Going South

Gampsite Media.

See, hey, Rory, can you recap for us what happened last episode?

Yeah, you guys are in recap corner with Rory Scovell. Basically what we got into the last episode. David Gampt works for Loomis Fargo to but in the fact he thinks it's Wells Fargo, and they transfer money and they hold money, and.

He decided that he wanted a new life.

And came across a co worker, Kelly, who I don't know that even wants a new life, maybe the biggest pothead I've ever listened to the voice of. And he decided that they're going to steal seventeen million dollars from Loomis Fargo, and Kelly's friend Steve is going to mastermind the entire ordeal. And we learned that David gamp had teamed up with a bunch of morons, including himself, in trying to pull off the biggest heist in American history.

Okay, then to see how our heroes fare this episode, I'm gonna hand it off to our friend Johnny Knoxville. With episode two of Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.

David Gant wakes up on October fourth, nineteen ninety seven, feeling like he's got the whole world fooled. When he climbs out of the bed he shares with his wife, Tammy, he still hasn't even given her a hint about his plan.

I should have been hired as an actor from that one. I played it off like nothing's different, you know, even visiting parents the weekend before.

He packs his lunch just like he does every day and jumps in his truck to go to work.

I had this pretty little red Dodge Dakota and it was a long drive King's Mountain to Charlotte, and I used to drive like a demon.

It's a long commute despite David's outlaw driving habits. And just like he does every morning, David listens to the radio show John Boy and Billy.

I wanted to write to let y'all know that not all prisoners are mean and dangerous.

Some are merely stupid.

This morning, John Boy and Billy are doing a musical segment and what should come on but take the money and run?

Ca on, take the money and Run. I thought this is an omen.

The lyrics to this song are absolutely perfect. It's about two young lovers who want to avoid a great, big hassle while robbing a castle, and most importantly they yes take the money and run. One of them slips away with the f fourmentioned money, and then the lovers meet up the very next day. Anyway, David didn't know exactly when Kelly was coming down to Mexico. It probably wouldn't be the very next day, but still.

I just felt great about it, and I'm singing along as one is wont to do off key loudly poorly. It just really set the tone for the day.

At this moment, David feels like he's already left the past behind. The good, the bad. It's all in the rear view of his Dodge Dakota in the heist the Money, the trip down south of Mexico with Kelly. Fate has already spelled it out for him. It was all gonna unfold, just like the song on the radio. His last day as David Gant is gonna go great. From SmartLess Media, Campside Media and Big Money Players in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. I'm Johnny Knoxville and you're listening to Crime List Bill

Of it all.

David said he texted Kelly that morning to let her know that they were on. He asked her to get him a money belt so he could sneak some cash in New Mexico, and also a pair of bolt cutters so he could break into where the bigger bills were kept in the vault. Kelly, of course, never got around to getting either of those things.

I could have probably easily doubled my money.

Take say Lovey instead. Kelly's in position in her pickup truck, waiting across from Loomis Fargo's chain link front gate. Kelly described her critical role at this stage in the plan to journalist Jeff Diamond.

She had a very good memory about what happened during the height, at least for what you remembered.

Uh, and that was bad. I'm sorry.

She was smoking marijuana the whole time. Can't you remember anything?

Yeah, it's called crs. Can't remember shit. I guess it was from the fact that I was smoking too much weed and not thinking properly.

Have you been officially diagnosed with that?

Yes? I have been officially diagnosed.

David's escape from his money worries and his marriage was a vivid fantasy that now seemed real running off the Mexico with Kelly. Kelly could only pretend to share this fantasy. Her escape was weed.

It was just like whatever. I didn't really put much thought into it. Once I'd smoked, you know, the reality of it was just like, eh, it's not that bad.

