Phillip Morris & Steven Russell

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hellllo, everybody, welcome back. Hey, then we're here with another
um you know what, let's do this, Diana get me.
An adjective describing today's episode audacious. Welcome to another audacious
episode of Ridiculous Romance. I'm into it, different words every time.

(00:21):
There's enough words. There's so many words there are Oh
my god, there are so many words chose yes, and
we're going to use a lot of them today to
tell you this very audacious story. We're so glad you
tuned in. We're so glad you're back. We hope you've
been enjoying, uh, your various weekends and your Facebook shutdowns,

(00:42):
and it's a hard day, I hope not procrastinating online.
I'll tell you what. I was on Twitter so much
more today than I usually know what happened. That's what
I've don't post very often for myself, but I've been
on a more are because Fringe has a show coming
up this weekend that we're producing. So I'm trying to promote,

(01:05):
you know, the show, and so I got beyond the
social media and it was a real hard day to day.
So we're like, no, the whole day of ads gone,
let's do it. If you're in Atlanta on October eight nine,
Atlanta Fringe in Metropolitan Studios in East Atlanta Village. We're
partnering to to do some Pride weekend programming, so we

(01:27):
have a bunch of lgbt Q performances, including Gay History
for Straight People, which is uh Leola Ladyland, a lesbian,
redneck senior citizen drag queen, and she'll be taking us
through the wonderful world of gayness from anal beats to
unicorns and she's so fun she's so funny. And then

(01:47):
there's a big, like an amazing burlesque and drag lineup
that Metropolitan Studios is bringing. We're doing a virtual drag
Queen storytelling hour on Saturday. We have a panel of
artists talking about the intersection of art making an identity.
And yeah, I'm very happy for the very strict COVID
protocols required by the venue, which is you have to

(02:07):
show proof of vaccination at the door and you have
to wear a mask the whole time you're inside. So
it's just a small space, so they don't want to
take any chances, I know, right, We want people to
take their We want to see titties, We don't want
to see your mouth. So if you are in Atlanta
this very weekend, October eight, n I know that that's

(02:28):
only mere days after this episode airs, so regular listeners
you might catch it. Um if you show up and
find us and tell us you heard about it from
Ridiculous Romance, we will be very happy to hear. All
that being said, we're excited to get right into today's episode.
This episode was suggested through Instagram um by Chelsea She's

(02:51):
woe I'm tripping on Instagram. So thank you so much
Chelsea for this idea. This was a really good one. Yeah,
we really enjoyed that, very excited and also got me
to watch this movie which I've always wanted to see.
I Love You, Philip Morris, Jim Carrying You and McGregor
and it's excellent and we'll be talking about that with
the episode as well. Ye. So Stephen J. Russell was

(03:11):
working as a deputy with the local police and he
was married with a young daughter. But then one day
everything changed and he left his family to live openly
as a gay man. But he also financed his life
with a series of scams and frauds and a bunch
of other criminal behavior. And when one of his cons

(03:31):
landed him in the clink, he ended up meeting the
love of his life, Philip Morris. And that's just the
beginning of the story. It sure is. And this story
is all over the place. So let's you will laugh.
Let's do it? Yes, please? Hey the French conblution. Well,
Elia and Diana got some joys to tell. There's no matchmaking,

(03:53):
a romantic tips. It's just about pardiculous relationships, a lover.
It might be any type of person at all, and
abstract conste But if there's a story, a second clinch,
ridiculous roles production of iHeart Radio. Stephen Russell was born
on September ninety seven. If he had been born one

(04:17):
minute earlier, he would have been a Friday baby. It's
a little Halloween for you. Um. He lived in Virginia.
He was raised by David and Georgia Russell, who ran
one of the largest food produce companies in the state,
and when he was twelve, they sat him down to
inform him that he had actually been adopted in a

(04:38):
very weird way, in an illegal transaction where they basically
met in a parking lot and traded a wad of
cash for a squattled infants. Yeah, obviously this is like
a really hard and confusing thing for a twelve year
old to learn, and it certainly showed itself in some
behavioral issues. All of his cousins kind of teased him

(05:01):
about a lot. I mean, you know, everybody's big brother,
older cousins whatever. I love to tell them they were adopted,
you know. But he's struck back in a big way.
He burned down his cousin's garage and another time he
set fire to a classmates jacket in school and it

(05:22):
like damaged the wall. Sure fire, that fire does do damage. Surprise,
surprise to things other than what you said on fire.
Very often a lot of unintended consequences with fire. Um.
So of course this caught people's attention because they noticed
that ship. And he spent thirty days in a hospital
psychiatric ward and then nine months in the Hanover Boys Home,

(05:46):
you know, getting link anger management therapy. They're trying to
help him figure out some things. Um. And then he
was released on Friday seventy one. Friday thirteenth became his
lucky day after that. That's to Friday. During his time
at the boys home, Stephen says, that he discovered his
i Q which is a hundred and sixty three, so

(06:07):
he's like a genius level intelligence. That he experienced physical
abuse from the older and larger boys in this boy's
home who were also there because of some criminal tendencies.
Of course they were probably pretty rough, And that he
also had homosexual experiences in this boy's home that he
found enjoyable and he was like, oh, I actually like that. Um,

(06:28):
so that was something he learned. Those were things he
learned about himself. And while he was in this boy's home. Now,
after he got out of the home, he did shape
up for a while. When he was eighteen, he joined
the family produce business. Or it turned out that his father,
David Russell, had been conspiring with other Virginia companies to
fix the price of produce sold to Virginia school districts. Yikes,

(06:51):
so say and right away Stephen contributed to these schemes
by convincing his dad to get a few more new
contracts that he could price fix. Two. He's like, I
want in dad, this looks cool. I can do this.
Those new contracts U s military bases. I'm not smart

(07:11):
the military. They have a little more know how about
like shady ship. They're a little more vigilant than your
average school district. And they immediately smelled something fishy about
this produce. They were like, this is produced, the should
not smell like fish. But all I'm getting this tuna.
So they quickly issued indictments against all five produced companies,

(07:32):
and his dad rolled over and helped. The investigation ended
up for him with just a fine and a probation sentence.
That's not so bad. Not so bad for dad. They
gotta do is snitch on your other produce guys. I
guess I'll give up my tomato gun. I guess. I
guess the like threat of snitches get stitches isn't as

(07:53):
strong coming from like the vegetable guys, big zucchini. But
Stephen was never implicated, so he may have also rolled over.
There's some suspicion amongst I guess the produced community. Then
he may be rolled over on them as well. He
rolled over like a like a unripe pepper. The peppers

(08:16):
roll over if they're not ripe, they do. He rolled
over like a hard tomato. Yeah, there you go, like
a melon. Yeah. So yeah, as far as anybody knew,
he was a law abiding susan Um. He played the
organ at his local church every Sunday, and he volunteered
as a deputy police officer, and he married the chief

(08:38):
of Police's secretary, Debbie, and then they had a daughter together, Stephanie.
So it's just this regular roll, suburban family man in Virginia.
Is everything chills normal. I'm kind of boring, actually, kind
of a normal dude. Until he decided to use his
access as a deputy to find his birth mother. So
it's a little bit um shady to do that because

(09:00):
obviously she probably didn't want to be found right right,
If it takes the police to track you down, then
you didn't want to be tracked down. But he was like,
whatever rules don't apply to me. We'll see many times
in the story he's like, let me look look her up.
And she still lived in the area, so she was
still local. Was not hard to find her. His birth

(09:22):
parents names were Thomas and Brenda Basham, and when he
confronted them, he discovered that he was the second of
their four children and he was the only one that
they had given up for adoption. That's, I mean, wrenching happens.
But you gotta wonder what it's not the kind of
thing you want to discover. I mean, that would definitely

(09:43):
leave you with a lot of questions. Yeah, even if
you had a great excuse for it, I think would
be incredibly hard not to still be like, oh, I
guess I was just this one gross kid or whatever.
And at first Brenda did not believe that he was
her son. She kind of like pushed him away again,
but eventually she and his siblings like accepted him into
their lives for a while. Now, around the time David,

(10:07):
his father, and the other produced companies are rolling over
the FEDS, Stephen and his wife Debbie, and daughter Stephanie
moved to book O Raton, Florida, where he was hired
as a patrol man focusing on d w I arrests.
But he was fired a year later for repeatedly calling
in sick while trying to get a new job at
the Florida Highway Patrol. So they ended up kid, come in,

(10:29):
got an interview, Yeah right, So they ended up moving
back to Virginia, but he was arrested there for stealing
jewelry and computers. I was only sentenced to five years
in probation, so not too bad. We'll slap on the wrists.
I mean for stealing jewelry and computers in the in
the eighties. Yeah, I mean computers. How do you even

