The Knife: Off Record – 128

This is exactly right.

This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to The Knife Off Record.

I'm Patia Eaton.

I'm Hannah Smith.

If you've been enjoying the show, if you would do us a favor and go over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen and give us a rating and review, we would love you for it.

Yeah, today I am so excited because I'm telling you a story that you know absolutely nothing about.

I literally have no idea.

And I know you've been working really hard on it over the last few weeks.

And there's been moments where you're like, oh my gosh, I just had this wild phone call.

And I'm like, what?

What is it?

Yeah, I'm looking forward to telling you this story because not only is it a heist story, but I also at the end of the episode will hear from someone who has a really important relationship to one of the people involved and I think brings an important layer to the story outside of the crime.

Cool.

Yeah.

So how did you first find this story?

Great question.

I think I remember because as you know, I like have 1 billion tabs open.

This right now.

Yeah.

Three notepads that I'm trying to stay organized in at once and you have to sort of stack them on top of each other to see my actual list.

Great system.

Yes.

But I found this because I think we had recently interviewed.

Ellen, who was the victim of a kidnapping.

Yes.

Great episode.

If you haven't listened to that yet, go listen to that episode.

Yeah.

And so I was thinking, wow, okay, what would it be like to be held hostage?

Like really trying to put myself in that space.

And so I started thinking about bank robberies.

And like, this is what we see in the movies is everybody get down.

Yeah.

And, you know, you and I had previously interviewed.

a bank robber before, which was an interesting story.

We interviewed a bank robber and the FBI agent who tracked him down.

We interviewed that agent again on this show.

His name is Mark Rossi.

Yeah.

That was such an interesting interview with the bank robber.

I remember him because he was so honest about it.

He told us exactly what happened in his life and his mindset and walked us through the whole thing.

And there were so many layers of his story that,

you know, it was wrong for him to do that, which he knows, but you begin to understand.

And that is, for me, one of the more fascinating aspects of like, quote unquote, crime and people who commit crimes is, does the ability to do good and bad lie in everyone?

Probably.

Oh, yeah.

Bank robbery is this interesting thing that has sort of this romanticized version of like early America and you have like Bonnie and Clyde, but then there's also this aspect of sort of like desperation, like someone who, you know, they're like, oh, I could just take this money right now and that would solve my problems.

So it's very interesting psychologically.

Yeah, definitely.

And, you know, recently I saw a headline where a guy went into a bank with lemon juice all over his face and he had convinced himself.

Yes.

And he had convinced himself that the lemon juice made him invisible to the point where he was like winking at security cameras, like, you'll never catch me.

You'll never catch me.

And then they, of course, do catch him and he is shocked.

And I'm not remembering the exact like diagnosis he was given, but it was something along the lines of like overconfidence.

What?

It wasn't like something, you know,

I don't know how to put it

more serious than that.

It was like, literally, you have just managed to convince yourself of this.

Oi.

A man, if you could imagine.

Okay, so this is the story of the Trenchcoat robbers.

They are a notorious duo of bank robbers, and I'm just going to get right into it.

All right.

All right.

So it's 6:30 p.m.

on February 10th, 1997.

We're in Lakewood, Washington, which is just outside of Tacoma, and we're looking right at Seafirst Sea Bank.

Now, the bank is closed, it just closed, but inside, three women are still working.

They are wrapping up for the evening, getting cash from the day stored safely away.

And two men approach the bank.

They're in trench coats.

One of them pulls a small L-shaped tool out of his pocket.

and picks the lock.

The door clicks open and they're inside.

immediately guns pointed at the people who are still working at the bank one person zip ties everybody and the other gets a hold of the cash

so they order these people into the vault they restrain them and they begin to fill duffel bag after duffel bag with cash they're in and out in less than 10 minutes with nearly 4.5 million dollars carrying 4.5 you gotta think that's heavy It's heavy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

As soon as they're gone, one of the women breaks free from a zip tie and she sounds the alarm.

So immediately, the FBI is involved.

They don't know who these men are, but they're pretty sure that this is the work of the trench coat robbers, a notorious duo that has been on a cross-country crime spree, evading capture for decades.

Okay.

See, I was going to say this feels like a clean operation, like a well-oiled machine, in and out quickly, zip-tying.

So it's making sense now that this is a notorious duo.

Yes.

And this is their biggest ever heist, and it would be their last.

So I'm actually going to take you back to the beginning.

Ooh, okay.

Wow.

I love the way you're telling this.

Okay, great.

In this case, the beginning is all the way back in 1974.

William Arthur Kirkpatrick, known as Billy, and Ray Bowman, managed to walk out of a Kmart together with 38 stolen records.

The The booster duo is arrested.

Their names are written by hand in one another's arrest records, but they never end up doing any time for this theft.

Now, boosting is taking something and reselling it, right?

Okay.

So, okay.

Yeah.

So they're like a budding crime duo in the 70s.

They're teenagers.

Billy and Billy and Ray.

Billy and Ray.

Yeah.

So Billy's from Hoveland, Minnesota, and Ray's from Kansas City, but they meet at what you might call their first real job, boosting records for none other than Kansas City mob boss Anthony J.

Cartarella,

otherwise known as Tiger Cardarella, the owner of Tiger Records.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And also a mob boss.

Also a mob boss.

Wow.

That feels like that could be a whole story right there.

For sure.

So Tiger Records is a place where you could go and get the latest and greatest hits for a fraction of the price.

much cheaper than you could anywhere else because the inventory was stolen by boosters like Billy and Ray.

Oh my gosh.

yeah, wow, okay.

So they really passed their sales on to the customer, which you have to appreciate.

So you're going to be hearing a series of clips in the episode.

The first person we're going to hear from for the really the majority of the episode is a former ATF agent by the name of Paul Marquardt.

And Paul is now retired.

However, he does sometimes still do contract work for the ATF.

Okay.

And then what they would do is they had these trench coats that had hidden pockets inside.

And they would go out to small towns in Kansas

and go to

like

any place that would sell records.

And one of them would distract the clerk while the other one's sticking albums in their coat.

And they were doing a lot of this in the winter time

because then it wasn't suspicious.

I'm wearing a trench coat.

And then they would just offload all those

record albums to Tigers record shop.

Okay.

We're talking albums.

We're not talking CDs.

We're talking big, big albums.

Yeah.

And they're putting them in their trench coats.

Yeah.

Wow.

Modern day Taylor Deluxe.

Okay.

Yeah.

So Billy and Ray are stealing these records in droves.

And as we now know, this is not a small-time operation.

They're making some serious cash and they're dipping their toes into the world of organized crimes.

So wait, can I just clarify real quick?

They're working for Tiger Records, right?

