Ridiculous CrimeLos Angeles, the bank robbery capital of the world. When bank robberies are commonplace, it takes an inventive heist team to stand out. That's exactly what the Hole in the Ground Gang did. They lifted their profile by lowering their operations. Right down into the sewers.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Oh hey up, Elizabeth stuck up on me.
I know, I just ran in here. I was, I was almost really late.
I know.
I'm sitting here file in my nails doing nothing. But I'm glad you made it.
Thank you. My shoes melted.
I see that it's hot out there, and.
Yeah it was hard. I got stuck, but I'm here.
Good. Come, glad you made it.
Listen. You know it's ridiculous.
Oh that's what I've been waiting. I've been sitting here, tapping my fingers, waiting to tell you. I read this in account from a flight attendant who recalled when a famous celebrity came onto a plane and joined the Mile High Club.
Oh God, and I'll give you a hint. He's a folk singer. Oh no, yeah, it was Art Garfuncle. You're ready for the day he joined the Mile High Clubs.
According to the flight attendant, the singer Art Garfunkle went into the first class bathroom with his girlfriend on a seven two seven during the day, and when they came out, everyone cheered, So he went to the galley, got a beer, shook it up, and sprayed the whole section.
Oh my god, it's so crass. Everyone is showing up to me cross.
I thought you'd like that one. That's it. That's all I got for you.
Did you know that when you played I'm gonna give this away now, when you play twenty questions, a really good thing to pick is Art Garfuncle. People. It takes a long time for people to get there.
Oh maybe I haven't played twenty questions in a long time.
Why would that be, I don't know, but it's like no one really takes it takes a long time for people to get to Art Garfuncle. That's true, a leg those are my two twenty questions.
I'm never playing with You know you shouldn't.
Okay, so that's ridiculous Art Garfunkle.
Joining the club?
Yeah whatever, Okay, I got a rain bleach. That's ridiculous. But you know what else is ridiculous being a human excavator for cash. Oh, this is ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn right, bank heists.
Yeah, you have my interest.
Go on and stop won't stop. I'm on a bit of a tear here.
You gotta love them. What do you have against banks?
Everything? Get them, sick them. I've taken you to England and New York with this. You've done France and Greece. I gee, now we're headed to sunny Los Angeles, California. Do you know where that is?
It's south of here, right, yes, I used to live there. I should be able to find it on the map.
Well for a while there and that maybe when you were living there. La was called the bank robbery Capital of the world.
Yes, it was the late nineties.
It was the thing, well all the way back to the seventies. Here's a book about it. It's called Where the Money Is, which we all know where that phrase comest. True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World. It's by Gordon Dillo, who's a veteran newspaper crime reporter out of Orange County, California, County Register probably and William Raider, who was a retired thirty three year veteran of the FBI based out of La So. Raider he was once described by CBS News as America's secret weapon in the war against bank robbers. Let me tell you some of the ones he's worked. There was once a Canadian bank robbery crew. That's a terrible limerick. I think this was in the seventies, but don't quote me on that. So these Canadians they came down to LA to try their hand at good old American bank robins.
Oh I like it, ambition, man.
They were good.
Oh really?
So they selected a bank in Hollywood, which to those not from California, I think Hollywood is seen as like purely TV and movies and celebrities and palm trees. It's a company town, you know, But it's not the way that people think it is.
No, No, it's a lot moreists at this point.
Yeah, So Hollywood Bank. The Canadians come up with the perfect plan. They got themselves construction uniforms and equipment, they got a truck, they got a lot of fake paperwork, like work orders and stuff like that. They showed up at the bank and they said that they were there to build the addition. We're here to build the addition. What addition? Bank manager says this one. And then they show all the paperwork. They got blueprints, they got work orders, and they're like, you know, come on, we're on the clock here. Everything looks superficial. The main office, you know, always pulling this kind of thing, not telling the people at the branch what the hooplaws going on. So like, yeah, sure, go ahead and get started. The manager tells the crew.
Wait, so he does Michael Scott's and be like, oh, yeah, this is totally fine. I'm not going to call it like normal corporate.
It doesn't want to be looked at like I missed the memo.
I don't want to get in trouble for that.
So they get all set up exactly, they go to work. They use their work as cover for the fact that they were blasting a hole in the wall of the vault. I have such a hard time thinking that the people at the bank weren't suspicious.
Yeah, like the ones who aren't the manager.
Yeah, they're thinking like, oh my god, how's this anyway? You know that there had to be one special investigator busy body at work.
Oh yeah, I mean Jim and Pam.
Of this world really tying this into the I'm.
Trying to I'm trying to do something you don't know. I'm just going to keep tying.
