Edwin Rist and the Feather Underground

A story about hundreds of rare birds, some British naturalists, one of the wealthiest families in the world, and the young American musician who planned to steal the rare collection and sell them on the black market, so he could buy himself a golden flute. It sounds like a fairy tale for felons!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Elizabeth Dunton. Hey, Saron, I missed you.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
I missed you too. I've been great.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Okay, I got a question for you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Do you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:11):
I do? I knew you would Ikea bags?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
They are ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Nice, I love them.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
You want more?

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Yeah? I have a bunch of Ikea bags, very handy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Do you know that they make like really cool new
bags like backpacks and other types of stuff out of them.
People will take them and they've converted them. I saw
them at a flea market.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Oh really, Oh cool. So you know I do a
lot of mashups, and so think of the iconic Ikea bag.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
What if I don't if id and you.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Just think about two iconic paintings.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Okay, you've got me. Unfortunately, go on, hold on.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Hold on this just in This is not a mashup.
What this is? This is an update. This is a
Ridiculous Crime update.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Oh hell yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Okay, So you know how I was. You're so relieved.
So remember I told you about the Van Go Van
painting that was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum. Yeah,
the parsonage garden. It's been recovered. The Laughing Boys and
that's that still hasn't been recovered, right, But the parsonage

(01:23):
is back. Baby. There's a Dutch art sleuth. His name
is Arthur Brand and he like had this unnamed contact.
They met up. Dude gave him a Ikia bag with
something wrapped in an old pillow case and inside the
van go whoa, And so it's it. It's the real one.

(01:45):
It's basically you can track it down to that Nil's
m the guy that I told you about. We pretty
much knew he did it, and so yeah, right, I
was right here it is. They they still have to
go through like you know, all these you know, looking
it over and double and triple checking and what have you.
They're going to hand it over to the museum soon.

(02:08):
But yeah, so it's been recovered. We got that news.
The first person got it from a bunch of people.
But the first person did let us know, is Mary
Tarantino on Instagram. You Mary looking looking out So yeah,
that's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
If you got a second, do you have a second?
Are you in the mood to hear something ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Because I got one for you, girl, I am Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Okay, imagine two hundred and ninety nine rare tropical.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Birds, Okay, all in one room.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Exactly, and now they're all covered in bright plumage. It's
a rainbow of feathers, just a riot of color. Now
imagine these birds and their feathers are on display in
a British museum.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
I can see that.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Okay, right, totally fitting. Now, Next, try to imagine the
twenty two year old American who would steal those rare
bird feathers.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Now, last, try to picture that same young American man
who's in your imagination as he sells the stolen rare
bird feathers on the black market in order to make
a small fortune so that he could buy a golden flute.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Is this a Hans Christian?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
And this is ridiculous crime? A podcast about absurd and

(03:36):
outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's all with ninety nine
percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous ridiculous. All right, Elizabeth,
I have an extra wild one for you today.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
I'm so glad I need it.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Nice that shot.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
In the arm.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Okay, I got a lift for you. This story has
a little bit of everything. He's got rare birds. It's
got British naturalists, he's got one of the wealthiest men
in the world. It's got an American music lover. He's
got a thing for golden flutes. Sign me up, right, Okay,
let's just take an element by element first, one rare birds.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yeah right.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
You know how it's not easy to save nature from
the ever rushing onslaught of humanity. I hate to have
that job. Enter the naturalist. That's pretty much their job, right.
I mean, this is also the reason why we have
zoos and zoo keepers, same reason, right, and nature preserves
open the last resort naturalist museums, because if we can't

(04:27):
save the animal from disappearing from the natural world, at
least we can still look at it behind glass, at
memories right there it was. Now, can you imagine what
must feel like to be a modern naturalist like today?
I mean, they live a good life on one level, right,
Like they get a scrabble over rocks, they get to
climb around ravines, they're clambering up boreal footpaths. They have
a great life in that they're stalking across meadow hill

(04:49):
and dale just to see an animal.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
I mean, how awesome is that it's pretty good job.
That's a good job for you, but it does sound
like a job for me.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Honestly, I don't think I could be one of them,
and I just want to be as a I told
I was one of the kids. I want to be
a marine biologist, right, I was that kid?

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Dude? How many marine biologists are there in the world,
because I think every person in like fifth and sixth grade, Yes,
it was HiT's on marine biologist. But then it continues.
Then you got people all the way into how many
are there?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Three thousand, two hundred and eighty four.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Okay, good to know, Yeah, ok question, probably have better
odds of being an MLB Baseball player than being a marine,
but has no idea. I know you made that up,
and I love you for that.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
I'm sure that you know it's close.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, let's just say. I'm just going to go out
here on the limb and say it. You have a
better chance of becoming a professional athlete than a marine biologists.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Wow, that's just kind of humbling, don't you think? I think? Maybe?

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Right, I don't know, I know, I'm right.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Well, if you're a naturalist these days, you know you're
living through the anthroposscene mega extinction event. Yeah, right, so
you're documenting. Yeah, that's fun for you as a naturalist.
Now I found this one guy's a naturalist. I was
doing research for this story. Right. I find him. He's
down there in Mexico trying to track down a rare bird. Right.
What he was all about was the Imperial woodpecker. Now,
this is a huge, two foot tall striking bird, right,

(06:06):
with majestic plumage, has this really bright red crop on
top of its head, right, and it's believed to be
extinct or nearing extinction.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
They don't really know two foot tall woodpeckers, yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
And the mountains of Mexico, and it was it's circling
in the drain of life on earth right now. Right,
So this naturalist tramps out into the wilderness. He's just
to find the last imperial woodpecker. He's convinced there's been spottings.
So what does he find, Elizabeth. He doesn't find the bird. Instead,
he finds a truck driver. Now this truck driver, yeah,
real close. He was a little bit taller than two feet,
but he had seen the Imperial woodpecker. He'd been crossing

(06:38):
the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains down in Mexico. That mountainous
region is the home to the presumed last remaining Imperial woodpeckers.
So this truck driver he spots one. So when he
saw that brightly plumage bird perch on the Durango pine
tree branch high above him, it's the truck driver gazes
up at her right there resting feet that red feather crop.

(06:59):
I told you about catching the sunlight. He slowly pulled
out a gun and shot the woodpecker. Get then he
ate it. The truck driver told the naturalists this story
of his Imperial woodpecker encounter. He added that the bird
was on the car, which are in American English. This
says the bird was a one great piece of meat.

(07:19):
So his truck driver's meal may have been the last
Imperial woodpecker we'll ever see.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
But what kind of gun did he shoot? It was?

