November 3, 2022 • 48 mins
Welcome to Stealing Superman, a new iHeart Original podcast hosted by Dana Schwartz.
After a holiday party, Nicolas Cage realizes his cache of rare comics has been ransacked, and Action Comics #1—the Mona Lisa of comics—is missing. With suspects ranging from employees to guests, Cage turns to his trusted comic book dealer for help solving what will shape up to be the most unlikely art heist of all time.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
It's early January two thousand and Stephen Fishler is sitting
in his office. You probably don't know the name unless
you've ever been in the market for expensive comic books,
very very expensive comic books. Titles that sell for millions
of dollars. Comics that once cost ten cents got thrown
(00:30):
away or left to us, and then go on to
fetch an incredibly high price for their rarity. Fishler was
and still is among the most well known brokers of
such books. He's been collecting since he was five years old,
a kid in Brooklyn, after stacks of superheroes. If you
want a particular title in a particular condition, he can
(00:53):
probably find it. And that's what Stephen was doing today,
making deals for collectors from his place of business, Metropolis
Collectibles in New York City, overflowing with rare books, first
appearances of Spider Man, Captain America Archie, many looking like
they just came off a news stand, even though they're
(01:15):
decades old. This is the kind of place that even
when the comics are sealed in plastic, they give off
that distinctive smell of old, cheap paper. Well maybe not
so cheap anymore, but today isn't going to be a
normal day for Stephen. It's going to be the beginning
of a situation and obsession really that will take up
(01:39):
a good deal of his time, something that will one
day have police instructing him on what to do in
the event of a shootout, that kind of situation. And
it begins, like many stories do, with a phone call.
Nick called me very upset and said to me that
(02:03):
somebody stole some of his comic books and was really
in a panic. I must have been. I don't know
that noon my time, and I sort of asked him
to sort of slow down so I can understand what
went on, and he gave me, you know, an account
of what went on as best he could. Nick is
Nicholas Cage, the star of huge movies like Face Off,
(02:26):
Cohn Air and The Rock, an Oscar winner, a man
who ate a live cockroach in Vampire's Kiss because he
knew it would draw attention. He didn't win the Oscar
for that one that was leaving Las Vegas. Cage is
talking quickly in that distinctive twang that makes his sentences
sound like melodies. He's calling because Stephen is his dealer,
(02:51):
his comic book dealer. Well, it started many, many years ago.
A friend of mine who was a friend in a
comic collector, Miguel Ferrare currently was on some movie set
with Nick Cage. This is in the eighties when he
was not as well known, and they got into a
conversation about comic books. And probably a month later, I'm
(03:18):
at seeing Nick at a hotel. He was living at
Hotel Rossmore and there he was in his crew cut
and this is after like Valley Girl, I believe, and
he had a giant fish tank in his apartment at
the hotel with a shark in it, and that's where
I first met him and started dealing with him way
(03:40):
way back. Since then, Cage has bought hundreds of comics
from Stephen, and now Cage is trying to explain that
the worst possible thing that could happen to a comic
collector has happened. His most valuable books have turned up missing.
And not just valuable books. The most valuable book, the
(04:04):
most sought after issue of them all, The Mona Lisa
of Comics, Action Comics number one, the first appearance of
a superhero, the first appearance of the Man of Steel, Superman,
the most well preserved copy available, a comic so rare
(04:26):
that even a rusty staple or some page flex from
one can sell for hundreds of dollars to collectors desperate
for even a small dose of its magic. Superman, the
embodiment of morality and virtue stolen. Stephen takes a deep breath.
He asks one of the world's most famous actors to
(04:49):
tell him exactly what happened. Nick told me that there
was some sort of party and that they disappeared during
the party. That was it is house, a party, a heist,
a frantic phone call, and as Cage talks, Stephen realizes
(05:09):
it gets worse. Action Number one is missing, and so
is Detective Comics Number twenty seven. That was the first
appearance of Batman. Someone has run off with half the
Justice League from right under the nose of a Hollywood superstar.
And that's about all Stephen can get because Cage, in
(05:30):
his indomitable cage fashion, is too upset to offer too
many details on what will shape up to be the
most unlikely artist of all time. Oh for I Heart Radio,
I'm Dani Schwartz. This is Stealing Superman, an I Heart
(05:53):
original podcast now on my long running podcast noble Blood.
I tell the true stories of historical royals, but occasionally
I like to cover a different kind of royalty, Hollywood Royalty.
Last fall we brought you Haileywood, a podcast about Bruce
Willis buying up a town in Idaho in the es
(06:15):
and the friends and enemies he made along the way.
This year's tale involves a brazen comic book heist, Nicolas
Cage and y two K. Let's get into it Episode one,
Beads of Sweat. We need to turn the pages back
(06:36):
a little. A few days prior to a house party
at three sixty three Coppa de Laura Road in bel Air, California,
the residents of Nicolas Coppola, known to most people by
his stage name Nicolas Cage, New Year's Eve was something special,
(06:58):
something peculiar. Remember why two K when people believed that
computers wouldn't be able to understand the year two thousand
and that it might cripple our infrastructure. Well, if the
people in attendance at Cage's house were worried about it,
they didn't act like it. And if this was the
end of the world, Cage was going to make sure
(07:20):
they had one hell of a good time On their
way out. The scale of a Nicholas Cage party is
hard to fathom. You'd have celebrities, actors, producers, directors, agents.
Fresh food was laid out on the fade tables made
(07:42):
from solid blocks of ice. Giant nutcrackers standing ten feet
tall flanked the main entrance. Fake snow was blowing out
of machines. Lightning professionals made sure everything looked perfect. At
one party, someone brought Cage a pony as a gift.
(08:03):
It would be found wandering around the yard the next morning.
It was as though Cage were always starring in a
party being directed by David Lynch. Yeah, he had amazing parties.
I once got a cigar from Jack Nicholson, who was
very intoxicated and gave me a cigar to give to
(08:24):
my father. Yeah. I was there. I was there, and
we were all there, all the staffs and all the people,
and I met some really amazing people and I had
a great time. That's Jen Bosworth Ramirez. Jen worked for
Cage in the two thousand's and no she didn't steal
the comics I did. Can you imagine? Jen was hired
(08:47):
by Cage himself, who conducted the job interview with one
of his ears blown off. Okay, And so then I
get into this trailer, a small trailer. Wasn't like a
fancy he must have been in the makeup trailer or something.
I don't know, but it wasn't like a big honey wagon.
It was like small, and I'm like, oh my god,
I'm sitting across from this movie star. Also, he doesn't
(09:08):
look like himself because he literally his ear is blown off.
He has my resume backs in his hand that they
had facts to his trailer, to the base camp or something,
and I'm like, twenty four, I don't know what's happening.
And then I said, I said, oh my god, your ear.
I remember being really startled because the prosthetics were so
good and wind Tucker's that's a John Woolf felt. I
(09:30):
think anyway, the prosthetics were really good, and I said,
oh my god, your ear go. Yeah, that's that's not real,
Like that's that's a prosthetic. And I was like, oh, okay,
it was so awkward. The whole thing was so weird,
so weird. I left. I didn't know if I had
the jab or not. I had no clue was happening.
Jen worked for Cages production company Saturn Films. Some perks
(09:53):
were parties like this one in Cage's Grand Residents over
a seven thousand square feet sitting on one acre in
one of the country's most prestigious neighborhoods. Walk inside the
house and you're created with a different kind of splendor.
A real estate agent and architectural historian named Brett Parsons,
(10:17):
who once toward the house, described the style as frat house,
bordello or quote early American Adams family. Those sound like insults,
and well maybe they were, But however you felt about it,
it was undoubtedly a reflection of its owner. Originally built
(10:39):
by famed architect Gerard Colcord in nineteen forty, it was
once owned by Dean Martin and later Tom Jones, who
sold it to Cage In Cage would make some improvements
or changes. At least purple curtains hung from windows. A
vintage nineteen fifty five jag war car had been painstakingly
(11:03):
disassembled and put back together in one room until the
pungent smell of oil overcame visitors and it had to go.
There were even people who swore they saw shrunken heads.
Oh you know, I never knew that. I never saw
the shrunken heads I heard about that. That doesn't shock
me either. I mean he had dinosaur bones. I think
(11:26):
model trains were running above diners. In the breakfast room
and throughout the house were bronze walsconces. Light fixtures, but
not ordinary light fixtures. These were fixtures sculpted out of
a cast made from Nicholas Cage's arm, his muscled appendages
illuminating the home, the bell Air House. If my recollection,
(11:50):
it's a huge Gothic mansion, meaning there's probably like ten
bedrooms in there. I mostly hung out in the living area.
