5. On the Run

David realizes he's been double-crossed, as the FBI's evidence starts piling up.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
GAMSI Media Large, Rory, could you please recap what happened
last week on episode four for the people at home?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I sure caad folks.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Last week we got to meet a new character. His
name is Bruno. His real name is Mike McKinnie, but
he goes by Bruno, and his three greatest passions in
life are cocaine, hookers, and hot tubs. We now know
and understand that. And he has been hired by Steve
Chambers to go down to Mexico and quote unquote deliver

(00:46):
money to David Gant. We've also learned that he is
in the running to beat the person to kill David Gant.
Whether that happens or not, Folks, we're gonna find out
today on episode.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Five of Hillbilly Heist.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
All right, let's get onto the episode.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
David Gant knows he needs to get out of can Kun. Ever,
since he was recognized by some nosy tourist at the
Hard Rock Cafe, he's been laying low and waiting for
help to arrive from the States. Finally, Bruno arrived with
a bit more money and a plan to help David disappear.
But David doesn't totally trust Bruno.

Speaker 5 (01:31):
He asked me a really weird question. Do you have
a gun? Do you carry a knife?

Speaker 6 (01:42):
I know?

Speaker 5 (01:44):
Do you lock your doors? Questions like that.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
But Kelly is still stateside and Bruno is David's only
source of help, so he doesn't have much of a
choice but to go along for the ride. The plan,
Bruno says, is to get David out of Cancun, maybe
across Mexico to Acapulco, maybe to Mexico City, and then
eventually to Brazil.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
But the first leg of.

Speaker 4 (02:12):
The journey is to make themselves scarce by fleeing to
yet another popular tourist town, just a short ways down
the beach from the one David has been hanging around
in for months. They check into a fancy hotel overlooking
the beach and decide to have a drink on the balcony.
Maybe David's sick of having to pretend he's a tourist

(02:34):
instead of a famous bank robber. Maybe it's the booze.
Maybe it's the adrenaline wearing off after another day on
the run. Whatever the reason, David starts to open up
to Mike McKinney or Bruno.

Speaker 7 (02:47):
And that's when we're sitting outside of his room on
his balcony, having a couple of beers, and that's when
he told me where the money came from.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
David tells McKinny that he had hit a bank for
seventeen million dollars, and that's how Mike learns he's an
accessory to one of the biggest bank hei sin history.
He had never known where the money came from until
this moment. Author Jeff Diamond explains the fallout, and.

Speaker 8 (03:15):
It becomes clear in that moment to McKinney that he
was in a world of trouble because until that point,
McKinney had assumed that this was some nondescript who knows
what type of crime that that nobody would in the
United States really cared about.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Now Mike knows that David's on the FBI's most wanted
list and that he's probably going to get caught unless
he has some other nimrod do the dirty work.

Speaker 8 (03:42):
So at that point McKinney gets the idea to subcontract
this murder out.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
Mike's wheels start turning, slowly but turning nonetheless. Maybe he
could get David to Mexico City.

Speaker 9 (03:54):
In Mexico City, they'd cut your arm off for a
time x.

Speaker 7 (03:57):
So if we're got out this dude was wandering around
downtown that he had like ten thousand dollars cash on him,
he would have been found out a dumpster and I
wouldn't have had to lift a finger.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
Or even simpler, maybe he could get someone closer by
to do it, because when hiring a hit man, proximity
is of course far more important than qualifications. He already
has someone in mind, a guy named Robert.

Speaker 9 (04:25):
Robert.

Speaker 7 (04:27):
I'd met him down there. He is one of the
street hustlers. You know, he was the one trying to
sell you the timeshares.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
Ooh, timeshare, that's a slippery slope. You invest in the timesharing,
the next thing, you know, you're wagering on pro wrestling
and wife swapping.

Speaker 10 (04:43):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Robert also told Mike he was willing to do other
more violent crimes. So there on the balcony, Mike tells
David that he knows someone that can help them out
from SmartLess media, campsite media, and big money players. In

(05:04):
partnership with iHeart Podcasts, I'm Johnny Knoxville, and you're listening
to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
This is our fifth.

