September 26, 2025 • 52 mins
Tune in today to listen to the story of when North Hollywood became a war zone after a brazen bank robbery.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This one was mentioned in our recent episode on the
militarization of the police because the bandits who robbed a
bank in Los Angeles were so heavily armed to the
teeth that they outgunned the cops, which led to police
carrying assault rifles to protect themselves from another event like this.
Except this robbery was so off the rails you can
kind of imagine there might not ever be one like
(00:22):
it again.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Away we go, Welcome to Stuff you should know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
and there's Jerry, and we're just well, Jerry's not here. Actually,
now that I mentioned it, those useoph habit, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
A ghost of Jerry?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, she's not. She's still with us, said, she's driving
the getaway car.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, she's not that kind of ghost.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
No no, no, no, no, no, she's the kind of ghost
that drives a getaway car. Right. So I mentioned that, though, Chuck,
because it's apropos of the heist episode we're about to
talk about, which I guess this would qualify as a heist.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Right, Oh, I mean heck yeah, Well, usually.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
To me, heists are a little more intricate most of
the time successful. This is a little more brute firepower
than than any other heist or most other heists, So
that's why it kind of disqualifies it in my opinion.
Oh okay, that's my essay on heists.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I don't even know what the definition of heist is.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I just gave it to you.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Apparently it is a robbery, So yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I mean, of course it's a robbery. But and this
qualifies as a robbery. It's just it's its own.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Unique thing, for sure, man big time.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And you know, as you're reading this, it's so theatrical,
it's so just totally off the chain nuts that this
actually has in real life. It's you have to remind
yourself from time to time like these are like really
really bad guys and what they were doing was beyond reprehensible.
It's just we're so trained to get sucked into that
(02:12):
kind of like action in the movies that when it
happens in real life you have to like kind of
turn off that entertainment part of it and bring yourself
back to reality. Sometimes, at least I did. I had
trouble doing it during research a few times.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
No, for sure, and we're talking about the North Hollywood
shootout is what it's known a lot as the Battle
of North Hollywood sometimes. And this was on February twenty
eighth and nineteen ninety seven, when two dudes armed to
the hilt with assault rifles like anything you can think of.
(02:46):
And this is, as we'll see a time when and
this is kind of one of the big sort of
I guess, interesting and scary parts about this. This is
when cops like people could be more out armed than
the police that are trying to stop them, right, And
that's what happened the day that they engaged, when North
(03:07):
Hollywood became a war zoned for a little while.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, and as a matter of fact, this episode, this
event led directly to the militarization of police forces, as
we see these two guys basically pressed that issue because yeah,
the Los Angeles Police Department was outgunned, out armed, but
definitely not outnumbered. They outnumbered the robbers, but they were
(03:33):
still getting pinned down and they were having no luck
with anything. Well, I don't want to give too much away.
Let's just start at the beginning, because we're talking about
two dudes, a twenty six year old This is back
in ninety seven named Larry Eugene Phillips Junior, and there
was a thirty year old who he was friends with
named Emil Mattiseranu. And even though Emil was older, Larry
(03:55):
was the one who called the shots. He was roundly
described by family members says manipulative, controlling, and he had
Emil under his thumb a meal was described by his
family members later as a follower. So even though he
was a little older, he listened to what Emil told
them to do, not just in their partnership as like criminals,
(04:17):
but in life too. I read somewhere that Emil got
married because Larry told him he should and that he
shouldn't marry an American girl. So Eiel went to Romania
and got himself a Romanian bribe because he was a
Romanian immigrant. That level of control is apparently what they
were engaged in.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Yeah, totally previous to their meeting they met each other.
They were bodybuilders, not professionally but just bodybuilding guys at
Gold's Gym and Venice Beach in nineteen eighty nine, and
just prior to this is when Phillips started. His life
of crime started kind of small. I guess, like most criminals,
(04:55):
just a heist of four hundred dollars from a seer's
othern California, and then graduated to burglary, real estate fraud
stuff like that. Apparently was sort of enamored of like
Scarface and ultimately the movie Heat.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So if this shootout.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Sounds familiar, it sounds a lot like the one from Heat,
it's because they seem to have been inspired by that movie,
for sure, but love not only just the gangsters and movies,
but also the white collar criminals. He would apparently like
park in front of rich people's houses and just sort
of fantasize about that life and wanted money like he
(05:37):
you know, in the end, this whole thing was about
money and like the thrill of it all largely because
of Phillips.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Right for sure, and Phillips was he kind of had
the odds stacked against him in succeeding in a normal
nine to five life because of the family he was
born into. His father, Larry Eugene Phillips, Sr. Who would
later speak about his son in glowing terms after this.
He was actually an escape beef from a prison in
(06:07):
Colorado when Larry Junior was born, so Larry Junior was
born into an alias. His last name was False Orful.
That's how he was born, and on his sixth birthday,
apparently the FBI came in with guns drawn to capture
his dad, and that helped set up what was referred
to as basically a lifelong hatred of the police and
(06:30):
by extension, the kind of normal society the police were
charged with defending.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
As for Mattisonano, he was a Romanian immigrant. Came into
the country when he was about eleven and nineteen seventy seven,
was naturalized in eighty eight. And his mom, we'll talk
about her a little bit. Her name was Valerie Nicolesque.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I think that definitely gets it across sure Nicolescue.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
She says that he was bullied when he was a kid.
He became a computer and video game nerd. He ended
up going to Deride Institute of Technology when he was
nineteen and I'm sorry he got his degree when he
was nineteen. But his neighbors also said things like this
guy was bad news. He threatened one of the neighbors
with a chainsaw because their dog came on his property
(07:22):
and their family also had another sort of disturbing secret, right.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, they had a family business. Emil and his mom,
Valerie had basically a residential care center out of their
home for people with disabilities, usually cognitive disabilities or mental
health issues. And they were set up as a legitimate
(07:48):
care institute. No that's not the word, I guess a
care home.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
The problem is is they were not a good care
home by pretty much any standard. Caught multiple times doing
or they were accused multiple times of mistreating the people.
One of their residents was left in the hospital just
kind of abandoned ditch there. There was supposedly some allegations
(08:14):
that Emil had been abusive toward at least one of
the patients there, and he was not allowed to come
back into the house anymore, which is a problem because
this is the family house. And eventually they got shut
down for fire codes and later on we'll see it
even got worse after the heist happened and all the
(08:35):
news came out and the police and the press started
looking into that family and their family business. Just suffice
to say, like, his mom doesn't appear to have been
a very good person herself, just based on the allegations
of how she treated the people who were under her care.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yeah, it was pretty just I mean, this is one
of the more disturbing parts of this whole story actually,
and it's kind of a sidebar, which is after the
shoot out, they found a they searched her like a
commercial building that she owned in Pasadena and found a
forty four year old mentally disabled woman locked in a
room with no windows, with no food or water. And
(09:13):
then later it turns out that she was charged for
that initially, which was I mean, I guess just sort
of like a neglect charge.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
She was sentenced to ten months.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
But then later in two thousand and two, I found
an article in the La Times where because I was like,
why would she do this? It was a social security fraud.
She was collecting checks in her name and her and
this other woman later on she you know, it was
basically welfare and social security fraud. So she got pinched
for that in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And if you read kind of some of the contemporary
articles from nineteen ninety seven right after the heist, she's
kind of portrayed by the press as like the thing
she says about herself or her background, the press don't
really take on face value. Yeah, like she's she said
that she was an opera singer from the state opera
(10:07):
in Romania who defected in nineteen seventy seven. And they
use the words like claim and when somebody's described as
claiming something about their own personal history, that's a signal
from the press that this is probably not a trustworthy person.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
She would also say after this whole shootout went down
with her son that she was like, he was depressed,
his wife had left him and taken his kid, and
I basically think this was a suicide mission for him.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So whether or not that was true, who knows. That's
what she claimed, right.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So these are the guys who found each other in
nineteen eighty nine at Gold's gym and became really good friends.
And one of the things, in addition to bodybuilding that
they had in common was a real pronounced love of guns. Yeah,
and not just any guns, high powered to assault rifles
in particular. And apparently Larry Phillips had a line somewhere
(11:09):
on steel cased ammunition. He could get it from Russia,
highly illegal, but apparently people weren't paying attention. And I
saw there was this British National Geographic little hour long
documentary on this called situation critical, which reminded me of
that Seinfeld movie Prognosis Negative. But they said that he
(11:33):
managed to import rounds of this really illegal, like incredibly
powerful steel lined ammunition, by the thousands of rounds. So
not only did they have really high powered assault rifles,
they had immeasurably higher powered shells to put in those
assault rifles, which made them extremely dangerous people.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Absolutely, and as we'll see, maybe we should take a
break here. These two guys were doing a lot of
really dangerous criming before that ninety seven shootout.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Let's take that break, all right.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
All right, so before we broke, I hinted around that
these guys were criming around previous to the nineteen ninety
seven shootout where everything ended, and that is very much true.
In nineteen ninety three, they were pulled over in a
rental car in Glendale and cop said, all right, well,
let me take a look in the trunk, and they went, oh,
(13:01):
you've got two nine millimeter handguns, two forty five hand
guns to coalition, a cofts, six smoke grenades, two homemade bombs,
three machine guns, two bulletproof vests, one gas mask, six holsters, wigs,
ski masks, two police radio scanners to stop watch, and
close to three thousand rounds of AMMO, and they said,
(13:23):
we're just going to the shooting range man. And you know,
sometimes we like to wear wigs or ski masks, or
listen to what the cops are doing, or time each other.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
We're big fans of the police.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Obviously that all is, you know, to an outsider obvious bs.
But shockingly, the DA said, you know, we don't have
enough evidence to convict them of conspiracy to commit robbery,
and they pled down to a misdemeanor weapons charge in
about four months in county jail.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Each It gets even worse than that. That was nineteen
ninety three. Okay, they were not only led off with
basically a slap on the wrist. What they had in
their trunk was described by other people later on as
a bank robbery kit. That's everything you needed to rob
a bank right there, And it was so painfully obvious
(14:18):
that's what that was. That but they still got a
stick up note right, no, there wasn't anything like that.
