The Bank Robber Who Turned His Bullet Into a Cross

Summary

Camp Gagnon: “The Bank Robber Who Turned His Bullet Into a Cross”
Host: Mark Gagnon
Guest: Stephen Myers
Date: June 18, 2026

Episode Overview

In this gripping episode of Camp Gagnon, Mark sits down with Stephen Myers—a former artist, craftsman, and close accomplice of the notorious bank robber “Hollywood” (Scott Scurlock). Myers reveals the true story behind one of the most cunning and surreal bank robbery operations in U.S. history, which, for years, outsmarted the FBI and operated from a hidden treehouse in the forests of Washington. The conversation delves deep into Myers’ bohemian past, the intricate planning behind 18 high-stakes robberies, the metaphysical experiences that surrounded the events, and the ultimate, tragic downfall of the crew—with reflections on fate, loyalty, and what drives men to the edge.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Stephen’s Unusual Path to Crime

• Early Life & Artistic Roots (02:34 – 07:56)
  • Myers grew up in Kansas City, developed a passion for music and European art, living in England, Germany, Norway, and Italy, before returning to the States in his 30s.
  • Although he describes himself as “always on the edge,” his immersion into crime only came much later.
• Entry into the Criminal World (08:18 – 13:43)
  • Invited by his brother to Washington, Myers meets Scott Scurlock (Hollywood), an eccentric, meticulous chemist and the mastermind behind a crystal meth operation. Initially, Myers claims naiveté about the legal implications.

2. The Treehouse: Sanctuary and Command Center

• Creation and Purpose (13:45 – 18:53)
  • The infamous treehouse was conceived by Scott as an “organic, ever-morphing” structure—equal parts bohemian hideout and symbol of freedom. Initially built to attract women and live an untethered college lifestyle, it would later become the criminal HQ.
  • “I can fuck all the women I want when they know I got a tree house, they come running here.” – Scott, relayed by Stephen (15:54)
  • The treehouse was ultimately funded by money generated from drug sales and, later, bank heists.

3. Scott Scurlock (Hollywood): Genius or Outlaw?

• Character Portrait (09:32 – 25:57)
  • Scurlock is described as highly intelligent, analytical, with a distaste for violence and excess; he lived simply, funneled money through Swiss bank accounts, and used disguises and misdirection to hide wealth and intent.
  • He’s contrasted with more ostentatious criminals: "It was never about the money. He hated the concept of hoarding. It was because you could show yourself you could do it. We did it." (28:13)

4. From Chemistry to Robbery: Transitioning to Bank Jobs

• Catalyst for Change (24:15 – 25:33)
  • A key event: the murder of Scott’s biker contact prompts him to leave the drug business for good, disliking its violence.
  • The notion of robbing banks was, at first, a fantasy, but became an obsession and a challenge—to outsmart the system nonviolently.
• The Psychology & Motivation (28:13 – 29:32)
  • Both men sought the thrill, challenge, and creative expression of planning the “perfect” heist more than material gain.

5. The Art and Methodology of Robbing Banks

• Planning and Execution (41:39 – 47:43)
  • Extensive surveillance, study of FBI case files, meticulous use of disguises (e.g., prosthetics, wigs, fake IDs), and understanding of forensic techniques.
  • Use of police scanners and two-way radios; elaborate protocols for buying and disposing of vehicles.
  • Nonviolent approach: focus on psychological control, calm demeanor, and using insider bank information to their advantage.
  • "The phenomenon was…they thought he had a skin defect, so they didn’t want to embarrass him." (56:22)
• Laundering the Proceeds (70:43 – 73:30)
  • Gambling (sports betting in Vegas/Reno) used to turn “heat-marked” bills into clean money.

6. Living on the Edge

• Personal and Psychological Tension (47:43 – 49:08)
  • Myers found the criminal world exhilarating—a “different dimension” compared to mundane life, but acknowledges it was unsustainable.
  • Keeping secrets from loved ones was the hardest part of that life: “It’s not understandable…who robs banks?” (109:36)
• Metaphysical Experiences and Supernatural Overtones (116:12 – 126:24)
  • Both Myers and Scurlock reported “strange feelings, premonitions, and dreams” preceding heists.
  • Myers recounts a vivid dream of losing his legs to a shark that eerily paralleled the loss of use of his arms in the final shootout.

7. The Final Robbery and Collapse

• Escalating Pressure and FBI Pursuit (126:24 – 140:03)
  • With advancing surveillance, electronic “Pronet” tracers, and a joint FBI/local police task force, the risk climaxed.
  • Detailed account of the last botched robbery, the escape, and the final standoff.
  • Memorable: “This was the end, one way or another…something was making us do this.” (122:19)
• The Climactic Shootout (145:47 – 159:41)
  • Police ambush; Mark Biggins is shot, Scott’s weapon jams, Myers loses use of both arms. During the chaos, Myers experiences “the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.”
  • After police remove him from the van, Myers learns Scott has escaped.

8. The Fate of the Crew

• Scott’s End (163:51 – 172:18)
  • Scurlock hides wounded in a camper, eventually takes his life after a day-long standoff—fulfilling his refusal to be taken alive.
  • “He would never go to prison…he would decide his own fate. And I’ve respected him for it.” (173:10)
• Myers and Mark’s Aftermath (175:08 – 183:45)
  • Both accept plea bargains (21 years), Myers spends time in various federal prisons, including with notorious figures.
  • Myers ultimately reunites with his daughter in prison and begins rebuilding his life upon release.

9. Reflections: Regret, Fate, and Meaning

• Spiritual and Existential Musings (136:16 – 138:01)
  • Myers ponders why the saga unfolded as it did—was it metaphysical, fate, or simply “testing” by unknown forces?
  • “This is not about banks. It’s about a realization of something that is beyond us.” (136:53)
• Regret and Perspective (198:47 – 199:53)
  • Myers feels no regret, regards it as an indelible part of his life, and attributes it to the drive for experience and freedom.

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• “My background, who I am. I’m not…There was no risk.”
  — Stephen Myers on why his art world persona shielded him from suspicion (44:32)
• “If two people like us…could beat the FBI at their own game, I mean, why not?”
  — Myers, on their motivation (28:13)
• “Their phenomenon was that when he would go into a bank, people would kind of glance at him and then glance away…they thought he had a skin defect.”
  — Myers, describing the psychology behind the disguise (56:22)
• “...he always said, never let somebody else determine how you live or die. He would never go to prison.”
  – Myers, recounting Scott’s philosophy (119:04)
• “After the Netflix doc, Sean (the FBI agent) said, ‘No case ever like this. I wanted to quit. No one won in this.’”
  — (89:20)
• “I always would build studios. I never asked…I never…can’t imagine carrying an American flag and going to get welfare somewhere. People would laugh at you.”
  — Myers, on self-reliance and wanderer’s life (204:42)
• “It was a challenge to himself. Does it make sense?...He wanted to empty the whole place out.”
  — On Scott’s compulsive thoroughness during robberies (83:59)

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Essential Timestamps

• 00:00 — Episode opening; Mark’s scene-setting.
• 02:34 — Myers’ upbringing and European art years.
• 09:32 — First encounter with Scurlock; introduction to meth operation.
• 13:45 — Treehouse origins and significance.
• 25:35 — Departure from the drug game; dream of robbing banks.
• 28:13 — Motivation: “Not about money, but doing it.”
• 41:39 — Planning and disguises.
• 70:43 — Money laundering through gambling.
• 116:12 — Metaphysical experiences, premonitions.
• 145:47 — Detailed recounting: the final heist and shootout.
• 163:51 — Scott’s last moments and the end of the crew.
• 175:08 — Myers’ prison experience, release, and reflection.
• 198:47 — “No regrets” and takeaways.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a rare, unflinching look into the minds of two men who lived years as ghosts—hidden within the walls of an enchanted treehouse, driven by thrills, creativity, and an indefinable metaphysical force. With a rich blend of psychological insight, dark humor, poetic asides, and true crime gravity, Myers takes listeners into a world where fate, choice, and chance collided—with consequences that still ripple decades later.

Further Reading/Listening:

• The Treehouse: The True Story of Hollywood the Bank Robber by Stephen Myers (Find on Amazon & Barnes & Noble; Audiobook available)

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Most bank robbers get caught because they panic. But Stephen Myers and his partner, Hollywood, treated robbery like an art form. Deep in the forests of Washington outside of Seattle, inside a massive treehouse hidden from the world, they built something that felt untouchable. A secret kingdom fueled by millions of dollars. 18 successful bank robberies in a row. A treehouse full of disguises, police scanners, and absolute paranoia. But according to Steve, there was something else surrounding all of it. Something divine. Premonitions, strange feelings, precognitive dreams, warnings. He even said that he felt that his partner was being haunted by demons. There was almost a supernatural sense to everything, that the walls were closing in. Well, in this episode, Stephen Myers reveals the unbelievable true story behind one of the most sophisticated bank robbery crews in American history. And how they outsmarted the FBI. For years lived like ghost in the woods. And why he believes that fate was always waiting for them in the end. So if you are interested in crime stories, in finding out what took down one of the most successful bank robbery operations in American history and the strange spiritual side of all of it, well, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Camp. Stephen Mayer. How are you?

[B]

I'm fine. How are you doing?

[A]

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me. This is really exciting. I watched the Netflix doc that features you and the story that kind of has unraveled around your life and kind of also was the documentary that was inspired very much by your book Treehouse. That's behind me. I mean, this story has everything. Truly, you've lived a fascinating life that I don't know if there's many people on this planet, certainly not many people that have sat in this tent that could say that they've experienced, I mean, going from being like a sculptor, this refined artist traveling Europe, to then being involved in a drug organization or maybe a drug scheme, perhaps. I'll let you elaborate. And then a full on bank robbery operation, 19 bank robberies total. I mean, accumulating millions of dollars in cash. And ultimately how it all went down and what the aftermath of that was, was truly fascinating. But I just want to begin, I guess, before we give away too much, where did you grow up originally?

[B]

I grew up in Kansas City.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Grew up and lived there through high school. Then I left for the East Coast, D.C. and went to college there for a few years and then went to Europe.

[A]

And then you started there and then working as a. As a sculptor and as an artist.

[B]

Well, not then. I mean, I was actually a musician back in D.C. when I was starting, I was jazz flutist and flautist. And when I went to Europe, then I started studying in a college in England, started doing sculpture and architectural, you know, study on architecture and so forth like that. And then from there I went to Germany and did a three year apprenticeship in furniture making and design with an architectural firm there. And then from there I went to, I got a visa to go to Norway to restore some mountain architecture, old post and beam type Norwegian architecture. And I was up there. I opened a studio in Oslo. And yeah, I mean, I was there for a number of years, four years. And then I moved to Italy and that's where I ended up living in Italy, sculpting down there.

[A]

For how long in Italy?

[B]

I think about five, six years, something like that. And then I moved back to the States and I kept my studio in Italy and would go back and forth. And then finally I cut it loose at a certain point and stayed in the States.

[A]

Now, how, how old are you roughly when you move back to the States? After the stint in Europe, I moved

[B]

back in 1980, so I would have been 30. 30, 30 years old, 31, something like that.

[A]

So up until this point, from zero to 30, you're a boy from Kansas City, you're interested in jazz, you're a musician, you're reading the classics, you're well read, you go to college, become a sculptor, open an art studio. I, at this point it seems like on the surface, not involved in any type of criminality. Is that fair to say?

[B]

I would say no. In actuality, my whole, I mean, I have so many subplots of things that went on when we were in college, things we did that. I've always escaped law, but I've always been unfolding with the law, if that makes sense. I mean, we did all kinds of things. But no, once I got into college, nothing like that ever took place. I was always, you know, but before that, probably, you know, in high school and sure, it was just, you know, we were wild kids. It was a time in life that, you know, I mean, I've always been on the edge my whole life. So whether it was the art world or whatever it was, I was always on the edge. I'd always, I never, I never looked for security. I always, if I wanted something, I would go to it. I mean, when I studied in Germany, I went. Before I went there, I went there and I started traveling all over Germany, Austria, Switzerland, looking for a place I could get an apprenticeship with, visiting all these places before I even spoke German. And you know, I was just like. Life was wide open. It was like Herman Hess, you know, when you read Herman Hess's works and you know, Dostoevsky and you read these giants and you see their life and the things they go, that was what it was, wide open. But of course, it was a different time. It's not like it is today. I mean, and it was a lot easier to do that. I mean, you could. $100 had some meaning back then.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It doesn't anymore.

[A]

Right. Were you inspired at all by like the beatnik sort of like New York poetry guys?

[B]

Not, not then, no. I mean, I like Bob Dylan, obviously. I mean, you know, he was that period of time when I was in D.C. studying, you know. He was. Yeah, he was there. He would show up in Georgetown and some of the clubs there, coffee houses. I would go there. Joan Baez and all that. But the beat thing, I wasn't. I was more into the French poetry, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, you know, all of that. And that was more my, you know, the symbolism and imagery and so forth.

[A]

Right, and so at this point you moved back to the United States and where do you land?

[B]

When I came back from Italy. Strange subtext here. Subtitle is Our house blew up in Italy in the village that we lived in. And it was a gas explosion.

[A]

And who all was living there?

[B]

Well, there was other families. We were renting the place, but it was an old 500 year old place and no one got hurt, fortunately. But my family, when I was still married, my daughter was two years old, two or three, something like that. And we lived in my studio, which was in the town from the mountain village we lived in. So we lived there for about a year, I guess, before we moved back to the States. Because it was just. Situation was untenable at that point, you know. Right, yeah.

[A]

And then you end up on the West Coast.

[B]

No, I ended up in D.C. went back to D.C. to Virginia, northern Virginia. And then I got a place there, set up, set up my studio there. And you know, my daughter was growing and, you know, lived there for a number of years and had. My studio was a showing in D.C. new York. I used to come to New York quite a bit. I had a number of shows up here and. But it's been 40 years. This is like 40, 45 years since I've been here. Really. Back in the 80s, I was showing in New York. Yeah, quite a bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Welcome back.

[B]

SoHo. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It's. A lot's changed.

[B]

Oh yeah. I mean I haven't been to Manhattan yet. I don't have time. But, you know, right now, I mean, I'm here in Brooklyn, but. Yeah, it's nice to be here, actually. Yeah, it's.

[A]

Get the energy back.

[B]

Yeah. It's, you know, because North Carolina, I'm there. My daughter lives there. I. Situation. There's situations while I'm there, but it's not my kind of livelihood. Yeah, right. Yeah.

[A]

So the. I guess maybe the focal point of the documentary on Netflix, how to Rob a Bank, is centered around this guy, Scott.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Who's known to the authorities during the time of this sort of bank robbery spree is Hollywood. How do you meet him for the first time?

[B]

Well, we met years before the bank robberies ever took place. My brother actually was the one. When I was living in D.C. i remember the day, actually. I was in my studio in Northern Virginia, and I was working. He came in, he said, would you like to fly out to Seattle and renovate this barn we have out in the countryside, you know, south of Olympia? And I go, yeah. And he says, well, you know, Scott's working on a laboratory up there for crystal meth. And at that time, I had really no idea. You know, I mean, pain was a thing during that period of time, during the 80s, you know, the whole whole Miami thing and all that. And so, yeah, I said, you know, yeah, sure. You know, I mean, it didn't mean anything to me, you know, doing. So I flew out there and I started, you know, building on the barn. You know, it was a sort of a front for his laboratory. It was a huge old, you know, American barn, one of those big, old, huge barns.

[A]

So your brother had the relationship before you?

[B]

Yeah, they were friends and great in high school. You know what I mean? So they were like, friends. I really never knew Scott then, but it was through this event that I finally met him. And when we went out there. When I went out there and we met each other and I started working and then he. We just clicked. I don't know. He's. Scott is a very analytical, very professional. In his mind, he's. He's wild and loose, friendly. But when he does work, his work is meticulous, and he doesn't like anything. He doesn't want people around him that will compromise this or that. I mean, the product he made was if, you know, Breaking Bad. He was, long before Breaking Bad ever happened, the original Heisenberg. Yeah, he was the Heisenberg that, you know, if you think Heisenberg was fanatic, Scott scurlock was fanatic, and his product was just wonderful. I mean, I don't know how to explain it. I mean, you tried it. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, especially during work sessions, you know, it's just such a thing. And then you, as long as you are smart about it, I mean, if you go crazy. But, you know, some people can tolerate. For example, I very rarely did marijuana. I hated this stuff. It messed my whole body up. Whereas somehow it affected me in a way that I just couldn't bear it. And. Whereas this was, you know, what I did when I did it was, you know, very nice. Inspiring, you know, productive. Productive. Very productive. You know.

[A]

Right. Which I wouldn't encourage anyone to try.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

At the same time, I hope people are not judging you when they hear this, because it's like I've taken Adderall, which is, I think, chemically the same thing. I don't know. Exactly.

[B]

Yeah, it's all of that. It's an uppercase.

[A]

All my friends in college are taking Adderall and Vyvanse, not nonstop. And if you've taken these things, you can probably relate to this experience of like, oh, I was able to write three papers that were due before the next day, and I worked all the way through the night, and I had great ideas and I was confident and I felt good. And so that's kind of the feeling of working on this barn with, you know, your buddy, and you're out in the. Out in the nature and you get in a tan and, you know, you

[B]

know all of that. And, you know, we're camping out with summertime, but, you know, when I was in the laboratory, you're talking about this massive barn, and he's got flask and burners going, and I don't even remember all the glassware name. You know, it was just like a huge thing. And, you know, you got to be on there 24 7. It's about a two, two and a half, three week process, you know, between beginning to end and, you know, so you got to have schedules, one on one, you know, sleep, do that and all that. And, you know, I, you know, it was fascinating for me. I didn't even realize. I didn't realize the implications legally. I. If, if we'd have been caught, we'd still be in prison.

[A]

Right? So. But at the time when your brother's like, hey, by the way, you want to work on this barn? It is a front for a lab. And also, you might have to, like, work on the lab a little bit.

[B]

No, he never asked Me that he just said it front. But only when I got there did Scott and I, you know, he started explaining, I started looking at, I questioned, and then we just click. It was like immediate. Because my brother is not that type of personality. He's more, I don't know, he couldn't do what needed to be done in a disciplined way with the laboratory. And so he and I did. That's when we first met and that's when we got really connected.

[A]

And at that point, you didn't have any aversion to the criminal element. You weren't like.

[B]

I didn't even realize I was naive to it. I didn't really enter my mind. He would mention that. He says, don't ever talk about laboratories. Don't ever make words like that. Don't ever speak this kind of stuff. He would tell me, you can get this, this amount of. Many years for it and so on and so forth. And. And, you know, I mean, I, I mean, I, you know, I was in the art world. I mean, what did it mean to me? You know what I mean? I mean, you saw Miami Vice. That was about the closest I got to anything watching those movies, you know what I mean? It was just. It was a drug, you know, and, you know, but it was so isolated from that world, from that drug world. The East Coast, New York, Miami thing, it just seems. So what are you going to do? I mean, it's out nowhere, you know, it's not. But he was aware of the legal implications and all of that.

[A]

And at this point, does he have the treehouse?

[B]

Oh, yeah, it's there. Yeah. He'd begun the treehouse long before.

[A]

Could you Google this? Christos, how do you pronounce his last name? Scurlock.

[B]

Scurlock, yes.

[A]

Scott.

[B]

S C U R L O, C,

[A]

K. So Scott Scurlock, Treehouse. And if you haven't seen the Netflix documentary, it's truly fascinating the amount of footage that exists within this place. I mean, it like specifically in this time, it just feels like innocent and fun and kind of avant garde and kind of like bohemian in a way. It's like these hippies out in the, out in the forest, like running around naked, doing drugs, hanging, you know, in a tree house.

[B]

There it is. Yeah, that's what it was. You know, it was.

[A]

If you have other photos of the treehouse, it'd be awesome to see. Just like it's a four story, 70 foot tall first.

[B]

The first level when you go up the staircase. I don't think the staircase was built here. At this time, he was still using ladders. I built a staircase for him, a three tier staircase and. But then it goes all the way to the tops of the trees. He just kept building. It was more. It morphed over years. It wasn't like he didn't like get down on, you know, design it on paper. He just built it like amorphously. I mean, it just, it grew.

[A]

I mean, this is like a young boy's dream is like to build a tree house with your buddies and live in it with you.

[B]

Want to know why he built it? I asked him. He said, whatever inspired you to build this thing? And he, he had a 20, 20 acre property. And in the very front of the property on the road was a little cottage, a little rundown cottage. And he had. There you go. And he had rented. He was renting that when he was at Evergreen College. And this was before he started his Crystal. That's actually where he started doing it. Crystal was in the college. He'd sneak in at nighttime, break into the college and do one night things. That's where he learned it. And it's where you experimented from it. Yeah, in the college itself. But I asked him, I said, why did you ever do this? He said, because Evergreen is a very liberal, free everything that. He says, because I can fuck all the women I want when they know I got a tree house, they come running here. He says, I had more women coming here from Evergreen College and all over once they knew it was there. That's the reason he built it initially started that way.

[A]

Wow. So he would go and be at a party, be like, yeah, actually live up in this giant treehouse. And I'm sure people tell stories like, oh, you know, Scott has a tree treehouse. And girls be like, well, I want to go see. And then, you know, you leave a party and they go check it out and you have a couple drinks on the, you know, balcony and you're overlooking Mount Rainier. And all of a sudden one thing leads to another.

[B]

I mean, when I first saw it, this was when I came from the barn down south of Olympia, that it was not to this level here yet. And that was the first time I saw it. And I. I remember I came in at nighttime and I was. Went through the forest and it was very hard, very dark. And you come into this small clearing around and you see this lights up there and you look up and you go, oh my God. You know what I mean? And I was just like, it was amazing to me, right? I mean, it was, you Know, it was. It was more not from a. You know, it's beautiful because it's organic, not because it's designed well.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Or even built well, but just that it's like a true soul expression phenomena that somebody could actually do it. And you can't. The picture, you can't realize it, but it's really, you know, I mean, we would sometimes be hanging from ropes to be able to support structures from underneath because of a storm or something. We'd have to resupport it and. And, you know, I mean, we did crazy stuff. You just think. I look back now and I go, I don't know how. What in your mind, but you're.

[A]

I can tell you how that.

[B]

Yeah, but that period of time was so different than it is today. It's.

[A]

It's not no phones, no Google, just guys carrying wood and hammering it in.

[B]

That was what it was, you know, and, you know, you go get materials and, you know, construction sites would, you know, they always have their. Their big refuge of materials, and we would get it and they would let us take it. And, you know, of course we bought stuff. You know, we would, you know, we spent thousands and thousands of dollars on wood and construction and all kinds of stuff. Yeah.

