Molto Ridicolo: Vincenzo Pipino

Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.

You know it's ridiculous.

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I do.

Yes.

Actually, the reason I know this is because one of our listeners was kind enough to share something that I particularly the interns handed it to me and I was like, that's not ridiculous, that's genius. But they said it's ridiculous, so I'm gonna go with them. Listener Ryan M. Ratley aka Boo Ratley. They wrote in a message to the Instagram, I believe and said quote something ridiculous.

But not a crime.

There is a tree in Georgia that legally owns itself and the eight foot area around it's right. The former owner of the land had so many good childhood memories under the tree that when he died, he willed the tree to itself in an effort to preserve it. In nineteen forty two, a storm blew it over, but someone saved an acorn from the tree and planted it on the spot as the sun of the old tree. The new tree legally inherited the land. So there is a tree that owns the land inherited from its father.

A tree that is incredible. That is so beautifully ridiculous, and I love it so much.

I want to go around giving and bestowing legal rights on trees and rocks at rivers. I'm going to become a lawyer just so I can do Who sent this to us?

Ryan Ratley? That was dope. You made both our days.

Yes, and yes, it is ridiculous.

But it's also super awesome. That is ridiculously awesome. You want to know what else is ridiculous? Oh yeah, I'm here for stealing art only to give it right back. What this is ridiculous crime. I'm a podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. You heard that we don't like murder, No, we do not. We like principled thieves.

Yeah, we like someone who does it for the people.

I this guy I'm going to tell you about does it for the people's erin does he? He he hates murderous and he's a principled thief.

I like that.

I think he may be one of my favorite crimers we've had on here.

So really excited.

Yes, when he was about eight years old, he committed his first crime.

I like, when you start young, it tells me we're in very I know, right.

Eight years old crime. So at the time, he was tired of the jobs that he'd had.

Numerous jobs.

He worked in a morgue for a little.

Bit, for a little bit and age.

Yeah, but he decided it wasn't for him. And then he got a job working at a bakery. But he kept eating all the baked goods.

Probably because he was angry child.

Yeah, let him go. He got high on their supply. So he retired from the traditional workforce in the age of eight.

Oh, I thought he started carrying like hot rivets on the still buildings. He got a hopper and he was climbing up.

No, he retired, and then he turned to a life of crime.

Oh good for him.

What was his first theft? He was walking by a dairy and sitting, no, sitting outside, cattle rustler. Sitting outside was a fifty liter milk tin, all right full and that's like those.

Big old silver wants with a double handle.

Yeah, yeah, okay, I believe I will, said the boy, or rather.

Oh yes, I believe I will. In Italian, thank you, Elizabeth, I'll be translating if you want.

This is a good time to tell you that this takes place in Venice, Italy. Okay, yes, in nineteen fifty one.

Oh, I like you.

That's when he's eight years old. This is three years after The Bicycle Thief.

Oh yeah, the movie Yeah totally and then really not called it the Bicycle Thieves.

Yeah, he grew up with the Thief and the bicycle zikas the bicycle Thieves. I suppose you know that illustrated the desk inspiration faced by Italians struggling in a war torn So this little boy sees the milk rolls that jug on home. When he gets to his house, his mother takes one look at the jug and then starts dividing it up with the neighbors. He gotta live.

They're in post war depressions.

It's just great, exactly. So the boy then smashed up the tin and sold it for scrap like the kids, right. This little boy was named Vincenzo Peppinocen Vincenzo. He was born in nineteen forty three in Venice and after the war, his dad worked as a ferry boat captain. There was no money, that's.

What was morning.

Do they have any like a tourist economy.

No, No, just rebuilding.

So they're doing the lace and moving boats around.

Yeah, they over on Burano, they had they had a really rough go of it. So Vincenzo starts stealing. This is how he learns his way around those like labyrinthine streets of Venice. Have you ever been to Venice?

No, I've never been.

I know a lot of people say Venice is an overrated tourist trap, but it most certainly is not.

I love you've been a couple of times.

Yeah, yes, as you know, there are no cars there. You get around either on foot or by boat.

I love all the bridges.

Yeah, and at night, the you know, the winding streets so quiet. The place is amazingly sinister, but like in a good way. It's not Savannah Georgia, sinister where the sins of the past are haunted.

You can hear the chains in the wind.

