True Crime Campfire - Blaze of Glory: The Story of Cowboy Bob

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

In the early 90s, north Texas was hit with a rash of bank robberies, all featuring a quirky-looking, mustached bandit the feds called Cowboy Bob. Bob was prolific, and his MO was smoother than silk—no muss, no fuss, in and out in 60 seconds with a satchel full of cash. The FBI figured they were dealing with a pro, a man with years of heists under his belt and nerves of chilled steel. They couldn’t have been more wrong…and in more ways than one. Join us for the tale of one of America’s strangest serial bank robbers, whose criminal career wasn’t so much about the money as it was about the thrill. Sources:Texas Monthly, Skip Hollandsworth: https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/the-last-ride-of-cowboy-bob/https://www.discoveryplus.com/video/forbidden/cowgirl-bobhttps://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10367955https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2005/may/06/bank-robber-shot-dead-in-texas/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In the early 1990s, North Texas was hit with a rash of bank robberies, all featuring a quirky-looking, mustached bandit, the feds called Cowboys. Bob. Bob was prolific and his M.O. was smoother than silk. No must, no fuss, in and out in 60 seconds with a satchel full of cash. The FBI figured they were dealing with a pro, a man

with years of heights under his belt and nerves of chilled steel. They couldn't have been more wrong, and in more ways than one. Join us for the tale of one of America's strangest serial bank robbers, whose criminal career wasn't so much about the money as it was about the thrill. This is Blaze of Glory, the story of Cowboy Bob. So, campers, for this one, we're in Mesquite, Texas, September 1992. At the first interstate bank, a man stepped calmly up to the teller window. He was a strange looking dude, medium height and broomstick thin with a bushy gray beard, big dark glasses, a 10-gallon cowboy hat, and a long leather jacket. Take away the sunglasses and you'd have a guy

who could have made a pretty good living plane and grizzled old prospector on Bonanza. The teller smiled and asked how she could help this, odd duck. Without a word, the man reached out his gloved hand and passed her a note. It read, This is a bank robbery. Give me your money. No marked bills or die packs. Then he put a big open satchel on the counter. Now, tellers are trained what to do in these situations. The priority is to get the robber out of the building as quickly as possible without anybody getting hurt. This means doing whatever the hell they want. Her heart pounding out of her chest, the teller filled the satchel with all the cash at her station. And this, as it happened, was quite a hall, almost 14 grand, which in today's money would be worth just under $30,000. The robber watched

silently as the teller filled the bag. He didn't speak, didn't fidget, but he was clearly pleased with the amount of green going into the satchel. As he took back the bag, he tipped his hat to the teller, like, ma'am. Then he turned and calmly walked out of the bank. The whole operation had taken barely 60 seconds. The first interstate bank had just been hit by a bank robber of growing notoriety in the Dallas area, someone who had already robbed five banks in the past year. In fact, he'd robbed another bank earlier that same day. Police and FBI agents were still at the scene about a mile away. Because of his dress sense, the FBI had nicknamed this guy, Cowboy Bob, and because of the cool and efficient way he operated, they assumed he was a professional bank robber with a lot of experience.

They figured from the start that the Cowboy Get Up was a disguise, which was confirmed when one agent noticed in security footage that Cowboy Bob was wearing his big hat on backwards. Texas, you know, they know how to spot hat errors a mile away. Other hat errors include wearing a cowboy hat while not doing cowboy slash outlaw activities, not taking your hat off when you're talking to a lady. And last, but certainly not least, not carrying a lasso in case of cow emergencies. Cow emergencies. Break class in case of cow emergencies.