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I didn't. That was not in any of the stories.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
So I'm thinking, like, that's not a big bird, and
you're going to do a lot of damn.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
I think like a twenty two rifle, something that a
truck driver would have in their trucks.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Anyway, I mean, I know you're hungry.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
But come on to tell a hungry man not to eat.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, but of all the birds he doesn't know he's liked. Well,
that one's the easiest to see.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
It was just right near him. He figures out it's
in the trees. You know, we got plenty of birds. Now,
this more naturalist listening to this story of the truck,
he's just losing. He's been dying to see this bird. Right,
it's possibly the last imperial woodpecker. And now this guy
they could be extend like we still don't know. We
still haven't seen one since this truck driver. Yeah, oh,
the life of the modern naturalist. But let's talk about

(08:07):
the lucky ones, the ones that got to quote, discover
everything and go around naming everything. The eighteenth and nineteenth
century naturalists, right, you know some of the big names, Carlneis,
John James Audubon, Alexander von Humboldt, and al.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Wallace, the greats, all the greats.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah. Well that last guy, that's just what Paul Simon
and I call him. We call him al Oh god hinterned.
Nineteenth century British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace. Hey. Now, Wallace
was a collector, extraordinariy. He dreamed of gathering up from
nature a storehouse and cataloging at all like a library
of Mother Nature. That's what he wanted, the greatest hits

(08:46):
of mothers, Nature's greatest works, but all of them really
now the scientists. He thought, I can put this collection
together for the benefit of all humanity. That's how this
cat talked to He's like all humanity, that's what I'm
doing this for now. He's super high mind, did very
noble view of himself and what he aimed to do.
But he was also very effective. Now, when I say
very effective, I mean like, after one trip down to

(09:07):
the Melee Archipelago that is at now Malaysia and Indonesia, Wallace
walked out of the jungles after harvesting get this, one
hundred and twenty five thousand specimens.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
So he doesn't wait until they just the great Creator
takes him.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
No, no, no no.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
For guys, anthology is the hand of God.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Harvesting. Yes, So primarily he was gathering up butterflies, beetles, birds. Now, Elizabeth,
you may be wondering, Saren, why did he need one
hundred and twenty five thousand specimens? Why basically in the
wings of a butterfly, Wallace saw world peace.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Oh God, I told you, you're trying to give me
a headache.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Nineteenth century. Yeah. So there's this book called Beauty Obsession
and the Natural History Heist of the Century. It's by
this author, Kirk Wallace Johnson. And in his book he
documents in great detail the story that I'm about to
tell you, and I will be quoting some of various
interviews he gave hyping his book. And in his book
The Writer Kirk Johnson, he concluded that the naturalist Wallace
believed that nature had written and I quote letters in

(10:05):
the volume of the Earth's Deep History. And if we
allow these things to disappear, we're essentially blinding ourselves to
these records. So real, high minded language. Right, it's a
heavy trip, but it got dude, ain't wrong, right. I'm
a big believer in biomimicry. You know this. I fully
agree with al. I mean, like, yeah, we gotta look
at nature as our place, not as something we exploit.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Anyway, this naturalist ol Wallace, he goes tramp on off
to the South Pacific to study nature and birds and whatnot.
As I told you, for one of our big early trips,
he went down to the Melee Archipelago. While he was there,
he collected all these creatures he found undud you know,
fascinating or pretty or whatever. He ends up writing some
papers for science journals. He's particularly smitten with the birds
of Paradise. You know, the birds of Paradise. Really okay,

(10:45):
so those are his birds, not the flower, the bird
obviously he loves it right. In one paper that was
published in eighteen fifty five, Wallace wrote that quote, every
species has come into existence coincident, both in space and time,
with pre existing closely allied species. So basically what he
had concluded is that each species came into being through
a divergence with apparent species. And this natural progression, if

(11:06):
you or if you prefer this evolution, was how new
animals came into being. In other words, he came up
with Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest on his own,
and three or four years before Darwin published it. So
he sent his ideas to Darwin in eighteen fifty eight. Yes,
and Darwin was so struck by them and how similar
they were to his own ideas, which he had been

(11:26):
developing independently. That he showed, you know, he showed his
buddies Wallace's ideas, right, and he was like, look, homies,
look what this cat came up with. Do I need
to be worried about this? And his buddies, right, Darwin's
close homies. They're also scientists, right, So once a geologist
and other dudes a botanist. Now they considered this question
earnest and they come back to Darwin and they're like, look,
my dude, d we got to be straight up with
you about this. This guy he's got all the same

(11:47):
stuff as you. So we're thinking this, it's better to
keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And he's like, ooh,
Darwin's like, my geez, I like that, that's what's up.
I'm going to do that. So I'm going to invite
him to publish a piece with me in my journal,
but I'll position it so that my ideas are up
front and his ideas are just like further confirmation of mine.
Think that'll play. They're like, that's what's up.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Right, So, and that is what was up.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
And that's what was up, Elizabeth. That was the move.
So Darwin, he does exactly that. He publishes his landmark
book on the Origin of Species very next year, eighteen
fifty nine, a year after Wallace's entem his work. So
now to seal the deal for his scientific fame, Darwin
came up with a presentation that featured extracts from his work,
two previous books of his, and some of Wallace's papers.

(12:32):
So then he presents them to the Linnaean Society, which
is basically the leading naturalist organization of the day. He's
now backseatd his brother forever. Right, So the paper that
Darwin presents and publishes is called on the Tendency of
Species to form varieties, and on the Perpetuation of varieties
and species by natural means of selection. Quite a banger, sure,
yeah right, it has it's his name, right, just just

(12:53):
liquid words, right, But Wallace's name is on the paper,
so it was Darwin's. But everyone still treats it like
it's Darwin's paper. So boom, Darwin and seals the deal
in the science community, and we all know it now
as Darwin's theory of evolution. Wallace gets sidetracked for all times. Sorry,
now right now, Darwin, he was a little decent about
this he made sure that Wallace won a couple awards.
He gets some medals, and also when later when Wallace

(13:15):
was aged and poor because he did not get the
scientific glory, Darwin also made sure you know that Wallace
is watching himself be lost to history while he's still alive.
Darwin got him a stipend of funds to live on,
so he was decent in that regard. But anyway, that's
pretty much how gangster Darwin iced out this guy Wallace.
So what about Wallace? Like, why should we not cry
for Wallace.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Argentina, don't cry for him because.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
His story isn't over, Elizabeth. He later on became buddy
buddy with one of the richest men in the world. Yeah,
who offered him his entire naturalist collection and create a
great museum to display at all. That was a good outcome.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Right, Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
However, he wasn't the only one in England who zealously
coveted the feathers of rare tropical birds, so that led
to a negative outcome, which was okay. There was this
fashion trend going on the time, bright tropical feathers that
these guys in these naturalists have been collecting. Suddenly became
all the rage in eighteen seventies London society, right, anyone
who was anyone had to have some eye catching plumage,
something to decorate their high hat. Basically, the ladies of

