Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Look Out.
Sorry, I was just napping snuck in here.
Sleeping on the beach. Listen, you know what's ridiculous? Oh please share?
All right, all right, I'm just gonna tell just you. Last year at the well, you know the artist Pink.
The performer, she flings herself around exactly.
What the with the fabrics and stuff in the sky. Okay, so they had she had her summer carnival tour last year, very muscular. She was over there in the UK, right, they think they call it the Britain. She was at Hyde Park in London performing, right, and somebody's like, oh hey, you know, like our fans will throw like stuff on stage, Like if it's some people, they'll throw like a joint, or they'll throw like a bra or like no, no, like just fans in America, the fans in America, our fans,
I would call them root dudes. But like the fans in America, when they like a music, she'll throw things like drugs or like underwear. Right. Well, in the UK, they threw a whole wheel of brie. And they just gave her a wheel of bri. Right, She's like, oh, thanks. I don't know what you do with this, but is this Belgium?
Okay?
What is this tradition? That wasn't the weirdest thing she got. Another fan was like, oh when I got something too right and they threw up a baggy and in the baggy was like a look like powder.
Right.
She's like, what is this like heroin? I don't do that kind of drugs? Like, oh, no, that's that's uh. Turns out it was Ashes, Elizabeth no Ashes. Pink looked at the fan and she said, and I quote, is this your mom?
Stop it?
It was the fans cremated toss like, I don't know if that's like like her mom loved Pink. She loved Pink so much. She's like, here's my mom. I don't know how this goes. Pink had a moment where someone handed her first a wheel of bri and they're a bag of cremain and she had to perform I didn't even know the lives and stars leave.
The stars are just like us.
Ridiculous.
Do you know what else is ridiculous? No, a hairdresser changing the way banks build their vaults. Yeah, wow, this is a ridiculous crime. A podcast about absurd and outrageous. Caper's ice and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Yeah, Arren, Nope.
You ever cut your own hair?
Yeah, all the time. Actually, most like the last I don't know ten years, I'm the one to cut my hair. I haven't been to a barber. I've been to a barber once since the turn of this century. Really interesting, I went to a barber, to a black barber in Oakland. I said, give me Muhammad Ali, Nope, give me the cash is clay, and and then he knew exactly what I meant, and I made that distinction. So I got this really cool, tight, like early sixties flat top, and
that was nice. That was the last time I got a haircut. You were dreads back out.
Yeah, you were cutting off dreads when.
I did that. That's the first time I cut dress. And then I grew them back out until now I cut the sides and so I'll use a you know whatever tremor to do side.
Interesting. You know I used to cut my own hair.
That seems a little more difficult than me doing well.
I went to a salon once and the hairdresser was all cooked out and gave me like they always probably, but she gave me the world's worst haircut, really, like it was so short, and it was she kept trying to fix and balance things, and then suddenly I had short hair shorter, and and then I looked like a cub scout and.
Then you look like a marine.
Oh.
It was terrible, and I stopped going to salon's for a long time after that. I just cut my hair at home, but like it helped that. I was trying to be all shaggy rocker kind of day, so I basically just did like bad Razor cuts on myself and dragged a pair of scissors through my hair, Oh, to make it shaggy. Sure, and then it like it was dyed all blue black and a ton of product in it cared. But then then after that, like I kind
of got through that. But then I was too broke to go to a salon and I just maintained normal hair at home. Then I realized I'm a grown up and I needed to bite the bullet and get a decent hair gut.
You have grown ass.
So I've been going to hairdressers ever since, and they've all been great.
What's that like? Has it stuff changed since the twentieth century.
Has My current hairdresser, Hannah, She's amazing and I love her. Sometimes when she's cutting my hair, she has her little dog, Oscar, in a sling on her chest.
That's awesome.
Yeah, Oscar has like no teeth and his tongue hangs out, but it makes the haircut look and feel so much better. Yeah, it's incredible. Most hairdressers are total artists, like Hannah is.
The hairs are medium.
It's a difficult medium in which to work, you know, unforgiving totally, and like most are, that's someone you gotta tip. Yeah, speaking on Tuesday about tipping, that's how you because something. But it's high stakes, something really important. Yeah, Like if they mess up, then you.
Know had weeks, if not months, of looking.
For years in my case. So like most artists, many hairdressers, they they're meticulous. They have a certain perspective, fine skills, and they apply them to other things. It's like drawing or handiworker crafts.
Often artistic or crime.
Oh yeah, they're criming. There are criming hairdressers, of course, why not. They exist.
They're there artists.
They're part of the crimer community too. Welcome in, and they're sometimes successful and there's sometimes not.
Is it's like about that movie shampoo. That's always thing I know?
