May 7, 2026 • 49 mins
When a young feisty gal with nothing to lose met a young tough fella with nothing to lose, the only thing they could possibly lose was the spark between them. And there was no stopping that. They made no money, but they lived lives of wild luxury and excitement. How? Robbery!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, Saron, Elizabeth, how are you nice?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Overalls?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Yeah? Those are cool. It was mine.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, I got them at the farmer's market. I took
him there, sold them to someone, bought them back.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I was wondering where they were, I explained, I like
to have the clothing with a story a nons if.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You will, do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Oh my god, I was hoping you'd ask me that
I do.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh good, good.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Do you want to hear it?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I would love to hear it. Why don't you go
ahead and share?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Okay, well I'll share with the group. I brought enough
to share, so you know how. I did a story
about thy monks getting hopped up on meth and yeah,
they were getting involved in all sorts of.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Crime, and the boys, bad boys, what you can do?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well, we got a new monk story. Some Sri Lankan
monks also Buddhist monks, twenty two of them were arrested
in the airport in Thailand and they set a record
two and forty two pounds of some that good Hindu
cushy Elizabeth, Hi, Yeah, apparently it was a record and
(01:02):
it was every single one of the twenty two monks.
They were each carrying five kilos in false walls in
their luggage. They were a smuggling operation. Yeah, they had
apparently they had been taking a trip from Sri Lanka
into Thailand. It was sponsored by this businessman. I think
he should be brought.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In on charges.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
But anyway, all twenty two at their kid. That's the
spot and they were trying to get it through and
they set a new record. So the monks are still
doing their things. Yeah, that ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I love outlaw monks. Right, Wow, that's a lot of
that's a lot of grass.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I'm gonna start telling people that my plug is a
bit a Buddhist monk. Where'd you get this brunette? You
got to know the people I know. I got these
Buddhist monks and bring it.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
In overspense you Ape airport.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
If you want some of that blonde Afghan hash, you
find somebody else.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
That is ridiculous. Do you don't know what else is ridiculous?
Being known for your hair? Oh no, this is ridiculous.
(02:26):
Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons.
It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
percent ridiculous. Damn right, Sarah and I want to talk
about hair. The hair on our heads.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Ah, serves a purpose, not the hair on our legs.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
No, it serves a purpose. It regulates body temperature, it
protects from UV rays and such. But like societally, we
put way more importance on it than it deserves.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think it distracts from my ears.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
There's that too, you know, like male pattern baldness is
super common, yes, but the way that people react to it,
but both those with it and without it like makes
a major deal out of it.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh yeah, totally. Like all those women are like I
love me a bald head.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Right, and like just you know, love when it gets
all shaved up and then you know, some guys want
to keep trying to do like a massive comb. Yeah,
but like is this society are there?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know people like like really thick, lush hair. Some
women like a really smooth bald head. You know, is
there anyone out there and love and could comb over?
Like I just go crazy for.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
A white Yeah, the grease here the back.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You ever met a lady here a man who's like combover.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Does lid for every pot zeron.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Okay, so somewhere out there someone who loves the comb home.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
But we've made hair important to one's image. Yes, it's
like I can remember back in the day when dyeing
your hair like a bright, unnatural color was not the norm,
Like you didn't see that, a yeah, it was a
freak move. And my hair was fluorescent pink.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Like I said, it was a freak.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It was for weirdos. It was so bright. And so
this is back when you only had manic, panic and
punky colors your only choices. And I had bleached my
hair and that's true. I'd bleached my hair almost white
in order to get the color grab like that. Yeah,
I mean it was a look. It was an obnoxious color,
but I loved it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
It was a shock.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah. And I was walking down the street one day
with friends and these two middle aged women literally stop
me and ask me why I had done that to
my hair.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Like they were offended.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, I be happy. Why would you do that? And
I said because I felt like it, like you know,
what do you want? They were personally offended by just
seeing it, middle aged women.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
And so did they forget about all the little blue
haired old ladies who used to exist in the seventies sixties.
I mean like this was, you know, come on, like
some women beyond.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
The blue hair, the old lady. But it was just
like what why would you do that? And I thought, well,
why do you care? Like this is a common issue
of our day, right, what do you care what someone
else does? Yes, you know, as long as you're not
hurting anybody, go nuts, Like why does what I do
with my body have anything to do with them?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah? Do you want to dye my hair? We ain't got
no problem exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So like men go to Turkey to get hair in plants, yes,
women sew layers of hair that's not theirs into their
own locks to add volume and length.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I love in the hood, real Indian hair, the signs
on it looks so weird.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And we have opinions about people's hair obviously, you know,
those ladies are an example, but it reflects our personalities.
Like my hairdresser once shaved her head and she told
me that it felt liberating, and I told her that
oddly it made her look even more feminine, that like,
she has the most beautiful features and the lack of
hair highlighted that.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I can see that. It was, Yeah, the same thing,
you know, like the focuses on the face.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, So we've had to legislate hair. There's the Crown
Act Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,
a law enacted in more than two dozen US states
to band discrimination and against natural hair textures and like
protective styles that includes dreadlocks, as you would know in workplaces,
in schools and so this way, you know, you can't
(06:10):
be discriminated against based upon your your natural hair.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I got you.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
And they had to do this because people were told
they couldn't wear their hair in a natural style. Locks, braids,
the unstraightened beautiful curls because it looked quote unprofessional. And
so like hair is political, you know, afros, braids, butch mullets,
shaved not covering, gray, shaved heads, mohawks, whatever the hell's
on the president's head. It's all political, right.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Or even beards like with the Department of Defense or
war whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Sure, sure, buddy, Yeah, hair makes a statement, and like
hair can be a symbol of ideology, identity, power, but
sometimes it's also about function. So at the start of
the twentieth century, there was the Bob haircut. Women started
cutting their long hair short, and it was considered are
genuinely radical, even scandalous, and like long hair had always
(07:04):
been associated with femininity, domesticity, and like submission to traditional
gender roles. Sure, so cutting it off was this deliberate
act of defiance, but it was also it was like
long hair took enormous time and effort to medicare, and
cutting it was this rejection of the domestic burden of that.
(07:26):
So it was practical, and this became the signature look
of the flapper, the new breed of young women who
rejected Victorian constraints.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yes, like throw off the bustle, cut to hair.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, these are women who wanted to vote, work, drink, dance,
live on their own terms. It is Yeah, it was
a practical, modern androgynous way to challenge the idea that
women had to look a certain way to be quote proper.
And so everyone, like, you know, they were rejecting this
marriage market ideal where you had to like look a
(08:00):
certain way and be groomed a certain way to attract
a husband. And all these people, parents, churches, employers all
actively condemned the bob haircut.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Oh yeah, they hated hair.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Which only made it more rebellious, so that you know exactly,
so the bob like the bob actually surged again in
the second wave of feminism with Vidal Sassoon's geometric Bob
Mary Kwan, Yeah, twitty, and so that was you know,
this new you know, sexual revolution. Right, So this short,
manageable hair is signaling independence and moving away from from
(08:37):
like the ties of all this unnecessary upkeep.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, your hair becomes like a form of bondage because
you're tied to all of that.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
That's the thing. Like women's hair has historically been treated
as public property and subjects, yeah, subject of social control,
like why would you wear that color, why do you
wear braids? Why do you straighten your hair? What's wrong
with you? Is basically that you know what they're saying.
So cutting it short is like claiming bodily autonomy, rejecting
the idea that a woman's appearance exists to please others.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And also, as we've talked about with the OG bigwigs,
it was a way to show you how its status.
It was wealth. They were just like, oh look at me,
I'm doing well, look at all this hair on my
head right right, and.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I can have someone you know, grow me and yeah, exactly.
So today I want to tell you the tale of
a brazen outlaw. Yeah, a bad mammagamma, a woman who
wore her hair and a bob okay and did absolutely
whatever she wanted. Loving that I know, I'm going to
tell you about Celia Cooney aka the bob Haired Bandit. Yes,
(09:38):
so let me read to you from a column by
Nunniye Johnson in the Thursday, April twenty fourth, nineteen twenty
four edition of The Brooklyn Eagle, quote, Celia Cooney isn't
being treated with the respect which she is entitled. There is,
of course a form of tribute in the columns of
publicity she's received, but these columns have been, for the
most part chronicles of fact. Celia Cooney deserves is a ballad,
(10:02):
a glorious painting, or a statue, preferably in Prospect Park.
It is too bad that she didn't, as Jesse James did,
ride a horse. Nothing would excite more public interest than
an equestrian statue of Brooklyn's bobbed haired Bandit. Nothing would
be more fitting to her achievements. Indeed, there is no
reason why the statue shouldn't be equestrian. Celia Cooney in
(10:24):
a few years will be a legendary figure, a part
of Brooklyn folklore, a glamorous myth in a world of
girls striving to reach the present height of feminine endeavor.
By then, no doubt Celia Cooney would have been a
rider of horses.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So she's like Lady Godiva, Sinead O'Connor and Jean of Arc.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Rolled into one. So not only Johnson, the author of that,
by the way, was a screenwriter, a producer and a
director in like the golden age of cinema, and he
wrote The Grapes of Wrath, adapted the Steinbeck novel, considered
one of the greatest screenplays in Hell. With his story,
he wrote The Woman in the Window Tobacco Road, and
Jesse James he directed The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Huh,
(11:09):
Three Faces of Eve Wore Red. But before he got
to Hollywood, he worked as a journalist and a short
story writer, and he contributed to publications like the Saturday
Evening Post and the Brooklyn Eagle. So he had like
this witty, literate sensibility, and we see that in the column.
The column was widely read and people loved this and
(11:29):
here he is advocating for the Bob Taired bandit. So
let's dig into Celia Cooney please. She was born Celia
Roth on the Lower East Side of New York in
nineteen o three and her family they lived in this
basement apartment. She had eight older siblings and two deadbeat parents.
