September 28, 2023 • 31 mins
Capturing a Pink Panther is one thing, but keeping them under lock and key is another. The Panthers develop a new talent: prison breaks. They escape jail time by breaking out with speed, precision and a flair for theatrics. In Episode Five, Olivera Ćircović, a former pro basketball star turned Pink Panther, takes us through her origin story, her life of crime and her daring escape from a notorious Greek prison. And Milan Ljepoja proves that a jail in the tiny country of Liechtenstein is no match for the Pink Panthers.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Basketball is a hugely popular sport in the Balkan States.
If you're a professional basketball player in say Serbia, you're
a big deal, a celebrity that said, no one can
play basketball forever. But when your time as a professional
(00:28):
athlete is over, there is another popular career you might
be able to presume. If you have the right set
of skills, the right connections, and the nerve, you could
become a criminal. I'm Natalia Antalava. I'm a journalist based
(00:49):
in Eastern Europe, and I'm going to take you into
the world of Serbia's most brazen jewel thieves, the most
daring and e says for diamond thieves in the world.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thirty to forty seconds, they're in, they're out.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
They've stolen half a billion dollars worth of valuables. Two
well dressed men strolled into an exclusive jewelry store in
London and walked out with sixty six million dollars in jewels.
They're called the Pink Panthers. They're a loosely connected group
of over educated, underemployed, ambitious young people who rose from
(01:27):
the ashes of the Yugoslav Wars of the nineteen nineties
to commit elaborate smash and grab heists all across the globe,
often in broad daylight. This is infamous international The Pink
Panthers Story Episode five, Catch and Release. In the years
(01:54):
following the Balkan Civil Wars, crime is one of the
few steady lines of war available. Many ordinary citizens are
forced to resort to some form of criminality just to survive,
and the same goes for citizens who are not so ordinary.
OLIVERI Tcherkovich is a truly impressive woman, over six feet tall,
(02:16):
blond and beautiful. She radiates supreme confidence and once you
know her story, you can understand why she has had
a very successful career, actually at least two careers.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
In shebroked.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
That's my ex husband. He was a member of the
Pink Painters and he still is member of the Ping Pents.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Olivera mostly speaks Serbian. That's her son, Nicholas translating like
she says, her husband was a Pink panther, but that
was not the life he wanted for her.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
He didn't want me to do that stuff because I
was the professional basketball player, so it was like unbelievable
for me to step in that side of the world.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
You know, Olivera was a power forward for one of
Serbia's tom basketball teams, the Novasatska ze Ka. She made
good money and made smart investments around Belgrade.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I have you private business which did well. I had
a lot of funny all the time.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
But when the civil wars in the Balkans break out
in the early nineteen nineties and sanctions are imposed on
Serbian Oliveri's team can no longer travel to compete in
international games. To continue playing professionally, she has to leave Serbia.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So it all started when she first came to Greece.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
The Spina Papa Joryu is a freelance journalist in Greece.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
In nineteen ninety one, the water upted in Yugoslavia, so
it was impossible for any kind of professionals to do
some living there. So she came in Greece in the
summer of nineteen ninety two to play professional basketball.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Because she was quite a star in Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Oliveri is hired by one of the top teams in
Greece based in Athens. At first, she doesn't think of
her adopted city.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
She wasn't very impressed.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
She found the city a bit dirty, but it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Was in Athens. Such a love noctio door.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Love who has a way of leading to trouble. The
man Olivera falls for in Athens has an interesting way
of making a living and some interesting associates too.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
So it all starts now because the whole pink Panther's
thing is connected with her husband, who she.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Met in as.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Olivera said in an interview that she saw her husband
as a robin Hood figure stealing from the ridge, and
well that's where the robin Hood analogy kind of falls apart.
But it was her relationship with this man that leads
Olivera into her next profession.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
When she got pregnant, she went back to Belgrade and
then it started.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So first she got in contact with the ring via
her husband.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
This ring, as the Spina Papajoria calls it, is made
up of fellow Serbians who are doing brisk business in
Greece and across Europe.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
This ring was bringing stolen goods to Serbia from abroad,
and it was mostly jewels and fashion brands, expensive fashion brans, clothing.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
The sanctions against Serbia had created a super charged market
for stolen goods and it didn't just go away once
the sanctions were lifted, the Serbian economy was still in shambles.
On the streets of Belgrade, illicit merchandise was everywhere. Olivera's
son Nicholas explains how she got involved.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Through the relationship and marriage with him. She got closer
to those kind of people. So the people who still it,
they don't sell it like in real store, they sell
it like three times less price.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
You know, Olivera can see there is an opportunity here.
She's got the legitimate businesses she's invested in around Belgrade,
and she certainly knows the right people.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
So in Oliveda's mind, it was good point to start
buying the stuff from the criminals. And she already got
to the content with the people with the friends with
my father, so she got the idea to buy the
stolen stuff from them from the less money, and then
then sell them in the servia and earn like for
one day, she earns like one year basketball contract, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
With her fame, her looks and her connections, Olivera's business booths.
She told the British newspaper The Independent, quote, I even
had politicians, doctors and famous people coming to my makeshift
showroom to buy the stolen goods end of quote. She's
so successful that she outgrows her piecemeal suppliers. Here's Nicholas
(06:36):
translating for her again.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
At the one point, they don't have so many goods
as I want to buy because I'm selling it every day.
So they don't have enough money to go to another
country to steal something.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
They don't know where to go and what to steal that.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I want to make it faster to get to the
goods that.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I need to sell.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Then I'm going deeper and deeper to the crime.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Soon, Olivera was running her own tea.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Tea after a few months.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I am the absolutely one who is organizing the group.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
She recruits the new crew members, and she has excellent
instincts for who will be a good getaway driver, who
is quick with tools, who will make the best team leader.
