Iron Man

Today's tour through the Cabinet will introduce you to a pair of unique individuals, and their tendency to break the rules and suffer the consequences.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

(00:27):
of Curiosities. I'd like to think that everybody has an
innate talent, something they can do that just comes naturally
to them. It might be drawing, or playing a musical instrument,
or picking up a new language, or how about walking

(00:47):
out of prison not once, but four times? Now. That
last talent belonged to Stephen J. Russell. Born in North
Carolina in n and raised by a religious couple who
had adopted him as a a by at the age
of nine, he learned the truth, and he didn't take
it well. His birth parents had had several other children
and never attempted to make contact with their firstborn, which

(01:09):
sent him into a spiral. By the time he was twelve,
he was setting fires and getting into fights. As he
got older, he discovered some things about himself though. For one,
he was very smart, very very smart. He knew how
to read people and gain their confidence quite quickly. He
also had a knack for mimicking people's voices, skills that

(01:30):
would come in handy later in life. However, before he
turned to a life of crime, he worked on the
opposite side of the law as a police officer. He
even married the Chief Secretary in nineteen seventies six, but
he was also gay, and admission that ended his nine
year marriage in Russell lost his job as a result
of that admission, and his attempt to get a new

(01:52):
one proved difficult because he was fired from one job
after another. His desperation eventually turned to poverty, and then
Russell came up with a plan. He started selling fake
Rolex watches, eventually graduating to even bigger cons. He pulled
off a slip and false scheme that earned him forty
five dollars in payott. Unfortunately, once he got a taste

(02:15):
for crime, he just couldn't help himself. Russell was arrested
after applying for a fake passport, and while out on bail,
he met someone special. His name was Jimmy Kempbell, and
the two fell quickly in love. There was just a
little issue in Russell's six month prison sentence. The con
man couldn't wait that long to see Kempell again, so
as soon as he got inside, he just started looking

(02:38):
for a way to get back out. He paid attention
to the guards schedules, watching when they'd take their smoke breaks,
so that he could wander off and look around. He
stumbled on a room where female inmates were being stripped
of their regular clothes before receiving their prison uniforms. He
swiped a pair of red sweatpants, a tie dyed shirt,
and one of the guards walkie talkies. Wearing this ridiculous

(03:00):
get up, Russell took an elevator to the first floor
and walked out the front door, and nobody stopped him.
And this was in nineteen He was arrested the following
week at the airport before he and Kempbell could hop
a flight to Mexico again. Russell was released on bail,
and this time the two men managed to high tail
itself of the border. Sadly, Kempell was dying from AIDS

(03:23):
and in need of better healthcare than what he was
able to get in Mexico. Russell was picked up again
after coming back to the US and pulling another insurance
scam to pay off his boyfriend's medical bills, but Kempell
passed away a few weeks later. But love would bloom
again for Stephen J. Russell in the form of Philip Morris,
an inmate with the charming Southern accent who Russell had

(03:44):
spotted in the prisons law library. The two men were
parole the n and Russell took a job as CFO
of a large company called North American Medical Management or NAM.
The only problem he was completely unqualified. He'd pa did
his resume without landish claims, and his references were all
phone numbers belonging to him. He managed to embezzle almost

(04:07):
eight hundred thousand dollars from the company before getting caught
a kind of robin hood scheme he'd undertaken as payback
for how medical companies had treated his late boyfriend. Russell,
as usual, was taken into custody. This time, his bail
was set at nine hundred thousand dollars punishment for having
made a fool of the justice system multiple times before,

(04:28):
and an amount too high for him to pay himself.
Not to worry, though, because he had a plan. Of course,
he had a plan. He called up the courthouse from
jail and impersonated the judge's voice, telling the clerk to
drop the bail to forty five THO dollars instead, and
they did. Russell paid and went home. The following day,

(04:49):
the authorities quickly realized what had happened and picked Russell
up at Morris's home. Soon after the judge had stopped
playing around, he sentenced the man who had strolled out
of jail twice with a forty five year prison sentence.
Russell wouldn't be caged that easy, though. While incarcerated, he
bought a bunch of green magic markers from the prison
commissary and emptied them into the sink and his cell,

(05:11):
which he had filled with water. He soaked his prison
whites until they were dyed a pale shade of green
to match the scrubs of the visiting doctors, and once
again waltz right out of the prison through the front door.
He and Morris fled to Mississippi after that, but were
soon found again, and Russell was sent right back to prison.
Sometime after that. The press interviewed him about his numerous breakouts,

(05:34):
but noticed that he wasn't his usual, happy, go lucky
self anymore. He was sad despondent. Russell told them that
he had been diagnosed with HIV and he was dying.
He lost a lot of weight over the next year
and was eventually moved to a secure nursing home to
live out his final days. During his stay, prison authorities
received a call from Russell's doctor. Apparently, there was an

(05:56):
experimental trial for a new HIV drug, and Russell had
been ozen to participate, but he had to act fast.
It wasn't fast enough. The doctor's phone the prison again
a few weeks later to tell them that Russell had died.
It wasn't until a man walked into a Dallas bank
and applied for a seventy five tho dollar alone that
they realized that the King of cons was still alive