Well, I think I would have been if I worked there, I would have been the one busy body who told everyone they think it's hinky, Like don't you think this is weird? But no one listened apparently, and then you know, like if I'm there, it gets all exposed and then I feel vindicated and no one cares. No one listens to Elizabeth. They would bemown I. Let's say their name is Elizabeth. Whatever the bank. So the Canadians they get into the vault, they empty it out, and then they're gone.
How are they getting the money? Did we know about that?
Put it in the truck?
Oh? I was just wonder if they had like a whole plan of like moving out in construction bags are probably something. Yeah.
Well, so they make it to the safe They go through their take at the safe house. It's amazing, so much stuff. But they needed to get rid of the evidence, Like if the cops figured out where the safe house was, they'd be toast. They would be cooked, they'd be in the heat, they'd be baked. Yeah, so they used gasoline to wipe down the surfaces and destroy their fingerprints, and then the fumes from the gasoline met the pilot light.
Yeah that's not good.
Was history? Terrible Cleaningblamo. They all wound up in the hospital.
Just takes vapors too, not even totally. The liquid doesn't have to touch.
I think it's lucky that they only went to the hospital. Yes, but from there they went to jail.
That happens.
That happens.
So, yeah, being chained to your hospital bed or like you know, like handcuffed.
Your So then here's another crew that he was dealing with a group of yacks. You know what that means, a yak.
A yak's not jumping yards after the catch. Yeah, Jerry Rice, thank you, producer Davi and we talked like really good hands.
We're talking Yugoslavia, Albania, Croatia, Serbia. Oh I've never heard the Eastern European heist crew.
Yeah, they so like instead of calling them Slavs or the former Yugoslavian nations, they're starting.
Remember we've talked about them on this before. Well from back a Serbian friend, Yeah, ask him if he's down. So this particular crew was from the East Coast and they became known here on the West coast as the Batman and Robin bandits.
Oh yes, I have remembered these.
More Batman Okay, so why did they get that name. They would climb upon the roof, cut a hole in the roof, drop through said roof on ropes. That's the Batman belt style. Yeah, and then they'd force the employees to open the vault.
Holy cow, put your hands up totally.
And they're all kitted out black pants, black shirts, black balaklavas, black gloves, the boys a time bomb bat belt. So but about those balaklava's currently, they left one behind on their way out and it had saliva inside. They were just drooling over all that money. Detectives thought that they knew who it could be based on them o. So they tracked the dudes and the cop followed one of them to a McDonald's, where he was able to retrieve a straw that the guy had used tossed it in the trash. They matched it to the ski mask. Busted boom, busted down. Now these guys, though, they were nothing, nothing compared to the Hole in the Ground Gang.
I love the name root and.
Toot and Hole in the Ground Gang, ragtag crew of lawless gophers. So hold on a second, Yes you like that show bosh right?
Yeah?
So it stars Titus Welliver as a veteran LA detective Harry.
Bosh, and legacy follows.
Yeah, exactly, and it's short for Hieronymous. The show is fantastic, absolutely fantastic. It's based on a series of books by Michael Connolly. You like him, right, I love him, I love, love love the series. There are twenty four Harry Bosh novels. And you know Connelly also created The Lincoln Lawyer.
Oh yeah, it's.
Too but the Bosh novels are great. I highly recommend them. Michael Connolly was a journalist covering the crime beat at the La Times. Big stuff. It gave him this intimate understanding of La in the Southland, which comes across in the books and the show. He's an executive producer on the show and he was exposed to a variety of crimes and criminals in La. So in the books, Harry Bosh is a military veteran. He is on the show too, but he's a Gulf War vet on the show. In the books he's.
A Vietnam vet.
Yeah, and so his job in Noam was tunnel rat. That's someone who performs search and destroy missions in Vietnam. Was he's seeking and destroying the vast network of underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong. These guys were combat engineers and infantrymen. Their motto was non gradum, honest rodentum, not worth a rat's ass a minute. These guys had to go into the tunnels, gather intelligence, kill or capture the combatants they found there that destroy the tunnels and business. It's super rough. All they carried was a standard pistol or a revolver, a bayonet, a flashlight, and some explosives.
Usually the bandet's like and their teeth kind of like it's up front.
Right exactly, because they don't have a whole lot of.
You're in a tunnel.
Yeah, and the danger wasn't just the Vietcong, like you say, it's the tunnel itself. They weren't always structurally sound. They were booby traps. Some of those traps included poisonous snakes. Oh, I knew that would get I knew that would get you. So these guys were mostly five foot five and under. Yeah, but I don't think the Bosh character is written to be that hype.
But anyway, Yeah, it's just real thin. He's boned.