Like they're going around to other stores, stealing albums and then selling them to Tiger Records, basically.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And that is how they met.

So I wasn't able to go back further than that, but that's how they met and became friends.

They were immediately besties.

Yeah, they really connected.

Yeah.

So I went on to Reddit to see if anyone had anything to say about Tiger Records because it has since closed.

And I found a thread on the Kansas City subreddit with a few locals who remembered it pretty well.

There were rumors of very tight security, people on ladders looking down at the shop, making sure no one was stealing from them.

You know, much more than you would.

have a normal record shop.

So I have no idea if anything else was going on there, but I can speculate that Tiger Carterella was in more than the record business.

I see.

Yeah.

So for Billy and Ray, this is a good gig.

There's easy money, no consequences so far.

I mean, they've been arrested, but didn't do any time.

And then actually in 1977, Cartarella was convicted for selling stolen records, and he was sentenced to five years and was also fined.

I imagine if you're Tiger Carterella in this moment, you're like, okay, arrest me for stolen records.

I don't know everything he was doing, but that seems like a deal I would take if I were him.

Like he was maybe doing other things,

but he got caught for the records.

So

this is probably, you know, not a time when you want to continue working for an alleged mob boss.

The people are on to him and you're kind of small time by comparison.

I can also speculate that if you're a billionaire and you're working for Tiger Records and Tiger Carterella, you're starting to sort of see

wealth from, you know, maybe that is obtained by a means that is not good, but that you might be able to replicate.

So I'm

in Kansas.

Yeah.

So Tiger Records in Kansas City.

Billy didn't live there, but they would travel all around and connect and do this work together, boosting records.

Yeah, I can totally see how they would think, like, we could have an exciting life as opposed to going and getting a nine to five over here.

Yeah.

Our lives could be much more glamorous.

Totally.

And I mean, I wasn't a teenager in the 70s.

I was still dead, if you will.

But,

but if your friends are like flipping burgers for minimum wage and you're making big bucks boosting records, that'd be pretty hard to stop doing.

And I'm especially picturing like, if I were a teenage boy, like this is a good time.

Appealing.

Like it would, it's

feels quite victimless too, a record.

Like, who cares?

Who cares?

I will say for Tiger the mob boss, if the record store is his front, then he really screwed up by having your front not be clean.

Right.

There's anything I've learned from watching The Wire.

Your front business has to be like upstanding.

Oh my God, The Wire.

I'm Michael Scott with The Wire.

I don't understand a word of it.

Fair.

A side note, Tiger Carterella went missing in 1984.

He was missing for two weeks and then found dead in the trunk of his own car.

So it didn't end well for him.

But back to our budding trench coat robbers.

In September of 1982, two young men, Billy and Ray, decide to rob a bank in Annapolis, Missouri.

They pick the lock while the bank is closed and once inside, point a gun at the bank tellers and demand access to the cash.

They're wearing wigs, sunglasses, and a hat.

I wasn't there while they were planning this, but it seems like they may have watched some movies about it.

And, you know, it's a pretty unimaginative disguise, but it works.

And they take off in a stolen car with around $60,000 and begin planning their next heist.

That's pretty big, especially for the 80s.

Yeah.

It's a lot of money.

It's a lot of money.

So, you know, boosting records is out.

Bank robbery is in.

Yeah.

More lucrative, sounds like.

Totally.

And in 1983, Ray starts dating a woman named Cheryl Clark.

And he tells her that he's unemployed, sometimes works as a locksmith.

You know, convenience, two truths and a lie.

But he is a big spender.

And that's not lost on Cheryl.

They go to a lot of fancy dinners.

They ride in limousines.

He buys expensive clothes.

He gives her cash, more than you would make as a sometimes unemployed locksmith.

And he would leave for weeks at a time.

And we on the other side of this know that Ray was meeting up with Billy and they would go to another location, stake out a bank.

and then rob the bank and go their separate ways again.

So Ray was living in Kansas City and Billy was living in Minnesota.

And so Cheryl didn't know that he was even friends with or maybe hadn't even met Ray.

Yeah.

So Cheryl was dating Ray and at some point she becomes aware that he has a friendship with this guy Billy, but she doesn't know that they're robbing banks together.

So in 1987, they robbed the Hawkeye Bank in Des Moines, Iowa, making out with nearly 50 grand.

And this robbery starts differently than the others.

At this time, Billy and Ray have set their sights on one of the bank employees, and they essentially stalk him and figure out where he lives.

And then at 3.30 in the morning on November 6th, 1987,

they break into his house.

They hold the man, his wife, and child at gunpoint, zip tie them.

And with all three in tow, they go to the bank where the man worked.

Wow.

Yeah.

So it's definitely an escalation, right?

For sure.

Cause now you're kidnapping three people.

Yeah.

And, you know, not that zip-tying tying them at their place of work was any sort of better, but you can see this like brazenness, right?

Yeah.

Like you're going to go to this guy's home.

You're going to follow him.

You're going to take his wife and kid.

Yeah.

That feels much more violent.

But I can imagine like they've been getting away with it.

So they're feeling a little more confident, perhaps.

Yeah, totally.

And so they go to this bank.

where the man works and they steal 50 grand, right?

And then they go their separate ways.

And what they're doing after these robberies is they're going their separate ways.

And on their way home, because they're driving, they're stopping at different banks and they're making deposits into bank safe deposit boxes.

Okay, different bank safe deposit boxes like across the country.

Yeah.

Do they co-own these?

Are these their own separate boxes?

They're their own separate boxes.

They were relatively careful, which I'll get into more later, not to make their sort of association super clear.

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And so in 1988, they have a failed robbery.

They attempt to rob First Wisconsin Bank, but the vault had already been closed for the night, and they left all the employees tied up in the basement and took off with nothing.

So

I don't know exactly what went wrong there, but things are moving really quickly.

They're already on to their next robbery.

And there are robberies in between these that I don't even, we don't even really quite know about because they weren't fully traced back to them until later.

But somehow they couldn't get maybe into the vault or whatever it is.

So this was a failed robbery.

This was a complete failure.

And are they wearing trench coats every time?

Yeah.

So I should mention they're they're wearing trench coats, wigs, mustaches, fedora hats.

I mean, sunglasses.

They just stick to the same get up.

And there's two of them and

the same MO.

They get into the bank.

They either linger as it's closing and stay behind, or they pick the lock and get in right as it's opening or right as it's closing.

So their whole goal is usually that there's no one else in the bank besides them and the employees.

And so in 1989, they rob another branch of the First First Wisconsin Bank, but this time they're successful and they take over $400,000.

Dang.

Yeah.

So once again, they return to their separate lives.

They stop on the way home, make these deposits into safe deposit boxes all over the country.

And some of the cash they do take with them.

