RedHanded - Episode 274 - Larry Hillblom: Who’s Your Daddy?

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

In 1995, the billionaire founder of DHL disappeared off of the face of the planet and left behind a closet full of skeletons. The aftermath stirred up one of the most colossal, convoluted shit storms you’ve never heard of. Two plane crashes, underage sex trafficking, missing DNA, cover-ups, private detectives, and a billion dollars of inheritance left in the air – this is the story of Larry Hillblom. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Yes, we have no headphones on because once again, someone has fucked up the studio and it's not working. But we are putting our trust, our good faith. In the audio gods. In the audio gods and in your hands, dear listener. And you're not here to listen to us complain about tech issues. You're here to hear us talk about some mental case. Yeah, this is quite something. It's a potential fakie-deathy,

which I don't think we've done since Canoeman. No, and like people message us and they're like, oh, do DB Cooper. And I'm like, ugh. No, no, no, no, no. No, never. I would rather sit on a hot grill. Well, there you go. So no hot grill sitting today, but a possibly fakie-death one. So let's do it. If we've learned anything over the past few years, whether it was the Paradise Papers, Trump, Wirecard, Putin's cronies, or of course,

Epstein's paedophile Ireland. And this guy doesn't have the same name recognition as like a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. But this enigmatic billionaire certainly did change the world. And we're not going to bother today with how he did that. No, no, no, because today's episode is all about the lesser known events of this man's volatile and depraved private life. On the 21st of May 1995, billionaire American entrepreneur Larry Lee Hillblom took off in his tiny vintage two-engine aeroplane. He flew this little plane 450 nautical miles from the island of Saipan near Guam, where he lived, to Vietnam. Guam is a US territory, so that is why he is there.

That makes sense. Now, despite being richer than God and having been in a plane crash a few years previously, Larry never really cared too much about servicing or maintaining his crappy vintage planes. Lightning doesn't strike twice, after all, does it? Hilbom certainly thought so. But on this day, it did. As the little plane's wheels left the runway and then banked over the Philippine Sea. The engine began to struggle, and Larry disappeared. Days passed with numerous rescue crews carefully scanning the Pacific for any sign of the plane or its passengers. Eventually, a few pieces of wreckage were discovered. And with those pieces of wreckage,

the rescue crew found the bodies of Helblum's pilot, 52-year-old Robert Long, and the body of Saipan congressman Jesus P. Mathness. Larry's body, however, was nowhere to be found. His family held out hope that he had survived and was just waiting to be rescued, but that day never came. Helblum was 52 when he disappeared, and the head of a multi-billion dollar business, billion with a B. He never married, and as far as anyone knew, he had no children.

But he certainly did have quite a lot of skeletons in his closet. A lot of them. And in the weeks following his disappearance, those skeletons were revealed for the whole world to see. In his lifetime, Hillblom was described by many as a genius for his central part in making globalisation possible. Anyone ever heard of the DHL Global Delivery Company? Well, the H in DHL stands for Hillblom. Every day's a school day, hey? Learning, learning, learning together. Exactly. And I think, you know how a lot of people are like, oh no, I would hate to be famous. But they want all of the money and the power. This guy did it. He has, as we said,

more money than God and nobody knows who he is. And that's the ideal situation. That's how you fly under the radar. Yeah, he pulled it off, man. Exactly. And you spin all of the webs. Spin webs? Is that what you do to webs? I don't know. Weave webs?

You spin a web. You spin a web. Spin the webs of power by not being directly in the public eye. What's the saying when you're like, what a blank web we weave? What a... Tangled? Yeah, what a tangled web we weave uh what a what a tangled yeah what a tangled web

we weave sure is that it that doesn't feel right i'm gonna okay what a tangled web we weave i'm pretty sure that's what it is so larry helped found the world's largest courier system and all but transformed the way the world communicates as well as founding a logistics empire, Larry also created one of the world's first word processors, owned two airlines, and was a Supreme Court justice. Who is this man? And he did all this while wearing dirty jeans, novelty t-shirts, and flip-flops. Though I am almost 100% convinced that when you are dealing with the real powers of Axis, they're not wearing a sharp cut suit. They're dressed like college students. They're wearing an Udi with puddle on it.

100%. 100%. I even went to just like a drinks reception that Hannah and I were invited to, but Hannah hurt her ankle too badly. So I just went to check it out, see who was there, you know, see if we could make any connections. When I got there, somebody introduced me to the owner of Novel, which is a huge production company here in the UK who we are currently working with on a top secret project, which will be revealed very soon. The most unassuming man I've ever seen. Just like wearing a t-shirt, wearing a sweatshirt, wearing jeans. And I was like, you own Novel? Of course you do. Of course you do. Because they have nothing to prove. They have nothing to prove. Exactly.

