Hey Paal! Did You Steal Edvard Munch's "The Scream"?

A former footballer in the Norwegian league who was also a former street criminal jumped back in the game as a high-end art thief. He says he made Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" famous by stealing it. We say his whole story is...ridiculous!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime. It's a production of Iheartradiobe.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Sorry, Hi, So I have a question for you. Yeah,
because I saw you walk in with this big smile
on your face. I don't want to ruin it, so
I'm just gonna ask you a question. Feels ridiculous, I do.
I knew it from the look.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
I know what's ridiculous. You like corn? Right?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Both the band?

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Yeah, both the vegetable the edible treat and then with
a k the band. Do you like that the lead
singer Jonathan Davis.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh, yeah, totally. He and I are both style kings
when it comes to the Didas tracksuit being our signature love.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Yes. Well, here's another area in which he's a style king.
He has a company called Freak on a Leash, which
is the name of the band's song, one of.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
The songs, one of their big hits.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Freak on a Leash is a pet accessory company.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
That's right there.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
That's right there. And so he has a new collaboration
with some I don't know, some like celebrity stylist.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Wait a minute, is give me the first mashup? I like?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
I think so. Ashton Michael is Ashton Herona is a
I guess he's a stylist anyway, Ashton Heroda Ashton. He
has a company, Ashton Michael. They're doing a.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Collab Ashton Michael.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
With freaking elish graphic bandanas, a ouigi plush toy, a
suede tug rope toy.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Maybe say aigi board like the what do they call it?
A plank like the select type thing?

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yeah, what's that called it? Anyway?

Speaker 2 (01:39):
You know, boards mouse.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
It's happened to me a couple of times in my
life where I have to remember what that word is.
Plank at plank.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Plantchett, planchet. Oh, that's what you're looking.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
For, Elizabeth, you did it again where you go? So, yeah,
you can see that they A'm showing you a picture
right now. Yes, huh. It's basically looks like those studded
punk belts. Yeah, kind of, you know, you know, full disclosure.
I've got two dogs now, it's true, and I don't
think either of them would look appropriate in free condition.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
You don't think so. Even if I like split to
them and like, I like, try this on, they're less
corn your flesh Mama will love more.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Like Grateful Dead seventy four.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Mellows like you know they belong in like a.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Garden, Yeah, like an Almond Brothers, like.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
A solo broken glass.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
No, no, they're not bad Boy Joneses. They're sweety pies.
But yeah, so anyway, free condilish dog apparel. There's an
entire website.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Of course, this is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
You got me to like, I know, I found a
mashup corn and dog collars.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Collars.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, they have like a harness that looks like a
little like denim vest from the dirt bag, very fun
from the ice cell sing lit cigarettesleveless gas station parking lot.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
We freighted yet took a jacket and cut the slee patches.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
For like corn. And then you go up to the
dog and you're like, name three songs. You're not a
real corn fans.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
The owner's looking at me all strange. What's wrong with you? Man?
Hey man? You're your dog's always coming at me with this.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
You're the one with a freak on a leash. See,
there's so much right there right there.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well, I got a question for you. That's not that,
do you know?

Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
You know how they say what made the Mona Lisa famous?
Isn't that it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Is Leonardo DiCaprio.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
No, that not that either, Elizabeth. Yeah, you need to
go back to school, open the schools. And it isn't
because it's a priceless masterpiece. It is. I mean, it's
a priceless masterpiece. But that's not why it's famous. Apparently
it's famous because, as we've covered here on the show before,
the Mona Lisa became famous when it was stolen. Yes, yes,
I guess what, Elizabeth, that's also the reason that the
painting the Scream is famous. Oh really, at least that's

(04:02):
the guy who stole it, says.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
And he would say that, he would.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous campers,
heist sands cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous. Baby is Elizabeth Darren today.
I would like to start our story by reading from
a diary. I would, but don't worry, it's not my diary.

(04:49):
I don't keep a diary. My Pops taught me you
don't keep notes on a criminal conspiracy. Wait wait, I'm
being told on my airpiece that was not my pops.
Stringer Bell from the wire either way. I don't keep
a diary, but you know who does, or rather who did?
Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Do you know much about him?

Speaker 3 (05:05):
No?

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Okay, Well he was well and this is from the
New York Times description of him, and I quote a
troubled recluse who lived in only two rooms of a
large house in Oslo, the rest of which was filled
with storage boxes, clutter, and paintings that he refused to sell.
When he died in nineteen forty four at age eighty,
he willed his art to the city, which built the
Munch Museum house.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
It dream setup now sadly, as the Time.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Also notes, quote, city officials have been criticized for spending
too little to protect and promote it. Oh yeah, so
what about his artwork though, well.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
What about it? It's very very sensual, very not central
as it's troubled.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, I would say, vivid colors, ving much like van
Go where he is working with heavy brushstrokes, yes, and
heavy mental heaviness. So yeah, he very much drew him
from his experience of life. Right. So, for instance, the
inspiration of his most famous work came from a sunset
he saw one day. Story goes, he's out walking with
a pair of friends. The sun is setting. It's amazing.

(06:14):
He's overcome. The mood was severe. It captivates his mind.
Right the sky looks like blood Edvard Munch pauses a moment,
tells his friends, I need to take this all in right.
He sits down or whatever, like on a fence, leans
on it whatever. He's overcome by the beauty, the horror
of this blood red sky. He says, it's like tongues
of fire licking the heavens above a blue black fjord.

(06:35):
Those are his words right now. We all know this
because he recorded in his diary. On January twenty second,
eighteen ninety two, Edvard Munch scribbled in his diary, and
I quote one in the evening, I was walking along
a path. The city was on one side and the
fjord below. I felt tired and ill, and I stopped
and looked out over the fjord. The sun was setting,

(06:57):
and the clouds turning blood red, and a scream passing
through nature. It seemed to me that I heard the scream.
I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood.
The color shrieked. This became the scream, Elizabeth, I can
only assume that you were familiar with the painting the Scream.

(07:18):
Do you like it?

