Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Okay, so we have made it to the final chapter
of the Good Thief saga, and I'm gonna pull a
move you've all seen before. Before I get to the ending,
I'm gonna bring us back to the beginning. Do you remember,
way back in episode one, the scene where a chopper
lands on the prison roof. These guys crawl up a ladder,
(00:34):
gunshots ring out, and prisoners go wild with applause. Yeah,
that's where we are in the story. Our man, Vasilispaliocostas
was on the outside for a few years, but by
late two thousand and eight, he's back in cuffs, taken
right back to the notorious prison complex he had escaped from.
(00:54):
This time, the prison swears they can contain. He's put
in a solitary with an armed guard stationed nearby, and
they've doubled down on vigilance. But there are two glaring oversights.
The first officials placed Vasili's in the same hallway as
(01:16):
his accomplice from the first helicopter escape. The two men
had parted ways after breaking out together in two thousand
and six, where freedom was short lived for both of them,
and now both men were behind bars, awaiting trial for
their breakout, and in some version of prison logic, officials
reason that it made sense to place both men in
(01:38):
the same heavily guarded corridor in the solitary confinement way,
which brings us to the second oversight. That same area
had access to the roof. Reporter Mariana Kakaunaki covered the
case for the local newspaper, and she told us that
(02:00):
the prison officials did debate whether or not to put
them so close to the roof, but in the end,
you can't give to the bookleta.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
They thought that another escape, especially one as flamboyant as
an escape by helicopter, was out of the question.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
And yet that's exactly what they did, using the same
damn playbook they followed. The first time, Auquette gets a
cell phone calls his girlfriend. On the outside, she finds
a helicopter company that offers day trips and getaways and
get this, the company's name escapes. Literally. She does her research,
(02:41):
make sure the chopper is minimally guarded, and on the
day of the ride, Hey, I'm.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Gonna Once they're in the air, she turns to the
pilot and says there's been a change of plans, and
she pulls out a knife and a hand grenade, and
soon the helicopter is flying in a different direction.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Can miskitovon Vida's and the gonna laugh us.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Now you know where this is going. The chopper heads
to the prison, descends, the guys climb up, the helicopter
disappears into the sunset, and Vasilis gets away for a
second time, except this time he's truly in the wind.
(03:26):
To this day, no one knows where he is. Some
say he's gotten plastic surgery and looks totally different now.
Others say he moves around in costume, wearing wigs and
other phony disguises. Rumor has it he's married in Bulgaria,
or living on an island somewhere all alone, or roughing
it in the mountain caves of Greece. Throughout our reporting,
(03:50):
we were told over and over that we shouldn't even
bother trying to find him, that Vasilis Poaliocosas cannot be found.
And after over a year of trying, we figured everyone
was right. He's just too damn good. But then late
last year, just as we were about to wrap things
(04:10):
up on this podcast, we caught a break. I'm Miles
Gray from Kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcast. This is the Good Thing,
Chapter one, the source. There are two versions of the
(04:36):
Vasilis Paliocosta story, depending on whom you ask. There's the
official version that he's disappeared and no one has seen
him since. And then there's the unofficial version, the one
we got after reporting from more than a year, the
one that always seemed to be the subtext of any
conversation about him, that people who knew him or were
(04:59):
from his hometown knew more than they were letting on,
that the police had leads they just wouldn't talk about
because there have been breadcrumbs. In twenty eleven, he was
supposedly sighted in a coffee shop, but his face looked different,
altered by plastic surgery. In twenty thirteen, a toll road
(05:20):
Cameron Athens supposedly caught a glimpse of him speeding along
the highway, and just a few years ago a local
swears they caught sight of him at a cafe eating
fish while summering in Thessaly. And then in winter of
last year, there's another possible sighting. Our team in Greece
stumbled across a short news item that describes this incident.
(05:47):
It's late November twenty twenty two, near the village of
Kipselli in central Greece, and apparently a BMW is tearing
down a desolate mountain road. With all due respect to
the people of Kipselli, this is the middle of nowhere.
There's no cell service out here. Most roads are unpaved
(06:09):
and a lot of cars can't even handle the terrain.