It was like a probably a three story situation. Outside
it looks like a regular you know, if I recall correctly,
like a brick mansion that you'd see in Valor. But
inside he had it decorated like super gothic, key and
(12:11):
dark and ornate at points and not my style, like
that's not my jam. But it was like a castle.
That's what I could sort of say. It reminds me
of a castle. A lot of rooms, a lot of
twists and turns. It was not an open floor plan.
Let's just say that, you know what I mean, There's
a pool. But I didn't spend a ton of time there,
but I do remember being like WHOA, I remember purple droops.
(12:33):
As guests wandered through the home, they would have noticed
something else. Lining the walls on the second floor were
comic books. Lots of comic books, the first appearance of
Captain America and Green Lantern and The Justice Society, comics
from the Golden Age of the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties,
(12:55):
science fiction comics and horror comics. Skeletons peering out at
the reader, and scantily clad women gasping at probing alien marauders.
Any comic book fan would have taken one look and
seethed with envy. At least a hundred scattered throughout the house,
(13:15):
one book in each frame. As you can probably imagine,
Cage didn't just pin the comics to the wall. This
was an ornate display. Each frame was nineteen and a
half inches long by sixteen and a half inches wide,
Each was made of stained maple. Each had a small
(13:36):
lock that could only be opened with a key, and
each was connected to a pressure sensor alarm. If someone
had the key and were to open the frame and
remove the comic inside cages security staff would be immediately notified.
You couldn't easily pill for any of these books unless, well,
(13:56):
hang up, We're almost there, but let's finish the tour.
The hub of Cage's collection was in what he called
a smoking lounge. It was originally a secret room used
by Dean Martin, and accessible only if you knew how
to get in from an adjoining bathroom through a panel
(14:17):
door that pops open. It's kind of a clandestine deal.
A spiral staircase curved up, and it's tight, so tight
Cage had to bring up the furniture in pieces. This
secret smoking room was, like other parts of the house,
decorated heavily in purple, purple furniture, purple walls, a purple
(14:41):
carpet with gold accents, a spiral staircase leading to the
roof carpeted, and well, you get it. It was in
this small room that Cage went to unwind, a respite
from fame or even from hosting duties. It's a small,
intimate room and the walls were lined with his most
(15:03):
valuable comics. Hanging in one wall frame was Detective Comics
Number twenty seven, dated May nine. The cover captures its protagonist.
In the thick of it, Batman, a strange, masked vigilante
readers have never seen before, is swooping into frame to
(15:26):
put a criminal in a choke hold. As Batman cuts
off the hoods corroded artery. He's hanging from a supported
building outside of you. In the lower left corner, two
crooks look on, one is armed. Both seem unsure of
what to do about the man with violent tendencies dressed
as a bat It's advertising sixty four pages of action.
(15:51):
Once upon a time, it was ten cents in two thousand.
It's thought to be worth up to a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. It's actually why Cage went to Fishler
in the first place. They wanted a Detective twenty seven,
so that's what the conversation focused on. I had brought
him a twenty seven to look at, but it had
(16:13):
too much restoration, that particular copy. But that was the
first meeting his interest in in a detective comics. But
that was really just a warm up. As desirable a
book as Detective Number twenty seven was and is, it's
always taken second place in the comic book hierarchy to
its bigger brother, The birth of the superhero genre. The
(16:37):
comic that would change popular culture forever. Action Comics number one,
dated June, but actually released a little earlier. You've probably
seen the cover. It's part of our cultural iconography by
this point. They're Superman hefting a call are clear over
(17:01):
his head. His costume isn't much different from the one
he sports today. Let's refined, sure, but the red cap, boots,
and s insignia are all there Bystanders are fleeing from
the scene, terrified of this man with super strength. In
(17:23):
the lower left corner is a man who is positively hysterical.
His hands are clasped to his face, like the figure
in Edward Monks the screen. He's running away. Maybe he's
part of the crew inside the car the crooked Superman
is trying to bring to justice. Maybe he's not involved.
Either way, he's got beads of sweat running down his forehead.
(17:46):
Seeing Superman for the first time has to be stressful. Nowadays,
people are happy to see him. They wave and clap.
Not this crew. They were scared. Two hundred thousand copies
of this comic book were printed in fewer than one
hundred copies are believed to still exist, and even fewer
(18:08):
in good condition cages. Copy is considered one of the
most well preserved, With bright colors and an intact cover.
Superman is still a deep red and blue. The pages
inside are a creamy white. On the scale of one
to ten, it's an easy nine. A comic over sixty
(18:30):
years old to survive, to endure and look this good
is remarkable. Unlike some comics that get restored, this Action
number one hasn't had any work done. Yeah, this is
now much later, probably around and I'm gonna say nineteen
(18:51):
or so, and an interest in buying an Action one
in high grade. I knew a collector who had one,
and I was able to was sort of a difficult deal,
but I was able to put the deal together, and
that was the book that Nick ended up with. It
was just the mechanics of giving me the book, and
I think the collector was enamored of selling it to Nick.
(19:13):
And I met with Nick without the collector there, but
I put Nick on the phone with this collector and
then the deal went through. I think he just kind
of wanted to meet him, just to be honest, But
Nick really did value it was very excited about buying
this book as well. He should, and I thought it
would be sort of a fun deal to pull off
selling it to him. Cage It paid one hundred and
(19:35):
fifty thousand dollars for Action Number one. That was a
record for a comic book sale at the time, but
three years later it's likely worth more, perhaps as much
as two hundred thousand dollars. It's the crown jewel of
Cage's collection. It would be the centerpiece of any comic
book collection today. Right now, copies of both of these
(20:00):
comics are worth two to three million each, if not more.
They've only appreciated in value, but Cage appreciated them then.
In two thousand, before comic book movies became the only
thing playing in multiplexes, he grew up reading comics. He
took his stage name Cage, partly after Luke Cage, the
(20:22):
seventies Marvel comic hero with impenetrable skin, a good superhero
for an actor who didn't always find kindness coming from critics.
But the comics were something else for Nicolas Cage too.
Like the House itself, they were monuments to Cage's success
from turns as strange characters in Moonstruck and Raising Arizona,
(20:45):
to winning an Oscar to becoming an action star. Cage
had navigated Hollywood successfully, and he arrived at a time
when the industry was paying record salaries. After the Academy
Awards win, cages quote for a movie went from four
million dollars to seven million dollars. Years before, Cage had
(21:08):
asked the director of a small film he was going
to make a cameo in Never on Tuesday, if the
man could buy him an Action Comics Number one instead
of paying him. The director couldn't afford to, But now
Cage could afford to buy his own copy, and so
he did. He love this book, I mean the actually
one metal lot to him, which brings us to Stephen
(21:31):
Fishler's phone ringing and Nicholas Cage telling him his comics
were no longer there. It was a few days before
Stephen could make it out to California, but he did. Stephen,
(21:54):
of course, wasn't in law enforcement, but he was one
of the few people in Caged circle who could understand
the enormity of what had happened. Saying it was just
a comic book theft was like saying a museum heist
only resulted in some plaster going missing. And I'm pretty
sure as soon as he realized that they're missing, he
(22:15):
called me. It seemed like you on the spot. He
called me because I was this comic guy, so this
is about a comic. He wanted, I guess advice, and
that's what I gave him, and I offered to come
out to help, which is what I did within maybe
a week or two. According to Stephen, it had taken
a day or two, perhaps longer for Cage to realize
(22:37):
the comics were missing. A maid had been in the
smoking room and noticed that three of the frames were empty,
and something else that was curious. Those lockable frames hadn't
been forcibly opened. So my brain went, oh, it's maybe misplaced.
(22:57):
Maybe they were put somewhere. I went there it was described.
I saw that I had sold Nick these shadow box
frames that the books were located in, and the Action
one in Detective were in the shadow box frames, and
there are the frames with the label on it Action
one with nothing in it. So the frames were opened
and taken. But I went through yet too safe there
(23:20):
and went through the safe and I went, huh, this
may be actually stolen. The comics weren't just loose inside
their frames. They were each in protective, hard plastic sleeves.
It's called a fortress, and it's used by serious collectors
to make sure comics didn't get bent, ripped, or otherwise damaged.
(23:41):
Each fortress was held together in two pieces by screws.
If a thief wanted to take the naked books, they
would have needed to spend a little bit of time
unscrewing each fortress, but the fortress sleeves were entirely gone.