(06:17):
and well and up to his old tricks. And how
did he do it? He faked his medical records using
a prison typewriter, then reduced his food intake, swallowing laxatives
to move things along. By the end of ten months,
he was half his old size. After all, he had
watched a boyfriend succumb to the effects of AIDS and
knew how to mimic the symptoms. Today, Stephen j. Russell

(06:40):
sits in solitary confinements, the weight of a one forty
four year prison sentence heavy on his shoulders. His spine
is compacted from a lack of movements, and he fights
every day to maintain his sanity in a six by
nine cell designed to break him mentally and physically, but
he hangs on, buoyed by the support of his friends
and family who visit it on the weekends. He also

(07:01):
writes and gives interviews to the press on occasion. However,
his habits of breaking out of prison, well, that seems
to have run its course, although someone should probably check
and make sure. Most people hope to accomplish one great

(07:28):
thing in their lifetime. It could be writing a novel,
or learning the piano, or maybe just winning the lottery.
A few of us will ever achieve such feats, and
even fewer will go on to do more. One man, however,
didn't learn to play an instrument, nor did he win
the lottery, but he is remembered for his many great accomplishments.
For example, he was the German robin Hood of his day.

(07:50):
He was a poet, a warrior, and he was among
the first cyborgs. Goods von Berlichingen was born to German
nobility in four eight. Raised in what is now modern
day Bavaria. He joined the military at the age of
seventeen to fight for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the First.
He struck down enemies across Europe on behalf of the

(08:10):
emperor for the next several years, but grew weary of
fighting in service to a king. By he was on
his own working as a mercenary. It was during a
siege in the small Bavarian town of land Shoot when
Goat's right arm was blown off by an enemy cannon.
Such an injury would have sidelined other soldiers, forcing them
away from battle and back home to nurse their wounds,

(08:33):
but not goods. He saw the expertise of local blacksmiths,
who provided him with a replacement arm. They fashioned for
him a rudimentary prosthetic made of metal and leather. Unfortunately,
he wasn't able to do much with it, so he
had a better, more advanced arm constructed instead. His new
prosthetic limb had fingers that could bend at the joints.

(08:53):
Berlick and Gen would use his left hand to operate
the unique spring loaded rod system inside that was so
precise he could curl the metal fingers around something as
sturdy as his sword or as delicate as a quill pen.
Once again able to wield the sword, he went back
to work as a mercenary. He carried out vicious acts
on behalf of those who hired him, as well as

(09:14):
people and even whole towns who had wronged him. In
fifteen twelve, he let his beef with the city of
Nuremberg get the better of him when he attacked several
merchants returning home there after selling their wares in Leipzig.
His former employer, Emperor Maximilian the First, got wind of
the raid and issued an imperial ban, which meant that
he lost all his rights and was free to be

(09:35):
killed by anyone else without consequence. He spent two years
as an outlaw after that, before paying the steep fine
of fourteen thousand golden for his freedom. He used his
newfound freedom to continue his one man war against the
people and places who had offended him. He traveled to hess,
home of the Hessian people nineteen thousand of whom fought

(09:55):
for the British during the Revolutionary War, and carried out
his next attack are. This time he kidnapped Philip, the
fourth Count of Valdak, the head of states under Emperor Maximilian.
His new crime earned him another price on his head
and another banishment. He had no interest in sitting by
while fight carried on without him, though he came to
the aid of Uric, the first Duke of Wurtemburg in

(10:18):
fifteen nineteen, when the duke's town of Mackmule was under
attacked by a peacekeeping outfit known as the Swabian League. Berlikingen, however,
lacked these supplies needed to defend mack Mool properly, and
was soon captured by the opposing army. It was too
bad that he'd made so many enemies during Mercenary days,
since he was given over to the town of Heilbron,

(10:38):
which he had rated quite a few times in the past.
But Berlickingen had also made some friends too, and two
of them fellow knights themselves, came to his defense. With
their help, he was only forced to pay two thousand
golden and he was free to go. Oh and he
had to promise not to go after the Swabian League
for revenge, which he didn't, but he did Yd a

(11:00):
new cause to fight for after that, in fifteen twenty five,
he and his metal arm fought alongside hundreds of thousands
of poor German farmers in what came to be known
as the German Peasants War. They had risen up against
the aristocracy for better land rights and more freedom, and
Berlkingen himself, being a man of means and born to
a wealthy family, had no problem joining their cause. His

(11:23):
participation is what earned him the nickname the robin Hood
of Germany. But he eventually deserted them once he saw
that they were less invested in the challenge and merely
after blood goats. Van Berlikingen died in fifteen sixty at
around eighty years old, leaving behind an impressive legacy as
a one armed, iron fisted knight who fought for the

(11:43):
poor and was hated by almost every town he met.
All of this was discussed in his memoirs, which were
adapted into a popular play in seventeen seventy three. Today,
both of his prosthetic arms, Mark one and Mark two,
are on display in his birthplace of youngs thousand, German
me The town even boasted depiction of his metal hand
on their shield, making it a true coat of arms.

(12:09):
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

(12:31):
and you can learn all about it over at the
World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,