469 - Crochet Positive

On today’s episode, Karen covers the story of true crime charlatan Stéphane Bourgoin and Georgia covers the 1963 Great Train Robbery.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hello, and welcome my favorite murder. That's Georgia Harts. That's
Karen Kilgariff.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
And now we're going to podcast at you.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Ready, here it comes speaking speaking again and now act
and act act like you can podcast. What do you got?
I have nothing?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Oh well, then great because I have plenty.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Okay, great, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Last week I told a very disturbing story of a
woman who claimed to have found a finger in her
chili at Wendy's.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Oh we'll never forget.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I mean, none of us shall ever. But in that
story I name checked my friend Erica Sobel, who I
went to high school with, and as I expected, she
texted me because she is a not only a day
one listener, but.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
She is a week to weeker.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Nice given to give out a different title to people,
she texted me lol, crying, laughing face.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Thank you for the Wendy's shout out.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yes, I worked at Wendy's for years, sophomore to senior.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Wow. All of high school.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Her parents were those like you will go out and
get a job and learn reality amazing. For the record,
we had very strict food safety training. When this story
came out, I knew it was obviously bullshit. She's a
Wendy's believer. She wasn't just an employee, Like you.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Work somewhere that long, you're gonna hate it if it sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yes, you know you're going to jump on any story
like hooray. And she was like, absolutely not, she said.
As I recall, the chili was made in the afternoon.
Burgers were grilled fresh, never frozen, and we saved the
patties that didn't get sold in a certain amount of
time to chop up and add to a bagged, pre
made chili mix.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
I read that somewhere too. Someone else said that of like,
it's the like sad hamburgers that didn't make it onto
a hamburger bun chopped up into the chili. Yeah, which
makes perfect sense.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Does They're using every part of the buffalo, which is
it is not buffalo? No, people love chili.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
This is so funny, Erica.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
People love chili on the baked potato taco salads.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Chili fries. Taco salad is dumb, a bit piling hot,
fucking spoonful of chili.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
On it, but right onto some iceberg. That sounds good.
Did you know they had chili fries? I had no idea.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
No, but it makes sense if they have fries and chili,
I mean.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
And then it says I got a text from my
murdery no cousin in Baltimore early this morning.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
She was dying, you mentioned my name, and then.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
The very last text is oh and just saying I
never eat the chili.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
So when did she said that Friday? Because you didn't
respond to her. No, it's there's no response.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, the first thing was I saw it and didn't
have her number in my phone, so immediately was like,
none of my business. Yeah, yeah, because I am the
queen of like, what's this link you just sent me?

Speaker 1 (03:10):
And no, yeah, you have a toll ticket you never pay.
I better pay it, literally, you do that. I didn't
touch the link.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
But the toll ticket thing, yeah, toll ticket thing was
like haunting me where I'm like, cause it's I'm always
going over the Sandra Felt Bridge when I go home, right,
and you're not allowed to, like you just have to
run it and then they send you the.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Okay toll because we do the one ten to the
free to the airport. There's that easy pass oh yeah,
which is like golden yep. So I was like, oh,
maybe and I'd been to the airport recently and Vince
was like, fucking no, don't click on it, don't go
nowhere near the guys. It's a scale. Everyone's like no, shit, yeah,
but it's like Gramma like yeah, like the toll place

(03:52):
would be like it's sent from one, three four at hotmail.
They told me that I have to pay my right.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
We're just like, oh, I guess they're making their employees
use their personal hot mail accounts.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Oh well, here I'll answer. You don't trust anything, you.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Trust nothing, but but please trust random gift?

Speaker 1 (04:09):
What is this? Well, just see, okay, Karen just gave
me a big, gorgeous fucking gift bag with gorgeous fucking
tissue coming out of it.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, okay, really beautifully expertly put together.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Which means you can't say you could do it exactly
if you're impressed. It looks like a wine bottle gift bag.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
You pause, like, now, I'm not trying to instill say
if you yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
If you said it was nice. Okay, what is this?
It's a can of something, a can of Wendy's chili.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Did you know they made that? No?

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Who gave this to us?

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Alison went and found it as Alison and Alejandro I believe,
but I think Allison was the one that searched for it.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
To see, had no clue that they canned Wendy's chili.
I'd eat that.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
I would eat this, And like any kind of hesitation
I would have about not eating it is false. Is
from a fake story, right right, which sucks.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
It sucks. It's glatly frustrating. But then yeah, you're just
always gonna have toe or finger I guess, yeah, and
fucking chilly in your mind when you can go there.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
I mean, I guess I thought you'd really enjoy though,
that you can actually get it in can.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
I'm so happy for that. Thank you, I love you.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
That anything else that you've been looking at or absorbing.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
I've been reading books. You love a book, not books.
But like there's not much going on.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Well, then let's just get into the show like regular
true crime podcast.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Okay, wow, that was a quickie. Before we tell you
our stories, we're going to give you some highlights from
our very own podcast network exactly right, media, that's right.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
So, for example, this week on Buried Bones, Kate and
Paul dive into the chilling tale of John Wesley Elkins,
the infamous thirteen year old who murdered his father and
stepmother in eighteen eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Whoa an over on G You Need to Ride? Karen
and Chris welcome the always hilarious and delightfully witty Solomon Georgio.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Love him and speaking of Karen, she joins the Banana
Boys this week to talk about some of the world's
most outlandish headlines.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
How fun and this week on this podcast will Kill You.
Get ready for a hard hitting discussion about sildenafil, the
medication used to treat everyone's favorite dysfunction, erectile. You did
want me to say it along with you?

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Right?

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Everyone said it with me?

Speaker 2 (06:24):
And just you know, we've restalked the store with all
your favorite merch like.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
For example, did you miss the chance to buy one
of our legendary crow shirts? Well, caw caw, this is
your signal that they're restock.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Can I can I give you the way that Elson
wanted to say?

Speaker 1 (06:42):
I was supposed to remember it? I well, caw caw. Well,
I'm glad you did it and not me, because I'm
not doing that. You can do a crow impression only
when not told to. Oh you know, what I mean. Yeah,
I get it. I don't like to be told how
to crow. Totally understand.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Also, get ready for summer to stay sexy, don't get murdered.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Muscle tea.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
You can warn the followers in your life with Jess Roders,
you're in a cult design. Those are now available in
both unisex and women's teas. There's so much going on
over there. Don't miss out.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Go to my favorite murder dot com. Okay, you're first.
I'm sitting back.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Okay, sit on back. Because when this story was first
pitched to me, and I think it was either by
Marin or by Alejandra Kak, our producer, I couldn't believe.
Like I think i'd heard like inklings, I guess is
the right word of this story around a little bit,
but I'd never like gotten the full scope of what

(07:43):
we were talking about.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Shit.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
So the story begins in France in twenty twenty as
an online community of web sleuths is hard at work.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Okay, love them, love it already? What a kickoff?

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Right?

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (07:56):
So this community is in France. They call themselves the
Fourth Eye Corporation, and they're currently doing what they do best,
which is combing through news reports and interviews, building out
timelines of specific crimes, and calling sources around the world
to verify their information, like.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
What a dream, What a dream to do? Fuck crocheting,
This is what I want to do with my retirement.
Excuse me, listener, she did not mean, I mean crouchet
while you do this. Yeah, that's all I meant. Yes,
Oh my god, I just pissed off so many people.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Oh my god, Etsy just exploded. So the Fourth Eye
Corporation does all of this in hopes of untangling what
is at that time a very murky backstory around one man,
a well known French author and criminology expert, who began
his career as the former owner of the Parisian bookstore

(08:49):
the Third I okay, right, So this is the Fourth
Eye Corporation.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
The Third Eye like fourth generation or fourth fourth wave
feminism exactly got it, just like this.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
And the Third Eye was known for its crime and
mystery collection. So this man that owned that bookstore has
built a successful career catering to the people exactly like
you and me and the members of the Fourth Eye
Corporation and many people listening to this podcast right now.
But now his career has made him the focus of
this group of people's research and investigations, but for all

(09:22):
the wrong reasons. This is the story of the rise
and fall of true crime. Charlatan Stefan Burwan, I'm excited.
Have you heard of any of this?

