Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio zero.
Hey what's up? Hi? Smile making my day brighter?
Thank you so much. I'm making my day brighter too. Yeah, I'm all about me. Do you know what's ridiculous?
Girl? Do I judge in Colorado determined that elephants are not people? No? Yeah, they did, like a whole rational thing all by themselves. They're like, wait, let me feel this around. Not a person, not a person. Still, not a person, keep going No. So it was actually a much more serious thing than that. There was these five elephants, African elephants stuck in Colorado, Missy Kimba, Lulu, Jambo and
Lucky right. Yeah, and they were at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Yeah, and rough apparently rough business a bunch of animal rights activists. They took the zoo to court and they cited a legal process one you probably know better than I habeas corpus Latin for have the body. They're like, you know, and they were basically protesting. They wanted to challenge the detention in court, yeah, you know. And they wanted to move the elephants to a sanctuary.
Yeah, because an African elephant probably shouldn't be in rockies.
Yeah, totally in the rockies, all of that in the how do we even say in the zoo? Like I'm like, I'm kind of I'm a big believer because elephants they experienced menopause, you know, like, what is it? Toothed whales, killer whales, chimpanzees, elephants And if you do that, I think if you experienced menopause, you should not have to be in a zoo. It's a sign of intelligence. It's
not a physical I'm saying, is it's a way. That's the whole idea of the theory, is that if you impart all that, sure, you know.
So I just believe in let wild be wild?
Oh well, definitely definitely phrase. So my point is is that the State Supreme Court Justice Marie and Birkin counter She ruled that it bears noting that the narrow legal question before this court does not turn on her regard for the three majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically, but rather it comes down to quote, whether an elephant is a person, which clearly they are not. So they cannot run their thing, which is I mean, it has worked,
it is a legal thing the Colombia. Down in Columbia, cocaine hippos. They tried to run that saying that they were people so they could have rights, not to be euthanized, sterilized and all that. And they try to make rivers people down in Australia. We can't even make elephants people. When are we going to get civilized in this country?
Why can't we deputize the orcas get.
Them to free us? There you go, isn't that ridiculous?
This is ridiculous? So do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Oh my god, I was praying you got something good.
For me protesting via plane?
What?
Yes, this is ridiculous. Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
I know you don't heard that.
So world's a little rough right now.
Kind of rocky and Sandy.
It's uncertain a little stressful for me. And I'm sure there are people out there who are loving it and okay, you know whatever, But you know, for me, I don't handle stress.
Well.
I'm a low key person. I like calm yes, I like cozy.
You don't like disturbances like that?
Yeah, No, you like action and getting wild right all right? Chaos, Yeah, you do like chaos, And when it comes to making a statement, I like to manipulate from behind the scenes.
Totally, totally all chas. I don't want to be like, hey, I root for anything of like destructive. I don't mean that.
I'm an agent of chaos.
So I like watching you work, which.
Which is manipulate behind this scenes to cause chaos for others.
Totally entertainment. I love.
That's my specialty, gentle manipulation. But that's the time when it beens like.
At a waffle bar in an embassy suit. Yes exactly.
I like the mostly gentle manipulation for the benefit of others, benefit of all.
You have a good heart.
Yeah, I try not to do it.
For my spread. You're chaos.
I'm a team player. I would imagine that you like loud, upfront statements, big gestures.
Oh not necessarily. I like well made They can be succinct, they can be even a hand gesture, you know what I mean. I just like something that's effective and efficient.
It can't be mistaken.
Like I want to be clear I want the intention and the message to be clear.
Yeah, and you're also someone who does nothing for your own gain. You always do stuff for others. I've noticed that, hats off. It's unusual. A lot of people are self serving, and that's when statements become stunts.
Oh yeah, pelicity stunts, yeah.
And selfish. This that impacts others. So you see where I'm going with this. I you see, I want to tell you about a guy who's loud and brash and crafty and crooked and stay with me. Stop stop giving me the cut hand signal. He was often called Zany in the press. He was part Emeric, part Tommy fits See. I pulled it up before crashing. Tree Top Flyer song by Stephen Still, I've mentioned it before. I love that.
I love that song total.
That's how I described like just barely making a deadline or getting something to fall in place.
Every time you say that to me, they're like, oh, you tree top flyer. It gives me this soul delight.
Tree top flying. This dude I want to talk to you about is also a tree top flyer. So not in the sense of like a Vietnam vet who flew planes full of drugs. Out of the jungle.
Not that kind.
No, not a literal. He's more of a building top flyer. We'll get into that later. So who is this Zaney fellow?
Who Elizabeth? Is this Zaney fellow?
I can answer that. His name Robert Boden.
I don't know his name.
And the thing is like, if he were using it in the French, it would be Bodon, but it's Boden.
Baud i m B A U D. Night.
Some called him the flying Forger.
What.
