On the Run

GAMSI Media Large, Rory, could you please recap what happened last week on episode four for the people at home?

I sure caad folks.

Last week we got to meet a new character. His name is Bruno. His real name is Mike McKinnie, but he goes by Bruno, and his three greatest passions in life are cocaine, hookers, and hot tubs. We now know and understand that. And he has been hired by Steve Chambers to go down to Mexico and quote unquote deliver money to David Gant. We've also learned that he is in the running to beat the person to kill David Gant. Whether that happens or not, Folks, we're gonna find out today on episode.

Five of Hillbilly Heist.

All right, let's get onto the episode.

David Gant knows he needs to get out of can Kun. Ever, since he was recognized by some nosy tourist at the Hard Rock Cafe, he's been laying low and waiting for help to arrive from the States. Finally, Bruno arrived with a bit more money and a plan to help David disappear. But David doesn't totally trust Bruno.

He asked me a really weird question. Do you have a gun? Do you carry a knife?

I know?

Do you lock your doors? Questions like that.

But Kelly is still stateside and Bruno is David's only source of help, so he doesn't have much of a choice but to go along for the ride. The plan, Bruno says, is to get David out of Cancun, maybe across Mexico to Acapulco, maybe to Mexico City, and then eventually to Brazil.

But the first leg of.

The journey is to make themselves scarce by fleeing to yet another popular tourist town, just a short ways down the beach from the one David has been hanging around in for months. They check into a fancy hotel overlooking the beach and decide to have a drink on the balcony. Maybe David's sick of having to pretend he's a tourist instead of a famous bank robber. Maybe it's the booze. Maybe it's the adrenaline wearing off after another day on

And that's when we're sitting outside of his room on his balcony, having a couple of beers, and that's when he told me where the money came from.

David tells McKinny that he had hit a bank for seventeen million dollars, and that's how Mike learns he's an accessory to one of the biggest bank hei sin history. He had never known where the money came from until this moment. Author Jeff Diamond explains the fallout, and.

It becomes clear in that moment to McKinney that he was in a world of trouble because until that point, McKinney had assumed that this was some nondescript who knows what type of crime that that nobody would in the United States really cared about.

Now Mike knows that David's on the FBI's most wanted list and that he's probably going to get caught unless he has some other nimrod do the dirty work.

So at that point McKinney gets the idea to subcontract this murder out.

Mike's wheels start turning, slowly but turning nonetheless. Maybe he could get David to Mexico City.

In Mexico City, they'd cut your arm off for a time x.

So if we're got out this dude was wandering around downtown that he had like ten thousand dollars cash on him, he would have been found out a dumpster and I wouldn't have had to lift a finger.

Or even simpler, maybe he could get someone closer by to do it, because when hiring a hit man, proximity is of course far more important than qualifications. He already has someone in mind, a guy named Robert.

Robert.

I'd met him down there. He is one of the street hustlers. You know, he was the one trying to sell you the timeshares.

Ooh, timeshare, that's a slippery slope. You invest in the timesharing, the next thing, you know, you're wagering on pro wrestling and wife swapping.

Oh yeah.

Robert also told Mike he was willing to do other more violent crimes. So there on the balcony, Mike tells David that he knows someone that can help them out from SmartLess media, campsite media, and big money players. In partnership with iHeart Podcasts, I'm Johnny Knoxville, and you're listening to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.

This is our fifth.

Episode on the run. Can you imagine getting off in senior Frogs talk about adding insult to injury? Your family would be forced to lie about it to save face. No, no, no, he actually got shot into Kenny Rogers Roasters. You dig But right around Christmas nineteen ninety seven, David Gant found himself in danger of meeting just such an undignified end.

He's been a fans he was a kid.

They were known for being a really tough team. And I love the colors, the black and the gold. And I hate to admit as guy, but I really liked the jersey more than the team.

When David looked up from his table, he saw a huge man towering over him, six foot three and three hundred pounds, a brooding menace who looks right at home in Cancun's dark underbelly. This must be Bruno's friend Robert, the latest chucklehead in the plot to kill David. But David thinks Robert's going to help him get out of town.

He was someone who arranged things like if he needed a new idea, or he needed a car, or you needed this, needed a place to stay, a place to go, a boat, stuff like that. He arranged things.

A good person to know as long as you're on the right side of the arrangement. After sizing David up, Robert introduces himself and makes a cunning proposition.

You trade me that jersey. I'll let you in on a secret about Bruno.

Turns out Robert's a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan. He's been looking all over for a jersey like this.