Oh my god. Close. So there's actually a scam going around right now with hairdressers. Oh really, And here's how it happens. Someone posts somewhere like Facebook or something asking for a recommendation for a stylist, and then a person claiming to be a stylist will respond and say, I'd love to work with you, and like I can get you a discount at my salon and say that it's
like this huge discount that they can get. But all the potential client has to do is just put down like forty to fifty maybe eighty five dollars to like as a deposit to hold their spot because the hairdresser is in such high demand. And like in a lot of places that's not unusual. Like when I go to get my haircut, they hold the credit card. Oh really, yeah, and then if I don't show, I get charged.
Yeah, holding a credit card not being charged, that's one thing. But this like I've been paying a little juice to get a spot.
And a lot of these scams they prey on people who are looking for braiders because it's so expensive and time can yeah, and it's if that is a crazy labor intensive art.
And also that person's only going to be able to work so much on that Saturday, you know what I mean or whatever.
And you have hours and hours and hours.
They want to be scheduling tight.
And because it's so expensive, if you find out you can get a discount, So like the phony braider will promise this great price for top notch work. They'll send pictures of their work and it's always just mind blowing. So the Mark gets sent a link to a scheduling web site in the book a time, and the site looks legit and the address is to a real salon on there like the physical address, and it's always a
nice salon. So then the Mark has to send the deposit to the stylist, like through Venmo or whatever.
Yeah, and it seems because that's so common now.
Yeah, exactly. And then they show up at the appointment and the owner of the salon, you're not on the books, I've never even heard of this stylist. The Mark tries to contact the stylist, no dice. It's like it's a small scale scam. But it's getting more and more prevalent.
This is what you always have to take things from word of mouth. If that you not know someone who knows this scam or this person who's offering you the offer, then.
Yeah, exactly, don't do it. And so But there are bigger scammers of course. For example, Tina Roberts aka the Black Widow. Right, it's a scary name. She was a con artist. Some called her the devil in disguise. Now with a name and a description like that, what did she do?
I'm thinking she uh, steals scalps.
It sounds like she's going to use up a one percent over here. Yeah, it sounds like she condered clients. It's like totally overhead.
I thought, like scissors in the neck or some stuff.
True, is it?
One old man, we're getting it.
One victim called her that and then all the UK tabloids just ran with it.
UK tabloids are the worst about hyperboles.
Out of control.
You You cannot ever get a sense of scale or perspective from anything, because everything's the worst. The last that's insane. This is never going to happen.
Again, exactly, Like, come on people, Yeah.
So I thought you guys were good, but history Tea Roberts.
The Black Widow, which I don't even know why you would give.
Her this name, exactly, you're wasting it.
She doesn't really have like black hair.
There's a lot of Peter than the Wolf. Yeah, or no Peter, but crying wolf Peter's exactly.
So she Tina, she's running all these cons twenty eleven.
Did you imagine a hair salon where every haircutter had in their own musical instruments Peter exactly. Yeah, and the customers too. They also have.
The noisiest that's the way noisier than normally noisies.
Okay, I'm sorry, go on.
The Black Widow she gets convicted of scamming a terminally ill cancer patient, banks clients as well as her own friends for a million pounds. She posed as the England rugby team's physiotherapist. It's like to establish credibility team. Yeah, And she said that she got that gig after she saved the life of former English coach Sir Clive Woodward, that she performed a tracheotomy at a school match.
Us.
Yeah, right. Another former England coach was like, that's not true, but right, So she's running this business where she's offering people nutritional advice, sports therapy, massage, but she's not qualified for it. She has like training in basic massage, and.
You do too. I think being an adult you have training in basic.
Massage massaging dogs. So once she got a client, she'd steal their credit card information to just go to town. But that's not all. According to the Southern Daily Echo newspaper, she told her marks that quote. She could not pay bills because the police had seized her computer and she'd been defrauded by an employee of HSBC, resulting in cash flow problems, and she desperately needed cash to buy supplies. She'd been working for the British cycling team.
She has moved it all around.
I'm a victim here, I so help me. So one of her clients, this guy Peter Lelliott, loaned her almost three hundred thousand pounds. Are you kidding No, I'm not kidding you. She took all the cash. Now remember it's like a million pounds in total, and she went on these crazy vacations to the Seychelles in South Africa, did something with it. But it's like they can't get like she's buying experiences you can't recoup them.
Oh no, no, just like I think it's brilliant, she's.
Can't give it back. So she eventually gets caught. She's sentenced to seven years. But is she going to give up?
No, not her, not on your life.
She got a seven year sentence, but she was out before that because in twenty fifteen she was back at it. So now she was a hairdresser. Okay, she had a mobile business.
She likes.
She has this mobile business, no set storefront, of course, and she would generally service elderly clients who couldn't make it out of the house too easily, but they still wanted to look and feel like a million bucks.
Of course.
Yeah, the clients loved her, of course, because she made he was charming. She told great stories. And the stories that she told a lot of them were about her celebrity clients of course, Oh yes, because like see, the stars loved that she would go to them and they got privacy and her incredible artistic skills. So she's telling all these old grannies about you know which star of
the east Enders she's been cutting. So once she'd get into their confidences, she would tell the clients about an investment opportunity that she had, and because of the high profile names that she was dropping, they all thought she was on the up and up, and she wasn't at first telling them do you want to invest?
