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selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room
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and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.
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00:01:42
My favorite love. Hello. Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder. That is Georgia Hardstark speaking. That is Karen
00:02:01
Kilgareff. And we're here to podcast at you. Near you. Near your ear. For, I don't know,
00:02:11
do you have an hour and 45 minutes? Oh, geez. We're going that long this time? Well, I mean,
00:02:17
let's see. My story's pretty long. Is it? You know, basics. You know what? What if this time
00:02:24
you just read dates? Just a bunch. It's just a bunch of this day. Yeah. Prices. Sure. You have
00:02:31
to guess how much they are in today's money only. Truly one of my favorite things. Oh, sure. I was
00:02:36
going to read you. This is just like first up only because you just did the story of William
00:02:42
Minor and the Oxford English Dictionary getting written. And a person named Melissa Langley
00:02:48
writes to us on the near defunct Twitter website X, which it really seems like everyone needs to
00:02:58
get off of, including myself. But so she writes, as a sales rep for Oxford University Press,
00:03:05
I was so excited to hear you tell the story of William Minor and the Oxford English Dictionary.
00:03:11
beautiful job, Georgia. Oh my God. Right. Also, I wanted to let you know, you can vote on the 2023
00:03:17
word of the year. And then she forwards the little thing you can like the poll. Oh my God. So the
00:03:25
word of the year, and I don't know why this is set up like a versus, but it's like there's eight
00:03:30
total. It's like they're competing against each other. That's called something in sports, but I
00:03:35
I don't know. Brackets. There you go. I mean, you saw the sweatshirt. You know. You have a sports sweatshirt on to everyone's surprise.
00:03:43
Yeah. I think this is the first time I've worn color in four years. No joke. It's red. It's very red.
00:03:49
It's shocking, but it's so cozy. There was a sale. I bet. So these words are competing against each other. Beige flag versus riz.
00:03:58
Okay. I don't know riz. Do you? It's like a children's thing for style, I think.
00:04:03
Okay. All right. I like beige flag because I see it all the time. Yes. And then it's just the emoji with the person with their eyebrow raised.
00:04:12
And then there's parasocial versus situationship. Oh, I don't like either of those.
00:04:18
I love both. Then there's de-influencing versus swifty. Okay. Let's go. Oh, I don't want to.
00:04:24
I know. Let's just skip that one. Well, also maybe it's bad to choose, but also why do we have to choose?
00:04:29
Why can't we pick both of those? Yeah. And then the last one is prompt, which is like a writing prompt because of chat GBT, I guess.
00:04:37
Oh, okay. Versus heat dome. I hope to God isn't some weird sexual thing and I just don't understand what's happening.
00:04:44
It doesn't say? No, it just has a little bit of the emoji of the sun. Okay. Anyway, just thought you'd want to know that people who are involved in that book liked your story.
00:04:54
That makes me feel so good. I love it when smart people think I did a good job at a smart topic
00:05:01
oh those smart people can be tough too oh my god you know barely graduated high school
00:05:06
didn't go to college so it's nice to hear that from smart people yeah thanks smart people thank
00:05:13
you um what have you got I don't have it I don't have much well you might like to hear this the new
00:05:20
season of Fargo just came out yes we watched it last night did you watch both uh-huh there's
00:05:25
too. So good. So good. So excited. What's her name? The Juno Temple. Juno Temple is doing a
00:05:32
great job with that accent, right? Oh, so good. And Jennifer Jason Leigh, who it thrills me to
00:05:38
see her anytime I see her. I'm like, yes. So good. Dave Foley is the creepy Steve Bannon lawyer.
00:05:46
Love it. It's so my sister is the one who was like, we have to watch this. And I was like,
00:05:51
oh and then it just starts and it never lets up and it so good Have you watched the new HBO documentary Love Has Won The Cult of Mother God which I didn a cult I didn know about until Karen Kilgariff herself covered it on this
00:06:08
show. Hey, there's just tons of footage from it. I haven't watched it yet. It's fucked up.
00:06:15
It's just fucked. It's so bad. A friend of mine watched it. It was Brandy Posey that I was talking
00:06:21
to you last night because I came home and she was dog sitting for me and she's like they're
00:06:26
interviewing these people and they're clearly still in the cold yeah they're clearly still
00:06:30
she's like they have glassy eyes and you know talking about her and it's just like that aspect
00:06:36
of human existence where if you manipulate people and their external circumstances just so
00:06:43
and everybody is susceptible it doesn't matter how smart you are dumb you are anything in between
00:06:49
you can get pulled into something and never stop believing in it. Totally. I kept waiting for them to have like former member
00:06:59
and then that person telling what actually happened. And there's like one girl so far that's like got out.
00:07:05
One. Everyone else is like still a member, still goes by their name given to them by Mother God.
00:07:12
And it's just wild. It's wild. It's fucking wild. I actually haven't watched the documentary, that one, the new one. But I think because, spoiler alert, she died. It's basically like now she's a martyr. It's not like something bad happened and she went to jail. There was no de-escalation moment where she's confronted, exposed, nothing like that.
00:07:38
That makes sense. And in their minds, she's supposed to come back. Yeah. Right? Yeah.
00:07:43
it's the whole thing of oh this is actually the prophecy type mentality yeah and it works and she
00:07:49
does all the culty things of like you can't eat anymore we're not sleeping it's like 24 get me all
00:07:56
your money you know it's just like the the huge classic the classic it's the same thing as like
00:08:02
when we have crushes on people and you're just like i'll never be that dumb again and then you
00:08:06
just immediately turn around and are 10 times dumber the next time and that's just what it's
00:08:11
like to be a person, I think. That's a great comparison to what it is to fall into a cult.
00:08:18
We've all had those crushes, especially the ones that are unrequited. Yeah. That are so
00:08:24
all consuming and painful and you don't sleep, you don't eat. All you do is think about that person.
00:08:30
And one, you know, yeah, that makes, that kind of makes me understand it a little more actually
00:08:35
saying that. And can I tell you, here's a little TikTok wisdom that I got. Let me see if I took a
00:08:40
picture of it because it was such a good sentence. You know, like as a consumer of kind of self-helpy
00:08:45
type stuff, you're always just scanning for that one sentence that's going to like reach out and
00:08:49
punch you in the face. And it's so great when that's what happens. Took a lot of pictures of
00:08:54
the pie my sister made on Thanksgiving, but I didn't actually do it. Somebody on TikTok who was
00:09:00
a kind of a life coach type person said, obsession is a lack of information. ooh okay so if there's somebody that you just can't get over and you're like you're embarrassed
00:09:13
about how obsessed you are yeah you have to remind yourself it's because you do not know them and if
00:09:18
you watch them if you sat in a restaurant with them for a week they would be rude to somebody
00:09:23
and it would bum you out or they would be like they would have some human moment that would bring
00:09:29
them off that pedestal and you would be a little less obsessed especially with unrequited love you
00:09:34
You just get to make up anything you want. Oh my God. I did that all the fucking time.
00:09:38
All the time. It's fun. Somehow they're better than you where it's like, why? Why do you, because you don't have as much information about them as you need.
00:09:45
That's so true. Well, this is a relationship podcast now. So send us your relationship questions.
00:09:53
It's going to be one of those really good relationship podcasts where I repeat unattributed
00:09:59
really good advice that other people have already given in are making money off of giving.
00:10:04
Right, right. That one's smart. That's actually helpful. It is helpful. That is very smart.
00:10:10
All right. Do you have anything else that you're doing? Saying, seeing, loving, needing?
00:10:14
No, I just spent the holiday with my family in Petaluma, and it was just lovely and relaxing
00:10:18
and everything I needed it to be. I'm so glad. How was yours? Good. We went to Cantor's Jewish Deli for Thanksgiving Day lunch.
00:10:27
Yep. That was great. My mom and I ordered a margarita at Cantor's for Thanksgiving.
00:10:33
what is up. It all came together. Yeah. And then Vince and I made our own Thanksgiving dinner that
00:10:38
night and it was lovely. Love it. Yeah. It feels to me like the upcoming era that we are moving
00:10:44
into is a permanent pajamas era. I don't think anyone's interested in putting out any effort
00:10:52
at all anymore. Nor should they. I don't have like, I don't have my like rotation of outfits
00:10:58
anymore. It's all indoor clothes. Yeah. Like since the pandemic, I don't have like when I have to put
00:11:04
on an actual outfit outfit that like has a waistline or needs a bra. I'm lost. You're just
00:11:12
like, how, how would one do this? How would one go about this? And I get mad. Like I never have
00:11:18
to do it. And I'm like, Oh, why don't I have to put a bra on? It's like society. It's like,
00:11:23
no, you used to like this. You used to really like getting dressed up. The fucking man, man, trying to make me put on foundation garments.
00:11:31
What a bunch of bullshit. It is bullshit. I want to wear my fucking comfortable swabs that I got off an Instagram ad, you know?
00:11:39
I mean, I like the way people, it seems, in public these days are going out with a blanket wrapped around their shoulders.