[A]

Now, Scott, to buy a property like this, and then obviously all the raw materials and windows and things like that. Where's this money coming from?

[B]

Well, he was. During that period of time, it was his crystal was when it, you know, he was. Like I said, he was renting. And then when I finally came out there from Chicago, he had purchased the property. And when I came from Chicago to actually help him with the whole process of the. Starting with the bank robbery, my thing was to remodel the front cottage. And I filled all the paperwork out and refinanced the place for him. And he got money to refinance from the refinancing, and we bought materials with that money. It's all very worked out. He used the bank money that he robbed banks from.

[A]

Hilarious.

[B]

So it's so poetical. I mean, I think we got maybe 40 or $50,000 extra. And then we bought a lot of materials for the house to redo it when we need. And also the treehouse, which, you know, they didn't know the difference.

[A]

But now how is the drug operation working? Because this guy, I mean, Scott, but it seems like he's sort of like this kind of hippie, free spirit, but like a smart, sharp, nice enough guy. So how is he actually funneling these drugs from his lab to, you know, Customers.

[B]

One man, One man, his connection. And this man was an ex biker and he lived in Olympia and he was retired from it, but he had all the connections from Washington down to Southern California. And he distributed everything. They never socialized together. They only met. They would meet up in the mountains in Olympia, the Olympic mountains. He would drive his old pickup truck. Scott had an old pickup truck. The other guy had an old pickup truck. And they would have chainsaws and wood piled in the back. And then in the wood, he would have 180 pounds of crystal that he just went through a session of, you know, laboratory session with. And he would deliver it to this man. And then within a month, the man would come back with whatever million, $2 million, whatever the value of all that product was.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And they would meet up in the. Up in the woods, and that was their connection. And back then you had payphones on the streets. So everybody, Scott and I even did. We never called on our own phone. We always have a payphone. I had one in New Orleans and San Francisco, and he had that number and I had his payphone number wherever it was in Olympia or Seattle. And we had arranged days. We would call each other at certain time and we would talk on the pay phone for any updates or when I would be traveling up there or whatever news. But we would never call on our phone. We'd never show any kind of communication. We were, you know what I mean? Because it was already strong enough connection when I would be up there, people knew that I was there. And I'd lived there for a little over a year when I was building on his house before I moved away.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So now at this point, he's making, I mean, a couple million a year doing this. I mean, how much money is he making in the drug game?

[B]

I mean, I never got quantified it because it was not my business. But, you know, when I was helping him on the laboratories, he would always pay me 100 grand or something like that.

[A]

100 grand.

[B]

So, yeah, he would.

[A]

And that was for you. Just to kind of help out on the side.

[B]

Just to help him.

[A]

Yeah. So for him, I mean.

[B]

I mean, he was getting. I arrived from Chicago one time. This is before I moved out there. I took a trip in the summer. I arrived. This is when he was married. He was married to a rich Jewish woman from North Chicago, which he didn't. Had no idea what kind of culture he was jumping into. But she was a hot, nice, really good looking woman. I liked her a lot. She was a nice Woman And I come in and I told him I was arriving, I was coming. He knew I was coming, but he didn't know when or what. And I arrived there and nobody was up in the front house. And so I walked back through the forest and then the treehouse. And I went up to the tree house and opened the door and they're both there nude, with stacks of millions of dollars on the cable counting them out. And she's there nude, and she says, oh, come on in. You know, I just. I'll tell you what, I'll come back later. You guys take care of yourself. I'll be back in a minute. I gotta go. But, you know, it was. Yeah, you know, what can I say? I mean, this is like, this is like some fantasy story, but this was real. They only were married for a year and then he realized it was.

[A]

That wasn't for him. Well, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that wants to be in a committed long term relationship.

[B]

No, he can't. Because his world was too. It was too critical for a woman like that. And then she came from a lifestyle and he was not her acquaintance and family. They're cultured, they dress up nice. He would go to a good restaurant and have cut off jeans or something, you know what I mean? He wasn't a hit hippie, but he was an outlaw. He just didn't give a if school kept or not.

[A]

Right. He didn't like authority. He didn't like any of this.

[B]

He liked authority on a professional level.

[A]

Like he was respectful.

[B]

Oh yeah, he really, I mean, the FBI, CIA, Mossad, all of these. He studied them meticulously. He studied case files of the FBI on bank robberies specifically. And this is one of his reasons why he was so good. Because he knew what worked and what didn't work. He was very analytical and very fanatic about forensic. Leaving forensic evidence either for them or keep it from them. You know, what were some of the

[A]

craziest parties happened in this treehouse? Were there ever just full on wild nights?

[B]

I mean, maybe before I got there, but I don't think so. You see, you had a lot of the local people, you know, that would love to come and, you know, but he was kind of. The deeper he got into things, the more reclusive he became. And that's one of the reasons he wanted me there as well. Because when I moved from Chicago out there, I was in the front house. I was living there as we were building that. But it was also to keep people from coming in Just arbitrarily, all the time.

[A]

You had to build a gate at one point.

[B]

Yeah, you built a huge gate up in the front. And, you know, they would come and they would have to knock on my door, and I say, well, no, he's not here, or whatever. Whatever. I would say, no, we can't do that. And little by little, they realized I was kind of like a. An opponent, right. You know, and so that was no longer just come in and free, you

[A]

know, everyone have fun.

[B]

So little by little, especially with bank robbers, he didn't want people hanging out anymore, you know, except the people who knew. Who knew what we were doing, you know, who were indirectly or directly involved. You know what I mean?

[A]

Now, the story could end here, right? He could just go on to be, you know, a pretty notorious drug manufacturer and maybe get out of the game. Or maybe that blows up in his face, and that's what it is. But eventually he gets out of the drug game.

[B]

Well, the reason why was very simple. He was in, I think it was Africa. I was there. Yeah, I was there in Olympia for some reason, I can't remember. And this was before the bank robbery. And the guy he dealt with was murdered in Olympia. Some biker, because they knew he had money or whatever. And although they didn't get anything, but they murdered him. And when Scott found out about that, he said, he's done. He doesn't want anything more to do with drug. He didn't like that world. That's why he never had to deal in it. He just liked the chemistry. He loved the creation of what he did, and obviously the money. But he didn't like the culture. He didn't like that world. And so when he left, he didn't want to have anything more to do with it. And that's when he decided he had spoken to me. He said he's always fantasized about robbing banks, even as a kid. And, you know, you. I mean, I did too. Like, you see. Yeah, that would be cool. You know what I mean? I mean, it was like, you know what I mean? It's just sort of like. But it was a fantasy. Whereas he took it seriously and he took it. That's when he realized that's what he's

[A]

going to do now at this point, like, you hear stories about people that are, you know, high up, you know, drug kingpins, and they live this lavish lifestyle and they'll buy, you know, like, all these Italian mobsters and they got all these jewels and they have cars and all this stuff. It didn't seem like that's what he was doing. Was, was he using this money in any way for himself? Like leisurely traveled.

[B]

He traveled.

[A]

He was just traveling.

[B]

He just traveled and loved. And I mean, you know, he wasn't a Robin Hood or anything cliche as that. But no, one of his main fanatic thing was he drove around a 1989 van and he says, I don't want to have a new car because if I ever get forensic, if I ever get investigated on suspicion of anything, they're going to see I have a. Where do I get this money? Where do I get money for this van? Where do I get. And so what he would do, he lived off credit cards. He was always in debt. And one of his ex girlfriends was from Switzerland. She worked in the Swiss bank in Basel. And he would send all of the money to her. He had an account there, send his money to her, and she'd put it into his account. And then when he would run up the credit cards, which we would always use for preparation of a bank robbery, if he ever was investigated, they suspected him for something, they would, look, this guy's got debt up to his, up to his head. He's got an old, you know, he's his. He's got a mortgage that he can barely pay and he's got an old car. This guy's not a bank robber, you know what I mean? And then once he robbed a bank, you know, he would have her pay it all off.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

You know what I mean? And then start it up again, live off the credit cards. And he said, if I ever get killed or get whatever, if it all falls apart, I'll rob them twice.

[A]

Now, I just don't get like, he's a smart guy, he's sharp. You're sharp as well. At this point, all that money could just get invested into the Swiss bank account and go into the market. And he had millions of dollars and he has no expenses at all. And he could keep on traveling, making interest on his investments and just live the rest of his life. He never touches the principal.

[B]

It was never the money. It was never. He hated the concept of hoarding. He never liked hoarding. It was just something I can't. I mean, I even questioned that too. I mean, I had, you know, my money too. But back then, investing was a different concept from what it is today, in a sense. I don't know how to explain it. Money was much more valuable then. And you know, if I were to sell a sculpture for two or $3,000, $2,000 or $3,000 was a lot of money back then, right? I mean, you know, in my world, you know, not a lot chunk of

[A]

money now, but especially in the 80s, 90s.

[B]

Yeah. Today it's hardly anything. I mean, to me it's. You know what I mean? But back then it was. But his was the hoarding. He just wanted to live. And the concept of manufacturing or robbing banks, it was the fact of. Not because you could make a lot of money and you could show yourself as some big kingpin or some big. This. It was because you could show yourself. You could do it. We did it. I can do this. And people ask me, why did you do it? I said, because we can do it. I mean, if two people like us. I mean, he studied, he goes to the library, forensic library. FBI forensic library, studies case files, gets an idea. His main, you know, illumination came when he saw, I think it was Doubtfire, where she had the mask on. And he said, that's the, that's the clue. You can't go with. You can't go on with ski masks. You can't go in. Like, you've gotta look like a real person going in. But they can't, they don't know who you are.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And that's what brought him, that's what crystallized in him. This is, this is how you have to do it. And that's interesting.

[A]

It's just, I don't know, I think so many people, they look at, you know, any type of crime, like specifically high ranking crime, they're like, oh, you do this to get money. But for him and for you by proxy, it was really about the thrill of doing something new and interesting and getting away with it.

[B]

I guess it was, yeah, being able. It was a very, very creative thing. I mean, for me, because it was so foreign to my world, but I was always even in Europe, in the art world. I mean, I don't know, I mean, I don't want to be critical here, but the art world's a criminal world too. I mean, it's a laundry world. Especially during the 80s, right? I mean, it was between real estate and artworks. It was drug money laundering is all it was. And there's a lot of crime in it. I mean, of all of the shows I've had, I could probably say out of 20, maybe three, four were, you know, not some kind of problem going on with the gallery owners or this. You know, it's just such, it's such a waste of time after a while. I mean, unless you're One of the chosen that gets up. And I'm not saying I'm that great to be one of the chosen, but it's a political game as well. Right?

[A]

And for anyone that doesn't know, and I'm not even an expert, but maybe you can expound on this, but the fine art world, you have a contingent at the very least, where you have people that are operating in the gray areas of economics, and perhaps they have a drug empire or some other type of criminal empire where they have all this dirty money that can get traced back to them from their operations or at the very least get investigated. But if they put $500,000 into a painting and all of a sudden they have that painting and they keep it for a year and then they sell it for $400,000 or maybe $600,000, it's a marginal gain or loss. But for them, they've now cleaned the money through this artwork sale. Is that more or less how it works?

[B]

It's kind of like that. It's also, if you have a new artist that's not known yet, you'll have a gallery that wants it, and then you'll have their friend who will pay $100,000 for it, and then they'll put it to the auction saying, well, it was sold for $100,000. The auctioneer has it, selling it for whatever, 200. Now the original gallery owner goes and has a new price on the. It kind of is a grow. It's a game they play between one another. I mean, except for the fact of maybe, you know, classical art, you know, antiquities and stuff like that, that's another market value. But new contemporary artists, I mean, you have to build their market, and to build it, you just don't put a price tag on it and say, this is what it's worth. Nobody's going to believe it. So auctioning off artwork. So if you have, if you, you're a gallery owner and I'm a gallery owner, I have a new artist, you buy this for $100,000 and then you take it to the auction house and sell it, I get you the money back. It's a strange operation that takes place. I'm not saying that's everything, but of course it's during that time. And then you have drug money and a lot of these, you know, a lot of the galleries were, you know, they were run by the house, not the housewife, but the wife of a very wealthy guy. And that's a kind of a tax write off, whether they make money or not. And you know, they sell. They don't sell, you know, and it's a cultural thing. It's a kind of high society. High society. And you know, it, it. I mean, I'm not that way. I did it. I played the game, I did it. And you saw it up close.

[A]

But you're boy from Kansas City, I

[B]

never have a shot. I never exhibited there actually.

[A]

Right. That's funny.

[B]

Everywhere else, but not there.

[A]

Now, before jumping into the actual bank robbery operations, you told me that there was a formula that was used by Scott in making this product. Where did he get the formula from?

[B]

You know, that's a good question. But it was Adolf Hitler's formula for Christopher, what he gave to his fighter pilots. And he found that when he was studying at Evergreen College. This is what he told me. I mean, I go, you got to be crazy. I said, really? How did you get. I can't remember where he. How he got it, but I'm sure it's documented. I mean, but you have to be

[A]

able to synthesize and understand the chemistry.

[B]

Yeah, you've got to know the chemistry to be able to, you know, make it work. And I'm sure it's easy to Google now if you wanted, but still, you have to do it. And yeah, that, you know, I don't know. You know, back then he. You got to understand the. The degree. Today you have these people creating this garbage that they create. They go and buy Sudafed and they have 150 people that go buy Sudafed for them, and they smash up the Sudafed and take it through a boiling process or whatever it is they do to get the ephedrine out of it. Well, back then he had people who would go to pharmaceutical outlets, distributors that sell to pharmaceutical companies the actual raw product. He would get ephedrine, pure ephedrine from China, from the pharmaceutical. And this was a clandestine operation he had to do because he knew that feds would follow these people who purchased stuff. But he had some kind of layered scheme that he would have. He would pay somebody, I think, 50 grand to go purchase this stuff that he had ordered. And everything was back door. Everything was fake names, fake id, all this stuff to be able to get the root. You can't get that. You can't go to a pharmaceutical and do that today. It's just like, like going and trying to buy explosives. You can't do that. Whereas back then you could. But then it, you know, that was part of one of the problems he had. It got more and more difficult to buy that, the pure ingredients. That was also one of his. Because he would never do what they do today. He would never mess around with that. You know, whereas in Mexico, I guess, they're manufacturing this stuff and, you know, they have the direct line from China. So they probably. Because evidently the ephedrine comes from a plant that's in China, from what I understand. Yeah.

[A]

And I've heard that they don't. They are not. Some of these, like, Chinese corporations are not too concerned about funneling drugs potentially into the west and that they're.

[B]

Well, I wouldn't imagine they would make a lot of money. But, I mean, you know, the actual pharmaceutical outlets that sell this stuff. There was one huge out one in Chicago that he did surveillance on when he came to visit me. And he wanted to try to get one of the employees to be able to be able to go in there and actually rob the place, take it over, you know, at nighttime, go in and get the ephedrine. You know what I mean? I don't know. I can't remember. It's in my mind. It's a little vague, but, you know, he knew the difficulty was coming, that that was. This was before his partner got killed, you know, so he was still looking into the future. Right. How he was going to do that, because he could see it was clamping down.

[A]

So he gets out of the drug game completely, and Scott says, you know what? Let's take up a new hustle. When does he come to you and say, I think we're going to rob a bank?

[B]

No, he came to me in Chicago. He arrived. It was his summer day, and I was working in my studio, and he came in and all happy. You know, he'd always. He loved Chicago because it was just party whenever you come into town. It was like, party for him. You know, the cities. And so we ended up going down to this Italian restaurant he liked a lot. You know, I'd taken him there before, and we were there. And he starts telling me about his first bank robbery, which he did with Mark Biggins and Mark Biggins's girlfriend. And, you know, because he wanted to try it and they were there and, you know, but they. It was. The whole thing was a boondoggle. It was just a complete. You know, they were lucky they didn't get caught.

[A]

Yeah, the documentary does a good job kind of explaining the tale where it's like, okay, you come in with me, Mark, and then you control the room. And then Mark's like, everyone get down. And then Scott's like, Everyone stand up because he doesn't want people laying down. And then. Then the whole thing goes off the rails. They go to a car. It's not the right car. They run across a golf course. They try to find the new spot. They get in the car and they drive away.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. Finally, the girl, she messed up. She was supposed to be at the first rendezvous points. She wasn't there. She was at the second rendezvous. So they had to run to get to her and everything. Anyway, he realized that, but it worked,

[A]

and he made 20,000.

[B]

He made whatever he made. It worked, and he realized that, but he realized that. That he can't do this with these people. At first, Mark was not the type for it. He's Mark's girlfriend, Bethany. She was. She loved it. I mean, she was. You know, she. She. She loved it. Scott said, man, she would be a great Bonnie. You know what I mean? She loved it. There's. Mark was just. He says, this is not me. I can't do this. I can't do this. Poor guy.

[A]

So when he's telling you this over, you know, a pasta sauce, I'm just shaking my head.

[B]

I'm saying, what the. I said, how much did you make? And he said, oh, what was it? 28,000, something like that? And I go, you did all that for 20? You did all that for that kind of money after what life you've been living? He says, it's not that. It says, that's just the beginning. I got a lot to learn and I got a lot. But, man, there's millions in this, and I love it. And, you know, it was the suspense. It was the action. I mean, the action, in a sense, we never approached it crazy, like, with adrenaline. We never had, you know, before an operation, before take a bank takedown. We. Two weeks throughout our whole surveillance period and everything planning. We never drank, you know, none of that. We were just very sober. It was very analytical, very programmed, and we didn't want to have a mistake made because of drinking or taking, because you were on marijuana, you know, some stupid stuff, you know, that you could blame. So that was our thing. But he just loved the dynamic, you know, energy that, you know, the success. To be able to beat them at what they do, at what they think they protect when they don't. And he didn't like banks, and he didn't like insurance companies. He didn't like them as. In principle, he didn't like them. Not like he was, you know, want to go blow him up or any stupid thing like that. But when you go after the system in a way that is nonviolent, and you use their methodology against them, that is more compromising and more dangerous to the system than is. If you go in with guns, raging and crazy, all of that, that's like Hollywood cliche. And they want that to happen because then they can have the, you know, FBI, then police, and everybody can go in and finally capture you, which they will do either dead or alive. You're going to get captured, and then they become the heroes, which, you know, they are in. In the eyes of, you know, everyday Americas, you know. But when you do it, what they do themselves better than they do it.

[A]

That's a problem.

[B]

That's a real problem. Yeah. And they don't like it. And, you know, that. That to them, they're very. They were very vindictive with us, which I can understand. You know, I'm not, You know, but

[A]

when he tells you this, does he immediately invite you in? Are you a little apprehensive at first, or are you just like, all right?

[B]

No, I'm. I have. I was having my property up for sale in Chicago, and I was thinking of leaving. And, you know, I'd been out to the treehouse, you know, out doing what we did before. And then he offered, you know, offered me to build the front place, you know, move everything out there. And, you know, I mean, it was a whole studio. I had Marvel, I had everything. And, you know, for me to have a place with all the materials and machines, machines and tools and, you know, I mean, sculptures, and took two truckloads for me to drive in, you know, back and forth. And, you know, his property has a huge barn, and I could store stuff. I had, you know, it takes something for me to make a move. And I said, okay, yeah, we'll do it. And he said, but the main reason was he wanted me to sculpt his prosthetics, sculpt his facial prosthetic components. And he wanted me to do it really well, because it's about a three week process to do it properly, you know, back then with the latex prosthetics and everything. And so, you know, you have to cast his face, then you got to sculpt. Cast that, you know, and then you got to sculpt it, and then you got to recast that. And then, you know, it's. Then you got to have multiple. You know, he had his. In his studio. In his makeup studio to have multiple noses and chins and cheeks and different components that we use, you know, and Then, you know, the first wig I made for him was just a cheap, one of those cheap wigs you get. And I said, man, that's got, you know, we can't use that. So I went and bought three or four different really real hair wig, women's wigs. And then we, you know, cut them and sculpted them for his head. Different, different looks for him at different times and stuff like that.

[A]

So now was he asking you to be an accomplice in the actual operations or was he just asking you like, hey, make me some disguises. And then it progressed.

[B]

It started, it started as disguises in Chicago and you know, building the place. But he also, when I got out there, you know, he explained to me that, you know, a person that was going to work with him, whom he never. It didn't work out and I never knew who it was. I kind of had my idea but, you know, but it was never a problem and he wanted me to. With a non, you know, a role that was running the scanners and running the radio communication between him.

[A]

Say the scanners. You mean police scanners?

[B]

Yes, police scanners. Yeah.

[A]

Listening on their frequency to see where they are and what they're doing.

[B]

Yeah. You know, for any call that comes out of a bank robbery. And you know, then the communication we had together while he's in the bank with our Motorolas, you know what I mean, our two way radios and you know, in the beginning it was a non compromising thing and, and like I said, we were friends and so I knew he was going to do this and you know, you kind of think morally, I mean, I didn't think morally of this. I thought more risk level.

[A]

I mean, what's going to happen to me?

[B]

Yeah, do I want to do this for, you know, this kind of thing? But then at the same time, I don't know how to explain it. It was like this aura that came about and especially when you're on the property around the treehouse and around this whole. It's a sanctuary. The place is a sanctuary. It's a entity or a world outside of the world.

[A]

You feel invincible.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You feel protected.

[B]

Yeah, it's a protection. It's something that's there, you're in it. And then when you leave, you go into the other world and you deal with what you deal with, whether it's party, whether it's a restaurant, whatever it is, and then you come back to it and you're in this womb, kind of like secure womb. And the treehouse created that ambient. But the first Robbery I did, which it's detailed in the book. You kind of hear our dialogue when he actually approaches me in the treehouse. And I said, yeah, okay, let's do it. You know what I mean? And it was a non compromising thing for me. It was not a risk and it worked.

[A]

Why is it not a risk? What do you mean?

[B]

As far as me getting caught, it was the way. It was the way we had it worked out. If he were to get caught, we were separated. I had a vehicle, I actually was in his van at the time and you know, he was in another vehicle. And if he were ever to get caught, I would just return to the place and you know, I was there. And at that time I had my Achilles tendon got cut and I was on a crutch. And so that was kind of like who would be robbing a bank with a crutch? And you know, the whole, the circumstances are just, you know, you're not doing that. And plus my background, I mean, who I am, I'm not. Do you see what I mean? There was no risk.