Well, this is where the problem with the word of mouth actually goes wrong, because they know her and it seems.
Like she knows like she would know, and so she's telling them about this great deal and then they're like, I want in on this. So she says, look, if you want in, give me the money and I can a'll double we can double it. Seven women gave her somewhere between two hundred and twenty five pounds a piece and twenty five hundred pounds each in total thirteen thousand pounds between twenty fifteen twenty sixteen. Let's hear from some of the victims, shall we?
Yeahs yeah.
Phyllis King, aged sixty three from Barnstable, Devin. She told the Bristol Post quote, I feel upset, betrayed, and very bitter towards her. She is the black widow. She will spin you a web of lies.
She's the one who Phyllis is, the one with a can turn a phrase.
A criminal nickname is born. She also told the Bristol Post quote the money was going to be used to take my mom, who's in her eighties on holiday. Whoa Yeah, horrible. To Lisa White, forty three from Bristol, she got scammed out of two grand, she said, quote the fraud against me was two thousand pounds and meant our children had nothing for Christmas. I'm hacked off.
I'm sorry, shouldn't laught, but hacked off. I didn't expect that.
Yeah, she's hacked off. But then also she gave away the Christmas money. Ye, come on now. Alison Coates from Weston super Mare, Somerset, she lost two hundred and twenty five pounds to the black widow. She said, quote, I couldn't pay my care bill and I couldn't buy Christmas presents. Christmas present again, don't you know? Jane Foster she lost eighteen hundred pounds, she said quote She's very sweet, very charming, very manipulative and cunning. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
I would say she's a devil in disguise, So that's the second part of it. But also I love Butterwood and melt in her mouth.
Yeah, she won cool character, total cool character.
And of course Roberts was caught. She admitted to ten charges of fraud and she was sentenced to two years and three months, and the judge told her at her sentencing quote, your victims, in many cases were particularly vulnerable by reason of disability that left them housebound. You con them by your lies. And you were running a successful hairdressing business which listed celebrities among its clients. Like as if she wasn't there, he just gives her a recap.
He's an expositions, like, yeah, I know, I did all that. Like the writers are clunky on this show. So the Anvila exposition just came down. Her defense solicitor said that she set up a legal legit business and that she had planned to pay back her quote unquote investors, and he was like, some of the cash was even repaid.
How did some lawyers say the things they say? How do you stand in front of someone but you're gonna have to stand in front again in the future, be like yeah, this one she thought They were, yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.
He's done time for conning people in the exactly, and they're like all she owes now is ten five hundred pounds out of thirteen thousand. So it's not like, oh, she paid down one hundreds of thousands. No, So that's the Black Widow who for such a name as a disappointment. Very she wasn't smart, no really, and she was her victims. I really that really that cheeses me up.
Well, you know, we talk a lot. It's important to who you pick. You know, it's not just that we don't root for the criminals. It's like, okay, the targets are part of it. Exactly. You rob like an old museum. I'm not going to feel so bad as if you rob an old person, right right.
And take people's Christmas money. She's she was brash, but she wasn't clever, and she wasn't meticulous. That's the thing. That's why she probably wasn't a good hair Probably not. I haven't I have a main course for you here. You talked about like who people, who you're going to steal from? Yeah, this this is the cut and styling after the wash and rints of the Black Widow.
I don't do what is this? This is this good?
Yes, it's good.
Right, it seems like I should be excited too.
Okay, So I'm talking about a man who was so smart It was his name, Smart Williams smart O, real name.
How do you find these people? The thumbfardo Bill Smarto making these names up? Williams Smarto, that is Bill Smarto.
In the seventies, you dream the story. He was a hairdresser at the Velvet Brush.
Bill Smarto the hairdresser at vel vel.
In Deerfield, Illinois. I one day, I am just going to make one up as I go. It'll be fun.
I've done.
I've done all I can to find out more about this salon, but I've come up empty. Like I went through. I tried to go through old phone books, newspapers. It's killing me because I want to see it. I want to know where it was, the physical location. But he wasn't just a hairdresser there. He was the owner toator. So here he is styling hair in the northern suburbs of Chicago in the seventies, swinging very shampoo. He had
a wife and two kids. Good for it, and he had siblings, including one named Vincent, So William and Vincent Vincent Very Vinnie and Bobby Smarto. They had a hobby and it all started with safe deposit boxes. Okay, so in nineteen seventy eight, Vincent he started going to banks and renting safe deposit boxes under the name John Barrow, which is not to be confused with one of the other great idiot aliases, John Barron.
And isn't John Barrow. Oh that's Clyde Barrow.
