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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:10]
B
We got a real juicy interview here. I am talking to Joe Loya, who was a real life bank robber who did time for his crime and has also consulted on many movies about bank robberies. And I am just so curious to hear your life stories. Thanks for coming on and spilling all the juice.
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A
Thanks for having me here, Heather.
- [00:37]
B
So let's start from the beginning. What was your childhood like that got you to a place that you were going to participate in an actual bank robbery to start?
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A
Okay, so I didn't think that my childhood was going to get me to bank robbery, but I think that it got me to. Was to transgression. And then transgression became eventually bankruptcy. So I'll explain what I mean by that. So my parents were 16 years old when I was born. They were little Mexican kids out of east la. They were converts to Protestant Christianity. Most people around us were all Catholics, which is a big deal because my dad thought, okay, I want to be, I want to know more about this Bible. I want to know more about God. And we started going to this very big church. It was, it was an early mega church in downtown Los Angeles. My dad wanted to be a minister. He had been a little gang kid, converted, and it was lovely. I was raised in a love story. These kids had loved each other since they were 12, got married at 16, dropped out of school and started a family. My dad worked very hard. Things were going good because he was such an earnest guy. At 18, he started teaching himself Greek and Hebrew. So I was raised around a lot of books. I was raised around somebody who. I saw a father who was very intelligent. And so he's this oddball. He drops out of high school, but he starts teaching out Greek and Hebrew. He starts going to night school, gets his degrees and. And now I'm kind of in a learned home. And because he is this kid in this church, they start sending us, you know, to private call, private elementary schools. So I'm getting this great education and my, my family is in love. My dad and mother love each other very dearly. And a great religious upbringing, family potlucks, everything you could think of. And, and I love Jesus as, as much as anybody. And then I'm thinking as a little boy, I want to be like my dad. I think I want to be a preacher like my dad wants to be a preacher. So I have this great moral upbringing. I have all this love in this love story. And then seven, I had age seven and my mother gets a kidney disease. And this changes everything. For one, the sweet young woman is now 24 years old and she starts slowly dying. And for two and a half years, that's what it was. It was just slow death. They couldn't replace her kidney because her body was so polluted with the disease, it would have rejected a kidney. So they just do all these experimental drugs on her. She goes crazy. She thinks she's Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor. She would call the house and say, hey, can I talk to my boys? This Elizabeth Taylor, she was just like, it was really very sad and tragic. People would be praying, having this. So prayer meetings around her and she's, hey, I'm Elizabeth Taylor. She was just daffy with the drugs, right? And dying and very tragic and very sad to put a lot of pressure on my father and stress of bills, obviously, and also just watching the woman he loves dying. And he's just impotent in the face of it. What starts happening is the pressure and the stress makes us from. My dad resorts to things that, that he had been struggling with. He had been brutalized as a kid. He thought Jesus would save him from his anger, his rage, distress brought down his. His guard. He was not sleeping as much. And I give him a lot of. I have a lot of compassion for him because I can't imagine what it would be like to have two boys. My brother, you know, a year and a half younger than me. Your wife dying, you're 24 years old. You have all this, like, you just don't know, right? And everyone's praying for God to save her up until the point where everyone starts praying for God to take her home so she doesn't suffer anymore. You know, it's very morally complicated time.
- [04:25]
B
Quince delivers layers that last. Sweaters, outerwear, and everyday essentials that feel luxurious, look timeless, and make holiday dressing and gifting effortless. I absolutely love them. I just got a bunch of silk skirts that are going to look so great over boots and like a chunky quince sweater. Step into the holiday seasons with layers made to feel good, look polished and last from quints perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself. Go to quince.com juicycrime for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com juicycrime to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com juicycrime and so my dad starts.
- [05:15]
A
Being more aggressive and hitting us and spanking us. And so this is going on. And when this is going on, My mother finally dies when I'm nine years old and very tragic. And then my dad remarries pretty quickly. In a year, he marries this woman who's only 10 years older than me. I'm. I'm 10, she's 20, he's 26. But she's in the church. Lovely woman named Brenda. And she was like a farm girl from Turlock. She comes down to live in east la, and it's just like it's an entirely different world to her. She's very smart. He introduced me to literature, and I was already a good student. I was a great student. But now we're in public school because we couldn't afford the tuition for private school. And that's a whole other thing. It's like I'm thrown into an entirely different world in which I was unprepared for a lot more violence and stuff like that. But I'm also getting beat up at home now. My dad has become this guy. When he gets angry, he loses his temper. He's under so much stress. And the. And the beans are significant and. And junior high. And Brenda is watching a side of my father she didn't think he had. And because she thinks she's this religious man, this really lovely. This. And, you know, there's kind of a romance. He's the widow and he has these two boys, and they're very loving and.
- [06:37]
B
Right. Like, she's going to come and, like, save this family. And this is a Hallmark movie. Now, what year is this that you're, you know, 9, 10 years old and your dad has gotten so.
- [06:48]
A
Yeah, 19. And so I could tell you, February 9, 1971, there was this big earthquake in LA called the Silmore earthquake. That was the day we buried my mother. Right. So we're talking 1972. Yeah, I know. It's very dramatic. You know, we all wake up and they are shaking. That's the day we're supposed to go bury my mom. It was very weird time, but. So he gets married. 72, I'm 10 years old. Right. So. Man. And she was beautiful. Brenda was beautiful. Brenda Joyce. And, and. And my dad was young, handsome man. You know, it's like. I'm telling you, it was like she thinks she's coming into this. It's not this thing. And she gets disillusioned pretty quickly. My dad has, at this point become a preacher of a church. Like, yeah, we laugh about it. We laugh about it. We're always talking about. Remember when you. When we were children, you were a preacher he was literally a preacher for like nine or 11 months. But we always talked like it was his entire. Our entire childhood. But technically he was a preacher at the time. Right. And he drops out, he's like, you know what my family is? I'm not good. I'm not a good father. I know I'm not a good father. This is like the most principled thing he's ever done. And I admire him so much for this because he's like, yeah, I. God needs me to be a good guy, and I'm not really that great. So I'm going to drop out of the mystery. So he drops out and he goes in insurance. Insurance is a tough thing because, you know, I mean, what's great for my dad, he's a salesman, straight up salesman. Starts making a lot of money. Unfortunately, Brenda goes to work for him in the. In the office. She's pretty bright back and put a pin in that real quick. Before she went to work there, she was actually working for a place called McLaren Hall. This is important. McLaren hall is a place where kids get beat up. They go there, they get put there before they get put in foster care. She was typing up the reports and she tells my dad, the beatings you're giving your sons, the bruisings, where they can't go to school for a week because you beat the hell out of them. They got bruises and stuff. These are in my reports. Like, you're doing stuff that is so seriously violent that this is terrible. But she doesn't turn any. Doesn't turn them in, doesn't do nothing. She just tries to tell them, calm down, you're beating the kids pretty bad. Now that she's no LONGER Working for McLaren hall, she starts working for my dad, goes to the office. One thing leads to another. She'd been four and a half years to kind of a tyrant. Now she. She gets involved with a guy in the office. They end up having this affair. Everyone knows about it. It's pretty terrible. She leaves my dad. My dad can't go to work. He's a cuckold now. He's embarrassed. And now all of a sudden, things just start spiraling out of control. We're sick. I'm 16 years old now, right now. 15 years old. They're getting a divorce.
- [09:19]
B
15, sorry, 15.
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A
And your brother divorce now? Yeah.
- [09:22]
B
And your brother's like 13. And are you still getting beat up or are you now around the same date as your dad?
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A
No, no, no. Yeah, which means the beatings are worse because we're bigger he needs to Dom. He needs to dominate us. Right?
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B
Wow.
