Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - True Crime This Week: Infamous Heists

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

This week on True Crime This Week, host Vanessa Richardson dives into two of history’s most daring and unforgettable heists.First, journey to Nazi-occupied France, where art curator Rose Valland risked her life to secretly track thousands of stolen masterpieces — including Nicolas de Largillierre’s Portrait of a Woman, Half Length — and later helped the famed Monuments Men recover Europe’s looted treasures.Then, ride back to the Wild West for the tale of Black Bart, the gentleman bandit who robbed 28 Wells Fargo stagecoaches without ever firing a shot — and left behind poetry instead of bloodshed.From stolen art to outlaw artistry, these two crimes prove that not all heists are created equal — but every thief eventually faces the same reckoning. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Crime House community. It's Vanessa Richardson. And if you love digging into the most gripping true crime stories, then you need to listen to another Crime House original, Crimes of, with Sabrina Deanna Roga and Corinne Vienne. Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season from crimes of paranormal, unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances, and more. Sabrina and Corinne have been covering the true stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains, and this month, they'll be diving into the paranormal. Listen to Crimes of every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This is Crime House. This week in crime history, we're talking about two of the world's most infamous heists. On November 6th, 2024, Christie's Auction House in Paris announced that a painting called Portrait of a Woman Half-Length by Nicola de LaGilliers was going on sale. Later that month, it sold for over half a million euros. This piece of art was stolen by Nazis in World War II, then recovered by a crafty and determined art curator named Rose Valon. 141 years earlier, Wild West outlaw Charles Bowles, better known as Black Bart, held up his last stagecoach. Throughout his estimated eight-year criminal career, he'd robbed more stagecoaches than any other bandit, and he committed all of his heists without firing a single shot.

Welcome to True Crime This Week, part of Crime House Daily. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Every Sunday, we'll be revisiting notorious crimes from the coming week in history. From serial killers to mysterious disappearances or murders, every episode will explore stories that share a common theme. Each week will cover two stories, one further in the past and one more rooted in the present. Here at Crime House, we know none of this would be possible. without you, our community, please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Crime House Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. And for ad-free and early access to Crimehouse Daily plus

exciting bonus content, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. This week's theme is infamous heists. First up is the story of Portrait of a Woman Half-length, painted by French artist Nicola Del Argyllier around the year 1700. Nazis looted the piece from a Jewish family in 1940, but thanks to one brave art lover, this and so many other priceless pieces didn't stay hidden for long. Then we'll jump back to 1883 when a bandit named Black Bart stole his final case full of gold from a Wells Fargo stagecoach. The authorities spent years chasing him across Northern California, but in the end, it was Black Bart's own dirty laundry that brought him down. All that and more coming up.

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more peace of mind with your bill over five years. This is big. Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at tellus.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. On November 6th, 2024, Christy's auction house in Paris announced that an 18th century Rococo-style portrait was going on sale later that month. The work by artist Nicola de Largilliere showed, a smiling French noblewoman. Her skin was powdered white. Her hair was adorned with pink and red

flowers, and she was wrapped in a shimmering red and silver robe. Titled Portrait of a Woman Half-length, this painting eventually sold for 529,000 euros. But the high price wasn't just because of the artist's masterful work. It was also due to the portrait's long and adventurous history. Portrait of a woman was one of thousands of paintings the Nazis had stolen from Jewish families during their conquest of Europe. And if it weren't for a woman named Rose Valon, this work of art could have disappeared forever. Rose Valon was born in a small town outside of Lyon, France, in 1898. She had a humble upbringing in the countryside, where her father worked as a blacksmith. But even though she lived far away from the museums and cultural centers of Paris, Rose grew up with a deep love

of art history. So no one was surprised when she pursued an art degree in Leone, or when she moved to Paris in 1922 to continue her studies. There, Rose attended some of the most prestigious art schools in the world, including the Ecole de Louvre and the Sorbonne. Afterwards, Rose applied for a job at the Louvre Museum, despite her deep knowledge of art and degrees from France's top universities, her application was rejected. The Louvre categorically refused to hire women. At the time, it was rare for women to attend university, let alone have a career. So in 1932, 34-year-old Rose was forced to accept a less prestigious job as a volunteer curator at the National Museum for Contemporary Foreign Art,

