531 - We’re Here at the House Party

On today’s episode, Karen covers trailblazing pilot Hazel Ying Lee and Georgia tells the story of the Dunbar Armored Depot Heist.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Last Hello, and welcome to my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
That's Georgia Hardstar. That's Karen Kilgariff, and we're here to
podcast for you on.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Video, breaking news, podcasting, breaking news.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Everybody.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Podcasts are on video now for fucking reason.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
And that's actually what breaking news is these days, because
there's no more local news in America.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
We refuse. You're right, yeah, Okay, for a second, it's
pretty crazy. I know, I didn't look at anything today,
so I'm feeling I'm feeling like I forgot everything that's
going wrong.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I know it's going right. Do you want me to
tell you about You have something to show me? So
I spend, according to my phone and hours on tikto
don't ever look that's really shocking. Yeah, I'm like, I
don't even know I have this much free time. But
my favorite thing that happened recently is a little kind
of like a three part story. Okay, and it's going
to start out with I'm going to show you a

(01:13):
TikTok and we have to change the music, of course,
because this is going to go on Netflix. Yeah, but
the real music is a song that you and I
both love by the rapper Armani White. That's the Billie
Eilish song.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Love that song. You see that video and she brings
it out on stage and say singing together and I
start crying.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
It's so cute and the audience goes so crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Hilly Eilish so much.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Okay, she's the best, deserves a song.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
So there's an incredible volleyball player at cal State Northridge.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
The matten Doors parents went. For real, I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I did a nooner at Northridge one time with Greg
Barren and somebody else. You have to go to the
cafeteria and do stand up comedy at noon while Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
That's where my parents went. Yes, yes, so that's where
right now they met. Yeah, okay, so.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
There's a So there's a very viral volleyball player who
is amazing at volleyball, but he also does like full
ony slay queen style gestures once he gets a point.
Oh my god, Okay, it is so great and people
are loving it. So let me show it up and
we're going to have the original music, but we'll put

(02:20):
in other music.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Oh he does the neck walk away eh oh, oh
my god, Okay, I love him.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
His name right, Jordan Lucas. His older brother was a
volleyball star as well. I think they said his dad was.
So now I'm like an expert on him.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Let's tell people who aren't watching on Netflix. He's doing
these like moves as soon as he hits well.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Go to TikTok. He's all over TikTok. It's basically what
everyone is looking at. But he's spiking the ball. He's
jumping what looks like five feet in the air, spiking
the ball, getting the point, and then basically doing a
little RuPaul's drag race move to be like slay Mama.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, like walk away, fucking head twists, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Kind of in your face. So this is starting to
build in popularity on social media. And then Seasun has
a game at Irvine.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Oh so it's where my parents went versus where I'm from.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Where they raised you. And at Irvine, one of the
color commentators says, I'm surprised nobody has popped Jordan Lucas. Yet.
What he's doing on that cord is distasteful. He isn't
standing there screaming like that. He literally goes like that.
He turns his head in a way that it's like
a gesture So one of the most popular supercuts is
to the Armani White song. I think it's called Billy Eylish.

(03:58):
That's how I know it, Bitch, I'm stylish. Basically, this
story gets out that that's what this guy says, and
at the next Seasun game Aremani Whites in the stand
watching Jordan Lucas play and cheering for every single point.
And I watched it last night and I just had
tears streaming down my face. So I'm just like, this

(04:19):
is it.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
This is where he went to the fucking he went
to the.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Next fucking game, and was like, I'd seen all these
videos and everyone was talking about this amazing volleyball player.
So I wanted to see it for myself, and I did,
and it's like him and his friends in the stands
cheering for Jordan Lucas.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
You're about to start crying. First of all, I want
everyone to know that.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
You're about to start crying, because well, what I was
going to say is like it's the old days growing up,
going to high school in the eighties, where not only
would you be popped for expressing yourself in any way
different than the standard norm, but that idea that someone
would suggest that would mean that would happen totally, and
it almost is like Armania White understands all those things,

(05:00):
and it's kind of like, here's the posse that's rolling
up for Jordan Lucas and symbolically tough guy rapper whatever.
That's basically like I'm here on his behalf.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, that's so touching, it's beautiful. Wow, do you have
more video to show me? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:18):
I mean there is another one, and this one is
cut to a Beyonce song, so it just like, oh my.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
God, what if Beyonce is in the fucking oh audience
next that one?

Speaker 2 (05:31):
He just tips it over.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yes, I love it, right, Oh my god. Can we
start podcasting like that so that like maybe they'll show
up to exactly write studios. Yeah, next time I give
a good story, I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
It's almost like when you're so good you can't control
in your face, so you have to turn it around,
and that's part of what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
I mean, it's called personality.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
It's pretty fun.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I love it. That's a feel good story. Yeah, good
job speaking of breaking news and going in a completely
different direction. Oh okay, but also you know, in a
positive if you could call it that way. True crime
and positivity aren't always But I covered the story when
we were in Portland called the Martin Family disappearance, which
is one of those stories I've always been obsessed with

(06:19):
where I'm pretty sure that like half of the missing
people drove into a lake and their car is still
in the lake, you know what I mean. So this family,
the Martin family, disappeared. It was five of them. It
was the husband and wife, Ken and Barbara and their children,
and they all went missing in December of nineteen fifty
eight while off getting bows for Christmas decorations out in

(06:43):
Oregon in the wilderness. They all disappeared. Was their foul play?
No one really knew. But their car was finally found
in the place where they had pretty much disappeared. So
a diving expedition spearheaded by this diver archer Mayo, who
has been finding cars and finding missing people at the
bottom of lakes. He had also found the Martin family

(07:04):
camera and they were able to identify it as the
car where some of the family was in. So it
looks like it was just an accident. Wow, long, but
nineteen fifty eight, that's crazy. Yeah, So two of the
children had already been found. I think that they had
floated out of the car and up the river, but

(07:25):
the rest of the family was found in the car. Wow,
So it does seem like it just was a horrible accident.
They were found in the Columbia River, so sad, I know.
But these stories that come out is like finally getting
an end of a story, you know what I mean.
I mean, it's just that those are fascinating to me,
and it's so heartbreaking and tragic.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, and good, great news when finally there's some sort
of resolution.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, yeah, do you have anything else? You haven't seen
the drama yet? No, you have to see it. The
drama is a movie yeah with Zandeya. Oh okay, so
it's just so good. Okay, we'll talk about it. I
need to talk about like it's one of those movies
that I need to talk to someone about it. Oh okay,
Like I had a little bit of a mental breakdown
after watching it because it was so like it's just

(08:07):
one of those things of like what would you have
done in that situation?