Exactly, no offense Savannah. There are these quiet little neighborhoods in Venice, beautiful areas outside of the tourist zone along the Grand Canal.

I say this like I've just seen pictures, but yes, I'm familiar.

It's not easy to navigate those streets. It's in no way laid out in the grid.

Oh really, yeah, I had I had the canals like in the Netherlands, like Amsterdam.

Not at all, not at all. It's all winding, you know, Serpentines. I had a professor in grad school who had this theory about how cities whose streets are laid out in the grid are masculine and those with winding streets are feminine.

Are they a man or a woman?

Man?

Interesting?

Did you agree with them?

I don't know.

It seems like a man's idea.

Barcelona's pretty much laid on a grid, but Barcelona feels very feminine.

Yeah, Maggie, I haven't been to Barstone either, but looking at it interesting thing.

To think about when we're another anyway. Venice can feel like a maze to the uninitiated.

Oh I bet.

But Vincenzo knew his way around as his little you know, this little preteen thief, and soon he gets a gig as a delivery boy. One day on the job, he's walking down the street and he sees a thirty kilo bag of sugar. I can't say where this bag was or who was supposed to be watching it, but a bag of that size may have well been full of gold.

Oh yeah, sugar.

At that point, sugar was at a premium. It took a long time to rebuild after the war. England was on rations for a few years after and they won. Yeah, so it took like five or six years for Italy's economy to return to pre war levels, at least on paper.

Totally. I listened to all those old radio shows in America they were also rationing sugar, where it's like, oh, you got the blue stamps for sugar, then you ain't getting it, and so.

You know, the reality on the street is always much worse than sort of as you play out on the books. So sugar was in demand at the time. People were selling it by the gram like it was disco dust.

Yes, totally, just.

A graham for the holidays, as they'd say, that's it. That's a shout out to all my nine o two and oh loving palace from UC Davis Coaggi's So here's Vincenzo, He's got thirty kilos of Hawaii's finest sweetened by the Sun. His dad saw the bag and looked at the label on the side. Property of the Italian navy. Yikes, that's ben So he told his son to give it back. So Vincenzo started to argue, and then his nana, his grandma,

Keeping this, who is it?

That's our navy, that's our sugar.

And what Nana says goes. So the family utn't get By the time he was thirteen, his thieving was totally out of control. Yet right his mom was terrified, not only that he'd be caught, she worried about his soul. So she hatched a plan. She told him that another resident in their apartment building had an accident a while back, before he was born. You you don't remember this, Vincenzo. This woman was coming home late and trying not to

Yeah, totally sounds painful.

Yeah, so the leg, the reason for the fall, was restless, and now it haunted their building. It was a ghost leg.

Now just the leg.

Yeah. The mom's like, there's a ghost leg and it is cursing young boys who come home late. No, it's not hopping, it's floating. But how does it anyway, So a ghost leg had a name, okay, like the Golden Leg. Vincenzo was terrified. He didn't want the ghost leg getting him wriggling its little haunted toes at him, so he changed his ways. He started stealing during the day.

Smart kid.

Yeah, but he still needed to creep out at night. So he practiced, and he practiced until he became really good at climbing up the outside walls of the apartment building spider spider Man style, you know, Spider Man d DA style. That way, the ghost leg, which apparently lived inside the building, was unaware that he was outside scrabbling up the facade.

It totally makes ghost leg sense to me.

It totally makes sense. When he was at the ripe age of fourteen, he learned a new trick. He was out at the Lido, which is the beach area in Venice.

At fourteen fourteen, so he's like six years into his crime curses. He's like still an apprentice journeyman. He's not quite a master, but.

He gets there with this. It's like, so there's this like Barrier Island beach area. He and his friends they go out to the beach and they would crawl under the changing huts where they had previously drilled holes brilliant, and they would watch the ladies change into their swim suit.

So I thought for changing stuff to drop.

They were peeping. Who were some of these ladies, Actress Gina l La Brigida Wow. And then someone making her third appearance on this show, Sophia Lren Because this was like the bay call for me, this is the vacation hotspot. So they'd hang out under the huts all day, gock in it lady's tushies.

Huh.

But Vincenzo, he had more crimes on his mind than just gross invaved into privacy, right yeah. Uh. He realized that come wintertime he could unscrew the floorboards of the huts and then he'd be able to come back in the summer and lift out the planks while the tourists were out frolicking in the sun. So at that point he could slip in and take their valuable.