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Uh, it's not it's not that I don't like it.
I don't have, you know, strong feelings either way. I
think it's hearing this story. It's really interesting because you
don't really think of sunsets, at least I don't in
that sort of sinister I mean, you can have it
in kind of a melancholy way, but a scream go
through nature. Yeah, it seems more urgent, and it's.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Like we're in a Hertzog. Only he would hear the
scream in nature, in a sunset exactly. Now, there's some
theories that what Munch was experiencing that afternoon on his
walk with his friends we would now call a panic attack.
The painting is an artist rendition of a panic attack. Now,
I don't know if I agree with that or even
really like that theory. I mean, it's fun to contemplate,
but I really this diagnosing things retroactively, even if it applies,

(08:03):
And I'm like, but you know me, I'm not a
big fan of labels anyway. Edvard Munch he paints the
Scream in eighteen ninety three. In fact, he painted it
multiple times, twice in pastels, twice in oils, as if
you were seeking a way to capture what he experienced,
that scream of nature. Right, there's another interesting theory about
the painting that Edvard Munch saw that day, the tongues
of fire licking the heavens over the blue black fjord

(08:23):
and those blood red skies, and there may have been
a meteorological cause for it. Okay, So some scholars suggested
Edvard Munch was so taken with the sky because of
the eruption of the supervolcano Krakatoa. Like it was huge,
It was massive when it erupted. People nineteen hundred miles
away in Perth, Australia heard the explosion. People three thousand
miles away, and Mauritius they heard the explosion, three thousand

(08:46):
miles away heard the explosions. It destroyed seventy percent of
the island of Krakatoa when it went off, right, So
it turned sky's blood red with the ash and dust
all around the globe, right, just darken skies, including as
far away as Norway. Yeah, there's only one problem with
this theory though. Edvard Moons painted the scream in eighteen
ninety three, and Krakatoa erupted in eighteen eighty three, a

(09:07):
full decade earlier.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Well, he could have been sitting on that idea for
a decade.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Sure, the skies were not blood red for a decade though,
So it's doubtful that the super volcano. But perhaps he did. Wait,
but he makes it seem as if he painted it
very urgent.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yes, remember when the wildfire's here. It was during COVID time,
so I think it was like what twenty.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Twenty, Yeah, the Blade Runner Scots.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, we're an entire day now that that is something
that kind of was panic inducing for you. Yeah, because
it was so unsettling. It was perpetual sunset all day long.
Everything was orange and red. When he looked outside, that
the entire sky, everything.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
It was gonna go away. So I love it, But.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Then I kept thinking, what if it doesn't. That's the
worst case scenario. And it was really unsettling, and it was.
It was weird in terms of, you know, disrupting your
circadian of them, your sense of time of day.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yes, overcast guys do that too.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Me.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, I can't tell. But I used the sun to
mark time. Okay a lot. It's no I do. But
it's just a habit I got into as a house painter.
You're outside all the time. You know exactly where the
sun's at this point, it means that suns at this point,
it means that you use the sun just subtly to
kind of track your day.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yes, when it's overcast, you're just.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Like, I'm screwed. I have no que They am, Yeah,
I'm I'm like a guy with a sun dial. I'm like,
I can't tell you what time.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
It is, but I mean I could see how that
kind of if it was Krakatoa, it would, you know,
stay with you and then maybe.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
You know, five years from now you see it again.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Really terrifying poem about this blade Runner Scott.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
There's another theory for what inspired the world famous painting.
It's based on the view that the view of the
painting like actually what you see. People figured out where
he was standing for that picture. It was identified as
this road in Oslo that looks out from the hill
of Echaburg, and coincidentally, Edward Munch's sister Laura cap there
and lived at the base of the Echoburg hill, So
maybe he was visiting her. We don't know she lived

(11:04):
in a mental asylum one that was next door to
a slaughterhouse.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
Oh that's great place, right, So.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
Perhaps walking past where his sister was locked up in
a lunatic asylum next to a slaughterhouse. Overcame him and
the blood Red Skies were like, oh I hear the
scream of nature.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Oh God in Dublin, isn't the I think the Guinness
factory is right by a hospital for alcoholics, is it really? Yeah?
But it doesn't smell good.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, the war they used for the beer. It just
it really had the malts and everything.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Ye say, but you know you got it. It's location location.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
I'm telling you a slaughterhouse next to an asylum.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Some bad zoning.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
What we do know is that on August twenty second,
two thousand and four, the scream was stolen.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
What.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, out of all all these theories, Elizabeth, two thousand
and four, August twenty second, two thousand.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
And four, I don't think I knew that.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, I want to tell you about that. So sit back,
they're comfortable, and you know what, Elizabeth, closed your eyes.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
Wait, I want you to picture as you're pulling an
early one like me.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
It's August twenty second, two thousand and four. It's been
a quiet morning in the Moons Museum in Oslo, Norway. Elizabeth,
you are a candy wrapper, one that was intended for
the trash but slipped from a child's hand and you
missed the waste receptacle. Now you sit on the museum floor,
tucked up behind the trash band. Wrinkled and crinkled as
you are, you still have quite the view of the
museum's paintings on display, so you've been enjoying your day

(12:29):
as a museum Goers circulate past you. No one stoops
to pick you up. They're too focused on the artwork
to notice a discarded candy wrapper. Laughing children, past couples
on first dates, amble passed, engaged in that flirtatious appraisals
of art. For the last few hours, you've done some
people watching, but mostly you've been contemplating the pained anguish
of the figure in the world famous painting The Scream,

(12:50):
by the namesake of the museum, Edvard Munch. As a
candy wrapper, you have little conception of the larger conversations
of the art world, nor are you familiar with the
developments of the expression movement of the late nineteenth century.
But you know what you like, and you are captivated
by Munch's use of color to convey his interiority. The
emotional landscape becomes the physical landscape. If you could paint,

(13:12):
you would like to paint like Edvard Munch. From your
vantage on the floor, you also have a view of
the front door to the museum. And around twenty minutes
after eleven am, your reverie of artistic contemplation is disturbed
when you see two men running up to the museum,
right at the sliding glass door. And you know it's
trouble because both men are wearing dark hoodies and balaklava

(13:33):
face masks. They look like real criminals. You watch as
they race up to the museum and slam into the
sliding glass door. Both art thieves bounce off the glass, stunned.
They pick themselves up like birds that have run into
a window. They wait for the sliding glass door to open,
and then they charge into the museum. You watch them
start off to the right, but then they come back
and run. They go to the left, then a moment

(13:55):
later they come back into view. They look around a
moment then they go back to the left, and then
they finally come back into view and they locate what
they've come for. It's right in front of you. Right
there in the central room of the museum where you
are is Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, And then, as
if the painting itself has come alive, you hear a
piercing scream. The shriek is likely due to the fact

(14:17):
one of the art band it's is brandishing a hell
of a handgun, more like a hand cannon. It's a
nickel plated three fifty seven magnum pistols, and you don't
see many of those in Europe, especially not in an
art museum. Patrons shriek and scream. They gather up their children,
others shield their dates from danger, while others just flee.
Being a candy wrapper, you have no other options than

(14:38):
to watch the art thieves get to work. One of
the thieves grabs Edvard Munch's painting The Scream. He grabs
hold of the paintings frame. It's wired to the wall,
so the thief gives a good hard yank. The wires
go spraying and they give loose the painting. You spot
one of the security guards rush into the central room,
drawn in by the screens and the street, but he

(15:00):
stops running when he sees the art Bandit level his
three point fifty seven magnum at the unarmed security guard's head.
The man freezes in place. He stares at the gun
pressed to his forehead. His eyes go cross. One of
the art thieves speaks Norwegian. You hear him tell everyone
to act cool and no one will get hurt. He
starts at the security guard whose head he's pressing the