Yeah, we'll get into that. Yes, so he's from New Jersey, was born in nineteen eighteen. Yeah, exactly. His dad was a French professor at NYU. Okay, but not like the rich professor of movies and TV shows, like he was like a real professor.
Living elbow style.
Oh yeah, so you know, I like to set the stage there and give you a sense of the bands. Nineteen eighteen East Orange, New Jersey.
Yes, yeah, is that the East Egg West Egg from Fitzgerald East Orange and West Orange is a parallel? No, okay, it's different.
This is New Jersey.
That's long Island, I know, but I mean I just wonder called Guyland.
Yeah. So, like like some of the other bad guys we've talked about. He got into criming early, and he just he wasn't born into a crime family. It was just in him. And so he did have some trauma as a young teen. Nothing I want to discuss here, but it may have influenced some of his behavior. Who's to say, witness or participants either way. As a teen he started forging checks and he got really good at it.
Him.
What did he do with the money?
What did he do with the money? Elizabeth?
Good question. He went to brothels.
Oh yeah, he was a teen. Yeah, he was with fast money.
He's doing real crime, right, like fake checks, prostitutes and and it went from there. He was a thief, con man, a teen cons contint he was a continent. So he stole from his dad's work a k A N y U.
Right. So he wasn't like robbing the payroll at the construction site. He was robbing in the university whatever.
I don't know, books, pens, paper chairs, those greade books. No, he was a shoplifter to in essence, he had no regard for the law.
It sounds like, I mean, I'm getting that from.
Him, and that's a weird thing to me, as someone who's pretty low regard for the law, like I'm law abiding to a fault, like you believe in the real.
Meaning of it, which is, if we do this, we can all live together.
Well, right, exactly, Like I can't fathom flouting the law and just moving through the world with no fear of repercussions either. I fear repercussions. I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to pay a fine. And like you were saying, like laws were crafted for.
A reason initially to me.
If I break the social fabric, can just ignore the law. I'm crapping on the whole operation, not to mention the social contract, permanent record.
I know you worry about that.
Yeah, we live in a society and all that. So not Robert.
Bowden, right, no, no, not.
Bad bodies didn't hair not tethered, you know, to convention or when the Great Depression hit, he hit the road. He's had enough in New Jersey. He made his way west where San Francisco. Oh snap, God bless. So he hopped trains to get out here, and then he stole and he begged in order to make it out here. It was like some sort of crusty punk I could see that spare some change.
He wore crusty punk.
Yeah. He gets to the city. That's what we call it here, the city. And he pulled cons like buying cheap paste, jewelry or watches and passing him off is the good stuff at a steep price. He even sold his body, and not in the blue collar worker.
Way, oh, the hustler way.
The hustler he didn't care. It was like, whatever whatever it took to make a buck or stay alive, he'd do it. So after a while he tried, he joined the merchant marine. H he was a merchant Ahoy, merchant mariner. So was my great grandpa for a time.
Yeah, good guys, and all.
These cornerman Bandini Brown he was one.
Hell yeah Brown.
David mammontt really, James Garner your man.
I love James. These are all like the man at throw, Denver Pyle, really Uncle Jesse from the Dukes that Have.
Yes, Sir Jim Thorpe, Oh why god? All American Jenny Cathree, what the heck? All the cool I got to get into that become a merchant American?
Yeah, I got what's wrong with you?
So basically, you know they're working on ships transporting domestic and an international cargo and passengers, a lot of international waters.
During peacetime totally.
And then if war breaks out, they become part of the navy and they move personnel and.
Supplies and yeah, supply line stuff. Remember how like some of the smuggling that the Navy needs done but doesn't want to have.
On their exactly so because there's civilians. Remember how I told you about Shanghai, Kelly that, Yeah, totally, I love that story. San Francisco, fella, he would you know, bunk sailors.
On the hedge, give us the term Shanghai.
Ship him off to shang slaver well bowden self Shanghai.
See did he hit himself in the head. He slipped himself on Mickey the head He dropped himself down to shoot.
San Francisco got too hot for him, and like he's criming all over the place, and he was worried that it was going to all catch up with him.
I got you. So he signed on.
So he set sail for Shanghai.
Picture him drop himself down the shot.
Yeah, off he goes. And so when he got to Shanghai, he joined up with the China Shanghai Constabulary.
Okay, became a cop over there, the cop.
Yeah, so this is sometime in the thirties. That meant that he was given.
Some rough characters. They're basically correctional office.
Yeah. What meant that he was there probably just before or during the Japanese invasion. That was nineteen thirty two, and so at that time, Shanghai was the world's largest city. Really, yes, things got bad there, got the organization, and the city's criminal underworld just thrived in that oppression and chaos.
He really earned its name.
What happens and so you know what happens when you mix Bowden with.
Crime a spark stars.