located in and referred to as the Jeux-Dupom. She collaborated with the Museum. She collaborated with the museum's director to plan exhibitions and acquire new paintings for the museum's collection. To make money on the side, she gave lectures about art history and published art criticism in major magazines. And her career wasn't the only controversial choice that Rose made. So was her romantic life. She spent most of her spare time with her partner, Dr. Joyce Hear, a British woman who worked as a German-to-English translator at the U.S. Embassy. Rose spent her 30s living out her dreams in the center of the French art world. But across the border in Germany, trouble was brewing.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany began building up its military and annexing neighboring countries like Austria. As the decade came to an end, it was clear that Hitler wanted to keep expanding. and France, which shared a nearly 300-mile border with Germany, seemed like the next logical target. In 1939, the French government began trucking famous works of art from the Louvre out to the countryside to protect them from a potential German invasion. That day came in May of 1940 when the Nazi army swept into Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France. France didn't see a way out, and in June, the government saw the government's

signed an armistice that put the Germans in control of the country, and the Nazis wasted no time making themselves at home. In November, officials from a Nazi organization known as Einzenstab Reichleiter-Rusenberg, or E.R.R. showed up at the G. de Pomme. The E.R.R. was tasked with seizing valuable artwork from conquered territories to take back to Germany. But the E.R.R.'s commander in France, Kurt von Baer, had a problem. The Nazis were taking so much art from museums, private collections, and Jewish families in France that they had run out of places to put it all. The Jue de Pomme was a large building with plenty of storage space.

When Van Baer and his men arrived, they fired the staff and set to work turning the museum into a warehouse for their stolen goods. But 41-year-old Rose Valon defied their orders and kept showing up for work every day. She answered to the art, not the Nazis. Rose's determination paid off. The Nazis needed somebody who knew their way around the building, and Von Baer knew nothing about art history. He just had an eye for things that looked flashy and expensive. So Rose helped Van Baer organize and store truckloads of paintings, antique furniture,

statues, and rugs from all over the country. German soldiers unloaded crates full of priceless artwork and roughly shoved them into exhibition halls, spare rooms, and offices. On more than one occasion, clumsy soldiers damaged or tore paintings as they rushed to unpack them. The whole time, Rose moved through the chaos, often unnoticed, doing her best to protect the artworks from their new owners. The Nazis who came and went from the Jeud-de-Pom didn't think Rose was a threat. In fact, they rarely noticed her at all.

None of them knew that Rose had learned German from her partner, Joyce, and Rose was always listening. Over the next few years, scavenged art from all over France flowed into the Je du Palme. Their top Nazi officials browsed the collections for anything they wanted to keep. The most famous works were reserved for Hitler's personal collection, followed by members of his inner circle. Air Force commander Hermann Guring came to the Jue de Pomme more than 20 times to pick out art for his various homes. By the end of the war, the New York Times estimated that he'd acquired nearly $200 million worth of stolen art. Not everything that showed up at the Jue de Pomme went to Germany, though. Impressionist paintings and other pieces of modern art that the Nazis deemed degenerate were shoved into a back room of the museum.

Sometimes the Nazis traded these unwanted paintings to art dealers in exchange for classical pieces they considered more valuable. Once, Rose watched in horror as the Nazis stacked up five or six hundred modernist artworks, including paintings by Paul Clay, Joan Miro and Picasso, and set them on fire. Rose didn't try to stop them. She was more strategic than that. The Germans didn't keep track of what art was coming into the je du pom, or where it was going. That wasn't an accident, though. They didn't want to create a paper trail that the true owners could use to track down their items. And access to the museum was highly restricted. The only French citizen allowed inside was Rose, and she was paying attention.

During her long hours at the jeud de palm, Rose took careful notes on every piece of art she saw coming in the door. She listened closely as the Germans discussed which Nazi officials had claimed which paintings and where they were taking them. However, she had to be discreet. Once, a German officer caught her writing down a list of shipping addresses and got angry at her for keeping track of forbidden information. Fortunately, Rose was able to talk him down, but after that, she changed her methods.

At the museum, she tried to commit as much information to memory as possible and then wrote it all down in the privacy of her home. It probably felt futile at times, standing by and taking notes as she watched her country's culture being looted and destroyed. But in the summer of 1944, the tide began to turn. In June, the U.S. and other allied nations landed at Normandy Beach and began the liberation of France.