That's what I thought they were trying to do the first and no.

One sees him going in or out. So generally when he did this, he grabbed a few lara out of the wallets.

Okay, that's why I figured they just get a hand up and reach him. But he's the whole plank, that's he's.

Just lifting, so it's easy. One day, things change. He sees an American family heading out from a hotel to the Lido beach, Mark and Vincenzo. He clocks a big water dollar bills in the guy's shirt pocket, just you know, the loud American. So he had some cash in his wallet from his little Lightnings wallet Lightnings, so he headed over to a store and he bought these really expensive pair of shorts on the beach. He wanted to blend in on the beach with these wealthy tourists, So off

These times, come up and stuff.

So he takes off. He claims telling this story now that it was the equivalent of two hundred thousand euros today. What right, So why would someone carry that much money? But then I started thinking, Okay, maybe the exchange rate was all off and the dollar went super far at that time. That's my guess. I was going to track down how much a dollar to leiro was at that time and then try and convert to euros and then backtrack the inflation rate and then run forward to the

Apply that judiciously, thank you.

So he had all these American dollars but nowhere to use them, because it would be really suspicious for a young Venetian to try and pay with American dollars. He did something even more suspicious, and he tried to exchange them for lira at the bank. Yeah, he was caught, he was arrested. He refused to admit what he'd done, but that didn't matter. He did seven months for that one.

Sacks like exactly rehabilitation.

So as he grew up, he graduated to burglarizing tobacconists and jewelry stores. Okay, so like the corner stores, right, The smoke shops were there for just everyday need, so that's what he's getting there. The jewelry stores, though, he'd break in at night because I guess he wasn't afraid

My entire life.

I felt this every since I heard about it, whether we're talking about the Siesta or like the what.

Did they call what we need?

Three? Totally like you just shut everything and shut everything down in August, those two things. That is my platform. Elizabeth twenty twenty four. I'm telling you, Bumfardo is my running mate. Dunton Fardo twenty twenty four. I like, so, AnyWho where were Vincenzo and I on this one?

Right?

He was tiptoeing across the rooftops to his Heidi hole. He'd pop out the roof stopper, the old ceiling.

The old bunghole exactly.

And he'd slip into the jewelry store and it was like one of those shopping streets when I was little, I felt like it was a common thing in entertainment and marketing, like you could win a toys r a shopping spree, you run around the store throwing things in the cart. Store still do that?

Do you remember how excited that people would get, like almost violot with themselves trying to turn those corner.

Yes, I don't think they do that anymore, like as a marketing prize giveaway and not like uncontrolled consumer shop lift.

Yeah, exactly, and not like the TV shows where it's just like I think they still do the grocery store one.

I don't know, Yeah, I think so.

Well.

Anyway, back to Vincenzo. He would slip into the store in the afternoon and take everything he could, lots of like those gold cornetto necklaces, and then he'd pop back out and scurry home. He got better though. This was him just training for his future as a serious burglar. Do you know what he took next? Let's take a break and when we come back, you'll find out when we last met Zarin, Yes, clad I was telling you about Vincenzo Peppinos.

I love him, dude, so far I'm digging them.

He's amazing. He was a petty thief in his younger days, but he started to set his sights on bigger hauls. Venice is brimming with art, from the works of the glass blowers on Morano to the artisans who craft carnival masks, which I find intensely creepy. Really, oh, I hate those masks.

Do you mean like all of them, like the ones the rich ones are people wear like an eyes wide shut? Or do you mean like those long.

Nose everything'll creepy?

All right, I didn't know if to just specifically the long nose. Yeah, plague dog, everything everything masked. If I can't see your.

Face, I have a crazy latex mask that goes over your head and then it comes down, you can like tuck it in your shirt song and it's an old man face and it looks amazing. And I love like when someone comes to my door throwing on and then open the door. I really really scarred my nephew doing that once.

Oh god, he's young.

Yeah, all right, so art. You also then have the fine arts, the big dogs, right, Caneletto Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Tintoretto Titian. I love the skies and Titian paintings. Yes, some of the greatest.

Words of art. I just always think of the d I can't help it. Forgive me.

So some of the greatest works of art were created there, and even more were on display in a number of museums. It was the perfect place to steal art. You know how we love art thieves. Vincenzo step up. Oh yeah, here's the thing. In order to be a good art thief, one has to know about art.