And he's still a cop. So he's running scams and he's dealing with shady characters, and just like in San Francisco, he knew he had to skid out all because the block was getting hottians. Well, I think once more off he went. So he went from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
Oh, so he's like, oh, let me keep the action going. Though I like working with these brids too.
It's working for him. And at the time that he was there, the economy wasn't so hot, which means crime, so He pulled scams there and then theft and that kind of thing, and then got a little too much for him. He's thinking, like they're going, they're on to me. So then he goes to Rangoon.
Wow once again, right, that's.
The yeah, present day yang Gun and Yonmar. So it was at the center of the Burmese independence movement and the hero and the heroin trick, lots of student protesters and so times of tumult, they bring great change and crime, and he crimed it up there.
Do you know he did?
Do you know who was born in yang Gun?
My friend Steve, Yeah, Nick Drake.
Nick Drake really was English singer songwriter Pink Moon and all that. His parents met there in nineteen thirty.
Four the part of the Foreign Office.
Maybe they were maybe they ran into Bowden while there.
Who knows, not I not I either.
So things get hot and Rangoon deep fried. And then he went to Delhi and you.
Know what he did there, Delli knew Delhi, which Dellwi just DELI.
You know what he did there?
I don't know. He committed Oh.
Yeah, he committed crimes. So things are getting tense though World War twos on ther and he can see it bubbling up.
Where he is in the east, terrible horizon.
He knew it was time to head home. Yeah, so he made his way back to the States, this time to Los Angeles, LA. In the early forties.
Oh my goodness, he's just going from crime spot to crime spot. Mickey Cohen.
Okay, you got scammers, thievesamers, today, suckers, hustlers, merchant he's on American soil. Yes, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, we made our way into World War two, there was the draft. Yeah, and it had Bowden's name on it. He didn't serve how you say, Well, he said he was he was too crazy, held insanity. You don't hear that much, No, you really don't. Like most people are.
Like about in Vietnam, Like the real hardcore draft dodgers would get like a candy bar and then like inserted their body and then go in and plead insanity by then eating eating it. Yeah yeah, in the draft room.
Yeah. Well, no, I don't know. Maybe he did that. So he had to do something nuts.
Yes, no one did that World War two, that was in but he did.
He's liked, you're too crazy for this, But so he has to do something. He learns photography.
Oh do you have a good eye?
Crazy as you like learning photography in nineteen forties, La.
Oh my goodness, get out of here. All the people you'd be working around, Like, imagine who's walking into that camera shop man Ray exactly, so.
About it. He just couldn't learn a trade or a craft though he wants. There's always that rascally voice whispering in his ear.
Hell with this steal something, do some crime con down?
So he did. He did the crack. I feel like criminals like him, they're always looking for an angle, So like, how can they use a tool or a situation or a skill to do bad?
It's like kind of like how do you leverage values? Not even like to use this, it's just like how do I what do I gotta do to flick that my way?
And he just couldn't help himself. So towards the end of the war he gets into counterfeiting and it's.
A lot more work than I would expect from it.
There was a lot of stuff to counterfeit at the time, namely ration tickets.
Oh wow, red and blues.
And the one that he focused on were the gas tickets.
Oh that's super smart.
Yeah, so I'm not.
Sure people are fighting. I listen old radio shows. They go nuts on those gas.
But I don't think people these days understand what the rationing was like.
Oh please, can you explain.
That community effort to sacrifice for now at that moment, in the present, for safety and the greater good down the road was just so strong, and this selflessness was incredible.
Well, they're buying war bonds, they've got their liberty garden, and they're willing to deny themselves. Butter melt make.
A sacrifice for everybody.
But the boys overseas they can use had to grease the tank axle.
Now I wasn't there, of course, but I heard from my grandparents what it was like, and I've read and watched an incredible amount about rationing in the bridge. They didn't mess around. They had ten years post war.
I think, yeah, because you can hear that Keith Richards and Mike talking about that. They're like, oh yeah, like I didn't see like good bread Clovest thirteen.
Oh yeah, totally. In the US, here's what was ration, among other things, sugar, coffee, meat, canned fish, cheese, ketchup shoes, bobby pins because of the metal, metal, tinfoil, whiskey, chewing gum, nylons.
They didn't make any cars for two years, yes, cigarettes cars, Every charactery was just making bombers or whatever else.
Of course, then gasolines ration, so you could only get a certain amount per week unless you knew Robert Bowden, Oh Bobby So like most of those who trafficked in black market goods and like phony ration tickets during he got bussed. So it was such an affront to those fighting to get rid of the Nazis, Like you couldn't have luxury, sure, but it meant that fascists would be
snubbed out. And it was a sacrifice that most were willing to make, and it you know, it paid off, as smart folks today say, to keep that traditional life see Nazi punch a nazis exactly that's what you do. So at the tail end of World War Two, Boden gets caught, he's charged.
Oh, when they're trying to get after the war profiteers and people like that, there's this anger that.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, like you might as well be, you know, just.