(15:23):
barrel of his gun against. His second art thief starts
for the door. The one with the handcannon slowly backs
up and then follows him out, but as if he
doesn't want to leave without a souvenir of his own,
one of the other Munch masterpieces catches his eye, so
he grabs hold of it with another hard yank. This
one doesn't give so easily, so he pulls wirecutters from
a pocket. Snip and the wires go scrying, and then

(15:45):
he runs off with the stolen painting. He doesn't make
it far before he stumbles drops the masterpiece. The other thief,
the one with the scream, looks back to see what happens,
and wouldn't you know what? He also trips and bails.
Both art thieves are down, the masterpiece is on the floor.
Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. If you could laugh, you would.
But the art thieves are quick to their feet. They
wave their handguns to remind the museum goers. Don't get

(16:06):
any big ideas. No one makes the move. As I've said,
the burglars grabbed their stolen booty and race for the
sliding glass door. This time they don't run into the
glass door. They wait for it. The slide open, and
then the dawn. You spot a patron outside the museum
as she snaps a photo of the art bandits as
they flee. Meanwhile, back inside the museum, as museum goers

(16:27):
breathed a sigh of relief, you marvel that this all
happened in less than a minute and a half. Away,
When it was all over and the art was heisted
and no one was hurt, the museum director went and
spoke to the press, because that's what they do. He
applauded the security guard for insuring everyone's safety. Yeah, he
made sure. As I said, nobody.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Moved, nobody get hurt.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Now the museum director even defended the guard's action, noting
that if you have a pistol or a revolver pointed
at your head, there is not much you can do
in Norway, not even the police carry guns. Once the
news broke, the nation was aghast. I mean, who steals
their national treasure? Why?

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah, like, who do they.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Possibly think they can sell this painting to the city
Government's like sell it to us? So they offer a
reward for the state of return of the painting. The
reward was huge, big, two million Norwegian kroner. Wow, Elizabeth,
I know you love to know exchange rates and monetary
conversions and inflation in this case, yes, so for this one,
first I had to calculate the inflation of the Norwegian
kroner and then convert that into dollars. But I did

(17:28):
it for you. Thank two million Norwegian croners in two
thousand and four would be about thirty one million now
thirty million, six hundred and eighty six dollars. Yes, but
that's really that's nothing for these This painting is worth
an insane amount, So it's not it's like it sounds big,
but it's worth hundreds of millions.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
So yeah, But if it's worth hundreds of millions, and
you think about how much gets shaved off, Yeah, by
fences and all this stuff. Like take a cool thirty
one mill in the city.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, I take it now. To help sweeten the offered reward,
the candy maker M and MS offered that they would
match that offer by the city of Oslo. Wait, yes,
but instead of Kroner, they'd pay out two million eminems.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Where are they getting up in the business.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
They love the painting, they love the screen.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Wait what I know?

Speaker 2 (18:12):
All right?

Speaker 3 (18:13):
They just just like, oh and we'll give you EM
and MS or like when nobody asked.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
For We're just needing some free advertising here, all right.
We got a new account executive. He just really wanted
to move forward with this. We thought it was a
good idea. Mean, come on, guys, who doesn't love M
and MS.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Why are you inserting yourself into a crime?

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Melts in your hand, not in your mouth?

Speaker 3 (18:28):
But I just don't understand. So yeah, like you're just
this random brand. You find out something's been sold, You're like,
you know what, I'm gonna how about this, I'll give
you seven thousand tacos Taco Bell exactly do you hand
that back over? What is that? What's this got to
do midro business? Worry about yourself? No, no, no, I want
in on this. I want my name associated with it.

(18:50):
What I mean, like, you see the scream is on
like socks dogs.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Oh yeah, and it's emoji.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
I mean, it's whatever, but it's like Emine.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
There's a whole series of movies with it. But that's
the character the scream goes.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
That's supposed to be that one? Is it?

Speaker 2 (19:06):
I think?

Speaker 3 (19:06):
So?

Speaker 2 (19:06):
I don't know, I don't know. I thought it was,
But was.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
There now I'm questioning was there like a tie in
with the painting and the Eminem's. Maybe at the time
I had like I would love to have my product, you.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Know, you know me, this seems like ash and I
just kept moving.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
I was like stuck in this. I love it.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Well, I'll let you know. There were no takers. The
art thieves also did not come forward.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
They're like thirty one mil not interested. Wait, how many eminems?

Speaker 2 (19:33):
So somehow the two of the most inet burglars we've covered,
who ever managed to steal a masterpiece get away with it.
But like, what's the deal with them? Obviously, as they said,
they're amateurs. But was this like their first burglary ever?

Speaker 3 (19:45):
Sounds like it.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
I don't know, but it feels like it. Obviously, after
the Scream was stolen, the whole nation of Norway was
in an uproar. It's a national treasure. As I said,
headlines around the world are playing with the obvious jokes
of the world screams, you know, like oh yeah. But
the people of Norway they're not in a laughing mood.
So they want their master he's back, and they want
the guilty brought to justice, even if they're a bunch
of amateur burglars. The two idiots with a pair of

(20:06):
wirecutters and just enough audacity to make off with the
national treasure in a daytime snatching grab robbery, right, I mean,
that's just embarrassing. And not only that, this was not
the first time the painting had been stolen, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
Wait, really, yes, ten.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
Years earlier had been stolen the exact same way, pretty much,
except they didn't do a daytime snatching grab, but they
went in and just yanked it off the walls. But
I'll tell you more about them and the earlier attempt
a little later. Anyway, Now that the paintings are perlined
and the police of Oslo are on high alert. All
available officers are put on this case. They're gonna get
the screen back, come hell or high water from whatever

(20:41):
fjords they got. And to focus their investigation, they started
with the usual suspects. Chief among them was one man
pal Anger. He was a knockabout small time criminal, former
professional footballer. He played in the Elite Syrian, which is
the Norwegian version of the Premier League. Not a football star,
but he was a pro gamer, right he saw time
on the pitch. This whole thing. The reason why the

(21:01):
Norwegian police were immediately focused on this former football or
the former soccer player was and also just a general
good time guy pal Anger, is that he was known
to be rather obsessed.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
With Edvard Moonse's the greatest name ever totally.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
And you see he'd once been sent to prison for
stealing a different Edvard Munch masterpiece, one called the Vampire.
So the police state, the cops, they thought we got
perfect good reason to go rouse them. So they go
and they roused him and they questioned Paul Anger, and
that's what they did. So what do you think, Elizabeth,
do you think Paull Anger said to the cops when
they showed up asking questions about this missing Edvard Moonscheb masterpiece.

(21:35):
You think he gave him the load? Do you think
he died? What do you think? Elizabeth?

Speaker 3 (21:39):
You're gonna have to tell me.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
I will tell you after these messages, which I hear,
are both fresh and so clean. So you got that
going for you, Yes, Elizabeth, ready for more Norwegian our crimes?

Speaker 3 (22:10):
I am I.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Thought this would be fun for you. We hadn't done
in our crime. I hadn't done in our crime in
a while, like him, and this was Norwegian flavored.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
This is excellent.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
So at this point the Norwegian police are feeling the
heat about their missing national treasure. So they turn, as
they said, to the one guy poll Anger and they say, hey,
pal what do you know? Or Paul it's p A
A L paul A pall Anger. So when the police
questioned him, he levels with them. He's like, hey, I
got nothing to do with it, man, this not this time.
So the police are like, oh, okay, they roused him,

(22:37):
they check him, they bring them in, they questioned him,
they check his place, like damn it, he seems clean.
So who is this pal Anger? Great question. I'm just
loving how you're just right on my.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Heel right, well, I'm scribbling down frantically.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, it's amazing. So we've uh, we'll let the stolen
masterpiece dangle in the wind while we get to know
pal and age sixteen, Powlanger left his hometown to go
seek his fortunes in the wide wide world. He was
an ambitious lad. He was from Vita, which is a
neighborhood of Alna, which is a suburb of Oslo, Sure, Norway.
Now this was a rough neighborhoo. Apparently from everything I read,
I've never been there. But young Pile wanted out. He

(23:15):
figured he'd get out either via professional soccer stardom or crime.
Kind of gives you an idea of the neighborhood, right,
so it's like the whole basketball or crime idea soccer.
So he was known to be a slender, fair haired
boy who was often not at school. One of his
classmates recalled how quote the hours he was present at
school in the eighth year can be counted on one hand.
When he came, it was only to play sport. Oddly enough,

(23:38):
nobody seemed to care not about him playing sport, but
him not going to school, so he kicked about for
his adolescence. He studied his ball handling skills and his
coked out tenacity and his goal scoring focus of his
football hero Diego Maradona, Oh god right, And he studied
the ways of his cinematic hero Don Corleone, Oh dear.
He liked to dream about the movie that would one
day be made about his life, either as a dashing

(24:00):
and charming football star or an underworld Bob bust. Do
you take your pick? Either one was cool withing oh Son.
And when I say he studied Diego Maradona and Don Corleone,
I mean as a teenager he wants flew to New
York just to see the streets that Marlon Brando had
walked on in The Godfather.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
And he knew he knows it's fake, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
But he wanted to see that little Italy.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
He's like, I want to see I want to feel that,
you know.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
OK.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
So, around that same time, his soccer goals were coming along.
He joined the junior teams of a professional squad and
so then think of it like minor league soccer. His
teammates liked him and they thought he belonged on the team.
He was good. He was clearly a professional grade player.
He was genial, likable guy. He spread the ball around.
He also drove super slick sports car, so he was
kind of cool. His teammates also wondered how he had

(24:45):
so much money for such flat He's like sixteen seventeen eighteen.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
He's like a minor league. Yeah he's not.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
People are barely able to pay their rent and he's
over there like, oh yeah, I got a new Beamer,
like you just had another one two months ago. So
he had his one sports card that he had painted
he Anger like pe the word letter P and then
E N G E R, which is basically pale anger
right painted on the side, Elizabeth. This would all be
way funnier to you if you spoke Norwegian, because Penger

(25:13):
is Norwegian for money. So he was driving around a
sports car with the word money painted on the side
p Anger. So Powell Anger used to love to boast
anyone who would listen. There's only one Porsche in Oslo
mine and on Sundays, people from the western edge, this
was the rich part of Oslo. Came to Tita to
watch me washing the car. Came to watch a new

(25:34):
car washes. Yeah, I'm like, okay, so that's his lie anyway.
So there he is, this young footballer with a taste
for the fast life and an ion crime.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Eighty people on the west side of town are like, hey, honey,
I heard there's a Porsche.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Just came to check. You did and steal my car?

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Kids in the Volvo and we're gonna drive over and
kids who wants to go watch a guy wash a
sports car?

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Brings next me me should we bring.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
The dogs, bring the kippers? Let's go.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
At eighteen, he makes his debut in the UFA Cup match.
He came on as a substitute, right, so by twenty
one he's on his way now to his legitimate soccer dreams.
By nineteen eighty eight, at the age of twenty twenty one,
he makes his professional debut on the soccer pitch for
the five time champs of the Norwegian Professional League Etliticirian.
The club called Vala Ranga. Okay's all right, so this

(26:22):
club manager of that soccer team, the dag Vestland, said
of Powell Anger, he was very talented. He was small, quick, tough.
I liked him a lot. He was always very well behaved,
in my dealings with him, always polite, very humble. Now
his teammates had a slightly difference, a street level view
of Powell. Yeah. One teammate said, what I remember about

(26:45):
Powell is he never took the tube to the city.
He would steal a car to make the journey instead.
His specialty was porschous, BMW's and Mercedes. It was all
a bit confusing because we had a policeman on the
same team. Oh wow, So it wasn't all a big secret.
And some folks clearly knew this, how this young kid
could live so big as a backup professional soccer player,

(27:08):
and most of them didn't seem to care much Like
when he wasn't attending class, he just kind of slipped
through the cracks right most of them. There were the
two teammates who were part time cops, not one two,
and they saw how Pollanger would never wear the same
tracksuit twice because he would trash the old one and
just always rock a brand new fit, and it just

(27:29):
bothered them, like what the hell, So they get suspicious
and they didn't like his answer that he hated to
do laundry. So Knute Rold Loberg was one of the cops,
and he later recalled how Powanger and his football prowess
were well. As he put it quote, he was a
good player. He had scored a lot of goals for
the junior side. He was sharp, quick, technical, but to
stay concentrated and be professional, there were a lot of

(27:51):
challenges for him. I tried to help him. Everyone in
the dressing room looked out for one another. So being
a cop, the way he decides to help his teammate
is to follow him after practice, after matches on off days,
just generally snoop on him. He and the other cop
teammate follow him all around Oslo. They clock how he
spends large amounts of money. He's buying clothes, He's buying

(28:11):
fancy watches. He obviously didn't need to buy cars, he
just stole those. Yeah, but he did drop mad loot
on expensive restaurants, hotels and vacations. He's living that luxfe.
His cop teammates hate this, so they're surveiling him, surveiling him,
and they're documenting this with photographs in like, you know,
at eleven PM, he bought such and such. So they
also see how he's not just so much of it

(28:33):
being his money that he's spending. It's the people's money
he's spending, Elizabeth because he was a burglar and a thief,
and they watched him also do those crimes. They watched
him steal jewelry, they watched him rob cash, and finally,
when they thought they had enough evidence on their teammate,
they turned it over to full time cops, who then
rated their teammates home, and the cops found a veritable

(28:54):
lair of stolen goods. Oh Man, what really shocked them
was hanging there on one of the walls was they
stole masterpiece, the Edvard Munch painting The Vampire what Yes
painted the same year as The Scream. The original title
for the work was Love and Pain. This man was
going through it.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
The figure in the painting is a woman. She has
this shocking red hair. She's embracing her victim and she's
just about to plunge her fangs into his neck. Turns
out the painting had been stolen from the Ostlo Munch
Museum a few months earlier, and it was not like
the rest of his stolen bounty. He didn't make sense
to the cops. They're like, what the hell is this doing? Here,
he's mostly just cut a young man would want. And
then there's one stolen masterpiece and specifically why that won.