I've had a few cow emergencies, actually. Of course you have. course you have. I'm not surprised. I have. Yeah. It's true. I grew up in the Southern State. But they had no idea just how much of a disguise they were dealing with. Satchel in hand, Cowboy Bob walked back to his 1975 Pontiac Grand Prix and drove off. After a little while, he pulled over and started taking off his disguise. And if you'd been there to see it, you might have been pretty shocked at what you saw. Because in just a few moments, Cowboy Bob was gone, and in his place was a pretty blonde-haired woman. Peggy Joe Talas was born in

June 1944 and grew up in Grand Prairie, a suburb of Dallas, and the Talas family didn't have it easy. Peggy Joe's dad died of cancer when she was just four years old, and as hard as she worked, her mom barely made enough to support the family. Peggy Joe had an older brother and sister, and the four of them lived crammed into a tiny little rented house. Her older siblings, Nancy and Pete, thrived in the high school social scene, one a majorette and the other playing on a championship basketball team. But from an early age, Peggy Joe was restless with the whole suburban life. While other kids were going to weeny roast and sock hops and whatever the hell else kids did in the 50s to numb the crushing fear of nuclear war, she'd be taking her buddies to watch

the races at Yellowbelly, a run-what-you-brung drag racing strip. Or she'd just cruise around with a friend looking for stray dogs that she'd take home and take care of. Peggy Joe, was just one of those people who marched to the beat of their own special drum. She dropped out of high school in the 10th grade, telling her friends there was just too much other fun stuff out there to do. And she wasn't kidding. Not long after, she jumped in her car and just drove out to San Francisco on a whim to see what it was like to live there. She came back not long after with a bunch of beat poetry books that she shared with her friends. And this was the early 60s, pre-Beatles, pre-Dillan. Things were still a long way off from being cool.

and groovy. Suburban girls from Grand Prairie didn't just drive out to California to read poetry, but Peggy Joe did. Damn it, you're making me kind of like or quit it. Don't worry. It won't last long. Also, you know she was super smug about it. Like, come on. Yeah. Well, I know I was when I had my brief obsession with the beat poets in college. I could just feel it in my bones. I would have hated you. You would have loved me like everybody else did you. Unfortunately, that is true. I would have been swayed by the charisma of Whitney, like everyone else.

I did have about a six-week period where I did wear a black beret around, though I'm not going to lie. And a black turtleneck sweater. I feel like you could have pulled it off. You could have pulled that off. By the end of the 60s, Peggy Joe had moved to Dallas and was working as a receptionist at the downtown Marriott. She'd made friends with another receptionist, Cherry Young, and soon the two of them were going out every night, drinking beer, playing pool, and flirting with guys. Peggy Joel would just drive them around in her little Fiat, gunning the engine and racing other cars between the

stoplights. They went to see bands like the stones and the doors, and Peggy dragged Cherry to coffee houses to listen to poetry. They were having the time of their lives. Cherry would later tell true crime legend, Skip Hollinsworth, that Peggy Joe didn't care about getting married, didn't care about building a career, didn't really even care about money. Pretty much all she wanted was enough to pay her bills, get a few meals, and go out for some good Mexican food at El Phoenix a couple times a week. Peggy Joe did have one dream for the future, though, and she put away a little money every month to try and make it come true.

One day, she wanted to move down to Mexico and live right on the beach, not have to wear anything but her bathing suit all the time. Girl same. That's a dream right there. Peggy Joe and Cherry also like to go to the movies together. Peggy Joe's favorite movie was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's a great movie, even if that bicycle scene goes on just way too long. Too long. I don't know what I... Ugh, ugh.

Now, as you probably know, campers, the movie versions of Butch and Sundance were handsome, charming bank and train robbers who lived a wild life and went out in a blaze of glory, dying in a shootout in Bolivia. Peggy Joe loved it. She watched it again and again. And one day, she and Cherry drove past a Wells Fargo armored truck. I could go rob that and not have to worry about anything for a while. Peggy Joe said, joking. Of course, right? Joking.

You'd need a gun, Cherry said, playing along. Ah, heck, I'm smarter than that, Peggy Joe said. And Cherry laughed, because as far as Cherry was concerned, they were just kidding around. And Peggy Joe probably wasn't really serious herself at that point, just thinking, if I were going to do this, how would I go about it? And it can be fun to think about stuff like that. I mean, most of us have probably thought about it just for fun. How could I rob a bank and not get caught or whatever? We don't have any intention of actually doing it. Not me, though, Mr. FBI man assigned to work my case. I've done nothing of the sort.

No imaginary heist for me, thanks. just wholesome podcasting. Convincing. You know, I do my best. One thing that was missing from Peggy Joe's life was romance. In her early 30s, she'd started dating this guy Richard, and before long, she was telling her friends that she was in love. He was vice president of a bank in a town just outside of Dallas, and Peggy Joe fell hard for him.