(10:49):
steal a computer in the eighties, they were as big
as a house. You like, put it under his shirt.
But he can't leave the building. It's got a whole
semi truck backed up. Forklip is coming in and out.
I've almost got half the computer loaded. Boss just stayed
a few more hours. We'll come back tomorrow. So anyway,
he got another produced job, this time with wholesale grocery

(11:12):
company Cisco Plastic Cisco Thong Song. This required him to
relocate to Houston, Texas, and Debbie and Stephanie stayed in
Virginia while Stephen went ahead to Houston, and it was
like a whole new world for Stephen. His biographer Steve
mcvickor wrote, he had done the circuit of anonymous bathroom

(11:34):
sex in Norfolk area parks for years, so he'd still
been kind of, you know, trying to get some gay
experiences on the down low while he was still married. Um.
But the Montrose area of Houston was known for having
a large homosexual community. They had like a plethora of
gay bars. This is something he didn't have access to
in Virginia, so it was like, I think, went straight

(11:57):
to his head. Probably he got very He went out
a lot. He got very familiar with that world by
the time Debbie and Stephanie joined him in Houston in January,
and for over a year, he kept his flings a secret,
so he was still going out in this community. He
was still he was doing like some drugs, and he

(12:17):
was meeting men anonymously and and having flings and stuff
like that. But Debbie didn't know anything about it until
in April six he was in a terrible car accident
coming home late from one of his nights out, and
Debbie nursed him back to health. But she had kind
of started to suspect that he was cheating on her,

(12:38):
so he finally came clean about his sexuality. He confessed
to her that he was gay. They agreed to divorce,
but they remained close friends, which I think is pretty
cool because Debbie was like a very religious person and
you know, in this conservative area and could have gone
very differently, very very differently, So I think that says
a lot about her. Yeah, good for Debbie. Like Debbie

(12:59):
the this week thanks Debbie. Yea. So Debbie took Stephanie
back to Virginia, leaving him, you know, in Houston to
his new life. In the early nineties, Stephen was working
as a sales manager for a food service company in
Houston and they found out that he was gay, and
it was the early nineties in Texas, so they were

(13:20):
able to just fire him for that. That, of course,
really screwed with his head and he felt like he'd
lost control of his life. At that point, he was angry,
and he decided, you know what, I'm done with this.
I'm sick of you know, slaving away for the man.
I'm gonna take it out on them. And he went
out and started selling fake Rolex watches. You know, he'd

(13:42):
had it. Why live legitimately when I can't even be
who I am without them coming after me. I tried
to keep a good job. Screw it, he went and
started selling watches. Did he come Foleix? Probably? And they
should have. And then soon after that he maybe took
it a step further and went ahead and defrauded an

(14:03):
insurance company for thousand dollars for pretending to hurt himself
in a fall. Been in ninety two, he was arrested
for lud behavior, the insurance fraud, and submitting a fake
passport application. All this is pretty rough, and it landed
him a ten year sentence in Harris County Jail. And

(14:25):
at the time, he was dating a man named Jimmy
Kempbell who had recently actually been diagnosed with AIDS, and
in the early nineties, AIDS was pretty much a death
sentence for most people, sadly, and Stephen was really mostly
just terrified of being in prison unable to care for
this guy that he loved. He knew that with this

(14:47):
long sentence, which was all stacked up for his multiple
c he knew by the time he got out for
all that Jimmy would be dead. So obviously he had
to get out of prison, right So Stephen watched, and
he learned, and he planned. He observed the shift changes

(15:07):
of the guards for four weeks, and during that time
he managed to collect a pair of plane sweatpants as
well as a tie dyed T shirt from a room
where they stored personal items of female in mace. Okay,
not seeing how this is gonna get anybody out of prison,
but go on, all he needed was like an accessory

(15:28):
to give him an air of authority. So he lifted
a spare radio that the guards usually carried, like a
little walkie talkie, and he stashed all that ship away.
He waited for the guards to go on their usual
smoke break, and then he quickly put on the outfit
and he casually walks over to the door and he

(15:49):
taps on the window of the glass with the walkie talkie.
He had seen like other guards do this before and
they would just open the door. And so the guards
thought he was an undercover police officer, dressed for the street,
I guess. And they opened the gate and Stephen walked
right out the front door of one of the busiest

(16:09):
and most secure jails in Texas. He said, those first
moments of freedom felt amazing, such an adrenaline rush. Best
of all, I knew I would get to see and
take care of Jimmy, and that he did. He went
straight to his apartment where Jimmy had been staying, and
he told him, Hey, uh, we gotta go, and we

(16:30):
gotta go now. And so they packed up and they
planned ahead to Mexico. But then less than a week later,
they were down in the Miami Airport getting ready to
leave the country for good, and the police were there waiting.
Stephen was arrested again and brought back to court. Now
the judge ordered a bail of only twenty thousand dollars,
which Stephen was actually easily able to pay, what with

(16:52):
all I guess the Moneys, with all the fraud. And
while on bail, they managed to get themselves on a
plane and they flew to Mexico City time the party
number one flight risk Stephen Russelling. After they landed, Stephen
called the Harris County Sheriff and told him he was
in the Dominican Republic, and he told the sheriff, I

(17:16):
hope you don't blame my escape on those guards who
were out there taking a smoke break. You could fix
the problem if you just allowed smoking back in jail,
to which the sheriff replied, fuck you. Who else are
you supposed to respond to that? So they lived it
up in Mexico for a while, but eventually money troubles

(17:37):
caught up to them again, and Jimmy's health also began
to deteriorate, and proper medical care wasn't really available, so
they were forced to return to the US. Jimmy spent
two years on the land with Stephen before the authorities
finally caught up with them, which is pretty good. I mean,
he must have been taking pretty good care Jimmy, I
think so. Yeah, but yeah. Ultimately, another insurance scam went wrong,

(18:01):
bungled up, and Stephen was back before a judge. He said,
the last time I saw Jimmy, he was in a
holding cell in front of me, and Stephen was sentenced
to six months. They spoke every day, but Jimmy was
getting weaker all the time. Now. Jimmy was also supposed
to be in jail because he was totally an accomplice
to some of these insurance scams and stuff like that,

(18:23):
but he'd been given a compassionate release because of his illness.
They basically sent him home to die, you know, they
would like, don't stay here. And that gave Stephen the
idea to fake having AIDS as well. Crazy, so a
doctor on the inside in the jail coached him about
the symptoms, which he was probably pretty familiar with anyway,

(18:43):
after taking jim um and he also falsified his prison
health records to include a positive lab test and they
never checked for themselves, like he looked so bad on
paper that when he petitioned at the readies to drop
his federal charges, they did. Wow. They were like, fine, sure,

(19:08):
I guess you're sick. So that that took care of
some charges, okay, But he had a lot of charges,
many many charges. So there was still the matter of
this six months sentence left to serve. And then only
a few weeks into that six month sentence, while Stephen
was enacting this great plan, Jimmy passed away and said

(19:30):
he had his dog lying on his bed beside him
back in his home in Florida. Stephen, of course was devastated,
but he was stuck in Harris County Jail and he
was actually a waiting transfer to a state penitentiary. He
spent months escaping into books, this time at the prison
law library, where one day in December he met fellow

(19:54):
inmate Philip Morris. And I say that we meet fellow
inmate phil at Morris right after a little commercial break,
and we're back. So Philip Morris, this fellow inmate that
Steven Russell just bumped into in the law library. He

(20:15):
was a small, blonde, soft spoken man. He was diabetic,
and he didn't have a lot of impulse control. So
he had this habit of going into like gas stations
or seven eleven or something and buying twelve donuts and
then eating them all at once. Um, which I don't
know a lot about diabetes, but as I understand it,
that's really bad. But he was hardly a criminal mastermind.

