Get the Money and Run | First Time Out

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Burden – "Get the Money and Run | First Time Out"

Podcast: The Burden
Host: Ben Adair (Orbit Media)
Episode: Season 4, Episode 1 – "Get the Money and Run | First Time Out"
Date: May 6, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode inaugurates Season 4 of The Burden, focusing on the remarkable and tumultuous life of Joe Loya, once Southern California’s most prolific bank robber. “First Time Out” dives into Joe’s very first bank robbery, the psychological and emotional landscape leading up to it, and the family trauma that shaped his path. Ben Adair (host/interviewer) brings out Joe’s candid, humorous, and haunting reflections—intertwining true crime storytelling with deep personal narrative.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Joe Loya's First Bank Robbery: No Plan, All Nerve

• Spontaneity and Nerves

  • Joe recounts walking in and out of banks all day, working up the courage and bailing out at the last minute—until he finally makes his move.
  • He describes writing a bank robbery note at a McDonald's after chickening out at another bank, highlighting just how improvised his first attempt was.

  Quote: “I would walk into banks and leave them all day long... If this was a short film, it would be a comic film because you would see me... Okay, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do it. And the next thing, you see me drinking coffee at McDonald's. And then you see me, okay, I gotta do it... I'm biting the Whopper at Burger King.”
  — Joe Loya, 03:13

• The Moment of Action

  • After hesitating all day, Joe’s deadline comes at 4:45pm—he finally passes the note to the teller, but when she doesn’t react, he escalates with an implied threat, grabbing the note and pretending to have a gun.
  • The teller complies, and Joe walks out as casually as possible—until someone yells “He robbed us!” prompting his getaway.

  Quote: “I walk away with my fanny, zipping it up. I'm walking away like I just did banking... I turn around to walk out... somebody yells, he robbed the bank. He robbed us. And so I start running… This jackrabbit’s gone.”
  — Joe Loya, 09:19

• The Payoff

  • Joe describes the thrill of counting $4,500 and reflects on how this single act felt like it rewarded his “wit, ferocity, and heart”—a quick, ‘clean’ transaction versus years of petty crime or hard labor.

  Quote: “I felt like this is what my time is worth... This money already felt so much better. It felt like I got it based on my wit, on my ferocity. I was getting paid for fucking heart.”
  — Joe Loya, 10:44

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2. Joe’s Upbringing: Love, Loss, and Early Trauma

• A Loving, Church-Centered Childhood

  • Joe grew up in East LA, the son of teenage parents madly in love, raised with strong church and family values.
  • His mother was a formative influence, described with warmth and vivid sensory memory.

• Tragedy Strikes: His Mother’s Illness and Death

  • Joe’s mother becomes gravely ill when he is seven, and dies when he's nine. The loss shatters the family and fundamentally alters Joe’s trajectory.
  • Joe remembers the unity of grief after his father breaks the news, emphasizing both the pain and brief, intense family closeness.

  Quote: “It was actually one of the best moments of my life in that the feeling you get when my dad leaned forward and pulled us into him and it was just us... And it’s one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever had with my dad.”
  — Joe Loya, 21:35

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3. Cycle of Violence: Joe’s Relationship with His Father

• Discipline Turns to Abuse

  • After his mother’s death, Joe describes life with his father as being always ‘in water’—meaning, the violence was so constant there’s no clear start.
  • Recounts a disturbing memory: being made to recite multiplication tables and his father forcing his ill mother to hit him when he fell short. The discipline grows more brutal over time, culminating in one beating so severe Joe couldn’t return to school for days.

  Quote: “He puts the belt in her hand and says, you hit him then. And he bullies her into hitting me. She’s crying while she’s hitting me... torturing her sadistic.”
  — Joe Loya, 27:07

• Toxic Masculinity and Legacy of Violence

  • Joe’s father pushes him to retaliate violently when he's beaten up, teaching “if you get sized up as being weak, you better be willing to go overboard and actually make a statement later.”
  • The psychological toll is clear: Joe internalizes rage, building up a dark energy that, while destructive, also amplifies his sense of strength.

