#61 The Bank Robber

Pushkin.

How's it going?

Dr.

Jackie Cohen?

Yep.

How about this?

Jackie Cohen.

Dr.

Jackie Cohen.

So, okay, so now that I am officially in my late 50s, what do you think I could do to start improving my health?

Yeah, you can build up that little noodle body of yours.

Get some meatballs on the spaghetti.

Yes, yes.

Oh, you're laughing?

Is that a medical term?

Why aren't you doing any weightlifting?

Because I don't live near a gym.

You don't have to live near a gym or do something at home.

Like where I just go around the house and I like lift a couch or try to pull a toilet out or something.

Yeah, Matt.

From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight.

Today's episode, The Bank Robber.

Right after the break.

This is an iHeart podcast.

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Hello.

Hello, how are you?

Hi, good.

How are you?

Doing really well, thank you.

Good.

Are you comfortable?

I am, yes.

The story you're about to hear is from someone who's still figuring out how to tell it, or even if he should tell it.

It just seems very crazy, and it's kind of hard for me to talk about it.

At this point, he's only shared the story with a couple of people, and he only agreed to share it with me after I promised not to use his real name, so we'll call him X.

My communication with X began with an email he sent me over three years ago.

It contained a lot of nervous preamble and throat clearing, but eventually he came to the point.

In 1992, he said, I committed an armed bank robbery.

I was just one month past my 14th birthday.

X begins his story by telling me about his family.

He was raised on a dairy farm, the son of immigrant parents.

He was one of seven children, all brothers.

X was right in the middle.

Right in the middle, yeah, three older, three younger, yeah.

X's home life wasn't an easy one.

Well, you would call it abusive today.

You know, the belt or broomstick or whatever was handy was used as a corrective measure.

My mom was a little more creative in the implements she would use, but it didn't hurt as much as when my dad did it.

To illustrate, X tells me about the night he snuck out to the local junior high.

He noticed an open window and broke in.

The police caught him and brought him home, where his parents were waiting.

They

told me to remove all my clothing, so I did, minus my underwear.

And then I just

got like the beating of my life

with a belt, but I just remember it hitting me all over my body.

I remember it hitting my penis.

Like

it was pretty brutal.

X says there were other nights like that.

I remember crying and lights are out and my younger brother trying to say something to comfort me, and me saying something like, I hate them, and

I don't want to be here anymore.

School offered no respite.

X was small for his age and had a high voice.

The bullies took notice.

When they'd see me in the halls, they'd ask me questions, you know, kind of vulgar, like, I heard you like giving head or something like that.

And I didn't even know what that meant.

Or I remember once they asked me,

is it true you like to choke the chicken?

And again, I was like, well, what?

But I said, not really.

And they really keyed in on that, not really, because it was like, oh, so you kind of like it.

My strategy with them was just curl up in a ball and hope that they'd leave me alone.

And that, I think, made them want to pick on me more.

Between school and his home life, it felt like there was no safe place to be.

So X retreated into a fantasy world.

He'd come home from a day of being bullied and lie in bed playing out out scenes in which he was the powerful one, the one to be feared.

As an example,

one of these guys makes fun of me in class and I get up and I push him down and beat him up like, you know, a Stephen Sakal movie or something.

X found himself drawn to movies like that, about tough guys and outlaws, Young Guns, Point Break.

A favorite was actually called Tough Guys.

At around this time, he discovered a book titled The Encyclopedia of Crime in the school library.

He'd spend lunchtime there, hiding from trouble and reading about criminals like Al Capone, Babyface Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd.

No one bullied them.

So I started to

fantasize daydream about

robbing a bank.

I had this image of going into a bank and getting a big bag of money and the place that I dreamed about going to was New York.

I thought of New York as being synonymous with the mafia and I thought, well, maybe if I could go there, somehow I could ingratiate myself to someone in that family and that would become my new family as opposed to this family who doesn't seem to want me and who I can do nothing right for.

It was all just a child's fantasy.

Until one day in class, when X witnessed something that made him realize it might be time to act.

A quiet, smaller kid said something to a bigger, tougher kid.

