Camp Gagnon - Diamond Thief Reveals DEADLY $1,000,000 Dollar Heist | Bryan Sobolewski

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Bryan Sobolewski was a member of a New England crime family responsible for 22 jewelry store heists and over 1.5 million dollars of stolen goods. He and his family were sentenced to federal prison. Bryan has since reformed his life and is here to tell his story. WELCOME TO CAMPEdited and produced by @99OvrAll Thank you to Morgan and morgan Bluechewand zippex for making this show possible00:00 Intro02:13 Growing up in Mass. makes you tough05:55 Stealing was so normal + Wh...

And that's where you lay in bed saying, geez, how much duct tape does it take to subdue him in to a chair? We were in and out in 90 seconds. This guy pulls in really late and everything starts to unfold. I gotta get his... My dad pushes the guy in, my brother grabs him, throws him against the wall, the wall him was false. It would have fell forward and you would have seen exactly what we were doing.

I threw his... We put him down on the chair and I stopped duct-taping. I was duct-taping the hell out of this guy, and I get sent out to the car. He had a Lincoln Continental. There were three locks on the back quarter pan. One of them popped open the trunk. The other two set off a massive alarm.

I could sit here with a thousand adjectives about how surreal and time slowed down, but they were like, click. Boom, the thing comes up. I don't know if you remember these suitcases that flapped in, and they were built like a br-a-hast-hout house. There were eight of them in them. Inside each one of them were velvet rolls full of

200 to 300 pieces. It's not easy to carry. So eventually I needed dad's help, and a cop pulled in. My dad turned to my brother and he said, There's a cop outside. My brother cocked the hammer. And this is where things just... This is Brian Subaluski.

He's a former diamond thief who is an integral member of a family crime business. And today, he's in the tent to explain how he and his family robbed over 20 jewelry stores. Oh, the money. We were just rolling in it, man. How he eventually got caught and sent to prison for his crimes. Me and my brother went on the block. My brother says, listen, if anyone's going to do any fucking around here, it's going to be me. Ooh, silence.

I was like, that is genius. When I got chipped out to the next prison, thought I'd give it a try. I walk out and I say the same thing. If anyone's going to do any fucking wrong here, it's going to be me. And I hear, oh my God, he's so cute. And in the end, he even explains the tragic circumstances

about how his brother and father passed away at the same time and the same place. The police detective thought my father shot my brother. Brian's story is truly one of a kind, from trying to get acceptance from his father to the thrill of diamonds and money and being on top of the world to losing everything and the long road back to redemption.

So without further ado, please enjoy Brian Subouloski. Welcome to camp. Brian Sobuluski. Correct. Thank you so much for being here, brother. I'm so excited. I love this. I really appreciate it, dude. This is going to be a lot of fun. You have a fascinating life story. Thank you.

You were convicted of stealing $2.3 million in diamond heists through multiple jewelry stores in the New England area. 22. You spent three years in prison, and you have an absolutely remarkable story. You're a part of a family business

that your dad was the mastermind of. We're going to get into all of it, but I guess the place we should start, how did you get into the diamond-stealing business? The mentality in Boston pretty much where he grew up in East Boston and in Chelsea, where the docks were, was a different life.

And you've all seen it and all the mob things, blah, blah, blah, blah. But my dad grew up next to Heller's Bar, which was a known mob bar. It was two doors down from where he grew up. And it wasn't uncommon for him to see someone getting the shit kicked out of him outside the house or there were certain cars you knew not to touch.

Or every once in a while there was a tractor trailer in the back of his apartment building selling stuff because that didn't make it from the dock to where it was supposed to go. Revere Beach, its entire history is just full of, hey, they stole a tractor trailer full of stuff from China and boom, we're just going to sell it out at Revere Beach. So most of the coastal towns in Massachusetts

have sort of that background, especially close to Boston. Wow. You have to get out to Rockport before you get to a class here where they just sell at and stuff like that. So your dad is like around mob stuff growing up and it's very familiar with like, you know,

talk shit, you're going to get hit. And you've got to kind of get what's yours and keep it moving kind of mentality. Wow, that was Massachusetts in general. The Jullos ran Massachusetts. And Massachusetts had a part of it called the combat zone, which is about four blocks of, hey, do whatever you want? It's all there for you.

You can go there get a blow job at, you know, 2 a.m. if you want to. But step off of those four blocks and a cop or a mobster's going to thump you and say, get back in there. That's where you do that. And they ran a very, you couldn't, none of the North End was not mobbed up. Wow. Every plate of pasta they served, maybe had, you know, some people in it. Was your dad mobbed a little?

No, not. No, in no way, shape or form. I never met any of them. My dad was a straight, upstanding. None of this was weird to me. You know, when we drove through Nashville and New Hampshire and Main Street, when they were redoing it, they had this whole civic redevelopment thing.

At midnight, we had this little tiny station wagon, Chevy station wagon. We called it the banana because it was bright yellow. My dad got a deal on it. And we're driving up Main Street, so my brother could jump out, and I could jump out, and we could grab a slab of curb

because dad wanted it for the foot of the fireplace. Wow. You see a four-cylinder Chevy car drive a slab of curbing? It was like six feet long. It was so heavy. We put it in the back and it was like something out of vacation, like something Chevy Chase would do it. I mean, if you're going to bite the curb,

that's probably the best way to do it, just to put it in the card. You know what I mean? Exactly. 100%. Wow. And two-thirds of that. That house was built by stuff we just stole.

Wow. Because it was raw material stuff. No one gave a shit. Hey, what's tough, guys? Sorry to interrupt this amazing program, but I need a little bit of help. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can probably see our subscriber number right down here. And if you're able to, it would mean the world if you could subscribe. That is the best way to support this show.

Because when you subscribe, I'm able to show it to potential guests or to different brands and stuff like that. And it really, really helps grow the show, get us cooler guests, have cooler conversations. And it helps everything so, so much. So, if you don't mind, thank you so much. Let's get back to it. at the time. That was probably after they divorced. I mean, they divorced really young,

but by the time my dad met his second wife, I was probably entering 11 or 12. Okay. And that's when it started. It was just regular to us. I remember being pulled over after we were stealing wood, by any other definition, was stealing. And the guy coming and saying,

hey, you can have a cord if you give me a case of bear. Like they settled it right there. Wow. Back then, today, that would be breaking and entering. my dad would have done five years, forget it, it's over. Wow. It was just different back then. And so you're growing up with this mentality.

Do you feel like it's wrong at the time when you're like 12, 13? Are you just like, this is what life is? I'm Catholic. We don't know what's wrong. Everything's wrong. We have to keep going Sunday and saying, oh, that, I shouldn't have done that. No, it wasn't. It was until, seriously, until Whitey Bulger took over, Boston was a very well-run city, man.

It really was. And then Whitey claims he didn't, but Whitey ratted. And Julo out and no crews had any discipline. And the only way we could have done what we did was if Whitey had done that. Because the Njulos would have thumped us because they were protecting a store or said, no, you're selling it to us for 10 cents on the dollar. And the Njulos were a prominent mob family. Huge. Yeah.

Oh my God. All you got to do is Google them and you'll see the Njulos. And they were actually keeping order. Yeah. 100%. Oh my God. They ran an amazing city. And because Whitey ratted them and got them out of there.

It just went to shit. And you guys... The combat zone became the whole city. Wow. It was awful. It was awful. And so you're living with your brother, dad's divorced, on hard times, living in this, like, foundational kind of shack house, stealing raw materials, putting it together. My dad was middle, upper middle class.

He had a great job. He worked every minute of every day that he could. So the first robbery that my dad did was going back to the mom and pops, there were only four companies that were basically importing. jewelry into the country. And one of them was called Citra. And they had a catalog full of stuff. So they would send traveling salesmen out in armored cars. And I don't mean what you're thinking bankwise.

I mean a Lincoln Continental. That's just bulletproof glass, souped up, and meets the insurance requirements for, is this safe enough to drive around potentially $500,000 worth of jewelry? because that's what they did in the trunk. Now, they got wise to the fact that they're just driving around to random stores. And, you know, we would call the person and say, hey, we're setting up a store. And we want your entire catalog in our store. Every one of our cases, we want to fill with their stuff.

And it was consignment or we pay it cash for it. Very few would do consignment if you had credit with them. But most of it was, hey, we're going to invest all of it into it. And you would get them to come to it. Now, when they do that, they bring you for, fake stuff to showcase in case they get robbed. So he has a dolly full of stuff. He's walking into the store and, okay, we don't want that.

It's brass and glass. Looks just the same. And most of the stuff you see in cases up front of jewelry stores, walk down any jewelry district, smashing grabs over. People were picking up on the fact that this was our MO, this is what we would do, and they would thwart us at our own game.

Oh, wow. So a lot of the stuff in the cases now is just all fake. Yeah, and the only, I was out in Burbank recently, and the only jewelry store I've ever seen in a mall that was close to a door was there. If you look and you go through a mall, it's always in the middle. It's always in the food court where you don't have a,

you have to run through the mall before you get to a place where you can get out. You're done. You know, you're walking out to a helicopter. You know what I mean? So, yeah, you see a lot of the insurance regulations start to develop based on people getting burnt by them. But in that time, in this, this is like the 80s, 90s,

you have some real stuff and you have guys coming through with the real stuff. With carloads full of it. Yeah. Carlos. So my dad targeted one of those guys. And he knew one of those guys. And he was the one feeding us all of the information. None of this happens if we don't have an inside guy that knows the store, that knows the guy, that knows what he typically has, that could potentially order for us.

for himself what would cover our expenses or make the robbery worthwhile. So he, as a traveling salesman, we'll call another one and say, hey, you're going to be at the store. I need $50,000 worth of loose diamonds because I got a blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we knew it was there.

At least that was there. Now we're covered. But if you don't have an inside person and you don't know that store intimately, don't do it, never get in out of it. So this guy, so you just kind of lay out the flow chart, you have this independent mom-a-pop, jewelry store and that's just, you know, Tony's, Tony's jewelry. And that's the only thing that

exists. And they have these traveling salesmen that are coming by and are, they're, distributing the jewelry? Yeah. They have a catalog. So you basically, they'll send you a catalog. And from there, you're like, hey, I'll take 80 rope chains. I'll take 80, you know, platterings. Yeah. You want to, you want to pad that store with stuff. You've been in a jewelry store, it's like, la la. Yeah. And so. That's how I feel like if I went into a chocolate. He goes in a chagga fact. And so the salesman, your dad sees a little exploit because he was a salesman himself. He sees these salesmen going through.

They're taking all this product with no real security. And he goes, bingo. Let's get them. So they set up those two, the inside guy and my dad set up a robbery of a guy at the Fessonleine Mall in Nashville where they said, hey, come to the store, bring your stuff, and you're going to pat our entire store with your product. My dad follows the guy in dressed as a security god now, but my dad's not that great. This guy says, I don't know what he meant by security god, but he approached the guy and maced him.

And the guy fell in the bag that my dad wanted, and my dad couldn't get it out. So he left. No way. This is my dad reporting it. All my podcasts, you can hear him. He said, I left. And I said, what did I do next? I said, geez, how could that have gone better?

I'll get my boys involved. That'll do it. and he drove home and wearing it wow so he had he had a moment that again

we don't really know where he had this turn where he goes I'm going to start really robbing for real yeah well I mean I'm sure you can look up

in the telegraph in New Hampshire that this happened I'm sure it was reported in the paper but that one kind of failed and he goes I need accomplices

and I can't just trust anyone I can you know if I get my buddy he's going to rat on me I need to get who can I trust the most

my two boys so he gets you and your brother he initially got my brother with a completely different story. What was that? The first one was basically, we both were up at Plymouth State College, ripping

it up. Oh my God, we having a blast. Plymouth State College, give me a break. It's in the middle of two mountains and there's nothing else. And we were spending a lot of his money. We were still I mean, we were both of age. We should have been making our own money, but we thought we were going to college, which we weren't. And when we came home, he was

very agitated. He was like, guys, you can't spend any more money. He was just a place that I had never seen emotionally. And my dad was never an emotional guy. And my dad said, well, Kev's going to start helping me at the office do filing. And I'm sorry, but, you know, my brother's not a filer unless you want the file cabinet, jettisoned into a pond somewhere. That's pretty much it.

And I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And I just sat at home for a couple days and said, something's not right here. And they came home and my brother just kind of saunters over and sits in a chair. and my dad sits down at the foot of the stairs and he says, son, your brother needs your help and I need your help. And he explained to me that he invested with this guy. And Jacob was the very first robbery that I was involved with. That my dad had invested $30,000 with this guy to bring diamonds from Israel.

This guy was buying a lot, $800,000 lot. And he was putting together investors to bring it in. And everyone was going to make money. It was foolproof. The guy pretended he didn't even know my dad. After giving the money. Yep. And my dad was like, that's all my saving.

You guys have to come out of college. You got to start working full time. And I'm sorry. I don't like to work. I like weed. And I don't want to do it anymore. I don't ever want to work full time again. And that was my mentality back then.

And I get that from my mom. She could lay around for a decade and not even worry about it. So when they asked me, I have to tell you, like, you know, not to be all psychological, but it jettisoned me back to a time when I was so young and my dad and brother were always the same size. They were like carving copies of each other. And I was like, I'm never going to fit into this. And my brother, my dad was taking my brother to jaws. And I was just wrecked.

I was like, yeah, come here. And I was just, I was right in the middle of like a level five hissy fit. you know, an emergency room, has he fit. When my dad goes and gets the book and brings it over and says, this is the movie. And it showed the shark coming up to the gym.

I was like, no, I'm good. You guys go. But when they asked me to do that, it was like, hey, I'm getting included in something that I've never been included in. Oh, wow. All the construction we did on that house that we stole was just an anxiety attack for me

because I was always little. My brother was a, boom. My brother was born 13 pounds. Damn. Yeah. Came right out. Butterball. fucking turkey.

And then once my brother, my mother got pregnant again, her womb was like, no, we're only doing half of that again. No. No way we're doing a full version of that again. So your brother and your dad are just wrecked Ralph. Oh my God. Are they just, and it's almost like, I don't blame, I couldn't blame it. I was like, look at them.

They're carving copies. And you're Luigi. Yeah. And so they would always play sports together, I'm sure. They would do stuff together. And you were always kind of the third wheel. Shit. I was just, my dad would just, oh.

Every time he'd look at me, he'd just be, oh, what did I do? Damn. Like, really considering regretting, not pulling out. Like, that's the kind of shit. You're like, how late can I get an abortion? I know he's seven years old. Can you do it in the 15,000th trimester? Because I'm swinging by the vet after this.

It's 15 bucks. We put them down. So finally they come to you and they're like, hey, we need you, Brian. Yeah. Because Kev needed me, number one. And number two, a huge part of this story is my brother's type 1 diabetes. my brother type 1 diabetic and it was just such a I understand it more now

so I understand that there's a lot of hindsight in what I'm about to say because my brother was so afraid of high sugars that he learned to live low now a low blood sugar is 20 and you're in a seizure my brother's sitting in jostling and after a lifetime of just being so afraid of having high sugar and his foot cut off or losing his sight because that's what they're facing regardless of how healthy you are

you know, at 50, they're like, no, we're shutting it down. He was so afraid of that that he learned to live on very low blood sugars. So he's sitting at Jocelyn, and my dad's like, he could be coherent at a blood sugar of 19 and Jocelyn last. No, they're like, oh, and they test him, and he's 16. And they started asking him questions. He's perfectly coherent, and then he drops. Done, seizure.

Yeah. And my brother lived on low blood sugars to the point that anyone that knew him or lived around him became his caregiver, and learned to carry Jolly Ranchers with him or any type of candy that you could get into him that would bring his blood sugar back up. Wow. And he drank just tons of sugar

just to manage this process. Wow. But refused to wear any type of pump once the technology became available and ended up making it worse on himself. Wow. Almost like the handicapped him. And you had mentioned before

that his blood sugar problem made him prone to violence. Yeah, I called him the giggling Hulk because he would just I mean, imagine the hulk is kicking the shit out of you

but he's laughing while he's doing. Wow. And he would just start throwing you around. He would refuse the sugar. He didn't, he just, again, I don't know

what that's like. Yeah. I've never lived like that and it's got to make you feel very different. And my brother was an Adonis. I mean,

the kid just had all the genetics. It just was just too stupid. Not stupid. He just didn't give a shit. So when you put him out on a football field and he knew the play, he'd be like, no, I'm going to go this way.

There's a squirrel over there. But, I mean, put him down in front of a book, and they'll tell you at the end of that book what's on page 38, what paragraph to find it. Almost idetic. Sharp guy. Yeah. But angry.

Yeah. Wow. Very angry. And again, I don't know that when you look at family dynamics, once my father and mother divorced, he was at a different age than me, three years older than me. And it hit him different.

He's like, you know, when I get in trouble, mom and dad have to be to get a guy. together to deal with it. So he just started going nuts. Kev's adolescence, man. We had the cops all the cops was just part of our life between my mother's alcoholism and my brother. My brother stole a car twice, two nights in a row. Found the keys, drove around, had a blast, dropped it off, got away with it, went to bed, got up to the next night, said, let's do it again. Bagged. The same car? Yeah. What? He like getting in trouble because then your parents would give him attention, they would

come together. It would give him that feeling of normalcy that he grew up with. 100%. Wow. But my brother was also the type of person that he had a computer teacher in school, Catholic high school we went to that he didn't like. But the teacher made the mistake of saying, if you're not going to try and you're not going to do your very best in this class, don't bother coming. My brother said, so I didn't go. I wasn't going to do any of that.

So I didn't go. He was very science, literal A plus B equals C. So there's no gray with my brother. Wow. You put him in front of the therapist. He's like, nope. Really? Shut down.

Yeah. I don't think he was psychotherapizable. And I might have just made that show. That sounds like a good word, though. I like it. I love it. And so what is the task that they want you to do? And what do you have to do to help your brother?

Just to make sure that because he was the muscle man. He was the person that was going to subdue the danger of all of this. My dad couldn't do it. My dad's knees were shot from being amazing. You could just kick him over pretty easily. And look at me. and it's coming with a gatling gun before you're going to think I'm a threat

you know what I mean and that's why a lot of people will be like oh yeah did you have a gun during the robbery I said listen if you look at my brother and he sternly ask you for all of your stuff probably going to give it over to him he was the gun yeah but if I don't have a gun and I ask you for all of your stuff

you're probably going to look at me and be like dude I think I can take you wow no so yeah like my brother moved into runs into a story like everybody on the fucking they're already on the for. Wow. Yeah. So what was your role in the first robbery? We stood behind the garage, which was separated from the house of this guy, Jacob, that ripped my dad off.