But despite all of these fascinating things, and putting the H in DHL, it's where H put his D that he'll now be remembered for. Nice. When he disappeared, the question remained, why would a man from California, with such ungodly amounts of money, influence, and corporate responsibilities,

live his days on a remote island in the middle of nowhere, just as his career was taking off. Well, it probably points to him being a bit of a wrong-in, but let's get into it. Yes, I would like to clarify I was nicing the wordplay, not when he put his penis. Born to Clarence and Helen Hillblom on the 12th of May 1943 in Kingsburg, California, Larry Lee Hillblom was one of three brothers. His father Clarence died of heat stroke while roofing in Bakersfield. Oh my god, that's your biggest nightmare.

I was going to say, that's my worst fucking nightmare. Oh my god. Did you know you could die of heat stroke? Oh, absolutely. Your body's just like, nope, I'm out. I'm out. Wow. I went to a Russian spa earlier this year and I genuinely thought I was going to die of heatstroke oh absolutely your body's just like nope i'm out i'm out wow i went to a russian spa

earlier this year and i genuinely thought i was gonna die of heatstroke but then you were all euphoric and stuff but then i was very euphoric after probably because my brain was just like completely dehydrated we did it we did it we survived yeah wow he was roofing in bakersfield during one of the hottest days of the summer, 1946. Was the Great Depression during then? No. No, that was World War II. No, the Depression was for the 20s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 46 was like, I was going to say that's such a great depression way to die, but. It makes me think of that bit in the Shawshank Redemption

when they're tarring the roof and Andy Dufresne gets beers for everyone and he doesn't even take one. Like, that's why it makes me think. Because he's dying of heat stroke. It's too late for Andy Dufresne. He's got rivers of shit to swim through. Right. Okay, well, that's what I'm watching this evening. Oh, actually,

so you know I told you about Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosity. There is a similar situation on Discovery Plus which we got to watch Armie Hammer. And it's all Eli Roth. There is a similar situation on Discovery Plus, which we got to watch Armie Hammer. Ah. And it's all Eli Roth. Oh.

Mm-hmm. Eli Roth also has a new show, which I saw advertised when we were in Columbus for Obsessed Fest, called Help My Pet Is Possessed, or something like that. He can't stop. And I actually suggested that we watch that as, like, of our halloween reacts video but i think sophie was like no but it's got two out of ten on imtv and let me read you the description okay i know we're i know we're well off track but this is just too perfect and what eli roth is doing i'm not totally sure but maybe he's just like i'm so rich now i can do whatever the fuck i want yeah he's definitely got fuck you money now okay Okay, so Eli Roth has a new TV show

called Eli Roth Presents colon My Possessed Pet and the premise of the show, which came out on September the 30th 2022, owners tell terrifying tales of cherished pet relationships ripped apart by supernatural forces

evil spirits, demons and curses taken over family pets. Sure. Wow. Oh, it's got four. It's gone up to four out of ten on IMDb. Well, his sort of collection of stories, it's called Urban Legend. This is also on Discovery+.

I'm such a big fan of Discovery+, because it has 90 Day Fiancé UK, which you have to watch. I am so going to watch. Very similar. Perfect. And it's all Eli Roth, so there's a lot of, might be a bit gory for you actually. Yeah. But it's, it passed the time for me last night. I do. Anyway, back to Heatstroke. So Larry's dad dies when Larry is just three years old. So his mum raised him and his younger brother, Terry. They barely scraped by and Helen earned money by cleaning her friends' houses. Helen was

a tough woman whose biting wit and sarcasm were infamous in her community and apparently brought people to tears. Bloody hell, Helen, that's not wit. No. That's being a bully. And Helen Hillblom also had extremely high standards for her sons. From a very young age, Larry was raised in the Concordia Lutheran Church, of which Helen was one of the founding members. And it was in that church that she met a man named Andy Anderson. Oh, just stop it. It's worse when you meet men who have got ridiculous names like that. Because I'm like, when your parents named you,

they weren't assuming that you would change your surname so they were like this is fine Andy Anderson no yeah I get what you mean and there was a kid in my year at Catholic school whose mom was called Carol Carol but she married someone called Carol and if you love your love you know that's fine that that makes sense you know you can't pick the surname of the person you fall in love with yeah but you can pick the first name of the male child that you have. And if you're Catholic, you can't really get away with keeping your own name either. So Carol, Carol, I hope she's doing great.

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This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. So Andy Anderson and Brad Bradley ran away at sea no they didn't andy anderson married helen hilblom and he was a peach farmer and it was from this stepfather peach farmer try saying that that is great stepfather peach farmer can we start selling some like stepfather day merch but not stepfather day father's day for your stepdad merch. Stepfather peach farmer. I'll get one for my stepdad.

He'd fucking love that. So yeah, stepfather peach farmer. It was... It sounds like, you know, when like guys in their early 20s wear like a bikini inspector or whatever. Female body inspector. FBI female body inspector. And this is just like for your middle-aged stepdad.

Stepfather peach farmer. It's the picture of an ass or a peach on it. Oh man. I wasn't sure where we were going to get the bum joke in, but I'm glad we did. I'm here to provide. The Lord will provide. As said your stepfather peach farmer. It was from this stepfather peach farmer that Larry learned the value of hard work and novelty t-shirts.