But, you know, how much cash does a man really need?

And from what I've learned about.

Ray, he never told anyone close to him that he was robbing banks or doing anything illegal.

There were definitely times where he was sort of openly not transparent, but he did not tell the people close to him.

Billy was not as tight lipped.

Okay.

I was going to say this agreement they have where they meet up and they'll rob a bank and then they go and they do their separate things.

It really requires a lot of trust in each other.

I don't know how long it is between bank robberies, like a year or something.

They're just going to trust the other person as like keeping their lips zipped.

And in some ways, it's sort of like this sweet friendship.

Like, we have this secret.

It works.

It's like, I have so much dirt on you.

Yes.

That don't you dare.

That don't you dare.

So then, but what happens with Billy?

Right.

So, so Billy is dating a woman named Myra Penny.

And he discloses a little more to her than Ray ever does to anyone close to him.

But more on that later.

Okay.

So Cheryl and Ray broke up in 1989.

And Cheryl would later say that when they were living together, there was a locked room in their home that she was not allowed to go into.

But one day, she peered in and saw wigs, fake mustaches, fedora,

and a police scanner.

Oh, uh-huh.

Yeah.

Suspect.

Yeah.

So what's Cheryl thinking at this point?

She's thinking, you're probably not a locksmith, but I'm on my way out.

So, you know.

So Ray begins dating a woman named Virginia Delamote, and she goes by Jenny.

And by 1990, they're living together.

Now, Jenny had a child from a previous relationship, as did Ray.

And then Jenny and Ray go on to have two daughters together.

So Ray tells Jenny and others at this time in his life that he sells lawnmowers and works as a private investigator.

And just like during his relationship with Cheryl, he leaves for weeks at a time.

And I read somewhere that he would tell her to take the kids to the grocery store.

And that's when he would leave.

What do you mean?

Like he wouldn't tell her, like, I'm going on a work trip.

It would be sort of their code.

Like, I'm going on a trip.

I'm going to be gone for a while so that the kids didn't start getting upset.

Yeah.

Because, you know, whether you're a bank robber or a traveling salesman, you probably have to pack for a trip like that.

Right.

Like, especially if you've got a bunch of fedoras.

Like, I imagine the boxes you're traveling with, not to squish them.

So get the kids out of the house so that I can pack my trench coat.

I think that's what it was.

Yeah, she never knew where he was going for how long or had any way to contact him.

Now, in 1991, Billy and Ray rob a bank in Green Valley outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, and they take off with $138,000.

But police nearly capture them in the process.

Billy and Ray take a hostage, lead police on a high-speed chase, and even exchange gunfire.

What?

Yeah, And so somehow they managed to get away.

The hostage was left somewhere unharmed.

I could not find hardly anything about this.

It's mind-blowing to me.

So this hostage, I guess, though, is seeing them in disguise.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

And is this before CCTV?

Yeah.

So this is like, we're in the early 90s.

You know, even any security footage that would be had was probably pretty fuzzy.

And a lot of the time, they were driving stolen cars.

Okay.

They were either renting a car or driving a stolen car.

So it wasn't like, we got the license slate, bingo.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they're pretty careful about that, driving different cars and apparently have really good disguises.

I mean, I'm just imagining those glasses that have the nose and then like the hair on the top of the glasses.

I mean, it's almost like that.

And, you know, I'm thinking, if I'm a bank teller and two men walk in in trench coats,

I'm done for the day.

I'm going home.

Goodbye.

I'm going to take the afternoon off.

Exactly.

But somehow they managed to get out of this high-speed chase unharmed and this hostage somehow unharmed.

Like always, the transcript robbers then split ways, return to their lives.

And now Ray has a young daughter along with his older children to go home to.

Billy returns to his girlfriend, Myra Penny in Minnesota.

So just like in the home he...

shared with Cheryl, he has the same locked room with Jenny, right?

She's not allowed to go in there.

It was a very modest house, a small ranch style home in the middle-class neighborhood, and they're successfully flying under the radar.

Now, fast-forwarding a little bit, the trench coat robbers have been linked to 27, sometimes I read 20, different bank robberies.

So as this is all happening through the early 90s, because this started back in the 80s, the FBI is assembling a task force because they know that these trench coat robbers exist, but they don't know who they are at this time.

They've been featured on America's Most Wanted, Unsolved Mysteries, but they always seem to be 10 steps ahead.

Wow, yeah,

until one day in May of 1997, when the first domino falls.

Ah, what is it?

Yeah, so we heard from Paul Marquardt earlier, retired ATF agent, semi-retired, you know, I would say.

He still works sometimes, hard to give up the job.

Yeah, he really loves it.

He was just the best to talk to about this.

Yeah, so back in 1997, Paul is working as an agent for the ETF in Kansas City, Missouri.

I'm walking down the hall.

It's mid-afternoon.

I'm already thinking about going home a little bit earlier.

And

the

assistant special agent in charge walks out

of their division office.

And I say, hey, Paul, come here.

And I got a note.

This company called Federal Van and Storage.

They say they got a machine gun and a silencer in one of their storage lockers.

Here, go ahead and check this out.

So I grabbed another agent.

We both went to federal van and storage to check it out.

So Paul's walking down the hallway.

He gets us note, you know, this is a typical day at work for him.

He actually mentioned on our call that he was like getting ready to leave for the day.

So it's a little bit of like a, okay, I'll go check it out.

Now, this storage unit that he's being called to come take a look at, what has happened is the storage unit, this unit hasn't paid its bill.

So the storage facility, they prepare to get rid of the contents via something like storage wars, right?

Right.

But they have to know what's in there.

For sure.

So they go and check it out and they find these guns and some other stuff that we'll get into.

And that's why they called the ATF.

Very suspicious.

Very suspicious.

So the name on the storage unit is Ray Bowman.

Not even a fake name.

Not even a fake name.

And he hasn't paid his bill, which is why they went in there in the first place.

First place.

Amateur mistake.

Yeah, unbelievable.

Because, I mean, clearly this guy's a pro at this point.

And you have the money.

You have to.

Unless he spent it on something else.

He had the money.

Yeah.

Isn't that wild?

That's really wild.

Like, what a mistake, truly.

Huge.

It was like a $155 bill.

That's like pretty unbelievable.

I think so, too.

I mean, the only thing I'll give to my I guess, is like you don't have auto-pay, right?

At that point, so you have to send a check or something.

Right.

I'm guessing.

Just couldn't get himself to the post office.

Yeah, just too busy.

Too busy.

So the storage unit sends this letter to Ray's address.

It doesn't get there because the address doesn't exist.

So with no payment, no response, they open up the unit, check it out.

Paul gets this call and goes to the unit.

Okay.