Speaker 4 (05:18):
Episode on the run. Can you imagine getting off in
senior Frogs talk about adding insult to injury? Your family
would be forced to lie about it to save face. No, no, no,

(05:38):
he actually got shot into Kenny Rogers Roasters. You dig
But right around Christmas nineteen ninety seven, David Gant found
himself in danger of meeting just such an undignified end.
According to David, he was sitting at the beach side bar,
nervous and sweating, and wearing this Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, one
of his last reminders of life back home.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
He's been a fans he was a kid.

Speaker 5 (06:01):
They were known for being a really tough team. And
I love the colors, the black and the gold. And
I hate to admit as guy, but I really liked
the jersey more than the team.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
When David looked up from his table, he saw a
huge man towering over him, six foot three and three
hundred pounds, a brooding menace who looks right at home
in Cancun's dark underbelly. This must be Bruno's friend Robert,
the latest chucklehead in the plot to kill David. But

(06:35):
David thinks Robert's going to help him get out of town.

Speaker 5 (06:39):
He was someone who arranged things like if he needed
a new idea, or he needed a car, or you
needed this, needed a place to stay, a place to go,
a boat, stuff like that. He arranged things.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
A good person to know as long as you're on
the right side of the arrangement. After sizing David up,
Robert introduces himself and makes a cunning proposition.

Speaker 5 (07:04):
You trade me that jersey. I'll let you in on
a secret about Bruno.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
Turns out Robert's a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan. He's been
looking all over for a jersey like this.

Speaker 5 (07:16):
I go chanin shirts. I like you probably is a
good Washington because when swimming this morning, it's a little sandy.
But here you go, brother, and he's way too big
a guy for this jersey. He's a big boy, but
he wants it.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
Now that David's kept his end of the bargain, Robert
does the same.

Speaker 5 (07:34):
He says, you know Bruno was in my place looking
to buy done. He says, I think he's gonna try
and kill you.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
Turns out Robert couldn't bear to help murder a fellow
Steelers fan.

Speaker 5 (07:50):
For what I paid for that Pittsburgh Steelers Jersey and
what it repaid. I mean, it probably saved my life.
I'm either really really lucky or when I came up
with my character sheet, I rolled high on charisma.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
But the warm feelings can't do much to take the
edge off some really shitty news, because I mean, he
was already feeling pretty sorry for himself. No Kelly, no money,
and now someone wants him dead.

Speaker 8 (08:21):
After David learned about the fact that his cohorts were
trying to have him killed, his life changed considerably. As
you would imagine, he was extremely nervous. He started constantly
looking around him all the time. He was justifiably paranoid,
you might say.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Once David finds out that Bruno intends to kill him,
his first instinct is to lay low. But his second instinct.

Speaker 6 (08:46):
Is that.

Speaker 4 (08:49):
He has to protect Kelly, sweet innocent Kelly, who just
hasn't found her way down to Mexico yet. Surely Steve
is putting Bruno up to the murder, and if Steve
wants him dead, he probably wants Kelly dead too. David
never really trusted Steve, but now he really really doesn't
trust him, and he has decent reasons for feeling this way.

(09:12):
One is the murder plot that he suspects Steve is behind.
The other is something Steve's hit man let slip. That
night on the balcony, when David confessed where he got
the money, Bruno returned the favor and shared a secret
with David too. He told him all about steve spending.
So the next time David calls Kelly, he decides that

(09:32):
they need to have a heart to heart, like the
lovers they are. David intends to really bear a soul
on this whole Steve spending all the money and hiring
people to kill him things. When Kelly answers, David says
he knows about the move from the trailer to the
giant mansion.

Speaker 5 (09:49):
He's bought a BMW and his wife's got new boobs
and huge horse killer diamond ring.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
David also drops some hints about Bruno.

Speaker 5 (10:02):
What's the deal with this clown?

Speaker 4 (10:04):
Kelly keeps to the party line. She admits that Steve's
been spending like crazy, but she says it's just him,
not her. All she's bought is a van, and she
says Bruno's just the delivery guy.

Speaker 5 (10:16):
You know that the same thing they've got planned for me.
They've got planned for years. That's when she got quiet.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
David tells Kelly he doesn't want to meet with Bruno anymore,
but he's still encouraging her to come down to meet him,
and he's still holding out hope that he might get
his share of the money. Oh, David, David David David.
David says he'll talk to Kelly again next week.