They hadn't gotten to that point. But the craziest part
of this whole thing even crazier that they only got
four months for these weapons. The DA and the judge
agreed to give them their weapons back after they got
(14:38):
out of jail, so they were re armed, ostensibly so
that they could sell the weapons to pay for their
legal costs, but no one followed up to make sure
they did sell the weapons. They just gave them back
their assault rifles and their handguns and probably their ski masks,
everything they needed to go rob banks. And that's exactly
what they did with that stuff.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
This was Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, for goodness sakes, I know, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
So later on, this was after the you know, the
final shootout that we're leading up to, but later on
there was obviously all kinds of investigations and stuff, and
they learned that these two guys were in fact what
were known as the High Incident Bandits, these two dudes
that robbed well, it was technically it was two incidences,
(15:28):
but three banks, because they hit two banks at once.
In ninety five, they robbed a well, not a bank,
but they robbed a Brinx truck in front of a
Bank of America in the valley and they killed a guy,
They killed the driver. They opened up fire on these dudes.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Without warning, without it. Put your hands and they just
came out of nowhere and just started firing on them.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Oh yeah, which will you know, we'll see as an
obvious precedent. And then in nineteen ninety six, they robbed
two Bank of Americas, one of which was the one
that they had previously robbed the armored carn from and
killed that guy. And you know, it was the same
type of deal. They had these automatic rifles, they were,
you know, screaming that they're going to kill you.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
They had body armor.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Ski masks, sunglasses. They took their time as far as
bank robberies go, by being in these banks for six
minutes and eight minutes, that's very long, which is that's
a long time for a bank robbery. I tried to
get out of there in less than three.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Well yeah, that's you know, that's what everybody does.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
That's our goal. But they made off. I mean they
these guys had a lot of money. They made off
with between one point three and one point seven million
bucks combined from this these two heists.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Let alone, then whatever they got from the Brinks robbery, oh.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
And they were you know, they were well known, they
were the high incidence bandits. The FBI was you know,
actively tracking them, and also had a theory that they're
not alone, They're part of like a larger crime ring
or terror string that's funding them.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, and like that's not only funding them with arms,
but the bank robberies are meant to fund some sort
of like right wing paramilitary group or terrorist organization or something.
That was the point. That was the premise they were
going on because these guys were so incredibly well armed.
And just for context too, one point seven million dollars
(17:15):
for two bank robberies is an eye popping amount of money. Yeah,
it's up there in like the top probably fifty bank
robberies in the United States history. Like, those are really
big hauls. I saw at the time. Back in nineteen
ninety one, the average bank robbery in the United States
yielded the robbers about three thousand dollars robbing a bank.
(17:37):
The takes were usually so paltry that it wasn't worth
the bank's money to invest in other protections like screens
that go up really quick between the tellers and the
bank robbers. It wasn't worth them installing those in banks
because the robbers rarely got away with more than a
few thousand dollars. So that was a huge, huge score
(17:59):
for almost two mansion dollars between just two bank robberies
for these guys.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, and I don't think murder usually occurs at those
bank robberies too.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Supposedly, I can't remember the number. I think it was
like sixteen people died in bank robberies over like I
think eighty five to ninety five or something like that,
and twelve of them were the bank robber. It was
a statistic somewhat like that. So yeah, yeah, and I
think eighty five percent of bank robberies get caught. It's
a really high risk, usually low reward crime. But if
(18:32):
you do it like these guys did, armed to the teeth.
And the other reason that their yields were so big,
they scouted out the banks and they knew when the
bank was going to get some big delivery of cash.
Usually it was a payday or something like that. That's
why their robberies paid off so well. They had done
their homework ahead of time.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah, and that's how they do it in the movies.
And apparently these guys were inspired by movies.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, I guess everybody else in real life doesn't do
it like the movies.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Yeah, so they were, you know, they were living kind
of high on the hog for a little while.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
They had a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Phillips himself, he was the one that really sort of idolized,
you know, being wealthy and all that stuff. He like
bought fancy cars, he bought rolexes. I think mattisonana rented
a big house for his family. So, you know, I
think looking at the timeline, one was in June of
ninety five, one was almost a year later, in ninety six, so,
(19:28):
and then this final one was in February ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
They weren't you know, they weren't doing this.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
It's hard to say they were being smart about it
because they were so brazen, but it seems like they
were doing this as like, all right, well here's our
annual salary and then we'll go out and do it
again in about a year.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Right. Yeah, No, they were. It was like their new
job and their new hobby and their new life, I
guess from what I understand. Right, So, on the day
of the robbery, their third heist, February twenty ath, nineteen
ninety seven, a Friday, and since it's the end of
the mon month, a payday they had targeted a Bank
of America. It wasn't one they had hit before, but
(20:05):
for some.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Reason hated Bank of America.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
They really and I kind of get why, but being
a former Bank of America account holder myself. But they
they hit one in North Hollywood. It was on Laurel
Canyon Boulevard. Are you familiar with this area? Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Okay, so you knew. Were you in LA at the time? No?
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Oh wow, this is kind of right before that though.
I didn't move to LA until two thousand, okay, yeah.
And North Hollywood just for references, you know, Hollywood Central
Hollywood was kind of right in the middle of sort
of central LA. And then just over the mountains as
you go into the valley, that's where North Hollywood is.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Right and that's where Hank, the Cheshnian gangster in the
HBO show Berry is from. That's why they call him
NoHo Hank.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I need to do, Barry you do.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It's one of those shows that gets insanely off the
rails and yet they still manage to make it work.
It's really good, you know.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I watched a little bit of it years ago when
it first started and just got distracted and never got
back around to it. But I'd love everyone in that show.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, I think you should. You should give it another shot, all.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Right, I'll bury up soon.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
It's weird though, it's it's deceptively gritty. It's a comedy
through and through, and it's just bizarre and all that.
But there's if you really kind of get into, like
the the violence, the meat of it, it's it's pretty hardcore.
It's a crazy show. It's hard to pin down, but.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
It's worth seeing, all right, I'll follow up.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So Friday, February twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven, Larry Phillips
and Emil Mattiserano walk into a Bank of America and
they are covered head to toe and technical gear ski masks.
It turns out Larry Phillips is covered from neck to
(22:02):
ankle in body armor.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
That he helped. He apparently so did himself and it
was really effective. Yah. Emil matesan who has a trauma
plate basically like a bulletproof plate covering his chest and
his vital organs. And they walk in and apparently the
first thing they did was started firing into the air
from their AK forty sevens, and you would think that
(22:28):
that would capture the attention of the police, But that's
a moot point, because the police watched them walk into
the bank from the first moment this started.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Boy, I mean, you can do all the planning in
the world as a bank robber, but you can never
count or discount bad luck for them good luck for
everyone else. Sure, but literally there was a police cruiser
that were like sitting there and watched two guys walk
into this bank armed like this yea, And I'm sure
(22:59):
they were like, what the oo and immediately called this
is at nine seventeen And they immediately called for backup obviously,
and I think once they saw and heard the shots
and everything, they all immediately knew that these were the
high incident bandits.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yes, And for those fans of Snoop Dogg and Doctor
Dre and Ice Cube and NWA, you're well aware that
what the police called in was a two to eleven
an armed robbery in progress.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So one of the things, a little detail that kind
of emerged later on, apparently Larry Phillips and Emal were
not drug users whatsoever in any way, shape or form,
but apparently they had taken phena barbital just before the
bank robbery to basically calm their nerves. They were the
kind of bank robbers that you see in the movies
(23:50):
but that don't actually exist in real life. These guys
existed in real life. They would knock down old ladies
and put guns in their faces. They would tell moms
that if they didn't shut their kids up, they were
going to kill their kids. They fired wildly into the air,
they fired wildly into the bank. They just shot everything
up everywhere. They were really abusive, They were really tough,
(24:10):
They were really scary, and they were also really on
point as far as like knowing where the money is,
knowing who would have access to the money, and just
making this whole thing work. They had also figured out
that they had about eight minutes before the average response time.
They hadn't noticed the cops watching them walk in, and
so they had timer stopwatches on during this whole eight
(24:33):
minute robbery.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Yeah, which is what they had in the trunk when
the cops pulled them over four years earlier.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah, the stopwatch. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
So yeah, I mean they had this thing planned out,
but they also didn't know certain things, like they asked
the bank manager to open up the ATMs, and he's like,
I can't open the ATMs, Like I literally can't do that.
So he tried to shoot them open, which did nothing
to get into the atm, but of course it you know,
bullets ricochet everywhere and injured the bank manager. They also,
(25:05):
you know, would shoot I think one of them, Phillips,
wasn't it, who literally shot into a safe and like
shot up a lot of the money that they could
have gotten, yeah, ruining that.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Out of anger, they learned that the Brinks truck that
was supposed to be delivering hundreds and hundreds about three
quarters of a million dollars by their estimate, was running
late or had been rescheduled to throw off bank robberies,
and out of anger, Emial just shot into a safe
and basically just ruined a bunch of cash that they
could have taken.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
There was also a cell phone on the scene, which
is not the most common thing in nineteen ninety seven,
for sure, but it was la and they locked a
bunch of the They were about, you know, thirty bystanders
or you know, just people doing bank business. They separated
them out from the tellers and put them in a
vault and shut the door and one of the I
(26:00):
believe one of the women inside had a cell phone,
and I'm not sure how much it help, but she
was at least able to be in touch with the cops,
sort of describing what she was hearing while all this
is going on.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Right, this is at a time before people knew what
lol meant, and one of the cops she was texting
with was like, LOL meaning lots of love. But she
didn't take it that way.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Lots of love. I thought it was laugh out loud.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Right, that's what it means. The cop didn't know that.
He thought he was saying like, hang in there, I.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Gotcha, I got cha, Okay, I miss I'm a little sick.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Today, that's all right. I stole that joke from family guy.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Anyway, In the end, though, they did get, you know,
a pretty good take. They got about three hundred thousand
dollars worth of cash, and then I guess we should
probably take a break here. But then they exited the
bank and all h e double hockey sticks broke loose.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Okay, Chuck, it's about nine to twenty five. I believe
eight minutes has passed. The timers going off on their
stopwatches and Emil Mataseranu and Larry Phillips are now planning
on leaving the bank. They have a duffel bag with
about three hundred grand in cash, and supposedly right when
they walk out the door, the die packs in the
(27:46):
bag go off and completely ruin the cash. So the
cast that they thought was going to be there wasn't there.