Like he's getting thrown in with a much bigger group too, so people are really god.
Yeah, so he's convicted. He sentenced to eight months hard labor in a prison. Yeah, well on a farm. He break that he used that ruse that got him out of the draft and played mentally ill again.
He goes back to which then they said, check my record.
Yeah, they sent him to a psychiatric hospital. Honestly, I'm not sure which is worse. I think i'd choose backbreaking work on the farm. But anyway, let's pause.
You don't want to keep up the ruse.
No, let's listen to some ads, uncurated ads, and when we get back, we'll continue to follow the misadventures of Robert Boden. Yeah, zaren So when we left off, Robert Bowden in veteric criminal. He was doing time in a mental hospital for printing fake gas ration cards and he was only he was only sentenced to eight months, but I think they probably needed an empty bed, so he was paroled. Let it go. He had a choice. He could get out and get a job, or he could keep being a criminal.
So duh. Yeah, he's got a tough decision, as you can see.
So he's out of the clink. He's just a drift. He's hanging out in San Francisco, once again doing petty crime. One day, he has a meeting with his probation officer, and instead of going to said meeting, he headed for the docks and it was there that he tossed his probation papers into San Francisco Bay and boarded a ship bound for Sydney, Australia.
Hope floats, but not those papers. Australia, Australia, Australia.
Like I said, nineteen forty eight, Sydney's booming.
Oh really, yeah, the.
Population was growing exponentially thanks to a ton of immigrants, mostly Brits and post war baby boom.
Huh.
So there were tons of jobs too. It was the time to be there, and there he was. Boden was so to the public. He's just this yank setting up an aerial photography.
He talks funny.
Yeah. So he meets and Mary's this really nice country girl named Betty, and they moved to a suburb of Sydney called Bowmain.
Betty and Bobby Bowden and Bowmain.
There it is. He didn't have a camera or a plane, but he did have a dream and he figured out a way to achieve. Remember, he was trained as a photographer and at some point he learned how to fly a plane and he used his photographer skills to make fake gas ration chips. So the fire was in him.
Had to move those pieces around differently.
He discovered a little loopholes what he did. It's illegal to print at the time. It's illegal to print your own Australian money when you're in Australia.
I think that's still a rule.
But back then it wasn't illegal to print American dollars.
Wait, you could just go nuts. We don't care our money.
Yeah, So he tried to make some Australian dollars anyway, but the deal that he had for this, the deal fell through for the Australian dollars, so he burned almost all of it. And he's but he's in this suburban house and he sets up shop for his real job, not aerial photography, a secret counterfeit printing setup. So he ran a printing press in his basement. Sure, and it was there that he printed up twenties hundreds, how many twenties and hundreds?
How many twenties hundred of elizabeth.
Two million dollars, I guess a lot. That's thirty one million Australian dollars today, which is almost like nineteen and a half million US dollars.
And that's a lot of bills, I mean, just a lot of printing. Yeah, my elbow hurt. Imagine.
Well, you know he's this hard worker. He hasn't give no attention to detail.
I'll give you that.
He'd crumple up the bills and he'd soak them in watered down glycerine to age them appropriately so that they'd be accepted. And he starts out doing this by hand, but then he's got so many he had to like get a dedicated washing machine to do that.
We know if he's starting with all like pre made bills like a one dollar in printing.
Because he's the photographer who would take a picture and then use that so to.
Make his plates. And I'm saying what he's printing on is he printing on fresh paper? Okay, it's all the idea. People use smaller bills like a one or a five print much bigger bills.
Well, I'm going to guess it's fresh paper because he's aged.
That's what I was guessing.
Yeah, this is what he said. Quote working on the tracing material was sheer joy. And since President Jackson's portrait seemed the hardest part, I tackled it first. I had a little trouble with his nose and eyes. I indulged in a few departures from government engraving to bring him back to normal.
So they don't want so much that hawk mean face.
Wanted to soften it out. He photoshopped him, so he moved a small amount of the fake bills in places like mom and pop shops or newsstands, drug stores, and I guess I think the US dollar was accepted everywhere. He pulled in Emeric, those.
Military guys everywhere, so people are taking back in Germany and anywhere that you have like the Marshall Plan guys. And we were over in the Australia still.
So he did like Emeric utener and was moving around and not spending it in the same area. Y sart and he tried to be like Emeric can be charming, but like Emeric was authentically charming. This guy he could turn it on, he could do the app was in the heart, so that printing press he had sure made a lot of noise, and he tried to blare the radio to cover it. Up and then his wife asked him about it. His neighbors asked, and.
His wife doesn't know about it.
Well, he had an answer for him. He was like, I'm printing up porn. What I am running a basement smut factory. And they were like, oh, okay, carry on. Yeah, they were fine with that. Now he has all this cash, the.
Noise makes sense. They're not asking questions after.
