August 4, 2022 • 59 mins
What do you get when you take one part hardscrabble Eastern Bloc kid, three parts lousy ice hockey skills, twelve parts booze, six parts non-violence, and infinite amounts of determination? You get one whole Attila Ambrus, the Hungarian Whiskey Robber.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. How
does Zarin? What's up, Elizabeth? You know it's ridiculous, Oh girl,
do I? Okay. So there's this movie called The Conqueror.
How much you've ever heard of it? Okay? So it
stars John Wayne as Mongolian Conqueror. Oh I've actually seen that? Yeah, okay,
(00:20):
So it's like a vie. It is known as the
deadliest movie ever. It's terrible. Oh yeah, it's definitely bad.
You know why I was also deadliest? Well, they filmed
it in Nevada. That was supposed to be the desert
that's supposed to take place for Central Asia, and the
desert that they filled it in was right where the
Department of Energy was doing nuclear tests open air above
(00:41):
ground nuclear tests. So by night one of the two
d and twenty cast members had contracted cancer. What and uh?
Then forty six of them died. This includes Agnes Moorehead
from Bewitched fame, John Wayne obviously Susan Hey, we're a
bunch of the stars of the film. It's considered the
(01:03):
deadliest film ever because they filmed on a nuclear testing site.
And he also did the same thing with You Are
Yellow ribbon apparently, but is that maybe uh, sort of
bad mojo from doing yellow Face. That's what I'm just
saying is it was a cursed film all the way around.
It's bad. It was a ridiculous idea for a film,
and a ridiculous place to shoot a film, and a
(01:24):
terrible recovery of like you know what happened after? That's crazy?
That is you know what that is straight up ridiculous. Yeah,
that's ridiculous. You know what else is ridiculous? But you
got one for me. Hit me with it. Bad wigs,
getting drunk and wearing bad wigs. Okay, my jam, getting
drunk and wearing bad wigs and robbing banks. I have
yet to do this. I'm Elizabeth Dutton, and joining me
(02:05):
is Zarin Burnett. I'm just letting you know you're joining me.
And this is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and
outrageous capers, heists, cons It's always murder free and one ridiculous, Zaren, Elizabeth,
You and I often find ourselves rooting for criminals who
(02:26):
are entertaining and don't hurt anyone. That's yes, that's kind
of my motto, my mantra, my jam. If you will
I feel like I've hit the jackpot here. Um. This
guy's story that I'm gonna tell you today is delicious.
It makes me dizzy. I want to tell you, I
want to tell you the story about the whiskey robber,
Attila and Bruce. I would never have known about this
(02:50):
king if it wasn't for listener Alex w emailed us
the hot tip. I need to start with a little
historical background before we dive in them. Please set the stage,
of course, so as you know, the nation of Hungary was,
following the defeat of the Nazis in World War Two,
a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Yes, behind the
Iron Curtain. We were establishing that. We know that, yeah. Um.
(03:14):
From the sixties to the eighties it was had some
like free market introduced into the economy. Um, and it
was referred to as the happiest barrack in the Eastern Block.
The happiest barrack in the Eastern not the happiest place
on Earth, the happiest barrack in the Eastern Block. They
had a really high well not really, they had a
higher standard of living. Things were a little bit looser
(03:36):
in terms of travel and expression compared to East Berlin
and Ze Republic. Hungarian art and culture is already so
lush and elegant. Um. So they kind of resisted the
brutalism as communism and so the highest standard of living
makes sense. It wasn't something that they would want to
ever reject, so it was easy for them to kind
(03:58):
of keep keep in their pockets. So in the eighties
we had a global recession and that made times tough,
and because even the Soviets got hit with it, um,
and it kind of opened people's mind in the Eastern
Bloc satellite what would you call them Soviet states, um,
(04:19):
it opened their mind to the possibility of revolution. So
this is like when they were falling in love with
rock and rolling beligions and Coca cola. UM and so uh.
In Hungary dipped out of the Soviet Union. They were
one of the first. Yeah. So like before the scorpions
were singing, winds have changed before their bella like us
(04:41):
saying um. And so the eight nine they dip out,
and that kicked off the chain reaction through the Eastern
Bloc that eventually led to the fall of communism. The
exit was peaceful, as it was in many of these
UM all of them, and it eventually, you know, leads
to the fall of communism, rings about serious economic trouble. However,
(05:03):
because Soviet subsidies went away, so everything is also privatized
like basically overnight, and then prices wildly changed exactly. So
that's just a quick primer to get you situated. Thank
you in the landscape for catching me up on Hungary's
recent history. It's very base, completely surface level assessment, all
(05:25):
pre Victor or Bon. Yes. And so this brings us
to Attila and Bruce the whiskey robber. He comes from tough,
tumultuous times, hard living. People had to get creative to survive.
Howdy duty was he creative? I was hoping Romanian culture.
(05:47):
I need you to do a little imagination exercise with me.
Should I maybe close my eye? I want you to
close your as as a close girl. It's January twenty two, Budapest, hungry.
(06:08):
You're at the post office on Village Street, and that's
on the Buddha side of Budapest by the way. Well,
you know, the Danube splits it into Buddha, and I
did not know that. Actually I did not know that.
That's great, though I'm not making that up. I know,
I totally believe. I've never heard that before. The trees
(06:30):
are bear It's just like the post office is on
a typical Hungarian tree lined boulevard, wide boulevard on the
trees are bare. Just before closing time at the post
office January. You've just run in after work to pay
your electric bill. I'm always running late. It's a common
thing in Hungary and in many parts of Europe. You
can pay your bills in cash at the post office.
(06:51):
So that's why you're there. Uh. You know, you're making
small talk with the ladies in the shop. You leave
the shop and you pass another man walking in. It's
got a big mustache. He's wearing a very obviously cheap,
long brown wig. And you know, who are you to judge?
Just let him do his thing. I mean, you're wearing
(07:13):
ladies panties under your quarter right pants, so I don't
use to say they've fit in front of my shoe.
So there you are. He's got the wig on. He's
also wearing like a bright red pointy ski hat that
has ear flaps, and it's cold. We'll give him that. Um.
(07:35):
You look down at his feet, they're enormous, like clown feet. Yeah,
but then you notice when he's walking, it's not that
his feed are enormous. The shoes are enormous and they're
way too big. And he reeks of whiskey as he
walks by. So you know, you're just a responsible guy
paying your bill. You look over it an old man
or an old like you know man walking by, and
(07:56):
you kind of raise your eyebrows at him, and then
you pull your collar up on your coat and you
just go off into the cold Hungarian evening. Yeah. Now,
this guy, he gets to the door of the shop
and this bewigged man. He tries to enter, but a
woman who works there stops him, and she says, look,
we're closed. You gotta come back. He said, no, I
gotta send a letter to my girlfriend. I have to
(08:19):
do it. No gotta come back monday is it's a Friday.
I think gotta come back Monday morning. He pushes her
aside and enters the post office. From his coat pocket,
he produces a small toy gun and he raises it
into the air. This is an armed robbery. Now the
cashier just stares at him. She's annoyed because he she
can see it's a toy guns. Yellow. Yeah, it's like
(08:42):
a squirre gun. And actually it was a cap gun,
so it kind of looks but she can tell. I
mean she's around the block, she's you know, uh, and
he's totally drunk. So she's just like, are you for
real right now? I'm not worried? This is what you do.
Um shoves her out of the way, nearly tripping over
his clown shoes, goes behind the counter, and another woman
(09:04):
who works there says, where are you doing this? And
he says, shut up, please instant regret. So then what
does he do? He pulls a Joe Camel Duffel bag
out of his coat pocket and empties the contest of
the register into it his coat pockets, and then he
demands that these women open the safe and they do
(09:28):
and it's empty. Yeah, So the man turns and he
just runs from the shop and he stops only to
pull a combination lock out of his pocket. There are
so many things in his pockets, and he locks the
door to the store from the outside and takes off.
How he's running in these shoes, I don't know. He's
sprinting down the road the giant shoes. He rips off
(09:49):
his hat and his wig tosses him in a trash can.
He pulls a disposable razor out of his endless coat pocket,
spits into his hand and like rubs it on his lip,
and he proceeds to shade his mustache while running down
the street. This is just like I'm imagining, like the
Benny Hill music playing in the background, like banjo scramble.
(10:12):
I'm imagine James Brown. He makes it all the way
to his apartment, locks the door behind him, empties the
contents of the Joe camelbag onto the kitchen table. It's
five yeah, five thousand, four iNTS, which is about six grand.
Attila Ambrose has just committed his first robbery. That was first.
(10:34):
That was Baby's first robbery. How did we get here?
How did he become this desperate, ridiculous criminals running down
the street. So here's a little bio. Mattila born in
a tiny village outside of a small town called Chicks
being in Hungary. That's a very common name. I mean,
(10:58):
I know, but still just keeping it traditional. Yeah, I know.
The hunt, He's like the Hunt of huns Um. Yeah.
Chick c is a tiny little village in Transylvania. And
he lives in a smaller village outside this town. Um
the area is technically a part of Romania's. Yeah, but
(11:18):
he speaks Hungarian is his first language. He considers himself
Hungarian and but also really proudly Transylvanian Wallachia, like they're
like their own little like region where they're going to say,
we're not really part of either Romania or Hungry we
are Wallachia. If you say so, I'm just saying that
one of those areas, it's all shifting sands, right, you know,
it's so um the village that he lives in, no cars,
(11:43):
no electricity, no running water. Can I get a place?
It's essentially he lives in a field right next to before.
So he got into a lot of trouble as a kid.
When he was seven, he got arrested for quote, climbing
too high in a tree. Really looking for crimes, aren't they?
There's nothing in this town. There's a tree. He's like
(12:04):
his house, get out of there. Gets in trouble for
racing a horse, like literally he was running horse. He um.
He had a hockey scholarship to a nearby boarding school,
but he got expelled for short circuiting the electricity on
exam day. But he doesn't know electricity from Adam. What
(12:24):
does he know? Well, he grew up with no electricities,
like totally did well, because he later admits in an interview,
he says, saying that I was a kleptomaniac is an understatement.
I took everything that wasn't made a concrete He's honest.
He got excommunicated from his small Catholic church after he
(12:47):
ate a bunch of Communion wafers, drank a bottle of
Communion wine, and then was found passed out on the
altar by a priest. Drunk. On God sixteen, he stole
musical instruments from a popular local wedding band. Yeah, and
then he gets released. He goes into the army for
about sixteen months, and then he comes back to his
(13:08):
town avoid prison time. Yeah, I think. So he's sixteen. Um,
there's nothing, no work in the town, and so um,
life for Transylvanians in Romania at the time was getting
more and more oppressive. So he decides, I'm going to Hungary.
He gets a job is what's called a church painter
in near the Romanian Hungarian border, and this job was
(13:32):
specifically given to people trying to cross over from Romania
to Hungary because the church provided like the tallest place
to look for on routes. So you know, you could
go there and be like, yeah, i'll paint the church,
wink wink, and you work there for a little bit
and then you coordinate to go to the next stop,
the next stop. Oh that's smart. I was thinking, like,
we let him paint and we just pray. You know. Well,
(13:54):
I think that happened to Um. So at this time
they're both Soviet satellite states, Romanian hung Hungry of course,
more progressive, very appealing. Um. After a couple of weeks
working at the church, he makes it across and he
enters Hungary. October. He has just turned twenty one years old.
Congratulations exactly. So cracks are showing in the Eastern Bloc
(14:21):
and people are starting to realize that peaceful revolution is possible.
As I mentioned earlier, he's twenty one. Um. Now, as
I mentioned he was. When he was a kid, he
played hockey and so well, yeah, I had a scholarship,
but the last time he played was when he was fifteen. Yeah,
but he was pretty good at him from what everyone
When you have a passion, you never let it die.