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A
So we are bigger, but we're still very. I'm still a super skinny little kid. And so she leaves him. He can't work. He starts. He. He goes bankrupt. And just psychologically he deteriorates. He just. It. It beats him up. I'm sure there was a ton of PTSD from the death of my mother. Just the stress is so outrageous that the violence is now becomes baroque. It becomes so grotesque. One more. I'll give you a perfect example of this. This one day again, you know, I'm 15 or so and my dad comes into the kitchen. My brother's washing the. I'm rinsing them and drying them. And he comes behind my brother and he just sucker, boom, ran the rib. And my brother's like, ah. And then my dad pounces, grabs him by the back of head, starts shoving his head in the. In the sink water. This is dramatic for his own most the worst moments of my life because I'm watching him and my dad's dunking him and dunking, pulling him up. And Paul has wished are coming out of his mouth. And I'm frozen. I can't do anything. I'm actually. My dad's now introducing me to my impotence. You know, like real like what I can't. And I'm. I hate myself so much because I have to just witness this. And he finally leans in my brother's ear and says, you should have died instead of your mother. And that is the worst trauma that we've endured. And I've had broken bones because of my dad. And here's the. Here's the issue with that. That would. Would drive me to eventually the next step, which is up until that point, there've been two traumas in my life. We get beat up regularly. We get beat up badly. We get beat up so that it's terrible. And then there's the death of my mother. The grief of that. Right. It's all in process. And nobody's helping me figure any of that out. But I have these two separate things. As soon as he said, you should have died instead of your mother during a beating, they became twin. They became married. And now all of a sudden I'm thinking, my dad wants us dead and the beatings are. And we're moving one step closer. My dad wants one of us dead. He's now put those three things together. And I'm thinking, I just want to die because I can't protect my brother. And I'm A protective guy. And I, from my heart, I feel like I'm big. I'm supposed to have a big narrative. And I feel super tiny. I feel super ridiculously weak and a coward. And I can't cope with this. In my mind, this is the first time I think about. You know, I've had suicidal thoughts all my life now because of mental illness or whatever, but that was the first time I remember thinking, I can't face being a coward. This is not going to work for me. And about six months later, he has a girlfriend. She's impressed by him again. You know, he's this Bible knowledge guy. He's a very charming man. He's, you know, he's got, he's the widow, all these things. So she starts. And I'm, and I'm pissed because he, it looks to me like he keeps getting away with shit, right? And, and so one day she takes a lovely woman to Susie, super sweet woman. And she takes us out of steak dinner while we're there. And I'm telling her all the things that he does. And you need to get away from him. He's a bad man. Go. I'm snitching on him all day. I'm like, get out of here. Right? We can handle it. You can't. Go. We tell you, please go. He's lying to you. He's faking. And probably because I just recently been beat or something, but I'm just like, no, no, I'm going to give him up. And immediately as I start telling him, telling her all the things she does, I really shit up. Portraying myself in this really super weak light. The coward that I'm afraid I am, I'm like presenting myself as a coward. I didn't do any. My brother, when my brother's getting his head dunked, so I pull up a steak knife, literally just pull the. Saying I'll just stab him next time should put that down, Joey. Violence doesn't accomplish anything. But that was the first time I said, I'll just stab him. And, and, and, and, and, and I'll take care of it. Well, a week later, beating so bad, he beats me so bad for, for something so ridiculously small. We go to wash clothes and stuff. And this is the mid-70s now, you know, 70, 78, late-70s and disco era. Everyone was wearing like polyester pants and like whatever, just like it was a whole thing. But polyester, you know, you put it in the dryer that it just shrinks right up. And I ruined like half his wardrobe accidentally. He was Poor again, remember? Bankrupt, not working, struggling to find jobs. He's so mad when he gets home and I get a beating and he, he leaves. And in the beating, he was discovered. He had, he had, he had caught me and say, hey, Susie told me what you said. And I'm like, wait, what? He's like, don't lie, you know, just tell me what you said. She just verify, you know, he did that okie doke. And I'm thinking, oh, he's being magnanimous. So I confess that I told Susie and I proceed to get the worst. One of the worst beatings is the first and last time I would ever confess to a crime. I'm just telling you that right now. I give him the suit, what's the one? He beats me with a teapot. And it's terrible. Breaks my bone. Like it's bad. I mean, by the time he leaves, I got a concussion, I got some fractured bones. And he leaves. And when he comes back, when he, when he's gone, I go to the kitchen, I grab a steak knife, come to the, the bedroom. I tell my brother, I lock him in the bathroom, say, just stay in here until I tell you to get out. And I'm sitting away in the bed and concussion. My dad comes home ready for round two. He looks at me, he looks at the weights in the corner, looks at me, and then he holds my eyes all the way as he walks to the, the weights. This big, big weight bar that you lift over your head. He's, he starts disassembling it. And I'm thinking like, Jesus, this is like a new level of savagery even for him. Like, what's he gonna hit me with? Like, the bar is no fun. The way is a 25 pound cement weight. The little thing that's that, you know, that still thing that you, you screw on to tighten up, that's heavy and hard. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. So I stand up, I pull the knife off one of their pillow and I stand up and he's like, put it down, put it down. And I'm like, I, I've never stabbed anyone before, but I think a neck would kill is a kill shot. And I need to kill him because I need to take him down there so we could run, right? So I, I, I rush him and he puts his arm up and resting a little bit and then boom, I hit him right back here in the neck and I twist and start trying to break it off in his, in his, in his Neck. And he screams, you killed me. And then he falls to the ground. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but I said something like super ridiculously dramatic and theatrical. When I said something like, you did. You. You did this to yourself. Or, you know, something biblical. You're probably like, this is what thy sin hath wrought. It had that kind of energy, like it's on you, whatever. And I run off and my. By this time, my brother's at the door. We run in my aunt's house, they call the cops. Cops come to the house. My dad's gone. Pretty dramatic. He wrote. Tried to write a suicide note, but they didn't finish. And there's blood everywhere. Meanwhile, I'm running to my aunts. We call the cops. And while then they. They pick us up and they take us to the police station. I think my dad's dead. I think I'm a killer. I think I've taken care of my dad and I, okay, I took care of him. And so for a few hours, not only do I think I killed him, but the police are interrogating me as if I committed attempt. They're thinking about charging me with attempted murder because they think I laid in wait. They don't. They're like, why didn't you run? In those days, nobody thought anything about child abuse. Yeah, child abuse. Now everyone. Your. Your parents are allowed to beat the out of you, right? Like, why'd you. And they didn't also understand domestic abuse, meaning, you know, people stay. People stay because they don't know how to leave. You're stuck. It's just like psychological thing. They're like, well, he left the house. Why didn't you leave? Why didn't you call the police? And like, what are you talking about? That just doesn't even sound reasonable. Right? So. But pretty soon the adrenaline dries dies down on my body and I'm like, I can't. It's hard to breathe and my arm hurts. And they take me to the hospital and they find out, you know, okay, fractured rib, fractured elbow. Like, okay, this was self defense. Like, there's no attempted murder. So now they take me on my brother in foster care. Now, that story is important only because what happened was it awoke rage in me. It awoke access to rage in me. More importantly, it also awoke this other thing, which is like, I realized, oh, I can dramatically change my story. I can innovate. Like, I don't know those words. But later on, it would mean important. When I start making all these, I get to some Places where it seems like I'm stuck in my circumstance and I don't know what to do and it feels lousy. And then I alter my imagination, choose a new strategy, and I can go and get some propulsion in another direction. It's happened several times in my life, big moves like that. This is the first one. I'm not weak. Not. I'm not a coward. In fact, I have way more power than I imagined I had. And so I changed my story up and I end up being the guy who, you know, tried to kill his dad. And even when I get to prison, there's very few of me in there, very few of me. Most guys got beat, beat up by their dads. Maybe they pushed their dad eventually off their mother. Maybe they, you know, took. Picked up a bat and were like, you know, get away from my mom because. But nobody tried to kill her dad. I never met one. Even of all the mafiosos, the killers that I met, they all basically got beat up and then went a world and beat up women, the girlfriends, boy, you know, men on the streets, kicked their dog. But I was a very rare thing. So it was a very powerful thing that I did now, because I have this power and I'm intelligent, I'm thinking about college, but I have so much grief and I have so much rage. I. I don't know how to put a life together in foster care when I'm supposed to be preparing to go to college and stuff. So I just go to community college. But while I'm at a community college, I think, you know, what am I doing here? Like, I'm going to go here and maybe become a lawyer. I'm smart enough to eventually become a lawyer. I could become a professor. And so. So what am I going to do? Work for four, six years and do 40,000, $50,000 a year to start off with and sound like this sounds ridiculous. I'm. What I have, I feel is. Is this, is this power that I'm feeling always like, I gotta. I gotta. But something else has to happen. Something bigger than what I have here.