(29:32):
So paal Anger explained it to the cops. He's like, well,
and I quote, I had no relationship with art other
than in primary school we went on a trip to
the munch Museum. I remember thinking his pictures were scary
and I was dreaming about them at night. Maybe Much
wasn't the only artist I had any relationship with. So
he stole a painting. Yeah, I want one, I can't

(29:54):
afford one. I'll take this one anyway. He gets tried, convicted,
senate's to prison, does his time, and then in nineteen
ninety four he gets released and almost immediately he goes
right back to crime.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
He's like, I'm good at only Yeah, what else is
he going to do?

Speaker 2 (30:07):
So yeah, he's like, and I'm too old for soccer now.
So it wasn't his fault, Elizabeth. He was trying to
go straight though apparently. I don't know if that's true.
I'd just like to say it, but I do know
that this crime that he was about to commit wasn't
his idea. Someone approached him, he was commissioned to do
a heist, since he had experience of stealing the Vampire.
His client said, I want you to steal another Edvard

(30:27):
Munch masterpiece. The client wanted pile Anger to steal the Scream.
He's like, okay, well I don't care. I'm not a
Norwegian patriot. I don't get ilse to steal that national treasure.
Oh and I forgot to tell you up top. The
reason why the police came to pile Anger when the
Scream was stolen in two thousand and four is because
he'd already attempted to steal it back in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Oh he attempted, so he wasn't.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
The client promised he would be paid extremely well, but
not only that he would keep the painting because like
you keep it. Wait, yeah, he gets to keep the Scream.
Ok So what's the client paying.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
For just to stick it to the music?

Speaker 2 (30:58):
What gives? Yeah? He an an old employee. He won
the lottery. Why would if someone paid to steal painting
in the level keep the painting?

Speaker 3 (31:05):
Right?

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Great question of.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Liza, I know it is.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Pal Anger didn't ask such questions. He didn't care, said
he went out walking. He hired three accomplices for his
art heist, which now brings us to the nineteen ninety
four Winter Olympics. You're wondering, what does this have to
do with the stories Erin, Do you remember the Lilla
Hamer Winter Olympics. It was the seventeenth Olympic Winter Games.

(31:27):
The games lasted from February twelfth to February twenty seventh,
nineteen ninety four. Okay, I know what might jog your
memory of Lilla Hammer Winter Olympics. That's the game when
Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped by Tanya Harding's husband, boyfriend or whatever,
Jeff Goluli.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
That's right, right, And I didn't.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Know his name. I had to look it up, right,
But I knew you'd know his name. But I had
to look this up because I needed something that maybe
you didn't know. He subcontracted the job out to an
underling the job. The guy who swung the beat down
stick was Tanya Harding's bodyguard, Sean Eckert. Four Litlahammer Olympics
are the ones Nancy Kerrigan missed out on. So wow anyway,

(32:05):
February twelfth, nineteen ninety four, the opening ceremony of the
Winter Olympics. They nicknamed it Elizabeth the Fairytale games. I know.
There were dancers dressed as angels and shepherds, ancient ghouls,
Nordic witches, all doing choreographs to moves as fireworks lit
up the white fallen snow, just reflecting the explosions above.

(32:25):
It was a wintertime merriment. That same day, early in
the morning, two men propped a ladder up against the
wall of the National Gallery in Oslo. They scurried up
the ladder, then one of them fell off the ladder,
so they scurried back up the ladder. Then one of
them smashed a window pane. They pulled open the window.
Then they just slipped inside and dropped onto the floor.
They scanned the gallery, did anybody see us? Then they

(32:47):
spotted what they came for, the scream. They pulled some
wirecutters from a pocket snip snip paintings freed, liberated or
in legal terms, stolen. Pall Ager pulled a note from
his pocket, left it behind. The note because you seem
to want to know this, Yeah, you read and I
quote a thousand thanks for your poor security. After the

(33:07):
note was placed, the thieves hustled back to their open window.
They're waiting ladder, and one after the other they snuck
back out this time. I don't think they fell. They
got away with Edvard Munch's most celebrated painting, one of
the most famous and recognizable paintings in the world. When
they get back to the getaway car, they shove the
painting down behind the driver's seat and just speed away.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
They were not prepared for this thing, did not have
like a carrier case any of that. They're just like,
this will fit bout your feet, bob. So later that day,
when the museum staff discovered the missing masterpiece, they immediately
checked the surveillance footage and they checked also, you know,
all the way back to the night before. They scan
the video, they find there are images of the thieves.
Oh thank goodness. But the images are so blurry they're

(33:52):
essentially useless. Oh, we should have got new cameras. So
the chief investigator for the Oslo Police, a man named
Leif Lear, he said, simply put, we had nothing to
go on. So what do they do? Like, what do
they have to go on? They got nothing. So the
Norwegians can't let someone steal their national treasure and just
get away with it. So they outsourced the investigation to
real professionals who have some experience retrieving stolen artwork. They

(34:15):
turned to Scotland Yard. Oh yeah, I thought you'd like that.
They turned to a man named Charles Hill. He was
he's an Englishman. He's a cop who was an undercover
detective works for Scotland Yards Art and Antiques Division. I
think you can get a spot.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
There that would amazing.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Specifically, he worked under the aegis of the London Metro Police. So,
as Powell Anger described this, detective Sherlock Holmes came to Norway,
which was just kind of funny.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
And Charles Hill equally had an assessment of Powell Anger.
He said, of the wanna be master thief, In my experience,
all thieves are the same. The minute they see money
and smell it, the good sense disappears out of their skulls.
Then they're hooked the way a fishermen would hook a fish.
So what do you plan to do?

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Was I like the clarification of yeah, you mean like
a fisherman.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Oh not like you're a heroin pedaling. Well, you know, literally,
when your nation has a history of pushing opium on
other countries, you have to clarify hooked, You're like, no, no,
I mean it like fishing, not like what we did
to China. Anyway, all back to it. The British Bobby
also decided he needed to play dress up. He needed
a wig and some costume changes. Yeah, yeah, right, I

(35:22):
figured it.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
Like that department, you.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Should start wearing wigs. And you know, I'm not right now,
that's very true. I actually cannot tell at all. It's
so smoky in here now. His plan was he'd pretend
to be a quote, dodgy mint Atlantic accented art dealer.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Oh I love it. God, I really need to work.
I want to do a character.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
The wig, the costume, the backstory is over there. I
mean they got like a whole like method department. So
as as I said, this guy, this brit Detective Charles
Hills fully commits to the bit. He decides his dodgy
art dealer was named Roberts. He worked for the J.
Paul Getty Museum in LA. For his look, he decided
Chris Roberts was a bow tie guy. He favored floral waistcoats.