As far as she knew, he'd fallen for her too. She started imagining a future together. Then one day, she'd draw. drove down to surprise Richard at work. She spotted his car and went over to say hi through the open window. But it wasn't Richard in the car. It was a woman. And not just any woman either.

After some excruciatingly awkward back and forth, Peggy Joe realized that this lady was Richard's wife. Dickhead was married. She had no idea. Holy moly. So embarrassed and devastated, Peggy Joe walked away, and I'm guessing Richard in his wifey had a pretty spicy conversation later that day. And it seems like that was pretty much it for Peggy Joe in dating. She was just out at that point. Nope, not doing that again. She'd always been independent, and I guess she just decided she could be happy on her own. But she wasn't

alone, even though her best friend Cherry eventually got married and moved to Oklahoma. Peggy Joe's mom was sick with a degenerative bone disease, and Peggy Joe moved into a little apartment to take care of her, getting a job close by. By the late 80s, things were getting kind of rough for Peggy and her mom. Peggy Joe's income and her mom's social security didn't really amount to much and money was tight. And the cost for treatment and medicine for her mom's illness kept on rising and rising every year. There's a kind of helpless drowning feeling you can get with financial trouble where you just can't see a way out, can't see any way to catch up and get in the clear. Peggy Joe was so stressed about money that her doctor put her on anxiety meds. And some of this was self-inflicted. Peggy

was proud, too proud to ask for help. She had a brother and sister who would have been happy to lend a hand if they'd known how much it was needed, and she had friends who cared about her too, but she didn't ask. She was still the kid who took home stray dogs to take care of. Her friend Sherry said she liked helping people. She didn't want people to help her. And Cherry felt like it wasn't only the money stress that was making Peggy Joe unhappy. Her free-spirited friend was all of a sudden in her mid-forties, and she'd fallen into this really constrained, careful, boring life. Peggy Joe and her mom had a morning routine. Peggy Joe would wake up and every morning make her bed with perfect military precision. Then she'd go help her mom through to the kitchen, fix her breakfast and lay out her pills. While her mom ate, Peggy Joe had her own breakfast of champions, usually a siggy and a Pepsi. And the two of them would chat for a while. Then Peggy Joe would help her mom back to bed, leave her with a glass of water in a romance novel and go get dressed for work. This was pretty much it, day in and day out. wasn't the future she'd wanted.

I think Peg missed being wild at heart, Cherry said later. Well, yeah. I mean, that kind of life where you're not much more than somebody else's caretaker is hard on anybody. But especially somebody like Peggy Joe, the kind of person who used to just pick up and move to California on a whim. Something was bound to crack. But also, like, throw up, Peg. Sometimes you can't just choke down Chimmy Chongas and play billiards to your heart's content. Sometimes you have to take responsibility.

Sometimes you've got to take care of. your mama even though that's not what you asked for or wanted it's not fair but like sometimes it's how it is well ask for help too that's the thing is that and and i kind of relate to that because i kind of am one of those people who will just like i'll burn myself out and i won't ask for help i know you know you know you know and and yeah so i do actually kind of relate to that and i have that kind of wild at heart side to me as well so i actually really kind of do relate to this as much as i hate to admit it. No, I get it. I get it. And I'm not being like critical. Like we live unfortunately, unfortunately we live in a society. Okay. With all the benefits, like we have

paved roads, but also sometimes we have to pay bills and that fucking sucks. Okay. And sometimes we have to pay medical bills. You can't always just fly up, you know, go to Mexico and live on the beach. I get it. Yeah. And I also get sometimes wanting to just flee. Yeah. Oh, I thought about it today. I was like, do you think Canada would let me in? I think my passport still could. No. So, one morning in May of 1991 started out with pretty much that same routine, except that the go-get-dressed-for-work part at the end took a very different turn that day. From a dresser drawer, Peggy Joe took out a pair of men's khaki pants and a dark men's shirt and laid them out on the bed. From the closet, she took out a long leather jacket and a pair of cowboy boots that were way too big for her and laid these out too.