(14:42):
It's in the body, in the muscle memory, and that's
that's how he was feeling. So he called up Hungary's
championship pro hockey team Ute and asked them to play
like just literally was like, what's up? He went to it,
goes to a pay phone, calls the facility, says, can
I speak to the general manage? Guy gets on the phone.
This is what he says to him. Hello, comrade, I'm
(15:04):
Attila Ambruce from Transylvania. I'm a goalie and i'd like
to try up straight up. The manager thinks he's getting pranked,
so he's like, now, come on now, and he realizes, well,
first of all, he's using this construction of comrade, and
like he sounds like he's got like a rural accent
to him. So he's all right, we know what we
actually kind of do need a goalie. I'll pick you
(15:26):
up tomorrow and you can come to practice. So he
picks Attila up. Attila has no equipment zero, I mean,
don't forget well he doesn't. He didn't bring anything with
him and they fled essentially a refugee, so I'm not
expecting him to have his full ice kig. The amount
of equipment he had was equal to the amount of
skill that he had. So he doesn't make the team,
(15:48):
but they love his moxie. Yeah, they like the spark
in this guy, so they give him a job as
a janitor slash zamboni driver slash handyman job. Can I
just say that right now and let him sleep in
a closet like job comes with your own requorters and
(16:08):
so he then he winds up getting kicked out of
that closet because he got drunk and he crashed the
zamboni into the closet just you know it, just doing donuts.
He was, you know, ghost riding the whip drunk driving
his zamboni is awesome. Let me just say that. But
they didn't fire him. They just wouldn't let him sleep
there anymore. So he's like, what am I going to do?
(16:30):
I need money for a place to live. So he
gets a side gig as a grave digger. He's like,
what is the most ridiculous thing I could do? Grave digging? Um.
In the meantime, the team made him the unpaid second
string goalie, so they basically just said, like, here have
a promotional T shirt. So He's like the rudy of
their hot He never misses a practice, never really played,
(16:53):
and it frustrated him. So he quits his janitor gig
in pro in protest, but he stays on as the
unpaid goalie. So he finds odd jobs. He sells expensive
pens door to door. Um. He manages to meet this
woman who comes from really rich family, and he goes
on a ski vacation to Austria with this family. The
(17:14):
owner of the hotel there knew a little bit of
Hungarian and when he found out that Attila was from Transylvania,
he asked Attila to smuggle pelts for him, like for
like first, yeah, but not like to make not for
like a furrier to make coats. He wanted like bear skinned,
boar skin, deer like rugs and stuff and the hotel
yeah exactly. So Attila goes back to Transylvania and his
(17:38):
uncle connects him with a pelt dealer. I mean, whose
uncle doesn't know a pelt dealer? Come on now, uh
that he drives. He then drives eight and fifty miles
on crappy roads back to Austria, paying off border guards
along the way with a trunk full of bear skin
and uh, he did this over and over again. It
was making really good money. He was also spending really
(18:00):
good money. He got a taste of it. Um. He
owed a lot of money by and he was totally
ready to call it quits on the smuggling game, but
he owed this money. So he's like, I got one
last run. But it gets canceled because all the border
guards that he'd been bribing got fired them, all of them.
(18:20):
And he had that side gig of selling pens door
to door, fancy pens. Someone broke into his car and
stole all the pens. So he's like desperate, he needs
cash and he needs it quick. And that's where we
met him at the post office that day in the
winter of nine. Ah, so he just borrowed the shoes,
grabbed like a Joe. Cammell looked around and was like,
(18:44):
I need money. So let's take a break here, listen
to some advertisements. I know that you know. I've kept
you waiting on that because they're your favorite part of
the show. It's why I'm here. Yeah. Um, when we
come back, I'll tell you more about how Attila blossomed
into a truly ridiculous criminal nice. I'm gonna get cozy
and listen to these ads. Okay. So when we last met,
(19:26):
I was talking about Attila am Bruce, Attila the Ambers,
and he had a bunch of debt that he had
to pay off because he'd had crazy living due to
his pelt smuggling, living high on that fur money. And
he robbed a post office with a Joe camel bag
and a fright wig and clown shoes. So he stole
(19:46):
enough in that heist to pay off his debts. But
you know what, he's not going to give up his lifestyle.
He wants more. So a couple of months later he
hits another post office. No weapons, no weapon, just bluster.
Yeah yeah, he's just all bravado um. And from there
he moves on to travel agents. He's hitting cash businesses
(20:08):
and I would have never thought travel I know. Well,
here's the thing. He targets one Mayne. He went to
a travel agent to rob it, specifically because he was
mad at travel agencies, and that's because he'd had he'd
taken this trip to Tunisia and they messed it up,
and he was just like, you know what, all of
(20:29):
you guys pox on your house, bunch, of scam. So
he's like, can't really remember where the one was that
sold him the bum tickets. He's like, well there's a
travel agent. Good enough slap him. So he goes in.
He robs a travel agency. Uh what does he get
like travelers checks? Like, what do you cash? They have cash? Well, yeah,
that wasn't I think that they weren't really running on
(20:50):
a lot of credit there. So people are using cash
for a large amounts Yeah, packages, okay, so um. The
Hungarian tabloid covered this theft and said, quote, well wish
he robbed the place. Quote, While wishing the office manager
all the best and kissing her hand, he swiftly left
the office. What a gentleman, Just shut up? Please money, darling.
(21:15):
So he gets away with twelve thou o. He's doubling. June.
Next month he robs his first bank graduated look at
this every time. Going up. August, he robs another post
office with a fellow Transylvanian hockey teammate is his accomplice.
(21:37):
He's like, hey, Bud, I got a little hometown tried.
Let's do this. Take off these gates and follow me
to this come with me. They have electricity. Um, they
get thirty six thousand dollars off of that one, so
they got you know, eighteen apiece. Um. You're probably thinking
to yourself, well, what's going on with his hockey career?
I was, I was just wondering, what did you get
like a rookie card um. A few months after teaming
(21:58):
up to hit the post office um with his teammate,
in October nine, Attila sees his very first ice time nice.
The team was up fourteen to nothing when he came
on the ice. Hockey comes on the ice, he gives
up three goals, but they still win because they were
up by fourteen. A few days after that, after his debut,
(22:21):
he robs again, this time another travel agency. And he
does it so tell Anger to work out. He's just processing.
It's part of his journey. This is what he considers therapy.
He goes to a crowded train station where there's a
travel agency and he does this during rush hour. It's like,
what would be the most ridiculous time. He's wearing a wig,
(22:41):
but of course the employees so they just started screaming
and people gathered outside. He got away, but he didn't
get money, so they started screaming before he had even
like said, hey, here's my pop gun. And well I
think he like he said, you know, this is a
stick up, and they're just and then because it's a
crowd station, they're like, what's going on there in the
(23:02):
travel agency? Um? But so he gets away December ninety three,
so that was October December ninety three. He finally gets
his revenge and he steals about from the original travel
agency that wronged him. That clears the deck is on
that February, he dresses as a businessman and he attempts
(23:23):
his first solo bank robbery. Oh yeah, he successfully takes
about dollars first time effort. March strikes again. He gets
bucks from another bank. What is he spending this on?
He had a gambling problem. He liked the drink, yeah,
(23:45):
and he liked to go to Tunisia, and so he
likes Tunisia, the ponies and a good whiskey. He does
another travel agency in July nine. Um dressed as a businessman,
puts on a wig. This time. He had a couple
of drinks at a nearby bar to comms nerves beforehand,
but he got so drunk that he forgot to put
up the closed sign and the agency's entrance after he
(24:06):
walked in, so like people just kept walking in, like, hey,
kind of curious about your next let me finish like
these timing year. Um, So one of the agents rings
a silent alarm. Are people still going to take a terra?
They agent rings a silent alarm, and then he can't
access the safe. Um and as he's leaving, though he
(24:29):
does get money. He gets as he's leaving, the cops
are there, but they're entering the adjacent building that has
the same address that's a supermarket because they think that's
what's getting robbed. They're like, who would rob a travel technically?
January he robbed his next bank, scored over with that.
(24:51):
One July he steals another twenty grand from another bank,
just ping pawing in between banks. He's like freelancing where
he's just get sees these checks and just keeps, you know,
living his life. Bills are yeah, basically um. When he
steals the twenty thousand from another bank that they had
(25:11):
surveillance video and so a still framed photo of him
was published in the newspapers and featured on a local
crime show called Sounds Amazing. Um, he's wearing the wig
and he wore a wig specifically that resembled the lead
detective on the case, like because he was annoyed the
(25:31):
detective had called him quote unquote lucky in an interview,
and he's like, no, this ain't luck, baby, and you
want to see luck, So Hi, how about this? Luck?
Is what I do on the ice, skill is how
I bring the ridiculousness. So yeah, he's like, sees this
guy's like mullet or whatever. It's like, totally, I'm styling
my wig like that. You imagine him like he's got
the wig like on one of those like mannequin heads.
(25:52):
He's like cutting the mullid looking at the photos, cutting
the mull looking at the photo. Okay, now, very perfect,
perfect son. So that just of course really cheeses off
the detective. Um. But wait, hold on hockey career. At
this time, he actually gets named U t s starting goalie.
(26:15):
But he was so stressed out about being caught that
he started playing really really badly, even for him. In
a six game stretch, he gave up goals. It's like,
seasons I could do better than I just lay across
in front of the net and just take my hits.
(26:36):
You could just go back and forth post to post
and do a better job. Just a random luck. When
you gave up twenty three goals in one game, how
many did he score on his own? Just like I
just knocked this one and I'm tired. I bet I
bet that some of them were. I need a break.
Go ahead. So he leads his team to a zero
to three loss. Um. But let's get back to the criming, right,
(27:00):
just a little time out On that one March, Attila
robs another post office gets around six. I'm he's glad.
He's good at something. Now back at u t E
at the team, they have a new coach and he
has a kid. The kid's name is Gabby. Gabby orbon
(27:20):
like Victor, so Gabby is the son of the new coach.
He's also a teammate because apparently if you if you're related,
get out there on the ice. Um. He had been
hanging around Attila because Attila's got money. They don't make
money on this team, like they make pennies. It's like,
what you know, I want to hang out with this dude. Um.
(27:42):
He befriends him, and then in the summer of ninety six,
Untila finally relents and it's like, all right, let me
tell you my secret, my secret to success wigs. And
so they're like, let's do this, And there was a
montage and music and they ran through the streets buying collections,
draws back the curtain, giant shoes. In August, they robbed
(28:04):
a post office together. Now, in this case, Attila was
pretty drunk by the time they arrived at the post office.
I like that, like whiskey is his dumbost feather. He's like,
I don't believe in me, give me a couple of whiskey. Well,
he shows up drunk and an employee recognizes him immediately,
(28:26):
and it's also like, you guys, it's a warm sunny day.
It's a little suspicious that you have raincoats on. So
these two drunks and raincoats, not three boys in one raincoat.
Two drunks and each of their own. This is a
stick up. So the employee calls the cops and it's like,
we got we got the whiskey robber up in here,
and he's talking about his his goaltending. The operator thinks
(28:46):
it's a joke. When they help, we have the whiskey
robber in this post office. She's like, yeah, you do,
weren't weren't um, So she tells the employe, look, if
you want to be serious, call back and hangs up
on the employee. Well, at the same time, Attila and
Gabby are like, everybody away from the phone's everybody in
the corner. This is a stick up. So the phone
(29:07):
starts ringing and no one answers, and instead of being like,
oh snap, I think there's something to float at the
post office, the operators like nothing going on. There must
be busy. If it was real, you would call back.