When it was clear that the German army wouldn't be able to hold them off, The Nazi E.R. loaded their favorite selections from the Jeud de Pomme onto a train, then tried to flee to Germany. Once they were gone, 45-year-old Rose tipped off her friends in the French Resistance, who she'd been giving information to the entire time. Thanks to her heads up, resistance fighters were able to sabotage the train before it could leave Paris and recover all the art inside. In the weeks that followed, firefights raged all around,

the Gilles-de-Palm. The German military headquarters were located nearby, and Allied armies were doing their best to close in on them. Rose stayed at the museum alone for four days, making sure the art was safe until the Germans gave up the city on August 25th. Once Paris was back under Allied control, French cultural authorities went through the artwork at the Gilles-de-Pom to return it to its rightful owners. But Rose had her sights set elsewhere, The Nazis had already taken thousands of cultural artifacts back to Germany over the past four years. Thanks to her exhaustive note-taking, Rose knew exactly where many of them were, and she was determined to get them back.

And with a little help from the U.S. military, that's exactly what she did. During the four years in which Germany occupied France, a Nazi organization known as ERR looted priceless works of art from museums, private collections, and Jewish families all over the country. The stolen pieces were kept at a Paris museum called the Jeux-de-Pombe, where French art curator Rose Valon secretly kept tabs on all the art. And after the Allies liberated Paris in 1944, 46-year-old Rose was ready to bring the stolen pieces back home.

Fortunately, she wasn't the only person in Paris who was interested in tracking down looted treasures. Not long after the Allies arrived in 1944, Rose came into contact with a U.S. Army captain named James Rorimer. But James was no ordinary soldier. Before he enlisted in 1943, he was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Now, he was a member of a special military task force called the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section Unit, better known as the Monuments Men.

This group of over 300 men and women had put their careers as art historians and curators on hold to help track down artifacts taken by the Nazis. In the winter of 1944, Rose took James on a tour of the various sites around Paris, where the ERR had hidden stolen art. She showed him a garage where James and his operatives uncovered thousands of rare books, stacked and sorted by Nazis who'd fled before they could take them back to Germany. She also led him to several ERR offices, where they were able to recover important paperwork, identifying ERR personnel and activities. But the most important document of all was Rose's notebook,

which detailed the destinations of all the artwork that had passed through the Jeux-de-Palm. Rose and the Monumentsmen knew exactly where to look. Now they just needed the war to end so they could go into Germany and recover what had been taken. The Germans surrendered a few months later, and on May 8, 1945, In 1845, the fighting officially came to an end, which meant the next phase of Rose's mission could finally begin.

Later that month, Rose and James traveled to the German province of Bavaria, where her notes say many of the artworks had been taken. Their first stop was a 15th century monastery called Bukesheim, about 55 miles north of Munich. During their search of the building, they found 158 paintings by famous artists, including Goya, Rembrandt, and Renoir. Even as a pair of experienced art curators, they'd never seen such an impressive collection in any museum, let alone an abandoned monastery in the middle of nowhere.

Just a few days later, Rose's notebook led her and James to an even bigger stash. During the German occupation of Paris, more than 6,000 pieces of French art, jewelry, and furniture were taken to a castle in the Bavarian Alps called Noiswansstein. It was breathtaking, with white walls and towers perched on a hilltop overlooking a lush valley. Noisvonstein looked like something out of a children's storybook. By the time Rose and James got there, the Nazis had already abandoned the castle. Inside,

they found every inch filled with stolen paintings, tapestries, and rare books. But one piece stood out. Among the many treasures crowding the ballroom and halls of Noysvonstein Castle was Nicola de LaGilliers's portrait of a woman. The Nazis had stolen it in 1940 from a bank vault belonging to the Rothschilds, a prominent French Jewish family. After Rose and James discovered the painting, a group of soldiers who were accompanying them carried this and several other artworks out of the castle. A military photographer snapped a picture of the troops on their way down the stairs with the painting, while James Rorimer stood in the background. The snapshot became one of the most famous images of the Monuments Men at work. By the end of May, Rose had led the Monuments Men to the largest and most valuable stash of stolen art yet,

