July 26, 2023 • 34 mins
A mysterious manuscript gives us an inside look at Vassilis’s first prison escape, and explains how his moral code took shape.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Okay, So imagine you are a member of a worker
owned publishing collective. You and your comrades make a tidy
income split equally. Your motto is books for a better world.
Some of your publications include titles like Solidarity from the
Underground History and Class Consciousness, Let's Rethink Anarchy, and Damn
(00:39):
You Cinderella, a feminist rereading. Then one day in twenty eighteen,
a lawyer walks into your bookshop in Athens. Either key
ahto chefde.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
This lawyer, it's best we don't say what her name is.
She found an envelope outside her office door or here
in Athens.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
In the envelope was a manusctcript enclosed with a no.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
This book is coming from a man who doesn't exist.
No one knows where he is.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
That man who doesn't exist Vasili's Palio Costas, and he'd
signed it in a very specific Waylocostas.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Had left a palm print authorizing her to take the
necessary actions to publish it.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So the lawyer had come to them and said, read it,
see if you want to publish it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Personally, I was impressed. I was impressed that the book
was extremely well written. But somehow the authenticity of the
text had to be checked.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But once Costas Legakis and his colleagues at the Collective
publishing house started reviewing.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
The details, the text is so obviously genuine. No other
person could know so many details. It's just impossible.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Ohtably, in the book Bylocostas talks about the imprisonments, about
the escapes, about everything he's done in his life, and
he also learned the ideology of Palokostas, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
His morals of the so called ethical robbery.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
The Greek edition has sold tens of thousands of copies,
but there are only a couple hundred in English, and
we got our hands on one of them. This dude
definitely thought he was being funny calling it a normal life,
because the book is as over the top as you
think it is. And while of course you can't believe
everything Vasilius wrote, he takes us behind the scenes of
(02:48):
every job and wild escape he pulled off, interspersed with
all these fever dream sequences and tangents about society and
his life philosophy. He even wrote dialogue like he was
screenwriting his own biopick. So of course we got an
actor to recreate all of it.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
At that moment, a guard appeared from the corner of
the wall, running towards me, machine gun in hand, shouting Freeze, Freeze.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I Miles Gray from iHeartMedia and Kaleidoscope. This is the
Good Thief. Chapter one, Gamble on Yourself. Where we last
left our anti hero. It was early nineteen ninety one
(03:49):
and Vasili's Paliocostas was still new to crime. He'd gotten
caught trying to break his big brother Nicos out of prison,
but he went down for a lot more than that.
The cops charged our robin hood with a string of
robberies that he swore up and down that he had
nothing to do with. As he languished in a jail
cell awaiting trial, he heard that the police's case against
(04:10):
him was weak. There was a good chance that he'd
be let out. But for Vasili's it was a matter
of morality. As he puts it in his memoir, he
simply could not and would not participate in what he
called a devious process. As far as he was concerned,
the justice system was stacked against him.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
I had the sacred duty to follow my personal instinct
concerning my own freedom, which was the cornerstone of my
moral and conscientious existence. I wished to remain free, and
I had no intention of negotiating or handing my rights
to anyone without a fight.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And so he starts planning his escape, which at first
is just a matter of sitting back and observing the
rhythm of prison life, collecting information on anything that could
prove useful, watching how the guards move and change shifts
at their posts. There's a holiday coming up, and he
knows the guards will be short staffed and distracted, so
he works quickly to come up with a plant. In
(05:12):
the bee wing of the prison, he's got a guy,
a fellow inmate, a long term who is at the
end of his sentence. He goes to see the guy
for a coffee and a chat in his cell, and
while they're sitting there, Vasilis notices the man has a
bucket stashed under his bed. He asked the old timer
where he got it. He tells Vasilis he can get
(05:32):
him one, to which Vasili says, I don't need.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
The bucket, just it's handling. He said, whether are you
up to kid? Looking at me, Chicul, be careful. The
prison is full of snitches.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
I know.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
That's why I'm talking to you.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
He tells the old timer he's going to need at
least five of those buckets and some bandages. Then he
approaches a sell ma asks him if he can keep
a secret, and as the guy a razor tells him
to start cutting up bed sheets as quietly as possible
so as not to wake their other sellies. Vasilis also
starts keeping track of supplies he may need in the
(06:11):
event that he pulls this off, because in all likelihood
he won't be unscathed. Before long, he gets his hands
on a stash of gauze from the prison pharmacy. On
the holiday, Vasilis looks for a quiet place to assemble
his kit. He hides everything in one of his buckets
and slips into a shower stall. There, he bends the
(06:33):
metal hooks into V shapes, curling the ends to make
double hooks. Then with the bed sheet, he lashes them together.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
I tied three sheet strips around the showerhead pipe and
wove a nice rope. Then I tied the strings together,
placing the hook at their end. I bandoned my ankles,
then my knees, then my elbows, and finally my wrists.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Then he slips a tracksuit over all that padding.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
The tracksuit was out of season, but there was no
better way to cover all those bandages.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Ready as he'll ever be, Vasili stuffs the diy grappling
hook into the bucket and heads out to the prison yard,
where there's an impromptu soccer game underway, real casual like.
He flips over the bucket and cops a squat, pretending
to just take a load off and watch the action.
He notices the old timer and his cellmates sharing a cigarette.
(07:26):
He thinks to himself, they've got front row seats to
watch the escape act. The plan is to make a
move when the bell rings to call the inmates back inside.
Vasili's eyes the guards as he predicted, one of the
guard posts is empty. The bell rings and there are
(07:46):
three dudes standing in his way, but he can't wait.
He grabs his kit and walks straight at them, screaming.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Stand outside, I'm breaking up.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
That's literally what it says in the book. Anyway, the
dudes get out of his way. He makes it to
the yard's outer wall and lassos his makeshift grappling hook
into the air.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
The rope that.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Had gotten wet in the shower and It's why it
prevented the hook from reaching as high.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
As I wanted.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
It Latched onto the concertina razor.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Wire, Vasilis knows he has a split second to make
a decision. It's not ideal that rope isn't where it
should be, but he just goes for it. Hoists himself up,
and as he nears the top of the wall, he
has to grab hold of the barbed wire. Razors gouge
his palms. Blood pours out, but there's no time to
(08:38):
second guess this escape. He squeezes his hands around the wire.