Yeah. So the shorter troops they could move around easier in the tunnels. Those tunnel rats were exposed to a lot of chemicals.
And thought about that all the agent orange.
Well yeah, after the war they had a higher level of agent orange damage than anybody else right where it's soaking it exactly. So agent orange, I'm going to pretend you don't know, is a very powerful herbicide and defoliate. It was one of the many horrors unleashed in this war. So the US dumped it on the jungles to try and send out the tree canopy and undergrowth that the Vietcong used as cover. And they also wanted to destroy food crops, so we sprayed twenty million gallons of various defoliates on Vietnam, laos M, Cambodia during Operation Ranch Hand. They dropped it from helicopters and planes, boats and trucks. They had it in backpacks. But wait, Elizabeth, isn't this a pretty clear violation of the Geneva Conventions?
Great questions, Eric, Go ahead.
Yeah, that's what the UN thought. But the US argued that agent orange was not a chemical or a biological weapon. Not a chemical weapon or a biological weapon. It's an herbicide, defoliate it's supposed to destroy plants, not people. They said it didn't qualify as a biological weapon because it wasn't a weapon at all.
Yeah, how is this a weapon? It just kills plants.
Well we know better.
Yes.
Agent orange impacts are still felt to this day. Aside from the chemical burns, it caused multiple forms of cancers, tons of birth defects. Anything sprayed like that is going to wind up, like you were saying, in the ground and the water table, which is exactly where the tunnel rats were. So they got done super dirty by their own country. It wasn't just the agent orange that they had to contend with. Many suffered severe psychological damage from spending so much time in narrow space that's so far underground, try to kill other human beings while trying not to be killed.
And living in like a hyper state of I'm about to die every moment.
I like, your pupils are all dilated, your body's just so tense. Yeah, So Vietnam tunnel rats were made of tough stuff. And that concludes today's episode.
Thank you. That was very interesting.
It was a look at the ridiculously heinous crime against humanity of Henry Kissinger. The end. No, No, I've only just begun, not with Kissinger, but with Ridiculous Crime. So all of this is going to make sense. After this commercial break, we'll be right back, Zarin. You missed some really good ads.
I was over here thinking about Agent Orange, the band.
The band. We love ads. They're so good.
They are good.
They're so good. As I say, I used to hate read this weekly recipe column where the lady would give like the gnarliest recipes involving lots of can goods or like boxed cake mix okay, and she'd always describe them, wasn't it They should always describe them as so good, like all these o's.
Lots of would some be capitalized?
Just a listener? They were not good so good? Anyway, I was talking about La Bank heist, and then I got sidetracked on Michael Connolly and Detective Harry Bosh and Vietnam. But it wasn't a sidetrack really, it was a foundation.
Oh bring it.
I am building this tale like a mead drunk medieval cathedral. Stonemason are Yeah, I am so Harry Bosh. I can't again. I can't state enough how good the books are. The writing gets better too, with each book. Plots are excellent nine out of four stars. I told you that the Harry Bosch character in the novels was a Vietnam tunnel rat.
Yes you did, Yes, I did.
How did Michael Connolly get this idea you're wondering? He was a tunnel no When he was a crime reporter at the La Times, he covered a case involving tunnels. Oh, and so he used part of that information for his first novel, The Black Echo, that came out in nineteen ninety two. In the book, Bosh is called out to a homicide. There's a body in a drain pipe at Mulholland Dam, and the guy is a fellow tunnel rat, another veteran they had actually fought side by side. The story winds up taking Bosh into a set of underground tunnels that were used for a bank heist in the show. They use the same tunnels, but it's used by a serial killer. You remember that creepy guy obviously. Anyway, But again we're talking about the books here. So when the book came out, a critic said that part of the book required too much suspension of disbelief, that part being the tunnels and Connelly. He gets quoted as saying that the critics said it was quote too far fetched, when in fact it was the only part of my novel that was based on fact. That's how it goes. So the Tunnel Bank heist a seriously compelling story, especially when you fold in all the details. I can see why. You know, Connelly couldn't resist it. Connelly couldn't resist it. Neither can I. So let's get heisting. Soon join me.
I'm here for it.
Los Angeles, City of Angels. You lived there for quite a while before upgrading and moving to Oakland.
Yes, before I got my head right.
Yes, did you ever rob any banks there?
No? I never got around to it.
Everybody was telling me this is the thing that everybody does down there. They're like, you gotta try it, Like here's a gun. I was like, no, I'm not into it. They're like, well, here's a mask. I was like, no, really, I don't want to do it. They're like, but just try it before you go. I hear you're moving. I was like no, I think I'm just going to leave.
So I never got to Oh.
Wow, okay, that's a shame, because you really could have filled some in there. People. They rob banks in LA because a lot of the banks are located right by the freeway.