At first, on the very plans of Heights from Afar,
she carefully diagrams the store she's targeting, details the items
she wants her crew to steal. She makes a map
(07:26):
of the surrounding roads for their getaway. Her associates case
the store for weeks before striking. It's all working.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I have the people who are moving the stolen goods
by the borders. So I already have two or three
those personal stores in my own showrooms. So it's all circle.
All the people from the crime trust me because I
never come late to pay them. I always pay them
on time, and I'm doing it as someone who is
professional sports player, not a criminal. I have a sports discipline.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
It is that sports discipline. By the late nineteen nineties,
Olivera has become a major figure among the Serbian criminal class,
one of the only women with her own crew. It's
a new kind of celebrity for her.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
In the criminal circles.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I get famous, kind of popular. We are doing well,
and if you become a member of my group that
you're going to be reach in a few months.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So only one month you will.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Buy the best car, two months you will got the
new apartment in the luxury part of the city.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
My colleague Alan Greenberg says Olivera's decision to join the
criminal world is not all that surprising.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
For people of her generation. They really were forced to
get creative about how they were going to make a life.
Serbia was so cut off, the sanctions from the West,
just a general dismal economy, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I get that, But what I don't get is like,
why Olivera. She's in a much better position than most Serbians.
I mean, she is famous, she's got money, she is
kind of a star.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Definitely, she's head of the game in post war Serbia.
But when her basketball career was over, when she couldn't
play anymore and she wanted to have a business career,
she had to deal with the realities of life at home.
So she did get.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Creative, right, and we heard how they became very reliant
on the black market because of the civil war, and
that never really went away, did it, Right.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
It becomes entrenched. It's very common and a lot of
the goods people need or want medicine, cigarettes, designer clothing, jewelry,
it comes from the West. People steal it there and
then they bring it home to Serbia and sell it.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, that sounds familiar for so much of the region.
But what makes Serbia difference is that anger towards the West. Right,
they felt that they were being punished by the West,
and it seems like a lot of people felt justified.
Do you think it would be an exaggeration to say
that for Serbians it was almost patriofic to bring things
(10:01):
back from the wealthier countries to help people back home
in Belgrade.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
I think that's true when you talk to people who
live through this period, or even ask people in Serbia
now about the pink panthers, there's this attitude like, sure,
crime is bad, robbery is bad, but the West is
rich and we have nothing, so the hell with them.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Olivera is happily running her own successful team of Belgrade thieves.
She and her husband have a son, Nicholas, but the
marriage doesn't end up working out. She leaves him and
finds a new love interest.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
The story continues because she then was receiving the best
merchandise from a guy called Dragon Dragon yazid if I
pronounced it correctly, and she was so intrigued by this
personality of Dragon and she decided to come back to
Greece and meet him in person.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Dragon spelt drga n is a popular name in Serbia.
And to be clear, this Dragon is not Dragon Mickage,
the pink panther who is arrested in the train station
in France after trying to buy a ticket with a
five hundred euro note. This Dragon was running a team
of jewel thieves in Athens. He and Olivera had been
(11:27):
doing good business together. Then they meet in person and
they fall in love. He's ten years younger than Olivera.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Was probably something like very intense feeling the love at
first sight, so she decided this way to participate in
a robbery in a big hotel jewel resort. This was
in the summer of two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Olivera agrees to help Dragon case the jewelry store in
the luxury hotel. Like many of the female Pink Panthers,
her role is together intel on their targets, identify them
as merchandise, and assess the security. And like other women panthers,
she looks the part impeccably.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
She visited the store before, pretending to be a wealthy
customer and being also a very impressive woman. She was
like a blonde one meter ninety two ninety three resuld,
so she didn't have much difficulty in frusuading the staff
in the junior store to show her the most expensive collections.
At the same time, she was screening the place to
(12:30):
see how security is like and pass the information to
her associates.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
But after the robbery, oliver and her boyfriend hit a
stroke of bad block. They're in a routine traffic stock
when police discover incriminating evidence Dragon had left his cutting
tools in the trunk of their car.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
She was arrested in them. She was really a starn.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You know how the media, the tabloids, they were like
the Amazon, the basketball. The Amazon was arrested and created
was a big thing.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So she found herself Jay.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Although she kept the court of contact of the gang,
she didn't give anue away in the court and she
denied any involvement, but still she.
Speaker 6 (13:08):
Was in Jane.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Olivera and Dragon are both sentenced to prison on the
island of Crete. She serves six years, but when she
and Dragon are released, are they reformed? They or not.
In March twenty twelve, Olivera returns to Athens and teams
up once again with her boyfriend Dragon.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
She decided to come to Athens this participate in a robbery.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And this actually wasn't the best.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Timing this particular moment they chose from the robbery because
it was really very strange.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
There was another robbery taking place at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Next stor another robbery taking place next door at the
exact same time. It truly is terrible luck.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
So the police were there and shooting starts, which is
not usually in Greece.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It's highly useful.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
The Pink Panthers plan their heis carefully. They make every
effort to avoid anyone being heard. But this is something
no one could plan for. Olivera's boyfriend, Dragon is shot
three times.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
So her boyfriend was wounded very very seriously, and he
end it's up in the hospital and he was in
a coma for forty days.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Olivera manages to escape, but she is beside herself over Dragon.
If there was ever a time to get out, it
is now. But she can't.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
She apparently quite emotional.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
She couldn't leave him here like that, so she went
back into the house they used, and the police raided
the house and they found her in there, along with
a lot of incriminating the evidence from its robberies.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The police find masks, wigs, weapons, and fake identity documents.
Olivera is arrested and lands back in a Greek jail,
this time in the infamous Athens prison called Corrida Los.
(15:09):
Olivera loves to tell stories of her time inside Corrida Loss.
She claims that one cell made told her she had
killed her husband and his mistress then serve them in
a pie to the husband's parents, something out of a
Greek myth. But Olivera is unfazed by her experience there,
(15:29):
as she tells it, for many paying panthers, prison is
sort of finishing school. To be truly respected, you have
to do at least one stretch. Again, this is her
son Nicholas translating.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Every criminal believe in that you are so smart that
there is no way for you to get into the prison.