(36:10):
Chris Roberts also like to top with a cream blazer. Whoa yeah,
so he also carried a suitcase which he claimed was
stuffed with cash for art buys. So all of his
prep work. He didn't think much of his quarry though,
as he'll recalled of his targets, the screen was stolen
by a bunch of Oslo no hopers. You could say
it was Norwegian organized crime. Two men in a ladder.

(36:31):
They went up the ladder and fell off when they
went up again and broke in the window to go
in and collect the painting.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
It feels like it's an offensive joke, right, what do
you call organized crime?

Speaker 2 (36:44):
You got a ladder?

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (36:47):
I feel like somehow there's a slur ball that we
don't know about. It as a bridge going above my head.
As non Europeans were like, is this like a whole
like a Polish joke? But for the Norwegian?

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Right, Oh, I didn't know.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
I've been. I had to quote the thank you for
doing once he studied. When he could of these suspects,
he starts to work the black market connections he has
see if he'd get a back channel message to the
art thieves to set up a meet and greet and
to buy back the stolen masterpiece to help with his
man hunt. The undercover detective partners with an underworld figure,

(37:18):
but a small group of middlemen right through his criminal confederates.
He gets an offer of a half million pounds for
the stolen masterpiece, just spread out amongst the underworld.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Meanwhile, Norwegian police, they're still working the case, but they've
got their expert right. Some of them didn't want this
brit to get all the glory for saving their national treasure,
I mean fair. The Norwegian cops were working with the
theory that the painting was stolen by a bunch of
fame seekers who wanted to use the world's attention thanks
to Lillehammer Winter Olympics, to guarantee they'd become famous or rich.
That is, even if they got caught, they'd be famous,

(37:49):
or if not, they'd be rich. That was their theory.
Other Norwegian cops were convinced that there was a mister
Big who'd hired thieves to steal the artwork for him,
because that was the talk in the underworld. This is
like some weird doctor no plot from James. Now. To
complicate things, there was also an anti abortion campaign and
a bunch of their most ardent supporters claimed they had

(38:10):
stolen the painting, and in one of their propaganda videos
that they released, they said if one of their propaganda
videos was broadcast and released on Norwegian TV, then they'd
returned the painting.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
So they got that problem over there too.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, against the backdrop of competing theories and nonsense, it
just strayed up weirdness. Undercover detective Charles Hills starts to
stalk his criminal prey Wig on outfits locked.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
See in my head. He's played by Benedict cabbage Patch.
Oh nice, And then the Paul Uh yeah, he's played
by Chet Hanks.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
I did not see that.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
And the underworld like the doctor know that's Tom Hardy.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Oh very good.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
I'm making a great movie.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
This is amazing. I love this. So he's now at
this point assisted by an Amsterdam based gangster who has
a predilection for high and art in the black market.
This guy, Charles Hill is convinced it wasn't the anti
abortion activists, not some shadowy mister Big or some thrill
seekers trying to piggyback off the Winter Olympics. Yeah, the
Dutch gangster and here are both convinced it's just some

(39:14):
amateurs who got lucky.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
So Tom hardy and benefits cabbage patch. Yes, yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
So Charles Hill remembers the man hunt period very well.
And he said, and I quote and art thief catches
the disease. You see, there is a madness that afflicts
these people. They are not necessarily art lovers, but they
view the work as trophies. So he considers himself a
hunter of those who go after trophies. So he's a
trophy hunter hunter. So then he catches a break right there.

(39:45):
Is wasn't good surveillance video from the night of the robbery,
but five days earlier there was clear distinct image of
a very suspicious character wandering around the museum, clearly casing
the joint. And that man looked just like pal Anger
because it paling casing the joint. The suspect also looked
a lot like a guy who'd recently posted a birth

(40:05):
announcement in the newspaper that proclaimed his newborn son Oscar
came into the world. Quote met ed screak, which in
Norwegian means.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
With a scream, get out of town.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Apparently he even capitalized the s in screek, so it
looks like like a title. Yeah, So that that caught
the attention of the cops and detective Charles.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Scouring the paper the parts that people don't really read. Yeah, exactly, curious.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Checking a misconnections. You wouldn't see me on the tube.
So at this point Charles has been making headway in
his back channel campaign in the underworld. His bait cut
a bite he'd heard back that someone knew a guy
who knew a guy who wanted to sell a certain painting.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, know.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
What I mean.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Relying on his mid Atlantic American accent, sounding like Catherine Hepburn,
he reels in his purp takes him three months start
to finish, and finally the wandering path leads to a
chalet in the country. That's where he's to meet his
thieves for an art buy. But the thieves have also
negotiated for more money. They wanted seven hundred thousand pounds.

(41:12):
The undercover cop agreed to their price. Now the trap
was fully set, and we Elizabeth will take a break. Yes,
and after these ads, I will tell you if the
dodgy fake art dealer with the good wig game catches
the former professional footballer turned art thief.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
Can't wait.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
And Rebecca Elizabeth so I got to ask you, you
seem like you're on the edge of your seat. Do
you think that the dodgy mid Atlantic art dealer who
talks like Catherine Hepburn Charles Hill, was able to get
his man?

Speaker 3 (41:59):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Well, we got to kind of doubt you. We'd be
hearing his name on the show if he didn't.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
This is the earlier theft of the painting. We know
it's recovered in order to be stolen again.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Well maybe remember I said there were four paintings. Ah see,
I'm seating stuff it. So since he'd worked so diligently
to set up his fraudulent art by slash raid, let's
have Charles Hill recount what happens next in the Countryside
Chalet over to you, DCI Charles Hill, and I quote
from his interview with the BBC. What we did in

(42:32):
this particular case was to go from a person who
knew someone who knew someone else and just followed that
chain until we eventually got to the people who controlled
the painting. When I finally met the bad guys, I
had to convince them that the Getty Museum would pay
to recover the painting. The Norwegian criminals were on tenter hooks,
and I spent the entire time trying to calm them down.

(42:54):
Eventually they rang me quite late, about eleven thirty. So
now the DCI Charles Hills on a lake my phone
call with the thieves trying to control the exchange.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Wait late it was eleventh It was me.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
So apparently when the alleged art thieves phoned him, they
told DCI Hill quote, right, we're going to do it now,
And I told them no way. I was going out
at midnight to walk in the wild woods with them
to get this thing back. We'd have to do it
in the morning. In the morning, I said, so he
is you if you can believe the art thieves are like, yeah, right,

(43:28):
suppose that makes sense. You want to pop down to
the chalet in the morning then, and they did so.
DCI Hill was like, I will see you then when
the sun's returned, and they make a plan to meet
the next day. So back to DCI Hill. We went
down to where the Dodgy art dealer had a summer home.
In the summerhouse, the painting was downstairs underneath the carpet
in the kitchen. It was a set of stairs down

(43:48):
to the basement, and he asked me, did I want
to get it? And I thought, well, I could do
without being down there next Christmas. So I told him that,
and you know that what's called Anglo Saxon vernacular, which
he understood. So we went down and got the picture,
brought it up and he laid it on the dining
room table and bang, there it was. It looked like
it was a masterpiece. It will tell you that it's