Her dad was a total drunk. All the kids were
(11:50):
sent out to beg on the street. That's how the
family survived, and eventually they got taken away to go
live with their aunt. When Celia was four, she was
put temporarily in the custody of the Children's Society in
New York and then in nineteen o eight, next year
she was given back to her mom at five. Yeah,
but not long after that, her mom just ditched her.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
She was found by neighbors after they she just left
her in a furnished room and like three days later,
the neighbors were like.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
She's not even school agent.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
No, no, So she went back to the ant in
Brooklyn and the aunt was like, Okay, I'm gonna I
think this might have been a different aunt. Aunt It's like,
that's it, Okay, We're going to take care of you.
So she's enrolled in Catholic school, taken care of. But
when she's sixteen, she's like, I'm ready to go out
on my own. I'm good. So it's nineteen nineteen. She
left her aunts and she got a job as a
(12:41):
laundry worker, and in nineteen twenty three she met a
fella and fell in love. Yeah, Edward Cooney. So he's
a larger dude. Everyone said that he looked like heavyweight
boxing champion Jack Dempsey.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Oh hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Celia, on the contrary, looked nothing like Jack Dempse and
was not huge. She was tiny.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
What if the two of them was like gypsy? She was.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
She was barely five feet tall. Jesus a litland. They
met at the pictures and so soon enough they get married,
they're living together. They're barely scraping by Celia was making
twelve dollars a week. That's like two hundred and thirty
dollars a week today. Ed was making thirty bucks a
week as a welder at a mechanic's garage. And then,
as Celia later recalled, quote, I had never been so
(13:32):
happy in my life. But we weren't saving a cent.
Ed kept insisting on my buying myself some nice clothes.
He took a lot of pride in my looks, and
the clothes he wanted me to wear costs money. It
seemed so wonderful to me to be loved and worried about.
So we spent our money that summer almost as fast
as we made it good for this.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Young crazy kids exactly some new looks.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You don't know what's going to happen with her old
good nuts. So their biggest purchase the bank breaker, was
a super fan see sealskin coat for Celia. So, according
to her quote, Eddie wouldn't rest until she bought herself
a fur coat for the winter. I had always longed
for a real fur coat, Celia later explained, And I
always knew it was impossible, but Eddie was different than me.
(14:15):
When he wanted anything, he went right after it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So, by the way, where do you stand on fur? Like,
I'm against it in terms of how they harvest it,
but I love the look of it, so I don't
know what to do with it.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, it's it's it's the feel.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
I mean, if you warn a fur you're like, oh god,
I'm a cloud of style.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I don't know. It's always kind of weirded me out.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
But yeah, I'm like fans of like a lot of
like a rabbit fur, but I mean some of the
lusher ones.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I don't think I can hang anywhere near a sealskin coat.
But like, yeah, the they are, you know, very luxurious
looking and they feel so soft.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
But I'm totally against how that happened. So you have
like a roadkill coat, I'm totally into it.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Now. You look at like vintage first, that's the idea. Yeah,
you know, it's jobs.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You can't tell that it was vintage, so they just
think you still support the fur industry. And you may
get the red paint. You know, you can't tell exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Who knows, but yeah, it's I don't I think you
like it, probably more than I.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I like natural looking stuff. Yeah, that's my bias.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I like renewable. I like wool and cotton.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, I'm not a fan of like vegan leather. I
hate that.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
No, that's just plastic, that's what that is.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Let's call it, but it is.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So. Here we are nineteen twenty four, Celia, twenty years old,
wearing her fancy coat, oh and newly pregnant. She wanted
to give her baby a better childhood than she'd had,
and she wanted this kid to know a good life,
and Celia wanted to live a life herself of like
fame and glamour and adventure.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It's the twenties, everybody's suddenly into that.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, So the couple they decided to make that happen,
and the way they.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Wanted to make that happen comedy career.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
They decided to rob a grocery store. I was old
and it was two sides at the same point. So
Ed's boss was this guy named Paul Horgan, which sounds
like you're trying to say Paul's he got something in
your mouth, like finish eating your sandwich and then we'll
continue the conversation. So he couldn't pay at all that much,
but there were other perks to the job, like he
left a couple of cars in the garage at all time,
(16:11):
and Ed and Celia they didn't have a car, and
they could in no way afford a car, so Paul
let him borrow one every now and then, you know,
take your gal out. So remember Ed's a welder. He
used his talents with the torch to make himself some
new license plates for his borrowed ride. So there's this book,
The Bob Haired Bandit a true story of crime and
celebrity in nineteen twenties in New York by Stephen Duncombe
(16:34):
and Andrew Mattson. And they said, quote, New York State
alternated colors every other year. One year it was yellow
on black, the next black on yellow. By cutting a
couple of nineteen twenty two plates in half and then
welding them to a pair from nineteen twenty four, Ed
created a set of plates with a nineteen twenty four
stamp but a new number that couldn't be traced back
to Horgan's garage. After bolting these onto one of the
(16:57):
cars in the garage, he drove to pick up Celia.
That's kind of brilliant, very clever, and with that.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The part with the stick around on part exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
So they're off. Let's take a break here, go weld
some plates and listen to the great ads that we
have on offer from our wonderful sponsors. And when we
come back, we're going to join the couple on their
first criminal adventure, all right, Zarin, So we got Ed
(17:40):
and Celia Cooney opting to improve their lot in life
by doing some crime, specifically robbing stores. Like they figured
they'd hit little shops, corner stores, groceries, drug stores, all
in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
So they're doing the like you know, you rob banks,
that's where the money is. They rob stores, that's where
some of the money, some of.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
The money is, you know, enough of the money. So
the Crimesbury began on Saturday night, January fifth, nineteen twenty four,
in a grocery store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Okay, Celia,
she got all dolled up. She put on the finery
that Ed insisted she have then and that she felt
she deserved. She does, and then he felt she deserved
(18:18):
He's right, they were both right. So a beaded gray
dress is what she was wearing, black.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Stockings imagining small beads.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, yeah, she's softball sized, beats.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
She's so tiny you'd hang a plant in.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
She looks like one of the grapes from the through
of the loom. So she's got the sealskin for cot
on and her neatly bobbed hair nice and she looked
like she was headed to a swanky party.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Oh I bet what speakeas are you going to? Girl?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
She later wrote, quote we staged a little hold up
that night. I put on my hat and coat and
put the little automatic in my pocket. We hadn't made
up our minds we'd try.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
A store first, little automatic.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I walked into the store cold as a cucumber, with
both my hands and my fur coat pockets, one hand
holding the butt of a little automatic hidding in my pocket.
The store was lighted up as bright as day, and
there were six clerks and white coats findling with stuff
on the counter. So I mean they walk into a
full house. So Celia, she goes in, She's like, I'd
like a dozen eggs please. Now, don't forget this is
(19:17):
before Piggly Wiggly changed the grocery games. So this is
like you go to the counter and they go fetch it. Yeah, exactly,
which I feel like we're gonna wind up going back
to that the way everything's all locked up pretty much.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yeah, anyway, and then like you give them their order
and the robots go and find all the stuff put
it in a box.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
But that's also when you do online grocery ordering. Your
we're there, let's just you know, uh, anyway.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
We get automats back. I do love those show up
you're like, I'll take that.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Sandwich just comes around on the cart. As the clerk
sets the eggs on the counter, Celia pulls out her
gun and yell stick them up. And then Ed came
storming in and he emptied the register. And Celia later explained, quote, Honestly,
they were like sheep. They went where we told them,
and they stood in line with their mouths gaping and
(20:05):
their eyes popping, looking so silly it made me want
to laugh. Oh right, yeah, okay, seeing bilass. So they
left with six hundred and eighty eight dollars. That's like
four months work for both of them to find. Yeah,
not bad so. According to the New York Times, quote
when she robbed on the next Saturday and again the
next week, the bobbed haired bandit was born bob haair
(20:27):
was her defining characteristic, but her accessories were also described
in detail. She wore a sealskin coat, wielded a baby automatic,
drove a powerful automobile, and came equipped with a tall,
dark male accomplice and distinctly unfeminine pattern. Another pee, bad
eye either of you, and you'll stop gassing forever, the quote,
(20:48):
gun miss announced to a stun shop keeper and his
elderly mother. At least that's how a reporter put it.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Oh man, I love nineteen twenties and thirty six speech
so good. People just suddenly got like colorful of shakespe.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Stop your gas in forever. So within a week they'd
hit another shop. They got one hundred and thirteen dollars
from an A and P. Then they hit another two
hundred and fifty bucks from a Bowhack grocery store, and
then another. Zaren close your eyes, yeah, I want you
to picture of it. It's January fifteenth, nineteen twenty four.
(21:27):
You own a small grocery store in Brooklyn. It's a
tidy little place, and you are a lovely man. It's
been a quiet evening after a very busy day. You
made a lot of sales, which is good, but you
are exhausted. The storefront next to you is a piano
teacher between lessons. She plays the most beautiful pieces. The
sound is so gentle through the wall. It's a real
(21:50):
treat this evening. She's playing a bouncy tune. It's keeping
your spirits up. You'll have to take her a little
something later, a treat. The bell on the door sounds
a slim, tiny, dark haired young lady walks in. She
is dressed two the nines, posh dressed, sealskin coat and
a black fur hat over a glossy little bob. She
(22:12):
walks to the counter and looks you in the eye.
She asks for soap. You ask if she wants pal
mal if ivory, soap, lifeboy repairs. You carry them all.
She tells you ivory and you grab her a bar
Then she points to a barrel of herrings and tells
you she wants to look at him. You nod at
her and turn to pick some out for her selection.
When you turn back around, all you see is the
(22:34):
end of a barrel of a pistol. You freeze, stick
your hands up and keep quiet, or all philly A
full of lead, says the girl. That's right, be a
nice little boy. Now get in the back room. The
door chimes and a large man walks in. You open
your mouth to warn him about the lady, but he's
got a gun in his hand too. They're obviously together.
This is no good. You walk toward the back of
(22:57):
the store and she intercepts you at the end of
the counter. She reaches into your apron pocket and pulls
out the day's take, six hundred dollars in checks and
thirty five dollars in cash. Your heart, which is pounding
in your chest, sinks. The man heads for the register
and takes the cash out. You know it's fifty dollars
because you just carrot it about fifteen minutes ago. This
(23:17):
just gets worse and worse. Just then the bell above
the door chimes again. Oh no, not another robber. You
look over and see that it's Anne Phillips from up
the street. She stopped in earlier and told you she'd
swing by later on her way back from her women's
club meeting at her church. She said she needed some
butter and wanted to be sure you had the kind
she liked and stock. You assured her you did and
(23:38):
promised to set a package aside for her. Then off
she went. Now she's standing in the doorway taking in
the scene. She sees the man at the register with
the gun. She sees the little dame holding you at
gunpoint two. She's frozen. The man turns to face Anne
and yells at her to get in the back room.