Larry knew from a very young age that he wanted a lot more from life than being a stepfather peach farmer. The tiny enclave of Kingsburg, where the streets were empty and silent by 8pm, was hardly the right environment for a boy who'd one day shrink the globe. While at high school, Larry told his best friend, Someday I'm going to move far away and I won't write you any letters.

I'll call you once in a while, but I will not write any letters. OK, Larry? Everybody who knew the young Larry said he was the hardest working person they knew at both school and at his stepdad's peach cannery. Before leaving high school, Larry began reading the Wall Street Journal and investing in the stock market with the money that he earned from the cannery. Still in his teens, Larry bought himself a Corvette. And he had an unbelievable string of luck too, because Larry would win every single all-night poker game that he played. And even when they switched up and played dice games, which are

absolutely by chance, there's no skill at a dice game, he'd still win those two. So Larry was either one of the luckiest people alive, or he was cheating. But as you'll come to learn, Larry loved his secrets, so it will never be 100% clear. Now, Larry's mother, Helen, was hugely proud of how her sons were turning out, but seemed to be completely oblivious to the odd contempt that Larry was forming for her. He'd say things like, so she's done all these great things for me, the bitch. Yeah, and he doesn't do it with any hint of sarcasm, like he means it.

No, yeah, I think when you're in the territory of calling your mum a bitch, things are probably not great between the two of you. But, you know, make of that what you will. So after high school, Larry moved out of the family farmhouse in Kingsburg and moved into an apartment in Fresno State, where he studied for his university entrance exams. Huddled under a blanket in a tiny freezing room without electricity, reading by candlelight, Larry managed to get himself accepted into the UC Berkeley Bolthorst School of Law.

It was the most prestigious university in the country at the time, but more importantly, it was worlds away from Kingsburg. But conveniently, in the same state, so he got in-state tuition fees. Ah, smart. I like this guy so far. So far, not terrible. Yeah, he's like, I'm just going to work hard. I hate my mum for reasons.

And I'm going to get myself into university and I'm going to get myself out of this peach cannery situation. And over the next few years, Larry would only return home a handful of times before finally deserting his family altogether for almost 25 years. When Larry started law school, the thing that immediately struck his classmates was his appearance. He had strange bumps on his forehead, which he claimed were caused by a metal plate

that was inserted into his skull after a car crash. But some people thought it looked like his face had been reconstructed. He had a number of tics and idiosyncrasies, including constantly parting his hair with his little finger, shaking his legs, and germaphobic behaviour that included carrying disinfectant and his own ketchup everywhere he went. Do you know what? A lot of that sounds like me. I didn't want to say anything.

But I'm glad you took the fall. Yeah. Anyone who spends any time with me knows that if my hair is down, I will constantly keep touching it. And I shake my legs all the time. And you don't know you're doing it, which is the weirdest thing. I don't know. So I 100% have restless leg syndrome. And it's not like me just being hypochondriac about it.

Like I 100% do. And I looked it up and I was like, what are the causes of restless leg syndrome apparently iron deficiency which I know I have so interesting there you go I have it because of my drugs um never had it before and it's when I lie down to go to bed but I know I'm doing it because it annoys me and it keeps me awake I don't know I'm doing it and actually when somebody points it out and makes me stop it feels really uncomfortable like my legs feel almost like they're aching, like I need to shake them. I always thought it was down to low blood pressure,

but apparently it's down to a nine deficiency. There you go. So there you go. And I also do dabble in germaphobic behaviour. Yeah, a germaphobic dabbler over here. I wouldn't be surprised if I sat down at your restaurant and you had your own ketchup either. It would probably be your own hot sauce though.

No, I bought some new hot sauce today for the office. So you're welcome, everybody. I do have to confess. Would you like to know a confession from me, Hannah? I'd love to. I stole a bottle of ketchup from a pub but two months ago. And I wasn't even drunk. Was it a particularly nice bottle of ketchup?

You were just like, I need this. Well, I did. I felt like I needed it. So I was on holiday. That's going to be covered in germs. It would have been. I had had half a bottle of wine. So not smashed, but drunk enough to think that this was acceptable behavior.

I did leave them a tip, but it was just like a refill ketchup bottle. They'll be fine. But yeah, I was on holiday and it was like towards the end of the holiday. And I was like, it's been really annoying not having ketchup in the morning when i have breakfast and i don't want to buy a bottle now because there are no shops near us there's some ketchup here let's just take it and then tomorrow the bacon sandwiches in the morning will be less shit so there we go that's true i'm a brown sauce girl so i find ketchup on bacon utterly despicable but that is because my mum is from the north well there you go and that's just the way it is sometimes it do be like that but yes i hope you thoroughly disrespected it yes

yes i felt quite disgusted the next day well i hope you had lovely bacon sandwiches right so similarly in another saruti bala vein what stood out the most about larry were his peculiar political beliefs i feel like larry and me we i think he and i might be kindred spirits to be perfectly honest with you they're crying studying under a duvet trying to get into you know be head girl into university and you know all the shit that he's up to i kind of feel like so far so good that's so funny larry hoblum head girl of whatever your school was called fern hill so when we were outside at the palladium show this girl came up and she was like i'm from chesham and i've been trying to figure out where you went to school for years

you will never know anyway larry would have endless debates with his liberal peers. He'd argue, for example, that the number of soldiers dying in Vietnam was irrelevant when compared to the number of Americans killed in car accidents every year. Larry Hillblom had a very calculated outlook on life. He believed that all that mattered was success and achieving one's personal goals. And I am just going to move straight on and not throw you under the bus. Larry, the law student, was obsessed with Mao Zedong and Howard Hughes. Very different men. And he loved them for different reasons.