I won't even answer the phone. Ain't got nobody today.
I come on now. Attila and Gabby get away with
thirty four thou dollars in that case. Uh. And it
(29:28):
was after this incident that the press gave Attila the
nickname the Whiskey Robbers. So I guess before they're like,
you know it was the drunk Yeah, the guy with
the wig and the drink um. And so he gets
that name because like bars that are near the robberies
are reporting a disguised man downing drinks right before the
thefts take place, and they're like, there's this guy wearing
(29:51):
a wig. He came in, he had a bunch of whiskey.
I don't want to be judging, but you know, and
he's not showing up sober to these bars. There's another
reason he's drawing attention to himself because he rolls up
having pre partied with the Joe camel Bag at home,
and then it's just like getting loose at the bar.
He just needs a couple of to top off his energy. Yeah,
so now he's referred to as the whiskey robber. He's
(30:13):
high profile baby. So September, the Dynamic Duo, that gruesome tosome.
They robbed a bank and took just about fifty grand
a bank. These are they're doing numbers. He's getting pretty good.
November they robbed another bank. He's getting boring at this point.
(30:33):
They dressed for this robbery. They dressed in wigs and
trench coats. Keep it fresh. Well, he's he's can't Attila
wearing a wig, wearing a trench coat, drunk as a skunk.
Just as as they're about to begin this robbery, Attila
realizes that he forgot to bring a bag to put
the money in. He doesn't have his Joe camel bag,
(30:54):
doesn't even have anything. So he's like hold on. He
runs to a nearby supermarket and he buys a loaf
of bread and they put it into bag for him,
and then he runs to the bank. He goes in.
They robbed the bank at ninety grand, put it in
the bag, and he leaves the bread in the safe
even trade, even trade. What was going on in his
(31:17):
hockey life? You're wondering enough with the criming, so he's
good at robbing. How is the goaltending? Well later that evening,
after that robbery, but the bread robbery and hockey practice,
he was so drunk at that point that he missed
like a super easy goal in A frustrated teammate got
so mad that he hit him in the head with
(31:39):
his hockey stick. And then the report I read was
he hit him, to quote so hard that a nail
from Attila's helmet lodged inside his skull. Attila hardly noticed
a nail from his That's what jumped out, like, great,
guy's got a nail in his skull, He's pickled. Whatever
(32:00):
what is going on with a nail in the helmet?
And they mean like a metal nail, not like a fingernail.
Right now, like a metal nail went into a skull
in Soviet Russia nail hammers. You what is going on
with that that the teammate is so mad at the
drunk goalie just beat him us and Antila is just
(32:23):
like sitting there all how drawing. So January robs another
bank Grand March. This litany is incredible. He robs he
had another bank. This time they dressed as cops and
they were like, you know, we found we heard that
(32:45):
there's some smuggling going on. There's some business. Yeah, sure,
it's all legit. So they're like, fulled you, we're not cops.
Were the robbers put it in there? Fifty two grand?
Off they go. So the cops are rushing to that
bank and they're already gone. Attila and Gabby went to
(33:06):
grab lunch. So they got lunch while the cops were
like descending on the bank like oh my god, he
hit again, and the people are all traumatized in there.
So they're grabbing lunch, and then they went to a
post office on the other side of town, and we're like, look,
we're dressed for it, we might as well just you
got a minute, Yeah, what do you think? So they
like they actually they in this case, they were dressed
(33:27):
as cops. They changed their they had a costume change,
so um they put on suits, long wigs and baseball caps.
So it's like zz top um and they stole twenty
two grand, so that's a two for those are athletes.
These are endurance athletes though. The performance this is what
(33:51):
peak performance looks like. So at the next robbery April,
he and Gabby only managed to steal about a two
hundred dollars because the bank had just handed off most
of its cash to an armored vehicle. I can't win
them all. Bad timing, kind of like how he is
on the ice. Um the following month way more money.
(34:11):
So they've got their outfits on business suits and wigs. Um.
They stole one hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars from
a Budapest bank. Yeah. Um the bills the police had requested,
Hey listen, you got a lot of cash on hand,
let's mark the bills. They're like, sure, they marked the bills.
The problem was is that banks and post offices didn't
(34:33):
have an ability to read the marks. They just put
smiley faces on there, so they were like and no
one knows to look for it to like, oh look
that's that's kind of smile face on. That's funny. Right. Yeah,
so they're able to pass the money, no, no problem,
they can't be tracked. Um Now, Attila, after this huge hall,
he's like, you know what that was it? That was
(34:54):
my final bow. Yeah, he's like, but hold on, what's
going on at the hockey career that year? Despite his
dedication until it was dropped from the hockey team? What
this out of all the stuff you told me, this
is just not that injustice? This is just wrong. How
did he find out the beatings he's endured. He found
(35:16):
out because he was reading the paper and he saw
the team's roster and his name wasn't on it. Yeah,
he did manage to get a spot on the team's
cross town rival, but the teammates didn't like him and
it didn't last. Um so December, n right, just a
couple of months later. Uh, he's They're like, you know what, hey,
(35:37):
Gabby Gabs, I'm a little short on cash. Let's come
out of retirement. Let's do this. And they did. They
came out of retirement and did another job. Now I
need to take a break. I need to think about this.
I need to think about hockey. I do you think
about injustice? And when we come back, I'm going to
(35:57):
tell you what happens next. Little Attila, I'm gonna take
this damboni for a loop. Okay, So Gabby and Attila,
(36:26):
out of retirement, back at it again. Uh. They stole
almost forty four thousand dollars from the same bank that
they robbed the previous May. Boys are back in town.
This time though he used a gun. That's a one.
He escalated. He hadn't been doing that, never had to.
He fired three shots at a surveillance camera had pause
(36:49):
in there. Um. So in February of night they robbed
another bank, and in that case they told the employees
they had a bomb. They're getting desperate. But the bomb
was just two cigars wrapped with transistor radio wire to
a battery, a bullet cartridge, and the face of a
digital watch. It's a trust me. Don't touch it. It's fine.
(37:15):
Don't check. Don't check, guys, don't check. Um. The next
month they robbed another bank, but Attila then they used
a tank. This time he's wearing this long wool coat.
He's wearing a blonde wig and a beret, mixing it up. Glasses,
but he was really distracted because he'd recently broken up
(37:37):
with his girlfriend. His emotional time him getting dropped from
the hockey steal in his stealing the wigs he's wearing
all her. So because he's so distracted, he takes a
lot longer than the three minutes that they usually allotted,
And by the time they left the entrance outside was
surrounded by a group of who do you think I'm
(38:00):
gonna go with Jehovah's witnesses. No, wait a second, guess
Canadian tourists there for a whiskey thon so close vegetable vendors,
green grocers, so they there's this to do going on,
and all the vegetable nearby vegetable vendors surround the outside
and they're like, we're going to apprehend the whiskey robber.
(38:23):
Pickle peddlers and cucumber pushers trying to chase you down.
The cops are closing in Attila, he's got the gun.
He runs out and he shoots twice into the air
and then starts running and all the vendors are chasing him.
They chase the man who fired the gun in there
like this, well, and the guy in a heavy coat,
blond wig beret and glasses. It's like a Wes Anderson.
(38:48):
The green grocers follow him and then everyone goes running by.
I can see the shot well. A cops starts chasing
him too, and then with it ed Norton as the
cop yes it was. And then Attila carjack someone and
takes the car. They go on a high speed chase.
The car's windows get shot out American. He escaped, though
(39:08):
I had no doubt dollars uh. I don't know what
happened to Gabby. I guess Gabby went with him. Gabby
was in the wind on this one. Good. Let's check
back in on the hockey career, because it's not over,
thank good. I keep hoping that that's going to pull
him back to a life that is more fulfilling. Well,
he got his unpaid goalie job back at ut E,
(39:32):
but he was playing so badly and generally so drunk
that they told him not to come to practice for
a while. Just counted the game. He had just taken
up space here. But let's get back to the robberies. January,
Attila and Gabby they robbed another bank, but guard decided
to fight him like fist fight. Yeah, like over the toaster,
(39:54):
that free toaster. You can hate the money, but I'm
keeping the free toaster, he said, debate me. So the
guard is like grappling with them. He delays them enough
that he only takes about bucks from the register or
from the teller sorry, because this is a bank. Um,
so he gets about bucks. And now you know, these
(40:14):
two are getting low on money despite all their spending money,
like well, imagine they're living big, buying first pelts. They're
draped in pelts, uncured. So they decide, okay, you know what, Okay,
one more bank and then we call it quippause just
for us. Yeah. Well, they end up getting almost eighty
(40:35):
thou dollars off this one. But they took so long
to do it in there that the cops were like
they wanted the moment to laugh. Yeah, the cops were
on their way. The cops were almost there. Attila got away,
Gabby did not. Yeah, and the coach knows who hangs
out with his boy. Yeah, Attila doesn't know where Gabby is,
(40:56):
but he knows he doesn't have a lot of times.
He makes a break for it, and so he gets home.
He decides he's going to leave the country or just
you know, go to the mattresses as they say, right, yes,
that's what they do say. Help me check my crimical life.
Who does he take with him when he goes on
the run? Um the I don't know, the enforcer from
(41:21):
the hockey team. He took his Burmese mountain dog named Don.
I was close named Don Don. This is the first
mentioned of the dog in the coverage of it is
this And it's like, wait, hold on, why is this
not the first thing that's ever told about him. I
have a Burmese mountain dog named Don. Um so he
(41:42):
and Don took off and sped to the Romanian border.
I wonder what Don Don is named after. We're in
the late nineties and tiny bubbles, the tiny bubbles. It's
definitely not Don Johnson. It's probably not Donald could be
I mean it is Eastern Bloc. Yeah, but it's the
late nineties. Yeah, so I'm thinking, like, you know, and
(42:04):
it's probably not Donald Duck, probably not Donald Sutherland. Maybe
he missheard Dom DeLuise. There you go. I like that
he named his talk after Tom Deelwise, but he missheard it. Yeah,
uh so he uh it was actually a sports journalist
who first outed Attila publicly. Well, he figured, like, okay,
(42:25):
this robbery went down. I've been noticing that the goalie
is rich and he didn't show up. And he didn't
show up. There was a robbery today and he almost
got caught. And now, hold on a second. So he
starts like clocking all the stuff. Attila makes it to
the Romanian border. Um, but the guards were all waiting
for him. He tried to go over on the road.
(42:46):
He goes on the road and he shows up with
his passport. He's like coming to you know, don show
your passport, um, don want to see the hometown. Just
homesick um. So Attila immediately confesses to all of the robberies, uh,
twenty six of them at this point. And he even
(43:07):
told him like, these are the disguises that I wore.
Here's my look book, Here's how much I took. He
had laid it all out in all at this point,
he'd taken about six dred thousand dollars. And that's like
if you're exchanging the exchange rates for forens dollars um.
(43:27):
Over a thousand people stepped forward to adopt don. I
don't know what's going on. I'll taked on um. Attila
spent the next six months in a Budapest jail awaiting
his charges. He was split down the middle. Um. He
(43:47):
gave a bunch of interviews when he was in jail,
including to criminalis Um and that just like fortified his
whiskey robber pathology and made him a total folk hero
because he wasn't hurting people. It was just you know. Um. July,
they finally formally charge him. So besides the robberies, he
(44:07):
was accused of attempted murder because of the fire and
the gun uh and he um. You know it's bad
to fire guns around vegetable vendors. They're very sensitive people,
are you could have bruised the cabbage. Um. The morning
of July, he had this you know, usual routine. He's
led outside to the jail's exercise facilities. Zaren, I want
(44:31):
you to picture it. I'm going I'm going for to
come here. Attila is out in the yard. It's a
hot day. He's wearing heavy jeans and a long sleeve shirt.