The blades dig into his palms as his hands take
the brunt of his body weight. Somehow, he pulls himself
up and swings his legs over.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
Hi, where are you going, screamed the guard.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
You'll see, I answered, before jumping off the edge, and then.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
He free falls fifteen feet onto the concrete below, Bloodied
but alive. He's made it over the wall, but as
he looks back, he realizes he's square into the sights
of the guard's machine gun. But Vasilis doesn't think. He
just turns tail and starts sprinting. Somehow, someway, the guy
(09:24):
doesn't get shot as sirens Blair Vasilis just trots his
way into the sunset. Literally. He makes it to a
quiet fishing cove on the crystal clear water of the
Aegean Sea, where a few people are enjoying an evening swim.
He just plays it off like he's merely jogging, and
(09:45):
then when no one's looking, he takes cover in some
overgrown brush and hides out till dark.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
I found myself sitting on a rock high above the city,
fishing boats and sailboats creas crossing the water, moving like fireflies.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Just a few hours ago, Vasili's Polyocostas was in prison.
It had been the twenty five year old's first time
behind bars, trapped in a hot, concrete wasteland. But now
he inhales the salty air. As he washes the dried
rivulets of blood off his arms, he stares up at
the stars, and for the very first time, he understands
(10:24):
just how fragile freedom can be.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Where would I be if I hadn't taken a risk
in the small chamber that reeked of death For a fugitive.
Freedom is not an abstract concept. Freedom requires courage.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
In that moment, as he watches the boats pass and
revels in the quiet, Vasilis promises himself he won't go
back to prison. He will never go back. According to Vasilis,
he had entered prison as a quote law abiding citizen.
He had never robbed a bank, or broken down a
(11:00):
or stolen a single scent. But now he was a fugitive,
and from this day forward he'd spend the rest of
his life on the run. Chapter two, The Romantic Rebel.
(11:30):
Reading Vasilis's book, you start to get a sense of
how all the pieces of the Paliocosta's puzzle worked together.
From his rough upbringing in the mountains, the reverence he
had for the clefts, his identity as a Greek ethnic
minority himself. But what his writing really lays out is
just how carefully he draws his own lines between right
(11:50):
and wrong.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Life taught me to walk a tight rope concerning my
own double nature, being at the same time an attacker
aiming to deci mantle the system and a romantic rebel
who refuses to dismantle his own character in a battle
between means and ends, who justifies whom.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
It's easy to see how Vasilis grew up in this
perfect cocktail for being radicalized. He grew up in extreme isolation,
high poverty, a lack of services, and in official spheres.
He witnessed a culture of corruption. So it makes sense
that one of the things you hear in Vasilis's stories
is that he is constantly weighing out, both for us
(12:35):
and for himself, who are the real criminals in a
corrupt society. But Vasilis is also very much a product
of his particular generation. When we were making this series,
our producers in Greece kept taking us back back to
the grease of Vasilis's childhood. Here's Christina, it's the circumstances.
Speaker 6 (12:57):
Right. In nineteen sixty seven, one year after the Citlis
was born, there was a coup where Greek colonels overthrew
the government.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The military regime in Greece has largely been the creation
of one man. This man, Prime Minister George Papadopoulos.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
The Hunter, which was a group of ultranationalist colonels drive
their tanks onto the streets of Athens and point them
at the Royal Palace and government buildings, taking control essentially
of the country. These colonels enforced a far right, hypernationalist,
(13:34):
hyper religious dictatorship. Martial law is implemented in free speech disappears.
Suddenly it's illegal to listen to the Beatles and to
reed told story. Women are barred from wearing mini skirts,
men are banned from growing beards or long hair. Labor
unions become illegal, church attendance becomes mandatory, and thousands of
(13:58):
dissidents are beaten and imprisoned and tortured and exile to
islands in the Aegy and by the end of the
Hunter's rule, student protests and with dozens being killed by
the army and the police. This Hunter ruled for the
first eight years of Vasilis's life, but despite all the repression,
the colonels had a lot of support where he was
(14:19):
growing up. Their appeals to old fashioned values warned people's admiration,
and the new rulers also paid outsized attention to rural regions,
canceling all loans held by farmers, increasing agricultural pensions, and
throwing money at small rural schools. But despite this local
atmosphere of support, a young Vasilis came to hate the regime,
(14:42):
which collapsed in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 7 (14:46):
The period of the Hunter of the seven Years was
really terrible. It was very miserable for a lot of Greeks,
and it was a police state.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
That's Ambassador Tom Miller. He served as the US ambassador
to Greece in the Earth two thousands and has spent
decades working there and in the Balkans. He told us
that even though many years have passed, collective trauma from
the junta still lingers.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
The memory is still fresh in people's mind. It passes
down from generation to generation. It's kind of a symbol
of the perception of many Greeks that they have of
fighting against all odds, fighting against the oppressure.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
The junta created what Miller describes as a reflexive antipathy
toward this state, and in many parts of Greece that
antipathy stoked a red hot distrust of the police, who
had spent years propping up the junta and doing its bidding.
In Vasilis's memoir, he often compares the police to the junta.
(15:49):
In his opinion, the junta never left. They just traded
in their uniforms for police badges and business suits.
Speaker 8 (15:56):
As he writes, the transitional government never other to stamp
out the masked fascism on the contrary seizing power, they
pinned up a bright sign that said democracy and everything
else remained the same. Or, to put it another way, therefore,
democracy is a bankrupt sham, reheated shit on a luxurious
(16:21):
porcelain plate.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
Scandals, political favors, bribes, those were only a few of
their great weaknesses. Affluent families knew how to give favors,
and in return, politicians wrote laws to protect them.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Now, to be clear, the vast majority of Greeks who
grew up poor and oppressed by the junta did not
become bank robbers. Vasilis chose his life of crime. But
here's the secret. According to sociologists, robin hood figures or
social bandits always rise to fame during periods of deep inequality,
(16:58):
when corruption feels rampant, when authority figures are absent or abusive.