(14:13):
London were like pimps. They needed all the feathers they
could get. They're like, give them to me, right, So
the fashion training creates a crime wave because they need
a black market to supply the ladies with the feathers
that they're willing to pay top dollar for. Us his
crime wave right and fashion trend synergy. It leads to
a creation of a network of feather getters m HM
and boom. Unscrupulous Europeans come rushing into the South Pacific

(14:35):
following Wallace, taking the same birds he's trying to take. Right,
they're taking him in such large numbers. They're just scouring
the jungles for rare feathers that are now basically worth
more than gold. That there are so many feather hunters,
and they resulted in a mass slaughter that was nicknamed
by the press at the time the slaughter of the Innocence.
That's how many birds they were taking, right. The wanton
bird killing got so bloody, so brutal that they eventually

(14:58):
animal rights activists, they didn't have that name with the
ti time. They formed the first early animal conservation societies
just to stop the feather trade. So this effort leads
to legislation in the UK. The UK bans the feather
trade entirely. Right. So now these same groups would go
on to form animal rights and conservation groups that we
know of. This was their first success, really, right, your people, Elizabeth,

(15:19):
So we don't have.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
A lot of these birds anymore. So that Henrietta Baxter
Chonkington could walk down the street.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
And look super flea and incredible, yes exactly, so she
could feel some kind of way.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Well, it's also like, you know, it's not new to
have the beautiful feathers and items like the Chinese Kingfisher headdress,
which are now in bits and pieces all over Western
gift shops in like China, Chinatown.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, you have.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
Broken up into Vancouver to which is so heartbreaking that
you know.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Anyway, So the thing is is that the eighteen seventies
allowed them to be able to get at an industrial
scale and harvest all this stuff. As before pe have
been getting it. They just couldn't go take steamships down
there and gingle tramping off and everything they could, much
like the gold Rush. Just imagine it for feathers. Yeah right, yeah, okay,
Well next up in our next element, the richest man

(16:11):
in the world. But first let's take a break and
we'll be back in two and two. All right, Elizabeth,

(16:37):
we're back. I got more nuts for you. Yeah ready,
Enter Lord lionel Walter Rothschild, the second Baron Rothschild. Is
he an you could say so? I mean, I'm not.
I'm not. I just meant the story itself. I got
I got a whole bag of nuts.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
I thought you had a bunch of bozos for me
to learn about.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
I do that too. I got a I got a hole.
I got a bag of nuts and a bucket load
of bozos. This guy, he was the son of the
first Baron Rothschild aka Nathan, and his father was a
Nate magnate you know who he was. Father was an
international financier. This man, he'd founded the banking fortune that
we all still influences our world today. Right. His boy,

(17:16):
lionel Or Walter, as he was known to the fam
and to history, was the eldest of three kids. So
that means he stood in line to inherit everything and
become the next sigh On and so forth. But he
was kind of a delicate boy. So because of his
rather porcelain nature, he was homeschooled. And then that's where
he came up with his true life's ambition, which was
not running the family's banking empire. Instead, like Matt Damon,

(17:36):
he would buy a zoo.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Does he have soft hands?

Speaker 2 (17:39):
No, he was a big dude. He's like six y
three and all that. Oh no, yeah, he had definitely
soft like butter soft hands, damp hands, moist, clammy hands. Yes,
I imagine that. So being the son of fabulous wealthies, I'm
building a zoo and he can build a zoo, So
a tremendousuo fabulous zoo. He would have everything. And you
know he because as I said, he's a you know,
child of wealth and privilege. He doesn't have to give

(18:01):
up this seven year old's dream. He can make it
actually happen, right, he has to wade out his family's
resistance to it. So eventually the family they buy him
the zoo, but not till he was forty years old.
By then, he had made it clear to everybody and
in every possible way that he had no head for finance.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
And so Daddy says, I want a zoo exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Daddy's like, Okay, give him the goddamn zoo. So they
bought him the zoo. Now, Walter he builds a zoo
right there on the family homes property at Tring Park.
And that's got to be fun. Like, you're one of
the richest men in the world. You live above the
lion cage that your son has created. You're like when
the wind shifts and you're like, we're gonna have to
change rooms, guys. So Walter Roschau he starts collecting animals.
He's like, this is like having a job, right. So,

(18:43):
but he's good to his word. His aim is to
become like Moses two point zero, just without the flood, right.
So he starts collecting everything butterflies. Mosah, what I say, Moses,
I'm sorry, Noah, come with me animals And then sorry,
You're right, Noah, not Moses.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
I was trying to save you from like.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
The Instagram comments when I have like yeah flub yeah,
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
I appreciate that I spend my life trying to avoid those.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
Yeah, clearly I do not corrections.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
You know again keep swimming.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
But anyway, I like that about you. Yeah, good looking
at huh, you know I'm back. So butterflies, moths, lizards, rabbits, squirrels, tigers, kangaroos, giraffes,
you name it. He wants them in London, right, He's like,
what do you got? I'll take two. So you've likely
actually seen an image of this guy. You wouldn't think,
you know, Baron rothschildt off of site, but I'd be

(19:33):
willing to bet you you've seen him. He's the British
cat who used to drive around Victorian and later Edwardian
England in a carriage pulled by a team of zebras.
You ever seeing the photo of a team of zebras, perhaps, well,
he had this team of floor zebras and they'd pull
his coach to like Buckingham Palace, and there's all these
pictures of that, you know, which is kind of striking.
But there's also images of him riding zebras like he's
a British cowboy, which are just kind of silly. And

(19:55):
he was real big on domesticating zebras. For some reason,
he bred them. He crossbred them with horse says he
called the resulting creature he created a zebroid. So anyway,
due to his aforementioned delicate constitution, Old Walter Rothschild, he
didn't leave the UK much, not as much as he
would like to. He couldn't go on the adventures that
he craved. So instead, what did he do?

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Elizabeth brings everyone to a very incompatible climate.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yes, and he hires teams of men to bring him
the world. He hires all these hunters, he sends them
out into the wilderness of the world to collect samples
from everything from his animal wish list. Right, so he
paid also roomfuls of taxidermists to prepare his collection, because
remember talking in the thousands for these animals, he had
librarians and scientists on his payroll. He had paid a

(20:40):
team of naturalists to organize and label his collections. He's
like a one man industry. Eventually, Walter Rothschild he had
two hundred thousand bird eggs in his collection, ten one
hundred thousand.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Think of the storage space exactly.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Just moving him around, and you had to label them
all anyway, and these.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Are just like unfertilized bird egg.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, just like imagine like an Ostrich museum, just but
all the eggs. So he had thirty thousand beatles. He
had two million, two hundred and fifty thousand butterflies. It
was the largest private collection in the world at the
time by far, and thanks to my man Al Wallace's collection,
he also had three hundred thousand rare birds to display