He loved Mao for his coldness and dedication to gaining power. And he loved Hughes for his reclusive nature. But his idols weren't giving him any money and neither were Larry's family. So in his second year of law school, Larry accepted a full-time job as a courier for a small Los Angeles law firm called Michael's Poe & Associates. At the time, the only way to have important documents sent across the country

was by way of the United States Postal Service, which could take weeks to deliver your package, assuming that it got there at all. And I'm sure everybody knows this, but the saying going postal, which we don't use in this country, but obviously Americans use, is because someone who works in the US Postal Service like went into work one day and shot everybody because I think things were just like run so badly and he was so miserable. Not that I'm excusing that behaviour. Do you know what I learned the other day on TikTok where I learned everything you know to boycott the verb it's named after someone called Mr Boycott who everyone hated I don't think what a legacy because yeah you have

to remember like this feels crazy today the idea that the only way to get documents across the country was to courier them and it could take absolutely weeks to get there but you have to remember that this was the mid-60s I think we forget about it because of the age that we live in. But the process of globalisation was exactly what we said earlier, shrinking the globe. Yes. It is, if you actually think about it, it's fucking mental that if I pay enough money, I could have something in China by the end of the day. Yeah. But at the time, the only alternative to the postal service was to literally jump on a plane and deliver those documents by hand. And that was Larry's job.

Every afternoon after class, Larry picked up important documents from insurance companies, law firms and banks in the Bay Area and jumped on a plane north. He'd get the majority of his studying done in the air, hand the papers to a courier waiting at the airport, and then get on the next flight to Oakland to make it back just in time for his morning classes. You know what? So far, I'm really impressed with him.

I'm super, I'm super pro Larry so far. Obviously, it won't last. But this explained why Larry looked perpetually disheveled, dirty and sleep-deprived, and why his, you know, student peers were noticing that. He basically lived off coffee and speed. But it didn't matter to him. He slept in his car on weekends

and was on a plane every night on weekdays so that he didn't need to spend any money on an apartment. It was a win-win. By 1969, it was clear to Larry that there was a gaping hole in the market for a reliable, fast courier service that would save companies time and money. And one day, a chance encounter in a supermarket car park between Larry and a sales associate from MPA, that's Michaels Poe and Associates, called Adrian Dalsey, changed everything. It had also dawned on Dalsey that there was a huge gap waiting to be filled, and the pair realised that they needed one another to make the business work.

The two of them were polar opposites. Dalsey was a well-groomed, suited, smooth-talking 50-year-old. And Larry was, well, Larry. But it worked. Larry was young, full of ideas and energy and speed and coffee, and was more than happy to work 20 hours a day. And Dalsy had the credit cards and the connections to make it all work. And in September 1969, the same year man first walked on the moon, Larry and Adrian founded DHL. The D stood for Dalsey, H for Hillblom, and the L was for Robert Lynn, an investor friend of Dalsey's who had promised to help them raise capital. Lynn ended up dropping out of the company in the early stages, saying that it would never work, a decision he would almost definitely go on to regret because DHL grew faster than any startup of its time. Between 1969 and 1971, DHL's sales

increased by almost a thousand percent. They controlled 70% of the courier market between San Francisco and Hawaii and over the next few years, they expanded to Asia. Also, Larry successfully managed to sue the United States Postal Service, meaning that their market monopoly was over. The courtroom win was a miracle, not just for DHL, but for other companies like FedEx. The young stepson of a Californian peach farmer was now heading up one of the fastest growing global corporations in history. But the problem was Larry never wanted to be a high profile public figure.

He wanted to be like his idol, Howard Hughes, a reclusive billionaire, pulling the strings from behind the scenes and peeing into jars. And in the late 1970s, after a seemingly endless legal battle with the US government, Hillblom made his escape to paradise. He rented a home in Morizo, a tiny village in the United States territory of Guam. Guam is not only a United States territory, it's a tax haven. And that tax haven would save Hillblom millions in capital gains taxes. That's the only reason anyone lives there. Grand Cayman, same thing, look it up.