And you are thinking like that until your first time
go to the prison, and then you learn that you
were just an amateur and you didn't know nothing about
the crime.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Prison, it turns out, is a crucial aspect of a
panther's credibility.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I don't know anyone in the pink painters that has
not a serious prison sentence behind his back. Those who
say that they are so smart, they were pin ventors
and they never went to prison, that's all the lies.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
That's not a true story.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
So destiny of one good ping ventor is a lot
of money, a lot of fast money, prison one hundred
percent for sure. After the prison, again fast money, and again.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Prison Olivera makes good use of her time at Carida Loss,
but she doesn't plan to stay long. Journalistic spinup a
bar your you.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
She started painting in prison, and she discovered she was
quite good to sea.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Olivera Tchirkouture's artistic talent is more than a hobby. It
becomes part of her plan to escape.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
So she had been thinking to escape since day one.
The prison officer was persuaded to let your.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
Paint the prison governor's office while the governor was away,
and this was golden opportunity because the office was fifteen
meters from Colorida Lost prison entrance, that is, fifteen meters
from freedom.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
As you might expect, Olivera has worked through the logistics
carefully and she's patient.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
So since started painting endless hours and waiting for the
right moment, she had notified the Pink panther gun members
to come to others and rent an apartment.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Olivera manages to get permission to buy art supplies from
outside the present and have them delivered.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And of course this was part of the plan.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
So her collaborators were strolling for weeks on ends outside
the prison walls, and the day comes Olivera is now
in the prison governor's office, so she gives a signal
with her mobile phone, which she had managed to smuggle
into the prison, and when the gate opened, her cellian
associate enters holding a bag with art supplies, and everything
(17:53):
happened within seconds. The man hit the prison officer on
the head, and Olivera just walked out of prison and
got on a motorbike that was waiting outside.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
After the escape, Olivera heads on foot to the mountains
of Macedonia. A young accomplice is waiting there near the border.
He shows her the route across the mountainous terrain. It's
over one hundred and fifty miles. Olivera tapes her wrists
and ankles as she would for a pro basketball game,
and she makes the climb. She's been given a map,
(18:28):
some money, and has set up meetings with contacts along
the route to charge her phone and get more supplies.
When she reaches the Serbian border, she finds a taxi
to drive her the last few miles to Belgrade. The
Greek press loved this story. Pink panther female prisoner vanishes
(18:50):
into thin air, exclaimed one headline. They called her a
spider lady and referred to her as an Amazon It
made for terrific copy. For Oliver, it's a point of
pride again.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Her son translates, I'm the first and only woman ever
escaped from the prison in Europe.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But like every true team player, she shares the credit
for the win.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That's why I escaped from the prison. That's why I
made it. I was smarked by the time to make
a good plan for how to escape. But with all
those people who are ready to give the life for you,
you cannot escape from the prison.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
But one of the craziest things about Oliver's story is
the fact that just a few months after escaping prison
and walking back to Serbia, she returns for another job
in Athens.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
After I escaped. Three months later, I came back to
the same city and we did the armed robbery of
the jewelers store. Four days after we did it, well,
they arrest me.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Police raide Oliver's rented safehouse and find her with sixty
five pounds of gold.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Oh I was convicted organizer of the criminal gang named
Pink Panthers.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
This time, Oliver is sentenced to thirty two years on
one hundred and sixteen charges of aggravated theft and three
armed robberies. The authorities value the looted goods at more
than five hundred million dollars. Back in prison again, she
is deprived of her art supplies naturally, so instead she
(20:27):
turns to creative writing. She chronicles her criminal exploits in
a kind of diary, but on appeal many of the
charges against her are actually dismissed and her sentence is commuted.
After five years, she's again out of prison, this time
banned from returning to Greece.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I am free from the prison since twenty seventeen, so
I decided to change my life. I serve my prison sentences,
so I don't own anything to anyone. Any country is
not looking for me.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Anymore, Oliver.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
She's done with the life of crime.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
To step up out of the crime, it's really really hard.
You need a lot of money to continue the life
that you get used to by doing that crime stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And so she's turned the story of her criminal past
into a new enterprise. She has speaking engagements, she's a
YouTube star. And remember that prison diary she kept, She's
turned it into three books. They're called I Pink Panther,
I Pink Panther two and I Pink Panther three all
(21:32):
have sold quite well in the former Yugoslavia. There's even
a TV series based on her books that's being developed
in Serbia. Olivera told the Greek journalist that she hopes
Uma Thurman will play her in the Hollywood version.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
I'm representing not just the crime story. I'm representing my
life and my character, and my character is the character
of the winner.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Oliveri. Tcherkovich says that prison is a necessary part of
the criminal education of any pig Panther, but there is
a limit to how much time behind bars a panther
is willing to spend, and as Oliveri's story shows, a
prison break is not that different from a heist. Both
involved tight security and armed guards. To pull either of
(22:25):
them off, you need careful planning, precision, and ingenuity, and
Oliveri is not the only Panther to stage an escape
that has all the flare and theatrics of one of
their heists. Over the years, the Panthers carried out prison
breaks all across Europe. In two thousand and nine, a
(22:45):
Panther from Bosnia was arrested after robbing a jewelry store
in Switzerland and given a six year sentence, but he
decided he would rather not stay the full time, and
in twenty thirteen he was sprung from his Swiss prison
by his fellow Panthers. The story was a sensation, like
in this report from ABC News, the media just could
(23:08):
not get enough of it.
Speaker 8 (23:10):
Today, two vehicles crashed through the perimeter, pushed through layers
of barbed wire, got ladders up over the last of
the wire so their guy could climb over to them.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And so the Pink Panther gang strikes again. The trucks
barreling through the gates, the ladders thrown over the wall,
the prison yard paralyzed by gunfire. But if you take
a closer look at the actual operation, much of it
starts to seem like a spectacle designed to draw the
attention of the media. Jack Johnson is an American expert
(23:42):
on prison systems who's worked for the Federal Bureau of
Prisons for the past twenty three years.