He tells her he'll kill her if she makes a noise.
The couple shove you and Anne into the back room,
(23:59):
slam the door, and then win out. You hear the
bell above the door chime once more, and Phillips asks
if you're okay. You tell her you're fine and ask
if she's okay. She assures you she's good. You open
the door in the back room and step out into
the empty store. The light's bright. You sigh to light
the moon and says, now about that, butter. You chuckle,
(24:21):
then fight back tears. An pats you on the back
and tells you she's going to run down the street
to the police station. She tells you to lock the
door and wait until she comes back with some officers.
She darts out and you sit on a stool behind
the counter. You sigh again, this is Aaron. What you
didn't see is the couple running through the car parked
a few doors down, speeding off, racing into traffic, gone
(24:44):
pulled another robbery.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
So they don't have a driver. They're like having to
run to start the car. I don't expect you to
it running. That's what I was wondering. If you leave,
you probably other way. You hand crank it.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Back to start exactly like, yeah, leave it running it's Mike.
Celia became a media sensation. The public loved the like
breathless reporting on the bobtair bandit and they focused on
her haircut and the fact that she took the lead
and the robberies that was so unusual. She's the one
who comes in first. She gives the direction, sparks the orders.
(25:19):
This tiny lady in a glamorous dress and flapper hairs,
just like waving a gun around with authority and confidence.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So she's even more badass than Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah,
Like she's like, no, I'm not just lippy, I'm the one.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, exactly. So the police commissioner had a meeting. He
called in two hundred detectives and was like demanding results.
He gave even two hundred, and he gave a shoot
to kill order. Yeah, and they're all like worried for
their jobs. So they're shaking a lot of trees and
a lot of garbage is tumbling out. So there were
all these false arrests, force confessions. According to the Mirror
(25:55):
newspaper quote, within a week, police arrested twenty two year
old Helen Quigley, also a flapper girl, after her boyfriend
apples Kowalski had been picked up on suspicion of robbery,
as they bore slight resemblance to Celia and Edward apples Kowalski.
Apples Kowalski, I googled that man my newspaper dot com research. Nope,
(26:18):
doesn't show up anywhere else. Apples Kowalski history. So Helen Quigley,
she was given this crazy high bail that there's no
way she could make. So she's sitting there in jail,
and that infuriated Celia. Yeah, so she left a note
for the police and her next robbery. Here's the This
(26:42):
is the bombed haired bandit speaking my child ten cruise.
Let me let me read you the full text of
the note. You dirty fish, pedling bums. Leave this innocent
girl alone and get the right ones, which is nobody
else but us. And we're gonna give mister Hogan, the
manager of Ralston's, another visit, as we got two checks
(27:05):
we could in cash, and also asked Bohack's manager did
I ruin his cash register? Also, I will visit him
again as I broke a perfectly good automatic on it.
We defy you fellas to catch.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Us damn girl, you.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Dirty fish pedaling bums, not fish pedaling, fish pedaling. Another
note she left a second one that was mocking the press. Yes,
and another thing she signed that one the bobtaired girl
and her tall companion A little bit, yeah, the tall companion. So,
according to a New York Times article at the time,
(27:40):
quote sure enough, on February third, she paid mister Bohak
the promised return call, held up three clerks and four customers,
made off of one hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I told you I come back right.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Author f Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda got stopped
on the Queensboro Bridge in queens Zelda was driving. The
cops thought they saw the bob and the lady driver,
and well maybe them. Who else would commit such affronts
to polite society? Oh man driving a car with a
man in a passenger seat and with short hair light
(28:15):
him up anyway, So despite all the traffic stops and
the street level shakedowns, the cops.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Came up in get roped into this.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Well, then, like the mayor is like quote, there isn't
any bobhaired bandit that's only a myth. Like he's trying
to play it like, no, no, this is just they're
making it all.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Up like the mayor from Jaws.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yes. Yes, according to Atlas Obscura quote, depending on what
paper you read, the Bob Haired bandit was a ruthless libertine,
a heroine of the lower class, a weak woman controlled
by her husband, or a trailblazer of the feminist movement.
So she's whatever you want her to be.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
The game.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
So they the couple that they're getting more and more brazen,
and the press coverage continued this one on for months,
and they even managed to rob a drug store across
the street from a National Guard armory where a policeman's
ball was in progress. What and don't be surprised they
got away. Yeah, so these two weren't stupid. They'd hit
on a formula that worked. But they also knew it
(29:17):
couldn't last forever. Like they figured, look, the cops are
going to catch us soon.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah, we're gonna either get unlucky or or something's going
to happen someone else does get lucky.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So you know what that calls for one last job. Yeah,
they decided on one last job, one that would get
them squared away for the rest of their lives. The
other problem is that Celia's pregnancy was really showing.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
He's doing all this, like six months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yes, increased the like higher than that, more, she's more pregnant.
So they had to act quickly. Had they had to
do something about this. They put their furniture into automatic
They put their furniture into storage. They bought tickets on
a boat headed to Florida, Oh to Florida, and then
they checked into a hotel under fake names. So everything
(30:03):
was set for them to do their one final job
on April Fool's.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Day, no less.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And it was a doozy. It was way bigger than
the grocery stores they'd been hitting.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
That's what I'm wondering. Who they're going to hit for
their one last year.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
National Biscuit Company payroll office, Bisco payroll office. And they
weren't going to hit it in the evening at close
of day like they had been doing. They were going
to nail them in the middle of the day. Yeah.
So they hired a packard with a chauffeur to drive them.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Car.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, that's got some muscle right there.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And so they were posing as out of towners and
had the driver take them to the Nabisco offices. You know,
you're room from out of town. I'd love to see
the Nabisco payroll office. So they knew that. On payday
April first money was taken out of the safe stacked
up in the office ready to be distributed to the work.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
They paid them cash.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, Celia went first, and she demanded the cash and
her like usual swaggering bravado. But the clerk didn't cower
like the groceryman. Oh, this guy grabs Celia by the
hand viper strike.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Didn't expect that from an It stunned her.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
So she stumbled backwards and like knocked into a chair.
Ed sees this and fires a shot and just grazed
the clerk like unhanded.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
My lady, yes's pregnant.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, exactly. And that was the first and only time
that someone had been injured in one of their robberts that.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
He had mentioned any violent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
In the confusion, Celia dropped a notebook and then so
they it's just chaos. So the couple run out. The
door behind them in the office was eight thousand dollars untouched.
That's almost one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars today,
enough for Florida forever. So they get to the packerd
Ed takes the driver, ties them up with picture wire,
(31:55):
throws him in the back seat foot well, and then
they drive the car to a rail road station a
few blocks away, ditch it with the chauffeur tied.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Up and back.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Let's pause for ads. And when we return ed and
Celia are on the run. Zaren So Ed and Celia
(32:33):
tried to knock over the Nabisco payroll office on pay Day.
They were not successful. Celia dropped a notebook there.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
They might as well have robbed a bank. I mean,
why I know that she thinks.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
The people because there's likely not going to be a
security guard. I would think there'd be a security They
lucked out that they didn't get all shut up so
that she leaves a notebook. But she also left a
ton of witnesses. And here's the thing. They didn't have
to go far to get to. The Nabisco offices was
(33:04):
right by their apartment. And Celia, you know, trying the lady,
this tiny little gal. They weren't exactly anonymous. According to
a New York Times article at the time of their arrest, quote.
By tracing the limousine that a quote mister and missus
Parker hired while registered at the hotel claimant now the
Times Square Hotel at eighth Avenue and forty third Street,
(33:26):
and in which the couple rode to the biscuit company's offices,
the police became satisfied that the Parkers in reality were
Edward Cooney and his young wife, So when they investigated,
they found out that the couple had moved out of
their apartment on Pacific Street in Brooklyn, and that they'd
moved on the same day the supposed Parkers had registered
at this hotel. They tracked down Ed's mom. She said
(33:49):
she had no idea where the couple was. Neighbors were
ready to dish, though, all about the suspicious stuff they'd
been seeing. Oh yeah, so, per contemporary reporting in the
New York Times, interview window was oh pretty much. Quote.
At several of the addresses at which they had rented rooms,
they were spoken of as a quote awfully nice couple,
but it won a dress where they lived for five months.
(34:12):
An irishwoman pierced the mask, and she was instrumental in
aiding the police to identify that bob haired bandit by
means of a photograph. Photograph. So she didn't like Celia
because she thought that Celia stole twenty bucks from her. Okay,
and she also didn't trust her because she changed her
hair color so often.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Oh the hair.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
And then she also said in this makes no sense,
someone to read it to you. In that same New
York Times article that quote, a large picture of myself
as a bride taken with my husband, a picture I
valued very highly from sentiment, although it was only worth
actually about forty dollars, disappeared when I missed the picture.
I got real mad, and I took a picture of
(34:56):
my lodger and told her I would keep it until
my picture was returned. But it never was returned to me,
and so last Friday I turned over to the police
the picture of this young.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Woman, Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (35:06):
So she thinks Celia stole her wedding photo, which like,
why no one wants your wedding picture? Exactly, nobody wants
your wedding pictures? Why would you.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Coveted?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
And so she's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to take
your picture. She's like, sit very still and puts the
fabric over her head. Stay right, there.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I like she has a view of like you know,
some of the indigenous tribes were like you hear about
like you take a picture, you can take some of
the I'm going to take a photo of you, and
you're not going to get this piece of your soul back.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
This lovely Irish chrome did just that. God bless her,
God bless her. So detectives they sat on Ed's mom's
place and like surveilling her for clues, and then on
April eleventh, they intercepted a letter from Ed to his mother.
He wrote that his new address was this furnished room
in Jacksonville, Florida, and he was begging his mom please
(36:03):
send money. We have absolutely nothing. They're like, yeah, we're
about to go. We have to go to the hospital soon.