At this prison, each inmates given a small private space
to work out in. There's a door that locks, but
the space is open to the sky. The guard locks
(44:53):
the door. Attila reaches under his clothes and pulls out
a rope that he's made from sheets, shoe paces, and towels.
He scales the wall, and just as he suspected would
be the case, there's no one in the guard tower
looking form, no one, no one on on watch. He
crosses the interior courtyard to the jail's administration building. Now,
(45:18):
his plan was to find an unlocked office on either
the first or second floor and then pop out the
window lower himself down with this amazing rope that he
has crafted. Um, but he hears people on those floors,
so he has to go up to the fourth floor.
Waight up to the fourth like on the outside of
the building. No, no, no, he's inside, and he's like,
(45:38):
I got to get to the outside of the jails
and find a window. Well, he has to go up
to the fourth floor. Um, the rope not long enough,
but you know, he didn't have a whole lot of options. Uh,
So he descends nearly fifty ft to the ground, severely
sprains both ankles, and then just rips his palms to shreds.
Like he just gets mess. He's basically just sliding down
(45:59):
a rope with his hands, taking all the s off
yea like shoe lace rope um. It was the first
time anyone had ever escaped from this jail before. So
with the help of a contact, he found an apartment
in Budapest. I don't know which side to hide out
in um, but first he had to celebrate with a
couple of beers. You know. He goes to a bar
(46:23):
and goes in the bathroom, gets rid of the clothes
you've been wearing, shaves his face, and then the bartender
like sees him and it's like, hey, are you a
whiskey robber shrugs. He's like, I get that a lot. Meanwhile,
good non answer at eleven am, because this is like
in the early and the first in the morning where
he's getting his workout. At eleven am, they put Budapest
(46:44):
on an emergency lockdown and it was the largest man
hunt in post communist Eastern Europe's history at this point. Yeah. So,
not long after his escape, his attorney makes a statement
and he says that he wants to an o ounce
that Attila would be at the center of an advertising
campaign for a new energy drink. Did I just have
(47:08):
a stroke? I was saying you're listening to you, and
I did none of that. Mads tense. So instead of
saying I've asked my client to turn himself, this is
a great misunderstanding, He's like, I'm glad you were all
gathered here today. A really important announcement. I want to
tell you about a new drink called Attila Pow. It's
a very rare brand partnership. It's there and he says, look,
(47:32):
promotional t shirts, buttons, souvenirs, they're already in production. An
alcoholic is the precursor to like vodka and Red Bull exactly.
It goes really well with whiskey. So they did. They
had all these promotional things in place, and there was
a partnership with like a Western European manufacturer and they're
going to distribute it. Um. So you know the attorney
(47:54):
is doing that. He obviously has the best attorney possum.
There's also a reward of one million four ins. That's
like about so for anyone who wants to help catch him,
Red Bull gives you wigs. Sorry, I was just thinking
(48:17):
I just need to rest in that from it, and
that was great. Um. So there's this one million fourans
reward for any help in catching him. Hungarians uninterested. They're like,
we're not helping you with this. Look what you you
bunched this up? Do I look like a snitch? Yeah?
Why you got to insult me? They're like chugging their
Attila juice and just looking like, look somewhere else. Pal
(48:37):
Attila calculated that he'd need between eighty five thousand and
a hundred and ten thousand dollars to start a new
life somewhere else, and he was considering Brazil. Always a
good choice, right, Argentina maybe so um, he didn't have
that kind of money. So what does he do? Steals it? Yeah,
end of July robs a bank. So he's on the run.
(48:58):
He robs a bank the best time to rob. And
my favorite is that he's like, Okay, everyone knows who
I am. I need this money. I'm going to go
back to a bank I've robbed before. I like the
comfort of it. They'll probably respect me. You know what
I do. They know what I'm working with. So he
goes in to this bank that he'd robbed previously, and
you know, they're just oh godly, and so he's like,
(49:21):
you know, can you heal your money? Open the safe
but the safe had been moved since he'd been there last,
so it was very confusing for him. And he was drunk.
He allegedly yells, you know who I am. I have
nothing to lose. I'm talking about care. He was only
able to get before he escaped. And how did he escape.
He swam across the Danube to an island to evade
(49:43):
the police, across which divides Buddha. And there we go.
September does it again. He gets, he buys a moped
and he drives the mop head to the bank. But
he's him murk. He drank an entire bottle of whiskey,
(50:03):
and he was so drunk that when he walked in,
the tellers started laughing. He's drooling, and he's like, I
can only keep one eye open. He's like, listen, I
love you guys so much. Don't give me the money please.
He only got two sixty bucks out of this one,
(50:27):
and the cops were like, you know, that's less than
the price of the scooter. That you've forgotten the parking lot,
and that you left your helmet on. He left the
keys in the moped. Everything he left the moped, keys, helmet, whatever,
So he gets less than that's worth. He's like, all right,
October rolls around him, gonna try it again, different bank.
He wears a baseball hat and jacket and brand new loafers.
(50:50):
You know, it's like your first day of school and
you just want to get fitted um the shoes, though
they sliced the back of his ankles so badly that
he had to abort the mission. He it back to
his apartment and he had to let his feet heal.
He's just like got his toad season some ice and
he's like, we should I should have broken these in.
(51:11):
Really I didn't think that through. He probably forgot to
like sand down roughen up the souls to these loafers
and sliding around. He's walking around his house and his
ice skates and don't hurt. A week later, he gives
himself a week to rest up. October eighteenth, he gets drunk.
He enters a bank. They're about fifteen customers. They're about
(51:33):
fifteen customers in there. He forgets again to put the
clothes sign on the door. So by the time the
robberies in progress, forty new people have entered, singing closing
time time. Do you give me all the money you
guys that deserves an arrest. Um. It took him sixteen minutes.
That's a long time, but he got two dollars. He
(51:57):
got away, yeah, well kind of yeah. He leaves right
when the cops are getting there, and he would have
been they would have gotten there sooner, but the two
separate police cars got an unrelated accidents on the way over,
and so he gets out the back. He's outside, he's running,
he's looking for a place to hide. He jumps um
(52:18):
into a nearby back yard. He jumps a fence, but
he falls head first over the fence and he breaks
two of his fingers and knocks himself unconscious. So he
spent the night in the yard and the next morning
he gets but he's wakes up unconscious, Yes, and like
(52:40):
a dog lookscept sniffs on him, peas on him, goes
back inside. He goes back to his apartment and the
next morning he thought he got away with it, but
in the whole kerf fluffle, he dropped his phone card
and police were able to trace a call to his
Transylvanian apartment owner, who was in the process of getting
(53:01):
Attila a new passport, and they figured out where he
was hiding. So October Attila is cooking his friend the
thank you dinner, thank you for being a friend, and
the Budapest police arrive. Um, they arrest him. He had
been on the lamp for a hundred and nine days
at this point, and so in all over the course
(53:23):
of six years, he committed twenty nine successful robberies, one unsuccessful.
Um he stole around one point nine million four iNTS,
which is about UM eight hundred and forty thousand dollars
in exchange rate in today would be almost one point
five million dollars UM. Sewing all that drunk. Yeah, like
(53:45):
other bank robbers just must hear this story and just
hang their heads. He was just consistent. It was like
trying to get on the hockey team. He's consistent. He's
just gonna keep hammering at it. Just showed up, success, success,
showing up. So but here he gets arrested. They're not
going to put him back in the jail. Instead, they
housed him in a government building. Quote in a special
all glass cage built five years earlier for the country's
(54:08):
most notorious serial killer, Magda Marinko, a convicted butcher of
four Wow, So they actually put him in like a
life size whiskey ball. They put him in like a
bond villain or a life sized whiskey. They poured him
on in Um, he's licking the bottom of it. He
was charged with sixty counts of robbery. He was charged
(54:29):
with attempted murder. He was charged with violations of personal
freedom for the people that he temporarily held against their will.
Dimly charged with the abuse of a green grocer. Yes,
he played guilty to all the robberies, and he was
mad though he was mad about attempted murder. He's like,
I didn't aim that at any It was just you know,
(54:50):
with all this booze, right is livers all who um
he The trial lasted six months. There were seventy witnesses, everyone,
everyone turned up for it, and despite asking the judge
for leniency, in December of two thousand he was sentenced
to fifteen years in a maximum security prison. And that's
(55:12):
more than at that point what murders were getting. Um.
He was acquitted on the attempted murder charges, but found
guilty on forty six robbery charges. The prosecution and the
defense both appealed to the Hungarian Supreme Court, like no
one's happy here. There are no winners. The court like
they agree prosecutions appealing, like, yeah, damn it, give me
(55:33):
another shot. Well, I guess because they wanted the attempted murder.
The court is like, you know what, No, we're going
to acquit him of the attempted murder. But let's put
two more years on this. Let him steal. He won't.
He's drunk. He got out of prison in January. Welcome back,
and he is going to hunt me down. And he
was released early for being for good behavior. And today
(55:56):
he works in ceramics. He learned how to, you know,
throw pottery in prison. He sells his pottery at art
fairs and around hungry and he does workshops. He's also
on Instagram. Can I get some of his well, he's
You can buy his stuff through Instagram. His handle is
at t E Underscore r E A L Underscore v
(56:21):
I s z k I S the real VIC. I
don't know. I'm not smart enough to know the how
to say the last word. Um, you can buy his wares.
I want a mug. He does these ceramic fake whiskey bottles.
Oh yeah, he's does he sign him? Can I get
like a custom piece? I bet? I bet what's your
(56:41):
ridiculous takeaway on this, Oh man, my ridiculous takeaway. Look
what you know a wig can do for a man's confidence?
You know this. You put him on a hockey ice,
couldn't even stand up. You give him a wig all
of a sudden, and he's like, you know what, Suddenly,
now I can do the rhymes that have only dreamed
of six Sampson. Yeah, exactly. So you know you care
(57:04):
about a man who's having a little bit of a problem,
Maybe get him a wig, Get him a fright wig
about fun, mix it up, not just one wig. If
that doesn't work, get him some whiskey. Let's just try
it all. I think Attila is the apex ridiculous criminals
so far in our young show. Really well, he doesn't
hurt people. He don's silly disguises. He does stuff like
(57:25):
rob the same place twice, or rob a place because
they messed up his travel arrangement. He has a ridiculously
unhealthy relationship with alcohol. He can't play hockey, but somehow
also plays it professionally. Uh. He is the living embodiment
of my grandma's advice of act like you know, and
he just bungles his way to success. Plus he gets
(57:48):
extra points for owning a dog and naming that dog
don because human names for dogs. That's the way to go.
You've made your case. Thank you. That's my takeaway. That's excellently.
I'm done here. I'm over here, sweat dripping delicious, right
are you dizzy? Dizzy, delicious and drunk? It's amazing. Thank you,
thank you, thank you all, thank you, thank you, thanks you.
(58:11):
With the academy. Um, that's it. So you can find
us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram.
Do you have a tip for us about a ridiculous
crime you'd like to hear about. Do you want to
confess to a ridiculous crime? And when I say like
a crime crime, give it to me, give me good crime? Uh?
Stuff that like you're going to confess it and pray
(58:32):
I don't pass it on to the authority. Yeah. Like
if you and your grandfather once I had like a
pot field and then you had to rob a bank
to be able to afford to get the pot field market,
that's a ridiculous that's no no one dead, no one hurt,
but ridiculous. But like, legitimately you could have been arrested.
