#61 The Bank Robber

9:33Stevie Lane:X packed a suitcase with some clothes and books and a few favorite CDs, Ice-T, They Might Be Giants. He stole a pair of his mother's pantyhose to pull over his face as a disguise. He put on a trench coat and hid the sawed-off shotgun inside. As he got on the school bus, the driver asked about his outfit. It's for drama class, he said. When the bus arrived at school, he was the last to get off. All around him, kids were streaming out of buses and parents' cars, filing into school, going about another normal day.

10:07Kalila Holt:And there was a moment of standing there, and if I turned left, I would be with a crowd of kids and heading towards the entrance of the school. And if I turned right, I'd be off school grounds and walking towards where the bank was.

10:22Stevie Lane:Maybe it still wasn't too late to give up on his plan. Like, I could just go to school and life could just go back to what it was yesterday and the day before.

10:33Kalila Holt:But I turned the other way, and I walked towards the bank.

10:41Stevie Lane:When X arrived, the bank was still closed. So at the back of the bank's parking lot, he waited behind some trees. And then, at 10.15, he took a deep breath. Okay, he thought. Here we go.

10:55Kalila Holt:And so I pulled the stocking over my face, and I ran through the parking lot, and I entered the bank with the gun raised in the air and I yelled something to the effect of, everybody get on the floor, this is a robbery.

11:13Kalila Holt:It was like a dream or like watching someone else go through these actions like I was a passenger and they were doing the driving.

11:21Jonathan Goldstein:Yeah.

11:22Kalila Holt:I remember there was a guy, the first person who was standing in line and he turned toward me and started laughing. I don't know if he thought it was a joke or he just couldn't believe that this little pipsqueak voice kid was holding up a bank or something. But that really made me mad. I felt like I was being laughed at. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.

11:54Stevie Lane:Had you ever used a gun before?

11:56Kalila Holt:No, I was actually kind of scared of him. Like, I didn't load this gun because I was scared that I would get hurt or somebody would get hurt. I didn't want to hurt anybody.

12:04Stevie Lane:X knew that most of the money would be in the vault. He forced two bank tellers to bring him in there and told them to stuff stacks of bills into his bag. When the bag grew full, he picked it up and walked past all the customers still lying on the floor. Then, he exited out the front door and made his way to a dumpster where he threw away the shotgun.

12:25Kalila Holt:I entered the hotel just a teenager with a green and yellow sports bag of over$40 ,000.

12:36Unbelievably, the plan had worked.

12:39Stevie Lane:Now X just had to wait out the police who would be responding to the scene. And then he'd be off to New York. He marched up to the hotel clerk and asked for a room.

12:50Kalila Holt:And she kind of looked at me like, what? And she said, I'm sorry, all of our rooms are rented by the month. This isn't like that kind of hotel where you can come and just get a room for a night.

13:01Stevie Lane:Daily versus monthly rates. The one thing movies hadn't prepared him for. X panicked. He couldn't just hang out in the lobby. A kid playing hooky would draw attention. So he headed out the hotel door.

13:14Kalila Holt:And right on the corner of the street is a police officer.

13:19Stevie Lane:X had two options. walk away from the officer, which might look suspicious, or walk towards him. And so I decided to walk towards him and try to act as cool as I could. Just after passing the officer and crossing the street, he heard the policeman cry out, Freeze. When X turned around, the cop's gun was pointed right at him.

13:47Stevie Lane:X was arrested, and from there, things moved quickly. At the police station, he confessed to the crime, and a date was set in juvenile court. X spent the next few nights in jail. Because his parents couldn't afford a lawyer, one was appointed to him. After the court proceedings, he was allowed to see his parents. It was his first time seeing them since breakfast on the morning of the robbery. They were just destroyed.

14:12Kalila Holt:Like, I've never seen them cry as much and be so... Like, it was hard for me to look at. They were so upset. And, yeah, they just looked broken.

14:24Stevie Lane:A few days later, X was sentenced to 12 years.

14:28Kalila Holt:I remember hearing that big, long number and thinking, okay, well, I guess they're not going to let me off because I was a kid. And I remember going back to my cell and crying because it was like, okay, this is really sinking in now, like, I'm going to be here for a long time.

14:44Stevie Lane:X was sent to a youth facility where he was one of the youngest inmates. He spent a lot of time reading, mostly the classics, Dickens, Moby Dick, the Bible. He underwent an intensive treatment program of daily therapies and took his rehabilitation seriously. After three years, when his case came up for review, he was released at the age of 17.