He later moved to the neighbouring island, Saipan, where our story started today. And there, Larry made himself at home. He bought the National Bank and served as a high court judge. But tax breaks and privacy weren't the only things that drew Larry Hillblom all the way out there. We're going to put a pin in it and come back to it. Another thing Hillblom had in common with Howard Hughes was his intense fear of death. Like his idol, he was incredibly particular and the furthest thing from a daredevil that you can imagine. Which is why it was so strange that Larry Hillblom loved to fly his tiny, vintage, piece-of-shit aeroplanes

that he never got serviced or maintained in the slightest. Not to mention the fact that he'd never even completed his pilot's licence, or had more than five hours of lessons. That bit doesn't surprise me because he's like, I can do anything. I'm Larry Hillblom. The not maintaining them is bizarre because the one thing Howard Hughes did is he maintained the shit out of everything. And in August 1993, two years before he went missing, Larry got into his 1960s Cessna 182 single propeller plane

and took off from Saipan's international airport. He did this without carrying out any of the standard checks that pilots are taught to do. As a result, the engine stalled mid-flight, the plane crashed, and he landed upside down on the neighbouring island of Tinian. Larry suffered huge gashes to his face and had to undergo major facial reconstructive surgery. But miraculously, he was otherwise totally fine. Following his recovery, Larry's famous words were, now I don't need to worry about another aeroplane crash because the odds of getting into two in the same lifetime are so remote, it's never going to happen again. Probably more likely if you're not

looking after your plane. Yeah. Larry, I'm going to say that maybe with that crash, some of your logical thinking went out of the window because just being like, well, after I've had this drunk driving incident, it doesn't matter how pissed I am behind the wheel of this car because it's never going to happen again. And this is where Saruti Bala and Larry Hillblom become no longer friends. This is where we part ways, Larry. Because of course, of course it did. So let's fast forward knowing what we know to May 22nd, 1995, which is the day we started the episode. The day that Larry Hillblom disappeared off the face of the earth. And as we said,

the body of the pilot and the other passenger were recovered, but Larry was nowhere to be found. After some time it was presumed that Larry had died and his body had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. You would expect that a man worth half a billion dollars who had attended one of the most prestigious law schools in the United States would at the very least have a comprehensive will in case of his untimely demise. But not Larry. It seemed as though Larry Hillblom didn't give a single shit what happened after he died. All he really said, in his 11-page will, was that he wanted a huge chunk of his money to go to medical research at the University of California.

There was no mention of how to divide the remaining capital amongst his family. And that was about to start an enormous clusterfuck, as I'm sure you can imagine. The will named the Bank of Saipan, which remember Larry owned as the executor of his estate. So he essentially makes himself the executor of his will. But with Hillblom gone, the majority shareholder of the bank would be in charge. And that man was called Joe Wachter. So keep up. Larry's dead. Bank now belongs essentially to this Wachter character and he is the executor of the will. Wachter was sure that he was quids in on Hillblom's fortune. But then he heard from someone he didn't expect. An 11-year-old paleon boy called Junior Larry Hillbroom. You heard that correctly. Junior had his last name

misspelt at the hospital when he was born and it was never changed. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, There were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

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But on the wall of his shack was a framed photo of Larry Hillblom, one of the richest men on the planet, who he had been told his entire life was his father. Kinney came forward to sue for paternity on behalf of her son, waged her, held a press conference. He announced that Kinney was lying and that junior Larry Hillblom was not Larry's son. Wächter held a press conference. He announced that Kinney was lying and that junior Larry Hilbroom was not Larry's son. And he framed her as a money-grubbing stranger that was trying to take advantage of a dead man's estate. Of course, the responsible thing to do would have

been to hold a paternity test before making any definitive public statements like this. But that just wasn't Wächter's style. Joe Wächter had been working for DHL since he was in college and had been made president of DHL by Larry himself. And although Larry hadn't left him any money in the will, Wächter felt that he was entitled to a slice of the pie. And as a trustee, he was legally entitled to any profits generated from the assets. So it was in his best interest to preserve Larry's billion-dollar trust. This was no joke.

And now, here was this random woman from a rural village in Palau threatening to take away a huge chunk of what Wächter felt that he was owed. And he wasn't going to go down that easy. Enter David Luján, a criminal lawyer from Guam who took up the case to represent junior Larry Hilbroom. Lujan was certain that Kinney was telling the truth about her son, not least because it had been something of an open secret on the island for years. While Hilbroom lived on the island, people would joke with him that he had a son down the road

and he would simply respond with a nervous chuckle and brush those jokes off as just rumours. Lujan felt it was his responsibility to defend a helpless child and get him his birthright, but this was very much David going up against Goliath. Lujan was up against an army of big-time American lawyers with a seemingly endless supply of funds and resources, and they thought that they had nothing to fear from the tiny island of Sepan. On top of that, the fact that Hilblom's body was never found worked in his lawyer's favour, because that meant there was no DNA to test the boy's legitimacy, so then there wasn't a case to be made. And obviously every member of the

Hilblum family refused to offer a sample of their own DNA, plus legally there was no way to force them to do it. The only remaining option for Luhan was to attempt to recover Larry's DNA from somewhere else. The judge ordered Wächter not to clean or disturb anything in Larry Hillblom's home until it had been searched. Obviously, the hope here is that the prosecution would be able to collect a DNA sample from Hillblom's house. But when Lujan and his team arrived at the home, the entire property had been ransacked. There wasn't a single picture, item of clothing, hair or speck of dust left in the entire house. It seemed as though even the plumbing had been cleaned. There was absolutely no evidence that Larry Hillblom had ever set foot in the house in which he lived. So had Larry Hillblom fathered

a child in Saipan? It's not impossible. Especially when you consider his habits while on the island. And this is where things get gross. Because according to his mates, Larry had no interest in buying fancy cars or big houses. He was only interested in young women. Even uttering, why would I spend $100 on dinner? I'd rather spend it on pussy.