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Okay, Yeah, that's a good idea. I'll watch it this
weekend and we'll make a video. Here you go, how
about that. Yeah, we'll do it rewatch talk down video. Okay, great, Okay,
we're making plans, we're making content.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
When have we ever followed through with the plans that
we made? How many books have we started in our
book club?

Speaker 2 (08:29):
How many? The last one? When You're like, here, here's
a book on burnout and I'm like, I'm going to
read it and get back to you. What am I
talking about?

Speaker 1 (08:38):
You loved it in the hotel room.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
No, I have it right by my bed. But you know,
I have to keep rewatching what we do in the
shadows for some reason. That's it's my serious problem. I
began talking like nandor around the house. This is crazy,
such a good show. It's delightful.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Speaking of delightful, we have a podcast network. Should we
do some updates?

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Very true? Yes we should.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Our podcast networks called Exactly Right Media.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
And this week on Deer Movies, I Love You our
movie podcast, Millian Casey revisit the post apocalyptic nineties ROMP
tank Girl saw it in the theater. Wow, that was
the year I think I moved to la Oh my god.
Plus Kara Klank joins them to talk about her area
of expertise. Later in life romance.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
That's not her expertise.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
I wonder if she did she meet her husband later
in life. Must be other pupils.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Can I just say she and I just recently polished
up two bottles of rose. Oh, that's she's She's a
fucking expert at that.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
I'll tell you about that's what she's great.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
As she is. And then over on Ghosted, Ross is
joined by Mark Sebastian of the hit series Great American
Gay Side Quest?

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Have you seen that? No, it's so good, so great.
He's just like standing in front of stuff and he's like, well,
I'm here, like it's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Okay, I love it, and they have a spooky download.
They get into his on camera ghost sighting at the
Stanley Hotel and his haunted childhood home.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
The Stanley Hotel. Thing happened. It's part of the Oh
my God side Quest series.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Okay, Great American Gay Side Quests. We're all gonna go
watch it.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
Also, please go listen to our newest podcast, Hollywood Land,
This sister podcast of Disgrace Land from Jake Brennan, and
this week he tells the story of the scariest one
of all, Charlie. She thanks from Tiger Blood to Machet's
to career wrecking levels of excess. This episode is on
Cocaine and.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Then finally on trust Me. You know her as Gnomes
from the Netflix docuseries Trust Me. The False Prophet. Nomzia
Bisline joins Lola and Megan for a compelling two part interview.
This is so good and for the first time, you
can watch the full episode on YouTube. So go to
YouTube dot com slash exactly Right Media to find episodes
of all your favorite exactly right shows except for my

(10:46):
favorite Murder and Buried Bones because that's on Netflix.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Cause we're right here on Netflix. That's right, All right, right,
you're first, I'm first. Great, Well, did you know that
May is Asian, American and Pacific Island or Heritage Month? Okay,
it is every May, and because of that, I'm going
to tell you a story that begins in August of

(11:09):
nineteen twelve in Portland, Oregon, with the birth of a
baby girl named Hazel. Her parents emigrated to the US
from China. They met each other over here, they get married,
they start a family, and baby Hazel is one of
eight children. Okay, they do it Irish Catholic style, but
of course, this is an era of rampant anti immigrant racism,

(11:31):
and the anti Chinese sentiment in the United States is
looming very large, to the point where it's actually codified
in our laws with legislation like the Chinese Exclusion Act
of eighteen eighty two, which specifically restricts immigration from China
for ten years. That law is renewed again in eighteen
ninety two, and it's made permanent in nineteen o two.

(11:53):
It is not repealed until the nineteen forties.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Hey build all our infrastructure and risk your life to
build a fuck railroad and the infrastructure, but you're not
allowed here.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
It's as if you're psychically reading the next la yes,
because when I read that, I was like, that's so weird.
It sounds like it's right around the same time that
the Chinese built the railroad, and literally I looked it up.
And the first transcontinental railroad crossing of America is finished
May tenth, eighteen sixty nine, when the Union Pacific side

(12:23):
is connected with the Central Pacific Railroad, so basically the
Central Pacific Railroad side alone from eighteen sixty three to
eighteen sixty nine its completion, their employees were over ninety
percent workmen that were Chinese immigrants. They risked their lives
daily handling explosives and mining and like blowing through rock,

(12:44):
completing grueling labor for sometimes half the pay of their
white counterparts.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Did you see that movie that came out recently was
nominated for things and it was really good Train Dreams,
Train Dreams, Thank you, Mollie. Train Dreams. It was so
like low profile I barely had heard about it.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Was it about making. It's about the sky.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Who works on the railroads, and there are characters in
it that represent the Chinese people who helped build it.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Who kind of were the majority builds, at least on
that one side.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, it's a really beautiful movie that doesn't shy away
from the horse.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Okay, that'll be my double feature for the weekend.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
But the irony that then twenty years later they're passing
laws that you can't come into this country at all,
insane and a recurring theme of this country. So definitely,
that's just a little context and setting the backdrop as
we talk about little Hazel Yinglee growing up in America.
She will be remembered as a witty and daring young
girl and when she gets older, her peers will describe

(13:46):
her as a quote bubbly optimist with a mischievous streak
and a taste for fried chicken.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Same.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
But Wow, We've been doing this Flora decade. But Hazel
ying Lie will become known for much more than any
of that, because she will make history as the first
Chinese American woman to get her pilot's license and fly
for the US military.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Today, I'm telling you about the story of Hazel ying Lie.
The sources used today are two thousand and three Associated
Press article by Gillian Flaccus, a twenty twenty five PPS
organ Experience documentary entitled Hazel ying Lie and related to
an Oregon Public Broadcasting article written by Emily Hamilton, and

(14:33):
the rest. I'm not going to tell you the titles
of those because they give things away, but the rest
are in our show notes. So it is now at
nineteen thirty two and in Hazel's hometown of Portland, Oregon,
aviation is actually a big deal. There's multiple airports around
the city, like in and around the city that regularly
host air shows. It's actually aviation's so big that the

(14:55):
Oregonian newspaper has a dedicated aviation editor Wow. Yeah, And
it's basically the time of Amelia Earhart and like that
discovery then kind of expanding out into who else could
fly all those things. So Hazel is twenty years old
when she goes to an air show with her friends
and there she gets a chance to ride in an
airplane for the very first time. Can you imagine, right,

(15:18):
And that's when she gets hooked.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
This is the year after Amelia Earhart and some of
her constituents or cohort form an international organization for female
pilots called the ninety Nines, and it's ten years after
Bessie Coleman becomes the first black woman and the first
Native person to get at pilot's license. Those are episode
four seventy four an Episode three twelve, respectively. So being