And two New York detectives were sent to Jacksonville the
next day, but they struck out when they found that
the couple had vacated the address that Ed gave to
his mom, and the landlord didn't have a forwarding address,
and so New York detectives teamed up with local cops
(36:25):
and canvassed the area and they got a lead and
a new address, and the couple had stopped running because
Celia gave birth and tragically their baby passed away just
a couple of days later. So when the cops came,
neither Celia nor Ed fought them. I bet they were
just like completely completely they went peacefully despite being fully armed.
(36:49):
I mean they had a bunch of guns, Celia. But
here's the thing. Like Celia, she told the cops later
that Ed wanted to fight it out or end it all,
but she convinced him to just cooperate. And while they
didn't put up a fight, it doesn't mean that Celia
had lost her spirit. Yes, So as she surrendered, she
said to the police, I'm the bob haired bandit you've
(37:09):
been looking for. Like just hey, I'm Huckleberry. She also
said to arresting officers, I won't shoot if you won't,
and then crack jokes with them. This is one tough lady. Yes,
oh my god, I'm.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
The bobhair bandit you're looking for. As somebody who's had
to say I'm the woman you're looking for to a
bunch of really macho firefighters on a mountain where they
had rescued me, and I had screamed like a woman
so they would hear me thus I said, I'm the
woman you're looking for. I have to say, it feels
really good to have.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
A pithy, realigated Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
And for me it was the inverse. It felt ridiculously bad,
but I imagine for her it was ridiculously good.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
It's gotta be your relief, yes.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
You know, and it's like get in your credit. She
wants her credit.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
This woman is s shurted. She is so like battle
tested the day she came to this planet, and she's
like had this adventure that she was seeking. She's just
lived through unspeakable tragedy. But you know, the thing is
too it's that it's not it's tragic, but it's not
(38:16):
like it never happens, and it's something that we don't acknowledge,
the grief that people carry for that sort of thing.
And so here, but she is just that is tough stuff.
And she won't let her husband take a coward's way out,
you know. So they get thrown back on a train
to head to New York to face charges. According to
(38:36):
the New York Daily News quote, thousands mobbed Pennsylvania station
to get a glimpse of the bobbed haired gun woman
as they arrived in New York. Two days later, they
saw the Daily News reported a diminutive girl barely over
five feet in height with a heart shaped face pierced
by two very bright black eyes. As for the infamous hair,
it was dark black and as Cooney told reporters about
(38:58):
down to my shoulders. Let it grow. Ever since that
was first cut. Oh, so she's just like, look, I
do what I want to stolen Bob So two thousand
and six book The Bob Haired bandits a quote only
drastic actions stopped the crowd. A score of policemen, charging
(39:19):
like football players, smashed into the swaying crowd, some of
who were in danger of falling to the tracks. Fists flew,
men shouted, and women screamed, and the air became murky
with magnesium powder from upset flashlight stands and photographer bulbs. Wow,
crazy stuff, great scene. Every paper wanted Celia's story. I bet,
(39:40):
and the New York American was the winner. They bought
an interview with her for one thousand dollars. Thousand dollars
that's a lot of money. So the tally for their
crimes came to about sixteen hundred, and Celia were like, no,
we only needed about nine hundred total.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
They got more for the interview.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, and I'm guessing they say it was they disputed
it because I'm thinking they probably couldn't move all the checks.
But they were flat broke when they were arrested. Not
a dime ed and Celia pleaded guilty, and they were
each sentenced to ten to twenty years, According to the
New York Times quote. The warden also advised Cooney and
(40:18):
Celia not to take more than eighty dollars with them
to prison out of the one thousands Celia received from
a newspaper syndicate for her signed story of her adventures
in crime. He told them to deposit the rest in
a joint account and not to touch the interest, so
that they would be able to start in business and
live honestly. At the end of their prison terms. Cooney
(40:39):
said that he intended to open an automobile welding shop
after he got out. He still insisted that he was
to blame for all that happened, that it was his
idea to hold up the stores, and that he had
induced his wife to help him. He said that he
got the idea from reading about crimes in the newspapers.
He also said the newspapers had been too hard on
his wife. So yeah, when they were transported from the courthouse,
(41:01):
twenty five hundred people crowded around to see them. Reserve
officers mounted police were called in to control the crowd.
Celia faced the crowd and reporters and smile, just beaming.
And she had such a cute face in this like
devilish grin. She's adorable. And so when they got out
seven years later, respectively, nobody remembered who they were.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Of course, moves on in the pan the twenties, things
were popping off so quick. I mean it was the
first time, all of a sudden everybody could hear stories
from around is like.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Thirty one when they're getting out, and so it's like
the bigger fish to fry going on.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Oh yeah, a lot. It happened well in Ed.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
When he was inside, lost an arm in an accident
in the prison, and he developed tuberculosis while he was
doing his time. But as a result he won a
twelve thousand dollars settlement. So I'm guessing he was working
in the prison.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Shop and sent there was an industrial accident.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
The couple used that money plus the thousand they'd squirreled
away by a cottage on Long Island.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
I love that they stayed together.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, Celia studied stenography and typewriting while in prison, so
she was ready for gainful employment when she got out.
She was offered movie cameos, but she turned them down and.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
She got out. Yeah, so she still had enough fame.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, yeah, but she just wanted this new anonymous life.
Ed passed away in nineteen thirty six, which is like
about five years after his release from that tuberculosis that
he contracted a prison. Celia became a good, productive citizen.
She had kids. She was a great mom. She worked
tirelessly to support her boys. One of them actually became
(42:36):
a deacon in the Catholic church, another one ironically became
a cop. And she was like boastfully proud of her children.
She eventually moved to Tampa Bay, where one of her
kids was living, and he took care of her at
the end of her life. She died in nineteen ninety
two at eighty eight years old.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Oh but she got her life in Florida, Yes, a
happy life Florida.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah she did. And what did her kids think of
their mom's early career? Is the Bob Haired.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Bandit, the cock kid.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, they had no idea.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
She didn't tell them.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
No, she kept it a secret from her kids, and
only at the end of her life, when her mental
state was slipping, did she start to share things. And
her sons were like, oh, come on, she's really boy. Yeah,
they're puzzle.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Imagine your mom.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
I stuck up this grocery start.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
You're like, okay, atomatically.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
To lay down Knda, Like there's no way she's telling
the truth, Like she has to be confused, she's making
it up. After she died, her son started researching his
mom and he's blown away and like it's really hard
for him to talk about, like the tragedy of it,
the desperation she must have felt. Like he gets all emotional,
he doesn't like to discuss it. But that is the
(43:50):
story of the Bob Haired Bandit. So Celia Cooney was
so much more than a haircut. You know something's aren
aren't we all?
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Not me? I'm mostly haircut, just tall haircuts, all hair
and attitude.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
That is what is your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I love that she didn't tell her kids about her
past and then it just like it just leaked out
of hers like against her own will. You know I
love that, you know, the truth will eventually went out,
but also that she had turned the corner of like
a rehabilitation in prison where they you know, once she
comes back and they become a happily married couple in Florida.
Did he make it to Florida? They were so then
(44:31):
then they least say, you know, they got to have
some of her a life together. Then she gets to
go have her Florida life that she dreamed about. She
has children, makes a cop out of a exist Catholic,
the Catholic deacon. Yeah, and then then the she got
one last like not like uh, you know, she wanted credit,
so she got credit, but not for an audience that
wanted to give her the credit her children. But you
(44:53):
know she got that that one more like whoa, you
were a bad man pajama, So hats off to the
Bob her bandage. I talk about you, Elizabeth, what's yours?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I keep thinking about how just the first twenty five
years of her life were miserable, hard travel exciting it
at times, and she and Ed were so in love,
and she was saying she was so happy they had nothing,
and so she had this adventure. But she truly even
though she had to do time, she created her own
(45:25):
life and came out of it and like broke so
many cycles.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Like I love that she was able to like get
employment and have like the straight and narrow She kind
of got it all out of her system totally. But
I just I think she's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Like I think, like early on about the only good
thing that she had going was the inverse, which is,
you know, when you're hungry, it's the best spice. Because yes,
that's about all she had to look forward to. It's like,
I'm hungry. This meal that I finally got is gonna
taste so good.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
But imagine like the excitement and the adrenaline when they
are running out to the car and peel out and
drive off. They're so young, you know what I mean,
Like they yeah, and so they're not thinking in a
broader sense. They're living in that absolute moments in their plane. Yeah,
Like that must have been absolutely intoxicating. You know what,
(46:17):
I think we need eels, Chris D what you doing?
Hit me?
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Oh my god? Did just s? I love ge?
Speaker 4 (46:36):
Hey guys, I just want to tell you how you
made my day. I was listening to the podcast on
a drive, as you do, and I was not having
a good day, practically in tears, and then Elizabeth came
in and said she did not have a mashup, and
(46:56):
Zaren's reaction sent me into such a giddy good mood.
I owe you guys a big one.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
No, I owe you one, no like I listen, sister,
totally understand that feeling, and I know that I was
relieved I didn't have a mash up that day.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Out were all relieved everyone. Then I went back to
thank you for that. We always say we literally do
this because of you, guys, So thank you for reflecting
back that it. You know, it's working, this is well,
and you know, moment together.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
The last really really tough day I was having was
not too long ago, and I had to tell myself like, Okay,
you know this isn't gonna last forever. Write it out,
but that's too And god, you know I love any
any kind of distraction from that, and so I'm so
happy that we could provide that for you on our little,
our little effort. Here. That's it for today. You can
(47:57):
find us online at Ridiculous Crime Duck. We're also at
Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Zaren on Instagram.
You can find us on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod,
Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and
please please leave a talk back on the iHeart app
reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
(48:24):
Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by the Bouffont Bruiser Dave
Cousten starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by high
Top Fade Heister Marissa Brown and the Slickback Schemer Jabari Davis.