Now, others close to him have also said that Larry had a particular penchant not just for young women, but for girls, who'd been trafficked in from extremely rural, remote areas of Southeast Asia. James Scurlock, author of King Larry, The Life and Ruins of a Billionaire Genius, puts it this way. Dabbling in local waters had been a favoured pastime of colonists for centuries. Vom. And Larry Hillblom was no different. You could say, in fact, that he was significantly worse. At the time of Hillblom's disappearance, he was living with a girlfriend, Josephine Nocasa. He met Josephine at a bar in Saipan called Poppy's Nightclub. Poppy's was living with a girlfriend, Josephine Nocasa. He met Josephine at a bar in

Saipan called Poppy's Nightclub. Poppy's was run by a Korean woman who'd fly in young girls, often underage, from the Philippines to be dancers, models, or GROs, or guest relations officers. Essentially, they were sex workers. These young girls would often be sold by their families to an agent who in turn would sell them to a bar to carry out sex work. And this is very tricky territory because, again, it's like if you're there against your will and you've been trafficked, it's not really sex work. You're just like a slave who's being raped.

So I think there is a distinction there, but just so we're clear about what's happening, basically. Many of these girls were as young as 13. And for more on these sinister markets, you can go and check out our episode on Richard Huckle, which is a real deep dive. And a friend of mine came to our Palladium show and she said she was driving up from Bournemouth with her boyfriend. And she was always, she'd listened to it on the way up. And he was like, I draw the line at listening to an episode about a paedophile. And then obviously came to the show, which was about a paedophile. Sorry.

Right. Check out our Richard Huckle episode. You can learn all about it. Let's get back to Poppy's nightclub. At Poppy's nightclub for a fee, the paedophile clientele would take trafficked young girls on a quote unquote date. And that is how Larry met Josephine when she was just 16. What he liked the most about Josephine was that she was still a virgin.

Poppy's nightclub charged extra for a virgin. They had something that they called a cherry fee, which is quite literally the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. Hilblum once bragged to his friends that he'd spent as much as 10 million in cherry fees and had slept with 132 virgins. Most of them, we can safely assume, were way underage. We already know lots of things about Hilblem and the main things are he was a total piece of shit,

he was a germophobe and he was also terrified of dying. He truly believed that the only way to avoid contracting AIDS was to sleep with virgins and virgins only and that's what he did. God forbid he should buy a condom. This is vile but my head has to be in your head too. One of the ways Hilblum would vet his conquests was to bring them back to his hotel bathroom and show them the shower. If the girl knew how to operate the shower, he took that as a sign that they had done sex work before and he would kick them out. And his germophobia even meant that he would drip iodine down his penis after having sex to kill any germs.

Just to be clear, Larry Hillblom and I have parted ways quite significantly now. Just buy a condom, my God, that's so much simpler. Anyway, eventually, Hilblum hired Josephine as his maid to get her out of Poppy's nightclub, and she became his live-in girlfriend. But that didn't stop him sleeping around with as many young girls as he could physically get his hands on behind Josephine's back. I would be amazed if Josephine didn't, no?

By the time Larry disappeared, Josephine had been living with him for almost 10 years. But she never had any money of her own, and she wasn't mentioned even once in Larry's will. So Josephine filed her claim for a slice of Larry's fortune. And as time went on, a few more women came forward too, claiming that their children were Larry's. These women were met with elitist, racist remarks from the media. Headlines questioned why these women from rural villages should be given millions of dollars, and what they would even do with the money. A rumour began to circulate that while Larry was alive, Joe Wester and another associate had advised him to put a stipulation

in his will to disinherit any offspring that he may have. Larry, however, had refused to do so, and this led many people to speculate that he was fully aware that he had children out there and didn't want them to be disinherited. During his time as a High Court judge, Larry Hillblom had passed a law supporting the inheritance rights of children. And during his time as a High Court judge, Larry Hillblom had actually passed a law supporting the inheritance rights of children born out of wedlock. Almost as though he was writing laws specific to his particular situation. It's nice when you own the National Bank and are a Supreme Court judge and can do whatever you want, basically. Meanwhile, Junior's criminal lawyer David Lujan was working tirelessly combing through the financials of the Hillblom estate.

He was convinced that there was something fishy about how Joe Wichter came to be the executor of the will in the first place. And David Lujan was right. He goes on to be right quite a lot. Wächter had manipulated Hilblum's assets in order to take control of the entire estate. It's convoluted and fucking boring, but basically Wächter borrowed money from the estate to pay for shares in the Bank of Cépan, which Larry had allocated to be the executor of his estate, which we already know. In simple terms, this is what he did. It's like me wanting to buy 40% of Saruti's stuff and borrowing money from Saruti to do that. It makes no sense. It's fucked.