And there's freeways everywhere.
Everywhere, so it's easy egress. You just hit it and run the valley.
You got, These big wide streets are pretty much like freeways.
Yeah, that's true too. So in the eighties, a bank was robbed every hour of every banking day in Los Angeles, or so they say that was the average. Yeah, and then and by they they say it, I mean someone said it. By nineteen ninety two, the number had jumped to a bank being robbed every forty five minutes of every banking day. It's that crazy. That's a whole lot of banks. The robbers I want to tell you about. Though they didn't use freeways. They went underground.
Some of the people who worked in banks, they were like the flight attendants in the seventies. They would have their bank be hit multiple times. I got the flight attendants that they're playing hijack multiple times, like I just had this happen. There's stories of like bank people going like I gotta quit. This is the third time they've been robbed this week.
You know, it got bad amazing. Could you imagine no like.
Another gun in my face.
Yeah, damn it. Well, So in June nineteen eighty six, employees of First Interstate Bank reported strange activity. WHOA, it's two story brick building the corner of Spaulding in Sunset, and the bank vault's alarm was just going off randomly during the day. And so there's no signs of break ins, nothing's amiss. They go poking around. Everything's where it's supposed to be. So the bank and the security folks just figured it was some sort of glitch in the system. They heard noises, weird scratching, grinding sounds, and so the manager walked all over the bank trying to get a read on the source, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Everyone figured it was likely coming from the construction across the street because they were putting up a new buildings. There's lots of noise and dust and sort of mild chaos. Let's talk about their bank vault. Yeah, you ready for some specifics. Please, you're going to write this down.
Get it.
Yeah, get some graph paper. So it has twelve inch thick walls, this bank vault thick and an eighteen inch thick floor.
It's a thick floor, thick floor, and the door double see thick floor, thick, thick, thick.
The door was three and a half inches of steel with a copper inside to diffuse the heat of a blowtorch someone wanted to get in, right. The door alone cost fifteen thousand dollars and just kind of like here at headquarters with.
Our doors are twelve. But yeah, this.
Placement business, it was a class one commercial vault to be exact. Okay, So this comes from the measurement of time it would take to breach the doors.
That's the class ranking.
Yeah, so for a class one it's one hour, one hour.
How long to preach the doors is rank them.
That's how you rank them, not the materials involved. No, how long is this going to take?
How long does it take for thieves to ruin this?
Exactly? And so there were censors all over there for sound, for heat, and there was of course a time lock.
Oh right.
This is sort of the standard for bank vault. So the manager sets the lock at closing and sets an opening timer for when they'll be back into prep for opening. If something happens between locking the vault and the scheduled opening, tough luck.
Can't.
You can't get in, you can't even override it just is. So there's another kind of vault that, instead of a timelock, requires two separate keys or pass codes, like a nuclear sub Yeah. Generally, the bank manager and another employee will have the codes and then they'll open the vault door and sink and that allows for off hours emergency entry, which seems smarter to me. But this particular bank, First Interstate in Hollywood, had the timelock.
Yeah.
Yeah, So the sensors continue to go off, alarm going off, the grinding sound started back up, and the security guys told the bank manager that the sound that they heard was probably a rat, like a big ass rat. So then one day the power races. One day the power just shuts off and the phones too, that rat and then they get a everything back up again. But it is really starting to get on everyone's nerves, you know, the constant and the constant. On the evening of Friday, June sixth, the bank alarm went off after hours and the police arrived. They did a perimeter check, they looked inside, everything was in its right place, just another false alarm. Zaren close ay, Oh yeah, I want you to picture it. It's Saturday, June seventh, nineteen eighty six. You are an assistant bank manager at First Interstate Bank. You're climbing the corporate ladder, or at least trying as such. You're working over the weekend. You just want to get some work done in the blessed silence of the empty bank. As you're shuffling through some loan forms looking for one in particular, you hear a buzz and a pop. Sounds like some sort of electrical short You stop what you're doing and listen nothing. Then suddenly the bank's music system turns to life easy listening reverberates through the empty building. While this is a nice, pleasant sound most of the time, without the chatter of customers and the sound of cash drawers opening and closing, it is creepy as all get out. You lift the receiver on the phone, who's still working. You push the directile button for security. You tell them about the electrical sound and the music. Just then the vault alarm sounds. It's a Saturday and the vault is locked until Monday morning, so you can't go and open it up and check. But you've all checked each time it's gone off. In the last couple of weeks and nothing. Why would this time be any different. You hear the squawk of securities walkie talkies coming into the lobby. They tell you that they've walked the perimeter and they're now checking the inside of the bank, but it looks to be a false alarm. Just then the music shuts off and everything is silent once again, not even the grinding sound. You tell the security guys that maybe they're rat chewing on the walls, electrocuted itself and all this will be over. They chuckle, and they tell you that you'll know when you smell it. And with that you put your papers away and your head home. With one last look at the lobby, you slip out the side employee entrance and head back to your condo and your cats, and your lean Cuisine and the telescope that looks into the window of your honky neighbor, Ralph.