The cast that they did get was now completely ruined
forever because the die packs. And they come out and
realize that the cops have them surrounded, that this eight
minute response time thing doesn't count when the cops watch
(28:07):
you walk into the bank with ski masks in AK
forty sevens.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Yeah, Like, what kind of surrounded are we talking about here?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
We're talking about surrounded on every side with police helicopters
hovering overhead. That's what they walked out of the bank into.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Yeah, in the end, there would be more than three
hundred cops from five different agencies that were engaged in
the shootout.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
So three hundred EGITST two. That gives you a little.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Insight into just how much more heavily armed these guys were.
That it lasted this long, But they walked out to
that scene and immediately turned North Hollywood into a war zone.
I've watched a lot of video this stuff, and this
is one of the remarkable things is a lot of
this stuff is on video. You know, LA is notorious
(28:54):
for you know, anytime something like this is happening, there's
six helicopters, news helicopters overhead, like within minutes, just kind
of live streaming, or I guess you wouldn't have called it
live streaming.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Then what would you just say?
Speaker 5 (29:07):
Broadcasting live broadcasting there you go, oh man, it's been
so long, you're so twenties, I am so yeah, live
broadcasting this thing from above. So you can watch a
lot of this take place, which is horrifying. But again,
if you've seen enough movies, you're like, yeah, it looks
like a lot of movies I've seen. But a lot
of the interviews that you know since then that have
(29:27):
happened with cops that were there and taking place basically
said like these guys just came out and started shooting
at everything that moved, citizens, cars, buildings, police cars at
the times at the time didn't have kevlar siding in
their doors and stuff, so like hiding inside a police
(29:47):
car was no good. Hiding behind a police car was
better because the bullet going all the way through it
at least is going to you know, ricochet around and
probably not go like straight into you. But you know,
they were it was all of a sudden, it was
like Vietnam out there in North Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So here's the thing. When the cops had them surrounded
and were waiting for them to come out. Number one
in the cops mind, they had no idea if the
whole place inside had just been massacred, because most robberts
don't walk in and start shooting into the air. Again,
that's movie stuff that these guys were influenced by. So
they heard like I think fifty rounds of automatic rifle
(30:23):
fire in the bank while they were waiting for these
guys to come out, and they didn't know if everyone
inside was just completely killed. That was number one. But
number two the cops also presumed, based on experience and history,
that when these guys came out and saw they were
surrounded not just by cops and cop cars but also helicopters,
that they would just you know, put their guns down,
(30:44):
put their hands up. So they were surprised at the
response that these two guys took on just even just
this first initial wave of dozens of cops, and then
they were further surprised when the guy's bullets started going
right through any kevlar vest, started going right through the
police cars, started going through buildings, through concrete buildings. There
(31:06):
was a concrete locksmith like kind of like a photo
mat in the parking lot that they were taking shelter behind.
The bullets were going through them. This was it just
suddenly turned completely one hundred and eighty degrees from their expectations.
And then even worse than that, they were finding their
own guns were having basically just pinging. The bullets were
(31:26):
pinging off of these guys because they were wearing so
much body armor. So this is about the moment almost
immediately out of the gate when the cops were like,
this is nothing like anything we've ever experienced before, and
we are out gunned right now.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Yeah, and this sounds unbelievable, but it's true. It was
so bad right away that the cops realized that and said,
if there's any available units, go to the gun store
down the street and get everything you can. Like they
literally went to a gun store to re arm or
you know, I guess what would you call it.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
When your armament. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
So they leveled up on their guns and they did
get guns. Apparently, according to like recovered ammunition stuff, they
didn't actually end up using those in the firefight because
I guess, you know, the whole thing didn't last that long,
and I'm sure it took a while to you know,
talk the store owner and giving up these guns and
getting the matching ammunition and all that. But they sent
(32:27):
for backup for themselves by going to a gun store,
which is just crazy to think about. And they were like,
we need the SWAT team. This is we're police cruiser guys,
and that we have revolvers or nine millimeters and this
ain't happening.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Swat team is downtown.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Took them about eighteen minutes to get there, and they
got there though. They finally showed up, and apparently it
was such a quick sort of let's get their quick
thing that one of the SWAT officers was about to
go on a jog and he shows up in like
jogging shorts.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, if you watched like the footage of the of
them taking Mitosurano, he's the first one to them and
it's kind of silly looking to be honest. Yeah, but
so yeah, this first wave of cops that they encountered,
I don't know how many cruisers there were, but let's
say there's probably six and maybe a dozen or so cops.
There were also two bystanders who got caught in the crossfire,
(33:23):
both of whom ended up getting shot by those ricochet
bullets going through cop cars that they were hiding behind.
Cops were getting shot like through their kevlar vests. I
think a number of cops were injured, and even worse,
they were pinned down. They were in what's called the
kill zone. Like these guys were very easily able to
shoot any of these people who were fairly close to them,
(33:46):
and so these these cops had to basically retreat or
be pinned down. And some of them were pinned down
because they were shot. So if you if you kind
of watch some of the footage or you you know,
read about it, that kind of gets left out. That
was something I thought that the Situation Critical documentary really
kind of drove home, like there were some people who
(34:06):
were in grave, grave danger in the first like ten
fifteen minutes of this firefight before backup arrived. And I
also saw it described that the Phillips in Mattisaranu at
one point, especially when they were engaged with that first
wave of cops who were totally unprepared and unequipped to
(34:29):
deal with them, that they could have made a getaway,
and they seemed to have decided that they were wanted
to stay and fight instead.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Yeah, that's unusual, and I'm curious about the wisdom of that.
Like if they had left, if these guys just would
have went and got in their car and tried to
get out.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Of there, I don't know. Who knows. I mean, I
don't know the fact that they had a helicopter on
them would have made it pretty difficult, but who knows.
Could have been way worse. It could have been shorter.
Who knows what could have happened. But yeah, I think
the point was that they, like bank robbers, don't try
to stick around when they're given the option to try
to make a run for it.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
And these guys, Yeah, I'm not gonna Monday Morning quarterback
this thing years later in my podcast Booth because I
wasn't the one, you know, getting shot at on the street.
So there was one citizen hero among this crowd, which
was a dentist doctor Jorge Montes, had an office across
the street, and two cops that were injured, like crawled
(35:30):
up the stairs to his office and he it sounds
like he had saved at least one of their lives.
He treated them immediately, and one of the cops had
shrapnel in his ankle, and Montes was smart enough to
be like, we should leave that in there, Like, I'll
treat you, but I'm not taking that out because it
could get worse. And that officer later said that he
(35:50):
probably saved my life because I probably would have led out.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, that's pretty great. So a few minutes before ten,
this firefight has been going going on for thirty plus minutes. Now, okay,
Phillips and Mataseranu decide that this is a really fateful
decision and no one has any idea why, probably will
never know why. But Mataseranu gets in their white Chevy Celebrity,
(36:16):
the ugliest getaway car ever. Oh there's one other thing
about that white Chevy Celebrity. They had it backed up
to the bank in a parking space, and so when
they came out and they were shooting at the cops
and everybody that moved for thirty minutes with their assault weapons.
Whenever their assault rifle would like run out of ammo
(36:36):
or jam or something, they just throw it down, go
to the trunk of the car and come back with
a brand new assault rifle. And they had like drums,
like one hundred round drums as clips, So they were
really doing a lot of damage. And at some point
they decided let's head out. Matisranu gets in the Chevy
Celebrity and rather than get in with him, Larry Phillips
(36:59):
decides to walk alongside, just firing at everybody while Matti
Serranu slowly drives with him. And then the really faithful
decision is made where they decide to split up, and
Larry Phillips peels off for Mattiseranu and starts walking down
the sidewalk of a street, a side street that a
residential street to a residential area.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Yeah, yeah, it's you know, I think I read a
lot about this too. I think he might have thought
he was providing some initial cover and the whole split
up thing is just, you know, judging from the movies,
I think sometimes that's just what they decide to do, like,
you know, instead of concentrating everything on us.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
If we split up. That'll that'll split the you know,
the burden or whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, I mean I get that. I also, based on
how quickly things happened after that, it also makes me
wonder if he was like, I'm just gonna go take
my last stand.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Well maybe, I mean, who knows. We're never gonna know, basically,
and you'll soon find out why. So in the end,
and Phillips was shot eleven times. He's walking down this
side street.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
He's still walking after he's some of these most of
these shots.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah, he's walking down the side street.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
He's firing at everything he can, and he gets just
like in the movies, like an old Western or something,
a cop shoots his hand, like shoots the gun out
of his hand by shooting his hand, he reaches down,
picks it up, puts it under his chin, and in
an attempt to kill himself and pulls the trigger. And
(38:30):
you know, it was sort of a bang bang thing.
No one sure which was the kill shot, but sort
of right along that time at either right when it
happened or right after he fell, a cop had shot
him true romance style, through the side of his body
where there was no protection, no protective vest because that
(38:51):
stuff is usually like it's on your back, it's on
your chest, but kind of not through the side, and
he severed his spine and he was dead immediately from
one of the two wounds.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
So Larry Phillips is now dead one way or another,
either by his own hand or by the cops shot. Uh.
And that is not the end of things, because Mattisranu
is still on the move. He's in his White Celebrity
moving down the street past where Phillips has just died.
(39:21):
And here's what's crazy, because, as we'll see, the LAPD
is very much feted after this for having saved North Hollywood,
taken on these guys who outgunned them. But there's a
really critical point that I think people just move right past.
When they were moving up Archwood, this residential street, it
was not closed off, so people were driving past Emil
(39:46):
Madiseranu within feet, like a handful of feet of this guy,
and they were confused, they didn't know what was going on.
And he's strapped with like this ak driving the White Celebrity,
which now has this tire shot out, looking for another car,
and at he's three or four pass him before he
finally stops and picked one and start shooting at the car.