(21:18):
eighty one hundred thousand. Yes. So in eighteen ninety two
he opens up his family's private parking museum collection to
the public. It becomes a wonder of its age. The
crowds love it. But just to make this long story short,
in nineteen thirty two, he gets blackmailed by a mistress
and he loses the zoo. So it wait plays out
like this. She was the third mistress to blackmail one. Right,

(21:40):
So this guy his first mistress had found out about
his second mistress and both of them were furious because
it turns out he had met his first two mistresses
at the exact same party. It was a hell of
a swanky affair hosted by King Edward the seventh. So
Walter rothschild. He starts canodling with Bogrim at the time.
Then they find out all hell.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Breaks these are mistresses, so he has one.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
He's not married, he's unmarried.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Oh, they are just girlfriends.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yes, but they're called mistresses and all the press because
at no point intending to marry them. They're not. Clearly,
you're not taking them.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
I don't think they use the term girlfriend at the time.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
No, but they're not girlfriends because he's not planning on marryland.
There's no future.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
Fellows have a girlfriend, they have no intention of murder.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, we're just little more delicate. I guess these days
started calling girlfriends. They're mistress. Oh this is your mistress. No,
I'm not married. I know I know somebody.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
We all know where be real, honey, don't get your hopes.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
So eventually threats get made by these two mistresses. Now
remember I said that, Uh, he's Walter's kind of delicate. Well,
his brother, his younger brother, has to step in and
settle the royaling embarrassment to the family. He bribes both
women with land and money for them to go away.
So then now unmarried Walter rothschild. He finds himself a
new mistress to blackmail.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
This man can like dip his wick all over the place,
but he can't settle up, like.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Come on, he's yeah, delicata. He doesn't deal with people
like he doesn't like game.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Thing you tell me about this man makes me loathe
him more and more.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Just wait. So his mistress of decades, she eventually blackmailed him.
He has a mistress he's with for four decades, the
same one during all of this, right, but she was married,
so she's married. He's not her husband and her conspire
to start blackmailing them. They blackmailed him for the four decades.
They just work them.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
They blackmailed him.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
For four decades, and at the very end they're like,
we need to cash out. So they cash out at
the casino and they go, we're gonna go big man.
He's like, oh, come on, guys, and they make him
sell his bird collection to pay off their ransom. So
he has to sell it off. He sells the Tring Museum.
He sells the museum and then on his death it
goes and gets transferred to the crown and the people
of the UK.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
The magnitude of like the maronitude in this we were like,
he has three hundred thousand birds. I'm like, my mind exposed.
He was blackmailed for four decades.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
And then he loses it to this married couple that've
been working there for He loses his whole collection. Right
the museum goes to the UK. It gets called in
nineteen thirty seven the Natural History Museum at Train. Now
in two thousand and nine, some random twenty something American
breaks into this museum, rifles through the collection and steals
the long prize fortune of Wallace and Rothschild and you

(24:12):
know the affair couple. This all the ultra rare birds.
This thief, what is he after? Elizabeth Feathers us say
yes so even talking rare bird Feathers British naturalists, one
of the wealthiest men in the world. Before I introduce
you to the criminal today, I do need to tell
you one more thing. You ready? You ever tie a fly?

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Oh like fishing fly?

Speaker 2 (24:31):
Yes? Good call. Yeah, I mean someone tried.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
To teach me in the past and I go, oh, yeah, totally,
you've seen it done. I've seen it done. Actually my
father used to tie them.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
You used tod type fly. Okay, there you go. It
turns out there's another group in this story who also
covet rare bird feathers. The dudes and Dudets who tie
flies for fly fishing. They like to use the feathers
for all sorts of imitations of nature designed a trick
fish into thinking it's a flying insect. Right, So the
New York Times they once documented this salmon fly fishing
expert dude tie his own flies. He ties flies professionally

(25:01):
for others. He's a master tie flyer or fly tire anyway,
whichever the case may be. His name is Paul Schmuckl,
and this cat Paul Schmukel. He was quoted in a
nineteen ninety profile wherein he tells the Paper of Record
that quote, we will use up to one hundred and
fifty different materials, ranging from polar bear and mink fur
to the feathers of wild turkeys, golden and reeves, pheasants,

(25:22):
the African speckled buzzard, and the Brazilian blue chatterer. I'm sorry,
that's just a fun list to say. I don't get it.
How often do you say the Brazilian blue chatterer.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Well, it seems like they're like, you know, wild turkeys,
they're all over the place, and we got him walking.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
All over the African speckled buzzard.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
Polar bears like please tell me you just went and
snipped a little off the side.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
You didn't. I'm hoping he went to the zoo. He's like,
do you guys just cleaned up? Like sleep up?

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Trying to get disappointed in fly fisher people, just we
I always admired it because it's a very contemplative activity.
And not only just in the tying of the flies.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
I've been where a river runs through it.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Exactly. You just stand there, just a little quiet, keeping yourself.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Imitating legs, like imitating imagine.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
That people are yes, and I take every opportunity to
say someone's peeing their pants.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yes, that's good anyway.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
But yeah, I know it's very contemplative and I appreciate that.
But now that they're just as craven and disgusting, Oh yeah,
they're all breaking my main credo in life, which is
let wild be wild. I like your main that's my
big thing, Let wild be wild.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
You have a Mary Oliver, I'm telling it. You always
about it.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Love her. But yeah, like, come on, guys.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Well you're gonna hate this next part. Chief among the
chosen natural materials of these fly fishermen is rare bird feathers, right,
and they are integral to a number of different fly
what they call recipes that you'll find in all these
manuals that are available. But get this, Elizabeth, most of
the flies these folks tie, they never actually get used
for fly fishing. So at this point they're just it's
it's a whole art of tie.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
They're in a shadow box on someone's walls exactly.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
So these ties are works of art. These beauties create.
They never touch water. I mean, would you throw Van
gos Storry night into a rushing creek, Elizabeth, No, you
would not.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
I needed to teach a man to fish.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
So these flies also at this point they can cost
thousands of dollars. Would you throw thousands of dollars into
a rocky bottom stream, Elizabeth? You would not. Anyway, you
probably would also anywhere whole festivals dedicated just to tying flies,
not to fishing, right, just to tying.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Probably find festivals dedicated to pretty much.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yeah, it's kind of rule thirty four. On the Internet,
people either gather or yeah anyway, So there are conventions,
there are meetups, There are groups rife with folks who
are all they all covet the feather, right, yeah, especially birds,
And just like remember those Victorian feather hunters of the past.
They also kind of get into a craze and a
mania out of this all, right now, So naturally these
folks will pay high dollar for these rare feathers that