15:13Stevie Lane:From here, X's story, and I mean this in a good way, is unremarkable. He went to college, he got married, and has had good jobs.

15:22Kalila Holt:I ended up at one point working in a bank, which...

15:24Stevie Lane:Wow.

15:25Kalila Holt:Yeah, kind of funny.

15:26Stevie Lane:It's been over 30 years since the day of the robbery. And in many ways, X has turned his life completely around. And yet, when he thinks about that day... I really feel so ashamed and so regretful. So much so that it's almost like he's divided himself in two. There's the boy who is capable of committing that crime and the grown man to whom that boy is a stranger. A part of the reason it's been so hard for X to tell the story is because, in a weird way, it's like he's telling someone else's story. And it's a story that all his life, he's been told no one wants to hear.

16:09Kalila Holt:My parents, in particular, just wanted to pretend like it never even happened. And they were very embarrassed and kept it very secret.

16:18Jonathan Goldstein:It wasn't a matter of just don't tell anyone.

16:20Stevie Lane:It was, if anybody asks, he went to go live with one of your older brothers. I spoke to several of X's six brothers to hear how the crime impacted the family.

16:30Jonathan Goldstein:My mom, I think, was really embarrassed by this. She thought the community would judge her. For years, I didn't tell people about it, like, well into my adulthood. It wasn't until maybe my sophomore year of high school that I shared it with some very close friends. Yeah.

16:47Stevie Lane:And how did that feel?

16:50Jonathan Goldstein:It was weird. I remember being really nervous, like, oh my gosh, are they going to judge me?

16:54Stevie Lane:No.

16:55Jonathan Goldstein:You know, when you're told as a nine-year-old that this thing is really embarrassing and shameful, you almost absorb it as like your own. You take it on. You know, to feel compelled to keep up a lie, to feel shame, that's difficult for a nine-year-old.

17:14Stevie Lane:And it can remain difficult.

17:16Jonathan Goldstein:I didn't feel comfortable breaking a vow of silence.

17:21Stevie Lane:This is another of X's brothers, now a middle-aged man.

17:25Jonathan Goldstein:Even, you know, now, my wife, I've been married to her for over 20 years. I've never told her about it.

17:31Stevie Lane:You, you've never, you've never told your wife about your brother?

17:36Jonathan Goldstein:Yeah, that's right.

17:38Stevie Lane:Until even now?

17:39Jonathan Goldstein:Yeah.

17:41Stevie Lane:Wow. Did you feel compelled to share it with her at any point?

17:46Jonathan Goldstein:I could say, I don't know, over the last couple of decades, there's probably been one or two instances where I thought about mentioning it. But after this interview, I may tell her, I probably will, but it hasn't come up yet.

18:05Stevie Lane:Shame can be silencing. And so for 30 years, X has kept quiet. But it hasn't prevented him from thinking about the people in the bank that day, which is why he's come to me.

18:18Kalila Holt:The people that were there, I was hoping that I might be able to at least let them know in some fashion that I'm really sorry that I destroyed their peace and left them with a lot of trauma.

18:29Stevie Lane:In all those movies X loved to watch, After the crime is committed, the camera remains on the criminal, the star. It never follows the customers, the employees. They're just extras. But X wants to know what became of them, how that day fits into their lives. And most of all, he wants to apologize.

18:50Kalila Holt:I tried to imagine what the rest of their day was like. I'm guessing they went home early and spouses were called or children were called. And they had to tell that story probably multiple times to police, to family, and relive it. And how did they sleep that night? And for the nights to come, it is just horrific to me. and I talked earlier about the students at the school who I saw get beat up. I empathized with the guy on the floor getting his face kicked. It never would have occurred to me that I would have been the bully in that scenario, that I would be the one, metaphorically anyway, doing the kicking.

19:40After the break, the day of the robbery.

19:43Stevie Lane:From the perspective of the victims.

20:03Jonathan Goldstein:On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury them, what are they going to do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.

20:35Stevie Lane:When X thinks about apologizing, there are three people he wants to apologize to. First, the bank tellers. the two women who led him into the vault that day.

20:46Kalila Holt:That vault was a very small room, and they were in very close proximity to me.

20:52Stevie Lane:So close, in fact, that at one point, while opening his gym bag, X unthinkingly leaned the shotgun against one of their thighs.