Ye Bonnie and John Barrow like John, call me wheel, Yeah Barrow. So one of the places that they rented boxes was the First National Bank of Deerfield, and they went to visit the boxes dozens and dozens of times. They cased the joint so while one would distract the vault attendant, the other one would scope out the particulars of the room. And each time they'd bring something with them to put in the boxes, and that's to be expected. But what Bobby Smarto was bringing in were tools bank
burglary tools right into the lion's den. And so one of the times he went in the vault and I'm guessing you know this is like when he asked for privacy to look at the contents of his safe deposit box. He punched two holes in the alarm system sound sensors in the ceiling, and then in two said holes he put two alarm clocks and he nested them in like the dropped false ceiling.
How good is the distraction? Guy is incredible? He's like, oh, so you feel tense here? Let message.
So Smarto. He had set the alarms to ring for after the bank closed, and then he and his brother they camped out watching the bank overnight and they wanted to see if the cops came when the alarm clocks went. No, they didn't, and that's how they knew the vault alarm didn't work. And with that in mind, let's take a break and when we come back, we're gonna look at phase two of the heist. You are so welcome for those ads. You're welcome world. So juicy, it's so juicy.
You have a napkin.
Clean yourself up. You're embarrassing yourself, William Smartos, I'll get your rat owner and operator of the velvet brush hair salon and hilarious, so good a velvet rush velvet brush.
You use a velvet brush I've never even heard of. They just put like a qualifier in front of brush. Yeah, that one. That's a velvet team brush's velvet.
He is also a bank burglar. Yeah, hello, so dateline Sunday, July twenty second, nineteen seventy nine, good Year, Deerfield, Illinois, just north of Chicago, First National Bank of Deerfield. Outside the bank, William Smarto slip behind some bushes and he took a ventilation grate off the building and he climbed in. And then he dropped into a room right outside the safe deposit vault. Wow, he was prepared. He brought food, A.
Drill his first thing he brought there for a while.
I brought some hammergers. He brought a drill, four crowbars, two flashlights, a spork, two headlamps, two sledgehammers, three chisels. He has a spare in case something goes wrong.
He's throwing a party.
Oh yeah, three chisels, eight screwdrivers, a vice grip, a hacksaw, and goggles.
Okay, you have anic machine, maybe some cocktail glasses.
So he's in this room, he's got his supplies tucked above the ceiling tiles. Did I mention that he was dressed like a workerman. No, he was dressed as a workerman. So we've talked about this before, how dressing like a maintenance worker is like a really great way to slip under the radar and go somewhere you aren'tupposed to.
You're invisible unless you're a house spanner because people are drawn to the colors.
Right, So Smarto he pulled a table over to a wall and he stood on it and he put He pulls out a drill and he gets to work making a hole in the wall. And then there he is mid drill when a janitor walks in and he's stuck to the ridiculous crime credo of act like you know, oh, I like it, so he doesn't flinch. The janitor looks down at the mess all over the floor, concrete, dust like bits of plaster, metal, sharks, and Smarto says, when I'm through, I hope somebody's going to clean up this mess.
Gets an attitude that's the way, and the janitor's like size like yeah, I'll clean it up, and walks away. That's total. That's power move right.
I had a friend who every time he got pulled over, he would hop out of his car and start asking the cops for directions or for help, and the cops always I don't want to deal with the do go and would leave. I was like, you can't. It's brilliant I tried it once I got arrested.
Hop out of the car. It will get you lit up.
But I mean like he wouldn't like hop out like that way. He would do it before the cops even had it, Like he would pull over and get out immediately, so they're not even thinking, and he wouldn't approach them. He'd hop out and be like, oh, thank god, I need your help them and then the company you're okay, and the drive away.
Yeah, that's it is pretty smart.
So yeah, I think throwing an attitude always throws people off. Yeah, they are unbalanced. They don't expect Yeah exactly, especially means you you should be guilty.
So Smarto gets the janitor leave there, but like the attention kind of spooked him. Okay, so they can like yeah, so the well, the janitor doesn't care. He's like, this guy's a jerk. He's like every other you know, mean, this guy comes in here attitude. But Smart's like this is this isn't good. So he gives up on the Deerfield bank, looks for another target, just ditches it.
Wow like that.
Yeah, William and Vincent, they knew what they wanted. They wanted banks in rich neighborhoods. So the next stop, first National Bank of Barrington. It's another Chicago suburbs. So Smarto he gets the box under the alias, and like last time, he visits it dozens and dozens of time. Each time he'd bring tools to stash in the boxes and in the ceiling tiles, and four flashlights this time, a sledgehammer, a crowbar, three screwdrivers, tape bat he's a wire stripper.
A trowel, a seventy eight TA.
Player, hizsors, plyers, steel bolts, and he brought a change of clothes to hide in there.
And no food this time, change of clothes.
And he did the whole alarm clock in the ceiling thing.
So I got found. I wasn't hungry, but I definitely wanted.