Email at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Tune in
next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
(58:57):
Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Kusten. The Transylvanian
Terror researches by Austrian pelp magn Marissa Brown. The theme
song is by Hungarian hustler Thomas Lee and Romanian renegade
Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Buddha Volan and Noel
pest Brownde. Say It one more Time, We Dequeous. Ridiculous
(59:26):
Crime is a production of iHeart Radio. Four more podcasts
to my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. How
does Zarin? What's up, Elizabeth? You know it's ridiculous, Oh girl,
do I? Okay. So there's this movie called The Conqueror.
How much you've ever heard of it? Okay? So it
stars John Wayne as Mongolian Conqueror. Oh I've actually seen that? Yeah, okay,
(00:20):
So it's like a vie. It is known as the
deadliest movie ever. It's terrible. Oh yeah, it's definitely bad.
You know why I was also deadliest? Well, they filmed
it in Nevada. That was supposed to be the desert
that's supposed to take place for Central Asia, and the
desert that they filled it in was right where the
Department of Energy was doing nuclear tests open air above
(00:41):
ground nuclear tests. So by night one of the two
d and twenty cast members had contracted cancer. What and uh?
Then forty six of them died. This includes Agnes Moorehead
from Bewitched fame, John Wayne obviously Susan Hey, we're a
bunch of the stars of the film. It's considered the
(01:03):
deadliest film ever because they filmed on a nuclear testing site.
And he also did the same thing with You Are
Yellow ribbon apparently, but is that maybe uh, sort of
bad mojo from doing yellow Face. That's what I'm just
saying is it was a cursed film all the way around.
It's bad. It was a ridiculous idea for a film,
and a ridiculous place to shoot a film, and a
(01:24):
terrible recovery of like you know what happened after? That's crazy?
That is you know what that is straight up ridiculous. Yeah,
that's ridiculous. You know what else is ridiculous? But you
got one for me. Hit me with it. Bad wigs,
getting drunk and wearing bad wigs. Okay, my jam, getting
drunk and wearing bad wigs and robbing banks. I have
yet to do this. I'm Elizabeth Dutton, and joining me
(02:05):
is Zarin Burnett. I'm just letting you know you're joining me.
And this is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and
outrageous capers, heists, cons It's always murder free and one ridiculous, Zaren, Elizabeth,
You and I often find ourselves rooting for criminals who
(02:26):
are entertaining and don't hurt anyone. That's yes, that's kind
of my motto, my mantra, my jam. If you will
I feel like I've hit the jackpot here. Um. This
guy's story that I'm gonna tell you today is delicious.
It makes me dizzy. I want to tell you, I
want to tell you the story about the whiskey robber,
Attila and Bruce. I would never have known about this
(02:50):
king if it wasn't for listener Alex w emailed us
the hot tip. I need to start with a little
historical background before we dive in them. Please set the stage,
of course, so as you know, the nation of Hungary was,
following the defeat of the Nazis in World War Two,
a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Yes, behind the
Iron Curtain. We were establishing that. We know that, yeah. Um.
(03:14):
From the sixties to the eighties it was had some
like free market introduced into the economy. Um, and it
was referred to as the happiest barrack in the Eastern Block.
The happiest barrack in the Eastern not the happiest place
on Earth, the happiest barrack in the Eastern Block. They
had a really high well not really, they had a
higher standard of living. Things were a little bit looser
(03:36):
in terms of travel and expression compared to East Berlin
and Ze Republic. Hungarian art and culture is already so
lush and elegant. Um. So they kind of resisted the
brutalism as communism and so the highest standard of living
makes sense. It wasn't something that they would want to
ever reject, so it was easy for them to kind
(03:58):
of keep keep in their pockets. So in the eighties
we had a global recession and that made times tough,
and because even the Soviets got hit with it, um,
and it kind of opened people's mind in the Eastern
Bloc satellite what would you call them Soviet states, um,
(04:19):
it opened their mind to the possibility of revolution. So
this is like when they were falling in love with
rock and rolling beligions and Coca cola. UM and so uh.
In Hungary dipped out of the Soviet Union. They were
one of the first. Yeah. So like before the scorpions
were singing, winds have changed before their bella like us
(04:41):
saying um. And so the eight nine they dip out,
and that kicked off the chain reaction through the Eastern
Bloc that eventually led to the fall of communism. The
exit was peaceful, as it was in many of these
UM all of them, and it eventually, you know, leads
to the fall of communism, rings about serious economic trouble. However,
(05:03):
because Soviet subsidies went away, so everything is also privatized
like basically overnight, and then prices wildly changed exactly. So
that's just a quick primer to get you situated. Thank
you in the landscape for catching me up on Hungary's
recent history. It's very base, completely surface level assessment, all
(05:25):
pre Victor or Bon. Yes. And so this brings us
to Attila and Bruce the whiskey robber. He comes from tough,
tumultuous times, hard living. People had to get creative to survive.
Howdy duty was he creative? I was hoping Romanian culture.
(05:47):
I need you to do a little imagination exercise with me.
Should I maybe close my eye? I want you to
close your as as a close girl. It's January twenty two, Budapest, hungry.
(06:08):
You're at the post office on Village Street, and that's
on the Buddha side of Budapest by the way. Well,
you know, the Danube splits it into Buddha, and I
did not know that. Actually I did not know that.
That's great, though I'm not making that up. I know,
I totally believe. I've never heard that before. The trees
(06:30):
are bear It's just like the post office is on
a typical Hungarian tree lined boulevard, wide boulevard on the
trees are bare. Just before closing time at the post
office January. You've just run in after work to pay
your electric bill. I'm always running late. It's a common
thing in Hungary and in many parts of Europe. You
can pay your bills in cash at the post office.
(06:51):
So that's why you're there. Uh. You know, you're making
small talk with the ladies in the shop. You leave
the shop and you pass another man walking in. It's
got a big mustache. He's wearing a very obviously cheap,
long brown wig. And you know, who are you to judge?
Just let him do his thing. I mean, you're wearing
(07:13):
ladies panties under your quarter right pants, so I don't
use to say they've fit in front of my shoe.
So there you are. He's got the wig on. He's
also wearing like a bright red pointy ski hat that
has ear flaps, and it's cold. We'll give him that. Um.
(07:35):
You look down at his feet, they're enormous, like clown feet. Yeah,
but then you notice when he's walking, it's not that
his feed are enormous. The shoes are enormous and they're
way too big. And he reeks of whiskey as he
walks by. So you know, you're just a responsible guy
paying your bill. You look over it an old man
or an old like you know man walking by, and
(07:56):
you kind of raise your eyebrows at him, and then
you pull your collar up on your coat and you
just go off into the cold Hungarian evening. Yeah. Now,
this guy, he gets to the door of the shop
and this bewigged man. He tries to enter, but a
woman who works there stops him, and she says, look,
we're closed. You gotta come back. He said, no, I
gotta send a letter to my girlfriend. I have to
(08:19):
do it. No gotta come back monday is it's a Friday.
I think gotta come back Monday morning. He pushes her
aside and enters the post office. From his coat pocket,
he produces a small toy gun and he raises it
into the air. This is an armed robbery. Now the
cashier just stares at him. She's annoyed because he she
can see it's a toy guns. Yellow. Yeah, it's like
(08:42):
a squirre gun. And actually it was a cap gun,
so it kind of looks but she can tell. I
mean she's around the block, she's you know, uh, and
he's totally drunk. So she's just like, are you for
real right now? I'm not worried? This is what you do.
Um shoves her out of the way, nearly tripping over
his clown shoes, goes behind the counter, and another woman
(09:04):
who works there says, where are you doing this? And
he says, shut up, please instant regret. So then what
does he do? He pulls a Joe Camel Duffel bag
out of his coat pocket and empties the contest of
the register into it his coat pockets, and then he
demands that these women open the safe and they do
(09:28):
and it's empty. Yeah, So the man turns and he
just runs from the shop and he stops only to
pull a combination lock out of his pocket. There are
so many things in his pockets, and he locks the
door to the store from the outside and takes off.
How he's running in these shoes, I don't know. He's
sprinting down the road the giant shoes. He rips off
(09:49):
his hat and his wig tosses him in a trash can.
He pulls a disposable razor out of his endless coat pocket,
spits into his hand and like rubs it on his lip,
and he proceeds to shade his mustache while running down
the street. This is just like I'm imagining, like the
Benny Hill music playing in the background, like banjo scramble.
(10:12):
I'm imagine James Brown. He makes it all the way
to his apartment, locks the door behind him, empties the
contents of the Joe camelbag onto the kitchen table. It's
five yeah, five thousand, four iNTS, which is about six grand.
Attila Ambrose has just committed his first robbery. That was first.
(10:34):
That was Baby's first robbery. How did we get here?
How did he become this desperate, ridiculous criminals running down
the street. So here's a little bio. Mattila born in
a tiny village outside of a small town called Chicks
being in Hungary. That's a very common name. I mean,
(10:58):
I know, but still just keeping it traditional. Yeah, I know.
The hunt, He's like the Hunt of huns Um. Yeah.
Chick c is a tiny little village in Transylvania. And
he lives in a smaller village outside this town. Um
the area is technically a part of Romania's. Yeah, but
(11:18):
he speaks Hungarian is his first language. He considers himself
Hungarian and but also really proudly Transylvanian Wallachia, like they're
like their own little like region where they're going to say,
we're not really part of either Romania or Hungry we
are Wallachia. If you say so, I'm just saying that
one of those areas, it's all shifting sands, right, you know,
it's so um the village that he lives in, no cars,
(11:43):
no electricity, no running water. Can I get a place?
It's essentially he lives in a field right next to before.
So he got into a lot of trouble as a kid.
When he was seven, he got arrested for quote, climbing
too high in a tree. Really looking for crimes, aren't they?
There's nothing in this town. There's a tree. He's like
(12:04):
his house, get out of there. Gets in trouble for
racing a horse, like literally he was running horse. He um.
He had a hockey scholarship to a nearby boarding school,
but he got expelled for short circuiting the electricity on
exam day. But he doesn't know electricity from Adam. What
(12:24):
does he know? Well, he grew up with no electricities,
like totally did well, because he later admits in an interview,
he says, saying that I was a kleptomaniac is an understatement.
I took everything that wasn't made a concrete He's honest.
He got excommunicated from his small Catholic church after he
(12:47):
ate a bunch of Communion wafers, drank a bottle of
Communion wine, and then was found passed out on the
altar by a priest. Drunk. On God sixteen, he stole
musical instruments from a popular local wedding band. Yeah, and
then he gets released. He goes into the army for
about sixteen months, and then he comes back to his
(13:08):
town avoid prison time. Yeah, I think. So he's sixteen. Um,
there's nothing, no work in the town, and so um,
life for Transylvanians in Romania at the time was getting
more and more oppressive. So he decides, I'm going to Hungary.
He gets a job is what's called a church painter
in near the Romanian Hungarian border, and this job was
(13:32):
specifically given to people trying to cross over from Romania
to Hungary because the church provided like the tallest place
to look for on routes. So you know, you could
go there and be like, yeah, i'll paint the church,
wink wink, and you work there for a little bit
and then you coordinate to go to the next stop,
the next stop. Oh that's smart. I was thinking, like,
we let him paint and we just pray. You know. Well,
(13:54):
I think that happened to Um. So at this time
they're both Soviet satellite states, Romanian hung Hungry of course,
more progressive, very appealing. Um. After a couple of weeks
working at the church, he makes it across and he
enters Hungary. October. He has just turned twenty one years old.
Congratulations exactly. So cracks are showing in the Eastern Bloc
(14:21):
and people are starting to realize that peaceful revolution is possible.
As I mentioned earlier, he's twenty one. Um. Now, as
I mentioned he was. When he was a kid, he
played hockey and so well, yeah, I had a scholarship,
but the last time he played was when he was fifteen. Yeah,
but he was pretty good at him from what everyone
When you have a passion, you never let it die.