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Not a fucking moment of this? Really? No?

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Okay, Like maybe I'll get familiar, but right now, okay, huh,
it's a fresh one.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
I love that, Okay.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
So the main sources used in Maren's research today are
an article by Lauren Collins entitled The Unraveling of an
Expert on serial Killers, which ran into New Yorker in
twenty twenty two, so.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
This is very recent story.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Also an article by Scott Sayer entitled What Lies Beneath
the secret of France's top serial killer expert.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
I get it, what lies? It's because it's lying.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
It's lies, and I wonder if lies was like in
red lies or exactly laying to the side. That article
was in The Guardian in twenty twenty one. Both of
those sources are heavily sighted in this story, so thank
you Lauren and Scott. The rest of the sources are
in our show notes. So we'll start at the beginning

(10:24):
long before the Fourth Eye Corporation exists. This is Stefan
Burgwan's origin story. He's born in nineteen fifty three, a
decade after the end of World War Two, to very
wealthy and socially connected parents. The Burgwane huge apartment has
a view of Larque de Trian.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
I've heard of it.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Just stuff and a staff of domestic servants that work
at the families beck and call very specific upbringing.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, especially after World War Two. I don't think a
lot of people were wealthy. Yeah then right in Europe? Yeah, yeah, true.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
So young Stefan describes an idyllic childhood where he bounces
around mid century Paris, sometimes spending entire days at the
movie theater watching films back to back. Now, when I
got to that part, I was like, but they only
play one movie at a time at the movie theater.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
It's not TV, right, so much? Is this even true?
Back to back of one is still back to back,
just back to back of the same movie.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
You're just like Carolin Maud again again again that is
a great movie.

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
So Stefan loves movies so much that by his late
teens he's doing everything he can to break into the
Parisian film world. He's especially drawn to genre film like horror,
science fiction, and eventually he connects with the publisher of
a genre zine named Elaine Schlockoff, so he starts writing
for Elaine and the two become friends. In nineteen seventy five,

(11:53):
Elaine is working tirelessly to launch a film festival and
Stefant is helping out his assistant, until it comes to
light that Steffan has actually been contacting filmmakers behind his
boss's back, pretending to be his boss, in the hopes
that he can acquire enough films to create his own
competing film festival.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Right, get your own ideas, get your own gimmicks.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
It's almost like, get you on contact, copy his gimmick, right,
or is that your only choice? Like you kind of
don't know what else to.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Do because you don't have any ideas of your own.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Journalist Scott Sayer later reports quote Elaine cut ties with
Stefan immediately Steffan's festival took place but flopped.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Well, yeah, you can't just do it and be like, no, mine, yeah,
my competing festival.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Okay, So this, of course is a bad look and
a bad move. Also in genre film. It's not like
all of film. It's very specific. I would imagine a
smaller set of people. But Steffaran shakes it off and
heads to the US, hoping to break into Hollywood. Once here,
he reportedly gets some work writing pornographic films.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
But that was so easy back then.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
I mean they are very plot driven and can be
a lot like Memento at times, where you it's so.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Am I coming? I heard literally? Is linear? Is anything linear?

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Are you the pizza man of the plumber?

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Those are the two choices.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
When he eventually returns to France, he comes back with
what one friend calls quote stars in his eyes about
the United States.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
He's also got suitcases.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Stuffed with comic books, memorabilia, and countless stories of meeting
actors and directors. But Stephan also returns with a much
more tragic and disturbing story. He tells his inner circle
that while he's in the US, he meets and falls
in love with a woman named Ellen, the French pronunciation
of Helen Ellen. Then one day, while he's at work,

(13:57):
Ellin is murdered, and, as Stephan tells his friends, quote
cut up into pieces.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
What year is this around seventy five.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
Okay, Stephan says he was the one who discovered her body.
He's around thirty years old at the time, so of
course this horrible, devastating and traumatic event that happens while
he's alone in a new country. But despite all that,
Stephan starts working at a local secondhand bookstore, the Third Eye,

(14:30):
and he loves it so much that he soon buys
it outright and basically becomes his own boss. The Third
Eye bookstore is a hub for people that are into
true crime and genre fiction in Paris.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Can you imagine how there's got to be a cat?
Tell me there's a cat.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
There's got to be a cat, and an array of
scarves and berets that you would kill.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Four smoking indoors around all the paper.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Oh reeks, did you lead?

Speaker 1 (14:56):
The new En rule?

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Would be the question, good one, thank you so much. Finally,
using my French education of two years San FinCEN's Hize school.
So Stefan is such a fixture in the shop that
he inspires a few writers to create characters that are
kind of based on him for their books. He also
becomes a go to translator for books written by famous

(15:20):
English language crime and horror authors like the author Robert
Block who wrote Psycho. At the time, Stephan is earning
a reputation for his truly impressive and encyclopedic knowledge of
serial killers. Into the nineteen nineties, the people around him
start noticing that he's becoming borderline obsessed.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
With the topic.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Scott Sayer writes that quote. Initially his friends found it
amusing or at least inoffensive, but it soon grew tiresome.
He spoke of nothing else.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Wow, end quote. Can't talk shit on that, can I?

Speaker 2 (15:52):
I mean, there is no judgment here, but only in
this one small part of the story.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, But it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Because the concept of serial killers basically kind of broke
in the late seventies when Ted Bundy, like, there were
some big stories that broke.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
There was spree killing, there was multiple murders, but they
never understood actual the way we understand them today serial.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Killers, which I think has to do with the team
from Mindhunter going in and basically trying to as the
FBI study them and talk about it and be like,
there's something here too.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
There's a pattern. There's a difference between a spree killer
and a serial killer and a crime of passion.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Right, this is a different thing and we need to
delineate these are people that are planning and doing it
for totally different reasons, to which was very compelling. I mean,
that is why that whole genre kind of came up
in the eighties and nineties the way it did. But
in the early eighties and nineties in France, basically that
conversation hadn't really come to the cultural four yet. Of course,

(16:58):
France had its own history of sadistic and repeat offenders,
but the idea of serial killers being their own category
of criminal that can be profiled by law enforcement hadn't
hit the mainstream yet. So Steffan is arguably on the
forefront of this type of thinking in France. Years later,
a prosecutor will tell The New Yorker that quote he
was one of the first people in France to say

(17:20):
that serial killers weren't only in America. Sure, so Steffan
is dedicated to this budding obsession. He's known to record
newscasts about murders, accidents, and natural disasters, which he keeps
in an ever growing.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
VHS collection Weird.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
He also amasses pictures of corpses and cadavers that he
likes to show off to guests. Not thank you, not
in the least, but I do want to remind the
audience listening, especially the younger people. This was the time
before YouTube, the time before the Internet. There was a
kind of like, especially in the stand up comedy world,

(17:57):
it was seen as underground.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
It was essentially like, here's the things people aren't talking about,
or here's the things that people you know that is taboo.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
And I might say I rented Faces of Death multiple times, right,
what was the blood on the asphalt? My boy high
school boyfriend, and I would just fucking sit and watch
on a Saturday night. So I have nothing to say.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Until it was organized in this way where it's like
it's actually, you're not like the worst person in the
world for having this curiosity about what is taboo and
scary and horrifying in our world, like as human beings.
So I'm saying you're not at the time though society
said you absolutely are. Definitely yeah, yeah, So Stefan has

(18:41):
this unnerving habit of telling shocking and disturbing stories about
murder in social settings.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Stop it. Just you can't do that. We learned, We've
learned that. We've learned that by doing it by doing
that and starting a podcast about it.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
It's our origin story really for sure. But for examples
to and like to tell how his mother's first husband
was decapitated.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
By Nazis Jesus.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
So sometimes we're just trying to make a connection with
other people quickly and efficiently.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
You know, we don't understand social cues, and that's understandable.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, And you're kind of looking for people who are like,
this is horrifying. Are you also like compelled yet horrified
by it? Are you my people?