Our inside guy was also ripped off. So he said, and this guy was just still operating, and that's the part of it that my dad was like, no, no, you are not going to continue to, I know you have these diamonds and I'm coming to get them. also keep in mind that since he didn't tell us about the first robbery, I don't know if any of that story about investing into anything was true. Wow. I am his son and I'm sitting here telling you, I don't know if it was true, but that is what drove me to stand behind that garage. Somebody fucked with my dad,

and my brother is standing here about to fucking put his life in danger, and I'm going with him. And that was my motivation. It wasn't the diamond. The diamonds are pretty good. Yeah, the diamonds are cool. The diamonds are safe. But that, but that's,

That was my motivation. And then to learn that he had done it before, it started to bring into question. Hey, every robbery was presented to us as, this guy's bad. He's fucking with people. And people are asking us to help. The Robin Hood bullshit.

We got to save the day. There any mobster fucking fools himself with and lulls himself to sleep at night with. Wow. You know what I mean? It's a crock of shit. Do you think your dad actually was ripped off by this guy? No.

I don't. He still tells you. in the podcast. He'll say, I don't know. Yeah, I think, I think it's bullshit. But does he, to, no, he, in the podcast, which was recent that he, we did this. He says he's still going with the number 30,000 he invested with it. So maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Either way, that first robbery put a, put a wrench into our thinking that we were so integral for him. And what I mean? Or to this. And we were at, At the end of it, when the chips fall and everybody ends up rating.

Yeah. I'm sorry, but there's maybe four people in prison right now that didn't rat. Like, can I rat now? It's just such bullshit. Like this whole, the first person that's like, oh, never rat, that's the dude. Yeah, yeah. Check him for a while. He's singing every night.

So you're standing behind the garage. This guy, Jacob, that allegedly ripped off your dad. You guys got to go get some money from him. We're going to take his case. because we know that he at least has what the inside guy ordered. So the inside guy said, okay, I need X. It was right before Christmas. It was December 23rd.

So this guy is like probably working 24 hours a day. Like this is the time for him. This is his season. So we were trying to make sure that what was in that case was what would be worth it for us. At least what would cover all the losses. So your dad tells the inside guy, hey, put in orders for this. He goes, let's do it. puts in the order with Jacob.

meets with the guy right before he goes to his house. So we had it perfect. Kev was standing next to the garage. It was separated from the house. So here's the main structure of the house. Boom. Sorry, I'm using visuals. And then right to the side over here.

Let me say this is the garage. Do you have anything ape-shaped? No, like here's my brother waiting for the motion detector to come on. And he's pasted against the wall. Full moon out. Like we are as visible. against that. I think as you can possibly imagine.

And we're just kind of standing there first. Like, we don't know. Like, where would you ever learn what to do? We wore dark clothes and stood against a stark white wall in front of a neighborhood of people that were like, I don't know what's going on. So as soon as he starts coming up and the light goes on, my brother, just, I don't know what that was.

He just starts tapping his hand to me. Like, don't go yet, don't go yet, don't go yet. And I'm like, are you talking to me? Am I in this yet? I don't think so. That's when I start fishing around for the Jolly Rancher. Like, I don't think I, I don't want to have to give him a cherry Jolly Rancher while he's kicking the shit out of a guy in front of his house.

So then my brother just, boom, he turns to me and he goes, count to 10. And then come out. Boom, he's off. Like he just jumped out of a plane. I hear, ah! Which I knew was not my brother. And I'm like, one, two, fuck it. I got to see this.

I don't know what he's doing to him, and I run out, and I run right up. My brother's got him down on the hood, and I'm sorry, but as huge as my brother is. He couldn't punch, man. He would rather pick you up and throw you. And we specifically said, please don't do that, Kev. I don't want to have to fetch the case. He would keep it, you know, in an enclosed area. So he's got him on the hill, and he's hitting him, and I go to grab the case, and I hear stuff going on, lights are going on in the house,

somebody's in the house coming back. I grabbed the case. He wasn't letting it go. because he knew what was in it. I stepped back and I was like, Kev, can we move it along? I literally, like that was my attitude. I was just, he's not giving it up.

What do you want me to do? Last time I go down to grab it, he lets go of it. I tuck it and boom, my brother goes, run. He goes, don't care about what happens to me, run. Across the street is my dad sitting in a stolen car. Now, where did we steal cars? My dad would rent a car the week before, make a key of it, put it back on the lot,

And back then, they would just open lots up in New Hampshire, you know, U-Haul or whatever, would go at the night of the robbery, grab it, steal a plate of another car, and that's what he would use. And he was across the street on a divided highway. Wow. I got the case. I'm running. I got my brother behind me, and I hear the guy chasing us yelling, you bastards.

I jump into the back of the car. My brother gets in the front. My dad speeds off. And my dad said, I don't care what's in that case, guys. I love you both very much. And I would have robbed the fucking Pope after that, the way I felt. Well, maybe a little after that because then I saw the diamonds. And I was like, okay, this is a pretty good game.

Now, I, I, the, the, uh, always the goal was to split. So if there was a description of the car going, I was, I was, I was, I was gone. So they stopped at my Ford Bronco 2, which I miss if it's out there. Hi. I popped in that with the case and I drove back home. Wow. I go home and I put the case down and I'm like, I'm not looking at it.

I'm a solid guy. I'm not going to do it. And I open it and I'm like, uh-oh, nothing. There was nothing in there. I start fishing around thinking, where's one hide diamonds? There was a couple of catalogs.

There was a couple pincher things to pick up diamonds. There was an eye loop thing. And I started going, uh-oh. And I put the case down. And I was like, I like wanted to get some coal and maybe start stomping on it because I didn't want that to be disappointed. pointed when they come home.

Like, I was going to make my own diamond. Finally, I start fishing around. I open it up again. And there were these little tiny white folds the way we used to fold cocaine in the 80s. Yeah, I don't know if you're, I don't know how old you were over. No, stop it. I didn't do 80s cocaine. Wow.

Get a flux capacitor. Go back to the 80s and try that shit. Messed a lot of people up, man. Poor Hunter Biden's right now. All messed up because of it. Now, I open up one of these little packets. And I apparently opened it upside down because it sounded like, the beginning of hungry, hungry hippos on my floor.

It's like half-carat diamonds just all over my floor. And I was both amazed, but at the same time, being like, this is going to be a really odd scene when dad gets home. So I get to my floor and I start doing the hungry, hungry hippo. I start scooping them all up. I get it back in the case. I fold it badly and I pop it back in the... Some fingernails and shit.

Everything. Oh my God. I was like, did I leave any? And there was probably about $250,000 worth of loose diamonds in that case. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick, because it's 2024, and it's time to talk about something important. When you are seriously hurt, your injury could be worth millions.

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slash gag-non or dial pound law. That's pound-529 from your cell phone. That's for the people, F-O-R-the-people.com slash gag-on or dial pound law pound-five-29 from your cell phone. This is a paid advertisement. Now let's get back to the show after the short disclaimer. You don't have to have a lot of diamonds to get to 250,000. Wow. But boom, there it is. Hidden all in the case. Not hidden.

They were all in little folds. You know, it was just like, hey, here's a fold. Now, when you go to a jewelry store, they will often go in the back and bring out one of these folds. And when they open it, and people will know what I'm talking about. They open this white paper, but inside is very fine blue tissue paper. That brings out the color of the diamond because one of the three Cs, or is it four Cs now, color cut clarity. What's the yellow on? Oh.

But if you take that diamond and it's colored yellow, most are yellow. You won't find a lot of white diamonds. And now they're repressurizing them to take the yellow out. Do you want a repressurize diamond that was yellow? That is now, no, and that's why this is just such a shit game. You want something rare, go get an emerald. Go get a sapphire. Never he treated sapphire.

Never he treated. Most of them are grown now. So you can find an Indian, Salon, Blue Sapphire. you got something rarer than any diamond. Wow. So, cutting stuff. They're putting at the end of drills with diamonds. That's not rare.

So you're 20 years old. You just got everything that you ever wanted. You got a bunch of diamonds, which is awesome. $250,000, which is pretty a good lick when you're 20. You got to hang with your brother and your dad. So you got to be in the in-group. And on top of that, and on the top of that, your dad told you how much he loved you. How many times have you heard that in your life?

Lexa Pro can't bring me that. much serotonin. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that was... Up until that point, I mean, that must have been like, boom. Yeah. So you're like, this is what I'm here for.

This is the game now. I'm in. I don't think me and my brother expected to do it again. Really? No, at no point did we drive away thinking, let's do it again? Because the idea was that this guy ripped us off and we just got our get back. Dad is saved. Roll credits.

That should be the end of the story. Yeah. To us. Then what? Then he calls us up. It was spring break. So Christmas was the first robbery of 1991. Spring break of that year, we go home and he's like, I got another problem.

This was presented to us as we were helping the same people as dad in this scenario. So this guy that had a freestanding structure store had ripped a bunch of people off and their cash that he owed them was in their safe. We were told $50,000 was in the safe. If we took down the store and got that money, we could have the rest of the store, which was six glass cases in the front. And we knew he had a safe. So we had to get in that safe. We also knew he had a recording system.

This is 1980. Get the videotape recording system over. We also knew that there was no alarm that could call out, which now is a huge deal. Any alarm that is tripped that can call out. Now it's next to impossible to disable that. because it's now wireless. Yeah. I mean,

so alarm companies just wirelessly call the cops and you're screwed. Yeah, when you say call out, you mean... So anything tripped. You push a button

and it goes through the phone line and then it calls the police. Oh, you can smash a glass and have that happen. Right, right, right. So it's pressure sensors, all that shit. 100%.

And this is... Nowadays it's all satellite and there's backup power things. So it's pretty much impossible to get around these. But in that time, it was a phone line. Yep.

And a freestanding store was important. Why? Because you don't want to have a neighbor. And now you have to start casing. And casing really is just the key to it. Now, we had the inside information. We knew his name was Woody. We knew he was strapped.

He had a 45 under his arm that looked like a gatling gun. We knew that he always took it off before he came out. He sold, it was a big bay window on one side, which was the jewelry side. And he had flowers on the other side. So from there, you start to get to know the, business, what is the traffic? How often does a cop go by? It's a busy road. When is the traffic the thickest? When are people coming through to get to work? When are they coming home? Who's around now? The other part of casing is don't get cased casing. Don't stick out. Don't

have somebody be able to say at some point, now those guys hung out every single day around seven in the parking lot in the same car. And then ever since the robbery, no one's seen them. Yeah. And and but you will stick out. We bought a slice of pizza in a robbery like this. that was attached to a Papagino's, and that's a New England thing. But everyone remembers us. When questioned, everyone in Papagino's remembered us when we got a slice.

Wow. All of them. So it's like, yeah, those are things you're going to work about. So when you're casing a place, it's important not to stick out while you're trying to not stick out. It's so weird. Like, the more you blend,

the more you start to stick out. Right, because you become a part of the traffic. 100%. And then the second you remove yourself, off, you go, oh, something's missing. You become part of the snapshot of everybody's day. I drive into work and there's nothing in the parking lot. Oh, one day there's a yellow car in the parking lot.

Now, wait a second, there's another yellow car on it. And it just, yeah, you start to become the habit that people develop in their minds. No matter how benign it is. Yeah. So you have to start doing things like not being able to park in the same place all the time without sticking out. You have to change your appearance. You have to use different cars. You can't be in and out.

You can't get out to pee all the time. Like, you know, and this is what cops know about stakeouts. You can't just get out of your car and take a piss, whatever. I'm going to get some funions. I'll be right back. No, you have to be part of the landscape without being part of the landscape. So now you're on spring break. You guys got to go get this money back for this guy.

God, this robbery was so stressful, man. It was, A, we have to make sure that we subdue the guy. That was always the issue. Can we control the store and control the owner? Our two huge components here of, holy fuck, because there's just no variable you can plan for. Two seconds, a cop to stop. Besides, he forgot his lunchbox and turns around, your whole casing becomes a shit show.

Not only a shit show, you could die. Thank you. Like, that's a part of it. Like, I don't think that can be downplayed. Not at all. The penalty for this is not, oh, we go to prison. The penalty is we get four slugs to the chest each, and that's it. Or, I mean, heaven forbid, like, your dad gets killed.

Like, what's worse, you die or you watch your father die while trying to do something, you know, potentially noble, right? trying to go get this money back for this guy. Shit, man. It's, the stakes are high. And then on top of that, you're not one of these guys. It's like an agro criminal. Like, you know, this is not your idea. Oh, I stole two thirds of a house and then I retired.

That was it for me. Like, for all intents of purposes, just even sitting with you, like, you're a pretty docile, chill dude. And so now you're... So now you're getting pulled into this thing and you're like, holy shit. So you case out the place for how long, roughly? At least two weeks. So two weeks.

I got to drop my father and my brother because they stick out like sore thumbs with sore thumbs. So you're doing most of the casing. I have to. Look at me. I'm average height, average weight, average everything. Yeah, you are the poster boy. Except penis, oh, me. I'm in the poster boy forever.

You are the Boston mascot. I was in three lineups that they couldn't pick me out. No way. So proud of that day. There's two days I'm really proud of. Not getting picked in those three lineups. And the day they, when they arrested me, they shut down two bridges. There was a helicopter.

I got out like, like I was receiving an oxen. Because they perp walked my dad and brother. Wow. So they put them on the news and it. Because cops, like, hey, look at this thing I got. Yeah. And they get me in there, like, they cuffed me in the front. Yeah.

Guys, if they ever cuff you in the front, they think you have a vagina that you're trying to hide. Like, they don't worry about you at all. They're like, here the keys. Here are the cuffs. Put them in the front. Don't make me kick your ass. Oh, yeah. So after I got arrested, they came up to New Hampshire to drive.

me and I didn't fight extradition and they cuffed me in the front. They're two giant, two meat bags. And they bring me down to the state police headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I'm walking in and all the other cops are like, oh, so you finally got the third badass, huh? Look at that badass. We've been looking for that badass. And I was like, hmm.

So they take my cuffs on and I don't, take them off. And I don't know why my brain said, do this. And I had probably 30 cuffs. Oh, boy. Yeah. It was not a good move. Don't ever do that. Yeah.

Made you look. Flinch, that's two for flinching. You should have punched them once. So we're talking the day of the robbery, we got, we stole a minivan. And again, this is the same stealing technique of the rental car. Yeah, we started just pulling them off the same lot because it just worked. We had to stop doing that eventually and we'll get into that as we go forward because that was one of the reasons why my brother was identified in this whole thing.

Wow. So pull a minivan in front of the picture window of where I'm going to be doing the snatching and grabbing. My dad's job is always to find the loot we know is somewhere else in the building. So he's like the gopher. I'm snatch and grabbing the cases while my brother handcuffs the guy to the back bathroom, which we knew was there from the inside information, to the plumbing. And okay, where do you get handcuffs? You buy them online.

No. There was no online. There was no online. You got to like a military supply store or something? Nope. I went to a porn store. That guy was going to get cuffed with pink frilly. Pink frilly handcuffs.

Like I tried to take the frilliness off. Couldn't do it. I was like, that was the thing that I woke out and I was just, this was just insult to injury. That feels wrong. But that's the only place at that time that we knew of. Like maybe those places are correct that you're talking about. But I didn't know that. I'm from Boston.

Where do you get handcuffs? We found a smoke shop. And there it is. We got them. So I got those in my pocket. We pull up. We have to get buzzed in. How do you feel the day before, like you're waking up that morning?

What are you thinking of yourself? It's days. As soon as you start planning, it's anxiety. It is the same anxiety I would liken to what people get before they skydive. It's that, oh my God. Oh, my God. It's adrenaline. You feel your breath being short.

It's a burn everywhere from everything. And you can't think right. And again, you could run every scenario over. Did we think of this? Did we think of this? Did we think of this? Should I bring this up? It's awful. I got to tell you, it probably took years off my life.

We'll see. It was just unbelievably stressful. You have a moment with your brother where you're laying in bed next to him. This was it. In the same room. And what happens? He was in a room, but he was across. And he just, he just kind of woke up and he said, did you sleep?

And I was like, no. And he goes, me neither. And there was just a pause and he said, bry, are we bad people? I didn't know. I was like, geez, if I paused too long, I said, no, he fucked with people. We're in there to help other people. And I knew I was lying to him. I just knew it.

I was just, when you do the math. Yeah. Bad is as bad does. So he was always asking that question. When do we stop? But without him, I'm not running into a store and scaring anyone. I'm just not. Wow. So day of, you guys are minutes away from going in.

You case the whole thing. You have the plan. Everything's in place. Four in front, we get inside the store. My dad goes in with the story. Here's my son. He's getting engaged. We want to see some engagement rings.

My wife is, my dad was so perfect as that guy. My wife's really mad because I waited this long. We also need flowers for the entire wedding because of blah, blah. He always came up with the backstory. Details are super important. But the guy stayed strapped. At no point in our casing did that man come out at 9 a.m. When he opened that store with a loaded gun under his arm.

Imagine going into a jewelry store. What would you think? Yeah, this guy's got put, yeah. You don't want to scare the customers. It seems crazy. 100% no. And most people that have to carry a gun with any regularity or because you have something that people are going to take

will probably tell you they don't like it. Because anybody that we had robbed that we had to take the gun away from, I had to unbutton somebody's back pocket to get the holstered gun that came out that was buttoned in the holster. It would have taken this guy. This guy would have three bullets in him before he could ever even get the gun out of his back pocket. But he had to carry it because if you're going to be insured,

the insurance company says we would depreciate it if you could fire back. I guess is the policy. So he's strapped and we're telling him the story and everything's sort of falling into place. We're just waiting for Kev to go over the case and take the guy down. And he wouldn't. None of us felt right about it.

So the guy goes in the back. My dad says, I don't like any of these. Do you have anything bigger? And that was always our thing. You had to get him into the safe. Because that guy, if the stuff in the front is even real, you need the stuff in the safe and if he's going back there

getting a piece out at a time and relocking it that's a safe that's useless to us so we have to get him to the point where he thinks that we're such buyers and he's going to make so much money off us that he goes back to that safe

and just opens it and that's a normal human behavior I'm lazy I'm going to just open it and keep it open for the time that they're here and now we're in we needed that to happen

because the safe is completely locked and you guys can't access no you're not going to be able to get I'm sorry you're not getting into safe So you basically give this guy some errands. Hey, go back and forth, check the safe again, two, three times. And then by the second or third time, maybe he says, you know what, I'll just leave it open.