To really did want a new outfit, So costume change. Saturday, April eleventh, nineteen eighty one, the regular vault attendant was on vacation and no one else was on duty. And then all investigators could later figure was that Smarto used a credit card to get past a glass door that led to the vault. Wow, so like Jimmy's his way in. Then he crawled up to the top of the safety deposit boxes and dropped into a corner where there was a twenty four inch square open space.
And that's between like between the corner and the wall.
Yeah, so like there are two walls of safe deposit boxes and where they meet the corner, there's that empty square space I got. Yeah, so bank employees they had no idea that there was a dead space in that corner. Never, they never thought about it the vault store because this is a Saturday. The vault store closes at one o'clock. And then it was one of those timelock jobsday. Yeah, seven thirty in the morning Monday, they got a wait, so one o'clock vault locks. Ten minutes later, the alarm
went off and the police arrived. They'd checked the bank, they couldn't find anything suspicious. You know, they leave. Ten minutes after that, the alarm goes off again. Now both the cops the bank employees, they're thinking the alarm's malfunctioning. This is you know, we got a squirrel on the cable totally, and so the alarm was tripping because Smarto was like getting himself situated and setting up. But it was this genius plan, or was it serendipity whatever. Everyone's
ignoring the alarms. So Smarto's in there for the weekend now, and he's ready to get chopping' Come Monday morning. A bank teller sitting in her car in the bank parking lot before the bank opened, saw a man in work clothes come out the bank carrying two Duffel bags.
He waited till Monday morning.
Seven.
Well, he was stuck in the vault.
Of course, right right right seven thirty.
It opens up, So she's waiting, like she probably starts at eight, so.
You can just open from the inside it. So it's seven thirty. That's interesting. Yeah, I guess spin the wheel. Yeah huh.
And so she sees or maybe like it opened up and then he popped out of the dead space. Anyway, she sees a guy in work clothes coming out of the bank carrying two Duffel bags, and she thinks that's a little weird.
Yeah.
She goes into work and she sees the same guy leaving the vault again, this time with another two Duffle bags, and she's liked, well, it must be a maintenance guy. I mean, after all, we had those alarm issues on Saturday. We had all thoseuffle backs, dead squirrels that did shoot through the water. Yeah, zaren close your eyes always, I always do do all right. Here we go, I want you to picture it. It's Monday, April thirteenth, nineteen eighty one.
You're a customer of First National Bank of Barrington and you want to access your safety deposit box. You hop out of your lemon yellow nineteen eighty Cadillac El Dorado and make your way into the bank. You're whistling what you think is the song at the top of the charts, Kiss on My List by Hollan Oates, but you can't really carry a tune. It's close, though, it's close. You enter the bank, people chatting and musac coming filling the air. You ask to be taken to the safety deposit boxes.
As you present your key and the clerk goes to open the box for you, something weird happens. The lock falls into the box, and while your bandana collection and stacks of rare two dollar bills should have padded, the locks tumble instead. You hear a clanging sound. The box is empty. You and the bank employee stare at each other for a moment, and then he gingerly lifts a finger and presses the face of the lock on the
box next to yours. It slides easily away from the door of the box and clatters loudly into the empty box, metal on metal, just like yours. You are quickly ushered from the vault and told to wait in the glass walled meeting room that looks over the bank floor. Muzak fills the empty room as you watch the clerk scurry to the bank manager, tuck his head down and whisper something. The manager looks at the clerk, shock briefly flashing across
her face. She immediately regains her composure and picks up the phone. You watch her have a quick conversation, her face stone serious. You pull a rolled up copy of Highlights magazine from your back pocket and start to flip through. You've done all the puzzle challenges and read all the stories. You toss the magazine in the trash. You reach into your other back pocket and you pull out a calculator. You type in fifty eight thousand and eight five eight
zero zero eight. Then you flip the calculator upside down. The display reads boobs. You chuckle and return the calculator to your back pocket, from the front chest pocket to your short sleeve button down shirt. You take a folded up piece of paper. You gently open it, careful with the war increases and frayed edges. It's the abstract for Torsen v CLLs and David Huble's about to be Nobel
winning research the ocular dominance columns. Oh yeah, you were just positive that in six months time they'll get the award for their work after all. By depriving kittens from using one eye, they showed that columns in the primary visual cortex receiving inputs from the other eye took over the areas that would normally receive input from the deprived eye. The kittens also did not develop areas receiving input from
both eyes, a feature needed for binocular vision. Their experiments, saren showed that the ocular dominance develops irreversibly early in childhood development, and these studies opened the door for the understanding and treatment of childhood cataracts.
A brutal but beautiful good assigns.