Time and again history has shown that these conditions will
always compel somebody to stand up and resist. The Great
Depression made Bonnie and Clyde, the Mexican Revolution made Pancho Villa,
(17:19):
and all these things happening in Greece made vasili s
Palio Costas. Chapter three, Getting the Band back together, free
(17:50):
but very much a wanted man Vasili Spalio Costas was
on the run, still in his bloody tracksuit. There was
nothing to do but start walking. He came upon a
house where he helped himself to a pair of Bermuda
shorts and a T shirt that were drying on the clothesline,
just hanging there, as he wrote, as if they were
waiting for me, and he kept it moving, breaking into
(18:14):
a farmhouse the next day, in typical Robin Hood fashion,
he felt conflicted.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
I broke into a farmhouse whose residents were away. I
found some money. It was the first, and hopefully the last,
time I entered someone's home uninvited out of necessity. I
dreaded the feeling because I had always considered homes sacred places,
a kind of personal asylum. That's why I wrote a
(18:41):
short letter to its owners, explaining that I really needed
the money I took from them, and begging them to empathize.
If I had entered the villa, I wouldn't have done that.
But a humble shelter and a guarded palace are two
different things.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
He used the money for a ticket on the first
train headed for Athens, where his old pal, the artist
Costa Samaras, happened to be turned out his mentor was
in prison, and he too was planning to make a
break for it. But the artist's plan was a little
more involved than jumping a fence. Samaras was scheduled to
(19:22):
appear in court back in his hometown of Tricola, two
hundred miles north of Athens. The authorities plan to transport
him in a police van equipped with a jail cell
or what he called a cage in the back. He
told us all about it when we interviewed him.
Speaker 9 (19:39):
I learned that the large cages that were used on
the route from Athens to Corfu had floors of plastic,
and under the plastic surface there was plywood.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Plastic and plywood were all that separated him from freedom.
So Samaras hatched a plan. The transport trip to Tricola
included a multi day layout in a nearby port city,
where he'd be held at a local prison.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
In the old prison, there was a carpentry workshop on
the ground floor where some prisoners walk making woodcarvings and SATs.
From some acquaintances, I got a couple of tools so
show blade and its seasily.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
While on the road, Samaras was going to saw his
way to freedom.
Speaker 9 (20:28):
When we started driving, I took cut the tools. I
started to carve the book.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Within three hours, Samaras cut out a hole in the
bottom of his cage.
Speaker 9 (20:39):
When I was done with it, you could see straight
out onto the road below.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
But he wasn't about to jump out of a moving vehicle,
so he waited for the police to park.
Speaker 9 (20:50):
I got down from mander, crawled a little, and went
out on the road. I walked normally, as if nothing
was happenings.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Forming nobody noticed a thing.
Speaker 9 (21:05):
Vasilis had escaped from Halkida prison a month before by
jumping the wall, so he and I agreed that he
would be waiting for me.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Back together, fugitives from the law ready for their next
big act. It was the fall of nineteen ninety one. Vasilis, Samaras,
and Nkos had all broken out of prison, and they
were all hungry for money. That's how they started robbing banks,
first in Ioannina and then well everywhere, just traveling from
(21:46):
town to town, planning and executing bank robberies. They were
making good money, but they weren't getting rich. The trio
stole a couple thousand dollars here, another thousand there. It
was never another to live off of, and certainly not
enough to just give away, that's for sure. So after
a spree of minor heists, Vasilis and his merry men
(22:09):
set their sights on something bigger on Columbaca. If I'm not.
Speaker 9 (22:15):
We decided to do something as big as we could.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Columbaca is an otherworldly place a short drive from Tricola.
The town is hugged by towering sandstone pinnacles. On the
cliff's edge are Orthodox monasteries. The robbers planned to sin
in their shadows. Vasilis didn't feel bad about it. He
figured any money he stole would return to the bank
(22:40):
once he and his pals started spending it.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
No matter how many bangs you robbed, eventually the money
will go right back to the banks. They're the only
ones that never lose.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
They were just borrowing the money. It's the perfect victimless crime.
Vasilis had adopted a Gandhi quote to justify his actions.
Poverty is the worst form of violence, so maybe redistributing
this money was actually a solve for a broken society. Plus,
the men were always careful. They planned each heist precisely
(23:14):
to avoid hurting anyone. They carried automatic weapons. Sure, but
as Samaras told us, the whole point was to scare
people into giving them the cash.
Speaker 9 (23:26):
It's all about psychology. If you go into a bank
to do something illegal, you have to look convincing and
there will really be a reaction unless someone wants to
play the hero. We had prepared a lot in advance
to avoid any violence.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
So you believe that there were no casualties victims in
this sense.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Look, I don't have a ton of sympathy for bank CEOs,
But at the end of the day, is there really
such a thing as a victimless crime? It might not
be for the dude holding the gun to say. When
we pressed some of us on this, he conceded some ground,
but only a little.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Ala.
Speaker 9 (24:12):
Someone is a victim, but it's the least share that
could be done.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
The way he sees it, they were trying to do
the least harm they could. But sometimes a little suffering
is just the cost of doing business. If costas some
of us feels bad about any of this, well, he
didn't show it. When we asked him, can there be
a crime without a victim? He started to wax philosophical
(24:40):
and deflect, blame.
Speaker 9 (24:43):
Every ali, all of the steps into something bigger. In
twenty ten, there was a domino effect in the banking
system where the economy is collapsed because the banks were
playing games at the expense of the people. If this
is not a crime against the men, what is? I
will not sit down and count the examples. There's no
(25:04):
such thing as trying to keep a balance of doing
the least harm possible. The questions should be who commits
a crime and whose crime is greater.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
This is the exact sentiment Christina kept reminding me about
that from the late nineteen sixties era of the junta
through today. For many, like Vasilis, the Greek state doesn't
play fair. The effects of the twenty ten banking crisis
that some of us is talking about still play greace
to this day. It led to an extreme austerity plan
(25:42):
and a massive loss of income. The whole thing rose
to a scale of a humanitarian crisis, and of course
it's the common people who suffered. In his book, Vasilis
likens it to a relentless war of haves and have nots.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
On one hand, lords who had reaped the gains of
a democratic fiction to solidify their authority, usurping this country's wealth.