Speaker 11 (10:52):
We Title three is a court order and it's just
a part of the US Criminal Code that allows FBI
to listen to a tell upone conversation or plant a
bug in your house or something of that nature.

Speaker 4 (11:05):
Even with the mountain of evidence against Kelly and Steve
and Michelle Chambers, there was still a lot that John
Wydra and his fellow FBI agents didn't know. Two missing
pieces in particular, that prevented them from being able to
swoop in for the arrests.

Speaker 11 (11:19):
It became a matter of where's the money and where's David.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
If they made the arrest without knowing where the money was,
they might never recover it. And if they made the
arrest without knowing where David was, they might never find
them or even know whether he's still alive. To track
down David and the money. The agents decided they needed
to listen to Steve's phone calls. Took a while to
make this happen.

Speaker 11 (11:43):
You can't just say, hey, I want to listen to
Stephen Michelle Chambers because they're involved in the Loomis case.

Speaker 9 (11:48):
That's not enough.

Speaker 11 (11:50):
It's got to be proven that we can't get this
information any other way. And then it's limited. The amount
of time we have it, it's very limited.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
The warrant got approved in the agents tapped the phone
lines at Steven Michelle's mansion. It might have taken a
lot of time to get the approval, but it took
next to no time to hear criminal mastermind Steve say
a slop jar full of incriminating.

Speaker 11 (12:12):
Stuff, taking trips, taking friends and family out, and spending cash,
getting in a fight with him guy at a bar,
and offering to buy the place for you know, four
hundred twenty dollars bills.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Oh yeah, this is good.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
Steve got in a fight in a bar and when
they kicked him out, he did the classic I'll come
back here and buy this place. It's the kind of
genius idea you share with your favorite gun for hire.

Speaker 9 (12:39):
He wanted to buy the place and make it a knockoff.

Speaker 7 (12:42):
Hooters with the prison theme. Yeah, it was weird. Steve
was wanting to have the girls dressing the slutty prison
guard or the slutty convict halloween outfits.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
I deal, and here we were making fun of senior frogs.

Speaker 11 (13:05):
Then he's going to convert it into a bar called
the Big House where all the staff are prisoners. He
wanted to put them in stripes, but you actually wear
an orange jumpsuit.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
That's the kind idea that would make Colonel Sanders a sergeant.
Steve even came up with the brilliant marketing slogan, if
you're going to do the time, do it right.

Speaker 7 (13:27):
When Steve floated that out it to me, I was like,
you never know, that might be the next big thing.

Speaker 9 (13:34):
You really don't know.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
Until he tried it, you kind of know. And the
evidence continued piling up.

Speaker 11 (13:41):
We found what I called the next stage, which was
called the friends and family clan. And at the time,
in nineteen ninety seven, I found that to be hilarious
because that was the AT and T's motto for cell phones,
and that was mom, dad, grandparents, friends that were not

(14:02):
involved in either of the planning or any of the
major spending afterwards. But they all agreed to hide one
hundred two hundred three hundred thousand dollars in a safe
deposit box in their name in exchange for payment of
ten twenty thousand dollars or bottom a car or something
like that.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
So the FBI is starting to get answers to the
money question, but there still isn't any mention of David
on the wire tap. David Gant knows he's being hunted,
and his funds are dwindling faster than a barnyard quickie

(14:42):
gone or the days of fancy hotels, lobster on the halfshell,
and premium tequila.

Speaker 5 (14:47):
When the tribal bulletins say don't leave the tourist area,
don't eat ice, don't buy street food, they mean it.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
He made this mistake with the can coon street food.

Speaker 5 (15:00):
Early on, it tasted really, really good. But about seven
eight hours later, I'm up in my really nice hotel
and that's when it hit me. The bug that's in
their water, in their food. It's horrible. It is straight
from the pits of hell.

Speaker 4 (15:23):
But this was back when David still had a fancy
hotel to pamperum. So there were solutions within reach.

Speaker 5 (15:29):
I crawled to the door and I called room service
and they sent the little kid up. I gave him.
I don't know how much money, I said, pepto bismol grindde.
Once you do that and you survive, you can eat anywhere.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
Also, like Jason Bourne, David Gant knows every language.