So they get out there and sure enough, there's multiple guns, but there's also a crown royal back, like those purple, you know, crown royal, like the liquor.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And funny enough, Paul said that they actually see these a lot when they're investigating

people storing things in those bags.

Because they're like nice, sort of like velvet bags.

Yeah.

And people just like to keep them, I guess, and store things in them.

I guess so.

I guess so.

And so.

Paul recognizes that there's these little metal pieces in the bag and they are components that you would use to make a silencer.

And silencers are illegal.

So these components are illegal, at least at this time.

And Paul has a specific skill set that allowed him to immediately recognize what these were.

And, you know, he noted throughout the call how many strange coincidences there were in this investigation that allowed them to put the pieces together.

So he recognizes these as components of silencers, but that's not all he finds.

But there were other weird things in there: a police hat, a blue cap with police written on it.

It got really strange because there was a legal briefcase

that was full of pamphlets.

I think there were like 85 of them or something like that.

I once had to type them all out.

They were on the weirdest subjects: how to kill people, how to do

makeup,

how to go,

you know, just

how to hide yourself from the authorities.

This is like a little aspect

of someone's search history now.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I'm like, pamphlets, pamphlets.

Okay.

So Paul and his fellow agent sees the contents of the storage locker, and the storage company is glad to hand it over.

They want nothing to do with it, but now they're also scared because they have given the ATF everything in this man's storage locker.

And he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that wants the ATF to know about his storage locker, let alone have everything in it.

So they're pretty afraid that he's going to come back to pay his bill and then be really unhappy.

So Paul tells them, look, if this person comes back to pay the bill, take the money.

There's a chance they won't even go back to the locker and check it out.

And in case they do, I'm going to leave a letter in there on ATF Letterhead that says, hey, we'd like to talk to you.

So the man behind the counter of the storage office, his name's Alan.

And I want to call this out.

It's a small detail that probably is not that relevant, but Paul mentioned it a few times that Alan was extremely frightened by this.

But he did as he was asked by Paul, and it ended up playing a major role in their investigation moving forward.

So Paul leaves with all the contents of the storage locker, leaves a letter in the storage locker.

They were actually a little relieved that I wanted to take them.

And so we just loaded those up.

And

ironically, I called the FBI

on my way back to the office and I asked to speak to somebody in the bank robbery unit.

And a guy answers and I said, hey, are you guys, told them who I was.

I was an ATF agent had just found a box full of weird stuff that looked like a bank robbery kit to me because it had a bulletproof vest, it had a police hat, it had a scanner with an earpiece.

So I'm thinking, this is the kind of stuff you use in a robbery.

I said, is there anybody that you're looking at?

The guy says, no, not really.

But if you ever find out who he is, give us a call back.

Hmm.

Yeah.

So.

Whoever he had called was probably in the local Kansas City office, was not aware of Trench Robb task force, but eventually Paul would get a call back, but it would take almost a year.

So this is happening in May of 1997.

So a couple months after that Seafirst bank robbery, which happened in February of 1997.

Okay.

So the storage unit visit were in May 1997.

Okay.

So Paul has never heard of the trench coat robbers at this time.

You know, it's like.

They were on the news and making headlines because there was some security footage, but

the access to information was just not what it is now.

And you couldn't just Google, like, are we looking for any bank robbers?

Right.

So he just does what he's supposed to do as an ATF agent and starts investigating the silencers and the guns and these pamphlets.

And he has a name.

Right.

Right.

He has the name Ray Bowman, but Ray did not put down a real address, so they can't go there.

Right.

Yeah.

But then Paul gets a call from the storage company.

And this is within a few weeks of them seizing the items from the locker.

So Alan behind the front desk is on the other line.

And he says someone has shown up to settle the account.

But he had come in

and they said, well, you know, you're in arrears.

And he said, yeah, I'm here to pay it.

So he did.

And they were so desperately afraid of him, they just didn't mention the fact that.

you know, somebody came and took your boxes.

And they were just hoping and praying that he wasn't going to to check them out,

which he did not.

All he wanted to do was just pay what was owed.

So he paid them in cash, $155 and like 63 cents,

and walks out.

And here's one of these strange twists of this.

There's this guy that was dealing with him, was scared to death.

His name was Alan Powell.

He's deceased now, but he was kind of a strange guy.

He worked there and he had a little dog that would sit under his desk and everything.

It was, he was just kind of a different kind of cat.

And what happened is he ran to the window as the guy's leaving and writes down the license plate of the car that he's leaving in.

Cool.

If he doesn't do that,

we aren't any closer to figuring out who he is, but he did.

Alan.

Alan, the unsung hero.

We love it.

So they now have the license plate and a name.

So Ray Bowman and a license plate.

And so they run the plate and it actually comes back to a guy named Wayne Wells.

And of course, Paul figures out, well, who's Wayne Wells?

And he's a local retired police officer who had actually stopped working due to disability.

He has since passed away.

But Paul is at this point wondering, does he have a dirty cop on his hands?

So this takes Paul to the local PD.

So he's now talking to the police and their intelligence unit, trying to see who is Wayne Wells because we need to investigate him.

He's tied to this strange man who has the storage locker.

Now, here's where one of those other coincidences that Paul told me about comes into play.

Is while he's at this police department, debriefing them on what's going on and saying he needs to learn more about Wayne Wells, someone who's working there hears the name Ray Bowman.

and tells Paul that he's related to someone named Cheryl who previously dated Ray Bowman.

So Paul is is really happy to have this intel, but he's also like, this is great for me, but don't go talk to Cheryl or Wayne because I need everything to lay low until I figure out what I'm dealing with here.

Okay.

Yeah, he was very afraid that they would tip him off.

Because you never know.

Are Cheryl and Wayne still working with him?

He doesn't know.

Exactly.

But this is now a different entity, right?

This is the police department, not the ATF.

And they are, you know, they collaborate, but they don't work for Paul.

Interesting.

yeah.

Okay.

Well, a couple days go by, and I find out that Wantland and another, another officer named, I think it's Dan Reynolds, they went and interviewed her, even though I was, I was insisting they not.

No,

I was furious with them.

And I said, why did you do that?

But it broke the case wide open because

she was cooperative.

She told them stuff about how when she was living with him, he had a locked room that he wouldn't allow her into,

that he would go on business trips for two or three weeks at a time and come back and not even tell her where he'd gone and all this stuff.

At one time, he asked her to sew him a bulletproof vest with Kevlar.

Just a wealth of knowledge about him.

Even knew

that he was living with somebody called Jenny.

Wow, this is a huge break.

Huge break.

So now Paul needs to move really quickly because even though it seems like Cheryl's cooperative and has no interest in protecting Ray at this point, she does know him.