Wächter's plan clearly was to take over the bank in order to take over Larry's assets in their entirety. So once Lujan brought this mess to light, the judge kicked Wächter off the case and suspended the National Bank. And while they were doing that, $8 million of missing assets were recovered. But somehow, the state attorney general from California, which has absolutely the fucking nothing to do with any of this, reinstated Wagerter. And I can hear you and I am answering your question. Why was the state attorney general of California sticking their oar in? Well, because the University of the State of California had been assigned $1 billion in Larry's will. So the state of California actually had quite a lot to lose. And when these women, with their silly paternity claims,

were sticking their oar in, the University of California were worried that their money was in jeopardy. The case was on the news around the world. And once people understood that there were girls out there with a claim to tens of millions of dollars, many scrambled to find their lottery ticket. Private detectives were hired to go around Saipan and Manila's infamous sex clubs to find out if there were any more of Hillblom's illegitimate children out there,

so that their client could represent the mothers. Now, to be fair to them, this was very likely. And they started this sort of hunt for heirs by going from club to club with posters of Larry's face and telling girls that they stood to make a lot of to club with posters of Larry's face and telling girls that they stood to make a lot of money if their child was Larry's. And this is how one PI found 15-year-old Mercedes Feliciano, who came from Paranake, one of the most deprived slums in Manila. Mercedes was eight months pregnant at the time. She told investigators that Hilblum had met her when she was just 14 years old at a bar in Manila. She had been sent there to work by her mother,

who needed the money to take care of her blind sister. After he met her, Hilblum had negotiated a price for Mercedes' virginity with her mother in a KFC near the bar. When Larry found out that she'd gotten pregnant, he promised to return and marry her one day. To his friends, Larry referred to Mercedes, 15-year-old Mercedes, as the Benz. Hate. Loathe entirely. Yeah. So the private investigator who found Mercedes locked her up in his apartment as his prisoner and pawn in the Hillblom case. There was a deadline approaching for Ayres to be able to make a claim on Larry's estate

and this PI wanted the baby born before the deadline. So he attempted to pressure Mercedes into having a caesarean section months before the baby was due in order to see if the baby looked half Caucasian. Fortunately, Mercedes' mother managed to rescue her from the apartment and they came forward of their own accord. And that entire time, Mercedes was never even informed that Larry Hillblom was dead. She still thought that he would come back one day and marry her as he'd promised.

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That's friends, without that R, Best Fiends. Another young woman called Julie Guadero had a similar story. She told investigators that Helblum had met her at a club when she was 15, taken her back to his condo and raped her on an air mattress. When he found out that she was pregnant, Larry gave her $200 and told her to get an abortion. But instead, she fled back to her grandparents' house in the provinces. So at this stage in our story, there were eight teenage mothers claiming that Larry was the father of their babies.

But there was still no way of proving the legitimacy of their claims without DNA. So the idea of testing the children's DNA against each other's to prove siblingship was floated about. This was a precarious plan. If a number of the mothers were lying, then the legitimate children's cases would be significantly weakened. So Lujan refused to go for it. Then, suddenly, news arrived that Hilblum had had a mole removed during a facial reconstruction surgery after his first plane crash. And that mole was being held in state like lead-in for some reason by the Davis Medical Centre in San Francisco. Isn't that lovely and convenient?

And this presented a very real chance of getting Hillblom's DNA. Lujan, in yet another edition of Lujan Gets It Right, was suspicious. The Davis Medical Center also stood to benefit from money coming to them from Larry's will. Millions, actually. When the day came to hand over the mole, this is farcical, a doctor in a white lab coat arrived in a room full of lawyers holding a small tissue specimen in a plastic container. I hate this. The idea of just a dismembered mole. Yeah, that's flopping around. But Luhan, because he is a smart cookie, noticed that something was off. The container that had the floppy mole in it, sorry, was labelled DMC 69755.

But the original pathology report that Luhan had seen had the sample number DMC 69775. Luhan pointed this out and then the pathologist ran out of the room. Oh my god. This is unbelievable. It's a farce. Then the doctor comes back shortly with a different sample in another plastic container correctly labelled, one would assume, and he threw it on the table saying,

here's Larry. Oh my god. Stop it. Oh god. The Davis Medical Centre was and is famous for its precision, as one would hope for a medical centre. And the whole thing just did not sit with Lujan. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's being conducted by a place that is famous for its position. No, it's not sitting well with me either.

Lujan had a feeling that the DNA from the floppy mole was not Larry's at all. He didn't trust the bit of mole or the white-coated doctor, in inverted commas, from the medical centre. So shortly after, Luhan woke up to the news that somehow a new probate law had been passed in the North Mariana Islands. It was dubbed the Hillblum Law and it stated that illegitimate children

had no legal right to claim an inheritance. Is this Game of Thrones? What's happening? And it also worked retroactively. That's nice. Yep. So surprise, surprise, it turned out that the entire thing had been engineered by none other than Joe Wächter. This was Wächter's checkmate. For Luhan, this meant war, and he went after them with a vengeance.