Clearly, her involvement in the heightst fit into the category of things she didn't want to spend too much time thinking about anyway. While David was breaking his back lugging cash in the vault, Kelly's at the front gate, just sitting in her truck, and Kelly's friend Steve, the self appointed mafia don running the heist, is parked in the

I don't think there was a lot of preparation I had to do.

Yeah, I'm struggling. I was a skinny, a little worry guy.

The only thing any of these people did while David was working to pull off the second biggest cash heist in American history is call him and page him over and over again.

And then I look and there's this big bag jammed up in the corner, and it's got a little over half a minute.

So I throw it on top, and then more beeps from the pager and another call on the Looma's phone.

This is when they try to convince me to come out with half a million dollars. Right, I'm not throwing my life away for half a million dollars.

Never again decides to get greedy, I guess. So I have to keep texting him and calling him, and he's getting pissed off because he's working his balls off and they're loading up money. He's like, I'm taking the ones, I'm taking the files, I'm taking it all. So he's taken forever to get out.

Yes, David is being extremely thorough. He takes so long that Steve starts to get paranoid. How long can it take to grab some cash out of an unluck vault? And drive away. Is David betraying them? How could he?

Steve was just like, you gotta make sure he's still up with it. He still wants to do this, he said, just make sure that you know he's still thinking that you're going to go with him.

So at Steve's urging, Kelly kept blowing up David's pager with one four to threes, the I love you emoji of the nineties.

I would keep texting him I love you on the pager, which is not like I said, one four to three, And I don't know how many times I put that in there while he was loading the money.

Why one four to three I has one letter, love has four letters, U has three letters. There you go. So, finally David has successfully loaded all the money into the van while ignoring dozens of alerts on his pager.

And the pile of money I ended up with was around three and a half four foot tall, about approximately nine feet long, and it weighed over a ton.

He calls Kelly the letter know he's coming out, but that's when the backgate won't open.

So here's my options. I either moved the vans around inside or I transferred the money to another van.

So David moves several vans blocking his way between him and the front gate, which isn't stuck.

Thank god, I'm a decent driver. That was a pretty good driver back then.

This new gate that David's going to use, it's the gate where Kelly, Steve, and the other Nimrods have been waiting all this time. Finally, the nondescript white van David's driving makes it to the gate, the headlights shining through the chain link. Kelly watches as David hops out to open the gate, the second gate he's tried tonight, so close to freedom.

And the gate's stuck. The gate won't open, So we're saying, like, oh god, what do we do? What do we do? And he's struggling trying to get.

The gate outen I mean, someone could get out and help David. He's on the other side of an unlocked chain link gate with a van full of seventeen million dollars.

But Steve didn't won't get to see him.

So all right, if Steve gets out, it will ruin the whole reservoir. Dogs thing about not being able to identify each other. Steve's the kingpin, the head of the entire operation. He can't get his hands dirty with this kind of thing. He tries to get his cousin Scott to do it, but he declines because he's busy doing nothing. All this time, David is struggling trap behind the gate and Kelly just watching it all. But finally Steve succeeds in getting cousin Scott to do it.

Steve's like, Scott, go help him get out and help him. I guess he had his cousin with him so he could make him get out if we was needed.

Scott told me he really didn't want to do it, but he did anyway, and he helped David get out.

At a boy.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the gate, David is exhausted. He looks up from his struggles to see a man he's never seen before approaching him. The man will not look him in the eye, but he does help David open the gate, and then finally David hops in the van drives through the gate and into his new life. The road he's on, believe it or not, is called freedom Drive.

What does going down Freedom drive to freedom? Is that the hand of fate or is that just happenstance?

So the plan is to form a three car caravan, Kelly in her pick up, Steve and Isedan, and David in the van With all the money. They'll drive to a nearby parking lot, where David will leave the van with Steve and his d list Henchman, and Kelly and David will drive to the airport. David can tell the armored van is loaded way beyond what it's meant to hold.

There's a Troy cop across from you. If he notices it's an ATM van out at this late night, he's gonna pull me over and ask questions.