Sweet Sweet Lean Cuisine, and Ralph.
Come Monday morning, bank employees arrived and opened the vault to welcome a new day of commerce. And what they found might surprise you is.
Erin what did they find?
It was a hole in the floor. It was a hole that was twenty inches by twenty five inches to be precise. Oh, just enough for a man to slip through, or like a few men one at a time, or like men tied together like a rope. Yes, rope men and spitball.
There's been a fire. You need to get out of the building.
They just lashed themselves together. One hundred and seventy two thousand dollars in cash was gone. Of the one hundred and fourteen safe deposit boxes in the vault, seventy four were empty, and of those seventy four, only thirty six reported losses.
So this always it could.
Be that because people like just genuinely didn't have anything in there. But I'm not so sure. So what was in the thirty six box?
Okay, please, let's hold the cold and silver.
Of course, naturally, jewelry of course, Persian artifacts. Interesting now we're talking an eighteen fifty five first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
Huh.
The box contains multitudes, a sketch by Ari Matisse, Oh wow, yeah, and some gold coins in cash belonging to none other than Joe Jackson, father of Tito and Michael and Janet and the others. Jermaine LaToya. I think I'm missing some as all right, So, yeah, the Jackson family coins in cash. The box holders would eventually be paid out two and a half million dollars, but some of the stuff in there was priceless, I'm guessing, especially the stuff that didn't get claimed. I'm thinking, yeah, so the robbers were not good at opening the boxes. Apparently they clumsily pried them open, and that prevented them from accessing the boxes directly around them. I was wondering, Yes, they just peeled out, so you can't get above blook. Yeah, so it looks like they missed out on probably what would have been an even crazier score if they could open all one fourteen because they had the time over the weekend.
I had plenty of times.
Yeah.
As it was though, that two and a half million dollars plus the cash was the biggest bank robbery in Hollywood history.
Really.
Yeah, it's a lot of money. So when a bank gets robbed, the FBI is automatically called in, and that's what happened here. Ozi's running up, came running over. But the FBI handles primarily bank robberies of force.
Yeah, with a gun and all that right.
Little put your hands up, nobody moves, nobody get airt I thing.
I'm a bad man.
Soon come rasta. The FEDS had never seen anything like this. The robbers had tunneled under the bank and come up in through the floor of the vault. So they called the Bad Boys.
Wait like the Will Smith and Martin Laarnce.
Movie, the Boys of Bad. That's right, Lapds Burglary Auto Theft Division. Oh ad, they ignore the T and theft. I guess that. They call themselves Bad Burglary Auto Theft Division. So these guys are fifteen hard boiled elite detectives. Yeah, and they're kind of like the non murder Flying Squad okay, you know, because they don't have a specific precinct that they're assigned to. They float and they just handle all the big stuff. They only took big cases, stuff where a lot of money was at stake. Maybe celebrities involved that.
So they're like the Anti Ramparts Division. They do actual police.
Actually they're bad, but like a.
Good way in a good way.
So it was the Bad Boys, the Boys of Bad, who dared peek into that hole in the floor of the vault and then double dog dared to crawl on down.
Oh yeah, do you imagine I'll write it up.
Yeah, when we come back from this break, I'll let you know what they found down there.
That yeah, en Elbeth.
When we left off l A p DS Elite bad boys, the hard bodies of Burglary, they were about to climb down into the tunnel under the First Interstate.
Bank and.
All greased up in Hollywood, California. The reputation exactly the tunnel was disgusting, Saren. I bet it was not because of anything specific that the robbers did.
I hit the sewer lines.
Well, no, it's the very nature of the tunnel itself. It led to the outdoor sewer lines. Oh yeah, those tunnels. So it's not toilet sewage but storm rain. Yeah, it's still pretty and fil We got decomposing organic matter, leaves and stick and dark, and then all that causes little pockets of methane to accumulate. And there's also the litter that horrible people dropped on the streets. So think of all that.
Then oil car oil steals over the other.