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Are you my people? Still?

Speaker 2 (19:25):
I'm like, if I was at that dinner party, I
would be like, this isn't what I'm This isn't my interest.
But it is Stefan's interest, and he has found it,
and he figures soon he would like to figure out
a way to combine that this interest and obsession with
his first love of cinema. And in the early nineteen nineties,

(19:45):
after Silence of the Lamb comes out and is like
a basically a worldwide hit, it feels like this is
the right time to produce a documentary about serial killers.
So Stefan reaches out to a film producer named Carol
karen Ja. So this will mostly be Carroll's project, but
she's excited to work with Steffan because he is becoming

(20:06):
known in certain circles as a basically a budding expert
in this topic. And they seem the two of them
seem in alignment on their tone of the movie. They
do not want to sensationalize serial killers. Instead, Carol says, quote,
we wanted to know if over time these killers had
come to understand the harm they'd done, if they'd question

(20:26):
themselves at okay.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
So during the production of this, the crew travels to
the United States, first to Quantico, where they managed to
land an interview with famous profiler John Douglas, and then
down to Florida, where they're given access to interview two
convicted serial killers. I bet you can guess one of
them and Bundy no close though. Who's the one that

(20:50):
loved talking oddist tool who basically confess to every murder.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
We don't even know if he was a serial killer, right, No.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
The other is John Gerard Schaeffer, who I literally just
covered recently. He's the cop that was that actually started
killing you. I remember him, yes, So those are the
two interviews that they get in Florida. Then they go
to California to meet with Ed Kemper. So if you
want to hear me cover John Gerard Shaeffer's story, that's

(21:22):
episode four forty six. The title of that episode is
I'm Michael Caine.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Do you remember that? Yes?

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Audust Toole gets covered in George's story about the disappearance
of Adam Walsh in episode two two, which is called
Spoiler Rama, and Ed Kemper is covered in episode thirty
nine early episode thirty nine, which is entitled kind of Loco.
So Ed Kemper specifically seems like the perfect interview subject

(21:53):
for this film because they're interested in whether or not
these murderers have come to question what they've done, and
it is Scott Sarah po points out quote Kemper was
thought to have grown exceptionally introspective and regretful. He could
provide the analysis that they wanted. But Carol's too scared
to meet with these killers in person. Definitely never would

(22:13):
want that in my life. So she and Steffan write
out the interview questions together, but when it comes time
to go and meet in person, Steffan and a cameraman
are the only ones that go into the prison.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
I also think these killers would talk and have a
different experience with a woman that isn't as entiretck and
I just wouldn't. I wouldn't go there. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
So Carol gets the tapes and then listens back to
these interviews, and when she does, she's horrified to learn
that Steffan went completely off script and in the worst
possible way. He was not remotely interested in whether or
not these men had come to regret their actions. Instead,
he asked them inappropriate, salacious questions that seem designed to

(23:00):
produce the most disgusting answers in the most detailed possible
For example, he repeatedly asks Ed Kemper about his quote,
fantasies of decapitating women. Carol also learns that Stefan brought
several copies of a very violent book that Schaeffer wrote
for him to autograph. No, so this documentary is eventually

(23:24):
completed with the title and investigation into deviance.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
He's like fanboying over these serial killers.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yes, exactly, and Carol just never talks to him again.
For her, she will later say, quote, I saw Staffan
change when he had the killers in front of him.
It was as if he was sitting across from his idols.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yikes. Yeah, oh that's so chilling when she was listening,
that's a movie itself. Yes, it is her finding out
this person. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yes, that she's supposed to be like co producing a documentary.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
With traveling in a foreign country with and ugh yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
So out of her life. But this behavior does nothing
to slow Steffan's rise. Shortly after an investigation of into
Deviants Airs and while he's still working in French film
and TV, Stefan publishes his first book on serial killers,
focusing on Jack the Ripper. He'll spend the next two

(24:20):
decades publishing more than seventy true crime books. Too many
Books's take a break, so many books.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Learn how to crochet. We're back. I'm just so work.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
From now on, smart, I'm so hard on crouchet. You're
like the most positive crochet crochet when I'm podcasting for
the rest of my fucking life.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Stefan's becoming the go to expert on criminology in France.
He isn't just writing or working on documentaries anymore. He
is now giving talks to law enforcement officials, analyzing high
profile cases on TV shows, and positioning himself as a
serious authority on how serial killers operate.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
If he was a woman, it would be fine, you know,
but there's something because I clearly know where this is
going for you personally.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Yeah, I thought you were being sarcastic because it's like,
this is such a great example and it reminds me
of the staircase, the blood spatter expert. Yeah, where there's
so much assumed. No one asked the question, right, I'm sorry,
how did you become an.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Expert on some stone? Where did you get your education?

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Where is this coming from?

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (25:24):
And because now you're on TV telling experts how to
do it, it's netharius. So at the time, Stefan seems
to have the credentials to back it up. He claims
to have personally interviewed dozens of the world's most notorious
serial killers and name drops some of the most notorious,
like David Berkowitz and Charles Manson, and sometimes he shares

(25:46):
harrowing stories from these encounters. For example, he says John
Wayne Gacy once grabbed his ass during a prison interview,
and that during his conversation with Angel of Death killer
Donald Harvey that you covered at our live episode one
ten our live show in Columbus, Ohio. Yes, we've done

(26:09):
all of them's.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Done a lot of shows.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah, yeah, So Harvey murdered dozens of patients working at
it as an orderly at a hospital. Stefan claims Harvey
confessed to seventeen additional murders when he talked to him,
So he got him to confess the way experienced detectives
and investigators could not. He even claims the FBI respects

(26:32):
his expertise so much they invited him to an exclusive
training program at Quantico, where he learned the ropes from
John Douglas himself.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
He's confusing it for her silence at the Lambs.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
He's confusing everything, like his whole life with everything he's
ever read, which is very much like oh you and
your little bookstore, reading all this stuff, absorbing it, loving
to be part of it, yeah, and then becoming part
of it. So for years, no publicly questions any of
this expertise, but there are people in Stefan's private life

(27:06):
that don't believe anything he says. Friends will later tell
writer Lauren Collins of The New Yorker that the Quantico
training program, for example, quote triggered rounds of knowing laughter
among us because we all knew it was absolutely bogus shit.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Then there's also the issue with the story of Ellen,
the woman he claims he was dating in the US,
who he claims he found brutally murdered. For years, he's
been privately sharing this story with friends and family. They
are skeptical, but of course, who's going to question a
story like that.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Right, And there's no Internet to fucking look that shit
up on anyway.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Exactly, So they're like, hm, but okay, Steffan have never
shared it publicly until the year two thousand.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yees see, a guy like that would have shared it
publicly if it were true, right, Like he wants as
much credit as he can. Yes, there's no reason to
keep it quiet if you're like that much of a narcissist.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
Right, And there's no way that a narcissist who loves
like serial killers had that experience right, right, right, because
without talking about it, right right exactly, without going wide
and being like, now I wrote a book and now
I did this thing.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
So now that he is a.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Well known by the year two thousand, a well known
expert in serial killers, he starts to claim it is
and Land's murder that got him interested in this topic.
And then he has a picture that he shows off
of the two of them together, but he doesn't have
his own story straight. In some media appearances, he'll call
her Eileen, saying she was his wife, not his girlfriend.