00:11:45
Like, I'm seeing a lot of shawl work in airports and on the streets these days. People that are just like, what if I become uncomfortable at some point when I'm at Target?
00:11:54
I better wrap this blanket around my shoulders So we going from pajamas outside to wearing our entire bed outside Yes Yes You just roll into your comforter and walk out the door
00:12:07
Figure out a way to put your pillow and your hoodie so you can lean back against a wall if it gets really exhausting.
00:12:14
I mean, people don't have it to give anymore. It's just, it's, you know, it's all too much.
00:12:21
The whole thing's, it's a mess. It's a goddamn mess. And we're here to contribute to that.
00:12:27
I mean, if we can in any way lighten your load. With true crime. And that's what we're going to do.
00:12:33
Yeah. Should we do highlights? Yeah. Okay. We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media.
00:12:40
Here are some highlights. On Buried Bones, Kate and Paul discuss Roberta Elder, a woman serial killer in Georgia who was finally arrested in 1952.
00:12:49
And on a related note, on Wicked Words, Kate's joined by David Nelson, who's the author of the book, Boys Enter the House, The Victims of John Wayne Gacy and the Lives They Left Behind.
00:13:00
Ooh, I want to read that. Yeah. Yeah. And actor, podcaster, and LGBTQ advocate T.S. Madison is Roz's guest on Ghosted by Roz Hernandez.
00:13:09
Okay, sorry. Sidebar. I saw a TikTok of a clip of Living for the Dead, Roz's supernatural investigation show.
00:13:18
and she's sitting in a bar and she's like, no one's talking to me. You know, she's like being
00:13:24
all Roz. She was like offended because the ghost was showing up for everybody else. But when Roz
00:13:29
was in there by herself, the ghost wasn't showing up for her. And she goes, God, what's the problem?
00:13:33
Is it my hair? And then the machine goes, and she goes, what? It's the funniest clip. Like that show
00:13:40
is so good. It's so good. She's so hilarious. She's so funny. And also just to wrap this up,
00:13:46
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Default terms at mintmobile.com. This is Ashley I from the Almost Famous Podcast.
00:15:07
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Promo code Ashley at tryhg.com slash Ashley. So you're first, right? Yeah, I am. Yeah. I'm going to sit back and listen. Here we go.
00:16:11
This story I'm going to tell you today goes back to 1980s Detroit, actually. Interesting.
00:16:18
As your husband Vince knows, it was a time of huge economic turmoil in the American auto industry.
00:16:25
And as jobs were being lost, factories were closing, the once secure middle class began to lose everything.
00:16:34
It was the kind of economic downturn that caused people to go looking for a scapegoat.
00:16:40
This is a story of the anti-Asian racism that this downturn brought out of some Detroiters.
00:16:47
It's the story of the murder of Vincent Chin. The main sources used in the story today are Polly Yu's 2021 book, From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry,
00:16:58
a 2022 New Yorker article by writer Hua Xu entitled The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin,
00:17:04
and the 1987 PBS documentary, Who Killed Vincent Chin. and the rest of the sources are in our show notes.
00:17:12
The real beginning of this story starts in Michigan in 1950s where a man named Bing Heng Chin who goes by the name David
00:17:18
and his wife Lily live together. They're both from China. Lily's been in the States for about two years.
00:17:25
David has lived here for 28 years. He first moved to Seattle in 1922 when he was 17 years old.
00:17:32
Then he relocates to New York. He serves in the army during World War II. when the war ends, he goes back to China, he marries his wife, Lily, and then he brings her
00:17:42
back to the United States and they together moved to Detroit, which was a new city for both of them.
00:17:47
So post-war Detroit is a boom town thanks to the auto industry. Here's what journalist Neil
00:17:53
Boudet writes about it Quote getting a job in an auto plant was a ticket to the middle class You could get out of high school take one of these jobs and be assured of living a very comfortable life You could raise your family have some nice vacations and send your kids to college
00:18:08
End quote. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? It's the way it should be. Why shouldn't you get paid, you work an honest day, 8-hour, 10-hour?
00:18:19
I'm sure people that worked in auto factories were working 12, 16-hour days. Totally.
00:18:24
Why shouldn't you get paid a ton of money and get benefits and get vacation time?
00:18:30
You know what's happening? The company you're working for is making billions. It's the fucking auto industry.
00:18:35
They're making so much money. Yeah. So David and Lily Chin share in that same vision of the American dream for themselves.
00:18:43
Chinese-American journalist and civil rights activist Helen Zia, who plays a big role in
00:18:48
the story, tells PBS, quote, for the early Asian immigrants who came to Detroit, there
00:18:53
was hope of the auto industry and the prosperity that they might be able to gain from that.
00:18:58
Some of them got jobs in the auto plants, but for the most part, it was in service industries
00:19:02
around the higher paying work in Detroit. Primarily for Chinese, it was laundries and restaurants.
00:19:08
For Asians who came here, they were looking for the same thing, a hope, a promise, a dream of a
00:19:14
better life. So very standard American immigrant story that most of our families have, you know,
00:19:21
somewhere in their, in their backgrounds. But this is a dream that's not always easy to believe in
00:19:27
because the Chins experience a lot of anti-Asian racism in the United States. But in spite of this,
00:19:33
they learn to love their adoptive country. And in the early sixties, they decide to expand their
00:19:38
family. After trying for a while, they find out that they can't have kids. So then they adopt a
00:19:44
six-year-old boy from China named Vincent, and they immediately fall in love with him.
00:19:48
Hmm. So we fast forward about 20 years. It's the early 80s. Life in the Detroit metro area is now very, very different from when David and Lily first moved there in the mid-century.
00:20:00
An oil crisis has led to serious recession that's affecting the American auto industry.
00:20:06
instead of defaulting to vehicles that are made in the United States, which are basically
00:20:11
gas guzzling dinosaurs, more and more Americans are buying up fuel efficient, affordable European
00:20:17
and Japanese cars by manufacturers like Toyota, Volkswagen and Honda. So I didn't really think
00:20:24
about the fact that before the 80s, Japanese cars weren't that common. It was so much more
00:20:31
ford dodge you know gm like all these yeah chrysler right all these brands that like some of them are
00:20:39
gone entirely now and it was because that crazy era of the oil crisis yeah it really was like now
00:20:47
we we absolutely have to have a product that works better and isn't so expensive totally
00:20:52
huh yeah but of course this has a devastating effect on the american auto worker according to
00:20:59
the UAW, quote, by the end of 1982, 24% of U.S. auto workers had lost their jobs.
00:21:06
Wow. End quote. So basically hundreds of thousands of people, many of them in the Detroit metro area, lose
00:21:13
their jobs. And then the city itself loses around 300,000 residents between 1970 and 1980 alone.
00:21:21
The big three automakers, which at the time are Ford, Chrysler, and GM, blame these troubles
00:21:27
on the labor unions, and the labor unions in turn blame the companies for failing to modernize.
00:21:33
The unions can back their grievances up in writing. Union member Sandra Engel writes,
00:21:38
quote, as early as 1949, the UAW urged automakers to build fuel-efficient cars, publishing a pamphlet called, quote, a small car named Desire, end quote. So they were begging them
00:21:51
to like update and get rid of these. I mean, remember how big those cars were? They were like so long.
00:21:57
Those cars were enormous. We had a Oldsmobile when I was a kid, like a hand-me-down.
00:22:01
Yeah. And that thing was enormous, like closing the door. As a little kid, you had to use your whole body to close the door.
00:22:09
And God forbid you got your fingers in that. Oh, yes, yes. I mean, truly it was like
00:22:13
you would lose your fingers if you got your fingers shut in that car door. Because someone would lock the door
00:22:18
and then close it. So you couldn't just open the door and get your fingers out. This happened.
00:22:22
You had to get your mom's keys, unlock the door. Did that happen to you? It happened to me or my brother.
00:22:27
I think it was me. If it was your brother, you felt it as if it was you. Yes, for sure.
00:22:33
So no one gets more flack from auto executives and auto workers, even U.S. politicians,
00:22:38
than foreign automakers, with Japanese manufacturers drawing out the most hatred.
00:22:44
Toyotas are sledgehammered in events sponsored by Detroit-area radio stations. bumper stickers reading, quote, Toyota, Nissan, remember Pearl Harbor are seen around town.
00:22:57
Yeah. So according to writer Washu of The New Yorker, quote, foreign cars were prohibited from
00:23:04
entering the parking lot of the United Auto Workers headquarters, end quote. Oh my God. Wow.
00:23:09
So this kind of scapegoating was rampant and it was openly hostile. So by 1982, two, Vincent Chin has grown into a handsome 27-year-old man. He's popular, he's charismatic,
00:23:23
he's very driven, and he works as a draftsman for a Detroit-based auto engineering firm during the
00:23:29
week. And then on the weekend, he has a job at a restaurant because his wedding is just a few days
00:23:35
away. He is marrying his girlfriend of three years, Vicki Wong, and they plan on buying a house
00:23:40
together. So he is working as much as he can. The excitement and hopefulness of this new chapter in
00:23:46
his life is just what Vincent needs because his father, David, who I was talking about his parents,
00:23:51
David and Lily, at the beginning of this, his father, David, passed away from kidney disease
00:23:55
eight months before. He and his mom, Lily, who now lives with him, are a family of kids.