[A]

I see. So if the police came and investigated you, let's say he gets jammed up and you go up to the tree house and they show up and they go, hey, your friend that built the treehouse, he's in prison for robbery. You'd be like, I had no idea. He never did that to me. I never saw this. And then you'd have a case to get out.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, they would never look at anything. There would be no. I mean, my background at that point was the first one I was around and I was there. There's too much residual evidence of me moving and everything else that would never come to that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And of course it didn't. And then when one thing happened after the other, this thing would built up and built up. And in the beginning, you have to understand, I was learning as I was going, just like in the laboratories, you know, I was learning and I became very analytical to it. I became very focused. And with this I said, listen, I'm not going to be doing this, Scott, for you or me with this Mickey Mouse 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, no more. We got to go for the vaults. It's the vault. It's hundreds, it's millions, or I don't want to do it. It's more embarrassing than anything else. If I were to get caught, it's just embarrass to me to think I got caught on some stupid. You know what I mean? It's just spend Whatever. However many years, I didn't know what the law was. But, you know, it didn't sound good if. Even if it was a year, a day didn't sound good to me.

[A]

Right. So, yeah, if anyone doesn't know, you obviously go into a bank and you have the bank tellers that have a certain amount of money behind the register, basically. And then in the vault is where the actual money.

[B]

That's where. That's where the real bank is.

[A]

Millions of dollars depending on the day.

[B]

And we learned. We had to learn as we went. You know, there's no school of bank robbery. So you learn as you go, and you learn what you can, what you should do. And mistakes help you because you learn what not to do after a mistake. And, you know, you refine it and, you know, there's all. There's many tiers of what you do. You know, the vehicles we would buy, I would hire some. I would go look for vehicles on the open market. You know, they. You know, those little books they have in cities, you know, for people who sell their own cars from their house. I would go look at it, and if there's one. One that I would find that I liked, then I would say, well, you know, I'll be back. I'll see. I got to go look at a couple more cars, and I'll let you know if I'm in, if I can want to buy it. And if I wanted it, I would go and I'd hire somebody from a bar or something. I'd say, here's $1,000. Can you go buy this car for me? And they would go buy the car. It would look like either a woman or. Or somebody that didn't look anything like us. Give him $1,000 to go buy the car. And I said, just go up there, buy it, and bring it back to this point to wherever I told him, parking lot somewhere, to shopping mall or whatever, and then take the car back. We'd clean the car up, do what we needed to do with it, and used it. One we had we got for $500. I think it was a little Japanese car. We used that for. I think we ended up getting about total with that one vehicle, about six or seven hundred thousand dollars over the period of time until we got rid of it. And then I just said, it's about time. There could be somebody who saw this car at some time that we're not aware of. So we get rid of it.

[A]

Now, at this point, like right before the first robbery, you just sold a property in Chicago. You got some money from working with Scott on this, the first operation. You got a sizable little nut right there. Right? Like, financially, you're probably doing all right. You have one daughter at this point. Do you have other kids?

[B]

No, just one daughter.

[A]

Just the one daughter. And are you divorced or you're married?

[B]

Yeah, divorced.

[A]

So at that point, like, you have a daughter, how old is she?

[B]

She was at that time. She must have been 9, 8 or 9? Yeah, 8, 9, 10, something like that.

[A]

And that was there a little party that's like, ah, this risk isn't worth what I'm putting up at stake. You know, like, I have money. I. I'm functional artist. I'm doing the art world, which is pretty rare in general to be a successful artist. And you're doing it, and you got a young kid. Is there a little party that's like, I can't do it, or did you not even. It. Did it not even cross your mind?

[B]

No. I went awol, you know, when I left Chicago, I went awol. It wasn't because of this. It was just the whole buildup for many, many, many different reasons. It was just a. You understand, when you step into this world, when you step into this other world, it's an experience unlike anything else. And to come back, I mean, I look at myself now and I'm in the. I'm in this world and it's boring. Yeah, I mean, I've seen it. I've. You know, you meet people, you do this, you see that, you go to restaurants. It's all the same. It's not. I don't know how to explain it.

[A]

It's.

[B]

When we were there, when we would be in a restaurant together or whatever, it was some different thing that went on. I don't know how to explain it. We were. I always say to people, we were like two comets that. That we're traversing the universe and we hit each other and we're trailing together for a while, and then boom, we split up. And we were electrifying when we were together and whether it was with women, whether it was a lifestyle, whether. Whatever it was, building properties, doing what we did, it wasn't normal. There was nothing normal about it. I mean, you dealt with normal, you know, normalcy on the cause. You were in the. You had to deal with the world. But. But I mean, even his tree house, he would pay off $5,000 a year to the. To the county in Olympia, to the county inspectors, to the inspection office, you know, inspects properties for building so that they Wouldn't come out and condemn it. I mean they would all take. He had politicians, lawyers up there, spend the weekend. He would let them go up with their girlfriends or mistresses and all this. You don't understand the kinds of people who knew he had this, that wanted this experience and it's embarrassing that he was. And they didn't know he was a bank robber. They didn't know he was. They thought at the most maybe dealt marijuana, you know what I mean? That kind of the northwest, stupid stuff, you know what I mean? But they didn't know who because he was too nice of a guy. He was too well spoken, educated and didn't act like a gangster. Drove around in an old van that he was mountain climb. I mean we mountain climb. He was, he was a, you know, just fanatic mountain climber, you know, and survivalist in his mind.

[A]

Now you probably wouldn't have done this without him.

[B]

No.

[A]

Would he have done it without you?

[B]

No, it wouldn't have been the same. No, he wouldn't have. Not the bank robbery level. No, it would have. Something would have happened tragically, I think. I mean maybe he would have found somebody, but I don't think so. It's just not. I mean we had other friends that we hired. Hired to do certain non risk things for us like sit in a car with a radio on an avenue that I couldn't monitor. Sometimes a bank would have ingress and outgress, you know, more than one. So we would have to hire somebody to sit at a certain point. If the police, which we called mamas. If a mama comes with red lights and speeding. Here's one code. If they were just a normal cruiser, don't say anything, you know what I mean? Because you don't want to draw him out of a bank for nothing, you know what I mean? So we would hire them, but they all knew. But because his life was so accommodating for people that were involved that knew this, they would never rat him out or anything like that because they, in his fact, they were involved as well. So they probably thought legally that if I did I might be, you know, jeopardize as well.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But just because of the fact that, you know, they would, they were, it was, it was a life that everybody shared the tree. Everybody was. Those kinds of people were at the treehouse.

[A]

But the two of you were the. Yeah, we were dyad.

[B]

Dyad. Yeah, we were inseparable. I mean people thought we were brothers when we would go into places. You know. On the other hand, we Never traveled. We would never, you know, like when I lived in New Orleans or something, if he flew in, you know, he was very non discreet. We never, we were together. We would go to places, bars, restaurants and girlfriends and all of that. But we didn't forensically tie in addresses, phone numbers and all of that sort of stuff. We were always kept things separate.

[A]

Guys don't really talk about what happens as you get older, but you start to notice it. Your energy is lower, gym recovery takes longer. You're doing the same workouts, eating pretty well, but not getting the same results. And for a while I just thought, all right, I'm getting older. But for men, testosterone can naturally decline as early as your 30s. And when that happens, it can affect energy, muscle recovery, focus, and how your body stores fat. And that is why I started taking Mars for Men. I've been on it for a few months now and I've noticed more consistent energy, better workouts, better recovery and sharper focus going into the summer. Mars Men is just a natural supplement. No synthetic hormones, no stimulants, with ingredients like Tonga Ali, Sheilajit, zinc boron and a bunch of other stuff designed to support healthy testosterone levels. It's made in the USA third party tested every batch and backed by a 90 day money back guarantee. And for a limited time, the listeners of this program will get 50 off for life plus free shipping and three free gifts@ Mengotomars.com that is Mengotomars.com and after you purchase, tell them that Mark and Christos from the campsite sent you. It really helps. Now let's get back to the show. So this first bank robbery goes pretty well.

[B]

Well, it was just a simple little. Yeah, it was, it was the. He'd actually. It was the same bank. His first bank robbery was with the. The same one. He went back and did that one when I got out there.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

He went to the same one.

[A]

I mean, I feel like that's a no no, man.

[B]

We did two different banks three times.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

One of them we got over $700,000 from in total. Another one, you know, I think about 603 times. And you know. Yeah, but there was a psychology to it. There's a methodology of when you do it, how you do it.

[A]

Yeah. What are you looking for? How do you case a bank? What were your.

[B]

Seattle was extraordinary. It was a very opportune place. You have a city that people ask us. I mean, I'm backing up. Why do you keep doing it in the same place? You get known it was because of that because everybody knew Hollywood. The police, the FBI. And the FBI would go into all the banks and brief them on how to react if Hollywood comes in.

[A]

Right. And Hollywood, of course, is the moniker of Scott.

[B]

It's Scott, yeah, it's. They knew him now, you know, the guy with the scene get up on,

[A]

you know, and they called him Hollywood

[B]

because it was Shawn Johnson gave him that moniker because, you know, he had prosthetics, he had makeup, he looked like this Hollywood kind of character, you know.

[A]

Can you pull up a picture? There is some photos of him going into banks with these prosthetics. If you just search, obviously his same name, Scott Scrollock, maybe like, you know, robbery photo or something like that.

[B]

That's one of his famous ones on the book cover, right?

[A]

Yeah, this one right there.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

Kind of creepy looking.

[B]

Hey, I tell you, the first time I saw him, he came out of the woods and I go, oh, my God almighty, what is this? You know, I mean, I could see that it was Scott because of his gait and, you know, his body shape. He was. We were the same size and. But, you know, the phenomena of this is that when he would go into a bank, people would. Would kind of glance at him and then they would glance away. And the phenomenon was it wasn't that they thought he was going to rob them in the very beginning, it was because they thought he had a skin defect. So they didn't want to embarrass him. There you go. Yeah, they didn't want to have to embarrass him.

[A]

Wow. Now, was he meant to look intimidating or meant to just look normal? Like, what was the main goal?

[B]

It all depended on the weather and the time of the time of the year. Sometimes I would have him in hoodie, you know, in parkas with a hood if it was raining and snowing, and other times it would just be a sport coat. So we changed up the clothes and everything. But no, he wanted just go in and look like a normal guy going in and, you know, so they don't just trip the alarm right away. And that never happened.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it never happened.

[A]

Now, the first one he did, he put on a Reagan mask.

[B]

Yeah, that was because he hadn't had prosthetics and that was.

[A]

Was picking Reagan intentional?

[B]

No, I don't. I don't know. I wasn't involved. But I think that was Mark who picked that one or maybe Scott. I don't remember how that worked out, but they did it because, you know, it was the easiest thing to do for Mark. He didn't have prosthetics. And. And I don't remember what Scott did. I don't know if he. I think he started his own. He had some loosely made prosthetics. That's why he came to me in Chicago, was to do it much better.

[A]

But I just wonder if there's like a political message there.

[B]

No, I don't think so. I think it was just because convenience. Convenience and situation and, you know, he. You. It's hard for me to remember at this point, but, you know, it was not something that he liked, but it was out of. Out of necessity at the time, I think. You know what I mean?

[A]

Now you're looking at these different banks, trying to case them. And what do you need? Do you need specific types of roads? Do you need a specific type of teller? Do you need a busy hour? Do you need a quiet hour? Like, what is the thought process?

[B]

Okay, it's all of that, actually. You know, Seattle is very unique in the sense that you have these commercial areas, small commercial, small or medium sized commercial. You know, you have restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, this, and then there'll be a bank or two, small branch bank. And then around that is all neighborhoods, all residential neighborhoods that filtrate money into there. And depending on the part of town which. Most of Seattle's pretty upscale. You know, it's not even back then. And so that is a perfect place for money volume. And then you have a labyrinth of roads as far as getaways. And of course, each geography of each bank depends on our getaway, how we do it, how we arrange it, how we, you know, whether we want the bank to see the car he leaves in so that we leave that for the FBI, or he's not to be seen in the car he's getting away in. And, you know, I shadow him sometimes a block or two blocks away. You know, it just all depends, the geography of how the getaway is. And I was always there in another car in case it was, you know, there had to be an abortion, you know, he had to abort and get out or whatever, that I could somehow rendezvous with him. And that was always an option. Only twice did we ever. Did he ever leave his vehicle to get into mine. And that was in the last one and one other one in Portland. Outside of that, it was always two separate vehicles, which was the safest thing to have.

[A]

Right. And as far as, like, egress of the doors, did you want it to have double doors or one door? What were the safety precautions that these banks had that you were trying to circumvent.

[B]

Basically, for him, it was the position of where the vault was in. In relationship to the actual lobby, where the people. Because he was alone, so he's having to control the lobby, control the tellers, and be in the vault to get the money. And so he had to be able to theatrically convince everybody, don't leave the premises, and make sure nobody else came in. And if they did come in to stand in line with the other patrons. And, you know, don't. You know, you have to make sure everybody control everybody. And he did this nonviolently. He did this with persuasiveness and psychology, showing no fear. And psychologically, people are more intimidated that this person knows what he's doing. And I don't want to cross it. Do you see what I'm saying?

[A]

There's a plan here that I don't want to get in the way of. Versus like, this is a rogue crazy guy.

[B]

Yeah, it's not a guy coming in swinging, afraid, already nervously. And this and that. This is somebody who knows he has language, uses terminology that only a banks would know about. I mean, I don't know how. We hired a woman who worked with us sometimes. She was Scott's old girlfriend, and we all became very close friends, and we hired her to work in the seafirst banks there. Gave her $40,000, I think, to work there. And she was there for a year. And so she gave us all of the. All of the protocol, bank protocol, robbery protocol, all of the terminology. So Scott could use that. It's actually still buried out there on his property.

[A]

What's buried?

[B]

The catalogs and all of the stuff that came from the banks that she gave us. Yeah, they have to train from.

[A]

She wasn't working at a bank.

[B]

Yeah, she was.

[A]

She worked when he was dating her.

[B]

No, no, that was when? Long before. In the drug thing.

[A]

Right. They're dating and then he says, hey, go get this job so we can get the information.

[B]

Well, this. No, they weren't dating, dating then. This was years after they were dating.

[A]

But did he encourage her to get the job?

[B]

Yeah, he paid. We paid her. We both did.

[A]

I mean, that's.

[B]

He convinced her.

[A]

Yeah, it's not like she was working there. And he was like, hey, by the way.

[B]

No, no, no. She had her own little business. She did a sort of business up and down from Seattle to Portland, Some kind of organic food business or something.

[A]

And he says, hey, go work.

[B]

She didn't want to do it. She says, that's A boring job, she says, I know, but we need the information. We need to know when they start putting electronic tracers in the banks for us. And you'd be there and you could tell us. Wow.

[A]

And so did you guys ever hit that bank? Bank?

[B]

No, we never hit hers. No. The c first we did. Yeah. One of our main banks. Yeah, right. But hers particularly. No, we never did. It was too risky, though.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Well, I mean, you never know. You know what I mean? You just. With the FBI, you don't play around with that kind of thing. I mean, the FBI is going to interrogate. They're always aware of inside information, inside employees helping out, certain things.

[A]

So the tellers will get investigated, they're

[B]

going to be questioned, and she may. May slip up, she may not. You never know. You know what I mean? There's no reason for it. And then the one one she worked in was. I think it was in downtown, kind of was kind of a more complicated one to do alone.

[A]

So. But yeah, like, that's such a clever little. Such a clever way to get information,

[B]

like, hey, well, yeah, it is, because it's like flight attendants, you know, they go through terrorist protocol, takeover protocol, and you have to have certain things you. You're trained to do and not do. And it's the same thing with tellers. You do this, you do this, you don't do this. And, you know, and after the FBI, when she told us that the FBI came and briefed everybody, just go along with him, get him out of there. If he says he wants this, just let him do it and get him out of there, and we'll take it from there.

[A]

And you're thinking, great, perfect. Wow.

[B]

I mean, he had people, he had tellers. When he ran out of his bag, when he ran out of space in his bag, tell her I said, can I bring you another bag, sir? And he goes, yes, but just make sure you don't have any tracers or any dye packs in there. No, sir, we don't have those in this bank. And stuff like that.

[A]

I mean, just wild.

[B]

I mean, they just. And so you ask, why to go to another city? I mean, he thought of it when I was in San Francisco to look for banks down there. And I go, man, this city, man, to get involved. The culture of each city is different. Chicago even looked when I was living there before, you know, And I said, man, I don't like it here, you know, I don't want to mess with this. I don't want to, you know, and he didn't either. It was just a different. It's a different soul, a different energy. And Seattle, because it's a very liberal city. I'm not saying that the police are like that, but it's just a different psychology. And the people living there, working there, it's different.

[A]

Perhaps a kindness or a passivism in a way.

[B]

Affability. Yeah. Even Portland was a little bit more off standish.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

It was a little bit less accommodating, you know?

[A]

Right.

[B]

But when you. Any of any city is doable, but you've got to invest in it.

[A]

Right. You have to understand the soul of the city.

[B]

The soul. You got to live in it. You got to know the city geography very well. Scott knew. He'd lived up in the Northwest for long before I got there. So he knew the city front and back. And the psychology, the people, the. You know, he had so many people that he knew, you know, all over, and it was a safe haven. What can you say? And plus, we had the tree house, and it was a perfect. You know, if you live in a city and you got to go somewhere and you're robbing a bank in your backyard, you know what?

[A]

Right. Someone driving by, and they're like, oh, that car. I noticed that car. Remember that car? There's so many ways. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, our cars. After, after. If we kept a car after one robbery, we would have places to cover it up, and we even had other people, we would pay that we could keep them on their property. They didn't know what we were doing. But we say we don't want it stored at our house because we have people walking through. You know, we just want, you know, yeah, sure. You know, you pay them whatever, a couple hundred dollars a month or something. I don't know. You know, wow. Just to keep the car there, you know, and then, wow.

[A]

So robbery number one, he's wearing this Reagan mask, and it is a big cluster, but it works out. But at this point, the authorities are like, oh, this might have just been a crazy guy. Who knows? Robbery two, it's a little bit more polished. You're involved. And now the police are like, okay, maybe there's a connection between these two. How many robberies? Until the FBI steps in and they go, hey, this is one guy doing multiple robberies, and his name's Hollywood.

[B]

Well, it didn't happen. Shawn didn't step into it. It never got to the FBI until, I think, the fifth or sixth robbery, he said. And that was when our first vault robbery.

[A]

And so you're doing the tellers for a company.

[B]

Yeah, because he was insecure about the. Scott was very, you know, meticulous about when he didn't have information. You didn't have what we have today where you can just Google something or go, you know, information's readily available. Everything, terrorism stuff, all that stuff is available, you know, so he was very skeptical about going and asking certain questions, you know, the electronics place or whatever. And he didn't know what the frequency. You know, we have our Motorolas, which are on a certain private frequency. When you buy these Motorolas, it's not like going to, I don't know, to just going. Buying your. Yeah, Radio Shack back then. These are Motorola, the high end ones. So you had to go to an electronics place to have them program your frequency in there. And those frequencies were on 400/something megahertz. The police were on 460/something megahertz. Depending on the district, it was a little bit different, but there were. I believe it was 460 or 480 MHz back then. But you know, the private radios, you go and you have a electronics guy and so you gotta. That's okay because we, we were in construction. We did construction. Yeah, we got a construction. We always had stories like that, you know what I mean? So it's normal. So the FBI came in after the. When we did the first vault. Okay. What we did, Scott would. To verify. I want to make sure our walkie talkies were received when I'm in the vault. Because I was saying, listen, man, this has got to end. I can't be doing this.

[A]

Oh really?

[B]

Yeah. I said, I can't do this 10, 15, $20,000 stuff. 8,000. I said, it's just stupid because at

[A]

this point you made maybe like 100,000, 150 or something total.

[B]

I don't even know. I don't even think that. No, I don't. I don't even think that much money. But it was just the ridiculousness of it. And I kept. He wanted to do the vaults, but he was insecure about the frequency of being called out. And I said, you know, look, the vault door is open. It doesn't make any sense. So what we did at nighttime, he went into a. I was way out in the street somewhere in my car and he went into some grocery store and went back into the freezer. I don't know.

[A]

I did.

[B]

He went back and shut the door in the freezer or whatever and we talked and it was good. Okay. So we assumed that would be like approximately. Approximately. But you know, the vault door is going to be open anyway. It's not going to be shut.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So that appeased him.

[A]

And can you explain in more detail the hazard of doing a vault robbery versus a teller robbery?

[B]

Zero. It's less hazardous to do the vault because they don't have dye packs. They don't have anything. And then. And like we said, because we knew there were no tracers, we always waited for them to have the electronic tracers put in, but they never did. And there's zero risk. It's the same thing. If the call comes out, he leaves the vault just like he leaves a teller. And you don't have the positive. All banks have little dye packs. Even though he made sure they never gave them to him. Except one. He insisted on taking it. It was a silly robber. He went into this one, and the woman there was a stack of twenties. Banded twenties, you know. And he said, why aren't you giving me that? And she goes, you want that, sir? He goes, well, of course. And she gave it to him. And then it had a dye pack. So when he got in the car, he had to throw the whole bag out.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, are the bills marked? Is that a time where people know what bills are being sent?

[B]

Yeah, we always laundered our money. They had Mark Bill's serial numbers. So if they ever caught us, the only way they could get us is they caught us and we had that. That money on us. So what we did is that I. I did most of the laundering either in Reno or in Vegas and just at casinos. Yeah. Yeah. What I. What we did is we did sports betting, and you bet same amount of money on each teams that are playing each other. So say 5500 on Oakland and 5500 on Kansas City, or if they're playing or whatever, one wins, one loses. And if it's a push, which means. And I'd always put the money on even numbers. Never like on a three and a half points. It'd always be a three or two or one or whatever. It was an even number. So if it did tie, you'd get all your money back. So one would lose, one would win, and you'd lose 5% if. If it was that. You see what I'm saying?

[A]

But now all the money you get back is clean.

[B]

It's all clean.

[A]

And you just spent.

[B]

And not only that, but you can. Some of it we would take. I would. The following week, I would go. I wouldn't do it all in one weekend. I would go every weekend I'd fly down and some of the money I would. Would have them send us a check so that we could deposit in the bank for imp. You know, for. For employment, you know. You know, it was legit taxes and some of you get in cash. You know, I would decide whatever you wanted. So we had a, you know, there's a gambling on your tax returns. You can be a gambler, right?

[A]

It's just your occupation.

[B]

Yeah, it's your occupation.

[A]

Did you ever have any crazy wins?

[B]

Like big wins?

[A]

Yeah. Like while you were gambling normal wins.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

Or were you?