21:00Kalila Holt:They didn't know it wasn't loaded. They didn't know how unstable I was. They didn't know anything. And to feel the weight of that against their leg is just horrifying.

21:13Stevie Lane:The other person X wants to apologize to is the officer who arrested him that day.

21:19Kalila Holt:There's some stuff that's fuzzy, but I remember this very well.

21:22Stevie Lane:After the policeman yelled for him to drop the money, X reached into his back pocket, where he had kept a few bills stashed for his cab to the airport.

21:30Kalila Holt:Not thinking how a police officer might perceive someone reaching behind their back and pulling something out. I found out later that he came very close to shooting me and that the cop was very distraught, thinking that he almost shot a teenage kid.

21:55Stevie Lane:Teen nabbed for bank theft, reads a local newspaper the day after the robbery. The article names the arresting policeman as Officer Roy Tupin. Our search for Officer Tupin is a few years too late, though. In 2019, Tupin died in a diving accident.

22:14Jonathan Goldstein:My name is Nick Tupin. I'm the son of the arresting officer on the day of the robbery.

22:20Stevie Lane:Nick says his dad told him stories about that day.

22:23Jonathan Goldstein:To my knowledge, that was the closest that he'd ever gotten to shooting anyone. Yeah. It shook his world. He took some time off of work. You know, he wasn't sure that that was his career path anymore. I know that it messed with him, you know what I mean?

22:44Stevie Lane:One thing Tupin never shared with his son was what kept him from shooting X when he reached into his pocket. But Nick has a theory.

22:52Jonathan Goldstein:14 years old. I'm 43 now. I was born in 78, so you do the math.

22:57Stevie Lane:Huh. Yeah, you would have been about the same age.

23:01Jonathan Goldstein:I imagine he looked at that kid like he was looking at me kind of deal.

23:05Stevie Lane:When I tell Nick about X's undertaking, how he's been hoping to make amends for that day, he offers this.

23:13Jonathan Goldstein:I think Dad would have forgiven him a long time ago. I mean, I really do.

23:19Stevie Lane:What makes you think that? As he got older, just some of the rhetoric that, you know, people make mistakes.

23:29Jonathan Goldstein:and you just hope, like hell, that they don't have life-changing consequences for what it's worth.

23:44Stevie Lane:After speaking with Nick, I turn my attention to the bank tellers. They aren't identified in any of the articles and the police reports have redacted their names and since the courthouse records have been sealed and the bank itself no longer exists, I decide that my best bet is to post a sort of missing persons notice in the local paper. I ask if there's anyone who might remember the bank robbery from over 30 years ago, or the bank employees from that time. One person responds. She doesn't know the tellers, but she does know about the robbery. Even though my ad didn't mention X by name, she knew who it was immediately.

24:24Stevie Lane:I sat behind X in Spanish class, she says. And so, the day after the robbery, when a photo of X lying face down was published in the newspaper, she recognized him. Because her desk was behind his, she knew the back of his head well. He had a small bald spot, and the bullies teased him about it relentlessly. I emailed because I was thinking, if X wants to talk about why he did it, He probably would say he was bullied. I want to back him up. She says she can understand why X felt so desperate. She was a target of the same bullies. She, too, spent her lunches in the library, in her case reading science fiction and imagining a life in a different world.

25:10Stevie Lane:It makes me sad, she says. If he stuck around, maybe we would have been friends.

25:25Stevie Lane:Because the missing person notice yields no leads, I start combing through old articles for names that might connect me to the tellers.

25:32Jonathan Goldstein:Hi, I'm William, and I was a customer in the bank on the day of the robbery.

25:37Stevie Lane:Not only was William a customer, but in one of the articles I read, he's described as chasing X after he fled in hopes of apprehending him.

25:46Jonathan Goldstein:Anytime you're facing somebody in a combat situation, Everything else around you disappears. It just went tunnel vision on this guy. Who is this son of a bitch?

26:00Stevie Lane:What inspired you? Are you a risk taker kind of person?

26:04Jonathan Goldstein:Yeah, many years of martial art training. That's where that comes from. No fear.

26:10Stevie Lane:Before I can ask William about the bank tellers, we're interrupted.

26:14Jonathan Goldstein:Just one second. We're going to order something from a drive-in.

26:20Stevie Lane:William is talking to me from his car. He's with his wife.