00:24:00
him are still in mourning. But tonight, the mood is light. Vincent gets off of work early,
00:24:06
and he decides to have an impromptu bachelor party before his wedding. So as he goes to leave the
00:24:11
house, he says goodbye to his mom, but she expresses some concern with him going out and
00:24:16
getting drunk, that it worries her. And Vincent tells her, quote, I promise it'll be the last time,
00:24:22
end quote. But Lily doesn't like this. She tells her son, don't say last time, it's bad luck,
00:24:28
end quote so Vincent Chin meets up with his friends Jimmy Choi Gary Koivu and Robert Swarovski
00:24:36
and as they walk to their destination they pass abandoned shops with broken windows and
00:24:43
closed auto factories and then they finally get to where they're going a strip club called the Fancy Pants Club oh dear which I just need to take a sidebar
00:24:55
to say it's my favorite name of a strip club or of anything really I've ever read in research.
00:25:03
The Fancy Pants Club. It's like, who's that for? The men going there? Right. We don't want pants in this situation. Like, pants are not part of this.
00:25:14
The pants aren't for the girls. So it's the men have the fancy pants on? It's gotta be.
00:25:18
Is that a compliment? Is that a manly thing? It's so hilarious. Okay. so just there it's some dudes out for a night on the town to have a good time it's the early 80s
00:25:28
it's a bachelor party vincent and his crew get seated near the stage and a little while after
00:25:35
they sit down a 43 year old white man named ronald evans and his 22 year old stepson michael knitz
00:25:42
take the table opposite them ronald's a supervisor at the local chrysler plant and michael who was
00:25:49
recently laid off from his job at Chrysler, now works at a furniture company. The two decided to
00:25:56
check out this club after ditching a very bad and bleak Detroit Tigers game. I still think it's gross
00:26:04
that it's a father-son team going to a strip club. I don't, what? Is that really something you want to
00:26:10
do with your father? It's very weird. I mean, doing it with your friends is bad enough. It's creepy,
00:26:15
but it's I don't know I guess everyone celebrates differently maybe they had really fancy pants on
00:26:23
and they were like look let's not waste these yeah so we all know where this is going yeah the bad
00:26:29
vibes begin at first everything's fine Vincent and his friends are enjoying themselves somewhere
00:26:34
in the night things get tense between the two groups of men the details are hazy and it's very
00:26:42
much he said he said vincent and ronald end up focused on each other and they exchange increasingly
00:26:49
hostile and heated words ronald is heard yelling quote it's because of you little motherfuckers
00:26:55
that we're out of work end quote so of course ronald seems to be referencing japanese automakers
00:27:03
who are definitely and very overtly being scapegoated for the layoffs in the american
00:27:08
auto industry, but Vincent Chin is Chinese American. He's not Japanese. And according to
00:27:15
author Paula Yu, quote, to this day, what happened next remains unclear. Ronald would later claim
00:27:22
that Vincent Sucker punched him in the mouth with his fist while he was still sitting down.
00:27:27
But Vincent's friends remember it differently, end quote. And the idea of that, where it's a hotbed
00:27:34
of racial problems in this city and the Chinese-American kid is going to go up and sucker punch a white man
00:27:44
in a club is ludicrous. It doesn't ring true. It doesn't ring true. I mean, hey, look, he could have,
00:27:50
maybe if he was drinking and stuff, but it just doesn't make a ton of sense. However, it actually started.
00:27:56
This fight heats up until finally a chair is thrown and that chair hits Michael Nitz
00:28:01
and splits his forehead open. Oh, dear. It is not clear who threw that chair, but within a few minutes of this brawl starting, everyone involved gets kicked out of the fancy pants club.
00:28:13
Gary would say afterwards, quote, I was hoping once the fight broke up in the bar, that was it.
00:28:18
And we both go our separate ways and go home. It didn't turn out that way. End quote.
00:28:23
So instead, the guys are all standing out in the parking lot, having just gotten kicked out of the club.
00:28:28
They continue to insult each other. And then Ronald grabs a baseball bat out of his car and storms at Vincent, who now knows this situation is spiraling out of control.
00:28:39
So Vincent takes off running down the street and his friend Jimmy goes running behind him.
00:28:45
And the pair wind up outrunning Ronald, who then turns around and walks back to the parking lot.
00:28:51
Now, Gary and Robert are still just standing in the parking lot. they're trying to figure out where their friends ran to, like where they could have gone.
00:28:59
And then they watch Ronald return to the parking lot and get into the car with Michael.
00:29:04
And then the car tears out of the parking lot and down the street. So according to Ronald's story, he heads in the direction of a nearby hospital to get his stepson
00:29:15
some stitches in his forehead. What we know for sure is that about a half an hour after leaving
00:29:20
the Fancy Pants Club parking lot. Ronald still hasn't made it to the hospital. Instead, the two
00:29:26
men spot Vincent and Jimmy sitting on the curb outside a nearby McDonald's and they pull the car
00:29:32
over. This is only half a mile from the strip club, which makes many people think and theorize
00:29:39
that Ronald and Michael were driving around looking for Vincent. As Ronald pulls up to the
00:29:45
But what Ronald and Michael don know here is that there a black off cop named Morris Cotton who watching them from the McDonald parking lot Morris is working a second job as a security guard that night and he will later tell PBS that Ronald and Michael quote jumped out of the car
00:30:14
And it kind of shocked me because it's a predominantly 90% black neighborhood. and to see these male whites get out of a car with a baseball bat,
00:30:23
the first thing I was thinking was that maybe they were coming from the Tiger Stadium baseball game.
00:30:28
End quote. Jesus. So the security guard is like this, you know, I can't really be seeing what I think I'm seeing.
00:30:35
Right. In front of multiple witnesses, Michael ambushes Vincent from behind, grabs him in what Cotton describes as a, quote, bear hug.
00:30:43
Vincent wiggles out of Michael's arms and rushes toward the street. he runs into traffic carves swerve slam on their brakes to avoid hitting him they start honking
00:30:53
at this point morris cotton is yelling at the white men to stand down they do not listen and
00:30:58
then according to morris cotton quote mr ebens swung a bat repeatedly striking mr chin he swung
00:31:06
the bat as if a baseball player was swinging for a home run full contact full swing oh no i hate
00:31:12
End quote. Yeah, it's a nightmare. So by now, another off-duty cop named Michael Gardenhire, who's actually eating at the McDonald's, he steps into the parking lot to back up Morris Cotton.
00:31:26
And as a crowd of around a dozen or so people start to kind of gather and go toward this horrific scene, the officers draw their guns and they basically call for Ronald to put the bat down.
00:31:38
so finally ronald backs away from vincent's body and drops the baseball bat vincent is bleeding profusely his pupils are dilated he has serious wounds on his head shoulders
00:31:49
and chest jimmy rushes towards his friend holds him in his arms and right before losing
00:31:55
consciousness vincent chin says quote it isn't fair so just past 10 p.m that night
00:32:02
the doorbell at the Chin home rings and Lily, who's in bed reading the newspaper,
00:32:08
she figures it's just Vincent and that he lost his keys and he can't get in the front door.
00:32:13
So when she goes down to answer the door, she's surprised to see a man named Paul Ng,
00:32:19
who is Vincent's boss at the restaurant he works at and a very close friend. And Paul tells Lily her son has been in a fight and he's injured. He's not sure how bad the
00:32:30
injuries are, but he is there to take her to Ford Hospital so they can find out what's going on.
00:32:35
Lily later says, quote, I was thinking the wedding's only a week away. If Vincent's badly injured,
00:32:41
he won't look good at the wedding, end quote. When they arrive at the hospital, Lily's shocked to
00:32:46
learn that her son has been gravely injured and as much as doctors are working to stabilize him,
00:32:52
things don't look good. Vincent's given a 5% chance of survival. And that prognosis never
00:32:58
improves. On June 23rd, 1982, an extraordinarily difficult decision is made to take Vincent Chin
00:33:05
off life support, and he dies. He is 27 years old. And so now, instead of attending his wedding,
00:33:14
his loved ones are left to plan his funeral. Yeah. So to many onlookers, there's a strong
00:33:22
case here for first or maybe second degree murder charges. Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz
00:33:27
had time to cool down after the fight inside the strip club, but instead they drove around for a half an hour,
00:33:35
found Vincent and beat him to death. Premeditation. Yeah. But as part of a plea deal,
00:33:42
Ebens pleads guilty to manslaughter and Michael Nitz, who played a role in the attack,
00:33:47
but did not technically hold the murder weapon, pleads no contest. The sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 16th, 1983.