On the other hand, young man who refused to accept
misery as a way of life and refused to tolerate
authorities but pressing on their necks. When the unjust pistoizes
(26:20):
in front of you, you must take up arms.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Chapter four, Escaping Columbaca, You mustamata distrapeza or he The
Columbaca heist, the one I told you about in the
very first episode where they hit the National bank that
(26:58):
was June nineteen ninety two and opened the safe. I
don't have the key. Who has the key?
Speaker 9 (27:05):
The manager?
Speaker 1 (27:07):
The brothers filled up a few canvas bags with cash,
and then when time's up, they hit it. The police
tried stopping the getaway by emptying their guns, but the
trio just laughed it off. The robbery went off without
a hitch, and now they were crammed inside a small
stolen car, speeding away from the scene of the crime.
Some of us told us the rest.
Speaker 9 (27:32):
We took the road north, reached where the other getaway
car was changed.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Car change close. But after they got back on the road,
Nico sees this flash of red and blue lights.
Speaker 9 (27:50):
We crossed two police caps. That old is windy and
you don't have good visibility behind you. For a moment,
Nichols thought that the police had stopped.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
The sight of the police cruisers spooks them. What if
the police are blocking the road ahead? Nkos calls an
audible as Vasilis once put it. Nicos knew all the
country's freeways, roads, dirt roads and paths like Google Earth
was planted in his mind before it was even invented.
So he cuts the wheel and veers onto a winding
(28:21):
mountain road.
Speaker 9 (28:25):
We took the road, then went up the Pindush to
the mountain range. We turned on their radio. Within five
minutes of the robbery, they had announced it on the
radio from Tricala.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Nkos floors it. The tires kick up dust as the
car drives higher. As they turn the road reveals an
immaculate stone building surrounded by gardens.
Speaker 9 (28:54):
Oho We passed in front of the to Ma Monastery.
The monastery was on one side of the dirt road.
There was a nun outside sar car.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Two nuns tending to their flower beds stare at the
three men stuffed inside a tiny sedan tearing up the mountain.
Nikos respectfully presses the brake for a second. He doesn't
want to disturb the nuns with a cloud of dust.
But as he accelerates up the slope, the road fades,
Rocks scrate the undercarriage, and the car is swallowed by
(29:31):
a dark chestnut forest.
Speaker 9 (29:35):
That attended. So we left the car and covered it
with some branches. We divided the weapons and continued on foot.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's August, the sun is beating down and the men
have no food, no water, But they also have no choice.
They have to hide in the mountains. Before they part ways,
they split the loop. As they begin to count the spoils.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Malaca, vasiline, catnico, spend, cat meria, rachmes.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
They're speechless. It's one hundred and twenty five million drafmas,
the equivalent of about one point four million US dollars.
They've just pulled off the biggest bank robbery in Greek history.
But instead of being able to relax, they're trapped in
those mountains, climbing higher and higher. For the brothers, there's
(30:31):
a certain romance to it, feasting at cherry orchards, spending
nights in caves, but there's little to eat, and they're famished.
At one point, almost like a fever dream, Vasilis finds
himself staring into the eyes of a doe just to
skip away from his cave on a nearby rock, and
though he's armed, he won't point a gun at the creature.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
With our pursuers on our tail, we almost forgot we
were in an ecosytem of unparalleled beauty. The little those
eyes seemed stuck on us. How can you point the
gun against this living miracle of nature? We preferred to starve.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
They had no qualms about robbing a bank, but they
couldn't take an innocent deer's life. After days of not eating,
the men were struggling. The roads were blocked, and they
knew they couldn't stay up there for long. So Nicos
and Vasili's decided to try something bold. They descended the
mountain and made their way to a funk, and Nicos
(31:35):
called the cops like they called the cops on themselves.
He just straight up called up Petricola Police and asked
to talk to the chief. Vasilis gives us the dialogue.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Tell him Paleo Costas's asking for him. Nicos, Palo Costas, Yes,
who is it, mister grab it all? I called to
tell you to call off your people, get your people
off the mountain. You fuck them over enough already Bye.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And according to Vasili's deploy works, the cops abandoned the roadblocks,
and two weeks later the trio climbs back into the
mountains to get their stashed loop. Shortly after, the three
bandits will high tail it out of the country, going
(32:29):
their separate ways. But true freedom always requires more money,
real money, and Vasilis Palio Costas was about to make
the rich pay next time. On The Good Thief.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
The idea of kidnapping a businessman for ransom kept drifting
through my mind.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
I lived in a car for four days. They treated
me humanely.
Speaker 10 (32:55):
Above all, she knows how to hide. He may have
changed his face. His fingerpaints. You lads are in luck.
You've got Palo Costas.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
The Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. I'm Miles Gray. Our executive producers are Mangesh,
Hettika dur Costas, Linos Oz Wallashan, and Kate Osborne. From
iHeart executive producers are Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etoor. Our
partners at The Greek Podcast Project. Our executive producer Daphne Carnesis,
(33:54):
field producers Christina Bilioni and George Miatis, and sound designer
Nico Sclebnis, who edited and mixed the episode and provided
the English voice of Costa Samaras. Mary Philip Sandy is
our supervising producer. Shane McKeon is our producer. The show
is written in research by Lucas Riley, fact checking by
(34:14):
Donia Suleman, sound design and final mix by Pran Bandy.
This episode featured the voice of Yorgos Karamijos. Our theme
song is by Imam Baldy with additional music by Body. Finally,
thanks to Will Pearson Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman and John
Mary napolis
Okay, So imagine you are a member of a worker
owned publishing collective. You and your comrades make a tidy
income split equally. Your motto is books for a better world.