That it helps.

Since Vincenzo had learned to read and write while in prison, he put those skills to work and he read everything he could about art. He hung out at the library, studying not just art history, but also Venetian aristocracy.

Oh smart patrons.

Yeah, he wanted to know who kept what art in their luxurious pilazzi that lie in the Grand Canal.

Brilliant.

He became an expert, so in his career he pulled off more than three thousand art thefts. Three thousands. Here's the craziest.

Very good.

Oh yeah, he's very good at what he does. Here's the craziest part. He never sold the art.

He just kept it off himself.

He basically held them until they could be returned. Yeah, he was the Yeah, well no, he would have them all, you know, if you pay a little like ransom basically, and then all the other stuff from the home. That's how he's really funding the lifestyle, like jewelry, silver, gold, Funko pops.

Oh. So he's like, I really like the art. I'm gonna respect that, but.

You're silver, I'm moving that, yes, and the fun and the Funko pops.

Yes, I saw you slip that in there. I'm like, I'm not going to let you do that to the nice people of Venice because you're like, I'm doing that.

The cops knew him, and the cops liked him.

Wait for the Funko pops, for the whole thing.

The whole kitten Kabuter. There was one investigator in particular, Detective Antonio Palmolcy. They had a pretty chummy relationship. They were buddies. He'd negotiate with Vincenzo to return the artwork, but you know, obviously for a cost, the aristocrats would pay up and get their loot back.

No Is he pretending like I know a guy who has this, or do they know that he's the one.

He's like, let me talk to let me find out who did I know who did it?

Let me talk to him?

Okay, cool, So everyone benefits Vincenzo. He makes a living off you know, what's basically a ransom. The cops look great because they've recovered these Yeah, the wealthy burglary victims. They get their stuff back and they boast about being hit by a famous thief.

I'm sure this isn't a sitcommon Italy.

So the aristocrats in the city they considered a theft by Vincenzo as a kind of badge of.

Honors, totally like I earned it.

He wanted to hit me exactly.

I have really good taste, like expensive stuff.

Do you know who robbed me the other day?

Now, Vincenzo had a younger brother named Alfredo, and sometimes it does Alfredo has. Alfredo's career is amazing. He was a magician, Alfred. So Alfredo and Vincenzo, they both said Alfredo was not involved in any of this stuff. But sometimes the cops would just arrest Alfredo anyway, breaking the laws of physics with your magic, You.

Got any new tricks, Freddy.

Little Fredo. He did have an accomplice, though Vincenzo wasn't his brother. He had a bunch that he would use my name Luigi. No. The one guy that he liked to use was a man named Claudio Claudio Claudio, and he was there in a pinch. He was deaf, and that made things a little difficult.

Did I sign language talking communicate?

Yeah, a lot of gesturing. I mean they do a lot of gest language. Yeah. So one of Vincenzo's favorite techniques when scoping out a grand palazzo was to carry a pigeon, you know, just as a.

Pal just like Nicola Tesla is like Caaren and around like this is my girlfriend.

Well, he'd let it go in the house and see if it tripped any motion detectors. Oh that's that's totally smart.

Wow, he was in his trained Imagine he's getting it right there.

Yeah, and then he uses the He was so good that there was an aristocrat named Count Barozzi who hired him to steal from his friends. So if the Count saw a piece at another rich person's house and he wanted it, he'd be like Vincenzo Okay, when you walk in, it's on the left, and Vincenzo got it.

I've never been there, right.

In nineteen seventy one, he stole from the private gallery of Peggy Gougenheim. Oh yeah, twice, once in February, once in December, or twice. He was a serious character. Here's what Epic Magazine had to say. Quote. He once infiltrated the Swiss consulate and made off with one hundred and fifty million lira in cash. In the late nineteen seventies, he tailed Carrie Grant, who portrayed one of the most famous thieves in film history, and robbed him while he

How is this guy living my best life?

I don't know how.

I mean now, I can't do any of these things because he's done them all right.

Well, he becomes known as the gentleman theater. He's a true gentleman in that sense. He was never violent, he never carried a weapon, andis love him. This guy's amazing well.

And he may have returned generalized.

He may have returned stolen items for a fee, but he never blackmailed anyone. And that would have been easy because he has embarrassing stuff.

And I'm sure that's the city with lots of embarrassing stuff.