The theme song is by the Cornrow Caniver Thomas Lee
and permed perloiner Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by
(48:45):
Botany five hundred. Producer Dave Couston's wardrobe is by Mister
Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest Haaren, makeup by Sparkleshot and
mister Andre. Executive producers are Karen Cutt, con artist Ben
Bolin and Rattail Robert Noel Brown. Ridicous Crime Say It
(49:07):
One More Time Ridiquious Crime.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, Saron, Elizabeth, how are you nice?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Overalls?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Yeah? Those are cool. It was mine.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, I got them at the farmer's market. I took
him there, sold them to someone, bought them back.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I was wondering where they were, I explained, I like
to have the clothing with a story a nons if.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You will, do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Oh my god, I was hoping you'd ask me that
I do.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh good, good.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Do you want to hear it?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I would love to hear it. Why don't you go
ahead and share?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Okay, well I'll share with the group. I brought enough
to share, so you know how. I did a story
about thy monks getting hopped up on meth and yeah,
they were getting involved in all sorts of.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Crime, and the boys, bad boys, what you can do?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well, we got a new monk story. Some Sri Lankan
monks also Buddhist monks, twenty two of them were arrested
in the airport in Thailand and they set a record
two and forty two pounds of some that good Hindu
cushy Elizabeth, Hi, Yeah, apparently it was a record and
(01:02):
it was every single one of the twenty two monks.
They were each carrying five kilos in false walls in
their luggage. They were a smuggling operation. Yeah, they had
apparently they had been taking a trip from Sri Lanka
into Thailand. It was sponsored by this businessman. I think
he should be brought.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
In on charges.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
But anyway, all twenty two at their kid. That's the
spot and they were trying to get it through and
they set a new record. So the monks are still
doing their things. Yeah, that ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I love outlaw monks. Right, Wow, that's a lot of
that's a lot of grass.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
I'm gonna start telling people that my plug is a
bit a Buddhist monk. Where'd you get this brunette? You
got to know the people I know. I got these
Buddhist monks and bring it.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
In overspense you Ape airport.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
If you want some of that blonde Afghan hash, you
find somebody else.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
That is ridiculous. Do you don't know what else is ridiculous?
Being known for your hair? Oh no, this is ridiculous.
(02:26):
Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons.
It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
percent ridiculous. Damn right, Sarah and I want to talk
about hair. The hair on our heads.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Ah, serves a purpose, not the hair on our legs.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
No, it serves a purpose. It regulates body temperature, it
protects from UV rays and such. But like societally, we
put way more importance on it than it deserves.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think it distracts from my ears.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
There's that too, you know, like male pattern baldness is
super common, yes, but the way that people react to it,
but both those with it and without it like makes
a major deal out of it.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh yeah, totally. Like all those women are like I
love me a bald head.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Right, and like just you know, love when it gets
all shaved up and then you know, some guys want
to keep trying to do like a massive comb. Yeah,
but like is this society are there?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know people like like really thick, lush hair. Some
women like a really smooth bald head. You know, is
there anyone out there and love and could comb over?
Like I just go crazy for.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
A white Yeah, the grease here the back.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
You ever met a lady here a man who's like combover.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Does lid for every pot zeron.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Okay, so somewhere out there someone who loves the comb home.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
But we've made hair important to one's image. Yes, it's
like I can remember back in the day when dyeing
your hair like a bright, unnatural color was not the norm,
Like you didn't see that, a yeah, it was a
freak move. And my hair was fluorescent pink.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Like I said, it was a freak.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
It was for weirdos. It was so bright. And so
this is back when you only had manic, panic and
punky colors your only choices. And I had bleached my
hair and that's true. I'd bleached my hair almost white
in order to get the color grab like that. Yeah,
I mean it was a look. It was an obnoxious color,
but I loved it.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
It was a shock.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah. And I was walking down the street one day
with friends and these two middle aged women literally stop
me and ask me why I had done that to
my hair.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Like they were offended.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, I be happy. Why would you do that? And
I said because I felt like it, like you know,
what do you want? They were personally offended by just
seeing it, middle aged women.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
And so did they forget about all the little blue
haired old ladies who used to exist in the seventies sixties.
I mean like this was, you know, come on, like
some women beyond.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
The blue hair, the old lady. But it was just
like what why would you do that? And I thought, well,
why do you care? Like this is a common issue
of our day, right, what do you care what someone
else does? Yes, you know, as long as you're not
hurting anybody, go nuts, Like why does what I do
with my body have anything to do with them?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah? Do you want to dye my hair? We ain't got
no problem exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
So like men go to Turkey to get hair in plants, yes,
women sew layers of hair that's not theirs into their
own locks to add volume and length.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I love in the hood, real Indian hair, the signs
on it looks so weird.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And we have opinions about people's hair obviously, you know,
those ladies are an example, but it reflects our personalities.
Like my hairdresser once shaved her head and she told
me that it felt liberating, and I told her that
oddly it made her look even more feminine, that like,
she has the most beautiful features and the lack of
hair highlighted that.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I can see that. It was, Yeah, the same thing,
you know, like the focuses on the face.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, So we've had to legislate hair. There's the Crown
Act Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,
a law enacted in more than two dozen US states
to band discrimination and against natural hair textures and like
protective styles that includes dreadlocks, as you would know in workplaces,
in schools and so this way, you know, you can't
(06:10):
be discriminated against based upon your your natural hair.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I got you.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
And they had to do this because people were told
they couldn't wear their hair in a natural style. Locks, braids,
the unstraightened beautiful curls because it looked quote unprofessional. And
so like hair is political, you know, afros, braids, butch mullets,
shaved not covering, gray, shaved heads, mohawks, whatever the hell's
on the president's head. It's all political, right.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Or even beards like with the Department of Defense or
war whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Sure, sure, buddy, Yeah, hair makes a statement, and like
hair can be a symbol of ideology, identity, power, but
sometimes it's also about function. So at the start of
the twentieth century, there was the Bob haircut. Women started
cutting their long hair short, and it was considered are
genuinely radical, even scandalous, and like long hair had always
(07:04):
been associated with femininity, domesticity, and like submission to traditional
gender roles. Sure, so cutting it off was this deliberate
act of defiance, but it was also it was like
long hair took enormous time and effort to medicare, and
cutting it was this rejection of the domestic burden of that.
(07:26):
So it was practical, and this became the signature look
of the flapper, the new breed of young women who
rejected Victorian constraints.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yes, like throw off the bustle, cut to hair.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, these are women who wanted to vote, work, drink, dance,
live on their own terms. It is Yeah, it was
a practical, modern androgynous way to challenge the idea that
women had to look a certain way to be quote proper.
And so everyone, like, you know, they were rejecting this
marriage market ideal where you had to like look a
(08:00):
certain way and be groomed a certain way to attract
a husband. And all these people, parents, churches, employers all
actively condemned the bob haircut.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Oh yeah, they hated hair.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Which only made it more rebellious, so that you know exactly,
so the bob like the bob actually surged again in
the second wave of feminism with Vidal Sassoon's geometric Bob
Mary Kwan, Yeah, twitty, and so that was you know,
this new you know, sexual revolution. Right, So this short,
manageable hair is signaling independence and moving away from from
(08:37):
like the ties of all this unnecessary upkeep.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, your hair becomes like a form of bondage because
you're tied to all of that.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
That's the thing. Like women's hair has historically been treated
as public property and subjects, yeah, subject of social control,
like why would you wear that color, why do you
wear braids? Why do you straighten your hair? What's wrong
with you? Is basically that you know what they're saying.
So cutting it short is like claiming bodily autonomy, rejecting
the idea that a woman's appearance exists to please others.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And also, as we've talked about with the OG bigwigs,
it was a way to show you how its status.
It was wealth. They were just like, oh look at me,
I'm doing well, look at all this hair on my
head right right, and.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I can have someone you know, grow me and yeah, exactly.
So today I want to tell you the tale of
a brazen outlaw. Yeah, a bad mammagamma, a woman who
wore her hair and a bob okay and did absolutely
whatever she wanted. Loving that I know, I'm going to
tell you about Celia Cooney aka the bob Haired Bandit. Yes,
(09:38):
so let me read to you from a column by
Nunniye Johnson in the Thursday, April twenty fourth, nineteen twenty
four edition of The Brooklyn Eagle, quote, Celia Cooney isn't
being treated with the respect which she is entitled. There is,
of course a form of tribute in the columns of
publicity she's received, but these columns have been, for the
most part chronicles of fact. Celia Cooney deserves is a ballad,
(10:02):
a glorious painting, or a statue, preferably in Prospect Park.
It is too bad that she didn't, as Jesse James did,
ride a horse. Nothing would excite more public interest than
an equestrian statue of Brooklyn's bobbed haired Bandit. Nothing would
be more fitting to her achievements. Indeed, there is no
reason why the statue shouldn't be equestrian. Celia Cooney in
(10:24):
a few years will be a legendary figure, a part
of Brooklyn folklore, a glamorous myth in a world of
girls striving to reach the present height of feminine endeavor.
By then, no doubt Celia Cooney would have been a
rider of horses.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So she's like Lady Godiva, Sinead O'Connor and Jean of Arc.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Rolled into one. So not only Johnson, the author of that,
by the way, was a screenwriter, a producer and a
director in like the golden age of cinema, and he
wrote The Grapes of Wrath, adapted the Steinbeck novel, considered
one of the greatest screenplays in Hell. With his story,
he wrote The Woman in the Window Tobacco Road, and
Jesse James he directed The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Huh,
(11:09):
Three Faces of Eve Wore Red. But before he got
to Hollywood, he worked as a journalist and a short
story writer, and he contributed to publications like the Saturday
Evening Post and the Brooklyn Eagle. So he had like
this witty, literate sensibility, and we see that in the column.
The column was widely read and people loved this and
(11:29):
here he is advocating for the Bob Taired bandit. So
let's dig into Celia Cooney please. She was born Celia
Roth on the Lower East Side of New York in
nineteen o three and her family they lived in this
basement apartment. She had eight older siblings and two deadbeat parents.
Her dad was a total drunk. All the kids were
(11:50):
sent out to beg on the street. That's how the
family survived, and eventually they got taken away to go
live with their aunt. When Celia was four, she was
put temporarily in the custody of the Children's Society in
New York and then in nineteen o eight, next year
she was given back to her mom at five. Yeah,
but not long after that, her mom just ditched her.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
She was found by neighbors after they she just left
her in a furnished room and like three days later,
the neighbors were like.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
She's not even school agent.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
No, no, So she went back to the ant in
Brooklyn and the aunt was like, Okay, I'm gonna I
think this might have been a different aunt. Aunt It's like,
that's it, Okay, We're going to take care of you.