Some of your publications include titles like Solidarity from the
Underground History and Class Consciousness, Let's Rethink Anarchy, and Damn
(00:39):
You Cinderella, a feminist rereading. Then one day in twenty eighteen,
a lawyer walks into your bookshop in Athens. Either key
ahto chefde.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
This lawyer, it's best we don't say what her name is.
She found an envelope outside her office door or here
in Athens.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
In the envelope was a manusctcript enclosed with a no.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
This book is coming from a man who doesn't exist.
No one knows where he is.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
That man who doesn't exist Vasili's Palio Costas, and he'd
signed it in a very specific Waylocostas.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Had left a palm print authorizing her to take the
necessary actions to publish it.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
So the lawyer had come to them and said, read it,
see if you want to publish it.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Personally, I was impressed. I was impressed that the book
was extremely well written. But somehow the authenticity of the
text had to be checked.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
But once Costas Legakis and his colleagues at the Collective
publishing house started reviewing.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
The details, the text is so obviously genuine. No other
person could know so many details. It's just impossible.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Ohtably, in the book Bylocostas talks about the imprisonments, about
the escapes, about everything he's done in his life, and
he also learned the ideology of Palokostas, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
His morals of the so called ethical robbery.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
The Greek edition has sold tens of thousands of copies,
but there are only a couple hundred in English, and
we got our hands on one of them. This dude
definitely thought he was being funny calling it a normal life,
because the book is as over the top as you
think it is. And while of course you can't believe
everything Vasilius wrote, he takes us behind the scenes of
(02:48):
every job and wild escape he pulled off, interspersed with
all these fever dream sequences and tangents about society and
his life philosophy. He even wrote dialogue like he was
screenwriting his own biopick. So of course we got an
actor to recreate all of it.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
At that moment, a guard appeared from the corner of
the wall, running towards me, machine gun in hand, shouting Freeze, Freeze.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I Miles Gray from iHeartMedia and Kaleidoscope. This is the
Good Thief. Chapter one, Gamble on Yourself. Where we last
left our anti hero. It was early nineteen ninety one
(03:49):
and Vasili's Paliocostas was still new to crime. He'd gotten
caught trying to break his big brother Nicos out of prison,
but he went down for a lot more than that.
The cops charged our robin hood with a string of
robberies that he swore up and down that he had
nothing to do with. As he languished in a jail
cell awaiting trial, he heard that the police's case against
(04:10):
him was weak. There was a good chance that he'd
be let out. But for Vasili's it was a matter
of morality. As he puts it in his memoir, he
simply could not and would not participate in what he
called a devious process. As far as he was concerned,
the justice system was stacked against him.
Speaker 5 (04:31):
I had the sacred duty to follow my personal instinct
concerning my own freedom, which was the cornerstone of my
moral and conscientious existence. I wished to remain free, and
I had no intention of negotiating or handing my rights
to anyone without a fight.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
And so he starts planning his escape, which at first
is just a matter of sitting back and observing the
rhythm of prison life, collecting information on anything that could
prove useful, watching how the guards move and change shifts
at their posts. There's a holiday coming up, and he
knows the guards will be short staffed and distracted, so
he works quickly to come up with a plant. In
(05:12):
the bee wing of the prison, he's got a guy,
a fellow inmate, a long term who is at the
end of his sentence. He goes to see the guy
for a coffee and a chat in his cell, and
while they're sitting there, Vasilis notices the man has a
bucket stashed under his bed. He asked the old timer
where he got it. He tells Vasilis he can get
(05:32):
him one, to which Vasili says, I don't need.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
The bucket, just it's handling. He said, whether are you
up to kid? Looking at me, Chicul, be careful. The
prison is full of snitches.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
I know.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
That's why I'm talking to you.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
He tells the old timer he's going to need at
least five of those buckets and some bandages. Then he
approaches a sell ma asks him if he can keep
a secret, and as the guy a razor tells him
to start cutting up bed sheets as quietly as possible
so as not to wake their other sellies. Vasilis also
starts keeping track of supplies he may need in the
(06:11):
event that he pulls this off, because in all likelihood
he won't be unscathed. Before long, he gets his hands
on a stash of gauze from the prison pharmacy. On
the holiday, Vasilis looks for a quiet place to assemble
his kit. He hides everything in one of his buckets
and slips into a shower stall. There, he bends the
(06:33):
metal hooks into V shapes, curling the ends to make
double hooks. Then with the bed sheet, he lashes them together.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
I tied three sheet strips around the showerhead pipe and
wove a nice rope. Then I tied the strings together,
placing the hook at their end. I bandoned my ankles,
then my knees, then my elbows, and finally my wrists.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Then he slips a tracksuit over all that padding.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
The tracksuit was out of season, but there was no
better way to cover all those bandages.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Ready as he'll ever be, Vasili stuffs the diy grappling
hook into the bucket and heads out to the prison yard,
where there's an impromptu soccer game underway, real casual like.
He flips over the bucket and cops a squat, pretending
to just take a load off and watch the action.
He notices the old timer and his cellmates sharing a cigarette.
(07:26):
He thinks to himself, they've got front row seats to
watch the escape act. The plan is to make a
move when the bell rings to call the inmates back inside.
Vasili's eyes the guards as he predicted, one of the
guard posts is empty. The bell rings and there are
(07:46):
three dudes standing in his way, but he can't wait.
He grabs his kit and walks straight at them, screaming.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Stand outside, I'm breaking up.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
That's literally what it says in the book. Anyway, the
dudes get out of his way. He makes it to
the yard's outer wall and lassos his makeshift grappling hook
into the air.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
The rope that.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Had gotten wet in the shower and It's why it
prevented the hook from reaching as high.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
As I wanted.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
It Latched onto the concertina razor.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Wire, Vasilis knows he has a split second to make
a decision. It's not ideal that rope isn't where it
should be, but he just goes for it. Hoists himself up,
and as he nears the top of the wall, he
has to grab hold of the barbed wire. Razors gouge
his palms. Blood pours out, but there's no time to
(08:38):
second guess this escape. He squeezes his hands around the wire.