00:33:55
and Ronald, Michael, and their attorneys are present, but a prosecutor is not. So we do have
00:34:03
to remember this is Detroit in the 80s. So this is probably a system that's overwhelmed. You know,
00:34:11
they don't have like a ton of funding. This isn't the richest, you know, this is probably one of the
00:34:16
poorest cities in America. And basically the prosecutor's office is so overburdened that the
00:34:23
prosecutor, like they just don't have people representing the prosecutor's office going to
00:34:28
every single sentencing hearing. So they just can't make it. They don't go. Plus no one informs
00:34:35
Vincent's friends or family. So there's no voice representing Vincent Chin during Ronald and
00:34:41
Michael's sentencing. Yeah, that's the whole point is so that the family can give a statement and you
00:34:47
can see that this was a human that had people who loved them and what was taken away. I mean,
00:34:53
that's absurd. Yeah. So according to Paula Yu, the judge presiding over this hearing is known
00:34:59
to be lenient with first-time offenders. He looks at Ronald and Michael's otherwise clean records
00:35:05
and determines that they, quote, aren't the kind of men you send to jail. He killed someone with a
00:35:11
baseball bat. Right. They killed someone with a baseball bat. You fit the punishment and still
00:35:16
Lamella quote, you fit the punishment to the criminal, not the crime, end quote.
00:35:22
Incorrect, completely. Oh my God. I feel like that's the, this is the 80s. Okay. We're not talking about the 30s.
00:35:31
This is the kind of thing that when I see it, I'm just like, yeah, that's why we are the way we are.
00:35:37
That's why like all of this stuff takes much longer for these older generations. And it's not
00:35:42
an excuse. But like, we literally grew up in a time where this kind of shit where that sentence,
00:35:49
these aren't the kind of men you send to jail. It wasn't being heard by anybody, but the people in
00:35:54
that courtroom and everyone in that courtroom is like okay I guess what he saying is these are two white men I not sending them to jail What they saying is that the victim doesn matter in this at all
00:36:05
Yes. And I'm immediately protecting these white, straight male defendants. Especially because it's also a racist practice to say that they look at their criminal record because they're white men.
00:36:20
So their criminal record because of that alone is probably way, you know, non-existent or way smaller than it would be if it was a person of color because they are targeted by the police and their record is larger because of that.
00:36:35
It's like the record doesn't really tell you anything other than they haven't been prosecuted.
00:36:40
Yeah. How many times did I know people in high school that would get into big trouble, get kind of like arrested and then just let go?
00:36:47
And the same thing would never be happening to a black teenage boy. No. Never. That's exactly right.
00:36:54
So the judge orders these two men to pay a $3,000 fine and around $800 in court costs.
00:37:02
It all equals about $12,000 in today's money. Plus they have to do three years probation.
00:37:09
Neither defendant receives any jail time. And this sends shockwaves through the community, of course, especially the Asian community. Vincent's bereaved fiance, Vicky, of course, is devastated. And Vincent's mother, Lily, is so distraught that she actually goes and stays with her mother in China. And she says, quote, I'm Chinese. This happened because my son is Chinese, not American.
00:37:34
If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives.
00:37:40
But only the skin's different. The heart is no different as an American. My husband fought for this country. We always paid our taxes and worked hard.
00:37:48
We never had any trouble. Before, I really loved America. But now it has made me very angry. Something is wrong with this country.
00:37:57
End quote. And Lily's outrage is felt widely and deeply in the wake of Ronald and Michael's lenient sentencing. Activists, community organizers and lawyers representing Asian and Asian American communities around Detroit come together to protest the lack of justice in Vincent Chin's case.
00:38:17
And this is huge because at this time in the 80s, people of Asian heritage in Detroit, they identified themselves by their specific national ethnic or linguistic backgrounds as opposed to the general Asian American kind of inclusive language that we use today.
00:38:34
That had not hit the mainstream. But Vincent Chin's murder will change that. Helen Zia says that, quote, people knew from personal experience that we were lumped together.
00:38:46
But in terms of identifying as Pan-Asian, the key thing was that a man was killed because his murderers thought he looked like a different ethnicity.
00:38:55
Right. End quote. So it's kind of the ironic, like painful fact in that where it's like, well, if you're lumping us all together, we should lump ourselves all together.
00:39:06
So we have more power and we can move as a stronger group of people than just I'm Chinese.
00:39:13
I'm Japanese. You know, each person from their separate country. Soon, Vincent's mom, Lily, does return to the U.S., and activists like Helen Zia band together and form the Asian American Civil Rights Advocacy Group, American Citizens for Justice, the ACJ.
00:39:32
Writer Washu describes one of the group's first meetings. He reports that, quote, young professionals from the suburbs, elderly conservatives, and Marxist activists all came to learn about what could be done, end quote.
00:39:46
but to get justice for Vincent, obviously. So it was essentially this galvanizing moment
00:39:51
where it's like our individual beliefs need to be set aside and we all need to band together.
00:39:57
It could have been any of us kind of a thing. Right, exactly. And then just to acknowledge to each other
00:40:02
and support each other in the fact that this sentiment isn't just a radio station being quote unquote funny,
00:40:09
that has now, it's resulted in a murder. And it's gotten into the brains of people
00:40:15
who are not thinking logically or calmly. They're being reactive. They're drunk.
00:40:20
They're angry. They want revenge. And whoever's in front of them that they think deserves that revenge
00:40:28
is going to get it. But even with the advocacy that the ACJ begins to enact, there won't be a retrial for Ronald and Michael
00:40:37
because of double jeopardy, plus a sentence already been handed down. And it's very rare that a court
00:40:43
will change a sentence after the fact. But the ACJ knows that there is another venue to explore. They can try to have Vincent's murder prosecuted as a federal civil rights violation. So today we call these hate crimes. But back then, being the early 80s, that language wasn't in place.
00:41:03
and convincing the Department of Justice to pursue a civil rights case isn't easy.
00:41:08
Despite a long and open history of anti-Asian racism and discrimination in the United States,
00:41:13
Asian Americans are not a protected class at this time. And many legal experts aren't convinced that a court would buy the theory
00:41:22
that a white man would be motivated by racism to kill an Asian American man. Wow.
00:41:28
It's self-serving thinking. Basically saying, of course no one's being racist. against Asians? What are you talking about? It's a denial of what actual people experience
00:41:39
and in total opposition of what the murderer said to Vincent during the confrontation. So
00:41:46
it's like right there. It's right there. Everyone witnessed what the source of it was and what the
00:41:51
problem was And yet the official kind of stance on it was it seems like the stance was being looked at through the racism lens of how white people are racist against black people And then they basically saying well it not like that
00:42:05
So that's not racism, which is just like, why are you the one deciding? So to the activists,
00:42:10
lawyers and organizers at the ACJ, this is a matter of waking people up to the often ignored
00:42:16
discrimination Asian Americans and people of Asian heritage face every single day in this country.
00:42:21
So they stage huge protests in Detroit. They get signatures on petitions. They take trips to Washington, D.C., and they work tirelessly to convince the Department of Justice to investigate Vincent Chin's killing.
00:42:35
And what's beautiful is that the ACJ isn't doing this alone. Activists from Detroit's Black and Latino communities, as well as members of local churches and synagogues, are also going with the ACJ to support this call to justice.
00:42:51
So people are really coming together. And then soon this local Detroit activism morphed into a national movement. People in cities as far away as San Francisco and Los Angeles are banding together to speak out about this lack of justice in Detroit.
00:43:07
There's such an uproar that the Department of Justice does, in fact, open an official investigation into Vincent Chin's death.
00:43:14
And this new investigation does result in federal charges against both Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz.
00:43:22
And with that, Vincent Chin's case becomes the first federal civil rights trial on behalf of an Asian American in U.S. history.
00:43:31
Holy shit. It's the 80s. Yeah. it's jaw-dropping so during this trial the defense team for ronald ebens and michael knitz
00:43:42
wholly rejects the idea that vincent's death was a hate crime they also deny that michael and ronald
00:43:48
ever said anything racist at the strip club they call into question any witness testimony that
00:43:54
suggests otherwise and in his own defense ronald will later blame drunkenness and some sort of
00:44:02
version of toxic masculinity, but not racism as the cause of why he murdered Vincent Chin.
00:44:10
As Paula Yu points out in her book, Vincent bucked the stereotype of the, quote, model minority
00:44:17
for an Asian man. Perhaps this enraged these two white men. She writes this, quote,
00:44:23
you have to wonder, would Ronald and Michael still have pulled over seeing two white men laughing?
00:44:28
was their confirmation bias of how Asian American men should act, that they should be meek, that they should not rock the boat,
00:44:36
they should be emasculated. Those were the terrible racist stereotypes of Asian American men back then,
00:44:42
and Vincent defied all of that. He was an all-American guy, end quote. So in June of 1984, a verdict is handed down.
00:44:53
Once again, Michael Nitz is acquitted, but this time Ronald Ebens is convicted of violating Vincent's civil rights and he is
00:45:00
handed a 25-year prison sentence. Oh my God. But he will never spend a day in prison.
00:45:07
Ronald's attorneys convince an appeals court that their client deserves a new trial because they
00:45:12
claim Vincent's three friends were coached by the prosecutors on how to address the court
00:45:17
about their memories from the strip club and therefore that corrupted their testimonies.