(28:41):
Later she'll be downgraded to quote a very close friend.
So this story also seems suspiciously one dimensional when he
salaciously notes that he found her body quote mutilated, raped,
and practically decapitated end quote, and that her killer was
ultimately caught in currently sitting on death row in the

(29:02):
United States. Other than those two facts, he doesn't have
much to say about her as a person.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yikes, God like the Jinks vibes. Yes, right completely.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Somehow, despite those discrepancies, the story only adds to his
popularity and credibility in the field. It more or less
explains his eccentricities, and it turns him into a sympathetic
character like this is why he's so obsessed, which he
is stealing from Dominic Dunn, right, well, I mean like
it didn't happen in that order, but Dominic Dune having

(29:35):
to go through the murder of his own daughter and
then write about that crime, you know, for major publications.
Is it's all these things hight. Everything is like stolen here,
stolen there.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
And why would anyone catch it? Like most most like
day to day people have not had an experience like that,
so when they hear someone talk about it, they wouldn't
be like, why would you make that up? It sounds awful, Yes, completely.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
In fact, even starts communicating with survivors of violent crime.
Lauren Collins notes quote, they saw him as a kindred survivor,
someone who could be trusted to treat them with integrity
because of his personal experience. But it turns out everything
about Stefan Bourguin's life and his career is worth scrutinizing

(30:20):
and a particularly troubling example of his questionable character. Stefan
uses his reputation as the bereaved loved one of a
victim to meet a woman named Dehena Si. Dehena was
just fourteen years old when she was abducted and raped
by a man who would then go on to murder
seven women. Oh my gosh, so she, as a fourteen

(30:43):
year old girl, escaped the clutches of a serial killer.
Jesus Her trauma from this attack, of course, I'm sure
was manifested in a million ways, but one of those
ways was a very intense fear of spiders, which somehow
Stephan learns about her. He invites her to dinner at
his house one night, and when she arrives, he begins

(31:05):
showing her graphic crime scene photos and then at one point,
as a funny joke, puts a plastic spider.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
On her shoulder. Dude, fucking straight to jail, right.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Dahina will later say, quote, I was paralyzed and he
was laughing. I think it gave him pleasure to mess
with my mind. Wow, So I don't know if we're dealing.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
I don't you know. We always love to.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
I love to for sure analyze and like diagnose people totally.
To me, that is sociopathic, that goes beyond to psychopath.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah too, Let's if we're gonna diagnose someone, let's go
all the fucking way.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Let's do our famous double sight diagnosis of sociopath's psychopath because.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
He can't think it get more for another diagnosis. You're
gonna be mad at us for one diagnosis. We might
as well fucking go all the way.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Stop them all on there and just being a jerk.
So also just that horrible thing of you have basically
lured this woman there because she thinks that like there's
you're a famous person, you're an author, whoever, You're going
to spend time with this person to talk about what they've.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Gone or to be with this person. It's a thing
of like that every fucking woman has ever experienced of like,
oh shit, I trusted the wrong person and now I'm
in their home, apartment, whatever it is. It's like, oh no,
how do I get myself out of this?

Speaker 2 (32:29):
And then when I am so paralyzed and horrified that
you put a plastic yea you vulnerability, then you just
say it's only a monster, right, calm down?

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Monster style?

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
So a few years later, Stefan publishes a graphic novel
featuring Dehena's.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Story of her assaults. No, no, thank you.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
He does it without permission, without even warning, and she
takes legal actions. She actually gets the book pulled from
the market, but the damage is done. Dahina will later say, quote,
it was like being defiled a second time. But that's
not the end of Stefan's troubling behavior. And I think
this is maybe a step up. So he is a

(33:12):
big boaster and a big bragger, And he starts bragging
that he somehow managed to get a hold of John
Gerard Schaeffer's remains. What his cremains, I guess, And that's
the serial killer whose autograph he got.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
So basically Stefan claims that after Schaeffer's execution, that he
somehow managed to get a hold of his remains.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Like, ups was like, here you go, and you've.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Got a hook up in the what like, what are
you talking about it? Any jail that would put someone
to death would not be like and I guess we'll.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Just be real free and easy. Right, you think it
would have to be the next akin thank you? Right? Okay.
So he says he has.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Them, and he starts to that he's going to give
a small portion of those remains to anyone who buys
his new book.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Oh dude, that's disgusting.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
So still, and despite this, Stephan enjoys a mostly positive
professional reputation. I think it also points to what a
strange time, especially the late the nineties and the late
nineties were. That was when like John Wayne Gacy's paintings
started getting really popular.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
That's what was going on before we started this podcast.
I feel like even up until then, where it's like,
we are not into true crime the same way that
other people are into true crime. Yes, I think it
just shows how different the obsession was, and I think
what everyone assumed you and I were obsessed with when
really it was something totally different. And thankfully this podcast
has shown that.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Right, thankfully the whole trend of true crime kind of
coming to the fore and basically being like, instead of
following the story after the fact, it's much more why
are we talking about this in the first place?

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Right?

Speaker 2 (34:59):
So where now it's twenty nineteen and we are several
decades into Stefan Burgwan's career, and so twenty nineteen, someone
makes a French true crime Facebook group, and someone on
that Facebook group writes a post basically arguing that Steffan Burgwan,

(35:19):
while prolific, is a bad writer with questionable talent, and
then they go further and they basically cast doubt on
his entire background.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Who is it?

Speaker 2 (35:29):
We never find out although and then I wrote, surely
the arguments ensued, right because that is what Facebook is for,
fighting with bots. And so from there, basically thirty skeptics
begin a separate private chat to dig deeper, and this
is the basically the beginning. This is where the Fourth

(35:51):
I Corporation is born. Got it because at first these
websluthors suspect plagiarism, so they start combing through Staffans books
to cross check them against English language sources. So they
have to do this like in a different language, because
the thinking, which is so smart, is the language barrier
would make it easier for him to steal from other

(36:12):
people's to books. They also spend hours pouring over Steffan's writing,
reaching out to people who he claims he's collaborated with,
contacting the prisons to verify his supposed jailhouse interviews, and
scouring the Internet for recordings of lectures and public appearances
that he'd given.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Throughout his career. Man fact checking is a.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Bitch, I mean, and they're so's It's decades of a
career to fact check. The Fourth Eye Corporation eventually concludes
that isn't exactly copying and pasting other writer's words. What
he's doing is stealing their life stories and passing them
off as his own life story. As one very disgusting example,

(36:55):
he claimed he was once splattered with maggots and body
parts while visit at a crime scene as a helicopter
lifted off nearby. There is a grain of truth to
this story, but it's the account of a renowned South
African forensic psychologist who had happened to and that South

(37:15):
African forensic psychologist is a woman named Mickey Pistorius. Mickey
Pistorius is actually the aunt of Oscar Pastorius, the famed
olympian who murdered his girlfriend. Yeah, which is very odd
in those things really connected. Yeah, The point is it
did not happen to Stephan, He only read about it.

(37:38):
So members of the Fourth Eye Corporation are now looking
for anyone who can confirm any of Stefan's jailhouse interviews
with notorious murderers, which is what he's built his entire
career on. They believe that Stefan, who claims to have
interviewed around eighty murderers, has actually spoken with less than ten.
Some of his details in those commons also seem ripped off,

(38:01):
for example, when he talks about meeting Charles Manson and
David Berkowitz. The stories are suspiciously similar to John Douglas's
stories and what he wrote about in Mind Hunter. When
members of the Fourth Eye Corporation reach out to John
Douglas to confirm whether Steffant was trained at Quantico. Douglas replies, quote,

(38:22):
Bourgois is delusional and an imposter.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Goy, spicy fuck. I love that guy.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
I know it's good, but he's basically just like No,
that's all bullshit.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Then there's Stefan's story about the woman who was murdered,
Ellen or Eileen. He called them both names.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Members of the.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Fourth Eye Corporation pick up all the breadcrumbs that Steffant
has left about her, where she lived when she was killed,
the idea that her murderer is currently on death row.
They scour records to find a victim and a convicted
murder who fit all of the timeline, all of it,
and they cannot find anyone. This loose eventually conclude there