[B]

Oh, we always, always. I mean we always had our own gamble side pod. Yeah, we would always. I would always do. I rarely. I would fly down on a Saturday morning. If it was NFL, I would fly down on a Saturday morning and then have fly back in the, in the evening, you know, back to Seattle and you know, do all place all the bets. So you'd have to go to all the casinos. You know what I mean? It depends on how much I had. But back then you could fly with 100,000, 200,000 a ton time in your. On your person and you know, it would already be pre bundled. I'd have either depending on the like a Super bowl, it wouldn't matter. You could have bet $20,000 at a time. It's normal, you know what I mean? But the normal weak NFL or NBA, you know, 2200, 3500 is kind of like, you know, 3300, I mean, is kind of getting at the top. But if you go up to 10, you know, they look at it and then they get the pit boss and they come and they, you know. But it's a game too, you know, when you get a. If you bet a lot on one team, then they'll change the point spread, which will give you an advantage to go to another casino and bet that amount on the other one. So you have this, I mean, I would say probably 20 to 30% of the time we would get all our money back.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Just because you play that right. But you got to do it. You got to go. And I'd go on a Saturday, do all the bets. So if you got two teams playing each other, you bet the one team in one casino and the other team in another. So I'd have lists, you know, the team's playing and I'd have, okay, I go to this casino for these teams and these casinos for these teams and you know, then you have to go. It's a little bit of a work, but it's Safe, I mean, right.

[A]

And there's never any hairy situation with those where they were like can we sit you down and bring into a back room and chat with you? Nothing like that. No. Wow.

[B]

Because you're not. If I were to go into casino and two teams are playing each other.

[A]

Yeah, of course.

[B]

And I put 2,500 here and 2500. What are you doing?

[A]

Yeah. This doesn't make any sense. So what are you up to?

[B]

Yeah, what are you up to? Yeah, of course. But when you're in separate places then you know it's wow. Yeah, that's the way you do it.

[A]

So these tell robberies you go on pretty well. And then it's like all right, it's time for the vault. Now one of the things that the doc points out is that the vault robberies can be tricky because you can't control the situation. So you're going in and all of a sudden you have all these people in the lobby. You got an old guy, you got a pregnant lady, you got. Got the teller, maybe there's a security guard. And then you go down into the vault, someone has to unlock it. And then now you're in there alone and you have two minutes to get everything you can and then get out. And you have no idea what's going on upstairs. Obviously you have, you know, the comms

[B]

but you know, you're assuming a vaults downstairs are usually on the same floor. Yeah, they're always on the same floor. From my everyone he. I mean we would case we would have actually the woman that worked in the bank. We would have her go in and case out and give us a diagram of the banks what it was. But he was always made sure that the vault was accessible. But like I said it was theatrics. He controlled the situation.

[A]

What was his script?

[B]

He would. I mean I'm. You know the book better portrays it because I remember his what he would tell me it's been so long, but he would go in. Okay, this is Rob. Everybody step back please. Go against the wall. Come out of your sir manager. And the the his off his table in the middle of the lobby. Come over here, sir. Everybody stand in line.

[A]

Did he have a weapon?

[B]

Well, he would show his gun. He would holster his gun. This is a bank robbery. This is going to be over with quickly. This all just be calm and co. And he'd put it back in. He never went like this and waved it around and scared people. He was always secure, non afraid, never edgy. And if there was an obstacle, he Would hop on the counter and jump over or something like that. You know, if there was a, if the teller wasn't there to unlock the gate to the, the vault, he would just jump over. I mean we, we jogged regularly. Jogged regularly. You know, you're building all day at night, you know what I mean? I mean we were in great shape and he, he better than I and we, you know, mountain climbed and all kinds of stuff. And were there ever security guards? No, only in the, sometimes in the downtown banks, the big banks downtown. But that didn't bother me. He wanted one with one. He wanted one.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because he just wanted the, the challenge.

[A]

But I mean the security guard might have a gun.

[B]

Well, they all have guns. But you go in and you have to do it and then you have zip tie them and all of that. But then, you know, I, I, I'm not trying to, but I always tried to avoid, I said, why do you want to escalate something that doesn't have to be escalated when we can do what you're doing in a non escalating way? You know, I mean, you're doing it perfectly. You're learning as you're going, you know, and you're fine tuning everything. It's like, why, I mean, you know, you never know what. Plus you're having to the whole thing of going into bank and interfering in somebody's world. I never liked that. And I mean, he didn't either. You know, where you're going into somebody's job and you're making them do something they're not, you know, they shouldn't, that's their livelihood. And I get that, you know, it's not a fun thing to have happen to you, you know what I mean? And, but you know, it is what it is. And you know, he did it as well as possible. I mean, there were sometimes, you know, some people, I mean there were some interesting. We were at a billiards place called Belltown in Seattle. And after a day of surveillance we went in and it was a nice upscale billiards place. And we went in there and it was cordoned off everywhere. And the whole place there was only two tables open for the public. Like the rest was a happy hour for the C first banks. And they were probably 90% women in there because most of the women are tellers. And so we get one of the tables was obviously by another table occupied by, you know, five or six women, you know, playing pool together. And he goes, Myers, don't say a word, don't say anything. Don't I know how you are. And I go, come on, man, don't play. Anyway, we're there and after a while, you know, they serve drinks and food and, you know, it's one of those, those nice billiards places. And we've got a table, you know, these high top tables. And you're sitting there and they're right there too. And so you end up talking. It's obvious, you know, it's just. And we asked what is all going, what's going on here? You know, and they all were the. From the C first Bank. They sponsored a happy hour for us, you know, all the employees in Seattle. I go, really? I go. Then after a while I go, God, do you guys ever have that crazy guy, that bank? What's that bank robber guy? Oh, yeah, he came in. Yeah, he came in one time. He came to robbed our bank. He was the nicest guy. It was so strange, you know, they started talking and Scott, I mean, his voice, that was what he's concerned with. He got mad at me after that. I said, come on, man. I said, if they didn't see you right away, they're not going to see you ever. You know what I mean? And he's right there, right.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

You see how beautiful that is? How poetical that is crazy. I mean, no. And we were talking and I mean, I didn't go into detail. I acted stupid. Like, what's it like? That must be hard. No, you know, he does, he's kind of nice. And you know, they don't say that we're supposed to obey or anything like that, but I mean, I can't reiterate exactly what they said, but they were like jovial, you know, Right. And bizarre.

[A]

I mean, was there ever a moment where you guys get back to the treehouse and the two of you are kind of counting the money and going through everything and you just look at each other and you're like, this is crazy. Or does he ever share? Like, oh man, that one was difficult or hard or I didn't like that. Like what? Were there ever any conversations afterwards, like on the comedown?

[B]

Yeah, we always had conversations. I mean, sometimes, especially in the aborts when I had to abort, call him out or something, you know, he said, you know, there was a guy once in Portland, he said, yeah, this guy, he says, man, I almost. He followed me out of the bank, you know, one of the tellers, you know, a guy. And I had to turn around and act like I was getting my gun out when he was outside. You know, and the guy finally turned around and went away. And, you know, he talks to the people. He says, when you read the book, you read the book, you see how his responses were. You know, you all have a nice day now. And you know, just make sure you don't press the alarm for another five minutes or I'll be back. If I hear that alarm, I'm going to come back and you don't want me to come back. Something like that, you know, so they would. Sometimes the alarm wasn't pressed for 10 or 15 minutes.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I mean, they were. He, whatever impressive presentation, whatever he presented to these people, they believed. Like I say, it was not this, this violent intimidation. It was a real psychological. It was almost. If I could think of Hannibal Lecter, right. When that guy talks to you, you kind of just cooperate.

[A]

There's a force behind this.

[B]

Yeah, it's just like a nice force. Smart and nice.

[A]

Did he ever express remorse at any point? Like, you know, oh, man, there was this poor old guy who was just terrified and he was shaken and man, I felt bad because he reminded me of my dad or anything like that.

[B]

Yeah, the first one he did, he was really upset, he said, because Mark was supposed to be to. Here's how that first one went down. They were in their vehicle in the van they were going to leave in, not his van, but another car. And they waited somewhere close to the bank that they could see. And they saw the one patron drop up, drive up in whatever it was a Cadillac, I think, and it was an older gentleman that got out and went into the bank. He says, okay, that's the one. So Mark, you go up to him and get the keys from him. Well, as the whole thing went in, you know, Scott goes in and controls everybody. They're standing in line. And then mark comes in 15 seconds after with this Ronald Reagan mask on and screams out, everybody on the ground. You know, and everybody just scared. The hell flops on the ground. And then Scott turns around and he actually said his name, you know, which was really bad. But, you know, because he was frightened the hell out of him, he said. And then he said, no, everybody get up, stand up, stand up. Scott goes, you know, and then. And some of them did, some of them didn't. And the old man that was there that had the car didn't. And then Scott says, go get those keys, you know, get the keys. And you know, Mark leans over and he's a 6 foot 4 guy, big guy, you know, and very nice, very kind of like baby Huey. You know, just a real nice guy. And he leans over, sir, I'm sorry, you know, you know, let me have your keys. We'll take good care of your car, whatever, like that. And just makes a drum, you know, the stupid thing. And Mark Scott says, just get the keys. Let's get out of here. You know. But he said he felt sorry for the. The older guy, you know, because the way he did it was so over, overreacting, unpredictable and stressful. Just like stress the person out. It didn't have to be like that, and it shouldn't have had to be like that, you know, And. But other than that, everything went smoothly. You know, sometimes when he left the bank, here was an interesting once in. Up on one, I think Queen Anne Hill. And as he was going toward his car, he left the bank and he was going up, walking up toward his car, and there was a woman doing gardening in her front yard. You got to understand, he'd have a bag at that point, too. So it kind of unusual. And, you know, then the woman looked up at him, and he looked over at her. And then, man, they just turned their head like they. They turn away because, you know, he just looks strange. There's something. It could be an alien, right? You know what I mean?

[A]

Something uncanny about it. You see a guy in this weird mask.

[B]

You don't even know if it's a mask, because that was a distance. But, you know, that was another example that time we got rid of the car because of, you know, she could have been, you know, I'm sure she would have heard about the bank robbery, might have, you know what I mean? So we got rid of that car. You know, it was other than that. No, everything. You know, the one time that he got the dye pack, he insisted the woman was very nice, said, sir, do you. You know, because when he goes in, he says, don't give me any dye packs or. Or trackers. Trackers? Yeah, tracers, you know. And so they don't give him that. They don't give him them. And then he saw that $20 bundle. You know, they're probably. $20 is probably $5,000 or something. And he says, you want that, sir? He goes, yeah. And so you give it, and you know that it has a die pack. And I told him, I said afterwards, I said, you know, this is after. After the vault or something. And I go, why would you do that? No, it was before the vault. I said, just forget these damn tellers. Don't even mess with it. But he had this kind of he wanted to get everything. He wanted to empty the whole place out. This was in his head. He had this challenge. It was a challenge to himself. Does it make sense?

[A]

There's something that's brought up in the doc that there was an inspiration maybe from Point Brain, Point Break, the film that kind of shows this, like, bank robbing, surfing guy that kind of just like, lives life to the fullest and does whatever he wants. And they said that's part of the inspiration.

[B]

No, he never.

[A]

He never brought that up.

[B]

No, they. They kept using that. They used that in the first 48 hours. They did way back in the 90s. You know, it was the same thing. Like, this was why he did it, because he saw the movie and. No, he. You know, when he would look at. When we watch bank robbery movies, you just look. Look at the flaws in it. It just doesn't work. What they're doing just doesn't work.

[A]

This violence, the aggression, shooting bullets up

[B]

into the sky and, you know, even heat, which is probably one of the better bank robberies. They would never go into a little diner and get a guy that just got out of prison to run the scanner for him. I mean, to run the scanner, you've got to know the frequencies of the town. You've got to listen to them, you got to hear the dispatch, you got to know their voice.

[A]

At the very least, an attention to detail. Yeah.

[B]

You just don't suddenly pick it up and do it and then, you know, some guy that gets out of the prison and you pick it, you know, is well made as that was, but it's all made for the final Shakespearean standoff, basically, you know, which is film.

[A]

And what's a good bank robbery mover that you feel like really shows it?

[B]

Well, I can't remember the name, but it was with. Took place in Boston.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It was a recent one. And do you remember that they were violent? Yeah, I can't remember his name. He's known. If I heard the name, I would

[A]

know, but I have a feeling Christos is on the case.

[B]

Yeah, it's Boston bank robbery, the town that was it. Was it the nun thing? I think. Yeah. Affleck was what?

[A]

It was the town.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's the crew of ruthless career bank robbers operating out of Charlestown, Boston.

[B]

I mean, but it was violent, but it made sense. I mean, it made like you could do it.

[A]

But so the town, as far as from a real bank robber, the town gets an A plus. Yeah, maybe an A. Yeah, I would say it worked.

[B]

You know what I Mean, I mean, it's. You're gonna get caught.

[A]

And what are the things that happen in this movie that you feel like are true to a successful bank robbery?

[B]

Well, they just, you know, I mean, it. It's a violent thing. But I don't know how it ended up with the money going. I can't. It's been so long since I've seen it. You know what I mean? But it just seemed more real, like honest. It's not the best way because you can't. How many times can you do this that you can't do what Scott did? I mean, that's 18 robberies. 19 robberies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, over the years. And you mean you just can't do it. You know, there's too many people. How many people are going to see nuns? You know what I mean? You can't do it. And, you know, plus the violent part, there's just too much forensic evidence that's left behind. There was all kinds of things in there that were traceable at a certain point. We had nothing traceable. Nothing was ever forensically.

[A]

What about license plates in the car?

[B]

Well, this is the interesting thing. Here's what we do. When we buy this car from whatever person in Seattle, wherever it was, we bought it in Washington state. The tags go with the car, and then you re register it. Well, we never registered it. We just kept the tags. But what we would do is we would go to the airport, and if we bought whatever ban or whatever it was, and let's say the tags were going to be expired within a month. Well, we go to the airport parking lot, covered parking lot, and find the same kind of vehicle, take its tags off and put ours onto that.

[A]

So literally unscrew the license plate.

[B]

Yeah. And then swap them. That had a good year of, you know, nobody looks at your license. As long as you got license plates on there. How many people come out of the airport? You know what I mean? And looks. And so we had that, and there was never any traceable. And, you know, we always. I mean, I cleanse those vehicles. Everything. I mean, we use mineral spirits on things. We put sprayed WD40. What's it called? Spray. You know, you spray that on the carpets and the seats, and if the FBI vacuums, it clogs up their filters and, you know, just different things. If we were going to leave a vehicle, we would put women's hair in there, where you get women's hair from wherever. And then put that in the vehicle for them to. If they actually got it, that they Would have that and thinking it was a woman and wow. You know, different stuff like that.

[A]

And where do you learn all this?

[B]

You just. Scott. Like, he was like that. He was. He should have been. He should have been a CIA or he should have been Mossad. That was his mind. He was like this clinical. I mean, he would have been great. He would have been great officer of some sort, you know. Know what I mean? But he was not built in that he just wanted to compete with them. He wanted to be better than they were, if that makes sense. Right? I mean, how. What's the dedication? I mean, Sean told me. I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but he said. He said he. After our case. And he's. His. His profile's huge. This is Sean Johnson, anti terrorism gangs. I mean, he's up and down the spectrum of the FBI and now he's teaching in Quantico and he does contract for FBI and case files. But he said after our case, he said he wanted to quit. He says no case ever. And, you know, he was very unhappy that it ended the way it ended. He said no one won in this.

[A]

Well, don't spoil the ending just yet.

[B]

Yeah, but it was, yeah, he, you

[A]

know, he said it was unlike anything he'd ever seen.

[B]

Unlike anything he'd ever seen. You know, and, you know, there was always a. It was bank robbery, which is violent. It's a, you know, it categorized as a violent crime, albeit that never ended up violent. The only violence came in the very end. And, you know, so there was something different. It was not as if you had to get a whole army of people trying, like on town trying to stop this stop. I mean, there was a lot of forensic evidence that they had. I mean, it was. Was, you know, but as far as doing it. But that's like a Whitey Bulger thing, you know what I mean? Type.

[A]

So robberies one through 18, no one gets hurt.

[B]

Never.

[A]

No, like he said. He did what he said. Said, hey, if you guys cooperate, nothing bad will happen. That's what happens. Nothing bad ever went down. And you said that there was a few operations that had to be aborted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can you take me through those?

[B]

Okay. 1. In the first one we did in Portland, the really successful. Let me back. The successful bank we had in Seattle was in. Called Hawthorne Hills bank in the area of town called Hawthorne Hills, and it was a C First Bank. And we'd done that three times, and I think we got close to 7 or 800,000 over the cumulative time. Well, when he was down there in Portland, you know, surveillance and looking for banks. And he came across this bank and it was called the Hawthorne Bank Bank. And it was sort of like biblical to him. Man, this has got to be the one. And it was in one of these perfect residential commercial, even a bigger commercial area than the one in Seattle. And so we went down there and I flew in from. I think, yeah, I was in San Francisco then and I came up from San Francisco and we started doing surveillance and we had the. I had the vehicles that I had purchased in San Francisco, had purchased in San Francisco and brought up to Portland and had it parked at the airport parking there. And he went and picked them up, up. And I drove one up. I drove the van up that I was going to be using and he. And the other car, which is his getaway car, which we wanted them to see and leave for the FBI and the bank was really beautiful. I mean it was a perfect location. And you know what surveillance we had. There was one main avenue on the main road which was, you know, which was where the police would come in from, from. And we, you know, I did, I wasn't, I wasn't stationary watching. I was circling in a block area. I can't recall now the reason, but there was a, you know, logistical reason why I was doing that. And so monitoring the scanner. And then, you know him always, anyway, I'm doing this. He goes. It was a calamity of errors. We leave, we leave. We planned on Olympia and we plan on weather. We want stormy weather when all, when all is possible. So when we left Olympia early in the morning and it's about two hour drive to Portland from Olympia and it was like pouring down rain down Portland. Not in Olympia, but in Portland it was. And it was pouring all, you know, once we left Olympia was raining, you know, and you know, so he's in a, you know, you got to realize we, we, according to the weather, we dress ourselves, we disguise, you know. And he was in a long beige trench coat and had a hat and all along. And this was in early summer. So with a rain trench coat wasn't a raincoat, but it was like one of these, you know, beige trench coats and for rain. And so we get down there, as we're getting closer and closer to Portland, you saw up in the sky this like black line from, from black toward our side. As we're getting to Portland, you saw the sunshine come down. Anyway, we got down there, it was hot and sunny. The storm was gone. And I said, do you Want to do this? And he was irritable because spending that much time, the prosthetics get irritating on your face, you know, itches and all, whatever goes on. And he said, yeah, let's do it. Let's just do it, you know. And so his. The vehicle was parked in the back of the bank. Bank. And we got there, we wanted to get there earlier, but it was right at. At about 11 o', clock, 11:30. And there's just a wrong time. That was another thing we learned. That's the wrong time because that's lunch hour. And people go to banks to get withdrawal money from the, from the atm, from the drive through, you know, and all that.

[A]

Too busy?

[B]

Yeah, it's just too busy. You know what I mean? Patrons and all that. Well, I'm there and he goes in the back door and some patron that was in the drive through to get money saw this strange guy in this coat and just looked out of normal. I mean, why would you have this long string? It's hot outside and everything. And so he's in the bank and I get a call and it said in the. The dispatch said, yes, we have a patron, we have a customer calling from the C first bank or whatever the bank was. I think it was C first. And that there's a strange person going in that looks like a bank robbery. And so I called him out, okay, here's the thing. He just had. He was in the bank while, you know, before all this happens. And he's asking for the bank teller and he says, well, the bank teller went to lunch and he goes, no, I don't believe it. And, you know, it's a. The. The bank was like a classical Jesse James. I mean, the vault door was one of the. These steel doors with the handle and everything. He said he'd never seen, never been in one so elaborate like that. And finally this big lady comes out and she's got some papers in her hand and he goes, oh, there's the vault teller. Oh, you're lying to me, were you? And she comes over and she's trying to. Trying to, you know, delay, delay. And he goes, listen, you do this and you get it over with. Let's get out of here, you know. So he finally, the door opens, and the door opens and he said there was money from the floor to the ceiling. He'd never seen so much money in his whole wife. And right when he walked into the vault to start taking it. And this was before any of the tracers or any. They call them, pronet tags that were available. So I had to call him out. And yeah, we. He got into his car.

[A]

Now you go through the walkie talkie.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Does he just have a walkie talkie on him?

[B]

On him? Yeah.

[A]

And so when you're calling him out, they hear. And they hear your voice.

[B]

Yeah, they hear. Yeah.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So they know, you know, before that happened, the FBI already knew there was somebody on the outside, because up until that point, they never really knew if there was anybody else involved until I had to call him out. The first time I called him out, which was when one of the robberies, that's when the FBI knew there was somebody outside. So I call him out, he gets into his car, and we do the rendezvous. And we have California plates on, which is not a good thing. I told him I wanted to get Washington plates, the California plates in this neighborhood. It's like. Like not that common, maybe, you know what I mean? And one car, maybe, but both of them have it. So they identified his car immediately because he went out the bank and somebody identified it, which was not a problem. It didn't matter. But I rendezvoused with him, and then he gets in and, you know, we go through. And then as I'm coming up to the road to go back to the highway to go north, up on the highway, it's the main road going toward the bank or away from the bank. And right across the street was a cop entering to go to the bank. And I'm still listening to the scanner, and he's down on the floor in the back of the van. I'm going, man, don't get up. Because if this cop sees these California plates, it's going to be unusual, you know what I mean? Because the getaway car that he had was California plates. So it's kind of unusual in the same neighborhood.

[A]

Do you ditch his car at the rendezvous?

[B]

Yeah, we left it there. Yeah.

[A]

And you cleaned it and everything?

[B]

Well, it was all clean before. Yeah. We meant to leave it there anyway for. Yeah. And fortunately enough for us, for everybody, that the cop went toward the bank and we went the other way. So it was all good. And we get back home and, you know, I said, man, don't ever do this to me again. I said, we don't. You know, there was mistakes. I said, you know, we never do this, you know, leaving two cars and California plates and all. You know what I mean? It was just. It was an unnecessary thing. But you got, you know, at a. At a certain point, you've got to check yourself in Confidence. You don't want to be too confident. You've got to always check yourself and, you know, double down on security for, you know, what may not seem that important or that you got away with once, not necessarily the second time.

[A]

Was he mad about that?

[B]

I was.

[A]

Why were you mad?

[B]

Because I told him to get. We need to get plates. We need to go up and get plates. I said, I don't want this. You know what I mean? I don't want. We need to get some other plates for all our cars. We don't want two California plates. Streets, in case something goes down.