Yeah, if he thinks he's going to make a ton, if you think he's going to buy the diamond and the band with diamonds in it and he won't buy. And if you say, I'm not going to buy it set. That's another huge thing with jewelry. You do not buy rings set. Because I can change one of those seas by turning that diamond and putting the flaw into the setting that you don't see it with any type of scope under. And so normal is 10 times magnification that you would look at that diamond and say, oh, here's how I'm going to judge it for cut clarity and all of that other stuff. But if I said it correctly, I can hide six of the flaws.

Wow. And you don't see them anymore. So all of a sudden, this flawed diamond is now flawless. Yeah. The other thing is when you go in there to have its service, don't you dare leave that thing out of your sight because you're leaving with a different diamond. And it's happened multiple times. Look it up on 2020.

They frequently will go in and say, here's a flawless diamond. Will you size it? and you leave with a yellow S-I-crap piece of shit. No way. They laser inscribe it. They do all of it.

And then they go back in and they say, what did you do? Yeah, bagged. And my dad and I talk about this a lot on the podcast. It happens pretty regularly. Wow.

These jewelers are switching it out. How'd you know? You go in and you have your time X, your Rolex serviced, and you walk out with a time X inside. Dude. This thing is great. Oh, I mean, these guys are scumbags.

Pretty much, man. I'm on your side now. How much markup do you need, though? This guy's already jacking up. So every single diamond person gets the rap report, which every single day, like gold and everything else, as a commodity, it fluctuate. So you want to know what it is that price that day.

So when somebody comes in, you know that that $4,000 today is only $3,900. And, you know, what you do with that is probably nothing. You're still going to jack it up 800%. Yeah. It's insane. So back to the story. You're standing there, your brother, your dad. This guy's got a gun under his arm.

He's going back and forth to the safe, but he's completely loaded. So he's in the back and we all kind of huddle over by the flower side and I go to my dad I'm like, I actually turn to my brother and I'm like, are you trying to fucking kill me?

Are you gonna take him down or what? Are we doing this? And my brother said, something doesn't feel right. And I said, I completely agree. And my dad says, what do you mean? I said, neither one of us feel good about this dad. Let's get out of here.

And my dad said, okay, let's go. And we left. Wow. A week later, the guy's best friend walked into that store, went into the back, with him because he was invited. He was his best friend. Shot his brains out and walked away with everything. He took a duffel bag full of the cases,

full of the money, full of the handgun, full of broken glass and blood on it, and brought it home, put it in his bathroom. Wow. Somebody, and this is bullshit to me because somebody heard the gunshot, which is not uncommon, but again, freestanding store at a very quiet time. Now, that's, to me, that's one of those caught bullshit, hey, we're going to get probable cause by saying an anonymous call, which is great. because you caught a scumbag.

Yeah. We were just going to rob him. Those words still coming out of my mouth. Sound like that's a better option for him. Well, I mean, it is. But to me, I'm like, wait, I mean, don't you say that? No, I mean, obviously, robbing a guy is worse than not rob him, but killing him is worse than robium.

Yeah, I got to practice that. I can't go in front of God with that. So I have articles of the guy doing, was sentenced to life. So basically, once they were on. to him, which was not hard to do. Two detectives went to question him. And the guy says, I want to go to the bathroom

and crawls out of his bathroom window with the duffel bag and puts it in his neighbor's, under his neighbor's porch. Well, now you don't need probable cause. You just have a knock on the neighbor's door and say, can I take that bag? Because your scumbag, murdering neighbor just put it under there and he's busted.

That's how he got caught. Wow. Dumb, dumb. I don't know that there's a smart criminal, but that's pretty fucking dumb. Wow. Yeah. So you guys get home and regroup,

and what is the feeling? Is it? We got home and regrouped and we were like, shit. I wanted my, I wanted my diamonds. It was a disappointment and it's letting dad down. It was like, okay. It was adrenaline without the payoff, I guess. But then a week later, just as we were heading back to school, my dad's like,

hey, boys put it on the news. And he comes running downstairs and we saw it on the news. And we were like, we were just going to rob him. Wow. No. Saving a life through robbery. I don't get credit for that. Now, you had mentioned that this guy's death in that area

kind of changed the scope of what you guys were doing. Everybody was told, lay down. Everyone. So we went nuts. It was like it opened the door for, you would think it would tighten things up. And it did tighten things up for us, but again, we had inside people. And once you have an inside person, I don't care what you're doing security-wise. That is getting told to other people.

So the only thing that you can do to make sure nobody knows how you're protecting yourself is don't tell anyone. Don't even tell yourself. So it made it easier to rob because now if you go in there to say, hey, I have a gun in my bag, give me everything you got. They go. You go in blazing.

You go, not blazing, but you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, it's not a bank robbery.

You go in and it's quick. We were in and out 90 seconds, fast, unless it was something we had to lull the safe open for. So in those situations, it was send my dad and his girlfriend in, who eventually ratted me out, hit my dad's girlfriend.

She's the only one that could place me at the burrower. Burlington robbery, which was our third. So we had Jacob, then we had that failed one, and then my dad found a way to get a store rented without having to give his name. I don't know how he did that. I think I asked him on the podcast, and I still don't remember his answer because I still can't imagine how a landlord said, I don't need any ID. I don't need anything from you to sign this lease.

Take a lease. Yeah. My dad did a complete fake name, fake everything, paid the guy cash. advance for a bunch of months and said, we're going to open a jewelry store here. It was in a very prominent part of Burlington. There were two gas stations on each side. You know, a lot of communters in and out. It was a very busy parking lot with a drug store next door.

We had attached stores. I had a dry cleaner next to us. And I forget it was on the other side, but it was an empty store. So his plan is to make a jewelry store, open it up, rob jewelry stores. It was just to get one guy. This is just one guy. We were after Bob. This is the robbery that I ended up going away for, was the Burlington.

We were after one guy and we were setting it up because we couldn't get anybody else after that death to meet anybody anywhere without having a legitimate storefront to go to. We couldn't just say, hey, meet us at the corner of fifth and two, we'll be in the white panel van with the guns and just leave the shit. You know what I mean? No one would go anywhere unless they knew. Yep. So you had to have a legitimate phone number. They wouldn't meet a man. So we needed a female.

We needed my dad's girlfriend to be the contact saying, oh yeah. So he felt lulled into a sense of security. Now, was your dad trying to do that before this? Because, again, this is just the Jacobs guy, which came from an inside thing. And then Woody, with the failed one, was he trying to lure salesman in? And he was calling him up and it wasn't working.

We wanted this guy because our inside guy said he had the most driving around. He had a Lincoln Continental. There were three locks on the back quarter panel. one of them popped open the trunk. The other two set off a massive alarm. The windows were bulletproof. To open the back, once you opened one of those and you got the right one,

it only popped up a little, so you couldn't remove anything until you got the lock inside with that key. And then there was a chain that only let it up a little bit more. So it was a shit show. So we needed to talk to this person. It wasn't just about subduing him.

It was about getting him into a place where he can tell us, how to get into this thing. So now your dad comes to you and at this point, this is no longer, hey, we're Batman getting some get back for a bad guy. We're doing it again. Hey, we are just straight up making a fake front

to rob this dude. And at that point are you like, all right, I like the money and I like the adulation and I like the camaraderie. Oh, the money. Dude, I grew up poor. I didn't have shit.

I, you know, I was a kid that was beat up because I was wearing secondhand stuff. I can show you a picture of me as a kid and I have a collar on that. It looks like I just went hand gliding. You know, because it was my brother's stuff. Yeah, no, but it was my brother's stuff. I was in a triple, I was in a triple X and I'm a Smedium.

Yeah. It's ridiculous. So the money was just too good and it was not having to worry. Like from then, I was taking English classes. I was studying English. What the hell am I studying English for me? That's great. So you're in college, but you're also spending money off this lick from Jacob.

Oh, I had a Ford Bronco. We were just rolling in it, man. How much did you get from that first one? Me and my brother probably cleared 50 each. Wow. In 80 something? Oh my God, yeah. I remember throwing it on a bed in a hotel

because our thing was, this was after the Burlington robbery where after we got into the car, after we talked to the guy, and after he told us all the keys to get in and out, and that's where I got to tell you, we were going to duct tape him to a chair. We didn't want to do cuffs

because we can't cuff him to the chair necessarily. We were going to use duct tape. And I wasn't a person being pulled in for this. And that's where you lay in bed saying, you know, geez, how much duct tape does it take to subdue me into a chair? So I'm just stressed. I'm like, where do you go? Again, there's no internet. I'm sure right now, go ahead and Google it.

That'll give you exact measurement. And I'm like, I go down to the roll of duct tape and I get it and I'm looking for, like, I don't know what I thought would appear. I thought maybe they would tell me how much duct tape it takes to. tape a squirrel to a chair and I can do some math and scale it, but it stressed me out so bad. And I remember that the store had a front where you had all the cases. And then there was this just small dividing wall, right? And there was a doorway. But this wasn't all built up to the ceiling.

And we didn't know that it wasn't very sturdy. The plan was to get him into the store part. My dad would be measuring for carpet back here. Once he came into the store, my dad would push him through. where me and my brother would be standing. My brother would grab him, paste him against the wall. I would get the gun. We'd put him in the chair, tape him up, get him to talk about how to get into the car.

Wow. That's what you're running through your brain. As you are sitting and waiting, the waiting, the casing, the waiting. We didn't do a lot of casing for the store because we controlled the environment 100%, which is not a lot. You can't control the bank you're about to roll. Rob. You know what? It was beautiful. It was really the only way that we could have done what we did then, especially what happened to that last guy. The mouse trap. You set up the trap for him.

So this guy pulls in really late. He was all over the place and we weren't even sure he was going to show up and he comes in and we're ready to go. He calls about 20 minutes out and my brother's sitting on the floor and I'm on the other side and, you know, my brother's got a 9mm. And I had a 3mm.000. and I had a 357. Only because I can aim with kickback, I can't aim with slide action. I don't know what my deal is. You got 17 bullets,

so you don't need the aim. Maybe, you know, just in the general direction and you're fine. And you're in close range too. But man, I was badass with that slide. I just, so I have that,

which, you know, I'm 150 pounds. That's about 100 pounds, so I'm like a little tilted. And my brother, because of the diabetes, we never gave him bullets. And he didn't know that.

Yeah. Because he might just fly off the handle and say, we're all dead. Wow. And stress brought my brother's blood sugar way down. So as always, we all, imagine you have all these things in a duffel bag ready to go. You got duct tape, you got rope just in case, extra bullets, and jolly ranches. Just don't fit in this whole scenario.

You're just like, okay, those ready? And those, I find myself wanting to reach more and more. than any bullets or extra loading. Yeah. And as he's playing with it, me and my brother, me and my dad had a meeting prior to this. I'm like, Dad, you are not giving Kev 17 bullets with type 1 diabetes.

He's like, oh, ring up a book, good point, son. How many bullets should we give him? Like, you're a fucking idiot. Like, so we decided none, but we never wanted Kev to know that. Kev found out in prison and almost killed us both. Oh, is he mad? What?

You said me. Like, imagine, we sent you in there with a sword that was rubber. Good thing, though. I got to tell you a really good thing because we're sitting there and he's playing with it. Like, you think you're a badass when you have a gun. And I didn't care because I knew it wasn't loaded. There was an incident way prior to this where my brother almost shot me doing the same thing. His gun, I don't know. I don't know 9 millimeters, but when to clean it, you hit this little thing and my brother hit it and the thing falls apart. The guy's on

his way as the barrel to the gun is just rolling away from my brother. My dad comes in and says, what happened? He starts picking up pieces of the gun and he starts trying to throw it together and finally just says put the muzzle on top of your hand and point it like that. That's the best. Like, no one, it was just complete panic. Finally, we get it together enough. I don't know. There might have been an extra part like an IKEA piece of furniture. But the guy comes in and everything starts to unfold. I got to get his gun. That is my, just a concern because my brother can grab him, pin him in that time, out. And he has one for sure.

We know it. He had to, especially after what happened to Woody. So it's just, we're standing against the wall. And again, here it. There's that tap my brother's doing it. I'm like, I don't get that signal. Give me a signal, I get it. I don't know what that is.

My dad pushes the guy in. He steps a little further than we thought he would. My brother grabs him, throws him against the wall. The wall was false. the thing starts to so I'm watching the wall and I'm watching my brother like keeping him pinned

but I got to I'm like this would be a hell of a thing boom into the Chinese restaurant next to you well no it would have fell forward and you would have seen exactly what we were doing oh fuck

so it just divided the front of the store from the back of the store but there was no one in the front of the store no but people are walking by like this is an open yeah it's a popular busy area wow people would have seen oh

So we find, this is the guy who I had to unbutton the pants, get it out of the whole stuff. So the gun was no problem. After that, it was like, geez, you could tell this isn't a guy that is readily seeking to grab his firearm to defend himself. And I don't think most people are. I don't think they realize. This is why I'm like, hey, how come no one's ever shot back in an active shooter? Everyone's got guns now. Right.

Once the bullets start flying, I know a woman with five guns, she has three rooms in her house. that's more guns than rooms in your house but again once the bullets fly you're it's a different story so that that I threw his gun and we put him down on the chair and I start duct tape him and I do a joke about this on stage

that I eventually stopped because people started saying whoa they laugh but it's that ha ha ha is he gonna do it to us I just tell this joke that my at one point I was duct taping the hell out of this guy I duct tape him so some of the duct tape pulled on other duct tape and tightened them.

And my dad comes over and just taps me on the shoulder. And it's the same tap I used to get from my ex-wife when I couldn't hit that spot. You know, you get that tap, you get tapped out. And that's not where the shit show starts. I put tape over his mouth and we needed to talk to him and he had a beard. Yeah, dude. It was just. So we had to rip it off and get what keys can get in here and getting in it.

I don't know if he's feeding us correct information. He could be lying because then the other. arm goes off and you don't know men. Some of these people are just like, screw it. I'm not. And we were told that he had reported fake robberies before. That's, we all went after people that, that had reported a fake robbery prior in the past. So the insurance company would instantly start investigating them.

So it was ideal to do that. If you report a fake robbery, the insurance company is going to pay you out for what you got allegedly stolen from you. And then you're still able to sell those goods and then you get the money. So basically, you're stealing from the insurance company. 100%. But if you get robbed twice right after you just reported a robbery, now the insurance company is going to be like, what is going on?

We're either, I mean, and think about how would jack your rates at that point, who are now a liability. Wow. Yeah. So even 10 years after the robbery, when I was married briefly to this girl that lived up in New Hampshire, their next door neighbor came over for Christmas just a stop while once. He owned a jewelry store, and he knew my story. And we're partying and, you know, getting a little buzzed.

And he kind of pulls me aside and he goes, I would love you to do that to my store. I was like, just hearing that puts me in the shit, bro, especially with my, because I was like, really? Tell me about it a little. And then I'll be outraged. I would love to do that to your store. These guys are dying to do it because you got to think of what they're paying in premiums to protect and have this stuff. And you had an inside source that told you this guy fits zone. Everybody.

Everybody. Everybody. We knew a little bit about everybody to the point where we had to figure out some cool ways to do it outside the store. Okay. We'll get to that in a second. But at this point, this guy is tied up. You're duct taping him. You rip the tape off of his mouth. And I get sent out to the car. My dad stays behind. So you're the one. So you're the one. It's just like, you know, I could sit here with a thousand adjectives about how surreal and time slowed down. But it was just like, and it was the middle of August. It was like, click. Boom. The thing comes up. I go underneath, click, and it opens up. This is a busy corner. I mean, people are walking by.

The parking lot is full, in and out. Very heavy traffic. People looking at you, waving back in them. Not knowing that there's a guy tied up in your store. 100%. And during one of my trips back in and out to the, I went through the store

to the back where my Bronco was where I loaded the cases. And on one of my trips, the next door neighbor dry cleaner guy stops and starts asking me questions about the store. Yeah. Can I come take a tour? I would love to see it.

No, you can't. I was doing, yeah, who's my neighbor going to be? Regular questions. And I'm like, I said, I don't know. I'm just a construction guy. I'm just here to build some stuff out. Oh, okay, and he eventually went away. But you're in the middle of a robbery.

In the middle of a robbery. So I, once I open it up, they were, I don't know if you remember these, but they were the suitcases that flapped in, and then the case thing had to come out, and they were square, and they were built like a brick shithouse. Yeah. There were eight of them in there. Inside each one of them were velvet rolls full of,

200 to 300 pieces individually. One was chains, one was men's bracelets, one was women's bracelets, one was gemmed bracelets, one was diamond bracelets, one was in the full catalog. So I'm just pulling cases out. These aren't easy. And this is what I mean, when you see Ben F like running through the streets of LA with a bag of cash on his back, that thing is hundreds of pounds. Sorry, dude, no.

You could probably carry 60, 70 bucks the way he looked in Batman. But from here, no, that thing's heavy. So it's not easy to carry them. Beyond that, there were two big trash bags. So eventually I needed Dad's help and a cop pulled in. And this is where things just, I don't know why my dad did this. But once the cop pulled in, I went in and I said, Dad, I need your help.

Come and help me because a cop just pulled in. And as I went out, my dad turned to my brother and did this. He said, showed the sign of a gun and said, there's a cop outside. And don't do that to my brother. Blood sugar plummet. So as my dad left, apparently my brother cocked the hammer of the gun. And the guy heard it. And he said, please don't kill me.

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Zipmore, smoke less with Zippix nicotine toothpicks. Now let's get back to the show. I don't expect sympathy here. I put him in the position, but, uh, yeah. It was pretty fucked up. Wow. I take the two trash bags and my dad's like, leave him. He had the last two cases.

I'm like, I just ignored him. Close the trunk. Get everything in the Bronco and I'm off. I go home. I couldn't even unload anything. It was just, I had to drink a full glass of wine down, a sandpaper throat just to get the adrenaline back. Because that was a shit show. Yeah.

And again, I always like. left everybody behind. So once we start going through the stuff and start emptying the truck, my dad's like, I told you to leave the fucking trash bags. He says those are invoices. That's evidence. Build a fire and burn it. And I'm out of the threesome.