- [19:49]
B
Wait, I just have a couple. Can I just interrupt with a couple questions?
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A
Sure. Please, please.
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B
No. Your life story is like, very intriguing and you're. But, okay, so after you stuck the knife in his neck, I guess it wasn't as bad as you thought. And he recovered. But did he face any charges then?
- [20:11]
A
No, they took us away from him. The courts took us away from him because that.
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B
But that was father.
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A
But he didn't go to prison or Nothing. No.
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B
And then when you went to the foster care, were you in like a foster care home with your brother or did they separate you?
- [20:26]
A
This is a good question. Yeah, no, we went to live with this great family in Pasadena called the Bob, Bob and Carol Storm. And they had two children. We were there. And then my brother decided he wanted to go back home for the next school year. And I went and lived with some other friends from church in, in the Valley, the. The Thompsons. My friend Tommy Thompson asked his parents to let me be a foster brother. And so I was there for a while. I came back for part of my senior year. But I do want to make a point about this. I'm glad you brought it up as soon as it happened. My dad was contrite. My dad did. He ran through every, jumped through every hoop to get us back. He showed up to all the meetings and anytime he could visit us, he could. And he, my dad showed me one thing, like, he was broken. Everyone knew that what he had done and all he wanted was to get us back. And he never laid a hand on us again. He's, you know, he's like, he really, like, he started reading books on how to deal with this anger and like, how to deal with emotions. Like, he'd already been reading, like, Greek and Hebrew commentaries on how to understand technical things in the Bible. Now his whole reading thing change. He was trying to learn, trying to grow. And so I give him kudos for that as well.
- [21:33]
B
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- [22:42]
A
No. No. So we go back to the house and things like that. But. And I keep trying to forgive him because we're Christians, and every night when we. When I move back my senior year, we're praying every night. We're trying to be a Christian home. So we're trying to do it. But I. I'll talk to you about forgiveness in a minute because I. I couldn't forgive him. I don't know why I couldn't forgive him.
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B
Well, my God, you're beaten for 10 years or whatever it was like, I mean, I. I think that.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Give someone.
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A
Well, here's. It's interesting because I never have forgiven him since I. I have compassion from which I think is entirely different. And it actually is the reason we can even have a great relationship that we have now. And I'll tell you how I healed the relationship. Because everything in my life story, the most. The most powerful and surprising thing of my story is that me and my dad and my brother are tight now. We have a loving relationship. And how we got to that, I think is. Is important for the world because we're. We're a mess. Everyone is lost and. And all their rages and their misunderstandings and the way we've. We don't talk at each other, so we've. We figured out how to put together something again. Real love. A real love story, a real great thing. But I'll get to that in a second. So. So now I'm in school and I realize I don't want to do this. I need to do something else. And I shove myself in the criminal world. I just start doing what all criminals do. But the guys I did time with, they all started at 13 or 14. I'm now like 20. And I'm like, what do I do? I got to start. And I start wanting, like, not work and wanting to just, like, have people pay for me or whatever, right? And so I started.
- [24:12]
B
What was like, the first crime?
- [24:14]
A
Like, what was the snow? It wasn't even crimes. It was. It was. You take advantage of people who are close to your family and stuff like that. So, like, I would. I would have roommates and then friends, and then we. We laugh about it now, but I would gather the rent and then I would take off, you know, I wouldn't pay the rent and I'd be gone and they wouldn't see me for a month or something, right? And I would just, like. It was petty, petty, petty, stuff like that. Then I started doing crimes that were all fraud. They were all Me looking for guys who had larceny in their heart and me pretending what in their heart? Larceny. Like, I could tell they were kind of crooked and wanted to do crooked stuff, right? So I pretended I was a guy who could take their money. And remember, I had the church upbringing, too. So because I lost my faith, I now use that kind of that church, that churchy talk, the churchy talk, and also more like just whatever to make people think that, you know, I'm this really good guy. Now I'm just using it to my advantage because I'm like, the church did not help me at all.
- [25:18]
B
But how. Like, give me one example of how you met someone and was fraudulent.
- [25:23]
A
I'll give you. I'll give you. I'll give a perfect example. So I. I'm up in Santa Barbara and I meet these guys and. And I'm working for this clothing store. It's called Lauren and Company. And it was a traditional men's clothing store. So, like, you know, geese and flight on your ties. Preppy kind of clothing, right? And it's really nice store. And I meet these two guys, and I don't know, I just could tell that they were kind of slightly crooked. And we're playing golf and I tell them, hey, man, you guys want. If you guys want, I can get you some clothes out of there. Come on and pick, you know, $1500, $2000 worth of stuff. You know, pay me 600 bucks and I'll get it for you. And so I was like, stealing clothes out the back door and charging them for that. And so they would bring their friends to me. I mean, I. I was. I was getting thousands. Thousands and thousands of dollars just doing that. But then I knew that they had this. They were kind of crooked. Like, they were willing to do these under. Under, you know, underhanded things. So then one day I'm like, hey, listen, I'm going down to Mexico. I'll be back in a while. But I put my money with my uncle, who steals cars and takes them to Mexico. He has an operation there that he can do this thing.
- [26:33]
B
Did you really have an uncle that did that?
- [26:35]
A
Hell no. Okay, this is what I'm saying. It's just. This is the fraud, okay? I said, so I have no. Because I come from this good family.
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B
Yeah, that's why I was confused.
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A
Okay. Yeah. So this is the fraud, right? I said, so if you guys want, you know, let's. You can give me. I'm. I'll let you and give you 5,000 and, like, three months, I'll be able to give you guys about, I don't know, $12,000 back. Something like that. Something that they were like, yes. And one of them, his father just died, left him a Mercedes and, and was, you know, he had a bunch of money coming to him from, from being in court with, fighting with his brother for it. But he was gonna have money, so he was really excited about like, yeah, let me, let me see if I can play with some of this money. So I get a BMW from him. I get like, I get some money and I now all of a sudden I'm working with like 10, 10 grand, which turns into 20 grand. Like I was just playing, working them, right? Playing these guys who didn't know what, knew what I was doing. I'd never done this before, so. But I'm hustling, I'm just like this low.
- [27:30]
B
Are these, are these guys kind of like white, preppy, golfing guys from Santa Barbara that are now becoming shady? Yeah, okay.
- [27:41]
A
They thought they were, they thought they're, they thought they were getting to the underworld and it was safe because, you know, I was so buffering them so like that, right, like, and the only crime that I really did that was violence. Someone stole.
- [27:51]
B
So wait, did they ever get, did that, did they ever turn on you? Were you ever scared? Like what, you just, you just scammed them and then they left you alone?
