The Criminal King of Parkour: Vjeran Tomic

A Bosnian boy with a poet's soul grows up to a pioneer of parkour in Paris. Up there on the rooftops of the City of Lights, he turns to crime. He has a taste for jewels and fine art... and suction cups. That's why they call him: The Spiderman of Paris.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey you're Elizabeth Dutton.

Speaker 3 (00:04):
Heyay and Elizabeth Dutton.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Yeah. Do you know it's ridiculous, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
Dutton do Zaren Burnett, gol durn it. I know it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
You'd look like it. Your face just said that.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Okay. So we have a listener, Andrew O'Brien out of Brighton, Canada.
He's got two rude dudes, Collie and RUGI oh, sent
us a picture of nice little cute patuites. They could
their intern material nights. Put them on the board, if
I do say so myself, if I do say so myself. Okay,
So he sent us this thing about how like back

(00:39):
in I think it was like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
twenty seventeen, actually twenty sixteen.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
So this guy just keep backing up till it feels right.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I'm like, when you're scrolling to get your birthday on
something in Oh God, did you ever want to have
just apropos of nothing? Did you ever want to have
a personalized license plate?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm actually the problem says now.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
What is it going to be? What's going to say?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I just want the old one it's not actually going
to read anything. It's not that personal. It's been California
for me to get the old black and yellow, which
is like the real old nineteen sixties.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
And yellow was the old one, and then it went
or no, yeah, and then it.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Went to blue and yellow that's the seventies and early eighties,
and then it goes to like the blue white blue,
and then can yeah. But then but before that, they
alsoid the the USA Olympics one.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
I think they've had a they've had a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Of I'm sking that was like a common one in
the state, willing to pay a little bit more whatever.
So yes, I'm in the process right now, Elizabeth of
getting a custom but not saying anything.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
But it doesn't That's what I'm saying. That was like
the like personalized where it says something that you wanted
to say.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, I mean I can be pretty douchey, but I'm
not that douchey.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I bet you Zaren is available.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
I don't know, I bet it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Let's seem they yeah, they'd be like whatever. Anyways, why
would I do that?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Just put my name on my card, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
It's.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Uh So, Joseph Tartaro is a fella who's like a
computer guy. He works, he's a security researcher. He wanted
to get a vanity license plate.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yes, and nothing against people will do that, I honestly.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, and he I got friends with vanity plates, you know,
many times. It's fun. I had one and then I
realized it was an idea for one and I realized
I don't want to get into it. But it was
a really better.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
You're unscratched, okay, okay, So he decided he was going
to he wanted to get null and U l L
for his and then void for his wife, and void and.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
So zero and the absence of all.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
So he got null and U l L. And then
he got a traffic ticket and it was that's like
he didn't have the sticker on his plate. So someone
yeah the year. So it's like it's thirty five bucks whatever, Okay,
he pays it. Then all of a sudden, he starts
getting a ton of tickets and they're all over the state,

(03:10):
all of two from Cyprus College on the same day.
He's nowhere near there. So it's like, what's going on. Well,
if they can't read the plate, they meaning the police.
Sure they type in null. He should know this as
a computer guy that null means no value. There's nothing
to enter.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
So once he triggered the first ticket, we lined up,
it's like, oh, we got a place to send them.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Thirty Like they're going from thirty seven all the way
up to eighty Fresno Rancho Cuca Manga. He's getting into
like the tens of thousands of dollars in tickets and so,
and he reaches out to this company that processes that.
It's Citation Processing Center. They're the ones who process citation

(03:53):
follow and he's trying to tell them, look, he's aren't mine.
They're like, hey, man, that's what your plate is. So,
you know him thinking he's so funny.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
He can't be live for those.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
I don't think so well. They were saying that he
had to prove first of all, because they're all different
makes and models of cars, So I would think that
challenge each one. He has to challenge each one that
and then if it does match up with his.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Opportunity, DMV's gotta come on.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I mean like I mean, so he goes to them
and then they're saying that, okay, Like.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
fIF time, there's like they're back.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
He whittled it down to six thousand dollars after talking
to the DMV.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
Yeah, So I don't know whatever happened with his nightmare.
It was still ongoing. That was in twenty seventeen, and
the article I found was from twenty nineteen, and so, golly,
I hope he's okay.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Say, I had a friend. I still have a friend,
but he had a Blockbuster membership and he made the
mistake of letting me get a card on his account.
Oh no, And then like I went somewhere in another
state and I rented a movie and I didn't return it.
I left it and it's like like some party house,
a friend's house. Since I never got returned, he was
kept getting charged for this movie. So he went in
with me to explain, like it was this jerk, right,
like it was me. I'm They're like okay. So then

(05:01):
he had me removed from the account. But the person
put in delty instead of delete delete, he put in Delty.
So I got a card for account for Delty delete
when it renewed the next year. So I had this
Blockbuster card Delty delete hard to go around. I did
the same thing to him. I went all around the
country renting movies. People are like, hey, you want to
remove I got it, man, I got a Blockbuster card.

(05:23):
You don't even have to return this movie. You would
get these notices all the time. You have to go in,
what do I have to do? And then they try
to fix it, and nobody noticed that it was just
the delty delete that somehow made it stay a name,
because otherwise it was delete delete, the system would have
picked it up.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, so she was just written poor my friend Ohn.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
That's ridiculous too.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Oh, that is very ridiculous. Zero tell me, really ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
But I got something else refew Elizabeth. Do you remember
seeing the stickers? Skateboarding is not a crime? I do, right,
Do you remember this today? I'm here to tell you, well,
that's true. Skateboarding is not a crime.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
But good show, good show.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, thank you, all right, I'm done roll credits. But
doing parkour that can certainly lead to crime. It should
be a crime, like say, the biggest art heist in Paris.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
History parkour art heist. Yeah, oh god, this.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Is ridiculous crime. It's a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heights and cons. It's always ninety murder free and one
hundred percent ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Oh, Elizabeth, so nice to see you, So good to
see you today. I found a story that I think
will surprise and delight you.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Oh I like you know me. I love to be surprised.
Actually I don't, and I love to be delighted.

Speaker 5 (07:06):
I do.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, And if not you, it'll definitely cover me. I
will find the story incredible.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
So surprised as you go.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Well, his street name, Well, to give you a hint
of why the story is so awesome, this dude's street
name is the spider Man of Paris.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, that's a long street name, right.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
The government name Vejaran Thomitch Okay, yeah, right. My man
Tomitch was born in Paris in nineteen sixty eight, but,
as we so often see in stories like his, an
early tragedy shaped his young life. In this case, it
was his mother. She was in a severe car accident
left her unable to care for her infant son. Now Tomich, which,
if you can tell by how I'm pronouncing his name

(07:45):
is from the former nation of Yugoslavia. Okay, Domich. Now
specifically it's people from Bosnia, right, As a one year
old Tomitch is sent to live with family in the
old Ottoman town called most Star, and it's famous for
this medieval arched bridge.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
So a picture like beautiful place, I've never heard of it.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, picture an Ottoman town if you will, with cobblestone
like roads, and uh, it's an idyllic existence for a boy, right,
this medieval town. Yeah, he's out there running the cobblestone streets,
playing their streams and rivers. He's you know, catching wildlife,
chasing butterflies, that kind of stuff, exploring the woods and
the mountains with other kids, having a great old time, right,

(08:25):
But soon, of course, the lures of adult life called
to him. By the age of six, he recognizes he
has a dark and devious side. So by ten, he's
pulling off his first heist. It's a library job, Elizabeth,
something you'd probably like, yeah, not like the local kids
book store. Now, he climbs up the side of a
building about ten feet high, breaks into a window. Then