But this vehicle, it moves with confidence. Whoever is behind
the wheel knows these roads. They also don't have license plates,
so when the car zooms past a lone police cruiser,
the officers flip on the sirens. Details of what happens
next are scarce. All we know is that there are
(06:32):
multiple people in this car and someone inside starts shooting
at the cops. Within ak forty seven the cops break
and the car gets away, and well, Christina, I feel
(06:53):
like at this point this sounds all too familiar.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
For sure, but the article doesn't say it's Vasilis. It
does have the hallmarks of a typical Vasilis police chase,
but it's just a news account of the incident. The
police give no indication of who they think it is.
But still we obviously couldn't stop talking about it in
the office, and we just felt that this might just
(07:18):
be him, so we tried to fill in more of
the blanks. I called to the local police, and of
course they refused to talk. We also contacted some locals
who were equally vague and of no help. And then
we tracked down an incredible source, somebody who has inside
knowledge of Vasilisa's patterns of movement. This person has been
(07:41):
following Vasilisa's trail for years. They wanted, or I should
probably say, needed, to remain anonymous, so we can't play
any interview tape for you. But when we asked them
about the article, they said that it wouldn't be hard
to believe that Vasilis Polo Costas was in the car
that night, and when we asked why, they pointed out
(08:02):
some very important clues. First, the location. It's the perfect
place for Vasilis. This region is Black Country, the region
where his people, the Blacks, are most concentrated, meaning he
has a built in support network. The region is also
not far from the village of Mouscrofo, where Vasilis was
(08:23):
born and grew up. Plus it's near a national park
home to tens of thousands of acres of inaccessible backwoods.
Imagine a labyrinth of rivers and ravines, canyons and caves.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Okay, well, why a national park? Is that advantageous for
him or something?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
The advantage for Vasilis is that communication in this area
is futile. GPS and police radio's hardly work. In fact,
the forest is so dense that search helicopters and drones
are useless. According to our source, Vasilis actually moves through
this rea and quite often he may even be staying
here full time. And apparently this isn't the first time
(09:06):
he's crossed paths with the cops. There have been as
many as seven or eight close encounters, and each time
he has moved around with one or two accomplices. Would
people suspect our bodyguards?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
On one hand, all this new information was incredible, and
it kind of confirmed something we'd been suspicious of from
the start, that people in this region know more than
what they're letting on. It even made us rethink our
interview with Costa Samaras, Vasilis's mentor, when he said.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
If I knew, I would not say anything, but if
he is alive, he must be living well, he must
be hiding now, whether he's here, which I don't believe,
or somewhere else. He knows how to move around. Let's
just say he might be traveling with those papers. He
(10:06):
may have changed his face by disguise or censoring, maybe
change his fingerprints. Vasilis knows how to protect himself.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
But it was also a little disheartening. Like we've done
over fifty interviews with everyone from chief of police to
Vasilis's literal partners in crime, and yet until now we
hadn't been able to get a real foothold on where
Vasilis had been hiding. But according to Christina's source, there's
a reason why.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
So there's apparently a team of police whose job is
twenty for seven to hunt down Polo Costas. It's there's
so mission, and they've been on the case since Vasili's
last escaped, but the government has kept this task force
hush hush. In fact, these same police officers are being
closely surveyediled by intelligence agencies from the federal government to
(11:04):
make sure that nothing leaks to the outside, and that
could be the reason that despite all our requests, no
current police have wanted to talk. But it's still amazing
to hear that they're actively working to try to find him,
using sizeable resources and still haven't managed to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Okay, I'll admit it. It feels like we've been on
a wild goose chase, chasing any possible lead in searching
the whole country from Athos to Kadia for Vasili's Meanwhile,
the police have been sitting right here and have allegedly
seen Vasilis seven or eight times on these little country
roads circling around the same mountain where he was born.