(44:10):
a masterpiece. It just jumps out at you. So there
you go. He found the painting, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Here it is.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
And he also did go down to the basement to
be there till next Christmas, said Anglo Saxophone action. Yeah,
oh yeah, I caught that part. He was getting field dressed,
get got down there. He wasn't going to be not
just there until next Christmas, the one after.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
That Christmas to come, Elizabeth DC I.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Hill had done it. So at this point he's found
Norway's stolen national treasure. Good outsourcing by them, and now
he's got to get it out of the summerhouse with
both the painting and himself still intact, which somehow he does.
And I guess he'd earned the art thieves trust. He
signals the cops. They raid the home. Now he's able
to bounce out of the chalet with the stolen masterpiece.
He high tails it back to his hotel room, where

(44:55):
he barricades himself in his room until proper authorities come
to take it. He doesn't even trust the other coups
for him, right, so he waits in case anybody gets
to get to any acute idea trying to steal this
painting bag. Everyone seems a want and it's like a
really sticky painting. I don't have to tell you, so
Dcihill does have this to say, and I quote. I
rang back to Oslo and told him I had it,
and barricaded myself in the hotel. Sure enough, after an

(45:16):
hour or so, the central detective unit in Oslo turned
up and I unbarricaded the room, and there was the picture.
Then I walked down actually onto the pier, and I
felt to myself done. It felt it felt good. It's
exhilarating to get the what you're going for back. I
can actually recover these things and feel as if I'm
doing my bit for creation. Wow, doing my bit for creation.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
I love that It took him an hour to respond.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Total emergency. I'll got there just second. Found finished and
we got some bake goods over here, really good. Yeah,
Pal's mom made them cruss. She's been coming by the station.
So there you go, cop for all creation, protect your
humanity's most beautiful treasures. Once the scream was recovered, Elizabeth
and the Oslo PD could take a collective breath of relief.
What happened to Powell Anger? Yeah, what happened to Well,

(46:05):
he was captured by the police obviously during the handover.
He was arrested. And this is where things get a
little weird, mostly because Norwegian justice is so different than
our American ideas.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Poal Anger and.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
His accomplices all they all get arrested, they get tried.
Anger was found guilty, sentenced to six and a half
years behind bars. All straightforward so far. His accomplices were
also sentenced, found guilty, sent to prison. Once again, straightforward
so far, except for they then appealed their judgments and
were later released. Why were they able to do this? Yeah,

(46:36):
they cited a rare Norwegian law about how they were
arrested by a UK cop and not by a Norwegian
cop and therefore they were not properly handled and gone
through the Basically it was like a you know, a
chain of custody issue. Yeah, so that therefore their bus
didn't follow proper Norwegian law and protocols and they were
able to get sprung on this. It's all four were
sprung free except for Powell Anger. He doesn't this somehow

(46:59):
doesn't apply to him because he gets arrested separately. Somehow,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
It's annoying everybody.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
That So in nineteen ninety nine, five years into his
six and a half year bid, pow Ager decides he's
had enough of prison, so he escapes.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Oh right, was it five and a half into the
six or.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, he escapes. But Elizabeth, you have to hear how
he escaped. You worked in a federal prison. I did
so imagine this next sentence happening in America. According to
the BBC and I quote, he did manage to escape
while on a field trip, but he was captured twelve
days later, wearing a blond wig and dark sunglasses and
trying to buy a train ticket to the Danish city
of Copenhagen. In Norway, apparently they let the prisoners out

(47:41):
go on field trips. Trips like to the like glue factories,
or like to the flute makers and the I don't know,
extuege drum makers. Like it's mister Rogers.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
At the at the federal facility, now, they didn't let
anybody walk out of the State one. The state one
was like horrendous. I'm sure at the Federal one. One
day I saw an inmate getting into a car, are
driving off.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
I gotta work for we had to go no.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
One of someone was explaining to me that, yeah, he
was working. He would go and like pick someone up
and bring them back. Sure, and it's like, but he
was trustee.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
But it was one guy. One guy in like seventeen
twenty guys voted in a bus and going to like
an amusement park.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
You're going to just let this guy get in the
car and drive. And they're like, there's so many security
protocols in place that like he takes one, he changes
lanes at the wrong time America.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
Yeah, they're going to be marked. And then also the
prole officers are on them, and then it also becomes
just like a fun game for them bust this guy pettings.
I'm not against this practice. I'd like to be clear.
I would want this for our inmates. Yeah, you know, like,
but it just sounds wild to my American ears, like
we got to let them on a bus to go
on a field drip. The guys have been good this month.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
They're actually I think we've talked about it before. San
Quentin is having a full overhaul that they have what's
called the California model now, which is you know, emphasis
on you know, abilitation and education and such. But now
they're taking like all these other uh Scandinavian influences, and
that's what they're going to be doing. Like it's going

(49:10):
from as a high security to medium security. Their whole
thing is how do we make good neighbors for when
they get out?

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Oh? I like that.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah, isn't that amazing?

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
So anyway, it's a it's an interesting experiment because right
now we're just making better criminals.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
So it's just criminal education. It's like university for Yeah. Anyway,
After his wig and sunglasses prison escape attempt failed, pal
Anger finished his sentence in two thousand. He was subsequently released.
He was at this point thirty three years old. I
remember how I told you up top about the second
time the screen was stolen by the Norwegian art thieves
who ran into the door. Yeah remember how else? Just said?
The Oslopedia immediately went to pal Anger and questioned him.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
Yeah, they ran into a door, this could be powered.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
It looks like he wasn't involved, and he said this
was that was true, but it wasn't the whole story.
Well he wasn't involved, he was the inspiration. Oh really,
so what's the deal with the two thousand and four
theft of the screen? Great question, Elizabeth. After the police
question pal Anger and found out it wasn't him, they
had to consider new theory. So someone out there, someone
was like, what if it wasn't pal Anger? But what

(50:11):
if he was the inspiration? What if they were like
pulling a pal Anger? Amazing? Right, So like Elizabeth in
My world, Caps and Criminals, they both talk like the
guys from Ocean's eleven, twelve and thirteen, where it's like
you were you know, you know what I'm talking about,
Like when Brad Pitt's like off the top of my
head and say you're looking at a Bowski, a Jim Brown,
a Miss Daisy you, Jeff Rows, and a Leon Spinks.
Not to mention the world's biggest Ella Fitzgerald. Ever, Yeah,

(50:32):
I look this up because I could never figure out
that last one, the biggest Ella Fitzgerald Ever, What does
he mean when he says that, you know, I couldn't
remember this one. You probably couldn't remember. You definitely couldn't
remember this when in the seventies there was a series
of commercials for the MEMORYX cassette tapes and Ella Fitzgerald
hits a high sea while she's singing and breaks a
wine glass.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
Oh, I've seen clips here.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's a historic ad. They used to be
excited all the time. So commercial narrator then says, is
it live or is it memor x? Right, So that
was a reference to the bank fault part of the job,
and how spoiler alert they made a mock up of
the vault rob that recorded and played it back. Aka,
is it live or is it memorized? Oh? Erld is?