(08:45):
he prowls in this darkened library and he finds a
couple old books. I'm talking like hundreds of years old,
and he's like, I'm ten, this must be valuable. These
are really old and dusty, right, so he steals them.
You now, at age eleven, he's become a handful for
his Bosnianic stended family. They're like, let's ship him back
to his parents in Paris, which they do. So at
this point, this devilish Bosnian village kid shows up in Paris,

(09:09):
speaks no French, doesn't know his parents. All he's ever
known is this medieval Bosnian in town.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
So now he's back in the home of his parents
in Paris, and he finds they are terrible parents.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
So wait a second, you got to help me out here.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
So the mom had a car accident when he was
and then she just couldn't take care of him. He's bedridden,
father's a car mechanic, he's working all the time.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
They didn't want to bring him back in until he
had messed up.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well, no, they got she got shipped back. Basically, he's like, oh,
he's your mess now, right, he's your boy.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Right, he just forgot about him.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Possibly if it was a fairy tale, they did, right,
they forgot about him, right. So then their little cinder
fella comes back right, and they he notices that his
parents that, like I said, terrible parents. They fight constantly.
They beat each other. They're hitting each other, and when
they aren't hitting each other, his father beats him, like literally.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
That's what he said. Couple people who forgot about him,
and then he was forced.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
To go back to that totally. So what does a
teenage boy do who hates his home life?

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Runs away?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
He bounces out, right, it is he starts to run
with the bad kids at school in his case, right,
he stays out late, he smokes, he drinks. He's hanging
out in cemeteries. And since this is Paris, a French kid,
this is Paris, right, he and has held them friends.
They hang out in a very famous cemetery, the Perry
Lache Wow. Right, as you know, Elizabeth, this is huge,
famous old cemetery, one hundred acres. It's like all gothic

(10:28):
and like really crazy looking. It's the Eternal Resting Place,
a bunch of French luminaries. You can find Frederick chopin there,
Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust. You know. Anyway, Tomich is a
team Morrison exactly. It's the eighties, right, So it wasn't
just him and other bad kids. There's dope smuckers, drug dealer,
sex workers, streetthousers all hanging out there, but also, as
you point out, American tourists, British, Canadian, Australian tourists who

(10:51):
want to come there and hang out because it's the
final resting place of Jim Morrison. So hey, let's get
drunk with the Lizard King, right, Yeah, that's the eighties.
It's that. It's a total that's the vibe of his
teenage years hanging out with those kids or those you know,
post hippie, I don't know, shaggy rock and roll, I
don't know what to call the early eighties kids who
love Jim Morrison in the door is not whole, Like, yeah,

(11:12):
we missed out on the sixties with these dirtbags. As
you can imagine, for this kid who's hanging out with them,
a team with no future to look forward to, this
is an intoxicating environment, right, So it starts to lead
him down a life of crime because for fun, he
used to go and climb that the gothic mausoleums, right
and his friends they bounce around on the rooftops and
they dance over the homes of the dead. Basically, he

(11:34):
starts to do parkour in the cemetery lizib what do
you know about Parker before you start scoffing at one
of the coolest latest street sports. What do you even
know about Parker?

Speaker 5 (11:48):
Like?

Speaker 3 (11:48):
What, I'm what? I'm what? I The question I have
for you, Sara is did you just go and make
a list of the things that irritate me and then
every week you're going to do a show about it.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I called your mother and your brother. I said, give
me the give me something she most complained about on
the phone to you Parkour. She mentioned Parkour the other
day she saw some video and I was just saying,
all I can.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Think of is the episode of The Office where they
park Parkour, which is so great.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
It's like basically putting like like half push ups off
of a desk, yeah, exactly, spinning around a trash can.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
So, I mean, it's when people are doing little stunts
and jumps and smims and.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Fanciful things, back floats, running up walls, and.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
They're usually wearing kind of like wide leg jeans skate shoes.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Very much so that because when it came of age,
but also because it works for the the movement of
the body. You want, well, he was doing it before
it had a name when the street sport was first
in the eighties, So like French Canadians, it was invented
by French people. That's wild there, it is, yeah, well

(12:58):
invented in anyway, there's in By nineteen eighty nine, it
was known as parkour. Before that it was parkours with
an S at the end in the venturece.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Before that, it was like they put the K in
the middle, they.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Dropped the ass, and they're like that, what's cool, and
Elizabeth's like, no, it is not.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well, my man, here's a pioneer park interpretive walking with
so much more than that. There's like interpretive dance.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
It's more like skateboarding without a skateboard, like street skating
skating without a skateboard.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
I think that the kids that use those little finger
skateboards grow up to parkour.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Okay, well, he was a pioneer, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
I'm kidding the sense that you were. You a practitioner
of parkour.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Before it had a name. People have said, I used
to jump from rooftop to rooftop a lot, and I
would scale like down drain pipes, or I go up
like you know, light posts and then swing over to something.
And so parkour parkour parkour, but he didn't have a name.
I just called it cheating death. That's why I called it.
Was like, let me jump over this alley. They like,
you can't do that, and I would do it. They're like,

(14:00):
how are you gonna get back?

Speaker 3 (14:00):
I'm leaving, I'm swing myself.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
You gotta go down another building out of here people anyway,
So my man Tom he wasn't doing parkour and at nighttime.
In the daytime hours, he was avoiding school because he's
a bad boy.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Right, daytime parkour is even better.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
It's the best time for daytime park corps. So he
would hit up like flea markets and sell the odds
and ends that he was like stolen the night before.
He'd like break into like glass factories and steal glass
wear and then sell it at a flea market. That's
what he and all the cool kids are listen to
the cure exactly. Now. The one thing I haven't really
pointed out, but my man Tomich is he had the
soul of a poet. Yeah. This female friend of his

(14:42):
from the time she remembered him thusly, and I quote
he was into esthetics, classical music, nature and the most
epicurean pleasures wine. Jeez, he is very out there in
his style, even his clothing. Now. She also added that
he talks about the moon. Remember, like I said, sol

(15:03):
a poet, Elizabeth, so tell me she understands it about himself.
He knows he's a poet. He starts to model himself
on the patron saint of French bad boy poet types.
Arthur Rimbau's totally fits in with that old Jim Morrison exactly. So, Elizabeth,
you're well read, you're a published, award winning poet. What
are your thoughts on Rambou? Is he kind of like

(15:25):
the French Bukowski?

Speaker 3 (15:26):
I think that's that's appropriate. This is a good one.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
There are guys who like they love and wallow and
the sad and the sick, the ugly, the profane, the
latrines of life. If you will, you know you everything
like Okay, perfect example Mickey Rourke in Bukowski's Barfly. I
don't hate cops. I just like it better. And they're
not around right.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Now, Okawski double Becky do you okay? Yeah? I feel
I feel bad for the guys. Here's a great actor,
you know, mess face up so bad. But like you know, now, no,
Bikowski's on my list.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
So I'm hitting the numbers right and scratch that. I'll
have to admit to you to keep it fair, I
once had my own Rambo poetry reading phase, a Bukowski
reading phase, even a Jim Morrison phase, well if you
can believe it. So I feel like I understand my
man Tomach and what he was steeped in is what
I said.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
I've read a ton of it, and I had a
friend who was constantly gifting me the Kowski books. Yeah,
and I mean I'd read it and then be like,
you know, Okay, I don't want to go off on
a tangent, because that's my that's what I'm really good at.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
But as you so often point out the difference for
those of us who stay outside prison walls and those
of us who are inside the prison walls or you know,
those inside at least basically I'm saying, it's the reason
why I'm not in prison Impulse control, Elizabeth, because I
understand Tomach, but I also understand why he is where
I was not right, Yeah, which is you know he basically,

(16:56):
you know, when he was parkouring around the cemetery high drunk.
Whatever make of rimbo. Soon enough, he starts bounding over
to nearby rooftops of the from the walls to this walls,
so the cemetery to the walls of homes, and then
boom up he's on the rooftops of Paris, and that's
where he decides to take in a new criminal fate.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
So wait, that was basically him during the Paris Olympics
opening ceremony.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Pretty much, Yeah, that's basically home. So I up on
the rooftops of Paris is where he gets the idea
to start breaking into apartments, all lupin our sandstone, right, yeah,
all right, So at this point, sixteen years old, we'll
take a little break, do a couple ADS, and we
get back. Oh yeah, let's do some Yeah, we'll talk
about how parkour turns into.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
That's where I have no impulse control.