The bigger kid pounced.

He started kicking him and including kicking him in the face.

That really shook me.

On my way home on the bus that day, I remember thinking,

I got to get out of here.

Like you're going to, you felt like there was more of an imperative, like you were next.

Yeah, because

I saw myself as that powerless powerless kid.

And I even,

this is like years and years and years ago.

And I still get so emotional about it.

It's like, what a horrible way to, you know, go through a day.

And I just thought, I don't want that to be me.

And so he came up with a plan.

There was a bank downtown where his mom was a customer.

In the movies, there was always a silent alarm.

which meant he'd only have a few minutes to do what he needed to before the police arrived.

He'd have to move quickly.

He'd also need a hideout.

There was a hotel about a block away from the bank.

After the robbery, he could rent a room.

Once the coast was clear, he'd call a taxi to take him to the airport.

And then he was off to New York.

And this is the part of the story that feels hardest for X to tell.

Okay.

I um,

my dad owned a shotgun, which he had used to hunt.

It was in a closet.

And the first thing I did when I got home was I took that gun, I took it into my bedroom, and with a hacksaw, I sawed the barrel off so it would be easy to carry.

I

remember

once the barrel came off and I had removed it, I thought, okay,

I don't really know if I want to do this.

I'm kind of terrified, but

now I'm in.

Like, I can't,

I'm on this track now that I can't back up on.

I have to go forward because I've now destroyed my dad's gun and eventually that will come to light.

I didn't sleep very well that night.

I got up in the morning, you know, after staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours.

I remember going out and

my mom was putting breakfast on the table.

The television was on, and they were talking about the 1992 presidential campaign and this governor, Bill Clinton.

And I just remember thinking,

This is a world I'm no longer part of.

I don't, none of that means anything to me.

Today, I'm going into a whole different world, and I'm leaving this one behind.

It was October, the beginning of ninth grade.

X had just turned 14 years old.

X packed a suitcase with some clothes and books and a few favorite CDs.

Iced tea, they might be giants.

He stole a pair of his mother's pantyhose to pull over his face as a disguise.

He put on a trench coat and hid the saw-off shotgun inside.

As he got on the school bus, the driver asked about his outfit.

It's for drama class, he said.

When the bus arrived at school, he was the last to get off.

All around him, kids were streaming out of buses and parents' cars, filing into school, going about another normal day.

And there was a moment of standing there, and if I turned left, I would be with the crowd of kids and heading towards the entrance of the school.

And if I turn right, I'd be off school grounds and walking towards where the bank was.

Maybe it still wasn't too late to give up on his plan.

Like, I could just go to school and life could just go back to what it was yesterday and the day before.

But

I turned the other way and I walked towards the bank.

When X arrived, the bank was still closed.

So at the back of the bank's parking lot, he waited behind some trees.

And then, at 10.15, he took a deep breath.

Okay, he thought.

Here we go.

And so I pulled the stocking over my face and I ran through the parking lot and I entered the bank with the gun raised in the air and I yelled something to the effect of everybody get on the floor.

This is a robbery.

It was like a dream or like watching someone else go through these actions like I was a passenger and they were doing the driving.

Yeah.

I remember there was a guy

the first person who was standing in line and he turned toward me and started laughing.

I don't know if he thought it was a joke or he just couldn't believe that this little tick squeak voiced kid was holding up a bank or something.

But that really made me mad.

I felt like I was being laughed at and so I

pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke and he got down and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like okay this is power.

Had you ever used a gun before?

No, I was actually kind of scared of him.

Like I didn't load this gun because I was scared that I would get hurt or somebody would get hurt.

I didn't want to hurt anybody.

X knew that most of the money would be in the vault.

He forced two bank tellers to bring him in there and told them to stuff stacks of bills into his bag.

When the bag grew full, he picked it up and walked past all the customers still lying on the floor.

Then he exited out the front door and made his way to a dumpster where he threw away the shotgun.

And I entered the hotel, just a teenager with a green and yellow sports bag of over $40,000.

Unbelievably, the plan had worked.