  Quote: “When you go inward like that and you go into the darkness, it gets real dark down there. That’s where you get your most power... I was getting stronger. I was not getting weaker. I was getting demented with a very powerful rage.”
  — Joe Loya, 34:27

• The Unfulfilled Cycle of Apology

  • His father alternates between violence and remorse, apologizing and promising to change, while nothing changes, leading Joe to deep disillusionment.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Improv bank robbery and comic absurdity:
  “It was fucking.” — Joe Loya, 03:13
• On facing fear:
  “You have to push past your fear to get to the next level.” — Joe Loya, 04:25
• The ‘clean’ feeling of the robbery:
  “I love the cleanness of it. Like, everyone's like, oh, okay, we're gonna go do this game where we exchange money... and then we all die. Here, I'm gonna get it.” — Joe Loya, 11:43
• Mother’s death and family unity in grief:
  “We just become this one spasm of anguish and pain and there's this unity of our grief around the same thing. And it's one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever had with my dad.” — Joe Loya, 21:35
• On accumulating rage and darkness:
  “As my dad was beating me and I was taking each blow, there's a different power... there's a different energy in the shadows that builds up inside of you. The animosity, the negativity... it rearranges you and gives you power.” — Joe Loya, 34:27

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Segment Timestamps

• [02:31] – The First Bank Robbery Unfolds: Joe’s hesitant, improvised approach, and comedic self-image as he tries (and fails) to start the robbery.
• [04:23] – Facing Internal Fear: Joe discusses his internal struggle with fear before acting.
• [07:24] – Execution and Escape: Joe finally robs the bank, escapes, counts the money, and rationalizes his career choice.
• [15:04] – Early Childhood & Mother's Death: Joe details his loving but turbulent early years and his mother’s illness and death.
• [26:12] – Violence and Abuse: Discussion of physical abuse, shifting to the more severe impacts after his mother’s passing.
• [33:43] – Joe on His Father’s Apologies: Reflections on cycles of violence, apology, and disillusionment.
• [34:27] – Harnessing Rage: How the buildups of trauma and anger became power for Joe.

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Episode Tone & Style

• Frank, irreverent, and emotionally raw: Joe Loya balances dark humor (“I probably nibbled a little bit of food from every fast food joint available at the time…”) with gut-wrenching candor about trauma, rage, and family loss.
• Cinematic and immersive: The episode uses vivid storytelling and honest self-reflection, offering listeners both gritty true crime intrigue and deep psychological insight.
• A journey into both method and motivation: It’s not just the ‘how’ of Joe’s crimes, but especially the ‘why.’

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Conclusion

The season premiere of Get the Money and Run powerfully sets up Joe Loya’s story as more than just true crime: It’s a study in human frailty, resilience, the scars of childhood trauma, and the choices that shape a life. Joe’s storytelling—unfiltered, often funny, always honest—propels the episode, promising a season that’s as much about understanding the man as chronicling his crimes.

Next Episode: "Who's Your Daddy?"

Transcript

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[Ben Adair]

Hi there, it's Steve Fishman from Orbit Media. You're listening to get the Money and Run. Over seven episodes, we're going to learn how Joe Loya became one of California's most daring bank robbers. We're going to hear about high speed getaways, a relentless FBI, about disguises, body doubles, and also about another side of Joe. Joe Loya is a soul searcher, a soul searching criminal. One of the most original criminals in true crime podcasts and I listen to a lot of them. Today's episode first time out. Remember to binge all seven episodes ad free. Subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. Our host and creator is the great Ben Adair, producer of shows like Lost Hills, Ripple, Pulse, the Untold Story. All right, over to Ben.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

How much had you planned this all out in advance?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

None.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

What did you know going into it? How are you gonna go in? How are you gonna get away?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

None.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

None.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

None.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

I mean, you can't just rob a bank with no plan, can you?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

What I do remember about is this. I start at 10. I walked into the First bank and I grab a slip and I write we have a bomb. This is a bank robbery. And I wrote A bank robbing note. And then I'm like, ah, fuck it. I don't want to do this here. For some reason, this doesn't feel right. So I start walking away. And as I walk away, there's like three cameras at me at the door. And I realized I could have been busted, right? If anyone just kind of, you know, zoomed in on the guy who was writing something on the back of that slip, they could have seen I was trying to rob that bank. So I wrote my next one, next note at McDonald's. I wrote it there. And I would walk into banks and I would leave them all day long, you know, Like, I would walk in and I would stand in line, go a couple steps up, couple customers would be going. I'd be like, nah, I don't gotta feel for this. I'd walk in, I'd see, you know, guard or something. No, I'm gone. I swear to God, man. I probably nibbled a little bit of food from every fast food joint available at the time. Kfc, Wendy's. If this was a short film, it would be a comic film because you would see me going in there. Okay, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do it. And the next thing, you see me drinking coffee at McDonald's. And then you see me, okay, I gotta do it. I'm gonna get all fucking nervy in there. The next scene, I'm biting the Whopper at Burger King. Like, it was just me. Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. Taco Bell. Let's do it. Let's do it. Wendy's. It was like. It was fucking.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