About a week later, Larry's mother had been hospitalised for high blood pressure, and there was a rumour that a nurse had come into her room and taken a swab from inside her cheek. But the hospital had no record of any nurse doing any such thing. Shortly after, Lujan phoned his team and told them that he knew with scientific certainty that Junior Larry Hillbroom was indeed Senior Larry Hillbroom's son. But he did not elaborate on how he knew. Lujan then went to the media, and NBC and Dateline ran a special story on Larry Hillbroom, including an interview with Junior Larry Hillbroom.

The world learned of the penniest Palawan boy, who'd been born nine months after Larry visited the island, and his mother, who was just 16 years old when she slept with Larry. The Dateline host also interviewed Wacheter's right-hand man about why they were fighting so hard to disinherit Larry's alleged heirs. He was squirming and sweating throughout. It's very much like a Prince Andrew in the Channel 4 interview. Or was it BBC? Dateline also told the story of 14-year-old Mercedes and how Hillblom had paid her family $2,000 for her virginity. After this media assault, the tides began to turn. Lujan went through every single legal bill from Wächter's team's expense accounts

and he stumbled upon a $160 charge for muriatic acid, which is also known as hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid can be used to degrade strands of DNA. So Lujan knew immediately why the plumbing had been so squeaky clean at Larry Hilblom's house in Saipan. Wächter and his team must have poured hydrochloric acid down the drains to destroy any evidence. And that is a felony. So this was a huge breakthrough for Lujan and Larry's kids. And what happens next is just as shocking, if not unsurprising.

Josephine Nocasa, Hilblom's girlfriend, came forward and she told Luhan that she had been asked by Wächter to burn every single thing Larry had owned before the place was searched. She was not having it, she thought it was entirely immoral, so she hired an excavator to dig a pit in the garden and buried it all instead. Waster denied this, obviously, and testified in court that Josephine had, in fact, thrown away Larry's belongings of her own accord as some sort of Filipino mourning ritual, which is very patronising. So Luhan and his team hired an excavator operator and had him dig up Larry's entire backyard,

but they couldn't find anything and suddenly the operator who hadn't been told why he was digging everything up said are you guys looking for where I buried the clothes? It turns out he was the only excavator operator on Saipan and he had been the one who had buried the stuff in the first place. Oh my god brilliant. And this guy led the team to the spot where he had buried all of the clothes and they uncovered

everything from this hole including Larry's t-shirts and jeans to his hair brushes combs toothbrushes and his socks.

Brilliant. So finally Luhan and his team had everything they needed to test the children's paternity. A dirty little DNA time capsule.

Gross. That's the name of your autobiography. Can't wait. So of the eight children whose DNA were tested against Larry Hilblum's, four returned as positive matches. Luhan proved that Larry was definitively the father of junior Larry Hilblum, along with two other children from the Philippines and another in Vietnam. He's like a shit Genghis Khan.

Yes, yes, exactly. But instead of war, he just rapes children. So Luhan and his team called them the Lucky Sperm Club. Don't love that from you, Luhan. Loving the rest of your work. But the Lucky Sperm Club, I'm sorry, you're on your own with that one. Merch? Merch? Merch!

And whether we like that name or not, lucky they were. Because each child was now entitled to $90 million in inheritance from Larry's estate. And thanks to Luhan, they got it. Now I wish I could say this was a happy ending for all of the kids, but sadly that's just not the case. After the settlement, junior Larry Hilbrum became one of America's richest teenagers and was catapulted from a poverty-stricken life in Palau into a world of private schools and endless wealth. In 2005, at the age of 21, Hilbrum was arrested on alleged drug charges and for attempting to bribe an officer in Guam.

The judge ordered him to go to a drug recovery centre, but it didn't work out, and the rest of his 20s were filled with alcohol and crystal meth abuse. And in early 2016, he was again arrested for having two female associates smuggle 160 grams of crystal meth into Palau for him. At this point, junior Larry Hillbrum had squandered most of his $90 million inheritance and only had around $10 to $15 million left. That seems impossible to

me. I know. How? How? But just earlier this year in February 2022, at the age of 37, Hilbrum was sentenced to eight years in prison for the smuggling charges. Sad. What a fucking waste of the Lucky Spam Club. As for Larry Hillblom Sr., his body has never been found. Although he has been officially pronounced dead, many still speculate that Larry is alive somewhere on an island, hiding out with Elvis, Epstein and Tupac. Who knows? Be a good way to go.

It would. Got enough money for it. I just want him to be like debating socialism with Tupac. So yeah, that is it, guys. That is the story of Larry Hillblom, the man who put the H in DHL. There you go. There you have it. Learned. Learning the stuffs. Absolutely. So yeah, we hope you enjoy it and uh

we will see you next time actually i'm gonna fake my death and move to an island so i'm not seeing any of you oh no bye So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh. Fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it.

That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge,

but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy.

You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.