(51:13):
I thought you'd get back to our starts movies? Are
I love them? So what happened to the cats in
two thousand and four who also got lucky and walked
away with the scream just like their inspiration pal Anger?
So once the aus of the Police considered new theories,
they came up with a winner. What if the two
thousand and four thieves were doing a poll Anger and
they were what he was a distraction for other criminals

(51:34):
to hit jewelry stores in banks because all the cops
are focused on the scream. Turns out that's exactly what
it was. A gang of street criminals who pow Anger
was loosely affiliated with, decided to go old school and
give the cops something to investigate that wasn't them. So
they commissioned some idiot amateurs who weren't pal Anger to
steal the scream and pull a pall Anger so the

(51:54):
street criminals could operate in peace. They could raid banks
without hassle for months, which is what they did. Meanwhile,
the mastermind for the copycat crime slipped out of the country.
He turns up in Madrid and that's where he, it's believed,
linked up with a notorious Norwegian hash smuggler, a guy
who could get that sweet. Now, this mastermind exchanged his

(52:15):
cut of the bank raids for some of that sweet
sweet Afghani hashish and plan to smuggle his way to freedom,
Except for the pair were both busted in a hotel
room in Malaga's Spain because I think the Norwegian hash
smuggler was under surveillance. So they get busted in Andalusia.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
The Spaniards don't play.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Do they do not? Dating back to Franco, they do
not play.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah, that is the last place you wanted to do
some smugglings.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
So once he's in custody, the alleged mastermind of the
bank raids and the second theft of the Scream confesses
his involvement. He names the four men he hired to
pull the job. He's like, you can find him here, here,
and here. Paul Anger gets questioned, taken into custody, and
that's when he gets exonerated for any part in the
copycat theft, and the paintings were recovered.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
After that, Anger went the other way with art, Elizabeth.
Instead of stealing it, he started creating it. Oh, just
like your guys, this warm football or street criminal art
thief becomes a fine art painter himself.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
He prefers to work in abstract forms. His work is
considered reminiscent of Edvard Munsch's use of color and tonality.
In fact, some folks believe they can see a ghostly
image of the screen painted into many of Pale Anger's works. Yeah. Anyway,
down in the corner of his painting, he signs them
p Anger, which, as you recall, is money in Norwegian.
So he's still that kid in the Stolen Beamer. Wow.

(53:30):
He refuses to sell his story, by the way, because
the UK cat tabloids came calling. Oh sure, one even
offered him one hundred thousand pounds to tell his story
in their pages as an exclusive. Powell Anger thought better
of it. Yeah, because he didn't want to betray or
piss off his underworld associates.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
Yeah, and he's like Vladimir Stop.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
He smart about it. There's the one choice he looked
out for him in this one moment.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
He did also occasionally speak about the burglary that made
him Norway's most famous art thief, and he did share
what it felt like to steal the scream as how
Anger said, and I quote, this is the coolest painting
in the world. I just drove around for hours thinking
about what I should do and what would happen. It
was really electric. It was just a great feeling. It
was magical. Even though he was fifty three at the

(54:16):
time of a very late interview, the newly minted fine
art painter was still something of a scoff log because
he was facing nineteen traffic offenses, ranging from stealing a
taxi sign to driving without a license, so he was
still kind of about that life. Yeah, for a final
word from Pile Anger, he once told a Norwegian newspaper
that from his life in crime he learned one all

(54:36):
important lesson, and I quote, you should not live in
movies and get bad role models.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
That's a very good right.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
We hear there's a lot on the show about how
movies were in inspiration for these kids and we had
become criminals. And you know whatever, who am I to
say where we should draw our inspirations. Art imitates life,
life imitates art, crime imitates movies. All that, right, two
way street. But if you're going to choose crime movies
as your rule book for life, yeah, try to pick
ones where the criminal role models get away with it.

(55:03):
Yes they're rare, I know, but you can find them.
Think to Shawshank redemption. So Elizabeth, what's a ridiculous takeaway here?

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Oh my goodness, I am still casting the film in
my head. But no, I think that it's curious this
notion of a big crime to distract from all the
little crimes. Right, I think that a lot. I think
I've talked about it before, like my suspicions. When I
see those big crimes, it's clever. That's very clever.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
That's the move.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Hmm, let me think about them. I don't have one. Okay, cool, No,
I'm kidding. I think wig game. We need to get
into wigs. We do, we do the shows. We both
show up in a wig.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Yeah, down, down, So there you go.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
That's all I got for you. Producer Deed, you got
to talk back, because I'm in the mood to wash
this down with something fropthy.

Speaker 5 (56:03):
I went, Elizabeth, I've been waiting to send something to you.
This is Vanessa from Texas. I'm gonna send it now.
It's not what I wanted to send. It's mama, don't
like your babies grow up to drive cybertrucks. And the

(56:27):
reason why I didn't want to send that is because
it could have been better. But you told me Banksy
might have been a woman. Ah'm freaking out.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
Listen, girl got to First of all, that was perfect,
It was beautiful, and mama should not let their babies
grow up to drive cyber trucks.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
I think William Whalen would both.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Be on board with that. And yeah, Banksy maybe.

Speaker 5 (56:53):
No.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
You know, my theory is Banksy's everybody.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
We're all banks By the way, you're Banksy.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Yeah, thanks girl.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
So there you go. You can find us online Ridiculous
Crime on social media's there go. Look, and we have
a website, Ridiculous Crime dot com, which is I think
now up for Monopoly Role Playing Game of the Year.
Oh really, very rare award, but I'm very excited. Yeah,
tabletop games.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
They get those every ten years.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
Yeah. So, and obviously we love your talkback, so please
go to that herd app downloaded record one. Maybe hear
your voice here, do it. It's fun. Also, emails you
like a Ridiculous crime at gmail dot com. Lease start
at the email DA producer d. And we also have,
by the way, a new YouTube channel which apparently I
told you that the wrong place last time. Go to
Ridiculous Crime Pod.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
Yeah, just ridiculous crime Pod. I've said it the wrong way,
You've said it the wrong So there you go, Ridiculous
Crime Pod. I don't know, I just work here.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
We're about that pod life, so thanks for listening. We
will catch you next. Crime Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabethutton That's Her and Sarah Burnett That's Me. Produce and
edited by the man who made Screaming famous, Dave Houston,
and starring Annelie's Rugger as Judith. Research is by the

(58:10):
inventor of the Edvard Munch multi color mood, ring Marissa Brown.
Our theme song is by the house band The Stolen
Beamers aka Norway's favorite sinister rock duo Thomas Lee and
Travis Dunny. The host wardrobe provided by Botny five hundred.
Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshock and mister Andre. Executive
producers are the men who've made making others famous famous,

(58:34):
Ben Boleen and Noel Brown.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Why Say It one More Times?

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Crime Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts.
My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.