Movie Mystery: The 2000 Oscars Heist [from Very Special Episodes]

Summary

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Noble Blood: Movie Mystery: The 2000 Oscars Heist

Very Special Episodes | March 14, 2026 | Host: Dana Schwartz

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Episode Overview

This episode of Very Special Episodes, hosted by Dana Schwartz with guests Jason English and Olivia Rutigliano, peels back the mystery and chaos surrounding the infamous 2000 Oscars Heist, when a shipment of 55 Academy Award statuettes vanished weeks before the ceremony. Through a mix of expert interviews, historical context, and the colorful real-life characters swept up in the drama, the episode explores how (and why) someone would try to steal Hollywood’s most recognizable trophy—and what happened to the people, and Oscars, at the heart of the case.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Discovery in a Dumpster (03:13–05:29)

• Willie Fulgear—a junk scavenger—stumbles upon dozens of Oscar statuettes discarded in a Los Angeles dumpster while searching for moving boxes. At first, he thinks they’re brass toys, only to realize he’s looking at a shipment of the iconic awards.
• Dana Schwartz sets the stage:
  “Willie doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to make Oscar history in a story with enough twists and turns worthy of a Hollywood screenplay.” (04:06)

2. How the Oscars Are Made (06:03–11:07)

• Interview with Joseph Petrie, design director of RS Owens, the company making the Oscar statuettes at the time.
  • Oscar trophies are not solid gold; they’re made of a pewter alloy called Britannium, layered with copper, silver, nickel, then gold.
  • Trophies that don’t meet perfect standards are cut up and destroyed ("the torture room").
  • Oscars are packaged in bulk, then shipped (surprisingly, not with heavy security).
  • “Oscar has no crack.” — Joseph Petrie on the statue’s design (06:55)
  • “We’d weigh them, and if anything was above or below, we had weights in the base so each and every one weighed the exact same amount.” (10:18)

3. The Vanishing Act & Investigation (11:07–18:34)

• In 2000, 55 Oscar statuettes ship from Chicago to LA, shrink-wrapped on a single pallet, delivered by regular freight rather than armed guard.
• The warehouse loses track of the massive package; after four days, it’s clear they’ve been stolen.
• The Academy rush-orders replacements and calls in detective Mark Zavala from LAPD’s cargo theft unit.
  • Investigation quickly focuses on an inside job: the 470-lb pallet required a forklift operator and a driver.
  • Surveillance footage is missing; union “Teamsters don’t snitch”; Roadway Express increases the reward to $50,000.
  • A lawyer representing “individuals” offers to return the Oscars in exchange for no prosecution.

4. The Futility of Stealing an Oscar (18:34–32:44)

• Olivia Rutigliano (Oscar historian) joins to explain:
  • Stolen Oscars are hard to sell—they’re numbered, traceable, and only gold-plated.
  • The Academy requires every winner to sign a contract: trophies must be resold to the Academy for $1 before being transferred or sold (24:38).
  • Famous cases of missing Oscars:
    • Alice Brady (1938): Her award was believed stolen when a mystery man accepted it onstage, but research later proved it was delivered by her director.
    • Margaret O’Brien (1945): Child actress’ Oscar disappeared for 40 years after a housekeeper took it for polishing.
    • Whoopi Goldberg (1990): Her Oscar was stolen in transit for refurbishment but later found in a garbage can.
  • Memorable quote: “An Oscar is the worst thing to steal if you’re looking for something to steal.” — Olivia Rutigliano (18:34)

5. Piecing Together the Heist (35:03–41:16)

• Investigation narrows to two suspects:
  • Anthony Hart (forklift operator) and Larry Leedent (truck driver) at Roadway Express.
  • Anonymous tipster claims Hart was seen loading the Oscars onto Leedent’s truck.
  • Both suspects stonewall until police trick Leedent into thinking Hart confessed; Leedent tells his version—Hart loaded mystery boxes onto his truck as they’d done with lower-value goods before, but this time it was Oscars.
  • The trophies change hands quickly after both realize the gravity; Leedent leaves them with friend John Harris, who wants nothing to do with them.
  • In panic, Leedent dumps the Oscars in the trash.

6. Willie Fulgear’s Moment in the Spotlight (41:16–47:52)

• Willie Fulgear finds the tossed Oscars, not realizing their value until his son looks up the reward.

• He contacts police and media, is cleared of wrongdoing (even passing a polygraph), receives $50,000, and attends the Oscars as a hero, called out by host Billy Crystal (43:34).

• But, a twist: Willie is the estranged half-brother of John Harris, the friend who briefly handled the stolen Oscars. Despite suspicion, both are cleared of conspiracy.