[A]

Was he pissed, though, getting called out, like.

[B]

Yeah, he was pissed that he. All this money. Yeah, he was upset. He goes, you can't believe it. You can't believe it. He said, I never saw so much money.

[A]

But he wasn't mad at you?

[B]

No, no. And then when we get back to Olympia finally, you know, we go celebrate and we go down to Bud Bay Cafe. Down. Down on the waterfront in Olympia is where we used to go. And we'd have Dom Perrion. He always. He'd have the owner or store Dom Perignon Cristal for us, you know, and he always had it in the refrigerator for us whenever we came in. And he would bring out a Dom and we drank it and we just cheered that we got out of that one.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

With zero. But just the fact, you learn. This was the beauty. We learned never to do it at that time of day again. Although before that we'd done it at that time, but they were. It was not. It didn't end up like that, you know, but it was a wrong time to do it.

[A]

How did you feel driving away? Were you. You full of adrenaline? Were you anxious? Were you paranoid?

[B]

You're, like, tight. You're, like in a military.

[A]

Focused focus.

[B]

And you're just. My eyes are everywhere, you know, I'm thinking of him. I'm listening to the scanner. Yeah, you're focused. There's no. People think, oh, you get high and you go. Just cheer. And no, it's nothing like that. It's like we were somber. We hardly spoke all the way back. And only when we got to the cafe and started drinking our champagne for failure, did we kind of loosen up, you know, and we joke with each other. I, you know, I say, man, don't ever with me again. Like, I'll kill you. I'll take that gun off you and kill you if you, you know. And he, you know, he'd joke back at me and stuff. So it was all but still, we knew there was certain points of seriousness where you didn't, you know, certain things Scott would do. Like the. The end call was his. I mean, he's the one.

[A]

He's in there.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I'm there to back him up, to help, but if you call

[A]

him out, he says no and waves you off.

[B]

Yeah, if he wants this, it's his call. It's his call because I don't want to psychologically make him feel uncomfortable. If he feels more comfortable in this makeup or this clothing that I got for him, you know, I'd always buy different clothes and mix and match and whatever he felt more comfortable in, you know, I mean, in the very beginning, he wore these Converse low cut tennis shoes all the time. He used to hike in those things. I said, man, you got to stop wearing those. You're. They're, you know, you can't wear those anymore. He said, I know, but I gotta. I like. I like my, you know, agility. I can jump and run and do what I need. I said, I don't care, man. We'll find some other shoes for you. And the FBI even noticed that.

[A]

Oh, wow. They noticed the Converse.

[B]

Yeah, the Converse, yeah.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

In my debriefing up until that bank that I first had to call him out of in Seattle, I. I could lie about everything. I told the police, I told the FBI Sean, who was debriefing me. I said, well, I only got $5,000 of robbery, you know. And they looked at me like, are you crazy? And I go, why? I mean, I was just in a car. I wasn't. I mean, I was. No risk. I go home. And if he got caught, I go home and I go about my business and leave or whatever. I mean, it sounded logical. Naive, but stupid and logical.

[A]

Underestimate you.

[B]

But then once I called him, once I had to call him out, then I told the truth because I knew they knew that there was somebody on the outside. So I said, yeah, that was the first robbery I ever did. And I made up some convoluted story of why I did it and what he wanted me to do and all that.

[A]

But this is after everything was said and done.

[B]

Yeah, this was done on a plea bargain. I spent four days with Sean for about eight hours a day while I was in county money and going through meticulously. I mean, he went meticulously even before bank robberies, history, life history, where we, you know, all that.

[A]

Now, what was the cadence between robberies during this period?

[B]

It depend, you know, it depends like if we had an abortion, an abort like the one with the dye pack, we went back two days after.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Whenever we would prepare a bank, we would always have minimum two, if not three banks that he would choose from in the very last month moment, we would have three banks that we wanted. We would go through all the getaways. What was advantageous. Disadvantageous. And look at it. And then it was his decision, usually on the day that we were going to do it, of which one, you know, which bank he would take. I mean, one of them was on the same avenue across the street from each other.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And he was supposed to do the bigger one. And then right at the last minute when I was in position and he was coming, he, he. He said, no, let's do number. Let's do number two. I mean, I didn't ask why, but I just, you know, went to focus into number two then, you know what I mean? So we had everything worked out depending on which one, but we'd always have one or two. And in that one that I boarded, then we went back two days because they don't, you know, you. They're not going to think you're going to come right back right away. We never had done that before. But he went right back at it. Not the same bank, but went after. And I think we got a lot out of that one.

[A]

Now, going back into the same bank three times, inevitably at that point they go, oh, hi, Mr. Hollywood. Like, was there familiarity?

[B]

Yeah. They go, oh, you're back again. He goes, yeah, but this is the last time. Don't worry. Just let's get this thing over with.

[A]

Wow. And at that point, it was almost jovial in a way. Like, people would just kind of be like, all right, here you go.

[B]

Pretty much, they accommodated him. I mean, the FBI told him to. Told them to. Right. Trained them to do that. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's such a bizarre thing that it was so regular and frequent and that they would just kind of be like, all right, well, it's happening again.

[B]

I mean, it could have. It wasn't as if we did the. The one three times back to back to back. They were. Might have been a year later.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know what I mean?

[A]

Still the same people work there, but still.

[B]

But because they are so much. The volume of money was so, you know, voluminous in those banks that we chose. Not all of them. Some were small, but, you know, technically why we did them. But, you know, they were just too. Just because they get robbed once doesn't mean they're not going to have money in there again. You see what I mean?

[A]

And then all these robberies from the first one to the last one, that's roughly like what a two year stretch? Maybe three years.

[B]

No, four and a half years.

[A]

Four and a half, Four and a half years. Now in that four and a half year stretch, how much money did you make?

[B]

Well, I would take 40% of everything because he was always paying for the operations, you know, like fly up, up, buying vehicles, buying electronics, all of the different things. You got to understand, we two and a half years, two years before the end, our whole plan, our whole modus operandi was we were going to do culminate everything and end it with the three banks right in a row, one right after the other on the same evening. The same evening. Because in the winter months it's really perfect in Seattle because it gets dark at 4 o', clock, banks don't close until 6:30 or something. So we would have start at that time and we'd already purchased all the vehicles we needed. And Mark was going to have to be involved in this because there's too many cars involved. And I was on the radio and they were always going to throw the money into my vehicle as they came and get into another vehicle and you know, as one would go. So it would be start from the north of Seattle and work our way down. And the reason why we did that is because we had to go south as Chicago back to Olympia. Well, all of this was planned, worked on, you know, a couple years before the final act. And we, you know, we were waiting, getting experience and then we, what we did is that I flew out to the east Coast, I flew out to Virginia, D.C. area because there was a CIA electronics place out there special that Scott knew about. And I went there and I had fake ID and and I went in and I bought a transceiver. Very powerful, the most powerful transceiver you could get. And I made a story up that I was coming from Greek, from Greece, and I was on a maritime. And they wanted this, the captain wanted this certain transceiver for his ships, his boats over there. Which was logical, I mean, because to get these things they have discs and they have to be programmed to the frequency. Well, the frequency frequencies we wanted to program at was the police frequency that we in Seattle. So any they're going to know what that police frequency is. So I had to make it look like it was in Greece. They're not going to know what frequencies are in Greece. I don't know where we got this idea from, but it worked. I got there, I had fake ID because you had to show everything. You have to show the id. And I paid cash, obviously I didn't pay a credit card. And being from Greece, I came in from Greece and I paid cash and it all looked, look, they were fine with it, you know, everything good. And they, I came back about four days later, got the disc, got the transceiver, everything was packed up nice and anyway, got that and sent it back. I went back, I flew back with it and back to Seattle and we had that and we had it there. We were going to set up a mobile unit and hook the whole transceiver up and jam the police frequency in Seattle so that it could just be. Be either pre record dispatches calling out police from whatever other previous event somewhere or just have it white tone hiss, nobody hears anything. But at the end, I mean, I'm jumping way ahead of time. The reason why we had to abort that and get to the one that we did was because they changed everything. Up, up.

[A]

I see. Okay, well, before we jump to the final act, I'm curious. The this time of your life, this four year run, you're making money, you're getting 40% of everything that's going on. Are you taking any trips? Like, what does your personal life look like? Are you paranoid at all? Are you seeing family? Are you meeting up with friends?

[B]

Do you have girlfriend, all of that? Girlfriends? Yeah, that was the hard part, you know, because you have girlfriends and you have, I mean, fortunately enough because I was an artist and we also did construction, you know, we did, did, bought property. I was building. I had a home in New Orleans that I was remodeling, rebuilding that. There was always activity. So there was nothing lying about anything. I mean we did construction, we did building, we, you know, but there is lying. I mean you can't, you've got to obfuscate what you're doing. And I had a girlfriend who flew for United. You know, I'd come in after two months away in Seattle and she goes, what are you doing? Yeah, we had to do this building project up there. We got delayed because of da, da, da, whatever story I made up up. Yeah, sure, you know, she just called me Myers. Yeah, sure, Myers. And I come back with, you know, little sacks of. Because she flew United and they're always on per diem and you know, so they like change $5, $10, you know, when they have that. And I'd give her a sack of maybe a Thousand dollars of loose money. She goes, where'd you get that? Oh, it's just from the construction crews. They have a pot for money for them to go to lunch when this is what's left over some stupid thing, you know? Nobody knows. I mean. Oh, yeah, okay, I get it. Or something like that.

[A]

Did you ever tell anyone outside the operation?

[B]

No. I mean, no one that didn't know,

[A]

but you never, like, got drunk at a bar and it's been like, oh, man, you don't even know about that Hollywood guy? No. Really? Never a girlfriend? You're like pillow talking?

[B]

No.

[A]

Was it difficult keeping the secret?

[B]

You know, it's not a thing. It's kind of, sort of. That's the hardest part of this world. When you jump out of the world and you go into that. That is deceiving people that you care about. It's hard. Yeah, it is hard. And it's not like I'm embarrassed to say it, but you can't. You can't say it for their sake or, you know, for anybody's sake, really. And it's not. It's not understandable, you know, I mean, if you're a drug dealer or something, you know, you people kind of accept that world, you know, but who robs banks? Nobody does that. I mean, you know, it just. It's too. It's too crazy. Right? You know what I mean? It's just. But once you're in that world, I don't know how you step into some other dimension and you have this aura enveloped around you that just keeps you away. There's a. I mean, I had, you know, the realtor that I bought my home from in New Orleans. I mean, we became. Became close friends, and, you know, we have lunches weekly, you know what I mean, and talk. And I never, you know, she never suspected. In fact, she would. When I bought the house, when we went to closing, I remember the banker, whomever it was, who did the closing, signing the papers, and she goes, this was back in the day when you could do no doc loans were pretty. It was easy. As long as, you know, they see your bank account, they see. See your money and all that. But she goes, yeah, you know, you could go in a bank, rob a bank one day, and the next day go buy a house. You know, that's how easy this no doc loan is, you know, she was saying it in jest. Yeah. God, that is that. I kind of laughed, you know what I mean?

[A]

Wow. I mean, that period of your life must have been interesting. Was there a Part of you that was like, ah, I gotta. Maybe I should slow down with this stuff. Maybe we should stop.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I was always saying up until the end, I said, with our progression up to the three banks. I said, after that, that's it. This is the culmination. This is the, you know, opus opera. This is it.

[A]

Because it's getting more difficult. The stress was getting too.

[B]

It's a stress. It's the lifestyle. And it's also, at some point, something can give, you know, and you just never know as much as you're, you know, clear on what you're doing and how you're doing it. You just. You just never know. You know, there's always this little element that you never quite know. And it's just the. Yeah, you gotta. Nothing can last forever. Nothing. You know, I mean, just logic in life. Nothing.

[A]

It's a little bit like gambling, right? Like, I'm not a big gambler, but, you know, I go to the casino and I'll throw, you know, a couple bucks playing, you know, blackjack or something. And you win like five, six hands in a row. And all of a sudden, after five or six hands, you go, should I quit? I mean, I should probably stop because I can't keep on winning. Like, was it a little bit of that where you're like, man, how many times can we get away with this?

[B]

No, it wasn't that. I mean, because like I say, you know, I told you. You asked me if I gambled. Yeah, we. Aside from laundering money. Yeah, we gambled. I mean, not crazy, but, you know, Scott was a crazy gambler. He was. He was ruthless. I was very conservative in a way, you know, but we did sports betting and, you know, sometimes we lost big, but that's. You know. But usually one. Because we were pretty. Back then, it was a lot more calculable. Especially football and basketball. It's not like it is today. I don't really even trust anything today, to be honest with you. But from what you see. But back then, you can kind of really. Yeah, it was, you know, we were. When you're in it, you know, a lot of stuff. I mean, I don't have the. That knowledge in me now like I did then. You know what I mean? But, yeah, we would gamble on the side, aside from the laundering money, you know, on our own. Yeah.

[A]

So this stretch goes on. Are you doing art at this point while you're.

[B]

Yeah, and like I said, I was doing my place in Was a New Orleans. Yeah, it was in New Orleans. It was a Greek revival home, a big place, and I was remodeling all that, and I had my, a little studio there that I was doing artwork in and.

[A]

Are you seeing your daughter in this period?

[B]

No. That's what, you know, that was something I couldn't do. I couldn't really. Yeah, I mean, that's a whole other sub story. And, you know, because of the custody thing, I went through and on and on and on. This was also part of one of the, one of the things that I just disgusted me, you know, I mean, when you go through custody thing and you see how the court system is.

[A]

Yeah, it's very.

[B]

I mean, they use children to keep their livelihood alive. They're sick. I mean, I, I, I said, I was so disgusted. I told my lawyer, I said, no, I'm done. I say, she knows me, and when she becomes of a, and comes of age and, you know, I'll come back, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna feed the system in this woman, though.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah, I mean happy. What do you mean by happy?

[A]

Like were you fulfilled? You have this four and a half year experience.

[B]

I've been working my whole life. You mean before robbery?

[A]

No, four and a half years before, like in the robbery period.

[B]

Oh, was I happy then? Oh yeah. I mean happy, yeah. I mean there's stress involved, mental stress, but you learn to cope, you learn to manage yourself. But toward the end, and I mean there's a lot of spiritual. I say spiritual, I don't mean it like in an elevated way, but metaphysical things that took place. I mean, I've always been very receptive to out of body experiences and even before, you know, all my life, you know what I mean? And I had some wild dreams. I mean I had dreams that Scott would come to me before a robbery. When I would come up, he says, did you have any dream about this next robbery? And. And I would tell him because there was a number of times that I had dreams of the amount of money. And I said, yeah, this next one you're going to be going through a whole squadron of police, but you're going to go right through them. You're going to get about $180,000 or whatever it was. I said, sure enough, it was within some thousands of dollars. It was. And he went right through the labyrinth of cops that he went right through after he de disguised himself and he drove right through them, just like I said. I mean these were dreams. And the last robbery I had, the last one that we. That ended everything, I was in New Orleans and I woke up about 8 o' clock at night. I think I went to bed really early. My brother was living down there in my house there and I woke up to this nightmare, man. And I just had this. I was in a cold sweat and I got out of the bed and I walked into my brother's room and he Was playing the guitar or something. And he goes, man, what happened? You know, he said I was like a ghost white. And this was in, you know, I was tan with, you know, summer in New Orleans. And I said, man, I just had this nightmare, you know. And I said I was on this beach and a shark had just bitten both my legs off. And I was crawling up on this beach, you know, trying to get somewhere. And it was like right before I was to leave for Seattle for the last robbery. Well, anyway, I got up there and, you know, Scott at some point asked me, did you have any dreams about this one? I said, no, I didn't have anything. I didn't want to tell him that.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Whereas before I always told him, he'd always ask me, and how many of

[A]

these precognitive dreams did you have?

[B]

Oh, man. I mean, they came and went. I probably with bank robbers, probably three or four that I had. That was pretty close to what was going on.

[A]

What do you. What do you chalk that up to?

[B]

So my past. I don't know my past. I've always. Like I said, I used to astral project.

[A]

Did you really?

[B]

Oh, yeah, all kinds of stuff like that. My whole family did.

[A]

Intentionally or.

[B]

No, it just natural came until I had to stop it intentionally.

[A]

And by astral projection, you mean you

[B]

would leave your body.

[A]

Leave your body. You'd be dreaming, maybe, and you'd see not dreaming.

[B]

You leave your body and you're aware of the outside world and you're out in the world. Out.

[A]

And it would just happen at random, naturally, but you would just be sitting at the park and all of a

[B]

sudden you see yourself sitting. It was always through sleep. And I would wake up in the sleep and then you would be in this other dimension and that would. You know, there was a lot of different. A lot of different dreams. Aside from that, there was all kinds of very vivid dreams that had more consequential things. And Scott did too. Toward the end, he started seeing demons. He started, said in the. In the forest, coming back from the treehouse. He'd see these eyes glowing at him. Things started getting heavy. This is. This is my whole point of this whole saga is that something, some power was making us do this. Does that make sense? I mean, we had the will to stop. I'm not. I don't want to rationalize out of it, but there's no logical reason for it. It in a sense, either financially or. It was almost as if something had to happen. And if you understand, I mean, I look at this as Very symbolic. I mean, when we got ambushed by the police, I was shot in both arms. And my whole life has been my arms is what I create. I paint, I sculpt, you know, build. This hand was shot here, and my whole hand was clawed like this. I couldn't open it. And, you know, they said I probably would never be able to, which I did. And this arm was shot off. And Scott always said. He always said when we would be mountain climbing, you know, and we would be in kind of afternoon sun up in the tops of the Olympics. And he said, man, whatever you do, never let somebody else determine how you live or die. Always have it in your own control. And what he said is, anything comes, he'd kill himself. He wouldn't. Wouldn't allow to go to prison. He would never go to prison. And Biggins, Mark, he got shot in the gut. And, you know, like I said, he was a heavy smoker, consummate drinker, you know, drugs. I mean, he wasn't an alcoholic or, you know, he was just heavy. He was a big guy. So everything he got shot, he lived. But it was all symbolical. And you want to hear a story? What? He told me. He's out in western Colorado now. He told me, he said when he was in prison, one of the bullets that didn't take out lodge out of it because he got shot in the buttocks. And they never took it out. And it started moving its way up, which they do, up to the surface. And it was on the surface, it was bothering the hell out of him. He said it was, you know, and he didn't want to go to the medical in the prison because they would just, you know, do what they do. So he had some guy, some prisoner out on the yard cut it out, and he wanted to keep it. He wanted the bullet himself. And then when he got out of prison, he went and had it melted down and turned into a cross.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He had a religious conversion, I guess, maybe.

[B]

No, he just. He wanted to send it to the shooter. To Mike McGann? Yeah. I don't think. He never did. But this is what his intention was. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. What other spiritual things in that window? I mean, what else can you share as far as, like, the. The heaviness of that time?

[B]

Well, you know, the last robbery, everything. You got to understand, Scott was, like I said, meticulous in everything he did. And all of our robberies were meticulous, analyzed, overanalyzed, you know, backup this, that. Whereas this last one, when I finally came up from New Orleans was. He left for Arizona where his girlfriend was, and he was down there and I was up there alone. And I did the surveillance and all the stuff that I was doing. And you know, he was. He kept not showing up. And I was saying, man, I'm getting tired of this, you know, it was like, it's getting critical mass, you know what I mean? And I said, finally I said, I'm leaving, man, I'm going. And I rented a truck or I had ordered a truck. I hadn't rented it yet, but I registered or whatever you call it, reserved it. Yeah. And to come and pack up the rest of the stuff I had up in his property to send to drive down to New Orleans with. And then that evening he showed up. And then it was like, here we are. It's like when we got together, it was like this magnetic thing, you know what I mean? And then this is what happened. Why we no longer could do the three robbery thing is because what had happened is that they finally got the pronet tags, electronic tracers put into the banks. And there was just no way we could do three banks with those electronic tracers. And when I was up there surveillancing, doing my scan, doing the scanner and surveillancing, listening to the scanner, the frequencies that I had logged into my scanner, they no longer worked. They were the different districts of the Seattle areas. Each district had their own frequency. And so where we were, the banks that we were going to do, there was no reception anymore. And I go, man, what's going on? Something's going on. I didn't know if it was a scanner that was malfunctioning or what. And so I call Electronics Place and I go, listen, I got a scanner here. And I'm trying to listen to the fire department because my brother works in the fire department, whatever. I said, you know, oh, well, they change. And I said, I can't pick up anything. I can't pick. He said, well, they change it. They change it to a trunk system. Trunk system is. They have like 25 or 30 frequencies that just keep rotating so that there's never one. Like if when you've got an area of Seattle and there's a call and another call wants to come in and they're still on, it's like blocked. So this trunk system, they can just rotate from frequency to frequency. So I said, oh my God. Okay.

[A]

And so did they change it because of the slew of robberies?

[B]

We kind of thought that. But I asked Sean and he said, no know. So it's just circumstance, you know, it's more sophisticated. I think probably every major city in the country does that. Yeah. And so I go there and I say, okay, man, this is what we got to do. We're going to have to do something. I said, what we need to do is in the area. We need two things. We need to find out where those Pronet tags are, how they have it in the money, and we need to find out what the frequency is going to be, the main frequency in that area that we want to do. We decided. We. We decided on this one big bank, which would have been 5 to 10 million dollars according to what we knew. Okay. It was a bank that I'd located years before, but it was too big for him, and he didn't feel experienced enough to do it alone. And so I said, we need to do this. So what we need to. We're going to have to. What we're going to do is we're going to rob this little bank in the same area not far from that one. And we'd done that before, years before we did it. And what you do is we de Disguise you. We put you in a ski mask. Put a ski mask on. Don't go into the vault, whatever you do, Just go to the tellers, and we got to get those Pronet tags. Make sure you get Pronet tags in the money. And then when I'm out there scanning, I'll hear the call, and then I'll log in the frequency that it is. Because if you.

[A]

You.

[B]

You know, if we just. I could have gotten the call on the final one. And, you know, with luck, the scanner, you know, it would have, but if not and I miss it, then, you know, you're in a whole hell of a lot of trouble. So anyway, the call went out. I logged it into the scanner when it came out the frequency, and it was the frequency I thought would have been, too. And he gets out, and we rendezvous. He leaves his car. We rendezvous in my van, and he's alone in the back of the van and going through the money. And within five minutes, he got three Pronet tags out. And I threw them out the window. So the Pronet tags is they got a monitor system in the vehicles, in the police vehicles, and they triangulate. And the closer you get, you have a constant. You have a light, and you have a sound that goes ding, ding, ding. And then the closer it gets goes. And then the light becomes solid, the closer you get. So if you throw one out, it's stationary as Long as you're driving, you know what I mean? It's always pinging away. Yeah, pinging away. So when there's a stationary one, then they're going to look, go to that, and they have to get it, they have to find it, they have to deactivate it, and then they go, keep going on to.