Like I'm starting to feel like with jaws again. So I go and I build a fire and I'm like, fucking I start opening these things of invoices. And then I open up one of the envelopes and it looks like an Andrew Jackson clown convention inside. Clone convention. it was just all 20s and I dump it on the coffee table next one all hundreds next one boom and I just

and then I'm just I'm sorry I'm just a son of the bitch I was like oh father might you come hither and see what I've discovered and he's got a meaty paw full of chains in his hand and he comes walking over there

there was probably about 30 grand all of a sudden and from there it was always just so funny because when there was cash, it wasn't, we would always say, Dad, we need 10 grand, we're going to go and just hang out somewhere and hide up. It was always to get a half ounce of cocaine and smoke it until we could see our pancreas. We were so thin. And just to get, I don't know why that makes sense. I don't know why a stimulant to counter

a stimulant makes sense, but it worked. I don't know. I have a friend that used to do cocaine and could fall asleep in 20 minutes. So you figure that out. We would just party our brains out just to, and that's when me and my brother would have those conversations. Brian, what are we doing. But now what happened with the guy? For all you know, you got him, yeah, we could have killed him. You go home and you're like, did my brother fucking kill this guy? Did he pull his gun out when my dad walked away and

shoot at everyone? Like, you're sitting there at home drinking wine, not knowing what the hell happened. And on top of that, there's a cop outside. You can't wheel this guy out in the parking lot. So what happened? He left him there. He left him there. So he's tied up, left in the place. Your brother and your dad, they did. And

my brother's girlfriend jetted right after the guy, pushed through the door. We didn't hear there. Leave. We don't want you there. And so then this guy eventually like... Gets himself out.

Gets himself out. Someone calls for him. Something happens. He calls the police. He says, hey... Well, here's the real fucking... This is the part where I left. This is the part where I said, I'm done.

Apparently after I left, my dad talked to the guy, took his license and said, if you do not report to the authorities that three black men robbed you, we're going to come kill you. And let me tell you what a shit show that turned out for. for me in prison when one of the articles I gave you will report that.

That's what we said. And that's in the paper. Oh, fuck. It's almost like the DA's like, here you go, guys, enjoy the two-thirds African-American population in that place, loving you. Because they know. Yeah. I mean, they have a hard enough time as it is without us saying three white guys were black.

It was just awful. Wow. It just, I was taught to be a racist, man. And it always felt like a punch in the face to me when my grandmother would like, whisper it. Those, goddamn, and she would whisper the racism. And I was always like, that's just, but I was born racist. I'm sorry, just New England. You can look at any municipality during that time of busing. And wherever there was violence and death, that's the most racist place in South Boston had the worst busing incident in the world, man. They were throwing rocks on,

like awful. It was one of the ones where the Coast Guard had to come in and just like, neaten it out. And South Boston is still a shit show now. So don't worry. It's still the same. But that race is just real. I was taught it. So, yeah. And again, it felt like another punch in the face. Like, I knew I was taught it.

I didn't believe it. I said bad things in the past and thought bad things in the past. But this was just like, this was beyond the pale to me. No pun intended. So I was like, dude, when my dad told me that, because I asked, I said, how to go? Did you leave him? And I was like, dude, that ain't right. I'm going back to school.

I don't want to do this anymore. Wow. And Kev talked me into the next one. And at this point, so this is not your third. You had one successful, a fail. This was huge. And this one was a big getaway. My God.

You know, this is probably about $5,000 to $750,000 worth of stuff. This was an entire catalog worth of jewelry. So imagine owning an entire Sears store. And you're cutting a third? Yeah. Now this is a tricky thing with robbing jewelry. You're getting diamonds. You're getting uncut gems.

You're getting gold chains. No, never uncut. That's on a level that, and this is what I talked about with America's Most Wanted, when you steal a gold bar, you're in a different league. You can't go to a jewelry store and get a gold bar. They don't work with gold bars. The people that are taking it and melting it down and putting it into molds that turn it into the rope chain that you want or setting the diamond, it's really just cases and cases and cases full of settings.

And from there, you just pop, pop, pop the loose stone in and it's as much of a production line as it. anything else, but that's a different level. God. This is running into stores, because right now you can't rob a bank. What are you getting out of the bank? You've got to go into the vault. Like, when you go into a vault, you're longer than any police response time, and you're done. You're not getting any money. And the money you do get, maybe you make $1,500.

So the stuff you got from this guy was all consumer level, ready to go. Yeah. But now, if you take it to a- pawn shop. And you're screwed. The police told all the pawn shop guys, hey, if anyone comes in here selling these types of diamonds or jewels, you got to call us. All of that's a shit show because.

you can go into any punch up with one piece and walk out with a couple hundred bucks, walk in with five, he's got questions. So now you get almost a million dollars worth of consumer level diamonds and jewels and gold bracelets. How do you get rid of it? We had gold parties. So we would just put the word out to friends, family, anybody.

And you wouldn't believe once you offer somebody a fantastic deal on jewelry and people see the shiny thing in front of them, how much people fork up cash, man. It was like having cocaine parts. We would just go to this, and it was usually around the holidays, and I'll tell you something, our biggest customer was the Wall Tham Police Department, and they didn't even know it. So you set up like a ballroom? Like, where do you do this?

Do it in somebody's house. Hey, hey, if you have a gold party, we'll give you 30% of what we make, or you can take a piece of jewelry. So your dad knows a guy and says, hey. And it spreads like that. You'll end up doing five, six parties a week and walking out with just loads of cash. Wow. Yeah. And then you're inviting your friends.

You're inviting. Everyone, yeah, come on. And is there a question? Are they looking at your dad? Like, oh, where did you? We told them. Me and my brother couldn't wait to brag about it. Guess what we did with Dad?

We robbed stores. Yeah. That's just, yeah. And no one ratted? Well, no one. I don't know that anyone really even believed it. I mean, they're walking in your house and there's a million dollars worth of diamonds and jewels. No, nobody's walking in the house that one.

We went to a gold party when we brought stuff to you and we did it in, we did it modestly. We didn't bring our whole catalog with us. We said, who were these people? You know, wealth and police. We're not bringing in loose stones. While then police were bringing in the clatterings and, you know, the stuff that we know might be a little less than fake or a little more. You don't know.

God. If her finger turns green in a month, give us a call. It was always based on that. And again, it was just so easy. It's so easy to give somebody a good deal in them just the word just spreads like wildfire. What a mouth is the best marketing for any business. So that part was pretty easy. Really was.

We were. Yeah. And again, it was, if this was in Julo world, if the mob was running it, they would take it. And they would give us 10 cents on the dollar. Fuck you. Because they assume all the risk. The Bulger world? 60, 70 cents on the dollar.

If we're selling it our cents. If we're selling it ourselves, we're getting over retail. We're getting 50 to 60 under wholesale. Wow. Not retail. Wow. And that you know that's just a, that's a chasm. Right.

If it's a 20x markup, you're taking the 10x markup, which is still an insane margin. Yeah. 100%. Wow. So how long did it take you to sell? the inventory from the Burlington robbery. You know, every single robbery, we decided that our co-defendant that was the inside guy, did not deserve to be in on 100% of the take.

So we took the finest, choices, pieces. And my dad, my dad had two safes. He had a safe that was upstairs in his closet that he bolted to the floor. Again, if you have a safe that I can lift and just take out, you don't have a safe. You just have a box I need to open to get your shit when I leave and do with this in my living room. So he bolted the floor down and so you couldn't lift the safe out. And that was the dummy safe. After one of the half ounces of cocaine that me and my brother went through,

my dad decided to take a concrete saw and take a hole out of the foundation of the house, took the block out, dug a hole and sunk a safe in it and threw a carpet over it. The cops couldn't find that after five search warrants. They still couldn't find that safe. But that's where we kept our stash. The rest went to our co-defendant, who was part of the business, and he started letting stuff trickle out. And he was scared to death of us. You know what I mean?

And that's, again, where I don't fault my dad, if I were sitting back and got into his frame of mind of who I would trust to do this. I wouldn't trust anybody to know. When there's a crew, that crew is lifelong. And when you look at some of the robberies, especially the Gold Bar Heist, the third person that they're looking for, dumped his crew and probably knew he was dumping his crew the second after the robbery. See ya. Here's my take. Goodbye.

Wow. And hang out and that's when things are just, you know, people start talking. Wow. And so you got your lick a couple hundred thousand. You sell it pretty easy. You're going back to college with, I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point. And you have the idea to walk away. Yeah.

But you get a suck back in. Well, yeah, man. It becomes, you start worrying about Kav. You start worrying about your family. You start worrying about, I was spending it pretty quick. It wasn't hard. And the call of the money, the greed, I'm assuming, just kind of just gets in your ear. I completely understand it.

I mean, you think to yourself, I'll make $100,000, and then it'll be done. And then you get to $100,000. You go, I mean, I could do $500,000. We could do $1 million. This is easy. Look at how easy this is. And it really did start to get easy. We just started banging them out.

We started hitting stores. We were doing two and three stores a year. So between 1991 and 1990. 95, 22 stores, average is about... Wow. At first, maybe there was five a year, but my dad thought the cathedral of jewelry was the jewelers building in Boston,

seven straight floors of seven to ten jewelry stores per floor. Yeah. Millions. And he wanted it. And he's like, what do you mean? Do it. We were like, what are you talking about? He's like, well, we start at the top.

We hit as many stores as we can until 90 seconds is up, and then you guys go. So what's the next one that you're brought? brother talks you into. So he didn't talk me into it while I was in rehab. My brother and father pulled the Rhode Island job, which was just brilliant. They knew where the guy lived. They knew he had a carload full of stuff, a lot like the Burlington guy. So my dad got a van and he just put an Amway sign on the side. He said, I just took some magic markers and made a sign and put Amway on the side. Like I was a traveling salesman. And they knew his route.

driving to work. So this is one of the things that I always encourage people. Like you have a store and you're trying to stay safe, safe means never predictable. Always try to go outside of what somebody could start to measure

as your predictable behavior. Now you're as safe as you probably can be. But this guy was just very predictable. 8 o'clock gets in, gets in his car, drives, stops at the stop sign. And my dad was in front of him when he stopped the stop sign. My brother pulls up behind them. they block them in

my brother pushes him into the van so he can't drive away they get out guns blazing clear out the car they're on their way wow it was just

match and grab fast same exact deal as the other guy do they time up uh didn't have to he just was like kept the minister staying to come my brother kept the gun on

whatever you want my brother keeps a gun on you you do what he tells you and how much do they get away with that one it was it was smaller probably 200 grand wasn't as big

my brother comes in to visit me at rehab and he's got a gold Jane on and I'm like, yeah, what are you doing? Nothing. Okay. And so then they tell the guy, okay, just report, you know, someone else robbed you. It's not us or we'll kill you. Didn't even get to that point. At that, we didn't even care.

Because, again, this was another dirty guy. So at that point, we didn't care. We were just on to the next one. Hitting them, yep. Wow. And then now you're out of rehab. You find it about this lick they got. Are you a little jealous that they did something without you?

Or are you back to... Yeah, absolutely I was. But again, it was, you know, if I was going to try to stay soul. when I decided, and it didn't take me long after I got out of rehab to be right back where I was. So eventually I did have to get my shit together. And it was when my dad packed up all my stuff in a trash bag and brought me to my mom's and said, you take them. And my mom's ultimative was you'll go to every day and you'll do this and you'll get a job.

And I said, all right, fine, I'll do this. But it was my way of using my mother to stay out of the robbery. But that's much later. This is, no, this is right about 93 where my dad starts using me to say, hey, I need you to watch Kev. That's how he brought me back in. So the last couple of years doing robberies, I was sober but being brought in

under the guys that dad needed me. And Kev was the only person that could do certain things. Like, my dad brought me to, he's like, listen, when you just let me get, help me get a car. And I was like, fine. Like that's pressure. Like your dad's asking you. And he's done a lot for you, you think.

And he says, this is the plan. People will go outside the ATM and they'll get out of the car and leave it running. He says, when you find one of those, run up, just get in the car and drive away with it. That's because we needed a car for a robbery. And I agreed to it. And I got to tell you, without the drugs, I was scared shit. I was like, no, I am not this dude. There's a kid in the car.

Who knows what happened? My brother would do it. Done. My dad asked, it would have been done. But he didn't want to call Kev up from Florida where Kev was hiding out from habitual offender status in New England. and get pulled over in New England, you're screwed. They would have still extradited him down there. But then my cunt of a brother, sorry, starts using my name and social security number when he starts getting pulled over.

Yeah, down in Florida. I got pulled over in New Hampshire for a suspended license. I didn't know I had from a Florida arrest that Kev used my name in social. And he did it to me four or five times. Oh, that best. Yeah, man. And that's where it's like, hey, dude, what do you thinking? Like, that's mine.

That's my identity. We're in on this together, right? Yeah, you're putting me up on the block. Stop putting yourself there. Wow. So to my brother, it wasn't a matter of don't do it. He just had to, man. He just had to be bad.

And I'm starting to say, hey, well, you know, there's an opposite to this. Just don't do that. You know, at some point in sobriety, it just becomes starting to do the opposite of what thing in your head tells you to do. You know what I mean? That's how I handle love. So when is the Boston Box robbery coming? Oh, the Boston Box robbery was, was,

one of the ones that we decide we're bringing Kev up and this is what we needed that car for so my dad wanted the jewelers building in Boston in Boston right in downtown just outside the financial district where the Macy's is

and it's just a whore of retail all outside and you have people milling about everywhere so the jewelers building is inaccessible because the guard downstairs is an actual police officer so we're not touching that So my dad's dreams of taking that whole thing down was gone.

And why are you worried about the police officer specifically? He's got a gun and he's got access to from what we understood at the time and what we understood of COs in prison was on their belts have a specific something in them that if they're horizontal for any length of time, that belt is horizontal alarm. And we thought this guy would probably have that. Plus he's got a gun and he's got access to backup. And we didn't know if he had any silent because the our inside guy didn't know. specifically there. He could give us information about specific stores, but not how to get in the

front fucking door. Got it. So from there, the plan came that our inside guy would order from a bunch of stores, and we would hit the kid that was walking the boxes, the FedEx boxes, down to FedEx. So the first plan was to go inside a FedEx and hit the FedEx because the crowds are unpredictable. That is not an environment. Like, even if you're going into a store, you've got four people to deal with, not 700. And so it was like, okay, we'll go into FedEx. And then I was like, but isn't that federal? Aren't we fucking with like federal law?

Like, and then my dad says, okay, what if we hit him somewhere in the middle? We just, and we use the crowd to our advantage. We use the panic. We use it. And I said, okay. So we developed this plan where I would be casing the kid from the foyer of a McDonald's. I would have a walkie-talkie. My brother and father would be down in front of FedEx.

So once that kid started walking, and I would go behind them and start following them and slowly leading so they would watch me and they'd see the kid with 18 boxes. My brother would go up, put the gun in the kid's face, and they'd take the boxes and run. My brother decides to walk up to the kid and punch him square in the face

and the boxes go everywhere and the kid starts screaming. I helped them pick up the fucking boxes. I helped the kid pick up the boxes. I gave him back to one. No. I felt so bad. It was just awful. It was an awful situation for everyone around and it was going horribly and the kid just screamed

his head off and it was just attracting the exact kind of attention. You thought you'd knock him out, pick up the boxes and be gone and it went nothing like that. Your brother can't punch? Can't out punch. So the guy gets stuck and all of a sudden he's like, what the fuck? You help him pick up the boxes and then send him on his way? Yeah. Sorry.

And then what happens? You guys all get in the car? We tried to do that twice. And I tried to do it with just my dad. different kid. Dad hits the kid and it doesn't happen. What the hell? So.

Damn. And in those two times that we tried to do that, it was, you know, trying to find different ways to get it something without having to get into the store. And again, it was, I think it was my dad's desire to take down as much as he could of that store.

He still wanted that plan of, let's go floor by floor. Yeah. Somehow get in there. Get in there and try to, That was like the opus. It really was because... So even just taking a delivery off them would be a win.

Pretty good, yeah. 100%. Another robbery did the same type because we knew we couldn't get in the store, meaning you go into the foyer of the store and the door that lets you in to the next door is not a human distance apart. Meaning that door will be closed by the time you get to that door, which means they can lock you into that.

And it's bulletproof glass. Shoot all you want. You're shooting yourself. Good luck duck in that ricochet. and then you just wait until the cops show up so we knew that and we knew we weren't going to play with that so again we waited for the UPS guy to walk outside with the boxes

and they were all catalogs we were talking walkie talkies prior to and my dad walkie talking me was picked up by a police scanner the jewelers had in their office and he didn't like it He said, something's wrong.

I'm sending catalogs out instead of the $500,000 order I was going to send out. Wow. And we got catalogs. Damn. When was that? That was around this time.

It was just hitting, hit and hitting. That was sort of going from going into stores or trying to find a storefront, which Burlington was the only time we were ever doing that. Yeah. So from here on out, it's just snatching grabs of either trying to get salespeople or trying to get salespeople

into ideal situations. Now, why didn't you guys do the Burlington situation again? You couldn't find another place that would... Now, think about how hard the cops came down on the landlord that let my dad rent a store with nothing. Forget it. He's going to jail. The landlord.

Of course, he's complicit. Wow. You didn't do any of the things that were in place that would have assured us being able to ID a potential cop. That's accessory before the factor. I don't know what some DA would call up. up. Wow. And then when is the Amway robbery?

That was the Rhode Island one where dad painted Amway on the side. That's why I started calling the Amway robbery. And so then you'd mention the hockey mom. Oh, the hockey mom was just so brilliant because it was another, hey, he's got a bunch of money in the safe, so we've got to get into the safe.

Then I'm going to hit the store, but we needed a female. My dad had to go in posing as a guy with his girlfriend, ready to buy. Now, my dad's They were on the outs and we weren't using her anymore. So my dad just stumbles upon this girl he's dating and asks her, will you be part of an armed robbery? Yup.

And let me tell you something, Matt. She was awesome. She was great at. Holy Christ. She was the only one that got us anything of real value, which was a Michael Jordan rookie card. She was like, oh, you should have seen her cleaning out cases. I had to stop the woman. Okay, so take me through it.

So how did that one work? How did you guys? It was a small store and it was the end of three. And the plan was I was going to stand outside and pretend that I was washing the windows so that I could, A, cover the store with soap, right? So you can't see him. From there, while that's happening is when Kev takes the guy down. So Kev was going to go in probably about an hour after my dad and his proposing girlfriend

in there looking at loose stones and get the guy with the safe open and all that stuff. That's when Kev goes in, subdues the guy. I continue to wash the windows and continue to soap them and get them completely soaked up. And then I go in to help her out cleaning the cases while dad goes and hits the safe. Wow. Safe had nothing in it. 90 seconds. Safe had nothing in it.