(39:03):
is no Ellen and or Eileen. As for the photo
that Stefan has shared of the two of them together,
this Loose believe that the woman in the photo could
be an adult film actress named Dominique Saint Clair, who
Stefan may have met while he was working in porn
in southern California. That suspicion has not been confirmed.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
One way or another.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
This loose also find out that Stefan does not and
has never had John Gerard Schaeffer's remains in his possession.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
A weird brag.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, not true and weird.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Like good, I'm glad that was a lie.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
For sure, you know, because what a disturbing fact that
would be if it wasn't.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah. So these are just a few of.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
The things the Fourth Eye Corporation members end up digging up.
There are way too many to mention today. As one
Fourth Eye member will later tell The New Yorker, quote,
as soon as we started looking, we found more and
more inconsistencies in any case. In twenty twenty, the Fourth
Eye Corporation takes their findings to the public. They post

(40:11):
YouTube videos that debunk Stefan's background and expertise.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Bit by bit.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
They also reach out to different French media outlets, hoping
to spread the word. As The New Yorker puts it, quote,
Stefan's story wasn't so much a house of cards as
a total teardownikes, so obviously this is a.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Major pr crisis for him.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
He's quickly able to get the Fourth Ie Corporation's video
taken down by filing some sort of a copyright claim.
But by now the word is spreading and French reporters
are starting to pick up on the story.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
About a month.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
After the Fourth Eye Corporation drops their bombshell report, and
not long before the coronavirus shuts down the entire world,
Stefan announces he's shutting.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
Down his Facebook page.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
I'm out, Yeah, forget it. Yeah, everyone's rude. He claims
this is to quote devote himself to the most important
project of my life end quote. He does not specify
what that project is, and then in his sign off,
he suggests that there's a conspiracy against him, but he
never directly comments on any of the allegations brought by

(41:16):
the Fourth Eye Corporation. Before long, journalists are reaching out
to give Stefan the chance to explain his side, but
he keeps digging himself into a deeper hole. On one hand,
Stefan acknowledges his flair for exaggeration and says, quote, I'm
sorry that I lied in exaggerated things, but I never
raped or killed anybody.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
And Peazes, that's your fucking bar.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Does that is not relevant in this conversation, sir.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
That's the big yikes.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
At the same time, he starts changing the details around
the La Eileen story yet again. He now claims she
was a bartender in Florida named Susan Bickrest, who is
indeed the victim of serial killer Gerald Stano. But as
Lauren Collins of The New Yorker will soon report quote,
the dates of bick Rest's murder and her killer's arrest

(42:09):
didn't align with the Eileen story, and even a cursory
glance at photographs of the two women revealed that, except
for both having blonde hair, they didn't look much alike
end quote. This is his most egregious and disturbing lie,
and the fact that he tried to cover it with
a real woman's murder will be his final sociopathic Hail
Mary move. Now it's twenty twenty five, Stephan Bourgoin has

(42:34):
lost his credibility and lives a mostly quiet life in
western France. He has made some media appearances in the
last few years. He still seems to be trying to
explain himself. But as filmmaker Ben Selcowe, who recently made
a mini series on this scandal, puts it, Steffan's story
is a cautionary tale about living a lie in the

(42:55):
Internet age, and of course trying to deceive hard boiled murderinos.
Yes it's not that's not what he actually said, but
hard boiled true crime fans, internet sleuths the like.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
Selkow says this quote.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
It's not hard to build something fake, but it's much
more difficult to have it persist. Where Stephan is unique
is the endurance of it forty plus years. It'd be
harder in the modern era, with the amount of research
available at our fingertips, the amount of skepticism within the
true crime community to have such an enduring con You

(43:33):
can rise, but that icarus fall comes sooner, but certainly
people are going to try. We are in the era
of scams, and that's not going anywhere. And that's the
insane story of disgraced serial killer expert Stefan Borgua.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Fucking never like heard a peep about it.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Crazy, right, yeah, so wild.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
It's like the motivation is just so confounding, you know.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, the kind of like it'll be okay if I
just say this one.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Thing, or I need to involve myself more, or or
it's not legitimate somehow, or like, but like why would
you want to put yourself in those shoes? Yes, it's
uh yeah, fascinating. Yeah, great job, thank you. Okay, so

(44:23):
this story is totally different, great as it should be. Yeah,
this story is one from the kind of dark underbelly
of British history. Oh, this is one that I think
you're gonna like because it could totally be like a
series that you'd watch. Okay, a British what are they
called procedural? Yes, it's got British stuff going on? Can

(44:44):
I say that anymore?

Speaker 2 (44:45):
So?

Speaker 1 (44:46):
This infamous heist captured the nation's attention and kept everyone
guessing for fifty years. Oh, this is the story of
the biggest rail heist of all time, the Great Train Robbery.
So the main sources I use for the story are
reporting from Smithsonia magazine, the British National Archives my favorite archive,

(45:08):
and the British Transport Police Archives and the Guardian and
the rest of the sources can be found in the
show notes.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
I guess my favorite archives are the British Transport Police Archives.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
I've got to be up there. They're so they're just
they're dated, they're times. Yeah, they're like if you're going
to be an archive junkie like you say, you are right,
You've got to You've got to put them on the
top three for sure.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
I mean, it's what do you want, transport, it's there, British,
it's there, police stuff right there.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
Right there. And so this is one of these stories
great from those archives. Perfect. Here we are. It's three
am on August eighth, nineteen sixty three, and we're on
a British mail train heading from Glasgow, Scotland, which we love,
to London. The train is nearing the end of its
four hundred and fifty mile journey, which usually takes about

(45:55):
five hours, and it's approaching a red signal or like
a stop sign, stops near the village of Cheddington, just Darling,
which is about thirty miles north of London. So this
train is called the traveling post Office. It's not just
carrying mail from one place to another. Most of the
train's twelve cars are actually full of postal workers who

(46:16):
are actively sorting letters and packages well in transit. So
I think, like Santa's workshop, but postman and fucking mail.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Yes, this is the efficiency of this idea is amazing.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Don't do it in the war else and then put
it on the train. Do it on the fucking train.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
On the mail It just keeps coming, always going to
be there were Are they always on the train or
the one special trip?

Speaker 1 (46:39):
No, this is a normal thing. This is like how
this train, the mail train worked for sure.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
So there could be a person that starts working at
the post office that's like, I'm obsessed with trains, and
it's like, guess what you get?

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Both best of both worlds, right, bro okay, okay, except
for this this night. Oh right, it's not a good night. Okay.
So they're sorting, they're actively sorting letters and packages well
in transit, and at the very front of the train
there's one additional car. So there's twelve cars, and there's
one additional car holding high value cargo. Most of this
cargo is fucking stone cold cash. Great. On an ordinary day,

(47:12):
it would be carrying around like three hundred thousand pounds,
which would be worth about let me tell you. I'll
tell you this one and then you can guess the
other ones based on this. Okay, So three hundred thousand
pounds normally, which in today's money and dollars would be
eight million. Oh so a lot of fucking money. A
ton of money. But this is the first journey following

(47:33):
a bank holiday, one of those British fucking bank holidays,
which just means it was closed the day before, so
a lot more cash is built up. This particular train
is caring about two and a half million pounds.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Which would be worth fucking thirty million.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Seventy one million kid in today's US dollars. Okay, probably
not next month's US dollars or next to year's US dollars.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Look, we can't look to the future anymore, only the past,
and only in Angland.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
So we do. It's called escaping. And this cash belongs
to several large banks blah blah blah. So the red
signal at Sheddington is unexpected because it's supposed to there
is a like, you know, a signal red and green,
like go or don't go, obviously, and it's usually supposed
to be green. But the train sees that it's red,
and so it slows and comes to a stop, and

(48:24):
the train's co engineer, a man named David Whitby, hops
out to see what's going on. Why is it red?
When he gets to the signal, he sees that like
a just a regular old glove is actually covering the
green light, and the red light is hooked to an
external battery, making it light up when it otherwise shouldn't. Right,
still doesn't totally understand what he's seeing, and so he