Speaker 9 (23:47):
I will tell you that what you described to me
is just people practicing a trade, having a career criminal orientation,
and the escape is part of the trade. This is
rod interrelated organized criminal activity that's very regimented and very
methodical and so as brazen as it sounds, it probably
(24:08):
was calculated.
Speaker 8 (24:09):
It was to be overkill, you know what I mean.
They didn't even need all that firepower. The guards didn't
have guns, So like a sensational as the escape sounds,
they know that they're not going to get resisted.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
The po wasn't in. Panther who made this dramatic escape
had only two years left on his sentence. In another
Panther prison break, the men who escaped had just one
year remaining. Like stealing jewels who can't easily sell, these
prison breaks seem as much about the Pink Panther's own
mystique as anything else.
Speaker 8 (24:42):
I keep going back to the oneywhere the person's a
year from release, you know, So what's the motivation for
something like that? Has to be more than just getting
somebody out of prison, So I think maybe it is
a lot of this is by design for the publicity,
for the sensationalism and the publicity.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Captain rve Konnon of the Paris Police had arrested the
Pink Panther, named Dragon Mikage after a high stat a
ski resort in the French Arms. Mikitch is a big
man six foot six and his fit. Conan had heard
that he did two thousand push ups a day. That's
why Conan had immediate doubts that the French authorities would
(25:20):
be able to secure their prisoner. And he told them, so,
I've been to.
Speaker 10 (25:24):
The prison to interview this guy. Okay, he was two
met as tall. That was impressed because the guy, he
was just a muscle. And I disc got after that
with the god of the prison. I said, okay, guys,
you know the guy.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Is very very fit.
Speaker 6 (25:39):
You should be very careful.
Speaker 10 (25:41):
And one week after that, at Conando attacked the prison
with a K forty seven.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It was the afternoon of October sixteenth, two thousand and five.
Mikitch had just entered the prison yard for his daily
exercise when two pink panthers pulled a venop outside the
prison walls, threw a ladder and wirecutters over the wall,
and then while the shop at the guards with an
AK forty seven, Mikitch climbed the ladder, jumped into the
(26:09):
van and they all drove off.
Speaker 10 (26:11):
They shot on the prison and they liberate the guy,
and the gay disappeared nothing.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
He was totally lost.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It's widely assumed that dragon, Mikic went straight back to Serbia,
where he could live openly beyond the reach of French
law enforcement, much to Captain Connan's frustration. Another person who
proved difficult to keep behind bars is Milan le Poya.
In our last episode, we said that Milan had also
(26:42):
managed to escape prison before his dramatic arrest in the
French border town of Jacques in two thousand and eight.
Here's how he ended up in jail that first time.
Milan was wanted for the heist at the Hooper watch
and jewelry shop in Liechtenstein. He was caught during a
border crossing when Swiss police were able to match his
(27:04):
fingerprints to the Liechtenstein robbery.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Milan Librier was first arrested in two thousand and six
when he entered Switzerland from France, and he was extraducted
to US.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Robert Wallner is the prosecutor General for Liechtenstein. After Milan's
arrests and extradition, he was held in the country's only
jail well he awaited trial.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
We thought we could bring him to trial, but he
didn't have the intention to stay with us and our
polices is not really very often confronted with criminals of
black calaber. So what he did was he had meticulously
planned to flee our small jail.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Liechtenstein is tiny population just under forty thousand, and the
single small jail is all they have. The police there
are more used to dealing with white collar crime. Serious
criminals are typically exported to Austrian prisons, and Milan happened
to know that the jail he was in did not
have a hospital on its grounds.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
He one morning went to the fitness room in the
jail and he smashed his hand with a weight and
he was taken by two policemen to our local hospital here,
and that's when two men entered the hospital with kalashnikovs
and they managed to free him, and then it was gone.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Despite its reputation as a finishing school for pink panthers,
prison was not where Milan Lipoye wanted to be. In
two thousand and six, he had plans, and just a
few months later the world would see those plans come
to life as he and Boyana Mitch drove a pair
of Audis through the plate glass doors of the Waffi
(28:46):
Moll in Dubai. Milan's escape from the Liechtenstein jail might
have been a sore point for Robert Walner, but Warner
would see his prisoner again.
Speaker 6 (28:56):
But he was re arrested later and extradited us again
in twenty ten, and this time we looked after him
very carefully until the trial and he wasn't able to
escape again.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Lalipoe was convicted for his role in the Lectinstein heist
and sentenced to nine years in prison. This time he
served his time. Coming up next on Infamous International, The
Ping Panthers Story.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Guys are hungry, they want to make some money.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
When it comes to the Ping Panthers, it's hard to
know if this is a highly organized criminal syndicate.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
You have a bunch of these organizations.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
They're like sales, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Or an informal network of thieves.
Speaker 11 (29:43):
It doesn't necessarily make sense that there's this one centralized hierarchy,
either very complicated it's very hard to follow the money.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Or something else entirely.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
We can say it was some kind of joint venture
business between organized crime and the state.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
That's next time on Infamous International, The Pink Panthers Story.
Infamous International. The Pink Panthers Story was produced by Best
Case Studios in association with Koda's Story, hosted by me
(30:28):
Natalia ant Lava and written by Katrina Wolfe, Adam Pinkis,
Suszanne Myers, and David Markowitz, with help from Brent Katz
and Matt Levin. For Best Case Studios Executive producer Adam Pinkis,
Senior producer David Markowitz, producer Katrina Wolfe, associate producer Hannah
(30:51):
Libovitz Lockhart, and consulting producers Julie Goldstein and Louis Spiegeler.
For Koda Story, reporting by Land Greenborough with associate producer
Rebecca Robinson. Edited and sound designed by Gaylon Mullins and
Max Michael Miller. Music by Dave Harrington. Archival producers Mac
(31:12):
Degora and Paul Dallas. This has been an exactly right production.