Speaker 5 (17:39):
Ads.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
We're back, Elizabeth, wake up.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Hey, Hey, so parkour course, So.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Sixteen year old Tolmich he's now at this point developed
the muscles and mentality necessary to become a first rate
cat burglar of the parkour variety.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Is yelp buff well pretty much.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, he can like climb up the side of a
building and you cannot know how rock climbers do, Like,
no ropes, nothing, He just does that up the facades
of buildings.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Have you ever watched professional rock climbing on television?

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah? I have friends who are professional rock climbers.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Really, I stumbled onto something. You know now that I'm
free with my you've watched me standing in my truth
of TV. I watched some not too long ago. Yeah,
flipping through channels.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
Are they're doing like just like an actual rock climber
climb and then they'd fall and then they'd have to
do it again, and then then they'd fall.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Did they have to ring a bell at the top?

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah? I think they had to hit a little buzzer
like out of Pea somewhere.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
This American ninja? Was this actually rock climbing?

Speaker 3 (18:57):
This was like international?

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Okay? So was it on an actual rock face or
was it on a wall.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
A wall with stuff drilled into it?

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (19:04):
There?

Speaker 2 (19:04):
You did watch it graduation for a little bit. So,
my man, he's like one of those rock climbers you
saw right. Imagine him doing that up the sides of
the like you know the buildings in Paris have the
other those big like almost ledges because like them, no no,
like on the sides of the buildings. Yeah, it'll be
like a whole block of like a stone block, right,

(19:25):
and then you go up a little bit higher, there's
a ledge, and then there's a little like almost like
like gutter or valley. Then there's another block. There's like handholds,
like some of the.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Big the elements of architectural interest as it goes up.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, but I'm saying it's a there's like lips and
so forth. But they're big enough that if you're strong,
you can almost like, you know, I could kind of
pull myself up, but if you go up two or three, like,
what are you gonna do?

Speaker 5 (19:45):
Now?

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Right? You're up? Like that's most people not him.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
I look at it. There's no way. I'm like, oh
I could pull myself up that that thought never crosses
my mind because I could not.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
He could, so he did, and he would get up there.
He basically just like Spider Man, go right up the
side of a building.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
This upper body strength legs too, but negative upper body.

Speaker 6 (20:07):
Strength, say definite for you it pushes you down, yes, yes,
well at this point right, he would like he starts like,
you know, moving to the next step, which is breaking
into places right of the ultra wealthy of Paris.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Right, he starts like pulling jobs based entirely on how
he feels. Right, he would walk the streets, He'd select
a few targets, cases spot narrowed down to one. Then
he would, you know, go for that apartment. He had
a conversation with a writer from the New Yorker. He
was sending him back and forth letters and answering questions,
handwritten letters. Right, he wrote in his own like French
cursive handwriting. Apparently, so he explained in one of these

(20:40):
how he would feel. But how that would align with
a job. He said down I quote, I have to
be on harmony with certain places where I feel good.
And then at that moment I see, like images from
a movie. The place is where I have walked in
the past week, and some places attracted me and something
is waiting for me in the end. Yeah, I'm gonna
keep doing it. So he finds that more than gold

(21:02):
or jewelry, it's the fine art that he sees in
these apartments and really start to stir his soul. Remember,
as I told you, poet's soul. So he finds he
loves renoir. He sees some renoirs. He's like, damn amazing,
he's really good at painting. And then he said, you know,
he starts to see other great masters because he's in
these ultra wealthy homes, and he starts to notice that
like Renoir paintings. Once he's seen a couple of them,
they have this sweetness that emerges from his portraits of children. Right.

(21:26):
And he also he loves Matisse. That's that one goes crazy.
He goes crazy for Matista. He's like, oh so joyful
in his dancing color palette. Right, he's particularly fond of
the impression is basically, you get the idea what he
leans to us good enough. Being impulsive as he is,
he has to have them for his own, so he
starts to steal them. He's like, I must have this,
I must possess it, I must have it on my wall. Right.
It's great for him, right, because this is enjoyment of

(21:48):
beauty and he has enough to do it, you know,
costs him nothing. Boom, So he's gonna stealing master works
of art, though he realizes he probably will have to
find some buyers eventually. He can't keep all of these,
and that's a whole other job. Finding buyers. He's like,
you know what, I need a reputable fence, somebody work
with you to move my stolen artwork. He starts, you know,
taking works from homes. I'm tracking, like paintings of like dega,

(22:09):
like realainting, exactly as my man Tomitch puts it. To
sell them was dangerous and I didn't have reliable sources
abroad in order to flog them to collectors or receivers.
A decent amount passed through my home and some stayed
with me for a long time on the wall. And
then it's in these cases that I fell in love.

(22:31):
Now you get the idea poet, Like I said. Now
the man he also obviously is a parkour flipping French
cat burglar, so he's got two different impulses. So he starts,
you know, trolling these homes with these well heeled French victims,
and they start commenting when they get robbed by this guy.
You know, they've noticing that. They tell the police it

(22:52):
was like an Arsan Lupin kind of guy. Because they
know they're French. They know this guy, the debonair gentleman
cat burglar of the early twentieth century, that's their model.
So this guy starts getting known. The cops start hearing
about this. There's this arsan lupin cat burglar working the
streets of Paris. Are above the streets of Paris's he
relies on intelligence and bravery and overcoming gravity and he

(23:12):
never hurts anyone. He's never violent. So the cops really
kind of intrigued by this grid. Yeah right, he's not
only is he just parkouring around Elizabeth. He's like, as
I said, scaling the sides of buildings, but I'm talking
like ten stories high.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
Wow, no safety ropes, no banch.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Jumping parachute, just dry hands and some just pluck scrabbling exactly.
And he gets good also picking locks, working home security
systems because he's breaking in all the time. Right. He
starts to focus on jewelry also with along with the art,
because he can make a big score of jewelry last
six months or more. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
He likes living well, right, Like most street criminals, he
tends not to save for tomorrow, right, so he wants
to live for today. So he eats well, he travels well.
You would have liked hanging out with him, right, He's
like a fun guy in terms of like for.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
The parkour part except for that, just like walking on
the street. And then he starts like jumping and flipping
in the air on stuff and I'm like out.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Spinning around a light post. Oh man. At this point
he's mostly a luner, probably because the parkour. But he
has a few friends, but in fact he has almost none.
That all he has is his work at his burglaries, right,
so he's getting more and more clever about them. It's
just that's all his life is. Autumn of two thousand
rolls around. He graduates to pulling cinematic capers at this point.

(24:26):
Now right, he buys himself a crossbow and he uses
it to stage a daring berger escalated right jump right there,
he fires a crossbow. Then he uses carabineers and ropes
to pull himself over to the apartment, and then he
breaks in while the owners are sleeping. They're there what
on their walls? He spies two of his favorites renoirs,

(24:46):
steals them both you like, you like. Not only that,
he also steals a George es Brock and some other
master works. All told night is easily worth a million
euros for him.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
In terms of how old is he around this time?