And that was a huge, huge failure on the LAPD's
(40:09):
part because those guys could have gone anywhere on Archwood
Street and started taking hostages easily.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
What was the failure that they didn't close the street off?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Like, I don't understand how you can get it.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
They had time bank robbery.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
You could close it off somewhere back there there was
through traffic still coming down Archwood, like right by the bank.
If you watch it, it's crazy that that's not now.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
I just don't I don't know, man, I think that's
also Monday morning quarterbacking. I don't know if they could
have they were in the middle of a shootout. I
just I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
I mean, the whole LAPD was focused on this shootout.
I feel like they could have shut the street down.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
It's just crazy to me, all right, agree to disagree, Okay?
At any rate, he's firing at cars. He gets in
this guy's jeep pickup truck, and the guy got injured.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
He was fine.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
He ran out of there and you know, got away
at least, and he starts he still thinks he can
get out of there. I guess he's transferring weapons from
that chevy to the truck, and three swat guys drive
over there. He comes out again, and all of a
sudden there's another shootout on the street, movie style, with
both of them kind of crouched behind these cars, and
(41:18):
the cops do a very smart thing, which is shoot
underneath the car, at his feet, at his legs, whatever
they can hit, and they end up hitting him twenty
eight times and dropped him.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah. Man, can you imagine taking twenty eight shots in
your legs and feet?
Speaker 3 (41:34):
I can't imagine one.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
He put his hands up, he gave up, he surrendered
and was laying behind the celebrity. I think in the
end when they captured him, twelve officers had been injured,
had been shot somewhere in pretty bad shape. Miraculously all survived.
Eight bystanders have been injured. All of them survived. Everyone
(41:56):
in the bank survived, and it turned out that the
only two people people who didn't survive were Larry Phillips
and Emil Mattiseranu, who ended up bleeding to death from
his injuries lying behind that chevy celebrity. Isn't that nuts yet, Chuck?
I think seventeen or eighteen hundred rounds were fired in
this forty four minute firefight, and only two people died,
(42:20):
the bank robbers.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
Yeah, and that became a matter of just sort of
further scrutiny because Matti Serrano, you know, he's laying there,
he's bleeding, and he says, you know, why don't you
put a bullet through my head? And when the EMTs
show up, the cops keep them away. They said, don't
come over here. EMT has never examined him, and he
slowly bled out basically over the next hour and died.
(42:46):
They were, you know, heavily scrutinized. I think there was
an attorney that ended up filing his suit on behalf
of the kids that said, hey, you know, regardless of
whether this guy was a bank robber, you can't you know,
you still have an obligation to treat an injured human
on the ground as a cop. The cops response was like,
we didn't know if there were other people involved, if
(43:09):
they were around, if they had a sniper, if they
had explosives on their body. We didn't want to put
those EMTs in danger. And in the end they dropped.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
It was a deadlock jury at first, so it was
a mistrial, and then they decided not to go further
with another case because they might be countersued for malicious prosecution.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Well put, did you read the La Times article on that.
Oh yeah, they really went to town putting this thing together,
and no one came out looking okay, you know.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
No, And it was you know, the LA PD has
always had a checkered reputation, so like, at first they
were heroes because this was all over the news, and
this was, you know, a handful of years after Rodney
King when they had probably an all time low opinion rating.
So they were like, look, look at the cops like
protecting you and and putting.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Their lives at risk.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
So it was good for PR at first, but then
this they let them bleed out in the street for
an hour. I'm sure a lot of people were like
good and a lot of people are like, yeah, you
still can't do that.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Sure. So one of the other outcomes of this was
that it changed police forces across the United States forever.
Like the police realized that they were not equipped for
something like this to happen in not only Los Angeles
but every other town in the United States, and in
(44:32):
the Defense Spending Act I think of nineteen ninety seven,
they passed a section called ten thirty three that said
that the Department of Defense can sell any excess armory
weapons materiel to local police departments. Now that's a new thing,
and it turned into what's been roundly considered the militarization
(44:55):
of the police. That's had all sorts of knock on
effects include, according to multiple studies, an increase in death
during police shootings. And that's a big criticism of this
that rather than people saying, let's reduce the public's access
to things like assault rifles that can kill tons of
(45:15):
people and have firefights like this, instead the push has
been to let's arm the cops equally to these criminals
that can be armed to the teeth as well, to
make it even which there's a logic to it, sure,
but you could also reduce the public's access to those
kinds of things as well, and that didn't really happen.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
Well, one of the good things that came out of
it was PTSD counseling for police officers. Was not such
a big thing at the time, and after this it
became much more just sort of implemented across the country.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, that is a good thing for sure. Anything else,
I got nothing else. I think there's in Grand Theft
Auto five, one of the heists. The Palletto score is
based on this too. And there's a movie called forty
four Minutes that was made for TV on FX and
it's terrible. I bet if you want to know anything
(46:11):
else about the North Hollywood shootout, there's plenty to see
and read about that. And while you're reading and seeing
about the North Hollywood shootout, I think it's time for listener.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Man, I'm going to call this.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Follow up that I feel pretty bad about. We did
our podcast episode on Kenton Greua Grand Canyon River Adventure
not too long ago, and we actually heard from his wife,
Michelle Grua, who was She's not a stuff you should
know listener, but someone told her about it. She listened
and she wanted to clear up some things, and so
(46:49):
I'm going to read it. It's a little lenkdy, but
I feel like we owe it toured. Hey, guys, I
was surprised to be informed by a friend of your
podcast about my late husband Factor.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Yes, Archilllren and I all called him Factor. That was
his preferred name.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
I appreciate that you obtained most of your information from
Kevin's book The Emerald Mile, which is for the most
part accurate. There are some things that you said that
are not accurate, and depictions of factor that I'd like
to set straight. These things are likely only important to
me our children into his two brothers if they were
to ever hear your podcast. I can tell that you
appreciated his adventurous spirit and the grandiosity of the things
(47:24):
he did, But I would gently suggest that you might
consider the feelings of those left behind with regard to
the way you depict someone. He's not just some character
and a really cool story. He's someone's husband, father, and
brother who has sorely missed. I do not expect any
kind of retraction public retraction. I just wanted to let
you know about the inaccuracy so you could have a
(47:46):
more clear picture of him. He was the most humble, gracious, generous, respectful, considerate,
fear soul I've ever met, truly one of a kind
and the greatest factor in my life. Regarding the description
of him really liking booze and hiking out to obtain
extra liquor, the passengers on that particular commercial trip are
the ones who requested extra booze, and given that there's
(48:07):
no delivery into the canyon, he offered to hike out and.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Procure a resupply for them.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Regarding the moccasins, he was a purist, and his reasoning
was that the ancient Queblins who'd lived in the canyon
had likely worn moccasins and he wanted to pay homage
to them and not have any unfair modern advantage like
hiking boots. He had scouted the route before, and the
first through hike attempt he had placed food caches, cases, cases,
(48:34):
cashes for that hike, as well as doing so the
second time.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
As an insight into his character.
Speaker 4 (48:39):
He hiked back in to remove all of them after
the hike, leaving no trace.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
You said that he was obsessed.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
If you can say that about someone who smokes that
much pot, I feel like you may have missed a
key element of Kenton's character and you're reading about him
that he had a fierce intellect, an intense focus, and
once he got a hold of an idea, he ruminated
on it, turned it over and over in his mind
until he worked out all the details. Not consistent with
the sleepy image you conjure up when thinking about a
(49:06):
typical stoner. It also bears mentioning that the original idea
was Wally Wrists. Wally, Rudy and Kenton did the original
speed one, but Wally was no longer working on the
river in eighty three and thus not able to partake.
This time around, Kenton came up with the idea to
put a second set of oar locks on the boat,
so you could have two rowing stations to tackle the
(49:27):
flat water at the far west of the canyon. As
far as the fine, the fine that was imposed as
reportedly five hundred dollars, but I have the cancel check
to the Cocochino County Magistrate and the amount of two
hundred and fifty dollars paid by Kenton, so your assertion
that he couldn't afford.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
It is not accurate.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
He never mentioned any imposition of community service to me
as well, and we are also quite sure of how
he died. He died not due collision or impact, but
from the spontaneous a ordit dissection, not an aneurysm. He
was found unresponsive on the trail by a hiker while
the kids and I were home awaiting his return.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
He was not dead when the hiker found him.
Speaker 4 (50:09):
He was taking to the local hospital, where resuscitation efforts failed.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
He wasn't laying in a peaceful position. The hiker said.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
He was still astride as his bike, and it appeared
that he had just tipped over. Indeed, he had a
little cut over his ear where his sunglasses dug into
the side of his head when he landed. As a
physician myself, I can tell you he was probably in
significant chest pain, and he died about two hundred yards
after passing through what would have been a busy trailhead
parking area, So he was probably peddling like hell to
(50:39):
get home just a couple of miles away, but dissected
and lost consciousness less than a minute after passing through
the lot. I only discovered it when he was two
hours late getting home from the ride and called the
hospital where I worked to see if they had any
mountain bikers that had come in. They said yes, but
they weren't able to identify him, and that was the
last moment of true peace that I had. I am
(51:00):
glad you found a story so compelling. I'm sure he's
glad people are hearing of it and he doesn't have
to do the telling himself, but accuracy is important. Please
don't paint him as a caricature. Best Michelle Grua and
I emailed her a very long email back, and I
felt terrible about all this, and she was very sweet
and much more graceful than I would have been in
(51:23):
her position.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
So yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, if you're
going to get taken to task by a living relative
of someone we profile, it's about as nice as it
can get, for sure.
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Yeah, So thank you Michelle for that, And just publicly,
I'm sorry for anything we did that costs you any upset.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, agreed. It was definitely not our intent to create
a caricature out of him. That's never our intent. So
sorry that that happened inadvertently, And thank you for taking
the time to write all that, and thank you Chuck
for reading all of it. Certainly, if you want to
get in touch with us, like Michelle Grua did, you
can use email as she did as well. Send it
(51:58):
off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Radio Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
This one was mentioned in our recent episode on the
militarization of the police because the bandits who robbed a
bank in Los Angeles were so heavily armed to the
teeth that they outgunned the cops, which led to police
carrying assault rifles to protect themselves from another event like this.