That printing press. Well, that's why he can't. So he's got all this cash. It is, but there was more to his plan. So he shipped the money to Rome and then he made his way there to pick up the cargo. So now he's moved all these dollars to Europe. So for the yeah, crates of money, he goes to Spain, France, he would exchange fake US dollars for local currency dollars and high demand you know as the continent rebuilds, and then he'd wash the cash by exchanging it back into
dollars that you know, the change that he gets. He's just constantly buying this stuff and getting all this change, and he's got too much, Like he doesn't want the stuff that he's buying the little things, so he's just dumping.
Them, not giving it out to like kids.
Well no, he would leave like a pile of it somewhere.
But he doesn't come up with an intentionality. But I could donate these babbles.
In it, because then people see him and they have an interaction. He just dumps it on the street or leaves it in a rented car. So in both Rome and Paris he narrowly escaped capture, either by wits or good luck. But he wasn't satisfied. Nothing was ever enough.
I want to get caught.
Yeah, I think he needed the adrenaline, right, So he leaves Europe.
It's an amazing feeling getting away with things.
I'm sure.
I mean, like when you're getting chased and you get away. It's there, it is.
So he leaves Europe, he gets on the Queen Mary, goes back to the US. Remember he has a warrant out for that parole Violet, and that could send him away away, but he didn't care. Off he goes. And so, like in Australia and like in Europe, he's passing the bills at little places and he's using larger and larger bills to buy smaller and smaller stuff. Just got to
break those bills, clean that cash. And so with the change that he gets, just like everywhere else, you know, he's he's you know, buying this stuff, ditching it, didn't care what happened to it. But all the change is adding up to almost two grand a day.
Oh, he's like brewistered millions his way around, Like I got to spend this to make this.
Yeah, and he figured if he did this scam for one hundred days, he'd never have to work or crime again.
Score.
Yeah. All of the cash he collected he put into a bank account in New York. He's just stowing it away. And it was a lot of legwork for one guy.
That's a job. He's a jot it full time.
Also, he recruited an accomplice, a woman named Terry, his ex girlfriend.
And he's on the show. They went all no, he had a good thing going. He then he expands.
He gets greedy it honestly, you'll see, so greedy. They go all over the US passing these fake bills, and he's meticulous. So they would drop into a place and start passing the bills, radiating out from like a randomly selected point, and that made it look like whatever the randomly selected point was was the counterfeitter's base.
Sure, Then they leave town.
Just before the authorities got wind of the phony cash. Then the cops are looking for a counterfeiter in town. It just doesn't exist. So, you know, they pull this all over the place. They're just banking, banking. Then the two of them crossed the Atlantic and Bowden found himself in Europe once again. So he and Terry they make themselves out to be these like wealthy, this wealthy American couple on the Grand tour money. Yeah. So and so they do that. They pull the same thing over there,
you know, same scams. Then they come back to the US and they found themselves in San Francisco.
On I thought he just needed tw hundred days he could never work again, Okay.
Like he had. He's like, but I have all this leftover counterfeit cat. You. So they're in San Francisco and that's where he and Terry got busted for passing fake cat. But this wasn't the end, not even close.
Okay.
See, the San Francisco cops could be reasoned with. I mean they take a breath, Like my great great grandpa before them, they were on the take. Yeah, and quote. Starting with an offer of two thousand dollars for each officer. We entered into a round of haggling that didn't stop short of double that figure. The older Copp remark that eight thousand dollars for getting out of doing ten years was a real bargain. Bowden said, oh hell yeah yeah.
So slipping away from Johnny Law eight thousand dollars later, he heads off to the UK. Terry had ditched him to marry some rich lawyer and like, probably pursue her own scam.
She has my read. She's like, he's getting too.
Big, right, I'm just going undercover now. So Bowden he used some of his cash, the real stuff, to buy a little plane in the UK, and he wanted to get back to Australia and actually open an aerial photography business dag nab it.
He planned to fly from like this, hopscotching his way to Australia. Yeah, oh god, it's so jealous. What a trip that would be.
So he got the plane. He picks up two passengers who are going to go with They're totally unaware that there's five hundred thousand dollars in fake cash hidden on the plane.
There his cover.
Yeah, and then he starts the journey. They're hopping their way across the East to Australia. In Singapore, he managed to crash the plane.
Oh my goodness.
So he survived. The passengers survive, but a lot of his money faker otherwise didn't. Oh, and so the crash was this big deal in Singapore's all over the papers.
Spread money across the ground or to catch fire.
People didn't see it. And so but all they knew is this American dude crash the plane in in the harbor.
We're in the harbor. He crashed, I guess.
So everyone wants to know about this mysterious American who just like tumbled from the sky, can't fly for He gave interviews. He told him all about how he was this renowned aerial photographer and his plane was now gone and he needed to get back to Australia. He needed to raise capital for a new plane. He said his business was like crazy successful and anyone who wanted in on this incredible opportunity, you could buy shares.