[A]

Just adds time to their process.

[B]

Yeah, well, we got it. We did it. And it was very easy. And I said, well, if it's that easy, you know what I mean? And even. But the big bank we're going to have, you know, when we're going to have Mark with us, at least there's two people going through the volume of money. And what was a mistake on our part, which would have been very logical, which would have remedied everything, is that they only put those in $20. What they do is they glue the tracer in between two $20 bills. They're glued together and they're in a bundle. So when you go through, when you break the bundle open, you can feel it. It's like a dentine. You feel it. You know what I mean? It's pretty easy. But what we didn't realize, they only put them in the 20s. So you just in. The reason why is because, you know, tens are too small, twenties are what everybody gets. And if you do 50s or 1/ hundreds, you're losing a lot of money. And they had these in 80s banks in Seattle. The FBI finally convinced the banks. I asked them, I asked Sean, he's the one who instigated it. But the banks didn't want to pay for the service. It's expensive. It's about, I think he said 2000amonth per bank. So you're talking.

[A]

Yeah, but how much money were they losing from these robberies?

[B]

I know, but they don't want to do it. Banks are malicious, man. Banks are seriously malicious.

[A]

It's funny. It's another irony, right? It's another poetry where like. Like your and Scott's greed to an extent is what got you in the situation, sort of. And it was their greed that also got them into it.

[B]

They got them into it. Yeah, you know, because they're protected. It's not FCI fdci, you know, because that's of a bank failure. This is just private insurance. So the insurance will pay them. Right, but, you know, there's been no violence, but at the same time, you could have some crazies or who knows? You never know. And then you've got a patron that gets hurt or harmed and they sue the bank for millions. And you know, it's stupid, right?

[A]

A copycat or whatever.

[B]

Exactly, you know, and you know, so that was that. And yeah, we, we got the Pronet tags out and so we knew where they were. We instructed Mark how to do it, where to go, you know, and in all actuality, Sean, when they, when they went, took over the tree house and the property, all of the stuff, they took all of the, all kinds of evidence, everything, you know, and they found an eight page thing that was written out entitled Procedures. And this is something we would never have left around the house. And the only thing I can, when he showed it to me, he says, does this look familiar? I was at his house some time back a month ago and I looked at it and I go, I'm looking at it, the front page, it said Procedures. It's all handwritten. And I go, well, that's my handwriting. And I start reading it, I go, oh my God. And it's like point to point to point of how to rob a bank. And I'm thinking, why would I write that to whom? And I'm thinking, the only thing I can imagine is that I did it for Biggins to kind of like program him to read, this is how we're going to do it. This is what. And I mean, it goes through. You can. Could read that and go, rob a bank successfully of everything. The cars that you buy, how you do it, when to do it, the frequencies, where the pro net tags are and the money. And you know, it was frightening. I have that now. He copied it off for me and gave it to me. And yeah, it's like interesting as hell to me because I can't remember writing it. That's what frightens me.

[A]

Strange.

[B]

Yeah, it's really. And it had to. The only thing I can imagine, because we would have never left something like that around a house. So, you know, Biggins flew in and I must have given that to him to sort of brief him because I had to do his prosthetics, I had to make his special prosthetics. And you know, so that was about a two week process with him. So I had him study that throughout those days, you know, keep him off the liquor.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know what I mean? But yeah, and that's frightening to think that I'm looking at that, at it. I go, it's amazing how much you

[A]

can't remember in those, the weeks leading up to that final one. Did you feel that force again?

[B]

Yeah, I felt. Well, you know, when, you know, the Pronet Tags are in there. And Sally, who we had hire in the bank. There was a task force, there was a federal task force that we knew it was there. We didn't know whom or what. I have to back up at some point and tell you how I met Sean. Okay. Before all this came about. About and.

[A]

Oh, you met Sean before the arrest?

[B]

Well, indirectly. I'll tell you about it, but let me finish this. This task force, everything was like accumulating. We knew that it's either going to be a win or a loss. And we'd invested a lot of money in this because we'd bought all these vehicles when we were planning on the three. Planning on the three robberies, the vehicles and the transceivers, which we couldn't use now. Everything was like, wait. So there was probably. We probably had, I don't know, maybe $70,000 involved and just living and, you know, working two months to prepare for this thing. And so we, you know, the tension was palpable. You know, it was different. We knew we were. This was. There was never any response by the Seattle police. We, the Seattle police are easy to determine. They're predictable. And it's not a criticism of them because they have their routine, they have their schedules, they have their drive by, they have their shift changes. You can determine them, you know what I mean, and predict them and use them to your advantage. Whereas as FBI, we never had any knowledge of. And that's what we were always apprehensive about, careful about. So now with the task force there, and we still did it. Why did we still do it? With the signs. We never would have done that before. And Scott shows up about a week before we're supposed to do it, after. After him being delayed at his girlfriend's. And then he says his girlfriend's flying up Christmas Eve, I mean, Thanksgiving Eve, the day we're doing this. And I go, what? Well, she's going to be in the treehouse. I said, man, you can't do this. We might be dead. You know that. I mean, we knew that this was it. You know what I mean? This was the end one way or the other. And I don't know how we knew, but it was like after that dream I had had of the show, I knew that and I never told him, but I knew it was critical mass now, and yet we still did it. You know, this is what's astounding, a force behind us.

[A]

What do you think that force is like?

[B]

Do you think it's just some metaphysical force? Listen, this story should be an American iconic story. It's an outlaw, modern day outlaw story. And I'm not saying it because I was involved in it or anything like that, but Scott Scurlak was a very unique individual. And you don't find personalities like him because the money didn't matter. It was just something more than him and it was something more than me. And because we came together and we had like, I mean, in my life, in my world, traveling throughout Europe, going. I was always on the edge of. Of society anyway. I mean, not illegally, but just. I didn't have the formula of career formula in the same way. I mean, mine was always. I always wanted to venture new. I wanted to see new things. I wanted explore. And this was another exploration, you know, but when we got together, it was. You, you couldn't. You couldn't. It was just there. I look back now, I look back and I go, how could I, How, How? Mentally, emotionally, how could I have done it? It was amazing. I look back at that personality and it's not me. I mean, it is, but it's not. And at the same time that if this hadn't happened, ended the way it ended, this book would have never been written, the story would have never, Netflix would. None of this would have happened. Sean even says, he says if that would have been successful, we'd probably never see them again because it would have been too big of a finale. You know what I mean? To hope that they would come back. I mean, he, strangely enough said, he says, I hope they come back so that we can finally catch them.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

You know what I mean?

[A]

Do you think it was this force? Do you think it was like. I mean, any religious folks listening will be like, oh, that's the devil.

[B]

Possibly. He felt he had dark entities watching him. I didn't. I never felt a dark entity. I just felt something testing me. It was a test. I felt this. I mean, if we wanted. If we wanted to go out as, you know, crazy bank robbers, he could have shot it out. We could have shot it out. We could have ended it. Death on the streets. It never ended that way. We. We left the way it was supposed to have unfolded. It unfolded the way it was supposed to unfold. It's too circumstantial. There's too much circumstance involved in it.

[A]

Like it was destiny in a way.

[B]

Destiny. It was all there unfolding in this fact that we're here now. This is just the beginning of this story. I mean, it happened in the 90s, but this is the beginning. This is not about Banks. This is about a realization of something that's beyond us, that's more than who we are. I mean, I'm not. I don't want to act special about it, but it's just not banks. I mean, even then it wasn't banks. The banks were the. You know, it's like you play dominoes. I mean, the dominoes there, and you take it and you do it and you get it and you go on and. You know what I mean? It's just an entity that represents something that is too dominating in our life. Why do we need banks? Why do we need wars? What is this about? Do you see what I'm saying? It's like we're on this three dimensional playhouse. On this planet, there's nothing. Nothing makes sense. None of it makes sense. You tell me what makes sense on this planet. I don't know. Religion doesn't make sense. Politics definitely doesn't make sense. Wars never make sense. I mean, what is wars ever achieved, right?

[A]

It feels like you're in a simulation sometimes.

[B]

Yeah, it's a simulation of a sort. I mean, you know, I can't prove it or nothing, but my experiences in life far and beyond this are, you know, too many experiences to make me, you know, think otherwise. And even the experience of prison, it could have, you know, you have every imaginable force working against you. And yet for me, that was one of my most free, creative periods of my life. Life. I mean, I wrote. I mean, I wrote the book the first year and a half a stream of conscious. The manuscript, the original manuscript, written in prison, typed and written in prison, is three times the size of that which I gave to Sean for forensic study. He has it at his place. And I have books of poetry. I've done designs and homes, many home designs. I did all the blueprints, everything. Paintings, pastels. I mean, I don't even know work, you know, I lived, you know, worked out. You can either become a fat slob in prison and, you know, all kinds of ugly, every imaginable ugly ailment there is to have, or you can become extremely fit. And it's like a. You would never have it on the outside without a lot of work, if you know what I mean. You've got to work, you got to make money, you got to do. And who has. You know, you can go to gym when you're young, you know, but after a while it's sort of.

[A]

Sort of life gets in the way.

[B]

Yeah, but this has become. It's part of the routine your day

[A]

Is like, how many push ups can I get done?

[B]

Yeah, you know, and you've got competition, you have it. And it's just like, what else are you going to do? It's just life, it's free. Right. And you know, it was a benefit in a certain. I don't want it again. But you know, it could have been disastrous. I mean there's all kinds of people that die in there. I mean it's not pretty picture.

[A]

So Sean Johnson is the FBI agent that ultimately investigated and really kind of cracked this whole case.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When did you meet him the first time?

[B]

Okay, when we first met him, like I said, Scott was obsessed with the FBI and not having knowledge, we couldn't go to any, you know, electronics outlet and try to. We would, you know, say to them, yeah, we're trying to scan the FBI. Is it what frequencies? Because they don't broaden. The police frequencies are published. You can get frequency books and find them and all that. But the FBI doesn't. So, you know, we could never get it to scan them to be able to use a scanner to listen to them in any way. So like I said, he came into it about, I think he said the third year we were, you know, I mean after the first year and a half he came into it because once we did did the vaults, that's when he came in and he was signed to the case. And he did, after a couple more, he did a full page or two full page article in the Seattle newspaper. Intelligence, I believe it was. And I was one day in the front house and Scott and I every morning we would go and buy all the newspapers, all the Seattle newspapers, the local Olympic. And we would always read crime sections for any bank robbers. Just get, keep abreast of what's going on. And if we get any information, mainly we wanted to see if there was any tell that they would slip up on and let us know that there was tracers put in the money, you know. Well, I opened the page up, I went and got coffee in the newspapers and I open up and I go, oh my God. You know, and up the top it goes Hollywood, you know, and there's Shawn Johnson sitting on his, leaning up against his desk and behind him is all the photographs of Hollywood from the bank robbers, you know, and then I started reading this thing and it was this long article and he was a cool looking guy, young looking guy. He was younger than we were.

[A]

Could you pull up a picture of Sean? I think that'd be cool to see.

[B]

Yeah. And there he is. Now, that's him now. Yeah, but he was a lot younger than that back then. Yeah. And I started reading it and reading it, and at one point, at the very end, it says yes, and there might be an accomplice called Mark, which was. That was that first bank robber. When Scott jumped around, got scared shitless from.

[A]

He said his name.

[B]

Biggins. He said his name. And he never told me this. So I was, like, upset when I read this. And so what I did, I laid the paper out with Shawn Johnson in the foyer of the cottage, the house I was living in. Scott comes up from the treehouse from the forest area and opens the door, and this. First thing he sees on the floor is Hollywood and Shawn Johnson there. And he starts reading it and everything else. I said, why in the fuck wouldn't you tell me that you'd called out mar. Mark, that we, you know, if anything, we should have done something to try to counter that name in some way. You know, make up another name call, you know, Spark or, I don't know, make some name that sounded like Mark that wasn't. You know, because Mark is very identifiable. But anyway, nothing ever came of that. But. And I was upset about it, and he knew I would be. He said, yeah, because I know you would. You know what I mean? I said, well, yeah, yeah, thanks a lot, you know. And from that point on, we had a guy. We knew who we were dealing with. And Scott had hired one of his tech friends to do surveillance on him. And he did some videos and tried to monitor him, tried to catch him in some sort of scandalous something. I think he did it for a couple weeks, but, you know, nothing ever came of it. There was nothing. Nothing, you know, untoward of. Ever took place. And, yeah, that was the first picture we had of him. And so that was like, crystallized in me. And that was two and a half years before the final thing. So you think, okay, it was a picture in the newspaper, but when I lay shot up on the streets of Seattle after they ambushed us, and he wasn't there in the ambush. That was spd, you know, the Seattle police. So he arrived about. About, you know, maybe five minutes, ten minutes after I'd been. The van had been, you know, crashed up against a tree. And I was in the street after being hauled out of the van. And I turned my head and I saw him. And. And he comes running up in a blue jacket, and I said, man, there's the man. There's. There's my guy. He came up and he was nice. I mean, you got to understand Mike McGann, the shooter. Shooter. He's over me after him, shooting up. He's like, on, Chris. Like, on. And he's got his dog Beethoven, you know, muzzled up. And the dog was cool. I like the dog. I've been sitting there with no arms, and you know what? Your life's upside down. So you're fig. You know, you can't prepare for this kind of stuff. And this guy's around me with his shotgun, you know, and he's going around me in circles. And I said, man, chill the out. You like ed you or something like that? Some. Yeah, well, you're done, man. You're done. Yeah, well, okay, okay. Just chill, you know. Anyway, he was crazy is what he was. And here comes Sean. He comes running up, you know, in a blue J. Because it was just a stormy night. I mean, this. That's why we did what we did. Not only because it was Thanksgiving eve, where there's lots of money, but because it was a storm perfect for us. And I mean, hellacious winds and rain, thunders and, you know, and he comes up in his blue FBI Ranger, and he looks over and he starts talking. Is this you? Is this you? He has the poster that they had all over Seattle banks of the two renderings they did, which didn't look anything like us, you know. And I said, no, no, no, no. He says, are you Hollywood? And I said, no, I'm not Hollywood. He must have gotten away or something like that. See, he had a ban on the shootout. He got away. Scott got away.

[A]

So can we go through that final day?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so. So the morning you wake up, this is supposed to be the final last robbery, one way or the other. Going into it, it seems like there were a couple things working against you. Right? You mentioned the scanners aren't working. You're mentioning that Scott seems like he's a little out of it. He's in Arizona. He's got this girl flying in. It seems like he's a little bit checked out. You got a pull. Markin, who historically has not been the best accomplice with any of this stuff. You got these now tracers that are in all the bags. You gotta go through what's going on with that. So there's a lot of stuff stacked against you. You have this awful dream. So you wake up on the day and what is the mood?

[B]

Well, before that day, we'd become solidified. Mark had been there for a week. And like I said, I did. His prosthetics had that going. But the actual day of waking up that we were going to do it was stormy, even in the morning, and we were very solemn. I mean, we're very focused. And we go into the studio and we predicted our time of the day, and we knew we have to go through. You know, we'd already. Scott had already gone through the one previous robbery and got all the tracers out, all the Pronet tags out. So we'd brief Mark over and over and over again. You know, this is where they're at. It's like you're going to feel it when you break the band open. You're going to feel a lump in the band, and that's where they are. And so I was doing his makeup. Scott was doing his own, because he always liked to do his own. So kind of I was doing Mark, and I had sculpted a mole on his cheek, and I started coloring that a little darker, you know, And I mean, he looked like one. I mean, horrific motherfucker, you know what I mean? And he's 6 foot 5 and he's, you know, he's intimidating anyway. And I say, man, you look like one mean mother. He says, this guy's a gentle guy, you know. He said, says, I don't want to scare him. I said, what the hell are you talking about? That's what you're there for. You're there just to freeze them. You don't have to talk. Just be there. Just stand there, you know, and, you know, we're doing this and everything's solemn. All the cars are. My van's clean, their vehicles clean.

[A]

And you've agreed on just one bank at this point?

[B]

Yeah, we had to just do the one, but it was big, and we knew there was 5 to 10 million in it.

[A]

And so why would you bring Mark along?

[B]

Because there was too much money. Money he had to help carry out the bags. The bag that we actually. The million 80 is what they ended up getting. I didn't know that then, but according to the FBI, you know, it was a million 80. You know, it was over 80 pounds. And if they'd have had all of it, it would have been probably three or four bags. They would have been hauling a lot of money, but I had to call them out before they could get all the money.

[A]

So you all. You all get into your separate cars and you go to the bank.

[B]

Yeah, we go to the gang. I go to my point where I'm stationary, and we have a already worked out rendezvous point where I'll go and meet up with Them and they'll jump into my van with the money and everything. And we leave their vehicle there in the streets, and they go. Start going through the money, you know. And our rendezvous was such that we were in the very north of Seattle and we have to go south all the way through the city. You know, you can either take the highway, but you don't want to do that because you've got tracers. So you want. Want to. We created a securitas route where you're going up and around and back and around. So it's very complicated. And we had. I had to, you know, go through that many, many times to get it down flat. And after I picked them up, we went driving back into the bank. Toward the bank.

[A]

When you pick them up, you mean?

[B]

Yeah, when we. When they changed over into my vehicle.

[A]

So they go in.

[B]

They go in.

[A]

I'm stationed, and everything goes fine on the inside.

[B]

Yeah, they go fine until I had to call them out.

[A]

Because you get something on the scanner.

[B]

Yeah, because the call came out, the robbery came out, so I had to call them out.

[A]

You call them out immediately. They hear it and they say, all right, let's do it.

[B]

And they leave. And they'd already. They'd been in there over five minutes

[A]

already, which is pretty long.

[B]

It's good. It's good haul. Yeah.

[A]

The typical run would be two, three minutes maybe.

[B]

I mean, tell her they may even be a minute. I don't know. You know what I mean? It's not. I mean, he was normally five minutes. This was a short run. Normally he's in there In a bank, five to 10 minutes, depending. Yeah. In the vaults. Yeah.

[A]

So five minutes they're able to get.

[B]

That was kind of quick.

[A]

They're able to get that one bag.

[B]

They got the one bag, which was over a million. Yeah.

[A]

And now they haul it back out.

[B]

So they haul it back out or they get into their vehicle and then we go. They drive to our rendezvous point and I meet them. I'm already there because when I called them, I went and I got in the vehicle and. Because I'm sitting there stationary, looking out for the. The one road where an ingress would come in, where the police would come in case the call didn't come out and the police were coming for, you know, you never know. So. And then. Plus we had Sally, who we'd hired in the bank. She was up. Way up on the hill from the highway with our radios, letting me know if a cop was coming down so I could get a pre up because it was probably from the top of the hill down to the bank was probably half a mile, quarter of a mile. So it was enough time to get them out of there if there was a cop that came up from up above. So we had her sitting up there and also she would be shadowing us in the getaway if we needed. We had two extra cars at the getaway that if we needed to abort that we could get out of and just leave and get other vehicles and go. But yeah, they finally. We rendezvoused and they got into the. I remember he jumped out of his car, out of the back of the van, out of the back of this car and jumped in. He says, man, maybe we better abort this. And I go, Scott said that? And I go, what the fuck are you talking about? Let's just do this, man. Let's just do it. Let's get this shit out. Let's get it.

[A]

What does he mean, abort it? Like just toss it all out?

[B]

Yeah, leave the money and let's go. You know, because of the tracers, you can't. You can't take it with you. You just leave it and go. And I said, no, man, let's do it. You just did it a week ago. We just did it four days ago. Let's just do it.

[A]

Dump it out, start going through it.

[B]

Just go through it, man. Do it. Concentrate. And I'm driving and the scanner's going. And the onslaught was nothing like the police had ever had. This was because of. I mean, we assumed that this was going to happen.

[A]

The task force was in town.

[B]

Yeah, the task force, because it was Hollywood now. It wasn't the ski mask guys that took that little bank, which the response was just lame at best. They didn't care because they could follow the guy home and follow him with the tracers, you know what I mean? A normal bank robber would just take him home with him, you know, Whereas this, it was immediate. I mean, Hollywood was known.

[A]

So they get the call, they say, hey, Hollywood just robbed us. Go get them.

[B]

Well, they just said a bank robbery. And they knew. Everybody knows. Yeah, whatever they said on the private line, maybe. But yeah, they did say it was a makeup.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Yeah, the dispatch comes out. Yeah, we have two white males with makeup on and so forth. So they knew it was Hollywood.

[A]

So now you're driving your route that you had practiced.

[B]

Yeah. So they're in the back going through the money, and I'm driving the route and we. Our route was that we go back in toward the bank from up where we were, I was, you know, maybe five blocks north of the bank. And then I went back down because we got to go south. And I go bank, and I take a left up into the residential area area, and right away, here comes a cop car up the street right behind us. And I turn, and he turns the opposite way, but then he stops and turns around. And I said, well, they're onto us. And Scott says, let's abort. He says, here's one. Here's one. And so I throw the bundle out. He'd found one of the Pronet tags. We didn't know how many are in there, obviously. So by me throwing that out, that one cop that was following or, you know, trying to track us had to stop and find that and deactivate it. So that gave us 10, 15 minutes, and they were still going through the money. And this was the calamity of everything. This is why nothing like this would have ever happened before. And on the getaway, we just passed one of our drop cars, one of our cars that if we wanted to abort, we could have gotten into. And Scott goes, goes, yeah, I've gone through all the money, man. I want to drive now. I said, no, we can't do this. I got to drive. I know the town. I said, I know where we're going. Don't worry. Just keep going through the money. We only got one. There's got to be more in there, man. Just keep doing, going. You know, I'm fretting, and he keeps. He's a very stubborn guy when he wants something, wants. I said, okay, get up here. Come on, let's go. And I looked back, and they didn't have any order to the money. They just. It was just a pile of loose bills now. And I said, what in the do I do here? What am I supposed to start and begin? And, you know, Mark, I don't know. I can't even remember he's there and you know, what he's doing or not doing. I don't know. This was what I hated. You know, Scott and I were alone. Everything was seamless. But here we got another entity. It's not seamless any longer. I'm not blaming him, but it's just.

[A]

Just as another variable.