Every muscle in his body tenses up. David still has his company handgun with him, but he'd really rather not use it.

If that guy had pulled me over, one of us would have died that night. I'm like, it ain't gonna be me.

Luckily, the cop doesn't notice, and David continues driving, following Kelly to the rendezvous point. They drive past rows of industrial buildings and Kelly finally pulls into an open gate. David hops out of the van and leaves it behind, along with the two security tape showing his cash grab. He takes a master keyring with about oh one hundred and twenty five keys on it and hands it to one of Steve's goons.

Do not lose these keys. These are the keys to this van. So he had this ring of keys. Instead of taking only the keys he needed, he took the whole ring of keys to all their vehicles.

Mind you, David had just successfully stolen more money than all these people could earn at their jobs in a few centuries. But he can't do anything right. In Kelly's eyes.

He took his sweet.

Time in the vault, and now he just had to grab all the keys to all the vehicles as a little extra few to Loomis. And now it's Kelly's job to drive David to the airport and continue stringing him along. Oh right, maybe there was another job she was supposed to do.

In the meantime, I'm driving Kant to the airport, which I didn't check to see if it was the international airport.

I mean, why would you David Gant took the money and ran. His old life was officially over. He couldn't have it back even if he wanted to. Now he's on the road with his beautiful accomplice and future Mexican Combanta mate, headed for freedom courtesy of the airport in Columbia, South Carolina. He's feeling great.

I'm about as amped up as I can get.

Of course, David took a bag of cash with him to tide him over in Mexico. He doesn't know how much. It's a tiny fraction of what he stole, but it's enough to last him a while. And even this much money, a relatively small amount he can hide on his person, is more than he's ever had in his life. Kelly, normally pretty sedate, not dimension sedated, is also euphoric.

I remember saying I'm a rich bitch now and kind of felt good.

The airport in Columbia, South Carolina is only ninety minutes away and a sneaky choice because surely the authorities would be You've seen the airport in Charlotte, just a short drive from Loomis. Still, the job isn't done. David is the only current Loomis employee among the gang of thieves, and the sooner he disappears, the better. So onto a few things Kelly had been putting off until now.

I was supposed to get him a money belt, and I didn't get the money belt. So he's like, well, how am I gonna hide it? So he's like, well, I'm gonna stick so many stacks in my boots because he had on cowboy boots. And I said, well, this is.

Where Kelly Campbell has the greatest idea she's ever had in her life. We're in bo dunk, South Carolina. Sorry, South Carolina. It's true. She runs into a pigly wiggly or somehow a little store is late. We're in the middle of nowhere. The only place is that she runs in and gets some tape and a pair of couple of pairs of hose pantyhose. Of course, greatest idea ever come. We stuffed money into the hose, stringing around me free good times. Tape it money belt.

The money belt problems are solved. But that's not the only place David will stash the money.

I'm stuffing money in my boots. I think I put a good pair of eleven and a half w's will fit some feet and about twelve grand, and I've got six grand over here, six grand over here. I've got my Walt jam Pack money.

So David is all set to make a break for it, and maybe it's something about driving farther and farther away from the money. But the glease starts to wear off. He starts to realize he left millions of dollars and two security tapes showing him stealing those millions of dollars from a variety of angles in a parking lot with some total strangers.

One of the central questions I had for David was why did you steal this money and then give it all to people, including someone you didn't know? And his answer has stayed with me through time, which is he said, I was in the military. I was taught that if you give me a team of five people, I could go anywhere and do anything. Five good guys, I could go anywhere and do anything.

Good guys being the operative word. Can he really trust these people? David asked Kelly to call and remind the guys to ditch the videotapes. Of course, they say, we definitely will. Anyway, they're continuing on to the airport, and then Kelly's phone rings again. It's Steve with a problem. They can't get into the van, you know, the van that has all the money in it.