- [27:59]
A
Yeah, at one point. Yeah, it was funny. This is the first time you. I've actually ever thought, hey, I wonder what those guys think about me out there now. Because I, because I committed so many crimes over the years that like I can't even always hold the consequences. Because here's what happened there at the time too. This one guy, I bounced a check. I gave him a $30,000 two thousand dollar check and he, and he gives me the pink slip to his is BMW sedan. You know, it was like this really expensive car and I got, and I take off to Mexico and I become a fugitive for about six months. I was in Mexico because I was wanted now in various counties for that one. I went down to San Diego. On my way out, I sold that car, that BMW. I get a bunch of cash and I now go to a, I go to this mile of cars down there in San Diego. I walk over to some kid and I flash him this cat. I got like $40,000 of cash or something. I'm going to buy a car right now and I. Let me try that, that sedan right there, the Cutlass here. He's all right. Well, give me your id. So I give my id. I'm not even trying to hide anything. I'm going to Mexico. Fuck you. I'm going to be a criminal. That's. That's the way I look at it, right? So I give my id, he goes in, he makes a cop. He comes out, he says, I got to drive it off the lot for insurance purposes. I said, that's fine. So we drive it off the lot, and he gets out of the car, and I pretend like I'm gonna get out of the car, but as soon as he gets out and started going around the back, I close my door, scoot over, jump in it. He looks at me through the back, and I'm like, oh, just scooting over. And then I lock the doors, and he's always at the side of the door. He's pounding on it. I'm like, yay. Bye. Click. All right, I'm gone. And I steal this Scottless Sierra, and I take it to Mexico. I mean, he's chasing me down the street. I mean, he's fast. He's a really young, athletic guy. He's running. He's in the street. I'm driving away, and then he stop in the middle of the street, and he's just flipping me off, and I'm like, yeah, okay, bye. Whatever. So I take off. So now I'm just like, I'm a criminal. I can do whatever the hell I want. The interesting thing about this, to me, the funny thing about this is I think I'm a criminal because I'm doing all this little small petty crime stuff that was really, really petty. In order to do these crimes, for the most part, I just have to deceive people. That's kind of the crimes I'm doing, right? So I go to Mexico and. And where there's real criminals with real nursing in their heart. And they all know I have money. I'm flashing around, whatever, trying to impress people. I get this condominium, and I hide my money all around, thinking I'm real slick. I come home and all my money is gone. All I have in my pocket is, like, two grand. And I've been robbed by real criminals who saw me coming and know this is what happens. Guys come down here running from their lives, and I don't have money.
- [30:41]
B
Now, how old are you?
- [30:46]
A
24, 25, something like that.
- [30:48]
B
And what about girls and stuff in your life? Do you. Are you. Do you have a girlfriend? Are you. Are you able to look like a rich guy and get hotties? What's happening?
- [30:57]
A
Yeah, I had a girlfriend in Santa Barbara. That's why I was there. Did she know? No, not at all. Not at all. I was an. She was a sweet. She was a sweet woman. And in fact, like, I was like. I knew I had to leave the country. You know, things were starting to gather up. I hadn't brought those guys their money in Santa Barbara, who's still probably waiting for and wonder what the hell happened to me. But I'm like, I gotta get the hell out of Dodge. So I tell her, I'll pick you up in the morning for breakfast. And then I leave. You know, just really cruelly, kind of like the vicious kind of ghosting. I just go to Santa Barbara that night. I mean, go to Mexico that night, down to San Diego and then go to Mexico the next day. So I was. I was not a nice guy. I was very terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible person and, and cheated on her all the time. It's just, you know, was this. And everybody. I was not. I was, you know, I was off kilter and morally off kilter. So it's not just like I was committing crimes. I was just all the way around bad. So I leave her, I go to Mexico and unfortunate in Mexico because, you know, I do meet people who have. I do have. I meet women as you know, and I'm a young guy, I'm still 24, whatever. And I have money, so I'm able to like, you know, do whatever.
- [32:09]
B
Now. Wait, do you speak Spanish?
- [32:11]
A
My butcher Spanish?
- [32:12]
B
So you could communicate when you're down there? Yeah.
- [32:15]
A
Okay. Plus, it was. Most of it was. Most of it was in Baja, so everyone speaks English down there.
- [32:24]
B
Okay.
- [32:25]
A
So that's not an issue. So what happens?
- [32:31]
B
So now you're in Mexico, I get robbed in Mexico.
- [32:35]
A
You get robbed, I get robbed. They still own my money. So now I'm sitting in my room and there's walls are torn out, paintings, things like where I was trying to hide money. All this stuff has been confiscated. And, And I'm like, I need money now. Again, I'd only done fraud and that kind of thing.
- [32:51]
B
So now are you doing any cocaine or drugs or drinking?
- [32:54]
A
No drugs. I have not. No. You know, I would drink once in a while, but I'm not, I don't have. I'm not an addict and I never was into drugs. I had, in fact, I had a kind of a. A disrespect for people who did drugs because I felt like it was a weakness of mine. I. I think what it was was I Had asthma as a kid, so I couldn't even smoke. So I could never be cool in that. In that regard. Right? I could never be one of the cool kids, rebellious kids. And I was still a Christian in those days. So I was like, oh, you know, you've been. So when I could do and partake, I just felt like that whole. That whole world was like, yeah, too seedy for me. I'm a man who gets angry, and I want to take your money, but I don't need to, like, do all that nonsense. So there's that. And. And so I'm not doing that. But I will drink. You know, I'm like, I'll go to the bars and I'll drink, but I'm. Here's the other thing, the other truth. I'm a lightweight. I'm total lightweight. So I drink and I go to sleep pretty quick. So I don't. I can't hold my liquor. And I'm a fun. Like, a fun drunk. So I just, you know, I laugh and giggle and go to sleep. So none of that. I go. I sit on my chair at night. I realize I need money. I need to do something. What can I do? Okay, I'm in Mexico. There's bandidos. The whole bandido thing is in my head. I remember the Pancho Villa, when he was leading the revolution in Mexico in the last century, about 100 years ago. He. He was a general, and he would get his men and they would ride up into New Mexico and Arizona. They would rob banks and post offices, and they would take off back into Mexico. So I'm thinking, why don't I move this in that direction? Why don't I go up there and rob banks? That's how bank robbery came to me. I had never.
- [34:25]
B
So you're robbing banks in Mexico first?
- [34:28]
A
No, I'm in Mexico. I get robbed. I'm sitting in my chair and I think, how am I going to get money?
- [34:34]
B
I gotta rob someone else.
- [34:36]
A
Yeah, I gotta. I gotta take money from somebody. So where am I gonna take money? And then I think of the bandido. And then I think, a bunch of you are going into Mexico, going to the United States and robbing and coming back to Mexico. So I said, that's what I'll do. I'll go over the United States, I'll rob, and I'll come back down.
- [34:49]
B
Okay?
- [34:51]
A
So the next day, I go to Mexico in my stolen car. I mean, I go to the United States in my stolen car. I get up there and I go to some Downtown strip. And I start walking banks. And this is all in the podcast get the Money and Run. Like, this is what it's about. Like, I. I tell these stories. There's 30. Remember, I robbed 30 banks. So there's a ton of these stories. This is the first one. I go in there and it's. It's bank after bank, and I. It's. It's really. I was so afraid of robbing these banks. So I win the first one. I read a note, and then I go stand in line. Then I walk out. And as I'm walking out, I see all these cameras, and I realize they could have zoomed in on me writing my note. You know, we have a bomb. I have a gun. Give me the money now. And they. I could have been busted right there. So I'm like, I can't be coming right in. That's stupid.