(14:42):
It's in the body, in the muscle memory, and that's
that's how he was feeling. So he called up Hungary's
championship pro hockey team Ute and asked them to play
like just literally was like, what's up? He went to it,
goes to a pay phone, calls the facility, says, can
I speak to the general manage? Guy gets on the phone.
This is what he says to him. Hello, comrade, I'm
(15:04):
Attila Ambruce from Transylvania. I'm a goalie and i'd like
to try up straight up. The manager thinks he's getting pranked,
so he's like, now, come on now, and he realizes, well,
first of all, he's using this construction of comrade, and
like he sounds like he's got like a rural accent
to him. So he's all right, we know what we
actually kind of do need a goalie. I'll pick you
(15:26):
up tomorrow and you can come to practice. So he
picks Attila up. Attila has no equipment zero, I mean,
don't forget well he doesn't. He didn't bring anything with
him and they fled essentially a refugee, so I'm not
expecting him to have his full ice kig. The amount
of equipment he had was equal to the amount of
skill that he had. So he doesn't make the team,
(15:48):
but they love his moxie. Yeah, they like the spark
in this guy, so they give him a job as
a janitor slash zamboni driver slash handyman job. Can I
just say that right now and let him sleep in
a closet like job comes with your own requorters and
(16:08):
so he then he winds up getting kicked out of
that closet because he got drunk and he crashed the
zamboni into the closet just you know it, just doing donuts.
He was, you know, ghost riding the whip drunk driving
his zamboni is awesome. Let me just say that. But
they didn't fire him. They just wouldn't let him sleep
there anymore. So he's like, what am I going to do?
(16:30):
I need money for a place to live. So he
gets a side gig as a grave digger. He's like,
what is the most ridiculous thing I could do? Grave digging? Um.
In the meantime, the team made him the unpaid second
string goalie, so they basically just said, like, here have
a promotional T shirt. So He's like the rudy of
their hot He never misses a practice, never really played,
(16:53):
and it frustrated him. So he quits his janitor gig
in pro in protest, but he stays on as the
unpaid goalie. So he finds odd jobs. He sells expensive
pens door to door. Um. He manages to meet this
woman who comes from really rich family, and he goes
on a ski vacation to Austria with this family. The
(17:14):
owner of the hotel there knew a little bit of
Hungarian and when he found out that Attila was from Transylvania,
he asked Attila to smuggle pelts for him, like for
like first, yeah, but not like to make not for
like a furrier to make coats. He wanted like bear skinned,
boar skin, deer like rugs and stuff and the hotel
yeah exactly. So Attila goes back to Transylvania and his
(17:38):
uncle connects him with a pelt dealer. I mean, whose
uncle doesn't know a pelt dealer? Come on now, uh
that he drives. He then drives eight and fifty miles
on crappy roads back to Austria, paying off border guards
along the way with a trunk full of bear skin
and uh, he did this over and over again. It
was making really good money. He was also spending really
(18:00):
good money. He got a taste of it. Um. He
owed a lot of money by and he was totally
ready to call it quits on the smuggling game, but
he owed this money. So he's like, I got one
last run. But it gets canceled because all the border
guards that he'd been bribing got fired them, all of them.
(18:20):
And he had that side gig of selling pens door
to door, fancy pens. Someone broke into his car and
stole all the pens. So he's like desperate, he needs
cash and he needs it quick. And that's where we
met him at the post office that day in the
winter of nine. Ah, so he just borrowed the shoes,
grabbed like a Joe. Cammell looked around and was like,
(18:44):
I need money. So let's take a break here, listen
to some advertisements. I know that you know. I've kept
you waiting on that because they're your favorite part of
the show. It's why I'm here. Yeah. Um, when we
come back, I'll tell you more about how Attila blossomed
into a truly ridiculous criminal nice. I'm gonna get cozy
and listen to these ads. Okay. So when we last met,
(19:26):
I was talking about Attila am Bruce, Attila the Ambers,
and he had a bunch of debt that he had
to pay off because he'd had crazy living due to
his pelt smuggling, living high on that fur money. And
he robbed a post office with a Joe camel bag
and a fright wig and clown shoes. So he stole
(19:46):
enough in that heist to pay off his debts. But
you know what, he's not going to give up his lifestyle.
He wants more. So a couple of months later he
hits another post office. No weapons, no weapon, just bluster.
Yeah yeah, he's just all bravado um. And from there
he moves on to travel agents. He's hitting cash businesses
(20:08):
and I would have never thought travel I know. Well,
here's the thing. He targets one Mayne. He went to
a travel agent to rob it, specifically because he was
mad at travel agencies, and that's because he'd had he'd
taken this trip to Tunisia and they messed it up,
and he was just like, you know what, all of
(20:29):
you guys pox on your house, bunch, of scam. So
he's like, can't really remember where the one was that
sold him the bum tickets. He's like, well there's a
travel agent. Good enough slap him. So he goes in.
He robs a travel agency. Uh what does he get
like travelers checks? Like, what do you cash? They have cash? Well, yeah,
that wasn't I think that they weren't really running on
(20:50):
a lot of credit there. So people are using cash
for a large amounts Yeah, packages, okay, so um. The
Hungarian tabloid covered this theft and said, quote, well wish
he robbed the place. Quote, While wishing the office manager
all the best and kissing her hand, he swiftly left
the office. What a gentleman, Just shut up? Please money, darling.
(21:15):
So he gets away with twelve thou o. He's doubling. June.
Next month he robs his first bank graduated look at
this every time. Going up. August, he robs another post
office with a fellow Transylvanian hockey teammate is his accomplice.
(21:37):
He's like, hey, Bud, I got a little hometown tried.
Let's do this. Take off these gates and follow me
to this come with me. They have electricity. Um, they
get thirty six thousand dollars off of that one, so
they got you know, eighteen apiece. Um. You're probably thinking
to yourself, well, what's going on with his hockey career?
I was, I was just wondering, what did you get
like a rookie card um. A few months after teaming
(21:58):
up to hit the post office um with his teammate,
in October nine, Attila sees his very first ice time nice.
The team was up fourteen to nothing when he came
on the ice. Hockey comes on the ice, he gives
up three goals, but they still win because they were
up by fourteen. A few days after that, after his debut,
(22:21):
he robs again, this time another travel agency. And he
does it so tell Anger to work out. He's just processing.
It's part of his journey. This is what he considers therapy.
He goes to a crowded train station where there's a
travel agency and he does this during rush hour. It's like,
what would be the most ridiculous time. He's wearing a wig,
(22:41):
but of course the employees so they just started screaming
and people gathered outside. He got away, but he didn't
get money, so they started screaming before he had even
like said, hey, here's my pop gun. And well I
think he like he said, you know, this is a
stick up, and they're just and then because it's a
crowd station, they're like, what's going on there in the
(23:02):
travel agency? Um? But so he gets away December ninety three,
so that was October December ninety three. He finally gets
his revenge and he steals about from the original travel
agency that wronged him. That clears the deck is on
that February, he dresses as a businessman and he attempts
(23:23):
his first solo bank robbery. Oh yeah, he successfully takes
about dollars first time effort. March strikes again. He gets
bucks from another bank. What is he spending this on?
He had a gambling problem. He liked the drink, yeah,
(23:45):
and he liked to go to Tunisia, and so he
likes Tunisia, the ponies and a good whiskey. He does
another travel agency in July nine. Um dressed as a businessman,
puts on a wig. This time. He had a couple
of drinks at a nearby bar to comms nerves beforehand,
but he got so drunk that he forgot to put
up the closed sign and the agency's entrance after he
(24:06):
walked in, so like people just kept walking in, like, hey,
kind of curious about your next let me finish like
these timing year. Um, So one of the agents rings
a silent alarm. Are people still going to take a terra?
They agent rings a silent alarm, and then he can't
access the safe. Um and as he's leaving, though he
(24:29):
does get money. He gets as he's leaving, the cops
are there, but they're entering the adjacent building that has
the same address that's a supermarket because they think that's
what's getting robbed. They're like, who would rob a travel technically?
January he robbed his next bank, scored over with that.
(24:51):
One July he steals another twenty grand from another bank,
just ping pawing in between banks. He's like freelancing where
he's just get sees these checks and just keeps, you know,
living his life. Bills are yeah, basically um. When he
steals the twenty thousand from another bank that they had
(25:11):
surveillance video and so a still framed photo of him
was published in the newspapers and featured on a local
crime show called Sounds Amazing. Um, he's wearing the wig
and he wore a wig specifically that resembled the lead
detective on the case, like because he was annoyed the
(25:31):
detective had called him quote unquote lucky in an interview,
and he's like, no, this ain't luck, baby, and you
want to see luck, So Hi, how about this? Luck?
Is what I do on the ice, skill is how
I bring the ridiculousness. So yeah, he's like, sees this
guy's like mullet or whatever. It's like, totally, I'm styling
my wig like that. You imagine him like he's got
the wig like on one of those like mannequin heads.
(25:52):
He's like cutting the mullid looking at the photos, cutting
the mull looking at the photo. Okay, now, very perfect,
perfect son. So that just of course really cheeses off
the detective. Um. But wait, hold on hockey career. At
this time, he actually gets named U t s starting goalie.
(26:15):
But he was so stressed out about being caught that
he started playing really really badly, even for him. In
a six game stretch, he gave up goals. It's like,
seasons I could do better than I just lay across
in front of the net and just take my hits.
(26:36):
You could just go back and forth post to post
and do a better job. Just a random luck. When
you gave up twenty three goals in one game, how
many did he score on his own? Just like I
just knocked this one and I'm tired. I bet I
bet that some of them were. I need a break.
Go ahead. So he leads his team to a zero
to three loss. Um. But let's get back to the criming, right,
(27:00):
just a little time out On that one March, Attila
robs another post office gets around six. I'm he's glad.
He's good at something. Now back at u t E
at the team, they have a new coach and he
has a kid. The kid's name is Gabby. Gabby orbon
(27:20):
like Victor, so Gabby is the son of the new coach.
He's also a teammate because apparently if you if you're related,
get out there on the ice. Um. He had been
hanging around Attila because Attila's got money. They don't make
money on this team, like they make pennies. It's like,
what you know, I want to hang out with this dude. Um.
(27:42):
He befriends him, and then in the summer of ninety six,
Untila finally relents and it's like, all right, let me
tell you my secret, my secret to success wigs. And
so they're like, let's do this, And there was a
montage and music and they ran through the streets buying collections,
draws back the curtain, giant shoes. In August, they robbed
(28:04):
a post office together. Now, in this case, Attila was
pretty drunk by the time they arrived at the post office.
I like that, like whiskey is his dumbost feather. He's like,
I don't believe in me, give me a couple of whiskey. Well,
he shows up drunk and an employee recognizes him immediately,
(28:26):
and it's also like, you guys, it's a warm sunny day.
It's a little suspicious that you have raincoats on. So
these two drunks and raincoats, not three boys in one raincoat.
Two drunks and each of their own. This is a
stick up. So the employee calls the cops and it's like,
we got we got the whiskey robber up in here,
and he's talking about his his goaltending. The operator thinks
(28:46):
it's a joke. When they help, we have the whiskey
robber in this post office. She's like, yeah, you do,
weren't weren't um, So she tells the employe, look, if
you want to be serious, call back and hangs up
on the employee. Well, at the same time, Attila and
Gabby are like, everybody away from the phone's everybody in
the corner. This is a stick up. So the phone
(29:07):
starts ringing and no one answers, and instead of being like,
oh snap, I think there's something to float at the
post office, the operators like nothing going on. There must
be busy. If it was real, you would call back.
I won't even answer the phone. Ain't got nobody today.