We were lied to. There was nothing in it. What we got out of there was basically we used old construction buckets that you had drywall in to put the loot in. And it was minus. It wasn't a job worth. This is where my dad and the inside guy started. to really get on the outs. My dad was like, I want to kill this guy.

Because you're like, I put my life on the line. And my boys. And you sent us into a place where you said there was this. And it wasn't. And that happened a few times. Boston box robbery was won. A couple of times that we went in and we came away with catalogs. We put on the inside guy.

What are we paying you for? What are you doing here? Without your information, we can't go in there. But at the same time, when your information sucks, you're going to pay for that, man. He was so mad at him. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick.

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Even for the hockey mom robbery, are you still doing all the same steps of robbery? Are you still casing it? Are you still picking the right spot? You're still neutralizing security. in as much as you can. What's the right spot when you're going into somebody else's store? What's the right time of day?

Potentially. Yeah, but again, the soaping thing, brilliant. Who came up with that? I don't know. Probably her. We're fucking idiots. So who's, but like, who's the mastermind behind all this? Dad.

He called him the mastermind. My fucking brother's the muscle and I'm the chimp that sweeps up after this. That's pretty much how goes. On stage, I'll say I'm the lookout. Yeah. You know, because my brother and father looked at me and they were like, well, he's got eyes. you can probably look at some shit and I always joked that shit

you know as the lookout it's the best job because when the shit goes down you can be like yeah you guys are fucked I don't know what to tell you I gotta call them because I was

being the lookout is just so fucking stressful because what happens when the lookout goes wrong guys somebody's coming there wasn't a plan for what I do at that point other than just warn them

and like I said that ended up thwarting us. Waki-talkies ended up killing us. Because it gets, it's not a, it's a frequency that's not specific and it gets picked up on other stuff. Not private or encrypted. Who's the hell you're talking to? Wow.

Who's listening to you being like, he's going to blizzard? Yeah. And that killed us a bunch. Wow. And that's how dumb we were in a way. So by the hockey mom robber, you're already out of, you're out of college. You're, I mean, at this point, you got. Living with my mom, I'm working as a duck worker.

I'm doing construction work. I'm a tin knocker because I'm just, and I'm trying to stay. out of as much of this as I can, but dad keeps planning. And with every robbery that wasn't like Burlington, it was like, let's do another. Come on, let's get one like Burlington. And then we'll stop. And then we hit Jacob again. Now at this point, are you feeling bad at all?

Hated it. Hated it. Genuinely. Dad, how long? One more Burlington is all we ever heard. Dad, me and my brother are both. How long are we doing this? We got plenty of money.

You can't even sell what's in the safe. How much longer? How much longer? One more Burlington. The last one was so bad. We only got cataloged. One more. At this point, you're like 10, 15 robberies in probably.

Like, you're doing pretty good. You made a ton of money. You could go buy a place in Florida and just kind of cool for a while. But your dad wanted more. My dad went down to Jersey because he was bald and he hated it. He went down to Jersey

at some clinic that was supposed to put hair on his head. And, you know, they give him a menu from to pay to graphing. Yeah, yeah. My dad comes home with it. It looked like they just took a raccoon and staple it to his forehead.

I'm like, Dad, I'm sorry, but I tried my hardest to not laugh in his face. But my dad wouldn't do anything. My dad didn't buy his first pair of Nike's until maybe a year before we were all caught. He didn't know what to do with the money. That's why we had a safe full of shit. Me and my brother were burning through it,

but his chair he didn't do anything with it. And he wasn't doing drugs or anything like that. No, my dad doesn't do drugs. My dad, at every point along the way, he was addicted to smoking like everyone was in the 70s, just stopped. Addicted to whiskey, just stopped. So what was his motivation?

I think it was growing up and working his ass off. And what we did in one robbery was worth more than he could ever do in a lifetime of working full-time as a pretty successful dude. It's that. It's like, look what we can do. And my dad will tell you he did it for us. And I did it because I wanted you kids to have, listen, we weren't going anywhere. We weren't going to come up with the next. We weren't curing cancer.

I think my dad was like, geez, the only plan of it. I got for these kids is if I start getting them into robberies. Because we weren't college kids. Do you believe he was doing it for you? No. I think my dad loved, I think, again, the same thing that when cocaine brings me out of my depression and I see that as a cure, my dad, when you've filled his living room with gold, you're, that was it for him.

It made him feel good. So it was always like, it wasn't drugs. It wasn't smoking. It wasn't chicks. It wasn't. None of that for him. It was the hunt. Do you think you got the thrill of outsmarting?

Like, oh, I outsmarted them. Like, those motherfuckers that sit in that, you know, rich building with all that money. There's my grandmother. Thinking that you're better than me. Well, I mean, she's Russian. My grandmother grew up a little bit in Russia, spoke fluent Russian before she came here. A, can't ever have been a good time in this country to be Russian. She hid it as much as she could.

But, yeah, you're talking about an oligarchy that crushed its lower class. Russia more than any other culture just broke the back of its poor and I think that's where that comes from culturally where we go now you go to Chelsea and it was all Russian and Polish so that attitude persisted and that was New England for us

so he's leaving like or his mom is leaving like the Goulogs basically and then going to the Depression in America and dealing with that shit which might have even been a little better and then from there it was just struggle struggle struggle but you don't ever enjoy So even when you get it, you can't indulge in it.

Who are you to think that you're better than us? Everyone is shit. Everyone's on the same level. But if you have it, you know in your heart like, oh. God, that's the exact speech my grandmother gave me one time. When I lost, I had a yard sale with some of my mother's stuff after she died and I made 50 or 60 bucks and I lost it. It was in one of the boxes and my grandmother lost it. Said just that, but screaming it, if you have money, you're a king.

If you don't, you're a piece of shit, I don't care who you are. and you just lost six, like, I was like, wow. Like, I had to live with her for a couple years before that was the piece that said, well, that's the woman that created my dad. Because it's not even about spending. It's just having it. And what it comes with, the respect and the honor and, hey, you're elevated. But he's not even flaunting it like that.

People don't even know he has it, but he knows he has it. And that's the most important thing. Yeah. Wow. So he's just addicted to the feeling of, yo, these malefors don't even know. I'm a millionaire. Yeah. I'm going to skirt.

I'm going to skirt it. Wow. So then the next one, there's two big ones. Jacob, two. Yeah, Jacob two. I don't know my dad had a hard on for this guy, but we sent him up again. And how many years later is this? Three, since his first robbery, since we took his case, since our first.

Yeah. So this was, we brought him to an office building that we said was going to be a wholesale jewelry place. And it wasn't outside of the norm. Like a lot of places that you'll go to, like, I don't know, I had my team. White in a couple weeks ago before I went to Fox to do America's Most Wanted. And it was in an office park in this little tiny, they didn't need much. And it worked. So we lull this guy to come again.

And it was the same scenario with Jacob. We had to get the case and we get him in and we get him subdued and we get him down. And I get the case and I leave. And my dad's ready to walk out and gets a eerie feeling. Turns around and looks back at Jacob thinking, this guy's a little too happy. He's a little too accommodating and goes and pats him down and he had two holsters full of diamonds

under each arm. Wow. Yeah. I don't know how my dad even thought or turned around and went back and that was a huge score. And so what was the plan with him that you were going to bring him into another office?

It was, hey, you are coming to supply our wholesale store. So this is going to be another Burlington situation? better more than Burlington. A wholesale situation is when you go into the jewelers building, you'll go into store fronts or you'll go into a single door with a little window. A guy has to buzz you in three times and there's the guy in the back making it, cutting it, faceting it, molding it. That's like you have the actual people doing work, potentially even melting it down at that point.

Because I don't imagine you've got to borrow a 14-car gold and you start hitting it with other metals to make it 14-carold. It's the same thing that I do with baby laxative when I'm trying to make a kilo into a kilo and a half. So now I'm going to make some 18 and I'm going to keep some stuff 24, but those are the guys that you go in and they're going by the rap sheet. They're saying, today, this is worth X.

Give me 500 over that. And you can go sell at retail for 6,000 over that. And those are the guys that you really want to be dealing with. You don't want storefront ever. So you tell this guy Jacob, you say, hey, you'll come and you will supply our wholesale, not our retail. So again, it's always trying to change a little bit of a detail that isn't part of what we have been doing three or four times prior with. Now the industry is starting to know the MO. Now you have to start changing your MO enough so that it's, it's, okay, we know that we get them into a store.

We know that it's a fake storefront. Let's shut the ability to do that down greatly. from there let's make sure that you can't get into the car by making sure all the stuff is fake and yaddy yada yada yad so how do you get the storefront is there a storefront in this particular situation my dad found another one he found an office building that he could pay he did the seat no no the fuck he did that man i honestly don't wow i don't know how charming you have to be to go in and say i don't know i guess you handle landlord a bunch of cash and they become very friendly do you think he fronts it and goes like oh what's the rent how about three times that

A hundred percent. Okay. Well, why else? Why else would a landlord who might have five other people looking to rent that? So he just greased. Yeah. Wow. So then he gets the place, calls Jacob and goes, hey, we got a wholesale situation.

Come on down. Come on down. We need you to, we need at least to start with $500,000 worth of inventory. And then from there, we're going to continue to buy and get on a regular shipment of blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's really like any other sales job. And then once again, your brother is going to kind of muscle him. you're going to search him get him to the chair

take the gun to the chair Jacob didn't carry wow even after getting robbed and this did him in he had to move out of the country after this nobody believed him

did he recognize you yeah so what happens he walks in the door he walks in the door he didn't recognize me and my brother but he recognized my dad from doing business with him oh wow

so I think that's the part that my dad liked because my dad didn't see him in the first robbery Right. My dad wanted to look him in the fucking eye. Because your dad was still pissed that he robbed him. 100%. Jacob started this whole thing.

How dare you? Wow. The first guy was a, he was a dress of security guy, he was going to hit an unknown guy, but this guy potentially ripped my dad off, which again makes the story a little bit more feasible than me saying maybe that wasn't the gig that my dad had just had a hard-on for him.

Your dad was a petty motherfucker. Fuck he wanted to look him in the eye and said, gotcha. And the fucking padding down was just it. Like, how could the universe do it? there's two people in the world that just the universe just said there you go Tom Brady and my fucking old man

for saying hey maybe he's got something in his armpit that's it's the only explanation is Jesus there I give him that one and so is the storefront furnished do you guys no it's nothing you walk into an empty place because again it part of the beauty is Burlington you had to do that so we did move some glass cases in we set

up the front like it was going to be that my dad's you know got carpet samples out we did try to gussy it up but by then we were just brazen it was yeah walk in and by the second you walk in the door it's in you're on right so yeah i don't care what you see so he walks in your brother grabs him into the back tied to a chair wow take the case it was pretty cut and dry until dad didn't feel like it went it went too smooth oh walks back takes it does dad say anything no it just goes pats him down we take the shirt off we get the shit he knew he

knew it was he had it and again it's hit by that point you just give it up you want to be done i don't know what it's like to get wrapped and tied to a chair yeah but i imagine you want it wrapped up as soon as possible but now at this point it's a little sketchy because the dude recognizes your dad he knows who he is how does he make sure that he doesn't come out he had already he was already just ruined in the in the in the industry the first robbery uh was was actual robbery of like two that he had done fake. That's what really screwed him. So now this is the fourth robbery that he's claiming happened.

He doesn't have any damage. You guys didn't hurt him. He had to leave, no. So he calls the insurance company. Heard him, to a chair. Sure, for sure. Yes.

Unless you're wearing fishnet stockings and tying me to a chair. I don't think your intent is. Sure. Yeah, no, you guys weren't nice with him, of course. But he doesn't have like visible damage. He's not able to go to the insurance company. He's not able to go to the insurance company. He's like, look at my broken nose. I got this thing.

No, but I'll tell you, after the Burlington, after we left him, They did try to get my dad with involuntary manslaughter for leaving a guy. I was charged with kidnapping, which is taping someone to a chair. And robbery through confinement. Two charges that both carry life sentences. But, yeah. Okay, we'll get to that. But you're not caught yet.

At this point, you did another lick. And how much you get from Jacob the second time? I don't even know the take of that, to be honest. That was a lot, though. That was a lot. And by then, a composite drawing starts floating around with my dad. because Jacob Well, I mean, everybody that has been

Rob sat down with a sketch artist And the sketch artist all of a sudden Because this is all within the same General municipality Yeah, well we're hitting different states Rhode Island may not be talking to the other states Until, you know, everything is said and done But yeah, there is a pattern being developed

A mode of operation being developed That is trackable Wow And this one woman She was Elizabeth something From the Massachusetts State Police And the place that we did the most robberies will tend to take the majority of that investigation.

New Hampshire will be like, all right, well, when you catch them, let us know. Rhode Island, when you catch them, let us know. But Massachusetts wanted us more than anybody else. Wow. So now there's a composite of your dad. Does it look like your dad? Some of these sketches are bad. I was at my mom's and he's like, meet me for lunch.

I want to talk to you about something, which was the next robbery, which was the Littleton robbery. And he says, and I got to show you this composite drawing. Oh, my God. It's hilarious. It doesn't look anything like me. I laughed about it for hours. So I go and I meet him at the 99,

which was a place that we met pretty regularly. I mean, when you do the Brian Sobulowski tour of New England, it'll be one of the places I'll point out. We plan robberies. But he slides it across and I was like, exactly. Looked exactly. I mean, give these police sketch artists some credit,

but for not knowing at all what he looks like. Holy fuck. This guy was on point. That was his day he peaked. Wow. that artist. And you have the photo. Yeah. Okay. Afterwards, send it to me and Brandon can put it in right here. Yeah. So that way people can see how close the composite is done to your death. I think I did that on Facebook. Wow. So it's boom. Are you worried at this point? Like 100%. I'm like, Dad,

you're known in the community. They know it's you. Yeah. They know it's you. This is up. It's it. If I mean, he should stop at this point. He should have stopped a long time ago. And he's like, okay, well, I see what you're saying. So one more. Littleton. One more. And this was just shit. It was shit from the get-go. It was no, we're not even, we don't even have a spot to get you in. Me and my brother sat outside, well, sat inside the lobby of an office park. It was an office building. Various offices renting number of, you know, a couple of lawyers, a couple of accountants.

And I'm sitting in this lobby. And it wasn't even big like a Boston building. This was Littleton Mass, a little shit stain off of whatever. Okay. And we're sitting in this. Take me through the plan. What is the plan here? The plan is the same as always.

Like, we don't have the environment. So the environment we're going to use. him between his car in before he gets to where he say a store is going to be, we have to hit him. You get inside knowledge. You get inside info that he's going to be going to a store. No, we brought him there. We brought him to what we said in this building will be a jewelry store.

It had, there was nothing about that building that this guy pulled in with that would have said there's a jewelry store in there. My dad just picked a random spot to say, hey, here's where the store is going to be. Meet us here for the initial meeting. We knew we had to get the car. He's getting fake numbers. Yeah. Like to make all the phone calls?

Yep. My dad had a stupid little cell phone back then, and cell phone technology was not the way that it is now. You're 10 minutes on a phone and no one can hear every third word. Got it. You know what I mean? And then it needs to be charged. So he's making the calls on these like shitty little minutes phones or something.

And a lot of it was Ernestine, which was another woman that we ended up convincing to do this stuff because women were just integral into getting this guy to come to a location. They just trust them. Just trust them. So meet us at this office park, come into the building in the lobby, we'll meet you in the lobby,

because we're going to have a store here, bring your stuff, and we knew he wasn't going to bring his stuff. We knew he was going to have a case full of fake stuff. We needed to get the car. So we were just going to hit him in the parking lot, put a gun to his head, take his keys and drive away.

It was a carjacking. It's all that was. And there was shit. What hasn't? Two cases in there. It was shit. It was the worst robbery we ever did. The jewelry was shit.

It was stones would fall out of it. It was garbage. And so what'd you do with the guy? So, like, you put a gun on his face. We left him in the parking lot. You say, stay right here. Don't talk to anybody. My brother walked up and said,

make a sound and I'll blow your fucking hat off. We're taking your car. Go inside and call the cops. Wow. So as soon as I'm driving away in his car with my brother next to me, my dad was in another parking lot, and he was going to follow us to the parking lot that we were going to wipe down the prints,

clean out the car, and get the fuck out of there. Well, we were in an office park of office parks. So we could have pulled in anywhere and wiped it down. Every single time we, we switch, car somewhere and wiped out another car, people noticed. People notice it. You're in an office park.

You're not detailing it. There is no... You stick out while you're wiping a car down and going around and open every door and moving things from one to the other. Every time we did that, we did it three times. The next robbery, we do it, with another car, with switched cars, and everyone's hard. It stuck out to everyone. And you're just getting a little sloppy at this point.

Really sloppy. Wow. Really fucking sloppy. And so that's Methamon? Methuen comes And after Littleton was shitty Methuen was We don't want the store

We want the guy coming to sell to the store So we knew the appointment was happening Almost the way you just started describing We weren't even making the appointment We knew this guy was going to be where he was going to be He was going to wheel a dolly full of Suitcases of jewelry Into this store to sell to this guy

We were going to hit him inside the store So that it would not touch the store so it looked like the store owner was in on it. I was like, you devious motherfucker. That's clever. Yeah. So dad's like, okay. But this was at the end.

This is the Papagino's one. Casing it, getting the guys. Same thing. In and out what's happening here. And me and I just, we decide, let's go grab a slice. We'd go into the Papaginos. We're just two or three doors down. And when all of a sudden done, we were recognized.

Wow. We just stuck out. I don't know why. But they don't get you at that point. No, this is down the room. People just clock you. So we did this store. I was sitting outside in a car, a stolen car, waiting for them to come out.

I watched my brother go in, boom, my dad puts a gun on the owner. And we just take the little dolly thing. And there wasn't a lot in it. It was another... Like 20 grand, do you think? Maybe 20 or 40, you know, wholesale. And, you know, again, if you wait and just let it trickle out and don't have to get cash right away, that that's the most...

criminals problem is how to convert that into the cash that you need. Now, America has done a great job in sealing up all the places that you can steal actual cash from. Here's the other thing that makes gold and this type of thing very beneficial is it's a universal commodity. I can sell gold anywhere. I can't sell American cash everywhere. I can't spend. You can spend it anywhere. But again, they have ways of tracing that shit now, man. Serial numbers were put on bills for a reason. But the gold here is as good as the gold in Japan. as good as the gold in Argentina. You take a diamond anywhere.