Also in the closet, on a shelf, was a mannequin's head with a fake beard pin to it. and a big white cowboy hat on top. Peggy Joe took off her PJs and got dressed, putting a folded up towel under her shirt to disguise her female shape and make herself look a little heavier. In the bathroom, she used spirit gum to stick on the fake beard,

then ran temporary gray hair dive from a costume shop through her blonde hair. After that, she added the cowboy hat, a pair of big sunglasses, and a pair of leather gloves. And just like that, Cowboy Bob was born. Peggy Joe walked past the closed door of her mom's room calling out, be back in a minute. And then she drove to the American Federal

Bank in Irving. At the counter, a smiling young woman, barely out of high school, said, Hello, sir, how may I help you? Peggy Joe took a deep breath and handed over a note. This is a bank robbery. Give me your money. No marked bills or die packs. The scared teller handed over a stack of bills which Peggy Joe shoved into a satchel. Then she nodded, walked out of the bank, drove home and made lunch for her mom. Well, after she took off the beard and stuff, obviously. She didn't want to let mom in on her little secret. There's no way of knowing just how long Peggy Joe had been planning this first robbery.

It obviously wasn't a spur of the moment thing. She had to get the clothes and other parts of her disguise for one thing and then practice with the fake beard and the hair dye. And judging from her behavior during the heist, it seemed like she thought it through pretty carefully. There were good reasons why, even for her. from the first robbery, the FBI thought they were dealing with a pro. Peggy Joe wore gloves, didn't look up at the camera, didn't speak or fidget, didn't rush out afterward. And when she drove

away, she did it carefully, not drawing any attention to herself. She didn't make any mistakes at all. During a later robbery, she even spotted a die pack hidden in a stack of bills and just calmly handed it back. She was a natural. Yep. And in December of 1991, One, Cowboy Bob struck again in the same outfit and with the same MO. This time, she scored about $1,300 from the savings of America Bank. This time, though, a witness took down the license plate of Cowboy Bob's Pontiac Grand Prix. The FBI quickly traced the number to a house close by the bank. Agents swarmed the address, scaring the shit out of the poor lady who lived there.

She told them she hadn't been out all day and that her car, a red Chevy, was sitting right there in the driveway. And it was, only without its license plate. Cowboy Bob had stolen the plate earlier in the day and put it on his own car. The bastard had thought of everything. In January 1992, Peggy Joe hit another bank. This time, the Texas Heritage Bank in Garland, netting around $3,000. And in May, she got over $5,000 from the Nation's Bank in Mesquite. Now, I think it's worth pausing a minute here to think about what the hell Peggy Joe

was doing. For that first robbery, if we want to be generous, we can kind of draw a line from A to B to explain why she did it. She was struggling financially. Her mom's condition was getting more expensive to treat and she needed money fast. But the more you look at it, the less persuasive that argument gets. Sure, she was worried about money, but it wasn't like she had some terrible, urgent need for cash. It wasn't as if she needed $2,000 by that weekend or her mom wouldn't get her medicine. It was just that things were tight, something that's true for most people, most of the time. And most people don't end up robbing a bank. And like we said, Peggy Joe hadn't even tried to reach out for help, despite having a support

system who would have been happy to do it. I mean, if your choice is between A, an uncomfortable conversation with your older brother, or B, literally robbing a bank and you choose the latter, that's because you want to rob a bank. Right. And look at the way she did it, too. Like the costume, the role playing. It's so theatrical. It's almost kind of playful. It's like she was enjoying herself. Thrill seeker, Peggy Joe was back. Yeah, I keep thinking of the hat tip. That was such a playful. Yeah, absolutely, the little hat tip. Yeah, it's such a playful moment. Like, she was having fun. Definitely. And you have to think that's why she kept doing it. She wasn't unemployed. She wasn't houseless. She didn't have a drug habit to feed. She didn't have a spending

addiction. As exciting as it was to walk out with thousands of dollars, she didn't need it. But the money wasn't really the point. Peggy Joe robbed banks because she liked robbing banks, because it was a thrill, because the wild kid she'd once been had never really gone away. This is a big motivation for a lot of bank robbers, at least the ones who do it multiple times. The excitement, the adrenaline rush of high stakes planning and execution just gets them high as hell, and they want to do it again and again. Yeah, it becomes way more about that than the money. And Peggy Joe seemed to be enjoying it way too much.