Chemicals that people are just throating the gutter anyway, so many popsicle sticks thick with them and then muddy water snow bueno. So the detectives they hunched over and they followed the dirt tunnel dug by the criminals. It wasn't particularly wide or tall, and there were no structural supports in there, just bare walls, but they had done them in like an archway. It was stronger, yeah, exactly, but dangerous, donjuboue. As the bad squad walked in the tunnels, they found small tools scattered around why would they don't know, sand bags and even some tire tracks where the tunnel got larger, and so they saw the skid marks on the ground beneath the floor of the vault, and that's where they had set up an industrial boring drum and tapped into the bank's power system and that's what was causing all the shorts. But the skids on the ground were from this enormous heavy tool that shimmyd really badly because it wasn't on this surface, so they didn't set it up collapse. Well yeah, and the thing is is that like they could, the detectives could tell that the crooks gave up on the borer because it just was sliding around. And then they did the rest themselves.
That's probably the better way, I mean, honestly.
So they figured the heist was originally supposed to take place the weekend before, over the three day Memorial holiday weekend.
If it's good enough for the undermining turks you know back in the castle.
Era undermine's yeah, exactly. So if they were supposed to do it over a Memorial Day, that would have bottom an extra day. But the large tools all failed and so they had to do all this stuff by hand and that slowed them down. But what of the tire tracks.
Yeah, they just back in f one fifty there, like, just get this forward in there, we'll take care of that.
They came from ATVs.
Oh that's smart.
So based upon the evidence found, it looked like these guys had used gas power generators, digging equipment, this diamond studded drill hammer, drills, power saws. They had all this heavy stuff. And they could tell that a lot, not because they found the tools, but they saw the market.
Yeah.
They also left scores of empty styrofoam coffee cups behind, you know, burning the all midnight oil there. So they got into the system at Hollywood Boulevard and Nichols Canyon drive. There's an entrance like a culvert. I mean it was there that they lowered the ATVs into the sewer system and they likely used manhole covers to navigate their way to the perfect place on Spaulding, just under the bank. So they're in the large tunnels for the you know, drainage, the sewer drainage, and they like mark, mark mark. They figure, okay, it's between this and this, and then that's where they cut into the big cement tunnel and started digging their tunnel in the dirt. And then when they would leave at night, they would they had a plywood that they had put mortar over so it looked like cement and they prop it up.
That's brilliant.
Yeah, So the tunnel that they made in the dirt was three and a half feet by four and a half feet. All the experts who were later called in to examine the scene so that it was done really really well. It was super precise, It was super clean. The bank vault itself not so much. So. They were expert diggers, but not expert burglars. Yes, interesting, yeah, and so bad. They led a search of the tunnels in a three mile radius from the vault They figured the guys had to have removed about three thousand cubic feet of dirt to dig the tunnel, and that's fifteen hundred wheelbarrow trips. Damn right, fifteen hundred have.
Reel barrow dirt. That's not fun. Uh now, So they're just looking for their dirt pile, basically figure.
Out any any evidence that they may have left. They figured that these guys worked on the whole operation for at least a month to six weeks leading up to this, yeah, yeah, And the way they got rid of the dirt was really smart. They would dam up the sewer drain above where they were working, and that that's what all the sandbags were for. And at the end of the day they'd quickly pull aside the sandbags and let the built up water wash away the dirt and clear the path.
Huh.
So they were like, you know, shevel it into the big yeah exactly, and there was like a huge mudflow further down, but like it kept it clear for them.
That's brilliant.
Whole thing was amazing. So the police and public Works they filled up the dirt tunnels with concrete and shut them down for good so they can't come there's.
A ton of those tunnels in the Hollywood hills.
Oh yeah, but and so they you have all these big tunnels and then they're doing all sorts of little like ant hill stuff, fingerstuff. Yeah, so tips poured in. Everyone had a theory. Some said that it had to be city employees, someone from public works to know the system so well. Others said it was construction workers, people with experience and then access to all that machinery. There were those who wondered if they'd actually been targeting a specific box and they did a crappy job with the rest just to throw everyone off, which I think is interesting.
That's interesting theory.
And then there's my face, like the British.
Robbery where they were going specifically.
Yes, exactly, my favorite theory Vietnam vets tunnel rats. Yes, that's tunnel rats who wanted the adrenaline of a score. And that's also my Connelly's favorite theory on this too.
He obviously covered this when it was happening as a crime, so he has a good reason to build that.
Theory exactly, and he latched onto it and that's what, like I said, it became compelling to him, and then he built a story. I mean, it may not have any truth to it, sure, but I mean it's I think it's a workable theory on this, you know, when you look at the time of it and everything. Lieutenant Doug Collison of the Special Burglary Units said the tunnelers quote would have had to require some knowledge of soil composition and technical engineering. The way the shaft itself was constructed, it was obviously well researched and extremely sophisticated. This was no wormhole or anything.