(20:38):
I mean, Sky was just a sweet little dude like sugar.
But in when he was only twenty years old, he
rented a car to move from Houston to Atlanta, and
he was arrested for never returning the rental car kind
of just hung onto it a little too long. How
is that a mistake? Do you hang on the rental car? Well,

(21:02):
it probably wasn't an accident. It was probably just like
just ship, I still need this car. I still need
this car. And eventually, you know, you kinda it kind
of becomes normal to you, you know, and you stopped, Yeah,
you stopped making the payments, and then you're like, oh, shoot,
I should pay for that car, and the next thing
you know, months have gone by. I get it. That's
all I'm saying. Have you still in a rental car? No?
I'm just saying for a slippery mind like mine, it

(21:25):
wouldn't be that hard to let it slide for a
little too long. So he was arrested, and you know,
they set up a series of restitution payments that he
was gonna have to pay in lieu of jail time.
Years later, he was struggling to keep up with these
payments and he was arrested again for breaking his probation,
and that landed him in Texas Harris County Jail. In December,

(21:50):
he was in the law library researching something for his
dying cell mate. And he's only five ft two. Like
we said, this is a little guy. And he was
reaching for a book on a very high shelf and
suddenly this hand reaches up and grabs it for him
with ease. He hands it to him and it was
Steven Russell, who was six ft two, so big height

(22:13):
difference between them a full foot. And he told Philip,
you know, hey, don't hesitate if you got any questions
at all. I'm a lawyer, so you can ask me.
He even opened up the Texas Legal directory as proof
and pointed to his name, see Stephen J. Russell. Philip
later said, we had these little arm bands that have
our prison i D number and our birthdate, and it

(22:36):
all matched up he was a lawyer. I believed it,
Stephen said in an interview. Oh, I told him all
kinds of bullshit. You don't expect to meet someone cool
in jail. You expect to meet derelicts. And damn was
I wrong. Damn. So he's like I just said, some ship,
but then he turned out to be cool. So Stephen
and Philip are in jail together and they just completely

(22:58):
fall for each other. Philip's birthday was even a Friday,
Steven's lucky day. So I mean this, ding ding ding,
This is a sign lighting up like we are meant
to be together for Steven right, and Philip had been
kind of reclusive and shy in prison, like shy like
you've got I mean, I mean, there's definitely a system

(23:18):
of clicks I think you have to figure out. But
he basically kept to himself to kind of stay out
of harm's way as best as he could self preservation,
I think. But Stephen, he knew the system well, and
he had like a whole network going on. He was
connected to other prisoners, to guards and even the outside world,
and he used those connections to get transferred as Philip's cellmate.

(23:43):
It's amazing. Let me go live with my boyfriend for
a while. Right, If this is prison, lock me up
thro the key. Philip said, we just had a bond
that can't be described. We were so in tune with
each other and we could sit and not even speak.
The next spring, both of them were released on parole,

(24:03):
Stephen in October of and Philip just two months later.
So they left prison to people who had fallen completely
in love, and they decided to start over with a
brand new life, and they bought a modest home in
clear Lake, and they decided to put their criminal pass
behind them. But it wasn't long before they needed some money. Sure, sure,

(24:28):
you need money. And to Stephen, some money was an option.
I wanted to like lots of money. Yeah right, So
he called a friend and he was able to cash
out a not so legit life insurance policy that he
had taken out on Jimmy Kimple, Yeah, his ex. At
this point, he had actually taken out multiple life insurance

(24:49):
policies on Jimmy, so not exactly how things are supposed
to go. So he did some more insurance broad and
Stephen said, we bought each other Mrs eighties. It was outrageous,
but we were on parole and we were free, so
we had a good time. Hey, you know, so you know,
we're like, you know, I've got a lot of work
to do, but fuck it, it's Saturday. I'm not gonna

(25:11):
do it. And you're like, hey, you know, all this
is illegal, but you know what, we're on parole. Let's
live large, let's go crazy. You think you'd be more
careful on parole than time, but you might think a
lot of things that don't end up being true about
Steven Russell, that's true too. At some point he needed
a real job, though, right to pay for this lavish

(25:33):
lifestyle like your average life insurance policy that those weren't
going to keep paying out forever, and they were buying
each other Mercedes like they needed some income. So he
got to work on his resume. He said, I'm going
to get a job, which of course meant he lied
like crazy on his resume and went and stole a job.
He managed to get himself hired at North American Medical

(25:57):
Management or NAM. Remember back in NAMA, which is a
company that oversaw the business affairs of private doctors and
medical clinics. All the phone numbers on his CV just
went straight back to Stephen, and he was a master
at disguising his voice, so he would just answer the phone,

(26:18):
give himself a review and a reference, and after an
interview and a few phone calls, Stephen was hired at
NAM as their chief financial officer. He got a c
suite job on a lie. I mean, I was afraid
to to like list all the roles I've gotten, like
on an acting resume for an unpaid theater gig. You know, like,

(26:40):
I'm like, well, I shouldn't even put this one because
it wasn't that big of a part. I'm always like,
don't say no Excel. You don't know excel. You're so
bad at this. Guy's like, I can run you the
financial operations of your company. Let me lie a whole
life of financial excellence. He has no experience in finance.

(27:01):
He has no actual history of employment at all, really,
not in anything like this and that of nowhere. He
gets hired under these guys with a starting salary of
like ninety dollars a year, in which calculating transferredly is
a hundred and fifty six thousand today. WHOA. So it's

(27:23):
a pretty sweet salary for having no experience. The company's
founder said that Stephen was quote a likable guy, engaging
and easier to work with than most chief financial officers,
the guys, the world's best actor, he said, all the
right things. Even though Stephen had no experience in this
field and he wasn't much of an accountant. He poked

(27:46):
around in the books a little. I guess he felt like, well,
that you know, paying me to be at CFO, I
guess I may as well pretend. So he pokes around
the books a little, and he found out that NAM
was cheating itself out of money. Oh it's the weird
thing to hear about medical management, right, you left something
on the table. Each month, NAM accumulated hundreds of thousands

(28:07):
of dollars from clients, which they held in accounts, but
those accounts bore no interests. So Steven saw that and
he's like, hmmm, let me just casually start shifting that
money into interest bearing accounts. That simple trick, within five
months had generated almost two million dollars in revenue for

(28:30):
the company. Oh my god, that tiny trick. So anyway,
put your ship in a high interest savings account. People.
So yeah, this like a brilliant move, Like this is
the smartest thing ever, he should just be like, you
know what, I guess I will be a CFO for
the rest of my life. I will pull down this
dope salary. I lied my way into this job, but

(28:50):
might as well legitimately keep it because I'm good at Yeah,
it turns out I'm great at it makes sense. But no,
not so much. He couldn't leave well enough alone. Obviously
it's Steven Russell. Yeah, so he decided that since he
made such a clever decision, right, he deserved a little commission. Okay,

(29:10):
that seems fair, specifically half of whatever fifty percent commission.
So in less than half a year, he skimmed eight
hundred thousand dollars from them to like various personal accounts. Okay,
but he also made them eight hundred thousand dollars true,

(29:31):
So to me, I'm like, well, that's that's your fault. Now,
come on, I'd be like, all right, you know what,
maybe he lied, but give me one more good idea
and you could stay. One for you, one for me
too for you, one too for me, classic bugs bunny trick.
Perfect now. Stephen himself suggested later that this wasn't just

(29:54):
impulsive theft, right, It wasn't just like, oh money, I'll
take it. He says that when Jim he was sick
and dying from AIDS, the HMS put them through absolute hell,
which is believable for anyone who's ever lived in America. Well,
and I'm sure a lot of people who did have
to live through the AIDS basis are very familiar with

(30:16):
this song and dance because I'm sure they were total
dicks about it being a gay virus or whatever. They
wouldn't cover the cost of treatments, and it was just
constant money troubles for them. And when he was at NAM,
he said, I watched executives badger their medical directors to
put pressure on network physicians to get patients out of

(30:36):
the hospital as soon as possible because otherwise it would
affect their bonus. And that he said when he heard
that ship, he got really fired up and vengeful. It
just reminded him of that hell that he went through,
and he was like, that's it. I have the ability
now I'm going to make someone pay. Specifically, I'm gonna

(30:58):
make someone pay me, I know, but as long as
they're paying, that's what I want. Here. It's just funny
that he's like, no, no, no, no, I had a
bigger purpose. But it wasn't really a bigger purpose. It
was just a justification for doing what he was going
to do. Anyway, I'm like a version of Robin Hood.
I robbed from the rich and I give to the me.