So she's enrolled in Catholic school, taken care of. But
when she's sixteen, she's like, I'm ready to go out
on my own. I'm good. So it's nineteen nineteen. She
left her aunts and she got a job as a
(12:41):
laundry worker, and in nineteen twenty three she met a
fella and fell in love. Yeah, Edward Cooney. So he's
a larger dude. Everyone said that he looked like heavyweight
boxing champion Jack Dempsey.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
Oh hell yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Celia, on the contrary, looked nothing like Jack Dempse and
was not huge. She was tiny.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
What if the two of them was like gypsy? She was.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
She was barely five feet tall. Jesus a litland. They
met at the pictures and so soon enough they get married,
they're living together. They're barely scraping by Celia was making
twelve dollars a week. That's like two hundred and thirty
dollars a week today. Ed was making thirty bucks a
week as a welder at a mechanic's garage. And then,
as Celia later recalled, quote, I had never been so
(13:32):
happy in my life. But we weren't saving a cent.
Ed kept insisting on my buying myself some nice clothes.
He took a lot of pride in my looks, and
the clothes he wanted me to wear costs money. It
seemed so wonderful to me to be loved and worried about.
So we spent our money that summer almost as fast
as we made it good for this.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Young crazy kids exactly some new looks.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
You don't know what's going to happen with her old
good nuts. So their biggest purchase the bank breaker, was
a super fan see sealskin coat for Celia. So, according
to her quote, Eddie wouldn't rest until she bought herself
a fur coat for the winter. I had always longed
for a real fur coat, Celia later explained, And I
always knew it was impossible, but Eddie was different than me.
(14:15):
When he wanted anything, he went right after it.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
So, by the way, where do you stand on fur? Like,
I'm against it in terms of how they harvest it,
but I love the look of it, so I don't
know what to do with it.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, it's it's it's the feel.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
I mean, if you warn a fur you're like, oh god,
I'm a cloud of style.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
I don't know. It's always kind of weirded me out.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
But yeah, I'm like fans of like a lot of
like a rabbit fur, but I mean some of the
lusher ones.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I don't think I can hang anywhere near a sealskin coat.
But like, yeah, the they are, you know, very luxurious
looking and they feel so soft.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
But I'm totally against how that happened. So you have
like a roadkill coat, I'm totally into it.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Now. You look at like vintage first, that's the idea. Yeah,
you know, it's jobs.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You can't tell that it was vintage, so they just
think you still support the fur industry. And you may
get the red paint. You know, you can't tell exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Who knows, but yeah, it's I don't I think you
like it, probably more than I.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I like natural looking stuff. Yeah, that's my bias.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
I like renewable. I like wool and cotton.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, I'm not a fan of like vegan leather. I
hate that.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
No, that's just plastic, that's what that is.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Let's call it, but it is.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So. Here we are nineteen twenty four, Celia, twenty years old,
wearing her fancy coat, oh and newly pregnant. She wanted
to give her baby a better childhood than she'd had,
and she wanted this kid to know a good life,
and Celia wanted to live a life herself of like
fame and glamour and adventure.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It's the twenties, everybody's suddenly into that.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, So the couple they decided to make that happen,
and the way they.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Wanted to make that happen comedy career.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
They decided to rob a grocery store. I was old
and it was two sides at the same point. So
Ed's boss was this guy named Paul Horgan, which sounds
like you're trying to say Paul's he got something in
your mouth, like finish eating your sandwich and then we'll
continue the conversation. So he couldn't pay at all that much,
but there were other perks to the job, like he
left a couple of cars in the garage at all time,
(16:11):
and Ed and Celia they didn't have a car, and
they could in no way afford a car, so Paul
let him borrow one every now and then, you know,
take your gal out. So remember Ed's a welder. He
used his talents with the torch to make himself some
new license plates for his borrowed ride. So there's this book,
The Bob Haired Bandit a true story of crime and
celebrity in nineteen twenties in New York by Stephen Duncombe
(16:34):
and Andrew Mattson. And they said, quote, New York State
alternated colors every other year. One year it was yellow
on black, the next black on yellow. By cutting a
couple of nineteen twenty two plates in half and then
welding them to a pair from nineteen twenty four, Ed
created a set of plates with a nineteen twenty four
stamp but a new number that couldn't be traced back
to Horgan's garage. After bolting these onto one of the
(16:57):
cars in the garage, he drove to pick up Celia.
That's kind of brilliant, very clever, and with that.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The part with the stick around on part exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
So they're off. Let's take a break here, go weld
some plates and listen to the great ads that we
have on offer from our wonderful sponsors. And when we
come back, we're going to join the couple on their
first criminal adventure, all right, Zarin, So we got Ed
(17:40):
and Celia Cooney opting to improve their lot in life
by doing some crime, specifically robbing stores. Like they figured
they'd hit little shops, corner stores, groceries, drug stores, all
in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
So they're doing the like you know, you rob banks,
that's where the money is. They rob stores, that's where
some of the money, some of.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
The money is, you know, enough of the money. So
the Crimesbury began on Saturday night, January fifth, nineteen twenty four,
in a grocery store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Okay, Celia,
she got all dolled up. She put on the finery
that Ed insisted she have then and that she felt
she deserved. She does, and then he felt she deserved
(18:18):
He's right, they were both right. So a beaded gray
dress is what she was wearing, black.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Stockings imagining small beads.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Yeah, yeah, she's softball sized, beats.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
She's so tiny you'd hang a plant in.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
She looks like one of the grapes from the through
of the loom. So she's got the sealskin for cot
on and her neatly bobbed hair nice and she looked
like she was headed to a swanky party.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Oh I bet what speakeas are you going to? Girl?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
She later wrote, quote we staged a little hold up
that night. I put on my hat and coat and
put the little automatic in my pocket. We hadn't made
up our minds we'd try.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
A store first, little automatic.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I walked into the store cold as a cucumber, with
both my hands and my fur coat pockets, one hand
holding the butt of a little automatic hidding in my pocket.
The store was lighted up as bright as day, and
there were six clerks and white coats findling with stuff
on the counter. So I mean they walk into a
full house. So Celia, she goes in, She's like, I'd
like a dozen eggs please. Now, don't forget this is
(19:17):
before Piggly Wiggly changed the grocery games. So this is
like you go to the counter and they go fetch it. Yeah, exactly,
which I feel like we're gonna wind up going back
to that the way everything's all locked up pretty much.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yeah, anyway, and then like you give them their order
and the robots go and find all the stuff put
it in a box.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
But that's also when you do online grocery ordering. Your
we're there, let's just you know, uh, anyway.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
We get automats back. I do love those show up
you're like, I'll take that.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Sandwich just comes around on the cart. As the clerk
sets the eggs on the counter, Celia pulls out her
gun and yell stick them up. And then Ed came
storming in and he emptied the register. And Celia later explained, quote, Honestly,
they were like sheep. They went where we told them,
and they stood in line with their mouths gaping and
(20:05):
their eyes popping, looking so silly it made me want
to laugh. Oh right, yeah, okay, seeing bilass. So they
left with six hundred and eighty eight dollars. That's like
four months work for both of them to find. Yeah,
not bad so. According to the New York Times, quote
when she robbed on the next Saturday and again the
next week, the bobbed haired bandit was born bob haair
(20:27):
was her defining characteristic, but her accessories were also described
in detail. She wore a sealskin coat, wielded a baby automatic,
drove a powerful automobile, and came equipped with a tall,
dark male accomplice and distinctly unfeminine pattern. Another pee, bad
eye either of you, and you'll stop gassing forever, the quote,
(20:48):
gun miss announced to a stun shop keeper and his
elderly mother. At least that's how a reporter put it.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Oh man, I love nineteen twenties and thirty six speech
so good. People just suddenly got like colorful of shakespe.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Stop your gas in forever. So within a week they'd
hit another shop. They got one hundred and thirteen dollars
from an A and P. Then they hit another two
hundred and fifty bucks from a Bowhack grocery store, and
then another. Zaren close your eyes, yeah, I want you
to picture of it. It's January fifteenth, nineteen twenty four.
(21:27):
You own a small grocery store in Brooklyn. It's a
tidy little place, and you are a lovely man. It's
been a quiet evening after a very busy day. You
made a lot of sales, which is good, but you
are exhausted. The storefront next to you is a piano
teacher between lessons. She plays the most beautiful pieces. The
sound is so gentle through the wall. It's a real
(21:50):
treat this evening. She's playing a bouncy tune. It's keeping
your spirits up. You'll have to take her a little
something later, a treat. The bell on the door sounds
a slim, tiny, dark haired young lady walks in. She
is dressed two the nines, posh dressed, sealskin coat and
a black fur hat over a glossy little bob. She
(22:12):
walks to the counter and looks you in the eye.
She asks for soap. You ask if she wants pal
mal if ivory, soap, lifeboy repairs. You carry them all.
She tells you ivory and you grab her a bar
Then she points to a barrel of herrings and tells
you she wants to look at him. You nod at
her and turn to pick some out for her selection.
When you turn back around, all you see is the
(22:34):
end of a barrel of a pistol. You freeze, stick
your hands up and keep quiet, or all philly A
full of lead, says the girl. That's right, be a
nice little boy. Now get in the back room. The
door chimes and a large man walks in. You open
your mouth to warn him about the lady, but he's
got a gun in his hand too. They're obviously together.
This is no good. You walk toward the back of
(22:57):
the store and she intercepts you at the end of
the counter. She reaches into your apron pocket and pulls
out the day's take, six hundred dollars in checks and
thirty five dollars in cash. Your heart, which is pounding
in your chest, sinks. The man heads for the register
and takes the cash out. You know it's fifty dollars
because you just carrot it about fifteen minutes ago. This
(23:17):
just gets worse and worse. Just then the bell above
the door chimes again. Oh no, not another robber. You
look over and see that it's Anne Phillips from up
the street. She stopped in earlier and told you she'd
swing by later on her way back from her women's
club meeting at her church. She said she needed some
butter and wanted to be sure you had the kind
she liked and stock. You assured her you did and
(23:38):
promised to set a package aside for her. Then off
she went. Now she's standing in the doorway taking in
the scene. She sees the man at the register with
the gun. She sees the little dame holding you at
gunpoint two. She's frozen. The man turns to face Anne
and yells at her to get in the back room.
