people you want them to be, and thinking, I.
Just really treasure my wigs and I don't want people touching them that have that kind of violence in their hearts. Micky would never Vicky get out of the basement, take a painting.
Class, pottery nice pottery throwing class. And so of course Lewis Werner's like, oh no, I don't want to fucking deal with my Spikey and his vice scripts. So he proposes an idea to Jimmy. He tells him, hey, man, I work at this cargo place. A large shipment of untraceable US currency regularly comes into the Luftanza cargo terminal at JFK Airport. This is like a regular thing. He says. It doesn't come in on a particular day, so he can't give him the day, but he says he always knows when it's going to arrive. So this shipment in general, why are they sending boxes of untraceable money from Germany to the US. Right It's because of an agreement between a German bank and the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. It's all money that American tourists, business people, and military personnel have exchanged in Germany. So like the money you exchange for German what are they fucking rights marks? They have to go back to the US. Oh right, you know what I mean.
But where's where's our jewelry coming from?
I don't know.
Here, take this necklace and I can have a couple of deutsch marks by myself a drink.
That was good.
Thanks, that was great. I'm working on my accent. I like it.
And the serial numbers from those bills are not recorded, I don't think until they get to Chase, so they're just unmarked bills in boxes at the cargo terminal.
It was such a wild time and a loosey, goosey time.
So loose and free. They're almost like, please steal this money, yeah, which it's just in a hardboard box. Yeah, with what a little tape on the top, tape stamps. It's like this Hello Kitty tape. You know. It was just like, oh, there it is.
This side up with a little cash symbol.
So much money, careful money or like fragile money.
I heart money.
So it's always a huge amount of money. Generally in the millions, and just like everyone fucking knows that. So Martin brings the idea to his mafia connection, Henry Hill, Raleiota and Jimmy Burke, Robert de Niro. He's like, hey, here's this idea, Like, let's do it. And they run the idea up the chain of command to the Kapo, which is the head of the Lukazy family, who's like, sounds great, let's do it perfect. Yeah. A crew is assembled, mostly made up of the Lukazy associates who all operate out of a bar in Queens. They all that's their spot. It's called Robert's Lounge.
Cool.
Sounds great, let's go so good.
So many brown drinks and so many rusty nails, pinky rings, bigs, wigs too, And that's where Jimmy Brook conducts most of his business.
And a plan comes together with the help from Lewis on all of the logistics. He provides plans to the building and says he will tell them exactly when to come and pick up the shipment, which he does that weekend in December. So immediately after the heist, it becomes clear to both authorities and to the thieves exactly how much money's actually been stolen. It turns out that there were two separate shipments in the vault that day, not one like the thieves have been expecting, and so the total amount of the untraceable bills they stole was five million dollars. And in addition to this, there was about eight hundred thousand dollars worth of all that beautiful jewelry we were talking about American jewelry in Europe. Yeah, a, the Bengals and the Broaches.
I left my watch on the plane Liftanzo.
Right, So that's about a total of about five point eight million dollars, which in today's money.
Oh, in seventy eight five.
Point eight million. I think everyone's like, oh fuck.
Is it double? Is it like ten million?
It's twenty eight million. Jesus Christ. They were stoked at the time. This is the largest cash robbery ever on American soil.
So they're like at Roberts, They're like pinacleis for everybody's top shelf.
The cash is quickly laundered through a network of additional mob contacts, all of whom are told to lay low. They're like, don't fucking buy flashy shit, because clearly like they're they're kind of onto us, and you're going to like point them right in our direction. Just play it cool. Yeah, you know, so things immediately start to go wrong, as they tend to do when you make a movie about a thing that happens.
Especially a thing that happens in the mafia.
Right right, The stolen black van that you know was part of the heist is supposed to be driven to a salad yard in New Jersey, and guess who. It's owned by John Gotti, who's like, he's not in this family, but he's like, I'll help you, guys. I think I had so much money that they're like, let's like spread it around. Like he's like, yes, I'll get rid of the van. But the man who's supposed to bring the van to the salavage yard a man named Parnell Edwards who goes by the nickname Stax, which is pretty great extime. I can Stacks by can Stack, my favorite cartoon. So, instead of doing what he's supposed to do, Sacks, for some fucking reason, parks the van in front of his girlfriend's apartment in Brooklyn.
He loves her.
He loves her so much he like has to make a pit stop on the way to getting rid of the van.
It's like, I'm trying to do these crimes, but I gotta come to see sweet why all right?
Unfortunately he parks the van in front of a hydrant. Oh oh, so it's immediately toad no, Like the police are immediate, like, hey they know the van, Yes, they know it's the van that had been reported stolen, that was used in the highest stacks sacks really fucking blew it. And also then Carrie Whalen's wallet is found inside the van.