(31:20):
But yeah, that's funny that he's like, I'm going to
stick it to him. But then he made them more money,
even that he stole some of it, but he left
some of it, and he also gave him that trick,
so they've probably been making money off that trick everything.
Like all this time, Philip was completely oblivious to what
they were doing. According to Philip, right of course, he
insists to this day he had no idea Stephen was

(31:42):
embezzling money. To Philip, he just landed the perfect man,
this man who cared about and for him, and he
handled all their financial interests. Stephen bought them like a
huge house with a pool and fancy cars and jet skis,
and they went to expend to restaurants all the time.
And Philip says it just all fit. He said, hindsight

(32:06):
is I had no mind for finance. Steve would call
me up in the middle of an afternoon and say,
how do you get dressed and meet me at the
Moose Cafe at six o'clock. We're going to celebrate. I
made nine thousand dollars today and I didn't think what
illegal activity did you do? Which I guess is fair,
but I'm my first. Philip had just been lonely and

(32:29):
miserable for so long, and he really thought that he
had finally found happiness and safety. Sure, sure, I do
want to pull into speculation station though, because I mean
I pretty much believe Philip in these interviews where he says, like,
you know, I didn't really know, But I also think
that he he probably kind of chose not to know,

(32:52):
you know, like like you can sort of choose ignorance
without knowing what you're choosing in a way, if that
makes sense, Like you can say I'm just not going
to ask any questions and not even that, but just
like very quickly convince yourself that this is normal. And
to me, it seems like maybe something like that is
going on, where he's like, oh, you made in a day.

(33:15):
That doesn't seem right. But if I poke at this,
it might go away. So why would I poke? Yeah? Sure,
he would tell me if something bad was happening, you know,
and then you just very quickly convince yourself that you're
not involved, you know, and you're not really, but you
probably could have been. Yeah, that's I think. I think
I agree with you. I feel like that's just a

(33:38):
very human thing should be. Like everything's great. I know
something bad is going on, like somewhere vaguely in my periphery,
but I just won't look at it. If I don't
look at it, it won't happen and it's not real.
And if as it edges its way into my vision,
I'll just turn my head, you know what I mean. Like,
that's that's what I think about this, Like he's he

(34:00):
probably did have an inkling that there wasn't this was
not legit, and then shut it down. But was just like,
I'm not I'll trust him and he'll get me out
of whatever mess he's getting me into. I would, I
would guess I'm certainly not anything close to a psychologist,
but we're in speculation station. I could say whatever I want,
um that that's that might be true of a lot

(34:22):
of spouses of criminals, you know who sort of when
you look back at it and you're like you totally
should have known that there's thirty bodies in your basement, right,
but um, but they're like, I really just had no idea.
And because they don't even realize that, they shut that
part of their brain down. Yeah, it makes me like
a Debbie. I wonder if she did something similar with

(34:44):
you know, she's kind of like, I know something's happening,
but I'm just not going to ask for a while,
until it was finally like, okay, man, what's going on?
Like yeah, how often do we do that every day?
Or like if I don't ask, it's not real. How
many people you know don't go to the doctor because
it's like, well, if I go to the doc, or
then I got a diagnosis, and then it's real. You
know how many people you know I don't. I don't

(35:05):
look at the nutrition facts on the cereal box because
then I know what I'm eating and it's terrible, A
very human thing, for sure, I think. Yeah. But of course,
eight hundred thousand dollars in just a few months doesn't

(35:26):
go missing without somebody noticing. And soon Stephen realized that
they were onto him and it was time to disappear.
So he went to every bank that he could find,
and he went to the A T M and just
took as much cash out as he could from each one,
and he just stuffed suitcases full of cash. Philip was

(35:47):
hanging out at his sister's house and Steven shows up
all frantic and harryed, and he shoves an open briefcase
full of cash in Philip's hands and says, here, baby,
this is yours. In Philip's own recollection of the story,
he told Stephen, you and that thing blanking blank? Oh
what a ship fit from Philip? That is? You know

(36:10):
you're on Philip's bad side. If he called you an
mffing blank blank. I'm like, if he said m fffing,
then what is blanking blank? Stand? Because I would think
it was fucking fuck or writer fffing s head or
something f m fingffing f That's what I would say.
I know, it rolls off the tongue better than a
blanking blank. But Philip was so mad he kicked the

(36:34):
briefcase and it flew up in the air and bundles
of money just reined around the house. I mean, I
bet he went was so mad to not pick up Yeah,
He's like, how dare you? As he's picking up like
stacks of cash. I can't believe you did this, stuffing
it in his shirt. Well, soon after, Stephen was arrested,
and so was Philip. Turns out, Stephen had been writing

(36:58):
checks in six different variations of Philip's name. He had
also like opened some of those accounts under like a
fake social Security number of Philip's name and all this stuff,
so it made him totally look like an accomplice, which
if Philip truly didn't know, even if he knew but
wasn't asking, he didn't know that Stephen was using his
name like that, and that's an extra level of suck up.

(37:21):
Very that's not cool. Yeah, I just brought you into
this without your consent kind of. So as he's being arrested,
Stephen told the officers that he was diabetic and he
desperately needed his insulin, which of course is Philip's insulin.
Stephen is not diabetic, so they brought him the whole kit,
and in the back of the police car, Stephen gave

(37:42):
himself forty injections of insulin. Oh my god, yikes, horrific.
First of all, too many needles. Second of all, way
too much insulin, right, and he now says that that
was a failed suicide attempt um, but Philip said that
it was just all a part of Even's planned because
he knows it's easier to escape from a hospital than

(38:03):
it is to escape from a jail cell or anywhere
in the custody of law enforcement. So he's just like,
give me to the hospital and I can get out
from there. I kind of wonder speculation station if um,
maybe it wasn't just like an either or thing, like
if he was if it was a suicide's attempt. He
was like, well, if it kills me, great, If it doesn't,
I'll be in a hospital and I can escape more

(38:25):
easily from there maybe, or vice versa, like, hopefully this
sends me to the hospital and I can escape. But
if it kills me, well, and it kills me, I'm
fucked either way. Maybe you can see that. I can
see that. And then, even though this sent him into
an insulin shock in the booking room, which must have
been horrifying, it didn't work to get him out of jail.

(38:45):
Philip was released on a forty bond, but knowing Stephen
all too well at this point, Texas set his bail
at nine hundred thousand dollars. There you go. That was
like deliberately to keep him from being able to pay.
They wanted him in jail from his arrest all the
way to his trial date. They were not trying to
let him out. So you know, it looked like maybe

(39:09):
this was the end for old Stephen. That kind of
money was going to keep behind bars. Like we said,
right up to the trial, there was no way out
at this point. Right, come on, you know, Stephen, this
was not going to keep him. Of course, it wasn't
early inconvenient. He knew exactly what to do, and we're

(39:32):
going to tell you about it right after this commercial break.
Welcome back to the thrilling conclusion of Steven Russell and
Philip Morris's story. Yea, some massive bond wasn't going to
keep Stephen down, pH poshsh So bond orders are typed

(39:54):
up by lawyers and the judge just has to sign it.
And Stephen knew that. So he called up a end
in Florida and he told him how to type one out,
and he had it mailed to him in the prison,
and then he hid the type letter under his armpit
and at a later hearing, as he was being walked
from the prison to the courthouse, chained to other prisoners,

(40:17):
he passed by a woman carrying a large stack of paperwork.
So this was the moment he dropped the letter as
he passed her. Sure enough, somebody picked up the paper
and then went, oh, you dropped this or whatever and
made its way to the deputy and eventually to the
file folder in the courtroom. Incredible. That night, he called
his Florida friend back and asked him to make a

(40:37):
three way call so that he could get through to
the night clerk at the magistrate's court. Stephen on the
phone pretended to be a judge and he was like, oh, hello,
this is Judge roder Gaster. I had a bond hearing
for Stephen Russell today. If you haven't heard of him,

(40:59):
just my monocle here. Yes, I filed the hard copy,
but the clerk in the courtroom didn't enter it into
the computer. So my good friend, respect my authoritative accent.
This is Texas Bros. Would you please handle that for me? Well,

(41:22):
I'll right, but you sound like a Maddie weird one. Yes,
Oh you know us judges. It's it's all that fancy
intrimication we get all right, I know that intumication does
that to you. So sure enough, the night clerk files
the paperwork, and within hours of that phone call, Steven's

(41:45):
bond was reduced from nine hundred thousand dollars to forty dollars,
which was of course a pittance compared to what he
had And at eight pm on guess when Friday July,
a bail bondsman came to the county jail and Stephen

(42:05):
walked right out once again. This guy, he just walks
out the front door. That's how he does it. So
Steven's out. He went back to their house. He hopped
the wall and starts banging on the door until Philip
came around to open it, and Philip, of course is
amazed and shocked to see him. They took a swim

(42:26):
in the pool and then Stephen told him once again,
we have to leave right now, and he explained to
Philip how he got out, but he added that there
was a warrant out for Philip's arrest too. Stephen used
a phony answering service to convince Philip that his bond
had been provoked and that he was going to be arrested.
That's so fucked up. Because Philip had paid his bail,