I go chanin shirts. I like you probably is a good Washington because when swimming this morning, it's a little sandy. But here you go, brother, and he's way too big a guy for this jersey. He's a big boy, but he wants it.

Now that David's kept his end of the bargain, Robert does the same.

He says, you know Bruno was in my place looking to buy done. He says, I think he's gonna try and kill you.

Turns out Robert couldn't bear to help murder a fellow Steelers fan.

For what I paid for that Pittsburgh Steelers Jersey and what it repaid. I mean, it probably saved my life. I'm either really really lucky or when I came up with my character sheet, I rolled high on charisma.

But the warm feelings can't do much to take the edge off some really shitty news, because I mean, he was already feeling pretty sorry for himself. No Kelly, no money, and now someone wants him dead.

After David learned about the fact that his cohorts were trying to have him killed, his life changed considerably. As you would imagine, he was extremely nervous. He started constantly looking around him all the time. He was justifiably paranoid, you might say.

Once David finds out that Bruno intends to kill him, his first instinct is to lay low. But his second instinct.

Is that.

He has to protect Kelly, sweet innocent Kelly, who just hasn't found her way down to Mexico yet. Surely Steve is putting Bruno up to the murder, and if Steve wants him dead, he probably wants Kelly dead too. David never really trusted Steve, but now he really really doesn't trust him, and he has decent reasons for feeling this way. One is the murder plot that he suspects Steve is behind.

He's bought a BMW and his wife's got new boobs and huge horse killer diamond ring.

David also drops some hints about Bruno.

What's the deal with this clown?

Kelly keeps to the party line. She admits that Steve's been spending like crazy, but she says it's just him, not her. All she's bought is a van, and she says Bruno's just the delivery guy.

You know that the same thing they've got planned for me. They've got planned for years. That's when she got quiet.

David tells Kelly he doesn't want to meet with Bruno anymore, but he's still encouraging her to come down to meet him, and he's still holding out hope that he might get his share of the money. Oh, David, David David David. David says he'll talk to Kelly again next week.

We Title three is a court order and it's just a part of the US Criminal Code that allows FBI to listen to a tell upone conversation or plant a bug in your house or something of that nature.

Even with the mountain of evidence against Kelly and Steve and Michelle Chambers, there was still a lot that John Wydra and his fellow FBI agents didn't know. Two missing pieces in particular, that prevented them from being able to swoop in for the arrests.

It became a matter of where's the money and where's David.

If they made the arrest without knowing where the money was, they might never recover it. And if they made the arrest without knowing where David was, they might never find them or even know whether he's still alive. To track down David and the money. The agents decided they needed to listen to Steve's phone calls. Took a while to make this happen.

You can't just say, hey, I want to listen to Stephen Michelle Chambers because they're involved in the Loomis case.

That's not enough.

It's got to be proven that we can't get this information any other way. And then it's limited. The amount of time we have it, it's very limited.

The warrant got approved in the agents tapped the phone lines at Steven Michelle's mansion. It might have taken a lot of time to get the approval, but it took next to no time to hear criminal mastermind Steve say a slop jar full of incriminating.

Stuff, taking trips, taking friends and family out, and spending cash, getting in a fight with him guy at a bar, and offering to buy the place for you know, four hundred twenty dollars bills.

Oh yeah, this is good.

Steve got in a fight in a bar and when they kicked him out, he did the classic I'll come back here and buy this place. It's the kind of genius idea you share with your favorite gun for hire.

He wanted to buy the place and make it a knockoff.

Hooters with the prison theme. Yeah, it was weird. Steve was wanting to have the girls dressing the slutty prison guard or the slutty convict halloween outfits.

I deal, and here we were making fun of senior frogs.

Then he's going to convert it into a bar called the Big House where all the staff are prisoners. He wanted to put them in stripes, but you actually wear an orange jumpsuit.

That's the kind idea that would make Colonel Sanders a sergeant. Steve even came up with the brilliant marketing slogan, if you're going to do the time, do it right.

When Steve floated that out it to me, I was like, you never know, that might be the next big thing.

You really don't know.

Until he tried it, you kind of know. And the evidence continued piling up.

We found what I called the next stage, which was called the friends and family clan. And at the time, in nineteen ninety seven, I found that to be hilarious because that was the AT and T's motto for cell phones, and that was mom, dad, grandparents, friends that were not involved in either of the planning or any of the

So the FBI is starting to get answers to the money question, but there still isn't any mention of David on the wire tap. David Gant knows he's being hunted, and his funds are dwindling faster than a barnyard quickie gone or the days of fancy hotels, lobster on the halfshell, and premium tequila.