(48:46):
heads over to a call box to call the rail
line to ask what's going on, and that's when he
sees the lines to the phone box have been cut,
and then someone grabs him from behind and the heist begets.
Heist is on, yes, so the person who grabs him says, quote,
if you shout, I will kill you, and then several
other men materialize, all wearing knit masks. They walked David

(49:08):
back to the front of the train and reboard with him,
and the trains engineer, a man named Jack Mills, actually
tries to put up a fight, which like, it's not
your money, bro, don't put up a fight, but we
know that now's his fault. Nineteen six sixty three three
sixty three sixty three, Okay, So he tries to put
up a fight and then one of the thieves and

(49:29):
this was totally unplanned and they did not have guns
at all, like they were not there to shoot the
place up or kill anyone one of the thieves then
brutally beats him Jack Mills. The weapon he uses is
sometimes described as a wood cudgel, sometimes as a rubber
cash and sometimes as an iron crowbar, which is kind

(49:50):
of like a club like weapon. But regardless, Jack suffers
a head injury, and once he subdued the group of
thieves buying the two engineers together of warning them like
stop fighting, like some of these people are crazy, And
it turns out there's fifteen hijackers in total. Oh shit, yeah, okay,
so like one of them's got to be a little mad, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Little maybe seen some shit been around the bend.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Yeah. So the thieves then detach the first two cars,
which is the high yield car and the engine from
the back ten cars where there are people sorting mail.
They don't even know what's happening, and the plan is
to get these two cars kind of down the line,
but upfront, the thieves are having trouble operating the train
and getting these two cars to fucking move as they're

(50:36):
supposed to. One of the robbers had apparently practiced on
an engine, a train engine, when it was a different engine,
so it's like a different bottle rocket. It's like I've
never tried to pick this lock before, and it's like, well, yeah,
it's a fucking lock, right. You said you could pick locks.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Yeah, you have to be generally good at like hot
wiring things.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Yeah, and more than one thing, not just your one time. Right.
So the thieves actually have to revive poor Jack Mills,
who had just been fucking beaten, unconscious and tied up,
and they're like, hey, bro, sorry about that. Can you
show us how to drive this train? It's poor dude?
Was Jack Mills like, go to hell? No? I mean

(51:18):
I think you fucking figured out not to fight with them. Yeah,
And then in the meantime, other members of the group
start working on entering the secure high value car. So
the high value package car is secured by iron doors,
which once shut and locked, can only be opened from
the inside, and the cargo in the cars is being
guarded by four men, but they're unarmed. The iron door

(51:40):
is the only security precaution. But the thieves are able
to use these fucking tools we don't know exactly to
breach the doors and open the cars.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
So sorry, they just had four guys in there like
warning people against like you don't want to be in here.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Yeah, but they didn't do guns back then, you know,
nobody did. And I know what they do there.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
It's some judo expert, like, can't they get anybody that's
gonna Yeah, if they don't use weapons, I'm just saying,
why have guys in there? Then, just like let them
go work on.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Some other party. Give me some pepper spray or something
at least something. Yeah, So exactly, you're like, why aren't
these secured better? And actually, by nineteen sixty three, when
this happens, some of these high value mail cars had
been equipped with alarms, but the ones on this particular
train are older and don't have that technology, and that
is one of the many clues that will ultimately point

(52:28):
to the thieves having had some kind of inside help
from someone in the postal service. Right, So, after breaching
the door, three of the thieves come into the car,
two holding clubs, one's holding an axe, which is like,
I wouldn't jiu jitsu a a guy with an ax?

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Yeah, you know, it's too what ax as a weapon
hand to hand is too wild?

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah, it's not a fair fight. They're followed by more men,
all of them wearing masks, and they immediately subdue the
four guards and push them to the back of the car.
And while this is happening, other thieves are still at
the end, and they get the train moving, and they
move at about a mile further down the line where
their getaway vehicles are parked. So all of this happens
really quickly, like within ten minutes. And once they stop

(53:10):
the train again, the thieves then form a human chain,
quickly unloading one hundred and twenty sacks of cash from
the car to the waiting land rovers their getaway cars.
Then the masked thieves tell the workers in the car
to sit and wait for thirty minutes before calling the police.
Then they drive off into the night. At the time,

(53:30):
those like fifteen is thieves had no idea how much
cash was in the bag. It's only when the dust
settles and the investigation begins that it becomes clear that
the total that they had stolen had been about two
point five million pounds, which would be worth about seventy
one million in today's money. Oh my god. So the
fact that the thieves told the train personnel to wait

(53:51):
thirty minutes actually winds up being another clue that the
investigators can use. The case is assigned mainly to Scotland.
Yard Flying Squad their name because they fly between London's
boroughs to solve major crimes. And since we're talking about
fucking episodes, we've covered shit on before. Sure, so I
talked about the Flying Squad in episode four forty six.

(54:15):
I'm Michael Caine when I covered the Hatt and Garden
jewel heist that happened decades later. Just a legendary episode
on this podcast. Yeah, so lots of heists, lots of.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Michael Kain, the most Michael Kaine you could get in
a podcast.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
What more do you need? So as soon as the
Flying Squad are called at the scene, they are like, well,
if they told him to wait thirty minutes, only thirty minutes,
that means they're fucking hideout is probably close by, so
they knew they'd be off the roads in about thirty minutes.
So the press learns about this story very early on.
The brazenness of this heist causes a huge sensation. And
remember that this is post war recession era England, so

(54:51):
people are actually like cheering them on and kind of excited.
It also reminds them of an old school like gangster
caper from the nineteen twenties. Yes, you know, so I
think people are like good for them.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Yeah, go take that money, get that money, We distribute
that money.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Please steal the money from the banks. They stole from us.
We don't care, right. So on August thirteenth, five days
after the heist, the investigators get a break when a
farmer calls to report suspicious activity at the farm next door,
about thirty minutes from the train in Buckinghamshire, England. He's
seen people coming and going, which is weird because the
farm's supposed to be put up for sale. So you

(55:28):
got to never underestimate a nosy neighbor, like they'll.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Talk, especially like a country stuff where you kind of
need to keep an eye out because there's like a
quarter of a mile right you and anywhere.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
It's better to hide an apartment block, it seems like,
that's right, where like people mind their own fucking business,
that's right, And people come in and out every day
and you'll never see them again.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
They see masks all the time, that's right. Or if
you're wearing a ski mask, why don't you just go
to a ski resort and hide there.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Man, The pandemic was great for people doing heists. Proper right.
It's great for people who had just gotten botox and
needed to cover their bruises. I wouldn't I wouldn't know
from experience.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
But oh, you're not pulling that exact example for any
specific reason.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
So when police arrive at the farmhouse, it's deserted, but
there are signs that people have been there very recently
and left in a hurry. Outside the house, police find
many empty mail bags next to a three foot hole
and shovel, and they also find the getaway land rovers
parked on the property, so like they were tipped off
and fucking ran.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
What sorry, just that no, the visual like, so they
went and put all their stuff in a hole and
then the cops are coming, so they went and dug
it back out of the hole.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Yeah, there's like empty these bags quick, oh shit su Yeah.
Inside the house police find more clues. It looks like
the group was gonna stay there for a while, that's
what their plan was. And there's an old school photo
of like you know when you see like what people
buy the grocery store in fucking England in a week,
like what family spend and it shows you like they
have that yeah of this and I love it.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
There's some cans of beans for breakfast. They love eat
bean what I love beans toast? So and they need
some bread, yes, they need sausages, yes, just to blink
some links. They can drape them all around the kitchen, right.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
And here's a part of that. So the fridge in
the pantry are totally stocked and most of the surfaces
have been white clean A fingerprints smart They found a
fingerprint on one thing you didn't name, because I don't
think a potato a potato. I think British people would
be embarrassed about this. A bottle of Ketchup. Oh British

(57:32):
people don't like ketchup. Or do they only not like
ketchup on fries? Oh they don't.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
They don't normally eat ketch or they didn't write traditional ketchups.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
Embarrassing that you got caught via a condiment that likes it.
I don't know, I just it stuck out to me.
It should have been malt vinegar. Yes, it was like
something like you know, brown gravy or something like. That's
more them. Yeah, it's like of course ketchup bucking told
on you.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Yes, like loudmouth American ketchup was like we've never liked you,
and here you are?