So how did most of the Jews get out of Poland or wherever in World War I won? Diamonds. Because everyone speaks the language. That makes sense. And, you know, De Beers kind of sort of set that forward. But it's a universal payment for services rendered. Wow. And cash isn't always that.

So you get done with Methuen and you get a little 30, 40K. And you guys are looking at each other like, ah. This sucks, man. I don't want to do this anymore. Really? No. And is your drug addiction at this point? No, I'm sober.

You're sober? Sober. I'm dating this chick. I'm living in Nashville. And I had started school as a substance abuse counselor. Oh, wow. One of my psych degrees is in substance abuse counseling. Dude, I was good at it.

I was the kind of good that I drove one of my professors crazy. And I'm still friends with him today because he doesn't know how I did it. But I'd just go in and I'd keep my books closed. I didn't take a single note. I had my dad's brain. If I'm interested in the information, dude, I'm absorbing it. And I'll know it. But if I don't give a fuck, I'm dumb.

You know what I mean? So I took to school, man. I loved it. And again, I got this hanging over my head. Wow. So you're a substance abuse counselor during the day. You're talking to kids, helping them get off pills or whatever. And then at nighttime, your case in jewelry stores and robbing the delivery.

And let me tell you, the paranoia was so bad that, that, so my dad's the first one to go down. Yeah, yeah, take me through. So now after Methuen, things start to unravel. That's it. You all start to get caught. There's a composite of your dad out there. So take me through all those beats. What happens?

Where are you? You got a phone call. I'm at my, uh, I'm at my girlfriend's house. I get a phone call from my dad's girlfriend. Your dad was just arrested. For what? She says, that my dad. For what?

For what? I had just given him five grand because I got student loans from something. I was like, hey, hold this five grand. I know he had five grand in cash. He always had a, a pinky ring, he always had a bracelet. She said, I don't know he was coming. He was picking up Chinese food and coming over here and they arrested him.

I immediately got in the car and drove to his house. But at the time, my license didn't say his address. So I was like, pull into, because I was like, I have to go fucking scrub that house. I got to get all the fucking jewelry out of there. We had duffel bags full of the fake jewelry that we ended up stealing, not knowing, which was real and which was fake. So we just kept duffel bags of the fake shit, which is when the police showed it on the news,

it was all fake. They were like 2.50, I was like, first of all, that table does not have $2.3 million of anything, even if it was real and it was all fake. Wow. And when you say fake, this is the shit you got from the front of the store. Yeah, anything we grabbed that we knew was shit. Right. So

we took everything because you don't know at that point. You're certainly not going to. Yeah, exactly. If it's shiny, grab it. Yeah. It's snatching grab at that point. So I go to the house and there's a cop car sitting outside because once he's arrested now they go through the process of getting the warrant to come in and search the house.

Now all of your money is also in that house. All of them. Everything is in the house. Everything is in that safe. Yeah. And I'm shitting myself. And I hadn't really, I didn't really know what dad was arrested for, but just dad being arrested. Kev's arrested. Yeah.

Did he use my name? That's all I want to know. Yeah. Who's name did he use? From there, dad arrested. So the cop comes out and he says, who are you? And I said, well, I live here. He goes, well, let me see your license. And I couldn't get in because I didn't have a matching address on it. I said, it's my daddy.

They're like, we don't care. Beat it. And I was like, I got to get out of here because I'm implicated in all of this. I'm standing in front of a cop. Like, this is just, this fucked up. Dad calls me the next day and tells me, I don't know exactly what they have, but they're saying this, they're saying that. And then they show them on the news.

And then they're just the cataclysm of shit. Just my phone just starts ringing. I'm like watching four, five, and seven, which is pretty much the news channels at the time in Boston. And you can kind of follow them because they're like a couple seconds from each other when you do it. And I'm like, boom, there's for this. Natalie Jacobs. Oh, well, that's my name.

That's nice. And then just go. And they did his perp walk, you know, but they had to put a coat over his head because at that point, it's so early that they don't want all the Jacobs out there saying, he robbed me 18 times. And then another guy saying, you know, who planned his own robbery saying, And he robbed me. That's no one that you couldn't fight.

Every salesman is faking the robberies. Everyone's coming out of the wood. He would have done 120 robberies in a year, probably. So from there, it's, it's, oh my God. What the fuck am I going to do? It was a month of that of meeting with my dad's ex-girlfriend who I don't know when she became states' evidence or when they grabbed her. When she turned on me, might have been in between. I don't know if she was wearing a wire at any point while she was talking to me.

I don't know if her arrest was just to make her look good at times. She got a severely reduced sentence to take me down. Now, is this your dad's girlfriend at the time of the Burlington? They were on and off. Hockey mom? No, hockey mom dad was starting to pull some serious tail. She was all right. I didn't like Nancy.

Nancy was just endogenous to me. I didn't get it. I think it was because she was successful. She was successful. I asked my dad, I said, I never liked Nancy. She ratted me out. What was the attraction? And in the podcast, he's like,

she was successful. I didn't have to... She was an independent woman. She had her own job. Yeah, she had her own gig. You didn't have to pay for shit. But she was the one involved in Burlington. Yeah.

She was involved in Burlington and a couple that I wasn't during the period I was saying, I don't want to do this anymore. Like Rhode Island, the Amway. Yeah, yeah. And the period while I was sober, I tried. School was just another reason for me not to be able to do robberies. And I tried to dug out of as many as I could, but that... They did a couple without you even... Yeah, 100%.

In the later years while you're sober. Yeah. One of the, and there was more than one robbery in Rhode Island that my dad and brother pulled in. Rhode Island didn't want to play. So when all the chips fall, the state you face the most charges in will take you. And most of the other states will say, you have the asshole. And we'll run the sentence concurrent with her. They wanted to do consecutive.

They're like, hey, when you let him out after 12 years, send him down here because we got 12 years for him to do. And so Rhode Island is trying to make the point. Don't come here. and rob our jewelry stores. Wow. So they... If you fuck with us, no matter where you are.

Most states, when you cross their state lines, you're basically saying, hey, I'm leaving this state to come over here to do this. They want to make an example of you. And you just don't understand how much a DA

or a prosecutor wants to do that. So they get your dad and then they get his girlfriend. No, they didn't get the girlfriend yet. So me and her are talking for about a month and then they go down to Florida and a huge task force

to go get my brother. Oh, he's still in Florida at this time. Yeah. So my brother, once he hears dad goes down, begins this whole process of changing addresses under his girlfriend's name and trying to get into a place where the cops won't know he is and gets all that in place and on the drive they take him down fly him back up here now he's down and how do they get tipped off that he's involved they have they have ernestine already ratin out so the first rat was ernestine one of the girls that we that i wasn't involved in any of the robberies that she helped in she didn't maybe two or three with them nancy was the only one that could put me in burlington and when she turned, it took a year for them after my brother's arrest to come and get me. I don't know if in that time is when they decided or they just thought I was small potatoes.

So they get your dad, they get Ernestine. They get Kev. And then they get Kev. And then Nancy. And then Nancy. And everyone's in. Me and the other guy, the inside guy, the only ones left out. And how, that's a year.

Yeah. We went, dad was arrested in March. Kev went in May. I went December 26th of 1995. And how do you feel for that year? you doing awful i there was not a single point ever in my car that i drove through the windshield i drove through the rearview back then it was you know most of detectives had square headlights so if you saw square headlights i took the exit i had the crippling anxiety one time we in i'm sitting in school and

we have a guest speaker and he's a state cop and everyone in the class came up to me after says why did you leave what was wrong with you what happened i just lost it it was like a full-on panic attack of which I was not in control of my body. My fighter flight said, get out. And yeah, it was that way around most people. You couldn't trust anyone. You didn't know who to talk to. You didn't know what to open up to.

You didn't know who was. It's awful, man. And you think, well, you got 2.3 million. No, man, it's not worth it. It's not. And your dad's talking to you? Dad was calling me asking, you know, it was sending up the lawyer. So cops go into the house two and three times to try to find the downstairs safe.

that they didn't know existed. They were trying to find the real stuff, anything other than the fake stuff, which put us was fine for them, but the cops need to come away with a win. Just getting us is not a win, is a recovery. They couldn't find the safe.

They cut open my couch cushions. The house was just a shit show by the end. They're not talking to you at all? Me? No. Are they talking? They're going in and out of the house? No, but they're not talking to any of them.

They're talking to your mom. They, after I was arrested and everyone was in, they threatened to go into her house with backhose to dig up and find jewelry. They threatened that to my grandmother. They would just, they were like, we know jewelry exists and we want it and we're coming to get it. So they just, it was an act of desperation. Are you talking to your mom well? Her husband or ex-husband is locked up and all that shit?

How does she feel? What's her take? My mother said that for the rest of her life, if she gets close enough, she will kill him. She'll rip his throat right the fuck out. She said, when we sat in visiting room, we all sat together and dad had to be at one. and my mother at the other and she says, go ahead, just let me have the opportunity.

Oh, she hates him. Hates him for doing. Because he put you guys in danger. It broke her heart. When I had to, after Kev went down, after dad went down, we were sitting in a restaurant

and my mother spent the day cleaning out my dad's house because they were foreclosing on it. And I couldn't because the cops kept driving around and driving around and driving around while she was doing that.

And for my mom to do that, they didn't talk. It was just not an amical amicable divorce. She hated him. Some of my toxicity towards my dad comes from my mother and listening to that. You know what I mean?

And it's like, careful what you say to your kids around about your dad. Because you don't want to tarnish. Let your dad fuck up his reputation. You don't need to help him. But I was already stained on them. You know what I mean? And she hated him. And I hope

no one ever has to look across the table and break their mother's heart the way that I, you know, I broke my mother's heart a thousand times. And so was you. That's what you do as a son. But Jesus, to watch it chatter after I told her that was something that I don't... I probably gave her cancer. You know what I mean?

So then your dad eventually is in there for a year and then they come for you. Yeah. And what is that day like? Oh, shit. You know, I had moved from my girlfriend's house. We broke up where I was hiding. They couldn't find me. I didn't think.

You think you're smart. You're not. When they want you, they come and get you. They're like, oh, you want them? we'll get them in like 20 minutes. You're not hiding. You're not as good as you think you are. Cut it out.

But I had already, I've been trying to move around and not be predictable and I didn't go to the same gym. But I'm at work and when calls came in for me, I told the nurses at the station while I was going in to do a group, I'm not here.

And they're like, why? If anyone calls, I'm not here. Because that's how they got Nancy. They went to her work. They sat outside her work. They called her boss and they said, hey, she's an armed robber. We're coming in to get her.

You either give her up or coming in. So they got her at, work. So that made me super paranoid about work. So I'm at work and the phone ring the bright phone and I'm like, nope. I'm not here. My name's not Brian. I don't know anything about jewelry. Yeah. And how are they finding these people? Is it, are they putting the story together? Or is anyone ratting? It's, it's, they're putting, listen, you know, investigators don't really have to investigate that hard. Rats are easy to come by. And they had already, we had a specific MO. I mean, it wasn't like we were, um, once you had, um, once you had.

have a distinctive style. That's how you get caught. I mean, that's just it. And how did they characterize your style? Was it jewelry? Or was it more specific than that? It was a efficient crew in and out with inside information. Every job's inside now.

There was a job done that I got pulled in in question for post-prison that was done like hours. They went in, same thing. Snatch and grab, but they didn't know the store from the inside. And the guy hit the silent alarm as soon as they went in. There were gunshots exchanged. So that's where I was like, listen, no. not in my neighborhood.

Sorry, when I sat down with a cops, I'm like, what do you want to know? Because don't fucking shoot in my neighbor. Come on. I get that you want your jewelry, but that's gunfire. Yeah, you guys were always like, we're going to rough people up,

but we're never going to kill them. And I'm sorry, but that's just bullshit. We, we, that Woody situation could have gone wrong and was going to go wrong for us. Right. I don't know that the guy that went in and shot him in the head

didn't have a struggle. maybe he didn't intend to do that. Yeah, he said Woody, I'm going to take your shit. And Woody came out to three very large men, well, two and a half, very large men, strapped. So he's like, I'm fighting. Other than that, no, you're not a pussy. And that's one you want to be afraid of.

Yeah, you guys had the chance to get into some gunfire and you didn't. We were lucky. That's all. But then you find out that in your neighborhood, some jackass decides that they're going to open fire on the store owner because he's chasing him with a gun. It's just that's where, you know, this whole, everyone has guns, things starts to go horribly wrong. because some people are afraid to shoot them. Yeah.

So then the day that you wake up and you find out, oh, shit, they're coming from me. What happens? I wake up that day and my girlfriend calls me and she said, don't you ever fucking have a package sent here? I was like, oh. Apparently they took a fake UPS driver,

sent her to the door with a package that only I could sign for and have to show ID. She thought it was stolen jewelry. So they must have known that she was going to call me right after she closed that door. Or I was there.

Those were there too. Ops outside, they were sitting there with whatever device shows her where she's calling. So I was living in the woman that ran the outpatient treatment addiction. She had a basement that was an in-law apartment that she needed somebody to move into. I took it. There was no paperwork. No one knew I was there. It was beautiful until she called me up thinking that I sent a package of stolen jewelry

to her house and starts freaking out on the phone. They tracked your phone. Busted. Yeah. So I literally, I'm like, Dawn, it's probably. Probably the cops. Thank you very much. You just fucking sunk me.

I hope I don't get arrested. Goodbye. And I hung up. You did not say that. I swear to God. I got on my knees and I said, God, because at this point, like, that's the only point I'm praying. It's not like, God, please.

It's God, please don't let them get me. Look, I'm sorry. It was only 22. Yeah, it wasn't a prime number. It was 22. It was even. Like, God on my knees. And I said, all right, well, I'm just going to live my life.

I'm just going to do what I was going to do today. I can't stay here. Like, when your own home is like, they're coming. So where do I go? Went to the gym, did legs. It just felt right. I just felt right. And I remember leaving the gym and it was snowing and the road was snowy and I looked down and there was a car that didn't have any snow on it.

Sitting there. I was like, that's weird. Again, it's just like once you cross that line, you start noticing shit, people don't. So you can't watch the town with me. I'll ruin it for you. Nope. Uh-uh. No, that didn't happen.

And the town's pretty good in that respect. But most movies, you're like, no, guys, bullets go through couches when you jump behind them. You're just getting a little bit of padding in that bullet with it. You know what I mean? It's like Hollywood is ridiculous with Mark Wahlberg ducks automatic machine gun fire six times in a movie? Sorry, Mark. I don't care how much ash you put on your forehead. Jesus ain't.

I can't be your... So I'm driving home and I have to pass over the Nashville Hudson Bridge, which was two bridges separate. And there was traffic going in but not coming out. again around Christmas time, and I reached the middle of the bridge. And then I just notice that a maroon sedan behind me pulls out, comes in and blocks me in. The guy comes out, here's on the fucking stairwheel, get out of the fucking car. I look over and they have the other bridge locked down. And then I hear it.

I don't know why I didn't hear before, but then I hear the helicopter. And those are like the only three things. I hear him screaming and the gun at me. And I'm like, I open the door to the car and I get out and I walk over to the edge of the bridge because I was going to jump. No, man, I'm too cute for prison.

So I just, no, no, that's the first thing in my head. No, first day I'm getting raped. I look over and I'm like, and he's like, don't fucking do it. Don't fucking do it. And he finally grabs me and he puts me down the car and, you know, he's the bad. I hate it when they kick the foot out.

They're like, spread him, but it's never enough. Try that with your girlfriend, asshole. See what happens. And they take me in. And it was not only a moment of absolute utter terror, but it was a moment of relief. And the thing that I remember the most is being cuffed in the back. And putting my hands in the back of the National Police Cruiser,

and they had special seats. They hauled out the back so you could fit your hands in it. You didn't have to sit on your hands the whole ride. That's nice. I was like, dude. I started asking the cop. when did you do it? Who?

Who? Said, hey, you know, it would be nice. I was like, once around the park, please. And they brought me into the National Police Department and, you know, there was no bail. I was wanted by Massachusetts, so New Hampshire was holding me. So there's no bail for that. I can fight extradition. And fighting extradition basically means we're going to go over Massachusetts' paperwork.

And if we find a T that's not crossed or an eye that's not dotted, we can fight extradition for a little. So all you're doing is prolonging Massachusetts getting you. There's nothing in that extradition paperwork that Massachusetts is like, say he was in the grassy knoll. Oh, there, there's a kid. It's just not how they do it. It's not how the law works. So I waived it.

But it was just hilarious the next day is there leading. Everybody else, you know, I spent the night listening to this one kid, admit everything he was arrested for to his girlfriend across in the other cell. Hey, did they find the weed that was in the tire? She's like, I don't think so. Com's like, yeah. No way. Yeah, I wanted to tell them to shut up,

but I was already in there for something stupid. I figured, what the hell? Misery loves company. What do I know? We're both in jail, you know? So they pull us out the next day, and they're lining us up for court, and everyone's just getting handcuffed,

and they shackle me. And it's miserable getting into a van shackled. You do not have. You have to basically do what I call the fish flop onto your stomach, and then kind of, It's just humiliating. And I have to do that in front of a bunch of idiots. Wait, when did they front cuff you?

They front cuff me, and then they waist cuff me, and then they front cuff the hands down to the ankles, and then they cuff the ankles. So you're... Every move, you're just fucked. And you can't get into the back of the van. So I've probably gotten to a back of a van maybe six or seven times in my prison career,

and it's always the same. It's almost like they're like, hey, what's that one link that's going to absolutely emasculate him? And they found it. And now you're going... into court, you're about to hear. I waived extradition, and I let them come get me.

Now, I want to get back to this. You had mentioned that you beat a lineup like three times. Why did you get pulled into those lineups, and when did that happen? I know this is going back a little bit. Because Nancy was giving them information that she couldn't corroborate by seeing me with her own eyes.

So they started pulling me into, hey, let's let the victim see if they can recognize, Brian. So for the Littleton robbery, I was in a lineup, for the Amway robbery, not the Nway because I didn't do it, the hockey mom robbery and they wanted to do it for Burlington, Bob had passed away.

Wow. And that's why they wanted to nail dad with manslaughter because they said it was because nobody believed him three months after the robbery, he died of a heart attack. Let me tell you something. This guy was, you know, I thought his gun was a pack of cigarettes and he was out of shape. He was a mess. This guy was a poster board for, you know, the stress we caused him, certain. didn't help. Sure. But I don't, I don't know that my dad was complicit in his death. Wow.