When the tribal bulletins say don't leave the tourist area, don't eat ice, don't buy street food, they mean it.

He made this mistake with the can coon street food.

Early on, it tasted really, really good. But about seven eight hours later, I'm up in my really nice hotel and that's when it hit me. The bug that's in their water, in their food. It's horrible. It is straight from the pits of hell.

But this was back when David still had a fancy hotel to pamperum. So there were solutions within reach.

I crawled to the door and I called room service and they sent the little kid up. I gave him. I don't know how much money, I said, pepto bismol grindde. Once you do that and you survive, you can eat anywhere.

Also, like Jason Bourne, David Gant knows every language.

If you want to learn Spanish, got to immerse yourself to watch the Latino soap operas because you can get the gist of what they're seeing and you can start putting it together. Calesinko in the Cancoon, and that's how you learn basic Spanish. There's gotta be a beautiful woman, there's gotta be an old angry woman. There's gonna be one fat cowboy, and then there's dashing hero them the

David's also a master the art of the skies.

I'm dressing like the whitest Mexican you've ever seen. The flip flops. Keep your feet good and cool. You want wherever you want, and go to the beach. You can go down to the club, no one notice. The baggy shirt allows the sweat to wick away. The cut off shorts are just convenient.

Okay, maybe he needs someone other than David to explain how terrifying his situation actually was.

David told me that everywhere he was going he was turning his head.

He said.

He told me once he was getting he was at a barbershop getting his hair dyed brown, and in the middle of it all, he heard someone say police and he got up to go to the bathroom and like went out the window or something in the back with his hair half died.

That's author Jeff Diamond, who interviewed David a little bit after these events.

He was staying in his hotel room eating eminem, listening to the Eagles, watching Men in Black on TV all day and really just like terrified to go anywhere.

I probably financially ruined myself by eating the M and ms out of the snack bar in the in the room. Calls like a dummy. I've never has snack bar, and I didn't know every time he touched that has three bucks.

That shit adds up.

And if he's put more thought into it, your allyes. The men come in two flavors. They're either a giant teenage or John Toddler. It's just a matter of toys and an attitude. I'm typically a giant Toddler.

To summarize, David's in deep, He's cowering in a hotel room in a foreign country, with no friends, no Kelly, no work prospects, in a stash of cash is shrinking by the day. Maybe it's just time to go to the embassy and give himself up like he threatened to do. But willfully putting yourself in the pokey is a decision you tend to procrastinate on. Same for officially giving up on millions of dollars. So what's the latest with Kelly. The FBI has been conducting physical surveillance on Kelly since

Get a wire tap on a payphone back then, not knowing where it was going to be or when it was going to be, because they're not going to allow you to listen to anybody's conversation on that payphone except that one call. So we're trying to figure out through other wiretaps, what time she's supposed to be at which payphone. Then you have to write it up and get it to a judge for signature, and then get it to the telephone company so that you can listen to that call.

So finally the FBI figures out the time and the location and gets the approval of the judge. Now they're just waiting for Kelly to show up and take the call so they can listen in and hopefully finally track down David Gamm. Kelly seems to be running late. Finally, almost twenty minutes.

After the first call, Kelly still.

Hasn't shown up, but the phone rings again. An agent decides to pick up and says hello. A kind of nervous sounding guy with a North Carolina accent says he must have the wrong number and hangs.

Up pretty suspicious, except this.

Is North Carolina and a lot of people have that accent. The agent hangs around, still know Kelly not surprised. Then the phone rings again. The agent picks up. The same male voice with the North Carolina accent asks who's there. The agent says, I'm just standing here and I picked up the phone man, and then the man hangs up. All that work and lawyers waiting in rooms and trips to judges and still no phone call between Kelly and David.

But it had to be him, right, because when I talked to him on the phone, he would be like, well, when are you coming down?

Well, when can you get me some money? And I would just make up excuses like, well, I think I should probably stay here so I keep on what's going on, or I'm scared. If I leave now, then the FBI is going to be wondering why just up and left, and it's going to cause them to start looking further. You know, I just kept making up excuses and kept telling him that yes, I was coming.

In the previous weeks, whenever she got off the phone with David, Kelly always reported dutifully back to Steve. She told him right away that David didn't trust Bruno anymore, and Steve emphasized to Kelly that she had to keep close tabs on David. Now she was the only one left keeping an eye on him and making sure he wouldn't turn them all in. Her job was the same as it had been since the beginning of the heist, keeping David happy, leading them on. It's just that the

Oh my god.

