May 4, 2023 • 46 mins
A city as fabulous and sinister and romantic as Venice, Italy, deserves a fabulous, sinister, and romantic cat burglar. The ultra wealthy were honored to be his target, and he was happy to take their priceless works of art (and the occassional cashmere sweater). His crimes were almost as egregious as Elizabeth's butchering of the Italian language.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
You know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Actually, the reason I know this is because one of
our listeners was kind enough to share something that I
particularly the interns handed it to me and I was like,
that's not ridiculous, that's genius. But they said it's ridiculous,
so I'm gonna go with them. Listener Ryan M. Ratley
aka Boo Ratley. They wrote in a message to the Instagram,
I believe and said quote something ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
But not a crime.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
There is a tree in Georgia that legally owns itself
and the eight foot area around it's right. The former
owner of the land had so many good childhood memories
under the tree that when he died, he willed the
tree to itself in an effort to preserve it. In
nineteen forty two, a storm blew it over, but someone
(00:53):
saved an acorn from the tree and planted it on
the spot as the sun of the old tree. The
new tree legally inherited the land. So there is a
tree that owns the land inherited from its father.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
A tree that is incredible. That is so beautifully ridiculous,
and I love it so much.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I want to go around giving and bestowing legal rights
on trees and rocks at rivers. I'm going to become
a lawyer just so I can do Who sent this
to us?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Ryan Ratley? That was dope. You made both our days.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yes, and yes, it is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
But it's also super awesome. That is ridiculously awesome. You
want to know what else is ridiculous? Oh yeah, I'm
here for stealing art only to give it right back.
What this is ridiculous crime. I'm a podcast about absurd
(02:01):
and outrageous caper's heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine
percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. You heard
that we don't like murder, No, we do not. We
like principled thieves.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, we like someone who does it for the people.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I this guy I'm going to tell you about does
it for the people's erin does he? He he hates
murderous and he's a principled thief.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I think he may be one of my favorite crimers
we've had on here.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So really excited.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yes, when he was about eight years old, he committed
his first crime.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I like, when you start young, it tells me we're
in very I know, right.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Eight years old crime. So at the time, he was
tired of the jobs that he'd had.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Numerous jobs.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
He worked in a morgue for a little.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Bit, for a little bit and age.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, but he decided it wasn't for him. And then
he got a job working at a bakery. But he
kept eating all the baked goods.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Probably because he was angry child.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, let him go. He got high on their supply.
So he retired from the traditional workforce in the age
of eight.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Oh, I thought he started carrying like hot rivets on
the still buildings. He got a hopper and he was
climbing up.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
No, he retired, and then he turned to a life
of crime.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Oh good for him.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
What was his first theft? He was walking by a
dairy and sitting, no, sitting outside, cattle rustler. Sitting outside
was a fifty liter milk tin, all right full and
that's like those.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Big old silver wants with a double handle.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, yeah, okay, I believe I will, said the boy,
or rather.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Oh yes, I believe I will. In Italian, thank you, Elizabeth,
I'll be translating if you want.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
This is a good time to tell you that this
takes place in Venice, Italy. Okay, yes, in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Oh, I like you.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's when he's eight years old. This is three years
after The Bicycle Thief.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Oh yeah, the movie Yeah totally and then really not
called it the Bicycle Thieves.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, he grew up with the Thief and the bicycle
zikas the bicycle Thieves. I suppose you know that illustrated
the desk inspiration faced by Italians struggling in a war
torn So this little boy sees the milk rolls that
jug on home. When he gets to his house, his
mother takes one look at the jug and then starts
dividing it up with the neighbors. He gotta live.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
They're in post war depressions.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's just great, exactly. So the boy then smashed up
the tin and sold it for scrap like the kids, right.
This little boy was named Vincenzo Peppinocen Vincenzo. He was
born in nineteen forty three in Venice and after the war,
his dad worked as a ferry boat captain. There was
no money, that's.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
What was morning.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Do they have any like a tourist economy.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No, No, just rebuilding.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So they're doing the lace and moving boats around.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, they over on Burano, they had they had a
really rough go of it. So Vincenzo starts stealing. This
is how he learns his way around those like labyrinthine
streets of Venice. Have you ever been to Venice?
Speaker 4 (04:55):
No, I've never been.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I know a lot of people say Venice is an
overrated tourist trap, but it most certainly is not.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I love you've been a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, yes, as you know, there are no cars there.
You get around either on foot or by boat.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
I love all the bridges.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, and at night, the you know, the winding streets
so quiet. The place is amazingly sinister, but like in
a good way. It's not Savannah Georgia, sinister where the
sins of the past are haunted.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You can hear the chains in the wind.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Exactly, no offense Savannah. There are these quiet little neighborhoods
in Venice, beautiful areas outside of the tourist zone along
the Grand Canal.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I say this like I've just seen pictures, but yes,
I'm familiar.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
It's not easy to navigate those streets. It's in no
way laid out in the grid.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Oh really, yeah, I had I had the canals like
in the Netherlands, like Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Not at all, not at all. It's all winding, you know, Serpentines.
I had a professor in grad school who had this
theory about how cities whose streets are laid out in
the grid are masculine and those with winding streets are feminine.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Are they a man or a woman?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Man?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Interesting?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Did you agree with them?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It seems like a man's idea.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Barcelona's pretty much laid on a grid, but Barcelona feels
very feminine.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Yeah, Maggie, I haven't been to Barstone either, but looking
at it interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
To think about when we're another anyway. Venice can feel
like a maze to the uninitiated.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Oh I bet.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But Vincenzo knew his way around as his little you know,
this little preteen thief, and soon he gets a gig
as a delivery boy. One day on the job, he's
walking down the street and he sees a thirty kilo
bag of sugar. I can't say where this bag was
or who was supposed to be watching it, but a
bag of that size may have well been full of gold.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Oh yeah, sugar.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
At that point, sugar was at a premium. It took
a long time to rebuild after the war. England was
on rations for a few years after and they won. Yeah,
so it took like five or six years for Italy's
economy to return to pre war levels, at least on paper.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Totally. I listened to all those old radio shows in
America they were also rationing sugar, where it's like, oh,
you got the blue stamps for sugar, then you ain't
getting it, and so.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
You know, the reality on the street is always much
worse than sort of as you play out on the books.
So sugar was in demand at the time. People were
selling it by the gram like it was disco dust.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yes, totally, just.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
A graham for the holidays, as they'd say, that's it.
That's a shout out to all my nine o two
and oh loving palace from UC Davis Coaggi's So here's Vincenzo,
He's got thirty kilos of Hawaii's finest sweetened by the Sun.
His dad saw the bag and looked at the label
on the side. Property of the Italian navy. Yikes, that's
(07:34):
ben So he told his son to give it back.
So Vincenzo started to argue, and then his nana, his grandma,
piped up. No, She shouted, the sugar stays here. She's like, look,
I have seen things like we are.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Keeping this, who is it?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
That's our navy, that's our sugar.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And what Nana says goes. So the family utn't get
By the time he was thirteen, his thieving was totally
out of control. Yet right his mom was terrified, not
only that he'd be caught, she worried about his soul.
So she hatched a plan. She told him that another
resident in their apartment building had an accident a while back,
(08:14):
before he was born. You you don't remember this, Vincenzo.
This woman was coming home late and trying not to
make a lot of noise. Her leg gave out and
she fell down the stairs in the dark and died
instantly when she was impaled on exposed nail. Yikes, I
mean that happened to me once and I died instantly,
so I believe it.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah, totally sounds painful.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, so the leg, the reason for the fall, was restless,
and now it haunted their building. It was a ghost leg.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Now just the leg.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah. The mom's like, there's a ghost leg and it
is cursing young boys who come home late. No, it's
not hopping, it's floating. But how does it anyway, So
a ghost leg had a name, okay, like the Golden Leg.
(09:07):
Vincenzo was terrified. He didn't want the ghost leg getting
him wriggling its little haunted toes at him, so he
changed his ways. He started stealing during the day.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Smart kid.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, but he still needed to creep out at night.
So he practiced, and he practiced until he became really
good at climbing up the outside walls of the apartment
building spider spider Man style, you know, Spider Man d
DA style. That way, the ghost leg, which apparently lived
inside the building, was unaware that he was outside scrabbling
up the facade.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It totally makes ghost leg sense to me.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
It totally makes sense. When he was at the ripe
age of fourteen, he learned a new trick. He was
out at the Lido, which is the beach area in Venice.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
At fourteen fourteen, so he's like six years into his
crime curses. He's like still an apprentice journeyman. He's not
quite a master, but.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
He gets there with this. It's like, so there's this
like Barrier Island beach area. He and his friends they
go out to the beach and they would crawl under
the changing huts where they had previously drilled holes brilliant,
and they would watch the ladies change into their swim suit.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
So I thought for changing stuff to drop.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
They were peeping. Who were some of these ladies, Actress
Gina l La Brigida Wow. And then someone making her
third appearance on this show, Sophia Lren Because this was
like the bay call for me, this is the vacation hotspot.
So they'd hang out under the huts all day, gock
in it lady's tushies.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
But Vincenzo, he had more crimes on his mind than
just gross invaved into privacy, right yeah. Uh. He realized
that come wintertime he could unscrew the floorboards of the
huts and then he'd be able to come back in
the summer and lift out the planks while the tourists
were out frolicking in the sun. So at that point
he could slip in and take their valuable.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
That's what I thought they were trying to do the
first and no.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
One sees him going in or out. So generally when
he did this, he grabbed a few lara out of
the wallets.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Okay, that's why I figured they just get a hand
up and reach him. But he's the whole plank, that's he's.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Just lifting, so it's easy. One day, things change. He
sees an American family heading out from a hotel to
the Lido beach, Mark and Vincenzo. He clocks a big
water dollar bills in the guy's shirt pocket, just you know,
the loud American. So he had some cash in his
wallet from his little Lightnings wallet Lightnings, so he headed
(11:22):
over to a store and he bought these really expensive
pair of shorts on the beach. He wanted to blend
in on the beach with these wealthy tourists, So off
he goes in search of the American family. When he
finds them, he cozies up to their son. He's like, Hey,
I'm Vincenzo, Shoe. You want to kick the ball around,
so you like kick the old football around right soccer
(11:43):
to us Yanks. So the kid obliges. He's like, oh, hi, yeah,
you sound nice, and he's like show like smoking a cigarette.