Carrie Whalen sounds like the name of a girl I would have gone to high school with. That does not sound like I'm mafia name at all.
It's k E r r y.
Is that Irish? It sounds it's a in Irish last name, I think, right.
So he was the one who worked at Luftanza. He was the one who got pistol whipped. Oh and like put in the van so that they were able to connect that to the van.
God know what I mean.
So they they're like, we're this is the van. The FBI figures out whose apartment the van is parked in front of, knows who Stax is and who he works for and because of the rigid hierarchy of the mob, they basically know immediately which general circle of people is connected to this heist, you know. Yeah. At the same time, investigators want to find out who the person was on the inside at Luftanza who orchestrated the heist, like because he's maybe the worst one, maybe right. They first focused on a Luftanza employee name Peter Grinwald, and Peter had actually in the past conspired with Lewis Werner to plan this exact kind of heist, but Peter was either cut out of the plan in the end or he just didn't want to participate. But it doesn't matter because Peter knows all about it and knows who the players are even though he wasn't participating. So he agrees to testify in exchange for immunity and immediately rats on his co worker Lewis Werner.
It can't feel good when you're riding on a fellow mafia guy.
No, you got to get out of there.
All the stuff in the mafia is the opposite of that.
Well, Lewis Werner isn't a mafia guy. He just fucking knows the mafia money.
Oh that's right, sorry, well he's an associate.
Yeah, and my association. You're an associate.
That's right. You hang around a barbershop, you're going to get a haircut. I love that.
I love that.
I didn't make it up.
It sounds like an old Irish thing. Okay. So Lewis is arrested, charged, found guilty, he sentenced to fifteen years in prison, all within the first half of nineteen seventy nine. Ultimately, though, he's the only person who was ever convicted in connection with the Luftanza heist. Oh interestingly, and you're like, oh, why are more people prosecuted for that? Well, people start to get oh yeah, mostly about the order of Jimmy Burke. So the first of all is Stax.
We lost Stacks.
He fucked up so.
Bad, he really did.
Like that was kind of a given.
You know, my boyfriend Sax died.
Yeah, he's found in an apartment in Ozone Park, Queens, having been shot in the head on December eighteenth, just a week after the heist, and he had to know it was coming.
Yeah, Like, he fucked up a real bad, although if they shot him from behind, it might have been a soprano situation where he.
Was it was just over.
But he had to know that it was coming, yes, because he let out you know what I mean, Yes, he was out in the zone park because he knows.
Yeah, He's like, I'm going to get my hand in a vice grip and then I'm fucking dead.
Yeah.
So next to go is Martin Krugman, the Whig salesman. Poor Marty. Part of the problem is that Martin also owes money to loan sharks. He's not just a loan shark himself, he owes money to them, and he's so anxious to get his cut from the heist, which is supposed to be like half a million dollars, that he keeps going to Robert's lounge and bugging Jimmy Burke for his cut, which is like, you just don't want to do that. Oh, it's like every that's mob one oh one.
I feel like that's in the movie, or there's something in the in the movie where it's like, yeah, there's a guy that comes to the bar.
It just keeps nagging. Yes, Yeah, I haven't seen in a long time great fucking movie, such a good movie, double feature, fucking good Fellas, And I'm just gonna keep pushing my Blue Heaven. It's really a gem and I feel like it's not given enough credit.
Do it?
Okay. By early January, Martin goes missing and his body's never found. Another member of the crew named Tommy de Simone who's played by Joe Peshy Hey Classic, he gets killed by members of the Gaudy Crew as vengeance for a different killing, not even directly related to the luftanza. Heis, but the hest probably did set the events in motion that led to it, so it is connected. It's all connected in the mob. Then another member of the crew named Lewis kfora who's nickname? It's a deli meet.
Oh, it's a head cheese Louis head cheese Gemora.
Nickname is roast Beef. No, who wouldn't have gotten Who would have gotten that? Okay, it's so simple, I know I'm delicious roast beef. Hey, roast beef. This guy goes and buys his wife a custom pink Cadillac right away, fool with his share of the money.
You put Mary kaysticker on the back. Then no one known's the wiser.
That's true, but he didn't do that. It was like they told you not to buy flashy shit, and you buy a pink.
Cadillac, you'd buy the flashy ish, right.
You know my second cousin wrote the song pink Cadillac. What yeah, what? Yeah.
We've been doing this podcast for eight and a half years and you've never bragged about that.
I'm trying to make sure that that's right in fact checking that in my mind.
And is it the the Bruce Springsteen song Pink Cadillac wasn't? Yeah, but who else sang Ittha Franklin?
There you go, he wrote that, Okay? Are yeah you knew him?
Yeah?
I did.
I was very good friends with him. I loved his music.