They do have mutual contacts.

So, okay, he's like, Ray is living with someone named Jenny.

So he finds Jenny's address and that's how he locates Ray's residence.

So that was given to them by Cheryl Clark, the ex-girlfriend.

But they still need to figure out why Wayne Wells is connected to this at all.

And what they uncover is that Wayne had some sort of lawnmower business.

Now, earlier I was saying that Ray told people, including Jenny, that he sold lawnmowers.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I wasn't able to fully understand that connection if Wayne had any knowledge or not of Ray's crime spree, but

that is the connection there in some way.

But most importantly, they now know where Ray lives because Cheryl told them.

So the ATF puts something called a pen register on the residence, and it's different than a wiretap.

It just tells you what calls are incoming to the residence and outgoing from a residence.

It gives you like the number of the caller.

Yeah, exactly.

So you can just see, okay, this number calls a lot, this number calls a lot, you know, see if there's patterns.

Gotcha.

And they also do a trash run.

So they start picking up any trash that's left outside the residence.

Glamorous part of the job.

Right, exactly.

And for whatever reason, in one of these trash runs, they throw away, there's a photo of Ray and his family.

So Ray, Jenny, and their kids.

It gets cataloged because they know what Ray looks like.

Now they're starting to surveil him.

The local PD is surveilling him.

And they have no idea still that he's one of the trench coat robbers.

But as they're following Ray, they notice he's making a lot of calls from pay phones.

And they subpoena the records from those payphones and set up something new called a mail cover.

So Ray had a PO box that they are able to track down.

And a mail cover tells you kind of like a pen register, what mail is incoming, what mail is outgoing, but they're not opening it.

They're just keeping track and kind of following the lead because they don't want to tip off Ray that people are looking at his mail.

Right.

Yeah.

So Paul, in the midst of this investigation that's unfolding, asks an intern at the ETF, pull up every police report, arrest record, anything you can find on Ray Bowman.

And he does.

And we've talked a lot about Ray and we're not done yet.

But meanwhile in Minnesota, also in the late spring of 1997, Billy and his girlfriend Myra Penny are building a cabin.

That's quaint.

Yeah, it's quaint, right?

And the cabin was being built in northern Minnesota, really far north, like by the Canadian border, I think.

I bet that's beautiful.

So pretty.

Great choice.

What a relaxing escape.

Billy has good taste.

Yeah.

So, you know, when you have that kind of cash, it's not like like you can walk into a bank and deposit it.

It's not like you can put it in a mutual fund.

So they're trying to figure out a way to spend it.

So they're building this cabin together and they're paying the builder in cash.

Well, Billy and Myra

are making a lot of complaints to the builder.

They don't like this, they don't like that.

Things aren't moving fast enough.

And they're really starting to frustrate him.

And he's like, you know, it's pretty unusual that someone would pay me all in cash because we're talking six-figure payments.

And he gets very irritated and he decides to call the IRS.

Wow.

Basically, they piss off their contractor.

Yeah.

Like, so silly.

And I feel like, meanwhile, Ray was so careful in most ways.

I mean, the storage unit not paying that, certainly a slip up, but seemed like he was treading pretty lightly.

But Myra and Billy piss off this guy building their house and he calls the IRS and he's like, maybe you should look into them.

The IRS is like, let's do it.

So they begin investigating.

And this process takes a couple more months.

So now we're in October of 1997.

And as a reminder, the Seafirst Bank robbery was in February of 1997.

Ray's storage unit was found out in May of 1997.

Got it.

So now we're in October.

And we know that Billy and Ray have some sort of connection because of the pen register and the mail cover, but we don't yet know that they're the trench coat robbers or what their relationship is at all.

And so the IRS agent up there, a guy named Billy Waters, who ended up being a major player in this case, actually went to the house and served them with a grand jury subpoena, and that freaked them out.

And so

all he was looking at was like,

what are you doing with all this cash?

He just wanted to investigate it.

But what they did is they panicked and they actually flew to Las Vegas because they had a bunch of money in a storage place there.

and they picked it up and she flew back.

Yeah.

So what he says at the end of that clip is they panic when they get this subpoena.

So they try to take this cash that has been in their home or in nearby locations and they drive it to Las Vegas.

They put it in a storage unit or in a safe deposit box, some sort of storage situation there.

Myra flies home and Billy drives.

So as Billy is driving home, Myra's back home because she flew and she calls Ray

and she tells him, Uncle Tom has been to the house.

Now, I'm not completely sure of the translation on that, but it's something like we're in deep shit with the federal government.

Yeah, that's the code word.

Uncle Tom has been to the house.

Yeah.

Not the call Ray wanted to get.

So Billy's still making his way through Nebraska, going seven miles over the speed limit, and he crossed paths with a Nebraska state trooper who had just so happened to recently attend a course on drug interdiction, which just means that you are stopping drugs from getting to their destination.

And he's pulling Billy over for breaking the speed limit.

So this is November 10th, 1997.

Now, when he approaches the driver's side of Billy's car, he notices Billy seems pretty nervous.

So he asks, can I search the car?

Billy says, no.

No, you can't search the car.

Well, the police officer calls for backup.

He's like, just hold on.

I'm really going to search your car.

He also calls in for a drug dog because he has just taken this class on drug interdiction.

And the dog didn't exactly hit on the trunk.

The dog seemed interested in the car, but he didn't,

according to the handover, it wasn't a good enough sign that there was dope in the car.

But the trooper on his own decides, well, this guy's really nervous and he's not being cooperative.

So I'm going to search the car.

So he searches the inside of the car and he finds a couple guns.

He finds a bunch of lockpicking material, keys, all kinds of stuff.

So he decides, I'm going to open up the trunk.

He opens up the trunk, foot locker in the trunk, opens up $1.8 million

in cash.

So that's a lot of money, but Paul calls this a bad search.

So that is an unwarranted search because they pulled Billy over for speeding, and then they searched the car after he said, You can't search the car.

But he did anyway, and he alerts the FBI.

And so, I'm not exactly clear on when the FBI then gets involved, but Billy's taken into custody.

I'm assuming because of what was already going on with the IRS, they had some way to make sure this was above board.

I can only assume,

so he never makes it back, he's arrested, he's arrested, okay?

Yeah.

I think he was arrested that day that he was pulled over.

So Billy's in custody and now the FBI is raiding his house.

And they're starting to put together, here's a guy with a lot of cash.

Here's a guy that the ATF thinks is a bank robber, but we don't know what their relationship is.

We know they've communicated.

But as they raid Billy's house, they find something.

Yeah, we're on the phone with the FBI agents that are in the house up in Minnesota at the log cabin

serving a search warrant there.

And they're acting kind of weird.

They're saying, well, we're not really finding anything.