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Just ballpark for so it probably thirty two.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Okay, okay, So we got this thirty two year.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Old man, and now he's a man with a dream
Elizabeth Corner around because one day, literally he has a
dream like at night asleep right, like yeah, cinematic theater
between your eyes, right, yeah. He sees himself in the
future stealing five great masterpieces. When he wakes up from
the dream, he's so real to him, he goes, it
must be a sign an omen right, so he goes,

(25:24):
I knew that someday I would do something great right now.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
So at this point these definitions of greatness vary.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
He lets a little time, you know, like develop, and
then eventually, in May of twenty ten, my man Tooma.
She's out taking a stroll. He's walking along the sand
and he sees this building. It's an Art Deco building,
large tall windows. He sees the Cubist masterpiece inside the windows.
Catches his eye, right, He's like, oh, he has to
go see it closer. Walks over the building. Is the

(25:51):
music the art Maldon des la Ville de peris, right,
the Museum of Modern Art, right, so tonic. He draws
closer to the museum. He checks the state security because
he's a thief. He sees a cameras there's an alarm system.
He's like scoping it out. He finds a blind spot
in the camera placement. Right, he checks that window. He
sees something he recognizes from a previous theft. This window

(26:12):
frame has screws in the frame. They're buried. Most people
wouldn't notice them. But he fishes out a pocket knife
to check and he you know, shout out to those
of carry Swiss army knife everywhere. He cuts into the
window frame and he chisels out a screwhead. It is
indeed has buried screws. Yeah, facing out. So he goes,
oh boom voila, and he sees exactly what he wants
to see. So he goes, I can break into this museum.

(26:33):
So he goes and he checks with his fence to
see if he can handle the kind of weight he
may be picking up. Fence's like, oh yeah, totally. He's like,
what are you thinking about hitting? And he's like, oh,
this museum on an art Now, as you know, a
masterpiece painting won't really keep its value in the black
market now about ten percent of its market values usually,
and this is due to a few factors. For one,
there are very few buyers for a painting that's stolen,

(26:56):
and unlike say jewelry, paintings can't be chopped up and
resold or re made into new paintings. You're stuck with
it right now. Recently I told you about some smart
art thieves who were trying to steal artwork and then
trade it on the black market for with the police
to get for like, oh, let's get our IRA sisters out.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
That's common, right, these criminal groups.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah, the Irish trade right now. The there's like Charles Hill,
the former head of the Arts and Antique Squad from
New Scotland. Yard he thinks that whole idea of like
the doctor no inspired idea of like, oh, criminals love
to have stolen artworks, Yeah, he said, and I quote,
it's foolhardy, it's stupid, it's big ignorant.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
Whoa.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, all right, new.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Scotland got a little God bless them now.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
But if you we talked about it, if you're going
to do like an art heist, you need to have
your fence all lined up.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
This guy, he's smart about it. He gets it all
lined up. He tells him, He's like, this is what
I plan to do. The fence is like okay, and
you know what, I've got some ideas of what I
would like from I got a shopping list, right, He's like,
let's let's do this, right. So the de fence his
name is Jean Michel corveat right. He's this distinguished frenchman,
owns a gallery, several other business, is very respected. He
carries himself like a patrician. He's in this fifties. He

(28:09):
has white hair. That's probably the most distinct feature.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right, early in that relationship, right, Tamich brings to him that,
you know, some real fine pieces of art defense and
Corve is like, oh, if you can get more like this, right,
And then he's like oh, He's like, well, what do
you mean. He's like, oh, yeah, here's my shopping list.
And he gives him this shopping list, right, and it's exhaustive.
It's like Gustav Klimp, Mark Chagall, Amadeo Mougegliani, mone Mayne, Picasso, Pissarro, Warhol,

(28:34):
Jean Michel Basquiat. It's like basically he's like, if you
heard of this model and audust, yes, then I would
like one of the basic but so the one modern
artist he really coveted was for Non Lege, right, And
so Corvet is interested in a very specific painting by Lege.
It's the still life with Candlestick. It's the scene of
a domestic life from nineteen twenty two. Corve is like,

(28:56):
it's at the mam, can you get this one for me?

Speaker 5 (29:00):
Right?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
And so he promises Tomich he'll give him forty thousand
large for the painting, and then he promises him fifty
thousand sight unseen for any other great masterpieces that he
can pull from the museum. So the two men strike
a criminal agreement. Corvet is now the one who gives
Tomich also his gnom to crime. He nicknames him this
spy there. That's his first.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
Nickname, Spider Spider.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
So the two of them they get real close, and
Corve is a little bit older, so he kind of
takes like great pride in his partner's physique and his fitness.
As to put it, Corve wanted me to work out
so that I could climb without any problem. So he's
always out in front of me. It's like are you
eating your bat?

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Like it?

Speaker 2 (29:42):
So he's getting ready invested in their relationship. Right, they're
now a crime team. Right, both men know it's on.
So Tomich he recalls the heady days right before the heist.
Certain paintings can provoke in me like an emotionless shock,
And he explained to the New Yorker, and I quote,
I love to touch antique objects, and I sense a
great past of generations and generations, and I think they

(30:06):
are a part of the works. So he's just out
there feeling time, just getting high on it all. Yeah,
and now he knows these paintings they're calling to remember
he had the dream. Yeah, he can feel his destiny
taking shit.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Got five of them, five big dogs.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
They're calling out his name.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
The wind cries Spider, Spider.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
On May fourteenth, twenty ten. Yeah, tom It starts to
work all right. At roughly three in the morning, he
stalks up to the window of the museum he was
working on the screws now. But first though, he hangs
up this black cloth to kind of give himself some
cover from the street. Sure, there's nobody around, really, it's
three thirty in the morning. The streets are silent, nobody's out.
But still a smart call in case any paint in
the neck bystander happens by yeah. Also he starts, you know,

(30:46):
he's got some stuff that's going to be doing that.
You know you may be able to smell. I'll explain
you a second. He's using paint stripper to loosen the
paint covering off the streams, right. And then once he's yeah,
once he gets that like all like loosened up, he
takes his knife out, scrapes out the gunk. Then he
sprays the screws with rust remover because they haven't been
twisted in forever.

Speaker 5 (31:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Then after that he works the screw loose with.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
A screwdrivers out the powerwasher.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Once he's done with getting the screw out, he then
he then places his own daub of modeling clay, and
then he takes out modeling paint and he paints to
match the window to cover the dab. There are twenty
screws that he has to do this for. He's only
able to get a few screws done each night. He
takes him eight nights working every night. Finally, on the
ninth night, Tomas she shows up this time with suction

(31:33):
cups ready to break in. He's like the glass is loose.
He's there he's dressed like a hype beasts like street Ninja.
He shows up with a hoodies her ninja style face mask,
sneaks up to the window. He places the suction cups
and he silently lifts out the glass of the window.
Then he uses bolt cutters to snap the padlock that's
holding the security gate in place. The sound is louder

(31:54):
than he expects. He says, it sounded like a gunshot
just ricocheting around inside the empty Yeah. Right, so he's free.
This is in place. He waits to hear if there's
any guards who come running. They don't. Satisfied now that
no one's coming, he sneaks into the museum Elizabeth. He
sees the for non Lige painting like it was just
there waiting for him. It's like the first thing he sees.
Oh wow, So he used a screwdriver to unscrew it

(32:14):
from the wall. Once free from the wall, he takes
it outside. He rests against the low wall of like
the little like plaza that surrounds the museum. He finds
it because it basically it's a spot where skateboarders gather
in the daytime parkour parkour wheels, but in the middle
of the night. It's vacant, obviously, right, So Toma she
goes back in the museum. He stops dead in his
tracks when he sees this painting pastoral by Matisse. It's

(32:35):
three pale nude figures, all resting, and Toma, she just
gazes upon this master work and is he put it?
A deep, vivid landscape and the little devil playing his
flute out of nowhere, as if by magic, as if
he were the guardian of this environment. So he loves
us painting. He loves that little devil with the flute.
So what does he do? He joints it off the wall.