I come on now. Attila and Gabby get away with
thirty four thou dollars in that case. Uh. And it
(29:28):
was after this incident that the press gave Attila the
nickname the Whiskey Robbers. So I guess before they're like,
you know it was the drunk Yeah, the guy with
the wig and the drink um. And so he gets
that name because like bars that are near the robberies
are reporting a disguised man downing drinks right before the
thefts take place, and they're like, there's this guy wearing
(29:51):
a wig. He came in, he had a bunch of whiskey.
I don't want to be judging, but you know, and
he's not showing up sober to these bars. There's another
reason he's drawing attention to himself because he rolls up
having pre partied with the Joe camel Bag at home,
and then it's just like getting loose at the bar.
He just needs a couple of to top off his energy. Yeah,
so now he's referred to as the whiskey robber. He's
(30:13):
high profile baby. So September, the Dynamic Duo, that gruesome tosome.
They robbed a bank and took just about fifty grand
a bank. These are they're doing numbers. He's getting pretty good.
November they robbed another bank. He's getting boring at this point.
(30:33):
They dressed for this robbery. They dressed in wigs and
trench coats. Keep it fresh. Well, he's he's can't Attila
wearing a wig, wearing a trench coat, drunk as a skunk.
Just as as they're about to begin this robbery, Attila
realizes that he forgot to bring a bag to put
the money in. He doesn't have his Joe camel bag,
(30:54):
doesn't even have anything. So he's like hold on. He
runs to a nearby supermarket and he buys a loaf
of bread and they put it into bag for him,
and then he runs to the bank. He goes in.
They robbed the bank at ninety grand, put it in
the bag, and he leaves the bread in the safe
even trade, even trade. What was going on in his
(31:17):
hockey life? You're wondering enough with the criming, so he's
good at robbing. How is the goaltending? Well later that evening,
after that robbery, but the bread robbery and hockey practice,
he was so drunk at that point that he missed
like a super easy goal in A frustrated teammate got
so mad that he hit him in the head with
(31:39):
his hockey stick. And then the report I read was
he hit him, to quote so hard that a nail
from Attila's helmet lodged inside his skull. Attila hardly noticed
a nail from his That's what jumped out, like, great,
guy's got a nail in his skull, He's pickled. Whatever
(32:00):
what is going on with a nail in the helmet?
And they mean like a metal nail, not like a fingernail.
Right now, like a metal nail went into a skull
in Soviet Russia nail hammers. You what is going on
with that that the teammate is so mad at the
drunk goalie just beat him us and Antila is just
(32:23):
like sitting there all how drawing. So January robs another
bank Grand March. This litany is incredible. He robs he
had another bank. This time they dressed as cops and
they were like, you know, we found we heard that
(32:45):
there's some smuggling going on. There's some business. Yeah, sure,
it's all legit. So they're like, fulled you, we're not cops.
Were the robbers put it in there? Fifty two grand?
Off they go. So the cops are rushing to that
bank and they're already gone. Attila and Gabby went to
(33:06):
grab lunch. So they got lunch while the cops were
like descending on the bank like oh my god, he
hit again, and the people are all traumatized in there.
So they're grabbing lunch, and then they went to a
post office on the other side of town, and we're like, look,
we're dressed for it, we might as well just you
got a minute, Yeah, what do you think? So they
like they actually they in this case, they were dressed
(33:27):
as cops. They changed their they had a costume change,
so um they put on suits, long wigs and baseball caps.
So it's like zz top um and they stole twenty
two grand, so that's a two for those are athletes.
These are endurance athletes though. The performance this is what
(33:51):
peak performance looks like. So at the next robbery April,
he and Gabby only managed to steal about a two
hundred dollars because the bank had just handed off most
of its cash to an armored vehicle. I can't win
them all. Bad timing, kind of like how he is
on the ice. Um the following month way more money.
(34:11):
So they've got their outfits on business suits and wigs. Um.
They stole one hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars from
a Budapest bank. Yeah. Um the bills the police had requested,
Hey listen, you got a lot of cash on hand,
let's mark the bills. They're like, sure, they marked the bills.
The problem was is that banks and post offices didn't
(34:33):
have an ability to read the marks. They just put
smiley faces on there, so they were like and no
one knows to look for it to like, oh look
that's that's kind of smile face on. That's funny. Right. Yeah,
so they're able to pass the money, no, no problem,
they can't be tracked. Um Now, Attila, after this huge hall,
he's like, you know what that was it? That was
(34:54):
my final bow. Yeah, he's like, but hold on, what's
going on at the hockey career that year? Despite his
dedication until it was dropped from the hockey team? What
this out of all the stuff you told me, this
is just not that injustice? This is just wrong. How
did he find out the beatings he's endured. He found
(35:16):
out because he was reading the paper and he saw
the team's roster and his name wasn't on it. Yeah,
he did manage to get a spot on the team's
cross town rival, but the teammates didn't like him and
it didn't last. Um so December, n right, just a
couple of months later. Uh, he's They're like, you know what, hey,
(35:37):
Gabby Gabs, I'm a little short on cash. Let's come
out of retirement. Let's do this. And they did. They
came out of retirement and did another job. Now I
need to take a break. I need to think about this.
I need to think about hockey. I do you think
about injustice? And when we come back, I'm going to
(35:57):
tell you what happens next. Little Attila, I'm gonna take
this damboni for a loop. Okay, So Gabby and Attila,
(36:26):
out of retirement, back at it again. Uh. They stole
almost forty four thousand dollars from the same bank that
they robbed the previous May. Boys are back in town.
This time though he used a gun. That's a one.
He escalated. He hadn't been doing that, never had to.
He fired three shots at a surveillance camera had pause
(36:49):
in there. Um. So in February of night they robbed
another bank, and in that case they told the employees
they had a bomb. They're getting desperate. But the bomb
was just two cigars wrapped with transistor radio wire to
a battery, a bullet cartridge, and the face of a
digital watch. It's a trust me. Don't touch it. It's fine.
(37:15):
Don't check. Don't check, guys, don't check. Um. The next
month they robbed another bank, but Attila then they used
a tank. This time he's wearing this long wool coat.
He's wearing a blonde wig and a beret, mixing it up. Glasses,
but he was really distracted because he'd recently broken up
(37:37):
with his girlfriend. His emotional time him getting dropped from
the hockey steal in his stealing the wigs he's wearing
all her. So because he's so distracted, he takes a
lot longer than the three minutes that they usually allotted,
And by the time they left the entrance outside was
surrounded by a group of who do you think I'm
(38:00):
gonna go with Jehovah's witnesses. No, wait a second, guess
Canadian tourists there for a whiskey thon so close vegetable vendors,
green grocers, so they there's this to do going on,
and all the vegetable nearby vegetable vendors surround the outside
and they're like, we're going to apprehend the whiskey robber.
(38:23):
Pickle peddlers and cucumber pushers trying to chase you down.
The cops are closing in Attila, he's got the gun.
He runs out and he shoots twice into the air
and then starts running and all the vendors are chasing him.
They chase the man who fired the gun in there
like this, well, and the guy in a heavy coat,
blond wig beret and glasses. It's like a Wes Anderson.
(38:48):
The green grocers follow him and then everyone goes running by.
I can see the shot well. A cops starts chasing
him too, and then with it ed Norton as the
cop yes it was. And then Attila carjack someone and
takes the car. They go on a high speed chase.
The car's windows get shot out American. He escaped, though
(39:08):
I had no doubt dollars uh. I don't know what
happened to Gabby. I guess Gabby went with him. Gabby
was in the wind on this one. Good. Let's check
back in on the hockey career, because it's not over,
thank good. I keep hoping that that's going to pull
him back to a life that is more fulfilling. Well,
he got his unpaid goalie job back at ut E,
(39:32):
but he was playing so badly and generally so drunk
that they told him not to come to practice for
a while. Just counted the game. He had just taken
up space here. But let's get back to the robberies. January,
Attila and Gabby they robbed another bank, but guard decided
to fight him like fist fight. Yeah, like over the toaster,
(39:54):
that free toaster. You can hate the money, but I'm
keeping the free toaster, he said, debate me. So the
guard is like grappling with them. He delays them enough
that he only takes about bucks from the register or
from the teller sorry, because this is a bank. Um,
so he gets about bucks. And now you know, these
(40:14):
two are getting low on money despite all their spending money,
like well, imagine they're living big, buying first pelts. They're
draped in pelts, uncured. So they decide, okay, you know what, Okay,
one more bank and then we call it quippause just
for us. Yeah. Well, they end up getting almost eighty
(40:35):
thou dollars off this one. But they took so long
to do it in there that the cops were like
they wanted the moment to laugh. Yeah, the cops were
on their way. The cops were almost there. Attila got away,
Gabby did not. Yeah, and the coach knows who hangs
out with his boy. Yeah, Attila doesn't know where Gabby is,
(40:56):
but he knows he doesn't have a lot of times.
He makes a break for it, and so he gets home.
He decides he's going to leave the country or just
you know, go to the mattresses as they say, right, yes,
that's what they do say. Help me check my crimical life.
Who does he take with him when he goes on
the run? Um the I don't know, the enforcer from
(41:21):
the hockey team. He took his Burmese mountain dog named Don.
I was close named Don Don. This is the first
mentioned of the dog in the coverage of it is
this And it's like, wait, hold on, why is this
not the first thing that's ever told about him. I
have a Burmese mountain dog named Don. Um so he
(41:42):
and Don took off and sped to the Romanian border.
I wonder what Don Don is named after. We're in
the late nineties and tiny bubbles, the tiny bubbles. It's
definitely not Don Johnson. It's probably not Donald could be
I mean it is Eastern Bloc. Yeah, but it's the
late nineties. Yeah, so I'm thinking, like, you know, and
(42:04):
it's probably not Donald Duck, probably not Donald Sutherland. Maybe
he missheard Dom DeLuise. There you go. I like that
he named his talk after Tom Deelwise, but he missheard it. Yeah,
uh so he uh it was actually a sports journalist
who first outed Attila publicly. Well, he figured, like, okay,
(42:25):
this robbery went down. I've been noticing that the goalie
is rich and he didn't show up. And he didn't
show up. There was a robbery today and he almost
got caught. And now, hold on a second. So he
starts like clocking all the stuff. Attila makes it to
the Romanian border. Um, but the guards were all waiting
for him. He tried to go over on the road.
(42:46):
He goes on the road and he shows up with
his passport. He's like coming to you know, don show
your passport, um, don want to see the hometown. Just
homesick um. So Attila immediately confesses to all of the robberies, uh,
twenty six of them at this point. And he even
(43:07):
told him like, these are the disguises that I wore.
Here's my look book, Here's how much I took. He
had laid it all out in all at this point,
he'd taken about six dred thousand dollars. And that's like
if you're exchanging the exchange rates for forens dollars um.
(43:27):
Over a thousand people stepped forward to adopt don. I
don't know what's going on. I'll taked on um. Attila
spent the next six months in a Budapest jail awaiting
his charges. He was split down the middle. Um. He
(43:47):
gave a bunch of interviews when he was in jail,
including to criminalis Um and that just like fortified his
whiskey robber pathology and made him a total folk hero
because he wasn't hurting people. It was just you know. Um. July,
they finally formally charge him. So besides the robberies, he
(44:07):
was accused of attempted murder because of the fire and
the gun uh and he um. You know it's bad
to fire guns around vegetable vendors. They're very sensitive people,
are you could have bruised the cabbage. Um. The morning
of July, he had this you know, usual routine. He's
led outside to the jail's exercise facilities. Zaren, I want
(44:31):
you to picture it. I'm going I'm going for to
come here. Attila is out in the yard. It's a
hot day. He's wearing heavy jeans and a long sleeve shirt.