(11:49):
But as soon as we hear this, we know we
have to go north. The weather is against us. It's
December and very soon the roads are going to be
impassable because of snow. None of us are mountain climbers,
and none of us own a vehicle that can reasonably
handle the terrain. Plus we're up against a clock. We
(12:12):
know the weather is about to change, so George reaches
out to a mountain guide in the region, hoping to
get help navigating the roads. Daphne's uncle loans us a
rave four to get around, and since we didn't want
George hunting for an Interpol's Most Wanted criminal, and his
two bodyguards all by himself. We decided to keep the
family theme going and sent him up there with Daphne's partner,
(12:36):
also named George, And so with that, George and George
packed their bags and headed for the mountains. Chapter two,
The Trip. If you did get.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I'm in the village of Kipselli with our mountain guide,
Christos Cordulas. It's taken almost five hours to get here
from Athens, and now we're slowly rumbling.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Up the road.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Kipselli is sort of dead. There's only a few hundred
people live here in the village and all the tavernas
look closed. But inside the car, our guy Christos, he's
this whirlwind of energy. He's constantly on this satellite phone.
It's the only thing that works out here, fishing for
any local source he can. You know, he's he's calling
the mayor as soon as we're in the car, he's
(13:41):
calling the police, the owner of a supermarket, anybody and
everybody who might want to talk, telling them, hey, I'm
with a reporter from Athens who wants to know about
Balliot Costas. He's a fire cracker, like he's this sixty
nine year old who chained smokes but still jogs every day,
(14:03):
does yoga, used to be a documentary filmmaker, then run
an organic grocery store nearby, and now he operates this
mountain refuge, Gadadaktis Mountain Refuge, which is this stone shelter
where obviously, you know, hikers can go for a hot
meal and a warm bed. And he grew up in
these mountains, and frankly he's with us because well, you know,
(14:26):
we'd be lost without him. I've been to a lot
of places in Greece, but I can confidently say I've
never been anywhere like this. We climb past massive white waterfalls,
tumbling hundreds of feet down like a bridal veil, and
the mountains a tower above us. They're rocky and dark,
and it's even more dramatic because it's raining today and
(14:50):
the cloud cover is making them look really ominous. And
as we climb higher and higher, the visibility deteriorate. The
fog turns all soupy and thick, to the point where
we can't really see in front of the vehicle. But
that doesn't stop Christos when he's trying to make the calls.
He's given me the lay of the land again, there's
(15:12):
a magic to this place, he says, and his eyes
are all lit up as we pass his childhood home.
He describes how the fruit trees blossom in springtime, how
he spent the summers of his boyhood napping under the
shade of these mountain peaks. But there's a sadness in
his voice too, that there are stories of the old
flower Grit's mill that shut down, you know, stories of
(15:33):
all these tight knit villages emptying out as people moved
to the city, Tales of violent earthquakes that shook old
stonehouses to rubble. Meanwhile, he keeps making.
Speaker 5 (15:44):
The calls good on it's this.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Suddenly he puts the phone down, turns to me and says,
somebody wants to talk.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Over the last fourteen years, Vasilis Palio Costas hasn't robbed
another bank or kidnapped another tycoon. Any criminal activity has
gone completely underground because he knows if the police ever
catch him, he's toast.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah. So, after Vasilis's second helicopter escape, the government had
a total meltdown. The Prime Minister scheduled an emergency cabinet
meeting where the Minister of Justice, completely embarrassed, went on
the attack. What the escape really did was expose the
prison system's weaknesses, but the Minister of Justice refused to
(16:42):
admit that there were any structural issues.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Instead, he played the blame game.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
He called the prison staff at Gorridalos corrupt and complicit.
He vowed that the heads would roll, and he launched
an investigation. All prison officials were required to declare their
whereabouts at the time of the escape, and those who
had been present had their houses rated by detectives in
(17:07):
the middle of the night, with officers barging into their
homes and searching for evidence of bribery. They didn't find any. Still,
the minister wanted heads. A handful of guards were arrested
and brought to the courthouses in the middle of the night,
standing trial under the cover of darkness. Eight guard would
(17:29):
be suspended, four would be arrested under suspicion of helping
us in his escape. All but one of them would
be accuted.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
It was, in a way the kind of behavior of
Vasilis had warned everyone about Greese's big wigs, rather than
own up to a systemic failure and fix that system
or target someone high up on the food chain, went
after the little clod. It was easier to throw a
blame than to actually fix the problem. Not only had
(18:00):
Vasili's hoodwinked the justice system again, he had pulled off
something even more improbable. He'd forced the state to turn
against itself, and that made him a bigger enemy than
ever before. Chapter three Bombshells. The Ministry of Citizen Protection
(18:42):
is housed in a drab looking building. It sits on
the edge of a highway in East Athens and frankly
looks like a tower of lego blocks. But appearances, as
they say, are deceiving. The building is the nerve center
for the country's police, and we're told headquarters for the
team hunting down Vasilis Palio Costas. June twenty fourth, twenty ten.