What were you feeling inside?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Fear. I was just like, at this point, I'm not going to jail. Just standing in line thinking about robbing a bank. When I go do this next thing, this is the real thing. So I know that on the other side of this is a payoff, A big payoff. Because when you run past your fear, then it cannot harass you anymore. On this side of it, it's a big payoff. Dark, menacing curtain, and it's saying, try to come back here, see what the gonna happen here. You're like, I don't know if I want to open that curtain. Oh, once you open that curtain, that curtain evaporates. There's no more curtain. You can turn around like, where's that curtain? It was menacing me. There's no curtain. And that's what you have to do. You have to push past your fear to get to the next level.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

But right now, Walking in and out of these banks, just staring at that curtain.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Oh, that curtain's just like, taunting me, you fucking punk. And I knew that I had this in me where I could cough up a nut sack and do something if I need to do it now. All day I wasn't coughing up the nutsack. All day I was not calling up my courage. It would just go. So it would only get me so far, and then it would peter out. But it was like this point. I was like, this is. We're doing it. We're doing it right now. Fuck all the bullshit. Let's go do.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Part one first time out. Okay, so I'm sitting here in the studio. This is Ben Adair, and I'm sitting here in the studio with Joe Loya. Hi, Joe.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Hey, Ben.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Joe, today you're wearing a sort of a black pullover shirt. You got black glasses, silver goatee. Normally, you have a City of Oakland baseball cap on.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Right here?

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Yeah, on the chair next to you. How do you describe yourself to people?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

I say I'm fluffy. I mean, I don't say I'm fat, but I'm very heavy.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

I mean, you're living large.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Yeah, I'm living. I'm existing large. I don't know about living, like. Yeah, but so I'm. I'm a thick man. Mexican man, Dark skin, you know, in late 50s. Late 50s, yeah. Easy to say.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

I mean, looking at you now, you're charming. I don't think people would understand that. You used to break school records and track, though.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Nobody is. My friend Danny Gallegos once said. He said, man, you look like you ate that guy. I showed him a photo of me when I was 18 years old. He says, man, you look like you ate that guy. I mean. Which. That's what I look like.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

But let's get back into it. It's 1984. You've never robbed a bank before. You've committed crimes, but mostly small stuff. Fraud, stealing cars. Enough that has gotten the attention of the cops. You're wanted by police. So you've been hiding out in Tijuana. You've driven up to San Diego from Tijuana, you're in a stolen car and you're walking in and out of banks all day. But now it's deadline time.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Okay? So finally, 4:45. I gotta rob this bank. I know it. There's no getting around it. We're doing it right now. I don't have a choice. I stand in line. I have my note. I go to the line, say, hello, how you doing, sir? I said I'm fine. How you doing? As I'm walking over, let everybody like see us and then let not pay attention to us. And as I walk up there, I slide the note to her, she puts it, I put it down on the table, I slide it to her. She looks down at it and she reads it and reads it and reads it, like, has plenty of time to have read it, turned it over, copied it, turned it back over, read it again, like too long. So I reach forward and I realize I gotta get her attention. So I grabbed the note and I move it around a little bit like, hey, let's do something about this. And she still won't look up. So I had to pull the note away from her. Cause I realized, oh shit, I've given her something to distract her. She does not want to look up and she doesn't have to look up. So I tried to pull the note back and she tries to pull the note to her. And when she's pulling the note, we're doing this little bullshit tug of war. Now I'm just fucking pissed. So I lean forward and say, I'm not fucking around. I'll jump the counter. And I reach down like I got a gun. And I pat my waistband like I'm coming over. I will fuck you up for this bullshit stuff. And it was in that moment, she looks up and just with my eyes, I menace her. And then when she looked, she saw I was serious. She opened her drawer and just gave me the money. Now I put on the table, on the counter, I put a fanny pack. I start throwing the money in it and I tell her good. And I walk away.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