They were also important to the study of cortical plasticity and so just then, though, just then you see movement out of the corner of your eye. Suits coming into the bank with purpose. You fold up the document and place it in your shirt pocket. These guys are definitely FEDS. You just want to know what happened to all the stuff in your safety deposit box. The clerk comes to
get you and takes you back to the vault. The FBI agents swarmed the vault, peering into masses of empty boxes, and the agent walks you over to the remains of your safety deposit box. Can you confirm this box is yours? Yep? You tell him and U there were items in there last time you checked. Yep. He sighs and hands you a form telling you to list all the items in the box and provide your contact information. You walk out
to your Cadillac, positive you'll never disclose. The extent of your bandana collection never saren So the FEDS took inventory, and they worked out that one hundred and fifty safety deposit boxes were very neatly broken into seventy four of them emptied out. More than a million in cash, as well as gold, coins and other valuables, all gone. After Smarto punched the locks out, he replaced all of the cylinders in the boxes and swept up the mess meticulous.
He hid all the trash in the ceiling, so the vault looked totally normal when it was opened, and the he's walking back and forth bringing bags out doesn't look fishy. How did he get out? He hid in that corner dead space until the vault door was opened Monday morning, and according to US attorney Alan Grossman, quote, he took the risk that no one would be waiting outside the vault Monday morning because the alarm had gone off twice.
He just calmly walked out. And then FBI agent Leroy Heinbach he said that it was the first successful looting of a safety deposit box vault in the United States. Really, yeah, us a number what yeah, Federal prosecutors said, whoever did it was a quote criminal genius. No, let's take a break. When we come back, I'm going to tell you more about this criminal genius. Get back here there, Oh hey, get back any here.
I'm sorry.
William Smarto hairdresser, bank.
Burglar, Billy Smarto.
Bad Billy Smarto. By the way, he was still a hairstylist this whole time. I love it, running perms, stubbing out grays, just the whole deal.
I was walking like early eighties perms like the like ay curl, spiral.
Farms tight yeah, tight, tight tight, frizzy, and and stealing from safety deposit boxes with the help of his brother also frizzy, Yeah, super frizzy. They had no reason to stop. No Vincent rented safety deposit boxes again, this time at the First National Bank of Lake Forest, and once again under the name John Barrow, and once again William Smarto made a ton of visits case the place stored his tools, blah blah blah. At the Barrington job, he'd almost been a Robin Hood.
Oh really Yeah.
He was going through the boxes and if he felt like he saw things in there that like mortgage notes or records that looked like the owner of the box couldn't afford to lose what was in there, he'd leave it alone. So that's why about half the boxes that were busted into weren't emptied. So he's like, that looks like these people need this.
Yeah, I respect Yeah.
So back to Lake Forest. He visited the rented boxes fifty one times between mid January and he won fifty one and Labor Day of nineteen eighty two, so more than once a week.
That's I mean, they all know you, They totally know him to have stories about you.
Yeah.
And at one point he had to bring in big items like wooden shelves.
Why how are you going to say, I'm going to put these in They're very important. My grandfather bought these back.
In shelves to put you wanted to put shelving in the ceiling, the drop ceiling.
Watch.
So what he did is he'd put them in boxes and said they were pieces of art and that he was a collector.
How big are these boxes? I don't know how big are these shells?
Let me there was like, ikea flat pack is what I'm kind of imagining that he had to put it together. Wow, it's you know, he's a It's part of his sick artistry. Here a flat So here we are, Friday, September third, nineteen eighty two. Aberca dabber by the Steve Miller band is at the top of the charts. First National Bank of Lake I want to read and grab you. A customer at the bank, an old man. He had to use the bathroom.
Yeah, as they do.
Aren't you so happy that I didn't use this as the picture it.
I'm actually surprised the word.
I'm a little surprised too. So the guy uses the can. He comes out and he tells a bank employee that a wooden panel had fallen in.
There for a couple of hours.
Yeah, he's like a wooden panel fell from the ceiling. And the guy's like, dang, dude, what you doing there? No, that's not what he said. That is what sounds.
I blew it out.
Yeah, like it was major. So they call the superintendent and maintenance, who goes to replace the panel. The only thing is he goes up the ladder to slide the panel in place, and he sees something eyes eyeballs staring back at him. He was face to face with the hiding William Smarto.
He didn't think to move, I could back up.
He just froze. Apparently Smarto had planned to spend the weekend like breaking into the safety deposit boxes, and then he was going to leave the morning of September fifth, like in jogging clothes. He had jogging clothes with him, and he had stashed his van nearby at Lake Forest College.
He's a very new trend.
Oh yeah, and he had like his whold backstory. And so anyway, the police they found seven bags containing tools for breaking into safety deposits. Every time he brings more and more stuff. This time he had an industrial sized jackhammer, a powerful land. He had teleand thermal lance. He had an electric saw to cut the hinges off the safe deposit boxes. He's like, it took too long to punch the locks. Let's just cut the hinges. He had a bottle of water, you know, stay hydrated.
Oh you're you're a kind of okay. Yeah, and he also thinking like you doing a chemistry thing.
Yeah, no, just for sippons. And then he had an empty bottle to pee intwo, Why just p in the corner?
Yeah, exactly.