(19:11):
Left Eddi's Ikonomu is working in his office on the
Ministry's sixth floor. Now left Eddi's is one of those
career law enforcement guys. He started as a regular police
officer and worked his way up the ladder to get
a cushy management job working as head of the Hellenic Police.
We heard from him in a previous episode, It's a
(19:33):
quiet Thursday evening. Left Eddis is in a meeting with
some high ranking officers when he hears a loud bang.
So marchiez so Risha meld.
Speaker 6 (19:46):
At the beginning, we thought there had been a short
circuit as fifty air conditioning unit blew up. But a
few minutes passed and the lights went out. Suddenly I
could smell smoke.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Lefedi says he'll never forget the smell. It was reminiscent
of burnt almonds. Years of police training told him what
it actually was. The residue of explosives LEFTI starts to worry.
On the floor above him is the office of the
Minister for Citizen Protection, the guy who runs public security
(20:21):
in Greece, Mihalis ris Us.
Speaker 6 (20:28):
I immediately went up to the office of the minister.
It was dark, there was a commotion. We were trying
to see exactly what had happened.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Leftedi's rushes to the Minister's office to check on Riso roids.
The minister is okay, but the office next to his
looks like a war zone.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
The officer of mister Vasilakis was damaged. The wall and
the plaster board were falling apart. There had clearly been
an explosion. There was complete upheaval. Everything was overturned.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
The space belongs to the minister's right hand man, George Vasilakis,
a lifelong public servant, a father of two. He's lying there,
motionless on the floor.
Speaker 6 (21:14):
It was obvious that he was dead.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Ekonomu bites his lip and steps out of the room.
Investigators quickly pieced together what had happened. Vasilakis always opened
the minister's mail. Today was no different. He received a
thick envelope addressed to the minister. He opened it and
(21:39):
inside was another package. He placed the envelope down and
began tearing it open. He didn't know it was booby
trapped with gunpowder and ammonium nitrate. At the crime scene,
detectives would find the outer envelope still intact. They took
it in for forensic analysis.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
Like part of the envelope had not been damaged, and
then investigators discovered there was a fingerprint, a fingerprint of Paliocostas.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Chapter four, The Truth Leferisiconomu is certain that Vasili's Paliocostas
killed his colleague. He tells us the fingerprint proves it.
In a mire of his.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
It is undeniably strong proof of Palaeocostas's involvement in this murder.
Surely he touched the envelope and actively participated either in
its construction or transfer. This leaves us no doubt about
his involvement. The message he wanted to send was clear.
Mister Chris Okoidas as the leading political figure in the
(23:02):
effort to dismantle terrorism in Greece, and Palio Coustas tried
to strike a blow against the minister.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Vasilis, of course, had been labeled a terrorist by the
Greek state long before the bombing. For decades, most domestic
terrorists in Greece had funded their activities through bank robbery,
and Vasilis, a gun toting bank robber himself, was automatically
put in the same category. It's a classification that he
(23:28):
takes issue with. As he writes in his autobiography.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
The majority of the country's politicians the ideal regime is repressive,
vindictive and totalitarian. So even if there are no terrorists,
some must be invented to justify repressive legislation.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
One of the guys behind those laws was the minister.
For the longest time, he was Greece's top anti terrorism cop.
He was credited with taking down the terrorists running the
notorious seventeen November organization, and by this time in twenty eleven, krisl.
Hoils was the country's number one law and order guy.
(24:12):
He led the country's fire, public safety, and police departments,
and he was the guy leading the hunt for Vasilis.
To be clear, Vasilis definitely held a grudge against the
man because in January twenty ten, Vasilis did something he
had never done before. He wrote a letter to a
(24:33):
Greek newspaper. In it, he rails against the police. He
says they're out to kill him, but he reserves his
harshest words for the minister himself.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
He is a devoted fan of snitching and loves rats.