So then you get the money, you take the fanny, you pick up the fanny pack.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

I walk away with my fanny, zipping it up. I. I'm walking away like I just did banking. I'm not like running, I'm not like, ah, I just routed the place, you know, no energy other than, you know, walk away. I turn around to walk out of the bank like I'm a customer just finished my transaction. I get to the door and before I can even walk out the door, somebody yells, he robbed the bank. He robbed us. And so I start running. And I mean, I run, I'm bending over, driving my arms and I'm high stepping and I'm running to far away at the end of the block. I knew there was a trolley station, the cab there, and I jumped into the cab, pulled away from these guys, kept looking back and they were like in the beginning they were chasing after me in earnest, and then they realized there's no catch me. This. This jackrabbit's gone. So get in the car, tell them to get me to San Ysidro. He drops me off on the other side of the freeway in San Ysidro. And then I walk over a bridge to where I had my hotel room. So I get inside my room, and obviously the first thing I'm excited to do is figure out how much money I got. It looks like a lot of money. And so I start counting the money. I break up the 20s, the 50s, the hundreds, the fives, the tens. That's what I always did. And then I was like, okay, let's count it, because this looks good. And sure enough. $4,500. Oh, man, it was. Felt glorious. Okay, so already, when I was in college, I used to think I did this math and thought, you know, I'm going to get out of college. I'm going to do four years. I'm going to be working through college because I don't. We don't have a lot of money. And when I get out, what do I think I might get? Start off at $40,000, maybe 50 if I'm lucky. I don't know. But I don't think that I'm going to make a lot of money, and I'm going to have to do that over a year of work. And one of the reasons I went into crime was I thought, no, a guy who has that kind of gumption, he should be getting paid buckets of money. I felt like, this. This is what my time is worth. So this money already felt so much better. It felt like I. I got it based on my wit, on my ferocity. I was getting paid for fucking heart. And also, I love the. The cleanness of it. Like, everyone's like, oh, okay, we're gonna go do this game where we exchange money all the time and life, and then we all die. Here, I'm gonna get it. Here's a paycheck, you know, okay, then here. I'm gonna go buy food. And we're all exchanging money, and then we die. I feel like, man, we've been duped. This is the way to live. But if we're gonna be having exchanges of money, let's make it this way. Hi. You have a lot of money. Give me your. Now. It's my money. Bye. Just give me the money. This is what I want. Bye. It's just clean. And it was fast. And it was commensurate to my time. That's great. I love getting $4,000, $5,000 for five minutes of work. I felt like that's. I should be getting that every day of my life, every five minutes of my life. So I was happy. I was like, I don't have to be a petty criminal ever again. I never have to steal a Snicker bar, a shirt. I never have to defraud anybody. If I owe somebody 50 bucks, I get to give them 50 bucks. I get to be honorable now in my life. Except for this one thing. Because I'm a bank robber now. I'm gonna rob banks. That's all I'm gonna do.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

We'll be right back.

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[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

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[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Part 2 Mama's boy.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Not.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