- [35:39]
B
So wait, is that what you did? You went alone and you'd go to the teller and what year is this? 1980 something.
- [35:46]
A
This is 1985.
- [35:50]
B
So you'd go up alone and leave the teller a note? Give me whatever.
- [35:55]
A
We have a bomb. I have a gun. Give me the money now.
- [35:58]
B
And how much would you add? Would you say a specific amount of money?
- [36:00]
A
This is. This is the first one only, right? This is the first one only. I walk up there and I give her the note, and she won't look up. And I start like, hey, you know, you know, move the note around. And she looks at me and, I mean, she won't look up and she won't do it. So I'm like, start pulling away, and she pulls it back. Now I'm having to tug of war with the note. And I realized, man, this note thing sucks. So now I have to actually tell her I'm not around, you know, and pretend like I have a gun. Give me the. You know, I'll jump over this counter. She gives me money, 4, 500 bucks. I grabbed the money. I start walking out. She says, we've been robbed. They chase me. I get away. I get to my car, I get to San Diego, and. And the next morning, I go into Mexico in my stolen car. And I get stopped at the border right there. They're looking for stolen cars. And I'm right last off ramp. I get on. So I can't even back off or nothing. Yeah, I get picked up for all the warrants I have for stealing and doing crazy petty shit, bouncing checks and all that in five different counties in Southern California. And now I know, though, even though they arrest me. I know now what I'm going to do. And I get out of prison and I'm in prison for about two years. And when I get out, I don't care about petty crimes anymore. I've now turned myself into a bank robber. They didn't know I robbed that bank. They didn't charge me with that bank. But when I got out, I got on 1988, January and I went on a 14 month 30 bank robbery spree.
- [37:23]
B
All by yourself?
- [37:25]
A
All by myself. Well, I got on a bail. I had robbed 25 banks and I robbed five more. Now in that time, excuse me, in that time I did take someone with me so they could go rob and I gave them my M.O. i said, go in there, you resemble me enough. Tell these people that. This is what you say. We have a bomb, I have a gun, give me the money. Now that person went in there. I didn't rob him with them in that. I wasn't in the bank with him. I told him to go in there. And this is why when the, the FBI went to these women and showed them a six pack of pictures of six men, they both picked me out and said, this is the guy who robbed us. Well, I told the FBI, no, that's not me. I'm not turning myself in. Because they told me, turn yourself in, we know you robbed this bank. I said, I'm not turning myself. And you guys made a mistake. I wasn't in that bank. They went to the bank, they were. The FBI agent went to look at the, the surveillance photo and sure enough, the guy who robbed the bank wasn't me because he was four inches shorter than me, which means they could tell by where the counter is in your chest. The counter was 4 inches higher on him than it was on me, which means he was shorter, which meant I had a double. And at that point I was looking at 36 years in prison for, you know, I was looking at how it going to have to plead to about 16 or 17 bank robberies. And because I had this double out there that, that made my. All the positive ideas that they were gathering from about me telling, hey, can you. Was this man who robbed you six months ago, Was this man robbed you eight months ago? And they would pick me. Those were absolutely suspect because these women had just been robbed and they both picked somebody who wasn't me, meaning he was shorter than me. So that meant I pled guilty to three bank robberies and I, and I ended up getting a sentence of eight years. One eight years, four Months. And I served seven years, one month in federal prison for the. My bank robberies.
- [39:23]
B
And each time I read that, you know, the average that you would get on each robbery was eight grand, that's probably all right. So it wasn't that much. So it's like, would that just hold you over for two months, or would you do a bunch in a row and then take a big break? Like, what was the pattern of these robberies?
- [39:42]
A
No, it was different because, like, in the beginning, sometimes I would rob. Remember too? Sometimes I rob four banks. I would, wow, four banks a day once. And that was the day that I got 32 grand in one bank robbery, right? So it wasn't like I got 8, 8, 8,000, and it lasted me a week, and I did another 8,000. And, you know, it wasn't like that. It was just. I was. I was stashing money and keeping money, and I would rob. Normally, though, I wasn't robbing because I was running out of money. I would rob when I got mad. When I get really angry and feel any kind of helplessness, I'd be like, somebody's got to pay for this. And then I would go and rob.
- [40:19]
B
So then in all robberies, did you. You actually never really did have a gun or you had a gun?
- [40:25]
A
I had a gun. And. And the only. The only time anyone said they actually saw a gun, saw a gun. What could have been a gun was the one bank that I pled to that was robbery with a weapon, because a woman thought she saw a gun in my backpack, but she couldn't say for sure, and there was no proof of it. So they charged me with a weapon because they said whatever was in there, I could have bludgeoned her with. So I was never charged with a gun, but I. I had. I had guns. Yeah.
- [40:50]
B
And it was over a time that you, like, went and chickened out because you were like, wait, this isn't a good setup. Or like, how much would you stake out the place before going forward?
- [41:01]
A
This is. This was my advantage about being. Not being a drug addict, because most guys I met in prison who were bank robbers were drug addicts, right? So their challenge was they would wake up in the morning, they were like, I gotta go rob a bank and. Because I need to go get drugs, right? I need to cop drugs so I can now stay in the hotel a little bit longer, get some girls, and have plenty of drugs. So if they went to a bank and they got a bad feeling about it, they were like, I have to do this wrong Because I stand, but I'm this far away from the connect. And then I gotta go do this. And I got like, they rushed to do it and I. There were several times I was like, yeah, this doesn't feel right. And then I would go around the corner and there'd be two cops there talking to each other, something in their car parked next to each other. Like, I could. I could do that where I would drive around, be like, yeah, no. And then find out. Okay, that was. That was clever. I mean, my intuition was right there. But then eventually, you know, I get picked up once. I. I grab money and exploding die pack and. And that exploded on me and I had to like, put that in a bag and run with it all the way to my car, put in a sports bag in the trunk. And the tear gas, a lot of people think it just explodes, but it doesn't just expl. Explode. It actually explodes. Dive tear gas as well. So when you reach down and pick it up, you're right. It's right in your eyes. And that's what happened to me. And how long does that last?
- [42:17]
B
Force like that you.
- [42:20]
A
I was barely able to get away because I was just like, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink, blink. And I thought I was going to go blind any second. I had to like drive away. And the cops are coming and I'm driving on, blinking, blinking under my sunglasses, hoping they don't see me freaking out. And I'm just like. I'm like, oh, I think I'm gonna. I think. I don't know how much longer I could do this. Then I went and get some Perrier at some. At some store and flush my eyes out with. With water. It was really intense. I almost didn't make that. But, you know, I got cat like reflexes. So whenever, you know, I backed off real quick, quick enough to not be debilitated, but then also I eventually I get caught with a. A transmitter in the money and they caught me seven miles away from the bank. And. Yeah, so that was. That was terrible. Yeah. So then.
- [43:00]
B
So then you do your time in prison and how was that? Like, did you feel like that was reforming you, or did you come back and still want to do more crime?
- [43:11]
A
No, no, no. So I got in there and I'm a criminal through and through. So for the first three years, I'm still many crimes, all the crimes that commit in prison. And what are the crimes?
- [43:22]
B
Wait, what are the crimes you could commit in prison?
- [43:24]
A
Okay, so you. One, you're in federal prison, which means everything you're doing gets investigated by the FBI because it's in federal, is a federal property. So if you bring in drugs, that's smuggling. If you make weapons like we did in the sign factory, we would make these, these amazing knives out of Plexiglas that could go through metal detectors. But they were like bowie knives that, you know, serrated edges even. Like, we could sell those, me and my friend, for.
- [43:49]
B
Sell them to other prisoners.
- [43:50]
A
Other prisoners.