(27:47):
they desire. Like addicts or junkies or funko pop collectors.
They're willing to ruin their lives in pursuit of rare
bird feathers. Yeah, and you know what that means, Elizabeth,
that means crime. So meet Edwin Risk. Yes, two year
old American floutist and fly.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Tying and daddiest on top of it all.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Dude was born in New York City. Later his family
moved upstate to Hudson Valley area. That's where he was homeschooled.
At a rage around ten years old, young ed Woim's home.
He's sitting there, he's, you know, schooling it up. He
sees a video about tying flies. He starts watching. A
kid is in fraud, right, He's he's also he's watch
he wants him to watch another video and another one.
He got no friends and he's got nothing to do,

(28:24):
and so he's hooked. He runs around his home gathering
up all these materials. He immediately begins imitating what he's
watching on the screen. He ties his very first fly.
That moment, moment changes the entire course of his life.
That one fly tying video did he happen to see?
Is wild? Like a one random us have those.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
One moments exactly, you know, change the course of everything.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
I think every kink is based on that one moment. No,
I mean, seriously, how much of a life anyway, So
his obsession with tie flying it grabs hold of him.
He starts focusing on trout flies as a kid. No,
trout flies, they're kind of easy for a kid to
tie because they're supposed to look like an ugly insect
and not like a beautiful yeah may fly or something.
So it's supposed to look like a bug. Right, So
he's able to do those and he starts to learn

(29:05):
as young and when risks, he starts learning all the techniques,
the history of tie flying. He spreads his own little wings.
He begins to compete. He travels to fly tying contests
one and two states away, mostly in New England. Right,
and at a convention, he sees someone who's tying salmon flies.
This is like Gwernica to his young eyes. He's like,
oh so young boy, thighs are now drawn to all

(29:26):
this bright, strange, rare bird feathers that this person used
for this salmon fly. And there he asks, and he
finds out there were twelve different types of bird feathers
used for just this one salmon fly. They're all delicately
wrapped and braided around the eyelid of the fish hook.
And he stares long and hard at this salmon fly
right the colors, and he just transfix them. It's like
a magic spell gets cast. He just has to be

(29:46):
about this to pare for his Netchere, Elizabeth, he stared
into the salmon fly, and the salmon flies stared into him.
Now evan to risk, he's got a new obsession, right,
so he books lessons with masters of salmon fly tying.
Turns out this kid's a natural. He had a god
given gift for making imitation insects out of bird feathers
and some mink fur or whatever. Rights having to drive

(30:07):
like all around these different states. Let's go get you
those fly like you can't watch them, Like when you
have a kid who's like good at gymnastics, at least
you can watch some fun stuff.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
You're like, oh, oh, man, I would take driving around
to fly tying over a gymnastics meet any day.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Okay, well that's the difference between you and I. Jim's stink,
the competition, the action, there's something going on instead of
like get out the ziplock turkey bag and find that
really feather.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, I would go for the feather thing.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah. Anyway, so guys, this is not a huge surprise
that this guy's good. Had all of this to be,
I said, he's a natural. I remember also this, I said,
he is a floutest. He was a virtuos too floutest.
This kid Edwin is like he could play a tune
on a flute to make a grown man cry. I
mean he's like as a kid. Apparently he also could
play metallic on his flute. I mean he was just

(30:57):
about it, right.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
I like to hear all of those. I like how
high minded his games and activities. Kind of like a
sixty year old man in a child wants to tie
flies and he wants to play the floor.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, and you know from Metallica.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Yeah, hey, he's ste year old man.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
It makes you believe in reincarnation. Anyway, as I said,
he's got to get for artistic expressions. His obsession with
time flies continues to hold over him. There's one problem, though.
If vund Wrist wants to recreate the recipes he's finding
in these nineteenth centuries masters of tie flyings recipe books,
he would need the materials that they had. Super rare materials,
the sort of materials that are now illegal to purchase
laws would not stop him. Elizabeth, he had flies to tie.

(31:41):
Years later, he moves to England. He finds himself not
far from one of the greatest collections of rare bird
feathers known to humanity. The idea of us come to
him one day. He was just like, you know, I
must break into the British National History Museum. So he
decides he's going to steal Lord Rothschild's display of Wallace's
rare birds, and if he was successful, he would sell

(32:02):
the feathers to all of his fellow fly tying officionados.
He would free the feathers, because you know, that's what
he was really after, Elizabeth. He wanted to buy himself
that solid gold flute. So he's planning a move in
these feathers.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
So are these birds actually on display?

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Taxidermy birds.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
They're not just in the storerooms.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Taxidermy birds on display, last case, his cabinets, the whole bit.
Sometimes feathers like attached to a wing.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Because I'm trying to decide how mad I get because
I'm thinking, like, if they're just in a storage space
and no one can see them, well, maybe they get
repurposed and people can see it because they're not using
these for actual fly fishing. They're for display purposes. Wait,
oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
So he is now next to the greatest temptation that
you could possibly conceive for this kid, the Natural History
Museum at Tring. They're in South Kensington, Soliz, Yes, can
you feel them, just like the anticipation, the anxiety this
kid must have, like, how can I get those feathers? Huh?
I want you to stay right there with that feeling,

(32:59):
cause we're gonna take a break afterwards. We're gonna bust
into that museum. Yeah all right, Elizabeth, Yes, you're ready

(33:24):
to bust into this baby. We're gonna free some feathers. Okay. Now,
this museum, it boasted, the is at this point the
second largest ornithological collection on the planet. I think the
Smithsonian has passed it or the Naturalisty Museum in New York.
I cannot remember. I did not look up what was
number one. But it was criminally unguarded or underguarded. Yeah,
it did have guards, but it was a rather easy target,

(33:45):
even for an amateur cat burglar. So Edwin brist he
does it the smart way. He cases the joint. He
visits the museum pretending to be a student photographer. That
gives him cover, right, so he's able to photograph everything.
He takes photos of all the cases, the cabinets, every
rare bird he wants to on his shopping list. He
of course, you know, he takes photos of the entrances,
the exists, all the info he'd need for his eventual

(34:07):
break in plan right for the next seven or eight months,
He creates his master plan, and like you, he created
a word document. He titled it Plan for a Museum Invasion. Yes,
in the document, he typed out his shopping list of
burglary tools and birds he wanted, and his wish list,
you know, just everything that could go right. And he

(34:28):
keeps visiting the Tring Museum working on his plan. We're
working up the nerve. One day he feels good to go.
He's like, all my ducks are in a row. So finally,
on a fateful summer day in June, edwind Wrist sets
his hest plan into motion. It was the night of
June twenty third, two thousand and nine. Edwind Wrist scheduled
to perform in a concert in London. He brought his
flute with him. He turned that concert hall out. Then

(34:50):
he took a train up to Tring Park. That I
discovered his estimated to be about a forty five minute
long train. Right, Okay, I haven't taken it. I don't know.
Don't jump on me if I'm wrong. Yeah, But whatever
it is, I do know this, Elizabeth. I'm not gonna
just tell you about that night. I want you to
close your eyes and I want you to picture as
a close You are a Victorian era ghost, yes I am.