To be out Tell me about your mother. But what was life like for a young Joe growing up?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Okay, so I was born in East Los Angeles, the old Matavia housing projects, back in those days. My parents were 16 when I was born. Actually, my mother had just turned 17 when I was born. And so my mother and dad found out my mother was pregnant. They went to their parents. Their parents said, you're getting married. They were in 10th grade. I said, you're getting married. And it was a loving home. Cool. Loving home. The love story that I was raised in with my parents, they loved each other since they were 12. Everyone loved them. I was raised in that love story. I was raised in the love. We went to church, and our church was our life at that time. I was raised with Bible stories. I was raised at church camps. I was raised potlucks, man. I was raised in the church, and I was raised with a dad who wanted to be a preacher. And he had a love of language. He was very smart, and he was devoted to learning. Everything was cool until 7. I turned 7. By that time, we'd moved out to Pico Rivera, and my mother got sick. Always, man. This always gets me, man. I remember my mother got a job at the Sears Tower over here on Olympic. I don't even know if the Sears building is still there, but there's a big Sears building there. And she got in the typing pool because she. Apparently, she was like, she's a typing foolia, man. But what I remember about that is my dad would. Would go warm up the car. My dad would go warm up the car outside. This is the days when you weren't afraid someone's just gonna steal your car, right? He would go warm up the car, you know, turn the heater on in there because it's cold. It was, you know, it's early morning, like three or four, maybe it was. It was four or five. Who knows? But it seemed super early, dark, cold. And then he would wrap us up inside, and they would take us, carry us to the car. We. We do in the back, sleep, sleeping. That was also in the days when you didn't need to buckle your kids in the backseat. And then he would take my mom. And I remember I would get up and I would look out, and there was fog over there by the. By the LA river. When you would go over, like, first street or one of those bridges in la. And I remember, like, wow, this is weird. It's like when you see those old movies and, like, Casablanca and there's just fog going by and it's Dark. It was like that, but it was early morning and. And she was a sharp dresser, you know, I remember her looking sharp. That's one of my first memories. But it's not until age 7, right? She was already sick then and very sick and didn't know it. She was just tired. She thought it was just because of her work, whatever, and she had to take a physical. That's when the doctor was like, oh, shit, something's wrong. And then she was in and out of the hospital. Like our life was just kind of what it's just. It was topsy turvy after she got sick. I remember once I visited her. I hated that hospital. I hate the smell. I hated being there. I hated her shuffling over to us and her chanclas and her little, you know, the hospital dress thing they had. I hated her smell of. Of spongebob. I hated it. All the beeping, all that stuff, man, it brings back crazy feelings of helplessness. Remember when she was in junior high, she had been voted tower queen of Griffith Junior High. She was beautiful. When she got sick, the medications that they gave her made her look like she was nine months pregnant. But she also got really skinny and gaunt everywhere else. And she lost the body in her hair. She got dark circles under her eyes, and, you know, she could barely move. She kind of shuffled when she was home. She was feeble. She was so drugged up. Her back. I would scratch her back sometimes. She loved to scratch her back. And I stayed home a lot. I was sick a lot. I was a sickly boy. So I got to spend time with my mom. And I would scratch her back and I would. I had this. I knew the pattern of her back that I could scratch because I would scratch her back. I would come across this rough skin. I realized, okay, I'm going into the. The volcano head of the. The boil. Let me move around it. And I would just find the pattern and scratch her back. And she loved that on her wrist. The vein was raised on the wrist because they were constantly putting needles into it so that it almost looked like you could see. You could see the blood flowing through it. It was really creepy. And then her mind left her periodically. It would leave her and in dramatic ways. So one day we came home, you know, like we always did. Mother was still in the hospital that day. It was a Thursday. But we're outside playing basketball. Me, my brother Paul, Mike Hart, some of the other fellas. And I get called in, and my grandma said, hey, man, come on up. I come on up. And I knew Something was strange because there's people in the house, they're all dressed up. People from church, family people. And this doesn't happen during the week. A week night, Thursday night. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I have no clue, really. I'm a clueless nine year old boy is what I was. And my dad comes in and everybody moves towards my dad and there's just like somber hugs, whatever. And nobody's trying to reveal to us what's going on yet. We're just dopey boys. Our life about to intersect with chance like a motherfucker here. And he comes, he gets us, he walks in the room, we sit down my grandma's bed. And then he tells us that, you know, my mom's, you know, I can see her again. She. She died, she's in heaven. And yeah, it breaks it to us that she's dead and it's just us. And I remember thinking that I was going to be strong. For some reason I felt like I need to be strong for this. And I tell my dad that I'm not going to cry. I said, don't worry, I'm not gonna cry. I'm still gonna be strong. He goes, no, you know, you need to cry. You know, men cry. He says, you know, and then he went through a little list. George Washington cried, Moses cried, Abraham Lincoln cried. I'm like, well, shit, all right. I said, yeah, you know, King David cry. You can cry. And so after he lays down this list, a bunch of crybabies, I feel like, all right, I'll cry. So I cry. And then it comes, you know, it's heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy. And then Paul's crying, my dad's crying. And it was actually one of the best moments of my life in that the feeling you get when my dad leaned forward and pulled us into him and it was just us. And we're all crying and we just become this one spasm of anguish and pain and there's this unity of our grief around the same thing. And it's one of the most beautiful moments I've ever had with my dad. Because around this morbidity, the death of my mother is also one of the most erotic feelings that you have. By erotic, I don't mean sexual erotic. I just mean feeling like just all this emotion and all this body chemical stuff going on. You're crying and you feel near to these people. You're literally hugging and touching and crying and shedding tears and kissing each other. It's a moment of unity. It was like a brief moment. All the pain that we've been struggling with, she's gone. There's relief in that moment. And we had just cried our eyes and our heart out. And it's like, oh, and he gives us the gum and he says here. And we all like, he's giving us like breaking bread. It's like a fucking. It's our thing, right? It's a pet. So now we got a physical thing that we can all physically do together for a little ritual here. And he says, we're going to be fine. We're going to do this. We got this. Got this.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