00:45:22
Eben's conviction is overturned on illegal tacticality. A retrial is held in 1987,
00:45:29
and the case and the whole trial is moved to Cincinnati. There, an all-white, mostly male jury
00:45:36
doesn't feel convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Ronald was, in fact, motivated by racism
00:45:42
when he killed Vincent, and he is ultimately cleared of all federal charges. There should never be an all-white jury ever again.
00:45:49
And I don't know what the stats are on that, but that's fucking insane. Well, especially when it's about, is this a hate crime? Is this a racially
00:45:57
motivated thing? Right. Little bias there. I mean, bias, blindness. So for those seeking justice for
00:46:04
Vincent, this of course is a terrible blow. It's not only clear who killed Vincent and that the
00:46:10
murder was brutal and violent, but the men who murdered him continue to evade any legal consequence.
00:46:15
So with few avenues left to explore, the ACJ takes Ronald Ebens to civil court. And there he ultimately agrees to pay a settlement of $1.5 million to Lily Chin.
00:46:27
That would be about $4 million in today's money. But that doesn't matter because to this day, Ronald Ebens has not paid her a dollar of that money.
00:46:39
And Lily Chin permanently moves back to China. Wow. But she will remain close friends with the members of the ACJ for the rest of her life. Lily Chin passes away in 2002, about 20 years after her son's murder.
00:46:53
Thanks to her bravery and resilience, as well as the many passionate activists who worked hard to keep the public interested and aware of Vincent Chin's case, his story will never be forgotten.
00:47:05
It's now known as a seminal moment in American history where thousands of people from different communities, Asian American, as well as many allies, came together to fight for civil rights.
00:47:18
Helen Zia, who is now the executor of the Chinn estate, has said that, quote, one of the reasons that I continue to talk about all of this is because I don't want the legacy of Vincent Chinn to stay in the experience of racism and injustice.
00:47:30
That's not the only part of his legacy. The major part is that our community did something about it. We came together.
00:47:38
End quote. And their activism really did actually change our country. In Michigan, sentencing rules for manslaughter are changed.
00:47:47
Prosecutors are now required to be present at sentencing hearings. And nationally, because of this case, victims' family members are allowed to give impact statements to the judge during those situations.
00:48:00
sentencing hearings. That's incredible. This case is the reason that that is like a right that the
00:48:05
victims' families have now. Fuck yeah. And importantly, Vincent's case brought to light
00:48:10
the violence and racism that Asian Americans are subjected to every day in this country.
00:48:15
Author Paula Yu, who's being interviewed for NPR's Code Switch by journalist Karen Grigsby Bates,
00:48:21
who actually, they were friends. So Karen was interviewing Paula about her book from a whisper to a rallying cry.
00:48:28
And they were discussing the extensive research that Paula did for this book, including an in-person meeting with Ronald Ebens.
00:48:37
She says, quote, I'm one of the first and only people to have met Ronald in person in his house,
00:48:43
and it was an off-the-record informal visit, so I can't talk about what we talked about.
00:48:47
But that was one of the most profound, deep, and very disturbing moments in my life.
00:48:53
And when Karen Grigsby Bates observes that in Paula's book, she actually writes with compassion for both Ronald and Michael, and she kind of asks her about how she's able to do that.
00:49:06
Paula Yu replies, quote, You can have compassion, but compassion is not mutually exclusive from justice.
00:49:14
At the end of the day, now that I know the humanity behind these two men, I can have compassion for them, but I can still think you still should have gone to jail.
00:49:24
What you did was wrong. Justice was not served. End quote. And that's the story of the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin.
00:49:31
Wow. Wow. I can't believe I've never heard of that before. Same. That is fucking wild.
00:49:40
Yeah. I'm glad some legal stuff was changed because of that. I mean, if there's any kind of positive thing coming out of it, you know, it's.
00:49:49
I mean, I think that is what all of the people that are, you know, involved in the legacy of that case.
00:49:55
That's what they all say is that as horrible as it was and as frustrating as like it played out in real time, the overall effect.
00:50:03
it really actually did a lot of change for good in a lot of different ways that,
00:50:08
yeah, you have to look at that silver lining. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, amazing job.
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All right. Well, we're going to change directions like we love to do. And I'm going to tell you, Karen, and everyone, the story of the biggest art theft in history, which has subsequently become the art world's biggest and most enduring mystery.
00:52:36
This is the 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Yes. My main sources for the story are a trove of reporting from the Boston Globe, mainly by a reporter named Stephen Kirkton.
00:52:52
And a podcast series made by WBUR and the Globe called Last Scene, which is fucking incredible.
00:52:58
I listened to it when it came out. It's so good. And the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes.
00:53:05
So real quickly, I'm going to tell you about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
00:53:09
It's a small collection, and it was amassed by a storied and eccentric turn-of-the-century Boston heiress who purposely built a reproduction Venetian palace to house her collection so that the public could view it.
00:53:24
And it's just a gorgeous building. It's amazing. She seems like she was a badass.
00:53:29
It's all the things. That's its own story. I mean, just so generous to build the public a Venetian palace reproduction.
00:53:36
So, so giving. Just what they needed. No, but you know, it's that's her thing. All right, cool. So let's get
00:53:44
into the heist. So it's just past one in the morning on Sunday, March 18th, 1990. So it's
00:53:51
basically Saturday night at one in the morning You know how time works So essentially it is the night of St Patrick Day in fucking Boston It St Patrick Day Eve or St Patrick Day night It St Patrick Day is happening since Saturday night on
00:54:08
And so now we're at one o'clock in the morning on Sunday. So this is vomit is flowing in the streets.
00:54:14
Right. There's people climbing lampposts. There's strangers making out in alleyways.
00:54:21
It's happening. We're in the thick of it still. This is what we're surrounded by.
00:54:25
And in 1990, so no one's like, no one's got cell phones. No one's fucking texting you up.
00:54:30
You know, it's just like party, party, party. You got to do it while you're there.
00:54:34
You're smoking your camel wide. You're trying to introduce yourself to somebody on the smoking patio.
00:54:40
It's all got to be right then. That's right. So two security guards are on duty at this Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
00:54:48
As I said, it's a smaller museum, but it houses one of Boston's most important art collections.
00:54:53
So it is a big deal. The guards are Rick Abbott and the other one's name is Randy.
00:54:58
He doesn't like to have his last name used in these stories. Rick is 23. Randy's 25.
00:55:04
And they're the only two people responsible for protecting the museum's collection of
00:55:08
sculptures and paintings worth millions and millions that night. Yep. That's how we do it.
00:55:14
23 and 25 year old. Definitely. It's just symbolic. It's a symbolic protection and you're just supposed to respect it.
00:55:20
Right. It's also Randy's first time on the night shift as well. Oh. So that's what we're dealing with.
00:55:27
Besides being very young and, in Randy's case, inexperienced, the two are not who you'd immediately expect to be in charge of an extensive collection of valuable art.
00:55:36
Rick and Randy are both musicians. You know, no shame. Fine. Randy is a jazz musician, and this is his day job.
00:55:43
And he's actually not supposed to be on duty that night, but there's a security guard who had been scheduled called out sick, which is like bullshit.
00:55:49
You went and partied, probably, right? Yeah. Calling out sick on St. Patrick's Day?
00:55:53
No. Only the day after. So Rick, who's the more experienced guard, he had dropped out of the Berkeley College of Music.
00:56:00
He's in a jam band and he looks every bit of the part of a jam band. He has long curly hair,
00:56:09
which was so popular in the 90s. He looks like he can play a mean hacky sack. On the night of the robbery, he's wearing his security uniform shirt open over a tie-dye shirt.
00:56:20
He's got tie-dye. He has a fanny pack on. He's got red corduroy pants on and white high tops.
00:56:29
And Allie, my researcher, said he looks a lot like Otto, the school bus driver character from
00:56:34
The Simpsons. And she is not wrong. That's literally what I was imagining. It's like,
00:56:40
it's always a brunette dude with like a spiral perm. That's so funny. Yeah. Like he had no
00:56:47
sheets on his bed. You know it. So it's 1.25 in the morning. Two Boston police officers buzz at
00:56:53
the museum's side door. Rick is behind the desk while Randy is making his rounds. Rick communicates
00:56:59
with the police officers briefly through the museum's intercom system. The police say they're
00:57:03
investigating a disturbance on the museum grounds outside and need to come in, which totally tracks
00:57:08
because all night long there had been a rowdy keg party nearby, of course. And so it doesn't
00:57:14
seem unreasonable that maybe some drunk person had gone over the fence in the museum's garden.
00:57:19
Also, earlier in the evening, a smoke alarm had gone off at the carriage house on the museum
00:57:24
grounds. So, you know, it could be some event that makes sense. Stuff's going on. Right. So
00:57:30
immediately when they come in, they ask him to radio Randy and tell him to come over as well.
00:57:35
One of the officers tells Rick that he needs to see his ID. So asks him to come over and show his
00:57:40
ID, which gets Rick away from the desk and, of course, away from the museum's panic button.