In September of 1992, she robbed two Mesquite banks in one day, and it seems clear that the second robbery was an impulse with no planning her prep. It was almost like she was daring the police and the FBI to catch her, raising the stakes, raising the excitement. For the first robbery, Peggy Joe had used her trick of stealing a license plate and putting it on her own car in case anybody took down the number, but for the second robbery, she hadn't bothered to do that. And when they got the license number from a witness and traced it,

the FBI were soon calling the guy, fully expecting it to shake out like it did the last time, that they'd find somebody who was shocked to learn that their license plate had been stolen. But in this case, the man they called was Pete Tallis, Peggy Joe's older brother. And when they asked if he owned a Brown Pontiac Grand Prix, he said he did, but he'd given it to his mom and sister a couple years ago

because they couldn't afford one themselves. And I love this. When the FBI told him the car had been used in a bank robbery, Pete said, Bullshit, that car can't go fast enough. Oh, Pete, you're a scam. And you're underestimating your old car. And his sister, seems like.

Definitely. Soon, FBI agents were converging on the apartment building where Peggy Joe and her mom lived, and they immediately spotted the Grand Prix in the parking lot. While they were discussing exactly how they were going to rush in and catch cowboy Bob before he could escape, they saw a cute blonde woman in shorts and a t-shirt come out of the apartments and walk right toward the car.

car. Hmm, must be Cowboy Bob's girlfriend, the lead agent said. Bob, they assumed, would still be in the apartment, and any kind of commotion in the parking lot would spook him. So the agents let the blonde woman drive a little ways down the road before they stopped her. When the agents told her who they were, Peggy Joe was friendly, polite, and soft-spoken. When they asked if they could look around her apartment, she paused just for a second and told them nobody was there except her sick mom. When they're hot on the trail of a notorious bank robber, the FBI didn't have much time for sick mothers. Peggy Joe's mom, poor thing, screamed as she opened the door to their knock, and FBI agents came surging in

with their guns out. They were sure they were going to find Cowboy Bob crouching in a closet or something, but it was a small apartment, and it was soon clear there were no Bob's, Cowboy, or otherwise, hiding anywhere. And looking at Peggy Joe's neatly made bed or closet full of dresses and heels and her collection of glass dolphin figurines, it didn't seem like a man had been staying there at all. But then an agent spotted Peggy Joe's mannequin head, complete with fake beard and 10-gallon hat on an upper shelf in the closet

and a moment later another pulled out a satchel of cash from under the bed. Come on Peggy Joe, the lead agent said, you're hiding a man from us. It's like good God, man, would you let the penny drop already? It's like they just could not wrap their heads around

it. It's so funny. Peggy Joe gave the agent an odd kind of irritated look and said there isn't any man, I promise you that. And that's when the agent noticed the gray dye in her hair and just a trace of spirit gum residue still stuck to her upper lip. Oh. Well, shit.

This is, this campers is why we need feminism. Okay? Girls can be anything they want, including a bank robber. I've been thinking about this moment since I learned about it. Okay? I'm crying, laughing. because holy shit they just couldn't they didn't even occur to them they just could not process it at all like even when they saw the mannequin head it just took forever for the penny to finally drop it's it's like a it's like a

it's like the Kaiser soze reveal or like in i don't know if you have seen i think it's one of the sequels to 21 drum street the new one with um channing tatum and uh what's his face and i didn't even see the original one and uh they find out that one of the the the non-deum the non Channing Tatum cop. You guys are going to roast me for not knowing his name. He's super famous. Is fucking the chief's daughter? Like they're dating? It's that moment. You guys are laughing. Whitney doesn't get it. I'll take your word for it. But it's, it's Kaiser Soze. Okay, Whitney, you know that one. It's Kaiser Soze. Yes, definitely. So he handcuffed her, red of her rights, and drove her to the main Dallas FBI office. As he walked her in, he said to the other

agents there, gentlemen, cowboy Bob is actually cowboy babette. He's got jokes, y'all. A lot to go on the road with jokes like that. The FBI were fascinated by Peggy Joe. Only a tiny number of bank robbers are female, less than 5%, and hardly any of them pulled off the robberies with the kind of cool, efficiency, and style that Peggy Joe had. They wanted to know where she learned this stuff,