So the kid obliges. They like, he's happy to make
a friend. They pass the ball back and forth. Then
Vincenzo makes his move. He punts the ball into the
family's beach hut all whoopsie. And then he's like, you
(12:05):
know what, kid, Joe, John, Sam, whatever your name is,
American kid, I'm going to run in and get it.
So he runs in, zoinks the cash, shoved it in
his new shorts, and then he comes out and he's like,
I just remember I got to get home. Yeah, im,
the canals are busy.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
These times, come up and stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So he takes off. He claims telling this story now
that it was the equivalent of two hundred thousand euros today.
What right, So why would someone carry that much money?
But then I started thinking, Okay, maybe the exchange rate
was all off and the dollar went super far at
that time. That's my guess. I was going to track
(12:46):
down how much a dollar to leiro was at that
time and then try and convert to euros and then
backtrack the inflation rate and then run forward to the
current rate. And I thought, you know what, Elizabeth, who
knows who cares. That's what I thought, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Apply that judiciously, thank you.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So he had all these American dollars but nowhere to
use them, because it would be really suspicious for a
young Venetian to try and pay with American dollars. He
did something even more suspicious, and he tried to exchange
them for lira at the bank. Yeah, he was caught,
he was arrested. He refused to admit what he'd done,
but that didn't matter. He did seven months for that one.
(13:23):
It should be noted that he learned to read and
write during his various stints in jail, so yeah, and
then he could read the sugar.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Sacks like exactly rehabilitation.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So as he grew up, he graduated to burglarizing tobacconists
and jewelry stores. Okay, so like the corner stores, right,
The smoke shops were there for just everyday need, so
that's what he's getting there. The jewelry stores, though, he'd
break in at night because I guess he wasn't afraid
of the ghost leg anymore. He'd climb up inside and
(13:51):
make a perfect hole through the ceiling and the roof,
so he gets breaks into the shop makes a hole,
I know, yeah, and he would replace the piece cut
out and make sure no wind could blow through it
or otherwise alert the shopkeeper that something was off. Then
he'd scamper off into the evening. And then the next
day he'd creep along the rooftops, but this time in
(14:12):
broad daylight. I guess he's thinking everything's locked up at night,
like in a safe for way. So everyone takes this
little rest from one to three the shops are closed.
Can I pause for one second and say that we
must do this over here in this Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
My entire life.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
I felt this every since I heard about it, whether
we're talking about the Siesta or like the what.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Did they call what we need?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Three? Totally like you just shut everything and shut everything
down in August, those two things. That is my platform.
Elizabeth twenty twenty four. I'm telling you, Bumfardo is my
running mate. Dunton Fardo twenty twenty four. I like, so,
AnyWho where were Vincenzo and I on this one?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
He was tiptoeing across the rooftops to his Heidi hole.
He'd pop out the roof stopper, the old ceiling.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
The old bunghole exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And he'd slip into the jewelry store and it was
like one of those shopping streets when I was little,
I felt like it was a common thing in entertainment
and marketing, like you could win a toys r a
shopping spree, you run around the store throwing things in
the cart. Store still do that?
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Do you remember how excited that people would get, like
almost violot with themselves trying to turn those corner.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yes, I don't think they do that anymore, like as
a marketing prize giveaway and not like uncontrolled consumer shop lift.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Yeah, exactly, and not like the TV shows where it's
just like I think they still do the grocery store one.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't know, Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Anyway, back to Vincenzo. He would slip into the store
in the afternoon and take everything he could, lots of
like those gold cornetto necklaces, and then he'd pop back
out and scurry home. He got better though. This was
him just training for his future as a serious burglar.
Do you know what he took next? Let's take a
(15:54):
break and when we come back, you'll find out when
(16:17):
we last met Zarin, Yes, clad I was telling you
about Vincenzo Peppinos.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I love him, dude, so far I'm digging them.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
He's amazing. He was a petty thief in his younger days,
but he started to set his sights on bigger hauls.
Venice is brimming with art, from the works of the
glass blowers on Morano to the artisans who craft carnival masks,
which I find intensely creepy. Really, oh, I hate those masks.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Do you mean like all of them, like the ones
the rich ones are people wear like an eyes wide shut?
Or do you mean like those long.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Nose everything'll creepy?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
All right, I didn't know if to just specifically the
long nose. Yeah, plague dog, everything everything masked. If I
can't see your.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Face, I have a crazy latex mask that goes over
your head and then it comes down, you can like
tuck it in your shirt song and it's an old
man face and it looks amazing. And I love like
when someone comes to my door throwing on and then
open the door. I really really scarred my nephew doing
that once.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Oh god, he's young.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, all right, so art. You also then have the
fine arts, the big dogs, right, Caneletto Giovanni and Gentile Bellini,
Tintoretto Titian. I love the skies and Titian paintings. Yes,
(17:39):
some of the greatest.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Words of art. I just always think of the d
I can't help it. Forgive me.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So some of the greatest works of art were created there,
and even more were on display in a number of museums.
It was the perfect place to steal art. You know
how we love art thieves. Vincenzo step up. Oh yeah,
here's the thing. In order to be a good art thief,
one has to know about art.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That it helps.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Since Vincenzo had learned to read and write while in prison,
he put those skills to work and he read everything
he could about art. He hung out at the library,
studying not just art history, but also Venetian aristocracy.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Oh smart patrons.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, he wanted to know who kept what art in
their luxurious pilazzi that lie in the Grand Canal.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Brilliant.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
He became an expert, so in his career he pulled
off more than three thousand art thefts. Three thousands. Here's
the craziest.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Very good.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Oh yeah, he's very good at what he does. Here's
the craziest part. He never sold the art.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
He just kept it off himself.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
He basically held them until they could be returned. Yeah,
he was the Yeah, well no, he would have them all,
you know, if you pay a little like ransom basically,
and then all the other stuff from the home. That's
how he's really funding the lifestyle, like jewelry, silver, gold,
Funko pops.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Oh. So he's like, I really like the art. I'm
gonna respect that, but.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
You're silver, I'm moving that, yes, and the fun and
the Funko pops.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yes, I saw you slip that in there. I'm like,
I'm not going to let you do that to the
nice people of Venice because you're like, I'm doing that.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
The cops knew him, and the cops liked him.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Wait for the Funko pops, for the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
The whole kitten Kabuter. There was one investigator in particular,
Detective Antonio Palmolcy. They had a pretty chummy relationship. They
were buddies. He'd negotiate with Vincenzo to return the artwork,
but you know, obviously for a cost, the aristocrats would
pay up and get their loot back.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
No Is he pretending like I know a guy who
has this, or do they know that he's the one.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
He's like, let me talk to let me find out
who did I know who did it?
Speaker 4 (19:43):
Let me talk to him?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Okay, cool, So everyone benefits Vincenzo. He makes a living
off you know, what's basically a ransom. The cops look
great because they've recovered these Yeah, the wealthy burglary victims.
They get their stuff back and they boast about being
hit by a famous thief.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I'm sure this isn't a sitcommon Italy.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So the aristocrats in the city they considered a theft
by Vincenzo as a kind of badge of.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Honors, totally like I earned it.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
He wanted to hit me exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I have really good taste, like expensive stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Do you know who robbed me the other day?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Now, Vincenzo had a younger brother named Alfredo, and sometimes
it does Alfredo has. Alfredo's career is amazing. He was
a magician, Alfred. So Alfredo and Vincenzo, they both said
Alfredo was not involved in any of this stuff. But
sometimes the cops would just arrest Alfredo anyway, breaking the
(20:38):
laws of physics with your magic, You.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Got any new tricks, Freddy.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Little Fredo. He did have an accomplice, though Vincenzo wasn't
his brother. He had a bunch that he would use
my name Luigi. No. The one guy that he liked
to use was a man named Claudio Claudio Claudio, and
he was there in a pinch. He was deaf, and
that made things a little difficult.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Did I sign language talking communicate?