00:57:46
So as Rick gets closer to the officer, he says that he remembers noticing that his mustache
00:57:52
that he was wearing looks fake. The officer tells Rick that they have a warrant for his arrest,
00:57:57
and they tell him to put his hands against the wall. And then Randy walks into the room and
00:58:02
sees what's happening. The officers tell him to do the same thing. He's like, there must be a
00:58:06
mistake, but he lets them handcuff him and they're both handcuffed. Can I make one statement? Yeah.
00:58:12
Those dudes were security guards at a museum, a nighttime museum, and it was St. Patrick's Day.
00:58:17
They were stoned out of their minds. Oh, oh. Just that's personal conjecture. That is judgment.
00:58:24
There's no proof of that. This is alleged. Alleged. My theory. I didn't even consider that.
00:58:31
That's a really good point. Long auto style hair. Come on. Okay, so they're both handcuffed.
00:58:38
Then the police officers, who are, of course, as we know, not actually police officers, say, quote, this is a robbery.
00:58:44
Don't you think it'd be like just slightly unnerving if you're walking towards someone you're like, that's a fake mustache.
00:58:50
Yeah. Like if you could spot that, how much it would like creep you out. Yeah, it's a red flag.
00:58:55
No good is going to come after you realize someone's wearing a fake mustache in that scenario.
00:59:01
It's that old saying, don't let someone in a fake mustache handcuff you. it's my mother said it to me yeah as she put me to bed as a child
00:59:09
now what did i tell you about handcuffing and fake looks little carrot so they bring rick and randy down to the museum's basement which they seem to know
00:59:23
the location of they put duct tape around their eyes and heads and there's a fucking photo of this
00:59:28
too it fucks up their hair yeah they handcuff them to a pipe in the basement and they head back
00:59:34
upstairs and now they have complete run of the museum. So the thieves spend a total of 81 minutes
00:59:40
in the museum, which is like longer than I spend just looking at art. Like that's a long fucking
00:59:45
time in a museum. It's like they had an actual trip to the museum. They wanted a solo. And
00:59:51
actually this is unheard of in the world of heists Most art thefts on this level would be done in about three minutes So 81 minutes So it makes you think maybe they not experienced Not experienced or bring back my theory they were stoned too
01:00:05
Everybody's stoned. You're like, go down that hall, what's down there? We could take that too.
01:00:10
That's trippy. Okay, so Anthony Amore is now the museum's security director. He didn't work there at the time though.
01:00:17
He says that the time that they spent there shows that the thieves were completely confident
01:00:22
that they had the run of the place. So they somehow knew that. and they were right. So after the two guards and that panic button, there's no other line of
01:00:28
defense. The thieves move around the museum as if they're very well acquainted with the layout and
01:00:34
with the security procedures. So we know most of what happens next from the printouts from the
01:00:39
museum's motion detectors. The thieves go directly to a gallery called the Dutch Room, which is called
01:00:44
that because it houses the museum's collection of Dutch paintings. That tracks. There, they steal
01:00:52
Rembrandt's The Storm of the Sea of Galilee, which is his only seascape. It's fucking gorgeous. I
01:00:59
would have gone for that one too. Is it really big? It's really big. They take it out of the frame.
01:01:05
They also steal a Vermeer painting called The Concert, which is also gorgeous. Vermeer,
01:01:11
who's best known for A Girl with a Pearl Earring, worked really slowly, so he didn't produce very
01:01:16
many paintings in his lifetime. And this is one of only about 35 surviving Vermeer paintings known
01:01:21
to exist. So these are priceless. Actually, they're not though. The Vermeer is the most
01:01:26
valuable work stolen and is in fact the most valuable stolen object ever. What? With a current
01:01:32
value of $250 million. Oh, for one painting. Yeah. You think they'd put just like maybe three
01:01:40
security guards on this, you know? When one was short hair. And one is not a stoner.
01:01:47
I'm not judging 90s long perm guys, but seriously. So after they take the two most valuable works that they end up taking, the thieves take four
01:01:57
other works from the Dutch room. There doesn't seem to be a ton of rhyme or reason to the rest
01:02:01
of what they take. They take a tiny Rembrandt sketch, which is screwed into an ornate frame,
01:02:06
and they take the time to unscrew all of the screws from the frame for this less valuable
01:02:12
sketch while they are standing under a much more valuable painting. So it doesn't make sense why
01:02:16
It's like almost like did someone request that specific painting possibly. They also take an ancient Chinese coup, which is a vessel for wine.
01:02:25
And it's not as expensive as some of the other works in the room, but it's also not particularly easy to grab.
01:02:30
It's not like they just like and put it in their coat on the way out. It's bolted to the table it's on and has to be unscrewed as well.
01:02:36
Wow. So Amore, the current security director, believes that the thieves went to the Dutch room in search of Rembrandt. Specifically, only of the six works they take from that room, only four are actually Rembrandts. Then they move on to a gallery called The Short Room. And here they take five Degas sketches. They also attempt to take a Napoleonic flag. Like they want a flag, but not the fucking frames. Like that's how are you going to walk out onto the street, the busy street, you know?
01:03:06
of drunk people. Maybe they worked at Michael's and they're like, we'll just reframe these ourselves.
01:03:11
It's a good point. It's too difficult to take. So they just take the little eagle statue at the top
01:03:16
of the fucking flagpole, which is called a finial. No, they take that instead. Right. Doesn't make
01:03:22
sense. Don't. Experts will guess that the finial and the coup were taken as trophies and not
01:03:27
intended to sell. And like, I think it's almost like the coup could have been like it's Mother's
01:03:32
day soon. And like, yoink, you grab that for your mom. You know, here's a vase with a hole at the
01:03:39
bottom. Good luck. Right. So one more painting is stolen that night for a total of 13 pieces.
01:03:45
It's from a gallery downstairs from the Dutch room and the short room. This gallery is called
01:03:49
the blue room. And there the thieves take a Manet painting called Chez Tortoni. And there's something
01:03:56
strange about this last item, though. In the 81 minutes the thieves are in the museum, the motion
01:04:01
detectors don't pick up any movement at all in the short room, which is weird. Later, it will be
01:04:06
determined that the detectors were working and it would have been virtually impossible to take a
01:04:11
painting off the wall in that room without getting triggered, but it doesn't get triggered. And this
01:04:16
part still baffles the investigators. So finally at 2.41 a.m., the thieves leave the museum through
01:04:23
the same side door they used to enter. But before they do, they go back down to the basement where
01:04:27
Rick and Randy are chilling. They're still cuffed to the pipe and say, quote, don't tell him nothing.
01:04:32
If you're good, expect a reward in a year. We know where you live. We have your driver's license.
01:04:38
We know where you live. End quote. That's so scary. That's such an effective threat.
01:04:45
Yeah. You know where you live. They're just trying to jam band, guys. Yeah. Don't harsh their mellow. When the next pair of security guards show up for their shift,
01:04:55
They find the empty security desk, so they know something's wrong, and they call the Boston police, who then discover Rick and Randy in the basement, and they pillaged galleries in the museum.
01:05:05
So shit hits the fan. So the story sends shockwaves throughout Boston and throughout the art world.
01:05:11
The total value of the stolen work is estimated to be around $200 million at the time, though now the value is estimated to be about $500 million.
01:05:22
Wow. Yeah. the Boston Bureau of the FBI takes the case and initially people speculate that the works have
01:05:28
either been stolen by some secret collector who simply wants the art or by someone planning to
01:05:34
ransom the artwork and this is because some of the artworks like the Vermeer is way too
01:05:39
recognizable and valuable to sell in the black market you know what I mean like I which I never
01:05:44
thought about where it's like don't get the most obvious paintings get the one people won't
01:05:49
recognize if you gonna steal shit yeah oh yeah i was picturing like there some evil billionaire who got like a secret library where he like only his the people he really trying to impress he brings there And he like look my stolen Vermeer Exactly Which could
01:06:05
actually be the answer. Who knows? And in the days, weeks, and then years following the theft,
01:06:11
many different theories emerge. The first theory is our buddy Rick Abbott. Good old Otto. The first
01:06:18
theory is that this heist was an inside job and that doesn't look great for Rick Abbott.
01:06:23
The more experienced security guard who played in a jam band. That's the one. And there are several reasons for this.
01:06:30
The first is simply that Rick is the one who opened the side door to the fake police officers when they fucking came knocking.
01:06:36
This was explicitly against museum protocol. His training would have told him to ask for the names and badge numbers and to call the Boston PD to confirm that there were officers dispatched to the museum.
01:06:49
Yeah. So that's a big fuck up right there. Yes. Like, that's the protocol, not just show me your badge.
01:06:54
He didn't ask them to see the badges, I guess. Well, and also it would be like, if that was the case, you would have to go through that
01:07:01
protocol. You have to report this, just people showing up to the police. Right. Because people can dress in a cop uniform, if not be real.
01:07:10
They can slap on a fake mustache and scare the shit out of you. That's right. That's all it takes.
01:07:16
So the security guards are not supposed to let anybody into the museum at all after hours.