and they wanted to know why she screwed up so badly in that final robbery, why she hadn't changed the license plates like she usually did. Her system worked. Why hadn't she stuck to it? But Peggy Joe stayed tight-lipped, even with her court-appointed attorney. That attorney hired a psychiatrist to take a look at Peggy Joe, and he at least managed to get something out of her that she had robbed that first bank to pay for her mom's medicine,

and it hadn't occurred to her at all at the time to rob a second or third or fourth bank. So why did you keep robbing banks? The psychiatrist asked. Peggy Joe just stared at the wall, shrugged her shoulders, shook her head, lit a cigarette. Her friend Cherry later said, I guess it was hard for her to admit just how much fun she had being a bank robber. That's absolutely what it was. I think she used her mom's medicine as the justification to do it in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah. And beyond that, she didn't really have a justification anymore other than I love it and I have a taste for it. And I don't think she wanted to admit it. It's interesting. Yeah, Marcus Parks from last podcast on the left, we love you. Please do a show with us. He calls these little allowances, which I think is super fascinating.

Because when you talk about, like, you know, serial crime, you have these where they will just like incrementally allow themselves to or give themselves permission to do these things. And it's like, you don't have to do this, but they want to and that's all that matters. Right. And so they'll bend their brain into whatever pretzel they have to to find a justification. Absolutely. So a six-time bank robber in Texas who took tens of thousands of dollars in the space. of just over a year. She must have gotten the book thrown at her, right?

Well, no. Peggy Joe helped her own case by agreeing to plead guilty, and the fact that she'd never used a weapon during the robberies was a fact in her favor. The judge ended up being pretty sympathetic to a defense argument that basically boiled down to she just went a little nuts, okay? I guess she's just a little bit crazy.

And let's be honest, it probably didn't hurt that she was a contrite, soft-spoken white lady. At the end of the day, Peggy Joe was sentenced to just 33 months in federal prison. Not bad, really. But there's a reason they call it prison and not happy joy fun place. It's not supposed to be an uplifting experience, but for an independent free-spirited sort like Peggy Joe, incarceration was really hard. She hated being locked up.

And when her friends and family visited, she refused to say anything about her. the robberies other than that they'd never happen again. She even refused a potentially lucrative offer to co-write a book with a true crime author because she thought it would embarrass her family even more than they already were. By the mid-90s, Peggy Joe was out of prison and she and her mom had moved into a little townhouse in a new neighborhood away from nosy neighbors who knew too much about her past. Her mom needed more care now, so Peggy Joe only had time for a part-time job. She got a cashier gig at a marina on Lake Ray Hubbard outside of Dallas, and soon got a reputation for helping out poor people. A lot of low-income folks would go fishing every day to feed their families,

and Peggy Joe would buy them bait. She also gave some money to a guy she knew who had been in prison and was having a tough time on the outside. When her boss asked her why she did it, Peggy Joe said, well, we all got a past, you know. Every now and again, some guy would ask her out for a drink at the end of the day, but Peggy Joe would just smile and say she had to get back to her mom. Her mom died in 2002 at the age of 83, and for the first time in decades, Peggy Joe was free to do what she wanted. In 2004, Peggy Joe bought an RV, gave away all her furniture, put her potted plants on a neighbor's porch, and in the words of that neighbor, just flew the coop. For a while, she just stayed around the lake. She sat up camp in a public park and just hung out, fishing, smoking

month-all cigarettes, drinking Pepsi, listening to classic rock on the radio, and cooking up fajitas on the skillet. It could be an idyllic life for most people, I think, but when friends and family visited, Peggy Joe would still sometimes bring up the old dream of getting together enough money to move down to Mexico and live on the beach. Then, after a few weeks, Peggy Joe hit the road in her RV, and her story gets a little fuzzy for a while. Later on, people, people would claim to have seen her in her purple-curtained RV all over Texas, and though she called her family every now and again to let them know she was fine, she didn't tell them where she was or what she was doing.