  Notable moment:
  “He is the hero of the red carpet... Arnold Schwarzenegger comes up to him, and he’s like, you’re the star.” — Olivia Rutigliano (43:16)

7. The Aftermath: Fame, Mystery, and the Academy’s Secrets (44:16–53:05)

• The recovered Oscars weren’t even needed for that year’s ceremony; the Academy always works a year ahead.
  • “As far as the whole world knew... we were producing them a year behind. So nothing was ever left to chance.” — Joseph Petrie (44:16)
• Willie’s fleeting fame: After his red-carpet moment, he fades into obscurity and is later robbed of most of his reward money.
  • “For that night, he’s the guest of honor, and then it’s over... he sort of becomes a footnote in the lore of that particular ceremony.” — Olivia Rutigliano (46:07)
• Final twist: Of the 55 Oscars, 52 were found in the dumpster, one turned up in a Florida drug bust in 2003, and two remain missing.
  • “Some had suggested that they had been destroyed because they were stolen… I never knew for a fact... what happened.” — Joseph Petrie (50:51)
  • Olivia’s open call: “If anyone out there happens to be listening and has one or both, please, please contact me. I would really love to talk to you about that.” (53:05)

8. The Symbolism and Intrigue of the Oscar (47:52–54:32)

• Oscars without a winner’s name are nearly meaningless, “raw materials of wish fulfillment among filmmakers.”
  • “If you’ve stolen one Oscar or 100 before they’ve been awarded, what have you really stolen? It’s solid, but it might as well just dissolve in your hands.” — Dana Schwartz (47:52)
• Brief discussion of the trophy's design evolution: the "butt" is slightly more prominent in newer models due to advances in manufacturing (49:32).
  • “There was advancement in butt technology.” — Joseph Petrie (49:32)
• Despite the chaos, the mystique and legacy of the Oscar endures.

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Notable Quotes

• Joseph Petrie (RS Owens):
  • “Oscar has no crack.” (06:55)
  • “There was advancement in butt technology.” (49:32)
• Olivia Rutigliano:
  • “An Oscar is the worst thing to steal if you’re looking for something to steal.” (18:34)
  • “For that night, he’s the guest of honor, and then it’s over.” (46:07)
• Dana Schwartz:
  • “If you’ve stolen one Oscar or 100 before they’ve been awarded, what have you really stolen?” (47:52)

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Timestamps By Segment

| Timestamp | Segment Summary | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:13–05:29 | Willie Fulgear finds the Oscars in a dumpster | | 06:03–11:07 | How Oscars are made & protected; manufacturing anecdotes | | 13:48–18:34 | The discovery of the theft; investigation launched | | 18:34–32:44 | Stolen/missing Oscars through history; why Oscars are unsellable| | 35:03–41:16 | The investigation unfolds: suspects, arrests, the dumping | | 41:16–47:52 | Willie’s discovery, reward, red carpet moment, and twists | | 44:16–46:44 | Academy’s secret: Oscars are always shipped a year ahead | | 47:05–47:52 | Family twist: Willie & Harris are half-brothers | | 50:51–53:05 | Oscars fate: 52 found, one in a drug bust, two still missing | | 53:14–54:32 | Panelists share Oscar nostalgia/memories, the show closes |

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Memorable Moments

• The RS Owens “torture room”, where defective Oscars are band-sawed into fourths.
• The story of a pyrotechnics technician melting his Oscar in his driveway; another recipient uses his as a hammer.
• The red carpet moment when Willie Fulgear, a total outsider, is hailed as the Oscars’ savior for a night, only to fade into obscurity soon after.
• The technical (and slightly comedic) discussion of the Oscar’s “butt” changes over time.

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Closing Reflections

The 2000 Oscars Heist episode masterfully blends true crime, Hollywood mythology, and the peculiar world of award season logistics. What at first seems like a classic whodunit morphs into a meditation on value, fame, and legacy: the Oscar’s worth isn’t in its gilded exterior, but in the story—the legacy—attached to the name engraved on its base. And sometimes, the story behind the trophy is even wilder than any movie could script.

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Transcript

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[Dana Schwartz]

Moving Boxes that's All Willie Full Gear wanted some cardboard moving boxes. It's March 2000 and 61 year old Willie, a junk scavenger by trade, decides to look inside a dumpster behind the Food 4 Less grocery store. He's in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. He figures it's a good place to find some discarded packaging. He's right. Inside this large orange container full of trash are nearly a dozen boxes. Willie picks one up. It's obviously heavy. He opens it. Inside, he sees what looks like a figure, maybe a toy made of brass. When he takes a closer look, it's something he's only ever seen on television. An Academy Award trophy, better known as Oscar, the gleaming gold plated award handed out to a select few actors and filmmakers. Each year, Willie looks through the rest of the packages. It isn't just one Oscar. It's four or five to a box. As Willie keeps opening boxes, he finds more and more of them. In total, over four dozen Oscars are in this smelly dumpster off Venice Boulevard. What these Oscars are doing in the garbage is a pretty incredible story. And what happens to Willie Full Gear after he finds them in the garbage is another wild tale. Willie doesn't know it yet, but he's about to make Oscar history in a story with enough twists and turns worthy of a Hollywood screenplay. And by the end, more than a few people will be wishing for a rewrite. Welcome to Very Special Episodes, an I Heart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is movie mystery, the 2000 Oscars Heist.