I guess the most aggravating part was Steve not doing enough to keep David pacified, because, you know, if he would have just sent him more money. I think that was the biggest thing with David was because he wasn't getting as much money as he thought he should, which I agree he should have, but I don't know if that was Steve's greed or why he didn't just you know, take him home hundred thousand that, you know, then we won't have to worry about it for a little while.

And by complete coincidence, that same day in February, when Kelly was too tired to go to take David's call. Was the same day the FBI was staking out the payphone. You might say Kelly did David a favor by failing to show that day and keeping him off a wiretap. But even without knowing exactly what's going on, David's an understanding guy, too understanding.

Mexico doesn't do the whole time switch in the seasons where they moved the clocks forward. It's throwing our schedule out of whack.

Steve freaked out when Kelly told them she missed the call with David. So when David Paige has set up another call for the next day, she made sure to be there on time. David tells where he's staying. The FBI is listening, and now they know for sure that David's in Mexico. But it's the next call Kelly makes the Steve that really gets the bureaus attention.

That's when he asked me if I would go to Mexico. Because Bruno is saying he can't draw him out, he can't get him to go anywhere that would be private. That's when he asked me if I would go down there.

The FBI heard every word of this plot to kill David, and even though Steve was leading the conversation, Kelly participated and provided Steve information on David's whereabouts. The legal community might refer to Kelly's criminal exposure.

As cagaste e soutaste and la kaka, which means you just shit and jumped in it.

She was part of their conspiracy to commit murder. She talked freely about trying to get a gun down in Mexico, which to me was ridiculous. It's easy to get a gun in Mexico, but who you buy it from might get you killed. But they talked about injecting David camp with Leitch, We're getting cyanide. Kelly Campbell was all part

The FBI now knows that David is in Mexico and that his life is in danger, so they immediately send an agent south of the border to start looking for him. They traced his phone call to a hotel and Plia del Carmon. Agents in the States continue to keep an eye on Steve, Michelle, and Kelly, but now they have a new person they haven't heard of before, some nut named Bruno.

We know that Steve Chambers is moving on with his mob boss mentality, playing in this gangster role, and he wants to have David Gant killed. They were all pretending to be in a movie, so Bruno sounds a lot scarier than Michael McKinney. I don't know why they wanted to intimidate and scare David Gant, because he's not like a very intimidating figure.

As the full Pitcher comes together, the agents and me are starting to feel kind of sorry for David. They know about all the one four three texts, They heard him tell Kelly he loved her on the phone, and they heard his good pal Kelly immediately turn around and start planning his murder with Steve.

He was just a key to unlock the vault door and get the money out to Steve. That's all it was. I still wonder whether or not they had the guts to go through with it. But the problem with a gun is it only takes one second to make that decision. You could feel bad the rest of your life. But if you have the guts for one second to pull that trigger and then it's over right, you can look back and say, God, I wish I hadn't done that,

Clearly?

Did he have the guts to discuss it?

Yes?

Did he have the ability to pull that trigger in that one moment? I think pretty much anybody does.

Anyway.

The FBI starts looking into Bruno and quickly finds Mike McKinney. McKinny is still living in a hotel in Charlotte, working to Steve's bodyguard. The FBI intercepts a lot of calls between Steve and Mike talking about how to lure David to his death. It's hard to say why exactly it took Steve so long to tell Mike to go through with the murder.

And then at some point it was just annoying to Steve that he had to give money to anybody else, including the guy that helped him get it, and that's when the plan started to be, like, we're going to kill him.

They keep listening to the calls as a plan to kill David take shape, and then they learned that Mike mckennie is buying a plane ticket to Mexico.

I believe McKenny was supposed to get on the flight on March second or third. In the State Department and the FBI were like, we're not letting a hit man fly to another country. That's not happening. Nothing good can come out of this. So that's when it was decided we're going to arrest everybody on March second, whether we found David or not, because the cat would be out of the bag once we arrested McKenny.

Mike McKinny had seen a lot of idiotic stuff since gain of all the Steve Chambers, the prison theme, hooters, the boneheaded assassination instructions, and of course Steve's gigantic and tasteful painting.

Of dogs playing billiards.

But all that stuff seemed a whole lot dumber and more risky once he learned Steve's money came from the famous Loomis heist. Now Mike is worried he's going to get caught. It seems like the prospects of all this ending well were getting slimmer.