26:23Jonathan Goldstein:The two of us hadn't eaten. Oh, my. We've been in the doctor's office all day. So I'm going to interrupt you here. I'm going to place this order. Yeah, don't mind me. Where's that button? Okay. Hi, can I help you? Yes, just a small order of nuggets. Four or six? Just four.

26:43Stevie Lane:Quickly, I do the math. Four divided by two is two? Two nuggets per spouse? For those of you unfamiliar with nugget apportioning, or nuggetnomics, eating two nuggets is like eating two grapes, two peanuts. It's like eating two nuggets. With my microphone muted to William, I process my feelings of judgmentalness to my producer, Stevie. Like, you're starving and you're like, oh my god, I haven't eaten all day. I'll just, we'll share, we'll share four nuggets. like a nugget's that big.

27:21Jonathan Goldstein:Okay. Thank you. All right, so go right ahead.

27:26Stevie Lane:I proceed with the most pressing question. Is that all you're getting?

27:32Jonathan Goldstein:Well, we have a nice dinner plan, so we don't want to wreck the dinner. So I'm just going to get a little appetizer.

27:40Stevie Lane:William has no fear, save the fear of ruining his appetite. With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, I ask William if he remembers the names of the tellers. He says no, but he does remember X.

27:54Jonathan Goldstein:He yelled at everybody to get on the effing floor or I'll blow your heads off.

28:00Stevie Lane:Did he sound like a child? No. He sounded very menacing.

28:07Jonathan Goldstein:And he did not look like a child.

28:10Stevie Lane:X had told me that he looked like a pipsqueak kid, that people laughed. But William says he doesn't remember any laughter, only screaming.

28:19Jonathan Goldstein:I found out the next day that he was 14 years old. I couldn't believe it. Unbelievable. You know, that takes chutzpah. Or is real desperate.

28:36Jonathan Goldstein:My name is Lujine. I was a former manager of the hotel.

28:41Stevie Lane:In the hope there might be someone who can connect me to the tellers. I spend my days speaking with anyone vaguely associated with the robbery.

28:49Jonathan Goldstein:My name's Mary, and I represented in juvenile court. My name is George. I wrote for the My name is Jane, and I used to be the librarian at high school.

29:00Stevie Lane:My name is Bale, and I was a police sergeant at the police department there. But no one can recall the tellers. Did you bank at that bank across the street?

29:09Jonathan Goldstein:No, I did not.

29:10Stevie Lane:I wish I could help you, but...

29:11Jonathan Goldstein:I don't really remember.

29:13Stevie Lane:Did you know any of the people that worked there?

29:16Jonathan Goldstein:No. No. No. No. Sorry, I can't help you.

29:25Stevie Lane:But then, after two months of phone calls, I call a restaurant across the street from where the bank used to be. The owner of the restaurant is now 84 years old. When I ask if she remembers anyone who worked at the bank back then, anyone she was friendly with, she gives me the names of two people, two tellers, Darlene and Judy.

30:06Jonathan Goldstein:On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury them, what are they going to do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.

30:38Stevie Lane:It takes me a few weeks, but eventually I find Darlene and Judy. And as it turns out, incredibly, they were the very same tellers working on the day of the robbery. After months of searching, we found them. Judy is now in her 80s and living in a retirement home. But when I speak with her daughter, she tells me her mother isn't interested in talking, that she wants to leave the past in the past. As for Darlene, at first she seems open, but then her husband grows ill, and she stops returning my calls. I can't tell if it's because her husband is sick or if she's changed her mind about revisiting that day.

31:17Kalila Holt:Hey, Jonathan, how are you? Hey, good, how are you?

31:20Stevie Lane:It's been over a year since I first spoke with X. I tell him the bank tellers don't seem to want to speak with him. X is disappointed, but says he understands. He says it, though, like he's starting to feel that maybe this whole undertaking was foolish.

31:35Kalila Holt:To them, I'm just still that same guy that did that thing. It's hard for me to blame them, I guess.

31:42Stevie Lane:I suggest to X that maybe he should try writing a letter to Darlene, since she'd seemed open to talking. This way, maybe he can at least offer her his words, and she could decide what to do with them. Darlene, X writes, I understand that words alone cannot undo the pain I caused you and the others in the bank that morning. Still, X expresses his regret, tells Darlene how he's thought of her often. He apologizes many times. After the letter is mailed off, two years pass during which X receives no response. And that's where I think our story ends.

32:29Kalila Holt:Hey, Jonathan. Hey, how are you? A lot has happened since we last spoke.

32:33Stevie Lane:Yeah, yeah, fill me in. But then, in May 2025, X reaches out.

32:39Kalila Holt:A year ago in November, I got a call from one of my brothers, and he doesn't usually call me on the phone, so I picked up and I found out that my dad had passed away.

32:49Stevie Lane:Oh, geez, I'm sorry.

32:51Kalila Holt:Yeah, no, thank you, thank you.

32:53Stevie Lane:X says it was while helping write his father's obituary and listening to his father be eulogized at the funeral, hearing the people who loved him speak about all he'd done in his life, that something happened.

33:05Kalila Holt:It reminded me that this person was more than an unequipped parent, or he was more than just the worst experiences I had with him.

33:17Stevie Lane:Taking a broader view of his father's life helped X to zoom out on his own. There was the day of the robbery, but then there were all the days after, too. If his father's legacy didn't have to be defined by one bad thing, perhaps his own legacy didn't have to be either.

33:35Kalila Holt:You know, when we initially started talking, my hope was that I would be able to speak to the people who were there, and that didn't work out. And it was hard for me, I think, because I almost felt like until they forgave me, I wasn't allowed to forgive myself. that that was like a luxury that I didn't deserve or something like that.

34:01Stevie Lane:Over the past three years, I've sought out the tellers, the customers, and even the policemen who almost shot X, all in service to X finding forgiveness. But there was always one person's forgiveness that he discounted.

34:15Kalila Holt:I was a kid. You know, my head wasn't on straight, and I was dealing with a lot of pain, and I felt like that's what I needed to do to get out of that pain. and I think the closure I've come to realize that needs to happen here is my own. That's the little mini journey I went on, was like, I don't have to keep lying or hiding or running from this or pretending like this was a different person.

34:45Stevie Lane:When X first came to me, he was trying to figure out how to tell his story. But in everything from witness accounts to confessions, From Great Expectations to Moby Dick, stories begin by asserting who the person telling the story is. How can you tell your story if you can't even say your name? You know, I'm going through the trouble of, like,

35:07Kalila Holt:asking you not to call me by my name and worrying about people finding out. But it's me. It's my story. And I'm not proud of it, but I'm also not trying to run away from it. I've done it for long enough.

35:23Stevie Lane:That's really wonderful to hear you say that. And I don't think it's such a mini journey, you know.

35:30Kalila Holt:Yeah. So do you think all that being said, you think you're okay with just coming out and saying it?

35:47Kalila Holt:My name is John Paul. and when I was 14 years old, I robbed a bank for$40 ,000.

35:59Stevie Lane:Yeah, how does that feel?

36:07Kalila Holt:Like there's a lightness in it. I don't know that I've ever said those exact words.

36:19Kalila Holt:I almost hesitate to say it because it's like I said, I felt like I wasn't allowed to not wallow in shame, but I feel relieved, I guess.

36:27Stevie Lane:Yeah, it's really, John Paul, that's a very nice thing to hear.

36:33Kalila Holt:Thank you. Yeah, it's kind of surprising to me how I've just been saying words, right? Like I'm just talking. Like how could words make that much of a difference?

36:52Stevie Lane:Words allow us to tell the story of who we are. And telling that story can feel like a burden. But it can also help lay that burden to rest.

37:02Kalila Holt:It feels like a new chapter in my life or a new story, and I'm kind of allowing myself to be excited about it.

37:20Thank you.

37:53Jonathan Goldstein:Now that the furniture is returning to its goodwill home

38:02Kalila Holt:Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit

38:09Jonathan Goldstein:Take this moment to decide

38:13Kalila Holt:If we meant it, if we tried or felt around for far too long

38:22Jonathan Goldstein:from things that accidentally touch.

38:29Stevie Lane:This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie Lane and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our senior producer is Kalila Holt. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks to Sean Cole, Chris Neary, Ben Nadeff-Haffrey, Lydia Jean Cott, Connie Williams, Catherine Reinhart, and especially Mohini McGaucher. Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at heavyweightpodcast or email us at heavyweight at pushkin.fm.

39:09Stevie Lane:We'll be back with a brand new episode in two weeks.

39:44Jonathan Goldstein:On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury them, what are they going to do to me? What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Listen to Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.

40:14Jonathan Goldstein:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.