And,

you know, they were kind of frustrated.

And I can't remember exactly how it happened, but somehow, somebody said, well, there's a picture on the refrigerator.

And we said, well, what's the picture of?

Well, it's a guy and a

woman and three kids.

And we're like, bingo, that's Ray Bowman.

So we're trying to tell him that's Ray.

That's the guy we're working on here.

Yeah.

Wow.

Like a Christmas card or something.

Yeah.

Like just some photo that they both had.

Yeah, probably a Christmas card.

I hadn't thought of that.

Maybe that's what it was.

And that's why it ended up in the trash.

It's like, how long does a person keep a Christmas card?

Yeah.

So.

Because of this grand jury subpoena, this code word call Uncle Thomas been to the house, Ray has known that things have been heating up for them.

So he takes, while this is happening, two duffel bags filled with cash, well over $100,000 in each one of them, and drops them off with his estranged brother that he's been estranged from for, I think, about two years at this point.

And he tells his brother, hold on to these duffel bags.

Don't open them.

If anything happens to me, it's for my kids.

He also tells his partner, Jenny, that something bad has happened to a friend of his, and he's not sure if it will affect him.

She doesn't know what this means, but from what I know about their relationship, and Jenny is pretty sharp, she understood that the lack of transparency and all of these comments were concerning.

And she had young children that she was looking after.

And so I'm sure she wondered about it, but what could she do?

And the day then comes, Ray Bowman is arrested without incident while being surveilled as his home is raided.

Wow.

I'm reading him as rights.

You're done.

And he argued with me and I said, I'm telling you, I'm reading them as rights right now.

I read Ray as rights.

I said, do you want to talk?

And Ray just nods his head no, which I knew was going to happen.

I said, that's it.

Take him back to his cell.

And that was it.

But

then

I left to go to where they were serving the search for him.

And that was crazy because they got into that locked room and I thought I'd get there too late to see anything.

Well, it took them forever to get into that locked room because they had to get a locksmith to break in because it was a really high-dollar lock that he had on the room.

And then inside was a safe.

And that took the guy

probably another two hours to break into the safe.

So we were there quite late.

And I think we took

all together, we took like $379,000 in cash and 85 guns.

And

it was quite a haul.

Whoosh.

I love that he had to bring in a locksmith to break into

Ray's secret room.

And it took them hours.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Ray is arrested.

Billy's in custody.

And they're linking them together.

So Ray and Billy are both in custody.

The ATF, the IRS, the FBI, they're like, we've got the trench coat robbers.

These are the trench coat robbers.

Ray's brother then turns in the duffel bags, which are, of course, full of cash traceable back to the C1st bank robbery.

So they still needed a little bit more than the photo and the cash.

Like they know who they are, but they need to be able to prove it.

And so they go back through the mail cover and see that Billy at one point mailed Ray a key to a safe deposit box in Washington state where the C1st bank robbery happened.

And they then remember that intern who pulled all these arrest records and they see mugshots going back to 1962 for their record boosting.

Wow.

And they're arrested together at certain times.

And so you have the names and different police reports.

So certainly the photo was

really great evidence, but they had been linked many other ways once everyone sort of collaborated, really largely thanks to the investigation done by the ETF.

That's really what broke the case wide open.

And I remember when I'm sitting down with all these FBI agents and they said, man, if we could only put them together.

And I reached in in my box of stuff and I pulled out that police report and I said, well, will this do?

They got arrested together stealing records in Springfield.

And they said, how did, why did you do all this?

They just couldn't get over it that we did a pen register.

and we did the mail cover and we did all of this stuff.

I had a file about an inch and a half thick of all his prior arrests.

None of them resulted in a conviction, though.

I mean, he didn't do time.

What an exciting moment when it all comes together.

Yeah, totally.

And, you know, Paul said multiple times throughout the interview, like he thinks highly of the FBI.

He was glad that they were collaborating with this, but ultimately they kind of take center stage at the end of the story after he's done all this legwork.

And you can tell it's a little bit like, I don't know.

But the Trench Coat robbers are finally brought to justice.

They're arrested in 1997 and they're charged with some of the bank robberies.

But the issue is that even though these different organizations like the FBI and the ATF are able to put together well over 20, around 27 bank robberies, the statute of limitations was up on most of them.

Really?

Yeah.

A lot of them had like a five-year statute of limitations.

So what could they do?

Yeah.

So they have three robberies that they're able to charge them with.

That is the U.S.

Bank in Portland, Oregon, which took place in February of 1994.

They stole $233,000.

A bank in Ohio on October 6th, 1994, $362,000.

And of course, the CEFIRS bank in Washington, where they stole $4.5 million, $4.4

million, but we can round up.

Okay.

So

In 1998, Billy decides he's going to take a plea deal.

And here is where it kind of turns for me with Billy because he has told Myra a lot over the years.

I was going to ask that because when they get the call, they're freaking out seemingly together.

She also knows we're paying for this cabin in cash.

So how much does she know?

She knows a lot.

I called her.

You did?

Yeah.

She didn't answer.

I also emailed her.

Wow.

Yeah.

No answer from Myra.

But yeah, I think she knew a lot.

I think he had told her more and more.

And so she pleads with him to take a deal.

Okay.

And he does.

And so he goes into custody in 1997.

He takes the plea deal in early 1998 and he was released in 2011.

Wow.

Okay.

I called him too.

And no answer.

Okay.

But Myra wasn't charged with anything.

So Myra

had tried to bail him out when he first was arrested.

What did she use?

Stolen cash.

So yeah, I think she did like six months for money laundering or something.

I mean, she must have really loved this guy.

Ray, on the other hand, decides to take his case to trial.

And I think a lot of that was based on that he thought that the searches were not up to above board.

And so could they really use all the evidence that they said they had on him?

And he was found guilty and he was sentenced to 295 months in prison.

How many years is that?

It's a lot.

I think it was 24 years or something like that.

Whereas Billy served, what would that have been?

10-ish?

Yeah, 11.

Less than 15 years.

Okay.

Yeah.

So let's see here.

Ray was sentenced to over 24 years.

Okay.

So, so quite a bit longer.

Yeah.

And Ray ended up passing away in prison, which we'll talk more about in a minute.

But I want to say

Ray and Billy, they didn't kill anyone, but they stole a lot of money and traumatized a lot of people who stood between them and that money.

And most of those people were just at work doing their jobs.

They held the family at gunpoint in the middle of the night.

They exchanged gunfire with officers who were obviously also just doing their job.

So it was not a victimless crime spree.

And indirectly, they also had two other major victims, which were two other bank robbers.

Really?

Yeah.

So Frank Bulldock and Francis Larkin.

And there's an interesting side story.