(42:48):
he was just out on bond, was adding for his
child date. He was good to go. Yes, he would
have been fine if he had just sat there quietly.
But he believed Stephen, he later said, being the gullible
fool that I am. I got scared and we ran
big mistake and they fled from Houston for Florida. But
with Steven's face being all over the papers there were,

(43:11):
they were only there for about a week before Stephen
was arrested again and flown back to Houston. And Philip
was not caught at this time, but he but he
was on the run. He didn't tend to be yeah,
exactly crazy, and twenty police officers were waiting when the
plane landed. Stephen pled guilty and he was sentenced to
forty five years in prison. Now, the one thing I

(43:33):
think is interesting now we've seen twice that if Stephen
hadn't gone back for Philip, he probably would have been
in the clear. Yeah, if he had just run somewhere else,
he would have been a lot harder to find. So
I think it really shows like that there is kind
of a deep love story here absolutely, you know, I
mean there's no question that these two recklessly cared about

(43:56):
each other. Right. Um, it's obviously not a healthy relationship.
But but even even Stephen, um, you know, I couldn't
stay away. He just he need a Philip. And whether
he needed him because he was a mark, you know,
because he was someone who was gullible, you know that

(44:17):
that might be an element. I think he really did
love him, But I think he also knew like, I
got to hang onto this one because I can do
my thing and he's not going to stop me. I
think he loved him too. It must be said. The
first time he escaped was for Jimmy, So it's it's
always been for love that he's escaped from jail, at
least for him in his mind. I just wonder if

(44:40):
there wasn't already a relationship, if he would have found
another reason to do it. The man did not like jail, Yeah,
who does you know? Who can blame him? But uh,
but I was going to say, like he seems to
kind of need someone to need him then, do you
know what I mean? And I wonder if that has

(45:02):
to do with kind of his family situation. I think
if you're a person who's been abandoned a lot or
rejected a lot. You get need and want really wrapped
up each other, really like, if you're really dependent on me,
you can't leave you. And so I think that probably
with Philip, he's like, oh, here's a guy who really
needs me. He's someone who wants to lean on someone else,

(45:24):
perfect for me. And then of course they also had
clearly some real chemistry and real ship in common and
stuff too. I don't want to take away from that,
but I think that that was very attractive to a
personality like Stevens. Well at this point seemed irrelevant because
in a forty five years sentence in prison, it finally
seemed to catch up to Stephen. He was locked up

(45:48):
for a long, long time years. That was going to
be it, you know, that's not, of course not. Stephen
started taking art classes while in prison. This is how
you expect every exciting story to begin, right jail break. Well,
first there was an art class. But this is this

(46:10):
is how Steven's brain worked. With each art session he attended,
he snatched up a green magic marker like a green sharpie,
and he hit it under his bed. Meanwhile, he was
closely observing the woman who guarded the entrance to the
unit where the inmates ate breakfast. She was always just
yacking away on the phone, only half paying attention. So

(46:34):
he's keeping a close side. If I've seen this movie,
I've seen this movie. See ladies on the phone. Oh yeah,
she's got the CADI glasses. Be hive, what do you want?
So I says to Jane. I says, oh my god,

(46:54):
you know that man's cheating on you. She needs to
leave him right now. I know from Jersey, we've got
a Jersey lady in the jail. And then I would
British magistrate, what is going on in Texas? So he's
watching this lady. He's stealing markers and on laundry rounds
he managed to smuggle himself an extra prison uniform and

(47:17):
these were basically like white two piece uniforms, is just
like scrubs almost just like a white plain shirt with
a V neck collar and white linen pants. And on
Wednesday December, he plugged up his cell toilet, he filled
it with water and he dropped the cartridges of the
marker ink into the water, creating a die. He soaked

(47:41):
the extra white uniform in the solution, and then all
the next day he was like very carefully shaking it
and blowing it meticulously so that it would try, and
once it did, it looked almost identical to the green
scrubs worn by visiting doctors. And on Friday December, he

(48:05):
slipped in the bathroom during breakfast, put the green uniform on,
and he walked right up to the guard on the phone,
waved to her, knocked on the glass. She opened the
gate for him, and he just kept walking right across
the courtyard and straight out the front entrance. A guard
tower even called to him, now, I'm doc, those sure

(48:28):
do look like prison digs, to which Stephen laughed and said, well,
don't shoot. And he walked right out of the prison
once again. He was only there of his forty five
year sentence for three months. Like as soon as he
went in, he's like, what am I doing? He took

(48:50):
his time and he planned and he did it. And
he says once there's a quote from him where he's
talking about why he got out of prison the way
he did. He says, in Texas, you are authorized to
stop a prison break with lethal force. So he's like,
you could not do it violently. It wasn't safe. The

(49:10):
only way to do it was to walk out, and
he managed to do that now multiple times. That's amazing.
Once again, Stephen probably could have disappeared, gone somewhere and
they could have lost track of him, but he went
back to his love. Philip was hiding out with a

(49:31):
friend in Galveston, Texas, when Steven tracked him down and
they told him he'd made parole, but he would run
away with him out of Texas. Made parole again. Philip,
come on, come on, buddy, like, just give it out,
you think Steve for a minute, but he did not

(49:53):
give it a thing for a minute. He went ahead
and accepted and said let's go together, and they fled
to Mississippi and they had a great old time at
the Grand Casino Hotel. But Philip was getting a little
fed up at this point. Again he's on the run
for something he'd never even did in the first place,
that he didn't even know he was in trouble for that.

(50:15):
He faked about him being in trouble again when he
was waiting for his bond. I mean, and he's always here,
like it's gonna be okay. I've got this handle. You know,
you're in and out of jail man. I never know
what's going on with you, So yeah, it makes sense.
They finally everything came to a head for him and
they broke out into a huge fight. So he blew
up at Stephen and he like flipped a table over

(50:37):
and he shoved Stephen into a window of Florida ceiling
glass in their high level hotel, and the glass bode
but it did not break. And Philip said, if that
thing had given away, I'd be sitting on death row
right now. But that kind of tells me if Maddie
was because he was he was just I mean, this

(50:58):
is a five to little like sweet gentle baby that
got so mad that he was willing to almost kill someone. Well,
and you look at I think people like to like
quiet people who are like, don't want a lot of conflict,
Like it's not you know, you might blow up and
when you do, it's all going to come out at once.
That that's the kind of the impression I get from

(51:19):
Philip is he's like the kind of guy who's like,
I don't want any trouble. Yes, everything's fine. I'm a
little upset, but I'll deal with it. Let me just
bottle it up. Bottle it up, bottle it up, tamp
it down, Tampa huh. And then the cork pops and
he almost threw someone out a window who's a foot
taller than him, you know, right, very crazy. And then
after a call on a tapped phone line, both Stephen

(51:42):
and Philip were picked up again by the authorities just
about a quarter mile from their hotel, and it would
be the last time that they saw each other for
seven months. They both faced hefty prison sentences, especially Stephen obviously,
who had completely embarrassed the entire state of Texas multiple times.

(52:02):
And this time it was for the last time. But
of course it wasn't for the last time. Of course
it wasn't. He already had things in the works. By
the time he was in a squad car, Stephen was
concocting his most elaborate escape plan yet, this one almost

(52:24):
a combination of all his previous plans in a lot
of ways. This was like his his the grand opus
of prison escapes, the finest word, most of piece. This
is what they'll remember me for if I'm going out
with a bank of going out big. So, while he
awaited trial for his escape, he got into this really
crazy plan. He started abusing laxatives, this is weirder than

(52:49):
art school, right, like where is this going away? But
suddenly shipping a lot. He started dropping weight very quickly
and the prison typewriter. He falsified his own medical records
once again. When he was sentenced to an additional forty
five years on top of the forty five years he

(53:10):
already had to serve, he's solemnly accepted. He very quietly said, okay,
that's if that's how it is, then that's how it is.
And they were like, they were like, hey, you don't
seem like a usual chip or self. You know, usually
when we sit and see to forty five years in jail,
you're all happy and funny about it. What do you
got to say for yourself? And he said, well, you see,

(53:35):
I just learned that I'm HIV positive. Stephen slippery little
rat even once again he was so dedicated to this
con he starved himself, He threw up his meals, he
did not sleep, and again he's abusing laxatives as well,

(53:56):
like he's just purging from every orifice scene until he
got super emaciated. He looked terrible. At over six ft tall,
he was only a hundred and fifty three pounds at
his trial. And so I mean, he's an openly gay
man in the mid nineties with symptoms. He's got a
piece of paper saying he at HIV. So no one

(54:18):
bothered to test him, no one in anywhere, and the
bad line of people that could have done it and
did I wonder speculation station once again. I wonder sometimes
if the era, the region, and what people thought of
AIDS back then, maybe that really helped him get away