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, a lot of gesturing. I mean they do a
lot of gest language. Yeah. So one of Vincenzo's favorite
techniques when scoping out a grand palazzo was to carry
a pigeon, you know, just as a.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Pal just like Nicola Tesla is like Caaren and around
like this is my girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Well, he'd let it go in the house and see
if it tripped any motion detectors. Oh that's that's totally smart.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Wow, he was in his trained Imagine he's getting it
right there.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, and then he uses the He was so good
that there was an aristocrat named Count Barozzi who hired
him to steal from his friends. So if the Count
saw a piece at another rich person's house and he
wanted it, he'd be like Vincenzo Okay, when you walk in,
it's on the left, and Vincenzo got it.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
I've never been there, right.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
In nineteen seventy one, he stole from the private gallery
of Peggy Gougenheim. Oh yeah, twice, once in February, once
in December, or twice. He was a serious character. Here's
what Epic Magazine had to say. Quote. He once infiltrated
the Swiss consulate and made off with one hundred and
fifty million lira in cash. In the late nineteen seventies,
(22:15):
he tailed Carrie Grant, who portrayed one of the most
famous thieves in film history, and robbed him while he
slept in his hotel room. Later, he freed a forlorn
gorilla from the zoo in Rome, he felt bad for
the animal, and robbed the Venice casino, all of which
made him a local legend.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
How is this guy living my best life?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I don't know how.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
I mean now, I can't do any of these things
because he's done them all right.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Well, he becomes known as the gentleman theater. He's a
true gentleman in that sense. He was never violent, he
never carried a weapon, andis love him. This guy's amazing well.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And he may have returned generalized.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
He may have returned stolen items for a fee, but
he never blackmailed anyone. And that would have been easy
because he has embarrassing stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And I'm sure that's the city with lots of embarrassing stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Right, So he had a code respect people. Don't use weapons,
don't steal from the poor, lawyers, doctors, magistrates or policemen,
and smart too when stealing from jewelers, leave some of
the gold, and don't take the jewelry that's being repaired
because it belongs to a customer who's already paid for it.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
That's so nice, it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
He was really sensitive while robbing people because.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
He's taking the cream, like like the world's a dairy.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Well. He dig through underwear drawers looking for jewelry, but
he made sure not to mess up the undies like
he kept everything in order because he knew that seeing
your private underthings tossed all over the place felt like
a real violation, more so than having your Picasso, macgreet,
Ernst Clee or Kandinsky taken from all Those are all
artists that are told by the.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Way, Oh wow, those are all just like adorn your underwear.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Underwear that touches you. He says, quote to be a thief,
you need a little culture, a little intelligence. You have
to have a gentle good soul and to not be
arrogant with him so.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Good, I know he wouldn't be writing his crimes down.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah right, well we'll see. One time, in the middle
of stealing everything from a mansion owned by a countess,
the lady at the house returned and was like, who
are you. You're in my house. Vincenzo and Claudio said,
we are thieves. Don't worry, don't be afraid. We're not
going to harm you.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Like it the truth, and she's like, okay, I can
trust you.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Then they carried her suitcases upstairs for her before they
took off and escaped into the night.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I'm telling you, good men, you just have a human moment.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
That's right. He says that quote stealing from the super
rich is not a crime, and that he quote robbed
from the rich to give to the poor.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
I super agree, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
He also said that quote I gave everything back and quote,
if I had just one percent of what I stole
over my career, I would be rich. But if I
had one percent of what I donated to the poor,
I would be even richer.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
He would only steal from rich and people who wouldn't
be hurt by the theft financially. And he only stole
beautiful and valuable things. Not just valuable things, but if
it was a piece of beauty. He's like, you don't
deserve this. He believed that the theft was a price
that they had to pay for being rich.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Yeah, looks, people can celebrate Jeff Bezos for being able
to skim a little off of all these workers and
get it becoming a billionaire. Yeah, I like this guy
for skimming from the billionaire. And I'm like, look, we
just both were celebrating different skimmers.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
He would steal credit cards from the wealthy and then
go to grocery stores and buy food for working people.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yes, see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Since it was covered by insurance, he figured that he
wasn't stealing from the rich. He was stealing from the bank.
And he really loved that. One time he saw an
old woman teleman begging on the street to go find
a job. He was livid, so he quietly followed her
home and he made a note where she lived. He
checked in every now and then, and after about a
month he decided it was time he broke into her
(25:46):
house and stole a bunch of valuables. After he left,
he was checking out his loot and he realized he'd
accidentally taken an urn with the woman's husband's ashes in them. Ooh,
and he always returned personal and sentimental objects that he
had mistakenly taken, but not this time. He dumped the
ashes over the rialto bridge into the Grand Canal, saying
to the ashes, quote, go, you're better off free in
(26:08):
the water than with your awful life.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Wow, that's kind of heavy. That's when you get into
like the Southern European of it all. Oh yeah, I
had to do this, And they're like, Okay, I'm not
going to argue.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
I got it. You gotta do this. That's messed up.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
His antics just continued. In the spring of nineteen ninety one,
he used a telescope on the bell tower in Piazza
San Marco, and he's like scoping out the nearby plaza.
He really had his eye on this one palazzo owned
by Raoul Gardini, a wealthy Italian entrepreneur and businessman. Sure
Vincenzo saw a skylight on the roof about forty feet
(26:46):
off the ground. A few days later, he and Claudio,
who you know, trustworthy nearly deaf, walked up to the
entrance of Palazzo Gardini. Claudio he guarded the alleyway entrance,
and Vincenzo scaled the crumbling facade to the roof, just
like he did as he was a kid, but now
he was forty eight.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yeah, and there's no longer ghost leg right.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So he gets on the roof. The skylight's locked, but
the frame around it is all old and rotten, so
he just slips right. He enters the house, no alarms,
walks down the set of stairs, opens the door to
let Cloudio in. Cloudio can't hear him, so he has
to like go out and like wave him down, like
make a noise that come in and then waves him
in comedy. Oh yeah, they searched the house, including the bedroom,
(27:28):
and here's where Vincenzo and I are kindred spirits. Okay,
this man loves kashmir cashmere. If he saw something cashmere
he liked while on a highst he'd grab it, and
he became known for wearing cashmere sweaters, so this time
he finds a blue cashmere sweater that fit. He and
Claudio then work their way through the rest of the house.
(27:50):
Vincenzo ignores the artwork. He's like, this is not impressive.
He's like, oh, this is fantastic, puts it on. Oh
this is better. So he'd seen and stolen better artwork.
He wasn't interested in the stuff there. He did find
some silverware worth more than over one hundred thousand dollars today.
In total, they stole around four hundred thousand dollars worth
(28:11):
of items they left. They loaded four duffel bags into
a borrowed water taxi and then escaped into the canals.
So good, they're very successful. In the fall of ninety eight,
Vincenzo was walking through the streets of Venice eating a pastry,
does another thing that I love about him, when he
noticed some large homes with closed shutters. So he did
(28:33):
some research and he discovered that one of the palazzi
belonged to a man named Alberto Falk FA l c K,
which is also.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Like the same spelling fa l CKK.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
But it's like the ambulance service in Oakland's fault. And
that's why I always yelled, oh Falc when they.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Oh, that's why you yelled at yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Oh Falc was it was. He was a wealthy businessman
from a really well known family in Milan. He also
had this extra home in Venice and appeared he was
currently away from it. So Vincenzo finds out that falk
owned a caniletto painting called Il fongetto de la Farina
The Source of Flower. This was one of Vincenzo's favorite paintings.
(29:17):
It shows this like bustling scene of merchants waiting along
the canal. Caniletto was an eighteenth century Venetian artist who
often painted scenes of Venice, and as the son of
the city, I feel like it must have really resonated
with him, this image. So one day Vincenzo and a
friend they enter Falkes home. They're mainly there to steal jewelry. However,
(29:37):
Vincenzo sees the painting on the wall. He told the
Italian paper Lesthompa in two thousand and eight that it
seemed like the caniletto was calling to him. Do you know,
I don't know. It's pretty large.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I imagine it's one of the biggest his paintings.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
And it was begging him to take it out of there.
He said, quote, what was I supposed to do? Leave
it there? So like the ghost painting is.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Like take me with you.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
In short, Vincenzo, he was captivated.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Divide it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
He said, no, it was the painting that stole me.
During the theft. It's around three am. Falk returns home. Oh, Falk.
He didn't see the thieves or the thefts though, And
after a bit, Vincenzo and his associate just leave. They
just kind of slip right out. Vincenzo said that if
(30:24):
he hadn't returned, they would have taken everything but the walls.
I mean, they were just going to bleed this guy. Still,
they stole so many bags of things, including the caniletto.
Like he knew that stealing the painting, which estimated to
be worth fifteen million euro.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Oh sure, but it's Manning stolen him. He's not giving
rid of that.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Well, he knew would complicate things like the government's going
to be notified and like, but he couldn't help himself.
So months after the theft, he calls Falk and he
told him that the painting I have it. Guess what
I'm the one with your painting, and he's like, I
will you need to donate it to the city of Venice,
and Falk's like, no, you need to give it back.
(31:01):
So Vincenzo eventually gives the painting back and he ended
up spending seven months in jail for that one, but
Falk later sent him some wine and three years later
allowed the painting to be shown in an exhibit, something
he hadn't done before. Now there's still one more major
heightst I want to tell you about when we come
back from this break, I'll introduce a new force to
(31:23):
be reckoned with the mafia Zaren Zaren Elizabeth Vincenzo Peppine.
(31:53):
Not long after that incident where he took the Kashmir
sweater in the silverware, Vincenzo ran into a local mafio
so named Andrea Zamatillo U Zamatillo. He worked for a
guy named Philiche Manieioch man Happy Manieiro Filich is Philippe
(32:15):
Filiche Maniio was known on the street as Faccia DiAngelo.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
The face of an angel, Angel Face.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Angel Face Zamatillo. He wanted to talk to vic.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
His name is Happy and angel Face.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Well, hold on, so Zamatillo, he wants to talk to Vincenzo.
This is what it said in Epic magazine quote. Zamatillo
was a member of the Mala del Brenta, the local
mafia organization in the Venetto, the northeastern part of Italy
that includes Venice. Under the leadership of Filiche Manieiro. The
group had assassinated many of its rivals. Now they controlled
(32:50):
everything from water taxis to drug trafficking in Venice. So
the Mala del Brenta, it was kind of like the
Cosinostra or Camora model of crime family, only morel Yeah,
it started in the sixties. Though nineteen sixties, there were
a bunch of high ranking Sicilian mafia members who were
locked up in solitary confinement in prisons in the Veneto region.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Now, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So they're trying to like send them as far away
as possible. Here are some of the heavy hitters. Salvatore Contorno,
Gitano Finzantati, Antonio.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I'm doing great so far.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Just keep on you go, and Salvae and Giuseppe Madiona.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
There we go, there you go.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Those are some amazing names in.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
The handjusters with them spot on.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
They're horrible men, but I love their names. So the
criminal element up in the Venetto started reaching out to
these guys. Eventually they all joined up together and built
a really strong crime family. And the boss Filichim Niero,
the police, they're cracking down on the mafia across the country.
In that crackdown, one of Manieiro's cousins was arrested, and
(33:58):
you know there it is so.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
The normal bribes.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
The normal bribes to get the cousin out of jail
weren't working. Zarin, Yes, close your eyes, Oh yes, I
want you to picture it. You're a Mala del Brena
enforcer named Corrado, working with Felice Manieero's right hand man
Andrea Zamatio. The two of you are walking around just
at the foot of the famous Rialto bridge. You're headed
(34:25):
toward Riva Rialto. It's a well known restaurant along the
Grand Canal. It's a little touristy, but as you look up,
you realize the rye humor in choosing this place. Above
the awning hangs a large banner. It reads no Mafia
Venizia isakra, No Mafia venice is sacred. But there you
are two made men meeting up with an infamous thief.