(35:12):
You haunt the former home of the Baron Rothschild. You
were one of the Rothschild's domestic servants, but you died
in a tragic hunting accident. So now you stalk the
grounds of Trink Park, specifically the spot where you were shot,
which happens to be the Natural History Museum at Tring.
It's nighttime you're doing your thing, haunting the hallways of
the museum. You hear a noise. You float directly through
the brick walls of the building and pass through into

(35:33):
the alley that runs behind the museum. You spy a
young man dragging a suitcase behind him. You watch as
he climbs up the backside of the museum. He cuts
the barbed wire meant to keep someone like him out.
With one good snip, the barbed wire springs away with
the tension of the wires. The young man climbs up
to a window. He goes up with his suitcase. Once
he's situated, he pulls out a diamond tip glass cutter.

(35:55):
You watch with curious relish. He tries to use the
glass cutter like you see in a movie, like a
cat burglar would do, or to his mind, like a
superspied James Bond guy would do. But the glass cutter
he bought online doesn't work. It fails him in that
critical moment, so you float over closer to see what
he's up to. He doesn't sense you, though. Instead he
hops back down to the ground. He pulls a loose brick,

(36:17):
then he climbs back up and smashes the glass of
the window. Then he reaches in. He opens the window,
swings it open, shoves his luggage into the window. The
suitcase lands inside the museum with a leathery slap. Meanwhile,
you float there wondering if you have a new roommate
in the museum. You float back through the brick wall
and catch up with a cat burglar. You watch him
as he quietly opens the glass faced cabinets and cases.

(36:39):
They barely creak with noise. Then he shoves Taxi dermy
bird after Taxi dermy bird into his suitcase. You know
there's a security guard working that night. You saw him earlier,
a droll fellow of little imagination. He's not even worth haunting,
but you know he's there. Later on, that same security
guard will say that an alarm did go off that night,
but in a different one of the six gallery of

(37:00):
the museum. But you, you are here, you know what
really happened. As best as you can count. The young
man steals two hundred and ninety nine rare birds from
the collection. Then he exits the same way he came in.
It just takes him a second or two to shove
his suitcase back through the open window and like that
he's gone. So Edwin Risk gets away with it.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
He successfully steals three birds, a suitcase.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Full of birds. So I don't know, like why that
worked for him, that was his first big bus, but
it works. So the amateur cat burglar. He goes to
a train station. His plan is then could take the
last train back to London. But he took so long
shopping for birds. He was like, you know those grocery
store shopping spree TV shows. Now was him in the museum, right,

(37:45):
It's bird after bird in the suitcase. He's dragging it around,
more birds, more birds, takes he gets so many birds.
When he gets to the train station, he's missed the
last train. So what's he gonna do now? Now he's
sitting there with basically about a million dollars worth of
birds in a suitcase at a train station somewhere in
the like suburbs of London. So he sits there at
a train station, all by himself, just a few miles

(38:07):
away from the museum. He's just burgled. And uh, luckily
though he's not in a part of England where someone
would think to steal his suitcase. That's the only thing
that works out for him.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Right, they'd be disappointed, dude, the flute player.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Right, imagine you steal suitcase. It's kind of heavy. You
think elders is coming here, get home. It's just a
bunch of tropical dead birds.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
No, not my suitcase. There's a million dollars with the
stuff in there. You're like, oh yeah, what kind of money?

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Python sketch him I in anyway, the dude, he's safely this,
this flute player safely spends the night in the train station.
No cops come up to him, No strangers walk up
and say his full name at him, No one punks
him for his suitcase. He makes it all the way
to dawn, He catches the first morning train, makes it
back to London. He goes back to you know his place. Now.

(38:51):
It's the next day, June twenty four to two thousand
and nine. Police are called out to the Natural History Museum.
Governort has been a break in. It's a train right.
The staffed and administrators of the train museum are on it.
The quickly tabulate Elizabeth the damage and lost items. Doesn't
take them long. Not coincidentally, it was all male birds
that were stolen. Why is that?

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Aren't they the showier one.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yes, he's not some kind of bird sexiest. Turns out
that in the bird world, magnificent plumage and regal feathers
are the male's domain, right They females, they get the show,
they get to decide. So the juvenile males, though, they
are too young for all that, so they're still drab
looking like the females. So this guy on his wish
list a bunch of male birds with bright feathers. Right,
so the birds he took, right, these you haven't asked me,

(39:31):
So I'm just going to tell you.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
I was waiting. I think give me an accounting of
what the flute tutor took.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
There you are they rare katangas, the oh not the
rare yes, rare katangas, and the quetzals from South America.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
Yeah, that's new social media.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Bower birds from New Guinea.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Oh, now, there's so much good footage of birds building
their collections of Yeah, it's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Now the Indian crows and the ever striking birds of
Paradise previously mentioned, also from New Guinea. He collected a
bunch of them. He's all about the tropical birds, and
all of them had been collected by al my Man
al Wallace back in the nineteenth century. So these birds
are irreplaceable, right, Yeah. The then director of science at
the museum, Richard Lane, he tells the press quote, these
birds are extremely scarce. They are scarce in collections, even

(40:12):
more scarce in the wild. Our utmost priority is working
with police to return these specimens to the national collection
so that they can be used by future generations of scientists.
Kind of a dusty statement. Yeah, To put it in perspective,
the collection was three hundred and fifty years old, the
specimens had been taken. This is basically you know, these
birds are literally priceless, like they The museum's collection represented

(40:33):
ninety five percent of all known living species of birds,
and he's just rifling through it. So he's damaging some,
taking others. Anyway, Oh my god, nothing else they had
been stolen except for these tropical birds. So the police
are baffled. The Interdetective Inspector Fraser Wiley, this is a
very unusual crime and we are keen to recover the
bird skins, which are part of a national heritage. Because
the British keep calling them birds skins because they're taxidermied birds,

(40:56):
there's no bones inside, yeah, exact. So the police asked
the pub look for help or assistance that they can provide. Meanwhile,
back at the ranch, and by the ranch, I mean
student housing at the Royal Academy of Music. Cut to
the rare bird feathers, all right, stolen by this random
twenty two year old American from the Hudson Valley. So, dude,
Edwin wrist Right, what's he doing at this point in

(41:17):
his little weird criminal fairy tale that he's living in
where he's gonna trade bird feathers for a golden flute?

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Does he have a roommate?

Speaker 2 (41:23):
No, he doesn't have a roommates. Yeah, right, But like,
why a golden flute? I'm so glad you asked to lose.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
I was wondering why a golden I look this up.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Golden flutes or gold flutes, they are a thing. There's
apparently some benefit to buying and playing a solid gold flute.
So so it's not just solid gold. Yeah, So, to
quote the instrument maker Suzuki, gold lends a special glitter
to a flute, and the lustrous tombre of a gold
flute has an unerring, far reaching carry even when the

(41:53):
instrument is played pianissimo. It's allure probably makes it the
last word in flutes, so he wants that last word, right,
So how much would the last word and flutes cost?