He had a radio, an alarm, clock, gloves, scissors, two flashlights, pliers, five screwdrivers, and then his jogging and it took us to the Cubs game. Yeah. And January twelfth, nineteen eighty three, he pleads guilty to charges of burglary and possession of burglary tools, and he got sentenced to three years by Judge John L. Hughes. Now the judge said he hoped that the sentence with John Hughes, John Hughes, John Carl John L.
Hughes was like, Okay, I heard that.
Yeah, judge said that he'd hope the.
Sentence Saturday detention.
It would deter possible copycats. And the judge said, quote, it almost seems like it's a script for a television show or a movie.
Are we sure this isn't John Hughes's dad, right, I'm saying about those other brother.
So Barrington police FBI agents they question him about Deerfield and Barrington the previous two no arrests had been made in those and they know fully the m O John Barrow had rented boxes at all three banks. And just like that, Smarto is BA BA busted for everything.
Yeah, of course.
July of eighty four, while America is gripped with Olympic fever, Ricardo and his brother Vincent they're indicted by a grand jury for the safety deposit box robbery of First National Bank in Barrington.
So he missed out on all of Edwin, Moses.
Great, everything, Flow, Joe everything, Lewis. Yeah, they plead not guilty. In February of the next year, Smarto he gets convicted of bank burglary and conspiracy in federal court. Was flowed in eighty four was eighty eight, I'm jumping forward anyway, So he gets convicted. He's looking at fifty five years in prison. And Vincent was also charged, but he was really sick. He didn't stand trial. He had a severe heart attack, open heart surgery. His lawyers like, he can't
take the stress of a trial. They're like, you know what, never mind, We'll just let it go. And according to an AFFI, David Smarto asked Vincent to open the safe deposit boxes, open those accounts at the three banks, and that around that time Smarto was quote involved in a bitter divorce and was trying to conceal assets from his wife.
So we found a way to blame a woman.
Yeah, pretty much, there was his wife, it exactly.
And then Williams said that Vincent knew nothing about any of these bank robberies. I just thought he was getting you know, I want to hide my stuff in these safe deposit boxes. I like that both Smarto and his brother Vincent. They requested severance of counts because Vincent didn't participate to the extent that William Smarto did, and the criminal acts on the indictment or quote not all of the same or similar character. So in a plea for leniency,
begging at the mercy of the court. Smarto's defense attorney, William's defense attorney pointed out that his crime was nonviolent and that he himself was a caring father of two sons, a sixteen year old and a twelve year old, and he went to point out that there was no evidence that Smarto had accumulated any wealth, you know, since the robbery.
It was a blowing money on thanks for yeah, And.
So April twenty third, nineteen eighty five, he gets sentenced to twenty years in prison by US District Judge Marvin Aspen.
So no leniency, what you're telling me?
Oh? Hold on. So he gets sentenced for the three bank jobs, even though one of them is the only one that was successful.
But they can connect them bridezily.
Yeah, but the stolen goods were not recovered at this point. And so he also gets fined twenty five thousand dollars by Judge Aspen, who called Smarto quote a very bright, multifaceted person, multifaceted, and they say you got to start serving your sentence immediately. He maintains his innocence.
He's like, sir, if I was so multifaceted, why would I wear this facet.
Yeah, and he says like, I can't give you the loot because I don't I didn't do it. I have no idea where it is. Judge asspen not buying it though, he said, now listen, I will reduce your sentence in exchange for you owning up to what you did and you have to assist the authorities with recovering the missing items. Next thing you know, an anonymous package is left at Smarto's lawyer's office. FBI goes to pick it up. They said it was obvious that the thing had been sitting
in a river somewhere. It was like damp, moldy, gross,
it smelled terrible. Inside over four hundred pieces of jewelry and other items, A bunch of them, though, were catalog is quote tarnished and or damaged, and so, according to court documents, prosecutors said Smarto was quote try to pull a fast one due to the fact that the most expensive pieces were not returned and the ones that were returned were damaged because like the gemstones had been pride, so they were like brooches and rings, and one of them was a ten carrot ring. This is a rein
carrot diamond ring. Yeah, so some of the items not recovered. Another ten carrot diamond ring valued it one hundred and twenty eight thousand dollars at the time, Wow, which is like three hundred and seventy k today. A platinum engagement ring worth thirty eight thousand dollars gold coins valued it, you know, almost thirty four thousand dollars. A platinum emerald ring through fifteen thousand and approach valued at ten thousand dollars, which is like nearly twenty nine thousand. Smackaroos.
I love those conversion.
God, I love the conversions. I had him for all of them. I was like holding on to him. So anyway, because of this, the US Attorney's Office recommended against the sentence reduction. They're like, you know, he didn't give everything back. He obviously sold a bunch of stuff. Judge Aspen, he didn't listen. He reduced Smarto's twenty years sentenced to eight years due to the quote the defendant's substantial but incomplete restitution of the stolen items.