(32:56):
A couple of screws later, Yeah, why tis too? Next
he spots the exactly he spots the Medigliani painting woman
with a fan. Again transfixed, he's he put it. The
woman in the picture was worthy of a living being,
ready to dance a tango. It could have almost been
the reality. So of course steals that one too, right.
Mogdigliani is on the shopping list, as you point out.

(33:18):
Next to the Medigliani, he sees a Picasso and a
work by George's Brock takes both of those. He rests
them outside but the rest.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Of us a big stack going on.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Oh yeah, He sees a sixth painting, remember the dreams five.
It's another Madigliani. It's the Woman with Blue Eyes and
told me she's rendered wordless at the side of it.

Speaker 5 (33:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
He fantasizes about stealing it, but then he hears his
little voice tell him if you take me, you'll regret
it the rest of your life. The voice of the
painting chills his lust to own it right as to
Much puts it, I will never forget what this woman
with blue eyes did to me when I touched it
to take it from its frame. The feelings stopped instantly.

(33:58):
Fear that came over me like an ice, big, a
freezing feel that made me run the way.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
So that was the voice of impulse control.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
He finally found it right, so he settles for the
five paintings. Just like in his dream, he's already got outside.
He steps out of the museum. He breaks the paintings
free of their frames. He takes takes a few minutes,
then he sneaks across the street with the paintings, right
where he's parked along the sane. He pops open the
hatchback of his little raino. He slides a five masterpieces
inside and whoo, off he goes drives off. Now there's

(34:28):
not much traffic at five in the morning, which is
what time is at this point, so he pulls over.
It decides he's smart. He decides, Oh, I'll wait for
morning traffic to disappear amongst all the commuters for two hours.
Then he sits there with the stolen masterpieces. What does
he do, Elizabeth Parkour, No, he just luxuriates with the paintings.
Remember he's a poet's said, get it, drinks deeply of
their beauty. His eyes linger on brushstrokes, he dogs a color,

(34:52):
He looks each one for twenty thirty minutes. Yeah. Hours later,
once he sees traffic growing thick enough with cars, he
drives off, joins the commuters. Disappears now officially. Yeah, but
once he gets behind the wheel, he can still like
he's out there in the morning traff. He can still
hear the Medigliani voice going like he as he put
it when I drove the Blue Eyed Lady was in
my head when he ignored his impulse, right, and he

(35:16):
gets that's why he gets away with it. Okay, Now,
as you know, Tomach is only half done. Now he
has to move the stolen art. So his plan he
makes with Corvet is to hand over the paintings as
soon as possible. So Tomich drives to the underground parking
garage where they agreed to meet. Corvey is not there.
Tomich waits, and he waits, and he gets nervous.

Speaker 5 (35:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Eventually, Corve does arrive in a rental car, a Porsche
ca Han because he's you know that guy, and he
sees that toomuch stole more than the one lige he ordered.
And Corve is scared at the proposition and now moving
five masterworks right because espectially with all this heat on
him so.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
Well, they weren't from a private home, from a big,
big old museum.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Totally, and so Corve he's like, tells him, I want
the lige. That's our deal, right. He says he'll pay
for that, and I can probably sell the Medigliani.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Wait, I thought he's gonnaive him forty K and then
fifty free.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
When he shows up, he's like, I didn't really think
you were going to do it, kind of he basically.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Box, but you know what, that's spider.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
He agrees that they come up with an agreement. They
he'll hold the other three and just safe house them
for them, right, Corbett agrees to that. Now. Meanwhile, the
news of the art heist is breaking, and soon enough
all of France is talking about this art heist because
these paintings are worth one hundred million euros.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Whoa yeah, and he's just scrabbling for ninety thousand, yeah, well.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Fifty for each one, so it would be last for
each one. Can totally be like what two hundred and
forty thousand dollars. Yeah, So the mayor of Paris gets
on like the news and tells his upset city folk,
I want everything to be done to recover these masterpieces, right,
and so he calls out the elite French armed robbery unit,
the Brigade, the Repression do bandtismy, Yeah, they're put on

(36:58):
the case.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
The investigation bandit squad exactly.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
They turn up a lead, right, it's a skateboarder who
comes forward. He tells the cops he remembered this suspicious dude.
He's to always hang out by their skate spot.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
Parkour is so annoying. I can't wait to get this guy.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
A parkour guy. You know what I'm talking about like
G star jeans and like anyway, the dude wasn't watching
the skaters, but this guy's point, he was clocking the
museum windows. So the police now have a description of
their purp quote a white man six feet two, weighing
about two hundred pounds, with a muscular build, an oval face,
and a square jaw. In other words, a perfect description
of my man tole me. Okay, so let's take a

(37:33):
little break, yo, you know, prominent Adam's Apple. After these messages,
we'll be back and I will tell you how things
hit left Fan Parkour. So Elizabeth sar, we're back. Now

(38:08):
that the police, the Parisian police have a suspects. The
news reports on it, right, and Corvet recognizes him and
he's like, wait, I know, so they're getting close, right.
He gets real nervous and scared. He's got a lot
to lose now. Tomich, being who he is he wasn't,
is scared. But he also knows that he's now the
prime suspect, or at least somebody who looks like him. Yeah,
all right, so he knows that this man hunt's about

(38:28):
to start. So Corvet agrees with Tomich that he will
pay for the Leger painting, right, so he gives him
the forty grand they manage in exchange. He shows up
and he gives him a shoe box of loose bills.
Oh god, yeah, bad sign. The Corve then promises to
sell off the other painting, still at the fifty grand
a pop price. Tomich is like, cool, do it man,

(38:49):
move those right, and then he's like, I'm gonna go
into hiding. So he goes into hiding, stays at a
friend's house, doesn't tell the Corve where he's going. Meanwhile,
the news is just going crazy. The French presses down
he's talking about it. They've actually they're interviewing museum directors.
People have the guy witness accounts of like I think
I saw something, right yeah. So then after this nothing happens.
Six months, nothing happens. The French police and their elite

(39:11):
squad turn up nothing. But there is one cop who
just happens to be tracking Tomich. He's working off this
tip about this skilled cat burglar, this parkour thief, and
he's like, oh yeah, and his fence is this white
haired patrician guy, right, So the cops are arranged for
around the clock surveillance of this interesting two man crew.
It's one day in October twenty ten at this point,

(39:32):
six months after the initial heights. The cops here that
Tomich is. He's on the phone. They got him on
a surveillance, right, and he's ranting about how the police
are after him for the modern Art museum job. Tomich
says to corve the cops, the cops think it was
me who did the museum. I swear that it's crazy.
They can't understand that the Baan things were sold and

(39:53):
that they're pissing me off. So the cops are condemn
the cops hear all of this, right, yeah, but they're
convinced he's drunk and talking himself up and he's just
a street criminal trying to brag on some stuff, like
he couldn't possibly this guy could masterminded that they have.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
They put out the effort to put him under surveillance, and.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
They're like, yeah, they ignore it. They're just like he's
just some parkour cat burglar who thinks he's trying to
talk tough. He's no master mind.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
It's no tall parkour guy.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
So at some point though, someone recalls that skateboarder eyewitness
who described a suspect. It worked a lot like Toamdch.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
That's how they have the sketch.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
Yeah, and the cops finally put two and two together
and they get to four and they're like wait a minute,
wait just a minute. So they start now focusing on
to Mitch as their primary suspect.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
In my mind, the police sketch is the Zodiac sketch
with a beret and a cigarette, mostly smoked cigarette exactly.
Continue at this point.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
It's December now, right. The cops are watching to Mitch
and they're you know, they're surveilling a day night. They're
listening to his phone, they're wired tapping, full surveillance, right, Yeah,
and they noticed that Tomich seems to be planning a
new heist. They're like, oh, he he keeps going to
the center George Pompadou. It's like it's only one of
the largest modern art museums in Europe, right, so this'd
be another legendary heist. This would be the perfect escalation