01:07:20
And that said, basically, no one follows this rule. The museum director herself would sometimes bring guests to the museum after hours, and the security guards were expected to let her in.
01:07:30
So she's having her fucking dinner party or whatever, and she's like, you guys want to see something cool?
01:07:34
He came down here because I have the girl with the golden tattoo, and I came down here.
01:07:41
No, it'd be funny. It'll be funny. The second reason is that mysterious lack of motion detection in the Blue Room where the Shea Tortoni was taken.
01:07:49
The motion detectors recorded nothing during the heist, but they did record Rick's own motion
01:07:55
throughout the room earlier in the evening when he was doing his rounds. So why did they turn off right after him?
01:08:00
Did he flip a switch? I don't know how it works. Also, while all the other paintings
01:08:04
had been removed from their frames and those frames were left in the galleries, the frame for Shea Tortoni
01:08:11
was left on the chair behind the security desk. Oh. Why would they be behind the security desk?
01:08:17
Well, because they're turning off cameras, maybe. That's a good point. The third reason investigators take a hard look at Rick is because security records from the night of the heist show that Rick had opened and closed that same side door where the thieves came in later about 20 minutes before he buzzed in the thieves, which is specifically also against protocol.
01:08:36
Why would you open and close the door? It's almost like you're sending a signal or practice.
01:08:41
Oh, sending a signal. Yeah. Rick says he would do this every night, though, to make sure the door was locked.
01:08:46
but it's also against museum protocol and investigators are unable to confirm if that's
01:08:52
true that he did this regularly if it was one of those push bar doors that's at like junior highs
01:08:57
i could see where you'd be like oh i'm trying to see if this is locked and you accidentally open it
01:09:01
if it's a door with a normal door handle or a round doorknob or whatever you don't need to open
01:09:08
it all the way to make sure close it yeah you're just like you should know whether it's locked or
01:09:14
not locked as a security guard. Isn't that one of the specialties that you need to have?
01:09:19
Knowing the doors are locked. So you don't have to open a door all the way out into the goddamn parking lot before you know.
01:09:25
Right. I just want to say I'm only saying that devil's advocate. I'm actually on Rick's side.
01:09:29
I actually am too. I was going to say at the end of this, even though like so much of the
01:09:33
evidence points to him and it being an inside job, I don't think he did that. But the last
01:09:39
reason is that he did just give two weeks notice at the museum. Oh, so someone's like another red
01:09:46
flag. Yeah. It's almost like get this one thing and you could maybe get paid off to what's the
01:09:53
word I'm looking for. Just kind of help out, facilitate the man from Sotheby's comes down
01:09:59
and puts a thousand dollars in your security guard front pocket and says, hey, man, open that
01:10:06
door a couple times for it. Test it out. So it looks very odd, but Rick has never been charged
01:10:12
and there's never been any real true evidence that he had anything to do with the heist.
01:10:16
He lives very modestly in rural Vermont. And when tracked down by reporters, he talks freely about
01:10:22
the night of the robbery. He didn't do it. I don't think he did it either, including in that podcast.
01:10:27
He's interviewed and, you know, shocking to no one. He's a character and like is totally open
01:10:32
about it. The podcast again is last seen. Also, it's like, it's sorry, but it just reminds me of
01:10:37
those kind of jobs that you get when it's like someone's dad is on the board of this museum.
01:10:43
And it's like a friend and they're like, hey, if you need a nighttime job, you can go, you know,
01:10:48
we know you're a good person. It does feel like the happenstance could absolutely come together
01:10:54
that you're just like, yeah, it's a small museum no one cares about or like that isn't that big of
01:10:59
deal. Yeah, totally. It's not like the Boston Museum. And actually he says, quote, for some
01:11:05
reason, you know, I seem to be the only person involved in this thing who doesn't give a fuck
01:11:09
who did it. I seem to be the only one who's not trying to figure it out. And that mainly comes
01:11:14
down to I'm glad to be alive. And quote. Oh, wow. Right. Because, yeah, they could have killed him.
01:11:21
He saw their faces. There is sketches. He was a victim of this. Exactly. It's easy to go. It's an
01:11:27
inside job because that's, you know, that's pretty standard. But if these guys were serious,
01:11:32
like art heist people, who knows what they would have done. They could, you know, it's a
01:11:37
multimillion dollar business. Totally. Totally. That's like a big job for someone who's for an
01:11:42
amateur. Yes. Yes. So another theory in 1994, the museum director, Anne Hawley, receives an
01:11:49
anonymous letter from someone claiming to be a broker on behalf of the person who stole the
01:11:53
painting. The letter says that they had been stolen as leverage to reduce someone's prison sentence. But
01:12:00
that opportunity had passed. And this comes up a lot in last scene is that it's collateral. Like
01:12:05
if they bust me for something else, I'll have this to like get out of my sentence for like my drug
01:12:10
bust. A gigantic painting from 1555. Yeah. Wow. It's collateral. The letter writer tells the
01:12:18
museum to communicate through ads in the Boston Globe and they do. But after a brief back and
01:12:23
forth, the anonymous letter writer stops responding. So the other theory is various members and
01:12:30
associates of the Merlino crew. And so here's when the mob comes in and they come in hot.
01:12:37
It involves many different members of the mob, most of whom were associated with each other,
01:12:41
and many of whom tried to take credit for stealing the paintings at one time or the other.
01:12:46
The problem is that most of them seem not to have had anything to do with the thefts after all.
01:12:50
Most of the people mentioned are affiliated with a mob boss named Carmelo Merlino.
01:12:56
And he works out of an automotive shop not far from the Gardner Museum. And in 1998, the FBI learns through an informant that Merlino is claiming to have the paintings.
01:13:06
But when the FBI approaches him, offering him immunity for a different major theft in exchange for the paintings, he admits that he doesn't have them.
01:13:14
But who knows? Oh, so he's like lying to try to get clout that he did have them?
01:13:19
I'm sure. I think people are doing that. Yeah. But that also maybe they did actually have them.
01:13:24
So other Merlino associates also become tied to the heist. One is named David Turner. And after an
01:13:30
FBI sting within that auto body shop, Turner was sentenced to 38 years in prison for several thefts
01:13:36
and violent crimes. Then in 2016, a reporter noticed that his prison sentence had been shortened by
01:13:43
seven years without explanation. Huh. Right. Because David had insinuated at other times
01:13:49
that he had information related to the Gardner heist. Some people think that he gave the FBI
01:13:54
credible information about it. And that's why his sentence had been reduced. Would that have been
01:13:59
the one that they were talking about before that? Like that could have been in exchange for. Yeah.
01:14:03
Interesting. Yeah. Some people believe that David worked with a man named George Reisfelder.
01:14:09
So another man named Robert Beauchamp is a former cellmate of George's who had also been romantically involved with him.
01:14:17
Robert says that he and George had talked about the idea of stealing valuable artwork as a sort of crime insurance.
01:14:23
So if they get caught for dealing drugs or something, blah, blah, blah, they would have these valuable paintings to bargain with.
01:14:28
They're trying to, they're hoping that they're going to get arrested by like Poirot or some cop that gives a single shit about fine art.
01:14:38
What's the idea? It's weird. It's like to commit a crime to get out of another crime in the future.
01:14:44
You know what I mean? It's like saying, like, when they arrest the lowest guy in the mob, they don't want him.
01:14:49
They want him to rat on the highest guy. Oh, right. It's almost like, if you give me a lenient sentence on this legit drug charge, I'll give you the paintings.
01:14:59
Oh, we'll give them back. Exactly. Yeah. Sorry. It's like, what cop cares this much about impressionism?
01:15:06
No, they're giving them back, essentially, because that's how badly the museum wanted them back. And like the FBI and the police, like this should have been solvable. And they stole such important pieces that they would have given you immunity on other things to get them back.
01:15:20
So Robert says that George took this idea back to David Turner and other members of the Merlino crew. Robert says he wasn't involved in the heist, but when he read about it in the paper, he said, quote, way too much, George, end quote. Meaning you should have taken something way smaller than the fuck. This is bigger than your dumb drug bust that you're going to eventually get, you know?
01:15:41
I mean, I'm just thinking of like, when you go to a museum and you walk in, you know,
01:15:48
those rooms where there's the paintings that are literally like 20 feet wide by 40 feet high,
01:15:53
like just like here you go Can I change this for my coke dealing mistake This is a monopoly So there another piece of compelling evidence that points to George involvement
01:16:06
When the FBI sketches come out based on descriptions of Randy and Rick, many, many people say that one of the two thieves looks strikingly like George Rice Fielder.
01:16:16
And he does, but it's also like, so does a lot of people, you know. It's like a fucking etch-a-sketch.
01:16:21
Or what's the one that you put the beard on? Oh, yeah. The magnet one? Yeah. It's like, looks like anyone, kind of, you know?
01:16:27
Does he have a round red nose? Yeah. And a fake mustache. So George Rice Fielder dies in 1991, a year after the heist. So after
01:16:36
his death, his brother gets in contact with Anthony Amore, the museum security director.