[Jason English]

Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I'm Jason English. She's Dana Schwartz. He is Zarin Burnett. And this is our Oscars special. The ceremony is this Sunday. Dana, I know you've been to the Emmys. Have you ever Made it to the Academy Awards?

[Dana Schwartz]

No, but I might make it this year. My husband is writing for them.

[Jason English]

Yes. Heck, yes.

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[Jason English]

Oh, please, take lots of photos. Is there a version of the EGOT for getting to attend the four ceremonies?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. A good choice in spouse. I'm a lucky date.

[Joseph Petrie]

You know, we didn't actually have buns on him in the back. That was always kind of a joke around our factory.

[Dana Schwartz]

The man discussing Oscar's buttocks is Joseph Petrie. Joseph is the design director of RS Owens, a trophy manufacturing business located just outside Chicago. The company got its start making pigeon racing trophies. They apparently did a pretty good job with those, because from 1982 to 2016 was. R.S. owens was the exclusive producer of the Academy Award statuette. Each year, the company made 55 of the trophies to exacting specifications, including just how the figure's rear end should look.

[Joseph Petrie]

Yeah, Oscar has no crack.

[Dana Schwartz]

The process was involved. While Oscar might look like solid gold, it's not.

[Joseph Petrie]

The Oscars were cast out of a material called Britannium, which is a very rare pewter alloy. And what it does is it flows at a little bit lower of a temperature, but allows you to get absolute detail, but you get enough hardness so that you can polish them really, really well.

[Dana Schwartz]

The pewter was covered in multiple layers of copper. One layer of silver, a layer of nickel, and then a top layer of gold. The nameplates would come later, after winners had been announced. And if one Oscar made it through the assembly process, even slightly imperfect, it was destined for the torture room. That's where Joseph would make sure it never saw the light of day in a most violent manner.

[Joseph Petrie]

So we had a fallout rate. You know, we usually figured a few percent. And anytime we got to that level, the protocol was we would immediately take it into the casting room to a bandsaw and cut him in fourths.

[Dana Schwartz]

RS Owens was also responsible for refurbishing damaged Oscars. Surprisingly, some recipients didn't treat them with the utmost care.

[Joseph Petrie]

There was a guy who was a pyrotechnics guy on one of the big blow em up movies who actually melted his Oscar in his driveway. So we had to replace his. And then one guy was using it for a hammer to put in screws. So the back of his head had all kinds of Phillips screw marks on it. But we used to get him in for all sorts of reasons.

[Dana Schwartz]

The Oscars were the brainchild of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which first convened in 1927 as a way of organizing the various factions of the movie business. Silent pictures were on their way out. Movies with dialogue, known as talkies, were coming in. The Academy decided that an awards ceremony was in order to publicize their flourishing industry. The best actors, directors, writers and films would be recognized. But what to give them? MGM's art director, Cedric Gibbons conceived of a man with a blank expression and a crusader's sword standing atop a reel of film that had five spokes. Those five were meant to represent the five branches of the Academy at the acting, writing, directing, producing and technicians. The design was realized in three dimensions by sculptor George Stanley. Oscar was born. The first Academy Awards were handed out in 1929. The ceremony has been held annually ever since. And aside from the wartime Oscars where the trophies were crafted in plaster due to supply shortages, they've largely been the same statue you see today. Polished buttocks and all.

[Joseph Petrie]

The Oscar itself, as I recall, was 13 and a half inches high. I think it was about eight and a half pounds. And that weight was predictable in that after we had the base attached and we had the statue, we would weigh them. And if they were anything above or below, we had weights in the bottom of the base so that each and every one of them weighed the exact same amount.

[Dana Schwartz]

We should also mention the Oscar trophies are technically still statuettes, not statues.

[Joseph Petrie]

Well, they're a statuette in that they're produced in bulk, produced in multiples, whereas most of the time statues might have an original, maybe a few replicas, but statuettes are typically smaller, typically handheld, and they're produced in greater quantities.

[Dana Schwartz]

In 2000 RS, Owens is doing what it always does. It handcrafts 55 of the statuettes and carefully packs each one in styrofoam, slipping them into 10 or 11 cardboard boxes. All the boxes are then shrink wrapped together on a pallet. The entire shipment makes for one massive 470 pound behemoth. Given the notoriety of the Oscar, you might expect that the trophies would be delivered to the Academy's Beverly Hills office under armed guard. You might get that impression because that's exactly what happened. A previous year. The organization made a big deal of having the world famous Pinkerton Security and Detective Agency escort the trophies from Chicago to California. But as with many things in Hollywood, it was a lot of smoke and mirrors. The whole armed guard show was mainly for. For publicity purposes. What the Academy normally did and what it's doing in 2000 is schedule delivery with a trucking company called Roadway Express. The service didn't operate with armed guards or armored trucks or anything else. The actual material value of those 55 Oscars is about $18,000. Pricey, sure, but not exactly a king's ransom. So regular freight seems appropriate, the way you might ship a load of potato chips or computer equipment. The Oscar Palette makes its way from Chicago to the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, California, in just a few days, as it usually does. On March 8, the truck is parked in a loading dock area, as it usually is. But instead of winding up in Beverly Hills a few days later, it seems to just disappear. Roadway Express supervisors don't panic. They figure they've simply lost track of the shipment. It happens. They spend the next four days searching every truck, dock, and terminal in the entire country. But the Oscars fail to turn up. And that's when the proverbial alarm goes off. The Oscars haven't been misplaced.