- [43:51]
B
And then when you sell to other prisoners, what would you do with that money? Be able to buy like more ramen noodles or. What are you getting out of it?
- [43:58]
A
It. Okay, so one. Yeah, every. Everybody has to pay money, but they can pay money. You know, they can send money home to you, right? Like, especially we were only doing that to people who are like gangsters who had money, who already had an operation where they could send money to pay bills that, you know, we have people have to pay for collect phone calls at home, right? So we would send, you get to send money home. If you're selling drugs in there, you're sending money home. You also being. Being able to have all the canteen you want, obviously. And you also have a lot of money on the line. Meaning. I remember this guy owed me and my friend a thousand dollars. And the way he paid us was he was tight with the Colombians and they had money all day long. And so like we. You could. A carton of cigarettes in those days was 10 cigarettes and it was 10 pack. It was $10, which is $10 a pack now, but it was $10 a carton. So if somebody owed you a gambling that they could just pay you, you know, $60 worth of cigarettes. That's six gardens and stuff. So this guy was smuggling stuff to us all day long from other units. We were getting three cartons of cigarettes from this guy. Three cartons of cigarettes from that. We got a thousand dollars by the end of the day in quarter and in, in photo tokens in a canteen. Like it was just like it's, it's, it's currency on there for you to do anything you want. You could play on the poker games, you could play, gabble on games. At that time, it was Lompoc Penitentiary in California. And then.
- [45:25]
B
And were the conditions okay? Because I heard federal prison is better than state prison or is it the opposite?
- [45:34]
A
That was once upon a time, but because of the drug laws, it changed everything. One of the reasons it was better is because there's a lot of white collar criminals there. There was a lot of people who had graduated from Crimes they would have committed in the state, they did state time and then they may be selling drugs here, possession of drugs, little small scale stuff. And then they would graduate to committing, you know, bank robberies or armored car highs and stuff. And then they would come to the feds. But now they're older, they're older convicts, whatever. When the get with the. What the drug laws did is they started giving 18 and 19 year olds 50 years, 75 year census and sending them to the feds because under RICO so that changed the whole complexion and now you have all these knuckleheads in there, don't know what they're doing doing in there forever, don't know how to do time. And they're now it turns it into a state system, right. Like it's just all these youngsters, just all this testosterone, all this fighting for little nonsense stuff. Still doing little local gang stuff in the federal system where most guys had, you know, you don't care about the local gang violence that you had in your house and you're, you're not like from California. That's all that matters. It doesn't matter that he was a gang across town that you hated. You're now California Mexicans. You hang together when you go to different states. Right. So it's an entirely different thing. But it changed because of the, the drug loss. But so it's not like it was better and that also I was in a maximum security penitentiary and so it was violent. You know, it's where everyone's, you know, super seriously violent and doing a ton of time. So I don't have a lot to lose. Right?
- [47:08]
B
Yeah, go ahead.
- [47:09]
A
That's it.
- [47:10]
B
Oh, so if. No, you were going to say something. Sorry.
- [47:15]
A
You're looking at somebody who's like two or 300 years, right. And he knows he's never getting out you. There's no incentive for him to behave. Right. You know, it really isn't. And if he gets mad and he doesn't like you, he stabs you. Oh wow, that's going to be in the hole for four months and. And what they're going to add another 10 years to a sentence. Big deal. Like so the doing time with men who are escape risk, they can't. They get there because they're doing so much time, they consider you an escape risk. Meaning you're going to want to get. And so there's a lot of guys there who have a lot of time and they're very violent. I was there because I was violent. You know, I wasn't did you get.
- [47:50]
B
Did you have girlfriends like writing to you and stuff?
- [47:53]
A
I actually had this one woman who I knew I was 13 and 14. We crushed on each other really hard. She was my neighbor and I met her about a month before I got arrested and she contacted me a year later because she got out of her, her marriage ended. She called me and for the last six years she visited me. She was like faithful to me and stuff. And we tried to make it work when I got out and it didn't. But she's like one of my oldest friends. Yeah, her name was Lisa Perez. I wrote in my book, my memoir, the man who All Grew His Prison Cell Confessions of a Bank Robbery. Acknowledge. I said, if she hadn't walked into prison, I wouldn't have walked out. She's the reason where I, I started working on changing my life.
- [48:33]
B
She brought a lot of, why didn't it work out?
- [48:38]
A
Well, you know, it's just she fell in love with somebody else before I got out, so that become okay. So. And then when. And it was terrible for her. So I come out and I'm like, listen, I love you, so I'm not beefing with you, but I got to get you out of this relationship because it's not good for you. You're not, you're unhappy. So, like, let's get you out. When she got out, then she was like, okay, let's try this. Yeah, let's try this. But I can trust somebody who had fallen in love with somebody like that. And so it just became a real challenge. We ended up when I started writing for television, you know, 20 years later. So then let's jump.
- [49:13]
B
Oh, you try to get back to her when you're like, no, no.
- [49:16]
A
I said, hey, I'm coming. We, we're friends the whole time. But even between years later, when I started writing a television, I was, hey, I'm coming to la. I need a room. I know you're renting rooms. Can I say, yeah, come on in. So I live with her and she was a family friend. She was taking my daughter to, to, to Disneyland and stuff. So we're friends, right? It's like I, we stayed friends. She's part of my life. Yeah.
- [49:35]
B
Okay, well, let's jump to how you ended up writing for television.
- [49:39]
A
Okay, so first, first I was a writer. I came out of prison and immediately started writing. I had a two year correspondence at the end of my life, my end of my term with a writer named Richard Rodriguez. Rich Rodriguez is an essayist. He was writing essays for Harpers. He'd written some books. He was doing a TV show there's called The Jim the McLaren, the McNeil Larry NewsHour on PBS. I saw him on it. And when I was in prison, I reached out, sent a letter to him. We became pen pals. And he's like, dude, you need to write. You're a writer. What are you doing? Come on out and write. I'll help you. And sure enough, true to form, I came out. Three months later, I published something for the San Francisco Examiner. Three months after that for the LA Weekly. There was this big bank robbery in New North Hollywood. I don't know where you're from. You from la?
- [50:24]
B
Yeah, I remember. I remember the North Hollywood Bank.
- [50:28]
A
Okay, so North Hollywood Bank, Robbie. I'm out like eight months.
- [50:30]
B
People died in that, right?
- [50:33]
A
Yeah. The two bank robbers who came out, they just started shooting and everything. The cops were coming after them. The cops broke into a gun store because they were so outnumbered, they were so outgunned. And these guys, they end up killing them. I write an op ed for the LA Times saying it wasn't a botch house, it was a successful suicide, which got me all sorts of play. In fact, when 40 CBS News, 48 Hours wanted to follow the FBI for a week, they come there and they say, what do you. Who should we be paying attention talking about this? And the FBI said, you need to listen to this Joe Lawyer guy, this ex bank robber. He wrote the seminal piece on this. And they put my clip on the top of all these clippings. The producer said. I said, contact him. So the producers contact me and say, man, the FBI is talking you up. They say, we need to talk to you about this, because you know what this is. What's the what? Sure enough, I get a gig working for CBS News. I become a talking head on TV for crime. That's how it started. I've been on every new show, big show, including arguing with Bill O'Reilly on his show about what was going to happen to Scott Peterson. So I started becoming a talking head and I started publishing in every major newspaper in the country on issues of religion, politics, crime, and the intersection of them.
- [51:40]
B
Okay, wait. Since you just stopped, you just mentioned one of my favorite crimes, Scott Peterson. So tell me what your thoughts are on Scott Peterson.