Except this robbery was so off the rails you can
kind of imagine there might not ever be one like
(00:22):
it again.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Away we go, Welcome to Stuff you should know, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
and there's Jerry, and we're just well, Jerry's not here. Actually,
now that I mentioned it, those useoph habit, wasn't it.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
A ghost of Jerry?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, she's not. She's still with us, said, she's driving
the getaway car.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, she's not that kind of ghost.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
No no, no, no, no, no, she's the kind of ghost
that drives a getaway car. Right. So I mentioned that, though, Chuck,
because it's apropos of the heist episode we're about to
talk about, which I guess this would qualify as a heist.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Right, Oh, I mean heck yeah, Well, usually.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
To me, heists are a little more intricate most of
the time successful. This is a little more brute firepower
than than any other heist or most other heists, So
that's why it kind of disqualifies it in my opinion.
Oh okay, that's my essay on heists.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I don't even know what the definition of heist is.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I just gave it to you.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Apparently it is a robbery, So yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
I mean, of course it's a robbery. But and this
qualifies as a robbery. It's just it's its own.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Unique thing, for sure, man big time.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And you know, as you're reading this, it's so theatrical,
it's so just totally off the chain nuts that this
actually has in real life. It's you have to remind
yourself from time to time like these are like really
really bad guys and what they were doing was beyond reprehensible.
It's just we're so trained to get sucked into that
(02:12):
kind of like action in the movies that when it
happens in real life you have to like kind of
turn off that entertainment part of it and bring yourself
back to reality. Sometimes, at least I did. I had
trouble doing it during research a few times.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
No, for sure, and we're talking about the North Hollywood
shootout is what it's known a lot as the Battle
of North Hollywood sometimes. And this was on February twenty
eighth and nineteen ninety seven, when two dudes armed to
the hilt with assault rifles like anything you can think of.
(02:46):
And this is, as we'll see a time when and
this is kind of one of the big sort of
I guess, interesting and scary parts about this. This is
when cops like people could be more out armed than
the police that are trying to stop them, right, And
that's what happened the day that they engaged, when North
(03:07):
Hollywood became a war zoned for a little while.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, and as a matter of fact, this episode, this
event led directly to the militarization of police forces, as
we see these two guys basically pressed that issue because yeah,
the Los Angeles Police Department was outgunned, out armed, but
definitely not outnumbered. They outnumbered the robbers, but they were
(03:33):
still getting pinned down and they were having no luck
with anything. Well, I don't want to give too much away.
Let's just start at the beginning, because we're talking about
two dudes, a twenty six year old This is back
in ninety seven named Larry Eugene Phillips Junior, and there
was a thirty year old who he was friends with
named Emil Mattiseranu. And even though Emil was older, Larry
(03:55):
was the one who called the shots. He was roundly
described by family members says manipulative, controlling, and he had
Emil under his thumb a meal was described by his
family members later as a follower. So even though he
was a little older, he listened to what Emil told
them to do, not just in their partnership as like criminals,
(04:17):
but in life too. I read somewhere that Emil got
married because Larry told him he should and that he
shouldn't marry an American girl. So Eiel went to Romania
and got himself a Romanian bribe because he was a
Romanian immigrant. That level of control is apparently what they
were engaged in.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Yeah, totally previous to their meeting they met each other.
They were bodybuilders, not professionally but just bodybuilding guys at
Gold's Gym and Venice Beach in nineteen eighty nine, and
just prior to this is when Phillips started. His life
of crime started kind of small. I guess, like most criminals,
(04:55):
just a heist of four hundred dollars from a seer's
othern California, and then graduated to burglary, real estate fraud
stuff like that. Apparently was sort of enamored of like
Scarface and ultimately the movie Heat.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So if this shootout.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Sounds familiar, it sounds a lot like the one from Heat,
it's because they seem to have been inspired by that movie,
for sure, but love not only just the gangsters and movies,
but also the white collar criminals. He would apparently like
park in front of rich people's houses and just sort
of fantasize about that life and wanted money like he
(05:37):
you know, in the end, this whole thing was about
money and like the thrill of it all largely because
of Phillips.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Right for sure, and Phillips was he kind of had
the odds stacked against him in succeeding in a normal
nine to five life because of the family he was
born into. His father, Larry Eugene Phillips, Sr. Who would
later speak about his son in glowing terms after this.
He was actually an escape beef from a prison in
(06:07):
Colorado when Larry Junior was born, so Larry Junior was
born into an alias. His last name was False Orful.
That's how he was born, and on his sixth birthday,
apparently the FBI came in with guns drawn to capture
his dad, and that helped set up what was referred
to as basically a lifelong hatred of the police and
(06:30):
by extension, the kind of normal society the police were
charged with defending.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
As for Mattisonano, he was a Romanian immigrant. Came into
the country when he was about eleven and nineteen seventy seven,
was naturalized in eighty eight. And his mom, we'll talk
about her a little bit. Her name was Valerie Nicolesque.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I think that definitely gets it across sure Nicolescue.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
She says that he was bullied when he was a kid.
He became a computer and video game nerd. He ended
up going to Deride Institute of Technology when he was
nineteen and I'm sorry he got his degree when he
was nineteen. But his neighbors also said things like this
guy was bad news. He threatened one of the neighbors
with a chainsaw because their dog came on his property
(07:22):
and their family also had another sort of disturbing secret, right.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, they had a family business. Emil and his mom,
Valerie had basically a residential care center out of their
home for people with disabilities, usually cognitive disabilities or mental
health issues. And they were set up as a legitimate
(07:48):
care institute. No that's not the word, I guess a
care home.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
The problem is is they were not a good care
home by pretty much any standard. Caught multiple times doing
or they were accused multiple times of mistreating the people.
One of their residents was left in the hospital just
kind of abandoned ditch there. There was supposedly some allegations
(08:14):
that Emil had been abusive toward at least one of
the patients there, and he was not allowed to come
back into the house anymore, which is a problem because
this is the family house. And eventually they got shut
down for fire codes and later on we'll see it
even got worse after the heist happened and all the
(08:35):
news came out and the police and the press started
looking into that family and their family business. Just suffice
to say, like, his mom doesn't appear to have been
a very good person herself, just based on the allegations
of how she treated the people who were under her care.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yeah, it was pretty just I mean, this is one
of the more disturbing parts of this whole story actually,
and it's kind of a sidebar, which is after the
shoot out, they found a they searched her like a
commercial building that she owned in Pasadena and found a
forty four year old mentally disabled woman locked in a
room with no windows, with no food or water. And
(09:13):
then later it turns out that she was charged for
that initially, which was I mean, I guess just sort
of like a neglect charge.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
She was sentenced to ten months.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
But then later in two thousand and two, I found
an article in the La Times where because I was like,
why would she do this? It was a social security fraud.
She was collecting checks in her name and her and
this other woman later on she you know, it was
basically welfare and social security fraud. So she got pinched
for that in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
And if you read kind of some of the contemporary
articles from nineteen ninety seven right after the heist, she's
kind of portrayed by the press as like the thing
she says about herself or her background, the press don't
really take on face value. Yeah, like she's she said
that she was an opera singer from the state opera
(10:07):
in Romania who defected in nineteen seventy seven. And they
use the words like claim and when somebody's described as
claiming something about their own personal history, that's a signal
from the press that this is probably not a trustworthy person.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
She would also say after this whole shootout went down
with her son that she was like, he was depressed,
his wife had left him and taken his kid, and
I basically think this was a suicide mission for him.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So whether or not that was true, who knows. That's
what she claimed, right.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So these are the guys who found each other in
nineteen eighty nine at Gold's gym and became really good friends.
And one of the things, in addition to bodybuilding that
they had in common was a real pronounced love of guns. Yeah,
and not just any guns, high powered to assault rifles
in particular. And apparently Larry Phillips had a line somewhere
(11:09):
on steel cased ammunition. He could get it from Russia,
highly illegal, but apparently people weren't paying attention. And I
saw there was this British National Geographic little hour long
documentary on this called situation critical, which reminded me of
that Seinfeld movie Prognosis Negative. But they said that he
(11:33):
managed to import rounds of this really illegal, like incredibly
powerful steel lined ammunition, by the thousands of rounds. So
not only did they have really high powered assault rifles,
they had immeasurably higher powered shells to put in those
assault rifles, which made them extremely dangerous people.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Absolutely, and as we'll see, maybe we should take a
break here. These two guys were doing a lot of
really dangerous criming before that ninety seven shootout.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Let's take that break, all right.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
All right, so before we broke, I hinted around that
these guys were criming around previous to the nineteen ninety
seven shootout where everything ended, and that is very much true.
In nineteen ninety three, they were pulled over in a
rental car in Glendale and cop said, all right, well,
let me take a look in the trunk, and they went, oh,
(13:01):
you've got two nine millimeter handguns, two forty five hand
guns to coalition, a cofts, six smoke grenades, two homemade bombs,
three machine guns, two bulletproof vests, one gas mask, six holsters, wigs,
ski masks, two police radio scanners to stop watch, and
close to three thousand rounds of AMMO, and they said,
(13:23):
we're just going to the shooting range man. And you know,
sometimes we like to wear wigs or ski masks, or
listen to what the cops are doing, or time each other.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
We're big fans of the police.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Obviously that all is, you know, to an outsider obvious bs.
But shockingly, the DA said, you know, we don't have
enough evidence to convict them of conspiracy to commit robbery,
and they pled down to a misdemeanor weapons charge in
about four months in county jail.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Each It gets even worse than that. That was nineteen
ninety three. Okay, they were not only led off with
basically a slap on the wrist. What they had in
their trunk was described by other people later on as
a bank robbery kit. That's everything you needed to rob
a bank right there, And it was so painfully obvious
(14:18):
that's what that was. That but they still got a
stick up note right, no, there wasn't anything like that.
