Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - No One Can Stop Him // The Carl Gugasian Story

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Carl Gugasian is known as "The Friday Night Bank Robber" and is widely considered the most prolific bank robber in U.S. history. Over a 30-year criminal career, he meticulously planned and executed more than 50 bank robberies, stealing more than $2 million. 

So what do you have to do to become one of the most successful bank robbers in the world? Well, let's look at this guy. His name's Carl. And Carl's around 15 during this time, living in the Philadelphia area in Pennsylvania. And one day, in 1962, he gets an idea that's going to change his life forever. He decides he's going to rob this local candy store. So he goes to the store. And it isn't clear if he has a gun or a knife or some kind of weapon. But he's like, give me all your money or whatever.

Now, the guy who owns the store is there, and he is not about to get robbed. So he pulls out a gun, and blam, he shoots Carl, and this, of course, stops the robbery. And Carl, he gets taken to the hospital. Now, eventually, he gets arrested and convicted, and he gets sentenced to about 18 months in juvenile detention. So now, Carl is a convicted criminal. And he starts to believe that this label of being an ex-con is going to follow him around forever. And his record will never be clean. And people will never not see him as a criminal.

And that basically he'll never be able to get a real job in the workforce. And he continues to believe this for years. Until about 1973. And he's about 25 years old. And at this point, he starts thinking, if he can't get a normal career, he's going to have. have to make his money another way by robbing banks. And that's exactly what he does. So he goes to North Carolina because he's going to do this robbery there. And there he gets a gun and a ski mask. Then he steals a car to use as his getaway vehicle. Then he goes to a local bank and he robs it

and he speeds away. So clearly this worked. He robbed a bank and he got away. So he wants to do it again. But he wants to refine his plan. Like he decides he's only going to hit banks in small towns that are close to the woods. That will make it easier to get away. He also decides that he's only going to rob banks on Friday nights because that's when they have the most cash stored. So he starts doing this. He goes to a small town, robs a local bank on a Friday night, and he flees into the nearby woods and he gets away. And he does this over and over and over. again. And after each successful robbery, he looks for a new way to refine his plan and make himself even harder to catch. Like he starts using scent blockers so police dogs will have a harder time

tracking him through the woods. When he walks into a bank, he makes sure to walk crouched down like a gorilla so that witnesses won't be able to identify him by his height. Stuff like that. So before long, Carl is robbing banks all across the East Coast. In Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, and Pennsylvania. And pretty quickly, he's really good at it. Like he leaves almost no clues behind. And no one knows what he looks like so far. And so he keeps doing it.

More and more, robbing bank after bank. And years pass. And it's now 1981. And he's still going. I mean, by this point, he's probably. robbed around 15 banks. So he's averaging about two a year. But then, finally, something goes very wrong. Because he's in Pennsylvania, in Susquehanna Township, robbing a bank. And when he's done, he makes his way out. But by this time, one of the bank staff has already hit the alarm,

which alerted the police. And so the police sergeant shows up. And he's like, stop, you're under arrest, or something like that. But Carl, he isn't. ready to go to prison, so he runs. And this sergeant starts chasing him. And Carl, he can't have that. So he turns back around and blam, he shoots this sergeant. And from here, Carl manages to run away and escape, while the sergeant is hurt, but luckily he survives. Now, that sergeant is not the only person Carl shot. In a 1991 robbery, Blam, he shoots a bank manager. And during a robbery in 1994, For, blam, he shoots a woman in her neck who refused to give up her bag. And so anyway, by this point, during all this, the nightmare on Elm Street movies and

Freddy Kruger are really popular. So Carl starts robbing these places wearing a Freddy Kruger mask. And he does this over and over again. For another decade or more. And at some point, he's robbed so many banks and his pattern is so specific that people start calling him the Friday night robber. And so it's now 2001, which is about 28 years after he committed his first robbery. And he's stolen more than $2 million total at this point. And Carl is still out here robbing banks, and he still hasn't been caught, and by now he's robbed around 50 or so. And that is

where these two teenagers come into the picture. We'll just call them the boys. They're both 13. And so one day in Rander Township, Pennsylvania, the boys are out playing on this train trail in a wooded area behind an apartment complex. And that is when they notice a drainage tunnel. And there's a PVC pipe in this tunnel, and it's all sealed up like a big capsule. And they're curious, so they open it. And inside, they find a bunch of masks and guns and ammunition and maps and other equipment, and they know that this stuff isn't supposed to be here. So something is very wrong. So they contact the police.

Then the police show up and they start looking around and they find even more PVC pipe with stuff inside. So from here pretty quickly the FBI gets involved and they start investigating. And that is when they realize they may have just found supplies belonging to the Friday night robber. So they start searching the surrounding area. And not too far away, they uncover a bunker. Now, before Carl would rob a bank, he would go out into the woods nearby and build a bunker, and he would store all of his equipment in there, and he would dig and build these bunkers like by hand. So these things, they're all over, basically near every bank he robbed.

And so the feds just found one. And there, they find even more evidence. Maps of banks, lists of banks, surveillance notes on banks, newspaper accounts, successful robberies, and also maps showing the location of other bunkers. And so the feds go and they search these other bunkers. And when all is said and done, they end up finding about 27 of them in different states. And they know that they're connected to the Friday night robber.

But they still don't know who the Friday night robber really is. Until. So in one of these bunkers, the feds, find a VHS tape. And on that tape is Carl performing a karate test. A karate test is where a karate student will demonstrate their physical skills so that they can earn a higher belt. And Carl is actually a martial arts guy. He's a third-degree black belt. So now police know that the Friday night robber is into martial arts and that he's a short guy and from what they found he appears to

know a lot about guns. The feds also find a brochure for a karate studio, low located in the area. So they go to that studio and they question the owner and they describe the guy that they're looking for short, middle-aged into karate. And the owner is like, well, that sounds like Carl. So eventually police are able to track Carl down and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And so Carl ends up confessing to robbing multiple banks and ultimately he takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison. But, While he's locked up, he starts working with the FBI to help train them on how to get better at catching bank robbers. That's how good of a bank robber he was. He even stars in their official training video at one point, which is just wild for a bank robber to go down that path.