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah, that's a good question.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
I look this up for you. They range between twenty
five thousand and one hundred grand.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Wow. And it's not just to be flashy.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
No, there's also solid platinum flutes. They're even more expensive,
which makes no sense because I can't imagine solid platinum
sounds better than gold AND's gold like atomically makes more
sense as a perfect element.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
But whatever, Well, people love the platinum.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
I know it just seems like you get platinum because
it's pretentious, not because he's going to do anything music.
But whatever, what do I know? I'm not a floutist.
So the time of the theft, Edwin Rist was twenty
years old. Now it's fifteen months later, he's twenty two
years old. I know you're wondering, how could that be.
It's because we missed a birthday or two.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
We missed two birthdays.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Right, So he's studying flute at the London Royal Academy
of Music. Did he have his golden flute? Well, he
was trying to get that amount saved up. Right after
he'd successfully robbed the train museum, he took all they
told you, the two hundred and ninety nine bird skins.
He starts processing them. He's clipping off the identification tags,
decoupling the birds from all that inventory, like that indexing system.
So all the scientific research is now null and void.

(43:00):
And when he went to where he could sell bird
feathers on the black market, he knew where he could
find and connect with what I'm going to call the
feather underground. So that's my generalized nickname for the modern
feather hunters, collectors, dealers. Did anyone who buys, sells, or
covets rare bird feathers? Elizabeth?

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Well?

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Anyway, this black market, the feather underground, primarily it's composed
of fly tying fishermen.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, the folks who desired the brightly colored tropical feathers,
they were the ones who paid top dollars, so they
really moved the market, right, So they are also willing
to pay on something that's either extinct or endangered or
stolen or why not two of three? Yeah, So Edwin
the now twenty two year old flute virtuoso. He's studying
at the London Royal Academy of Music, so real, like,

(43:42):
you know, congrats to his parents. Yeah, he spends his
nights tying flies made from his stolen bird feathers. And
get this, Elizabeth, you were to drop Edwin in a
stream with a rod and some flies, he'd have no
idea what to do. He doesn't know how to fly fish.
He's never been fly fishing. He doesn't fly. He doesn't
fish period. Right, apparently this is very common for expert
tie flyers or fly tires rather, especially amongst the salmon

(44:04):
fly tying community. Anyway, so no fishing, Edwin. He's down
there spending all of his night's tying flies, and it's
tossing him into large ziplock bags. He crammed ziplock bags
filled with thousands of flies that he ties in this
twelve or fifteen month period.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
So, anyway, kids, who's sitting down that day happened to
see a fly tying video has now shaped his life.
Or he's sitting there alone in London tying flies every night,
dreaming of his golden flute. Right, and he's plucking feathers
from this rare bird collection and so he does this
for more than a year. I said, he's plucking, he's
tye in, he's plucking some more. Edwin's sitting there alone. Boom.
It was like, also, I forgot to mention when he's

(44:39):
not doing that, he's ritualistically playing flute. So he's just
either playing flute because he's you know, virtuoso, or he's
tying flies. That's all he's doing. He's just obsessed, all right.
So he stuffs multiple ziplock bags filled with thousands of
delicate salmon flies. He manages to sell some online mini
In fact, he makes money, a bunch of money for sure.
And now where do you think he was selling these

(45:00):
stolen feathers? I told you who you're selling them to
and in the feather underground. But where do you think that?

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Where do you think he found geographically?

Speaker 2 (45:08):
We'tre's go with where? Online?

Speaker 3 (45:10):
eBay?

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yes, he was selling them on eBay. He was just
listing and selling the rare bird feathers all out in
the open as whole skins or tide flies on eBay,
also in fly tying forums. It worked for a while.
He was able to he found four buyers. He moved
about seventeen thousand dollars worth of bird skins and flies.
Then things went awry. Someone got suspicious, someone went to
the police. They reported him. Didn't take long for the

(45:33):
bobbies to find him because he hadn't hidden his IP address.
He's just using eBay, so they just went right to
his student housing apartment. Knock, knock, knock. He gets arrested
November twelve, twenty ten. When the police search his apartment,
what do they find? They find one hundred and seventy
four of the two hundred and ninety nine stolen birds.
They're like, how many ties have you been tying?

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Man?

Speaker 2 (45:51):
So up about one hundred and seventy four. Only one
hundred and two were still tagged and labeled. The remaining
seventy two weren't there. Just all out. The museum puts
out a request and they asked in anyone who bought
one of his stolen birds please return them. No questions asked,
We just really want the birds, bask Can you guess
how many of these outstanding birds were sent back?

Speaker 3 (46:08):
I'm gonna say zero nineteen, oh wow, which calculates out
to be six percent of the missing birds from the
Train Museum.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
So they got six. Yeah, so there's a few good
people or maybe one who bought a lot, I don't know.
Nineteen So anyway, guys, with the number of birds that
were returned into flies and stuffed into zip lock bags,
can we guess how many that was? The police estimated
it as sixty four birds returned into flies.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Sixty birds birds.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yeah, So he gets arrested, interrogated, and because he's not
a hardened criminal, Edwin Wrist he confesses to everything and
that just leaves his trial now because he is me right.
So his defense attorney, admittedly though, just still wanted to
fight something. He doesn't have much to work with, but
he still decides to try to like get something. So
the defense attorney works his butt off and the dude's sharp.
He argued that his client, Edwin Risk, engaged in impulsive

(46:55):
and amateurish actions, to be sure, in a vain attempt
at living out his James Bond fantasies. Blah blah blah.
Then the attorney he argued that his client had spent
a few weeks, just to me, a few weeks planning
this job, and he was a boy playing at cat burglar.
The lawyer tried to downplay the value of the stolen
rare bird Feather's what science can be done with three
hundred and fifty year old feathers? Right? So Risk, at

(47:17):
some point he's like really proud of his lawyer for
just going after the court. Right. He tells Kirk Johnson,
the author of the book, quote, my lawyer said, let's
face it, the tring is a dusty old dump, and
he was exactly right. What Yeah, so they just go
on the attack. Right.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
So he's got James Bond. Yeah, there's nothing, says James Bond,
more than tying flies and playing the flute by yourself.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
To break a window.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Very James Bond, Yeah, exactly, it's just one Bond woman
after another.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
He just needs a Bond woman and then boom birds.
Oh wow. So his lawyer, rather solicitor, argued in court
that the purported scientific value of the feather had been
lost to the dustiness of the tring. Right, and Risk
tells the court all the scientific data that can be
extracted from the skins it has been extracted. So Risk
is on the attack right now. Remember this dude's an
amateur bird lover, no scientist, just a flute player. But

(48:09):
he's out there talking about scientific value. Anyway, prosecution, they
countery story. They go after him and they show that
Eben Risk has been planning his burglary for fifteen months.
They showed that he contacted the museum by posing to
someone else in emails. Then there was his purchase record.
They showed in the months or the month rather before
they break in, Van Rist bought a glass cutter. Then
they showed the box of moth balls that he bought.