They hadn't gotten to that point. But the craziest part
of this whole thing even crazier that they only got
four months for these weapons. The DA and the judge
agreed to give them their weapons back after they got
(14:38):
out of jail, so they were re armed, ostensibly so
that they could sell the weapons to pay for their
legal costs, but no one followed up to make sure
they did sell the weapons. They just gave them back
their assault rifles and their handguns and probably their ski masks,
everything they needed to go rob banks. And that's exactly
what they did with that stuff.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
This was Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Yeah, for goodness sakes, I know, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
So later on, this was after the you know, the
final shootout that we're leading up to, but later on
there was obviously all kinds of investigations and stuff, and
they learned that these two guys were in fact what
were known as the High Incident Bandits, these two dudes
that robbed well, it was technically it was two incidences,
(15:28):
but three banks, because they hit two banks at once.
In ninety five, they robbed a well, not a bank,
but they robbed a Brinx truck in front of a
Bank of America in the valley and they killed a guy,
They killed the driver. They opened up fire on these dudes.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Without warning, without it. Put your hands and they just
came out of nowhere and just started firing on them.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Oh yeah, which will you know, we'll see as an
obvious precedent. And then in nineteen ninety six, they robbed
two Bank of Americas, one of which was the one
that they had previously robbed the armored carn from and
killed that guy. And you know, it was the same
type of deal. They had these automatic rifles, they were,
you know, screaming that they're going to kill you.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
They had body armor.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Ski masks, sunglasses. They took their time as far as
bank robberies go, by being in these banks for six
minutes and eight minutes, that's very long, which is that's
a long time for a bank robbery. I tried to
get out of there in less than three.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Well yeah, that's you know, that's what everybody does.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
That's our goal. But they made off. I mean they
these guys had a lot of money. They made off
with between one point three and one point seven million
bucks combined from this these two heists.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Let alone, then whatever they got from the Brinks robbery, oh.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
And they were you know, they were well known, they
were the high incidence bandits. The FBI was you know,
actively tracking them, and also had a theory that they're
not alone, They're part of like a larger crime ring
or terror string that's funding them.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, and like that's not only funding them with arms,
but the bank robberies are meant to fund some sort
of like right wing paramilitary group or terrorist organization or something.
That was the point. That was the premise they were
going on because these guys were so incredibly well armed.
And just for context too, one point seven million dollars
(17:15):
for two bank robberies is an eye popping amount of money. Yeah,
it's up there in like the top probably fifty bank
robberies in the United States history. Like, those are really
big hauls. I saw at the time. Back in nineteen
ninety one, the average bank robbery in the United States
yielded the robbers about three thousand dollars robbing a bank.
(17:37):
The takes were usually so paltry that it wasn't worth
the bank's money to invest in other protections like screens
that go up really quick between the tellers and the
bank robbers. It wasn't worth them installing those in banks
because the robbers rarely got away with more than a
few thousand dollars. So that was a huge, huge score
(17:59):
for almost two mansion dollars between just two bank robberies
for these guys.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Yeah, and I don't think murder usually occurs at those
bank robberies too.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Supposedly, I can't remember the number. I think it was
like sixteen people died in bank robberies over like I
think eighty five to ninety five or something like that,
and twelve of them were the bank robber. It was
a statistic somewhat like that. So yeah, yeah, and I
think eighty five percent of bank robberies get caught. It's
a really high risk, usually low reward crime. But if
(18:32):
you do it like these guys did, armed to the teeth.
And the other reason that their yields were so big,
they scouted out the banks and they knew when the
bank was going to get some big delivery of cash.
Usually it was a payday or something like that. That's
why their robberies paid off so well. They had done
their homework ahead of time.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Yeah, and that's how they do it in the movies.
And apparently these guys were inspired by movies.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah, I guess everybody else in real life doesn't do
it like the movies.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Yeah, so they were, you know, they were living kind
of high on the hog for a little while.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
They had a lot of money.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Phillips himself, he was the one that really sort of idolized,
you know, being wealthy and all that stuff. He like
bought fancy cars, he bought rolexes. I think mattisonana rented
a big house for his family. So, you know, I
think looking at the timeline, one was in June of
ninety five, one was almost a year later, in ninety six, so,
(19:28):
and then this final one was in February ninety seven.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
They weren't you know, they weren't doing this.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
It's hard to say they were being smart about it
because they were so brazen, but it seems like they
were doing this as like, all right, well here's our
annual salary and then we'll go out and do it
again in about a year.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Right. Yeah, No, they were. It was like their new
job and their new hobby and their new life, I
guess from what I understand. Right, So, on the day
of the robbery, their third heist, February twenty ath, nineteen
ninety seven, a Friday, and since it's the end of
the mon month, a payday they had targeted a Bank
of America. It wasn't one they had hit before, but
(20:05):
for some.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Reason hated Bank of America.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
They really and I kind of get why, but being
a former Bank of America account holder myself. But they
they hit one in North Hollywood. It was on Laurel
Canyon Boulevard. Are you familiar with this area? Oh?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Of course?
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Okay, so you knew. Were you in LA at the time? No?
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I didn't.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Oh wow, this is kind of right before that though.
I didn't move to LA until two thousand, okay, yeah.
And North Hollywood just for references, you know, Hollywood Central
Hollywood was kind of right in the middle of sort
of central LA. And then just over the mountains as
you go into the valley, that's where North Hollywood is.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Right and that's where Hank, the Cheshnian gangster in the
HBO show Berry is from. That's why they call him
NoHo Hank.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I need to do, Barry you do.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
It's one of those shows that gets insanely off the
rails and yet they still manage to make it work.
It's really good, you know.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
I watched a little bit of it years ago when
it first started and just got distracted and never got
back around to it. But I'd love everyone in that show.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, I think you should. You should give it another shot, all.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Right, I'll bury up soon.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
It's weird though, it's it's deceptively gritty. It's a comedy
through and through, and it's just bizarre and all that.
But there's if you really kind of get into, like
the the violence, the meat of it, it's it's pretty hardcore.
It's a crazy show. It's hard to pin down, but.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
It's worth seeing, all right, I'll follow up.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
So Friday, February twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven, Larry Phillips
and Emil Mattiserano walk into a Bank of America and
they are covered head to toe and technical gear ski masks.
It turns out Larry Phillips is covered from neck to
(22:02):
ankle in body armor.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
That he helped. He apparently so did himself and it
was really effective. Yah. Emil matesan who has a trauma
plate basically like a bulletproof plate covering his chest and
his vital organs. And they walk in and apparently the
first thing they did was started firing into the air
from their AK forty sevens, and you would think that
(22:28):
that would capture the attention of the police, But that's
a moot point, because the police watched them walk into
the bank from the first moment this started.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Boy, I mean, you can do all the planning in
the world as a bank robber, but you can never
count or discount bad luck for them good luck for
everyone else. Sure, but literally there was a police cruiser
that were like sitting there and watched two guys walk
into this bank armed like this yea, And I'm sure
(22:59):
they were like, what the oo and immediately called this
is at nine seventeen And they immediately called for backup obviously,
and I think once they saw and heard the shots
and everything, they all immediately knew that these were the
high incident bandits.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Yes, And for those fans of Snoop Dogg and Doctor
Dre and Ice Cube and NWA, you're well aware that
what the police called in was a two to eleven
an armed robbery in progress.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
So one of the things, a little detail that kind
of emerged later on, apparently Larry Phillips and Emal were
not drug users whatsoever in any way, shape or form,
but apparently they had taken phena barbital just before the
bank robbery to basically calm their nerves. They were the
kind of bank robbers that you see in the movies
(23:50):
but that don't actually exist in real life. These guys
existed in real life. They would knock down old ladies
and put guns in their faces. They would tell moms
that if they didn't shut their kids up, they were
going to kill their kids. They fired wildly into the air,
they fired wildly into the bank. They just shot everything
up everywhere. They were really abusive, They were really tough,
(24:10):
They were really scary, and they were also really on
point as far as like knowing where the money is,
knowing who would have access to the money, and just
making this whole thing work. They had also figured out
that they had about eight minutes before the average response time.
They hadn't noticed the cops watching them walk in, and
so they had timer stopwatches on during this whole eight
(24:33):
minute robbery.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
Yeah, which is what they had in the trunk when
the cops pulled them over four years earlier.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah, the stopwatch. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
So yeah, I mean they had this thing planned out,
but they also didn't know certain things, like they asked
the bank manager to open up the ATMs, and he's like,
I can't open the ATMs, Like I literally can't do that.
So he tried to shoot them open, which did nothing
to get into the atm, but of course it you know,
bullets ricochet everywhere and injured the bank manager. They also,
(25:05):
you know, would shoot I think one of them, Phillips,
wasn't it, who literally shot into a safe and like
shot up a lot of the money that they could
have gotten, yeah, ruining that.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Out of anger, they learned that the Brinks truck that
was supposed to be delivering hundreds and hundreds about three
quarters of a million dollars by their estimate, was running
late or had been rescheduled to throw off bank robberies,
and out of anger, Emial just shot into a safe
and basically just ruined a bunch of cash that they
could have taken.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
There was also a cell phone on the scene, which
is not the most common thing in nineteen ninety seven,
for sure, but it was la and they locked a
bunch of the They were about, you know, thirty bystanders
or you know, just people doing bank business. They separated
them out from the tellers and put them in a
vault and shut the door and one of the I
(26:00):
believe one of the women inside had a cell phone,
and I'm not sure how much it help, but she
was at least able to be in touch with the cops,
sort of describing what she was hearing while all this
is going on.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Right, this is at a time before people knew what
lol meant, and one of the cops she was texting
with was like, LOL meaning lots of love. But she
didn't take it that way.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Lots of love. I thought it was laugh out loud.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Right, that's what it means. The cop didn't know that.
He thought he was saying like, hang in there, I.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Gotcha, I got cha, Okay, I miss I'm a little sick.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Today, that's all right. I stole that joke from family guy.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
Anyway, In the end, though, they did get, you know,
a pretty good take. They got about three hundred thousand
dollars worth of cash, and then I guess we should
probably take a break here. But then they exited the
bank and all h e double hockey sticks broke loose.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Okay, Chuck, it's about nine to twenty five. I believe
eight minutes has passed. The timers going off on their
stopwatches and Emil Mataseranu and Larry Phillips are now planning
on leaving the bank. They have a duffel bag with
about three hundred grand in cash, and supposedly right when
they walk out the door, the die packs in the
(27:46):
bag go off and completely ruin the cash. So the
cast that they thought was going to be there wasn't there.