(41:08):
for a guy like him if he did pull off
the other job. So the police surveiling him, they notice, hey,
you know, he's clocking the doors, the windows, emergency exits
and they're like rotating shifts so they can see everything
he's doing. The cops watches he goes now next, shopping
for his heist supplies. They watch as he buys two
large suction cups, he buys industrial glue, some heavy duty

(41:28):
construction gloves. Right, but Tonich, he can start to sensit
their eyes on him, right, so it gets the ideas
being followed, But that doesn't stop him from using as
his outgoing voicemail to set up a possible buyer for
his stolen artwork. Because if you called him, as the
police did on December tenth, French detectives heard, if you
want to buy paintings or works of the exceptional jewelry,

(41:51):
do not hesitate, do contact me. Among the mini paintings,
there are five that are extremely expensive to ship bows.
So this is all the cops need to hear, right,
they decided to ramp up their investigation and set a
trap for Tomade.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Now they're like, okay, it's got.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
So he's a prime suspect. But the French police aren't
in any rush, right, So instead they continue to surveil
Tomache and wait for him to make a mistake and
they can catch him ready handed, right, Meanwhile, Tomich is
waiting on Corvet to make good on his promise to
move the stolen paintings and get him his money, because
he's expecting two hundred large, right, He's like, I'm gonna
take that money. I'm gonna He starts pricing sailboats. He's like,

(42:34):
I'm gonna buy myself a sailboat and I'm gonna sail
away from France.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Got your money, don't buy a sal Oh, he's.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Got it all picked out. He knows exactly the one
he's get. It's gonna cost him one hundred grand. That's
the one he's got his eye on. Half of his money.
He's gonna go to the sailboat right off the bat.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
And then he wants to just go Christopher crossing it
out onto the Mediterranean.

Speaker 5 (42:51):
You know it?

Speaker 3 (42:51):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
The trouble for this plan is is trusting Corvet. Right,
his fence is super worried about getting busted, and he's
shown them all the signs of that. So this dude
at this point goes into hiding, but he doesn't tell
him toomuch about his plans. He just goes into dining.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
The first signs should have been when he gives them
a list, but then doesn't want all like okay.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Can't handle the yes below so too much. Calls Corve
one day and he gets a disconnected line that makes
him a little suspicious, so he starts trying to track
down his fence, goes to where he is. He's not
at his gallery, He's not at home right. He finally
runs into him at a train station at the Garret
de Leon. It's a chance encounter, right. The fence is
not happy to see him. Tomich says that Corvet looked

(43:30):
quote totally white, and also this fence was acted freaky,
so these are dread quotes. So Tomich he asked for
an update on the stolen artwork, like he've been able
to move them in Corvet, he stalls, He double talks.
He refuses to give any new guarantees, no more agreements.
Tomich is no fool. He now knows what this means,
so he takes matters into his own hands. The next

(43:50):
time he contacts him, because they set up a time
to talk. He records the conversation he has with Corvet.
He wants to get his partner on tape, some solid
proof in case Corve tries to double cross him. Instead
him out to the cops. Yeah, that's good point, good
good angle. I mean yeah, it's like basically, at this point, Elizabeth,
everything is going to poo pooh so out of nowhere. Corve, though,
has a positive update. He calls He's got the rare

(44:12):
good news ever since the heist. He's found a buyer
for the Medigliani.

Speaker 5 (44:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
The dude's name is Yonatan byrne b I r n Right, Elizabeth,
this guy is not cut out for this world. Oh no,
He's a thirty three year old watchmaker. He attended the
Sore Bone and got an art degree there. He owns
a small clockmaker shop and apparently he had just enough
money to buy the stolen Madigliani. No, but well, not

(44:37):
that I know of. After he does buy it, he
stashes away in a security deposit box in a bank.
That's how the story goes. Now, Satisfied with this clockmaker
coming into their criminal conspiracy, Corvet arranges with Tomuch to
give Yonatan Burne the other four paintings. It's like, this
guy can move him. I'm telling you this guy.

Speaker 5 (44:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
It turns out Corve was able to sell the Leger,
but the buyer then returned it like a day later,
after he got worried about the police investigations showing up
at his door. He's like, no, no, take it back,
I don't want yeah, too much, too much, so too much.
And Corvet are like, yeah, let's give it to the clockmakers.
See what he can do with these. So what does
burn do? He flies to Tel Aviv, Israel, and he
says this point December twenty ten. When he gets there,

(45:18):
Burne reports that he's got lined up a buyer and
I got somebody to move at least one painting. We
know this because the French detectives are now onto Corvet
as the fence for Tomach because they've been following him
so long they figured out he's the fence. Yeah, so
they also have him on a wire tap, so they're
just listening all along. French detectives like what's he saying now?

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Yeah, and they're like, this is a fantastic fiction. It
couldn't possibly be true.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
I can't wait to see what they do next. So
the clockmaker calls him Israel and he says, he tells Corvet,
I had the first meeting. I believe ninety p nine
percent we are gonna pass this through and so the
Parisian cops hear this fence and Corvet replies better than before,
so they're all excited, right, and the French cops were like, yeah,
high fiving, like this going down, So they're working that

(46:00):
same wiretap the French detectives also here. Krve tell Tomitch
that he's lined up a Saudi buyer for some of
the stolen artwork. Now I don't know if that buyer
was like BSD or not, if he was like double
talking him, but Corve claimed that the clockmaker burn planned
to meet this guy in Israel. Okay, but I can
tell you that Corve later called Tomach and told him, oh,
the deal's off with the Saudi buyer. He backed out,

(46:22):
So we've never having the Saudi buyer really come into
the picture. But they have a solution because Burne tells
both of them, Tomich and Corve that quote there's a
Russian jew who is capable of taking the paint things,
so we sell to him, right, So like Elizabeth, this
other shady buyer he also never materializes. So there's just
these rumored people now, just like it's turning into like,

(46:43):
you know, the Maltese Falcon, right, you know, like the
Gutman character. It's like people I imagine he did business
with in that book, right, That's what we're down to,
is that list?

Speaker 5 (46:52):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (46:52):
So at this point, now it's May of twenty eleven,
one year after the museum heist, an anonymous person contacts
the French detectives and tells them Corvee has the missing paintings, right,
but not only that, he's he's like, he is a
sketchy dude. He may he doesn't handle pressure well and
I think he may do something drastic like destroy the paintings.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
And if you need to watch fixed im yeah barely.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Tomitch makes a recording of Corvet telling him and I quote,
I would have preferred that you didn't bring me these
things because I don't know what to do with them anymore.
I am sick of it.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
So do I think it was Tomach who contacted the detectives, Yes, yes,
I do. I thought no. I think it was Tomach
trying to get a control of the situation again, Okay,
and you'll see why later. But anyway, at this point,
now the cops have the updates. So what do you
think the French detectives did with this new piece of
the puzzle. Isabeth didn't believe it. If you guessed nothing,
you've been paying attention. Meanwhile, Tomich is now getting desperate. Yeah,

(47:49):
he can't get his money. He's done spent up the
forty grand that he got for the Ligier painting. Right,
he still hasn't seen another single euro from this heist.
He needs his money, he needs his sailboat, and being impulsive,
he decides to give into a bad idea. So he
decides to rob an apartment in the nicest part of
Paris just to get himself some you know, rolling around money.
So Tomach is walking around on the Avenue Montaigne, which

(48:10):
is right by where he is, right by the Canadian Embassy.
So it's amongst this homes of the ultra wealthy. Yeah right.
He sees this one duplex. The lights are on, he
passes by. Later, the lights are still on. He passes again,
lights are on. You guessed it, Elizabeth, still on the
third time he passes. So Tomuch decides this is a
sign the owners are not around and too much he's