(48:30):
Then also he bought, oh, by the way, fifteen hundred
ziplock bags. So finally he also bought a lock I'm
guessing a padlock that he planned to secure his door
with because he had his you know, fortune and rare
bird feathers he wanted to secure and he didn't want
some punk twenty two year old to come along and
steel his feather forteen Yeah, So as the scientific value
of the stolen bird skins and rare bird feathers, the

(48:50):
collection had been used for climate research. So these feathers
from seabirds had been documented a rise in heavy metal pollutants.
They used it to prove the DDT was on the rise. Basically,
some real science was done. The naturalists. My man al Wallace.
He would have been happy about that. Yeah, probably, you know,
much happier than at Lisa's collection being turned into flies. Anyway,
So Edwin Risks, he pleads guilty on charges of burglary

(49:11):
money laundering. Then comes sentencing oh Man. Sentencing, the defense
attorney introduced their star expert witness as psychologists who happened
to be Sasha Baron Cohen's cousin. So yeah, so they
have this psychologists evaluate Edwind Risk, and Sasha Baron Cohen's
cousin convinces the court that's a lot of seas that
Edwin Rist had Asperger syndrome and his James Bond fantasies.

(49:33):
He's got him carried away, and believe it or not,
the court goes for it. They sentenced Edwin Risk to
time served in a fine. He's out free. As for
the Asperger syndrome diagnosis, Elizabeth, Yeah, the author Kirk Johnson
called him out on it. He asked Edwin Risk point
blank about this diagnosis and the only interview this dude
has done this, you know, about the burglary. Kirk Johnson recalled,
and I quote, around the five or six hour mark

(49:56):
of my interview with Edwin I said, I don't want
to sound like a jerk, and I'm not an expert
in it. You don't seem like you have asked Bergers.
You're not avoiding eye contact. You're clearly reading the subtext
of my questions. I'm paraphrasing what he told me that
he became what he needed to become during that phase
in his life, that he'd never had any issues with
eye contact before since, but that all of a sudden

(50:17):
he couldn't look in people's eyes, started rocking back and
forth and hiked his voice up in octave. To me,
it was clear that he had gained the system. He
never spent a night in jail, graduated from the Royal Academy,
and today plays the flute with orchestras throughout Germany, albeit
under a different name. Now, wow, he did have to
pay one hundred and twenty five and one hundred and

(50:38):
fifty pounds. That's how much he made in total once
they tabulated it all from selling rare birds on eBay
and the fly fishing forums, a lot of money. And
then also his fine was thirteen thousand, three hundred and
seventy one pounds. He had to pay that in six
months time, or else he'd have to turn himself in
for his totally restored twelve months sentence, and he'd had
to do the full twelve months. Of course he paid

(50:59):
the fine. Yeah, served no time. But did he get
that golden flute? Did he get what he was after, Elizabeth? No,
he didn't enough rare birds to buy his golden float,
thank god. But that said, if you check YouTube, which
I did, you can find him jamming out on what
looks like a golden flute. But I don't know. I'm
not a golden floutist. I do know this, Elizabeth. He

(51:19):
has a new name, and unlike the author, I'll tell
you what it is. His new name is Edwin Reinhardt
and he has that YouTube Jamli told you about where
if you want, you can find him playing his heavy
metal flute rendition of Metallica's Master of Puppets. He pulls
the strings baby, yeah right, So go to at heavy
metal flute on YouTube. There are five videos on his page.

(51:40):
One is of a Game of Thrones theme song cover.
There's a Lord of the Rings cover. I think it's
a misty mountain cold yeah, but he's not very active there.
The last video he posted was five years ago, so
don't expect new content. So Elizabeth, what's our ridiculous takeaway
after all of that?

Speaker 3 (51:54):
That wild be wild? That's my takeaway, you know, I mean,
that's like I can see if you're sort of scavenging
things that in nature that have already passed and don't
have that like you're saying the scientific value. I mean,
once these guys have in the past stolen all the birds,
we can't go back and unsteal and then kill the
birds today. Like if you're building these these flies first

(52:15):
of all, to be a poser and not actually know
how to fly fish, Like, wouldn't you need to know somehow,
like how you would anticipate them sort of dancing on.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
The decontextualize it to the point that it is its
own standalone elements.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
That's idiotic. But like I mean, I used to have
a in my house, a mantle piece that I called
my mantle Piece of Curiosities. It's just all stuff that
I found like on walks and like you know, dead
dragonflies and like feathers, girl skulls. Yeah yeah, but you
know those are the kinds of things like cool shells,

(52:46):
and but it's always something that you take and you're
not damaging your environment to take.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
It away, and you're just acting as an animal.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
Yeah exactly, but.

Speaker 2 (52:54):
Much like a bower bird, you're just it was my power.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
Let wild be wild.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Well, my ridiculus take away once again, and thank you
for asking I anyway, I'll just tell it to you.
Unlike most of the burglars would get away with it.
I don't like this cat.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
Yeah, no, I don't like him because he.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Steals birds and he stole science and he didn't he
didn't steal it from money or for diamonds. If he
would have stole money of diamonds, would have been cool
with it, like I would have had no problem. But
he stole science, he stole birds, and I'm just ain't
cool with it. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
My instinct is like whack, he blew it. Man. He
could have been like every parent's dream of, like a
kid who just like does really well and has these
great you know, and then he goes off to a
music conservatory school, Like come on, I don't like him.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Well that's all I got for you.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
As always like it.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Find us ever after online, ridiculous Crime, Twitter, Instagram, sometimes
the Reds. I don't know, We have a website, Ridiculous
Crime dot com. That's fun. We also like your talkbacks
on the iHeart app. We listened to those. We dig
those We drive around the car listening to him bumping them.
Make the neighbors listen to him anyway. He emails if
you want Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. As always,
type You're Elizabeth and write your email YEP, thanks for listening,

(54:03):
See you next Crime. Hidko's Crime is hosted by Elizabeth
Dutton and Zaron Brunette, produced and edited by the seventh
Baron of Houston, Dave Couston. Researches by Marissa do Not
Give Me a cute Royalty Name Brown and Andrea Samesey's
for Me song sharpened here. Our theme song is by Thomas,

(54:24):
the fourth Duke of Lee and Travis the sixth and
one third Earl of Dutton. The host wardrobe provided by
Bonny five hundred. Executive producers are Ben of Paradise Bowlin
and Noel Mister Matt Damon. Please buy na Zoo Brown?

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Why say it one more time?

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Crime?

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
my Heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or
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