Right, So he had a code respect people. Don't use weapons, don't steal from the poor, lawyers, doctors, magistrates or policemen, and smart too when stealing from jewelers, leave some of the gold, and don't take the jewelry that's being repaired because it belongs to a customer who's already paid for it.

That's so nice, it's incredible.

He was really sensitive while robbing people because.

He's taking the cream, like like the world's a dairy.

Well. He dig through underwear drawers looking for jewelry, but he made sure not to mess up the undies like he kept everything in order because he knew that seeing your private underthings tossed all over the place felt like a real violation, more so than having your Picasso, macgreet, Ernst Clee or Kandinsky taken from all Those are all artists that are told by the.

Way, Oh wow, those are all just like adorn your underwear.

Underwear that touches you. He says, quote to be a thief, you need a little culture, a little intelligence. You have to have a gentle good soul and to not be arrogant with him so.

Good, I know he wouldn't be writing his crimes down.

Yeah right, well we'll see. One time, in the middle of stealing everything from a mansion owned by a countess, the lady at the house returned and was like, who are you. You're in my house. Vincenzo and Claudio said, we are thieves. Don't worry, don't be afraid. We're not going to harm you.

Like it the truth, and she's like, okay, I can trust you.

Then they carried her suitcases upstairs for her before they took off and escaped into the night.

I'm telling you, good men, you just have a human moment.

That's right. He says that quote stealing from the super rich is not a crime, and that he quote robbed from the rich to give to the poor.

I super agree, you know.

He also said that quote I gave everything back and quote, if I had just one percent of what I stole over my career, I would be rich. But if I had one percent of what I donated to the poor, I would be even richer.

Wow.

He would only steal from rich and people who wouldn't be hurt by the theft financially. And he only stole beautiful and valuable things. Not just valuable things, but if it was a piece of beauty. He's like, you don't deserve this. He believed that the theft was a price that they had to pay for being rich.

Yeah, looks, people can celebrate Jeff Bezos for being able to skim a little off of all these workers and get it becoming a billionaire. Yeah, I like this guy for skimming from the billionaire. And I'm like, look, we just both were celebrating different skimmers.

He would steal credit cards from the wealthy and then go to grocery stores and buy food for working people.

Yes, see what I'm talking about.

Since it was covered by insurance, he figured that he wasn't stealing from the rich. He was stealing from the bank. And he really loved that. One time he saw an old woman teleman begging on the street to go find a job. He was livid, so he quietly followed her home and he made a note where she lived. He checked in every now and then, and after about a month he decided it was time he broke into her

Wow, that's kind of heavy. That's when you get into like the Southern European of it all. Oh yeah, I had to do this, And they're like, Okay, I'm not going to argue.

I got it. You gotta do this. That's messed up.

His antics just continued. In the spring of nineteen ninety one, he used a telescope on the bell tower in Piazza San Marco, and he's like scoping out the nearby plaza. He really had his eye on this one palazzo owned by Raoul Gardini, a wealthy Italian entrepreneur and businessman. Sure Vincenzo saw a skylight on the roof about forty feet off the ground. A few days later, he and Claudio, who you know, trustworthy nearly deaf, walked up to the

Yeah, and there's no longer ghost leg right.

So he gets on the roof. The skylight's locked, but the frame around it is all old and rotten, so he just slips right. He enters the house, no alarms, walks down the set of stairs, opens the door to let Cloudio in. Cloudio can't hear him, so he has to like go out and like wave him down, like make a noise that come in and then waves him in comedy. Oh yeah, they searched the house, including the bedroom, and here's where Vincenzo and I are kindred spirits. Okay,

Like the same spelling fa l CKK.

But it's like the ambulance service in Oakland's fault. And that's why I always yelled, oh Falc when they.

Oh, that's why you yelled at yeah.

Oh Falc was it was. He was a wealthy businessman from a really well known family in Milan. He also had this extra home in Venice and appeared he was currently away from it. So Vincenzo finds out that falk owned a caniletto painting called Il fongetto de la Farina The Source of Flower. This was one of Vincenzo's favorite paintings. It shows this like bustling scene of merchants waiting along

I imagine it's one of the biggest his paintings.

And it was begging him to take it out of there. He said, quote, what was I supposed to do? Leave it there? So like the ghost painting is.

Like take me with you.

In short, Vincenzo, he was captivated.

Divide it.