Now X just had to wait out the police who would be responding to the scene.

And then he'd be off to New York.

He marched up to the hotel clerk and asked for a room.

And she kind of looked at me like, what?

And she said, I'm sorry, all of our rooms are rented by the month.

This isn't like that kind of hotel where you can come and just get a room for a night.

Daily versus monthly rates.

The one thing movies hadn't prepared him for.

X panicked.

He couldn't just hang out in the lobby.

A kid playing hooky would draw attention.

So he headed out the hotel door.

And right on the corner of the street is a police officer.

X had two options.

Walk away from the officer, which might look suspicious, or walk towards him.

And so I decided to walk towards him and try to act as cool as I could.

Just after passing the officer and crossing the street, he heard the policeman cry out,

Freeze.

When X turned around, the cop's gun was pointed right at him.

X was arrested, and from there, things moved quickly.

At the police station, he confessed to the crime and a date was set in juvenile court.

X spent the next few nights in jail.

Because his parents couldn't afford a lawyer, one was appointed to him.

After the court proceedings, he was allowed to see his parents.

It was his first time seeing them since breakfast on the morning of the robbery.

They were just destroyed.

Like, I've never seen them cry as much and be so...

Like, it was hard for me to look at.

They were so upset.

And

yeah, they just looked broken.

A few days later, X was sentenced to 12 years.

I remember hearing that big long number and thinking, okay, well I guess they're not going to let me off because I was a kid.

And I remember going back to my cell and crying because it was like, okay, this is really sinking in now.

Like I'm going to be here for a long time.

X was sent to a youth facility where he was one of the youngest inmates.

He spent a lot of time reading, mostly the classics, Dickens, Moby Dick, the Bible.

He underwent an intensive treatment program of daily therapies and took his rehabilitation seriously.

After three three years, when his case came up for review, he was released at the age of 17.

From here, X's story, and I mean this in a good way, is unremarkable.

He went to college, he got married, and has had good jobs.

I ended up at one point working in a bank, which

it's been over 30 years since the day of the robbery, and in many ways, X has turned his life completely around.

And yet, when he thinks about that day,

I really feel

so ashamed and so regretful.

So much so that it's almost like he's divided himself in two.

There's the boy who is capable of committing that crime, and the grown man to whom that boy is a stranger.

A part of the reason it's been so hard for X to tell the story is because, in a weird way, it's like he's telling someone else's story.

And it's a story that all his life, he's been told no one wants to hear.

My parents, in particular, just wanted to pretend like it never even happened.

And

they were very embarrassed and kept it very secret.

It wasn't a matter of just don't tell anyone.

It was, if anybody asks, he went to go live with one of your older brothers.

I spoke to several of X's six brothers to hear how the crime impacted the family.

My mom, I think, was really embarrassed by this.

She thought the community would judge her.

For years, I didn't tell people about it, like well into my adulthood.

It wasn't until maybe my sophomore year of high school that I shared it with some very close friends.

Yeah.

And how did that feel?

It was weird.

I remember being really nervous, like, oh my gosh, are they going to judge me?

No.

You know, when you're told as a nine-year-old that this thing is really embarrassing and shameful, you almost absorb it as like your own.

You take it on, you know, to feel compelled to keep up a lie, to feel shame.

That's

difficult for a nine-year-old.

And it can remain difficult.

I didn't feel comfortable breaking a vow of silence.

This is another of X's brothers, now a middle-aged man.

Even, you know, now my wife, I've been married to her for over 20 years.

I've never told her about it.

You've never told your wife about your brother?

Yeah, that's right.

Until even now?

Yeah.

Wow.

Did you feel compelled to share it with her at any point?

I could say, I don't know, over the last couple of decades, there's probably been one or two instances where I thought about mentioning it, but

after this interview, I may tell her.

I probably will, but it hasn't come up yet.

Shame can be silencing.

And so for 30 years, X has kept quiet.

But it hasn't prevented him from thinking about the people in the bank that day, which is why he's come to me.

The people that were there, I was hoping that I might be able to at least let them know in some fashion that I'm really sorry that I destroyed their peace and left them with a lot of trauma.