He's invented Patreon and go thunder all ones.
And people bought him. People bought the shares, loads of shares. So he was able to buy not one, but two planes, what with all the money he raised. And I guess he had the second one flown back for him. You can't do the thing like you do with bikes where you hold the handlebars and the empty bike to get the extra one.
You can't do him like on top one.
It doesn't work, doesn't work.
Like a big rope. And then dragon the plane can't do that either. Planes are so difficult.
He has all this paper, all these shares printed.
Up like stocks shares.
Yeah, and he has people's inform me on him, and he takes off for Australia. Their hopes and dreams attached to the success of his business. Everything in those stock certificates. And those are the same stock certificates that he tossed out of the window and into the ocean on his way home the Pacific.
YEA like one of those like soda cops when you're driving you're like, forget this thing, not you.
I would never I knew that at so Bowden he reaches Australia, things change time for ads. When we come back, I'm going to tell you what changed. So there's Robert.
Bowden littering in the Pacific littering.
His way across. He'd flown a small plane from London to Sydney with an unexpected crowds landing in Singapore along the way, but he made it to Sydney by golly. He built people into investing in an aerial photography business that didn't exist, But when he got back to Australia he actually did start one. He just didn't cut the investors and he ran that business for nine years, no counterfeiting.
He finally got the job, he won, finally got the job.
This he did the old one last heist thing and actually stuck to it.
Wow.
Yeah, amazing self control. Like I think maybe he got it all.
Out of his system, finally did.
Finally, but it wouldn't last. Zaren. Nothing is ever dead and gone, especially crime.
Or that impulse, that little voice.
Well, one day in nineteen sixty eight, the cops came calling. It seems an old accomplice of his had stored a bunch of fake cash under his house and the dude's adult son found it one day and just went bananas with it, like major shopping spree.
Oh okay, I got a ton. It was kind of like a large adult son like.
He's both physically. No, he was.
I mean, like it's like a full grown man, or is it more like like a twenty two year old twenty two year old stuff?
I just I'm gonna imagine he's probably like in his early twenties. So he's buying all this stuff. He goes on a huge, huge shopping spree. It attracts a ton of attention. The guy squeals Bones caught. When the police searched bones house, they found two hundred and sixty five thousand dollars in phony US bills that he'd hung on too. They found some of the Remember how he said, I said he made the Australian bills but then burned them. The ones that didn't burn he hung onto, so they
found those. He confessed to absolutely everything.
What's the point now?
Yeah, he gets booked and then he was released on bail to await trial, and he was facing twenty years behind bars.
So was his confession just basically yep, yep, yep, yep, you got it to do that, yep, that's yours, yep, yep, that's yours too, yep.
So he yeah, he's looking at twenty years. He's out on bail. February nineteen sixty nine, comes up with an idea.
I'm going to become a hippie.
Call no, He's like, I'm going to stage a protest. Protest, Yeah, he's and he's going to use his talents to do this.
What's he protest?
Well, his sentence charges.
He's like, I'm protesting.
He's protesting his charges. And so the talent he had was flying. So his protest, he was going to fly his plane over Sydney and then he told people he was going to crash the thing unless the charges against him were dropped. Oh.
I thought he's going to treat some fake money like shareholder stops jumping out the windows.
So like he's buzzing buildings and cruising all lows.
He's playing chicken with skyscrapers.
Oh yeah, swooping all around. He's like, I'm going to fly under Harbor Bridge. They're like, don't do it, don' don't do it.
He does it.
They're begging him to stop. No, he no, you, but you know you can't tell me what to do.
Actual he's swooping.
All over the place. He's up there for hour hours telling like air traffic control, I'm going to crash this. Maybe in the harbor, maybe out at sea.
I'm going to an opera house. You got shame of a plane crashed into it.
I'm going to end it all, end it all unless the charges are dropped. Quote. I figured the masses would be sympathetic to someone who was fighting the law in the sky above their biggest city, rather than in a courtroom. Only crash, Yeah, only if the crash. So the And he wrote that in his autobiography Fake The Passing Fortunes of a Counterfare.
Yeah, so he got his book deal.
Just you wait. So the crazy stunt brings the city to a standstill, and it introduced the city to its wildly criminal resident.
Now everyone, oh yeah, it's like a publicity stunt for this guy, right, and since.
The crimes weren't violent, he became kind of a folk hero at that point.
So they did like him.
They did like him. Okay, so did he crash? Well no. As he flew around this city, Bowden was able to get a message to New South Wales Commissioner of Police Norm Allen, and he explained his thinking and why the charges should be dropped. His fuel's getting low and he was like, look, man, I'm running out of gas. Here I need an answer. Yeah, suddenly a message comes over the radio. Your conditions are agreed to, you can land.
And he did beat the charges sort of, so they showed leniency because he'd been above board for the last decade on him, but he got new ones for the stunt flight. He gets sentenced to five years for everything. Remember it was supposed to be twenty.