Whoever took them would have had to deal with a
little extra book folk, as opposed to just rolling up
(24:02):
the comics and stuffing them in a pocket, something that
would have been unspeakable for a rare comic. It could
also mean the thief or thieves didn't have time to
remove the books from the fortress covers that they needed
to move quickly. It's a little bigger than the book,
but if you put in your jacket, it's not so big.
It's not like taking a giant painting and taking it
(24:24):
off the wall. Fisher noticed something else Cajun mentioned in
their conversation. The thief had also made off with a
third comic from a frame It was a copy of
Detective Comics Number one from seven, an even older title
than the Big two. While certainly valuable and worth ten
(24:44):
thousand dollars or so, it wasn't nearly as desirable. No
famous heroes made an appearance in it. The stories inside
lacked real staying power. You probably haven't heard of Speed
Saunders and the River Patrol or Cosmo the Phantom of Disguise.
Maybe the thief just saw an opportunity to take it.
(25:06):
Maybe he saw a Detective and number one and thought
any issue with that title was prized. But that still
wasn't the biggest news. There was an alarm in the
back of each frame, and I guess the box was open,
and maybe the alarm was not set for they want
to be triggered when the box is open, but apparently
that was the idea behind it. I saw there was
(25:28):
a wire attached to the back of each shadow box,
attached to the wall. A lot of money setting this up,
but unfortunately, somebody was able to open up these frames
and take the books out. Probably understood these are the
most valuable books. What Cage liked to do was take
the books out of their wall frames and rearrange them
(25:49):
show them off to people, that's what collectors do, and
then he'd leave them unlocked and the alarm disengaged. That's
sometimes what happens when people installed alarms. They become a
nuisance and so they're deactivated. That meant that, at least
in theory, anyone could walk up and grab a piece
(26:12):
of comic book history and disappear into the throngs of
a Nick Cage New Year's Eve party. But it would
have been bold to take the books without some sort
of knowledge that they were unlocked and disarmed. Yeah, I'm
not sure what this individual knew or didn't know. I
(26:34):
think that this individual saw Nick open up the case
and show the book to somebody, and he probably went
opened up. It doesn't bring if that's what happened, it's
not likely they would have been stopped. Not at a
Cage party and one of those parties, especially, Are you
kidding me? You have to understand, like everyone's drinking, it's
(26:56):
a huge party. Everyone's trying to make business deal and
get to know the famous people. Oh sure, there's so
much stuff in those houses. You'd have to have security
guards watching every rook like a museum them all of course,
and Also, there is this thing of you let people
into your house you trust. The problem with that is
you let two other people into your house, you can't
(27:17):
trust them, all right, So oh, yeah, someone would be
able to leave. Are you kidding me? But Stephen wasn't
entirely convinced a crime had been committed, not yet. First
he diligently searched the enormous house. It was certainly possible
Cage had taken the books out and set them down
somewhere without remembering, or maybe a party guest had picked
(27:41):
them up and left them in another room. Maybe a
thief considered taking them, then panicked when they ran into
someone and decided to leave them behind. All were reasonable possibilities.
But the more Stephen looked, the more he realized that
nothing innocent had taken place. And I really, after probably
(28:02):
spending six or seven hours in the house, said yeah,
and now we're understanding that this was in this case,
and it's not there. Nobody took it out. That works
for nick, and but it's somewhere else. It would be unusual.
He couldn't find a trace of them, not a page,
not a screw, not anything. So if this was a crime,
(28:23):
and it was looking that way, who were the suspects.
It was incredibly unlikely a burglar had somehow made their
way into the home undetected, forcing their way in through
a window or door. It had to have been the
party where dozens of people had filed through Cage's home
like they were on a museum tour. To make matters worse,
(28:46):
Cage had more than one gathering around that time. It
could have been his New Year's party, or it could
have been a birthday or Christmas bash. It was impossible
to know the exact night the comics had disappeared, but
Cage's guests were always friends or friends of friends. Robbing
the actor seemed pretty out of character for wealthy, connected people,
(29:11):
But Fishler was told that there was another possibility. There
was talk of somebody who worked at the party selling
some alcohol, almost like a bodyguard or somebody who worked
at his house. It seemed like just for that day,
it didn't seem like a regular employee, and that person
(29:32):
was selling alcohol in the back of a car, and
that alcohol seemed to have been taken out of Knick's
house as well. So there was the belief that this
is the thief that took the books a transient worker
of sorts. They're just for the party, someone who had
access to Cage's home but wasn't a friend or associate.
(29:52):
It made sense, but nothing came of it, and nothing
came up. Speaking with Cage's many employees, security staff, a chef,
cleaning staff, drivers, all had varying degrees of access to
Cage's home. In theory, one of them could have used
the party as a cover a way too deepen the
suspect pool to help avoid detection. Or someone could have
(30:16):
used that information and given it to a third party
a kind of tip. What was it likely? Was someone
really going to steal from Nick Cage and then just
continue reporting for work as if nothing had happened in
the gated exclusive community of bel Air. Well Yeah. Flash
(30:37):
forward about a year. Movie producer Peter Goober, who also
lives in bel Air, discovers he short one Picasso drawing
titled fun From taken from his wall. A glass entry
door appeared to be kicked out, just like at his
(31:00):
Picasso was gone like Cage. Uber had a full time
staff twenty nine employees to be exact, and all were questioned.
Nothing turned up, nothing until five months later when a
man named Tony walked into Christie's, the famed auction house,
(31:20):
and asked if they'd be interested in purchasing in authentic
Picasso drawing fonn He was going through a divorce, he said,
and wanted sixty dollars for it. And then Tony said
something odd. He said the drawing by one of the
world's most famous artists was quote ugly. The Christie's employee
(31:44):
furrowed her brow and told Tony to hang on for
just a second. On a hunch, she got online and
checked out the Los Angeles Police Department's database of stolen art. There,
alongside a note about Nicholas Cage's missing be of Action
comics number one, was a notice about the missing Picasso.
(32:06):
Tony was arrested, and that wasn't as you may have
guessed his real name. He was a driver for Peter Goober,
who snuck into the house and smashed a window to
make it look like a break in. He had seen
the Picasso, he gave in to temptation. If Tony could
do it, well, why not someone working for Cage, someone
(32:27):
who knew the comics were often unlocked, unarmed, and easily accessible.
Was it like Goober's drawing an inside job. But the
thing to know about in his life then is that
there were so many people working for him. It's fascinating.
(32:51):
He had a staff I would say of like maybe
of a round. I mean, it was crazy. It's hard
to keep track of everybody. There's such an enabling thing
of celebrities that, like, my first thing when you say
about the comic is like, well, what if this is
an inside job? Totally an inside job at the house.
That's Jen Bosworth Ramirez. Again, Jen has some ideas about
(33:14):
how Cage found himself in this position. First, there's the
house itself, the Purple Palace. That house is huge. I
don't think he still owns it. I think he lives
in Vegas. But like, that house was so big and
had so much stuff in it. It was like this
gothic mansion obviously in bel Air, but it also had
twist and turns in that house, and he had what
(33:34):
I believe is the first danger Will Robinson Robot in
the house, which I remember being really weirded out by
from what was it lost in space? I think, And
it was like a museum. So it doesn't shock me
that something walked off from that house. If it did.
That's what actually happened. Other sources say the robot was
a replica, but still so. The Cage Museum of Modern
(33:57):
Art is one factor, and the other is people in
cages orbit, the employees, associates, hangers on. The other thing
to note about this time, and maybe it's all times
with celebrities and kind of interesting weird celebrities, is that
they always have a cast of characters around them. They
sort of elect people, people that are in the industry,
(34:19):
people that are not in the industry. I could totally
also see how someone like Nick could get involved with
someone who could be a little shady, you know what
I mean, Because everyone's shady here in Hollywood in some way, right,
and Cage had undoubtedly run into them. So you have
a party at your house, there's an object worth at
(34:40):
least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that's small enough
to fit inside of a jacket. Two of them. Actually,
people can wander around freely. Employees come and go, and
you're away for maybe half the year shooting movies. Would
you just leave it unlocked and available for anyone to
(35:00):
pick up? If you're Nicolas Cage, yes, yes you do.
My understanding of him is that he started acting so young,
and because he was from kind of a famous family,
you know, the Coppolas, And because of all these things,
he was sort of like protected from a lot of
the harsh truths of the world that people can take
(35:23):
advantage of you, which is something actually I've seen over
and over with celebrities, but especially with Nick. I was
struck by the fact that he was super earnest in
a way that shocked me. It was like he wanted
to believe the best in people. But more than that,
I don't think he thought people would do that to him,
steal from him. It's really weird because you would think
(35:45):
that people would be like, Oh, I have money and
fancy things, and I have random people in my house.