Speaker 5 (15:55):
If you want to learn Spanish, got to immerse yourself
to watch the Latino soap operas because you can get
the gist of what they're seeing and you can start
putting it together. Calesinko in the Cancoon, and that's how

(16:15):
you learn basic Spanish. There's gotta be a beautiful woman,
there's gotta be an old angry woman. There's gonna be
one fat cowboy, and then there's dashing hero them the
Antonio Banderas looking guy. Because you know when the woman
is standing there with her hand or you know the
gist of what she says, you start putting it together.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
David's also a master the art of the skies.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
I'm dressing like the whitest Mexican you've ever seen. The
flip flops. Keep your feet good and cool. You want
wherever you want, and go to the beach. You can
go down to the club, no one notice. The baggy
shirt allows the sweat to wick away. The cut off
shorts are just convenient.

Speaker 4 (16:59):
Okay, maybe he needs someone other than David to explain
how terrifying his situation actually was.

Speaker 8 (17:04):
David told me that everywhere he was going he was
turning his head.

Speaker 9 (17:08):
He said.

Speaker 8 (17:08):
He told me once he was getting he was at
a barbershop getting his hair dyed brown, and in the
middle of it all, he heard someone say police and
he got up to go to the bathroom and like
went out the window or something in the back with
his hair half died.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
That's author Jeff Diamond, who interviewed David a little bit
after these events.

Speaker 8 (17:27):
He was staying in his hotel room eating eminem, listening
to the Eagles, watching Men in Black on TV all
day and really just like terrified to go anywhere.

Speaker 5 (17:37):
I probably financially ruined myself by eating the M and
ms out of the snack bar in the in the room.
Calls like a dummy. I've never has snack bar, and
I didn't know every time he touched that has three bucks.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
That shit adds up.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
And if he's put more thought into it, your allyes.
The men come in two flavors. They're either a giant
teenage or John Toddler. It's just a matter of toys
and an attitude. I'm typically a giant Toddler.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
To summarize, David's in deep, He's cowering in a hotel
room in a foreign country, with no friends, no Kelly,
no work prospects, in a stash of cash is shrinking
by the day. Maybe it's just time to go to
the embassy and give himself up like he threatened to do.
But willfully putting yourself in the pokey is a decision

(18:29):
you tend to procrastinate on. Same for officially giving up
on millions of dollars. So what's the latest with Kelly.
The FBI has been conducting physical surveillance on Kelly since
shortly after the heist. They know she lied about being

(18:50):
in touch with David the day of the robbery, and
they notice she makes frequent trips to a payphone outside
a convenience store. Kelly k new talking on a payphone
created extra hassle for the FBI, so to be able to.

Speaker 11 (19:03):
Get a wire tap on a payphone back then, not
knowing where it was going to be or when it
was going to be, because they're not going to allow
you to listen to anybody's conversation on that payphone except
that one call. So we're trying to figure out through
other wiretaps, what time she's supposed to be at which payphone.

(19:24):
Then you have to write it up and get it
to a judge for signature, and then get it to
the telephone company so that you can listen to that call.
So you're running around. You got an attorney that's just
sitting in a room waiting to fill in information from another
team that's listening to a phone call.

Speaker 4 (19:43):
So finally the FBI figures out the time and the
location and gets the approval of the judge. Now they're
just waiting for Kelly to show up and take the
call so they can listen in and hopefully finally track
down David Gamm. Kelly seems to be running late. Finally,

(20:10):
almost twenty minutes.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
After the first call, Kelly still.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Hasn't shown up, but the phone rings again. An agent
decides to pick up and says hello. A kind of
nervous sounding guy with a North Carolina accent says he
must have the wrong number and hangs.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Up pretty suspicious, except this.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
Is North Carolina and a lot of people have that accent.
The agent hangs around, still know Kelly not surprised. Then
the phone rings again. The agent picks up. The same
male voice with the North Carolina accent asks who's there.
The agent says, I'm just standing here and I picked

(20:55):
up the phone man, and then the man hangs up.
All that work and lawyers waiting in rooms and trips
to judges and still no phone call between Kelly and David.

Speaker 6 (21:08):
But it had to be him, right, because when I
talked to him on the phone, he would be like, well,
when are you coming down?