But again, you know, I... So you get pulled in three different times. Are you stressed out for each of those? You have no idea. Because the first thing that you have to understand is by that point, the only lineups I had ever seen were in, God, it was a Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal movie. They were cops, and they were cops. And they have a lineup in it. And the guilty person's number five. And he's standing there with five other uniform cops. Number five. I was like, okay. Kramer on Seinfeld. Number five. Every lineup I'd ever seen on any movie, the guilty person was number five. So I'm just like, listen, I don't know what to do in this lineup. I don't know what they're looking for.

I don't know if I should make contact with this guy. Just don't get number five. Number fucking five. I'm standing in a lineup of. Now, lineup day. We need X number of people to be in this lineup that are reminiscent of or look somewhat like this person. We did get that in a courthouse. It wasn't in a behind glass or anything. They did it in a jury box. And they got six other state police officers to stand there and a homeless guy that was hammered.

You're just like that. Yeah. So I'm like, one guy had to stand on a phone book to be the same height. And we all had to wear T-shirts that were white. So we all had to change our shirts and have the same shirt on. By then, and in the Littleton robbery, I was described as Hispanic because I had. had a mullet. I had just gotten back from Mexico because that's what we did with our money.

And I was tan as hell. So he described me as Hispanic. I'm number five. I'm standing there. I got the number. And again, it's like if they make eye contact with them and I don't. Or if vice versa, or do I look up? Or what do I do? Hey, what's up, buddy? Or do I, like, what do I do? Like, what do I do? I just said, you know, if I'm standing with cops, cops are probably going to stand like cops do. And that's what I did. My head was shaved. I looked exactly like I'm. And part of the reason why they got other cops to be in the lineup.

Guy came through once, stops in front of between me and six. And you're looking at him. You recognize this guy. I know exactly who he is. I stuck a gun in his face. 100%. And he's looking at me and six. And he scampers out.

Because I'm looking at another double, whatever the hell it is I'm looking at for the one robbery. He comes through again. I'm like, come on, guys. Make up your mind. Don't do this to me again. He came through like three or four times and he ended up picking number six. And six was just a cop. My lawyer had a field day with it because my lawyer went up to the cop and gave him his car and said, I think you're in some trouble, can you?

Where were you that night? But no, he couldn't pick me out. Nobody could. And that happened three times. Wow. It was Littleton and then. The hockey mom robbery. Wow.

I'd have to look at the robberies to figure out what third one. And then another one. Wow. So all those lineups. It was like every day the lawyer calls you up. Got another lineup. But up until that point, Nancy never ratted you out. Up to that point, I think it was Nancy giving him the information.

And they were like... So once Nancy was arrested, again, I don't know if Nancy's arrest was prior to making it look good. I see. Afterwards, she starts talking. But they wanted to get more evidence. They started putting me in lineups because, hey, we know he was there. We can't place him there. So let's put him in front of the victim since Nancy can't.

Who else was there? Got it. They did pull me. So right after I was arrested, the officer pulled me into the interrogation room and says, we got your co-defendant, we got the inside guy. We arrested him this morning, and he's singing like a bird. And I'm, you know, helping us out by telling us what you know and ratting on your dad and brother would go a long way for you.

And I swear to God, I just love it. I was like, dude, that's just going to make Christmas weird. I can't. I can't. And I just said, no. At that point, you got me. What judge is going to be like, let them go, some Oreos and get them out of here?

No. And it's like, no, I'm not ratting on my family. I don't know. Maybe I would have rated on somebody I don't know, but I didn't tell on anybody. Because I know what it was like to be told on. I wouldn't have been there if Nancy didn't save her ass. And consequently, I don't know that I would have made her same decision.

I would have probably. Listen, once your ass is on the line and I literally mean your ass whole you become very yeah, you want to sing and who wouldn't and it's just such bullshit anyone that thinks they're solid enough

not to rat. It just doesn't exist anymore. So what did they eventually get you on? Nancy's testimony that you were there? Well, they got me on Burlington, which was armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. So you have to understand that the planning is a different charge.

Always. So it's eight total charges. So it's arm robbery. conspiracy to commit on robbery. Robbery through confinement, conspiracy to... I bought the duct tape. I didn't just grab a roll in the heat of the moment. Kidnapping, which is the same as robbery through confinement. Larceny over 250.

And that was the four. Did you have to fight in prison? Yeah. What were the fights? After that article came out where my dad... Where it says, we asked for three black men to be robbed. I was approached in prison by two guys that had a cell next to mine. it was a guy that had a limp because he shot his own dick off.

He had a gun in his waistband. You don't put a gun in your waistband and he went to pull it out. He put his finger on the trigger. You don't put a finger on a trigger unless you intend to put a bullet into somebody. So every cop will keep the finger off the trigger until he puts it on it. And that's when they're like, hey, that's when you're about to apply eight pounds of pressure to a trigger and put a bullet in someone. So he tried to pull it out of his waistband and shot his deck off. So he had a weird limp.

And he was, he had a cellmate that was just as big as my brother. Like, you could feel this guy's humidity when he was near you. I had my canteen. Canteen is you get money sent and you can buy things in the commissary. You can get Pop-Tarts and anything canned. And you could buy mayonnaise. You couldn't refrigerate it, but if you have, you think Hellman's mayonnaise needs to be refrigerated, guys. Go into prison right now.

It'll be in every prisoner's locker and it's not refrigerated and it's fresh as hell. So those preservatives are fucking strongest. they're great. So he's walking up the block because once you get called to canteen, you get called by cell and everyone dumps out of the block and you start coming back one by one. And they never got canteen. So he approaches me and he stands in front of me and I could have taken him. He's fucking got a limp and no dick.

So he says, hey, you know, we saw that article in The Herald. He's like, like, we don't have enough problems as it is. He says, you're going to start giving us your canteen every single week. and just go put it in our cell right now. And as soon as he's saying that, I feel a cellmate behind me. It kind of just bumps into me. As all this is going on,

the sergeant opens the block door between blocks, and he's walking down. Now, if they got caught strong arm in me, we're all going to the hole. So I said, listen, I'll just bring my stuff into myself. And when he's gone, I'll just give it to you. I don't want any problems. I don't care.

And that's when I was like, shit, I can't because I had befriended a guy in the yard who let me use his weights. And when you're in prison, and it's not like the gym. Hey, can I work in? Do that. I saw one guy do that. And they were like, sure, God. And the guy started his set.

And they took a 25 bummer dumbbell and they bashed them in the side of the head. Sorry, but that's the prison language that no one can teach you. You disrespected them by asking them if you could have their weights. You had no. So you'll go out in the yard and there'll be, you know, the sharks will have the weights. you'll see a bunch of people standing on the edge hoping to just get a dumbbell. Because you're sitting in 23 hours a day and you can't exhaust your body enough to fall asleep at night, man. You're laying around.

Try it. You've been on unemployment. We know. And that's why he go back to work. So he befriended me and I was like, dude, I told him one night. I said, you have no idea how scary this is for me to be in. He was like, you know, we called it. He was, I knew you had SDD when you walked in, scared to death.

That's what they call every inmate gets STD And he says Listen it's really It just comes down To how you handle Your first situation Somebody's gonna step to you

And you let them do it You gotta do the hardest time There is You know handle it And you'll skate And uh Yeah I've heard that before Like you've got to be proactive

If someone steps to you Like I've heard people say When you get into the block Like just fight the first guy you see Like just swing on a motherfucker Yeah well no Because that that That just doesn't work.

Me and my brother went on the block, and my brother was walking the block, and everyone's on the outside of the block, and I say this as a joke, because it was just so true. My brother says, listen, if anyone's going to do any fucking around here, it's going to be me.

And silence. My brother says things you listen. I was like, that is fucking genius. When I got shipped out to the next prison, thought I'd give it a try. I walk out, and I say the same thing. If anyone's going to do any fucking around, it's going to be me and I hear oh my god he's so cute

bring him up here I want to start with him so at that point knowing all of that and no one I didn't and and part of the reason I think I survived as long as I did was cause of my brother he was in a cell next to me I got him there we can get into that in a sec but I go into my cell and I'm like first situation first situation first situation and they were breakaway socks so you couldn't put shit in the sock so you could swing it around because they would just break. The sheets were breakaway. I can't lower

my sheets down from the 11th floor of the prison and get drugs from the street because they'll break away once you put a little bit or however, that's the genius of what's going on in there. Your blankets are asbestos, so try lighting them on firefucker, it ain't happening. I knew the socks would break away, so I grabbed like three of them

and I threw two tuna cans on there and I came out swinging. I went up right to Malachi and the limping guy because I figured take him out first. And I got to tell you, if you ever use nunchucks, you know that the most embarrassing part of using them is if you get knocked out by them. It's the same thing when you're swinging a sock full of tuna cans.

If I got knocked out by my own weapon, I fully would have expected to wake up with my pants around my ankles and my asshole eating. So I came out and I, I want to take him out first because it was the back swing into the other guy I wanted. So I knew he was going to go down easy and then take the swing and then home and hit the other kid. I hit him right up the side of the head. As soon as I hit the first guy, you hear over the loudspeaker, move team to east down.

And east down was because it was the east side of the building lower level. That was the block I was on. Move team to east down. Whole prison shuts down. anybody that doesn't make it to their cell while the doors are locking that is outside their cell is told day one when the move team's coming and you can't get to your cell just get on the floor and interlace your fingers behind your head because they're taking you too they're not coming on the block and be like hey uh who's who is it point them all no they come in they sweep it and they go out they're like a caterpillar they move efficiently you can hear them marching in step they have electrified

in the front, electrified in the back, and the two dudes in the middle, you don't want to fuck with. I have seen them do shit. Like, when they quit smoking in prison, they did it on January 1st, and they expected riots. You could see the cops with metal detectors out in the yard the next day.

And they had one kid that they were using as an example. This kid was smoking in his cell, and the move team came. And he took baby oil and just started spraying it everywhere. They ban smoking? They ban smoking because of all the class action lawsuits they were getting from cellmates that were getting secondhand cancer from not making that choice.

It's the same thing as non-smoking in a plane, you idiot. There's no non-smoking in a plane ever. Wow. I was sitting next to somebody and breathing it in. So they started facing a lot of lawyers that are like, no, I'm going to sue the state for. Oh, wow. Yeah, so they halted it. Is that a lot of state prisons that do that?

All of them. I don't know. A single state prison now you can smoke in. Not in Massachusetts. Federal, you can smoke. I don't know. Probably not, because I can't imagine it didn't,

I can't imagine it didn't start there and trickle down to the state level. But yeah, they said, hey, January 1st, all smoking products are now illegal. I'm not saying they're not smoking. Sure, sure, sure. But like this kid,

if they catch you, they throw the bucket shoot him to set a time. So they're coming in and heaps sprays his entire floor of his cell with baby oil. So once the move team hits it, yeah, there goes that perfectly synced marching. And they fell, you should have heard everybody laughing, and I got it.

It was like a Benny Hill skit. Oh, no. You heard the Billy clubs. You heard him kicking the shit out of him. They brought him out like he was a prized pig about to be sunk in the earth and roasted. They pulled him, they cuffed him, and they pulled him up by his arms. And that's awful. If it's never been done to you, don't look into it.

It's just terrible when it's done. And they dragged him out by his feet. They brought him out to the yard and kicked the living shit out of him in front of everybody. Wow. While everyone was watching, this is what will happen. It's mostly for the baby oil, right? It's the baby. Yeah.

Yeah, nobody's crying over the fact that you kick the shit out of a business or armed. I'm Robert. Like, no taxpayers like, well, maybe we shouldn't do that to people. And it becomes very unpopular when you present to them the numbers of what you're facing right now in terms of how many of us are out there. We jail more people than any country in the world. world combined. And now our prisons are subsidized, which means when they're empty, we still have to write

a check. Yeah, it's crazy. So that ain't right, because it means now this is the argument for legalization of things that could potentially not or bring in tax money that could help people. Sure, sure, sure. Yada, yada, yada. But back to the story, you just hit this guy with a tuna can all of a sudden that say move team. Move team.

And I know they're coming. And I got two guys of colored down in an article that says I, so I'm like, this is racially moody up. So I turned to my buddy, Richie, who was a runner on the block and he was white and he was on the ground interlaced like he was supposed to. Bam! No. Yeah, I had to. I felt so bad.

I know I'm laughing, but I feel so fucking bad to this day for hitting Richie. Why? But I had to just make it look like I had lost it. It wasn't racially motivated. I didn't want to hit those guys, but they were strong on me. But that is not, you don't go to the discipline team and say, hey, they were strong. No, you don't say they were strong on you either.

That's ratting. You just say there was a disagreement. I don't have anything to say. But I don't want to have anything to say or not have anything to say in front of people that think I took out two black guys because I don't like them. Wow. Nothing's further from the truth. You know why I'll tell you something? You know who prison made me racist against?

White people. They're the worst. The solidest people in the fucking prison are black. That might be racist too, but I had the best friends in there, man. It taught me how stupid my racism was. It really did because they were awesome. Interesting. Yeah, more people, I feel like people get more racist in prison.

But you feel like you got actually connection. No, because it was like, shit, I'm sitting in front of a kid of color that is doing eight years to my two. For some bullshit, probably. For half of what I did. He didn't have a lawyer and he's not white. Yeah. Do you feel like if you were black and you got these sentences? Without a doubt.

Fuck. Yeah. Without a doubt. I think I only got what we did. We got partially because we could hire lawyers and we were white. We presented the, we're addicted to drug bullshit. We had a black judge. And he was brilliant.

He was just brilliant. Julian, I think the last name was Julian. And he said to my dad at his sentencing. And I think it's in the article. This is beyond my capacity as a father to understand for a judge to say that. It was like, wow. How you could have brought your two sons into this. I don't care what you did, sir, but you brought your kids into this.

Wow. So the cops come down. Oh, you can see my dad. It looks just like Tony Soprano in the article. My dad did not like him. Oh, wow. Because your dad, you feel like it's a pretty racist dude. He's sitting there with this guy.

My dad was both my dad and my grandmother were just the quiet racist. They snuck it in. It was like you didn't hear it until it was a, hmm. So he's getting sentenced by this black dude, and that's even making him more mad. Yeah. And this guy. my dad was supposed to get out with all of his good time and everything on a certain date and this guy wouldn't sign off on it.

This guy tried to keep him in for another year and a half. Wow. Yeah, fuck you. It was awesome. And then one of my dad's ex-con friends called this judge and said, I'm from Fox News. I want to ask you why you're keeping a man in jail 18 months longer than his sentence. Just scared him a little bit and my dad got back out. Now, when you're in prison, you finally your mother has lung cancer.

Yeah. Which is brutal. and then while you're in there you can't do anything and you love your mom you know she's the only one that didn't send me to prison at this point so of the two yeah I favor her yeah my mother gave me my sense of humor because my mother was like listen our life sucked

I'm sorry I tried to drink everything my mother drank in a way that she thought that if she drank everything no one else could drink it and she was saving them they were multi my mother got to the point where with alcoholism because it starts to wear down the mucosal lining of your esophagus one hiccup and rupture that esophagus, they can't repair that. You don't go into the emergency room with a bleeding esophagus, and they're like, oh. Take a pill.

No, it's time for you to just bleed out, and you probably won't even know what's happening. And of all the times, my childhood was pretty much two or three times a year, my mother ended up in rehab. And back in the 70s and early 80s, it wasn't understood as a disease. And I don't buy into the disease model of addiction, but that's where they treated them in mental hospitals. My poor mom was next to a woman, you know, people with schizophrenia. And I asked her one time, I'm like, mom, are you really crazy? And she's like, no, I just need a break from you guys. I'm like, well, fucking go to Disneyland.

And she goes, well, Disneyland doesn't leave a little candy dish of Thorazine next to my bed every day when they start doing that I'll go. So she's funny. It was a break for her. Yeah. She just said, listen, out of tragedy needs to process it. Yeah. We got to find the humor in it. So Thanksgiving for us was, remember the time Kev stole two cars?

And it was always just to find what's funny about it and outrageous about that level of anger and disappointment that you brought your poor parents to. Wow. Diagnosed with lung cancer and given a, it was stage four right away and minimal, you know, time left. And so it's like, am I going to even, am I going to even make it to see her? and the day she came to pick me up it was it was she had just finished about of chemo and radiation she didn't have insurance so she qualified for a study where they were like how much is enough to kill somebody almost yeah they just blast her with it and i just hugged a bag of bones and uh when i got up and found out she was living in some conditions with my sister my half

sister that my sister was taking a medication and uh my mother wasn't getting her medication. So the first night I dosed my mother, I almost killed her. Yeah, I kicked my sister out. I said, listen, you got to go. She had her own problems. My sister had a kid. And she had her own pain.

I don't necessarily fault my sister for trying to appease her pain, but not at my mother's expense. Right. So it was just me and my mom in the last couple months. Wow. And at one point, you know, you go to the doctors and they're like, listen, it didn't work. And right now it's just about pain management. And I said, you know, I think this is above my capacity to handle. Like, I think maybe you should go into hospice. And she

cries. She said, please, just help me die home. And I did that. And the past couple weeks, she kept trying to escape. She thought I was an orderly in a hospital. That morphine will fuck with you. You're dehydrated. You're not getting food. And all you're just managing just this awful pain. And at that point she started having a stomach tumor which i'd rather have lung the stomach is supposed to be viciously painful because it breaches you the tumor grew out of her and that smell and having to clean that a couple times a day i did it and i did it happily because she wanted to die at home but it was just it's scarring man traumatized wow i was already traumatized so the second you get out you're just take care right into the shit yeah wow and making sure that she dies where she wants to wow and that

goes on for a couple months. At three months, yeah. And then she passes away. Brutal. At least you got to be there with her. You know, and that's the way I look at it. At some point, the universe said, you know, let him be the one that she,

because in any other scenario, it just would have been an awful death. It was an awful death to begin with. At one point, and God bless hospice, Jesus, if you know a hospice worker, get them a bottle of booze because they need, because they're just wonderful. I don't know what goodness in your heart heart gets you to face that every day.