The blades dig into his palms as his hands take
the brunt of his body weight. Somehow, he pulls himself
up and swings his legs over.
Speaker 5 (08:52):
Hi, where are you going, screamed the guard.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
You'll see, I answered, before jumping off the edge, and then.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
He free falls fifteen feet onto the concrete below, Bloodied
but alive. He's made it over the wall, but as
he looks back, he realizes he's square into the sights
of the guard's machine gun. But Vasilis doesn't think. He
just turns tail and starts sprinting. Somehow, someway, the guy
(09:24):
doesn't get shot as sirens Blair Vasilis just trots his
way into the sunset. Literally. He makes it to a
quiet fishing cove on the crystal clear water of the
Aegean Sea, where a few people are enjoying an evening swim.
He just plays it off like he's merely jogging, and
(09:45):
then when no one's looking, he takes cover in some
overgrown brush and hides out till dark.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
I found myself sitting on a rock high above the city,
fishing boats and sailboats creas crossing the water, moving like fireflies.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Just a few hours ago, Vasili's Polyocostas was in prison.
It had been the twenty five year old's first time
behind bars, trapped in a hot, concrete wasteland. But now
he inhales the salty air. As he washes the dried
rivulets of blood off his arms, he stares up at
the stars, and for the very first time, he understands
(10:24):
just how fragile freedom can be.
Speaker 5 (10:27):
Where would I be if I hadn't taken a risk
in the small chamber that reeked of death For a fugitive.
Freedom is not an abstract concept. Freedom requires courage.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
In that moment, as he watches the boats pass and
revels in the quiet, Vasilis promises himself he won't go
back to prison. He will never go back. According to Vasilis,
he had entered prison as a quote law abiding citizen.
He had never robbed a bank, or broken down a
(11:00):
or stolen a single scent. But now he was a fugitive,
and from this day forward he'd spend the rest of
his life on the run. Chapter two, The Romantic Rebel.
(11:30):
Reading Vasilis's book, you start to get a sense of
how all the pieces of the Paliocosta's puzzle worked together.
From his rough upbringing in the mountains, the reverence he
had for the clefts, his identity as a Greek ethnic
minority himself. But what his writing really lays out is
just how carefully he draws his own lines between right
(11:50):
and wrong.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
Life taught me to walk a tight rope concerning my
own double nature, being at the same time an attacker
aiming to deci mantle the system and a romantic rebel
who refuses to dismantle his own character in a battle
between means and ends, who justifies whom.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
It's easy to see how Vasilis grew up in this
perfect cocktail for being radicalized. He grew up in extreme isolation,
high poverty, a lack of services, and in official spheres.
He witnessed a culture of corruption. So it makes sense
that one of the things you hear in Vasilis's stories
is that he is constantly weighing out, both for us
(12:35):
and for himself, who are the real criminals in a
corrupt society. But Vasilis is also very much a product
of his particular generation. When we were making this series,
our producers in Greece kept taking us back back to
the grease of Vasilis's childhood. Here's Christina, it's the circumstances.
Speaker 6 (12:57):
Right. In nineteen sixty seven, one year after the Citlis
was born, there was a coup where Greek colonels overthrew
the government.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
The military regime in Greece has largely been the creation
of one man. This man, Prime Minister George Papadopoulos.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
The Hunter, which was a group of ultranationalist colonels drive
their tanks onto the streets of Athens and point them
at the Royal Palace and government buildings, taking control essentially
of the country. These colonels enforced a far right, hypernationalist,
(13:34):
hyper religious dictatorship. Martial law is implemented in free speech disappears.
Suddenly it's illegal to listen to the Beatles and to
reed told story. Women are barred from wearing mini skirts,
men are banned from growing beards or long hair. Labor
unions become illegal, church attendance becomes mandatory, and thousands of
(13:58):
dissidents are beaten and imprisoned and tortured and exile to
islands in the Aegy and by the end of the
Hunter's rule, student protests and with dozens being killed by
the army and the police. This Hunter ruled for the
first eight years of Vasilis's life, but despite all the repression,
the colonels had a lot of support where he was
(14:19):
growing up. Their appeals to old fashioned values warned people's admiration,
and the new rulers also paid outsized attention to rural regions,
canceling all loans held by farmers, increasing agricultural pensions, and
throwing money at small rural schools. But despite this local
atmosphere of support, a young Vasilis came to hate the regime,
(14:42):
which collapsed in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 7 (14:46):
The period of the Hunter of the seven Years was
really terrible. It was very miserable for a lot of Greeks,
and it was a police state.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
That's Ambassador Tom Miller. He served as the US ambassador
to Greece in the Earth two thousands and has spent
decades working there and in the Balkans. He told us
that even though many years have passed, collective trauma from
the junta still lingers.
Speaker 7 (15:10):
The memory is still fresh in people's mind. It passes
down from generation to generation. It's kind of a symbol
of the perception of many Greeks that they have of
fighting against all odds, fighting against the oppressure.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
The junta created what Miller describes as a reflexive antipathy
toward this state, and in many parts of Greece that
antipathy stoked a red hot distrust of the police, who
had spent years propping up the junta and doing its bidding.
In Vasilis's memoir, he often compares the police to the junta.
(15:49):
In his opinion, the junta never left. They just traded
in their uniforms for police badges and business suits.
Speaker 8 (15:56):
As he writes, the transitional government never other to stamp
out the masked fascism on the contrary seizing power, they
pinned up a bright sign that said democracy and everything
else remained the same. Or, to put it another way, therefore,
democracy is a bankrupt sham, reheated shit on a luxurious
(16:21):
porcelain plate.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
Scandals, political favors, bribes, those were only a few of
their great weaknesses. Affluent families knew how to give favors,
and in return, politicians wrote laws to protect them.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Now, to be clear, the vast majority of Greeks who
grew up poor and oppressed by the junta did not
become bank robbers. Vasilis chose his life of crime. But
here's the secret. According to sociologists, robin hood figures or
social bandits always rise to fame during periods of deep inequality,
(16:58):
when corruption feels rampant, when authority figures are absent or abusive.