Executive producers Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hart Stark, and Daniel Kramer,
with consulting producer Kyle Ryan
Basketball is a hugely popular sport in the Balkan States.
If you're a professional basketball player in say Serbia, you're
a big deal, a celebrity that said, no one can
play basketball forever. But when your time as a professional
(00:28):
athlete is over, there is another popular career you might
be able to presume. If you have the right set
of skills, the right connections, and the nerve, you could
become a criminal. I'm Natalia Antalava. I'm a journalist based
(00:49):
in Eastern Europe, and I'm going to take you into
the world of Serbia's most brazen jewel thieves, the most
daring and e says for diamond thieves in the world.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thirty to forty seconds, they're in, they're out.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
They've stolen half a billion dollars worth of valuables. Two
well dressed men strolled into an exclusive jewelry store in
London and walked out with sixty six million dollars in jewels.
They're called the Pink Panthers. They're a loosely connected group
of over educated, underemployed, ambitious young people who rose from
(01:27):
the ashes of the Yugoslav Wars of the nineteen nineties
to commit elaborate smash and grab heists all across the globe,
often in broad daylight. This is infamous international The Pink
Panthers Story Episode five, Catch and Release. In the years
(01:54):
following the Balkan Civil Wars, crime is one of the
few steady lines of war available. Many ordinary citizens are
forced to resort to some form of criminality just to survive,
and the same goes for citizens who are not so ordinary.
OLIVERI Tcherkovich is a truly impressive woman, over six feet tall,
(02:16):
blond and beautiful. She radiates supreme confidence and once you
know her story, you can understand why she has had
a very successful career, actually at least two careers.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
In shebroked.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
That's my ex husband. He was a member of the
Pink Painters and he still is member of the Ping Pents.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Olivera mostly speaks Serbian. That's her son, Nicholas translating like
she says, her husband was a Pink panther, but that
was not the life he wanted for her.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
He didn't want me to do that stuff because I
was the professional basketball player, so it was like unbelievable
for me to step in that side of the world.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
You know, Olivera was a power forward for one of
Serbia's tom basketball teams, the Novasatska ze Ka. She made
good money and made smart investments around Belgrade.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I have you private business which did well. I had
a lot of funny all the time.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
But when the civil wars in the Balkans break out
in the early nineteen nineties and sanctions are imposed on
Serbian Oliveri's team can no longer travel to compete in
international games. To continue playing professionally, she has to leave Serbia.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So it all started when she first came to Greece.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
The Spina Papa Joryu is a freelance journalist in Greece.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
In nineteen ninety one, the water upted in Yugoslavia, so
it was impossible for any kind of professionals to do
some living there. So she came in Greece in the
summer of nineteen ninety two to play professional basketball.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Because she was quite a star in Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Oliveri is hired by one of the top teams in
Greece based in Athens. At first, she doesn't think of
her adopted city.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
She wasn't very impressed.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
She found the city a bit dirty, but it.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Was in Athens. Such a love noctio door.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Love who has a way of leading to trouble. The
man Olivera falls for in Athens has an interesting way
of making a living and some interesting associates too.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
So it all starts now because the whole pink Panther's
thing is connected with her husband, who she.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Met in as.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Olivera said in an interview that she saw her husband
as a robin Hood figure stealing from the ridge, and
well that's where the robin Hood analogy kind of falls apart.
But it was her relationship with this man that leads
Olivera into her next profession.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
When she got pregnant, she went back to Belgrade and
then it started.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So first she got in contact with the ring via
her husband.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
This ring, as the Spina Papajoria calls it, is made
up of fellow Serbians who are doing brisk business in
Greece and across Europe.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
This ring was bringing stolen goods to Serbia from abroad,
and it was mostly jewels and fashion brands, expensive fashion brans, clothing.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
The sanctions against Serbia had created a super charged market
for stolen goods and it didn't just go away once
the sanctions were lifted, the Serbian economy was still in shambles.
On the streets of Belgrade, illicit merchandise was everywhere. Olivera's
son Nicholas explains how she got involved.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Through the relationship and marriage with him. She got closer
to those kind of people. So the people who still it,
they don't sell it like in real store, they sell
it like three times less price.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
You know, Olivera can see there is an opportunity here.
She's got the legitimate businesses she's invested in around Belgrade,
and she certainly knows the right people.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
So in Oliveda's mind, it was good point to start
buying the stuff from the criminals. And she already got
to the content with the people with the friends with
my father, so she got the idea to buy the
stolen stuff from them from the less money, and then
then sell them in the servia and earn like for
one day, she earns like one year basketball contract, you know.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
With her fame, her looks and her connections, Olivera's business booths.
She told the British newspaper The Independent, quote, I even
had politicians, doctors and famous people coming to my makeshift
showroom to buy the stolen goods end of quote. She's
so successful that she outgrows her piecemeal suppliers. Here's Nicholas
(06:36):
translating for her again.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
At the one point, they don't have so many goods
as I want to buy because I'm selling it every day.
So they don't have enough money to go to another
country to steal something.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
They don't know where to go and what to steal that.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I want to make it faster to get to the
goods that.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I need to sell.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Then I'm going deeper and deeper to the crime.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Soon, Olivera was running her own tea.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Tea after a few months.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I am the absolutely one who is organizing the group.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
She recruits the new crew members, and she has excellent
instincts for who will be a good getaway driver, who
is quick with tools, who will make the best team leader.
At first, on the very plans of Heights from Afar,
she carefully diagrams the store she's targeting, details the items
she wants her crew to steal. She makes a map
(07:26):
of the surrounding roads for their getaway. Her associates case
the store for weeks before striking. It's all working.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
I have the people who are moving the stolen goods
by the borders. So I already have two or three
those personal stores in my own showrooms. So it's all circle.