The cast that they did get was now completely ruined
forever because the die packs. And they come out and
realize that the cops have them surrounded, that this eight
minute response time thing doesn't count when the cops watch
(28:07):
you walk into the bank with ski masks in AK
forty sevens.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
Yeah, Like, what kind of surrounded are we talking about here?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
We're talking about surrounded on every side with police helicopters
hovering overhead. That's what they walked out of the bank into.
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Yeah, in the end, there would be more than three
hundred cops from five different agencies that were engaged in
the shootout.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
So three hundred EGITST two. That gives you a little.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Insight into just how much more heavily armed these guys were.
That it lasted this long, But they walked out to
that scene and immediately turned North Hollywood into a war zone.
I've watched a lot of video this stuff, and this
is one of the remarkable things is a lot of
this stuff is on video. You know, LA is notorious
(28:54):
for you know, anytime something like this is happening, there's
six helicopters, news helicopters overhead, like within minutes, just kind
of live streaming, or I guess you wouldn't have called it
live streaming.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Then what would you just say?
Speaker 5 (29:07):
Broadcasting live broadcasting there you go, oh man, it's been
so long, you're so twenties, I am so yeah, live
broadcasting this thing from above. So you can watch a
lot of this take place, which is horrifying. But again,
if you've seen enough movies, you're like, yeah, it looks
like a lot of movies I've seen. But a lot
of the interviews that you know since then that have
(29:27):
happened with cops that were there and taking place basically
said like these guys just came out and started shooting
at everything that moved, citizens, cars, buildings, police cars at
the times at the time didn't have kevlar siding in
their doors and stuff, so like hiding inside a police
(29:47):
car was no good. Hiding behind a police car was
better because the bullet going all the way through it
at least is going to you know, ricochet around and
probably not go like straight into you. But you know,
they were it was all of a sudden, it was
like Vietnam out there in North Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
So here's the thing. When the cops had them surrounded
and were waiting for them to come out. Number one
in the cops mind, they had no idea if the
whole place inside had just been massacred, because most robberts
don't walk in and start shooting into the air. Again,
that's movie stuff that these guys were influenced by. So
they heard like I think fifty rounds of automatic rifle
(30:23):
fire in the bank while they were waiting for these
guys to come out, and they didn't know if everyone
inside was just completely killed. That was number one. But
number two the cops also presumed, based on experience and history,
that when these guys came out and saw they were
surrounded not just by cops and cop cars but also helicopters,
that they would just you know, put their guns down,
(30:44):
put their hands up. So they were surprised at the
response that these two guys took on just even just
this first initial wave of dozens of cops, and then
they were further surprised when the guy's bullets started going
right through any kevlar vest, started going right through the
police cars, started going through buildings, through concrete buildings. There
(31:06):
was a concrete locksmith like kind of like a photo
mat in the parking lot that they were taking shelter behind.
The bullets were going through them. This was it just
suddenly turned completely one hundred and eighty degrees from their expectations.
And then even worse than that, they were finding their
own guns were having basically just pinging. The bullets were
(31:26):
pinging off of these guys because they were wearing so
much body armor. So this is about the moment almost
immediately out of the gate when the cops were like,
this is nothing like anything we've ever experienced before, and
we are out gunned right now.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Yeah, and this sounds unbelievable, but it's true. It was
so bad right away that the cops realized that and said,
if there's any available units, go to the gun store
down the street and get everything you can. Like they
literally went to a gun store to re arm or
you know, I guess what would you call it.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
When your armament. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
So they leveled up on their guns and they did
get guns. Apparently, according to like recovered ammunition stuff, they
didn't actually end up using those in the firefight because
I guess, you know, the whole thing didn't last that long,
and I'm sure it took a while to you know,
talk the store owner and giving up these guns and
getting the matching ammunition and all that. But they sent
(32:27):
for backup for themselves by going to a gun store,
which is just crazy to think about. And they were like,
we need the SWAT team. This is we're police cruiser guys,
and that we have revolvers or nine millimeters and this
ain't happening.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Swat team is downtown.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Took them about eighteen minutes to get there, and they
got there though. They finally showed up, and apparently it
was such a quick sort of let's get their quick
thing that one of the SWAT officers was about to
go on a jog and he shows up in like
jogging shorts.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, if you watched like the footage of the of
them taking Mitosurano, he's the first one to them and
it's kind of silly looking to be honest. Yeah, but
so yeah, this first wave of cops that they encountered,
I don't know how many cruisers there were, but let's
say there's probably six and maybe a dozen or so cops.
There were also two bystanders who got caught in the crossfire,
(33:23):
both of whom ended up getting shot by those ricochet
bullets going through cop cars that they were hiding behind.
Cops were getting shot like through their kevlar vests. I
think a number of cops were injured, and even worse,
they were pinned down. They were in what's called the
kill zone. Like these guys were very easily able to
shoot any of these people who were fairly close to them,
(33:46):
and so these these cops had to basically retreat or
be pinned down. And some of them were pinned down
because they were shot. So if you if you kind
of watch some of the footage or you you know,
read about it, that kind of gets left out. That
was something I thought that the Situation Critical documentary really
kind of drove home, like there were some people who
(34:06):
were in grave, grave danger in the first like ten
fifteen minutes of this firefight before backup arrived. And I
also saw it described that the Phillips in Mattisaranu at
one point, especially when they were engaged with that first
wave of cops who were totally unprepared and unequipped to
(34:29):
deal with them, that they could have made a getaway,
and they seemed to have decided that they were wanted
to stay and fight instead.
Speaker 4 (34:38):
Yeah, that's unusual, and I'm curious about the wisdom of that.
Like if they had left, if these guys just would
have went and got in their car and tried to
get out.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Of there, I don't know. Who knows. I mean, I
don't know the fact that they had a helicopter on
them would have made it pretty difficult, but who knows.
Could have been way worse. It could have been shorter.
Who knows what could have happened. But yeah, I think
the point was that they, like bank robbers, don't try
to stick around when they're given the option to try
to make a run for it.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
And these guys, Yeah, I'm not gonna Monday Morning quarterback
this thing years later in my podcast Booth because I
wasn't the one, you know, getting shot at on the street.
So there was one citizen hero among this crowd, which
was a dentist doctor Jorge Montes, had an office across
the street, and two cops that were injured, like crawled
(35:30):
up the stairs to his office and he it sounds
like he had saved at least one of their lives.
He treated them immediately, and one of the cops had
shrapnel in his ankle, and Montes was smart enough to
be like, we should leave that in there, Like, I'll
treat you, but I'm not taking that out because it
could get worse. And that officer later said that he
(35:50):
probably saved my life because I probably would have led out.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, that's pretty great. So a few minutes before ten,
this firefight has been going going on for thirty plus minutes. Now, okay,
Phillips and Mataseranu decide that this is a really fateful
decision and no one has any idea why, probably will
never know why. But Mataseranu gets in their white Chevy Celebrity,
(36:16):
the ugliest getaway car ever. Oh there's one other thing
about that white Chevy Celebrity. They had it backed up
to the bank in a parking space, and so when
they came out and they were shooting at the cops
and everybody that moved for thirty minutes with their assault weapons.
Whenever their assault rifle would like run out of ammo
(36:36):
or jam or something, they just throw it down, go
to the trunk of the car and come back with
a brand new assault rifle. And they had like drums,
like one hundred round drums as clips, So they were
really doing a lot of damage. And at some point
they decided let's head out. Matisranu gets in the Chevy
Celebrity and rather than get in with him, Larry Phillips
(36:59):
decides to walk alongside, just firing at everybody while Matti
Serranu slowly drives with him. And then the really faithful
decision is made where they decide to split up, and
Larry Phillips peels off for Mattiseranu and starts walking down
the sidewalk of a street, a side street that a
residential street to a residential area.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Yeah, yeah, it's you know, I think I read a
lot about this too. I think he might have thought
he was providing some initial cover and the whole split
up thing is just, you know, judging from the movies,
I think sometimes that's just what they decide to do, like,
you know, instead of concentrating everything on us.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
If we split up. That'll that'll split the you know,
the burden or whatever.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, I mean I get that. I also, based on
how quickly things happened after that, it also makes me
wonder if he was like, I'm just gonna go take
my last stand.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Well maybe, I mean, who knows. We're never gonna know, basically,
and you'll soon find out why. So in the end,
and Phillips was shot eleven times. He's walking down this
side street.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
He's still walking after he's some of these most of
these shots.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah, he's walking down the side street.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
He's firing at everything he can, and he gets just
like in the movies, like an old Western or something,
a cop shoots his hand, like shoots the gun out
of his hand by shooting his hand, he reaches down,
picks it up, puts it under his chin, and in
an attempt to kill himself and pulls the trigger. And
(38:30):
you know, it was sort of a bang bang thing.
No one sure which was the kill shot, but sort
of right along that time at either right when it
happened or right after he fell, a cop had shot
him true romance style, through the side of his body
where there was no protection, no protective vest because that
(38:51):
stuff is usually like it's on your back, it's on
your chest, but kind of not through the side, and
he severed his spine and he was dead immediately from
one of the two wounds.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
So Larry Phillips is now dead one way or another,
either by his own hand or by the cops shot. Uh.
And that is not the end of things, because Mattisranu
is still on the move. He's in his White Celebrity
moving down the street past where Phillips has just died.
(39:21):
And here's what's crazy, because, as we'll see, the LAPD
is very much feted after this for having saved North Hollywood,
taken on these guys who outgunned them. But there's a
really critical point that I think people just move right past.
When they were moving up Archwood, this residential street, it
was not closed off, so people were driving past Emil
(39:46):
Madiseranu within feet, like a handful of feet of this guy,
and they were confused, they didn't know what was going on.
And he's strapped with like this ak driving the White Celebrity,
which now has this tire shot out, looking for another car,
and at he's three or four pass him before he
finally stops and picked one and start shooting at the car.