This could be a big problem. I'd never experienced him
that way. It was so interesting during that time. I
remember being like, Oh, he really takes people at their word.
The famous cage eccentricity you probably figured we'd address this
(36:08):
cage has always been perceived as slightly odd. What other
actor has bought a dinosaur skull for two hundred and
seventy six thousand dollars and then had to give it
back when it was discovered that it was stolen from Mongolia.
Who else has described his own acting style as no
voo shamanistic and again we remind you of eating a
(36:31):
live roach. So Cage is not exactly playing by any
particular rule book. And it's fair to say he experienced
the world in a very different way. And it was
like he couldn't understand that there were consequences financially. I
don't know that he knew that if you don't pay
(36:52):
a parking meter, there's a ticket, and if you don't
pay the ticket like increases, because I think everyone just
did things for him all the time. He didn't know
certain things. But by his own admission, Cage was often
interested in building up a mythology around himself. Why else
by a two headed snake and share the fact that
(37:13):
you had to feed it with a spatula between the
heads to keep them separated. Why else stand up in
a restaurant and throw a ketchup bottle against the wall
to impress a date, Or get on a plane intercom
and pretend to be an ill pilot losing control of
the plane. Why else appear on a talk show in
the UK and stripped down to your bare chest. Cage
(37:37):
seemed to enjoy testing the boundaries of personality, creating his
own alter ego like Superman created Clark Kent, so that
it became difficult for anyone to compare the real Cage
to a part because well, who was the real Cage anyway? Well,
there was a story. I used to get beat up
(37:58):
on the bustle of a way. I went to a
correctional school for juvenile delinquents and I wasn't a big guy.
I was ten years old. I got kicked out of
school because I was, you know, the class clown, coming
up with pranks and whatnot, fried grasshoppers and people's egg
salad sandwiches and uh, I used to get beat up
on the bus every day. And then then I was
(38:18):
Nikki Coppel, that was my name. So one day I
went to school and I dressed up, put my cowboy
boots on, put my black leather jacket on, put my
sunglasses on, and UH said, I was Roy Richards and
if you if you mess around with my my cousin,
Nicki Coppel, I'm gonna kick your ass. So after that
they never screwed around with me anymore. So that was
(38:38):
really my first acting experience. The eccentricity probably gets exaggerated,
but it's also true that Cage, like many stars, is
somewhat distanced from the normal burdens of life. There was
the time he bought a Bentley, a beautiful Bentley, and
(38:59):
had it cussed demised so that it had every available
amenity you could think of, plush seats, televisions, a stereo,
a bar, luxury. When Cage got it back, he found
he couldn't fit inside of it anymore. There had been
too many additions. It became too opulent to contain him.
(39:20):
It also just didn't occur to Cage that anyone would
mean him any harm. He was, by the account of
people who worked for him, generous kind, far from the
egocentric star stereotype. It probably never occurred to him that
action number one could be taken, because who would want
(39:40):
to do that to him? Too many people? Do you
know what I mean? Like, why don't you know these people?
I don't know. It was such a weird time. He
had tons of people working for him, tons, and then
that doesn't include his agents, manager, and then all of
the publicists. I mean, it's a huge team of people,
(40:00):
and he's paying for all them, and you're probably wondering
security footage. Nope, no cameras inside, no one guarding the doors,
no one searching bags or patting people down. It was
a party, not a t s a checkpoint. Being at
the house and seeing sort of the grandness with which
(40:21):
he lived in terms of how much stuff he had
and collectibles, it was a whole new world to me,
and I can easily see how that world, as glorious
as it could be and as fun, could also be
a huge burden, and to keep track of everything and
everybody in your life would be almost impossible. That's the story.
(40:45):
It's just being in his house. You're playing pool with
Tom Waits and Jack Nicholson just gave you a cigar,
and this is this guy's house, and yet nobody really
knows you. It's very him, it's very weird. It's a
weird life. But that I think would be it's just
being the grandness of the whole thing and all the
things that people are being like, Oh, but who really
are these people and what are they doing here? And
(41:07):
what are we doing here? And what is this kind
of a life. It seems like it'd be very overwhelming
and unmanageable. But Stephen Fishler thought he could help manage
at least one part, the stolen comic part. He understood
that if these books were going to surface, there was
a very good chance he would hear about it. So
no one went to the media, and that was on purpose.
(41:31):
If you make it very public, then somebody's going to go, oh,
it is very public. And I can't publicly sell these
books because everybody knows. But if they steal them and
they're not able to find references to the theft, then
they may believe that nobody realized and now they're free
(41:52):
and clear to sell. But I think the word might
have gotten around about this theft in l A. Instead
of calling the Los Angeles As Times, Stephen picked up
the phone and began dialing Los Angeles area comic bookshops.
He told owners that some valuable comics had been taken,
but not who they had been taken from. Perhaps the thief,
(42:13):
like with Tony and the Picasso, would be brazen or
ignorant enough to just walk into Golden Apple Comics and
present an action number one with some concocted story. Comics
were after all found in attic. Sometimes it was a
long shot and here's the thing about property crimes. Unless
(42:34):
someone is an eyewitness to the theft, or unless someone
is stupid enough to admit to being in possession of
stolen property, it's not too hard to stay out of handcuffs.
It's estimated that just ten of art thefts see the
items recovered. But then, speaking to one dealer, Stephen heard
(42:58):
something too good to be true. Yes, the store owner
said someone had just called asking about the value of
an action number one and a detective number twenty seven,
but he didn't leave his name, and as the days
ticked by, it became clear that person wasn't going to
phone back. Please hang up and try your call again. Please.
(43:22):
There's a working theory about art crime. When something is stolen,
it will either surface immediately to get some quick cash,
or in about ten years, just long enough to hope
the victim has forgotten or has died, or the cops
are no longer actively investigating. It's the difference between a
fast score and playing the long game. So which was
(43:46):
it going to be? Was someone trying to move these
books fast? Were they going to go deep underground until
cage was onto other things? Was the l a shop
call a sign of things to come. This is just
the beginning of the story of one of the most
audacious art heists in modern history. Taken from one of
(44:07):
Hollywood's most famous actors, it moves from Los Angeles to Connecticut,
to Memphis and Paris and ropes in two Billionaires. It's
Nicolas Cage's own real life version of National Treasure, a
search for the birth of modern popular culture and the
person or persons who took it from his frat house
(44:31):
Bordelo Fortress of Solitude. And it really begins with one question,
the one that you might have caught yourself asking when
we started. When Nicolas Cage called Stephen Fishler, it was
the first question Stephen asked Cage. He actually told him,
did you call the police? And yet not so? I said, well,
(44:53):
get off the phone with me. Let's get the police involved.
Cage hadn't phoned the police right away. It was Stephen
who called them and gave them the advice of right
police to get them involved. Get him over there, went on.
They may be able to certainly help, but could they
This was no conventional art theft. Stephen was about to
(45:17):
put l a p d s finest to the test
when he discovered that there weren't just three comics missing,
there were four, and that's when the beads of sweat
really started rolling this season on Stealing Superman, the fact
(45:37):
he went to the Dayla first rather than the place
as an investigator, that would indicaite to me that Nicholas
Kaige knew more than what he let on and he
didn't want really a lot about being my public. You
hear the gossip that it could have been the butler,
could have been security guard, and I just remember that
showed us everything, and then in the end it was like,
(45:57):
well the police is going to come and everything. And
then Jeff and I were like, well we touched everything
because he had said something about fingerprints. We're both like,
we just touched everything. We touched the door coming into
your room and we never go up there. K you
just one of our people. He's one of my people.
I understand exactly what he must be thinking half when
(46:20):
that happened, how it felt to him. We all do.
And it's like, that's why Mark was more piste off
and all this stuff, just because it's like, why are
you bringing something around to my warehouse? Now I can
go to prison for but this is because it's so
specific both the man and his interests that it just
feels like another world, right, Like it feels like fiction
(46:41):
because someone targeted this very specific, very talented actor and
stole something that is very specific to his interests, but
that we're all aware of. As if it was a Monai.
That feels more relatable than if it was like someone
stole a two thousand dollar car from that damon, that
(47:02):
wouldn't be interesting. I think they should make a movie
this and just talk about all the weirdos that worked
for him and like who could have done this? And
maybe it turns out that in the end he did
it to himself. Stealing Superman is written by Jake Rawson,
(47:22):
sound design scoring by Josh Fisher, additional editing by Jonathan Washington,
mixing and mastering by Baheed Frasier. Original music by Aaron Kaufman.
Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson,
with production support from Lulu Philip. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia.