(34:47):
You see Vincenzo sitting at a table under an awning
outside the restaurant. Gondolas and water taxis glide by in
the canal. You join them. Zamatio is serious. He tells
Vincenzo that Manierro wants him to lead a group of
armed henchmen into a museum called Ka Ratzunico. He's supposed
to steal the best paintings. You take a drag from
(35:08):
your cigarette and you stare at this Steve. His dark
brown Kashmir sweater is gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
I really like it, sky you.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
You want to ask him where he got it, but
now it's not the time. Zamatillo tells Vincenzo that Maniaro
would trade the stolen paintings for his cousin's release. He'd
also get a promise to take the heat off of
Mala del Brenta. Vincenzo doesn't like this. He stares out
at the canal and watches a mail boat drift by.
I have an idea, Vincenzo says to you. He gets up.
(35:36):
I'm going to steal a famous piece of art, he says,
and I'm going to do it alone. You ask him
which artwork, Vincenzo responds, Just read the newspapers you'll find
out and scene.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Okay, I was waiting for the mail boat and then
the female boat to go buy. Every time you say that,
I'm always like, it takes me a second. You take
like the male car on the train, I'm always like, Wow,
that's really stuck in there. I don't think of male
as an adjectives.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, anyway, go, So Vincenzo, he did not work with
the mafia. He did not want to good call. This
kind of robbery would scare civilians.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
We've seen how that works out. You have no one to.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Call well, and you can't you can't say no, they
can't hal a cop. If you do this kind of
thing that it's going to cause the museums to improve
their security. It's going to piss off the police. All
of this is going to make his job.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Harder, way harder, and he'll lose all of his good
reputations and good rapport with the cops, and it'll put
him over a barrel because they'll want more and more
and more.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Exactly, So this is what it said in Epic magazine.
Until now, the Big Boss hadn't meddled in Peppino's work.
But if Peppino was viewed as disloyal, Maniero could ban
him from stealing in the region or simply haven't killed
options two options. On October ninth, nineteen ninety one, Vincenzo
joined a tour group at the Palazzo Ducale, the Doge's palace.
(36:49):
It's now a museum. It's located near Piazza San Marco,
and it's seen as a symbol of Venice. The group
crossed over the Bridge of Size. It's an enclosed, bifurcated
bridge to the former prison, and it got its name
because it provided the last view of Venice that jailbirds
saw before they went to prison.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Oh that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So they would sigh at the beauty of the city
and they're impending in carsons.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Have you seen some of the studies.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, oh yeah. So Vincenzo he lagged behind the group
as it toured the bridge, and as the group left,
he hung back and he hid in one of the
old cells. So after the museum closed, he stayed hidden
and he timed the guards round. He discovered that there
was just one guard on duty, and he came by
every forty five minutes. So around two am, Vincenzo crossed
(37:31):
back over the bridge into the main museum, into a
room called Sala de Cnsori. They were the historical protectors
of Venice's public institutions, and the room held a lot
of their portraits. But Vincenzo was focused on another painting,
La Madonna colbambino Madonna and child. Yeah, that was painted
(37:51):
in the early fifteen hundreds by a member of the
Viverini school. It symbolized the power of the Venetian state.
A comparison made is that it was like take it
would be like taking the Constitution from the capitol. It's
that important, really. Yeah. The painting was fourteen feet off
the ground, so it's way up there.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
He reached up to a ledge below it, but the
wooden ledge is old that starts cracking when he pulls
on it. So before he can make his next move, though,
he hears footsteps guard's back, so he runs to the bridge.
He chose the side of the bridge, luckily that the
guard did not walk down. When the guard turned around,
Vincenzo returned to the cell to hide and regroup for
another forty five minutes, so it's now around three am.
(38:31):
When the guard finally passed again. Vincenzo ran to a
supply closet, grabbed a ladder, climbed up to the painting,
used a knife to separate it from the wall, covers
it with a blanket, tucks it under his arm, leaves
the museum. The next morning, a janitor discovered and reported
the theft, and the city freaks out.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah he sold the constitution, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Oh totally, So the police come to investigate. There are
no clues except for a shoe print left where dust
from the painting had fallen. The forensics team they figured out, okay,
these are clarks and the finally little soft shoes I know.
And then the following morning they let Detective Paul Mossy know.
(39:12):
But before Paul Mosy could send officers to arrest Vincenzo
and take his shoes, he saw the morning's paper. Someone
from the museum talked to a reporter because the article
noted that the only evidence that at the scene was
a shoe print. So Vincenzo takes his shoes, fills them
with Rocks throws them into the canal. Police show up,
no shoes. Paul Mosey is angry and he threatens Vincenzo
(39:36):
with police surveillance. And that meant that any interaction with
anyone considered a criminal would land him in jail. And
that's like most of his friends. So he promised he
would return the painting, and more than that, he'd give
it back in twenty days.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
This is like the moment where like the police captain
goes to the loose cannon, give.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Me your badge, and you're gun. You're off the forest.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I can't trust you to the loose cannon.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Criminal, criminal exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Okay, So he says, I'll get it to you in
twenty days. Details about how he got the painting back,
you know, given by the man himself, are hazy. He
contradicts himself in his various tellings. So you said he
didn't write these things down in twenty ten. I see
he wrote a book. Stealing from the rich isn't a sin.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Well with a book, okay, I'll give him that. Yeah,
we all know what happened with the books.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, So he said that he actually arranged to have
Manieero return the painting in twenty Days as part of
his initial discussions with the mafia. That doesn't really make
sense given the purpose of the painting as a negotiation tool,
but whatever. So in other places he said, he just
you know what, I was on vacation in the Seychelles
when it was supposed to be returned. I didn't have
anything to do with this. That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
That's an odd one.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
In twenty fourteen, he told Epic magazine a totally different story,
and he said, well, this is hypothetical and like, nothing
I'm about to say is what happened. But if I
did it so, according to this version, shortly after the
Doge's Palace theft, he visited many Arrow at home under
the pretense of making sure the painting was being properly stored,
(41:00):
and it would be really detrimental to both of them
it was if it was damage, so I just want
to check on it. Vincenzo was told that it was
being stored in a shed behind Maniero's cousin's house nearby,
and that's where Maniero also kept his pets, so it
is good to check on this thing, Vincenzo. He then
had a forger friend paint a replica of the middana,
(41:23):
and then he also had a veterinarian friend pick up
some tranquilizers in case he needed them for Manieo's pets.
So a week later it's like tenant night Vincenzo. He
goes to Manniero's cousin's house. He has the replica painting,
he has the drugs. When he approaches the shed, he
sees that one of the pets is in a caged
run in front of it in front of the shed,
(41:44):
but instead of the expected guard dog, it's a tiger.
What it's a tiger?
Speaker 4 (41:50):
What this is where they the mafia part jumps out.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
So he puts one of the tranquilizers into a piece
of steak that he brought, you know, and he feeds
it to the tiger, and after thirty minutes the tiger
falls asleep.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Oh good for him, right big.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
As he makes his way inside, he sees the painting,
but he sees something else, another tiger. No, he had
more meat on him and he had more tranquilizers. So
he feeds it the tiger and the tiger falls asleep too.
He's like, all right, sick, ready for y'all so he
grabs the stolen painting, replaces it with the replica, and
(42:24):
then it escapes back into them.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
They have guard tigers, guard tigers.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
You're still they have guard painting is guarded by tigers.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
This is what I want in movies and they have
it in reality.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Exactly. No, this is why Venice is amazing.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
And the criminals they want life to be like movies.
I want life to be like Venice, right.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
We all do. November seventh, nineteen ninety one, the Venice
police held a press conference. The madonna had been returned.
It had been found via an anonymous tip Maniera's cousin
was eventually released after being you know the negotiations for him,
but Sanniio claims it was thanks to returning a different artifact.
(43:03):
He'd stolen Saint Anthony's tongue and jaw bone rob from
a church and patava by unidentified men with shotguns the
day after Vincenzo had stolen the madonna. I think I
now have to do an Italian relic theft.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Hell yeah? Did they do it? As like like we
need some leverage?
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Like all right, we will give you back the jaw
bone if you give me back our boss basically.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
So throughout his career, Vincenzo says he stole nearly a
ton of gold and hundreds of carrots of precious stones.
He says he probably you know, like I said, what
was it, three thousand thefts, but he's like it probably more. Yeah.
He spent a total of around twenty to twenty five
years in jail when you add it all up for
his various thefts, oh little bits here and there. And
(43:46):
he said that he was aware of the fact that
sooner or later because of his job, he was bound
to be arrested. There's just no way around it.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Yeah, so you're doing three hundred jobs.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
And sometime in the earlier two thousands he was convicted
of cocaine trafficking and he was sent that's to eleven years,
but he totally denies ever being involved in drug dealing. Yeah,
in twenty thirteen, he was arrested for a fake credit
card scam. But it's not really It was hard to
find out like if he was convicted, did he serve time.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Or if he's with people who are.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Doing it right, I got to So the story in
Epic Magazine was picked up by twentieth Century Fox as
a possible movie, but it doesn't appear it was ever made,
and by twenty twenty, when he gave an interview with
Vice Italia, he said he was retired. He's still out there,
Vincenzo in the.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Kashmir Vincenzo, I tipped my cap to you, bro.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
That's all I have. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 4 (44:39):
That this man is out there living my best life
and I only now hear about it. You know, I
got a lot of reading to do.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
You really do watch, got to get to Venice.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah, I Bennie, I'm coming.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. Hell yea, we have t shirts
if you're into that sort of thing. We also are
are available at ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram.
Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave
us a talkback on the iHeart app, reach out Baby,
connect and tune in next time. My rude dudes, or
(45:12):
as they say in Italia, Mala Dugatti. Ridiculous Crime is
hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited
by Capo Ditkapi Dave Couste. Research is by Renaissance genius
Marisa Brown and former plague doctor Andrea Song Sharpened Hear.