He said, no, it was the painting that stole me. During the theft. It's around three am. Falk returns home. Oh, Falk. He didn't see the thieves or the thefts though, And after a bit, Vincenzo and his associate just leave. They just kind of slip right out. Vincenzo said that if he hadn't returned, they would have taken everything but the walls. I mean, they were just going to bleed this guy. Still, they stole so many bags of things, including the caniletto.

Oh sure, but it's Manning stolen him. He's not giving rid of that.

Well, he knew would complicate things like the government's going to be notified and like, but he couldn't help himself. So months after the theft, he calls Falk and he told him that the painting I have it. Guess what I'm the one with your painting, and he's like, I will you need to donate it to the city of Venice, and Falk's like, no, you need to give it back.

The face of an angel, Angel Face.

Angel Face Zamatillo. He wanted to talk to vic.

His name is Happy and angel Face.

Well, hold on, so Zamatillo, he wants to talk to Vincenzo. This is what it said in Epic magazine quote. Zamatillo was a member of the Mala del Brenta, the local mafia organization in the Venetto, the northeastern part of Italy that includes Venice. Under the leadership of Filiche Manieiro. The group had assassinated many of its rivals. Now they controlled

Now, okay, that makes sense.

So they're trying to like send them as far away as possible. Here are some of the heavy hitters. Salvatore Contorno, Gitano Finzantati, Antonio.

I'm doing great so far.

Just keep on you go, and Salvae and Giuseppe Madiona.

There we go, there you go.

Those are some amazing names in.

The handjusters with them spot on.

They're horrible men, but I love their names. So the criminal element up in the Venetto started reaching out to these guys. Eventually they all joined up together and built a really strong crime family. And the boss Filichim Niero, the police, they're cracking down on the mafia across the country. In that crackdown, one of Manieiro's cousins was arrested, and you know there it is so.

The normal bribes.

The normal bribes to get the cousin out of jail weren't working. Zarin, Yes, close your eyes, Oh yes, I want you to picture it. You're a Mala del Brena enforcer named Corrado, working with Felice Manieero's right hand man Andrea Zamatio. The two of you are walking around just at the foot of the famous Rialto bridge. You're headed toward Riva Rialto. It's a well known restaurant along the Grand Canal. It's a little touristy, but as you look up,

I really like it, sky you.

You want to ask him where he got it, but now it's not the time. Zamatillo tells Vincenzo that Maniaro would trade the stolen paintings for his cousin's release. He'd also get a promise to take the heat off of Mala del Brenta. Vincenzo doesn't like this. He stares out at the canal and watches a mail boat drift by. I have an idea, Vincenzo says to you. He gets up. I'm going to steal a famous piece of art, he says,

Okay, I was waiting for the mail boat and then the female boat to go buy. Every time you say that, I'm always like, it takes me a second. You take like the male car on the train, I'm always like, Wow, that's really stuck in there. I don't think of male as an adjectives.

Yeah, anyway, go, So Vincenzo, he did not work with the mafia. He did not want to good call. This kind of robbery would scare civilians.

We've seen how that works out. You have no one to.

Call well, and you can't you can't say no, they can't hal a cop. If you do this kind of thing that it's going to cause the museums to improve their security. It's going to piss off the police. All of this is going to make his job.

Harder, way harder, and he'll lose all of his good reputations and good rapport with the cops, and it'll put him over a barrel because they'll want more and more and more.

Exactly, So this is what it said in Epic magazine. Until now, the Big Boss hadn't meddled in Peppino's work. But if Peppino was viewed as disloyal, Maniero could ban him from stealing in the region or simply haven't killed options two options. On October ninth, nineteen ninety one, Vincenzo joined a tour group at the Palazzo Ducale, the Doge's palace. It's now a museum. It's located near Piazza San Marco, and it's seen as a symbol of Venice. The group

Oh that's nuts.

So they would sigh at the beauty of the city and they're impending in carsons.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

Have you seen some of the studies.

Yeah, oh yeah. So Vincenzo he lagged behind the group as it toured the bridge, and as the group left, he hung back and he hid in one of the old cells. So after the museum closed, he stayed hidden and he timed the guards round. He discovered that there was just one guard on duty, and he came by every forty five minutes. So around two am, Vincenzo crossed back over the bridge into the main museum, into a

Wow.