(54:38):
with this because people are probably like, oh, he's got AIDS. Well,
I don't want to deal with it. No, it's a
good point. I wondered that, Yeah, yeah, he's probably got AIGs.
There's nothing we can do. He's a gay guy. He
says he's got AIDS, he's got AIGs. Sure that makes
sense to me, right, Why would he stay if we
didn't have it? Yea. And plus they made me wonder
about the compassionate release that Jimmy got when you know,

(54:59):
people weren't super clear on how it transmitted right away,
you know, at first, so a lot of people were
very concerned about airborne transmission or you could touch someone's
hand and get AIDS and stuff like. They really didn't
have a knowledge of that, so I kind of wondered
if the prison was like, yeah, get him out of here,
because he might infect other people with AIDS just by

(55:20):
being here. So I don't know that could still be
a thing I should say. He's like, thanks, bigotry here
used that to my advantage once. For the next ten months,
they just watched him as he withered away to skin
and bones. He's showing all the signs of late stage
terminal AIDS. So eventually, as was standard procedure, they gave

(55:43):
him a transfer to a prison nursing home just south
of San Antonio, and shortly after that, prison officials got
a phone call from a physician who was like, oh, hello,
this is still r. Reinald. I was just wondering if

(56:04):
you had any near death patients who would be willing
to participate in experimental drug therapy for eight right right,
if you do send them right away, I really need
a lot of patients to test on, so I'm sure
you have at least one one guy that fits the
bill in there. And they're like, well, funny enough, I
think I have exactly one guy who meets the exact

(56:28):
description you just gave me. Well, by jove, send him
to my way by jove, British calls lately, Well, slap
mattinee and call me grasshopper. You send him right this way, man,
that's more like it goes. I'm less suspicious. So they

(56:48):
put him in a taxi to send him off to
this experimental treatment facility. Once again, Stephen walked right out
the front door. Oh my god, this guy just like
they put him in a taxi. That's very like, well,
you're about to die, so just you take yourself to
the experimental medical facility in May. And what day was it?

(57:12):
March a Friday, of course, Oh my god. Not only that,
it was Philip Morris is thirty ninth birthday, thirty nine,
and that's thirteen times three. I think about when he
died the prison uniform and he's drying it the next
day if he's like, you've got to fucking dry faster
because I'm gone on Saturday. And that's funny too, because

(57:35):
I feel like a lot of prison breaks are very
much like the day is specific, because oh, there'll be
less officials there that day, though someone will be over there.
There's the thing happening, and so they'll be distracted or whatever.
And for him it's just like it's a Friday of
the thirteenth. I'm doing it then. I don't care what
the funk else is going on. If you're not ready,
I'll wait till the next Friday. Later that same physician

(57:59):
Dr Reinholdt. I wanted to say, Judge Reinold, but well,
doctor instead called back to the prison to once again
inform him that well, sadly the treatment didn't work. My
opus was a failure. Oh, I'm so sorry, doctor, Stephen

(58:22):
Russell has passed away. I know you're very broken up
about it. We are. He was our favorite escaping Well
he's escaped life at this point. Wow, let me send
you a death certificate so you got something all record.
I hope that your experimental treatment fares better in the
future too. If you ever got any more patience over

(58:45):
there that I can I can experiment on you, send
them my way. They've got to be exactly six to
and near death and I only take patience on Friday.
And it true. Stephen even sent death certificates to both
the prison and the parole board so they could be like, wow,

(59:08):
I guess he's really dead. Meanwhile, Philip was still in
prison and Stephen was determined to get him out. He's like,
I'm not leaving my man in there. He said he
would take care of him. I'm going to take care
of him. So he forged an attorney's bar card because
of course, and he called the Estelle unit, which was

(59:28):
the prison where Philip was staying, and he posed as
a judge on the phone and he issued a bench
warrant to have him moved from that prison outside Houston
to a Dallas prison so that Stephen could go visit
him disguised as an attorney named Jean Louis, and that way,
you know, people wouldn't recognize him when he walked in.

(59:50):
And he tried and tried. He saw Philip a few
times and he tried to get him released, but he
was not able to make it work and he needed
to flee because they were starting to catch on. Authorities
were definitely dubious of the death certificates. To be honest,
I'm like, what is getting embarrassing? All come on, guys,

(01:00:11):
and they were like, you maybe this guy faked his death.
I imagine they're thinking, like, well, he was getting real
sick because saw him lose a lot of weight. He
was throwing up he had all the signs, terminal aids,
and even a piece of paperwork and said he had
eights So so he's got to be dead, right high.
Sure if what if we do some police work on

(01:00:32):
this now, Carlton, Carlton, we don't do that kind of stuff. Here,
I had one of them. It always hurts my head.
But you know what, Carlton, you might be onto something.
Let's do some police work. And sure enough they actually
did their own investigating for once and found out that, yes,

(01:00:54):
the death certificate had been forged. It was all fake.
But by the time US Marshall's as it did the prison,
Stephen was already gone. He had totally dropped off the radar.
But he's still trying to get Philip out of jail,
of course, and so in March an attorney offered to
represent Philip for fifty thou dollars, but Steven's like, I

(01:01:15):
don't have that kind of money right now. I can't
get that kind of money together very quickly. Um, so
you know, I guess I should get a get a
job and save up. Just kidding. He went to a
nation's bank. He strolled into Nation's bank and posed as
a Virginia millionaire with the name of an old friend

(01:01:36):
of his, art Sandler Arts. Sandler Art no relations to
Adam Virginia millionaire Arts Sandler. Let's hear him. Okay, he
applied for a loan, Okay, hello, mr bank of My
name is Arts Sandler, and I need a seventy five
thousand dollar alone so that I can purchase me a
nice barbecue restaurant. Oh yeah, a barbecue restaurant, of course. Yeah,

(01:02:01):
it seems like a legitimate reason. I won't seventy five
thousand dollars for a millionaire. Well, of course it is. No,
you can't start a business with your own money. Whatever
he needed for I wanted to buy a bunch of socks.
You see, seven dollars worth of socks. I got these
new bombs I want to try. Yeah. Stephen said that

(01:02:25):
he chose seventy five thousand dollars because fifty thousand was
for this lawyer for Philip, and thousand was for quote
sundry expenses. So I had to have something to live
on eight you know, but the bankers got pretty suspicious.
Now Here again is where Steven is not given credit

(01:02:47):
where it's due, Because, like the military, banks are very
suspicious you want money, And so they alerted the police
that something might be up. They're not sure about this
art Sandler guy. And the police came in and Stephen
was arrested and that was it. Seriously, this time, his

(01:03:07):
biggest escape was over. It was time for jail. He
had no more tricks, so he just had to surrender. No,
he faked a heart attack, of course, and that got
him transported to a hospital instead of jail. Always easier
to escape from a hospital than a jail. And he

(01:03:28):
was placed on security watch. Okay, okay, well that's that's
got to be it then, right, Well, stupidly they had
never taken his cell phone away from him. They put
him into security watch at the hospital, so he simply
picked up his cell phone called the hospital impersonating an
FBI agent. He's literally like, hey there, this is dangerous

(01:03:49):
Johnson with the FBI. Yeah, you got Stephen Russell over
there on a security watch. You can just cut him
on loose. We're done with him. Just let him go,
Just let him go. Oh they just did. And they
just did. They were just like sure, if you say so, boss,
I got a phone call says let him go. You
guys go to facts, a piece of paper, anything, Well,

(01:04:13):
who is the phone call from agent? Johnson? Checks out?
It's an agent. Johnson's a name. Don't sound made up
to me, he says, his an agent is I'm not
going to press that. Well, you can't just lie and
say you're an agent. What what kind of criminal would do?
That's a crime. You can't impersonate an agent. That's a crime.