Hitler's personal collection. He'd hidden over 10,000 of his favorite pieces, deep underground and a salt mine in the Austrian village of Alta Sea. George Stout, a Harvard-educated art conservationist who enlisted with the Monuments Men, showed up in Alta C on May 21st, less than two weeks after the war ended. The entrance to the salt mine had been sealed shut by an explosive charge, but after talking to the locals, he realized it could have been much worse. worse. In the last days of the war, Hitler had given his local Nazi commander orders to destroy the whole stash. Eight one thousand one hundred pound bombs had been placed alongside priceless works

of Renaissance art, primed to explode. But when the commander gave the order to blow the mine, only a few small charges at the entrance went off, sealing the entryway, but preserving the rest of the mine system. It turned out the staff at the mine, who weren't Nazis, had gone in and removed the bombs. They were just interested in protecting their livelihoods, but along the way they'd protected some of the most valuable art pieces in Europe. After digging through the collapsed entrance, Stout and his men explored miles of salt caves by lamplight, all of them packed with works by renowned artists like Michelangelo, Titian, Botticelli, and and El Greco. Over the next few weeks, the Monuments Men recovered over 6,500 paintings,

2,300 drawings or watercolors, 137 sculptures, 129 pieces of historical armor, 122 tapestries, and more than 1,500 cases of rare books from the mine. In the years to come, Rose's notes helped the Monumentsmen recover as many as 60,000 pieces of looted art. Like many of these other artworks, portrait of a woman was eventually returned to its original owners, the Rothschild family, who held onto it for decades until putting it up for auction. As for Rose, she received multiple awards for her bravery, including the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Legion of Honor, France's highest award. Even then, her mission wasn't complete. In 1946, she became the director of France's Fine Arts Cultural

Affairs Bureau. In 1953, she was promoted to the director of the Department for the Protection of Works of Art. Even after her retirement in 1968, Rose continued her detective work, traveling the world to recover stolen paintings that had been looted or auctioned after the war had ended. When Rose Valon first came to Paris in the 1920s, no museum would hire her because she was a woman. But by the time she died in 1980, at the age of 82, she'd done more to preserve and protect fine art than any man in France. Up next, another dramatic heist with a shocking ending. It's the epic return of Mayor of Kingstown. Warden? You know who I am.

Starring Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner. I swear in these walls. Emmy Award winner Edie Falco. You're an ex-con who ran this place for years. And now, now you can't do that. And Bafta Award winner Lenny James. You're about to have a plague of outsiders descend on your town. Let me tell you this.

It's going to be consequences. Mayor of Kingstown, new season now streaming on Paramount Plus. That's annoying. You're a muffler. You don't hear it? Oh, I don't even notice it. I usually drown it out with the radio. How's this? Oh, yeah. Way better. Save on insurance by switching to Bell Air Direct and use the money to fix your car.

Bell Air Direct, insurance, simplified. Conditions apply. Your favorite true crime series, 48 Hours, is back for a new season, and so is the official after show podcast, Postmortem. Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48 hours, and then join me, 48 Hours correspondent, Anne-Marie Green, on Tuesday for a new episode of Postmortem. Morton, where we bring you a closer look at each case.

This case was eye-opening on so many different levels. Follow and listen to 48 hours on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. 141 years before Portrait of a Woman went up for auction, another momentous heist took place on the other side of the world. That's when the infamous Wild West outlaw, known as Blueprint. Black Bart committed his last stagecoach robbery, but he'd be remembered as more than a bandit. He was also hailed as a talented poet. On the afternoon of November 3rd, 1883, stagecoach driver Reason McConnell was making his way up the dusty road between the towns of Sonora and Milton in Northern California. His nine-passenger stagecoach was empty that day,

but he was carrying a strong box full of gold that belonged to his employers at Wells Fargo. They were so intent on keeping the treasure safe that they'd bolted the iron box to the floor of the stagecoach. As Reason's team of exhausted horses pulled the stagecoach to the top of Funk Hill, just outside the town of Coppropolis, a man came out from behind a big rock and stood in the middle of the road. He was wearing a flower sack over his head with two eye holes. cut into it and a black bowler hat on top, and he was pointing a sawed-off shotgun at Reason's chest. As Reason brought his stagecoach to a stop, he already knew who was robbing him. The mysterious outlaw, known only as Black Bart, had established quite a reputation for himself. Stagecoach

robberies were fairly common at the time, but most robbers only managed to hold up one or two stagecoaches before being captured or killed. Over the past eight years, it was reported that Black Bart had robbed 27 Wells Fargo stagecoaches, all without any casualties or foul language. Now Black Bart's 28th robbery was about to begin. Black Bart politely asked Reason to get down from the driver's seat and unhitch his team of horses. Reason did as he was told, and Black Bart got into the buggy and went to work, prying open the strong box with a small axe. After a few minutes, the lid popped open. Inside were hundreds of dollars' worth of gold coins and a batch of mail.