[B]

It's an energy, you know what I mean? And so there's Scott. He's in the driver's seat, and I'm saying, get out of here, man. You can't wait. He's trying to take his coat off. And, I mean, you're talking about it's outside. It's raining. Hellacious rain, storm, night. You can't see in a vehicle. I said, forget the mask. Just go. Let's go. Take. Don't worry about your makeup, you know. And he was there probably for a minute and a half. And as he goes up the knoll, the top of the knoll, we're in a residential area, too. Turns left and then right behind. The cops are there because they triangulated, you know, and he drives. He's not driving fast. He's, you know, just normal going on, I guess, trying to figure out what to do. And I'm kind of laying forward because you can't lay flat because of the money pile. And my arms are behind me like that. And Biggins suddenly gets shot.

[A]

So is he in. Is Scott in his car?

[B]

No, he's in the van.

[A]

He's still in the van.

[B]

He's driving the van that I was driving. He wanted to change position, have me go through the money.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

And then. So Biggins is on the left. I'm on the sliding side door. And Biggins says. He just falls flat. He says, they shot me. Just calm like that. Just like they shot me. Scott stops, gets out.

[A]

You hear the shot?

[B]

No, I didn't hear the shot. I didn't hear anything. No. But they shot through the back of the van. The police, when they ambushed us, and they shot Mark first. He was behind the driver's seat. And, you know, we got money. I mean, we're this close together. I mean, you know what I mean? It's not a. It's nothing. You know, it's a cargo, little cargo van. And so Scott stops and he gets out, which was one of his modus operandis. He had this assault rifle with armor piercing bullets, which he had read a case of a bank robbery. An ex cop who robbed a bank in Chicago, and he was being chased by a cop, and he shot the engine out and got away. So he always had this in mind that, you know, disable the vehicle, the cop vehicle. So he gets out with that rifle to shoot the cop that's pursuing us, and it jams. So he gets back in, he throws the rifle, and he gets back into the driver's seat. And the. And the sliding door is still open, and I'm sort of there on the side. And then they shoot, start shooting again. And then they shot my left arm. And my left arm sort of goes flying in front of me like this. You know, they shot the whole bone in of me front off. And, you know, I Yelled out. I mean, I yelled out some of those f. Or whatever I said. They shot my arm off like that. And that scared the hell because I screamed it, unlike Mark, who just sort of like calmly said, they shot me. I'm screaming and I'm mad, you know what I mean? And I lay and I lay. Fall. No, I'm on my knees and my arm is just flopping from side to side, you know, the pain of that. And then Scott stops again and he gets out and he has his Beretta shotgun with like a semi, five or six shot semi. And he has slugs in him for the engine too, not for, you know, spraying out to hurt people. It's for the engine. And he was right there on the sliding door. And I hear one shot. Evidently there was two. From what they said, forensic said I heard one and then nothing. And he jumps back in, throws the shotgun in and gets back in the driver's seat. Then they start shooting in the van again. And they shot my other arm. Arm. And so I'm laying like this with my arms behind me, laying as flat as I can, armless and you know, just like the legless sharks, you know what I mean? It was the same thing, only they were. The arm. It's. It. It's too close. Do you see what I'm saying? It's too close. And there's blood and. And then suddenly this van stops, it juts up. I mean, it's not fat. He's not going fast. And it hits a bush or tree or something, you know, and the windshield wipers are still flapping back, you know, and the ting of the van from the rain. And he leaves. Scott left. And then you hear the cops out there, shoot that, shoot that. Kill him, kill him, you know, and they, you could hear pop, pop, you know, the shots going through the neighborhood. This is a residential area. And you know, he gets away. And then there were. There we are in the streets, you know, and I'm, you know, McGann comes with his shotgun. Get out, you get out. Out, get out. I'll kill you all. Or, you know, it kept going on like this, like some big badass, you know what I mean? And so I hobble, you know, I get out and you know, I didn't have arms. So, you know, you logic, you put your arms down to get. Lay flat on the ground. I just had to flop down, you know what I mean? And he said, put your arms. I don't have any arms, man. You shut my arms off. He says, put your arms around I said, you. I don't have any arms. You know, and then some other cop comes over and contains me and all the. You know what I mean?

[A]

And.

[B]

And then I'm laying there, I lay there, you know, and I look into the van. And I mean, you know, you're in a. You know, your life's upside down, you know, this is. You don't prepare for. Even if you do prepare, it's not.

[A]

You're in shock. Adrenaline, losing power.

[B]

And I look back in the van and all these laser lights, you know, just from the bullet holes that the cops shot into the. There's just these streams of light into the van. It just. Like. I looked at it, and it was just like. God, how beautiful. It just looked like angels in there, you know? And then I started hearing this music, this. This serene. The most beautiful music I've ever heard. Harmonics and overtones of a choir like this beautiful, beautiful. Just encompassing my whole. I just go, God, this is beautiful. This is just like the most beautiful experience I ever had. It was. It was. It was amazing, you know, and it lasted about a minute. It. You know, and then the. And then the shooter McGann comes over and, you know, he breaks me out of that reverie. But. And then he says, yeah, your friend, he left. Huh? Left. Left you. And I said. And he said. He said, well, that's a good friend who left you like that. And he said. And I said. I don't remember what. I said. Something. It's in the book, whatever. I said, you know what I mean? And, you know, he goes, yeah, well, you know, we didn't get you, but we're gonna. The courts are sure gonna. You up, you know, the courts are gonna take care of you. And, you know, in the book, I said, you know, whatever. Some mental dissertation went through. Yeah, the. The courts, I don't. You know, whatever they are, whatever bag of hell they're gonna send me, you know, I don't look forward to that or, you know, whatever it was. I said, you know, and, you know, he kept going around me with his shotgun, you know, and. And then. Until Sean showed up. Then. Then the guy was gone, you know, because Sean was the authority of all of it. And, you know, he. He realized. And when I saw him come up, it was like, there's the guy, you know, and he was a great guy. And, you know, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, wasn't like a friend, but it was just a professional. He was a professional, and he acted like it. He didn't act like some crazed, you know, crackhead like McGann was. And, you know, then the legal thing, you know, once I got into county and I mean, first I go to the hospital and, you know, there was some of the cops. I was there for three days in the hospital. And, you know, you're shackled and to the bed and everything. And, you know, they have cops, they're 24 7. And some of the changes of cops, they would come in and shake my hand and thank, you know, said, I don't know how you guys had the balls to do what you did, but it was pretty amazing, you know. And then there was just others that were just like, oh, man, these guys, these are punks. You know, I'm so glad we should have killed them and stuff. Like, you overhear them talking, you know, they're gibberish and their cacophony and all that sort of stuff. And then, you know, the marshals, when we would be, you know, transported from the county to the hospital, wherever they transport us from our. For our medical reasons, they were always cool guys. You know, the feds were always. The feds and marshals were always all. Because they understood. Sean understood what he was dealing with, you know, he understood that. You know what I mean? And then now, after the Netflix, through a. Through a mutual relationship, during our legal, you know, strategies and everything, one of the investigators for Scott's, I mean, not Scott's, for Mark's lawyer, she was investigator, and she went and did all the forensics. She saw what happened, and they, you know, they didn't allow it and they didn't put it in court because it was a plea bargain, so it wasn't a trial. And, you know, but she saw what really took place, and she knew this and this. And, you know, there's no way that they would have, you know, they could have shot from the van, you know, all the bullet. When you look at the back of the van, everything splayed inwardly, the metal, you know, from the bullets. And, you know, I mean, Mark did. He said he did shoot his 9 millimeter out as he lay flat. Shot it out the back of the window, which was stupid, but he did. I didn't hear it, you know, but he said he did it. So. And he didn't remember any of the process of how this thing went down. He says it's just like he blanked out. So.

[A]

And then.

[B]

Yeah. So we found, after the Netflix, before

[A]

jumping to that, what happens to Scott?

[B]

Okay, so Scott got away. Okay. Yeah. This is the beautiful thing I Don't know. Beautiful, symbolical thing. He had to have been shot, his father, when he saw the autopsy. There was one bullet wound to his leg which would crust it over that was older than his head shot and the other bullets that the police had shot in. But what he did there was maybe two blocks away. There was a camper in the backyard of a house. House. And he jumped, got over the fence and he got in it somehow. And that's where he was held up for. For over a day. Held up inside this. And he would have never done that if he hadn't have been shot and injured. He could have. You know, he would have. His disguise was off. He could have gotten rid of everything, gone into a bar or someplace nearby. It was in that area, you know, plus we had our drop cars nearby. He could have gotten away. He was in better shape than any of the cops were, you know, and he would have gotten away and. But he didn't because he had a wound. So he was held up, holding out, and they didn't find him for a day. And the reason why they found him is because this was the house of some elderly lady. And she had two sons who were loggers, who were, I guess, in their 40s or something. And they were concerned because there was a whole dragnet around that neighborhood where her mother lived. You know, everything was cordoned off, off for the whole night and day and everything. So they went over to try to make sure everything was okay. They wanted to go through the house and make sure he wasn't held up there or something. And they went out to the backyard of the camper and they realized that the camper door was. It was always their key would have unlocked it, but it was locked from the inside with a latch, and that would have never happened. And so they were suspicious. And then they looked into, you know, how the campers come up over the truck. There's a little window. They looked in and they saw. Saw a person underneath the plastic tablecloth, you know, under the table. You know how those horrible little campers are, you know. And so they called the FBI, the police, and then they had just a huge, you know, dragnet of cops and FBI and detectives and all kinds of stuff going on like that. And, you know, they kept calling out. And by that time, you know, this whole thing unfolded when I was. I was in the hospital. In the hospital. Right away, I was being interrogated. Biggins, Mark was in operating, and, you know, he wasn't verbal and available. And I'm in there, waited, I think Three hours waiting for surgery. I'm like, you know, I was drugged up, obviously, and Sean's there, and I go, you know, they had his guns already. They had the guns, so they could have traced the guns. I said, well, just. Just, you know, who. Where's Hollywood? We don't want anybody to be anybody further to be hurt. And I said, well, the only people that got hurt are us. You know what I mean? I mean, what are you gonna do? And. And he. I said, you know, look, just get his gun. You got his guns. Trace him. You can. Well, it could take two days. I go, two days. You're the FBI, you know, and evidently it does. I don't. It's what he told me now. And the reason why I even told him the names, it's not. I mean, Scott and I had spoken about this before, long before. We said, look, at this point, if anything happens to us, Big and you, me, there's no that. We're all forensically tied. It's, you know, there's nothing. You got to do what you got to do. I got to do what I got to do. Everybody's got to do what they got to do. And it's true. You got to make the best situation that you can. And so the problem I had was, was which we argued at intensively, is his girlfriend being at the treehouse. And she was there. And I said, can you imagine these cops going down and when they get the address and seeing a tree house? And they. I mean, if they didn't kill her, they would have put her in jail until they figured everything out, you know, I mean, this girl didn't know what was going on. She had no idea. I mean, you know, she lived a lifestyle that she liked. This was Scott's lifestyle. So she knew something, you know what I mean? But they didn't.

[A]

She didn't know he was robbing a bank.

[B]

No, she didn't know that. And she didn't deserve. They're just naive young people, you know, young women, and, you know, they don't deserve that. And so I said, okay, as long as. I mean, I, you know, you're going to get him. I said, anyway, and I said, you're going to find out who he is. And, you know, but you got to promise me this. Is that her girlfriend's. His girlfriend is that there? And she's going to be in the tree house. And he goes, tree house? And I said, yeah, it's the biggest tree house in the world. And he kind of looks at me and shakes his Head like that. And, you know, I said, da, da, da. I said, her name is, you know, Janine, and, you know, make sure you don't hurt her. She's not involved in any way. She just came in for Thanksgiving, you know, and, you know, I tried to make it as easy, you know, I mean, sooner or later they're, you know, I mean, it's just. You're stupid to think otherwise, you know, he would never have gone back to the tree house. It never would have entered his mind. He's not that stupid, you know, if he'd have been not shot, if he'd have gotten away, he would have never gone there. And so anyway, they go down there and they do cordon off the whole property, everything. And he's still up there in the camper overnight. And this was at nighttime. And so it all went through the whole night and the whole next day. And when the two brothers found him in the camper, then the police came and they started calling him out because they knew his name at this point, and no answer, no answer. And they shot in tear gas, and nothing happened. They put tear gas through the window. You know, nothing happened. You know, they were saying, they, you know, you can't live through that in a little camper like that. Scott was a survivalist. I mean, he read about all that stuff, you know, I mean, he hiked alone a lot in the mountains just to test himself, you know, and nothing happened. And then, you know, it kept going on, and they kept calling his name, and they. You know, the whole place was. They had amphibious. They had an amphibious vehicle that tried to get into the backyard, and it got stuck on the fence. They were going to come and crash the camper over. And I mean, they don't, you know, they. The cops haven't seen that there was anybody in there. They're just taking the word of this guy, you know, and no, there was no reaction from. From the tear gas. And so then they. Or the pepper spray. And so then they shot in tear gas. The detective went up to the. Up to the window. There's a little latch window, you know, you can go put your hand through and unlock the door. So he started fiddling with the latch. And that's when a shot went out. The shot, and that was Scott. He shot him. And then the detective ran van. And then the police just started shooting. I don't know how many rounds. I think Sean said something like 70 rounds were shot and just destroyed the van. And still no word, nothing. And they still kept going on and on and on until his girl, they brought his girlfriend up and she called and she kept saying, he's dead, he's dead. You've already killed. You know, he's not going to do that. What? You know, it's in the book. You have. Everything is really. The dialogue, all of it's in the book.

[A]

Book.

[B]

You may ask how I know that. I had her when I was in federal prison. I had her write me about it. She wrote about a 20 page letter of all of the dialogue, all the different people, all that took place from when they came to. When she was in Seattle. So I reiterated and, you know, sophisticated it. But all of that information came from her. So I knew that. And plus from newspaper articles that I was able to get. Get. So that's there. But, you know, the detective, this is what Sean said he went up to. The detective went up to him, you know, he said, that man could have killed me. But he didn't. And for Sean, he always said, you know, I never. I never knew Scott Scurlock. You know, I only knew Hollywood, but I never. And I would have liked to have met the man and shaken his hand. Can you believe that? I mean, it's beautiful. I mean, not that he condones the bank robbery. It wasn't that. But he just respected the way it went down and the way, you know, he could have killed the guy. He could have gone out blazing like you see in Hollywood.

[A]

He had weapons.

[B]

He had his 9 millimeter and he had a PPK on as well. And you know, he could have. Yeah, he could have done any number of things. Even before that. He could have. We all could have. I mean, I didn't have an ability. I didn't have any arms. But you know what I mean? I mean, before it got to that, it couldn't. We could have stopped immediately when we first saw the police and all jumped out and scattered and all number of things. But why it took place the way it took place, I don't know, man. I don't know. It doesn't make sense. I mean, you blank out, but you don't blank out, you see. I mean, everything unfolded and you saw it unfold and I don't know how to explain it. It's something that had to be the way it was.

[A]

When did you find out that Scott had died?

[B]

Died on tv, in the hospital.

[A]

And what was what feeling came over you?

[B]

Relief for him that, you know, that's what he always said would happen. Other than that, he said if he. If it ever came to that, it would he would decide his own fate, you know what I mean? And I've respected him for it. I mean, people say it's weakness. What's weak about not facing prison? What does that make you? A strong man to face prison. Kind of stupid, you know, you didn't man up to it. What the hell. He didn't man up to it. I mean, you know, that's a samurai morality in a way. I mean, to me, I mean, I don't look to commit. Neither did he. It's not like you long for it. There's no. Didn't have a death wish, but you prepare your essence. I mean, it's no different than a warrior going in and seeing right in front of him, but doing it to protect his mission, whatever that may be, even though he knows he's going to die. I mean, this was a bad. This was like for us, a warrior without physical violence in a sense. Every time we went into a new operation, you had to approach it soberly. You didn't, you know, they always wanted, you know, these articles and people, they got the adrenaline. They had this, they had. No, it wasn't like that. Even after, I mean, when we, after a successful operation, robbery, we would be back and after everything was cleaned and money was sorted out and everything, we high fived and gave each other a hug and good job, you know, that was that. And then we'd maybe go have a. Usually on the successful ones, we never, we always split up. He would hit, go his way. I would, you know, get the money prepared to go to Vegas before I went back to, to New Orleans or Frisco where I was living at the time. And, you know, but we didn't like party and get drunk and all that sort of silly shit. No, it was clinical.

[A]

Right after you sort of came to and kind of got more stable in the hospital, did you feel relief that you were caught?

[B]

Oh man, I don't remember. I didn't feel relief, No, I didn't feel relief. I felt uncertainty of. Okay, I'm in mode 2 now. No longer is it Steve Myers preparing a bank robbery. Now it's Steve Myers in survival mode. Scott didn't enter into it, Biggins, in a certain sense because we're both there so we have to, you know, they tried to keep us away from each other so we couldn't, you know, we wouldn't coordinate our stories and so forth. And fortunately enough, Mark didn't have a lot of knowledge. He only did two robberies with Scott. So he only knew that he didn't know details of all those years at all. So that wasn't really a problem.

[A]

But what was Mark's deal? Like, what was the deal?

[B]

Same as mine. The only deal he got is that his girlfriend, because they had robbed a bank alone. They actually robbed Scott's bank in Olympia, which he had to pay for Scott. I mean, Mark had to pay. Scott got. I don't know. He told him, just not because he wanted the money. He said, I want $20,000 from you just because you took my gun out of the treehouse and you robbed my bank, my personal bank in Olympia. And everybody in frigging Olympia almost knows you.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And his girlfriend put him up to

[A]

it because she loved it.

[B]

Yeah, she was a bitch. I never liked that woman. She was like Morticia. You know what I mean?

[A]

So he got jammed on those three. On the first one, the one he

[B]

did alone, and then that Crawford. The only thing he got. I mean, our deal was 21 years, and it was actually a deal that the judge would decide on a high end or a low end. 24 to 20. 21 to 24. The judge went to low end, obviously, and he got. His deal was. And we. That he would. She wouldn't be indicted. His girlfriend, somehow. I don't know why. I mean, she'd done. You know what I mean? But.

[A]

So she walked away.

[B]

Yeah, she walked away. And she's. You know, even to this day. And I didn't get anything other than the fact I didn't get anything tangible to it at all. But the only thing we had to do was we had to do a debriefing with the FBI. And I said, yeah, and for me, this is where I had my trump call card. Because I knew what the FBI had on us. I knew what bank they would. I could. I could lie about everything when I knew they didn't know something. I could lie and obfuscate and make up a story, whatever it was. I made myself look less vulnerable, less comparable than, you know, would have been. And, you know, when he read the book. When Sean read the book, he said, man, I didn't realize you. I thought you'd only done a couple. Three robbers from what you told me before.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And, you know. But I was trying to save myself. So Scott was dead. So I could just say anything I wanted to say as long as I knew they didn't have forensic evidence. Like when I made a call out, then I had to tell the truth. I didn't say what it was, but I always told them I always got $5,000, which was. And they would look at me, his partner, David Burrow, he was a cool guy. He was more of a stranger. Street FBI agent, liked him a lot. He jumped up on the table and he said, $5,000. Are you crazy? And I kind of looked naively, you know, and I said, I mean, I didn't do anything. I'm sitting in a car and I got a radio.

[A]

I mean, I'm an artist.

[B]

I don't know. It was five grand. It was no big deal. You know what I mean? I'm not going to get. If he gets caught up, I mean, I'm out of there. I'm not. And they kind of. They all believed it, so. So not until the real story comes out. But, you know, I didn't want any restitution, too. I didn't want to have any. I'm not going to pay all that money back.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know what I mean? I mean, I had my own thing going, but I'm not going to pay back millions of dollars.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I mean, you got to go through prison with a restitution. You're in not happy shape. You know what I mean?

[A]

So you got to keep the money.

[B]

I had what I had. Yeah. I had my money, and I didn't have any restitution. I mean, you have some little thing, court costs. I don't know, $500, everybody.

[A]

Attorney fees.

[B]

No, I had a. I had this. She was a public defender, but she was really good attorney, actually. And she came to me, actually because she saw what was going on with the police on the night of the shootout. And it was like. It was like legally illegal, what they were doing, you know?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Especially after being shot up and vulnerable and using us in the way they used us, you know what I mean? So she came to me, and I. Another attorney had come, and they wouldn't give me the name. They tore the cards up.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So they kept any attorney from me until she somehow insisted and got. Got through. So.

[A]

So you get sentenced in 93.

[B]

96.

[A]

96, yeah.

[B]

November of 96. Yeah. Thanksgiving.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Well, it was probably. No. Before we got convicted, it would have been 97 because it took a half a year to get to the court. Court took a half a year negotiation. I was in half. Six months. About six months in county jail, which was horrible.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Nightmare.

[A]

And then what's the. The prison you spent most of your time in?

[B]

Boy, they sent me all over the place. Sheridan was where I started in Oregon. Yeah. Which was a cool place. I mean, it was. It was a High security. But the higher the security in federal prison, the better the place is. The lower you go, the more scum you get.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because it's just, you know, drug, molesters, all that kind of garbage. You know what I mean?

[A]

And you were telling me before, some of the people you were in prison with.

[B]

Yeah, who were they? Well, I mean, CIA agent who was a Celia Mine, who was Harold Nicholson, who was in there. He got indicted again in federal prison. While he was in prison, he was smuggling information out through his son to the Russian. Yeah. He and I were cellies. He was big time. Yeah.

[A]

And then other people.

[B]

Yeah. John Connolly, Whitey Bulger. FBI agent who used Whitey Bulger for information. Him, Waco. One of the Waco. Jamie. What was his last name? Jamie. He was from la. He ran the chapel. The music in the chapel. Yeah. The stories I heard about the Branch Davidian. Oh, my God. Oh, my. That was. That was a murder. Mayhem. That was a Clinton murder machine. Janet Reno Clinton murder machine. You know, they went after that, and they finally got out. They got out after 10 years. They got out. They got 40 years knocked off of their sentence on the bogus gun charges from a pro bono Supreme Court lawyer.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Got them all out. Yeah. The rest that were alive, that weren't murdered. And, you know, there was others. There was. So, I mean, you know, there's some famous. There was a lot of big cartel guys, you know, Mexican, American, and they were all really cool guys. One of the accountants of who was a cartel guy in Colombia. What was his name?

[A]

Pablo Escobar.

[B]

Yeah, Escobar, his accountant was there in a West Texas prison I was at. Wow. Yeah, he was interesting. There was a lot of interesting people along the way. Yeah. But, you know, there was. When I got to North Carolina, that was the last place I was at.

[A]

Did your daughter visit you in prison?