(47:43):
Our executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host
Danish words. If you're enjoying this show, check out Haleywood
and Noble Blood and give us a nice review. We'll
see you next week. Stealing Superman is a production of
I heart Rate Yeah.
It's early January two thousand and Stephen Fishler is sitting
in his office. You probably don't know the name unless
you've ever been in the market for expensive comic books,
very very expensive comic books. Titles that sell for millions
of dollars. Comics that once cost ten cents got thrown
(00:30):
away or left to us, and then go on to
fetch an incredibly high price for their rarity. Fishler was
and still is among the most well known brokers of
such books. He's been collecting since he was five years old,
a kid in Brooklyn, after stacks of superheroes. If you
want a particular title in a particular condition, he can
(00:53):
probably find it. And that's what Stephen was doing today,
making deals for collectors from his place of business, Metropolis
Collectibles in New York City, overflowing with rare books, first
appearances of Spider Man, Captain America Archie, many looking like
they just came off a news stand, even though they're
(01:15):
decades old. This is the kind of place that even
when the comics are sealed in plastic, they give off
that distinctive smell of old, cheap paper. Well maybe not
so cheap anymore, but today isn't going to be a
normal day for Stephen. It's going to be the beginning
of a situation and obsession really that will take up
(01:39):
a good deal of his time, something that will one
day have police instructing him on what to do in
the event of a shootout, that kind of situation. And
it begins, like many stories do, with a phone call.
Nick called me very upset and said to me that
(02:03):
somebody stole some of his comic books and was really
in a panic. I must have been. I don't know
that noon my time, and I sort of asked him
to sort of slow down so I can understand what
went on, and he gave me, you know, an account
of what went on as best he could. Nick is
Nicholas Cage, the star of huge movies like Face Off,
(02:26):
Cohn Air and The Rock, an Oscar winner, a man
who ate a live cockroach in Vampire's Kiss because he
knew it would draw attention. He didn't win the Oscar
for that one that was leaving Las Vegas. Cage is
talking quickly in that distinctive twang that makes his sentences
sound like melodies. He's calling because Stephen is his dealer,
(02:51):
his comic book dealer. Well, it started many, many years ago.
A friend of mine who was a friend in a
comic collector, Miguel Ferrare currently was on some movie set
with Nick Cage. This is in the eighties when he
was not as well known, and they got into a
conversation about comic books. And probably a month later, I'm
(03:18):
at seeing Nick at a hotel. He was living at
Hotel Rossmore and there he was in his crew cut
and this is after like Valley Girl, I believe, and
he had a giant fish tank in his apartment at
the hotel with a shark in it, and that's where
I first met him and started dealing with him way
(03:40):
way back. Since then, Cage has bought hundreds of comics
from Stephen, and now Cage is trying to explain that
the worst possible thing that could happen to a comic
collector has happened. His most valuable books have turned up missing.
And not just valuable books. The most valuable book, the
(04:04):
most sought after issue of them all, The Mona Lisa
of Comics, Action Comics number one, the first appearance of
a superhero, the first appearance of the Man of Steel, Superman,
the most well preserved copy available, a comic so rare
(04:26):
that even a rusty staple or some page flex from
one can sell for hundreds of dollars to collectors desperate
for even a small dose of its magic. Superman, the
embodiment of morality and virtue stolen. Stephen takes a deep breath.
He asks one of the world's most famous actors to
(04:49):
tell him exactly what happened. Nick told me that there
was some sort of party and that they disappeared during
the party. That was it is house, a party, a heist,
a frantic phone call, and as Cage talks, Stephen realizes
(05:09):
it gets worse. Action Number one is missing, and so
is Detective Comics Number twenty seven. That was the first
appearance of Batman. Someone has run off with half the
Justice League from right under the nose of a Hollywood superstar.
And that's about all Stephen can get because Cage, in
(05:30):
his indomitable cage fashion, is too upset to offer too
many details on what will shape up to be the
most unlikely artist of all time. Oh for I Heart Radio,
I'm Dani Schwartz. This is Stealing Superman, an I Heart
(05:53):
original podcast now on my long running podcast noble Blood.
I tell the true stories of historical royals, but occasionally
I like to cover a different kind of royalty, Hollywood Royalty.
Last fall we brought you Haileywood, a podcast about Bruce
Willis buying up a town in Idaho in the es
(06:15):
and the friends and enemies he made along the way.
This year's tale involves a brazen comic book heist, Nicolas
Cage and y two K. Let's get into it Episode one,
Beads of Sweat. We need to turn the pages back
(06:36):
a little. A few days prior to a house party
at three sixty three Coppa de Laura Road in bel Air, California,
the residents of Nicolas Coppola, known to most people by
his stage name Nicolas Cage, New Year's Eve was something special,
(06:58):
something peculiar. Remember why two K when people believed that
computers wouldn't be able to understand the year two thousand
and that it might cripple our infrastructure. Well, if the
people in attendance at Cage's house were worried about it,
they didn't act like it. And if this was the
end of the world, Cage was going to make sure
(07:20):
they had one hell of a good time On their
way out. The scale of a Nicholas Cage party is
hard to fathom. You'd have celebrities, actors, producers, directors, agents.
Fresh food was laid out on the fade tables made
(07:42):
from solid blocks of ice. Giant nutcrackers standing ten feet
tall flanked the main entrance. Fake snow was blowing out
of machines. Lightning professionals made sure everything looked perfect. At
one party, someone brought Cage a pony as a gift.
(08:03):
It would be found wandering around the yard the next morning.
It was as though Cage were always starring in a
party being directed by David Lynch. Yeah, he had amazing parties.
I once got a cigar from Jack Nicholson, who was
very intoxicated and gave me a cigar to give to
(08:24):
my father. Yeah. I was there. I was there, and
we were all there, all the staffs and all the people,
and I met some really amazing people and I had
a great time. That's Jen Bosworth Ramirez. Jen worked for
Cage in the two thousand's and no she didn't steal
the comics I did. Can you imagine? Jen was hired
(08:47):
by Cage himself, who conducted the job interview with one
of his ears blown off. Okay, And so then I
get into this trailer, a small trailer. Wasn't like a
fancy he must have been in the makeup trailer or something.
I don't know, but it wasn't like a big honey wagon.
It was like small, and I'm like, oh my god,
I'm sitting across from this movie star. Also, he doesn't
(09:08):
look like himself because he literally his ear is blown off.
He has my resume backs in his hand that they
had facts to his trailer, to the base camp or something,
and I'm like, twenty four, I don't know what's happening.
And then I said, I said, oh my god, your ear.
I remember being really startled because the prosthetics were so
good and wind Tucker's that's a John Woolf felt. I
(09:30):
think anyway, the prosthetics were really good, and I said,
oh my god, your ear go. Yeah, that's that's not real,
Like that's that's a prosthetic. And I was like, oh, okay,
it was so awkward. The whole thing was so weird,
so weird. I left. I didn't know if I had
the jab or not. I had no clue was happening.
Jen worked for Cages production company Saturn Films. Some perks
(09:53):
were parties like this one in Cage's Grand Residents over
a seven thousand square feet sitting on one acre in
one of the country's most prestigious neighborhoods. Walk inside the
house and you're created with a different kind of splendor.
A real estate agent and architectural historian named Brett Parsons,
(10:17):
who once toward the house, described the style as frat house,
bordello or quote early American Adams family. Those sound like insults,
and well maybe they were, But however you felt about it,
it was undoubtedly a reflection of its owner. Originally built
(10:39):
by famed architect Gerard Colcord in nineteen forty, it was
once owned by Dean Martin and later Tom Jones, who
sold it to Cage In Cage would make some improvements
or changes. At least purple curtains hung from windows. A
vintage nineteen fifty five jag war car had been painstakingly
(11:03):
disassembled and put back together in one room until the
pungent smell of oil overcame visitors and it had to go.
There were even people who swore they saw shrunken heads.
Oh you know, I never knew that. I never saw
the shrunken heads I heard about that. That doesn't shock
me either. I mean he had dinosaur bones. I think
(11:26):
model trains were running above diners. In the breakfast room
and throughout the house were bronze walsconces. Light fixtures, but
not ordinary light fixtures. These were fixtures sculpted out of
a cast made from Nicholas Cage's arm, his muscled appendages
illuminating the home, the bell Air House. If my recollection,
(11:50):
it's a huge Gothic mansion, meaning there's probably like ten
bedrooms in there. I mostly hung out in the living area.
It was like a probably a three story situation. Outside
it looks like a regular you know, if I recall correctly,
like a brick mansion that you'd see in Valor. But
inside he had it decorated like super gothic, key and
(12:11):
dark and ornate at points and not my style, like
that's not my jam. But it was like a castle.