His hobbies include setting prices for the heads of the wanted.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
He calls KRISL. Hoils an egomaniac, a guy who fantasizes
about having his greatest arrest turned into a Hollywood movie
played by George Clooney. Mister Clooney, if you are listening
to this podcast, I'm sure you are, and you do
want to option this into a movie, please give us
a call. Anyway. A few months later, when that bomb
(25:18):
goes off, detectives look back to that letter. The letter
gives them a motive, and the fingerprints are the evidence.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Vasilica's reputation got a lot more cloudy after the police
linked him to the bombing. The heroic good thief follows
the story that the mountain thief who does not harm
suddenly seemed like the opposite. A lot of that charm
he had was lost.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Vasilis's reputation took a bigger hit in the following months
because after the bombing, domestic terrorism in Greece went a wire.
Letter bombs began turning up all across Athens, at the
embassy of Bulgarian, the embassy of Mexico and Russia, Chile,
the Netherlands, even neutral Switzerland. One letter bomb was discovered
(26:11):
en route to the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Fourteen letter bombs appeared, sparking so much fear in Greece
that for the first time ever, the government shut down
international airmail for forty eight hours. Eventually, the terrorist group
Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei took credit for all of these attacks.
(26:34):
You might recall that Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei looked up
to Vasilis as a hero. In their communicas. They cited
him as an inspiration. Detectives saw all of this as
more evidence that Vasilis was becoming too dangerous. Maybe he
wasn't behind these fourteen letter bomb attacks, but he inspired them,
(26:56):
and that was a problem. Vasilis needed to be high
it down and soon. For the record, Vasilis Palio Coostas
denies mailing a bomb to the Ministry office, and if
we asked him, he probably tell the punks running fire
Nuclei to get his name out of their mouths. One
(27:16):
of the most consistent things about Vasilis is that he
takes blame or credit for every crime he's committed, and
in this case he's adamant the police are lying. In fact,
in his writing he tries to point out how improbable
this all seems.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
Inside an A four sized envelope which I never saw,
never attached, never mailed, and which exploded, destroying half a
floor in the Ministry of Citizen Protection, the police managed
to find a whole palm print of mind.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Mind you, a lot of people are on Vasilica's side here,
doy think this was all a setup, all fairness, there
is plenty of evidence to support Remember, in twenty ten,
the Vasilis myth is at its height. He's embarrassed the
police with a second insane helicopter escape. Fan pages have
(28:14):
popped up all over Facebook. People are painting religious iconography
with his likeness on it, making the outlaw look like
a Saint Vasilis, and popular bands like a Mumbai the
artists who play our theme song are composing tunes about him.
Vasilis is also making international news. He isn't just famous
(28:35):
in Greece anymore. He's getting right ups in Jerusalem, in Dublin.
His story spreading to all corners of the globe. He
has complete control over the narrative and if you're the police,
you're losing badly. And in what better way to regain
control of the narrative than Trump up charges against him
(28:56):
to claim that his fingerprints are on a bomb that
killed an sent father of two.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I mean, it is weird that police claim to have
found a bunch of Vasilis's fingerprints, right, It's completely out
of character. By this point, he had been committing crimes
for two decades. We know he was very self conscious
about leaving fingerprints anywhere, let alone all over a package
containing a bomb. Vasilis's old mentor, Costa Samaras says, a
(29:27):
student of his would never make such an amateur mistaken.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
I don't believe that Vasilis was so stupid that he
would leave his finger printed the envelope. If he wanted
to get involved with terrorism, he would do it his
own ways. Remember, they never found half of the million
nso with three or four million euros, he could organize
(29:57):
an army to overthrow the government within a wiki she wanted.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
The point is, in the eyes of the public, Vasilis's
guilt is not unanimous. During our reporting, we ran into
people who've called Vasilis a murderer, others who have called
him a saint. But in the absence of a smoking gun,
it may just be a matter of whose story you
want to believe the most. Chapter five, Back in the mountains.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
We're in Kipselli, the village where Vasilis was allegedly cited
a few weeks ago, and Christos has brought us to
this taverna. It's a humble place with kind of log
cabin vibes. There's wood paneling everywhere, and all the tables
have legs made from old branches. On the there's a
big painting of a bear hunt. It's only one pm,
(31:04):
but Christos insists on ordering us chubulo, which is basically
kind of a Greek brandy. We're alone except for a
guy sitting with a big play of pasta by the bar.