- [51:50]
A
Well, Scott Peterson got. I'll tell you what they were in this, in the context of this, Scott Peterson got funky. Guilty. He was going to prison. And I said, you know, Bill Riley thinks he knows everything. He's like, oh, he's going to get killed because, you know, people hate men who, who kill babies. I was like, no, wrong. I said, well, Scott Peterson has. Is a Rolodex, because right now every attorney is going to want to represent him for his appeal. And he's going to get so many cards and so much mail. And not only that, he's going to get a bunch of women who love these celebrity guys, these celebrity criminals. Oh, they're going to offer them all the compassion. And so guys in prison know, they're going to take him under the wing and they're going to say, here's what you do for us. We will protect you, but we want every correspondence you have. We want names, we want numbers. And some of these women you're going to. They're going to teach him how to start getting things so they could have things. They're going to get money on their books. They're going to get visits. They're going to have him send them also whatever. They're going to have people run for him. They were going to use him. And so I said, his Rolodex is going to keep him alive. And sure enough, all these years later, that's what has kept him alive. And then he was turned into a sex slave for a minute. So there's that, too. But I knew that he wasn't going to get.
- [53:05]
B
I thought when you were. He was on death row, you're kind of protected. You're not in the regular area.
- [53:11]
A
Yes or no? Yes and no. You're with, you're allowed to. Come on. No, he was. He's been extorted from. And so there's that. But my point is, we argued and, and I said he's going to be fine. He's going to live for a long time in prison. Guys are going to protect him because he has value, and they're not going to do what he thought, which is immediately he's going to be killed. No, that's not it.
- [53:33]
B
So what do you think about the guy, Brian Coburger, who just, you know, the plea deal killed the four Idaho students? He's going to be in prison for the rest of his life, but not on a death row. What will his life be like?
- [53:50]
A
Miserable.
- [53:51]
B
Good.
- [53:51]
A
His life's going to be miserable. His life will be miserable for one. You know, guys like him, you know, they kill people a certain way. And so to kill them that specific way, you. Now, you know, what he needed was he needed space. He needed to be able to drive around, find people, be vulnerable, go in, be able to leave the state. The, the difference now is if you're that kind of killer, you're not the kind of killer you're going to be dancing with in prison. Those guys are they, they're right next to you. They're in the sound. They will walk in, they'll throw a knife on the bed and they'll say, pick it up. Last one standing wins. He's not that guy. And not only is he not that guy, the guy who says, pick up that knife. Last one. Last. Last one standing wins. Has a homeboy or two outside who has a knife. And so if he gets in trouble, he still wins. Like the guy, this Brian guys has no play. Not only that he will be sexually abused conceivably first, but the worst thing about him is the. As he lives, if they continue, if the people let him live, there will be constant attempts at his life. And the reason there will be conscious attempts his life because there's a lot of guys coming in there who don't have any, any gate. They'll never seen the light. And so they can make a name for themselves by being the guy who killed. Try like they tried to kill Manson, you know, Charles Manson. Young guys would come in, they wanted to be the guy that killed Charles Manson, they set him on fire. All these different things, right? Or the guys, the serial killer, right? The, the very famous serial killer who got killed in the one. The cannibal, what was his name? Dahmer. Right? The guy who gets to, he gets to be the guy who killed Dahmer, the guy who killed Whitey Bulger, he gets to be the guy who killed Whitey Bulger in his, in that system. So like, you get a reputation. And if you're a big name serial killer who gets. Goes to prison, you now have a target. And just because somebody can make a name for themselves by, by, by damaging you pretty hard, and if you keep living and surviving them, you're gonna, they're going to keep attempting. His life's miserable, just miserable.
- [56:00]
B
Do you think Epstein killed himself?
- [56:02]
A
Yes. I mean, here's what, here's what I say. Here's what I say. There didn't have to be a conspiracy for Epstein to kill himself then to. For somebody to kill him. There was plenty of reasons why he would want to live, and the biggest one is why he wouldn't want to live. Well, he wouldn't want to live. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason he wouldn't want. Biggest reason of them all is you have to look at him as. There's these Men who, they are so controlling and so have a vision of themselves as being so powerful that when they are going to kill themselves, they kill their family as well. And the psychology behind that, as I understand it, is they have now killed the possibility that people who know them and live with them and looked up to them will have a reduced impression them after everything comes out, what they've done. And after, if they kill themselves, so they are killing other people because they don't want those people to have an impression of them after they live. That's a bad impression. So they're basically taking judgment away, future judgment that might exist in their family's hearts. They just snuff it out. That kind of thorough control of. It's not just I want to kill myself, I want to kill the possibility these people might not like it and, and look, look down on me later on. So they kill them. They kill their families as well. Their families haven't done anything. But what their families have done has been their family. They've been near them. The, the man who kills himself like that, he is so, so, so sort of impeccably attentive to impression he has on other people. And when that is going to be reduced, he will do whatever he can. In the case of Epson, the only thing he could do was kill himself. He did not. He knew he was. Everything about him was going to be reduced, everything about him. He was never going to be able to be the guy he wanted to be the guy he had been. And he had been a very powerful, powerful person. So to me, he also understood that in prison he was, he knew he was because of all the things that they were going to say about him being a pedophile. He wasn't going to live long. So he didn't need to. He, he, There's. He had. He wanted to die. Believe me, he wanted to die.
- [58:31]
B
But do you think that the two guards that just happened to fall asleep at the same time during that time when he had the opportunity to kill himself, do you think there could have been something of like a plan through his people or whatever? I'm going to, I'm going to do something, so just don't check on me, don't. Whatever, because that's what I think. I do think he killed himself, but I think that the guards were paid off or something to just allow it to happen.
- [59:03]
A
So here's the other thing too. It's like you, you can, you're allowed to think that because you don't understand how incompetent Guards can be. Right. And me having done time and been like, a couple years in the hole where I was supposed, you know, where these guys are supposed to monitor all of us and stuff like that because we're like, some sorts are. We're dangerous in the hole, always plotting to get out, sneak out, break out, whatever. Like, I understand that there is enough reason to accept that they were incompetent. Remember, I only go to outside hypotheses, and if it doesn't seem like it's reasonable, that it could just be. What is meaning? Could it be incompetent guards? Absolutely. I've known some really idiotic guards are stupid. Could it be incompetent guards who lied because they try to cover up for themselves? Yeah, absolutely. Like, all that happens. They lie. They. They do all sorts of terrible things. Now my feeling is like, they didn't give a. About Epstein. They didn't need to give a. About him, which is why they don't check on them. I don't care. And so.
- [59:58]
B
Oh, well.
- [59:59]
A
And here's the more important thing. He knew. He knew they don't. They don't walk around. He knew that they don't walk around at certain times. So he had all the latitude he needed to do what he wanted to do. Right. Because this wasn't the first time they just fell asleep on the job. This wasn't the first time. They didn't do the rounds. They were incompetent. They just didn't give a. There was no. They were just unprofessional. That's enough of a reason to give him the window that he needed to do what he did. Could it conceivably be that somebody else did set him up, too? That's possible, but I don't need to believe that to think that's the only thing. There's enough reasons here for me to understand the psychology of the man want to die and the. The ineptitude of the guards who allowed it to happen, because they were just like, no, we don't care. We're not doing our job.
- [60:45]
B
Yeah. Wow. Amazing.
- [60:47]
A
So.
- [60:50]
B
It'S so great to talk to you and tell everybody where they can get, like, you know, your podcast and what you have going on or where to purchase your book and all of that.