Time and again history has shown that these conditions will
always compel somebody to stand up and resist. The Great
Depression made Bonnie and Clyde, the Mexican Revolution made Pancho Villa,
(17:19):
and all these things happening in Greece made vasili s
Palio Costas. Chapter three, Getting the Band back together, free
(17:50):
but very much a wanted man Vasili Spalio Costas was
on the run, still in his bloody tracksuit. There was
nothing to do but start walking. He came upon a
house where he helped himself to a pair of Bermuda
shorts and a T shirt that were drying on the clothesline,
just hanging there, as he wrote, as if they were
waiting for me, and he kept it moving, breaking into
(18:14):
a farmhouse the next day, in typical Robin Hood fashion,
he felt conflicted.
Speaker 5 (18:19):
I broke into a farmhouse whose residents were away. I
found some money. It was the first, and hopefully the last,
time I entered someone's home uninvited out of necessity. I
dreaded the feeling because I had always considered homes sacred places,
a kind of personal asylum. That's why I wrote a
(18:41):
short letter to its owners, explaining that I really needed
the money I took from them, and begging them to empathize.
If I had entered the villa, I wouldn't have done that.
But a humble shelter and a guarded palace are two
different things.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
He used the money for a ticket on the first
train headed for Athens, where his old pal, the artist
Costa Samaras, happened to be turned out his mentor was
in prison, and he too was planning to make a
break for it. But the artist's plan was a little
more involved than jumping a fence. Samaras was scheduled to
(19:22):
appear in court back in his hometown of Tricola, two
hundred miles north of Athens. The authorities plan to transport
him in a police van equipped with a jail cell
or what he called a cage in the back. He
told us all about it when we interviewed him.
Speaker 9 (19:39):
I learned that the large cages that were used on
the route from Athens to Corfu had floors of plastic,
and under the plastic surface there was plywood.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Plastic and plywood were all that separated him from freedom.
So Samaras hatched a plan. The transport trip to Tricola
included a multi day layout in a nearby port city,
where he'd be held at a local prison.
Speaker 9 (20:06):
In the old prison, there was a carpentry workshop on
the ground floor where some prisoners walk making woodcarvings and SATs.
From some acquaintances, I got a couple of tools so
show blade and its seasily.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
While on the road, Samaras was going to saw his
way to freedom.
Speaker 9 (20:28):
When we started driving, I took cut the tools. I
started to carve the book.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Within three hours, Samaras cut out a hole in the
bottom of his cage.
Speaker 9 (20:39):
When I was done with it, you could see straight
out onto the road below.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
But he wasn't about to jump out of a moving vehicle,
so he waited for the police to park.
Speaker 9 (20:50):
I got down from mander, crawled a little, and went
out on the road. I walked normally, as if nothing
was happenings.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Forming nobody noticed a thing.
Speaker 9 (21:05):
Vasilis had escaped from Halkida prison a month before by
jumping the wall, so he and I agreed that he
would be waiting for me.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Back together, fugitives from the law ready for their next
big act. It was the fall of nineteen ninety one. Vasilis, Samaras,
and Nkos had all broken out of prison, and they
were all hungry for money. That's how they started robbing banks,
first in Ioannina and then well everywhere, just traveling from
(21:46):
town to town, planning and executing bank robberies. They were
making good money, but they weren't getting rich. The trio
stole a couple thousand dollars here, another thousand there. It
was never another to live off of, and certainly not
enough to just give away, that's for sure. So after
a spree of minor heists, Vasilis and his merry men
(22:09):
set their sights on something bigger on Columbaca. If I'm not.
Speaker 9 (22:15):
We decided to do something as big as we could.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Columbaca is an otherworldly place a short drive from Tricola.
The town is hugged by towering sandstone pinnacles. On the
cliff's edge are Orthodox monasteries. The robbers planned to sin
in their shadows. Vasilis didn't feel bad about it. He
figured any money he stole would return to the bank
(22:40):
once he and his pals started spending it.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
No matter how many bangs you robbed, eventually the money
will go right back to the banks. They're the only
ones that never lose.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
They were just borrowing the money. It's the perfect victimless crime.
Vasilis had adopted a Gandhi quote to justify his actions.
Poverty is the worst form of violence, so maybe redistributing
this money was actually a solve for a broken society. Plus,
the men were always careful. They planned each heist precisely
(23:14):
to avoid hurting anyone. They carried automatic weapons. Sure, but
as Samaras told us, the whole point was to scare
people into giving them the cash.
Speaker 9 (23:26):
It's all about psychology. If you go into a bank
to do something illegal, you have to look convincing and
there will really be a reaction unless someone wants to
play the hero. We had prepared a lot in advance
to avoid any violence.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
So you believe that there were no casualties victims in
this sense.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Look, I don't have a ton of sympathy for bank CEOs,
But at the end of the day, is there really
such a thing as a victimless crime? It might not
be for the dude holding the gun to say. When
we pressed some of us on this, he conceded some ground,
but only a little.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Ala.
Speaker 9 (24:12):
Someone is a victim, but it's the least share that
could be done.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
The way he sees it, they were trying to do
the least harm they could. But sometimes a little suffering
is just the cost of doing business. If costas some
of us feels bad about any of this, well, he
didn't show it. When we asked him, can there be
a crime without a victim? He started to wax philosophical
(24:40):
and deflect, blame.
Speaker 9 (24:43):
Every ali, all of the steps into something bigger. In
twenty ten, there was a domino effect in the banking
system where the economy is collapsed because the banks were
playing games at the expense of the people. If this
is not a crime against the men, what is? I
will not sit down and count the examples. There's no
(25:04):
such thing as trying to keep a balance of doing
the least harm possible. The questions should be who commits
a crime and whose crime is greater.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
This is the exact sentiment Christina kept reminding me about
that from the late nineteen sixties era of the junta
through today. For many, like Vasilis, the Greek state doesn't
play fair. The effects of the twenty ten banking crisis
that some of us is talking about still play greace
to this day. It led to an extreme austerity plan
(25:42):
and a massive loss of income. The whole thing rose
to a scale of a humanitarian crisis, and of course
it's the common people who suffered. In his book, Vasilis
likens it to a relentless war of haves and have nots.