He tells her he'll kill her if she makes a noise.
The couple shove you and Anne into the back room,
(23:59):
slam the door, and then win out. You hear the
bell above the door chime once more, and Phillips asks
if you're okay. You tell her you're fine and ask
if she's okay. She assures you she's good. You open
the door in the back room and step out into
the empty store. The light's bright. You sigh to light
the moon and says, now about that, butter. You chuckle,
(24:21):
then fight back tears. An pats you on the back
and tells you she's going to run down the street
to the police station. She tells you to lock the
door and wait until she comes back with some officers.
She darts out and you sit on a stool behind
the counter. You sigh again, this is Aaron. What you
didn't see is the couple running through the car parked
a few doors down, speeding off, racing into traffic, gone
(24:44):
pulled another robbery.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
So they don't have a driver. They're like having to
run to start the car. I don't expect you to
it running. That's what I was wondering. If you leave,
you probably other way. You hand crank it.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Back to start exactly like, yeah, leave it running it's Mike.
Celia became a media sensation. The public loved the like
breathless reporting on the bobtair bandit and they focused on
her haircut and the fact that she took the lead
and the robberies that was so unusual. She's the one
who comes in first. She gives the direction, sparks the orders.
(25:19):
This tiny lady in a glamorous dress and flapper hairs,
just like waving a gun around with authority and confidence.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So she's even more badass than Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah,
Like she's like, no, I'm not just lippy, I'm the one.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, exactly. So the police commissioner had a meeting. He
called in two hundred detectives and was like demanding results.
He gave even two hundred, and he gave a shoot
to kill order. Yeah, and they're all like worried for
their jobs. So they're shaking a lot of trees and
a lot of garbage is tumbling out. So there were
all these false arrests, force confessions. According to the Mirror
(25:55):
newspaper quote, within a week, police arrested twenty two year
old Helen Quigley, also a flapper girl, after her boyfriend
apples Kowalski had been picked up on suspicion of robbery,
as they bore slight resemblance to Celia and Edward apples Kowalski.
Apples Kowalski, I googled that man my newspaper dot com research. Nope,
(26:18):
doesn't show up anywhere else. Apples Kowalski history. So Helen Quigley,
she was given this crazy high bail that there's no
way she could make. So she's sitting there in jail,
and that infuriated Celia. Yeah, so she left a note
for the police and her next robbery. Here's the This
(26:42):
is the bombed haired bandit speaking my child ten cruise.
Let me let me read you the full text of
the note. You dirty fish, pedling bums. Leave this innocent
girl alone and get the right ones, which is nobody
else but us. And we're gonna give mister Hogan, the
manager of Ralston's, another visit, as we got two checks
(27:05):
we could in cash, and also asked Bohack's manager did
I ruin his cash register? Also, I will visit him
again as I broke a perfectly good automatic on it.
We defy you fellas to catch.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Us damn girl, you.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Dirty fish pedaling bums, not fish pedaling, fish pedaling. Another
note she left a second one that was mocking the press. Yes,
and another thing she signed that one the bobtaired girl
and her tall companion A little bit, yeah, the tall companion. So,
according to a New York Times article at the time,
(27:40):
quote sure enough, on February third, she paid mister Bohak
the promised return call, held up three clerks and four customers,
made off of one hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
I told you I come back right.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Author f Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda got stopped
on the Queensboro Bridge in queens Zelda was driving. The
cops thought they saw the bob and the lady driver,
and well maybe them. Who else would commit such affronts
to polite society? Oh man driving a car with a
man in a passenger seat and with short hair light
(28:15):
him up anyway, So despite all the traffic stops and
the street level shakedowns, the cops.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Came up in get roped into this.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Well, then, like the mayor is like quote, there isn't
any bobhaired bandit that's only a myth. Like he's trying
to play it like, no, no, this is just they're
making it all.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Up like the mayor from Jaws.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yes. Yes, according to Atlas Obscura quote, depending on what
paper you read, the Bob Haired bandit was a ruthless libertine,
a heroine of the lower class, a weak woman controlled
by her husband, or a trailblazer of the feminist movement.
So she's whatever you want her to be.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
The game.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
So they the couple that they're getting more and more brazen,
and the press coverage continued this one on for months,
and they even managed to rob a drug store across
the street from a National Guard armory where a policeman's
ball was in progress. What and don't be surprised they
got away. Yeah, so these two weren't stupid. They'd hit
on a formula that worked. But they also knew it
(29:17):
couldn't last forever. Like they figured, look, the cops are
going to catch us soon.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah, we're gonna either get unlucky or or something's going
to happen someone else does get lucky.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So you know what that calls for one last job. Yeah,
they decided on one last job, one that would get
them squared away for the rest of their lives. The
other problem is that Celia's pregnancy was really showing.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
He's doing all this, like six months pregnant.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yes, increased the like higher than that, more, she's more pregnant.
So they had to act quickly. Had they had to
do something about this. They put their furniture into automatic
They put their furniture into storage. They bought tickets on
a boat headed to Florida, Oh to Florida, and then
they checked into a hotel under fake names. So everything
(30:03):
was set for them to do their one final job
on April Fool's.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Day, no less.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And it was a doozy. It was way bigger than
the grocery stores they'd been hitting.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
That's what I'm wondering. Who they're going to hit for
their one last year.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
National Biscuit Company payroll office, Bisco payroll office. And they
weren't going to hit it in the evening at close
of day like they had been doing. They were going
to nail them in the middle of the day. Yeah.
So they hired a packard with a chauffeur to drive them.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Car.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah, that's got some muscle right there.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And so they were posing as out of towners and
had the driver take them to the Nabisco offices. You know,
you're room from out of town. I'd love to see
the Nabisco payroll office. So they knew that. On payday
April first money was taken out of the safe stacked
up in the office ready to be distributed to the work.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
They paid them cash.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, Celia went first, and she demanded the cash and
her like usual swaggering bravado. But the clerk didn't cower
like the groceryman. Oh, this guy grabs Celia by the
hand viper strike.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Didn't expect that from an It stunned her.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
So she stumbled backwards and like knocked into a chair.
Ed sees this and fires a shot and just grazed
the clerk like unhanded.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
My lady, yes's pregnant.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, exactly. And that was the first and only time
that someone had been injured in one of their robberts that.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
He had mentioned any violent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
In the confusion, Celia dropped a notebook and then so
they it's just chaos. So the couple run out. The
door behind them in the office was eight thousand dollars untouched.
That's almost one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars today,
enough for Florida forever. So they get to the packerd
Ed takes the driver, ties them up with picture wire,
(31:55):
throws him in the back seat foot well, and then
they drive the car to a rail road station a
few blocks away, ditch it with the chauffeur tied.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Up and back.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Let's pause for ads. And when we return ed and
Celia are on the run. Zaren So Ed and Celia
(32:33):
tried to knock over the Nabisco payroll office on pay Day.
They were not successful. Celia dropped a notebook there.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
They might as well have robbed a bank. I mean,
why I know that she thinks.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
The people because there's likely not going to be a
security guard. I would think there'd be a security They
lucked out that they didn't get all shut up so
that she leaves a notebook. But she also left a
ton of witnesses. And here's the thing. They didn't have
to go far to get to. The Nabisco offices was
(33:04):
right by their apartment. And Celia, you know, trying the lady,
this tiny little gal. They weren't exactly anonymous. According to
a New York Times article at the time of their arrest, quote.
By tracing the limousine that a quote mister and missus
Parker hired while registered at the hotel claimant now the
Times Square Hotel at eighth Avenue and forty third Street,
(33:26):
and in which the couple rode to the biscuit company's offices,
the police became satisfied that the Parkers in reality were
Edward Cooney and his young wife, So when they investigated,
they found out that the couple had moved out of
their apartment on Pacific Street in Brooklyn, and that they'd
moved on the same day the supposed Parkers had registered
at this hotel. They tracked down Ed's mom. She said
(33:49):
she had no idea where the couple was. Neighbors were
ready to dish, though, all about the suspicious stuff they'd
been seeing. Oh yeah, so, per contemporary reporting in the
New York Times, interview window was oh pretty much. Quote.
At several of the addresses at which they had rented rooms,
they were spoken of as a quote awfully nice couple,
but it won a dress where they lived for five months.
(34:12):
An irishwoman pierced the mask, and she was instrumental in
aiding the police to identify that bob haired bandit by
means of a photograph. Photograph. So she didn't like Celia
because she thought that Celia stole twenty bucks from her. Okay,
and she also didn't trust her because she changed her
hair color so often.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Oh the hair.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
And then she also said in this makes no sense,
someone to read it to you. In that same New
York Times article that quote, a large picture of myself
as a bride taken with my husband, a picture I
valued very highly from sentiment, although it was only worth
actually about forty dollars, disappeared when I missed the picture.
I got real mad, and I took a picture of
(34:56):
my lodger and told her I would keep it until
my picture was returned. But it never was returned to me,
and so last Friday I turned over to the police
the picture of this young.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Woman, Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (35:06):
So she thinks Celia stole her wedding photo, which like,
why no one wants your wedding picture? Exactly, nobody wants
your wedding pictures? Why would you.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Coveted?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
And so she's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to take
your picture. She's like, sit very still and puts the
fabric over her head. Stay right, there.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
I like she has a view of like you know,
some of the indigenous tribes were like you hear about
like you take a picture, you can take some of
the I'm going to take a photo of you, and
you're not going to get this piece of your soul back.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
This lovely Irish chrome did just that. God bless her,
God bless her. So detectives they sat on Ed's mom's
place and like surveilling her for clues, and then on
April eleventh, they intercepted a letter from Ed to his mother.
He wrote that his new address was this furnished room
in Jacksonville, Florida, and he was begging his mom please
(36:03):
send money. We have absolutely nothing. They're like, yeah, we're
about to go. We have to go to the hospital soon.
And two New York detectives were sent to Jacksonville the
next day, but they struck out when they found that
the couple had vacated the address that Ed gave to
his mom, and the landlord didn't have a forwarding address,
and so New York detectives teamed up with local cops
(36:25):
and canvassed the area and they got a lead and
a new address, and the couple had stopped running because
Celia gave birth and tragically their baby passed away just
a couple of days later. So when the cops came,
neither Celia nor Ed fought them. I bet they were
just like completely completely they went peacefully despite being fully armed.
(36:49):
I mean they had a bunch of guns, Celia. But
here's the thing. Like Celia, she told the cops later
that Ed wanted to fight it out or end it all,
but she convinced him to just cooperate. And while they
didn't put up a fight, it doesn't mean that Celia
had lost her spirit. Yes, So as she surrendered, she
said to the police, I'm the bob haired bandit you've
(37:09):
been looking for. Like just hey, I'm Huckleberry. She also
said to arresting officers, I won't shoot if you won't,
and then crack jokes with them. This is one tough lady. Yes,
oh my god, I'm.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
The bobhair bandit you're looking for. As somebody who's had
to say I'm the woman you're looking for to a
bunch of really macho firefighters on a mountain where they
had rescued me, and I had screamed like a woman
so they would hear me thus I said, I'm the
woman you're looking for. I have to say, it feels
really good to have.
Speaker 2 (37:41):
A pithy, realigated Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
And for me it was the inverse. It felt ridiculously bad,
but I imagine for her it was ridiculously good.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
It's gotta be your relief, yes.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
You know, and it's like get in your credit. She
wants her credit.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
This woman is s shurted. She is so like battle
tested the day she came to this planet, and she's
like had this adventure that she was seeking. She's just
lived through unspeakable tragedy. But you know, the thing is
too it's that it's not it's tragic, but it's not
(38:16):
like it never happens, and it's something that we don't acknowledge,
the grief that people carry for that sort of thing.
And so here, but she is just that is tough stuff.
And she won't let her husband take a coward's way out,
you know. So they get thrown back on a train
to head to New York to face charges. According to
(38:36):
the New York Daily News quote, thousands mobbed Pennsylvania station
to get a glimpse of the bobbed haired gun woman
as they arrived in New York. Two days later, they
saw the Daily News reported a diminutive girl barely over
five feet in height with a heart shaped face pierced
by two very bright black eyes. As for the infamous hair,
it was dark black and as Cooney told reporters about
(38:58):
down to my shoulders. Let it grow. Ever since that
was first cut. Oh, so she's just like, look, I
do what I want to stolen Bob So two thousand
and six book The Bob Haired bandits a quote only
drastic actions stopped the crowd. A score of policemen, charging
(39:19):
like football players, smashed into the swaying crowd, some of
who were in danger of falling to the tracks. Fists flew,
men shouted, and women screamed, and the air became murky
with magnesium powder from upset flashlight stands and photographer bulbs. Wow,
crazy stuff, great scene. Every paper wanted Celia's story. I bet,
(39:40):
and the New York American was the winner. They bought
an interview with her for one thousand dollars. Thousand dollars
that's a lot of money. So the tally for their
crimes came to about sixteen hundred, and Celia were like, no,
we only needed about nine hundred total.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
They got more for the interview.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, and I'm guessing they say it was they disputed
it because I'm thinking they probably couldn't move all the checks.
But they were flat broke when they were arrested. Not
a dime ed and Celia pleaded guilty, and they were
each sentenced to ten to twenty years, According to the
New York Times quote. The warden also advised Cooney and
(40:18):
Celia not to take more than eighty dollars with them
to prison out of the one thousands Celia received from
a newspaper syndicate for her signed story of her adventures
in crime. He told them to deposit the rest in
a joint account and not to touch the interest, so
that they would be able to start in business and
live honestly. At the end of their prison terms. Cooney
(40:39):
said that he intended to open an automobile welding shop
after he got out. He still insisted that he was
to blame for all that happened, that it was his
idea to hold up the stores, and that he had
induced his wife to help him. He said that he
got the idea from reading about crimes in the newspapers.
He also said the newspapers had been too hard on
his wife. So yeah, when they were transported from the courthouse,
(41:01):
twenty five hundred people crowded around to see them. Reserve
officers mounted police were called in to control the crowd.
Celia faced the crowd and reporters and smile, just beaming.
And she had such a cute face in this like
devilish grin. She's adorable. And so when they got out
seven years later, respectively, nobody remembered who they were.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Of course, moves on in the pan the twenties, things
were popping off so quick. I mean it was the
first time, all of a sudden everybody could hear stories
from around is like.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Thirty one when they're getting out, and so it's like
the bigger fish to fry going on.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Oh yeah, a lot. It happened well in Ed.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
When he was inside, lost an arm in an accident
in the prison, and he developed tuberculosis while he was
doing his time. But as a result he won a
twelve thousand dollars settlement. So I'm guessing he was working
in the prison.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
Shop and sent there was an industrial accident.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
The couple used that money plus the thousand they'd squirreled
away by a cottage on Long Island.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
I love that they stayed together.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
Yeah, Celia studied stenography and typewriting while in prison, so
she was ready for gainful employment when she got out.
She was offered movie cameos, but she turned them down and.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
She got out. Yeah, so she still had enough fame.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Yeah, yeah, but she just wanted this new anonymous life.
Ed passed away in nineteen thirty six, which is like
about five years after his release from that tuberculosis that
he contracted a prison. Celia became a good, productive citizen.
She had kids. She was a great mom. She worked
tirelessly to support her boys. One of them actually became
(42:36):
a deacon in the Catholic church, another one ironically became
a cop. And she was like boastfully proud of her children.
She eventually moved to Tampa Bay, where one of her
kids was living, and he took care of her at
the end of her life. She died in nineteen ninety
two at eighty eight years old.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Oh but she got her life in Florida, Yes, a
happy life Florida.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Yeah she did. And what did her kids think of
their mom's early career? Is the Bob Haired.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Bandit, the cock kid.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, they had no idea.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
She didn't tell them.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
No, she kept it a secret from her kids, and
only at the end of her life, when her mental
state was slipping, did she start to share things. And
her sons were like, oh, come on, she's really boy. Yeah,
they're puzzle.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Imagine your mom.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
I stuck up this grocery start.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
You're like, okay, atomatically.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
To lay down Knda, Like there's no way she's telling
the truth, Like she has to be confused, she's making
it up. After she died, her son started researching his
mom and he's blown away and like it's really hard
for him to talk about, like the tragedy of it,
the desperation she must have felt. Like he gets all emotional,
he doesn't like to discuss it. But that is the
(43:50):
story of the Bob Haired Bandit. So Celia Cooney was
so much more than a haircut. You know something's aren
aren't we all?
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Not me? I'm mostly haircut, just tall haircuts, all hair
and attitude.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
That is what is your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
I love that she didn't tell her kids about her
past and then it just like it just leaked out
of hers like against her own will. You know I
love that, you know, the truth will eventually went out,
but also that she had turned the corner of like
a rehabilitation in prison where they you know, once she
comes back and they become a happily married couple in Florida.
Did he make it to Florida? They were so then
(44:31):
then they least say, you know, they got to have
some of her a life together. Then she gets to
go have her Florida life that she dreamed about. She
has children, makes a cop out of a exist Catholic,
the Catholic deacon. Yeah, and then then the she got
one last like not like uh, you know, she wanted credit,
so she got credit, but not for an audience that
wanted to give her the credit her children. But you
(44:53):
know she got that that one more like whoa, you
were a bad man pajama, So hats off to the
Bob her bandage. I talk about you, Elizabeth, what's yours?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I keep thinking about how just the first twenty five
years of her life were miserable, hard travel exciting it
at times, and she and Ed were so in love,
and she was saying she was so happy they had nothing,
and so she had this adventure. But she truly even
though she had to do time, she created her own
(45:25):
life and came out of it and like broke so
many cycles.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Like I love that she was able to like get
employment and have like the straight and narrow She kind
of got it all out of her system totally. But
I just I think she's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Like I think, like early on about the only good
thing that she had going was the inverse, which is,
you know, when you're hungry, it's the best spice. Because yes,
that's about all she had to look forward to. It's like,
I'm hungry. This meal that I finally got is gonna
taste so good.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
But imagine like the excitement and the adrenaline when they
are running out to the car and peel out and
drive off. They're so young, you know what I mean,
Like they yeah, and so they're not thinking in a
broader sense. They're living in that absolute moments in their plane. Yeah,
Like that must have been absolutely intoxicating. You know what,
(46:17):
I think we need eels, Chris D what you doing?
Hit me?
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Oh my god? Did just s? I love ge?
Speaker 4 (46:36):
Hey guys, I just want to tell you how you
made my day. I was listening to the podcast on
a drive, as you do, and I was not having
a good day, practically in tears, and then Elizabeth came
in and said she did not have a mashup, and
(46:56):
Zaren's reaction sent me into such a giddy good mood.
I owe you guys a big one.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
No, I owe you one, no like I listen, sister,
totally understand that feeling, and I know that I was
relieved I didn't have a mash up that day.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Out were all relieved everyone. Then I went back to
thank you for that. We always say we literally do
this because of you, guys, So thank you for reflecting
back that it. You know, it's working, this is well,
and you know, moment together.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
The last really really tough day I was having was
not too long ago, and I had to tell myself like, Okay,
you know this isn't gonna last forever. Write it out,
but that's too And god, you know I love any
any kind of distraction from that, and so I'm so
happy that we could provide that for you on our little,
our little effort. Here. That's it for today. You can
(47:57):
find us online at Ridiculous Crime Duck. We're also at
Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Zaren on Instagram.
You can find us on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod,
Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and
please please leave a talk back on the iHeart app
reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
(48:24):
Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by the Bouffont Bruiser Dave
Cousten starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by high
Top Fade Heister Marissa Brown and the Slickback Schemer Jabari Davis.
The theme song is by the Cornrow Caniver Thomas Lee
and permed perloiner Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by
(48:45):
Botany five hundred. Producer Dave Couston's wardrobe is by Mister
Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest Haaren, makeup by Sparkleshot and
mister Andre. Executive producers are Karen Cutt, con artist Ben
Bolin and Rattail Robert Noel Brown. Ridicous Crime Say It
(49:07):
One More Time Ridiquious Crime.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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