Two other guys from Boston had gotten arrested by the FBI

for two of the jobs that they did in Wisconsin.

And these guys actually got convicted.

Oh my gosh.

So two other guys were wrongly convicted for robberies committed by Ray and Billy?

Yes.

Were they actual bank robbers or not?

And they just got convicted of these crimes.

I mean, either way, it's.

Yeah.

So.

Basically what happened is Frank Bulldock and Francis Larkin had been charged with having committed an armored car robbery in Boston.

They hadn't been convicted of that crime at this point, but they had been charged stealing a large amount of cash from an armored car.

An FBI agent who happened to be either familiar with or working on the trench coat robber case was visiting Boston when he reads an article about this duo that robs an armored car.

And he's like, boom, these must be the trench coat robbers.

You know, it's not unreasonable.

So they arrest Bulldock and Larkin, and they are actually convicted for having robbed a bank in Milwaukee in 1991, which was actually not them.

It was Billy and Ray.

Bulldock was sentenced to 48 years and four months in prison.

Larkin was sentenced to 32 years and six months in prison.

And they ended up actually just dropping the armored car robbery charges after that because, you know, they're effectively spending the rest of their lives in prison.

Now, these guys were not innocent in their life.

They were innocent of this specific robbery that they were charged with, but Bulldock had been convicted of second-degree murder in Massachusetts and released on parole before this all happened.

So, yeah, I don't want to also make it seem like they were not problematic in their own ways, but they certainly shouldn't have been convicted of this crime.

They were convicted of a crime they did not commit.

So then, was that overturned and were they released?

Yeah, so.

During their imprisonment, the trench coat robbers are found out and arrested.

So I think it was Billy who admits to this Milwaukee robbery.

And when that is revealed, they have to release these people.

So they were both released from prison in 1999.

I'm not discussing their other crimes because it just wasn't part of the story, but they didn't do the crime that they were serving all this time for, which is a huge miscarriage of justice.

Totally.

And it doesn't, you know, I mean, it doesn't really matter.

It reminds me of our Jennifer Thompson episode where, you know, she talked about putting the wrong person in prison, no matter if you think they're a good person or not, is an injustice.

And so I'm glad that they got released, and that's really wild.

Totally.

And I will say that Bulldock sued for $9 million for the wrongful conviction.

This is also why it's a terrible idea.

Like, obviously, you know, it wasn't intentional, but yeah, then they're, of course, they're going to sue and probably get money.

The judge actually, I think, threw it out because they were like, you're not innocent.

Okay.

But

I mean, yeah, little side story there.

But isn't that so crazy?

So crazy.

That is largely the story of the trench coat robbers but ray bowman was also a father and you know i had listened to that great podcast my fugitive dad and i'm like what is it like like what is that like to know your dad as this other person portrayed in the media and so i reached out to a couple of family members And I was lucky enough to speak with Sam Bowman, who is Ray's daughter.

Wow.

Yeah.

And, you know, she was really young when this all happened, but of course it has tremendously impacted her life and still does.

And, you know, I asked Sam about her dad and the man that she knew because she didn't know this version of him.

And I also want to first say, before I get into the Sam Bowman of it all, Sam was so.

great and acknowledged as we were getting into our conversation talking about the fact that her dad went to prison and she didn't get to spend most of her life with him because of that.

And then he passed away in prison.

She's like, Yeah, and his time was cut short, but by his own choices, and she fully acknowledged what he did.

And I think it is totally within her rights to also acknowledge that he was her dad.

And so I asked her if she had any memories that she would share with me about Ray as her dad.

I

think about him

in his giant green armchair.

He used to stick his lower lip out in a very specific way.

And he would always be reading the newspaper.

And

he's just under this warm yellow light and it's dark outside the house.

And

that's where he would always be if he was home and not doing anything else in the house.

He would just be in that chair and reading.

And then every night I would climb in his lap and I'd lay down and he'd rub my back and I'd watch the TV like 60 minutes, whatever was on, or cops.

And then he'd rub my back until I went to sleep.

and then he would carry me to my room and tuck me in and say buenos noches

and i would go to sleep that's really sweet it's really sweet i mean i'm so glad she has that memory of him and sam was just so great and she does have in her own way like a sense of humor about all of this and she said you know he also i remember had a lot of trench coats which of course have been widely reported on but here's what she had to say about it

actually um he used to, obviously, he wore trench coats a lot.

He was very, very fashionable.

Obviously.

Yeah, so he was very fashionable.

I know he used to wear like Italian silk button-down shirts or whatever.

He was always well-dressed.

My mother was always well-dressed.

They believed in presenting themselves in that way to the world, which I also like to do in my own personal style.

But specifically, what I loved was

he wore like Italian leather shoes, like specific leather shoes that were made for his feet, which means that he had those, oh gosh, they're like wooden feet.

Yeah.

And so I was picturing this, like, okay, you have this dad who wears nice clothes and has these like

custom shoe

shape holders.

It's like he tucks her into bed at night, but he also watches cops.

I know, I was going to say, I'm like, I love that.

She watches cops with him.

This is something that's interesting to him.

Right.

She said that he loved watching shows like that.

And I'm like, is this guy just an adrenaline junkie?

Wow.

Wow.

I love hearing these details about him, you know, that he was like, obviously really cared about his clothes and spent a lot of time and money on his appearance.

Yeah.

And I wasn't able to locate these people, but I heard through my various phone calls and research that actually Ray and Billy overall, now.

after they zip tied and pointed guns at people, acknowledging that, were kind.

Like there were instances where someone said, it's too tight.

It's hurting me.

And they would loosen it a little bit and reassure them they were going to be okay.

And look, I don't want to overstate a level of kindness when you're robbing a bank and people are terrified, but they had, you know, these different layers to them.

And I loved talking with Sam and hearing about this other part of Ray that you don't hear about.

I asked her though, looking back, could she remember any display of wealth or money that might have seemed out of place given their otherwise modest lifestyle?

Because she was so young.

I like to say that I'm very lucky.

I had no conscious concept of money until after it happened when we immediately had no money.

To me, no, there was nothing I would say that was extravagant.

I know he used to have like,

it wasn't great, but it was gorgeous at the time.

It was a 1986 Corvette.

At one point, he had a Harley that was from like this.

73, something like that.

He liked his clothes.

He liked to eat well.

I remember because we lived outside Kansas City, we would go to the plaza and he would spoil us with toys.

Toys, like when we were born, when, because my older sister, he would spoil her.

It was me with my little sister.

Like, we just toys galore.

Yeah.

He sounds like a great guy, honestly.

Yeah.

He's a great guy.

I mean, obviously they committed a crime.

They also did their time for it.