[Joseph Petrie]

One of the guys from our shipping department came in and said, hey, we think our shipment's been hijacked.

[Dana Schwartz]

Roadway Express phones Bruce Davis, then the executive director of the Academy, on March 13th. They tell him that the Oscars intended for the 2000 ceremony, which is just two weeks away, have disappeared. This is a rather seismic development. It's like realizing that your year's host, Billy Crystal, had dropped off the face of the earth or that someone had run off with the envelopes containing the names of winners. You couldn't hand Meryl Streep an iou. Bruce Davis springs into action, making two calls. The first is to RS Owens. With the Oscar ceremony so close and the fate of the statuettes up in the air, the Academy places a rush order for 35 replacement Oscars to join the 20 they have on hand that were left over from previous year. Years. What would normally take months, RS Owens will now have to do in a

[Joseph Petrie]

matter of weeks to make sure we were able to get this done because we knew all of it was going to be done under heavy scrutiny. Cameras everywhere, press everywhere. So once we got that ball rolling, which was about, I want to say, within 24 hours, maybe, maybe 48, but we got rolling pretty quickly. You know, it was time to step up, take it to the next level, you know, be a big deal, you know, make sure that the Oscar show went off without a hitch.

[Dana Schwartz]

But even if RS Owens can fulfill the order in time, the Academy has no desire to have dozens of stolen Oscars out in the world. They're fiercely protective of the trophy. So Davis also calls the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPD assigns a detective named Mark Zavala to the case. Not because Zavala is an expert in Oscars or black market goods. But because he's part of the department's cargo theft unit when large quantities of shipped material went missing, he can often find them. Zavala and his partners head for Roadway Express, hoping to solicit the help of employees. This is perhaps overly optimistic. The employees are union members, and union members are by nature a pretty codified group of people. Put another way, Teamsters don't snitch on one of their own. But Zavala knows it was likely an inside job for one big reason. Remember, R.S. owens shipped the Oscars as a single package. It weighs nearly 500 pounds. If you wanted to make off with it, you were going to need a forklift and a truck big enough to accommodate it. So Zavala knows that at a minimum, he's looking for two suspects, a forklift operator and a driver. You'd figure surveillance footage would be helpful, might even catch the perpetrators in the act. But no such luck. So with the cooperation of Roadway, Zavala tries a different tact. The trucking company offers a $25,000 reward to anyone with with information leading to the recovery of the Oscars. That causes a little mumbling among the Teamsters, but still no snitches. Roadway quickly bumps the reward up to $50,000. Zavala soon gets a message from a man claiming to be an attorney. He said he represents individuals who would be willing to return the Oscars if no questions were asked and no arrests were made. Zavala and his colleagues are interested in this man, but before blindly giving him the money, they decide to follow him around for a bit. In the meantime, Zavala has a larger question to resolve. As a cargo theft specialist, he knows that when you steal a pistol, palette full of clothes, watches or electronics, you can resell them. You can make money. But what is anyone going to do with 55 stolen Oscars?

[Olivia Rutigliano]

An Oscar is the worst thing to steal if you're looking for something to steal.

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[Olivia Rutigliano]

Excuse me, I'm hiccuping because I'm so pregnant. Just give me one second to redeliver that.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's Olivia Rutigliano. Olivia is a book and online features editor who also has what you'd call a particular set of skills. She's a historian of misplaced Oscars. Lost, stolen, and everything in between.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

I like to say missing Oscars because it's unclear if some of them were in fact stolen or some of them were purloined without, you know, any criminal intent behind them. But some of them were literally stolen, and it does seem like a bit of an undersell not to say that as well. So stolen and missing Oscars is a good umbrella term for them.

[Dana Schwartz]

Olivia's fascination with missing Oscars goes back to a trivia book she had as a 12 year old.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

This was the complete Oscars up to 2003 by Gayle Kin and Jim Piazza, this huge coffee table book my mom got at a Costco. And they would include details about Oscars that had, you know, reportedly been stolen just in the trivia section. And eventually I was like, there have been a couple of these. There have been a couple of these instances.

[Dana Schwartz]

The subject so intrigued young Olivia that she began doing her own research.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

I wonder if there's an interest in obtaining stolen Oscars. And my research took off from there. I was like 12, and I would go to the New York Public Library. I grew up in New York, and so I go to the New York Public Library and do research on the computers and try to find articles about stolen Oscars.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's easy to see why someone can fall into a rabbit hole of Oscar mythology. It's a cultural touchstone. We're a society obsessed with the best, the best football team, the best pizza, and even the best in the highly subjective field of art. When the Oscars began airing on Television in 1953, the general public quickly grew consumed with the awards race.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

Suddenly, there's a way that through your television, you can be connected to the spectacular world of Hollywood that you are becoming entranced with because it's the post war period and everyone would be depressed otherwise. So I very much think that the broadcasting is what contributed to the Academy becoming a household name in terms of, like, moviegoing institutions.