(15:43):
a lady pilot is not inconceivable for Hazel. But even
with a tangible path to follow, their serious barrier to entry,
of course, money being the biggest one, and Hazel being
the daughter of hard working immigrant parents with eight children,
flying lessons are way down at the bottom of anybody's
must do list. Mommy, I want to fly, that's nice,

(16:05):
And then her sister's like, and I want polo lessons,
let's get this American dream going. And yet she still
was able to finally do it. Wow, which is pretty amazing.
I couldn't get my dad to drive us to the
roller rink on Saturday, as him being a first generation American,
that was impossible for him. There aren't many employment options
at this time for Hazel either. Her sister Francis will

(16:27):
later explain, quote, either you'd be a stopgirl, an elevator operator,
or you might work in the theater's restroom in a costume.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
It was very difficult for an Asian person to find
a job. So Hazel becomes an elevator operator at a
at a downtown Portland department store, and she saves up
her money to pay for private flying lessons. So she
basically that's what she uses all her money for. Around
the same time, Hazel's father passes away. Her bereaved mother

(16:57):
doesn't like the idea of her child flying in planes,
but as Frances later says, quote, there was nothing mother
could do. She said to Hazel, you're not afraid of
the wind, You're not afraid of the water, and that
was that.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Their mom kind of couldn't deny. Yeah, that Hazel was
this daring I kept thinking of Ramona Quimby because she's
also from that area. But like that idea, that's this
little girl that's just totally unafraid, a big adventurer, like
wants to do that stuff. And it's like, well, there's
kind of nothing I can do about.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
So in late nineteen thirty two, when she's just shy
of twenty years old, Hazel finally gets her pilot's license
and she is the first Chinese American woman ever to
earn one. Wow, a very cool picture of her.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
Oh my god, god, cutie pie, right look at her.
She looks so happy.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, she's just like check this out.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
That is just like the coolest photo.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
It's so good. And listeners, she's leaning on the wing
of a biplane, so it's the most old fashioned looking
plane of all time. And then she's got this amazing
like the director job pers h and a great flying
hat and.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
The goggles on her head and a fucking self raled.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Cigarette it is self rolled cigarette in her left hand.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Couldn't look cooler.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
She looks so happy. But there is political tension in
the world and in China at this time, and Hazel
cares about it. Deeply so the year before she gets
her license. Before this all happens, Japan invades Manchuria, igniting
the brutal Second Sino Japanese War. Twenty million Chinese people
die in this conflict over the next several years, and

(18:32):
Hazel cannot sit by and watch on the sidelines. Like
many other Chinese American pilots, the vast majority of whom
are male, Hazel travels to Canton, China and tries to
volunteer with the Chinese Air Force, but because she's a woman,
she is repeatedly turned away, so she takes administrative jobs
until she actually is forced to flee to Hong Kong

(18:53):
as Japan escalates the brutal air campaign and she basically
is forced to return to America, But she still wants
to find ways to serve and that opportunity will come
just a few years later when the Japanese attack Pearl
Harbor in December of nineteen forty one. So as the
US enters World War Two and the fighting intensifies overseas,
there's an increasing shortage of military pilots, all of whom

(19:16):
are men, and that's a serious problem because the war
effort requires non combat pilots for transport, and you never
think about stuff like this, how do they get supplies
over there? Totally, there's a big thing of farying damaged
aircraft for repairs, they had to get the aircraft out
and fix it and then get it back.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
And even just moving people, moving soldiers from place to
place requires a non combat pilot.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Right or newly manufactured bombers like basically the planes get
flown out by these people and they use them for training,
for maintenance, all of it. So to deal with the
pilot shortage, the military finally opens those roles to female
civilian pilots, and when they do, twenty five thousand women
apply holy to join the volunteer program known as Women

(20:03):
Air Force Service Pilots aka the WASPS. So even though
thousands of women apply, only a little over eighteen hundred
women are accepted into this program. And what they have
to do is they go for six months at a
Texas airfield in the relentless heat of a Texas summer.
Hazel and her peers are put through the same basic

(20:23):
training that male pilots complete. On top of classes in
navigating aviation, mechanics, physics, and meteorology. Sometimes in upwards of
one hundred and fifteen degree heat. Now, because it's summertime
at Texas, it's brutally challenging, and in the end, over
seven hundred and fifty of the trainees dropout or are cut.

(20:44):
Hazel ying Lie makes it through and becomes one of
the few female flyers now authorized to fly the world's
most powerful military aircraft. So she makes it in. But
when we talk about the Wasps, what you say is
that they fly with the military, not for the military,
because again they're not technically enlisted, their civilian volunteers. But

(21:05):
other than that small detail, they're virtually indistinguishable from their
military counterparts. They're subject to all the same rules. They
have to wear the same uniforms. Literally, the WASP units
had to use flight suits that were made for men,
so most of them were ridiculously oversized, and the women
referred to them as their zoot suits. So here's maybe

(21:26):
not the zoot suits. Well that's Hazel when she became
a WASP cuty.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
That's her portrait actually has a pin that says WASP
on it, Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Then the other one is her and so those are
their forties military uniforms that they had to wear.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Oh my god, they're all so cute.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Hanging out waiting to fly. Just let us fly.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Can you imagine the time in their lives?

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Okay, So Hazel becomes a beloved member of this group.
She's known for her charm and her personality. A fellow
pilot says, she was quote in our room more than
she was in hers. She would come bouncing in, laughing
with the latest information or joke. She was always very jolly.
Oh my god, how fun when they have downtime, and
so they have to travel, like around the United States,

(22:09):
flying these planes around. So she ends up taking her
fellow pilots to local Chinese restaurants, and it's described years
later by the Associated Press with Hazel wowing her peers
by ordering in quote rapid fire cantonese. So she goes
in and just is like, we're going to get this, this,
and this, It's going to be amazing.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
That sounds so cool.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
But of course these moments are few and far between,
because the wasps are constantly on assignment, often flying seven
days a week with no rest. And over the next year,
Hazel and the other wasps will deliver more than twelve thousand,
five hundred aircrafts to one hundred and twenty two bases
all across the country. They also tow the shooting targets

(22:49):
for artillery training, a dangerous job that so basically it's
like something is flying up there and it's like they're
towing like a flag or something that they have to
hit with machine gun.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
No, it's like putting an apple on your head and
someone has to shoot it. No, thank you, Let.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
The gals go do it. The wasps will go to it.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
They also help carry out mission simulations and a huge
part of the job is transporting war battered airplanes, some
without working navigation systems, back to bases to be repaired.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
So they end up learning to guide themselves by spotting
landmarks on the ground. They have to be their own
GPS because most of the job is flying damaged planes
from bases to mechanics, engine and system failures are dangerous.
It's so fucking dangerous, and that's a reality they just
have to constantly deal with. So there's a story where