So Lewis and his wife they disappear, their bodies are never found, the wife too. That's sad bummer. Yeah. Then two other members of the crew, who were likely directly involved in the heist because they actually worked at JFK for Air France's cargo terminal, were found dead in the same car, both of them shot in the head. So like everyone's taken out at this point, which I kind of remember that part in Goodfellas, Yes, where the killing start, and it's just like boom, boom, boom. It's like a montage of hits. And so while all this is going on, Henry Hill, our friend Rayleiota, who first brought the idea of the heist to Jimmy Burke, is starting to worry a little bit. He's worried that Burke's going to find a reason to kill him too. Henry wasn't actually directly involved in the heist that we know of, but at this point even people who are tangentially involved are getting killed.
Yeah.
So, in nineteen eighty, Henry Hill is arrested on drug trafficking charges and he's ultimately convinced to become an informant, and that is so his family can enter the witness protection program. Right around the time Henry becomes an informant, Jimmy Burke is arrested for a totally separate crime, a college basketball points fixing scheme that, of course Vince knows about. When I asked him about it, of course sports, he knows everything.
Oh so, how the fuck do you do that? I don't know?
It says, this happens at Boston College and it's a big scandal on its own.
I think you just I think you get people to not not score, I guess, or not block or.
Whatever, but right or like get a certain amount of points. I don't know, Yeah, okay, Yeah. Burke is sentenced to twelve years in prison. But then it's also convicted of the murder of a Florida club owner who likely also laundered money from the Luftanza heist and had been skimming. So Jimmy goes to prison, but he dies there in nineteen ninety six. So Henry Hill's testimony, you know, as a he becomes a rat. His testimony leads to fifty separate convictions in assorted mob cases, so it's like one of the biggest fucking turns in mob history. His family changes her name and lives in various other states around the country, which I like, I don't know why I find fascinating and I want to know everything about it.
Yes, about the witness Protection program.
Yeah, And then you start thinking about like the kids who are at your school for like six months and then like had a weird background story and then left again.
Yes, that happened all the time, where I'm like, I've always lived here, how come you just your coming and going willy.
Nilly, Like when someone in Orange County, when someone would transfer from like Florida. You'd be like, what the fuck are you doing in Irvine from Florida.
I don't buy this story of that. You're only in the second grade exactly.
You look like Arnold Swartzwegger. You're not a kindergarten and cop herb teacher anyway. So they live in various states around the country. I think he marries and remarries, and he dies at the age of sixty nine in twenty twelve. So he never gets fucking off by the mafia.
That's crazy, gets away. Yeah.
And so none of the cash or jewels that were stolen from the cargo terminal, which would be worth about twenty eight million today, has ever been found. No, because it wasn't traceable. It's like the last great heist.
Yeah.
Holy that money puts some fucking kids through college of it.
Oh my god. Just real low key paying for like a pool and some nice person, a couple fur coats, maybe a nice cruise, a nice cruise, yeah, low key.
Yeah, low KEI not a pink catalog. And when Henry Hill was working with Nicholas Peleggi to write Goodfellas, or to write the book that Goodfellas was based on, in the screenplay. Sometimes he'd call late at night and Nicholas wouldn't be around, so he talked to his wife, Nora Ephron, not knowing that she was just getting information from him to write My Blue Heaven the whole time, when she'd just like, hey, let's chat, and he said, quote, I never got a penny for it, but Nick, her husband had been so generous with me that I let it slide. Had it been anyone else's wife dot dot dot, Yeah, oh my god. So she fucking pushed it.
So essentially, it's almost like those are mirror.
Movies and they came out in the same year.
Did the people that made them kind of know that?
I think?
So? That's hilarious.
Yeah, and that's the story of a Luptanza heist.
Incredible, that was great, Thank you so different. Yeah, it's uh, the light and dark of life, the duality, the duality of this human experience that we're just going to have to keep on playing back and forth over and over to get through the next four years.
I mean, what is the reasoning, what is the answer? What is the purpose?
What is the We'll figure it out, will we? Maybe?
Okay, you never know, you don't never know.
Yes, you do never know, you do never not know. Well, guys, thanks, thanks for listening, Thanks for sticking with us. Yeah, that's right. Stay strong, Go outside and walk around, turn your head from left to right. That's real good for the nervous system.
Adopt a puppy or a kitten, or an older dog or a senior cat. Adopt an animal. They really give you that endorphin rush that you need.
They do help you. And if you can't afford an animal, pick a bird in the park that you like and visit it day after day. And remember, we're going to get through this. Stay sexy and don't get murdered.
A good guy, Elvis, do you want a cookie?
This has been an exactly right production.
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
This episode was mixed by Leana Squalachi.
Our researchers are Mayreon, mcclashan, and Ali Elkin.
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot.
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Bye Bye, m