Yeah, and there might have been a good reason for that. In October of 2004, an elderly-looking man walked into the Guarantee Bank in Tyler, Texas. He had a messy mustache, a big floppy hat, gloves, baggy clothes, and a big round belly. With no fanfare, he strolled up to the teller, lifted a bag up onto the counter, and said, all your money, no bait bills, no blow-up money. Then, with his bag full of stolen money, he strolled back out and down the street. The teller told the FBI the mustache looked glued on. The round belly looked like fake padding, and the robber's voice was soft, almost feminine. Now, the agents from the old cowboy bob days were either retired or working elsewhere by now. Otherwise, all this

probably would have got some alarm bells ringing. As it was, the Fed started hunting for older male bank robbers. They certainly didn't stop any 60-year-old ladies with friendly smiles and purple curtains. In May 2005, Peggy Joe was parked by a lake on a relative's farm, and her brother Pete drove down to hang out. They had a good time, looking at old pictures and reminiscing. Then Peggy Joe said she had to pack up and hit the road. Pete asked if she was okay. Peggy Joe hugged him and told him, yeah, she was happy. The next morning, Peggy Joe made her bed, then put on black pants and a black shirt. She did her makeup carefully, lipstick and blush and

everything. She didn't usually bother with all that. She put on a wide straw hat and black glasses and drove down to Tyler, Texas. Drove, in fact, to the same bank the mustached man had robbed back in October. Peggy Joe parked her RV across the street, walked into the bank and up to

the counter, a black satchel in hand, said, this is a robbery. I need all your money. Don't set any alarms. The terrified young woman did just what Peggy Joe asked, and it was quite a haul. $11,241. Enough to finally get Peggy Joe down to Mexico? Well, maybe not, and maybe that wasn't what she was looking for anymore anyway. This time, Peggy Joe hadn't checked for a die pack hidden in the cash, and one exploded as soon as she passed the

sensors at the bank's entrance, soaking all the cash with red ink and sending red smoke billowing up out of the satchel. A young woman on the street, a former bank teller correctly figured Peggy Joe had just robbed the bank and called the police as Peggy Joe hurried across the street to her RV, dodging cars on the busy seven-lane road and red smoke trailing out behind her. By a weird coincidence, a bunch of FBI agents and police officers were already out on the streets of Tyler that day looking for a gang of three young men behind a string of recent bank robberies that had nothing to do with Peggy Joe. Tyler had a bank robbing boom, it seems. You really don't get those anymore. Yeah, and when they heard about this latest robbery, they hauled ass to the scene,

and it didn't take them long to catch up with Peggy Joe's RV as she raced down the highway as fast as she could, which obviously was not fast enough. You're just not going to outrun a police car in an RV. Peggy Joe braked hard and skidded the RV into a suburban subdivision at the edge of town, but the police followed right behind her. A few minutes later, they'd boxed her in,

forcing Peggy Joe to bring the RV to a screeching halt. The curtains on the RV were closed. The police and FBI couldn't see inside. Were the three young, tough criminals they'd been chasing in there? Were they armed? Officers and agents leapt out of their cars with rifles and pistols and trained the weapons on the RV. You're surrounded, they yelled.

Whoever's in there, just come on out with your hands up. Inside, Peggy Joe sat in the tiny kitchen of the RV, smoking a menthol cigarette, the useless red-stained money on the floor beside her. After a couple of minutes, she went into her bedroom. It probably won't surprise you to hear that an independent Texan woman living alone on the road had a gun. In fact, under her pillow, Peggy Joe kept a 357 magnum handgun loaded with hollow point bullets. And that's plenty of firepower to ruin the day of anybody who

decided to mess with her. Peggy Joe didn't go near the hand cannon, though. She picked up a plastic toy pistol instead. It was black. It was the right size and shape. Unless he got a real close look, it could have been the real thing. Peggy Joe opened the door to the RV, keeping the hand holding the toy gun out of sight. I can only imagine how startled the officers were, expecting some badass dude and instead seeing this lady, who looked like their grandma's wearing a big floppy hat. You're going to have to kill me, she said calmly. One of the officers told her she didn't have to do that.