Apparently they dropped the key and they got mixed in with all the rest of them. So they've got this ring of keys like this, and they can't figure out which key it is to open the door. So they're pannikin.

But Kelly and David can't turn around. They're already too far down the road and they need to get David on a plane. Meanwhile, Steven cousin Scott in a third henchman, Big Eric, another guy Steve recruited at the last and our operating light clockwork. If that clock didn't work, Steve had promised each of these clowns a cool one hundred grand for their services. They clearly had no idea what they were in for.

At this point.

The heights that already happened, and even if they didn't get away with it, they were all going to be in trouble. Scott didn't know which key to use, so there were a lot of them, and they were like, okay, which one of these fifths.

It's a dark parking lot, and there are just so many damn keys on this keychain it seems like it's going to be impossible to find the right key. So someone gets the bright idea to break into the van, the armored van. They try smashing the windows with the rock, but it's bulletproof, it doesn't even chip. They then tried jimmy in the back door opened nothing, budgets. It's almost like this armored van was built to keep out criminals.

Scott told me that he's tharft to hear a siren, and he says, he puts his hands up and he walks towards the back of the truck which he'd been loading, and he thinks it's all over for them, And amazingly, it's an ambulance on Route eighty five, driving away from them.

Scott shakes it off and then gets back to work. Meanwhile, on I eighty five, David and Kelly continue to drive through the night to the airport in Columbia, David's first step towards freedom. Where exactly in Mexico David's flying to that just hasn't come up. He figured his accomplices must have boughtom a ticket to someplace nice, right, you know, for all the trouble he went to. It's about nine thirty pm. When they finally pull into the parking lot. David looks towards the terminal.

It's strangely dark. I'm like, oh, crap.

They drove to the airport in Columbia, South Carolina, and when they got there it was closed. They hadn't even bought a ticket. They still seventeen million dollars and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.

That absolutely blew me away.

So we get to the airport and the airport's closed. So I'm like, crap, what do we do now. I'm not driving him to another airport. I don't want him flying out as Charlotte.

So, setting aside for a second the fact that Kelly never even checked whether or not the airport would be open, she really won't drive the man who just threw his life away for her to another airport. The closest one that's opened is the big international airport in Atlanta. It'll probably have dozens of flights to Mexico or anywhere else in the world. It's two hundred and forty miles away, a little more than three hours on quiet nighttime roads.

I'm not driving to Atlanta. Are you crazy? I put him on a bus and he can drive to Atlanta and get him a plane. But I'm not driving to Atlanta.

I'm disappointed, but I'm really too tired for it to sink in, and the adrenaline is starting to wear off. I'm getting, you know anyway. I know she needs to get back David.

Jesus.

I decide, well, I'll take you to a bus station.

She takes me to the Greyhound office.

In my mind, you know David was going to be fine. He had money with him, so I didn't have any worries that he would not reach his destination.

Now I go, okay, I need to get to Atlanta Columbia Greyhound. I sleep all the way to.

Atlanta, and when he finally gets to the airport in Atlanta.

There's nothing. No direct flights from Atlanta to either side of Mexico.

Like crap.

So I find one New Orleans that's closer. We're getting there. I love New Orleans anyway.

Meanwhile, Kelly is just fucking driving back home, and she has one last job to do on the way, a last favor to David. He had left his Loomis Fargo work shirt and service Revolver in her car. Now it was Kelly's job to hide the evidence.

So I'm driving back across the bridge and Belmont. It's a place they call the hot hole. And as I'm driving across the bridge, I just take the shirt in the gun and chunk it out the window hope it lands in the water.

While Kelly was meticulously hiding the last shreds of evidence, the three Stooges, Steve, Cousin Scott and Big Eric were wrapping up the finer details on their end. They finally succeeded in transferring the money from the ATM van to their rental Well not quiet. The rental van was full and there were still huge stacks of cash left the ATM van, which was a problem since they planned to abandon it.