We'll be right back.

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[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Part three mama's gone. Do you remember the first time your dad hit you?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

No. I mean, I just feel like it was always hitting me. I just. It was, wow. It's like asking a fish to describe the properties of water, right? There's no way he knows that. It's like I was always. I was always getting hit. There was a moment, for example, my mother had to have been ill at this time, and I had to memorize my multiplication tables. And my dad would do this thing where he wanted us to be the smartest kids in the class because we were scholarship kids and we were the brown kids. He wanted us to be better and smarter than the other kids. So sometimes he would make us do things that we weren't yet learning. So, like, for example, multiplication tables. I hadn't got there yet, but he wanted me to know them. And I had to memorize all 144. You know, 1 times 1 times 1, all the way to 12 times 12, 144. And he wanted me to learn, like, in a day or whatever, he comes home and tests me and he tells me, for everyone I miss, I'm going to get two spankings. He wanted perfection because he felt if I didn't get it right, then that meant I was lazy. That meant I was being undisciplined, which means I was also being refractory. I was just, you know, rebellious kid for not learning. I missed five. You know, the five you're always gonna miss nine times eight, eight times seven. There's like. There's something that always get me right. I just couldn't. Couldn't figure them out. And then he's Gonna hit me 10 times with the belt. And my mom, you know, cries out, no, don't hit him. Don't hit him. You know, he didn't do bad, man. It's 144 equations. And he does this crazy thing, man, I'll never forget. He puts the belt in her hand and says, you hit him then? And he bullies her into hitting me. She's crying while she's hitting me, torturing her sadistic. And she hits me so feebly because she doesn't want to hurt me that he says, you didn't make him cry. And I was a fool not to cry out because it didn't hurt. He needed to hear me cry in elaborate pain. And I wasn't. Clearly wasn't doing that with my mom saying so, like, yeah, my dad would get demented. It was about proving who's the boss and all this other kind of sadistic bullshit in there. And he would Throw. He would throw all that in the mix. And then, yeah, stuff like that happened. Now we were little, so it wasn't like he was. He didn't have to do things he would later have to do, you know, kick us and use weapons on us. But when we were little, that little, he just would whack us with the belt, you know.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Is there the first time you remember, like, crossing a line? Like, this was different. What happened just now is different than just regular stuff.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Yeah. When I. When I got suspended for a week, that beating was so bad I couldn't go to school even after the period of time was up for me to go back because he found out late in the week that about it. So I was supposed to go back like the day or next day or two days later. I couldn't go back for three or four days because the welts were so bad on me. Brenda would not let me go to school.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Brenda, your stepmom, she felt that they would.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