And all right, five but then they.
Paroled him after fifteen That really was born in nineteen eighties, in his fifties. Yeah, and so he gets he gets paroled after fifteen months. What is absolutely hilarious is that he did most of his fifteen months in prison working in their print shop.
He's got a town, Elizabeth.
Yeah. So eight years after maybe.
A crime to not let him work in the.
Princeship exactly, he's so good at it. Eight years after his flight, he did something else. He released that autobiography, another one for the Ridiculous Crime Library Fake The Passing Fortunes of a Counterfeiter. So the book is a hit in Australia.
Okay, I think he's a good writer. Just a crazy story.
It's a crazy story. And then naturally US publishers come calling. Harcourt braced Chavanovich. They bought the book and put it to market, and like, they made some cuts to it and they changed the name. But it sold six thousand units and it got pushed to book clubs. But Bone was irate.
Absolutely, those are low numbers for what imagined he was really he was imagining.
That's not what was Megan the mad. Now I have to say that, as someone who can't stand the publishing industry, he won my heart with this. Every writer I know has some complain about publishers totally. The industry is so poorly run.
They're good in worthwhile complaints.
Right, So, in nineteen seventy nine, in the middle of his one sided beef with his publisher, he decided to do something he'd done it before. Saron. He got on a plane. Who zaren close your eyes, I was wondering, I want you to picture it. Yes, it's Tuesday, October ninth, in eighteen seventy nine. You are a New York City police officer. You're assigned to the aviation unit as you are a decorated helicopter pilot, having honed your skills in Vietnam.
Today is going to be a busy one and you are ready see Fidel Castro's in town to speak at the UN. Tensions are high. You straighten the tie on your uniform and adjust your ball cap. You are unflappable. Let everyone else be anxious about this, your stone cold. As you and two other pilots sit in an office at Floyd Bennett Field in southeast Brooklyn, listening to radio chatter, you get a call, get your bird in the air. We got us a situation. Two of you dash out
to your choppers. Immediately you're both up in the air. You've been told that there's a plane buzzing UN headquarters. Possible terrorist. What with Castro in town and all? You head up to midtown Manhattan and take stock of the situation and see what can be done. As you approach, you see a red and white plane gliding around and around, back and forth, up and down around the tall, mirrored
glass UN building. You look down and see that your fellow officers have blocked off First Avenue in East River Drive for about seven blocks in front of the UN There are ambulances and fire trucks lining the now empty streets, and you see the steady stream of people filing out of the building evacuating for their safety. You attempt to contact the plane on your radio. You expect either silence or an angry person barking demands at you. Instead, you hear a man's voice crapple to life. He tells you
he's there to make a statement. Obviously, you think the plane banks left to make another turn around the building. You follow. He dips down a little too close for comfort to the ground. You keep right beside him and check your altimeter two hundred and fifty feet. Listen, You tell him Castro and the un are covered with security. They've already shoveled him away, and there's no use trying to get him this way. The man chuckles, Castro. What's this got to do with Castro? You're confused. You ask
him why he's doing this. They took out the raunchy parts, he tells you, raunchy parts of what you ask, my book. He begins to loop around the building again, with you and the other helicopter pilot following on either side of them. He tells you that he wrote a book and that the publisher cut out the good parts, even changed the title to Confessions of a Promiscuous Counterfeitter garbage name. He says,
and you have to agree with him. He goes on to tell you about how Harcourt Brace was stiffing him on his royalties, how he wanted to send a message and make them take him seriously. You all bank turn again. As Boden makes yet another loop, You ask him, why is he buzzing the UN?
Then?
How does the UN fit into this. I'm not buzzing the UN, he tells you. I'm buzzing Hardcourt Brace offices. You look down and you realize that they're just a couple blocks over from the UN. You sort of remember seeing that building once the tower's been listening the whole time. They tell you the UN has asked NYPD to take quote positive action. You mean shoot him down, you ask, I guess that's what they want, But that's not happening.
You're told debris would rain down on the eight thousand people that have been evacuated and wait anxiously along the police barricades. You just keep them talking, and you do for hours. As Boden's fuel supply starts to get low, you get a message. The head of Harcourt Brace, Ryan Dumain, has agreed to me with this guy. You tell Bowden, and he agrees to land his plane at LaGuardia. You tell him you'll be right there with him the whole way.
Why does this always work?
It always works. So it really didn't because as soon as he landed, he gets arrested. There's no meeting with the publishers. Oh yeah, they're just like, yeah, tell me if you get down here. So they yank his pilot's license on the spot, and they charged him with aggravated harassment, which was a New York City charge, and extortion in interstate commerce, a federal charge.
Whep.