David stole seventeen million dollars, but they actually only made away with over fourteen million dollars because they had to leave about three million dollars in the van because it wouldn't fit into their other van in a way that they felt was safe to take it.

Steve made the call to just give up. He sent Big Eric to drive off in the loaded rental van and he and cousin Scott went to ditch the Loomis vehicle and that's how an atm van three million dollars in cash and two VHS tapes showing David Gant sweating his balls off ended up in the woods, just a few miles from the scene of the crime. You heard that right. Steve and his hair brain highwayman never grabbed

The first time he introduced me to Michelle, he introduced her as his associate's wife. That's an associate of mine's wife, and he's out of town and I'm looking after while he's out of town. Her husband at the time was in the military, and apparently her and Steve had something going on.

But that's all in the past, and now Steve and Michelle seemed to be in lockstep chasing this big money dream. Kind of sweet to see a couple so in tune with each other and working towards the same goal.

There were four of them there. There were Steve, Michelle, Eric and Scott. Scott passed the money to Eric, who passed it to Steve, who announced how much there was.

And told Michelle, who edited up on a calculator.

From what I heard from people who were there, Michelle and the rest of them were all really excited.

Michelle just kept yelling, look at all this money, Look at all this money, but is the total kept climbing into the hundreds of thousands and then into the millions. Something dawned on cousin Scott. They were all in deep shit.

Scott and probably Eric too, were extremely nervous. Scott was like, we are going to get caught. We're going to get caught, and Steve, according to Eric and Scott, says We're not gonna caught if everyone does what they're supposed to do.

Yeah, exactly, everyone just follow protocol. The next step in the master plan stuffing a mattress from Steve's kids bunk bed full of cash, the one from the top bunk. Of course, they stuff it completely full the stacks of twenty dollars bills.

That's where they were gonna hide it.

And then Scott points out, guys, if you put that on your bunk bed, it's gonna your kid underneath it, you know. So I think they changed the planet at that point.

Kelly shows up to this chaotic scene after selflessly not driving David to the airport. Cousin Scott in Big Eric had already left. It was just Steve, Michelle and some blue barrels full of cash with a bit of dog food sprinkled over the top for cover. No one there had given a single thought to the fact that a third of that heavy, stinky, kibble flavored cash belonged to David Gant. It's early in the morning on October fifth, the day after the heist, and David Gant is in

I sue, there's a little pharmacy down the street from me, time store whatever. So I go out. I go down and I go in, and I think I need to change my appearance.

He buys his hair dye, some non prescription eyeglasses, and novelty contact lenses to change his eye color.

I go back to the hotel room and I've never died my hair before. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm winging it for real. This is impulsive to level ten. We're just going with it. So I dye my hair brown. Well, I ignore my eyebrows, So I've got this chestnut chestnut hair and blonde eyebrows. I'm thinking, well, just dye my hair, and the movies that make it look so easy. No, it's not. I die everywhere it was going to close. There's a mess.

The contact lenses didn't go much better.

Look like idiot, But this is great. And I put the contact lens in and it didn't change my eyes in the way I thought that we went from. I thought I was going from blue to green, and I ended up with some it was almost a purple. I'm like, oh God, that's ridiculous. So I took them out. I threw them away because they were did just it didn't work.

Despite this felt mission, David feels like he's starting to get the hang of this whole outlaw thing.

Your actions have to fitture cover story. A round trip ticket draws no attention.

David's cover story is that he's taking a two week vacation in can Coon.

It was the first flight and it was the closest I would be in can Coon quickest.

He makes it to the airport and is waiting for his flight, counting the minutes until take off.

A woman approaches him and says, I think I know you.

His first thought is that his cover is blown. His ugly mug must be on every TV in the airport. The woman says, hey, are you Boris Becker an honest mistake. Boris Becker the German tennis phenom, also a tall, skinny redhead. Maybe David's already looking rich and successful, but he plays it.