(45:32):
The theme song is by itinerant gondolier Thomas Lee and
Guy Who Once Saw a Dog walking a dog in Venice,
Travis Cocolit Peo. Executive producers are conjoined glassblowers Ben Bowleen
and Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Ridicous QUI Say It One More Time? 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
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
You know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Actually, the reason I know this is because one of
our listeners was kind enough to share something that I
particularly the interns handed it to me and I was like,
that's not ridiculous, that's genius. But they said it's ridiculous,
so I'm gonna go with them. Listener Ryan M. Ratley
aka Boo Ratley. They wrote in a message to the Instagram,
I believe and said quote something ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
But not a crime.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
There is a tree in Georgia that legally owns itself
and the eight foot area around it's right. The former
owner of the land had so many good childhood memories
under the tree that when he died, he willed the
tree to itself in an effort to preserve it. In
nineteen forty two, a storm blew it over, but someone
(00:53):
saved an acorn from the tree and planted it on
the spot as the sun of the old tree. The
new tree legally inherited the land. So there is a
tree that owns the land inherited from its father.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
A tree that is incredible. That is so beautifully ridiculous,
and I love it so much.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I want to go around giving and bestowing legal rights
on trees and rocks at rivers. I'm going to become
a lawyer just so I can do Who sent this
to us?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Ryan Ratley? That was dope. You made both our days.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Yes, and yes, it is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
But it's also super awesome. That is ridiculously awesome. You
want to know what else is ridiculous? Oh yeah, I'm
here for stealing art only to give it right back.
What this is ridiculous crime. I'm a podcast about absurd
(02:01):
and outrageous caper's heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine
percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. You heard
that we don't like murder, No, we do not. We
like principled thieves.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Yeah, we like someone who does it for the people.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I this guy I'm going to tell you about does
it for the people's erin does he? He he hates
murderous and he's a principled thief.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I like that.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I think he may be one of my favorite crimers
we've had on here.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So really excited.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yes, when he was about eight years old, he committed
his first crime.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I like, when you start young, it tells me we're
in very I know, right.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Eight years old crime. So at the time, he was
tired of the jobs that he'd had.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Numerous jobs.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
He worked in a morgue for a little.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Bit, for a little bit and age.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, but he decided it wasn't for him. And then
he got a job working at a bakery. But he
kept eating all the baked goods.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Probably because he was angry child.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, let him go. He got high on their supply.
So he retired from the traditional workforce in the age
of eight.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Oh, I thought he started carrying like hot rivets on
the still buildings. He got a hopper and he was
climbing up.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
No, he retired, and then he turned to a life
of crime.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Oh good for him.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
What was his first theft? He was walking by a
dairy and sitting, no, sitting outside, cattle rustler. Sitting outside
was a fifty liter milk tin, all right full and
that's like those.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Big old silver wants with a double handle.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, yeah, okay, I believe I will, said the boy,
or rather.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
Oh yes, I believe I will. In Italian, thank you, Elizabeth,
I'll be translating if you want.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
This is a good time to tell you that this
takes place in Venice, Italy. Okay, yes, in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Oh, I like you.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
That's when he's eight years old. This is three years
after The Bicycle Thief.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Oh yeah, the movie Yeah totally and then really not
called it the Bicycle Thieves.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, he grew up with the Thief and the bicycle
zikas the bicycle Thieves. I suppose you know that illustrated
the desk inspiration faced by Italians struggling in a war
torn So this little boy sees the milk rolls that
jug on home. When he gets to his house, his
mother takes one look at the jug and then starts
dividing it up with the neighbors. He gotta live.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
They're in post war depressions.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
It's just great, exactly. So the boy then smashed up
the tin and sold it for scrap like the kids, right.
This little boy was named Vincenzo Peppinocen Vincenzo. He was
born in nineteen forty three in Venice and after the war,
his dad worked as a ferry boat captain. There was
no money, that's.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
What was morning.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Do they have any like a tourist economy.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
No, No, just rebuilding.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So they're doing the lace and moving boats around.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, they over on Burano, they had they had a
really rough go of it. So Vincenzo starts stealing. This
is how he learns his way around those like labyrinthine
streets of Venice. Have you ever been to Venice?
Speaker 4 (04:55):
No, I've never been.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I know a lot of people say Venice is an
overrated tourist trap, but it most certainly is not.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
I love you've been a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, yes, as you know, there are no cars there.
You get around either on foot or by boat.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
I love all the bridges.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, and at night, the you know, the winding streets
so quiet. The place is amazingly sinister, but like in
a good way. It's not Savannah Georgia, sinister where the
sins of the past are haunted.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
You can hear the chains in the wind.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Exactly, no offense Savannah. There are these quiet little neighborhoods
in Venice, beautiful areas outside of the tourist zone along
the Grand Canal.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I say this like I've just seen pictures, but yes,
I'm familiar.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
It's not easy to navigate those streets. It's in no
way laid out in the grid.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Oh really, yeah, I had I had the canals like
in the Netherlands, like Amsterdam.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Not at all, not at all. It's all winding, you know, Serpentines.
I had a professor in grad school who had this
theory about how cities whose streets are laid out in
the grid are masculine and those with winding streets are feminine.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Are they a man or a woman?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Man?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Interesting?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Did you agree with them?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It seems like a man's idea.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Barcelona's pretty much laid on a grid, but Barcelona feels
very feminine.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Yeah, Maggie, I haven't been to Barstone either, but looking
at it interesting thing.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
To think about when we're another anyway. Venice can feel
like a maze to the uninitiated.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Oh I bet.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But Vincenzo knew his way around as his little you know,
this little preteen thief, and soon he gets a gig
as a delivery boy. One day on the job, he's
walking down the street and he sees a thirty kilo
bag of sugar. I can't say where this bag was
or who was supposed to be watching it, but a
bag of that size may have well been full of gold.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Oh yeah, sugar.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
At that point, sugar was at a premium. It took
a long time to rebuild after the war. England was
on rations for a few years after and they won. Yeah,
so it took like five or six years for Italy's
economy to return to pre war levels, at least on paper.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Totally. I listened to all those old radio shows in
America they were also rationing sugar, where it's like, oh,
you got the blue stamps for sugar, then you ain't
getting it, and so.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
You know, the reality on the street is always much
worse than sort of as you play out on the books.
So sugar was in demand at the time. People were
selling it by the gram like it was disco dust.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yes, totally, just.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
A graham for the holidays, as they'd say, that's it.
That's a shout out to all my nine o two
and oh loving palace from UC Davis Coaggi's So here's Vincenzo,
He's got thirty kilos of Hawaii's finest sweetened by the Sun.
His dad saw the bag and looked at the label
on the side. Property of the Italian navy. Yikes, that's
(07:34):
ben So he told his son to give it back.
So Vincenzo started to argue, and then his nana, his grandma,
piped up. No, She shouted, the sugar stays here. She's like, look,
I have seen things like we are.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
Keeping this, who is it?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
That's our navy, that's our sugar.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And what Nana says goes. So the family utn't get
By the time he was thirteen, his thieving was totally
out of control. Yet right his mom was terrified, not
only that he'd be caught, she worried about his soul.
So she hatched a plan. She told him that another
resident in their apartment building had an accident a while back,
(08:14):
before he was born. You you don't remember this, Vincenzo.
This woman was coming home late and trying not to
make a lot of noise. Her leg gave out and
she fell down the stairs in the dark and died
instantly when she was impaled on exposed nail. Yikes, I
mean that happened to me once and I died instantly,
so I believe it.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah, totally sounds painful.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, so the leg, the reason for the fall, was restless,
and now it haunted their building. It was a ghost leg.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Now just the leg.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah. The mom's like, there's a ghost leg and it
is cursing young boys who come home late. No, it's
not hopping, it's floating. But how does it anyway, So
a ghost leg had a name, okay, like the Golden Leg.
(09:07):
Vincenzo was terrified. He didn't want the ghost leg getting
him wriggling its little haunted toes at him, so he
changed his ways. He started stealing during the day.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Smart kid.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Yeah, but he still needed to creep out at night.
So he practiced, and he practiced until he became really
good at climbing up the outside walls of the apartment
building spider spider Man style, you know, Spider Man d
DA style. That way, the ghost leg, which apparently lived
inside the building, was unaware that he was outside scrabbling
up the facade.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
It totally makes ghost leg sense to me.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
It totally makes sense. When he was at the ripe
age of fourteen, he learned a new trick. He was
out at the Lido, which is the beach area in Venice.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
At fourteen fourteen, so he's like six years into his
crime curses. He's like still an apprentice journeyman. He's not
quite a master, but.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
He gets there with this. It's like, so there's this
like Barrier Island beach area. He and his friends they
go out to the beach and they would crawl under
the changing huts where they had previously drilled holes brilliant,
and they would watch the ladies change into their swim suit.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
So I thought for changing stuff to drop.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
They were peeping. Who were some of these ladies, Actress
Gina l La Brigida Wow. And then someone making her
third appearance on this show, Sophia Lren Because this was
like the bay call for me, this is the vacation hotspot.
So they'd hang out under the huts all day, gock
in it lady's tushies.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
But Vincenzo, he had more crimes on his mind than
just gross invaved into privacy, right yeah. Uh. He realized
that come wintertime he could unscrew the floorboards of the
huts and then he'd be able to come back in
the summer and lift out the planks while the tourists
were out frolicking in the sun. So at that point
he could slip in and take their valuable.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
That's what I thought they were trying to do the
first and no.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
One sees him going in or out. So generally when
he did this, he grabbed a few lara out of
the wallets.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Okay, that's why I figured they just get a hand
up and reach him. But he's the whole plank, that's he's.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Just lifting, so it's easy. One day, things change. He
sees an American family heading out from a hotel to
the Lido beach, Mark and Vincenzo. He clocks a big
water dollar bills in the guy's shirt pocket, just you know,
the loud American. So he had some cash in his
wallet from his little Lightnings wallet Lightnings, so he headed
(11:22):
over to a store and he bought these really expensive
pair of shorts on the beach. He wanted to blend
in on the beach with these wealthy tourists, So off
he goes in search of the American family. When he
finds them, he cozies up to their son. He's like, Hey,
I'm Vincenzo, Shoe. You want to kick the ball around,
so you like kick the old football around right soccer
(11:43):
to us Yanks. So the kid obliges. He's like, oh, hi, yeah,
you sound nice, and he's like show like smoking a cigarette.