It's the owner, and he's also sipping a tall glass
of liquor. And since it's just us, I figure it's
safe to ask whether he knows anything about the sighting
of Acillus. And well, he gets very angry very quickly.
(31:30):
You know, don't get us involved with Balogostas, he says.
He starts measuring me up. What kind of business do
we have with him? And for the next five minutes,
everything that comes out of this man's mouth is just
spiked with scorn. He's cursing words that I've never even
heard before, and he starts mocking us. He's like, oh,
I'll just give you an interview about Ballogosta's like we're
the best of friends. He turns to Christos, our guide,
(31:52):
and he's like shaking his fists, cursing him, telling him,
you know, we shouldn't go anywhere near this story. What
do we have to do with this story? But after
a few minutes of yelling, he kind of mellows out
a little bit and starts to soften. Let me make
you understand something, little boy. He says, right now, Vacilli
is out because the cops don't want to find him.
(32:13):
I know it for certain. They have thermal cameras, they
can do whatever they want, but they don't find him
because they don't want to. And before we can ask
him why he thinks this, he continues, Besides, even if
someone wants to tell you something, they won't. They won't
tell you anything. You might run into someone who knows him,
but will they tell you anything. No. I kind of
get the impression that this guy could be speaking about
(32:35):
himself here, but it's hard to know. Is he saying
people won't speak up because they're lords of Vasilis or
is it because they're afraid of him?
Speaker 5 (32:46):
Bows?
Speaker 7 (32:47):
Did KiB selmod wl Ganlana?
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Did good? Look mab dura.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
We get back in the car and continue onward towards
the hiker's shelter that Christos runs and owns, and he
wants to give us a lay of the land to
show us what hiding in these mountains actually takes. As
we drive up, Christos keeps making calls to people who
each refuse to meet with us. We make a pit
stop at a local pharmacy and you know, we ask
a couple of guys if they know by look Orstats.
(33:15):
They shake their heads as if to say, no, this conversation,
it's not happening. The thing is, when we took this
trip out to Kip Silly, I half thought these rumors
of us Illis hiding in these mountains were you know,
a little overblown, just more romantic law, like why would
Vasillis stay near his hometown when he has a world
to hide in. But so far everyone we've tried to
(33:39):
talk to has been evasive, like really evasive. And it
feels like the guy in the taverna was right, you
know that even if locals have something to say, they're
not going to spill secrets to an outsider. It just
feels like everyone here might know something. As we climb
up to the mountain refuge, the rain turns to hail,
(33:59):
The thickens and the wind roars. The road has like
turned to rubble every couple hundred of feet, Christs jumps
out the car to move giant rocks out of our way.
I feel trapped, you know. On one side is the
mountain face on the other side is a cliff, and
everything is shrouded in this, in this heavy fog.
Speaker 4 (34:22):
She wants to in the car.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Before long we've we've reached an altitude where the trees
disappear and the dirt road is all rocks. Now finally
we reach a little stone hut, like a one story building,
surrounded by a bank of snow, and I'm struck by
just how isolated it is. Some people, you know, think
that Basillis is holding out strong in a cave or
camping in the woods, you know, or sheltered maybe in
(34:50):
some remote hunting shack a little bit like this. But
being here as the first snowfalls, it strikes me how
hard it is to survive this place. That night, the
car battery dies on us, and when we finally revive it,
it starts storming hard. And now Christos is stepping out
(35:10):
into what feels like a tornado, moving small boulders and
tree branches that have fallen across the road. So much
for not driving home in the dark, in the storm,
in the middle of any to put it lightly, the
drive home gets hairy, and it just hammers home the point,
(35:32):
you know, living out here takes goods it's not easy,
and I become convinced. If Vasilis is anywhere in the region,
it's not up on the mountain, it's in one of
the villages down below. The question is with.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Who Chapter six Greek Values. When Christina spoke to her
(36:07):
anonymous source, they told her that Vasilis is never alone
and that he has managed to remain free because he
has a network of people who help him. These people,
whoever they are, clearly provide him with shelter and transportation, and,
according to the source, a regular installment of money. But
(36:29):
even then there's the regular folk who don't help him,
who know he's around and keep their lips shut tight.