They would send me and that would get him in trouble. You know, I had crossed the line with him, had deceived him for almost an entire week that they were going to work. I mean, the deception had been so, so bad. I think he really wanted, like, stop me in my tracks, but I was so far gone already, you know, that was a vicious be. You know, once I came home and he was. I had been walking home from school and I got in a fight with this one guy, or I got an argument with this one guy and he and his boys are like, hey, man, you gotta fight him. You gotta fight him. All right, I'll fight you. You know, that's Mexican honor. Me against you. Let's do it. Let's sling our dogs. And so we gotta find the right place, though, to do it so nobody, you know, nobody will jump in. I said, all right, so dopey me, they're like, babe, but you got a nice sweater on, man. Take it off. And it was a nice sweater. My stepmother, Brenda used to get us the great sweaters. It's kind of a little argyle thing across the front. Kick ass sweater. And I'm like, you know what? These are gentlemen, man. They don't want to ruin my sweat. I get it. That's actually cool. It's very courtly. I felt like. So I go to pull my sweater and then all three of them jump the shit out of me. They beat me and I like, I'm just that I've got that sweater halfway up and I can't throw any punches. They're holding the sweater, dragging me around, just kicking punch. I just fall to the ground and get the beat out of me and break my glasses right in the middle, right? Crack it right in the middle. So I go walk home. I'm all beat up, my sweatshirts all ripped. I just tore up, right? And my glass are broken. So I walk in, and my dad's studying the Bible, getting ready to, you know, teach and stuff like that. And he said, what happened is I got jumped. And I show my glass. He's so mad, he walks over, slaps me, says, you know, you got to get it. You got to go fight these guys. We're gonna find them, and you're gonna fight them one by one. And essentially, like, you're too much of a. You got to recover your manhood. This is. So he puts me in the car, like, what the. I'm scared of these dudes now, man. They. They just taxed my ass, man. And they did it easy. But I have to do it, man. I mean, dad's teaching me a very valuable lesson that will haunt his ass later, which is if you get sized up as being weak, you better be willing to go overboard and actually make a statement later. You cannot stay weak. That idea of me being a weak kid, he's not going to tolerate that. I got to learn payback. We start driving, right? Anytime he sees some kids, I'm trying to slink in my seat, front seat, I can't. And he says, hey, is that them there? I put my glasses together and hold them up to my face like, no. And he's like, he's mad. He's mad at me. I'm just. I'm a walking badge of weakness to him. To him, it's like you. You shamed the Joloy name.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

He's not mad at the kids who beat you up?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

No.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

He's not at you?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Yeah, I. Right there next to him is all the evidence that he's a fucked up father because he creating such a sissy boy. And he's not gonna have that. He at least gonna be able to say to the people, my son went back and tried to clean it up. And even if I get beat, at least I try to clean it up.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

So you and your dad, did you ever find the guys?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

So we do finally find him walking out of a liquor store, is that them? And I put my glass together. No. And, you know, I find he gets whacked across the face, and he drives home pissed, pissed. He was just so mad that his son was a sissy. And my dad had been this little gang kid who had converted to God, but he didn't know how to control his temper.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Did your dad ever apologize? Did he ever say he was sorry?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Said he's sorry? All the time.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

All the time.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

He would go into shame spirals and he would cry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We were like, hey, we're sorry. We accepted, we love you, dad. And it was all that. And I think that that's eventually what led me to, like, shut me down, man. I was disillusionment because you have all this hope. You're like, yeah, I'll never do it again. God bless. We all get on our knees and pray and God heal the home that it's like fucking worthless.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

Joe. I mean, all this just sounds awful. I mean, you were a kid. How did you not just like, fold?

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Yeah, this is what people don't understand. When you go inward like that and you go into the darkness, it gets real dark down there. That's where you get your most power. So as my dad was beating me and I was taking each blow, there's a different power. There's a different energy in the shadows that builds up inside of you. The animosity, the negativity, that stuff, it crackles differently. It changes the molecules differently. Yeah, it rearranges you and gives you power. And I was getting stronger. I was not getting weaker. I was getting demented with a very powerful rage. And that's what eventually would come out.

[Ben Adair (Interviewer)]

You are listening to The Burden Season 4, get the Money and Run. The Burden is produced by Orbit Media. Get the Money and Run is produced by Western Sound and Acast Studios. Next up, stay tuned for episode two, who's your daddy?

[Ben Adair]

Thanks for listening. Remember to hear all episodes all at once and ad free. Subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. It's worth it. You'll find other gripping true crime series there also ad free. If you want to hear Ben talk about this episode, check out the teaser. It's in the Burden feed. Joe Loya has agreed to answer our questions, so please send yours to inforbitmedia FM or leave them in the comments on Spotify or Apple. Thank you.

[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

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[Guardian Bikes / Sephora Advertiser]

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[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

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[Guardian Bikes / Sephora Advertiser]

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[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

With a bite of Velveeta. Pick up a pack of Velveeta at your local store today.

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[Guardian Bikes / Sephora Advertiser]

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[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

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[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

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[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

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[Guardian Bikes / Sephora Advertiser]

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[Joe Loya (Interviewee)]

Goodbye.