[B]

Yeah, In North Carolina. Yeah.

[A]

That must have been.

[B]

Well, yeah, she came to Texas once, too. Yeah.

[A]

That must have been interesting that. That's kind of the time that you and her are reconnecting.

[B]

Yeah. Pretty close. Yeah. That started, you know, we wrote letters, and actually, when I was selling with a Turkish multimillionaire, he was from Istanbul, he and I were sellers, and he ran. He pretty much ran the prison. He paid everybody off. And so he. Instead of using his lawyer, he couldn't. Lawyers don't want to deal with this Mickey Mouse. He paid my daughter to send checks out to all the different Mexican people who did favors for him, cleaned his clothes, made food for him and all that. So she would make, you know, $500 a month and you know, that kind. She was beginning her teaching career, you know, so that, you know, it was something. I mean, she. It was a shock to her when she realized it, but once we got together, it was just. She knows who I am. I mean, she. We had a great childhood and. Yeah, you know, she traveled. She lived in Europe as a child.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, we could do an entire episode just on the prison experience, which if the people are interested, please let me know. But eventually you get out in what, 2014.

[B]

Yeah, it was. I actually with this. I got subpoenaed when I was in. It was in North Carolina, I believe the first place. It was well run, you know, Whereas this low security place was just run by degenerates, you know, I mean, the warden was some half breed something. I don't know what he came from, where he came from, but he was a degenerate. Place was a tramp house. There was. It was a slum. Illegals off the border would come into vans and just rabies and malignant this. And I mean, it was disgusting, filthy. I wanted to get out of there and I was trying to figure out, how am I going to get out of there. And once you got into that place, they don't want to let you go because they all get money out of that thing. You know, they all get the, you know, they get kickbacks and they get populating. So you got to do something radical to get out, you know, And I'm not a gang member, I never was. And I didn't run with that crew and, or any of that. And so, you know, I'm on, I'm solo. And it was a horrible overcrowded place and I got, I got put in the hole there. I mean, I don't know if you want me to say it online on, on air, but sure that in the chow halls you have these long lines and at lunchtime, I mean it would take you hours just to get in to get have chow. And you get in there, the warden would run around. He was like a 6 foot 4 guy. You didn't know. Pakistani, Mexican, black. You didn't know what the hell the guy was, you know, and he had these high. His pants were high, high cuffs and he had white socks. He was goofiest looking thing you ever imagined, you know, Mean, horrible, mean guy. And he's no talking because it was like they wanted you to eat and get out. And I'm talking to some guy and he comes Up. And he says, you, you stop talking or get out of here. And I just looked up out of inst. I, I didn't even know. I mean I looked up at him and I said, I go, fuck you. You like that, screamed it out. And he looks at me, he calls the lieutenants and the guards come and get this guy. And I was in the hole for five months and I was happy in there.

[A]

And then when you say the hole, you mean just like solitary?

[B]

Yeah, solitary. You just, you know, you got to sell. It's just a sell, you know. And you're there and you have a little rec area you can go to, but the guards that are running the. Oh, shoot, if you're cool, they like you. And it's a lot better that you don't have to do the stupid stuff that you do on. You know, it's, it's. It was horrible, you know, in the living quarters, bunk beds and people all around, you know. And I was there for five months or something and I got called into the lieutenant there one day and there was these anti terrorist guys and they're there and they're in there questioning me this. And I go, what are you guys here for? You know, and, and they go, well, what do you know about Jim Nicholson? And that was my, the CIA agent. And I said, yeah, he was my cellie. What about him? You know, well, you know, he's. They didn't say why he's there. I said, well, what, you know, you. He must have told you a lot of stuff. And I go, I don't know. Not really. I mean, yeah, we talked. I mean, we good friends, you know, whatever. Not good friends, but you know, we. He was in to find a cellie in prison. I mean, he was educated. I mean he was a criminal, don't get me wrong. He outed American citizens and everything, you know, operatives and stuff.

[A]

But he went to college.

[B]

College. We could have conversations. He was calm, you know, everything was cool. And he worked all day. And that's when I was able to type. I had a typewriter in my cell and I could write the book and you know, all kinds of things went on and he would tell me things, but I didn't, you know, to me it didn't, it didn't. There was nothing. I mean, I didn't, you know, I mean there was things I knew, but you know, I'm not going to sit here and anyway, that nothing happened. And I got.

[A]

So Even behind bars.

[B]

Even behind bars, he was continuing the espionage. Healing of the espionage by Using his son to do this. Okay?

[A]

And then his son got jammed up.

[B]

And his son got jammed up because he was going to Cyprus, Argentina, and meeting the Russians in different places. Places, you know. So I said that, Mother. I said, he used his son to do this. And even before that, I told him when I left Oregon, you know, some years back, some years before, I said, don't write my daughter. Because he wanted to keep in communication. See, he wanted me to help him. He had escape plans and everything for me to help him get out of prison because of my cosmetic disguise. Plus I had money and I had a lawyer that I could send out information to without the prison seeing it. He couldn't send anything out without going through blackouts. And it would go to the FBI in Washington before it was sent to a sender, and they would either throw it away or blackout anything that wouldn't be there, but he sent something to my daughter, and obviously they saw it. And so that's why they kept coming to me, that there's some connection with us.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And that pissed me off. I just left.

[A]

Let it.

[B]

I let it ride. But then when it came to, I saw his son, I said this. You know, I said. So I went into the case manager, and I said, let me call this guy, you know, in Portland. They let me call him. And I said, yeah, I'll come out. I'll tell you all kinds of wow. I mean, escape plans, how he wanted to use this. And anyway, I got. I got a couple years knocked off, but that was a beautiful experience in prison. They took us, went to a grand jury. I got flown to Portland for. From North Carolina to Portland twice.

[A]

Wow. What was the guy's name again?

[B]

Harold Nicholson. Can you pull him up?

[A]

That's a wild story. I'd never heard that before.

[B]

He got an extra eight years on top.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Of 21. And then from there, from Sheridan, which was a chill place, he went to not Illinois, but Indiana. Terre Haute, Indiana, which is a high. It's almost like Florence, Colorado, right? Yeah.

[A]

Wow. That is wild.

[B]

Yeah. But anyway, I got a couple years, and I went to the grand jury, and we went. This was w. What was really exciting, actually, for me, the first time I've ever been to a grand jury. So I got to back up the. The federal prosecutor in Portland, who was a woman. And when I first arrived from North Carolina to the Portland, you know, and they picked me up, the marshals picked me up and took me to the federal courthouse in Portland and come in and, you know, there's the FBI agent. There's another local Portland policeman there, and another person. And then the woman comes in. There he is. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. I'd never heard this story before. That is wild.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow. I'm sorry not to interrupt.

[B]

No, that's okay. So she comes in and she's just dropped dead. Beautiful woman, man. I mean, she comes in in a satin low cut thing. And here I am, you know what, 12 years in prison. Fuck this shot. And you know, that's part of their game, too. I mean, you get that. I mean, you know, but I didn't know who I was dealing with till I got there. And she was very nice and everything. He says, can we get you anything? I said, yeah, well, get me. You know, I haven't had a cappuccino. Cappuccino in years. And croissant, it would be great. And they went out and got it, brought it. So I started telling them these stories and then everything. And then they said, okay, we got to have a grand jury. This information, they start, you know, everything, all the different things. Because when I had my typewriter, it was an IBM word process that I was allowed to have in my cell, which nobody else does because I was a clerk for the unit. So I did payroll for the unit for the unit managers. And I mean, to have that, that's another just happenstance. I mean, if I hadn't had that to write the book, I mean.

[A]

Yeah, it never would have happened.

[B]

I mean, I hand wrote and then typed. But, you know, it's just the same. You can't. It's not the same, you know. And so, you know, I get there and I come back out and I go to grand jury. And here we are, you know, and we go into this and all the federal buildings are so much. They're beautiful. They're designed to captivate you. They're designed colors, shapes, forms, lighting. The lighting is very important. It's not too bright, it's not too dull. It's just perfect. Then you have these colors and nice cushion. The grand jury, I think there's 12 people and they're in seats and there's kind of like. Like a circular amphitheater. And I'm up there on the. In my, you know, orange bullshit. And here's this gorgeous woman comes in and everybody up there knew about Hollywood, okay? So these poor people, Harry and Mary and Joe and, you know, just normal citizens. GQ guys in Portland, they're getting called up on a CIA case. And that's like, oh, wow, this ought to be. Who wouldn't want to go to, you know, be chosen for a grand jury for that. That. And then I come in and she introduces me as the Hollywood bank robber. And you can see the eyes like this because they all heard of us. So first of all, they're in with a CIA guy that's trying to get out of prison using. And then they got me and then they start talking about. She starts asking me the questions, what do you want? I said, well, yeah, he had planned that a helicopter from San Francisco, Russian consulate would come up and pick us up in Sheridan and pick us up in the yard, which was doable. And, you know, it really was doable. I mean, in that prison setting, especially with the weather, the fog all the time and all that. And, you know, I would have availability to do this and, you know, because I had this typewriter when he would. On the weekends when he wasn't working, he had his own typewriter cassette and he would use the typewriter to do all of his clandestine stuff. I mean, I never asked him what he was, you know, but what I did notice is after his cassette was. Was used up, he would take and unravel it and flush it down the toilet so that it'd never be found or confiscated.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Instead of throwing it away, which. So, you know, I mean, I didn't question it, but I. I look back now, I probably could have got out of prison back in the day all the way if I'd have wanted, but it wasn't in my mindset to. You know what I mean? I mean, enough things. He told me about escaping and transferring information to the Russians through San Francisco and then to my brother who lived in Italy and be able to get that to them because I had a paralegal in San Francisco, I could easily put anything in there and send to them. They don't. Legal mail, they don't.

[A]

They don't read right.

[B]

His, they would, but not mine.

[A]

So he was trying to use you and use your daughter.

[B]

Well, she. There was only one letter. But that's why they, I think, ultimately came to me.

[A]

And at that point, you're like, f this guy.

[B]

Yeah, him. I just said, you know, that's, you know, because became, you know, and there was always something quirky about the guy. I mean, when you're in a 8 by 12 cell, you know, and he was losing his hair and, you know, he would sit in front of the mirror and kind of like fix it. Combing the hair. I go, what the. You got. You know, let's just let it be. You Know, there's, you feel, you know what I mean, after a while.

[A]

But do you chronicle a lot of the prison stuff in the book?

[B]

Only in the county jail because I'm more concerned about the priest, you know, the county jail in the very beginning of the book. The book starts out on the shootout in the very end. So you don't know what it is. It's just this. And then little by little you start seeing that it was a bank robbery. And we go through the. And it's through the debriefing with Sean after the plea bargain and everything, while I'm in county jail doing the negotiating. It's in the plea bargain that you go into the bank robberies. So we go back in time, right. And I tell Sean what, you know, what question he's asking, whether I'm lying or not lying.

[A]

And now you and Sean are good friends?

[B]

Yeah. It was because of the Netflix. We were both disappointed with it. And this mutual friend that knew his wife, who was the investigator on our legal team, we had, after I got out of prison, we contacted each other once or something. And then she said, Sean wanted to, if you're willing, Sean would like to call you and ask you about the Net Netflix. I said, sure. You know, I mean, and then he called me and I said, wow, you know, he's in Virginia and I'm in Durham, North Carolina. I'm two hour drive, two and a half hour drive up. I said, how would you like to have the original manuscript, which is three times the size of the book? And he said, yeah. And he'd gotten the book already and read it and was astounded by a lot of the things that he didn't know. And then when he got. Got the manuscript and his wife went through it and put it in plastic sleeves because I had. It was all pretty still rough, you know, from years of being used and transported.

[A]

Have you caught up with Mark?

[B]

Yeah, he's in western Colorado, Montrose, Colorado.

[A]

And you see him from time to time?

[B]

Yeah, I saw him out there. Yeah, I was out there visiting my brother, you know, and oddly enough, he, my brother has. He and his wife, wife have this large property in Montrose, you know, beautiful place. And he's about as a crow flies, maybe quarter of a mile away from him. And they never knew this.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And it's all there. He ends up there. And I was out there helping my brother build, build on his home. And I went and saw him and we saw him. He's running, he's on this property that has a couple Three horses. And he takes care of the horses for the old lady. And, you know, he's kind of like settled in just the same as he was, but mellow, you know what I mean? Older and mellow and. But he's not. I mean, I got out, I turned the light switch on and started business and started getting things going again. It's just. I can't, you know.

[A]

And what happened to his wife?

[B]

Well, they never married.

[A]

Or I guess his girlfriend at the time.

[B]

Oh, she. You ever heard from her? No, I don't have anything to do with it. I know she's got some kids and married somebody and was in New Orleans for a while and. I know. I don't know. I think they're kind of friends. I think they talk. She's married and something. I don't know.

[A]

And do you ever think about Scott? How often? How often do you think about it?

[B]

More now, the more I'm getting into it. I want to euthanize, you know, I mean, I just want to bring him out. I want to bring. I mean, there was a. There was a lot negative about him. Don't get me wrong. There was things that he had a weak part, but he carried a lot of stress, a lot of internal responsibility that he self created. But as far as a human, a mench, he was a real mensch with people and. But he could be Eric, he could fight. He would, you know, if he got. If somebody tried to. Somebody did something, he would get a fight. He would, you know. But he was a great guy, you know. And did you love him? Yeah, there was a. I mean, I don't know how to explain it. It's almost because it was so metaphysical, the whole thing. We leaned on each other. He needed me like I needed him. I mean, we kind of used each other in a way, but not used each other maliciously, just. We became dependent on each other. I mean, my dependency was that I can't let him fall because once he falls, there was a certain point in the history that forensically it would come back on me. But, you know, if I. Knowing the law that I know now, it wouldn't have mattered. I mean, but then just thinking that if my name came up, you know, life was over with. But now, knowing how things work, it's not that critical, but.

[A]

And everything that you've gone through. Do you look back at that day in that Italian restaurant when he pitched you this idea and do you regret it?

[B]

No, I just look at it. He ordered after we had one serving of tiramisu. Together because he loved it because this was a Tuscan restaurant and Johnny was his name. And after we had one serving of tiramisu, he asked the waitress, and she said. She said, do you have. Do you have any more tiramisu? And she goes, yeah, there's half of the pan. She said, bring the whole thing out. And we're sitting there eating the rest of the whole plate of tiramisu and drinking wine. I mean, this is who he was. We would go into an Italian bar in Chicago. He loved Chicago because it was just party time for him. And we'd go in there, and he was a drinker, man, he's my size. But that guy could drink more than one mark. And he loved grappa. And we went in there and there was this exotic back bar, you know, and they had like 15 bottles of grappa. And he said, I want to taste at least 10 of those, the best ones you had. And, you know, each grappa taste and those exotic grappas are 10, 15 bucks a piece or whatever. You know, they're a lot, even back then. And he'd have these shots of grappa, and that guy would drink every one of those things. Wow. God almighty. I mean, he was drunk, but he could handle it. You know what I mean?

[A]

But you don't regret it?

[B]

No, I can't regret it. I can't regret. I don't look back. If somebody said, would you. If you could change it all, would you? And I go, no, not even the prison. I don't know. It changed. My life changed. I respect. I respect more now than I did before that I respect more the human simplicity in a way, even though I'm not fully part of the human organism in the same way that I would have been before. But, I mean, I look at life so much freer in a way, sort of. I mean, I'm in the. I'm involved in the routine of what everybody has. You have to make money. You do this, you have responsibilities. I mean, it's all there, but it's like an old collage. It's just there. You do it. And it's not. Not who I am. It's not. I don't. I don't. The success is not important to me, if that makes sense. I mean, I don't not want to. It's not like I'm looking for success, but I'm not not looking for it. It's just a thing that's just one of the.

[A]

You're more focused on doing Yeah, I just.

[B]

I just work. That's all I do is work. I work and you know, going to restaurants and all of that stuff, I've done it so much that I go in there and it's just anti climatical, the food is not even. And I mean, you know, it's just. I've tasted better done. You know, it's just. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I. It's not the same as it used to be. And I mean especially with him or with girlfriends and you go in and you party and you have good times. I mean, with my girlfriend that flew for United, we were at the treehouse and I mean she. When she met Scott and saw the treehouse, it was like this. Oh my God. I mean, she comes from Europe. She came, escaped the war, the creation she was creating, escaped the Serbian Croatian war and got to America and became successful. You know, I mean, she got everything, did everything properly. Became a flight attendant. She was a flight attendant already in Croatia for their airline there. But the point is, is that. And she comes to this, ideally this tree house and Scott, who was this crazy guy, the first time she met him, we were watching Evander Holyfield and Tyson fight when he bit the Earl off. And we're there in the front, in the front house and we're there and we got, you know, wine and champagne and whiskey and we're going and Scotsk and we're screaming and yelling and you know, at the fight and. And you know, she sees this tree house and I take her the next day up to the Mount Rainier, up to the paradise and it's just this magical. I mean the forest, the treehouse was this, this womb of beauty of, of. It was symbolic, you know, symbolic of something that doesn't exist in life anymore. And you know, you became secure and to feel this. And when she see Scott in the treehouse and how he lived and he had this money, but he dressed like a vagabond, he drove around an old van, you know, he shared what he had. His house was not exuberant. It wasn't. He didn't buy designer furniture. Unlike me, when I get. I design everything. You know what I mean? I like that kind of ambient. But him is like always in a log cabin, you just go and you put the feet up on the sofa and you just live. You know what I mean? And that's the way he was.

[A]

Any more nightmares?

[B]

No.

[A]

Do you, do you feel like you're still being tested by that metaphysical force?

[B]

I think I always will from the day I die, even before bank robbery, I just, you know, life was always something extraordinary. I mean, things happen to me that should never happen. I. Kinds of people I've met throughout the world. Teachers, philosophers, artists, all kinds of different artists from different parts of the world. You know, I had the opportunity. I mean, I put myself in those opportune situations, but still to be able to have it and appreciate it. I mean, I have Russian friends, Israeli friends, you know, Brazilian. I was married to a Brazilian wife and we were married for some number of years, whom I met in Italy. She was a sculptress as well. And, you know, just different, you know, all of the things, everything unfolded. I don't know. Did you ever read Herman Hess? He's probably not now. He's a German writer, you know, and he. I read all of his books back in the day, and it was, you know, kind of Herman Hess was one the of. Of his things and Siddhartha, which is more metaphysical one. You know what I mean? But that's what I felt like. I felt like a wanderer back then. And things just unfolded as I went. And whenever I did, I always gave. I always would build studios. I never asked. I never. I can't imagine carrying an American flag around and going down and trying to get some welfare somewhere. I just. It doesn't even. People would laugh at you.

[A]

I'm curious, in that time of your life, and I'm not asking this as a pejorative memorial, almost like a clinical question, do you feel like you or Scott were psychopaths?

[B]

I mean, psychopath in which way?

[A]

Like maybe like having some type of clinical disposition where anxiety didn't affect you or the things that would scare 99% of the population didn't scare you?

[B]

No. I mean, they scared us. I mean, I was always on edge. I mean, any operation we would drive. I mean, the drive up to Seattle to do a robbery was a very, very edgy clinical. I understood the fear. I understood. I realized the fear he did as well. He was never fearless of anything like that. I mean, I don't know what kind of backbone the man had or what drove him. There was something very different in him. But was he psychopath? No. He had faults, I had faults. I mean, we're all vulnerable, but I cared about people. He cared about people. People.

[A]

But yeah, the. The level of risk you were willing to take, you don't feel like it reached a diagnostic level?

[B]

It may have been. I mean. I mean, I'm sure a doctor would set us down and say you're crazy, you're stark or even mad. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I look back at it now, I go, do I think it's crazy? I mean, do I think a soldier going and convincing himself that the war in Vietnam is justified to die for because of some politicians that told you that this is, you know, and it all ends up what it would have, you know, it all ended up as a communist country in the end? I mean, do you see what I'm saying? I had many friends. I didn't go to Vietnam, but that was my era and it was a struggle, psychological struggle. And I had friends who were there. And there's no upside to Vietnam and you see the heroes or you see nurses and all kinds of great people. But it's sad to think that you sacrifice or you risk your life for these politicians who don't do it, who have, you know, it's criminal what they do. Now, at least we had. I always said, if I'm going to fight a war, I'm going to fight my war. That's what I said. And this was what for me was my war. And if it was an indirect way of expressing the political dislike I had, of course, of much of the system, I don't mean all of it. I'm not, you know what I mean? I'm not like an anarchist or anything like that. Systems have to exist. But when you have the vulgarity and the extremity of the politicians, especially today, even more than back then, I mean, it's unconscionable. And nothing goes on. It's just a merry go round. And I mean, I used to call Clinton's regime the, you know, the, the, the, the, the B rated film. You know, his was a, A B rated film is what he was. Right. You know what I mean? And then that was minor. He was minor compared to what's going on today. So, you know. Yeah, to me, am I a psych? I guess clinically, somebody could maybe analyze that. I was, you know, I remember when we were going through the custody thing and the guardian ad litem said that, you know, would you. You, you know, had my daughter go to analysis. Psycho. Not a psychiatrist, but I guess a psychiatrist. Been an analyst, you know, for court, whatever. And you know, they would, we would do it together and then she would do it alone, and then I would do it alone. And at one point when I was alone, she said, well, would you ever consider, do you think it would be beneficial if we, you know, you had more private sessions with me? And I said, yeah. As long as we fly to Paris. I'll talk all day in a cafe. You think I'm going to come in here and talk my woes? Yeah, I'm miserable. What do you want me to say? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, let's go and talk all day in cafe or Rome or in Paris and we'll have fun. Yeah, that's how. That's what, that's, you know, I mean, I see all this stuff. I don't know. Yeah, I can talk all day, but, you know.

[A]

Well, Stephen, I had a fantastic time. Thank you so much for sharing your story. And if people want to learn more or get maybe the full picture, where can they find the book?

[B]

Amazon. The Treehouse, The True Story of Hollywood. The Bank Robber. Because that's the. The full title with my name. It's on Amazon and it's also on Barnes and Noble. You can get it. And they also have audiobook in both of them now, too.

[A]

Here's the book right here if anyone's looking to check it out.

[B]

So you can get audiobook now that's just been released and that's, you know, if you want to. I'm actually, it's AI generating my voice, but it's reading the whole book and.

[A]

Well, thank you so much.

[B]

There we are. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

[A]

Thank you, brother.

[B]

I really appreciate it. Thank you, brother.

[A]

Let's do it again. Thank you soon. Hey, we have a brand new channel that is a part of the camp universe and we made it specifically with you in mind. And I personally think that you're really going to like it. So check it out.