All the people from the crime trust me because I
never come late to pay them. I always pay them
on time, and I'm doing it as someone who is
professional sports player, not a criminal. I have a sports discipline.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
It is that sports discipline. By the late nineteen nineties,
Olivera has become a major figure among the Serbian criminal class,
one of the only women with her own crew. It's
a new kind of celebrity for her.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
In the criminal circles.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I get famous, kind of popular. We are doing well,
and if you become a member of my group that
you're going to be reach in a few months.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So only one month you will.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Buy the best car, two months you will got the
new apartment in the luxury part of the city.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
My colleague Alan Greenberg says Olivera's decision to join the
criminal world is not all that surprising.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
For people of her generation. They really were forced to
get creative about how they were going to make a life.
Serbia was so cut off, the sanctions from the West,
just a general dismal economy, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
I get that, But what I don't get is like,
why Olivera. She's in a much better position than most Serbians.
I mean, she is famous, she's got money, she is
kind of a star.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Definitely, she's head of the game in post war Serbia.
But when her basketball career was over, when she couldn't
play anymore and she wanted to have a business career,
she had to deal with the realities of life at home.
So she did get.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Creative, right, and we heard how they became very reliant
on the black market because of the civil war, and
that never really went away, did it, Right.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
It becomes entrenched. It's very common and a lot of
the goods people need or want medicine, cigarettes, designer clothing, jewelry,
it comes from the West. People steal it there and
then they bring it home to Serbia and sell it.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, that sounds familiar for so much of the region.
But what makes Serbia difference is that anger towards the West. Right,
they felt that they were being punished by the West,
and it seems like a lot of people felt justified.
Do you think it would be an exaggeration to say
that for Serbians it was almost patriofic to bring things
(10:01):
back from the wealthier countries to help people back home
in Belgrade.
Speaker 5 (10:05):
I think that's true when you talk to people who
live through this period, or even ask people in Serbia
now about the pink panthers, there's this attitude like, sure,
crime is bad, robbery is bad, but the West is
rich and we have nothing, so the hell with them.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Olivera is happily running her own successful team of Belgrade thieves.
She and her husband have a son, Nicholas, but the
marriage doesn't end up working out. She leaves him and
finds a new love interest.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
The story continues because she then was receiving the best
merchandise from a guy called Dragon Dragon yazid if I
pronounced it correctly, and she was so intrigued by this
personality of Dragon and she decided to come back to
Greece and meet him in person.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Dragon spelt drga n is a popular name in Serbia.
And to be clear, this Dragon is not Dragon Mickage,
the pink panther who is arrested in the train station
in France after trying to buy a ticket with a
five hundred euro note. This Dragon was running a team
of jewel thieves in Athens. He and Olivera had been
(11:27):
doing good business together. Then they meet in person and
they fall in love. He's ten years younger than Olivera.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
Was probably something like very intense feeling the love at
first sight, so she decided this way to participate in
a robbery in a big hotel jewel resort. This was
in the summer of two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Olivera agrees to help Dragon case the jewelry store in
the luxury hotel. Like many of the female Pink Panthers,
her role is together intel on their targets, identify them
as merchandise, and assess the security. And like other women panthers,
she looks the part impeccably.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
She visited the store before, pretending to be a wealthy
customer and being also a very impressive woman. She was
like a blonde one meter ninety two ninety three resuld,
so she didn't have much difficulty in frusuading the staff
in the junior store to show her the most expensive collections.
At the same time, she was screening the place to
(12:30):
see how security is like and pass the information to
her associates.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
But after the robbery, oliver and her boyfriend hit a
stroke of bad block. They're in a routine traffic stock
when police discover incriminating evidence Dragon had left his cutting
tools in the trunk of their car.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
She was arrested in them. She was really a starn.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
You know how the media, the tabloids, they were like
the Amazon, the basketball. The Amazon was arrested and created
was a big thing.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So she found herself Jay.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
Although she kept the court of contact of the gang,
she didn't give anue away in the court and she
denied any involvement, but still she.
Speaker 6 (13:08):
Was in Jane.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Olivera and Dragon are both sentenced to prison on the
island of Crete. She serves six years, but when she
and Dragon are released, are they reformed? They or not.
In March twenty twelve, Olivera returns to Athens and teams
up once again with her boyfriend Dragon.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
She decided to come to Athens this participate in a robbery.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And this actually wasn't the best.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Timing this particular moment they chose from the robbery because
it was really very strange.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
There was another robbery taking place at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Next stor another robbery taking place next door at the
exact same time. It truly is terrible luck.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
So the police were there and shooting starts, which is
not usually in Greece.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It's highly useful.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
The Pink Panthers plan their heis carefully. They make every
effort to avoid anyone being heard. But this is something
no one could plan for. Olivera's boyfriend, Dragon is shot
three times.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
So her boyfriend was wounded very very seriously, and he
end it's up in the hospital and he was in
a coma for forty days.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Olivera manages to escape, but she is beside herself over Dragon.
If there was ever a time to get out, it
is now. But she can't.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
She apparently quite emotional.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
She couldn't leave him here like that, so she went
back into the house they used, and the police raided
the house and they found her in there, along with
a lot of incriminating the evidence from its robberies.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
The police find masks, wigs, weapons, and fake identity documents.
Olivera is arrested and lands back in a Greek jail,
this time in the infamous Athens prison called Corrida Los.
(15:09):
Olivera loves to tell stories of her time inside Corrida Loss.
She claims that one cell made told her she had
killed her husband and his mistress then serve them in
a pie to the husband's parents, something out of a
Greek myth. But Olivera is unfazed by her experience there,
(15:29):
as she tells it, for many paying panthers, prison is
sort of finishing school. To be truly respected, you have
to do at least one stretch. Again, this is her
son Nicholas translating.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Every criminal believe in that you are so smart that
there is no way for you to get into the prison.