He reached up to a ledge below it, but the wooden ledge is old that starts cracking when he pulls on it. So before he can make his next move, though, he hears footsteps guard's back, so he runs to the bridge. He chose the side of the bridge, luckily that the guard did not walk down. When the guard turned around, Vincenzo returned to the cell to hide and regroup for another forty five minutes, so it's now around three am.

Yeah he sold the constitution, Yeah exactly.

Oh totally, So the police come to investigate. There are no clues except for a shoe print left where dust from the painting had fallen. The forensics team they figured out, okay, these are clarks and the finally little soft shoes I know. And then the following morning they let Detective Paul Mossy know. But before Paul Mosy could send officers to arrest Vincenzo

This is like the moment where like the police captain goes to the loose cannon, give.

Me your badge, and you're gun. You're off the forest.

I can't trust you to the loose cannon.

Criminal, criminal exactly.

Okay, So he says, I'll get it to you in twenty days. Details about how he got the painting back, you know, given by the man himself, are hazy. He contradicts himself in his various tellings. So you said he didn't write these things down in twenty ten. I see he wrote a book. Stealing from the rich isn't a sin.

Well with a book, okay, I'll give him that. Yeah, we all know what happened with the books.

Yeah, So he said that he actually arranged to have Manieero return the painting in twenty Days as part of his initial discussions with the mafia. That doesn't really make sense given the purpose of the painting as a negotiation tool, but whatever. So in other places he said, he just you know what, I was on vacation in the Seychelles when it was supposed to be returned. I didn't have anything to do with this. That doesn't make sense.

That's an odd one.

In twenty fourteen, he told Epic magazine a totally different story, and he said, well, this is hypothetical and like, nothing I'm about to say is what happened. But if I did it so, according to this version, shortly after the Doge's Palace theft, he visited many Arrow at home under the pretense of making sure the painting was being properly stored, and it would be really detrimental to both of them it was if it was damage, so I just want

What this is where they the mafia part jumps out.

So he puts one of the tranquilizers into a piece of steak that he brought, you know, and he feeds it to the tiger, and after thirty minutes the tiger falls asleep.

Oh good for him, right big.

As he makes his way inside, he sees the painting, but he sees something else, another tiger. No, he had more meat on him and he had more tranquilizers. So he feeds it the tiger and the tiger falls asleep too. He's like, all right, sick, ready for y'all so he grabs the stolen painting, replaces it with the replica, and then it escapes back into them.

They have guard tigers, guard tigers.

You're still they have guard painting is guarded by tigers.

This is what I want in movies and they have it in reality.

Exactly. No, this is why Venice is amazing.

And the criminals they want life to be like movies. I want life to be like Venice, right.

We all do. November seventh, nineteen ninety one, the Venice police held a press conference. The madonna had been returned. It had been found via an anonymous tip Maniera's cousin was eventually released after being you know the negotiations for him, but Sanniio claims it was thanks to returning a different artifact. He'd stolen Saint Anthony's tongue and jaw bone rob from a church and patava by unidentified men with shotguns the

Hell yeah? Did they do it? As like like we need some leverage?

Like all right, we will give you back the jaw bone if you give me back our boss basically.

So throughout his career, Vincenzo says he stole nearly a ton of gold and hundreds of carrots of precious stones. He says he probably you know, like I said, what was it, three thousand thefts, but he's like it probably more. Yeah. He spent a total of around twenty to twenty five years in jail when you add it all up for his various thefts, oh little bits here and there. And he said that he was aware of the fact that sooner or later because of his job, he was bound

Yeah.

Yeah, so you're doing three hundred jobs.

And sometime in the earlier two thousands he was convicted of cocaine trafficking and he was sent that's to eleven years, but he totally denies ever being involved in drug dealing. Yeah, in twenty thirteen, he was arrested for a fake credit card scam. But it's not really It was hard to find out like if he was convicted, did he serve time.

Or if he's with people who are.

Doing it right, I got to So the story in Epic Magazine was picked up by twentieth Century Fox as a possible movie, but it doesn't appear it was ever made, and by twenty twenty, when he gave an interview with Vice Italia, he said he was retired. He's still out there, Vincenzo in the.

Kashmir Vincenzo, I tipped my cap to you, bro.

That's all I have. What's your ridiculous takeaway?

That this man is out there living my best life and I only now hear about it. You know, I got a lot of reading to do.

You really do watch, got to get to Venice.

Yeah, I Bennie, I'm coming.

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