So the kid obliges. They like, he's happy to make
a friend. They pass the ball back and forth. Then
Vincenzo makes his move. He punts the ball into the
family's beach hut all whoopsie. And then he's like, you
(12:05):
know what, kid, Joe, John, Sam, whatever your name is,
American kid, I'm going to run in and get it.
So he runs in, zoinks the cash, shoved it in
his new shorts, and then he comes out and he's like,
I just remember I got to get home. Yeah, im,
the canals are busy.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
These times, come up and stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So he takes off. He claims telling this story now
that it was the equivalent of two hundred thousand euros today.
What right, So why would someone carry that much money?
But then I started thinking, Okay, maybe the exchange rate
was all off and the dollar went super far at
that time. That's my guess. I was going to track
(12:46):
down how much a dollar to leiro was at that
time and then try and convert to euros and then
backtrack the inflation rate and then run forward to the
current rate. And I thought, you know what, Elizabeth, who
knows who cares. That's what I thought, Sarah.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Apply that judiciously, thank you.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
So he had all these American dollars but nowhere to
use them, because it would be really suspicious for a
young Venetian to try and pay with American dollars. He
did something even more suspicious, and he tried to exchange
them for lira at the bank. Yeah, he was caught,
he was arrested. He refused to admit what he'd done,
but that didn't matter. He did seven months for that one.
(13:23):
It should be noted that he learned to read and
write during his various stints in jail, so yeah, and
then he could read the sugar.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Sacks like exactly rehabilitation.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So as he grew up, he graduated to burglarizing tobacconists
and jewelry stores. Okay, so like the corner stores, right,
The smoke shops were there for just everyday need, so
that's what he's getting there. The jewelry stores, though, he'd
break in at night because I guess he wasn't afraid
of the ghost leg anymore. He'd climb up inside and
(13:51):
make a perfect hole through the ceiling and the roof,
so he gets breaks into the shop makes a hole,
I know, yeah, and he would replace the piece cut
out and make sure no wind could blow through it
or otherwise alert the shopkeeper that something was off. Then
he'd scamper off into the evening. And then the next
day he'd creep along the rooftops, but this time in
(14:12):
broad daylight. I guess he's thinking everything's locked up at night,
like in a safe for way. So everyone takes this
little rest from one to three the shops are closed.
Can I pause for one second and say that we
must do this over here in this Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
My entire life.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
I felt this every since I heard about it, whether
we're talking about the Siesta or like the what.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Did they call what we need?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Three? Totally like you just shut everything and shut everything
down in August, those two things. That is my platform.
Elizabeth twenty twenty four. I'm telling you, Bumfardo is my
running mate. Dunton Fardo twenty twenty four. I like, so,
AnyWho where were Vincenzo and I on this one?
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
He was tiptoeing across the rooftops to his Heidi hole.
He'd pop out the roof stopper, the old ceiling.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
The old bunghole exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And he'd slip into the jewelry store and it was
like one of those shopping streets when I was little,
I felt like it was a common thing in entertainment
and marketing, like you could win a toys r a
shopping spree, you run around the store throwing things in
the cart. Store still do that?
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Do you remember how excited that people would get, like
almost violot with themselves trying to turn those corner.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yes, I don't think they do that anymore, like as
a marketing prize giveaway and not like uncontrolled consumer shop lift.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Yeah, exactly, and not like the TV shows where it's
just like I think they still do the grocery store one.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
I don't know, Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Anyway, back to Vincenzo. He would slip into the store
in the afternoon and take everything he could, lots of
like those gold cornetto necklaces, and then he'd pop back
out and scurry home. He got better though. This was
him just training for his future as a serious burglar.
Do you know what he took next? Let's take a
(15:54):
break and when we come back, you'll find out when
(16:17):
we last met Zarin, Yes, clad I was telling you
about Vincenzo Peppinos.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
I love him, dude, so far I'm digging them.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
He's amazing. He was a petty thief in his younger days,
but he started to set his sights on bigger hauls.
Venice is brimming with art, from the works of the
glass blowers on Morano to the artisans who craft carnival masks,
which I find intensely creepy. Really, oh, I hate those masks.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Do you mean like all of them, like the ones
the rich ones are people wear like an eyes wide shut?
Or do you mean like those long.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Nose everything'll creepy?
Speaker 4 (16:51):
All right, I didn't know if to just specifically the
long nose. Yeah, plague dog, everything everything masked. If I
can't see your.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Face, I have a crazy latex mask that goes over
your head and then it comes down, you can like
tuck it in your shirt song and it's an old
man face and it looks amazing. And I love like
when someone comes to my door throwing on and then
open the door. I really really scarred my nephew doing
that once.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Oh god, he's young.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah, all right, so art. You also then have the
fine arts, the big dogs, right, Caneletto Giovanni and Gentile Bellini,
Tintoretto Titian. I love the skies and Titian paintings. Yes,
(17:39):
some of the greatest.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Words of art. I just always think of the d
I can't help it. Forgive me.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So some of the greatest works of art were created there,
and even more were on display in a number of museums.
It was the perfect place to steal art. You know
how we love art thieves. Vincenzo step up. Oh yeah,
here's the thing. In order to be a good art thief,
one has to know about art.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That it helps.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Since Vincenzo had learned to read and write while in prison,
he put those skills to work and he read everything
he could about art. He hung out at the library,
studying not just art history, but also Venetian aristocracy.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Oh smart patrons.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, he wanted to know who kept what art in
their luxurious pilazzi that lie in the Grand Canal.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
Brilliant.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
He became an expert, so in his career he pulled
off more than three thousand art thefts. Three thousands. Here's
the craziest.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Very good.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Oh yeah, he's very good at what he does. Here's
the craziest part. He never sold the art.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
He just kept it off himself.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
He basically held them until they could be returned. Yeah,
he was the Yeah, well no, he would have them all,
you know, if you pay a little like ransom basically,
and then all the other stuff from the home. That's
how he's really funding the lifestyle, like jewelry, silver, gold,
Funko pops.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Oh. So he's like, I really like the art. I'm
gonna respect that, but.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
You're silver, I'm moving that, yes, and the fun and
the Funko pops.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Yes, I saw you slip that in there. I'm like,
I'm not going to let you do that to the
nice people of Venice because you're like, I'm doing that.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
The cops knew him, and the cops liked him.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Wait for the Funko pops, for the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
The whole kitten Kabuter. There was one investigator in particular,
Detective Antonio Palmolcy. They had a pretty chummy relationship. They
were buddies. He'd negotiate with Vincenzo to return the artwork,
but you know, obviously for a cost, the aristocrats would
pay up and get their loot back.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
No Is he pretending like I know a guy who
has this, or do they know that he's the one.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
He's like, let me talk to let me find out
who did I know who did it?
Speaker 4 (19:43):
Let me talk to him?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Okay, cool, So everyone benefits Vincenzo. He makes a living
off you know, what's basically a ransom. The cops look
great because they've recovered these Yeah, the wealthy burglary victims.
They get their stuff back and they boast about being
hit by a famous thief.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I'm sure this isn't a sitcommon Italy.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So the aristocrats in the city they considered a theft
by Vincenzo as a kind of badge of.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Honors, totally like I earned it.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
He wanted to hit me exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
I have really good taste, like expensive stuff.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Do you know who robbed me the other day?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Now, Vincenzo had a younger brother named Alfredo, and sometimes
it does Alfredo has. Alfredo's career is amazing. He was
a magician, Alfred. So Alfredo and Vincenzo, they both said
Alfredo was not involved in any of this stuff. But
sometimes the cops would just arrest Alfredo anyway, breaking the
(20:38):
laws of physics with your magic, You.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Got any new tricks, Freddy.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Little Fredo. He did have an accomplice, though Vincenzo wasn't
his brother. He had a bunch that he would use
my name Luigi. No. The one guy that he liked
to use was a man named Claudio Claudio Claudio, and
he was there in a pinch. He was deaf, and
that made things a little difficult.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Did I sign language talking communicate?
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, a lot of gesturing. I mean they do a
lot of gest language. Yeah. So one of Vincenzo's favorite
techniques when scoping out a grand palazzo was to carry
a pigeon, you know, just as a.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Pal just like Nicola Tesla is like Caaren and around
like this is my girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Well, he'd let it go in the house and see
if it tripped any motion detectors. Oh that's that's totally smart.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Wow, he was in his trained Imagine he's getting it
right there.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah, and then he uses the He was so good
that there was an aristocrat named Count Barozzi who hired
him to steal from his friends. So if the Count
saw a piece at another rich person's house and he
wanted it, he'd be like Vincenzo Okay, when you walk in,
it's on the left, and Vincenzo got it.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
I've never been there, right.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
In nineteen seventy one, he stole from the private gallery
of Peggy Gougenheim. Oh yeah, twice, once in February, once
in December, or twice. He was a serious character. Here's
what Epic Magazine had to say. Quote. He once infiltrated
the Swiss consulate and made off with one hundred and
fifty million lira in cash. In the late nineteen seventies,
(22:15):
he tailed Carrie Grant, who portrayed one of the most
famous thieves in film history, and robbed him while he
slept in his hotel room. Later, he freed a forlorn
gorilla from the zoo in Rome, he felt bad for
the animal, and robbed the Venice casino, all of which
made him a local legend.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
How is this guy living my best life?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I don't know how.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
I mean now, I can't do any of these things
because he's done them all right.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Well, he becomes known as the gentleman theater. He's a
true gentleman in that sense. He was never violent, he
never carried a weapon, andis love him. This guy's amazing well.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
And he may have returned generalized.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
He may have returned stolen items for a fee, but
he never blackmailed anyone. And that would have been easy
because he has embarrassing stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
And I'm sure that's the city with lots of embarrassing stuff.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Right, So he had a code respect people. Don't use weapons,
don't steal from the poor, lawyers, doctors, magistrates or policemen,
and smart too when stealing from jewelers, leave some of
the gold, and don't take the jewelry that's being repaired
because it belongs to a customer who's already paid for it.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
That's so nice, it's incredible.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
He was really sensitive while robbing people because.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
He's taking the cream, like like the world's a dairy.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Well. He dig through underwear drawers looking for jewelry, but
he made sure not to mess up the undies like
he kept everything in order because he knew that seeing
your private underthings tossed all over the place felt like
a real violation, more so than having your Picasso, macgreet,
Ernst Clee or Kandinsky taken from all Those are all
artists that are told by the.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Way, Oh wow, those are all just like adorn your underwear.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Underwear that touches you. He says, quote to be a thief,
you need a little culture, a little intelligence. You have
to have a gentle good soul and to not be
arrogant with him so.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Good, I know he wouldn't be writing his crimes down.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah right, well we'll see. One time, in the middle
of stealing everything from a mansion owned by a countess,
the lady at the house returned and was like, who
are you. You're in my house. Vincenzo and Claudio said,
we are thieves. Don't worry, don't be afraid. We're not
going to harm you.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Like it the truth, and she's like, okay, I can
trust you.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Then they carried her suitcases upstairs for her before they
took off and escaped into the night.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I'm telling you, good men, you just have a human moment.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
That's right. He says that quote stealing from the super
rich is not a crime, and that he quote robbed
from the rich to give to the poor.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
I super agree, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
He also said that quote I gave everything back and quote,
if I had just one percent of what I stole
over my career, I would be rich. But if I
had one percent of what I donated to the poor,
I would be even richer.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
He would only steal from rich and people who wouldn't
be hurt by the theft financially. And he only stole
beautiful and valuable things. Not just valuable things, but if
it was a piece of beauty. He's like, you don't
deserve this. He believed that the theft was a price
that they had to pay for being rich.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Yeah, looks, people can celebrate Jeff Bezos for being able
to skim a little off of all these workers and
get it becoming a billionaire. Yeah, I like this guy
for skimming from the billionaire. And I'm like, look, we
just both were celebrating different skimmers.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
He would steal credit cards from the wealthy and then
go to grocery stores and buy food for working people.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yes, see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Since it was covered by insurance, he figured that he
wasn't stealing from the rich. He was stealing from the bank.