(48:31):
gonna slide on in, So he gives into impulse. Now
keep in mind, he thinks he's being followed by the
French police. He thinks they're always watching him. He's like,
I can still pull this off, and they are. They
are following him that night, and they're they're trying not
to get spotted. So there's like this comedy of errors
where it's because it's difficult because as the night goes
on and we get closer to one am, two am,

(48:51):
three am, there's a few few people out on the streets.
It's just the cops and Tomach walking around on these
alleys acting like, hey, zu fellow, you're doing so to
much though needs the money badly, so cops are no cops.
He's like, I got to do what I've got to do.
So he ditches the cops by well scaling up the
side of a building. Cops can't do that, so they

(49:11):
watch like, oh darn it. So he gets up on
the top of the building right and like parkour right,
and he starts to like tom climbs the facade and
then he gets to a fire escape that uses that
to get to the roof and he scampers from roof
to roof parkor right, and then he's on slanted metal
rooftops down cat in the park and then he works

(49:32):
his way from one building to the other.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Who's the French actor who does that kind of stuff.
He was in one of the Ocean's movies. He's like
the French batty. I can never remember his name.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
Vincent Cassel.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love picture picture of that.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Just a little bit buffer.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yeah, okay, but yeah Parkour. So now at this point
he the face of the Zodia.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
He goes leaping from building to building, right, and then
he ties off a rope that he has with him.
He lowers himself down into the apartment with the lights
on all the time through an open skylight window. Total
cinematic moment. Right now he's inside the fully lit luxury apartment.
So what does he do. He stays still and silent.
He waits to hear if there's any noise of any ocus.
As he puts it, you have to go into listening mode.

(50:15):
It is very important in order to avoid and encounter there.
So he finds no one is home, Elizabeth. He's in luck.
It's just him and all their fabulous artwork. So he
goes shopping in the apartment and then you know, he's
gazed into a couple times. He's got some ideas, right,
So at this point, he's got confirmation, as he put it,
on this playground, the treasure hunt was about to stop.

(50:36):
Oh god, but that's n I did not have much
time left. I had to come back in another time.
So after that, he lets himself out that night and
he decides he'll go back another night to that same
apartment and just scour it for hidden treasures. Elzabeth, he
came back to that same apartment fifteen times fifteen, which
also means, Elizabeth, he ditched the French detectives fifteen times.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
What how.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
They should learn partore?

Speaker 3 (51:04):
I just also what are you going to do? Fifteen times?

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Well, he was, he was, he was convinced that there
was hidden treasures because this house was so nice. He's
trying to find like hidden safes, because these are super
wealthy people. If he can like go along the wall,
find where the release button is, any statues, he'sisting, Yeah,
he's he convinced he's missed the real score.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Okay, he doesn't have a fence anymore, so he's got
to have like trying to.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Find jewelry now, and really jewelry exactly loose it him
so he can turn them quick to the black market.
So but when you press your luck that much, eventually,
Lady Luck, it's offended. She turns on you. And that's
exactly what happened to Tomich when he went back for
the Fateful fifteenth trip its May twelfth, twenty eleven. Now
you see Tomich. He arranges with Corvet to buy a
Pisarro painting that he saw in this apartment.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
How wait, he's talking still trust.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
He's the only fence he knows. He doesn't have any friends.
His only other friend is this unhoused guy he never
He goes and buys drinks and dinner for it.

Speaker 3 (51:56):
But there's still said five paintings that he hasn't been able.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
To get him a sixth. So he goes back to Nabbit.
He has to ditch the French detectives or a talium,
which he does. He goes back to his spot and
there's the pisarro. He sees another painting of this met singer.
He's like, I'll take that. I won't be able to
move this onelin's that And then he's like, ohin And
then he grabs ten expensive watches from the owner's watch
and watch it.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Now you're in the ball.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Yeah, And then he gets two undergrams of loose jewelry, right,
that's his estimation to under Graham stuff. Finally, he scoops
up the masterpiece, panting the pissarrow. Then he bounces out,
breezy as ever, climbs back down from the rooftop, evades
the French detectives again, makes it back to his car,
opens the trunk, slides in the stolen masterpieces, and whoosh,

(52:41):
just like that, he's gone. He drives off into the night,
the stillness of the dark streets except him, and just
like that, Elizabeth, he's done it again. However, the same
night is also when it comes to an end for Tomage.
How can that be?

Speaker 3 (52:53):
How can that be?

Speaker 2 (52:54):
You wonder, great question, Elizabeth. Well, Elizabeth, rather than let.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
Me tell you about it, like you to as a
close I'd.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Like you to picture it. You are in Paris, Elizabeth.
You're huddled up with other officers and the police command trucks,
seated around a screen. The few other cops, all of
them are French, and someone brings you a fresh cup
of coffee. Tired of getting played by the cat burglar
Toumach the man who takes to the rooftops and loses
a police tail with his parkour and whatnot. The French

(53:22):
detectives have called in Special Inspector DCI Dutton on loan
from the London Flying Squad. Elizabeth, you are on the case.
That's the move now in it now. It's been another
long late night with these laisse a fair French police
who have been taking their time recovering their nation's stolen
art treasures. They've been playing cat and mouse with their
cat burglar, with the parkourp habit for far too long,

(53:44):
and you were brought in to get results. When you
first got to Paris, the first thing you asked the
French police was about surveillance, and you were told that
the suspect is under surveillance, but it's impossible to follow
him because of how he climbs buildings and whatnot. You
asked how he gets around when he's not climbing buildings.
No one answers. You ask if he has a car.
One of the French detectives is like, oh we that's
when you convince the French cops to play see tracking

(54:05):
device on his car, say Geniel, Elizabethray, brilliant tonight, your
police work is paying off because you and the French
detectives are watching the little flashing light that is Tom's
renal as it blink drives around on a map of Paris.
Then a police radio crackles to life. One of the
surveillance guys reports back to the substation command center. His

(54:26):
team spotted Tomich come back to his car, and he
loaded something into the trunk before he drove off. You
ignore the fact that they let him drive off. You
grab the radio and you tell the team to pull
him over. You tell them where he presently is on
the map. And then your fellow officer from the Parisian
police takes the police radio from you, and he repeats
everything you just said, but in French you nod, thanking

(54:47):
him in that sort of macho cop way. And now
you wait. Meanwhile, the French surveillance team springs into action.
They load into their sensible guess saving European cars, and
they give chase on that rainy late night street. The
detective eventually catch up Totomich at his house. Just as
he pulls up and steps out of his car, the
police arrive. It's perfect timing. Back at the command center,

(55:09):
the police radio crackles to life again. They got him.
Not only that When the detectives opened up the trunk
of his car, they found a stolen pisarro, a met
singer painting, ten luxury watches, and roughly two hundr gram's
of jewelry. You and the French police celebrate with some
hearty cheers, high fives. Someone pops a bottle of champagne.