At this prison, each inmates given a small private space
to work out in. There's a door that locks, but
the space is open to the sky. The guard locks
(44:53):
the door. Attila reaches under his clothes and pulls out
a rope that he's made from sheets, shoe paces, and towels.
He scales the wall, and just as he suspected would
be the case, there's no one in the guard tower
looking form, no one, no one on on watch. He
crosses the interior courtyard to the jail's administration building. Now,
(45:18):
his plan was to find an unlocked office on either
the first or second floor and then pop out the
window lower himself down with this amazing rope that he
has crafted. Um, but he hears people on those floors,
so he has to go up to the fourth floor.
Waight up to the fourth like on the outside of
the building. No, no, no, he's inside, and he's like,
(45:38):
I got to get to the outside of the jails
and find a window. Well, he has to go up
to the fourth floor. Um, the rope not long enough,
but you know, he didn't have a whole lot of options. Uh,
So he descends nearly fifty ft to the ground, severely
sprains both ankles, and then just rips his palms to shreds.
Like he just gets mess. He's basically just sliding down
(45:59):
a rope with his hands, taking all the s off
yea like shoe lace rope um. It was the first
time anyone had ever escaped from this jail before. So
with the help of a contact, he found an apartment
in Budapest. I don't know which side to hide out
in um, but first he had to celebrate with a
couple of beers. You know. He goes to a bar
(46:23):
and goes in the bathroom, gets rid of the clothes
you've been wearing, shaves his face, and then the bartender
like sees him and it's like, hey, are you a
whiskey robber shrugs. He's like, I get that a lot. Meanwhile,
good non answer at eleven am, because this is like
in the early and the first in the morning where
he's getting his workout. At eleven am, they put Budapest
(46:44):
on an emergency lockdown and it was the largest man
hunt in post communist Eastern Europe's history at this point. Yeah. So,
not long after his escape, his attorney makes a statement
and he says that he wants to an o ounce
that Attila would be at the center of an advertising
campaign for a new energy drink. Did I just have
(47:08):
a stroke? I was saying you're listening to you, and
I did none of that. Mads tense. So instead of
saying I've asked my client to turn himself, this is
a great misunderstanding, He's like, I'm glad you were all
gathered here today. A really important announcement. I want to
tell you about a new drink called Attila Pow. It's
a very rare brand partnership. It's there and he says, look,
(47:32):
promotional t shirts, buttons, souvenirs, they're already in production. An
alcoholic is the precursor to like vodka and Red Bull exactly.
It goes really well with whiskey. So they did. They
had all these promotional things in place, and there was
a partnership with like a Western European manufacturer and they're
going to distribute it. Um. So you know the attorney
(47:54):
is doing that. He obviously has the best attorney possum.
There's also a reward of one million four ins. That's
like about so for anyone who wants to help catch him,
Red Bull gives you wigs. Sorry, I was just thinking
(48:17):
I just need to rest in that from it, and
that was great. Um. So there's this one million fourans
reward for any help in catching him. Hungarians uninterested. They're like,
we're not helping you with this. Look what you you
bunched this up? Do I look like a snitch? Yeah?
Why you got to insult me? They're like chugging their
Attila juice and just looking like, look somewhere else. Pal
(48:37):
Attila calculated that he'd need between eighty five thousand and
a hundred and ten thousand dollars to start a new
life somewhere else, and he was considering Brazil. Always a
good choice, right, Argentina maybe so um, he didn't have
that kind of money. So what does he do? Steals it? Yeah,
end of July robs a bank. So he's on the run.
(48:58):
He robs a bank the best time to rob. And
my favorite is that he's like, Okay, everyone knows who
I am. I need this money. I'm going to go
back to a bank I've robbed before. I like the
comfort of it. They'll probably respect me. You know what
I do. They know what I'm working with. So he
goes in to this bank that he'd robbed previously, and
you know, they're just oh godly, and so he's like,
(49:21):
you know, can you heal your money? Open the safe
but the safe had been moved since he'd been there last,
so it was very confusing for him. And he was drunk.
He allegedly yells, you know who I am. I have
nothing to lose. I'm talking about care. He was only
able to get before he escaped. And how did he escape.
He swam across the Danube to an island to evade
(49:43):
the police, across which divides Buddha. And there we go.
September does it again. He gets, he buys a moped
and he drives the mop head to the bank. But
he's him murk. He drank an entire bottle of whiskey,
(50:03):
and he was so drunk that when he walked in,
the tellers started laughing. He's drooling, and he's like, I
can only keep one eye open. He's like, listen, I
love you guys so much. Don't give me the money please.
He only got two sixty bucks out of this one,
(50:27):
and the cops were like, you know, that's less than
the price of the scooter. That you've forgotten the parking lot,
and that you left your helmet on. He left the
keys in the moped. Everything he left the moped, keys, helmet, whatever,
So he gets less than that's worth. He's like, all right,
October rolls around him, gonna try it again, different bank.
He wears a baseball hat and jacket and brand new loafers.
(50:50):
You know, it's like your first day of school and
you just want to get fitted um the shoes, though
they sliced the back of his ankles so badly that
he had to abort the mission. He it back to
his apartment and he had to let his feet heal.
He's just like got his toad season some ice and
he's like, we should I should have broken these in.
(51:11):
Really I didn't think that through. He probably forgot to
like sand down roughen up the souls to these loafers
and sliding around. He's walking around his house and his
ice skates and don't hurt. A week later, he gives
himself a week to rest up. October eighteenth, he gets drunk.
He enters a bank. They're about fifteen customers. They're about
(51:33):
fifteen customers in there. He forgets again to put the
clothes sign on the door. So by the time the
robberies in progress, forty new people have entered, singing closing
time time. Do you give me all the money you
guys that deserves an arrest. Um. It took him sixteen minutes.
That's a long time, but he got two dollars. He
(51:57):
got away, yeah, well kind of yeah. He leaves right
when the cops are getting there, and he would have
been they would have gotten there sooner, but the two
separate police cars got an unrelated accidents on the way over,
and so he gets out the back. He's outside, he's running,
he's looking for a place to hide. He jumps um
(52:18):
into a nearby back yard. He jumps a fence, but
he falls head first over the fence and he breaks
two of his fingers and knocks himself unconscious. So he
spent the night in the yard and the next morning
he gets but he's wakes up unconscious, Yes, and like
(52:40):
a dog lookscept sniffs on him, peas on him, goes
back inside. He goes back to his apartment and the
next morning he thought he got away with it, but
in the whole kerf fluffle, he dropped his phone card
and police were able to trace a call to his
Transylvanian apartment owner, who was in the process of getting
(53:01):
Attila a new passport, and they figured out where he
was hiding. So October Attila is cooking his friend the
thank you dinner, thank you for being a friend, and
the Budapest police arrive. Um, they arrest him. He had
been on the lamp for a hundred and nine days
at this point, and so in all over the course
(53:23):
of six years, he committed twenty nine successful robberies, one unsuccessful.
Um he stole around one point nine million four iNTS,
which is about UM eight hundred and forty thousand dollars
in exchange rate in today would be almost one point
five million dollars UM. Sewing all that drunk. Yeah, like
(53:45):
other bank robbers just must hear this story and just
hang their heads. He was just consistent. It was like
trying to get on the hockey team. He's consistent. He's
just gonna keep hammering at it. Just showed up, success, success,
showing up. So but here he gets arrested. They're not
going to put him back in the jail. Instead, they
housed him in a government building. Quote in a special
all glass cage built five years earlier for the country's
(54:08):
most notorious serial killer, Magda Marinko, a convicted butcher of
four Wow, So they actually put him in like a
life size whiskey ball. They put him in like a
bond villain or a life sized whiskey. They poured him
on in Um, he's licking the bottom of it. He
was charged with sixty counts of robbery. He was charged
(54:29):
with attempted murder. He was charged with violations of personal
freedom for the people that he temporarily held against their will.
Dimly charged with the abuse of a green grocer. Yes,
he played guilty to all the robberies, and he was
mad though he was mad about attempted murder. He's like,
I didn't aim that at any It was just you know,
(54:50):
with all this booze, right is livers all who um
he The trial lasted six months. There were seventy witnesses, everyone,
everyone turned up for it, and despite asking the judge
for leniency, in December of two thousand he was sentenced
to fifteen years in a maximum security prison. And that's
(55:12):
more than at that point what murders were getting. Um.
He was acquitted on the attempted murder charges, but found
guilty on forty six robbery charges. The prosecution and the
defense both appealed to the Hungarian Supreme Court, like no
one's happy here. There are no winners. The court like
they agree prosecutions appealing, like, yeah, damn it, give me
(55:33):
another shot. Well, I guess because they wanted the attempted murder.
The court is like, you know what, No, we're going
to acquit him of the attempted murder. But let's put
two more years on this. Let him steal. He won't.
He's drunk. He got out of prison in January. Welcome back,
and he is going to hunt me down. And he
was released early for being for good behavior. And today
(55:56):
he works in ceramics. He learned how to, you know,
throw pottery in prison. He sells his pottery at art
fairs and around hungry and he does workshops. He's also
on Instagram. Can I get some of his well, he's
You can buy his stuff through Instagram. His handle is
at t E Underscore r E A L Underscore v
(56:21):
I s z k I S the real VIC. I
don't know. I'm not smart enough to know the how
to say the last word. Um, you can buy his wares.
I want a mug. He does these ceramic fake whiskey bottles.
Oh yeah, he's does he sign him? Can I get
like a custom piece? I bet? I bet what's your
(56:41):
ridiculous takeaway on this, Oh man, my ridiculous takeaway. Look
what you know a wig can do for a man's confidence?
You know this. You put him on a hockey ice,
couldn't even stand up. You give him a wig all
of a sudden, and he's like, you know what, Suddenly,
now I can do the rhymes that have only dreamed
of six Sampson. Yeah, exactly. So you know you care
(57:04):
about a man who's having a little bit of a problem,
Maybe get him a wig, Get him a fright wig
about fun, mix it up, not just one wig. If
that doesn't work, get him some whiskey. Let's just try
it all. I think Attila is the apex ridiculous criminals
so far in our young show. Really well, he doesn't
hurt people. He don's silly disguises. He does stuff like
(57:25):
rob the same place twice, or rob a place because
they messed up his travel arrangement. He has a ridiculously
unhealthy relationship with alcohol. He can't play hockey, but somehow
also plays it professionally. Uh. He is the living embodiment
of my grandma's advice of act like you know, and
he just bungles his way to success. Plus he gets
(57:48):
extra points for owning a dog and naming that dog
don because human names for dogs. That's the way to go.
You've made your case. Thank you. That's my takeaway. That's excellently.
I'm done here. I'm over here, sweat dripping delicious, right
are you dizzy? Dizzy, delicious and drunk? It's amazing. Thank you,
thank you, thank you all, thank you, thank you, thanks you.
(58:11):
With the academy. Um, that's it. So you can find
us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram.
Do you have a tip for us about a ridiculous
crime you'd like to hear about. Do you want to
confess to a ridiculous crime? And when I say like
a crime crime, give it to me, give me good crime? Uh?
Stuff that like you're going to confess it and pray
(58:32):
I don't pass it on to the authority. Yeah. Like
if you and your grandfather once I had like a
pot field and then you had to rob a bank
to be able to afford to get the pot field market,
that's a ridiculous that's no no one dead, no one hurt,
but ridiculous. But like, legitimately you could have been arrested.
Email at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Tune in
next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
(58:57):
Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Kusten. The Transylvanian
Terror researches by Austrian pelp magn Marissa Brown. The theme
song is by Hungarian hustler Thomas Lee and Romanian renegade
Travis Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Buddha Volan and Noel
pest Brownde. Say It one more Time, We Dequeous. Ridiculous
(59:26):
Crime is a production of iHeart Radio. Four more podcasts
to my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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