And he really loved that. One time he saw an
old woman teleman begging on the street to go find
a job. He was livid, so he quietly followed her
home and he made a note where she lived. He
checked in every now and then, and after about a
month he decided it was time he broke into her
(25:46):
house and stole a bunch of valuables. After he left,
he was checking out his loot and he realized he'd
accidentally taken an urn with the woman's husband's ashes in them. Ooh,
and he always returned personal and sentimental objects that he
had mistakenly taken, but not this time. He dumped the
ashes over the rialto bridge into the Grand Canal, saying
to the ashes, quote, go, you're better off free in
(26:08):
the water than with your awful life.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Wow, that's kind of heavy. That's when you get into
like the Southern European of it all. Oh yeah, I
had to do this, And they're like, Okay, I'm not
going to argue.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
I got it. You gotta do this. That's messed up.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
His antics just continued. In the spring of nineteen ninety one,
he used a telescope on the bell tower in Piazza
San Marco, and he's like scoping out the nearby plaza.
He really had his eye on this one palazzo owned
by Raoul Gardini, a wealthy Italian entrepreneur and businessman. Sure
Vincenzo saw a skylight on the roof about forty feet
(26:46):
off the ground. A few days later, he and Claudio,
who you know, trustworthy nearly deaf, walked up to the
entrance of Palazzo Gardini. Claudio he guarded the alleyway entrance,
and Vincenzo scaled the crumbling facade to the roof, just
like he did as he was a kid, but now
he was forty eight.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yeah, and there's no longer ghost leg right.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
So he gets on the roof. The skylight's locked, but
the frame around it is all old and rotten, so
he just slips right. He enters the house, no alarms,
walks down the set of stairs, opens the door to
let Cloudio in. Cloudio can't hear him, so he has
to like go out and like wave him down, like
make a noise that come in and then waves him
in comedy. Oh yeah, they searched the house, including the bedroom,
(27:28):
and here's where Vincenzo and I are kindred spirits. Okay,
this man loves kashmir cashmere. If he saw something cashmere
he liked while on a highst he'd grab it, and
he became known for wearing cashmere sweaters, so this time
he finds a blue cashmere sweater that fit. He and
Claudio then work their way through the rest of the house.
(27:50):
Vincenzo ignores the artwork. He's like, this is not impressive.
He's like, oh, this is fantastic, puts it on. Oh
this is better. So he'd seen and stolen better artwork.
He wasn't interested in the stuff there. He did find
some silverware worth more than over one hundred thousand dollars today.
In total, they stole around four hundred thousand dollars worth
(28:11):
of items they left. They loaded four duffel bags into
a borrowed water taxi and then escaped into the canals.
So good, they're very successful. In the fall of ninety eight,
Vincenzo was walking through the streets of Venice eating a pastry,
does another thing that I love about him, when he
noticed some large homes with closed shutters. So he did
(28:33):
some research and he discovered that one of the palazzi
belonged to a man named Alberto Falk FA l c K,
which is also.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Like the same spelling fa l CKK.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
But it's like the ambulance service in Oakland's fault. And
that's why I always yelled, oh Falc when they.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Oh, that's why you yelled at yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Oh Falc was it was. He was a wealthy businessman
from a really well known family in Milan. He also
had this extra home in Venice and appeared he was
currently away from it. So Vincenzo finds out that falk
owned a caniletto painting called Il fongetto de la Farina
The Source of Flower. This was one of Vincenzo's favorite paintings.
(29:17):
It shows this like bustling scene of merchants waiting along
the canal. Caniletto was an eighteenth century Venetian artist who
often painted scenes of Venice, and as the son of
the city, I feel like it must have really resonated
with him, this image. So one day Vincenzo and a
friend they enter Falkes home. They're mainly there to steal jewelry. However,
(29:37):
Vincenzo sees the painting on the wall. He told the
Italian paper Lesthompa in two thousand and eight that it
seemed like the caniletto was calling to him. Do you know,
I don't know. It's pretty large.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
I imagine it's one of the biggest his paintings.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
And it was begging him to take it out of there.
He said, quote, what was I supposed to do? Leave
it there? So like the ghost painting is.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Like take me with you.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
In short, Vincenzo, he was captivated.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Divide it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
He said, no, it was the painting that stole me.
During the theft. It's around three am. Falk returns home. Oh, Falk.
He didn't see the thieves or the thefts though, And
after a bit, Vincenzo and his associate just leave. They
just kind of slip right out. Vincenzo said that if
(30:24):
he hadn't returned, they would have taken everything but the walls.
I mean, they were just going to bleed this guy. Still,
they stole so many bags of things, including the caniletto.
Like he knew that stealing the painting, which estimated to
be worth fifteen million euro.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Oh sure, but it's Manning stolen him. He's not giving
rid of that.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Well, he knew would complicate things like the government's going
to be notified and like, but he couldn't help himself.
So months after the theft, he calls Falk and he
told him that the painting I have it. Guess what
I'm the one with your painting, and he's like, I
will you need to donate it to the city of Venice,
and Falk's like, no, you need to give it back.
(31:01):
So Vincenzo eventually gives the painting back and he ended
up spending seven months in jail for that one, but
Falk later sent him some wine and three years later
allowed the painting to be shown in an exhibit, something
he hadn't done before. Now there's still one more major
heightst I want to tell you about when we come
back from this break, I'll introduce a new force to
(31:23):
be reckoned with the mafia Zaren Zaren Elizabeth Vincenzo Peppine.
(31:53):
Not long after that incident where he took the Kashmir
sweater in the silverware, Vincenzo ran into a local mafio
so named Andrea Zamatillo U Zamatillo. He worked for a
guy named Philiche Manieioch man Happy Manieiro Filich is Philippe
(32:15):
Filiche Maniio was known on the street as Faccia DiAngelo.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
The face of an angel, Angel Face.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Angel Face Zamatillo. He wanted to talk to vic.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
His name is Happy and angel Face.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Well, hold on, so Zamatillo, he wants to talk to Vincenzo.
This is what it said in Epic magazine quote. Zamatillo
was a member of the Mala del Brenta, the local
mafia organization in the Venetto, the northeastern part of Italy
that includes Venice. Under the leadership of Filiche Manieiro. The
group had assassinated many of its rivals. Now they controlled
(32:50):
everything from water taxis to drug trafficking in Venice. So
the Mala del Brenta, it was kind of like the
Cosinostra or Camora model of crime family, only morel Yeah,
it started in the sixties. Though nineteen sixties, there were
a bunch of high ranking Sicilian mafia members who were
locked up in solitary confinement in prisons in the Veneto region.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Now, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
So they're trying to like send them as far away
as possible. Here are some of the heavy hitters. Salvatore Contorno,
Gitano Finzantati, Antonio.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I'm doing great so far.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Just keep on you go, and Salvae and Giuseppe Madiona.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
There we go, there you go.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Those are some amazing names in.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
The handjusters with them spot on.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
They're horrible men, but I love their names. So the
criminal element up in the Venetto started reaching out to
these guys. Eventually they all joined up together and built
a really strong crime family. And the boss Filichim Niero,
the police, they're cracking down on the mafia across the country.
In that crackdown, one of Manieiro's cousins was arrested, and
(33:58):
you know there it is so.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
The normal bribes.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
The normal bribes to get the cousin out of jail
weren't working. Zarin, Yes, close your eyes, Oh yes, I
want you to picture it. You're a Mala del Brena
enforcer named Corrado, working with Felice Manieero's right hand man
Andrea Zamatio. The two of you are walking around just
at the foot of the famous Rialto bridge. You're headed
(34:25):
toward Riva Rialto. It's a well known restaurant along the
Grand Canal. It's a little touristy, but as you look up,
you realize the rye humor in choosing this place. Above
the awning hangs a large banner. It reads no Mafia
Venizia isakra, No Mafia venice is sacred. But there you
are two made men meeting up with an infamous thief.
(34:47):
You see Vincenzo sitting at a table under an awning
outside the restaurant. Gondolas and water taxis glide by in
the canal. You join them. Zamatio is serious. He tells
Vincenzo that Manierro wants him to lead a group of
armed henchmen into a museum called Ka Ratzunico. He's supposed
to steal the best paintings. You take a drag from
(35:08):
your cigarette and you stare at this Steve. His dark
brown Kashmir sweater is gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
I really like it, sky you.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
You want to ask him where he got it, but
now it's not the time. Zamatillo tells Vincenzo that Maniaro
would trade the stolen paintings for his cousin's release. He'd
also get a promise to take the heat off of
Mala del Brenta. Vincenzo doesn't like this. He stares out
at the canal and watches a mail boat drift by.
I have an idea, Vincenzo says to you. He gets up.
(35:36):
I'm going to steal a famous piece of art, he says,
and I'm going to do it alone. You ask him
which artwork, Vincenzo responds, Just read the newspapers you'll find
out and scene.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Okay, I was waiting for the mail boat and then
the female boat to go buy. Every time you say that,
I'm always like, it takes me a second. You take
like the male car on the train, I'm always like, Wow,
that's really stuck in there. I don't think of male
as an adjectives.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, anyway, go, So Vincenzo, he did not work with
the mafia. He did not want to good call. This
kind of robbery would scare civilians.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
We've seen how that works out. You have no one to.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Call well, and you can't you can't say no, they
can't hal a cop. If you do this kind of
thing that it's going to cause the museums to improve
their security. It's going to piss off the police. All
of this is going to make his job.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
Harder, way harder, and he'll lose all of his good
reputations and good rapport with the cops, and it'll put
him over a barrel because they'll want more and more
and more.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Exactly, So this is what it said in Epic magazine.
Until now, the Big Boss hadn't meddled in Peppino's work.
But if Peppino was viewed as disloyal, Maniero could ban
him from stealing in the region or simply haven't killed
options two options. On October ninth, nineteen ninety one, Vincenzo
joined a tour group at the Palazzo Ducale, the Doge's palace.
(36:49):
It's now a museum. It's located near Piazza San Marco,
and it's seen as a symbol of Venice. The group
crossed over the Bridge of Size. It's an enclosed, bifurcated
bridge to the former prison, and it got its name
because it provided the last view of Venice that jailbirds
saw before they went to prison.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Oh that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So they would sigh at the beauty of the city
and they're impending in carsons.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Have you seen some of the studies.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, oh yeah. So Vincenzo he lagged behind the group
as it toured the bridge, and as the group left,
he hung back and he hid in one of the
old cells. So after the museum closed, he stayed hidden
and he timed the guards round. He discovered that there
was just one guard on duty, and he came by
every forty five minutes. So around two am, Vincenzo crossed
(37:31):
back over the bridge into the main museum, into a
room called Sala de Cnsori. They were the historical protectors
of Venice's public institutions, and the room held a lot
of their portraits. But Vincenzo was focused on another painting,
La Madonna colbambino Madonna and child. Yeah, that was painted
(37:51):
in the early fifteen hundreds by a member of the
Viverini school. It symbolized the power of the Venetian state.
A comparison made is that it was like take it
would be like taking the Constitution from the capitol. It's
that important, really. Yeah. The painting was fourteen feet off
the ground, so it's way up there.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
He reached up to a ledge below it, but the
wooden ledge is old that starts cracking when he pulls
on it. So before he can make his next move, though,
he hears footsteps guard's back, so he runs to the bridge.
He chose the side of the bridge, luckily that the
guard did not walk down. When the guard turned around,
Vincenzo returned to the cell to hide and regroup for
another forty five minutes, so it's now around three am.
(38:31):
When the guard finally passed again. Vincenzo ran to a
supply closet, grabbed a ladder, climbed up to the painting,
used a knife to separate it from the wall, covers
it with a blanket, tucks it under his arm, leaves
the museum. The next morning, a janitor discovered and reported
the theft, and the city freaks out.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah he sold the constitution, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Oh totally, So the police come to investigate. There are
no clues except for a shoe print left where dust
from the painting had fallen. The forensics team they figured out, okay,
these are clarks and the finally little soft shoes I know.
And then the following morning they let Detective Paul Mossy know.
(39:12):
But before Paul Mosy could send officers to arrest Vincenzo
and take his shoes, he saw the morning's paper. Someone
from the museum talked to a reporter because the article
noted that the only evidence that at the scene was
a shoe print. So Vincenzo takes his shoes, fills them
with Rocks throws them into the canal. Police show up,
no shoes. Paul Mosey is angry and he threatens Vincenzo
(39:36):
with police surveillance. And that meant that any interaction with
anyone considered a criminal would land him in jail. And
that's like most of his friends. So he promised he
would return the painting, and more than that, he'd give
it back in twenty days.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
This is like the moment where like the police captain
goes to the loose cannon, give.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Me your badge, and you're gun. You're off the forest.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
I can't trust you to the loose cannon.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Criminal, criminal exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Okay, So he says, I'll get it to you in
twenty days. Details about how he got the painting back,
you know, given by the man himself, are hazy. He
contradicts himself in his various tellings. So you said he
didn't write these things down in twenty ten. I see
he wrote a book. Stealing from the rich isn't a sin.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Well with a book, okay, I'll give him that. Yeah,
we all know what happened with the books.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, So he said that he actually arranged to have
Manieero return the painting in twenty Days as part of
his initial discussions with the mafia. That doesn't really make
sense given the purpose of the painting as a negotiation tool,
but whatever. So in other places he said, he just
you know what, I was on vacation in the Seychelles
when it was supposed to be returned. I didn't have
anything to do with this. That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
That's an odd one.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
In twenty fourteen, he told Epic magazine a totally different story,
and he said, well, this is hypothetical and like, nothing
I'm about to say is what happened. But if I
did it so, according to this version, shortly after the
Doge's Palace theft, he visited many Arrow at home under
the pretense of making sure the painting was being properly stored,
(41:00):
and it would be really detrimental to both of them
it was if it was damage, so I just want
to check on it. Vincenzo was told that it was
being stored in a shed behind Maniero's cousin's house nearby,
and that's where Maniero also kept his pets, so it
is good to check on this thing, Vincenzo. He then
had a forger friend paint a replica of the middana,
(41:23):
and then he also had a veterinarian friend pick up
some tranquilizers in case he needed them for Manieo's pets.
So a week later it's like tenant night Vincenzo. He
goes to Manniero's cousin's house. He has the replica painting,
he has the drugs. When he approaches the shed, he
sees that one of the pets is in a caged
run in front of it in front of the shed,
(41:44):
but instead of the expected guard dog, it's a tiger.
What it's a tiger?
Speaker 4 (41:50):
What this is where they the mafia part jumps out.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
So he puts one of the tranquilizers into a piece
of steak that he brought, you know, and he feeds
it to the tiger, and after thirty minutes the tiger
falls asleep.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Oh good for him, right big.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
As he makes his way inside, he sees the painting,
but he sees something else, another tiger. No, he had
more meat on him and he had more tranquilizers. So
he feeds it the tiger and the tiger falls asleep too.
He's like, all right, sick, ready for y'all so he
grabs the stolen painting, replaces it with the replica, and
(42:24):
then it escapes back into them.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
They have guard tigers, guard tigers.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
You're still they have guard painting is guarded by tigers.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
This is what I want in movies and they have
it in reality.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Exactly. No, this is why Venice is amazing.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
And the criminals they want life to be like movies.
I want life to be like Venice, right.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
We all do. November seventh, nineteen ninety one, the Venice
police held a press conference. The madonna had been returned.
It had been found via an anonymous tip Maniera's cousin
was eventually released after being you know the negotiations for him,
but Sanniio claims it was thanks to returning a different artifact.
(43:03):
He'd stolen Saint Anthony's tongue and jaw bone rob from
a church and patava by unidentified men with shotguns the
day after Vincenzo had stolen the madonna. I think I
now have to do an Italian relic theft.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Hell yeah? Did they do it? As like like we
need some leverage?
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Like all right, we will give you back the jaw
bone if you give me back our boss basically.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
So throughout his career, Vincenzo says he stole nearly a
ton of gold and hundreds of carrots of precious stones.
He says he probably you know, like I said, what
was it, three thousand thefts, but he's like it probably more. Yeah.
He spent a total of around twenty to twenty five
years in jail when you add it all up for
his various thefts, oh little bits here and there. And
(43:46):
he said that he was aware of the fact that
sooner or later because of his job, he was bound
to be arrested. There's just no way around it.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Yeah, so you're doing three hundred jobs.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
And sometime in the earlier two thousands he was convicted
of cocaine trafficking and he was sent that's to eleven years,
but he totally denies ever being involved in drug dealing. Yeah,
in twenty thirteen, he was arrested for a fake credit
card scam. But it's not really It was hard to
find out like if he was convicted, did he serve time.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Or if he's with people who are.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Doing it right, I got to So the story in
Epic Magazine was picked up by twentieth Century Fox as
a possible movie, but it doesn't appear it was ever made,
and by twenty twenty, when he gave an interview with
Vice Italia, he said he was retired. He's still out there,
Vincenzo in the.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Kashmir Vincenzo, I tipped my cap to you, bro.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
That's all I have. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 4 (44:39):
That this man is out there living my best life
and I only now hear about it. You know, I
got a lot of reading to do.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
You really do watch, got to get to Venice.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah, I Bennie, I'm coming.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
That's it for today. You can find us online at
ridiculous Crime dot com. Hell yea, we have t shirts
if you're into that sort of thing. We also are
are available at ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram.
Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave
us a talkback on the iHeart app, reach out Baby,
connect and tune in next time. My rude dudes, or
(45:12):
as they say in Italia, Mala Dugatti. Ridiculous Crime is
hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited
by Capo Ditkapi Dave Couste. Research is by Renaissance genius
Marisa Brown and former plague doctor Andrea Song Sharpened Hear.
(45:32):
The theme song is by itinerant gondolier Thomas Lee and
Guy Who Once Saw a Dog walking a dog in Venice,
Travis Cocolit Peo. Executive producers are conjoined glassblowers Ben Bowleen
and Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Ridicous QUI Say It One More Time? Ridiculous Crime is
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