[Dana Schwartz]

Then there's the nickname itself. Oscar. The trophy is already humanoid, and the proper noun lends it more of an emotional pull. Technically, the award is named the Academy Award of Merit, but since the 1930s, it's been best known by its nickname. And no one, not even Olivia, is quite sure why.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

But the most salient rumor about the naming of the Oscar is that the Academy secretary, I believe Margaret Herrick, nicknamed it Oscar and just called it Oscar Her. But I don't know beyond that. I cannot say anything definitive at all regarding that. But I do find it funny if it was just a pet name for this object that wound up blowing up and becoming the main moniker.

[Dana Schwartz]

Talking to Olivia tends to result in a lot of interesting revelations, like the fact that the Oscars don't technically belong to to their recipient, at least not in the way you might think. Since the 1950s, Academy Award winners must first agree to the Academy's terms before taking possession of their statuettes.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

When you win your Oscar, you are taken backstage and you are, you know, met with a bunch of contracts and lawyers, and you have to sign a document saying that if you wish to give away your Oscar for any Reason, and that includes bequeath it when you die, sell it, give it to a loved one, anything like that, you must first offer it back to the Academy for a sum of $1.

[Dana Schwartz]

There is a bit of a loophole. Someone could, in theory, sell an Oscar belonging to someone else with their permission or that of the estate. Or it might have been given out so long ago, it's now more historical artifact than anything. That's how Vivian Leigh's Oscar for Gone with the Wind wound up selling at auction for over a half million dollars in 1993, even though the Academy told trade publication Variety they were, quote, concerned about such Oscar sales. But stolen Oscars present unique problems with. One of the first cases that Olivia worked on originated in 1938. That's when a Best Supporting Actress award was given to Alice Brady for the film in Old Chicago. The movie is a highly fictionalized telling of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. Brady plays a woman whose clumsy cow knocks over a lantern, starting the blaze. But Brady had been on bed rest at home with a broken ankle and was unable to attend the ceremony.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

Apparently at the ceremony, a mysterious man nobody knew walked on stage, accepted the award on her behalf, and then disappeared with the award. And no one had ever seen him or the statuette since then. When I say statuette, it was kind of a plaque statuette. It wasn't the same as the ones we have now, and that was so cool and weird.

[Dana Schwartz]

But the Oscar, or rather the plaque, hadn't been stolen at all. At the behest of Olivia, the Academy's librarian, Libby Verton, revealed she had excavated the truth.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

She presented me with several newspaper articles that she had found that showed what actually happened that night. And apparently the man was not so mysterious. He was the film's director, Henry King, and he apparently brought the Oscar to Brady that night, according to a fan magazine. So there's definitely reason to suspect that the Oscar wasn't stolen at all. And I was really excited to encounter her research and the fact that she had sort of found this answer.

[Dana Schwartz]

Brady's story may have been invented, but plenty of Oscars have gone AWOL. Since the Academy's first ceremony in 1929, roughly 80 Oscars have gone missing, including the 55 from the roadway Express heist. And they often take a circuitous journey before being returned to their rightful owners, or if they're deceased, their estates. And as, as thieves often find out, they're incredibly hard to monetize on any so called black market.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

I think Oscars even more than paintings, because you can, you know, heist movies have taught me that you can find a weirdo who's obsessed with Vermeer who just wants to look at it. They'll pay you $4 million or whatever. Or a museum is unaware that the thing was stolen and they've acquired like. There seems to be, like some wiggle room, especially regarding the history of some of the art pieces.

[Dana Schwartz]

You know, unlike paintings, all Oscars have a serial number, making them easily traceable. And because the Oscar is only gold plated and consists mainly of other less valuable materials, melting it down doesn't make a lot of sense. So why do people steal them? Sometimes the motive is something other than money. One of the first Oscars ever stolen belonged to child actress Margaret o', Brien, who was awarded a special Oscar, dubbed a Juvenile Academy Award, for her role in the 1945 film Meet Me in St. Louis. The musical details the exploits of the Smith family in the months leading into the 1904 World's Fair. O' Brien plays Tootie, the younger sister of Judy Garland's Esther. When she won the award. She was just eight years old. A few years later, in 1954, O' Brien's family housekeeper took the Oscar to polish it at home. When she failed to come back to work, the o' Briens fired her. She didn't return the award, possibly out of spite, for the next 40 years, the statuette was missing. It wasn't until 1994 that it turned up at a flea market in Pasadena. Two memorabilia collectors picked it up for $500, then returned it to O' Brien when they realized it had been stolen. Then there was the one belonging to actress Olympia Dukakis for her performance in the 1988 romantic comedy Moonstruck. That Oscar was swiped during a home burglary just months after the ceremony. Plucked right off a kitchen table, the thief took nothing else except the Oscar. It felt a little personal. Not long after, Dukakis son received a call that offered to sell the award back. A meeting was arranged, but the kidnapper never showed up. And then there was a thief who seemingly got cold feet. In 2002, actress Whoopi Goldberg thought her Best Supporting actress Oscar for 1990s Ghost was looking a little pale. She sent it back to the Academy, which intended to forward it on to RS Owens for refurbishing. But RS Owens only got an empty