And you are thinking like that until your first time
go to the prison, and then you learn that you
were just an amateur and you didn't know nothing about
the crime.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Prison, it turns out, is a crucial aspect of a
panther's credibility.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
I don't know anyone in the pink painters that has
not a serious prison sentence behind his back. Those who
say that they are so smart, they were pin ventors
and they never went to prison, that's all the lies.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
That's not a true story.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
So destiny of one good ping ventor is a lot
of money, a lot of fast money, prison one hundred
percent for sure. After the prison, again fast money, and again.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Prison Olivera makes good use of her time at Carida Loss,
but she doesn't plan to stay long. Journalistic spinup a
bar your you.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
She started painting in prison, and she discovered she was
quite good to sea.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Olivera Tchirkouture's artistic talent is more than a hobby. It
becomes part of her plan to escape.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
So she had been thinking to escape since day one.
The prison officer was persuaded to let your.
Speaker 7 (16:55):
Paint the prison governor's office while the governor was away,
and this was golden opportunity because the office was fifteen
meters from Colorida Lost prison entrance, that is, fifteen meters
from freedom.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
As you might expect, Olivera has worked through the logistics
carefully and she's patient.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
So since started painting endless hours and waiting for the
right moment, she had notified the Pink panther gun members
to come to others and rent an apartment.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Olivera manages to get permission to buy art supplies from
outside the present and have them delivered.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And of course this was part of the plan.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
So her collaborators were strolling for weeks on ends outside
the prison walls, and the day comes Olivera is now
in the prison governor's office, so she gives a signal
with her mobile phone, which she had managed to smuggle
into the prison, and when the gate opened, her cellian
associate enters holding a bag with art supplies, and everything
(17:53):
happened within seconds. The man hit the prison officer on
the head, and Olivera just walked out of prison and
got on a motorbike that was waiting outside.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
After the escape, Olivera heads on foot to the mountains
of Macedonia. A young accomplice is waiting there near the border.
He shows her the route across the mountainous terrain. It's
over one hundred and fifty miles. Olivera tapes her wrists
and ankles as she would for a pro basketball game,
and she makes the climb. She's been given a map,
(18:28):
some money, and has set up meetings with contacts along
the route to charge her phone and get more supplies.
When she reaches the Serbian border, she finds a taxi
to drive her the last few miles to Belgrade. The
Greek press loved this story. Pink panther female prisoner vanishes
(18:50):
into thin air, exclaimed one headline. They called her a
spider lady and referred to her as an Amazon It
made for terrific copy. For Oliver, it's a point of
pride again.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Her son translates, I'm the first and only woman ever
escaped from the prison in Europe.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But like every true team player, she shares the credit
for the win.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
That's why I escaped from the prison. That's why I
made it. I was smarked by the time to make
a good plan for how to escape. But with all
those people who are ready to give the life for you,
you cannot escape from the prison.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
But one of the craziest things about Oliver's story is
the fact that just a few months after escaping prison
and walking back to Serbia, she returns for another job
in Athens.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
After I escaped. Three months later, I came back to
the same city and we did the armed robbery of
the jewelers store. Four days after we did it, well,
they arrest me.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Police raide Oliver's rented safehouse and find her with sixty
five pounds of gold.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Oh I was convicted organizer of the criminal gang named
Pink Panthers.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
This time, Oliver is sentenced to thirty two years on
one hundred and sixteen charges of aggravated theft and three
armed robberies. The authorities value the looted goods at more
than five hundred million dollars. Back in prison again, she
is deprived of her art supplies naturally, so instead she
(20:27):
turns to creative writing. She chronicles her criminal exploits in
a kind of diary, but on appeal many of the
charges against her are actually dismissed and her sentence is commuted.
After five years, she's again out of prison, this time
banned from returning to Greece.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I am free from the prison since twenty seventeen, so
I decided to change my life. I serve my prison sentences,
so I don't own anything to anyone. Any country is
not looking for me.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Anymore, Oliver.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
She's done with the life of crime.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
To step up out of the crime, it's really really hard.
You need a lot of money to continue the life
that you get used to by doing that crime stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And so she's turned the story of her criminal past
into a new enterprise. She has speaking engagements, she's a
YouTube star. And remember that prison diary she kept, She's
turned it into three books. They're called I Pink Panther,
I Pink Panther two and I Pink Panther three all
(21:32):
have sold quite well in the former Yugoslavia. There's even
a TV series based on her books that's being developed
in Serbia. Olivera told the Greek journalist that she hopes
Uma Thurman will play her in the Hollywood version.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
I'm representing not just the crime story. I'm representing my
life and my character, and my character is the character
of the winner.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Oliveri. Tcherkovich says that prison is a necessary part of
the criminal education of any pig Panther, but there is
a limit to how much time behind bars a panther
is willing to spend, and as Oliveri's story shows, a
prison break is not that different from a heist. Both
involved tight security and armed guards. To pull either of
(22:25):
them off, you need careful planning, precision, and ingenuity, and
Oliveri is not the only Panther to stage an escape
that has all the flare and theatrics of one of
their heists. Over the years, the Panthers carried out prison
breaks all across Europe. In two thousand and nine, a
(22:45):
Panther from Bosnia was arrested after robbing a jewelry store
in Switzerland and given a six year sentence, but he
decided he would rather not stay the full time, and
in twenty thirteen he was sprung from his Swiss prison
by his fellow Panthers. The story was a sensation, like
in this report from ABC News, the media just could
(23:08):
not get enough of it.
Speaker 8 (23:10):
Today, two vehicles crashed through the perimeter, pushed through layers
of barbed wire, got ladders up over the last of
the wire so their guy could climb over to them.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And so the Pink Panther gang strikes again. The trucks
barreling through the gates, the ladders thrown over the wall,
the prison yard paralyzed by gunfire. But if you take
a closer look at the actual operation, much of it
starts to seem like a spectacle designed to draw the
attention of the media. Jack Johnson is an American expert
(23:42):
on prison systems who's worked for the Federal Bureau of
Prisons for the past twenty three years.