In all those movies X loved to watch, after the crime is committed, the camera remains on the criminal, the star.

It never follows the customers, the employees.

They're just extras.

But X wants to know what became of them, how that day fits into their lives.

And most of all, he wants to apologize.

I try to imagine what the rest of their day was like.

I'm guessing they went home early and spouses were called, their children were called, and they had to tell that story probably multiple times to police, to family, and relive it.

And how do they sleep that night?

And for the nights to come, it

is just horrific to me.

And

I talked earlier about the students at the school who I saw get beat up.

I empathized with the guy on the floor getting his face kicked.

It never would have occurred to me that I would have been the bully in that scenario, that I would be the one metaphorically anyway doing the kicking.

After the break, the day of the robbery.

From the perspective of the victims.

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When X thinks about apologizing, there are three people he wants to apologize to.

First, the bank tellers.

The two women who led him into the vault that day.

That vault was a very small room, and they were in very close proximity to me.

So close, in fact, that at one point, while opening his gym bag, X unthinkingly leaned the shotgun against one of their thighs.

They didn't know it wasn't loaded.

They didn't know how unstable I was.

They didn't know anything.

And to feel the weight of that against their leg is just horrifying.

The other person X wants to apologize to is the officer who arrested him that day.

There's some stuff that's fuzzy, but I remember this very well.

After the policeman yelled for him to drop the money, X reached into his back pocket where he had kept a few bills stashed for his cab to the airport.

Not thinking how a police officer might perceive someone reaching behind their back and pulling something out.

I found out later that he came very close to shooting me and that the cop was very distraught, thinking that he almost almost shot a teenage kid.

Dean nabbed for bank theft, reads a local newspaper the day after the robbery.

The article names the arresting policeman as Officer Roy Toupin.

Our search for Officer Toupin is a few years too late, though.

In 2019, Toupin died in a diving accident.

My name is Nick Toupin.

I'm the son of the arresting officer on the day of the robbery.

Nick says his dad told him stories about that day.

It's my knowledge, that was the closest that he'd ever gotten to shooting anyone.

Yeah.

It shook his world.

He took some time off of work.

You know, he wasn't sure that that was

his career path anymore.

I know that

it messed with him.

You know what I mean?

One thing Tupin never shared with his son was what kept him from shooting X when he reached into his pocket.

But Nick has a theory.

14 years old.

You know, I'm 43 now.

I was born in 78, so you do the math.

Huh.

Yeah, you would have been about the same age.

I imagine he looked at that kid like he was looking at me kind of deal.

When I tell Nick about X's undertaking, how he's been hoping to make amends for that day, he offers this.

I think dad would have forgiven him a long time ago.

Man,

I really do.

What makes you think that?

As he got older, just some of the rhetoric that,

you know,

people make mistakes,

and you just hope, like hell, that they don't have life-changing consequences for what it's worth.

After speaking with Nick, I turned my attention to the bank tellers.

They aren't identified in any of the articles, and the police reports have redacted their names.

And since the courthouse records have been sealed and the bank itself no longer exists, I decide that my best bet is to post a sort of missing persons notice in the local paper.

I ask if there's anyone who might remember the bank robbery from over 30 years ago, or the bank employees from that time.

One person responds.

She doesn't know the tellers, but she does know about the robbery.

Even though my ad didn't mention X by name, she knew who it was immediately.

I sat behind X in Spanish class, she says.

And so, the day after the robbery, when a photo of X lying face down was published in the newspaper, she recognized him.

Because her desk was behind his, she knew the back of his head well.

He had a small bald spot, and the bullies teased him about it relentlessly.

I emailed because I was thinking, if X wants to talk about why he did it, he probably would say he was bullied.

I want to back him up.

She says she can understand why X felt so desperate.

She was a target of the same bullies.

She too spent her lunches in the library, in her case, reading science fiction and imagining a life in a different world.

It makes me sad, she says.

If he stuck around, maybe we would have been friends.

Because the missing person notice yields no leads, I start combing through old articles for names that might connect me to the tellers.