[Olivia Rutigliano]

box, apparently the Oscar en route to Chicago. No, it never left California. A security guard found it in a garbage can. Presumably, someone had seen the box, opened it, and then removed the Oscar, or was afraid that, you know, they would be seen with an Oscar and dumped it. The Academy, as it does, thought that maybe the thief had intended to steal the Oscar and then realized that it was serialized and had a name on it and decided to forgo the plan. So the security guard found it in the garbage and it was sent back to the Academies, then sent it back to Whoopi Goldberg.

[Dana Schwartz]

But no one had ever attempted anything as audacious as the Roadway Express heist. This wasn't one Oscar sitting on a shelf. This was 55 Oscars yet to be awarded. A quarter ton of Hollywood iconography that didn't really have value because they didn't yet belong to anyone. Their worth is tied directly to the name inscribed on the plaque, and if you try to sell one, even if you legitimately won it, the Academy is likely to take aggressive action. So what exactly could anyone have been thinking?

[Olivia Rutigliano]

Whenever someone thinks they can steal an Oscar, it's, you know, it's this moment of hope discovery. Oh my God, I hit the jackpot. And then there's a quick like Google search and it's like crap. What, what am I supposed to do with this thing?

[Dana Schwartz]

Actually, for these thieves, the answer involves a lot of finger pointing and a dumpster.

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[Dana Schwartz]

2000 has already been a peculiar year for the Academy. Months earlier, several thousand ballots intended for voting members had gone missing in the mail, only to turn up in California. Then, a short time later, movie blogger Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News claimed he had obtained a list of politics possible nominees before they were officially announced. The list turned out to be quite a ways off the mark, but it still sparked talk of security issues within the academy. But those were nothing compared to the mass disappearance of 55 Oscar trophies once Roadway Express bumped the reward up to to $50,000. Detective Mark Zavala gets a call. It was another anonymous tipster. This person advised Zavala to take a look at a roadway forklift operator named Anthony Hart. This caller claims he actually saw Hart load the Oscar pallet onto the truck of one Larry Leedent, a driver for the company. Sure enough, both Leident and Hart had been on duty during the window of time the pallet had disappeared. What's more, other anonymous tips phoned in had also mentioned Hart by name. So Zavala drives to the home of Anthony Hart, who refuses to discuss anything at all. But Zavala does not that Hart's brother in law is the same attorney who had phoned in to inquire about the $50,000 reward if Hart wouldn't talk. That leaves Larry, but Zavala might run into the same stonewalling. So detectives decide to lean on Larry by telling him a lie that Hart has just confessed. It works. Larry has a story to tell. We'll call it Larry's version. In his Telling Larry was minding his own business at the dock when Hart told him he had loaded something into the back of his truck. This, according to Larry, was not unusual, as the two had schemed to help themselves to inventory before. Stuff like clothes and shoes. Larry says he wasn't sure what to make of this information at first. He drove around for a bit before finally peeking inside one of the boxes where he discovered the 55 purloined Oscars. Oscars that Hart had apparently forklifted into his truck. Here's Olivia again.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

I think Hart was the one who told Leden, like, put something on your truck. And he was like, okay. And then later realized that they were Oscar statuettes and freaked out because they were. It's not like a, you know, rug or a bunch of cologne.

[Dana Schwartz]

Larry felt a surge of panic. Not wanting to transport stolen goods, he headed to the house of a friend of his named John Harris. He told Harris he was was going to leave the Oscars with him for a short period of time until he could figure out what to do about them again. He drove to a friend's home and informed him he had 55 Academy Awards he wanted to drop off. Happens every day. Harris agreed, but the statuette were only with him for one night before they were on the move again.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

Apparently, Harris was like, whoa, these things are hot. This is very bad. Do not bring these to my house. Please do not involve me in this.

[Dana Schwartz]

After that, Larry tells police he wanted nothing more to do with the heist and dumped the Oscars. He was, as he says, afraid of losing his job. A reasonable concern. Larry is arrested and charged. Hart is arrested but released. Owing to a lack of evidence, police can't prove he knowingly loaded the Oscar palette into Ledent's truck. It could have been an accident. But authorities do wind up charging Hart months later, after Leident offers additional testimony about Hart's role and after police uncover telephone communication between the two. Around the time of the heist, Leiden pled no contest to charges of grand theft. He got six months in jail and a fine. Harris pled no contest to receiving stolen property and one count of accessory to grand theft. After the fact. He got three years probation. Hart pled no contest to receiving stolen property and also got probation. Hart vehemently denied all of Larry's claims that he was in on it. He said he knew nothing about the theft. He said he pled out to avoid being chewed up by the system. He asserted Larry's confession had been coerced. Later, Hart sued the lapd, the Academy and roadway express, alleging they had violated his civil rights and that the lapd had defamed him by naming him as a suspect in a press conference. He lost on appeal. In 2006, at the time of his arrest for the oscars, Larry tried telling police where the stolen statuettes could be located. But when police arrived at the places, he indicated, nothing was there. This brings us back to Willie folgear. Willie, as you'll recall, is the scavenger who was looking for packing boxes in a koreatown dumpster and got a surprise instead.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