Speaker 1 (57:59):
What about what over here? The fucking snitch?

Speaker 2 (58:01):
But imagine how glorious it would have benefit. There was
just like one thumbprint on a potato and they found it.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Can you thumb print a potato? Are you a fingerprint
of potato?

Speaker 2 (58:11):
It would implicate all the other people that either touched,
shopped for, or farmed that potato.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
And the potato because it's got kind of a thumb printy, okay,
kind of personally stop it. The other fingerprint they found
is from a game of Monopoly, Yes, and they think
they were playing the monopoly with real money. The real
money nand stolen, just like classic.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
That's classic thieves. I'm so sorry to say. That's a
great celebration of your heist. Yeah, now we play Monopoly
with real money.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Totally, yeah, totally. So these fingerprints lead police immediately to
a suspect named Roger Cordrey. He had just rented an
apartment in Bournemouth, a town on the southern coast of England,
and when he's arrested, police realize that he's hiding a
car key in his rectum. Oh no, oh hey, the

(58:57):
key unlocks a car that holds his share of the cash.
It's just like like nobody gets away, Like this is
an immediate I hate to tell you this, Like some
people have some luck here and there, and I'm gonna
tell you all about him. But like that's just.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
An immediate it's a key shit show.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Yeah exactly. And actually this relatively small amount of money
is most of what winds up being recovered from the
heightst so actually not a lot of money is ever recovered. Oh,
then it is successful in some way. They all split
it up. Who knows what This guy Roger doesn't give
anyone away. He does not snitch. I mean, if you're
gonna put a fucking keying your rectum, you're not a snitcher.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
You are ready to get the job done for the
job at hand.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Yeah. Yeah. However, from the fingerprints and knowing who works
with who, police quickly arrests eleven other people. When they
piece everything together, they learn that the mastermind of a
whole robbery is a career criminal named Bruce Reynolds. And
we're to wisdom that they're all career criminals, so fine,
and Bruce is fucking in the wind. No one can

(59:55):
find him. He seemingly left the country. However, most, although
not all, of the thieves are charged, convicted, and sentenced,
mostly for about thirty years, while police are still working
to track him and two others down. Among those who
are caught in this initial sweep is a man named
Charlie Wilson. So, after being sentenced in April of nineteen

(01:00:16):
sixty four thirty years, he escapes prison. And this was
a big sentence back then for them, especially because they
didn't use guns. So, like I think there were an example,
like you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
For sure, well because it's post office, so you can't.
That's a federal Yeah, I'm assuming here it is so
over there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Probably it's like a tough on crime kind of a thing, right, And.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Don't think that you're going to get your friends together
and start heisting, right, will really make your life hell.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
But he escapes from prison when a gang of three
men break into the prison and get him out. There's
a couple of prison breaks going on outside. In is
a pretty bad break prison. It has to be easier
than breaking out, right, I don't know, I mean, yeah,
I guess well. Charlie escapes to Canada with his family,
is recaptured four years later because his poor wife like

(01:01:05):
finally calls her parents at home because she probably misses them.
But guess whose phone is tapped? Yeah, those parents. Like
that sucks. You can never call your parents again. Yeah,
that does suck.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
And it's also such good policing on right there on
Scotland Yards.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Thank you Scotland Yards.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Part now it's like Liverpool's what's because Yeah? And also
for the so four years later there's still a tap.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Yeah, I wonder when, yeah, you gotta one.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
He feels like here they're always like sorry, we did
it for forty eight hours to totally totally.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
So they're able to track Charlie Wilson down. He's put
back in prison and eventually he's released. He moves to
Costa del Soul in Spain, which is popular with British
criminals because of a lapsed extradition treaty, and eventually he's
killed there by a hitman in nineteen ninety. Oh my god,
So let's get a movie about his life please.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
I feel like the movie is called Sexy Beast, right,
even though it might not specifically be that's such a
good well.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Charlie isn't the only member of the gang to escape
from prison a year later, in July of nineteen sixty five,
a man named Ronnie Biggs scales a prison wall and
manages to escape basically in the back of a garbage
removal van. And this guy, the more I read about him,
the more fascinating he is. Ronnie Big. Yeah, Ronnie Biggs
didn't give a fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
There's a photo of him in his wheelchair at the
funeral for one of these guys as an old man
giving the like two finger, fuck you. He's an old man.
He looks like he's from the Exorcist, and he's giving
a fucking middle finger, a British middle finger.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Fight like hell, Ronnie Biggs, He's good, fight like hell.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
So he once he escapes, uses some of his money
that he had made from the heist to get plastic
surgery to change his face. Amazing. Then he's I know.
He travels all over and then he ends up in
Brazil where he gets married and to like this young
stripper and eventually has a son. And in Brazil this

(01:02:57):
makes him exempt from extradition.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
But I think they were actually in love because she
fought for him the rest of his life. I believe it.
They sound like a just like a firecrack couple. Okay.
In nineteen seventy eight, he does the vocals for a
sex pistol song called No One Is Innocent. However, I
have to say that Johnny in said had left sex

(01:03:21):
pistols by then, so like, how how was sex? You know?
And it also sounds like your British dad trying to
sing a sex pistol song at karaoke. It's not okay,
you know, it's fine, yeah, but it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yeah what producer thought that concept was going to really
right get him a hit?

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
But I think that the point was like he was
a celebrity, like everywhere people knew he people loved him. Yeah.
So in nineteen eighty one, a British group of ex
soldiers try to bring him back to the UK, but
because of this legal loophole, he's able to return to Brazil.
He lives fairly openly like a celebrity until two thousand
and one, and then he returns to the UK. He's

(01:03:56):
an old man, he's re sentenced, he serves time until
he's clearly about to die, and he's released and dies
in twenty thirteen at the age of eighty four, without
ever showing remorse. Yeah, hence the British fuck you. He
just didn't give a fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
And sorry, do we think that his cut of the
money is somewhere?

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
He might have spent it all and that's why he
came back to the UK. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
He was like, yeah, what there's ran out and I
had my fun.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. So I had
mentioned this guy, Bruce Reynolds, who had just taken off
and was in the wind. He spends the first six
months after the heist moving quietly around in England waiting
to get a fake passport. Then he flees to Mexico,
where his wife and son join him, and they live
in Mexico and then Canada until nineteen sixty eight, and

(01:04:45):
then their money runs out and so they returned to
the UK. Bruce is arrested in nineteen sixty eight and
a sentence to twenty five years in prison. Bruce's this
is just a rando like note like you had in yours.
Bruce's son Nick is a member of the band Alabama Three,
who wrote the song Woke Up This Morning, which is
the theme song for the Sopranos. Oh just randomly, that's

(01:05:07):
a great piece of trivia. Oh my god, that's trivia
night at your local pub that we just fucking gave you. Yes,
that's right, so you owe us a pint.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
And also that's an intense trivia night.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
That's the deepest deep traits. Like someone knows that. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
First of all, do you know Ronnie Biggs? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Okay, someone on your team. That's why you have to
have a diverse team. That's right, people you wouldn't hang
out with in normal life. Yeah, because they know weird
shit and they want to stop talking about it. That's
right about music. That guy will get you a free picture.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
But also just like Valor, true pub Valor.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
Yeah, and you appreciate it. You're cool. Yeah. So years later,
first Reynolds will say that he was motivated, of course
by the money, but also he wanted to do something
big and stunning, and he'd been inspired by the nineteen
fifty robbery of a Brinks truck in Boston, and he said, quote,
we wanted to do something as spectacular as that. We