So that federal charge could get him twenty years and a ten thousand dollars fine. That's like forty three grand today. So the New York Daily News reported that the New York Post was in on it with him what like. They said that the paper had forget up no because like all the other papers though, including the Post, they asserted that this audio tape from Bowden had been delivered to the Post that morning, right before he got in
the air. The New York Daily News was like, no, he They've had that tape for a week and they're the ones who coordinated. They're just telling tales anyway, the tape that it was like this wild accusation that just suddenly gets ignored. Totally, totally is But so this audio tape detailed his grievances and like maybe the Post sat on it a bit, but they eventually shared it with authorities. Okay, Boden did a night in jail, then he got out on bail. The papers were loving this, absolutely loving it.
Hardcourt Brace was not. They released a statement that said that they had recently rejected this like ten page outline that he gave them for a murder mystery. And then but they said, quote, our relations with mister Bowden have been correct and not unpleasant. Okay, yeah, So anyway, Harry Steinberg, who he did the book reviews for Newsday, he described the autobiography as quote an interesting story, not very well told. It was the kind of book you want to for get,
kind of out you want out. So the painters all picked up on the story of his Australian stunt as well, and so like the speculation about his punishment was just absolutely rampant. They also went out of their way to portray him as insane. He's like this zany. They kept calling him zany loopy guy. Who pulled idiotic stunts. They used these wild pictures of him with like crazy hair.
Zane. I mean that picture like you know the screwball comedies. I imagine like the heroines like you know, Catherine Hepburn trying to drive Carrie Grant nuts. That's my picture.
They're just like this guy's absolutely.
This guy's threatening people with a plane.
But the insanity comes up again because the court ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Yeah, but that gambit that he used in the past and hold he still he had to stand trial and a grand jury indicted him on February fourth, nineteen eighty, but on March third, nineteen eighty he was acquitted of all charges by a jury acquitted fully acquitted. He passed away in April of nineteen eighty three, at the age of sixty five, in
San Diego. I'm not sure why he was in San Diego, although he did tell the papers in New York after the un incident that he had a house in Australia and a house in Cucamonga, California. I'm guessing that's Rancho Cucamua, Yeah, right outside of La not San Diego either way, So I couldn't find an obituary for him in either the
US or Australia. I know, and he died because there was a notice to creditors in the paper in Australia saying, if you're after he died, this guy died on the state and if you you know, get in touch if he owes you money. So he made this wild name for himself in life, but there's not a final tribute to him in death, which I just think is fascinating nothing. So, Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
This guy makes so many interesting choices as out of the box thinker. But I have to say say that playing your your hits again of like, oh I didn't get what I want. I'm going back to the skies in a plane. I'm gonna make it right.
It made it kind of right the first time, the first.
Time it did, But that's not something. Kind of my point is that I don't think you can repeat. I don't think that lightning strikes twice, you know. So like the fact that he thinks that after having such success reading people and knowing how to play the moment, it's like he just got old and lazy, or he just wanted to play one of the old hits and like go out with some glory. Remember when I did this was Wild is Killed in Sydney.
I can't even talk about impulse control with him because there's a lot of planning.
Yeah, he spends a lot of time thinking about a lot.
Of time to think, oh maybe not. But he has that addiction to the adrenaline them it obviously and.
The getting away with that, and like you can't tell me what to do?
Yeah, exactly what.
Yours, Elizabeth? What's your ridiculous take ony?
My ridiculous takeaway is this is another reason why people shouldn't fly small planes.
No, stop it with that. That is that it's mean and unfair to those of us who want to fly small planes and are not musicians, so we're not at risk.
That's true. You know what I need right now?
What talk bag? Oh?
Hell yeah, hit me Dave.
Oh my god, sp.
I love get.
A Elizabeth Sarah. Then producer d thanks so much for always producing such a great show. I am that person who would love to be into true crime because of the intrigue and the narrative and the character elements, But then I just can't get into it because I don't like when dogs and cats get hurt, or people get maimed, or other terrible things happen. So you guys hit that perfect sweet spot where I can be entertained but still fall asleep. Keep up with great work.
You're very welcome. Thank you.
Of your people wants to know if the dog or cat.
I want to make sure the animals turn out okay. I want to make sure the people survive.
You're a good person, so were you.
We we do that here all the time. Twice a week we deliver. I'm so glad that that That's right. That's that's all we have for today. You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. There is not password protected anymore.
Oh nice, you can get back.
We're also a ridiculous Crime on Twitter, Instagram, blue Sky, Bluesky, Sorry it's yeah. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and number one. Leave a talk back on the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Raunchy part Appreciator Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger as Judith. Research is by Counterfeit Bill ader Marissa Brown and u N
security expert Alex French. The theme song is by Duped Dime store owner Thomas Lee in Australia's number two aerial photographer Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany. Five hundred guests Haron, makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive producers are the Cruising counterfeiter Ben Bolin and Driving Dud dollar dealer Noel Brown.
We dis Clime, say It one More Times.
Cry Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts. My heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows