July 19, 2023 • 38 mins
Every bank robber has to start somewhere. We track down the man who taught Vassilis the art of crime.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Look, if I could just call up the most wanted
man in Greece, I wouldn't be sitting here hosting a podcast.
I mean, no shade the podcast, but like I would
have at least two lambeaus and be eating shrimp all day.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Nobody, and I mean nobody has seen Vasili's Paliocosta since
two thousand and nine, when he pulled off that brazen
helicopter escape from a high security prison near Athens. In
his absence, though, a legend has grown, spreading from backwoods
towns to urban centers and even onto some strange corners
of the Internet. Like even today, people still tell stories
(00:48):
about his generosity, how he robbed banks and billionaires, sharing
the wealth with ordinary Greeks. It occurred to us that
if we're going to get some real traction with our reporting,
we're gonna have to get inside this guy's head. CSI
him a bit piece together, a psychological profile of the
man at large.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
When you're working on a story and you're trying to
understand why or how something happened, sometimes you have to
go to the person's society considers to be the bad guy.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That's investigative journalist to durisrodro Janos, who he spoke with
in the last episode. So Duris has covered crime in
Greece for years, and he told us that criminals aren't born,
they're created.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Anyone can cross the line criminals on to category of
bad people who were born bad and die bad. It's
something that's much more dynamic. It can happen to anyone.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
As our team in Athens began digging into Vasilis's past,
trying to trace his path from a rural mountain villager
to Interpol's most Wanted man, we came to understand that
it wasn't just that something happened to him. Someone had
happened to him.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
In the case of Costas Samaras, we have a man who,
in the eyes of the law, is a bad person.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
He's a criminal. We kept hearing that name, Costas Samaras
back in the late eighties. Samaras became a sort of
mentor to our Robin hood. He taught Vasili's how to
be a criminal, how to pick locks in hot wire cars,
but more importantly, he also taught him what kind of
(02:32):
criminal he should be. We heard this directly from people
who knew the guy.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Then that.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Samaras was what you would call an intellectual outlaw.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
He had a point of view online. He wasn't a thug.
He didn't abuse anyone, he didn't kill anyone. He didn't
have blood on his hands.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
That's our producer Christina translating for Costas. Argyrosis Kostas is
a journalist who grew up in Samaras's hometown of Tricola.
He knew the guy back in the day and remembers
hanging out with him at local clubs and stuff. He
told us these guys won people over with their principles
of nonviolence and some good old fashioned wealth redistribution.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Heyan mithistom.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
They helped local people where they could with other people's money,
of course, which was the product of robberies. And they
were charming. That's why we're interested in them now. There
was a mystery and romance about them.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That cloak of mystery and romance has become Vasilis's best disguise.
Costa Samaras gave him that to get closer to Vasilis,
we needed to get closer to Samaras. But Samaras has
been in and out of jail himself. The people who
used to know him. Well, they're not so close anymore.
(03:50):
So Daphne and our team in Athens started following Leeds
in three Colo.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
One phone number led to another, then another and another.
But then the days went by and we just really
weren't sure it would happen.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Then, just as the team's getting desperate, Daphne's phone lights up.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Shit, it's Samaras.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
Daphne.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
A man with a thin voice is on the other line.
It's Costas Samaras, and he wants to talk from Kaleidoscope
and iHeart podcasts. I'm Miles Gray. This is the Good
Thief Chapter one, the mentor.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So at first, Samaras was quite evasive on our calls.
He wouldn't really say much. But when we told him
that we were planning on driving up to three gall
in a few days, he did seem willing to plan
a meetup. So he asked us a our plans and
where to meet, which I thought was really encouraging. But
then every time we tried to lock down a time
(05:06):
for an interview, he ended up bailing.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But we had someone US's attention, and before long he
turns the tables. Now, yes us, Now he's calling us daily,
dangling the interview in front of us, paying with us,
and then one day he.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
Asked us something strange. He asked us if we'd be
willing to take his granddaughter with us up from Athens
so that he could see her. It sort of goes
without saying, but when I got a call from one
of Greece's most famous criminal masterminds, I didn't really know
what to expect, but I definitely didn't imagine I'd be
offering my services as a chauffeur. That kind of made
me confident that he was starting to warm up to
(05:50):
us or trust us in some way. We didn't end
up taking her with us in the end, but we
did offer the interview.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Dance continues for a and then in April of twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
I guess I have served in twelve or thirteen different
prisons in Greece.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Some of us sits down with us. Daphne and the
team meet him at an office where he works at
as an office administrator part of a prison rehab program.
It's after business hours and they're alone.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
He's sixty three, with a kind face, small glasses, snowy
white hair, and a beard. He certainly didn't strike as
as a career criminal who spent twenty one years in prison.
When the interview itself started, though, and we actually hit record.
Each time we asked him a question, his eyes started
darting around as if he was sizing us up, trying
(06:46):
to gauge our motives before giving us an answer. I thought, Okay,
this is going to be a short interview.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Daphne did not want this to slip away, so she
keeps asking questions.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
And you change lots of schools, different cities. Did you
play in any band?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Trying to warm him up.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
So what was the first robbery? And did you have
weapons with you?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
And then after this period of stonewalling us and trying
to decipher our motives, his mood just shifts.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
So Manas cracked open a bottle of fruit juice. He
doesn't drink or smoke. It's one of his principles, he says.
And then he leaned forward, grabbed a sheet of paper
and began doodling, sketching random patterns and shapes as he
was speaking. And for the next forty five minutes he
didn't really look up from that paper. It felt like
he'd suddenly disappeared from the room, like his memories had
(07:38):
put him in some sort of trance, and that's when
he started telling us the story from nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Probably stay again.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
So the first roldbody was in me and Vasilis.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
The first time he and Vasilius Bolo Costas robbed a bank.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Chapter two, Puppy Luff. It all started in the autumn
of nineteen ninety one. With a string of petty robberies
under their belts, Vasilis and Samaras were cooling off in
the northwestern city of Ioannina, and that's when they decided
(08:23):
to try something bigger. The city is not far from
the border of Albania. It's a scenic place too. You
got four story apartments, narrow cobblestone lanes. Some of us
knew that bank robberies didn't happen much up north and
figured that a robbery in these parts would take people
by surprise. So the two wander around Iowanina searching for
(08:47):
a target, and as they're milling about downtown on one
of the city's busiest streets, that's when they lock eyes
on Embodi Qui bank.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Gage on the main street of just opposite the courthouses.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
The challenge made these guys laugh a small business district
with the courthouse and central police station of stones throw away.
It was like the city was daring them to try.
The town's geography made the challenge even tougher. In the
early nineties, troubles were boiling over in nearby Yugoslavia, so
the city was teeming with Greek military personnel. Most crooks,
(09:35):
they would have read the room, run the numbers, and
just moved on to the next town. But Vasilis and
Samaras red flags were their idea of fun. First step
was a costume change.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Do you having parties for less?
Speaker 6 (09:53):
We had taken camouflage military uniforms and jackets and dressed
like a captain and a lieutenant.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
The military presence, they figured, wasn't a deterrent, It was
actually an advantage. If you're wearing a T shirt and
holding a submachine gun, you look like a danger to society.
But if you're in a military town and holding that
same weapon with a uniform on, well, now it just
looks like Tuesday. Once they nailed the look, they stole
(10:21):
a handful of vehicles and scattered a few getaway cars
throughout the region, and.
Speaker 6 (10:26):
After killing we used a car we had stolen from Athens,
and the second car we had was a zip it,
just in case we needed to go to any mountains.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
This was one of some of US's early lessons to vasilis.
Always have multiple escape routes and multiple getaway cars.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Look, I was concerned about the details. I'm not like
these others who operate most spontaneously, with no methodology, no
foot I won't even leave a pin where it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
They checked out the twisty roads north and mapped their getaway.
But it wasn't just the two of them now. They'd
also picked up a straggler, a little puppy.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
Yeah, we had the puppy in the jip, which was
found in the city of Cerres.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Months earlier. The pair had found a stray black and
white Greek shepherd whining in the bushes. And you can't
claim to be bank robbers with a heart and then
just abandon a puppy, so the dog joined the crew. Naturally,
turns out the dog was a hell razor. It loved
to chew up the car seats and jump out the window.
(11:39):
So you know, Vassili's fell in love immediately. The pupp
was a rebel, a dog after his own heart. They
became inseparable. The morning of the heist, the men parked
their getaway car a half mile from the bank and
lock the dog inside. Now before you, even as trust
(12:00):
me wasn't hot and they would never put the dog
in harm's way, The dog is fine. Then they slip
into their phony military uniforms, grab their weapons, and wait
for the bank to open. At eight am, they swing
the door open. Vasilis has a shotgun and Samaras he's
(12:20):
got an uzzi, wandered like soldiers. The clock starts ticking.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Vasilis went in first. I followed.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So Vasilis points the shotgun at the bank teller and
throws him a bag. He gestures to the vault and
tells him to fill it Upas he's standing by the
entrance cradling his uzi, he watches as the teller stuffs
the equivalent of one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
into the bat.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
The saving she filled the back back until he didn't
fit any more money. It took just a half minute.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The teller gestures to Vasilis that he can't fit any
more money into the sack. Vasilis lets him know, don't worry.
We're not greedy. Then he grabs the bag and the
two men stroll onto the street like nothing happened. They listen,
no sirens, just a gentle pitter patter of rain. This
(13:28):
is Vasilis's first bank robbery, and it seems to have
gone off without a hitch.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
We got in the car and drive out of you.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
With then right before leaving the city and enter another neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
That's where we left the zip. We part next to it,
open the door, and just as.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Things feel like they're going great.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
The puppy jumps out and it starts running around.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I mean, this is not the time to cause chaos,
but the puppy is zooming up and down the street.
He wants to play. Vasilis tosses the loot into the
car and waves for the dog to get in, but
the puppy holds its ground. Vasilis walks toward the dog,
but the closer he gets, the more the dog runs.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
We called it. It did not come. It thought we
were playing again some of us.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
His stomach drops. He hadn't accounted for this. He and
Vasilis start begging the dog please please come with us.
Sirens are waiting sounds are echoing off those cobblestones. Vasilis
and some of us frantically gestured to the dog, chasing
after it in tandem, but the dog keeps prancing away.
(14:50):
The sirens are getting louder, and some of us starts
to panic.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Let's leave it, I said, we're wasting times here. We
have to leave.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Samaras swings open the door and steps into the getaway car,
but Vasilis hesitates. He looks at the dog, still wagging
its little tail. As the sirens grow closer. He gets in.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
The abums on the puppy, get into the drip and drive.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Driving out of Ioannina, Vasilis is completely consumed with guilt,
not because he just robbed a bank, his first ever,
but because he just lost his little sidekick. But maybe
there's even a lesson in here. Spend enough time with
Costa Samaras, and even a harmless little puppy will turn
(15:47):
into an escape artist. Chapter three portrait of the artist
as a young man. Reporters have called Costa Samaras the
(16:13):
Artist because of the elaborate heists he crafted, but according
to his old friends, he also came by the nickname
honestly in his twenties, he dabbled in Cubist painting, and
that was when he wasn't playing the drums and bands
around Tricola. And even when we met with him, he
was most comfortable when he was doodling on the page.
(16:33):
But his greatest masterpieces have always been the blueprints he
drew up for robberies and jail breaks. Sadas routinely used
his drawing skills to sketch plans for his heists. One
time he even sculpted his own gun, whittling it from
a piece of wood. Growing up, his family was always
(16:54):
on the move, going from one city to the next.
We've been told that in the absence of a stable
home life, art and literature in particular helped ground him,
offered him comfort. One book in particular spoke to him.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
I read it at the age of twelve, thirteen Papillion.
It felt so authentic to me. It's an autobiography of
an illegal Frenchman who is sentenced to life in prison
for murder, and he has the it for freedom. He's
looking to become free at all times. It affected me deeply,
(17:32):
this idea that you don't have to accept the faith
that the others impose on you.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Samaras was one of those kids who refused to take
no for an answer. He was smart, liked to gain
the system, and it wasn't long before he started applying
his creativity to petty crime.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
He prot the skinnesses.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
I started out stealing books and records, just trying my
hand at.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
But just shoving in lp under his coat. That wasn't
his style. Instead, the young someone us invented this contraption,
a small box that looked like a present with wrapping paper,
which had a secret compartment that he could slip stolen
records into.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Before long, my friends asked for the book so that
they could still records.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Two so I let them, and of course they got caught.
Speaker 6 (18:33):
Now what kind of feeling does that give the kids
starting out on this path. There's a satisfaction when you
can do something that others can't do easily.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
That is how it started.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Some of us fell in love with the thrill, that
delicious rush of adrenaline of stealing and getting away with it.
Committing crimes was fun.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
During the day. I could be painting.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
At night we could be playing music, and then I
could go and do a breaking.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But his skill is some of us was at creating
deceptive little inventions and planning petty robberies. Perhaps his greatest skill,
The thing he excelled most at was reading a room.
Somehow some of us honed an uncanny ability, almost a
sixth sense, to detect people who lived on the other
side of the law. One day in the late seventies,
(19:34):
some of us was at a pub in tri Colon
went across the room. He spotted another young man, a
guy with a strong Mountain accent, and immediately he felt
this kinship he.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
Was subconsciously, you recognize it from how a person moves around.
So I don't know if it's like that in other things,
like if an accountant when I recognize another accountant, or
an architect another architect, But he gave me this feeling.
(20:06):
I figured, this is someone who doesn't think much of
the low so I started talking to him.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
That man was Vasilis's big brother, Nicos Palio Costas. It
didn't take long for some of us to realize that
his instincts about Nicos were right, but their origin stories
were completely different. Where some of us committed crimes for
the thrill, Nkos was driven by circumstance. Chapter four in
(20:49):
the valley of the clefts. Nicos and his younger brother
Vasilis grew up miles from the city, under the peaks
of the Pindus Mountains, the spine of Greece. It's a
pastoral place, studded with ramshackle huts.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Imagine a village without a trace of outside culture. Big
tall mountains, an endless horizon between ravines, this wild beauty
that's indescribable.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
That Stelios Catagjorgos. Today he's a museum director in Tricola.
But like the Paliocostas boys, his family lived off the
land in the Pindus. He actually knew them growing up,
and as he tells it, living there is not easy.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
So the children become adults so young they don't have
things like toys, and as soon as a child is
strong enough, there's no way they'd be able to sit
at home while dad worked. They'd be put to work too.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Astelios put it, this sort of life hardens people, and
it wasn't just Stelios who took notice of how hard
the Paliocostas has had it. Nico Celeppis was a classmate
of the brothers. He remembers how Vasili's only had one
pair of clothes to where to school.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It was clear to Celets that the costas family didn't
have much money. Lastus always came to school in the
same clothes. Wore a pair of corduroy bell bottom jeans
and narrow at the top, and a light brown striped tea,
and his hair was down to his eyebrows. But the
detail that really sticks out was his shoes. There was
(22:26):
no one else from his village at the school, so
he walked, and most of the time his feet were
covered in mud. When it rained, he couldn't get the
moto off. Walked nearly four hours a day just so
he could attend school, and at a certain point it
just became too much. It's the circumstances, right, He probably thought,
(22:47):
going to school every day, what should I do?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
How can I continue?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
In other words, he was a poor rural kid without
many options.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Stelios puts it, these cads that grow up there. They
lived in the wilderness like animals, he said, when you
grow up on mountains like this, it makes you face inside.
The only time they got parented was at night. It'd
gather around with their parents around the fireplace, you know,
eat some bread, and then they'd hear these legends like
folk tales and songs.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Breathing in the nighttime air village children heard stories of
the Clefts, people who centuries ago had called these same
mountains home. The Clefts emerged in the sixteen hundreds after
the Turkish Ottoman Empire conquered mainland Greece. The Ottomans turned
Christian Greeks into second class citizens, so the Clefts fled
(23:43):
to the mountains, hoping isolation would provide them some independence
and safety. To preserve that independence, they had to protect it.
The Clefts were known to stock the surrounding highways and
rob unsuspecting travelers. They stole lambs and goats from herders
wandering their territory. Banditry became their calling card. You know
(24:06):
the word kleptomaniac, It comes from the Greek root cleft.
But they were more than just thieves. They were on
the front line of the fight for Greek independence. Today,
they are thought of as Greece's founding fathers, and their
stories are told to children with pride growing up. The
Paliocostas brothers heard these stories and romanticized them. The boys
(24:29):
were taken with the cleft way, this idea that banditry
could be used to help your people. There was one
story in particular that captured Vasilis Palocostas imagination. As a kid,
Vasilis attended a one room schoolhouse. When he was maybe
(24:51):
eight or nine, his teacher gave him a gift, a
leather bound book about Antonis Katzandonis, the story of one
of the most famous clefts dating back to the seventeen hundreds.
For Vasilis, there was a lot to like about Katzandonis.
They both grew up in the mountains, both were the
sons of shepherds, and they both had a strong sense
(25:13):
of fairness. But Katzandonis was falsely accused of stealing a
sheep and thrown in jail. When he got out, he
killed the man who had smeared his name, then joined
the clefts. Katzandonis embraced the life, robbing the Ottomans, rallying
clefts into an army, freeing Greek slaves along the way.
(25:34):
But one day Gotzandonis's luck ran dry because somebody snitched
under the shade of a plane tree. The Ottomans tied
his body to the ground, raised their sledgehammers and proceeded
to crush his bones. The story of Katsandonis left a
(26:03):
deep mark on young Vasilis. Years later, he'd reflect on
the teacher who gave him that book, as Vasilis once
wrote that teacher never had and never would again, give
a personal gift to one of his students. Was it
a random act? Insight who knows every story has a lesson,
(26:25):
And for Vasilis, the moral of Katsandonis's downfall was simple,
Never trust a rat Chapter five. Going pro. In the
(27:01):
nineteen seventies, the Palio Coosta's family moved out of the
mountains and closer to Tricola. They landed in a small
town on the run down edges of the city. Each day,
Nikos and Vasilis's dad would trek into the city for
his new job selling lottery tickets.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Dimitris Kutabasciakos is a film director who grew up in
the area, and during that time he started seeing the
brothers around town, hanging out with Costa Samaras and Dimitris
and his friends were in similar social circles. The Mitris
told us that there was a very famous pool hole
in trica La.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
The Lion. At the time, Samaras was a well known
person in the neighborhood, and the Palio Costas brothers carried
a mystique of their own.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Samaras had opened the first live music bar in Trica La,
and it was for young people and it was really
something unprecedented. The brothers used to come in and play billiards,
and according to the Mitris, they played really well, and
their name was apparently on everyone's lips.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
But your course, that's your course.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Everyone was talking about them, especially the older one, and
all the young kids were just very in all of them.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So when some of us spotted brother Nicos across the
bar and they hit it off, that reputation only grew
some of us in Nicos started as small. They were
stealing cars and broke into jewelry shops, and they developed
this moral code of crime pretty early. Like they didn't
think of themselves as hard nosed crooks, more like gentlemen burglars.
(28:34):
Through the eighties, Nicos Paliocostis would commit at least twenty
seven burglaries in that time. He began to hone a
virtuosic ability for spotting and escaping the police. That's how
He earned the nickname.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
The Ghost my Sugar Past after.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
One time we were notified that the car was speeding
down to Tricola.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
You might remember Vasili's e Ftmu from last episode. He's
the police officer who spent two years chasing the Paliocostas brothers.
Speaker 7 (29:05):
We were already driving up the mountain range, so we
picked a point to block it.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
We got ready for a collision.
Speaker 7 (29:14):
But twenty or thirty meters before the spot where we
planned to trap him, Nikos noticed us. He turned off
onto a dirt road and we lost him.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Ftmiu admits that Nikos was incredible behind the wheel. The
risks he took on the road just baffled the authorities.
His ability to escape was so legendary that years later
the police devised well more creative ways to try and
ambush him. To give you, his mother died.
Speaker 7 (29:43):
We went to the funeral disguised as priests in case
Nicos came.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
He went as priests.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yes, we had people in the church. They said he
was going to say goodbye to his.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Mother, and it didn't end up coming.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
He didn't show up, but persistence pays off. Around nineteen
eighty nine, Nicos caught a bad break and the police
arrested him. At the time, Vasilis was barely in his twenties.
Unlike Nicos, he wasn't living a life of crime yet,
as far as we know. He was busy drinking, hanging out,
playing pool. But when he visited his brother in prison,
(30:15):
he was immediately enlisted. The ghost had no intention of
staying behind bars, so he said to his brother, go
find Costas. Samaras.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
We had made that appointment in Nathans to meet to
see what we can do for his brother who was
in safe We went somewhere for coffee. He said, how
nice you thieves are with your cars. That takes the money. Yes,
I said, but that's one side. On the other side
this prison, you need to wait them and choose. I mean,
(30:51):
he said, if you are in, I say, let's go
for taming.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Samaras claims that before this moment, Vasilis was a law
abiding citizen, and while it's hard the fact check that statement,
what is true is that this was a turning point.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
Certainly, when Vasilis and I met, he had no particular
experience in these matters. He had heard some things from
his brother, She had learned a little from him, But
from then on she learned directly from me.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
So the lessons began. Vasilis and some of us rented
an apartment in Larissa and started planning to break Nicos out.
And that's where Vasilis was first exposed to the rules
that would dictate the rest of his criminal life.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
It is true that there was, let's say, a philosophy
in the first place, do not do more damage than necessary,
especially to human being.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
You can be violent with.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
Objects, that is, to break a door safe, but not
with people. With people, it's a game, like says she
kinds broke again.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
It turned out the prison was a fortress. They'd need
an elaborate plan to break Nico south, so some of
us drew one up. First. He and Vasilis would case
the prison, recording every detail about the prison guard's movements.
Then they'd steal a dump truck that they could use
to break down the outer prison wall. They'd be prepared
(32:26):
with plenty of firepower to scare off the guards when
they came running. Last, but not least, they'd need getaway cars,
multiple hideouts, change of clothes, the works.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
She was a quick learner and trusted the process. She
had the quick mind.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
But that escape it never materialized.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Something went drunk over there. It didn't work out.
Speaker 8 (32:51):
For you.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
To say something went wrong is an understatement. On the
day of the plan breakout, Vasilis was making his way
alone to a stolen getaway car that he'd packed with
guns and explosives and left in a village on the
outskirts of town. But he'd overlooked one crucial detail. A
Greek village is a tight knit place. People notice even
(33:14):
the smallest changes. So when locals spotted an unfamiliar car
parked on the side of the road, they got nosy,
and when they saw all the weapons stashed in the car,
the locals immediately took action. They deflated one of the
back tires, enlisted a couple cops, and laid a trap.
Sometime later, when Vasilis went to check the car, a
(33:38):
group of them were hiding in a dark cafe nearby
watching him. They clocked Vasilis as he approached the car,
and then watched as he detoured into the wood. Turned
out he had to peek, and that's when the villagers
ambushed him. They literally caught him with his pants down.
Later the police found it. All the cars, the guns,
(34:02):
and Ammo. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to realize that
Vassilis had been planning a prison break. Suddenly Vasilis, a
twenty somethingter with a clean record, was sitting in the
back of a police cruiser, hands cuffed, and it was
about to get worse. At the booking station, police decided
(34:22):
to charge Vasilis for dozens of petty robberies, the robberies
that his brother in Samaras had committed over the past
few years.
Speaker 6 (34:30):
Oh, Vasilis had no involvement, She hadn't been involved with
us yet, but they wanted to implicate him in all
of his crimes.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Vasilis was seeding the foiled prison escape, the stolen cars
and illegal weapons that he was happy to own, but
all these other crimes. This wasn't justice, of course. I
don't I know for sure what went through Vasilis's mind
(35:02):
back then, but I like to imagine he was thinking
about that leather bound book his teacher gave him about Katsandonis,
the man falsely accused of stealing sheep who joined the
Clefts after being wrongly imprisoned. Katsandonis would go on to
fight the Ottoman authorities and he's known for laying the
groundwork for Greek independence, a founding father who created the
(35:24):
vision of what the Greek nation could become. The stories
we tell ourselves about how our great societies came to be,
about the people who, against all odds, made it happen.
They're not unique to anyone culture. In the same way
we grip to our tales of founding fathers. These stories
hold together nations and they inspire individuals on their own paths,
(35:46):
like Vasilis Paliocostas, who, in this pivotal moment in his life,
sat in a police station as all the sins of
his brother became his to bear, and as he contemplated
how to fight back with this, gales of justice tilted
hard against him.
Speaker 6 (36:05):
From that moment, John Vasili's was forced to turn to
a life.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Of crime.
Speaker 8 (36:12):
That that carrier his famous by.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Next Time, I'm the good Thief.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
This book is coming from a man who doesn't exist.
No one knows where he is.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Stand outside, I'm breaking out.
Speaker 7 (36:47):
It's kind of a symbol of the perception of many
Greeks fighting against all odds, fighting against your pressure.
Speaker 6 (36:55):
You believe that there were no casualties, The questions and
Who's crime is Greater?
Speaker 1 (37:10):
The Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. I'm Miles Gray. Our executive producers are Mangesh Hettikadur, Costas,
Linos Oz Wallashan, and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, executive producers
are Katrina Norvel and Nicki Etor. Our partners at The
Greek Podcast Project are executive producer Daphne Carnesis, field producers
(37:33):
Christina Bilioni and George Miadis, and sound designer Nico Sklavenitis,
who's also the voice of Costa Samaras. Mary Phillips Sandy
is our supervising producer. Shane McKeon is our producer. The
show is written in research by Lucas Riley, fact checking
by Donia Suleman. Initial edit, mix and sound design for
this episode was by Kieran Matthew Banerji at Palm Tree Island.
(37:57):
Sound design and final mix by Soundboard. This episode featured
the voice of George I Valiotis. Our theme song is
by Imam Balden with additional music by Botany. Finally, thanks
to Will Pearson Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman and John marry Napolis,
Look, if I could just call up the most wanted
man in Greece, I wouldn't be sitting here hosting a podcast.
I mean, no shade the podcast, but like I would
have at least two lambeaus and be eating shrimp all day.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Nobody, and I mean nobody has seen Vasili's Paliocosta since
two thousand and nine, when he pulled off that brazen
helicopter escape from a high security prison near Athens. In
his absence, though, a legend has grown, spreading from backwoods
towns to urban centers and even onto some strange corners
of the Internet. Like even today, people still tell stories
(00:48):
about his generosity, how he robbed banks and billionaires, sharing
the wealth with ordinary Greeks. It occurred to us that
if we're going to get some real traction with our reporting,
we're gonna have to get inside this guy's head. CSI
him a bit piece together, a psychological profile of the
man at large.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
When you're working on a story and you're trying to
understand why or how something happened, sometimes you have to
go to the person's society considers to be the bad guy.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
That's investigative journalist to durisrodro Janos, who he spoke with
in the last episode. So Duris has covered crime in
Greece for years, and he told us that criminals aren't born,
they're created.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Anyone can cross the line criminals on to category of
bad people who were born bad and die bad. It's
something that's much more dynamic. It can happen to anyone.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
As our team in Athens began digging into Vasilis's past,
trying to trace his path from a rural mountain villager
to Interpol's most Wanted man, we came to understand that
it wasn't just that something happened to him. Someone had
happened to him.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
In the case of Costas Samaras, we have a man who,
in the eyes of the law, is a bad person.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
He's a criminal. We kept hearing that name, Costas Samaras
back in the late eighties. Samaras became a sort of
mentor to our Robin hood. He taught Vasili's how to
be a criminal, how to pick locks in hot wire cars,
but more importantly, he also taught him what kind of
(02:32):
criminal he should be. We heard this directly from people
who knew the guy.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Then that.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Samaras was what you would call an intellectual outlaw.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
He had a point of view online. He wasn't a thug.
He didn't abuse anyone, he didn't kill anyone. He didn't
have blood on his hands.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
That's our producer Christina translating for Costas. Argyrosis Kostas is
a journalist who grew up in Samaras's hometown of Tricola.
He knew the guy back in the day and remembers
hanging out with him at local clubs and stuff. He
told us these guys won people over with their principles
of nonviolence and some good old fashioned wealth redistribution.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Heyan mithistom.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
They helped local people where they could with other people's money,
of course, which was the product of robberies. And they
were charming. That's why we're interested in them now. There
was a mystery and romance about them.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That cloak of mystery and romance has become Vasilis's best disguise.
Costa Samaras gave him that to get closer to Vasilis,
we needed to get closer to Samaras. But Samaras has
been in and out of jail himself. The people who
used to know him. Well, they're not so close anymore.
(03:50):
So Daphne and our team in Athens started following Leeds
in three Colo.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
One phone number led to another, then another and another.
But then the days went by and we just really
weren't sure it would happen.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Then, just as the team's getting desperate, Daphne's phone lights up.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Shit, it's Samaras.
Speaker 6 (04:12):
Daphne.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
A man with a thin voice is on the other line.
It's Costas Samaras, and he wants to talk from Kaleidoscope
and iHeart podcasts. I'm Miles Gray. This is the Good
Thief Chapter one, the mentor.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
So at first, Samaras was quite evasive on our calls.
He wouldn't really say much. But when we told him
that we were planning on driving up to three gall
in a few days, he did seem willing to plan
a meetup. So he asked us a our plans and
where to meet, which I thought was really encouraging. But
then every time we tried to lock down a time
(05:06):
for an interview, he ended up bailing.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But we had someone US's attention, and before long he
turns the tables. Now, yes us, Now he's calling us daily,
dangling the interview in front of us, paying with us,
and then one day he.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
Asked us something strange. He asked us if we'd be
willing to take his granddaughter with us up from Athens
so that he could see her. It sort of goes
without saying, but when I got a call from one
of Greece's most famous criminal masterminds, I didn't really know
what to expect, but I definitely didn't imagine I'd be
offering my services as a chauffeur. That kind of made
me confident that he was starting to warm up to
(05:50):
us or trust us in some way. We didn't end
up taking her with us in the end, but we
did offer the interview.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Dance continues for a and then in April of twenty
twenty two.
Speaker 6 (06:05):
I guess I have served in twelve or thirteen different
prisons in Greece.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Some of us sits down with us. Daphne and the
team meet him at an office where he works at
as an office administrator part of a prison rehab program.
It's after business hours and they're alone.
Speaker 5 (06:25):
He's sixty three, with a kind face, small glasses, snowy
white hair, and a beard. He certainly didn't strike as
as a career criminal who spent twenty one years in prison.
When the interview itself started, though, and we actually hit record.
Each time we asked him a question, his eyes started
darting around as if he was sizing us up, trying
(06:46):
to gauge our motives before giving us an answer. I thought, Okay,
this is going to be a short interview.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Daphne did not want this to slip away, so she
keeps asking questions.
Speaker 5 (06:59):
And you change lots of schools, different cities. Did you
play in any band?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Trying to warm him up.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
So what was the first robbery? And did you have
weapons with you?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
And then after this period of stonewalling us and trying
to decipher our motives, his mood just shifts.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
So Manas cracked open a bottle of fruit juice. He
doesn't drink or smoke. It's one of his principles, he says.
And then he leaned forward, grabbed a sheet of paper
and began doodling, sketching random patterns and shapes as he
was speaking. And for the next forty five minutes he
didn't really look up from that paper. It felt like
he'd suddenly disappeared from the room, like his memories had
(07:38):
put him in some sort of trance, and that's when
he started telling us the story from nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Probably stay again.
Speaker 6 (07:47):
So the first roldbody was in me and Vasilis.
Speaker 5 (07:53):
The first time he and Vasilius Bolo Costas robbed a bank.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Chapter two, Puppy Luff. It all started in the autumn
of nineteen ninety one. With a string of petty robberies
under their belts, Vasilis and Samaras were cooling off in
the northwestern city of Ioannina, and that's when they decided
(08:23):
to try something bigger. The city is not far from
the border of Albania. It's a scenic place too. You
got four story apartments, narrow cobblestone lanes. Some of us
knew that bank robberies didn't happen much up north and
figured that a robbery in these parts would take people
by surprise. So the two wander around Iowanina searching for
(08:47):
a target, and as they're milling about downtown on one
of the city's busiest streets, that's when they lock eyes
on Embodi Qui bank.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Gage on the main street of just opposite the courthouses.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
The challenge made these guys laugh a small business district
with the courthouse and central police station of stones throw away.
It was like the city was daring them to try.
The town's geography made the challenge even tougher. In the
early nineties, troubles were boiling over in nearby Yugoslavia, so
the city was teeming with Greek military personnel. Most crooks,
(09:35):
they would have read the room, run the numbers, and
just moved on to the next town. But Vasilis and
Samaras red flags were their idea of fun. First step
was a costume change.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Do you having parties for less?
Speaker 6 (09:53):
We had taken camouflage military uniforms and jackets and dressed
like a captain and a lieutenant.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
The military presence, they figured, wasn't a deterrent, It was
actually an advantage. If you're wearing a T shirt and
holding a submachine gun, you look like a danger to society.
But if you're in a military town and holding that
same weapon with a uniform on, well, now it just
looks like Tuesday. Once they nailed the look, they stole
(10:21):
a handful of vehicles and scattered a few getaway cars
throughout the region, and.
Speaker 6 (10:26):
After killing we used a car we had stolen from Athens,
and the second car we had was a zip it,
just in case we needed to go to any mountains.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
This was one of some of US's early lessons to vasilis.
Always have multiple escape routes and multiple getaway cars.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Look, I was concerned about the details. I'm not like
these others who operate most spontaneously, with no methodology, no
foot I won't even leave a pin where it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
They checked out the twisty roads north and mapped their getaway.
But it wasn't just the two of them now. They'd
also picked up a straggler, a little puppy.
Speaker 6 (11:12):
Yeah, we had the puppy in the jip, which was
found in the city of Cerres.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Months earlier. The pair had found a stray black and
white Greek shepherd whining in the bushes. And you can't
claim to be bank robbers with a heart and then
just abandon a puppy, so the dog joined the crew. Naturally,
turns out the dog was a hell razor. It loved
to chew up the car seats and jump out the window.
(11:39):
So you know, Vassili's fell in love immediately. The pupp
was a rebel, a dog after his own heart. They
became inseparable. The morning of the heist, the men parked
their getaway car a half mile from the bank and
lock the dog inside. Now before you, even as trust
(12:00):
me wasn't hot and they would never put the dog
in harm's way, The dog is fine. Then they slip
into their phony military uniforms, grab their weapons, and wait
for the bank to open. At eight am, they swing
the door open. Vasilis has a shotgun and Samaras he's
(12:20):
got an uzzi, wandered like soldiers. The clock starts ticking.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Vasilis went in first. I followed.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
So Vasilis points the shotgun at the bank teller and
throws him a bag. He gestures to the vault and
tells him to fill it Upas he's standing by the
entrance cradling his uzi, he watches as the teller stuffs
the equivalent of one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
into the bat.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
The saving she filled the back back until he didn't
fit any more money. It took just a half minute.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The teller gestures to Vasilis that he can't fit any
more money into the sack. Vasilis lets him know, don't worry.
We're not greedy. Then he grabs the bag and the
two men stroll onto the street like nothing happened. They listen,
no sirens, just a gentle pitter patter of rain. This
(13:28):
is Vasilis's first bank robbery, and it seems to have
gone off without a hitch.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
We got in the car and drive out of you.
Speaker 6 (13:40):
With then right before leaving the city and enter another neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
That's where we left the zip. We part next to it,
open the door, and just as.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Things feel like they're going great.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
The puppy jumps out and it starts running around.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I mean, this is not the time to cause chaos,
but the puppy is zooming up and down the street.
He wants to play. Vasilis tosses the loot into the
car and waves for the dog to get in, but
the puppy holds its ground. Vasilis walks toward the dog,
but the closer he gets, the more the dog runs.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
We called it. It did not come. It thought we
were playing again some of us.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
His stomach drops. He hadn't accounted for this. He and
Vasilis start begging the dog please please come with us.
Sirens are waiting sounds are echoing off those cobblestones. Vasilis
and some of us frantically gestured to the dog, chasing
after it in tandem, but the dog keeps prancing away.
(14:50):
The sirens are getting louder, and some of us starts
to panic.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Let's leave it, I said, we're wasting times here. We
have to leave.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Samaras swings open the door and steps into the getaway car,
but Vasilis hesitates. He looks at the dog, still wagging
its little tail. As the sirens grow closer. He gets in.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
The abums on the puppy, get into the drip and drive.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Driving out of Ioannina, Vasilis is completely consumed with guilt,
not because he just robbed a bank, his first ever,
but because he just lost his little sidekick. But maybe
there's even a lesson in here. Spend enough time with
Costa Samaras, and even a harmless little puppy will turn
(15:47):
into an escape artist. Chapter three portrait of the artist
as a young man. Reporters have called Costa Samaras the
(16:13):
Artist because of the elaborate heists he crafted, but according
to his old friends, he also came by the nickname
honestly in his twenties, he dabbled in Cubist painting, and
that was when he wasn't playing the drums and bands
around Tricola. And even when we met with him, he
was most comfortable when he was doodling on the page.
(16:33):
But his greatest masterpieces have always been the blueprints he
drew up for robberies and jail breaks. Sadas routinely used
his drawing skills to sketch plans for his heists. One
time he even sculpted his own gun, whittling it from
a piece of wood. Growing up, his family was always
(16:54):
on the move, going from one city to the next.
We've been told that in the absence of a stable
home life, art and literature in particular helped ground him,
offered him comfort. One book in particular spoke to him.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
I read it at the age of twelve, thirteen Papillion.
It felt so authentic to me. It's an autobiography of
an illegal Frenchman who is sentenced to life in prison
for murder, and he has the it for freedom. He's
looking to become free at all times. It affected me deeply,
(17:32):
this idea that you don't have to accept the faith
that the others impose on you.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Samaras was one of those kids who refused to take
no for an answer. He was smart, liked to gain
the system, and it wasn't long before he started applying
his creativity to petty crime.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
He prot the skinnesses.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
I started out stealing books and records, just trying my
hand at.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
But just shoving in lp under his coat. That wasn't
his style. Instead, the young someone us invented this contraption,
a small box that looked like a present with wrapping paper,
which had a secret compartment that he could slip stolen
records into.
Speaker 6 (18:20):
Before long, my friends asked for the book so that
they could still records.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Two so I let them, and of course they got caught.
Speaker 6 (18:33):
Now what kind of feeling does that give the kids
starting out on this path. There's a satisfaction when you
can do something that others can't do easily.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
That is how it started.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Some of us fell in love with the thrill, that
delicious rush of adrenaline of stealing and getting away with it.
Committing crimes was fun.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
During the day. I could be painting.
Speaker 6 (19:01):
At night we could be playing music, and then I
could go and do a breaking.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But his skill is some of us was at creating
deceptive little inventions and planning petty robberies. Perhaps his greatest skill,
The thing he excelled most at was reading a room.