(23:41):
one time Hazel is transporting a plane it goes down
over a Kansas cornfield and she is able to like
there's emergency landing she survives it, but then the farmer
whose property she lands on thinks that she is a
Japanese enemy, and he chases her down with a pitchfork
and traps her and basically they hold her hostage until
his son can call the local army base and prove

(24:04):
that she actually is an American. Holy shit, which you know,
when she got back to the base, she got drunk
and told everyone that story. Hulair's I mean, sorry, I'm
editorializing on this person, but it's just like you get
that vibe from her where she's like, I got this. Yeah,
I'm sure she was just like sorry, first of all,
I'm Chinese. Just for starters, just for starters. So after

(24:25):
all that, Hazel and the other wasps, of course, receive
little recognition for their bravery and dedication to the war effort. Actually,
they're treated with outright hostility by the male military personnel
on the basis that they end up having to work at.
Being a pilot in World War Two, of course, is
seen as this very serious badge of honor. So many
of the men have a real problem seeing women in

(24:47):
the cockpit. I think we have a picture of Hazel
in the cockpit working with somebody that just like, oh wow,
uh huh so badass. He seems nice. Look at the
look on her face. She's just like, yeah, I know,
I know how.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
To I'm a pilot.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Two sir, pilot, two sir. So their grit and bravery
and sacrifice are just, of course dismissed outright. Even though
dozens of wasps make the ultimate sacrifice in the line
of duty. Over the length of the WASP program, thirty
seven female pilots die serving in the United States.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Holy shit, that's a lot, especially because it's not on
the battlefield or would you call it in the warp thing.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, but they're doing all this dangerous stuff and they're
flying like broken planes.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Hazel Yingli is one of those people.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Oh No.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
In late November nineteen forty four, she has to deliver
an aircraft from Niagara Falls, New York to Great Falls, Montana,
and as she approaches Great Falls, a radio dispatch comes
through warning her that the airstrip is busy and she
has to delay her landing. She pulls her plane upwards,
not knowing there's another plane directly above her that pilot
was sent the same message, but his radio was broken.

(25:58):
He does not change course, so she flies thinking that
everyone's flying the same way because they all write. The
two planes collide in a fiery crash. Somehow Hazel actually
survives this crash, but she dies later at the hospital
on Thanksgiving Day. She's just thirty two years old. My god,
and sadly and horribly, her younger brother, Victor, who was

(26:22):
serving in the war in France, dies in combat the
same week.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, Hazel is not given a military funeral. The government
doesn't even pay to transport her body back home to
Oregon or cover any of the funeral expenses. And when
Hazel's loved ones try to secure a specific burial plot
for her that looks out over the Willamelet River, they're
told that Hazel cannot be buried there because she's not white.

(26:47):
Of course, her family's i rate. They file suit against
the cemetery, and the details are fuzzy on like the
step by step of it. What we know for sure
now is that Hazel today is buried at this site,
and she is buried next to her Wow. Yeah, So
it takes a very long time for the Women Air
Force Service pilots to receive any recognition at all for
their service, but as the years pass after the war,

(27:09):
interest and admiration in the group grows. In nineteen seventy seven,
President Jimmy Carter finally gives the WASP military benefits and
veteran status, and much later, in two thousand and nine,
President Barack Obama awards the surviving wasps the Congressional Gold
Medal WOW. At the signing ceremony, he says, quote the
women Air Force Service pilots courageously answered their country's call

(27:33):
in a time of need, while blazing a trail for
the brave women who have given and continue to give
so much service to this nation. Since every American should
be grateful for their service, and I'm honored to sign
this bill to finally give them some of the hard
earned recognition they deserve. Miss him end quote. I mean, remember,
Presidents No. Hazel ying Lee's legacy now looms large, reflected

(27:55):
in recent museum exhibits, books, documentaries, and in March of
twenty two five, composer Derrek Wang debuts and opera that
he wrote about Hazel's life, entitled Fearless.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Oh My God.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Her memory lives on with those who knew her and
who loved her with a fellow wasp telling the Associated
Press that quote. I'm sure she would be some kind
of leader.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Now.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
We enjoyed her so very much.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
She would have been such a cool grandma, Grandma, what
did you do during the war. I flew, I smoked fucking.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Smerollies, smoking some rolies.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
I wore great outfits, and I fucking flew planes. Oh
and I was scared of nothing. Hazel's sister, Francis, has
spoken publicly about her sister many many times over the years,
and in a PBS organ documentary, she says that her
sister Hazel was destined for greatness. It was in her
name because her Chinese name Ying means heroic, and that's

(28:49):
the story of trailblazing pilot Hazel Yingle. Oh my god, right,
that was incredible.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
I never I've never heard of her. I've heard of
the wasps a little bit, but not in detail of Like,
these are women volunteering and giving everything and there's people
being like thanks, go home.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
It's historical. Yeah, that was incredible. I'm going to go
in a different direction.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Okay, that's pretty common.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
But you're gonna like this one great because it's a
high story. Oh love, I love a good high.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Story love a heist.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
So did you know that LA used to be the
bank robbery capital of the world.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
I would think it would be Fort Knox or somewhere
like that.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah, maybe it is now, but it used to be. Yeah,
so congratulations to us.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Was it like the downtown era when everything was down there?

Speaker 1 (29:39):
That's where we're at today, reading my mind. So it's
just past midnight on Saturday, September twelfth, nineteen ninety seven,
and we are at the nondescript warehouse of the Dunbar
Armored Depot. And do you know Dunbar trucks. It's like
the Brinks truck. Yeah, it's another one of those brands

(30:01):
of moving lots and lots of cash around in an
armored truck. Okay, And so the Dunbar Armored Depot is
in downtown Los Angeles and kind of the warehouse area.
Not much going on around there, and that's where Dunbar's
armored trucks are loaded and unloaded as an intermediate stop
between wherever the cash is coming from and wherever it's going.

(30:22):
So like you know, where they take the cash and
then put it into the ATMs. It stops there in
between gets counted gets.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
I could be wrong, but I think I've seen a
terrible Guy Ritchie movie about this place.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Really.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Yeah, Okay, instead of robbing a bank or robbing a
Brinks truck, we're going to go into where they have
the money. This is exactly what the plan is here.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Okay. So it's Friday night, and Friday nights into Saturday
morning are one of the busiest ships because it's where
the most cash is being moved in and out of
the vault, you know, for the weekends to go to
those ATMs. In fact, it's so busy that the staff
just keeps the vault door open this time instead of
opening and closing it just to kind of bring all
the money. And like they're bringing so much in that

(31:03):
that extra step of opening closing the door isn't going to.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Work for them. Yeah, whose suggestion was that?