But there's something really romantic about bank robbers because it's sort of like this idea that they were like, you know, this whole thing with the American dream, this whole like thing I'm born into where I'm going to maybe have to work this nine to five.

And I don't know their backgrounds, but it seems like neither of them came from wealth.

And they were like, actually, we'll just cheat the system and we're going to do it differently.

And then it's sort of hard to be super sympathetic when they're stealing from banks, you know?

Right.

So there's something that feels very like adventurous about it.

And I'm not discounting the fact that they also terrified people.

But yeah, it's interesting.

We talk about this so much, but especially talking to Sam, just being reminded that people are, you know, dynamic and it doesn't mean something that he did wasn't wrong, but he was also a dad who clearly loved his children.

And he really, I think, did what he could to sort of protect them from what was going on.

You know, Paul Marquardt, the ATF agent we've been hearing clips from, said that at Ray's trial, when Jenny learned the amount of money that he had stolen and the CFIRS bank robbery, she audibly gasped in the courtroom.

I mean, she truly had no idea.

And, you know, she was completely innocent of the crimes that he committed.

We talked about Myra Penny, Billy's girlfriend, on the other hand, who had been arrested for money laundering.

She also then wanted to shield her children from it as much as she could.

So for the most part, Sam actually grew up knowing nothing specific about what happened.

So obviously, all of this happens when I'm like first grade, and that's like the fallout of it's first and a second grade.

So being that young, my mom said, daddy broke a rule and he has to go to timeout for a while.

Cause that's how you explain that to like a five-year-old,

four or five-year-old.

Yeah.

And that, that,

it was, it made sense.

And I kind of held on to that for so long, but that's, I, what I held on to from that was, oh, he's going to come home.

Like, he'll come back.

He's just in timeout.

Yeah.

I mean, it's sad.

And she would go and visit her father sometimes while he was in prison, but was so young that the visit was, you know, it's in a very controlled environment.

And it's not like she's using that time to ask a lot of questions, but they would exchange letters and birthday cards.

And another sweet thing that Sam told me is that her uncles, her father's brothers, would send birthday cards, blank, to Ray for him to fill out to his kids in prison.

And he always would.

And I just thought that was so sweet, the way they really rallied, you know, because when all of this happened, Jenny then had no money, nowhere to go.

She had been reliant on Ray financially, which I think is the case in a lot of households.

And they moved in with one of her sisters in Georgia.

She had to go back to work to support the family.

And so when I asked Sam more about like, what did you know and when did you find out?

She was like, you know, life just sort of keeps moving.

And it's not like you don't have questions, but it doesn't consume your thoughts because it's your normal.

But one day it is revealed to her.

Actually,

Sam was home with her older sister, and her older sister was watching a crime show on television.

We were in Georgia.

We lived in an apartment out there, and my older sister had told me, Sam, you need to go to your room.

And it's the middle of the day, and she's watching TV.

And I'm like, Why are you telling me to go to my room?

That's rude.

I don't need to be in there.

So I pretend to go to my room, and then I sneak back out.

And I'm hiding behind the couch in our living room.

And she's watching the TV.

And from behind the couch, me peeking around the corner, I found out what my dad did and what his life was before he had me and when he had me and after he had me.

And I found out about the trial and I found out about everything.

And I was 10 years old, nine years old, 10 years old.

Yeah, no one had to tell me.

I found out it was just so,

such a surreal way to realize that, just to actually come to terms with, oh, he's not coming back because you don't come back from that.

Yeah, I mean, we didn't get into the specifics of this.

She was so young when it all happened, but I imagine, you know, he was sentenced to 24 years.

That's an amount of time that's hard to comprehend as an adult and as a child, it's impossible.

And so, I think Jenny, just in an effort to protect them, was sort of also protecting the details of that.

And he's in timeout, and we'll see him when we see him.

And they did go and visit, but it was difficult.

And Sam, because of this experience, really sees what we've seen, which is that

people are capable of good and bad.

And that's the case for almost everyone.

I think every because it's

so

these shades of gray that people have where no one is black or white.

It's everyone is a shade of gray.

Everyone thought and experienced my dad as this wonderful person.

And

obviously his brother knew good and bad, I'm sure.

His mom knew good and bad, but he was

kind in so many ways.

And then he was my dad.

And he was, in my opinion, for a short time, a very good dad.

Reconciling, I think that's why it made such a sad impact on so many people.

The people who knew him for so long understood that he had been doing this for so long and were like,

you did this to yourself,

while still mourning the fact that he had started a family, he had kids, he was trying to do better in some ways and was trying to be there for us.

Ray passed away in prison in 2011.

So Sam actually has a tattoo.

on her arm that reminds her of her dad and it's a trench coat hanging on the shoe rack or hanging on a coat rack with the Italian leather shoes at the bottom of it.

And she said that she'll find herself holding her arm where the tattoo is at times.

And it just reminds her of him.

And they just really loved that.

I mean, Sam is such a thoughtful, kind, introspective person.

And it's just one of the ways that she has processed her grief.

So thank you so much to Sam for sharing her story with us as well.

So glad that you were able to speak with her.

Yeah.

I'm curious, you know, so when they were finally caught, how much money was found that they actually took?

Do you know?

I tried to figure this out and I couldn't.

They recovered some of it, but not all of it is the short answer.

Well, that's my other question.

First of all, if I were the brother, good for him for following the law and doing the right thing, but he probably could have held on to those duffel bags full of money and would have been okay.

But you think about all of those safety deposit boxes and bank boxes like spread out across the country.

And I'm like, did they find all of it?

Did they not?

Impossible to say.

And I, you know, Billy didn't answer the phone, but I certainly would have asked.

I know that Ray also told his mother, hey, here's a keto-safe deposit box.

If anything happens to me, you know, when things started heating up, he was trying to sort of help his family before he went to prison, I think.

But yeah, sounds like his family turned in any money that they became aware of.

And yeah, I don't know.

It's a lot of money to recover.

And it sounds like they were pretty good at hiding it.

I asked Sam, you know, do you get that question?

And she's like, sometimes, and I understand people's curiosity, but that usually people's response is pretty empathetic when she tells them.

Yeah.

I mean, what a wild thing.

It's like such a banana story.

And then if it's like your life, though, and your father, then it's, you know, very real and a whole different thing.

Totally.

Yeah.

So that is the story of the trench coat rock.

Wow, Seisha.

What a story.

What a story.

I loved it.

Thanks for listening.

We'll be back next week.

If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it.

Our email is theknife at exactlyrightmedia.com, or you can follow us on Instagram at theKnife Podcast or Blue Sky at The Knife Podcast.

This has been an exactly right production, hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith, and me, Taysha Eaton.

Our producers are Tom Breifogel and Alexis Amorosi.

This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

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