By the day.

He had hoped that outsourcing David's murder to Robert the Plan B hit Man, would solve everything. David would be dead, Mike would get his feet, and the murder would never be linked back to him. But Robert and his new Pittsburgh Steelers Jersey were no longer in the assassination game.

Robert was.

He was a hustler. He was just playing both sides, playing it simple.

Mike's job was so easy when Gant was just a phone call away.

A lot of it was just not having the responsibilities of actually having to get up to go to work.

He could stay out all night and whenever he woke.

Up, go sit on the pier, eat fresh seafood, a hammock, drink a few beers, hang out until it's time to go back out that night.

Hmmm, this Hitman game doesn't sound half bad. But now he and Steve were having to scheme on how to lure David out into the open.

Can't absolutely refuse to meet with me.

They still didn't really have a plan, but Steve's more serious than ever about getting rid of David, and Mike was quite literally leaving for Mexico the next morning.

I was actually stuck in the hotel.

I was waiting for Steve to drop some money off so I could go to Mexico. And I actually sat in my room, read a book and drank a six pack in my room. It was probably something like it one of the Grisham books, whichever newest one was out.

Even with a six pack and a crummy book to read on the beach, Mike wasn't feeling very optimistic about landing in Mexico the next day.

True sixth sense or paranoid kicking in by then. But like that evening, when I was going into the hotel, there were a couple of local cops and I heard him throw out a coat on the radios and I didn't know what the codes were.

I was like, this isn't good.

Mike kept hearing strange sounds coming from the other room, but there wasn't anything he could do about it. The holy tranity of hookers, cocaine, and hot tubs seemed far on the horizon. Hell at this point he probably would have settled for a hot pocket and a hand job. But in a few short hours, the FBI hopes to make him the recipient of a rude awakening. And he's not the only one the FBI plans to rub the wrong way.

So now you got ten agent sawed guns. We know that Michelle and Steve have guns, and we got two little kids in the house.

That's next time on Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.

So Rory Mike slash Bruno is having a bit of a crisis of conscience here. He was happy to take that money to kill someone. Yeah, less stoke to find out he's killing one of the most wanted men in America.

That's right, That is correct. My heart actually goes out to Mike in this case where he doesn't even understand yet. Yeah, sure, he's been hired to kill someone. Here's some things I respect. One, he didn't even understand who he was killing and he was still willing to do it. That's a guy who needs a paycheck. And two, he was willing to subcontract that workout. That is a thinker.

That's a guy.

Who really just wants to be in a hot tub doing coke with hookers. That's that's the American dream he was living it up in Mexico.

I didn't know you could subcontract murders for hire.

I didn't either. I thought, I what a slippery slope to hire one hit man, but to hire to subcontract out. And I have to say, my favorite part of this entire episode is quite literally the fact that owning a Steelers Jersey is potentially why David Gant is alive to this dame.

I was gonna I was gonna say, what a great advertisement for the Steelers, like maybe they could use this as an ad.

Yes, and just having that on and a guy like I want it. I want that and be like, oh, here you go. Anyways, they're trying to kill you.

What a twist, What.

An absolute insane twist. That's when you just think things are uh they all things happen for a reason. Is that a moment like that moment of kismet? Like that for sure? But yeah, usual usual, fair From the other other episodes, Kelly is still aloof I will say this is the first time it kind of felt good to have David be a little more confrontational with her. But also the fact that he explained to Kelly what they're gonna do to me, they're probably gonna do to you.

I know, But poor David Man, he's still longing for Kelly, So I know, I just know. I just want him to meet a lady in Cancun. Yeah, like a divorce at the pool.

Yeah.

And then finally our cliffhanger this week, the Feds decide to make their move because they just can't let an assassin.

Get on an airplane.

I guess that's the that's the red line.

Yeah, yeah, you do have to pump the brakes at some point.

All right, Well, let's stay tuned next week as we wait to find out will Bruno kill David.

Gant this time Bump Bump bu.

Or will a different sports team Jersey save his life?

Crimeless Hill Billy Heist is a production of SmartLess Media, camp Side 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. The series was sound designed and mixed by ewin Le Tremwen, fact checking by Gray Lanta and a special thanks to our operations team Doug Slaywyn Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara and Destiny Dingle iHeart Podcasts and Big Money Players. Executive producers are Jack O'Brien, Lindsay Hoffman, and Matt Appadeca. Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Deen, Vanessa Grigoriatis, Adam