Speaker 10 (21:19):
Well, when can you get me some money? And I
would just make up excuses like, well, I think I
should probably stay here so I keep on what's going on,
or I'm scared. If I leave now, then the FBI
is going to be wondering why just up and left,
and it's going to cause them to start looking further.

(21:39):
You know, I just kept making up excuses and kept
telling him that yes, I was coming.

Speaker 4 (21:45):
In the previous weeks, whenever she got off the phone
with David, Kelly always reported dutifully back to Steve. She
told him right away that David didn't trust Bruno anymore,
and Steve emphasized to Kelly that she had to keep
close tabs on David. Now she was the only one
left keeping an eye on him and making sure he
wouldn't turn them all in. Her job was the same
as it had been since the beginning of the heist,

(22:08):
keeping David happy, leading them on. It's just that the
stakes were even higher now. But driving to a payphone
once a week to hear a heartbroken paranoid man who
you completely screwed over plead with you is just really
hard work.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Oh my god.

Speaker 10 (22:26):
I guess the most aggravating part was Steve not doing
enough to keep David pacified, because, you know, if he
would have just sent him more money. I think that
was the biggest thing with David was because he wasn't

(22:47):
getting as much money as he thought he should, which
I agree he should have, but I don't know if
that was Steve's greed or why he didn't just you know,
take him home hundred thousand that, you know, then we
won't have to worry about it for a little while.

Speaker 4 (23:09):
And by complete coincidence, that same day in February, when
Kelly was too tired to go to take David's call.
Was the same day the FBI was staking out the payphone.
You might say Kelly did David a favor by failing
to show that day and keeping him off a wiretap.
But even without knowing exactly what's going on, David's an

(23:30):
understanding guy, too understanding.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
Mexico doesn't do the whole time switch in the seasons
where they moved the clocks forward. It's throwing our schedule
out of whack.

Speaker 4 (23:46):
Steve freaked out when Kelly told them she missed the
call with David. So when David Paige has set up
another call for the next day, she made sure to
be there on time. David tells where he's staying. The
FBI is listening, and now they know for sure that
David's in Mexico. But it's the next call Kelly makes
the Steve that really gets the bureaus attention.

Speaker 10 (24:09):
That's when he asked me if I would go to Mexico.
Because Bruno is saying he can't draw him out, he
can't get him to go anywhere that would be private.
That's when he asked me if I would go down there.

Speaker 4 (24:27):
The FBI heard every word of this plot to kill David,
and even though Steve was leading the conversation, Kelly participated
and provided Steve information on David's whereabouts. The legal community
might refer to Kelly's criminal exposure.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
As cagaste e soutaste and la kaka, which means you
just shit and jumped in it.

Speaker 11 (24:49):
She was part of their conspiracy to commit murder. She
talked freely about trying to get a gun down in Mexico,
which to me was ridiculous. It's easy to get a
gun in Mexico, but who you buy it from might
get you killed. But they talked about injecting David camp
with Leitch, We're getting cyanide. Kelly Campbell was all part

(25:10):
of those conversations with Steve Chambers and Michael McKinney. And
I know, I don't think Steve or Kelly would have
done it themselves, but they definitely would have hired somebody,
and they did to do it. I guess that it's
worthy of an apology. I mean, sorry, I tried to
kill you. Can we still be friends? I don't know

(25:31):
how that works.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
The FBI now knows that David is in Mexico and
that his life is in danger, so they immediately send
an agent south of the border to start looking for him.
They traced his phone call to a hotel and Plia
del Carmon. Agents in the States continue to keep an
eye on Steve, Michelle, and Kelly, but now they have
a new person they haven't heard of before, some nut

(26:03):
named Bruno.

Speaker 11 (26:07):
We know that Steve Chambers is moving on with his
mob boss mentality, playing in this gangster role, and he
wants to have David Gant killed. They were all pretending
to be in a movie, so Bruno sounds a lot
scarier than Michael McKinney. I don't know why they wanted
to intimidate and scare David Gant, because he's not like

(26:30):
a very intimidating figure.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
As the full Pitcher comes together, the agents and me
are starting to feel kind of sorry for David. They
know about all the one four three texts, They heard
him tell Kelly he loved her on the phone, and
they heard his good pal Kelly immediately turn around and
start planning his murder with Steve.