- [61:01]
A
Okay, yeah. So the podcast is get the money and run, you know, wherever you get your podcast. It's me talking about. And it's not just me talking like, they interview my dad. They interview my brother. Like I said, we got this great love story now. And so there Is this. There's this. Listen to my father tell the story and what he believes about it. It's all there. Then the memoir is called the man who Occurs Prison Cell Confessions of a Bank Robbery. I asked people to go to Joloya Ltd to buy it from me. And I'll send you a signed copy because I'm. It's. It's. You know, I saw the book and. Yeah, I mean, then, you know, if my website also has all these things you can. You want to learn more about what I'm about. There's essays there, there's videos for things I've done. There's interviews, profiles, you know, I wrote for. I consult on a baby driver and. And Edgar gave me this really cool role in which I get killed by. And Jamie Foxx is the young plane of bank guard. And so, like, it was. It's a lot of fun. I'm consulting on Baby Driver 2. But, yeah, I'm out there doing my thing. I do want to say once, one story real quick. I think it's kind of fun. I need to give you a sense of my relationship with my dad. My dad and I were talking to these guys in jail, and they're all there for being domestic abusers. They've. They've beaten their wives or children, girlfriends, whatever. And it's just like. It's this program where instead of getting like five years, six years, you get. It's a year. And it's just dedicated Every day you're in groups learning how to have empathy, learning how to deal with your age, learning just like. And they bring in victims to talk every week. And these guys have to write points where they relate to the person and stuff. It's a really great program. It's up here in the Bay Area. And I would go there and my dad went there one day and I told the story about how I got beat up as a kid. I was a victim. And then I tell the story about how I started Robbie Banks and I became a victimizer. And I stay here and I have a guest trio. And I bring up my dad and say, this here's my dad. And I just told him how I stabbed him and tried to kill him. And they're like, all these guys. There's a hundred, 100 of these men in prison, right? They're looking at us and they're shocked. And I says, my dad. My dad gets up there and he tells him the story about I stabbed him. He tells the story of a lot of things, basically scolding them, saying, don't blame your kids. Don't blame everyone. You know, like I do. In the darkness of your heart and the darkness of the night in your heart, you know, it's on you, not on them. So he scolds him, he gives them that speech. But then he says, you know, when Joe stabbed me and he's telling the story of what led up to and stuff, he said, when Joe stabbed me, I knew instantly it was my fault. My dad said, you know, the Bible says, don't exasperate your children. And I exasperated my child. He says, but when, when Joe started twisting the knife up and trying to break the blade of my neck, I thought, oh, that's just Joe being an. And everyone starts laughing in this jail because he's like, I'll take the responsibility for what I did. I deserve to stab him with that twisty. That's just Joe being an. And everyone. I'm telling you, this whole place erupted with laughter. Like it's a dark humor. Like men know, like just because these things are tragic, it doesn't mean there's hilarious in moments. And that's where, that's where me, my brother, my dad reside. We went through stuff that was super, super terrible. Obviously I shattered our home collapse. It was done. Nobody could think we could come back from that, but we have. And so if for nothing else, I recommend people listen to this story and follow anything that I'm doing and writing. I'm writing a book right now to my 19 year old daughter called Dear Matilde. Lessons from my Grim Lessons from my confinements and I shared with her the lessons I've learned. I'm always trying to get to that. Yeah, there's. Bank robbery stories are kind of sexy. There's a lot of wild, crazy stuff going on. But I'm always trying to get to like lives can change, really can change. And you could really throw a lot of love at certain issues and, and, and change sort of the ecosystem of relationships. And we've done that, me, my brother and my dad. You know, I'm gonna go see him next week. I was down there a couple weeks ago. We always hang out, we talked three, four times a week. Yeah, that's what I'm about. That's, that's really what I'm about now. I appreciate you letting me come on this show.
- [64:52]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was so. It's just a very interesting life. Like, so you worked on Baby Driver, like what is, what's a bank robber movie that you didn't work on that you felt was really well done and kind of realistic. Like, my favorite is the Town, but that was multiple people doing that crime. Have you seen the Town with Ben Affleck? Everything like what. What do you think is one that seemed more realistic and ones that were just ridiculous. A movie?
- [65:27]
A
Yeah, I mean, I, I, One that I really, really loved was 60 beast. Did you see Sexy Beast?
- [65:37]
B
No, I have not seen it.
- [65:38]
A
It's good with Ben Kingsley. Sexy Beast, a great movie. It's a British movie. It's about 20 years old. 20, maybe 25 years old now. I saw, Yeah, I saw it at Sundance in 2000. So this movie won. It's. The acting is brilliant, but it's a, It's a heist in which they break into a vault through a building next door, and they break in. And I'm not going to give you any more than to say that it blew up a bunch of actors here. Ray Winston, Ian mc, and the guy who was in Deadwood, Ian and Wick. I forget his name. Dark black hair, really intense guy. He was in that movie. It blew him up here, like. But the crimes itself and the underworld aspect of it, the dark underworld component of it, because that's also crime stuff I like. I like things that feel gritty and real. The way men in the underworld operate in a certain way, a certain tone, a certain violence and menace. I love that movie. And I don't want to say what a ridiculous movie, because that's, you know, whatever you're going to say, but. Because I work in Hollywood, but I will say that there are some that, that, that are, are more comical and, and, and Sexy Beast is really great. Is a really great movie. And, and you. Funny you should say this, too, because I'm actually going to start very soon a podcast talking about heist films. I'll be talking about one heist film a day. I mean, one high school a week. So that's my next big project. Yeah.
- [66:58]
B
Oh, good. I think that'll be great. Well, thank you so much, Joe.
- [67:01]
A
You like ice films? Real quick? You like ice films?
- [67:04]
B
Yeah, I mean, I, I do. I mean, sometimes I. Sometimes I'm like, you know, with the. They're fun, but sometimes I feel like, with the voiceovers and the music of, like, Ocean's Eleven and all that kind of stuff.
- [67:18]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [67:18]
B
But at least it's, like, pretty to look at and it's kind of exciting and, and I think they're directed well and all that kind of stuff. You know, I always, I always wondered, like, when you'd watch it. I'm like, okay, so what if they've done all these deals together, like in Ocean's Eleven? Like, they get everybody, all the. Let's get the group back together. I'm like, if they've stolen all this money all this time, why do they have to keep stealing? Like, didn't you make enough on the last one? If you each made millions of dollars? Like, but I mean, obviously it's a movie, so. Yeah, but I guess that's kind of the question is. Yeah. Did you ever know if you did you ever know anyone that really did millions of dollars and then retired? Like, why wouldn't you retire? You got millions of dollars. Like, had you on one of your deals. Let's say you, you know, was like, give me the money. And that person really did give you, like $500,000 instead of your average 8. Do you think you would have then hung up your robbing life?
- [68:20]
A
No, no, no, no, no. Because what it is, is we're criminals because we're impulsive. We're criminals because we don't care about the future. We have no sense of posterity. Like, okay, this is not going to do. Yeah. So for the most part, most criminals at that level were impulsive. And we love that. We love the pop. We love putting ourselves at risk. We love Hazard, meaning we want to be the, we want to be the agents of Hazard. So we're just going to keep making our lives messy in a bunch of different ways. And if we can get paid along the way, we're going to keep robbing. Right. So that's part of the problem with being a criminal in that regard is that you don't care about the future. I care about the future now. I have a 19 year old daughter. I'm not going to ever do another crime again. I want to be with my daughter as long as I can. I dig that kid. I didn't have any of that stuff when, when I was, I was back then. I didn't care about the future at all. I made it to 26. My mom died at 26. I felt like, all right, the rest is gravy. I, I, I, I made it here. What happens after this, I don't care. I don't care if I die tomorrow. I don't, you know, just put my life at risk many ways. But I'm not that guy anymore, so.
- [69:18]
B
Yeah. Well, good. Well, thank you so much. This was. Thanks again.
- [69:21]
A
Appreciate it.
- [69:21]
B
We'll be in touch.
- [69:22]
A
Thank you. All right, Heather, Take care. Bye, Sam.