(55:29):
Elizabeth Zaren. When the French police raid to much his
apartment that same morning, they find all sorts of cat
burglar equipment, heist tools, a grappling hook.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
Suction cuffs, suction cuffs. But like he finally just started
going to La Costco and getting like a big box
a section cuts.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Yeah, you get like eight in a row, and you
have like a couple boxes over there. So he's got
those and there kind a corner leaned up against the side,
and the cops are like, oh, he was a professional.
So they at this point realized that they're dealing with
the probably the guy, because who else has grappling hooks.
But there's no stolen artwork, nothing from the Museum of
Modern Art to tie him in. So this is where

(56:09):
things get weird. Elizabeth, hearing about the bust of Tomich
the clockmaker, burn gathers up all five stolen artworks from
the museum heist. Apparently terrified that he will be caught,
he destroys all five irreplaceable masterpieces throws them in a
dumpster outside his shop. Oh no, that's the story. Back
in police custody, Tomitch takes care of any confusion the

(56:30):
police still have about him by giving them a full confession.
He tells them about his fence, Corvet, and the clockmaker
Burn everything. Mainly he wants the police to know it
was him. He wants credit for his masterpiece robbery because
now that they have Tomich the prison detectives, they tighten
the noose on Corvet and the clockmaker Yonitan Burn right
the cops. They raid the clockmaker's shop the gallery of

(56:51):
the fence, but still no stolen paintings. And in jail,
Tomich tries to contact the clockmaker Burn and find out
what he did with his stolen artwork. Now, Burn at
this point is terrified of him because remember it not
meant for this world. Yeah, he asks for increased protection
from the prison. He eventually puts up a mattress against
his cell door just so that Tomitch can't come by

(57:12):
and keep looking in through the little window at him
and intimidating him. Eventually though this I don't know why
it takes so long, But in twenty seventeen, six years later,
the three men are all tried together.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
At their trial, a French newspaper describes Corvet and his
slicked back white hair as having the same look and
feel of a Disney villain, so they're really on his side.
The reporters also report that the clockmaker has the look
of a confused student, so he's written off as the idiot,
but they fall in love with Tomich. They're like this now,

(57:44):
So the Darren cat Burglar, right, who's pulled off the
greatest French art heist in the least a generation, if
not ever, and did it without ever hurting anybody. He's
like a folk hero now he's a figure of fiction
come to real life, a cinematic figure from this bygone
era of the City of Lights that they love and know. Right,
they call him the spider Man of Paris. Have this

(58:04):
one reporter from Le Figaro He said, French people are
very fond of thieves stories. When there is no blood
for us, so much is a perfect thief? Why is
he perfect? Elizabeth has no blood exactly right. Well, also
he acted yeah in the parkourps that's for me now,
as the French reporter said, he acted without weapons, did
not strike anyone, robbed, not an individual. But they poorly

(58:27):
supervised museum fooled the guards without any difficulty and chose
the works he took with taste, so they applaud his taste.
There was another journalist who pointed out that the French
really like to upset the established social order, and to
carry out his point, he says, look no further than
the rebellions of seventeen eighteen nine, seventeen ninety two, eighteen thirty,

(58:49):
eighteen forty eight, eighteen seventy one, nineteen thirty six and
nineteen sixty eight. Oh man, who knows their history? Well,
all three men and they're in their trial. They of
course get found guilty. The corve sixty one at the time,
he catches a seven year sentence. The clockmaker burned forty
at the time, he gets sent up for six years.
The cat burglar Tomich forty nine at the time he

(59:10):
gets an eight year sentence. But saren what about the paintings?
Were they really destroyed by the paranoid watchmaker. Did Tomich
hide them or did the clockmaker portray them all and
just lie about it? Is this all a ruse?

Speaker 3 (59:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Look at your face, Elizabeth. I wish I could tell
you no one knows except for Jean Thomechin Jonatan Byrne.
But I do have a happy ending for you though.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
So, just before he was put on trial, Tomich met
this woman outside of a cafe. She was reading a
book about UFOs. He asked her about it. They started chatting.
They hit it off, They started chatting on Facebook. They
become an item Facebook official. I guess his new galpal.
Her name is Corin Opiola. She's a fun shwe consultant,
so right in line with him.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Her new man turns up on the news for being
on trial for the greatest art heist in French history.
She's like, oh, man, right, But at this point she,
you know, she stays flexible about it. She's like, you know,
I don't know. She's so in love, right, So when
he's found guilty, she decides she'll stay closer with him.
She starts visiting him each week in prison. After eight years,

(01:00:16):
Tomitch gets out of prison earlier this year. No less,
Elizabeth and she was there to pick him up. She
drove him out to the coast and they that way
he could feel how free he was, and they have
the rest of their lives together if they so decide. Yeah,
I well, finally, Basically, my point is this Tomich finally
had someone who stuck by him and bet on him
and his evolution as a person, someone who just give

(01:00:37):
up on him as like, oh, shunt him.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Over there, shut him over there.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Yeah, someone who saw his poet's soul and the impulsive
choices he makes as a criminal. It's like, you know what,
I can balance this out and we can have a
nice life together. I could calm him down. I'm pulling
for these two crazy kids to make a go of it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Yeah, you can't fix anybody, Lady, make a run for it.
I'm pulling for him.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
I think they fit well. Who knows, what's our ridiculous
takeaway here, Elizabeth, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
I'm going to kind of like uno reverse you on
this slightly. Is that My takeaway is that this is
terribly cinematic, and I know you like to do the
game of who would you cast in this? Yeah, so
you know we've got Vincent Cassel as a spider. Yes,
So who would you cast in the other two roles.
I'm kind of thinking the Harry Potter kid for the watchmaker.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Oh, I like that. That's a good call, Daniel Daniel Radcliffe. Yeah.
And then for the old guy. Oh, I don't know
if you know the actor. I think it's Peter Capaldi.
He's like a Doctor Who guy. He played one of
the doctor Okay, well he was a villain on the
moment of my The Musketeers show that he'd be good. Yeah, yeah,
I like it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
I also was thinking that, you know, we have this
question about you cast, but that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
I don't know that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
I was kind of thinking, like, I think he's too old,
but Brian Cox would be great for the fun. And
then to have the last scene of like those paintings
are all hung in like an oligarch's house. Yeah, so
we know they survived.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
You get the happy ending for the painting exactly like that. Well,
since you're not gonna ask my ridiculous takeaway, Elizabeth, thank
you for not asking yet again.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Well, I asked you to help me cast mine.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Yeah, no, you do. Was very considered of you. Let
me play along your sandbox. Did I had fun? Is
that cat Pete anyway? So I like these two crazy
kids I'm pulling from. I like the Tom she finally
found somebody because he's like, hey, you're reading a book
about UFOs. She's like, yes, I am. And then they're
like they're weird matched up. I'm pulling for them.

Speaker 7 (01:02:32):
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
That's fine. You haven't good for a talkback, maybe to
something to clear the palette.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
I love talkbacks.

Speaker 5 (01:02:41):
Oh my god, I get.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Hi, everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
This is DELI.

Speaker 7 (01:02:54):
So I'm listening right now to the Pokemon episode. And
I am not even joking when I say there's a
car driving behind me with like fifteen plushies of different
Pokemon and stickers all over a pikachuw And I just
find this very funny.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
For me, love me, I love yeah, the synergy. But
like you know, just everywhere you go now she'll see
Pokemon everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Pokemon when life winks at you like that?

Speaker 5 (01:03:27):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
Well, thank you for listening. As always, you can find
us online Ridiculous Crime on social media is and we
have our website, ridiculous Crime dot com. We got new
merch go check it out. In a bunch of cool
like stuff and you can get it and put it
on your body, and you put your drinks in it
and do all sorts of stuff. Also, go to the
iHeart app download it and you can leave a talkback.
You could hear yourself here obviously fun We love the

(01:03:49):
talkbacks and if you can email us if you like
Ridiculous crimegmail dot com. Occasionally we even see those, yeah sometimes,
So there you go. Well, as always, thanks for listening.
We will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted
by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by

(01:04:09):
the man who taught carry Grant Everything he Knows about
cat Burglary Dave Cousten, and starring Alice Rutger as Judith.
Research is by Marissa the She Hulk of Cincinnati Brown
and Andrea the Miss Marvel of Memphis, Tennessee. Song Sharpened Tear,
our theme song is by Thomas the Professor ex of
San Diego Lee and Travis the Silver Surfer of Oakland.

(01:04:32):
Dutton the host wardrobe provided by Body five hundred, guest Haron,
makeup by Sparkle Shot and Mister Andre. Executive producers are
Ben the Bizarro of Birmingham Bowlin and Noel the Green
Goblin of Greensboro, North Carolina.

Speaker 5 (01:04:48):
Browns QUI Say It one More Times?

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
QUI Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.