That's what I could sort of say. It reminds me
of a castle. A lot of rooms, a lot of
twists and turns. It was not an open floor plan.
Let's just say that, you know what I mean, There's
a pool. But I didn't spend a ton of time there,
but I do remember being like WHOA, I remember purple droops.
(12:33):
As guests wandered through the home, they would have noticed
something else. Lining the walls on the second floor were
comic books. Lots of comic books, the first appearance of
Captain America and Green Lantern and The Justice Society, comics
from the Golden Age of the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties,
(12:55):
science fiction comics and horror comics. Skeletons peering out at
the reader, and scantily clad women gasping at probing alien marauders.
Any comic book fan would have taken one look and
seethed with envy. At least a hundred scattered throughout the house,
(13:15):
one book in each frame. As you can probably imagine,
Cage didn't just pin the comics to the wall. This
was an ornate display. Each frame was nineteen and a
half inches long by sixteen and a half inches wide,
Each was made of stained maple. Each had a small
(13:36):
lock that could only be opened with a key, and
each was connected to a pressure sensor alarm. If someone
had the key and were to open the frame and
remove the comic inside cages security staff would be immediately notified.
You couldn't easily pill for any of these books unless, well,
(13:56):
hang up, We're almost there, but let's finish the tour.
The hub of Cage's collection was in what he called
a smoking lounge. It was originally a secret room used
by Dean Martin, and accessible only if you knew how
to get in from an adjoining bathroom through a panel
(14:17):
door that pops open. It's kind of a clandestine deal.
A spiral staircase curved up, and it's tight, so tight
Cage had to bring up the furniture in pieces. This
secret smoking room was, like other parts of the house,
decorated heavily in purple, purple furniture, purple walls, a purple
(14:41):
carpet with gold accents, a spiral staircase leading to the
roof carpeted, and well, you get it. It was in
this small room that Cage went to unwind, a respite
from fame or even from hosting duties. It's a small,
intimate room and the walls were lined with his most
(15:03):
valuable comics. Hanging in one wall frame was Detective Comics
Number twenty seven, dated May nine. The cover captures its protagonist.
In the thick of it, Batman, a strange, masked vigilante
readers have never seen before, is swooping into frame to
(15:26):
put a criminal in a choke hold. As Batman cuts
off the hoods corroded artery. He's hanging from a supported
building outside of you. In the lower left corner, two
crooks look on, one is armed. Both seem unsure of
what to do about the man with violent tendencies dressed
as a bat It's advertising sixty four pages of action.
(15:51):
Once upon a time, it was ten cents in two thousand.
It's thought to be worth up to a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. It's actually why Cage went to Fishler
in the first place. They wanted a Detective twenty seven,
so that's what the conversation focused on. I had brought
him a twenty seven to look at, but it had
(16:13):
too much restoration, that particular copy. But that was the
first meeting his interest in in a detective comics. But
that was really just a warm up. As desirable a
book as Detective Number twenty seven was and is, it's
always taken second place in the comic book hierarchy to
its bigger brother, The birth of the superhero genre. The
(16:37):
comic that would change popular culture forever. Action Comics number one,
dated June, but actually released a little earlier. You've probably
seen the cover. It's part of our cultural iconography by
this point. They're Superman hefting a call are clear over
(17:01):
his head. His costume isn't much different from the one
he sports today. Let's refined, sure, but the red cap, boots,
and s insignia are all there Bystanders are fleeing from
the scene, terrified of this man with super strength. In
(17:23):
the lower left corner is a man who is positively hysterical.
His hands are clasped to his face, like the figure
in Edward Monks the screen. He's running away. Maybe he's
part of the crew inside the car the crooked Superman
is trying to bring to justice. Maybe he's not involved.
Either way, he's got beads of sweat running down his forehead.
(17:46):
Seeing Superman for the first time has to be stressful. Nowadays,
people are happy to see him. They wave and clap.
Not this crew. They were scared. Two hundred thousand copies
of this comic book were printed in fewer than one
hundred copies are believed to still exist, and even fewer
(18:08):
in good condition cages. Copy is considered one of the
most well preserved, With bright colors and an intact cover.
Superman is still a deep red and blue. The pages
inside are a creamy white. On the scale of one
to ten, it's an easy nine. A comic over sixty
(18:30):
years old to survive, to endure and look this good
is remarkable. Unlike some comics that get restored, this Action
number one hasn't had any work done. Yeah, this is
now much later, probably around and I'm gonna say nineteen
(18:51):
or so, and an interest in buying an Action one
in high grade. I knew a collector who had one,
and I was able to was sort of a difficult deal,
but I was able to put the deal together, and
that was the book that Nick ended up with. It
was just the mechanics of giving me the book, and
I think the collector was enamored of selling it to Nick.
(19:13):
And I met with Nick without the collector there, but
I put Nick on the phone with this collector and
then the deal went through. I think he just kind
of wanted to meet him, just to be honest, But
Nick really did value it was very excited about buying
this book as well. He should, and I thought it
would be sort of a fun deal to pull off
selling it to him. Cage It paid one hundred and
(19:35):
fifty thousand dollars for Action Number one. That was a
record for a comic book sale at the time, but
three years later it's likely worth more, perhaps as much
as two hundred thousand dollars. It's the crown jewel of
Cage's collection. It would be the centerpiece of any comic
book collection today. Right now, copies of both of these
(20:00):
comics are worth two to three million each, if not more.
They've only appreciated in value, but Cage appreciated them then.
In two thousand, before comic book movies became the only
thing playing in multiplexes, he grew up reading comics. He
took his stage name Cage, partly after Luke Cage, the
(20:22):
seventies Marvel comic hero with impenetrable skin, a good superhero
for an actor who didn't always find kindness coming from critics.
But the comics were something else for Nicolas Cage too.
Like the House itself, they were monuments to Cage's success
from turns as strange characters in Moonstruck and Raising Arizona,
(20:45):
to winning an Oscar to becoming an action star. Cage
had navigated Hollywood successfully, and he arrived at a time
when the industry was paying record salaries. After the Academy
Awards win, cages quote for a movie went from four
million dollars to seven million dollars. Years before, Cage had
(21:08):
asked the director of a small film he was going
to make a cameo in Never on Tuesday, if the
man could buy him an Action Comics Number one instead
of paying him. The director couldn't afford to, But now
Cage could afford to buy his own copy, and so
he did. He love this book, I mean the actually
one metal lot to him, which brings us to Stephen
(21:31):
Fishler's phone ringing and Nicholas Cage telling him his comics
were no longer there. It was a few days before
Stephen could make it out to California, but he did. Stephen,
(21:54):
of course, wasn't in law enforcement, but he was one
of the few people in Caged circle who could understand
the enormity of what had happened. Saying it was just
a comic book theft was like saying a museum heist
only resulted in some plaster going missing. And I'm pretty
sure as soon as he realized that they're missing, he
(22:15):
called me. It seemed like you on the spot. He
called me because I was this comic guy, so this
is about a comic. He wanted, I guess advice, and
that's what I gave him, and I offered to come
out to help, which is what I did within maybe
a week or two. According to Stephen, it had taken
a day or two, perhaps longer for Cage to realize
(22:37):
the comics were missing. A maid had been in the
smoking room and noticed that three of the frames were empty,
and something else that was curious. Those lockable frames hadn't
been forcibly opened. So my brain went, oh, it's maybe misplaced.
(22:57):
Maybe they were put somewhere. I went there it was described.
I saw that I had sold Nick these shadow box
frames that the books were located in, and the Action
one in Detective were in the shadow box frames, and
there are the frames with the label on it Action
one with nothing in it. So the frames were opened
and taken. But I went through yet too safe there
(23:20):
and went through the safe and I went, huh, this
may be actually stolen. The comics weren't just loose inside
their frames. They were each in protective, hard plastic sleeves.
It's called a fortress, and it's used by serious collectors
to make sure comics didn't get bent, ripped, or otherwise damaged.
(23:41):
Each fortress was held together in two pieces by screws.
If a thief wanted to take the naked books, they
would have needed to spend a little bit of time
unscrewing each fortress, but the fortress sleeves were entirely gone.
Whoever took them would have had to deal with a
little extra book folk, as opposed to just rolling up
(24:02):
the comics and stuffing them in a pocket, something that
would have been unspeakable for a rare comic. It could
also mean the thief or thieves didn't have time to
remove the books from the fortress covers that they needed
to move quickly. It's a little bigger than the book,
but if you put in your jacket, it's not so big.