Cool and he's like, oh no, no, I'm Mike. I work in printing or something.

Genius g e n iOS. Mike is the name on David's fake ID, the one piece of planning Stephen Kelly successfully pull off for him. That ID is his ticket to freedom. Maybe Steve's not so bad after all. All David has to do now is just get on this flight and everything should be just fine.

She says, you know, hey, this has created a crap story. Okay.

There were several local informants calling police, saying.

I've known this guy his whole life. There's no way he can afford this house.

Something's up.

When you do really bad things like murdering somebody, it's either for money or to keep a secret.

That's next time on Crime List. He'll Billy hust.

Okay, I now imagine we're all deeply invested in the extremely colorful life of David Gant.

How are you feeling, Rory?

I cannot stress enough how aggravating it is when everybody on the team isn't operating at their highest level, and I feel like David Gant is sweating blood for this team, and I cannot handle Kelly.

I just can't handle Kelly. I can't handle it.

I know, I mean, just an incredible series of events and moments in a true story. And maybe, yeah, the rudest thing someone's ever done after a crime is just decide not to drive their accomplice to the airport so he can make a getaway.

But not even just that literally didn't look into the airport, didn't get the flight, didn't get the money belt, didn't participate in any way.

You almost want to.

Be like, are you just so high you don't even know we have committed a federal crime?

Are you aware of what is at stake here? It speaks to how.

In love delusionally David is with Kelly, that he thinks that Kelly's going to step it up, like David's not a.

Good read of character.

The fact that David even got in bed in any way with Steve Chambers and his crew, and Kelly speaks volumes of David and his and his.

His decision making when it comes to relationships.

But it's like Kelly, everyone's doings, even Steve is doing doing something. Kelly her tone when she was like, I'm not going to drive him to Atlanta, I'm like, this isn't your buddy going back to college.

This is this poor man. You guys are screwed. You're screwed.

Also like terrible for herself because it just increases the chances that David gets caught, and if David gets caught, she's screwed too.

Yes, exactly exactly, but she doesn't seem to even understand it. She almost doesn't even understand what's at stake, almost as though this is just a weekend kind of fun thing, like yeah, I guess we'll go steal some money.

I don't know they wanted to do it just so blase.

I almost would be a better person in my life if I could be that blase about everything. I get a little too high strung about anything that has no consequence.

Kelly doesn't even care.

That this is like.

That, this is gonna be decades behind bars. I also feel like.

There's some pretty useful information in this episode, like the exact amount of money you can stuff into your pantyhose and boots. Have you learned anything that will help you in your future heights?

I mean, one, it's gonna be get the money belt. But I learned that if someone says I want to be on the team, and I smoke a lot of.

Pot, You're already out. You're out. And I have nothing against pot, but you're just not gonna be able to make it for this gig.

If they don't let people smoke pot to take orders at McDonald's, you can't let someone smoke pot to help you steal a massive amount of money.

So you're saying that marijuana is not a performance enhancing drug.

And I would say it's only ever really worked for Michael Phelps. For the rest of us, it's we're not gonna be able to pull it off. It's a it's I would get a money belt. I would definitely have already looked up the airport. I love that they thought Columbia, South Carolina was an international airport.

Slash would be open at three am.

There's no airport open at three am.

Maybe jfk Abe, maybe jfk Well. In this episode David's escape, it continues, and I believe episode three, we will hear a little bit more about David State. I give that episode five bong hits out of five.

I think same.

We'll see you next week for episode three.

Crimeless hill Billy Heist is a production of SmartLess Media, Campside Media and Big Money Players in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. Bill Billy Heist is narrated by me Johnny Knoxville and created by Liz Elkington and Stuart Bailey. Written by Michael Kenyon Meyer with Liz Elkington and Stuart Bailey, Produced by Lane Rose and Sierra Franco. Additional production help by Rajeev Gola.