But they were wonderful. And towards the end, once I was arrested, I was in Valley Street and inmates are amazing. I think there should be all-inmate juries. Because there would be 30 seconds before they're like, nope, it's full of shit. This is how we did it. Get them out of here. And they would out, they'll know the second somebody's innocent. No way they could have done that. And they just know. So two dudes were reading my

article the next morning. And I'm just my first day. I'm fucking all fucked up But they're looking at it And they're pointing at me And they're laughing And I go over and I'm like, what? And they're like, this is you? And I said, yeah, they're like,

six years. Like, what? You get six years. They knew. They're like, they said you did this. Yeah, you did this. They just knew. It's like that, you know,

you ever come home to a girlfriend that's like, I know you've been with someone and she's right? And you're like, you just want to ask her how she knows because you don't know how she knows because there's no reason

she should know. And they just knew. And my mother came to visit me and it was like, I can't control my emotions around these people. I wanted to cry. But I can't. I'm in a place where that, and I hung up the phone and I went back to my cell and I said, I can't, you can't do it. I'm killing myself. I'm done. And I was in my cell by myself, which was rare. And somebody tried to hang themselves the night before and I saw how they did it. When they were cleaning it up, I saw that he had ripped his sheets apart and he tied it in and then you tied up to the top bunk

and then you have to get into a position where you can lay in a prone and be as straight as possible and choke yourself out. I said, you know what? My mother deserves a last goodbye. And I went to the phone and I called her. And I said, I can't do it. She says, what?

I said, I can't do prison. She goes, I know. Neither can I. And I said, I got to tell you, I'm wrapping it up. And she goes, okay, me too. And that was the moment that my mother's brilliant saved my life. Because she used reverse psychology. She said, I'm going to kill myself too.

I said, what? No. She said, well, you are. I said, well, you can't. People need you. She was, well, people need you too. And I'm crying and I'm like, I'm ready to. I was resolute, dude.

I was going to kill myself. And she turns the tables on me And I said, well, listen, I'm going to make you, I'll make you a deal. You don't die tonight and I won't die tonight. And if I see you slip it through all of this and you start to lose your way, know that if you kill yourself, I'll kill myself.

She said, deal. And we made a pact. And it was something that we said at the end of every phone call. She'd say, remember the pact. And I don't know. I might cry. Hospice asked me to break it. They said she won't let go.

My mother held on till the last second. And to have medical professionals say, we don't know why she's still alive. My sister wasn't there. My brother was locked up. I was miserable. She couldn't die in peace. And they got to the point where they said, listen,

tell her she can go. And fuck. I knelt by her bed and I said, listen, you know that pact that we have? She says, of course. I said, you know, it's over. You can go. She said, what are you on your fucking mind?

No. She fell asleep. That was it? After that, she lost her power of speech. You know, it was only a couple of days before she went. But she wouldn't let me out of it. Wow. Yeah.

And how was it? That was it. I watched it get carried out in the body bag of it. I don't know what it is about me that, that, wants the scar to be deep enough. And I'll watch that stuff, despite people trying to tell me, don't watch it.

And it's the same thing. And I know we haven't talked about my father and brother's death. And it's the same thing about the video I have of the room they both died in. I have a video of it. I took it. And I had to.

I don't know why. I don't know what about me ever looking at that again will help me process it. It won't. You know what? I think the reason I keep it is because I'll send it to you and you can look at it. And I can somehow draw from your reaction

what a normal person would think. Because I'm not a normal person. I don't have a lot of the same reactions. Sometimes I overreact to things that most people wouldn't. You know what I mean? So my life has really just been a study of what normal people do. I love normal people. I'm like, that's fucking fascinating.

And then you sit around a tree and open gifts. Wow. And nobody punches each other? That's fantastic. It's thrilling to me. But it's never been my life. So then after your mom passes, you have six-ish years, five-ish years where you're just alone. You're the only one on the outside.

Your brother's still in. Your dad's still in. And I stopped talking to both of them. I started going to a therapy called Determinism. And it was a therapy invented by a guy who the American Psychiatric Association ended up pulling his license. Because he basically sat you down and he said, you're not self-made. You didn't develop you.

You didn't ask to be born. So so much of what you've been through up to the point where you think you became independent, you were programmed by. And your parents deserve all the credit in the world for your successes, but they also deserve some of the blame for your struggles. And boy, did I have a pile of that.

And I only heaped it on my dad. So I sat in front of this therapist who very, very, very, calculatingly let me do it until one day he decided he was going to bring my mother into the mix he said uh you know your mother allowed that man access to you i got up and i grabbed him by the fucking chest i grabbed him by the neck and i said you fucking mention if you taste my mother's words if they ever come out of your mouth again i'll fuck you up and i left um and it i went back the next week and we talked about it it was fun

but it was an amazing reaction for how I didn't I never even thought that I couldn't even couldn't even process the idea of that but he was right and I wouldn't have got if he wasn't right I wouldn't have tried to choke him wow yeah don't try to choke out your therapist very hard for them to help you from that what ended up happening with your your father and your brother God two years ago I was getting ready to go teach a spin class 6 a.m. And I was living in a hotel room at the time. There's a knock at the door, which doesn't happen for me. You don't understand.

I'm the type of person that sleeps with a bottle next to my front door. Because I don't trust the locks. Somebody opens that door. I want a bottle to alert me to like. It's just shit like that you end up walking out of prison still with a mentality with. But two uniform officers knock at the door. And it was just so weird because it was instinctual. I look, I see them and my instinct was back.

door. Look at the back door. Because that's how you know whether or not you're leaving in cuffs. If the cops are recovering the back and there's two in the front, you're leaving in cuffs. And there wasn't. So I said, this is weird. I considered not opening the door. I don't like people, certainly don't want to talk to cops because there's never anything good. They're not like, hey, we have an appreciation award for you. And you've been out at this point for, I mean, what, 20 years, 15 years? I'm doing episodes with my dad of the podcast. Me and my brothers still aren't talking. We just, we just don't. I wrote a book about fitness. I, I've written actually three fitness books about, hey, here are the things that I've seen going into the lab every

day, 60 hours a week, working with people. Here are the things I know to be true. Here are the things that aren't. And I really just started, because that's the other mark I want to leave. I want to say, hey, here's, here's what I've done with this career, the first half of which I hated. To be an ex-con and be stuck with landscaping, chef, or personal trainer, seriously, if you've had more than one personal train on one of them's next comp. Yeah. The guy that says, I'm going to date you to this, GSC, how long you get out.

All right, no, you're fit. You're good. And it's very limiting. So rather than hate it, knowing that I was stuck in it, I said, all right, well, let me see if I can be the best. Anyone's ever seen in this. And that's my ego. That may be a little narcissistic, but it's,

I want to figure out. So I, like I, like I always do, I sat down in front of a curriculum of physical therapy books. and I said there's got to be an answer in here somewhere. And there isn't. I mean, there's nobody out there that can say, here's the rotator cuff and this is what it should look like. These are why they're breaking.

Because I'm a trainer seeing it constantly. Well, why is you breaking? So it was trying to leave something here. I want to leave something here. And that's what I was in the process of doing when these two cups knocked. And my brother read the book, my first book. and and I wanted him to because he's a completely different type of brain and it was exactly the type of brain I needed to sort of say hey

here's here's the rabbit hole you want to go down and here's the questions you want to answer here and here's what you didn't really look at he was the only one that I could think of capable of doing that and uh we just couldn't be in the same room and survive and our energies which we we could if it wasn't a thanksgiving of us talking and laughing it was us destroying the furniture because we would fight physically constantly and I've only won one of them I only beat my brother once and I don't even think

I think he let me win they told me that my father and brother would deceased and it was like no you're fucking out of your mind what what but it's two cops and he's like here's a phone number you need to call this detective because he's in charge of the case and they stand there and they're like we're here to watch you do this

it's not like closed the door thank you for the number And I called the guy. And, you know, God bless these state detectives and these police detectives. But like I said, they're a different type of people. And I don't think to them this is as shocking as it is to hear. Because he played the 911 call that my dad made. So my brother killed himself. My father found him.

And my father went, called 911, wrote a note, a suicide note, went and laid next to my brother and killed him. So the police detective thought my father shot my brother. So I sent the article that is online right now that you can look up and find in Trinity, Florida. Father shoots some. And it was right after a husband just killed a wife in that same neighborhood. So what's going on in this neighborhood? Nothing, you jackass. They thought it was like something in the water.

That's what the media sort of started to direct it to. And they said that. And I had a call, say, well, why would your dad put the barrel of the gun? in your brother's mouth. There was a flashlight on the gun. Why would a dad do that? Why would you? And I'm sitting there thinking, you know,

my brother's diabetes got bad to the point where I think that my brother couldn't even drive. And he was having seizures nightly, and my dad couldn't handle it. My dad texted me a couple weeks prior to, and I have the text still because they are probably part of what I regret the moment. most in this. He was asking me for help. He's like, your brother's not good. Something's wrong

with him. It's worse. Can you please call me? And I called him and I called him and he couldn't talk at that point. So he ended up becoming a back and forth. And at the same time, my dad's working out his will. Calling me saying, do you want you want this? And I'm going to put you in charge of that and make sure of this. And I'm, and I just thought it was an old guy, you know, putting his affairs in order. And that's how he was saying. He said, here's everything in case you need it. And then they both shoot themselves. I don't know how the fuck two ex-cons with that caliber of, you know, history, find a gun. That's what I asked a cop.

He's like, dude, no, you can't go and buy one anywhere, but you can buy one from your neighbor. And no one gives a fuck. That gun could have exchanged hands 19 times, and we wouldn't know where to trace it back to him. That's what's going on, guys. It's not going in and saying, hey, the ex-con can't have the gun because ex-cons are still getting the guns. and it's because right now I can sell you any gun that I own with no recourse.

You know, if you go and commit a crime with them, I'm sure the cops are going to knock on my door, but you can't get charged with that. Wow. And that's was, I can't have a gun right now. I don't know where I would even get one. I don't know how my father got one. It was a Glock with an extended clip.

They still don't know. I still don't know. Wow. I don't think they're pursuing it. But these are the things that he said to me on the phone. listening to my dad call and reporting his own death.

I don't know, maybe he should have softened that blow a little bit, but the other thing is they don't clean it. I clean it. I was like, okay, well, who comes in and cleans it? He's like, I don't know, fucking call somebody or do it yourself. They don't give a shit.

And then they do an autopsy. And an autopsy means they're ripping the shit out of that body to the point you can't open casketing. So the cop orders autopsy to be done on my dad and brother because he doesn't believe that the blood spatter expert

and the coroner both said it was a suicide suicide. Cop said no. Something here. This woman was like, when she called me 90 days later, she was apologetic. She said, I called this woman and the blood spatter woman

because I needed her to convince the cop not to do the autopsy. She said, I knew right away. They know. My brother aspirated after he shot himself. and the blood spatter was something that the cop didn't like. So he decided that I was going to have to wait 90 days thinking my father shot my brother.

90 fucking days, I had to sit with that. I had to think of all the reasons he could have and think, yeah, those are justifiable reasons to stick to fucking hammer, to put a gun in somebody's mouth with a flashlight on it. Listen, my brother was insufferable. I thought of shooting him in the head. But this wasn't it. And my dad wouldn't, he wouldn't have.

In an act of mercy, maybe. In the way that my dad was describing my brother's condition of seizures every night, that makes you crazy after a while. You go insane. And once the police find out you having seizures, your license is gone. Your ability to do anything is gone. And my brother's looking at a dad that's going to die. A brother he doesn't talk to anymore.

And a Saf sister that's not very reliable. My dad's decision to do it, I don't know. You know, I'm left with... If it had been me, would he have killed himself? If he had found me, and that sucks to... I don't think he would have. You know, and God bless the one person in my brother's life that he had. But it's just a fucking shit story.

What are the notes? I can't live without my son. Please don't let him take the house. Please contact Brian Siboulouski. He is the executor of my will like. it was all planned. And, you know, I could see the cops saying, geez, a week before,

and here's a guy laying everything out. That was my dad. He was systematic. He was like, here's everything. Like, he was doing a will. And I think he just saw the suicide as, my dad, on the podcast, you can hear him. My dad says, no, I'm dying at 85.

I'm like, dad, you don't get to pick when you die. He's like, I do. I don't want to live beyond 85, so I'm not going to. He died just before his, he died two months before his 80th birthday. By his own hand. So I think I don't know if that was what he was always planning But that man was like no

Pretty sure God's gonna take me before then So it's it's And the autopsy confirmed that it was suicide suicide It was ruled suicide suicide do you think the media said we fucked up we reported it wrong? No, there's not gonna be a retraction So you get rid of all the shit We get rid of all of it and then do you go in with a team? Is there a hazmat team? Yeah, you can hire people to go in and clean specifically the

that stuff four grand and you didn't want to do that no so you went in alone i went in alone and uh i had a good friend i have a i don't have a lot of friends but the friends that i have are people that um i have two therapists as friends the patty my really really good friend um was on a plane before i asked her she just like i'm coming and she was there she went in the room first and god bless her she she tried to put a pillow over one of like she tried to hide it like i was going to go in there and not be traumatized as much and god bless her for that but um she said don't go in there and i'm sorry i couldn't not would you you know what i mean i i don't know and again i don't know what regular people do so i'll ask and if you say no i wouldn't go in there i don't know i'd be like cool

but i had to yeah and i had to film it i just sometimes i want to relive it and and get to the that pain because grief is crippling and it's you can ignore it until it says no and it'll lay you out so for two years it's like all right i got to keep going man i still i still got to keep you know paying bills but every once in a while it's couch day you get the fuck down and you ain't getting up and again you see there are times that shit i can be watching a movie and just watch better call saw about the two brothers and i'd lose it i'm done i can't and And grief will just say, you know, I don't care if it's not appropriate here for you to express that. And maybe that's me trying to use that keep a beach ball under the water mentality while the tide is coming in.

Yeah. Is there a closure for something like this? I don't think there is. I don't know. I don't know that there is because I don't like who I am as a result. It changes you. It changes you instantly. The second you found out, you are changed to the point where it's, I can't date.

like I'll meet somebody in the second that it becomes an emotional commitment. You're out. I can't. I'm sorry because all of the emotional commitments that I have had in my life that were supposed to be, you know, my parents were supposed to love me the most. They were supposed to prevent me from going to prison. That was their job. Now, when I talk to parents, my two criteria of figuring out if you're a good parent

is are any of your kids in prison or are any of them swinging on a pole right now? And if you're okay and that's no, you did good in my book. But I mean, that's the part of this that I think is, you know, the coolness runs that very thin line of no parent would do that. What was their funeral like? I don't, there wasn't. They were both cremated. I cremated them both. My dad wouldn't want it when nobody would have come.

My brother, I'm pretty sure within two years of that, within two miles of that funeral home, nobody can pass a drug test after they burned my brother. Anyone that breathe that secondhand smoke was like, wow. My brother right now, he left me his Shelby G.350 Mustang in the will. And I have it. And his ashes are in the back seat. Seat belted to the back. To this day. Because it's the only thing that gave him joy.

And when I picked that, when I went to pick it up after they died, it had 800 miles on it. And he hadn't driven it. And I think the seizures had my brother saying, listen, had my dad say you shouldn't drive it. And you took the one thing away from my brother. This is the physical embodiment of my brother. It sounds and drives and aggressive. And it's not me.

He's look at me in it. You're like, guy, this guy's in the middle of a fucking, he's got a little dick, and he's in the middle of a fucking midlife crisis. I get it. But I can't sell it. I can't. And I won't. And that's where it belongs.

I considered putting his ashes on the hood and screaming down the hallway and letting it spread. but he's exactly where he needs to be. My dad chased my grandmother around for 15 years of the last of her life because she had massive dementia. He put her in and earn that I can't open. I asked a funeral home. I'm like, are urns usually openable?

And I'm like, well, there's two versions. Yeah, my mother, my dad locked that bitch up, said, you ain't fucking getting out anymore. And I have my dad. I considered for a long time sending him to be compressed into a diamond. He would fucking love it. It's 10 grand.

No, I need that 10 grand. But it's like, what do you do? What do you do now with that? Wow. I don't know any of it. I don't know what to do with any of it. And you wouldn't bury him with your mom. My mother wasn't buried either.

My mother wanted to be cremated. My mother said, don't have a wake. It's too expensive. And it is. Like, I went into the funeral home and I said, okay, well, how much is an earn? And they're like, well, we give you this little cardboard thing. It looked like Chinese takeout. Like, you don't put my mother in that.

What's the next thing out? $1,200 for a wooden box. That's what she's in now. People don't realize. She wanted her ashes spread in the white mountains of New Hampshire. And so I said, well, my brother's still lucked up. My sister's not going to be able to do it. So I'll take a third of the ashes out.

Don't ever do that. You think it's ash? There's teeth, bones in there. I took this little tiny antique ash trick to just get enough of the ashes out. and I scooped them out and it's the most disturbing fucking thing

you'll ever do in your life. And now there's only a third of my mother up in heaven. So this is fucking hanging out wondering with the rest of her. Wow. I spread her asses where she wanted them and I did what I was supposed to do

but dad didn't have a wish. My brother didn't have a wish. And they certainly didn't live long enough to talk about it. Wow. My dad didn't care. You didn't want to be buried anywhere. A diamond is kind of a...

It's kind of cool. Kind of cool. I'm still not against. So if anyone wants to donate, let's start a go fund me. Yeah. He doesn't have to be a diamond either. We can make him a cubic zircon just to fuck with him. Wow.

So at this point, you're like a year and a half, two years away from that incident. Two years, February 11th. Wow. Exactly. Last question. Thank God. Is this my beer? That's you.

What happened to the safe that you guys buried in the cement of your dad's home? Maybe the only person that had any business being a criminal in all of this was my sister. I sent her into that house because they were guarding it and they were looking for me. There was a cop car outside of it every day. So I said, Jess, go in the back door, get yourself. She had to get herself up to my dad's bedroom because he screwed the combination in a light switch. Unscrewed it. Wrote the combination down, popped in there, re-screwed it in.

That's where it was. No one else knew the combination. She had to get up there and then get downstairs into the basement, uncover it. there was only a rug thrown over it. He didn't do anything else to cover that safe. So police went in there with three warrants, cut our couch cushions, but didn't say,

come on, guys, be better. She went in there and she cleaned it out. That's how I paid for my dad's defense. That's how I paid for my brother's defense. And that's how I paid for mine. Wow. And I don't know. There was maybe a silver Rolex in there that,

I don't know if I think it, I didn't pay for with money. I paid for with years in prison, but it's shiny now and tells me the time and date, but it's a momento. That's a great place to end it. Brian Sobaleski.

Thank you so much for coming here, brother. I really appreciate the time. I appreciate you sharing the story and being vulnerable with me. This stuff is tremendously difficult. Oh, you're not going to cut that out? No, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, man. This is awesome. I'll link everything, the book, the podcast. This is awesome. Let's spread the word. All right. Thank you, brother.