He thought, apparently, that what he had found was brass. And he had, you know, great success selling brass. I mean, you know, really good brass is, you know, is worth a pretty penny. So he called his son, Though when he saw that it was something else, his son did an Internet search, search and realized there was a reward out for them.

[Dana Schwartz]

Armed with the knowledge he had a lot more than packing boxes on his hands, Willie makes two phone calls, One to the lapd and one to a Los Angeles news outlet. Within minutes, Willie is posing with the oscars near the dumpster. The media is already hailing him as a hero, but by now, you're probably thinking, this doesn't quite add up. How did the oscars get into that dumpster? Larry claimed he didn't know. Hart claimed not to have any involvement at all. And did willie really just happen across them, or did someone tell him where they could be found? Police think it's odd, too. They question Willie to see if he had any potential involvement, but willie insists he did not, that he found them in the dumpster. By happenstance, he even passes a polygraph test, which is inadmissible in court, But a technique that police often put faith in when it comes to evaluating potential suspects. Absent any evidence of wrongdoing and with increasing pressure from the public to give Willie the $50,000 reward, cops cut him loose and roadway cut him a check. He also gets something priceless. A grateful academy extends an invitation to the ceremony and a car and driver to the event held March 26 at the Shrine auditorium in Los angeles.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

And he is the hero of the red carpet, like so many articles say. You know, Arnold schwarzenegger comes up to him, and he's like, you're the star. I shouldn't say that. You know, they're like, I've been watching a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. It's weird how pregnancy gives you cravings that are sometimes media related.

[Dana Schwartz]

That night, american beauty wins the oscar for best picture, beating the likes of the Green Mile and the Sixth Sense. And despite the presence of luminaries like Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie, it's Willie who is The Star. Over 46 million people watch as he's called out by name by host Billy Crystal. Clad in a tuxedo and top hat, he waves to the crowd, the hero civilian who made the ceremony possible, hadn't he? There's an interesting addendum to that. While the media played up the idea that the Oscar statuettes were needed for that year's show, they didn't have the story exactly right.

[Joseph Petrie]

As far as certain things about the Oscar, nobody was to ever know at that point that what we were making was for essentially next year. So as far as the whole world knew, except for very few inside the factory, because even some of the employees had no idea that we were producing them. Like I said, a year behind. So we just. Nothing was ever left to chance.

[Dana Schwartz]

The frantic search for the 2000 Oscars was actually a frantic search for the 2001 Oscars. R.S. owens was, according to Joseph, working a year in advance just in case something like this were to ever happen. The show was never in any danger of handing out IOUs. So why the mad rush to make more? It's possible, though not confirmed, that a dash to replenish the Academy's Oscar inventory simply made for some good publicity. It is show business, after all. As for Willie Folgear, he takes some of the reward money and buys a gold Lexus Puck, possibly an homage to how he got his windfall. He also plans to use some of the funds to fix up a property in his home state of Mississippi. But when he returns from a trip there later in 2000, he discovers someone has stolen a safe with the remaining Reward money, about $40,000. It was never recovered. To Olivia, Willie's flirtation with fame and fleeting celebrity isn't quite the feel good story it appears to be. And not just because he himself was robbed.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

For that night, he's the guest of honor, and then it's over. The next day, it's over. He is nothing to that community because he hasn't accomplished anything of note. He's just made it possible for the show to go on, made it possible for the ceremony to continue, for the people to receive their awards. He's not part of a production, he's not going to be making movies. And so he sort of becomes a footnote in the lore of that particular ceremony rather than a member of the community. And a year later, his life is horrible.

[Dana Schwartz]

There's also also that one final twist that authorities wouldn't actually cover until months after the recovery of the trophies. Willie had always maintained he had nothing to do with the heist itself, but his family tree told a little bit of a different story when it turned

[Olivia Rutigliano]

out that he was the half brother of John Willie Harris. The friend that led ant the trophy truck driver had brought the statuettes to John.

[Dana Schwartz]

Harris and Willie had actually arrived in California together in the 1960s, but both claimed to be estranged from one another. Harris denied that Willie had any involvement in these statuettes beyond finding them by sheer coincidence. And Willie maintained he had nothing to do with any of it.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

The polygraphs they put him through, you know, did not turn back anything suspicious. Apparently, you know, the fact that the two men were half brothers was inconsequential, as they had been estranged for some time.