Speaker 11 (26:51):
He was just a key to unlock the vault door
and get the money out to Steve. That's all it was.
I still wonder whether or not they had the guts
to go through with it. But the problem with a
gun is it only takes one second to make that decision.
You could feel bad the rest of your life. But
if you have the guts for one second to pull

(27:12):
that trigger and then it's over right, you can look
back and say, God, I wish I hadn't done that,
but it's already done. So did he have the guts
to drip and fly down there?

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Clearly?

Speaker 11 (27:22):
Did he have the guts to discuss it?

Speaker 5 (27:24):
Yes?

Speaker 11 (27:27):
Did he have the ability to pull that trigger in
that one moment? I think pretty much anybody does.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Anyway.

Speaker 4 (27:35):
The FBI starts looking into Bruno and quickly finds Mike McKinney.
McKinny is still living in a hotel in Charlotte, working
to Steve's bodyguard. The FBI intercepts a lot of calls
between Steve and Mike talking about how to lure David
to his death. It's hard to say why exactly it
took Steve so long to tell Mike to go through
with the murder.

Speaker 11 (27:55):
And then at some point it was just annoying to
Steve that he had to give money to anybody else,
including the guy that helped him get it, and that's
when the plan started to be, like, we're going to
kill him.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
They keep listening to the calls as a plan to
kill David take shape, and then they learned that Mike
mckennie is buying a plane ticket to Mexico.

Speaker 11 (28:17):
I believe McKenny was supposed to get on the flight
on March second or third. In the State Department and
the FBI were like, we're not letting a hit man
fly to another country. That's not happening. Nothing good can
come out of this. So that's when it was decided
we're going to arrest everybody on March second, whether we
found David or not, because the cat would be out

(28:38):
of the bag once we arrested McKenny.

Speaker 4 (28:45):
Mike McKinny had seen a lot of idiotic stuff since
gain of all the Steve Chambers, the prison theme, hooters,
the boneheaded assassination instructions, and of course Steve's gigantic and
tasteful painting.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Of dogs playing billiards.

Speaker 4 (29:01):
But all that stuff seemed a whole lot dumber and
more risky once he learned Steve's money came from the
famous Loomis heist. Now Mike is worried he's going to
get caught. It seems like the prospects of all this
ending well were getting slimmer.

Speaker 6 (29:15):
By the day.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
He had hoped that outsourcing David's murder to Robert the
Plan B hit Man, would solve everything. David would be dead,
Mike would get his feet, and the murder would never
be linked back to him. But Robert and his new
Pittsburgh Steelers Jersey were no longer in the assassination game.

Speaker 11 (29:34):
Robert was.

Speaker 7 (29:35):
He was a hustler. He was just playing both sides,
playing it simple.

Speaker 4 (29:43):
Mike's job was so easy when Gant was just a
phone call away.

Speaker 7 (29:47):
A lot of it was just not having the responsibilities
of actually having to get up to go to work.

Speaker 9 (29:52):
He could stay out all night and whenever he woke.

Speaker 7 (29:54):
Up, go sit on the pier, eat fresh seafood, a hammock,
drink a few beers, hang out until it's time to
go back out that night.

Speaker 4 (30:04):
Hmmm, this Hitman game doesn't sound half bad. But now
he and Steve were having to scheme on how to
lure David out into the open.

Speaker 9 (30:13):
Can't absolutely refuse to meet with me.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
They still didn't really have a plan, but Steve's more
serious than ever about getting rid of David, and Mike
was quite literally leaving for Mexico the next morning.

Speaker 9 (30:25):
I was actually stuck in the hotel.

Speaker 7 (30:27):
I was waiting for Steve to drop some money off
so I could go to Mexico. And I actually sat
in my room, read a book and drank a six
pack in my room. It was probably something like it
one of the Grisham books, whichever newest one was out.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
Even with a six pack and a crummy book to
read on the beach, Mike wasn't feeling very optimistic about
landing in Mexico the next day.

Speaker 7 (30:50):
True sixth sense or paranoid kicking in by then. But
like that evening, when I was going into the hotel,
there were a couple of local cops and I heard
him throw out a coat on the radios and I
didn't know what the codes were.