(01:06:00):
wanted to draw our line in the sand. It's the
same madness I suppose that drives people to bivouac on
the north face of the Eiger End quote, which basically
means set up camp on a fucking mountain that you
just like to like. It's an adrenaline it's an adrenaline rush. Yes,
but instead you're getting money instead of frostbite. Yeah, I
know what I would fucking pick, I know for sure. Yeah,

(01:06:20):
wait which one frostbiteing? No, absolutely not exactly. I also
need to lose a toe. I've seen these fe they're
fucking money maker. All that up. That's your safety net
right there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
But also it's that idea, I think, because there is
a romance to it, and there is that kind of like,
you know, they didn't have guns, they weren't there to hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
They weren't supposed to No one was supposed to get hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
It was we've all seen the movie a thousand times,
or just like we're gonna do one last one. We're
gonna get that money, we're gonna we're gonna get our
cut because we know that in life, it's not like
we're gonna go back to school and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Get a new job and no more small time you know,
street criminal. Let's fucking do something big, yeah and get it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
So eventually Bruce Reynolds and a couple of the other
crew members who had initially evaded capture are caught and sentenced.
So in the decades following the Great Train Robbery, there
is one enduring mystery, which is who was the person
on the inside who helped the gang know which train
to strike because of that thing that the bank holiday

(01:07:24):
having twice as much money as it was supposed to
do the next day, where to strike it and how like,
And you know also the train that didn't have alarms
on it like they had. There was an insider, for sure.
And this person only ever communicated with three members of
the gang, which is smart, all of them who claimed
not to know his name, and everyone referred to him

(01:07:45):
either as the Ulsterman or the Irishman. Ulster basically means
Northern Ireland. Yeah you knew that. Huh, you're so Irish.
I knew that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
But then when I went to call Darry, Darry, I
looked at the map, said London, Darry, and everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
You've lost your Irish pastorist.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Every anything that I've ever had, And I think about
it constantly, And when I see clips of the show
Dairy Girls, it mays, who go, because it's happening again.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
It's all happening. Yeah, no, I feel it. I feel you,
but not this time. Nope, it's all different now twenty
twenty five. However, it's also a term some Irish people
take issue with, so like ulstrument. So yeah, yeah, fair warning,
I'm Jewish, leave me alone, okay. Oh. It's not until
twenty fourteen that the identity of this insider is ever revealed.

(01:08:32):
So it's at this point that another of the gang member,
a man named Gordon Goody, who had served his sentence,
he was like off the grid. He would not talk
to people. He's living a quiet life in Spain the
countryside with his wife and five dogs. He's like, I
don't want to talk about this anymore. But he comes
forward eventually in a documentary called A Tale of Two Thieves.

(01:08:53):
So this guy, Gordon Goody, says that the insider who
helped them. Basically, he gives the documentary filmmakers as much
information as he has and they're able to track down
this person. The only information he has is because when
he was one of the three thieves going to meet
this insider to get information from him, and they had
met in Kensington Garden in London. It was a warm

(01:09:15):
day and this insider went to go get everyone ice creams,
which is like so darling, right, But he dropped his
glasses case and Gordon Goody said when he picked them up,
he saw the name of the insider in the glasses
and always remembered it. And so the documentary makers hired
two private investigators to search through like who had worked

(01:09:38):
at the post office back then, you know who had
that name, and the name was Patrick McKenna, and who
looked like what Gordon Goodie remembered. And so they were
able to find this guy named Patrick McKenna, who had
been forty three at the time, who was older than
most of the crew. He wasn't on the train, he
wasn't one of the robbers. He just gave them information
for money. And by the time Gordon Goodie comes forward,

(01:10:00):
he's like Patrick mcnnaught already died, so he doesn't feel
terrible about it. So when the documentary filmmakers reveal this
to Patrick McKenna's family, they are flabbergasted and also like, well,
he wasn't he didn't have money, he wasn't a rich man.
He was a quiet, church going man. He like simple life.
He didn't even have a car and he worked at

(01:10:20):
the post office until his retirement, and so they're like, well,
maybe he felt guilty and donated the money to the
Catholic Church. Maybe the money got stolen from him. Like
that is a mystery of like what was Patrick McKenna's
motivation and what happened to the money? Wow? Which like oh,
to be his grandchild, I know, tell me everything.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
Because that's what I think of all these heists where
it's like the people that get away or you never
hear about it again. It just means that there's like
some apartment somewhere it doesn't know what has like on
the East end of London, or they know fully and
it's just like we don't spend this in any weird
showy way. It's just like you just pulled down a

(01:10:59):
gold bar. You bring it in or you get it
changed out right, and you very evenly and slowly.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Don't be flashy. Flashy's so obvious, especially when you like
live you know, you're a post office person and then
suddenly you're driving a Mustang like, yeah, come on, guy,
just break it down.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
You can get that in twenty years. You can't can't
get in five.

Speaker 1 (01:11:18):
No. Now, the other mystery is who of the fifteen
person gang beat the train engineer Jack Mills. Later, most
of the thieves will say that they didn't agree with
the decision to beat him so brutally. It was not
in the plane at all, and they very much regret it.
Jack Mills survives his injuries and mostly physically recovers, but

(01:11:40):
he's clearly traumatized, and then he sadly dies at leukemia
in nineteen seventy. It's just like tragedy after tragedy. Yeah,
and Gordon Goody doesn't snitch on the guy, but basically,
by process of elimination, you're able to tell which of
the thieves beat him. But it's nobody that I've talked
about today. He says that Jack Mills getting hurt was

(01:12:02):
his biggest regret from the heist, and that those he's
been in touch with from the heist in the decades
since feel the same. He says, quote the fact the
driver was hurt, that's the thing I regret. Nobody was
going to get hurt. We were gentlemen, robbers. When Jack
Mills fell and hit his head, we all looked out
for him, which is like, did he had his thatt
or did he get hit in the head. Yeah, right
to get his head beaten. It right, Charlie bandaged it

(01:12:24):
up for him, and Tony gave him a cigarette and
sat with him. We knew it changed everything. I was choked,
choked end quote. Oh but other than that, Goody has
no regrets. And that is the story of the biggest
rail heist of all time, the Great train Robbery.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
They got away with it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42):
Oh, I like that story a lot. Who was you
cast in it? We already know, I mean pie in
the sky.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Because it feels like they were if the one guy
was forty three and he was the oldest. Yeah, then
we get to go into a full is Paul Muscal
one of the leading people?

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Its Irish and English people, so like we can kind
of pay from very key Owen Killen baby, what's the Kegan?
You know something like that would be good. Is Andrew Garfield? No,
you know the hots Andrew Scott. Yeah, just put him anywhere.
I don't care where. Let him, but let him be
on the flying squad like that would be hot.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
Let him be the forty three year old that's like
the voice of reason. All the boys you got the youngsters.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
Except he dropped his sunglasses case you know, right, Can
you imagine I'm gonna go get some ice creams.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
He's the type to get ice creams. And he's the
type that actually writes his name in the sunglass. Yeah,
like that little patch of white words like if found,
please return to shit. And he's like, I might be
a major criminal, but I'm also kind of a d
go ahead and return these glasses.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
What a mastermind he is, That's that's right. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
Meanwhile, I won't put my name on the suitcase tag
that you absolutely need if you want to get that
suitcase returned when the airline is lost your suit case.

Speaker 1 (01:14:00):
Or you can put an air tag in your suitcase.
Oh keep track of that shit yourself. Oh that's true. Right. Listen,
we're getting all kinds of tips. We're telling you how
not to get scammed.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
We're trying to teach you how to get away with
a great train robbery. And we wish you would and
we wish you a merry Christmas.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goy bhye, what Elvis,
do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:14:33):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
This episode was mixed by Leanna Scualachi.

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
Our researchers are Mareon mcclashan, and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder. Heyebye, Hey,