And that was a huge, huge failure on the LAPD's
(40:09):
part because those guys could have gone anywhere on Archwood
Street and started taking hostages easily.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
What was the failure that they didn't close the street off?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Like, I don't understand how you can get it.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
They had time bank robbery.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
You could close it off somewhere back there there was
through traffic still coming down Archwood, like right by the bank.
If you watch it, it's crazy that that's not now.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
I just don't I don't know, man, I think that's
also Monday morning quarterbacking. I don't know if they could
have they were in the middle of a shootout. I
just I don't know.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
I mean, the whole LAPD was focused on this shootout.
I feel like they could have shut the street down.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
It's just crazy to me, all right, agree to disagree, Okay?
At any rate, he's firing at cars. He gets in
this guy's jeep pickup truck, and the guy got injured.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
He was fine.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
He ran out of there and you know, got away
at least, and he starts he still thinks he can
get out of there. I guess he's transferring weapons from
that chevy to the truck, and three swat guys drive
over there. He comes out again, and all of a
sudden there's another shootout on the street, movie style, with
both of them kind of crouched behind these cars, and
(41:18):
the cops do a very smart thing, which is shoot
underneath the car, at his feet, at his legs, whatever
they can hit, and they end up hitting him twenty
eight times and dropped him.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah. Man, can you imagine taking twenty eight shots in
your legs and feet?
Speaker 3 (41:34):
I can't imagine one.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
He put his hands up, he gave up, he surrendered
and was laying behind the celebrity. I think in the
end when they captured him, twelve officers had been injured,
had been shot somewhere in pretty bad shape. Miraculously all survived.
Eight bystanders have been injured. All of them survived. Everyone
(41:56):
in the bank survived, and it turned out that the
only two people people who didn't survive were Larry Phillips
and Emil Mattiseranu, who ended up bleeding to death from
his injuries lying behind that chevy celebrity. Isn't that nuts yet, Chuck?
I think seventeen or eighteen hundred rounds were fired in
this forty four minute firefight, and only two people died,
(42:20):
the bank robbers.
Speaker 4 (42:22):
Yeah, and that became a matter of just sort of
further scrutiny because Matti Serrano, you know, he's laying there,
he's bleeding, and he says, you know, why don't you
put a bullet through my head? And when the EMTs
show up, the cops keep them away. They said, don't
come over here. EMT has never examined him, and he
slowly bled out basically over the next hour and died.
(42:46):
They were, you know, heavily scrutinized. I think there was
an attorney that ended up filing his suit on behalf
of the kids that said, hey, you know, regardless of
whether this guy was a bank robber, you can't you know,
you still have an obligation to treat an injured human
on the ground as a cop. The cops response was like,
we didn't know if there were other people involved, if
(43:09):
they were around, if they had a sniper, if they
had explosives on their body. We didn't want to put
those EMTs in danger. And in the end they dropped.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
It was a deadlock jury at first, so it was
a mistrial, and then they decided not to go further
with another case because they might be countersued for malicious prosecution.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Well put, did you read the La Times article on that.
Oh yeah, they really went to town putting this thing together,
and no one came out looking okay, you know.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
No, And it was you know, the LA PD has
always had a checkered reputation, so like, at first they
were heroes because this was all over the news, and
this was, you know, a handful of years after Rodney
King when they had probably an all time low opinion rating.
So they were like, look, look at the cops like
protecting you and and putting.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Their lives at risk.
Speaker 4 (44:01):
So it was good for PR at first, but then
this they let them bleed out in the street for
an hour. I'm sure a lot of people were like
good and a lot of people are like, yeah, you
still can't do that.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Sure. So one of the other outcomes of this was
that it changed police forces across the United States forever.
Like the police realized that they were not equipped for
something like this to happen in not only Los Angeles
but every other town in the United States, and in
(44:32):
the Defense Spending Act I think of nineteen ninety seven,
they passed a section called ten thirty three that said
that the Department of Defense can sell any excess armory
weapons materiel to local police departments. Now that's a new thing,
and it turned into what's been roundly considered the militarization
(44:55):
of the police. That's had all sorts of knock on
effects include, according to multiple studies, an increase in death
during police shootings. And that's a big criticism of this
that rather than people saying, let's reduce the public's access
to things like assault rifles that can kill tons of
(45:15):
people and have firefights like this, instead the push has
been to let's arm the cops equally to these criminals
that can be armed to the teeth as well, to
make it even which there's a logic to it, sure,
but you could also reduce the public's access to those
kinds of things as well, and that didn't really happen.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
Well, one of the good things that came out of
it was PTSD counseling for police officers. Was not such
a big thing at the time, and after this it
became much more just sort of implemented across the country.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, that is a good thing for sure. Anything else,
I got nothing else. I think there's in Grand Theft
Auto five, one of the heists. The Palletto score is
based on this too. And there's a movie called forty
four Minutes that was made for TV on FX and
it's terrible. I bet if you want to know anything
(46:11):
else about the North Hollywood shootout, there's plenty to see
and read about that. And while you're reading and seeing
about the North Hollywood shootout, I think it's time for listener.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Man, I'm going to call this.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Follow up that I feel pretty bad about. We did
our podcast episode on Kenton Greua Grand Canyon River Adventure
not too long ago, and we actually heard from his wife,
Michelle Grua, who was She's not a stuff you should
know listener, but someone told her about it. She listened
and she wanted to clear up some things, and so
(46:49):
I'm going to read it. It's a little lenkdy, but
I feel like we owe it toured. Hey, guys, I
was surprised to be informed by a friend of your
podcast about my late husband Factor.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Yes, Archilllren and I all called him Factor. That was
his preferred name.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
I appreciate that you obtained most of your information from
Kevin's book The Emerald Mile, which is for the most
part accurate. There are some things that you said that
are not accurate, and depictions of factor that I'd like
to set straight. These things are likely only important to
me our children into his two brothers if they were
to ever hear your podcast. I can tell that you
appreciated his adventurous spirit and the grandiosity of the things
(47:24):
he did, But I would gently suggest that you might
consider the feelings of those left behind with regard to
the way you depict someone. He's not just some character
and a really cool story. He's someone's husband, father, and
brother who has sorely missed. I do not expect any
kind of retraction public retraction. I just wanted to let
you know about the inaccuracy so you could have a
(47:46):
more clear picture of him. He was the most humble, gracious, generous, respectful, considerate,
fear soul I've ever met, truly one of a kind
and the greatest factor in my life. Regarding the description
of him really liking booze and hiking out to obtain
extra liquor, the passengers on that particular commercial trip are
the ones who requested extra booze, and given that there's
(48:07):
no delivery into the canyon, he offered to hike out and.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
Procure a resupply for them.
Speaker 4 (48:13):
Regarding the moccasins, he was a purist, and his reasoning
was that the ancient Queblins who'd lived in the canyon
had likely worn moccasins and he wanted to pay homage
to them and not have any unfair modern advantage like
hiking boots. He had scouted the route before, and the
first through hike attempt he had placed food caches, cases, cases,
(48:34):
cashes for that hike, as well as doing so the
second time.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
As an insight into his character.
Speaker 4 (48:39):
He hiked back in to remove all of them after
the hike, leaving no trace.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
You said that he was obsessed.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
If you can say that about someone who smokes that
much pot, I feel like you may have missed a
key element of Kenton's character and you're reading about him
that he had a fierce intellect, an intense focus, and
once he got a hold of an idea, he ruminated
on it, turned it over and over in his mind
until he worked out all the details. Not consistent with
the sleepy image you conjure up when thinking about a
(49:06):
typical stoner. It also bears mentioning that the original idea
was Wally Wrists. Wally, Rudy and Kenton did the original
speed one, but Wally was no longer working on the
river in eighty three and thus not able to partake.
This time around, Kenton came up with the idea to
put a second set of oar locks on the boat,
so you could have two rowing stations to tackle the
(49:27):
flat water at the far west of the canyon. As
far as the fine, the fine that was imposed as
reportedly five hundred dollars, but I have the cancel check
to the Cocochino County Magistrate and the amount of two
hundred and fifty dollars paid by Kenton, so your assertion
that he couldn't afford.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
It is not accurate.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
He never mentioned any imposition of community service to me
as well, and we are also quite sure of how
he died. He died not due collision or impact, but
from the spontaneous a ordit dissection, not an aneurysm. He
was found unresponsive on the trail by a hiker while
the kids and I were home awaiting his return.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
He was not dead when the hiker found him.
Speaker 4 (50:09):
He was taking to the local hospital, where resuscitation efforts failed.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
He wasn't laying in a peaceful position. The hiker said.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
He was still astride as his bike, and it appeared
that he had just tipped over. Indeed, he had a
little cut over his ear where his sunglasses dug into
the side of his head when he landed. As a
physician myself, I can tell you he was probably in
significant chest pain, and he died about two hundred yards
after passing through what would have been a busy trailhead
parking area, So he was probably peddling like hell to
(50:39):
get home just a couple of miles away, but dissected
and lost consciousness less than a minute after passing through
the lot. I only discovered it when he was two
hours late getting home from the ride and called the
hospital where I worked to see if they had any
mountain bikers that had come in. They said yes, but
they weren't able to identify him, and that was the
last moment of true peace that I had. I am
(51:00):
glad you found a story so compelling. I'm sure he's
glad people are hearing of it and he doesn't have
to do the telling himself, but accuracy is important. Please
don't paint him as a caricature. Best Michelle Grua and
I emailed her a very long email back, and I
felt terrible about all this, and she was very sweet
and much more graceful than I would have been in
(51:23):
her position.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
So yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, if you're
going to get taken to task by a living relative
of someone we profile, it's about as nice as it
can get, for sure.
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Yeah, So thank you Michelle for that, And just publicly,
I'm sorry for anything we did that costs you any upset.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, agreed. It was definitely not our intent to create
a caricature out of him. That's never our intent. So
sorry that that happened inadvertently, And thank you for taking
the time to write all that, and thank you Chuck
for reading all of it. Certainly, if you want to
get in touch with us, like Michelle Grua did, you
can use email as she did as well. Send it
(51:58):
off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Radio Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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