Speaker 9 (23:47):
I will tell you that what you described to me
is just people practicing a trade, having a career criminal orientation,
and the escape is part of the trade. This is
rod interrelated organized criminal activity that's very regimented and very
methodical and so as brazen as it sounds, it probably
(24:08):
was calculated.
Speaker 8 (24:09):
It was to be overkill, you know what I mean.
They didn't even need all that firepower. The guards didn't
have guns, So like a sensational as the escape sounds,
they know that they're not going to get resisted.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
The po wasn't in. Panther who made this dramatic escape
had only two years left on his sentence. In another
Panther prison break, the men who escaped had just one
year remaining. Like stealing jewels who can't easily sell, these
prison breaks seem as much about the Pink Panther's own
mystique as anything else.
Speaker 8 (24:42):
I keep going back to the oneywhere the person's a
year from release, you know, So what's the motivation for
something like that? Has to be more than just getting
somebody out of prison, So I think maybe it is
a lot of this is by design for the publicity,
for the sensationalism and the publicity.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Captain rve Konnon of the Paris Police had arrested the
Pink Panther, named Dragon Mikage after a high stat a
ski resort in the French Arms. Mikitch is a big
man six foot six and his fit. Conan had heard
that he did two thousand push ups a day. That's
why Conan had immediate doubts that the French authorities would
(25:20):
be able to secure their prisoner. And he told them, so,
I've been to.
Speaker 10 (25:24):
The prison to interview this guy. Okay, he was two
met as tall. That was impressed because the guy, he
was just a muscle. And I disc got after that
with the god of the prison. I said, okay, guys,
you know the guy.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Is very very fit.
Speaker 6 (25:39):
You should be very careful.
Speaker 10 (25:41):
And one week after that, at Conando attacked the prison
with a K forty seven.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It was the afternoon of October sixteenth, two thousand and five.
Mikitch had just entered the prison yard for his daily
exercise when two pink panthers pulled a venop outside the
prison walls, threw a ladder and wirecutters over the wall,
and then while the shop at the guards with an
AK forty seven, Mikitch climbed the ladder, jumped into the
(26:09):
van and they all drove off.
Speaker 10 (26:11):
They shot on the prison and they liberate the guy,
and the gay disappeared nothing.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
He was totally lost.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It's widely assumed that dragon, Mikic went straight back to Serbia,
where he could live openly beyond the reach of French
law enforcement, much to Captain Connan's frustration. Another person who
proved difficult to keep behind bars is Milan le Poya.
In our last episode, we said that Milan had also
(26:42):
managed to escape prison before his dramatic arrest in the
French border town of Jacques in two thousand and eight.
Here's how he ended up in jail that first time.
Milan was wanted for the heist at the Hooper watch
and jewelry shop in Liechtenstein. He was caught during a
border crossing when Swiss police were able to match his
(27:04):
fingerprints to the Liechtenstein robbery.
Speaker 6 (27:07):
Milan Librier was first arrested in two thousand and six
when he entered Switzerland from France, and he was extraducted
to US.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Robert Wallner is the prosecutor General for Liechtenstein. After Milan's
arrests and extradition, he was held in the country's only
jail well he awaited trial.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
We thought we could bring him to trial, but he
didn't have the intention to stay with us and our
polices is not really very often confronted with criminals of
black calaber. So what he did was he had meticulously
planned to flee our small jail.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Liechtenstein is tiny population just under forty thousand, and the
single small jail is all they have. The police there
are more used to dealing with white collar crime. Serious
criminals are typically exported to Austrian prisons, and Milan happened
to know that the jail he was in did not
have a hospital on its grounds.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
He one morning went to the fitness room in the
jail and he smashed his hand with a weight and
he was taken by two policemen to our local hospital here,
and that's when two men entered the hospital with kalashnikovs
and they managed to free him, and then it was gone.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Despite its reputation as a finishing school for pink panthers,
prison was not where Milan Lipoye wanted to be. In
two thousand and six, he had plans, and just a
few months later the world would see those plans come
to life as he and Boyana Mitch drove a pair
of Audis through the plate glass doors of the Waffi
(28:46):
Moll in Dubai. Milan's escape from the Liechtenstein jail might
have been a sore point for Robert Walner, but Warner
would see his prisoner again.
Speaker 6 (28:56):
But he was re arrested later and extradited us again
in twenty ten, and this time we looked after him
very carefully until the trial and he wasn't able to
escape again.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Lalipoe was convicted for his role in the Lectinstein heist
and sentenced to nine years in prison. This time he
served his time. Coming up next on Infamous International, The
Ping Panthers Story.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Guys are hungry, they want to make some money.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
When it comes to the Ping Panthers, it's hard to
know if this is a highly organized criminal syndicate.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
You have a bunch of these organizations.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
They're like sales, you know.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Or an informal network of thieves.
Speaker 11 (29:43):
It doesn't necessarily make sense that there's this one centralized hierarchy,
either very complicated it's very hard to follow the money.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Or something else entirely.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
We can say it was some kind of joint venture
business between organized crime and the state.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
That's next time on Infamous International, The Pink Panthers Story.
Infamous International. The Pink Panthers Story was produced by Best
Case Studios in association with Koda's Story, hosted by me
(30:28):
Natalia ant Lava and written by Katrina Wolfe, Adam Pinkis,
Suszanne Myers, and David Markowitz, with help from Brent Katz
and Matt Levin. For Best Case Studios Executive producer Adam Pinkis,
Senior producer David Markowitz, producer Katrina Wolfe, associate producer Hannah
(30:51):
Libovitz Lockhart, and consulting producers Julie Goldstein and Louis Spiegeler.
For Koda Story, reporting by Land Greenborough with associate producer
Rebecca Robinson. Edited and sound designed by Gaylon Mullins and
Max Michael Miller. Music by Dave Harrington. Archival producers Mac
(31:12):
Degora and Paul Dallas. This has been an exactly right production.
Executive producers Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hart Stark, and Daniel Kramer,
with consulting producer Kyle Ryan
Host
Natalia Antelava
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.