Hi, I'm William, and I was a customer in the bank on the day of the robbery.

Not only was William a customer, but in one of the articles I read, he's described as chasing X after he fled in hopes of apprehending him.

Anytime you're facing somebody in a combat situation, everything else around you disappears.

It just went tunnel vision on this guy.

Who is this son of a bitch?

What inspired you?

Are you a risk-taker kind of person?

Yeah, many years of martial art training.

That's where that comes from.

No fear.

Before I can ask William about the bank tellers, we're interrupted.

Just one second.

We're going to order something from a drive-in.

William is talking to me me from his car.

He's with his wife.

The two of us hadn't eaten

in the doctor's office all day.

So I'm going to interrupt you here.

I'm going to place his order for you.

Yeah, don't mind me.

Where's that button?

Okay.

Can I help you?

Yeah, yes.

Just a small order of nuggets.

Four or six.

Just four.

Quickly, I do the math.

Four divided by two

is two?

Two nuggets per spouse.

for those of you unfamiliar with nugget apportioning or nugonomics eating two nuggets is like eating two grapes two peanuts it's like eating two nuggets with my microphone muted to William I process my feelings of judgmentalness to my producer Stevie like you're starving and you're like oh my god I haven't eaten all day I'll just we'll share

we'll share four nuggets

like a nugget's that big.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, so go right ahead.

I proceed with the most pressing question.

Is that all you're getting?

Well, we have a nice dinner planned, so we don't want to wreck

the dinner.

You know, so I'm just going to get a little appetizer.

William has no fear, save the fear of ruining his appetite.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, I ask William if he remembers the names of the tellers.

He says no, but he does remember X.

He yelled at everybody to get on the effing floor or I'll blow your heads off.

Did he sound like a child?

No.

He sounded very menacing.

And

he did not look like a child.

Hex had told me that he looked like a pip squeak kid, that people laughed.

But William says he doesn't remember any laughter, only screaming.

I found out the next day that he was 14 years old

uh i couldn't believe it unbelievable you know

that that takes hutsbah

or is real desperate

my name is leugen i was a former manager of the

hotel in the hope there might be someone who can connect me to the tellers i spend my days speaking with anyone vaguely associated with the robbery my name's married and i represented represented in the juvenile court.

My name is George.

I wrote for the

my name is Jane, and I used to be the librarian at high school.

My name is Vail, and I was a police sergeant at the police department there.

But no one can recall the tellers.

Did you bank at that bank across the street?

No, I did not.

I wish I could help you, but I don't really remember.

Did you know any of the people that worked there?

No.

No.

No.

No.

Sorry, I can't help you.

But then, after two months of phone calls,

I call a restaurant across the street from where the bank used to be.

The owner of the restaurant is now 84 years old.

When I ask if she remembers anyone who worked at the bank back then, anyone she was friendly with, she gives me the names of two people, two tellers: Darlene and Judy.

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With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

That's your business, supercharged.

Learn more at supermobile.com.

Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

where you can see the sky.

Best business plan based on a combination of advanced network performance, coverage layers, and security features.

Best network based on analysis by Ookla of SpeedTest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

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it takes me a few weeks but eventually I find Darlene and Judy.

And as it turns out, incredibly, they were the very same tellers working on the day of the robbery.

After months of searching, we found them.

Judy is now in her 80s and living in a retirement home.

But when I speak with her daughter, she tells me her mother isn't interested in talking, that she wants to leave the past and the past.

As for Darlene, at first she seems open, but then her husband grows ill and she stops returning my calls.

I can't tell if it's because her husband is sick or if she's changed her mind about revisiting that day.

Hey, Jonathan, how are you?

Hey, good, how are you?

It's been over a year since I first spoke with X.

I tell him the bank tellers don't seem to want to speak with him.

X is disappointed, but says he understands.

He says it though, like he's starting to feel that maybe this whole undertaking was foolish.

To them, I'm just still that same guy that did that thing.

It's hard for me to blame them, I guess.

I suggest to X that maybe he should try writing a letter to Darlene, since she'd seemed open to talking.