Speaker 5 (25:58):
On one hand, lords who had reaped the gains of
a democratic fiction to solidify their authority, usurping this country's wealth.
On the other hand, young man who refused to accept
misery as a way of life and refused to tolerate
authorities but pressing on their necks. When the unjust pistoizes
(26:20):
in front of you, you must take up arms.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Chapter four, Escaping Columbaca, You mustamata distrapeza or he The
Columbaca heist, the one I told you about in the
very first episode where they hit the National bank that
(26:58):
was June nineteen ninety two and opened the safe. I
don't have the key. Who has the key?
Speaker 9 (27:05):
The manager?
Speaker 1 (27:07):
The brothers filled up a few canvas bags with cash,
and then when time's up, they hit it. The police
tried stopping the getaway by emptying their guns, but the
trio just laughed it off. The robbery went off without
a hitch, and now they were crammed inside a small
stolen car, speeding away from the scene of the crime.
Some of us told us the rest.
Speaker 9 (27:32):
We took the road north, reached where the other getaway
car was changed.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Car change close. But after they got back on the road,
Nico sees this flash of red and blue lights.
Speaker 9 (27:50):
We crossed two police caps. That old is windy and
you don't have good visibility behind you. For a moment,
Nichols thought that the police had stopped.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
The sight of the police cruisers spooks them. What if
the police are blocking the road ahead? Nkos calls an
audible as Vasilis once put it. Nicos knew all the
country's freeways, roads, dirt roads and paths like Google Earth
was planted in his mind before it was even invented.
So he cuts the wheel and veers onto a winding
(28:21):
mountain road.
Speaker 9 (28:25):
We took the road, then went up the Pindush to
the mountain range. We turned on their radio. Within five
minutes of the robbery, they had announced it on the
radio from Tricala.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Nkos floors it. The tires kick up dust as the
car drives higher. As they turn the road reveals an
immaculate stone building surrounded by gardens.
Speaker 9 (28:54):
Oho We passed in front of the to Ma Monastery.
The monastery was on one side of the dirt road.
There was a nun outside sar car.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Two nuns tending to their flower beds stare at the
three men stuffed inside a tiny sedan tearing up the mountain.
Nikos respectfully presses the brake for a second. He doesn't
want to disturb the nuns with a cloud of dust.
But as he accelerates up the slope, the road fades,
Rocks scrate the undercarriage, and the car is swallowed by
(29:31):
a dark chestnut forest.
Speaker 9 (29:35):
That attended. So we left the car and covered it
with some branches. We divided the weapons and continued on foot.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's August, the sun is beating down and the men
have no food, no water, But they also have no choice.
They have to hide in the mountains. Before they part ways,
they split the loop. As they begin to count the spoils.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
Malaca, vasiline, catnico, spend, cat meria, rachmes.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
They're speechless. It's one hundred and twenty five million drafmas,
the equivalent of about one point four million US dollars.
They've just pulled off the biggest bank robbery in Greek history.
But instead of being able to relax, they're trapped in
those mountains, climbing higher and higher. For the brothers, there's
(30:31):
a certain romance to it, feasting at cherry orchards, spending
nights in caves, but there's little to eat, and they're famished.
At one point, almost like a fever dream, Vasilis finds
himself staring into the eyes of a doe just to
skip away from his cave on a nearby rock, and
though he's armed, he won't point a gun at the creature.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
With our pursuers on our tail, we almost forgot we
were in an ecosytem of unparalleled beauty. The little those
eyes seemed stuck on us. How can you point the
gun against this living miracle of nature? We preferred to starve.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
They had no qualms about robbing a bank, but they
couldn't take an innocent deer's life. After days of not eating,
the men were struggling. The roads were blocked, and they
knew they couldn't stay up there for long. So Nicos
and Vasili's decided to try something bold. They descended the
mountain and made their way to a funk, and Nicos
(31:35):
called the cops like they called the cops on themselves.
He just straight up called up Petricola Police and asked
to talk to the chief. Vasilis gives us the dialogue.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
Tell him Paleo Costas's asking for him. Nicos, Palo Costas, Yes,
who is it, mister grab it all? I called to
tell you to call off your people, get your people
off the mountain. You fuck them over enough already Bye.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And according to Vasili's deploy works, the cops abandoned the roadblocks,
and two weeks later the trio climbs back into the
mountains to get their stashed loop. Shortly after, the three
bandits will high tail it out of the country, going
(32:29):
their separate ways. But true freedom always requires more money,
real money, and Vasilis Palio Costas was about to make
the rich pay next time. On The Good Thief.
Speaker 5 (32:47):
The idea of kidnapping a businessman for ransom kept drifting
through my mind.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
I lived in a car for four days. They treated
me humanely.
Speaker 10 (32:55):
Above all, she knows how to hide. He may have
changed his face. His fingerpaints. You lads are in luck.
You've got Palo Costas.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
The Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. I'm Miles Gray. Our executive producers are Mangesh,
Hettika dur Costas, Linos Oz Wallashan, and Kate Osborne. From
iHeart executive producers are Katrina Norvel and Nikki Etoor. Our
partners at The Greek Podcast Project. Our executive producer Daphne Carnesis,
(33:54):
field producers Christina Bilioni and George Miatis, and sound designer
Nico Sclebnis, who edited and mixed the episode and provided
the English voice of Costa Samaras. Mary Philip Sandy is
our supervising producer. Shane McKeon is our producer. The show
is written in research by Lucas Riley, fact checking by
(34:14):
Donia Suleman, sound design and final mix by Pran Bandy.
This episode featured the voice of Yorgos Karamijos. Our theme
song is by Imam Baldy with additional music by Body. Finally,
thanks to Will Pearson Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman and John
Mary napolis
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