[Dana Schwartz]

Willie Fulgear was never charged with any crime in connection to the Oscar heist. Was he involved or simply tipped off? Or was it all just a massive coincidence? We can't ask Willie. He died in 2007. In a sense, the trophies were a kind of trash. They were the raw materials of wish fulfillment among filmmakers without intent behind them, they're just trophies, nameless and faceless trophies. That Oscar that once belonged to Vivien Leigh and sold for a half movie million. Without her name, without her story, without the legacy of Gone with the Wind, it would have been just an auction of glorified tin alloy. If you've stolen one Oscar or 100 before they've been awarded, what have you really stolen? It's solid, but it might as well just dissolve in your hands.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

Once they are in the hands of their winners, once they symbolize the achievement that their winners accomplished, then they will be worth more. They still won't be able to be sold, but they will be worth more in an abstract way.

[Dana Schwartz]

The Oscars are currently manufactured by Politch Tallex Art foundry in New York. And unless you're Joseph Petrie, they probably look like like every other Oscar out there, with one small exception.

[Joseph Petrie]

The new company had a better. But because they were working with a newer technology that evolved, they went back to bronze, which was how they were originally made. And bronze is much harder than Britannium is. And so polishing his rear down would take a lot more work than it's worth to try to do that. But I would say he had probably a little bit better butt with the new guys. Yeah, there was. There was advancements in butt technology.

[Dana Schwartz]

There are mysteries within mysteries. In the 2000 Oscars heist, how the trophies wound up in that dumpster. Whether Larry Lee Dent knew what he was driving off with and whether it was just sheer coincidence Willie Folgier stumbled upon a trash heap containing 500 pounds of his brother in law's stolen loot. But there's one more. Just what happened to those 55 recovered statuettes? Were they given to winners during the ceremony or did they suffer a more gruesome fate? Here's Joseph Petry again.

[Joseph Petrie]

There was always kind of some conflicting evidence or stories as to what actually happened. It was some had suggested that they had been destroyed because they were stolen. So now they're tainted, if you will. Knowing the Academy, that would more than likely be my first thought. I never knew for a fact or nobody in our organization to my knowledge knew exactly to a fact exactly what

[Dana Schwartz]

happened at the time of their recovery. Academy executive director Bruce Davis said some of them would be handed out. A 2001 article in Vanity Fair states these stolen statuettes were cleaned, replated and and hand it out the following year. Because the statuettes have serial numbers, it would be simple enough to trace the ones taken from Roadway Express and see if and when they were ever awarded. But a representative for the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences didn't return our request for comment on what exactly happened happened to those 52 trophies. Oscar has a mystique to him and it looks like the Academy wants to preserve that. And yes, I said 52. Of the 55 Oscars taken, only 52 were in the dumpster. One was recovered three years later in 2003 when a Florida drug bust uncovered a statuette in the possession of a drug dealer. When asked where he got it, the man said it had been given to him by a person who had owed him $10,000. He took the Oscar in lieu of payment. That leaves two Oscars outstanding. Somewhere out there, there are two trophies, never inscribed, never awarded. Maybe they're still standing, sentry, in someone's garage or bathroom, modestly polished buttocks and all. If anyone out there happens to be listening and has one or both, Olivia has a request if you do and

[Olivia Rutigliano]

if you're listening, please, please contact me. I would really love to talk to you about that.

[Jason English]

Another solid episode in the books. Any last minute Oscar thoughts or projections for either of you? Have you seen many of the nominated films?

[Dana Schwartz]

I have seen most of them, but unfortunately with a baby it's hard to get to a theater. So I've watched them at home, which is never quite the same experience, but I feel very generic, like I'M like on a dating profile being like, I love movies, but I do, I love movies. I'm such a sucker for like a montage during the Oscars. It always makes me tear up. I really love the Oscars in a non cheesy, ironic way. It gets me very hyped and excited and makes me very proud to work in this industry.

[Jason English]

Yeah, I'm right there with you. I absolutely love the Oscars. My mother used to always host Oscar parties when I was young and I still keep up through tradition where I print out all of the nominations and we have a contest who can pick enough of them. Right. To win. And I look forward to it every year because it's just one of the coolest things. And I've never considered actually winning one of the little gold man statues, but stealing one, now that's something I can get behind. I think we should win one if we were gonna set our sights on it. Is it a short film?

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, yeah. That maybe is the easiest one to win because you can kind of sneak in maybe. I think animated short people aren't really paying attention to that one.

[Jason English]

Yeah. Do you see the strong premise? Some interesting iconic artwork. You're almost halfway there.

[Olivia Rutigliano]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Can you draw? Can any of us draw?

[Jason English]

There's always a catch. Yeah, I can color, so if you guys can draw, I can do the color. Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. This show is hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zarin Burnett and Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode was written by Jake Rawson. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington. Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. Additional editing by Mary Dew. Original Music by Elise McCoy. Show logo by L. Lucy Quintanilla. Social clips by Yarberry Media. Our executive producer is Jason English. If you want to email the show, another mailbag episode is coming. Very Special Episodesmail.com Very Special Episodes is a production of I Heart podcasts.

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[Dana Schwartz]

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