This way, maybe he can at least offer her his words, and she could decide what to do with them.

Darlene, X writes, I understand that words alone cannot undo the pain I caused you and the others in the bank that morning.

Still, X expresses his regret, tells Darlene how he's thought of her often.

He apologizes many times.

After the letter is mailed off, two years pass during which X receives no response.

And that's where I think our story ends.

Hey, Jonathan.

Hey, how are you?

A lot has happened since we last spoke.

Yeah, fill me in.

But then, in May 2025,

X reaches out.

A year ago in November, I got a call from one of my brothers, and he doesn't usually call me on the phone, so I picked up and I found out that my dad had passed away.

Oh, so geez, I'm sorry.

Yeah, no, thank you.

Thank you.

X says it was while helping write his father's obituary and listening to his father be eulogized at the funeral, hearing the people who loved him speak about all he'd done in his life, that something happened.

It reminded me that

this person was more than an unequipped parent or he was more than just the worst experiences I had with him.

Taking a broader view of his father's life helped X to zoom out on his own.

There was the day of the robbery, but then there were all the days after too.

If his father's legacy legacy didn't have to be defined by one bad thing, perhaps his own legacy didn't have to be either.

You know, when we initially started talking, my hope was that I would be able to speak to the people who were there.

And that didn't work out.

And

it was hard for me, I think, because I almost felt like until they forgave me, I wasn't allowed to forgive myself.

That that was like a luxury that I didn't deserve or something like that.

Over the past three years, I've sought out the tellers, the customers, and even the policemen who almost shot X, all in service to X finding forgiveness.

But there was always one person's forgiveness that he discounted.

I was a kid.

You know, my head wasn't on straight and I was dealing with a lot of pain.

And I felt like that's what I needed to do to get out of that pain.

And I think the closure I've come to realize that needs to happen here is my own.

That's the little mini journey I went on was like, I don't have to keep lying or hiding or running from this or

pretending like this was a different person.

When X first came to me, he was trying to figure out how to tell his story.

But in everything from witness accounts to confessions, from great expectations to Moby Dick, stories begin by asserting who the person telling the story is.

How can you tell your story if you can't even say your name?

You know, I'm going through the trouble of like asking you not to call me by my name and worrying about people finding out, but it's me.

It's my story.

And I'm not proud of it, but I'm also not trying to run away from it.

I've done it for long enough.

That's really wonderful to hear you say that.

And I don't think it's such a mini journey you know yeah um

so do you think all that being said

you think you're you think you're okay with just coming out and saying it

my name is john paul and

when i was 14 years old i

robbed a bank for $40,000.

Yeah, how does that feel?

Like there's a lightness in it.

I don't know that I've ever said those exact words.

I almost hesitate to say it because it's like I said, I felt like I wasn't allowed to not wallow in shame, but I feel relieved, I guess.

Yeah, it's really,

John Paul, that's a very nice thing to hear.

Thank you.

Yeah,

it's kind of surprising to me how I've just been saying words, right?

Like I'm just talking.

Like, how could words make that much of a difference?

Words allow us to tell the story of who we are.

And telling that story can feel like a burden, but it can also help lay that burden to rest.

It feels like a new chapter in my life or a new story, and I'm kind of allowing myself to be excited about it.

Now that the furniture is returning to its goodwill home

Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit Take this moment to decide

if we meant it if we tried

But felt around for far too much

from things that accidentally touched

This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie Lane and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan.

Our senior producer is Khalila Holt.

Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.

Special thanks to Sean Cole, Chris Neary, Ben Natif Haffrey, Lydia Jean Cott, Connie Williams, Katherine Reinhart, and especially Mohini Medgauker.

Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K.

Sampson, and Bobby Lord.

Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions.

Our theme song is by the weaker than courtesy of Epitaph Records.

Follow us on Instagram at heavyweight podcast or email us at heavyweight at pushkin.fm.

We'll be back with a brand new episode in two weeks.

Alouette, Janti, Alouette,

Jackie Cohen, Janti plumerie, Jackie Cohen, moi la tet, Jackie Cohen, moi la tet.

This is an iHeart podcast.