(01:04:37):
So it's got to be one. I mean you seriously,
are you even Yeah, they're just all asleep at the wheel.
Oh my god, but okay. A couple of weeks later,
in early April, U S. Marshals did track him down
in Florida. At this time, they were not going to
let him slip away. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice

(01:04:58):
even told the marshals quote, if he comes out of
the apartment and says that he's President Bill Clinton and
you believe that he's Bill Clinton, don't believe him, arrest him.
Oh my god, and I am. We're not gonna do
the gag anymore. It is played out. That really was

(01:05:20):
it for real? This was his last arrest. They threw
every book they had at Stephen. He had embarrassed them
over and over again and you know, Texas is very
sensitive to being insulted, right. Also it's Governor George W. Bush.
Oh boy, he hates being made a fool of fool

(01:05:40):
me once foolmy, can't get fooled again. It's so ridiculous.
I mean, at the time, it was the most embarrassing
president we'd had. Things would change, Uh, So that was it.
They were so upset that they sentenced him to a
hundred in forty four years in prison. That was forty

(01:06:03):
five years for his scams and nine nine years for
his multiple escapes. His current release date is July twelve, one,
twenty one fort I mean, you know what, Texas, punish
yourselves because how many times did your complete incompetence? And

(01:06:25):
I get that you're embarrassed because he exposed that incompetence,
but any number of checkpoints, this should not have happened.
This guy should have served out his sentence, maybe not
made parole because he kept trying to escape and failing,
But ridiculous how many times? How many times he just
walked out? So why don't you lock yourselves up for

(01:06:47):
being so bad what you do? And at this point,
I mean, he's escaped so many times, you kind of
want to get it. You got a punch card, your
fifth escape and you're free. You got us, you win.
We obviously can't keep you, slippery bastard. Philip was released

(01:07:12):
on early parole. He moved back to Arkansas, where he
seems to still be living today. He has a small
apartment where he paints and draws, and a remote lake
house where he lives far away from anyone, which I
kind of get. That sounds nice, Yeah, it does you
And McGregor plays him in the movie I Love You
Philip morris Um, and so he came to spend a

(01:07:33):
few days with him to prep for the role. And
you know, Philip was like, that's so flattering that he
would come spend time with me, which please you? And
McGregor comes spend time learned to play me like I
don't want to, you know, speculation station here, But does
that kind of almost make it worth it? You get
to hang out with McGregor for a couple of days.

(01:07:53):
And he played you in a movie, man, Come on,
that's pretty cool to do. Apparently be lied to a lot,
and Philip loves the movie I Love You Philip morris Um.
He says he especially loves it mostly because it portrays
him as the victim. He's you know, I've been kind
of denying his involvement, so it's probably, yeah, pretty nice

(01:08:16):
to have some validation on the big screen, to be like, see,
I told you I didn't know anything about that, because
he's definitely had his critics. Oh sure, and he says
you and portrayal of him is spot on. He's like,
he got the way I talk, the way I walk,
the way I cried. I cry a lot. He's like,
I cry a lot. He did it right. And I

(01:08:37):
think Stephen said the same thing about Jim Carey. Look
if you and McGregor played me in a movie, I
don't care what he does. I'm going to be like, Yep,
that's me. That's exactly who I am. I am you
and McGregor, I'd be watching it going, how do how
does he did that? How do you do that? So charmingly?
I would also like to do that charmingly. You and McGregor,
please play the better version of me so that I

(01:08:57):
may imitate it. Yes, that I will be a better
I'll be a lesser version of you and mcgragg. In
an interview with Gina Piccolo and The Daily beast, Philip says,
this sounds crazy. After all he's done to me as
messed up as my life has been, and seven years
in prison over something that I didn't do or even
know about. I am so mad at him. I could

(01:09:20):
just beat him to a pulse, beat him until he dies.
But I love him. You explain that. Yeah, that love
is weird, man, We love is very weird. If you
haven't noticed from this show or your own life. Possibly right.
When asked if Stephen were to ever get out, if
Philip would see him again, he said, I don't anticipate

(01:09:42):
him coming out anytime soon, but there are various reasons
why I'd love to sit down face to face with
him again. I'd like him to tell me he's truly
sorry and mean it, but we'd never be together again.
I could never trust him. I wake up in the
middle of the night sweating thinking I'm still in prison,
and when I think of those things, it makes me
at Steve understandable. Yeah, I get that, he says. Steven

(01:10:04):
Russell is the most charming man you'll ever meet in
your life. He's not the most handsome man, but I
don't care who you are. If Steven Russell wants to
attach himself to your life somehow, you will fall in
love with him period, And that is just what makes
a successful con man a successful man, you know. It's
just that charm, that way to just get in your

(01:10:26):
head and make you just want to believe him in
all the ridiculous things he's telling. So you decide to
sort of like Phillips whole situation, and also like he
makes you kind of like he did it to me
and this story, you know what I mean, Like, I'm like, man,
he is just the goal on. This guy is so
insane and I kind of want him to win anyway,

(01:10:49):
even though I know he's not doing good things, he's
not treating people right, Um, I'm still like, I still
kind of want him to get away with it. Isn't
that weird? We have a tendency, I think, to root
for maybe because our prison system is so fucked up.
And yeah, and we like audacity. We really love that
in this country especially. I don't I don't know, I
can't speak to other countries, but we love the more

(01:11:11):
create Like, the more out there you are, it feels
like the more we're like, all right, fine, let him
have it. And he really went for it. So bold
boldness takes the day, you know a lot of times.
But it is true. That's I mean, Steven's not, you know,
a great guy in this story. Even so, he did
abuse Philip regularly, you know, mentally, emotionally flies. Yeah, lies.

(01:11:36):
I don't think he ever hit him or anything like that.
I don't know. I don't want to throw that on him,
but you know, he's kind of trapping him in a
little bit of a prison of his life. And he
even tried to keep Philip in jail longer than him.
At like some point in all of these prison escapes,
Philip said, Stephen was scared that Philip would get out
of jail before him, and that he'd go back to

(01:11:57):
his ex if he did so. Before Philip was paroled,
Steven posed as a d a and called the judge
to make sure Philip stayed longer than him, like Philip
would have gotten out that night, but he arranged it
so that he could get out of jail first and
have more control over his release where he went after

(01:12:18):
he left brutal. Yeah, Jimmy his first boyfriend that we
talked about. His mother even said I really liked Stephen
at first, but he conned Jimmy, He lied like a rug,
He told one lie after another, and he deserves to
be where he is because he'll do it all again.
He should be in prison forever. And obviously there's something

(01:12:42):
to that. I mean, like we said, he caused a
lot of damage. Yeah, he stuck it to the man,
and we love that. You know, he got his from
from an insurance company like that. Whole industry is sucked up.
And he's still manipulated people and abused people and dragged
Philip into this world that he had no part in.

(01:13:04):
And we can't really know what his life would have been,
but we can assume that he wouldn't have been thrown
in jail for seven years like he was. So at
a certain point, Stephen is a bad guy, right, and
if we need, however, we punish bad people as a
means of a deterrent to stop people from being bad
in the future. Obviously, our prison system is fucked because

(01:13:26):
at now sixty four years old, Stephen is still in prison.
Since his arrest in and his subsequent sentencing, Stephen has
been in solitary confinement in one room for twenty three
hours a day, with one hour a day to shower

(01:13:47):
and exercise. In Steven's own words, he says, do I
belong in prison? Yes? I do. I most definitely did
not belong in solitary However, that is a cruel and
unusual punishment, completely disproportioned it to my crimes. In his situation.
His spine has become so impacted over the years that
now he's bound to a wheelchair whenever he leaves his cell.

(01:14:10):
He says, it is the only legal form of torture
in today's prison system, but it's a slow maltreatment of
the body and mind that in the short run at
least leaves no visible signs. That's why it's permitted. No,
it's it's unconscionable that this guy has been in solitary
confinement for over two decades now, every single day. He

(01:14:37):
describes it pretty graphically in some of his interviews, where
he's like, I mean, these visitations are taking place with
thick plexiglass between him and whomever it is, and he
doesn't touch anyone. He has not had a human contact
except for when the guard takes his arm to take
him out to his shower in that length of time.