Speaker 1 (31:10):
And even though we're talking about more cash being handled
than a bank would have over one hundred million dollars,
oh my god, there's also less security than in a bank,
and in fact, the ship has the fewest number of
security guards scheduled to work, even though it's the most
amount of money. It's not great common sense plans that
out logistically exactly, And I guess it makes sense because

(31:30):
it's like, well, of course a bank would have more
security because people off the street can come in. It's
not like this warehouse where only employees can go in.
But still, it's so much fucking money.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
It's just money, money.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
But there is one security guard working and he's in
the lunch room taking his lunch break. But the CCTV
monitors are in there as well, so he's keeping an
eye on what's going on. He sees no sign of
anyone trying to enter the facility, so he's taken completely
off guard when five men dressed in all black, wearing
ski masks, burst into the lunch room with guns drawn.

(32:05):
This is the story of what was until very recently,
the largest cash robbery in US history, one that the
perpetrators very nearly got away with if it weren't for
some very rookie mistakes. This is the dunbar armored Depot heist. Hell. Yes.
The main source for the story is an episode of
the show History's Greatest Heists hosted by Pierce Brosnan Cute

(32:29):
and a twenty twenty Medium article by Alissa Kelly Rose,
and the other sources can be found on our show notes.
So the heightst starts and ends with a Dunbar employee
named Alan Pace. He's twenty seven years old from a
middle class family in Compton. He has no criminal record.
He actually works at the depot as a security specialist,

(32:49):
and that's what his career has been up to then,
is like various security jobs. He has idly toyed with
the idea of how he might rob the facility, but
not with any series business. And it's kind of his
job to know how someone would rob the facility, So
it's not that weird.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Also, don't you think about that every time you see
like a Brinks truck horse, We're just kind of like,
why are they just standing outside?

Speaker 1 (33:11):
I did this on that? Yeah, exactly. And he's an
affable guy. He's a jokestore. Everyone seems to love him.
And at some point he starts dating a coworker who's
also on the security staff, a woman named Timiko Carns.
And while they're both in security, Alan's job revolves around
inspecting the trucks, while Tamiko's is monitoring the video security system,

(33:32):
and no one really knows how seriously Alan and Tamiko
discuss the idea of perpetrating this robbery. But what we
do know is that in July of nineteen ninety seven,
Tamiko gets fired under suspicion of theft. She's seen on
a security camera placing a money bag in a known
camera blind spot. It's all allegedly. It's totally not clear

(33:53):
she actually was going to steal anything, or if she
had any plans to or even knew about this heist
at all, And she was never to trial or anything
like that, So just want to make that clear. But
what does happen is she gets fired for this security breach,
whether it's on purpose or not. And this is what
kind of sends Alan pace into a talespin with the

(34:15):
idea of like, fuck this place, I'm going to actually
see I can do a heist. So in August of
nineteen ninety seven, Alan starts by recruiting friends. None of
them have ever robbed any kind of security disciplined before,
none of them even have criminal records. They're all like
nice boys who go to church and come from nice,
respectable families. They're all just Alan's buddies. The first one

(34:38):
he calls is a childhood friend named Eugene Hill and
another one named Freddie McCreery junior. So Eugene Hill, Freddie,
and Alan have all known each other since they were
around ten years old. So Alan is like, these are
guys I can absolutely trust and they won't tell anyone.
And Freddie also works as a security guard, so he
has relevant experience. And then Alan also recruits a man

(35:00):
named Terry Brown, also a security guard. So Alan, Freddie,
and Terry have all worked together on private security jobs
at like events and nightclubs. They've done some bouncer work
that sort of thing. So one day after church, the
group gather around in the parking lot and start drawing
out a plan and chalk on the pavement, and Alan
is showing them all how the facility works, kind of

(35:23):
the layout of the whole place, noting where each camera
is and where the team will have to walk in
order to not show up on those monitors. So there
is like, you know, you're like up against the wall
like super Burglar style, you know, like the spotlight goes
in front and then you run and running around to
the next one. Yeah, exactly, like that exactly, And it
seems like they do it in broad daylight in the

(35:45):
church parking lot, and then other parishers like, don't suspect anything.
These are good boys, not a church yea. And so
later he recruits an additional man named Tommy Johnson. So next,
while Alan is at work, he starts taking polaroids around
the facility of every room and every camera. But he's
a security guard, so it doesn't seem weird. It's almost

(36:05):
like it seems.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Like he's just doing research.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yeah, takes photos of his like coworkers who are just.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Like, hey, I love Alice capturing, Like where the love Alan? Yeah, Alan,
You're so great.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Nobody like suspects Alan. He's Alan. And he uses these
polarids to create a detailed floor plan with visual references
so the rest of the group will know exactly where
they're going. So there are twenty five cameras but only
around six monitors, so they kind of just like bop
in and out of like whatever camera is on, you
know what I mean. Sure, So he shows his crew everything.

(36:37):
He instructs them on how to travel so that they
never show up in the feeds that are on the
monitor at the moment. It's kind of a lot of
choreography and it takes some time so the plan is
to keep practicing this choreography until September. That's when they're
gonna do the heist. So Alan's original plan is to
not participate in the heist at all, since he works there.

(36:59):
He gives them such detailed information and they have such
a long time that they should be able to do
on their own without him even being there. He goes
to bed, he wakes up the next morning and goes
to work, and he's just as shocked as everyone else
that the place got burgled.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
So it's plausible deniability exactly. He's kind of building anything
where it's like he doesn't have to worry about seeming guilty.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Right exactly, So he's basically the plan is for him
to give them the key because he has the keys
to the place because he's a security guard there. Yeah,
and then they go and do it. So that is
a great plan until early September when Alan gets fired. Oh,
he gets a call saying he's been fired because he's
suspected of tampering with trucks and that he'll need to

(37:40):
come back in and hand in his key. And so
Alan decides it's now or ever. We got to do
this earlier that we planned, but I have to get
rid of my key, so we have to do this.
And also he's like, all, come along with you guys now,
since we haven't had as much time as we need
and I know the layout so well.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
I just got to say, first of all, do you
think it a place like that? They do they replace
the locks every time they fire somebody? I bet they don't.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Probably not, because you could just get a copy.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Right, isn't that the thing and the other heist movies.
So they shove it into some clay or whatever.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
There's all those keys that say like, do not copy.
I've gotten so many of those copied.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yes, I mean, no one gives a single shit. It's
like it's a shit, No, what is this for the landlord?

Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yes? Exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Feel like for a place like that, it would be
interesting just to know, because this is pre tech anything, right,
It's like everybody's on their honor, and then when you're
firing people and they're like, yeah, well fuck you totally.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Like there's not like the badges that you have to
like sign in and out with. It's just a key, a.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Key, but like, yeah, hundreds of millions of dollars, so
much money.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
So he also then recruits one more person, his brother
in law named Eric Boyd. So on the night of Friday,
September twelfth, they're like, it has to be tonight. The
group splits up into two vehicles. Some ride in Eugene
Hill's car and some ride in a U haul that
they had run earlier in the day. They don't go
straight to the depot. Here's what they do. There is

(39:05):
a friend having a house party in Long Beach, so
they go to the house party and they're like, what's
up everyone, it's.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
Us, Yes, there are We're here at the house party.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Exactly, and then are on eleven forty five. They all
like tiptoe irish goodbye. Yes, get into the car and
to the U haul and drive to the depot.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Right does everyone's getting a little slurry exactly, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
Exact art. And so to get to downtown LA. They
park on a nearby street and then they drive the
U haul up to the depot. Everyone changes into all
black clothing and puts on those ski masks. And then Eric,
the brother in laws, days behind with the U haul.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
So and the Jew, sorry for your heist. Yeah, would
you be the driver? Would you be?

Speaker 1 (39:49):
I'd be the getaway driver would be the getaway driver.
Huh yeah, yeah, what do you think? What would you be.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Too, bossie? I have to be and you can get charged.
I can't let other people fuck my high step.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
I would trust you to be in charge, thank you.
And I would definitely be like, no one is the
driver with me. Oh I would not fucking person to
be the driver, No way.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
But I also would absolutely know you would get us
out of there. Oh my god, absolutely, especially downtown LA.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
I'm baby driver, that's my nickname. That's right, I'm a
driver influencer. I'm a getaway driver influencer.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
So here's how to run a red light in three
fun steps.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
And then Vince can count the money because he can't
have money facing the wrong way.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
He bank faces everything, so obsessed about that.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
So I would trust him to count exactly how much
money there is and like be in charge of the
money and how much and getting everyone the right.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, that's right, he's the banker. So the three of us,
we've done it. Ohops, let's do we just gave it away? Whoops?

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Cut that out. So in the parking lot, they sneak
up to the front door and the security cameras blind
spot and they use the key to open the door.
They sneak through the depots, maze of corridors, you know,
doing the thing we said again the.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Wall and I'm sorry, but the idea that they have
continual blind spots, like they're firing people for going into
the blind spots, right, not fixing the blinds. It's like
the money is still there, the issues still remain.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Absolutely my okay, up against the against the wall, striped
shirt tiptoe Exaggerator, Big Tipsies. Their first destination is the
lunch room because they've timed everything around the security guard's
lunch break. This poor fucking guy just wanted to eat
a sandwich.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
He's like, I microwaved this old TV dinner.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
That's right, this fish dinner. And they know where he'll
be exactly at midnight, so they strike. They subdue the
security guard immediately. They get him on the ground, duck
tip his wrists together, take any of his weapons. They
also bring weapons, but they are very clear on nobody
gets hurt. You know, you can't control that always, but
that's their plan. They then take his key to the

(41:55):
vault prep room. Alan checks the security monitors and verifies
that there are only three people that he's expecting to
see working in the vault room. Those people he took
fucking forlarids of. But that's they proceed down the hallway.
A driver of one of the truck drivers, who's basically
a trained security guard, emerges from the vault prep room.
That's a surprise, but the driver's unarmed, and so the

(42:15):
group gets him on the ground and they duct tap
his wrist together, and so one member of the group
stays behind to watch the guards. And then in the
vault prep room there is one dispatcher and two bookkeepers
counting the money, doing events exactly. The group goes for
the dispatcher first because he has a panic button under
his desk, so they subdue the rest of the employees.

(42:37):
There is one female employee who's at the depot and
is understandably terrified, but also I think she gets her
shoulder hurt when they wrestle her to the ground, and
so she starts crying, and she hears one of the thieves,
one of the mass men say, don't worry, baby, like
calming her down, and she's like, I feel like I
know that.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Voice, like he don't worry. He's just trying to be nice.
Don't worry, baby, they're going to rob you a little
bit more exactly.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
So Alan then radio's Eric, who's me back in the
U haul. He backs the U Haul into the loading dock,
and Alan starts to pick out what packages of cash
the group is going to take from the vault. He
knows to skip the crisp new bills that because they're
in sequential order and they're more traceable. And these are
big shrink wrap blocks of cash, oh, like giant blocks. Yeah,

(43:31):
you know, like we're in Super Mario Brothers, like hitting
our heads on the top, and so they're shrink wrapped.
They throw them into trash bags and then throw them
into wheelbins and then stuff them all into the U
haul and the whole thing takes about only thirty minutes.
And after thirty minutes, the U haul is so full
of cash to the fucking tippy top that the whole
group isn't going to be able to fit back inside.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Oh they didn't plan that out, They sure didn't.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
They got greedy, didn't they. They remove all the security footage,
include this secret security footage that you know, they shouldn't
have known about if they hadn't actually worked there then
they smashed a bunch of things around the office to
try to make it look like a more random burglary,
like they were looking for the key, you know what
I mean, Like, yeah, they do when they pull out
the dresser drawers and stuff where it's like to make

(44:16):
it look like a robbery.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yes, totally. I just keep thinking about the fact though,
that they didn't plan the ride home because also you're downtown, so.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
That's the thing too. Okay, They're in and out about
thirty minutes and then they're like, there's two guys who
don't fit back into the truck. Their getaway car is like,
you know, a few blocks away, but it's the middle
of the night in downtown LA, and it's two black
men in fucking all black and masks. Yeah, like, you're
not they're not safe. It's not safe for you to

(44:46):
be out there. You're going to get immediately caught. So
essentially what they do is there's other security guard who
was having his lunch. His beloved pickup truck is in
the parking lot, and this security guard is so in
love with this pickup truck that he had had one
of the cameras trained on it at all times, so
they take the keys to his truck, They get in