Peggy Joe said, You mean to tell me if I come out of here with a gun and pointed at y'all, you're not going to shoot me? Please don't, an officer told her. please don't do that. Peggy Joe stepped forward and aimed the toy gun at the cops. Four officers fired at the same time. All four of them hit her. She collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut and was dead within seconds. Was that what she wanted right from the start of this final robbery? Peggy Joe was good at robbing banks, but for this final heist and Tyler,

she hadn't bothered to use any of her skills. There was no cross-stress. dressing disguise this time. She went in there fully as herself, carefully put together like she was going to her cousin's wedding or a funeral. And there were no baggy clothes or oversized men's boots either. She dressed up nicely, all in black, like an old Western outlaw, like the Sundance kid in the last scene of her favorite movie. She didn't wear gloves. She spoke to the teller instead of using a note. And she didn't check for a die pack in the stolen cash, something she'd always been careful to do in the past. And her RV, her getaway RV, was parked right across the street with no stolen license plates or anything. None of that seems like an accident.

She had to know she'd get caught. Had to. And then there's the toy gun. Some of the reporting on Peggy Joe's case had suggested she had it in case she needed to threaten a bank employee during a robbery, but that doesn't fit with her MO or her personality. I think she bought that toy gun for exactly the purpose she put it to, to force a cop to shoot her dead. Yeah, and we need to talk about that. I mean, Peggy Joe has all the elements of the kind of people that we tend to turn into folk heroes. I mean, I think I would have actually liked her if I'd known her. But there was also a deep, hardcore of selfishness running through her.

It's pretty much a prerequisite for, you know, a life of crime. Manipulating another person into shooting you, into killing you dead, is one of the worst things that you could ever do, in my opinion. I mean, these guys shot an old lady to death. They all had to have years of therapy after that. It's not a kind thing to do to put somebody in that position, to threaten shoot me or I'll kill you and then aim what looks like a gun. And it's kind of a similar story with the bank robberies themselves. Let's not give her too much of a free pass because she didn't actually use weapons during her robberies.

Oh, hell no. Like, you know why tellers are trained to comply when someone robs a bank with a note or a spoken statement? because those notes and statements carry the implication of violence. That's right. If they didn't carry the implication of violence, the tellers would just laugh in the robber's face and call the security guard over. They don't do that because there's a chance the robber will pull out a gun and start shooting. And if you deliberately put somebody in that situation with a note where they have to think,

am I going to die today? That is a violent crime as far as I'm concerned. And before we feel too bad for Peggy Joe, I think we have to remember that, especially since a lot of those bank tellers were barely out of high school. A lot of them were seriously traumatized by what she did to them. Absolutely. People act like that's a victimless crime, you know, because it's a big wealthy bank or whatever. It's not. Think about the people who were there and who have nightmares still years later about it.

I mean, that's messed up. You don't put somebody through that for your own selfish means. You know, that's fucked up. As to why Peggy Joe might have chosen to end her life in such a situation. a dramatic way, well, she didn't leave a note or anything, so all we'll ever have her guesses. Friends said she was depressed and pretty devastated by her mom's death in 2002, couldn't talk about her without crying. And that's no surprise, I guess. I mean, she'd spent most of her life living with her mom. She'd looked after her mom for as long as her mom had looked

after her as a kid. Maybe after a couple of decades of caring for an aging and increasingly sick relatives, she was scared of getting old. She had her own health problems and the thought of being in that condition without her own Peggy Joe to take care of her, could have been terrifying. Maybe she was lonely. I guess we'll never know for sure, but it seems to me like she went out on her own terms. Like you said, Katie, I think that was her plan from the get-go that day, or at the very least she was flirting with it, being so careless with her MO, when she'd always been so careful before. So what we're left with at the end of the day is a sad story, I think. woman who had a wild heart and a free spirit on the one hand

and a determined sense of duty to her sick mom on the other and a stubborn unwillingness to reach out for help. It's almost like she managed to cut herself into two totally opposite halves, the dutiful daughter with the boring routine and the freewheeling bandit who didn't want to live if there wasn't a risk of dying in a blaze of glory. I wish she'd been able to bring the two halves together, make them a team, have that dream life down in Mexico.

And, most importantly, I wish she hadn't victimized anybody else in the process. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe, until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Sarah, Sonia, Courtney, Michael, Christina, Stephanie, Nicole, and Vicky.

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