(01:14:59):
As well, talks about others in solitary with him who
He's like, I've seen thirty suicides. They cut themselves, they
go insane. I mean, solitary is a very real torture.
It really is. It should is not humane treatment for
any person, no matter what they did. To be perfectly honest,

(01:15:21):
I know some very heinous crimes, and you get mad.
I get mad. I'm like, I would trounce their face
in right now and curb stomp them or something. In
my brain, I'm getting really needed, you know what I mean.
But wh when they're actually being in the custody of
our state governments or our federal government, or a city
government or whomever they're in custody, they should be treated

(01:15:41):
a certain way, and that way should be pretty humane technically,
according to our principles. It's it's not about rehabilitating you
to be a better citizen, or equipping you with skills
and behaviors or whatever to get you out there and
be a normal person going around being productive. It's not

(01:16:02):
about that. It never is. And then you can even
see in this story, Stephen had behavioral issues as a kid.
He got sent to a home where he met only
more violent people who made him more violent. You know,
what I mean, It didn't help him necessarily to go
to that home. I don't think it changed much for him.
And then every time we have a guy who had

(01:16:23):
a rental car, he owed money, that's it. He owed
money that he couldn't pay, and then they went back
to jail. He went back to jail, you know what
I mean, Like, you just can't get out of a
psych once you're in, you can't get out of the cycle.
And that's sort of the point. Well, that's Stephen says.
You know that society tends to look down on prisoners
and that many people just feel like whatever they experience

(01:16:44):
is what they deserve because they broke the law. He says,
if we expect prison to rehabilitate offenders, or if we
expect inmates to reintegrate into society once they've done their time,
the less broken they are when they finally come out here.
That will be Last December, Stephen was up for parole

(01:17:05):
and was denied. According to the Texas d o J.
He was to be reassessed actually this very month of October.
So if we hear anything, we will definitely update shell
in a later story. Um, but you know what, that's
all very dour. Prison system is a dark conversation, and

(01:17:27):
this one definitely sparks it because we're obviously left this
moral conundrum of like, somebody's a bad person, somebody has
broken the law, somebody has taken advantage of people, but
maybe we shouldn't torture them all the time. A much
lighter topic of conversation would be this delightful movie about this,

(01:17:47):
which we did watch. We did watch last night, and
UM really really loved Yeah, it was good. I saw
some reviews that was like kind of messy or something,
but I really liked it. I thought it was pretty tight. Honestly. Um,
Jim Carrey is phenomenal because he does this thing where
he really takes his time with it and sometimes doesn't

(01:18:10):
have the answer. You can see him scrambling for it
in his mind, but not in a way that makes
it seem like these people are idiots for falling for it. Um.
It's just a really delicate portrayal of a very realistic
portrayal of a very good liar. He's not so good
that you're like this is scripted. No one would be

(01:18:30):
that quick on their feet. It's very steady, unbelievable. I
thought he was great. Yeah, and they had great chemistry too.
I thought you were so like, such a cute They
were so adorable together, and they like legit would like
staring to each other's eye. It was very epic love story.
Um kind of beats that. It was hitting. Um. You

(01:18:53):
and McGregor was so cute, and he was like, I
don't know, Philip, but I think he crushed it. He
certainly did that that looking away kind of thing really
well too, because he would be like, oh, really is
is everything going good? Well, okay, let's you know, go go,
let's go do it, you know what I mean. The

(01:19:14):
kinda would have a question, but then he just let
it go and it's exactly what we were thinking. Like,
m that's probably what he was doing. Literally. I have
a personal connection too because um uh good friend and
former boss of mine. His name is Joe Connolly. He's
a prop master in Atlanta. I worked with him on
The Vampire Diaries and Dynasty a little bit, uh, and

(01:19:37):
he's just one of the coolest people in the world
and one of the best prop masters out there. And
he did this movie and so I texted him that
we were doing this story and that we watched the
movie last night when it was so good, all those
all those needles that Jim Carrey stabs into himself. It's
classic Joe Connolly work, so good and disturbing. And Joe

(01:19:59):
told me that they happen to be filming on a Friday. No,
that's amazing. Had to stock the prop truck with glasses
and hats and fake mustaches, just an anticipation that he
would actually show up after he broke out of prison.
Oh my god, just waiting for him. That's hilarious. They
were all looking around like, well, keep an eye out,

(01:20:21):
and he just shows up. Like Actually, on the director,
I've been directing the movie the whole time. Actually, I've
been Jim Carrey this whole time. Whoa good trick. If
anyone could do it, it's Steven Russell. So the book
I Love You Philip Morris came out in two thousand
and three, and it caught the interests of these filmmakers,

(01:20:43):
Glenn Fakara and John Requa, who they said they saw
it as an epic love story, which they totally presented
as a movie. Um, but the two people in the
love story happened to be gay, right, Um, well, it's
two thousand three so when they pitched the story Fakara recall,
they said, great, sounds like an amazing story. Can you

(01:21:03):
turn Philip into a woman? Wow? First of all, no sense,
it does not work at all. How are they going
to meet in prison? How are they going to meet
in prison? That was my first question. How are they
going to meet in prison? If she is a woman,
they don't go together, like they don't live together in
the same prison. And the producer says, yeah, you're the writer,

(01:21:23):
that's your job to figure out. Sorry, Riptorn Megan work.
I wanted to add this quote in from a NAM
official who worked for the company that he was CFO
at right. He said in an interview that Steve Russell
was still one of the best CFOs I've ever worked with.

(01:21:45):
See Steven still has a future. We would just let
him out of jail. No, but yeah, that's funny. They
say not a single Magic marker has gone missing. Nothing
has seventeen at the time of this article, which was
I think a couple of years ago, but they were
like seventeen Friday that their teints have gone by. No,
but nothing, you know, apparently they do amp up their

(01:22:08):
security on Friday, that their team short because they do
know about that. So maybe this will be his first escape,
not on Friday and their teen. Look if if it
turns out that he doesn't have an impacted spine, if
a wheelchair is bullshit. If he's actually like super healthy
and he's just been playing them this whole time, and
he's got some investment accounts somewhere where he's made millions

(01:22:28):
of dollars and when he gets out he's going to
be sipping drinks on a beach in Mexico somewhere. Then great,
you know, fifth escape, You're free. But he did also
say when he was kind of describing his prison experience,
he was talking about how um Texas prides itself on

(01:22:49):
only spending two dollars a day to feed their inmates.
Oh my god. Um, So he's overweight, not just because
of a sedentary lifestyle, but because he's literally getting chopped
a spoonful of chopped ham boiled egg and mayonnaise with
pickles in it, like apparently calls it cat food and
he's like, they just that's what I eat. And so

(01:23:11):
I'm fat now because he's scanned a lot of weight
and he is ghostly pale. Yeah, he's very pale because
he never sees the sun right. And then he also
came out with a follow up, UM Life After Philip
Morris UM, which is actually written as a stage playing.
It's very interesting. Yeah. It kind of talks about his
mostly his time in prison and how he feels now

(01:23:31):
about Philip and everything. It is very interesting. It's very
funny too. All the reviews were like I was dying
laughing play. So he says that um, Steve McVicker and
other writers who have come to visit him have really
helped him grow as a person and a writer. So
like writing is something that he is very much focused
on in his time in prison. So I could see that.
But he did it all for love. He did it

(01:23:53):
all for love. Yeah, well, I am totally blown away
by this story. It is altogether fast nating and exciting
and challenging, I think because it really gives you a
kind of a lot of moral conundrums too. It does
because again it's like even if, even even if we
sit here and talk about it, we slowly tend to
shift back towards like yeah, go Stephen, and then it's like,

(01:24:17):
wait a second course, correct, because it is not a
good person. He just doesn't deserve to be tortured like this. Yeah,
I think it's just because the punishment doesn't fit the
crime is what really makes it like, well, I feel
badly for Stephen because he's really suffering for And another
point that people bring up a lot is that, of
course he's stolen a lot less money than like the

(01:24:37):
Enron guy, Goldman, Sachs SI, any of those investors, so
it's like like no prison time and in fact got
bonuses some of them for the theft that they already
had so much money. It's like, it's so maddening to
be like, Okay, so just a regular average joe who
dares to steal any amount of money from anybody has

(01:24:59):
to go to jail. Yeah, but some investor who sucks
and has all the money in the world already, if
they're going to do whatever we can to cover his
ass or her ass and keep them out of jail.
So yeah, the average Joe of me is going, well,
get Steven out of there, you know. I mean, I
would wager that the people he stole money from, which

(01:25:20):
is insurance companies and nam and banks, all probably have
committed more egregious crimes than he ever did. You know
they just you can't get caught for that. Give you
who knows? That's my biggest speculation station of the night.
But it's you all agree for everybody knows. All right. Well,

(01:25:42):
such a good story. Thank you to Chelsea slash Woe
I'm tripping on Instagram. This was a very good suggestion.
Appreciate you. It took us on a very fun research journey.
Thank you. In great movie recommendation is right, right, So yeah,
tell us what you think about this story. We want
to hear from you as always. Our email is Romance

(01:26:03):
at i heeart media dot com. That's right, and you
can find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at O Great,
It's Eli, I'm at Dianamite Boom and of course you
can reach the show at Riddic Romance and then please
tune in for our next episode of course, and tell
all your friends to tune in as well. We are.
We're going to try and come back to you guys
with some spooky stories this month for Halloween, so look

(01:26:25):
forward to those, not just more Friday than thirteenth, but
ghosts and courts and pirates and all kinds of crazy stuff.
So stay tuned. Yeah, we'll see you next time. So
long friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to
our show tell your friend's names. Uncle Sandance to listen
to our show. Ridiculous roll Nance

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