Black Bart gathered up the contents of the Strongbox, thanked reason for his time, and began walking back towards the woods at the end of the road. But as he neared the tree line, four shots rang out. One of the bullets hit its mark, striking his hand, and Black Bart stumbled before disappearing into the trees, leaving a trail of blood. Eventually, that trail would lead investigators to the crafty bandit. The man who would become Black Bart was born as Charles Bowles in Norfolk, England in 1829.

But he didn't stay there for long. When he was just two years old, his parents loaded him and his nine siblings onto a boat and set sail for America. Instead of settling in New York City, like many immigrants, Charles Ford, father bought a farm in upstate New York, not far from the Canadian border. For the next 18 years, Charles worked the land, but in 1849, at the age of 20, he decided it was time for a fresh start. The California gold rush was in full swing, and he and two of his brothers decided to try their luck on the West Coast. Like most amateur gold prospectors, Charles didn't find any of the precious metal. Even worse, his brothers both got to be.

got sick and died in the California wilderness. After that, 25-year-old Charles finally called it quits and headed back to New York in 1854. Later that year, Charles's life changed when he met 16-year-old Mary Elizabeth Johnson. The two hit it off and were married just a few months later. Not long after, they headed west again, but only as far as Decatur, Illinois, where they bought a farm together. Over the next few years, Charles and Mary Elizabeth had four children, but the quiet domestic bliss wouldn't last. Charles was about to find a new identity, this time, as a war hero.

In 1861, the Civil War began. The following year, 33-year-old Charles enlisted with the 116th Illinois Regiment of the Union Army. For the next three years, he fought his way through the South. When the war was over, he returned to his wife in Decatur, but after everything he'd seen on the battlefield, Charles had a hard time readjusting to life on the farm with his wife and kids. Soon, he heard the siren song of Gold Country calling him back. In 1867, Charles said goodbye to his family and traveled to Idaho and Montana in search of gold. His plan was to make his fortune, then returned to Illinois as a rich man. letters home, he kept his wife posted on how his hunt for gold was going. Spoiler alert, it was

not going well. In the early 1870s, Charles bought a share of a gold mine in Montana. Unfortunately for him, somebody else had an eye on the mine, too, the Wells Fargo Company. Established as a bank in 1852, Wells Fargo also ran an extensive stagecoach network that moved people, mail, supplies, and gold all over the West. Their business was extremely profitable and extremely powerful. According to Charles, Wells Fargo representatives offered to buy his mine in 1871. He refused, but the company wouldn't back down. In letters to Mary Elizabeth, Charles claimed the bank actually sabotaged the mine's water supply, forcing him to abandon the property. Charles was furious. In his last letter sent in late 1871, he vowed to get revenge on Wells Fargo.

After that, Mary Elizabeth didn't hear from her husband for the next 10 years. Eventually, she assumed he was dead. The truth was, he'd just changed careers. On July 26th, 1875, a Wells Fargo stagecoach making its way through Calaveras County in northern California was stopped by a man with a shotgun wearing a flower sack over his head. In a deep, booming voice, the robber called out, Please throw down the box, referring to the strong box full of gold the stagecoach was transporting. The driver hesitated. Protecting Wells Fargo's gold shipments was part of his job description. He didn't want to hand it over just because one robber asked nicely.

Sensing the driver's reluctance, the robber turned to the trees and called out, If he dares to shoot, give him a solid volley, boys. The driver scanned the forest around him and was shocked to see dozens of rifles poking out of the trees pointed straight at him. The driver knew he was outnumbered and handed over the strong box. The robber smashed it open with an axe. collected the gold inside, then backed away into the woods and disappeared. Once the robber was long gone, the driver noticed that none of the rifles in the trees had moved. When he got off the coach and took a closer look, he realized they weren't rifles at all, just carefully positioned sticks. The bandit had pulled a fast one on him and walked away

with $160 worth of Wells Fargo gold, the equivalent of $5,500 in today's money. Charles Bowles had reinvented himself as an outlaw, and this time he'd finally found his calling. Forty-year-old Charles Bowles had been a farmer, a soldier, and a failed gold prospector. But after the Wells Fargo Company stole a gold mine from him in 1871, he dedicated himself to robbing their stagecoaches.