Speaker 9 (31:06):
I was like, this isn't good.

Speaker 4 (31:10):
Mike kept hearing strange sounds coming from the other room,
but there wasn't anything he could do about it. The
holy tranity of hookers, cocaine, and hot tubs seemed far
on the horizon. Hell at this point he probably would
have settled for a hot pocket and a hand job.
But in a few short hours, the FBI hopes to

(31:30):
make him the recipient of a rude awakening. And he's
not the only one the FBI plans to rub the
wrong way.

Speaker 11 (31:39):
So now you got ten agent sawed guns. We know
that Michelle and Steve have guns, and we got two
little kids in the house.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
That's next time on Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
So Rory Mike slash Bruno is having a bit of
a crisis of conscience here. He was happy to take
that money to kill someone. Yeah, less stoke to find
out he's killing one of the most wanted men in America.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
That's right, That is correct. My heart actually goes out
to Mike in this case where he doesn't even understand yet. Yeah, sure,
he's been hired to kill someone. Here's some things I respect. One,
he didn't even understand who he was killing and he
was still willing to do it. That's a guy who
needs a paycheck. And two, he was willing to subcontract
that workout. That is a thinker.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
That's a guy.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Who really just wants to be in a hot tub
doing coke with hookers. That's that's the American dream he
was living it up in Mexico.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
I didn't know you could subcontract murders for hire.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
I didn't either. I thought, I what a slippery slope
to hire one hit man, but to hire to subcontract out.
And I have to say, my favorite part of this
entire episode is quite literally the fact that owning a
Steelers Jersey is potentially why David Gant is alive to

(33:04):
this dame.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
I was gonna I was gonna say, what a great
advertisement for the Steelers, like maybe they could use this
as an ad.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yes, and just having that on and a guy like
I want it. I want that and be like, oh,
here you go. Anyways, they're trying to kill you.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
What a twist, What.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
An absolute insane twist. That's when you just think things
are uh they all things happen for a reason. Is
that a moment like that moment of kismet? Like that
for sure? But yeah, usual usual, fair From the other
other episodes, Kelly is still aloof I will say this
is the first time it kind of felt good to

(33:42):
have David be a little more confrontational with her. But
also the fact that he explained to Kelly what they're
gonna do to me, they're probably gonna do to you.
And that was the first time. That was the first
time her brain cells actually lit up with legitimate information
of what she was truly involve often.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
I know, But poor David Man, he's still longing for Kelly,
So I know, I just know. I just want him
to meet a lady in Cancun. Yeah, like a divorce
at the pool.

Speaker 5 (34:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
And then finally our cliffhanger this week, the Feds decide
to make their move because they just can't let an assassin.

Speaker 5 (34:17):
Get on an airplane.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
I guess that's the that's the red line.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, yeah, you do have to pump the brakes at
some point.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
All right, Well, let's stay tuned next week as we
wait to find out will Bruno kill David.

Speaker 5 (34:30):
Gant this time Bump Bump bu.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Or will a different sports team Jersey save his life?

Speaker 4 (34:49):
Crimeless Hill Billy Heist is a production of SmartLess Media,
camp Side Media, and Big Money Players in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. Bill Billy Heist is narrated by me Johnny
Knoxville and created by Liz Elkington and Stuart Bailey. Written
by Michael Kenyon Meyer with Liz Elkington.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
And Stuart Bailey.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
Produced by Lane Rose and Sierra Franco. Additional production help
by Rajeev Gola. The series was sound designed and mixed
by ewin Le Tremwen, fact checking by Gray Lanta and
a special thanks to our operations team Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren,
Sabina Mara and Destiny Dingle iHeart Podcasts and Big Money Players.

(35:32):
Executive producers are Jack O'Brien, Lindsay Hoffman, and Matt Appadeca.
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Deen, Vanessa Grigoriatis, Adam
hoff and Matt Cher. Executive producers are Liz Elkington and
Stuart Bailey. From SmartLess Media, the producers are Will Arnett,
Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Richard Corson. Bernie Kaminski is

(35:55):
the head of production. The associate producer is Mattie McCann.
If you've enjoyed crime Less Hillbilly Hies, please rate and
review the show wherever you get your podcasts.