01:16:41
He asked to meet and see the images of the stolen artwork. So Amore shows him every piece.
01:16:47
And each time he says he's never seen any brothers, like never seen it, never seen it.
01:16:52
And the last image Amore shows him is of Chez Tortoni. Amore says, quote, when he saw it, I can only describe it as jumped in his chair and became very upset and told me, Anthony, I have to tell you, I've seen that painting in my brother's apartment.
01:17:08
Oh, shit. End quote. He was very upset. It was visceral. He was teary eyed. And he said, quote, my brother did it.
01:17:15
My brother did it. He had that painting. End quote. He kept the mayonnaise for himself.
01:17:20
over his fucking couch in his apartment. That's what's so amazing about this thing is like,
01:17:26
when you listen to the podcast, it's like, I don't think people know where they are anymore.
01:17:29
So much time has gone. It's probably changed hands so many times. It's hidden in someone's
01:17:34
wall that doesn't even fucking know it that didn't even live there at the time. Yeah. And like, where is it?
01:17:40
I also like to imagine that there's a kind of like simultaneous Goodwill hunting style character who
01:17:45
is like, he's just going about as normal day blue collar worker, but he actually loves like certain
01:17:52
eras of painting. And like, he's the one, he's just like, I've always wanted a man or something.
01:17:58
He's like, no one suspects him. No one, you know, you walk through and you're like, oh, that's
01:18:02
clearly from Z gallery. It's like, it's actually not. That's the real thing. I mean, this shit could have gone, like he had it framed over his couch. He dies. They gave it
01:18:09
to Goodwill. Like some hipster girl can have it in her bathroom right now and not even know what
01:18:15
it is. That's the beauty of the art business. You know, like, I love that. I love when you're
01:18:23
like, I don't know what this is worth. It could be worth anything. Well, and that is my favorite,
01:18:27
like, documentary or like the lady that found the Jackson Pollock in the garbage can. And then
01:18:31
the art world was like, it's not real because they couldn't handle the idea that now they have
01:18:36
to give that lady $46 million or however much it was worth. That's amazing. George's apartment had
01:18:43
and searched, no painting had been recovered. And his brother has also died in the years
01:18:47
since that meeting with Amore. So that's kind of a dead end. Okay, here's the last theory I have
01:18:53
for you. And it involves none other than Whitey Bulger. Oh, yeah, because it's Boston. Yeah. So
01:19:00
there is relatively little evidence here. But it's that the heist was the work of notorious
01:19:06
Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger. Bulger was a fugitive between 1994 and 2011, as we know.
01:19:13
and was deeply involved in organized crime in Boston, as we also know. As we know.
01:19:17
He also has ties to the Boston police, which some people think may have been why the thieves had such convincing police uniforms on.
01:19:25
I wonder how much police involvement there was going on, too. It could have actually been two police officers, for all we fucking know.
01:19:32
Hey, we all saw the departed. We know what those guys can be like. Exactly. Allegedly.
01:19:37
Everything here is allegedly. Allegedly. It just is my opinion. So Bolger had ties to, of course, the IRA, the Irish Republican Army. Did you know that?
01:19:47
Simply must have it. Well, that's very common for people. Apparently, there's a story of my
01:19:54
Uncle Martin kind of like getting brought to an IRA meeting when he was in the army because he was in I can remember if he was in Boston or New York City And it was like the people that he was with and then they had stopped by and it was like an actual IRA meeting
01:20:08
And he was just like, it was real intense. I mean, he was like not, he wasn't there to plot or scheme or anything.
01:20:15
But I think that might be a little, I don't know. That seems realistic to me. Yeah, it makes sense.
01:20:20
And it was, this is 1990. So shit is like, it's a hotbed. Oh, yeah. And IRA actually does have a history of art theft.
01:20:28
So one former Scotland Yard detective named Charles Hill says he believes Bulger oversaw the heist and shipped the paintings to Ireland as part of a deal with the IRA.
01:20:38
Hill says that Bulger would have done this to make up for a shipment of weapons, which had been intended for Ireland, but it was intercepted in the 80s.
01:20:46
So it's like, sorry about that. Here's some really expensive paintings. Here's a beautiful painting.
01:20:53
So you don't have to think about arms, your revolutionary arms. Right. So Hill also says that setting off a fire alarm before an operation is a calling card of the IRAs.
01:21:04
And a fire alarm had gone off in the museum's carriage house earlier in the evening before the heist.
01:21:10
Oh. So interesting tidbits. All right. Anyways, in 2013, here's where we are now.
01:21:15
the FBI called a big press conference saying they knew with a high degree of confidence that the
01:21:20
paintings had been brought to Philadelphia through Connecticut and that they were likely to be able
01:21:25
to release more information soon. But it's been 10 years since that announcement and there's never
01:21:30
been any follow up. Like, you know, I wonder they have to know. And they just like it's too big to
01:21:37
talk about kind of a thing. Right. It's on the level of Epstein, but it's just art. It's art.
01:21:42
So it's like classier, but it's that same thing where it's like, we can't talk about who's involved in this.
01:21:47
Right. Totally. And it's likely that they were referring to yet another pair of mobsters who have since been proven not to have been involved.
01:21:53
So they might have been wrong to begin with. Anthony Amore is still the museum's head of security.
01:21:58
He remains haunted and obsessed with the case, but he also says that he believes that he knows who perpetrated the heist itself.
01:22:05
But he doesn't say. The FBI said that they believe the two people who committed the actual theft are dead.
01:22:10
what nobody knows is where the paintings are today. Check your mother-in-law's house.
01:22:15
For real, get up in that attic. Yeah. Isabella Stewart Gardner's will specified that nothing
01:22:20
about the museum should ever change after her death, which is like probably why there's no
01:22:24
vending machines in it. That's a bummer. Wait, did you say there was no vending machines at the
01:22:30
beginning? No, but I'm guessing there aren't. And I got bummed because I want a snack while I look
01:22:35
at the fucking paintings, right? You know, they don't have that, that one, like that coffee machine
01:22:40
that drops the cup. And then it's like, here's like, they'll make you a mocha right there. And
01:22:44
it's like so off brand, but still incredibly delicious. Not allowed. I wonder if they can
01:22:49
change the employee lounge area if it's still like 1900s employee lounge style. It's like a
01:22:55
coal burning stove. Isabella, seriously, you have to go in there and make yourself some hard tack
01:23:01
and a piece of like bacon fat to have lunch. Right. You can't heat up your lean cuisine or whatever.
01:23:07
No, no microwaves. Such a bummer. Okay. So because the paintings and the works of art
01:23:13
were in her will to stay in the place that she chose for them, for the stolen works,
01:23:18
the museum staff placed the empty frames back on the wall where they have hung for the past 33 years.
01:23:23
Wow. So it's like a reminder. Isn't that cool? Very cool. There's photos of that.
01:23:27
That's like these gorgeous rooms and these incredible works of art and then these huge empty frames.
01:23:34
Stolen. Amore says, quote, if you were a homicide detective, you'd go to the scene
01:23:38
and see the taped outline of the person on the floor. I come in here every day and these are my taped impressions,
01:23:45
end quote. Wow. So I think it probably stings a little for him, you know? Yeah. And that is the story
01:23:51
of the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist That a great story Yeah Yeah Yeah Listen to that podcast Last scene Last scene And there also a documentary about it That good But the last scene I mean you know
01:24:06
audio, you go, you can go so deep with audio. Support that audio. That's the good stuff. Wow.
01:24:11
Great job. That was really good. Thank you. It's weird because you started talking about it. And
01:24:15
then I was like, you told me it was the 90s. But then it was like, it seems like long, long ago.
01:24:20
33 years ago, which is a long time ago. It's like pre pre cell phones. Like none of the things they
01:24:28
could have done or would have done. It was a very ignorant slash innocent time. Totally. Be
01:24:35
interesting to know what really happened. I know. I want to know so bad, but I'm just convinced it's
01:24:41
buried somewhere. Someone forgot about it and died and didn't tell anyone or told someone that
01:24:46
that guy died. It's just rolled up in like underneath some couch cushions and someone's
01:24:50
going to find it. Someone's going to find it. Someday someone's going to find it.
01:24:55
Cookie just poked her nose in looking at me. So I think that means it's the end of the show.
01:24:59
She can tell. That's the cue. Yeah. And also the second story is done. So I mean, we're done.
01:25:04
That's it. That's it. That's the other cue. And guess what? If we talked for five more minutes,
01:25:08
I would have been right. An hour and 45 minutes. I did not expect that. Oh my God. How crazy is
01:25:15
that. Yeah. Look, we'll cut right to it. You, you fill in for the next five minutes. Okay. I'm
01:25:21
talking to the listener. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it. Listener. You can talk for five more minutes
01:25:25
and we're going to go like, yeah, yeah. And pretend to listen to you. Just kidding. We're leaving. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered.
01:25:34
Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:25:47
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
01:25:52
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:26:00
Email your hometowns to MyFavoriteMurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavoriteMurder and Twitter at MyFaveMurder.
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01:26:42
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