After his first successful robbery, which some reports say was in the summer of 1875, Charles kept at it and eventually became the most prolific stagecoach robber of all time. In December of that same year, Charles robbed another buggy. Once again, he used carefully placed sticks to fool the driver into thinking he had a gang waiting in the woods. Charles spent the following year in San Francisco, living the good life and gambling with the money he'd made from his first two robberies. Then, in August of 1877, he struck again and pulled off his most famous heist of all. The robbery started the same as the others.

Charles walked up to a stagecoach, shotgun in hand. and politely asked the driver for the strong box. Charles pointed to the fake rifles in the trees to convince him to hand it over. After disappearing with the gold, the driver alerted the nearest sheriff that he'd been robbed. When the sheriff and his men arrived at the scene of the crime, they found the bandit had left a gift for them, a poem. It read, I've labored long and hard for bread, for honor and for riches. But on my corns, too long you've tread, you fine-haired sons of bitches. And below the stanzas, he'd signed his name, Black Bart. There were lots of stagecoach robbers out there, but there'd never been a stagecoach robbing poet before, let alone one with

such a catchy name. Within days, Black Bart's poem and name were in newspapers all over the country. Although Black Bart's poetry was all original, his moniker wasn't. Reporters later discovered he'd taken the name from a popular Western adventure story that had appeared in a Sacramento newspaper years earlier. In the story, Black Bart is a bearded, black-clad villain who robbed Wells Fargo stagecoaches. He struck fear into the hearts of everyone who crossed his path. But the real-life Black Bart, aka Charles Bowles, couldn't have been more different from the storybook character.

Although Charles threatened stagecoach drivers with his shotgun, he never fired it, and he never killed or injured anyone. In fact, he later claimed that his shotgun was never even loaded, and he was famously polite to passengers. During one robbery, when a woman riding in the stagecoach tried to give him her jewelry, he refused to take it. He told her and the other passengers that he was only interested in Wells Fargo's money, not theirs. He was, however, very interested in continuing his

literary career. After a stagecoach robbery in July of 1878, Charles left another Black Bart poem behind for the police. It read, Here I lay me down to sleep to wait the coming morrow, perhaps success, perhaps defeat, and everlasting sorrow. Let come what will, I'll try it on, my condition can't be worse. And if there's money in that box, tis money in my purse. Black Bart had set out to get revenge on Wells Fargo, and he was already succeeding. Not only was he robbing them blind, he was humiliating them. Wells Fargo's business depended on keeping its customers money safe.

Now, newspapers all over the country were writing story after story about the gentleman thief who was holding up their stagecoaches and leaving cute poems behind. Black Bart was quickly becoming a Robin Hood-style folk hero. After local police tried and failed to catch him several times, Wells Fargo took matters into their own hands. They hired multiple teams of professional trackers and bounty hunters to bring the outlaw to justice. But Black Bart had more tricks than clever wordplay. On October 2nd, 1878, 49-year-old Black Bart held up a Wells Fargo stagecoach outside of Yucaya in Mendocino County, California.

The following day, October 3rd, he held up another buggy in the same county. Soon, trackers arrived in the area and began scouring the crime scenes. Although Black Bart robbed stagecoaches on foot, the people looking for him assumed he had a horse, stashed nearby for a quick getaway, so they scoured the woods for hoof prints, droppings, or anything else they could track. But they couldn't find anything. What these professional trackers didn't know was that Black Bart was terrified of horses, so he never rode a horse to or from any of his robberies. He just walked. The people who'd been hired to find him never managed to figure this out, which meant they had no idea he was a lot closer than