Somehow some of us honed an uncanny ability, almost a
sixth sense, to detect people who lived on the other
side of the law. One day in the late seventies,
(19:34):
some of us was at a pub in tri Colon
went across the room. He spotted another young man, a
guy with a strong Mountain accent, and immediately he felt
this kinship he.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
Was subconsciously, you recognize it from how a person moves around.
So I don't know if it's like that in other things,
like if an accountant when I recognize another accountant, or
an architect another architect, But he gave me this feeling.
(20:06):
I figured, this is someone who doesn't think much of
the low so I started talking to him.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
That man was Vasilis's big brother, Nicos Palio Costas. It
didn't take long for some of us to realize that
his instincts about Nicos were right, but their origin stories
were completely different. Where some of us committed crimes for
the thrill, Nkos was driven by circumstance. Chapter four in
(20:49):
the valley of the clefts. Nicos and his younger brother
Vasilis grew up miles from the city, under the peaks
of the Pindus Mountains, the spine of Greece. It's a
pastoral place, studded with ramshackle huts.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Imagine a village without a trace of outside culture. Big
tall mountains, an endless horizon between ravines, this wild beauty
that's indescribable.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
That Stelios Catagjorgos. Today he's a museum director in Tricola.
But like the Paliocostas boys, his family lived off the
land in the Pindus. He actually knew them growing up,
and as he tells it, living there is not easy.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
So the children become adults so young they don't have
things like toys, and as soon as a child is
strong enough, there's no way they'd be able to sit
at home while dad worked. They'd be put to work too.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Astelios put it, this sort of life hardens people, and
it wasn't just Stelios who took notice of how hard
the Paliocostas has had it. Nico Celeppis was a classmate
of the brothers. He remembers how Vasili's only had one
pair of clothes to where to school.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It was clear to Celets that the costas family didn't
have much money. Lastus always came to school in the
same clothes. Wore a pair of corduroy bell bottom jeans
and narrow at the top, and a light brown striped tea,
and his hair was down to his eyebrows. But the
detail that really sticks out was his shoes. There was
(22:26):
no one else from his village at the school, so
he walked, and most of the time his feet were
covered in mud. When it rained, he couldn't get the
moto off. Walked nearly four hours a day just so
he could attend school, and at a certain point it
just became too much. It's the circumstances, right, He probably thought,
(22:47):
going to school every day, what should I do?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
How can I continue?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
In other words, he was a poor rural kid without
many options.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Stelios puts it, these cads that grow up there. They
lived in the wilderness like animals, he said, when you
grow up on mountains like this, it makes you face inside.
The only time they got parented was at night. It'd
gather around with their parents around the fireplace, you know,
eat some bread, and then they'd hear these legends like
folk tales and songs.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Breathing in the nighttime air village children heard stories of
the Clefts, people who centuries ago had called these same
mountains home. The Clefts emerged in the sixteen hundreds after
the Turkish Ottoman Empire conquered mainland Greece. The Ottomans turned
Christian Greeks into second class citizens, so the Clefts fled
(23:43):
to the mountains, hoping isolation would provide them some independence
and safety. To preserve that independence, they had to protect it.
The Clefts were known to stock the surrounding highways and
rob unsuspecting travelers. They stole lambs and goats from herders
wandering their territory. Banditry became their calling card. You know
(24:06):
the word kleptomaniac, It comes from the Greek root cleft.
But they were more than just thieves. They were on
the front line of the fight for Greek independence. Today,
they are thought of as Greece's founding fathers, and their
stories are told to children with pride growing up. The
Paliocostas brothers heard these stories and romanticized them. The boys
(24:29):
were taken with the cleft way, this idea that banditry
could be used to help your people. There was one
story in particular that captured Vasilis Palocostas imagination. As a kid,
Vasilis attended a one room schoolhouse. When he was maybe
(24:51):
eight or nine, his teacher gave him a gift, a
leather bound book about Antonis Katzandonis, the story of one
of the most famous clefts dating back to the seventeen hundreds.
For Vasilis, there was a lot to like about Katzandonis.
They both grew up in the mountains, both were the
sons of shepherds, and they both had a strong sense
(25:13):
of fairness. But Katzandonis was falsely accused of stealing a
sheep and thrown in jail. When he got out, he
killed the man who had smeared his name, then joined
the clefts. Katzandonis embraced the life, robbing the Ottomans, rallying
clefts into an army, freeing Greek slaves along the way.
(25:34):
But one day Gotzandonis's luck ran dry because somebody snitched
under the shade of a plane tree. The Ottomans tied
his body to the ground, raised their sledgehammers and proceeded
to crush his bones. The story of Katsandonis left a
(26:03):
deep mark on young Vasilis. Years later, he'd reflect on
the teacher who gave him that book, as Vasilis once
wrote that teacher never had and never would again, give
a personal gift to one of his students. Was it
a random act? Insight who knows every story has a lesson,
(26:25):
And for Vasilis, the moral of Katsandonis's downfall was simple,
Never trust a rat Chapter five. Going pro. In the
(27:01):
nineteen seventies, the Palio Coosta's family moved out of the
mountains and closer to Tricola. They landed in a small
town on the run down edges of the city. Each day,
Nikos and Vasilis's dad would trek into the city for
his new job selling lottery tickets.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Dimitris Kutabasciakos is a film director who grew up in
the area, and during that time he started seeing the
brothers around town, hanging out with Costa Samaras and Dimitris
and his friends were in similar social circles. The Mitris
told us that there was a very famous pool hole
in trica La.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
The Lion. At the time, Samaras was a well known
person in the neighborhood, and the Palio Costas brothers carried
a mystique of their own.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Samaras had opened the first live music bar in Trica La,
and it was for young people and it was really
something unprecedented. The brothers used to come in and play billiards,
and according to the Mitris, they played really well, and
their name was apparently on everyone's lips.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
But your course, that's your course.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Everyone was talking about them, especially the older one, and
all the young kids were just very in all of them.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So when some of us spotted brother Nicos across the
bar and they hit it off, that reputation only grew
some of us in Nicos started as small. They were
stealing cars and broke into jewelry shops, and they developed
this moral code of crime pretty early. Like they didn't
think of themselves as hard nosed crooks, more like gentlemen burglars.
(28:34):
Through the eighties, Nicos Paliocostis would commit at least twenty
seven burglaries in that time. He began to hone a
virtuosic ability for spotting and escaping the police. That's how
He earned the nickname.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
The Ghost my Sugar Past after.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
One time we were notified that the car was speeding
down to Tricola.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
You might remember Vasili's e Ftmu from last episode. He's
the police officer who spent two years chasing the Paliocostas brothers.
Speaker 7 (29:05):
We were already driving up the mountain range, so we
picked a point to block it.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
We got ready for a collision.
Speaker 7 (29:14):
But twenty or thirty meters before the spot where we
planned to trap him, Nikos noticed us. He turned off
onto a dirt road and we lost him.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Ftmiu admits that Nikos was incredible behind the wheel. The
risks he took on the road just baffled the authorities.
His ability to escape was so legendary that years later
the police devised well more creative ways to try and
ambush him. To give you, his mother died.
Speaker 7 (29:43):
We went to the funeral disguised as priests in case
Nicos came.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
He went as priests.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yes, we had people in the church. They said he
was going to say goodbye to his.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Mother, and it didn't end up coming.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
He didn't show up, but persistence pays off. Around nineteen
eighty nine, Nicos caught a bad break and the police
arrested him. At the time, Vasilis was barely in his twenties.
Unlike Nicos, he wasn't living a life of crime yet,
as far as we know. He was busy drinking, hanging out,
playing pool. But when he visited his brother in prison,
(30:15):
he was immediately enlisted. The ghost had no intention of
staying behind bars, so he said to his brother, go
find Costas. Samaras.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
We had made that appointment in Nathans to meet to
see what we can do for his brother who was
in safe We went somewhere for coffee. He said, how
nice you thieves are with your cars. That takes the money. Yes,
I said, but that's one side. On the other side
this prison, you need to wait them and choose. I mean,
(30:51):
he said, if you are in, I say, let's go
for taming.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Samaras claims that before this moment, Vasilis was a law
abiding citizen, and while it's hard the fact check that statement,
what is true is that this was a turning point.
Speaker 6 (31:09):
Certainly, when Vasilis and I met, he had no particular
experience in these matters. He had heard some things from
his brother, She had learned a little from him, But
from then on she learned directly from me.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
So the lessons began. Vasilis and some of us rented
an apartment in Larissa and started planning to break Nicos out.
And that's where Vasilis was first exposed to the rules
that would dictate the rest of his criminal life.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
It is true that there was, let's say, a philosophy
in the first place, do not do more damage than necessary,
especially to human being.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
You can be violent with.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
Objects, that is, to break a door safe, but not
with people. With people, it's a game, like says she
kinds broke again.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
It turned out the prison was a fortress. They'd need
an elaborate plan to break Nico south, so some of
us drew one up. First. He and Vasilis would case
the prison, recording every detail about the prison guard's movements.
Then they'd steal a dump truck that they could use
to break down the outer prison wall. They'd be prepared
(32:26):
with plenty of firepower to scare off the guards when
they came running. Last, but not least, they'd need getaway cars,
multiple hideouts, change of clothes, the works.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
She was a quick learner and trusted the process. She
had the quick mind.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
But that escape it never materialized.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Something went drunk over there. It didn't work out.
Speaker 8 (32:51):
For you.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
To say something went wrong is an understatement. On the
day of the plan breakout, Vasilis was making his way
alone to a stolen getaway car that he'd packed with
guns and explosives and left in a village on the
outskirts of town. But he'd overlooked one crucial detail. A
Greek village is a tight knit place. People notice even
(33:14):
the smallest changes. So when locals spotted an unfamiliar car
parked on the side of the road, they got nosy,
and when they saw all the weapons stashed in the car,
the locals immediately took action. They deflated one of the
back tires, enlisted a couple cops, and laid a trap.
Sometime later, when Vasilis went to check the car, a
(33:38):
group of them were hiding in a dark cafe nearby
watching him. They clocked Vasilis as he approached the car,
and then watched as he detoured into the wood. Turned
out he had to peek, and that's when the villagers
ambushed him. They literally caught him with his pants down.
Later the police found it. All the cars, the guns,
(34:02):
and Ammo. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to realize that
Vassilis had been planning a prison break. Suddenly Vasilis, a
twenty somethingter with a clean record, was sitting in the
back of a police cruiser, hands cuffed, and it was
about to get worse. At the booking station, police decided
(34:22):
to charge Vasilis for dozens of petty robberies, the robberies
that his brother in Samaras had committed over the past
few years.
Speaker 6 (34:30):
Oh, Vasilis had no involvement, She hadn't been involved with
us yet, but they wanted to implicate him in all
of his crimes.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Vasilis was seeding the foiled prison escape, the stolen cars
and illegal weapons that he was happy to own, but
all these other crimes. This wasn't justice, of course. I
don't I know for sure what went through Vasilis's mind
(35:02):
back then, but I like to imagine he was thinking
about that leather bound book his teacher gave him about Katsandonis,
the man falsely accused of stealing sheep who joined the
Clefts after being wrongly imprisoned. Katsandonis would go on to
fight the Ottoman authorities and he's known for laying the
groundwork for Greek independence, a founding father who created the
(35:24):
vision of what the Greek nation could become. The stories
we tell ourselves about how our great societies came to be,
about the people who, against all odds, made it happen.
They're not unique to anyone culture. In the same way
we grip to our tales of founding fathers. These stories
hold together nations and they inspire individuals on their own paths,
(35:46):
like Vasilis Paliocostas, who, in this pivotal moment in his life,
sat in a police station as all the sins of
his brother became his to bear, and as he contemplated
how to fight back with this, gales of justice tilted
hard against him.
Speaker 6 (36:05):
From that moment, John Vasili's was forced to turn to
a life.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Of crime.
Speaker 8 (36:12):
That that carrier his famous by.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Next Time, I'm the good Thief.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
This book is coming from a man who doesn't exist.
No one knows where he is.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Stand outside, I'm breaking out.
Speaker 7 (36:47):
It's kind of a symbol of the perception of many
Greeks fighting against all odds, fighting against your pressure.
Speaker 6 (36:55):
You believe that there were no casualties, The questions and
Who's crime is Greater?
Speaker 1 (37:10):
The Good Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with
iHeart Podcasts. I'm Miles Gray. Our executive producers are Mangesh Hettikadur, Costas,
Linos Oz Wallashan, and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, executive producers
are Katrina Norvel and Nicki Etor. Our partners at The
Greek Podcast Project are executive producer Daphne Carnesis, field producers
(37:33):
Christina Bilioni and George Miadis, and sound designer Nico Sklavenitis,
who's also the voice of Costa Samaras. Mary Phillips Sandy
is our supervising producer. Shane McKeon is our producer. The
show is written in research by Lucas Riley, fact checking
by Donia Suleman. Initial edit, mix and sound design for
this episode was by Kieran Matthew Banerji at Palm Tree Island.
(37:57):
Sound design and final mix by Soundboard. This episode featured
the voice of George I Valiotis. Our theme song is
by Imam Balden with additional music by Botany. Finally, thanks
to Will Pearson Connell Byrne, Bob Pittman and John marry Napolis,
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