(45:08):
his truck and they take off.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, and it's a little mini movie about them stealing
his truck essentially.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Yeah, but they but they don't get caught from that
that way, because they did take all the film. So
it does work. But it also means that that security
camera wasn't on the door where it's supposed to be.
It was on his truck.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Oh he changed it, Yeah, because he's such a gearhead.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
So they all go back. They made up back at
Eugene's apartment. They change back into their regular clothes, and
this is really smart. They go back to the party.
Yes right, Yeah, they don't just leave at midnight.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Also, not just for their alibi, but just to party, Like,
get back there. See what the alurd wave is about.
Everyone is fucked up, but this dancing, they're so fucked up.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
And they bring that U haul full of cash and
park itt right in front of the house just to
be like I'm not letting this out of my sight. Yes. Yeah,
and they're back within nine minutes of leaving the party,
so wow, I don't think anyone would have said anything.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
They were like, listen, we had to go rent a
U haul really quick because we don't know we might
buy your cash this exactly, Okay.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
So then afterwards there's so much fucking cash and they
didn't expect that that they bring the U haul to
a storage unit. They buy a storage unit and put
most of the cash in there. They keep just a
little bit of cash just to have just to play with, sure,
because are really aware that the way to get caught
is to start spending all that cash. Of course, so
they're careful about it. When the cops arrive to the depot,

(46:32):
they find in the parking lot right outside the depot
a broken piece of tail light. So I wouldn't have
done this. But when Eric pulled that U haul back
and backed it up into the he broke the tail light.
He hit something and broke a tail light. I know,
so rookie, rookie, you would not have done that. But

(46:54):
also that's so strange. What are the odds where it's
just probably so nervous yes, and stress style. Yeah, And
so that's the CoP's first bit of evidence. And then
they look at the lock that you know, where they
had actually used the key, but then afterwards they had
used a drill to kind of damage it. To make
it look like they got in without the key. But

(47:15):
the cops are like, this is obviously just to cover
up the fact that you had the key. It's probably
an employee, like immediately.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Also it's at a fucking the Brinks rival or whatever,
it's an employee.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
It's the people who have to sit.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
There and stare at it all day long, right, Like,
how did they know exactly where the security stuff was
to destroy it or to take it? It's not not good.
So it's not until a few days later that dunbar
officials are able to figure out how much cash is
actually missing, how much was actually stolen? Do you want
to guess how much was stolen? Yes?

Speaker 2 (47:45):
I do want to. Okay, it's nineteen ninety seven, you said.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Yeah, so until recently, it was the largest cash robbery
in US history. So how much do you think?

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Fifty nine million dollars?

Speaker 1 (47:55):
See, I was going to say to you, like, don't
go overboard because it's going to sound better.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Hold on, give me a chance to go under thirty
million dollars? Wow, So two million dollars.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Eighteen point nine million dollars, Well, that's not bad. That's
a lot of fucking money.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
For just the microwave dinner. They stole that off that
guy and the truck, right, it's all they got.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
However, in today's money, that eighteen point nine million dollars.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Is upwards of forty million.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Dollars thirty eight point eight million dollars.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
So yes, very cool right all along turn so.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
That makes it the largest cash robbery in US history
to date, and that record isn't broken until twenty twenty four. Wow.
So these guys, I think almost like they overdid it
and didn't realize it.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
They overdid it, and they also did it without the
aid of modern technology, right, Like, they did it the
real way. They they earned it. They went to the party,
they got the U haul.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
They planned it. They had chalk in a parking lot.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Doing your plan in the church parking lot's genius.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah yeah. And then also like only recruiting people that
you know and trust, I think is obviously yeah, huge
part of it, and that aren't criminals. They're like, this
is going to be the one thing we do. It's
going to set us up for the rest of our lives.
Never again.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Every heist movie, it's a heist movie. Come back for
just this one last one before you retire exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
So it was eighteen point nine million in at the time,
and the police in Dunbar keep that number out of
the press orring that copycats are going to be like, Oh,
that's how much money I can get from this easiest
fuck heist. Yeah, so just tell the press that it
was more than a million dollars that had been taken. Wow,
which is an understatement.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
They're like, oh, just that one warehouse under the overcas exactly,
I can go down there.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
So the police and the FBI have their two main clothes,
which is the fact that the robbers clearly used a
key and that broken tail light. They're quickly able to
tie that broken tail light piece back to a U
haul truck. Stuf's pretty fucking easy. And so Alan, this
guy who got fired recently, is immediately a suspect, with

(49:55):
that one employee also saying that she recognized his voice.
I don't think she realized it was his voice until later.
So he and every other employee who had quit or
been fired recently, about thirty people all are given polygraph
tests and Alan and his girlfriend Tamiko are the only
two that fail. Oh but there's really no solid evidence

(50:16):
that can tie Alan to the crime, and so two
years pass where he's like, I got away with.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
This, But wouldn't you have an acid stomach the entire time?

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Absolutely, especially because you took a polygraph test there like
onto you and you know that you know it didn't
go well. Dunbar announces that they will have an award
of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for anyone who
gives them information leading to an arrest, which gives you
a clue that it's more than around a million dollars
that way exactly.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
You're just like, how much, Yeah, we just want that back.
We'll give you a quarter of what They still.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Right, but the group stays under the radar. No one
spends a crazy amount of money, you know, they go
to Vegas and use cash on those help under the money.
But no one, you know, buys a pink Cadillac like
in Goodfellas, or does anything crazy like the good Fellow's
luptwasa heist which I covered in episode four fifty four.
They don't do that. They're smarter than that. They find

(51:08):
instead a local immigration lawyer named David Matsumoto, who along
with his assistant, agreed to be paid a million dollars
each to help launder the money. Oh, so they just
find a lawyer who's willing to very smart, and so
they do that through real estate purchases and like kind
of small purchases. And then also they open a small

(51:31):
business called Extreme Entertainment so that they're able to take
a salary from the business and make the money look legit.
That on the surface, the business Extreme Entertainment, which sounds
like poor step brothers. Oh yeah, what was a stepbrother's one.
I don't know, Prestige Worldwide, thank you, Prestige Worldwide.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
Molly had that at him.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
She did that was an Aristotle came. Basically, what the
company does on the surface is they rent party equipment
jet skis and limos. So they are like Prestige Worldwide,
Extreme Entertainment. That's what they do, and that's how they
launder the money. And it's also a front to pay
the crew big salaries with the stolen money.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
And then it becomes a wonderfully successful business.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Exactly does it, I don't know, but it seems like
it like it would. It does seem like it would.
On the surface, it seems like they're making a shit
ton of money and it's all legal money, yeah, taxed
and everything.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Yeah, they're doing it right. Unlike the rice pudding store
in New York.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
There was a rice pudding store that opened.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Rice to riches. I fucking have, yes, I have had
rice pudding from those places.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
We did a field piece at Ellen. We're like, what
you can do? This is crazy because we're just scraping
the bottom of like what can we do for a
field piece? And then like two years later it's like
this was a front or some mafia thing.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
I was actually really surprised by that because I went
there one time. I got rice pudding and it was
so good that I was like, how could that be
a front if it was so fucking good? Like, I
was actually shocked.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
I wonder if it's not that hard to make good
rice pudding.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
It was tear me sea flavored rice pudding, and it
was fucking excellent. But I also see that most people
don't like rice pudding.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
So yeah, it's very specific. Yeah, because it feels to
me like they were trying to pick something that would
keep people away.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
The lines around the fucking block to them.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
I loved it. I was just like, this is one
of my favorite desserts. Yeah, you know that was That's
fucking hilarious, so extreme and where was I?