And that's amazing to me. What makes this community so loyal,
Like why doesn't some poor farmer turn him in and
cash in that million euro reward? Is he really that good?
Or are the police that incompetent.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
I taught to a good number of people on this trip,
and they all told me a version of the same thing,
that this part of the country has been forgotten, that
nobody in power cares about the rural villages. People in
power seem to know this too. When we talk to
the former prime minister George Papandreau.
Speaker 7 (37:08):
He admitted it all the economic activity was very much
centralized here in Athens. That meant that in the countryside
they did not have much.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
He said that government policies helped gut these areas.
Speaker 7 (37:24):
Things like health, things like education, social service and so on,
all centrally controlled, really starved the countryside. So this is
I think a probably just has grown and grown over
the years.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
The strange thing about talking to people in this region
is that, honestly, a lot of the people feel more
proud of being from the region than the actual country.
And usually Greeks love talking about being Greek, but up
here it seems a little different.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
In reviewing the transcripts, there's a line that the deputy
Minister Leftedis Economo said that's stuck with me, that Vasilis's
protectors don't have Greek values. But I don't think that's
the problem. I think the problem is, after decades of
neglect and power struggles, nobody can agree on what those
(38:18):
Greek values are anymore. And to the people in this region,
values mean sharing the little you have, providing for one another,
the same values that might have inspired our robinhood, and
maybe that's why this idea of an entire community protecting
Vasilis in solidarity of not turning him in for the
(38:38):
million dollar reward seems so foreign to many of us.
Throughout this podcast, there's been one nagging detail that has
kept bugging me. We keep hearing stories of Vasilis being
so benevolent that he steals cars and gives them back,
that he throws money out the window as he drives
away from the scene of the crime. These stories are
(39:01):
always secondhand, always coming from somebody who knew a guy
who had a brother who like we never got the
story from the source, and after making seven episodes talking
to dozens and dozens of people, hopes weren't high that
we'd ever find someone. That is until George and George
(39:22):
were on the mountain trip and they visited a little
village not far from where us a least was spotted
a place called Borgarelli.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
So here in Burgarelli, I'm at a grocery store, or
I should say the grocery store. One of her Stusag's
contacts told us you have to talk to the owner.
So we step inside and we meet this guy's like
a nice looking family man in his fifties, you know,
grayin hair, and when he starts talking, you know, he
seems quite guarded, timid, And by this point we're used
(39:55):
to it, right, I mean, and I'm clearly not a local.
I've got this giant microphone with me. I've got more
of my mum's britishness that my dad's greekness in me.
So I get it. But when I ask him about
this ballio Acostas, he perks up and starts telling us
how Balo Costas stole his car and then gave it back.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
After king.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
He said he left his car parked outside his shop
one night and went to get some coffee. When he
came back, the car was gone. He didn't see it anywhere,
so he's looking and looking, and he actually thought like
am I drunk? And after a couple of days he
learned that Ballocostas probably took it. He says, Baalocostas was
off and around the area. He even came into the
(40:40):
shop to the bakery, things like that. And apparently Blocostas
kept his car and after two years he returned it
with a little note. Kind of jokingly, I asked, well,
did he ever say thank you? And he's said, obviously,
(41:01):
you know, he even changed the oil. He's a gentleman,
all right.
Speaker 5 (41:05):
Now.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
I don't know about you, but like, I can't imagine
having my car stolen for two years and then calling
the guy who took it a gentleman. I don't care
if he changed my oil or not.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
You know, you can tell this this was a story.
The owner's performed a lot, like he really enjoys the
fact that his car was stolen. And as people were walking,
you know, in and out of the shop, all of
them start chipping in, like remember when Vassilis did this
or when Vasillis did that? They all had something to add,
including this one guy who starts telling this story. One
(41:36):
day by Lookostas barges into a local farmer's house and
he's like, I'm hungry, slaughter one of your sheep and
feed it to me. And the guy's a little afraid,
so he plucks a sheep from his flock, slaughters it,
cooks it, and feeds it to Vasilis. And after the meal,
as Vasillis is leaving his house, he passes a farmer
who's selling clover. Vasilis buys the whole truckload and tells
(41:58):
the seller give all of this cloth to the guy
who showed me hospitality, so that the rest of his
flock can eat. The way he told the story, it
felt like something from a story book like this could
have been a folk tale from centuries ago.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
The stories feel as if they are fables written by
Asap or straight from the ballads of Robin Hood himself.
The same man has one more tale to tell us
when we have never heard before. He claimed it was
the real Paliocostas origin story.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
This isn't written down, but it's a story that's gone
around our community. Years ago, the agricultural bank took advantage
of Facility's sister. She took out a loan for a
house in Trico Lab but it was a rotten loan
and the bank system got ahold of her and started
milking her as they usually do.
Speaker 5 (42:50):
So.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
The first vengeful act of the Palocostas brothers was to
rob the Agricultural Bank of Trikala. That is where their
illegal activity started.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
The bank was robbing their sister, so they robbed the
bank back. It's such a simple story, but it had
all the elements of a true folk tale. Heroes, villains,
a quest a moral and at the end, poetic justice.
But it's not true, at least according to Vasilis's own accounts.
(43:24):
It is, however, the type of thing that makes us
want to believe, the type of thing we tell ourselves
over and over because it feels right for a man
we want to believe is a saint. It also harkens
back to the original robinhood story, because Robin, like Vasili's,
was leading a perfectly legal life until a bad debt
(43:46):
forces him to become an outlaw. The folk tales we
tell ourselves now and the tales told centuries ago haven't
changed much. The settings have been updated, but the heart
of these stories is timeless, because there are times when
(44:08):
we just need a hero. Our team has spent a
lot of time trying to get to the bottom of
the Vasilis story, to find the capital t truth, to
find out if Vasilis is actually not just good at thieving,
but a genuine good thief. But out here in these
(44:28):
villages those questions don't seem to matter to the people. Here,
Vasilis has become a symbol. He stands for this idea
that wrongs can be righted, hope that things can one
day be just, which isn't to say that Vasilis has
lived a normal life. The big things he's done are
(44:49):
genuinely extraordinary, and his story has plenty of real overlap
with Robinhood, which can make it hard to know what
to believe. Back when George was in the mountains, he
told us that he got this eerie feeling, this sense
that Vasilis could be hiding just down the block, and
when he mentioned it to the grocery store owner, the
(45:11):
gentleman agreed. In fact, he said it had happened before
the next second, Yes.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Yeah, So as we're trading stories, he told us about
this one time that there was twenty cops, you know,
swarming the village, and there Vasilis was in the middle
of it, all dressed as a priest, just smiling and
hiding in playing sights.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
I like that idea, Like, what if Vasilis was hiding
in plain sight. Maybe as we were running around town
he was chilling in a little chapel dressed up as
a hermit or a monk. It'd be a fitting move.
After all, that's something Robin Hood did too. The Good
(46:15):
Thief is a Kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeart Podcasts
gets hosted by me Miles Gray. Our executive producers Our
mangesh Hetikutur Costas, Linos, Ozwaalishan and Kate Osborne from iHeart
executive producers are Katrina Norvel and Nicki Etor. Our partners
at the Greek Podcast Project. Our executive producer Daphne carnisis,
(46:38):
field producers Christina Bilioni and George Miatis, and sound designer
Nikos Stavenikis, who provided the English voice of Kosa Samaras.
Mary Phillips Sandy is our supervising producer. Shane McKeon is
our producer. The show is written and researched by Lucas Riley,
fact checking by Donya Suleman, sound design and mix by
(46:59):
Pran Band. Special thanks to Fani Scolias and Elini Cassimo.
This episode featured the voices of Yourgo Scattamihos and Rich Green.
Our theme song is by Imam Baldi with additional music
by Botany. Finally thanks to Will Pearson, Connell Byrne, Bob
Pittman and John Mary Napolis