It's not like taking a giant painting and taking it
(24:24):
off the wall. Fisher noticed something else Cajun mentioned in
their conversation. The thief had also made off with a
third comic from a frame It was a copy of
Detective Comics Number one from seven, an even older title
than the Big two. While certainly valuable and worth ten
(24:44):
thousand dollars or so, it wasn't nearly as desirable. No
famous heroes made an appearance in it. The stories inside
lacked real staying power. You probably haven't heard of Speed
Saunders and the River Patrol or Cosmo the Phantom of Disguise.
Maybe the thief just saw an opportunity to take it.
(25:06):
Maybe he saw a Detective and number one and thought
any issue with that title was prized. But that still
wasn't the biggest news. There was an alarm in the
back of each frame, and I guess the box was open,
and maybe the alarm was not set for they want
to be triggered when the box is open, but apparently
that was the idea behind it. I saw there was
(25:28):
a wire attached to the back of each shadow box,
attached to the wall. A lot of money setting this up,
but unfortunately, somebody was able to open up these frames
and take the books out. Probably understood these are the
most valuable books. What Cage liked to do was take
the books out of their wall frames and rearrange them
(25:49):
show them off to people, that's what collectors do, and
then he'd leave them unlocked and the alarm disengaged. That's
sometimes what happens when people installed alarms. They become a
nuisance and so they're deactivated. That meant that, at least
in theory, anyone could walk up and grab a piece
(26:12):
of comic book history and disappear into the throngs of
a Nick Cage New Year's Eve party. But it would
have been bold to take the books without some sort
of knowledge that they were unlocked and disarmed. Yeah, I'm
not sure what this individual knew or didn't know. I
(26:34):
think that this individual saw Nick open up the case
and show the book to somebody, and he probably went
opened up. It doesn't bring if that's what happened, it's
not likely they would have been stopped. Not at a
Cage party and one of those parties, especially, Are you
kidding me? You have to understand, like everyone's drinking, it's
(26:56):
a huge party. Everyone's trying to make business deal and
get to know the famous people. Oh sure, there's so
much stuff in those houses. You'd have to have security
guards watching every rook like a museum them all of course,
and Also, there is this thing of you let people
into your house you trust. The problem with that is
you let two other people into your house, you can't
(27:17):
trust them, all right, So oh, yeah, someone would be
able to leave. Are you kidding me? But Stephen wasn't
entirely convinced a crime had been committed, not yet. First
he diligently searched the enormous house. It was certainly possible
Cage had taken the books out and set them down
somewhere without remembering, or maybe a party guest had picked
(27:41):
them up and left them in another room. Maybe a
thief considered taking them, then panicked when they ran into
someone and decided to leave them behind. All were reasonable possibilities.
But the more Stephen looked, the more he realized that
nothing innocent had taken place. And I really, after probably
(28:02):
spending six or seven hours in the house, said yeah,
and now we're understanding that this was in this case,
and it's not there. Nobody took it out. That works
for nick, and but it's somewhere else. It would be unusual.
He couldn't find a trace of them, not a page,
not a screw, not anything. So if this was a crime,
(28:23):
and it was looking that way, who were the suspects.
It was incredibly unlikely a burglar had somehow made their
way into the home undetected, forcing their way in through
a window or door. It had to have been the
party where dozens of people had filed through Cage's home
like they were on a museum tour. To make matters worse,
(28:46):
Cage had more than one gathering around that time. It
could have been his New Year's party, or it could
have been a birthday or Christmas bash. It was impossible
to know the exact night the comics had disappeared, but
Cage's guests were always friends or friends of friends. Robbing
the actor seemed pretty out of character for wealthy, connected people,
(29:11):
But Fishler was told that there was another possibility. There
was talk of somebody who worked at the party selling
some alcohol, almost like a bodyguard or somebody who worked
at his house. It seemed like just for that day,
it didn't seem like a regular employee, and that person
(29:32):
was selling alcohol in the back of a car, and
that alcohol seemed to have been taken out of Knick's
house as well. So there was the belief that this
is the thief that took the books a transient worker
of sorts. They're just for the party, someone who had
access to Cage's home but wasn't a friend or associate.
(29:52):
It made sense, but nothing came of it, and nothing
came up. Speaking with Cage's many employees, security staff, a chef,
cleaning staff, drivers, all had varying degrees of access to
Cage's home. In theory, one of them could have used
the party as a cover a way too deepen the
suspect pool to help avoid detection. Or someone could have
(30:16):
used that information and given it to a third party
a kind of tip. What was it likely? Was someone
really going to steal from Nick Cage and then just
continue reporting for work as if nothing had happened in
the gated exclusive community of bel Air. Well Yeah. Flash
(30:37):
forward about a year. Movie producer Peter Goober, who also
lives in bel Air, discovers he short one Picasso drawing
titled fun From taken from his wall. A glass entry
door appeared to be kicked out, just like at his
(31:00):
Picasso was gone like Cage. Uber had a full time
staff twenty nine employees to be exact, and all were questioned.
Nothing turned up, nothing until five months later when a
man named Tony walked into Christie's, the famed auction house,
(31:20):
and asked if they'd be interested in purchasing in authentic
Picasso drawing fonn He was going through a divorce, he said,
and wanted sixty dollars for it. And then Tony said
something odd. He said the drawing by one of the
world's most famous artists was quote ugly. The Christie's employee
(31:44):
furrowed her brow and told Tony to hang on for
just a second. On a hunch, she got online and
checked out the Los Angeles Police Department's database of stolen art. There,
alongside a note about Nicholas Cage's missing be of Action
comics number one, was a notice about the missing Picasso.
(32:06):
Tony was arrested, and that wasn't as you may have
guessed his real name. He was a driver for Peter Goober,
who snuck into the house and smashed a window to
make it look like a break in. He had seen
the Picasso, he gave in to temptation. If Tony could
do it, well, why not someone working for Cage, someone
(32:27):
who knew the comics were often unlocked, unarmed, and easily accessible.
Was it like Goober's drawing an inside job. But the
thing to know about in his life then is that
there were so many people working for him. It's fascinating.
(32:51):
He had a staff I would say of like maybe
of a round. I mean, it was crazy. It's hard
to keep track of everybody. There's such an enabling thing
of celebrities that, like, my first thing when you say
about the comic is like, well, what if this is
an inside job? Totally an inside job at the house.
That's Jen Bosworth Ramirez. Again, Jen has some ideas about
(33:14):
how Cage found himself in this position. First, there's the
house itself, the Purple Palace. That house is huge. I
don't think he still owns it. I think he lives
in Vegas. But like, that house was so big and
had so much stuff in it. It was like this
gothic mansion obviously in bel Air, but it also had
twist and turns in that house, and he had what
(33:34):
I believe is the first danger Will Robinson Robot in
the house, which I remember being really weirded out by
from what was it lost in space? I think, And
it was like a museum. So it doesn't shock me
that something walked off from that house. If it did.
That's what actually happened. Other sources say the robot was
a replica, but still so. The Cage Museum of Modern
(33:57):
Art is one factor, and the other is people in
cages orbit, the employees, associates, hangers on. The other thing
to note about this time, and maybe it's all times
with celebrities and kind of interesting weird celebrities, is that
they always have a cast of characters around them. They
sort of elect people, people that are in the industry,
(34:19):
people that are not in the industry. I could totally
also see how someone like Nick could get involved with
someone who could be a little shady, you know what
I mean, Because everyone's shady here in Hollywood in some way, right,
and Cage had undoubtedly run into them. So you have
a party at your house, there's an object worth at
(34:40):
least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars that's small enough
to fit inside of a jacket. Two of them. Actually,
people can wander around freely. Employees come and go, and
you're away for maybe half the year shooting movies. Would
you just leave it unlocked and available for anyone to
(35:00):
pick up? If you're Nicolas Cage, yes, yes you do.
My understanding of him is that he started acting so young,
and because he was from kind of a famous family,
you know, the Coppolas, And because of all these things,
he was sort of like protected from a lot of
the harsh truths of the world that people can take
(35:23):
advantage of you, which is something actually I've seen over
and over with celebrities, but especially with Nick. I was
struck by the fact that he was super earnest in
a way that shocked me. It was like he wanted
to believe the best in people. But more than that,
I don't think he thought people would do that to him,
steal from him. It's really weird because you would think
(35:45):
that people would be like, Oh, I have money and
fancy things, and I have random people in my house.
This could be a big problem. I'd never experienced him
that way. It was so interesting during that time. I
remember being like, Oh, he really takes people at their word.