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Where are we? Okay, So this thing might have actually
gotten away with it at this point. But Eugene Hill,
the old friend, the first one who Alan brought into
the plan, makes an error, let's say, pretty big error unfortunately,
so in trying to make a down payment on a property,
because they're putting a lot of this money into real estate.

(53:53):
To make it look legit, he offers another lawyer one
hundred thousand dollars in cash, which is already suspicious, but
also he leaves the branded money strip on the one
hundred thousand dollars cash that says done bar.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
No, you know, the like the money, the bundling.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
The bundling money paper. He doesn't take it off, and
it says Dunbar.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
On it, dunbar cash and stuff.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
So understandably, this lawyer is suspicion yeah, and calls the police,
probably finds out about that two hundred fifty thousand dollars reward.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Dang.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
The cash is examined by the authorities and they find
that those Dunbar branded straps that still on it have
been stamped with the date they were counted, which just
so happens to be September eleventh and twelfth of nineteen
ninety seventh.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Shit.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
And then when they have the name of Eugene Hill,
they able to go back into the U haul rental
records and find that it had been rented under his name.
Oh yeah, ooh.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Here's the thing though about heists that I I've learned
over years of watching many films and maybe doing a
couple of heights myself. Human error has to get folded in. Yes,
and if we don't do that, and if people don't
think about every single possibility, we're just like, no, we're
gonna go over it again. If you're gonna spend the cash,
what are you gonna do? Cut the bands off the cash,
don't be excited about bands like all those kinds of things,

(55:20):
which you know, if it's just a bunch of amateurs,
they can't think of every right.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
So, once Eugene is arrested, police threaten him because they
had all agreed that if one of them gets caught,
they're gonna just take the blame and go down and
them and their families will be taken care of with
the money. Yeah, that was stolen Unfortunately, Eugene is arrested
and he had been using his sister's bank account to
launder money through and so as soon as he's told

(55:46):
that she's going to be charged as an accomplice, he
picks his family over his friends, and he winds up
admitting to participating, and he names everyone else. Everyone is
arrested one by one, with Alan actually turning himself in
at the end. In February of two thousand.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Can I just say that that was clearly Eugene's older sister.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Because I was a little sister. They gotta give a shit.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
He's fight me if you want. It's the older sister.
He's like, I had to turn everybody in. There's no
coming back from this.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah, that's a really we're all scared of our older sisters.
Were afraid of our older sisters. So when the group
is indicted in court, this is the first time they
hear how much money they had stolen, and I guess
all of their faces fell because they hadn't counted all
the money. So when they hear that they stole eighteen
point nine million dollars, like the blood rushed out of

(56:38):
all of their faces and they were like, oh, we
are in so much trouble, you know what I mean,
Like if they had stolen a million, I feel like
after taxes, ye gives some of the back, but no,
they are shocked they had never counted all the money.
So four of the group, everyone except Alan's brother in law,
Eric Boyd, wind up testifying against Alan. Alan pleads not guilty,

(57:01):
and actually, from what I can see to this day,
he denies being involved at all. Oh, which is interesting.
He says that he was framed by one of the
other defendants quote because I was messing with his wife.
So he just refuses to take any response. He just
says he's not involved.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Yeah. He ends up serving twenty four years in prison. Wow. Yeah, Well,
everyone else serves about twelve years, and so that was
in the year two thousand ish, so he's out now.
In the end, only around seven million dollars is ever recovered.
Ooh yeah. The rest of the stolen money was believed
to have been either squandered by the robbers at gambling
tables in Vegas, some of it was burned because they

(57:40):
found that some of the bills were sequential and so
they could get caught with him and easily traced, or
invested in other things in other people's names. So that
big sister, you know, she's living somewhere nice. I hope, so,
I hope so too. She's the end of the movie,
fucking living in paradise.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
And she's like, that's right, that's it. Use my bank
account if you're not going to pay me back.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
This is why you scare the shit out of your
younger siblings from birth. Yeah, but they won't fucking route
on you.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Then they serve you for the rest of life, essentially.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
And actually I found in twenty twenty this producer named
Khalib Pinkett, who is fucking Jada Peepin. It's Smith's brother. Yes,
his production company, Like, We're going to make a movie
out of this, but I could I didn't find anything
any updates since then, so I'm not sure. Oh wow,
where that went? You know how Hollywood? Yes, takes forever.

(58:32):
And that is a story of the dunbar armored depot
heist man.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
That was good. Yeah, that was great. Yeah, I mean
I don't know. There's only a couple high stories that
I've heard where this story is and the money's never found. Yeah,
there's only a couple of those.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
I feel like, yeah, it was kind of a success,
depending on how you want to look at it.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
Yeah, right, a little bit. I feel like these days
we used to could heist a little bit different, but
I think these days people are just like stick it
to the man.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
Yeah, well, these were the good guys. They were not criminals.
They were all buddies from when they were young, working
their asses off, and we're finally like, let's let's take
advantage of how dumb this fucking corporation is. And also
along the way, you're welcome for showing you like your
security issues.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Yeah, constant security issues that you refuse to fix. It's
just like you can't keep firing people. Yeah, apparently your
video camera won't turn to the right or left.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Very fair. And then let's keep in mind, of course,
the people who were working there that night were scared
out of their minds. They had guns pulled on them. No,
that's not good, that's bad. They Yeah, that's a lot
of trauma.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
That's a lot of trauma.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
And let's rethink our next heist.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
When we use ice. Yeah, let's do it in a
more caring way.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Sure please.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Yeah, I feel like this has been almost like a
college class in this podcast today totally. We're just bringing
the full every facet of the world to you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
American history, baby.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
Yeah, get into it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
What's what we do here on My Favorite Murder?

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
That is yeah, our true crime podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
That's right. That's why we both graduated college with degrees
in American history.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
That's right, advanced degrees from season from season Matador. They're
going to send us some season distance season desist care
Come on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
I had to do it like years in the making,
and I'm so happy about it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Uns against my will. That's my new autobiography. That was
fun times, that was listeners. Thank you for being here
with us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
We appreciate you so much. Everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
If you have any heist questions, please write into My
Favorite Murder gmail dot com and until then, stay sexy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
And don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer
is Tessa Hughes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Our editor is Aristotle lass Vedo.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

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