Yeah, and we're kind of saying digging a tunnel, digging a hole into the earth is not something you want to do as an amateur, but if you know what you're doing, it can be very safe. You can feel very comfortable doing it. And it sounds like they did so it seems to suggest that they had a lot of experience or some experience as tunnelers.
Yeah. And I think that the public works one is a good theory just because they know it so well, that the layout of it, the construction's good because of the tool access, but to be able to operate in that small tunnel for a long period of time also it makes me lean towards the tunnel round.
Yeah, also thinking the military because of the necessary operational aspect of it.
Yeah, And I've worked and the discipline to it, exactly.
And I've worked with some of the public works people from LA when I was a house painter, and let me just say, I would be surprised if you could find a crew of them who could do an operation for a number.
Of weeks, no offense, public wor no.
They were just much more individualistic and some of the team work that I was used to as a house painter, Like we had cruise and they are like, well I do this and Bob does that, and I was like, wow, yeah.
It's really interesting. It was so okay. So we're thinking it's the vets. Even though they had all these tips, sometimes to very specific people, nothing panned out, you know, they went and interviewed him. There was one guy who had moved to Vegas and he was sort of like peripheral to the underworld. Sure, and his girlfriend had a box at the bank and someone had called in a tip that that's how like she went in to scope it out and blah blah. But there was absolutely nocause that seems like a tenuous yeah exactly. But then there was a development. Oh yes, Saturday, August twenty second, nineteen eighty seven. Okay, the alarm went off at a Bank of America on the corner of Pico and Losianica. Oh yeah, yeah, So first Interstate had that timelock on the vault. Bank of America did not. They wanted to access the vault anytime they damn well please. They had the two party entry system. So when the alarm went off on a Saturday, the bank manager, another employee, and security guards all stopped in to check the vault. They popped it open, and they heard people escaping through the tunnel below the vault floor. They caught them in the act.
Oh wow.
Yes, and so there was another tunnel system, this one just as vast and well constructed as the last. The police arrived and then they gave chase, but the thieves were long gone.
The pecosystem. Yeah right there, Pico robertson those blocks, there are tunnels that they totally can be connected too. That's why.
Yeah. And they picked up the Los Sienaga line and they I think.
Almost down to Cheviot Hills, which is like to the west miles away.
It's a so long yeah, exactly. So obviously this had to be the same, guys. John Popovish, a spokesman for First Interstate, stated the obvious quote. You look at the modus operandi in our burglary and the other one over the weekend, and it would sure seem to be the same, wouldn't it. Yeah, thanks Crain genius. Since this robbery had been interrupted, though, the thieves made off with only ninety eight thousand dollars, so they still pulled. They still pulled. That means those cash carts, man, Like, that's they cracked one of those open. Yeah, I mean almost one hundred thousand isn't bad, But when you think about the ten die packets and no die packets, when you think about the time and the money though that they invested to get it, it's probably bad.
Actually, kind of like a job at that point.
Yeah. So the tunnel system was also believed to have taken over a month to finish. This time around. The sixty foot main tunnel was dug from a nearby sewer and it measured five feet high by eight feet wide, so they got beat. They also put wooden support beams into so they focused on safety and comfort this time too. They weren't like, let's get in.
We need good lighting, some track lighting.
Guys, we need some essential oils. And this time they had the heavy equipment issue figured out too, so the hole in the floor of the vault was smooth and perfectly centered. They figured out how to you know, how to get the bit in there.
How to get their foundation for their drill.
Yeah. The spokesman for Bank of America, Ed Haynes said, quote, you get the impression that they knew where they were at all times. Yeah, so you know, they had it pretty locked.
And you're saying eighty seven, So this definitely fits with your theory that they could be tunnel rats from Vietnam right basically thirteen fourteen, fifteen years out of their time, and no, probably be you know, at that point, would say they're in their mid to late thirties. They need to now to make a score to set themselves up.
For the rest of or just like to get in touch with that that adrenaline. One of them just like, hey, yeah, one of them comes up with the ideas, that's what I'm The other.
Ones are like, yeah, let's get the band back together out of space totally.