The famous cage eccentricity you probably figured we'd address this
(36:08):
cage has always been perceived as slightly odd. What other
actor has bought a dinosaur skull for two hundred and
seventy six thousand dollars and then had to give it
back when it was discovered that it was stolen from Mongolia.
Who else has described his own acting style as no
voo shamanistic and again we remind you of eating a
(36:31):
live roach. So Cage is not exactly playing by any
particular rule book. And it's fair to say he experienced
the world in a very different way. And it was
like he couldn't understand that there were consequences financially. I
don't know that he knew that if you don't pay
(36:52):
a parking meter, there's a ticket, and if you don't
pay the ticket like increases, because I think everyone just
did things for him all the time. He didn't know
certain things. But by his own admission, Cage was often
interested in building up a mythology around himself. Why else
by a two headed snake and share the fact that
(37:13):
you had to feed it with a spatula between the
heads to keep them separated. Why else stand up in
a restaurant and throw a ketchup bottle against the wall
to impress a date, Or get on a plane intercom
and pretend to be an ill pilot losing control of
the plane. Why else appear on a talk show in
the UK and stripped down to your bare chest. Cage
(37:37):
seemed to enjoy testing the boundaries of personality, creating his
own alter ego like Superman created Clark Kent, so that
it became difficult for anyone to compare the real Cage
to a part because well, who was the real Cage anyway? Well,
there was a story. I used to get beat up
(37:58):
on the bustle of a way. I went to a
correctional school for juvenile delinquents and I wasn't a big guy.
I was ten years old. I got kicked out of
school because I was, you know, the class clown, coming
up with pranks and whatnot, fried grasshoppers and people's egg
salad sandwiches and uh, I used to get beat up
on the bus every day. And then then I was
(38:18):
Nikki Coppel, that was my name. So one day I
went to school and I dressed up, put my cowboy
boots on, put my black leather jacket on, put my
sunglasses on, and UH said, I was Roy Richards and
if you if you mess around with my my cousin,
Nicki Coppel, I'm gonna kick your ass. So after that
they never screwed around with me anymore. So that was
(38:38):
really my first acting experience. The eccentricity probably gets exaggerated,
but it's also true that Cage, like many stars, is
somewhat distanced from the normal burdens of life. There was
the time he bought a Bentley, a beautiful Bentley, and
(38:59):
had it cussed demised so that it had every available
amenity you could think of, plush seats, televisions, a stereo,
a bar, luxury. When Cage got it back, he found
he couldn't fit inside of it anymore. There had been
too many additions. It became too opulent to contain him.
(39:20):
It also just didn't occur to Cage that anyone would
mean him any harm. He was, by the account of
people who worked for him, generous kind, far from the
egocentric star stereotype. It probably never occurred to him that
action number one could be taken, because who would want
(39:40):
to do that to him? Too many people? Do you
know what I mean? Like, why don't you know these people?
I don't know. It was such a weird time. He
had tons of people working for him, tons, and then
that doesn't include his agents, manager, and then all of
the publicists. I mean, it's a huge team of people,
(40:00):
and he's paying for all them, and you're probably wondering
security footage. Nope, no cameras inside, no one guarding the doors,
no one searching bags or patting people down. It was
a party, not a t s a checkpoint. Being at
the house and seeing sort of the grandness with which
(40:21):
he lived in terms of how much stuff he had
and collectibles, it was a whole new world to me,
and I can easily see how that world, as glorious
as it could be and as fun, could also be
a huge burden, and to keep track of everything and
everybody in your life would be almost impossible. That's the story.
(40:45):
It's just being in his house. You're playing pool with
Tom Waits and Jack Nicholson just gave you a cigar,
and this is this guy's house, and yet nobody really
knows you. It's very him, it's very weird. It's a
weird life. But that I think would be it's just
being the grandness of the whole thing and all the
things that people are being like, Oh, but who really
are these people and what are they doing here? And
(41:07):
what are we doing here? And what is this kind
of a life. It seems like it'd be very overwhelming
and unmanageable. But Stephen Fishler thought he could help manage
at least one part, the stolen comic part. He understood
that if these books were going to surface, there was
a very good chance he would hear about it. So
no one went to the media, and that was on purpose.
(41:31):
If you make it very public, then somebody's going to go, oh,
it is very public. And I can't publicly sell these
books because everybody knows. But if they steal them and
they're not able to find references to the theft, then
they may believe that nobody realized and now they're free
(41:52):
and clear to sell. But I think the word might
have gotten around about this theft in l A. Instead
of calling the Los Angeles As Times, Stephen picked up
the phone and began dialing Los Angeles area comic bookshops.
He told owners that some valuable comics had been taken,
but not who they had been taken from. Perhaps the thief,
(42:13):
like with Tony and the Picasso, would be brazen or
ignorant enough to just walk into Golden Apple Comics and
present an action number one with some concocted story. Comics
were after all found in attic. Sometimes it was a
long shot and here's the thing about property crimes. Unless
(42:34):
someone is an eyewitness to the theft, or unless someone
is stupid enough to admit to being in possession of
stolen property, it's not too hard to stay out of handcuffs.
It's estimated that just ten of art thefts see the
items recovered. But then, speaking to one dealer, Stephen heard
(42:58):
something too good to be true. Yes, the store owner
said someone had just called asking about the value of
an action number one and a detective number twenty seven,
but he didn't leave his name, and as the days
ticked by, it became clear that person wasn't going to
phone back. Please hang up and try your call again. Please.
(43:22):
There's a working theory about art crime. When something is stolen,
it will either surface immediately to get some quick cash,
or in about ten years, just long enough to hope
the victim has forgotten or has died, or the cops
are no longer actively investigating. It's the difference between a
fast score and playing the long game. So which was
(43:46):
it going to be? Was someone trying to move these
books fast? Were they going to go deep underground until
cage was onto other things? Was the l a shop
call a sign of things to come. This is just
the beginning of the story of one of the most
audacious art heists in modern history. Taken from one of
(44:07):
Hollywood's most famous actors, it moves from Los Angeles to Connecticut,
to Memphis and Paris and ropes in two Billionaires. It's
Nicolas Cage's own real life version of National Treasure, a
search for the birth of modern popular culture and the
person or persons who took it from his frat house
(44:31):
Bordelo Fortress of Solitude. And it really begins with one question,
the one that you might have caught yourself asking when
we started. When Nicolas Cage called Stephen Fishler, it was
the first question Stephen asked Cage. He actually told him,
did you call the police? And yet not so? I said, well,
(44:53):
get off the phone with me. Let's get the police involved.
Cage hadn't phoned the police right away. It was Stephen
who called them and gave them the advice of right
police to get them involved. Get him over there, went on.
They may be able to certainly help, but could they
This was no conventional art theft. Stephen was about to
(45:17):
put l a p d s finest to the test
when he discovered that there weren't just three comics missing,
there were four, and that's when the beads of sweat
really started rolling this season on Stealing Superman, the fact
(45:37):
he went to the Dayla first rather than the place
as an investigator, that would indicaite to me that Nicholas
Kaige knew more than what he let on and he
didn't want really a lot about being my public. You
hear the gossip that it could have been the butler,
could have been security guard, and I just remember that
showed us everything, and then in the end it was like,
(45:57):
well the police is going to come and everything. And
then Jeff and I were like, well we touched everything
because he had said something about fingerprints. We're both like,
we just touched everything. We touched the door coming into
your room and we never go up there. K you
just one of our people. He's one of my people.
I understand exactly what he must be thinking half when
(46:20):
that happened, how it felt to him. We all do.
And it's like, that's why Mark was more piste off
and all this stuff, just because it's like, why are
you bringing something around to my warehouse? Now I can
go to prison for but this is because it's so
specific both the man and his interests that it just
feels like another world, right, Like it feels like fiction
(46:41):
because someone targeted this very specific, very talented actor and
stole something that is very specific to his interests, but
that we're all aware of. As if it was a Monai.
That feels more relatable than if it was like someone
stole a two thousand dollar car from that damon, that
(47:02):
wouldn't be interesting. I think they should make a movie
this and just talk about all the weirdos that worked
for him and like who could have done this? And
maybe it turns out that in the end he did
it to himself. Stealing Superman is written by Jake Rawson,
(47:22):
sound design scoring by Josh Fisher, additional editing by Jonathan Washington,
mixing and mastering by Baheed Frasier. Original music by Aaron Kaufman.
Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson,
with production support from Lulu Philip. Show logo by Lucy Quintinia.
(47:43):
Our executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host
Danish words. If you're enjoying this show, check out Haleywood
and Noble Blood and give us a nice review. We'll
see you next week. Stealing Superman is a production of
I heart Rate Yeah.
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