Wow, and get him good faith.
But then on top of that, he he sentenced him to five hundred hours of community service upon release and quote cooperation with law enforcement and banking authorities in developing internal security programs to combat potential bank robberies.
But five hundred hours a community service, what is that? Two full months of eight hour days, five days a week. Well, so he had two months of work. Yeah, not that much, come on.
So he had. But he tell like, the bigger thing is that the judge says, you got to work with the FBI to come up with protocols for banks to use to avoid people like you.
Yeah, teach, it's what you know.
And thanks to him, that's why bank vaults don't have false ceilings anymore or dead corners.
Thanks to him. Thanks to him, they decided that was a bad idea.
He worked with the FBI to estatl.
With that on their own.
Now they needed him, so wow, smarto. He sent the judge Judge Aspen, a handwritten letter sharing the quote happy reaction of himself and his loved ones to the reduction of the sentence and this part of his release, like when he got paroled, he was allowed to travel, and so he's on parole. He in nineteen eighty nine, he went to New Orleans. Nineteen ninety he went to Spain. He went to Wisconsin twice.
He's traveling wells from Chicago, but he went to he got a new wife, wife wife, new wife, Bermuda, that went and it was never brought up, like how are you funding these these trips all this.
You know whatever questions.
Twenty eleven, he popped up again, this time as a real estate broker, and he hadn't burgled another bank, but his eighty five conviction had come back to haunt him all those years later. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional regular they issued a disciplinary order and they placed his real estate broker license William Smarto of Lake Villa, on probation for five years and then Restrictedlycenger as a managing broker for five years due to his eighty five
felony conviction. Now, all I could find was the order. So my guess is that he was acting as a broker and someone found out about it and ratia. It doesn't seem fair to me because like he did his time, he paid his debts in the way that we're prescribed to him. I think he's still kicking today. There's an episode of Masterminds about him, but it doesn't tell much about his personality, just that he's this genius who was respected by law enforcement who hunted him, But I wish
I knew more about him as a person. Yeah, how did he get into hairdressing? What did he think about his crimes? How did his life go after he got out?
Why did you think about the development of the Rachel?
Yeah?
Where is hairstyle? What I'm trying to say is I want him to write a book. Oh yeah, it might not be too late. No, he has not written a book. Please write a book, Zaren. I'm going to cut you off before you ask me. My ridiculous takeaway is that I hope he writes a book. Oh man, what's your ridiculous take.
Whyl was the takeaway? Thank you for asking his He didn't write a book.
He didn't write a book.
That's wild. He didn't write it in all honesty. Do you think that like he doesn't have a chip on his shoulder right about being like you know, it's not like, oh, I'm not a tough guy because I'm a hairdresser, right and he's not like a he doesn't have a chip on his shoulder. Like people didn't think I was smart. So I'm going to burn these people. Yeah, what was the motivator? Because it seems like he's kind of like
a smart guy. He gets into real estate later on, like why did he have to do the Like I just I know where I'm asking a very large question, but like what do you suspect did he get a thrill out of it? Like getting over on the people from what you read? Like, yeah, is it the artist in him? Like you know how an artist can very much enjoy either a performance or the or the the pla stick act of creation. You know, It's like, was this his I think so?
I think so. I think that he recognized the vulnerabilities in it and was smart and realized like this is God, I could totally do this, and there was an art to it. He was so meticulous and so careful in all the planning and all the time, and it's like, you know, you go to get your hair done and they're going to dye your hair and they lay everything out and they get it all ready, and it's like, yeah, I think that there was an art to it for him. And I think that he's just like too smart for
his own good in that. But you know I wish him, well, yeah, there you go, So yeah, you know what would make me feel better not being able to read a book of his though, as if I had a talk back. Oh Captain d.
Oh, oh my god, he su.
I went get.
I just finished listening to your episode about Lady under the Psychic Horse, and I just want to say, well done. You guys outdid yourselves. It is probably now my favorite episode that you have ever done. So thank you for that, and thanks for being awesome and keep up the good work.
Wow.
We're always glad that somebody enjoys and has a new phase.
Yeah, and that like positive message. We haven't really gotten any negative talkbacks.
I don't know, except for my mother.
We wouldn't censor them if we did.
Get why did you do that? You're embarrassing the family.
That's all. That's all I have. Happy note. You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're on We're at ridiculous Crime on various social things Twitter, Instagram, friends to MySpace, email ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Leave us a talk back on the iHeart app, reach out to a suppose girl. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Chicago lands Frosted Tips expert Dave Cousten Research is by Marissa Feather.
The Bangs Please Brown and Andrea New Year, New Cut, New Me song Sharpened Tear. The theme song is by two guys who collect the hair swept up from salon floors and stored in safety deposit boxes, Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five Hundred. Executive producers are Surly Bank janitor Ben Bolan and Trusting Vault clerk Noel.
Browns QUI Say It One More Time Crime.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts. To my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.