Or maybe one of them has like terrible can answer from and they're doing it to pay for right. I'm right in the screenplay in my head right now. So when they followed the tunnel, when the cops followed the tunnel out to the culvert off Los Sienaga, they found an ATV. The VIN had been filed off. But the bad boys, the boys of bad they were hoping that the crime lab could get something off the vehicle, somehow print anything, and they did. They were able to raise the VIN with acid, so the vehicle identification number, they got that, and that led them to an ATV dealer. It turned out four ATVs were recently purchased in cash by quote, white males in their early thirties, slim and muscular, dressed in construction style clothes, speaking accentless American English. And they said they kind of had like close cropped hair. Yeah, and they had a name now, David's Spalding, but it was an alias, and it was a joke because remember first Interstate FAK was on Spalding. So they realized, okay, this is nothing is true on this one. So that was as close as they got ever to linking anything to an actual perchon Everty, no back down, back down in the new tunnel, the cops made a discovery a newer tunnel. They found another set of tunnels about one hundred and two feet long, and those were completely finished, and those led to Union Federal Savings and Loan Bank on Wiltshire in Beverly Hills, and there were mounting bolts already in place underneath the vault for the drill, so they had that fully prepped and ready to go. The cops figured that the Bank of America tunnel and then the third tunnel leading to Union Federal were being made simultaneously, and that the crew likely wanted to strike with back to back heists. An analyst calculated if the double bank hit had happened without any interruption or prevention that they'd had, the payday would have totaled anywhere between ten and twenty five million dollars huge. So still, with all this material and what should be evidence, the cops had no leads. The case went cold. The case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries. It actually aired a couple of times over the years, and every time it was on, tips would come in, but they were always pretty much the same tips. The statute of limitations for the robberies expired in nineteen ninety two, the same year Black Echo came out with Michael conleybook Remember retired FBIA agent generator. Yeh, he co wrote Where the Money Is. Yeah, so he was on the case. He said he has no ill will against the rotters. I like that about that guy because he said, look, no one got hurt, no one got killed.
Yeah.
He usually respects like brilliance in crime as long as there's no victim.
And he really also respected the fact that they stopped after that near miss. We're not going to keep doing this and damaging things. He said that since the statute of limitations had expired, he just wanted to buy him a beer and have a conversation about their adventures of nearly pulling off what would have almost certainly been the most successful bank heist in history.
I got respect.
Yeah, this is a quote from him. Everybody has their own theory, each probably as good as the next. The one thing that everybody seems to agree on is that they weren't a professional burglary crew. They appeared too suddenly, made too many technical mistakes on the burglary side, and then disappeared too completely for the professional criminal scenario to fit. The working theory on the Hole in the Ground Gang is that they were regular guys who simply got a wild hair up to do a bank heist or three bank heists, and then melted back into the straight world, never to be heard from again.
And to never betray each other.
Yeah, there's a really great pat in his section in his book, the section on the Hole in the Ground Gang. There's a really great passage at the end where he's like, in his mind he's spitballing his own screenplay of like the scenario that gets them there and these guys and there's one you know, and it's really beautifully written. I mean, he had like a co writer on this, you know, this is a raid and then his journalist co writer. But it's it's really nicely done. It's a great book just to the general. Yeah, so I recommend that as well as Michael Connolly books.
I think we should just come up with an ending for these guys and just write our own screenplay.
Let's do it, right, let's do it.
Ridiculous crime films.
Why not, Oh my god, ridiculous crime film studio. I So, what's your ridiculous takeaway? Aside from the fact that we need to branch out and start a film studio.
That I'm flagrantly rooting for these criminals in this case. It's kind of ridiculous how unguarded I am about that because raider, I gotta disrespect them like they once again, they didn't hurt anybody.
They they weren't serious. It wasn't like they were, you know, like robbing nonprofits. They're robbing banks that were that have like you know, insurance. They're all pretty much taken care of. There's no there's obviously a victim somehow, I guess if you want to look at abstraction.
But the only ones I really just appreciate. Yeah, I really feel bad for the owner of the Matisse, the leaves of dressing, the Persian artifacts, but like everything else.
Is I forget about that. It's a good point.
I love that we like everybody in this I like the cops involved, the cops, the bad yeah, the bad boy and so yeah. I think that's I'm a big fan of this one. That's it. That's all I have on this. Thank you so much. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. There's merch there. Sometimes we're also at Ridiculous Crime on Twitter and Instagram and threads, but that's kind of abandoned at this point. Thanks, guys, don't email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Here's the thing, though we read the emails. We do read the emails. We just don't answer the emails because there are simply too many nuts. But people do read them.
I appreciate them read them.
There's just you can't reply. There's just way too just like I can't.
I can't.
I don't know how to read.
Why are you making thank you from Zaren?
I don't know my numbers? Like whatever, leave it talk back, leave it, talk back. It's thirty seconds to do something magical. The better your message, the more likely we are to play it on the show.
That is true.
Keep that in mind, folks. That's all. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Cousten, Leader of the Hole in the Sky Gang. Research is by Bubbling lock Pick, Marissa Brown and Wayward Explosives. Amateur Andrea Song Sharpened Hear theme song is by pretty Good Digger Thomas Lee and accidental electrician Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Producer's wardrobe provided by Dress Barn. Executive producers are ATV Wrangler Ben Boleen and Beginning Tunneller Noel Brown.
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Crime, Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