they thought. After Black Bart's robbery on October 3rd, he simply walked through the woods for a mile or two until he reached a farmhouse, where he asked if he could stay the night. While bounty hunters were searching for him in towns dozens of miles away, Black Bart was enjoying a home-cooked meal just a couple miles from the scene of the crime. The family didn't know who he was till he was long gone, but they later told reporters he was a polite and charming guest who entertained them with jokes all through dinner. Before he left in the morning, he even insisted on paying them for his meal. Over the next five years, Black Bart held up more than 20 stagecoaches and stole over $18,000 from Wells Fargo, which is over half a million dollars in

today's money. More than once, the company's bounty hunters got close to catching him, but he was always able to give them the slip in the mountain wilderness of Northern California. Black Bart's revenge campaign against Wells Fargo was a smashing success. He would have kept it up forever if he could, but in 1883, his luck finally ran out. On November 3rd of that year, Black Bart held up Reason McConnell's stagecoach on a hilltop outside Coppropolis. As he was walking away with the gold and mail he'd stolen, shots rang out. They were fired by a 19-year-old named Jimmy Rollerie, who'd stumbled on the robbery while he was out hunting. Three of his shots missed, but one of them caught Black Bart in the hand as he leapt into the

underbrush. Reason and Jimmy continued on to the next town and told the sheriff what had happened. When Wells Fargo's hired detectives arrived on the scene, the outlaw was long gone, but they found a handful of bloody mail in the woods and a dropped handkerchief that Black Bart had used as a makeshift band. There was a distinctive marking on the fabric, the letters FXO-075. The investigators recognized it as one of the serial numbers that laundromats in San Francisco used to keep track of customers' different garments.

After eight years, this was the first solid lead that Black Bart's pursuers had found, and they weren't going to let this opportunity go to waste. There were approximately 320 laundromats in San Francisco in 1881, and Wells Fargo's detectives searched 91 of them, until eventually they met a shopkeeper who recognized the blood-stained handkerchief. She told them it belonged to one of her regular customers, a man named Charlie Bolton, who claimed to be a successful mining engineer. As she described him to the Wells Fargo detectives,

Charles Bowles, who was calling himself Charlie Bolton, walked into the shop to pick up his laundry, wearing a fancy suit and carrying a gold-tipped cane. After years running rings around Wells Fargo operatives in the hills of California, Black Bart was arrested when his favorite shopkeeper pointed him out to the detectives. Black Bart confessed to his crimes a few hours after being taken into custody. Despite his grudge against Wells Fargo, he was just as kind to his captors as he was to the people he robbed. He even led them into the woods to show them where he'd hidden a bunch of the money, cracking jokes and telling stories the whole way. Although he'd robbed more stagecoaches than any other bandit, he was only put on trial for his final robbery. It's possible

that Wells Fargo realized throwing America's favorite gentleman poet in prison for life would be bad PR. On November 16, 1883, at the age of 54, Black Bart was found guilty and sentenced to six years in San Quentin prison. After four years as a model prisoner, he was granted an early release on New Year's Day, 1888. Reporters were waiting for him when he left the prison. When they asked if he planned to rob more stagecoaches, he replied, no, gentlemen, I'm through with crime. When they asked if he planned to write more poetry, he laughed and said, Now, didn't you hear me say that I'm through with crime?

After that, Black Bart disappeared. Reportedly seeking solitude, he checked into a hotel in the small California town of Visalia in late February. When reporters showed up to interview him, Black Bart left in a hurry and was never seen again. The legendary outlaw had made his final escape. Looking back at this week in crime history, we can see that not all heists are created equal. The Nazis tried to steal the culture and history of the people they were oppressing. Meanwhile, Black Bart only targeted a faceless company and without any violence. Even so, the men behind these very different heists learned the same lesson.

When you take something that isn't yours, sooner or later, somebody's going to come looking for it. studios. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Crime House Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly matters. And for ad-free and early access to Crimehouse Daily, plus exciting bonus content, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. We'll be back tomorrow. True Crime this week is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and is a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the True Crime This Week team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertzowski, Lori

Maranelli, Sarah Camp, Truman Capps, Beth Johnson, Spencer Howard, and Michael Langsner. Thank you for listening. Next, Crime House listen, don't miss Crimes of with Sabrina Deanna Roga and Corinne Vienne. Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season from crimes of the paranormal, unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances, and more. Their first season is Crimes of Infamy, the true stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains. And coming up next is Crimes of Paranormal, Real Life Cases where the line between the living and dead gets seriously blurry. Listen to Crimes of every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music,

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