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SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Harrowing Story of the North Hollywood Shootout · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: This one was mentioned in our recent episode on the
0:03
Speaker 1: militarization of the police because the bandits who robbed a
0:06
Speaker 1: bank in Los Angeles were so heavily armed to the
0:09
Speaker 1: teeth that they outgunned the cops, which led to police
0:13
Speaker 1: carrying assault rifles to protect themselves from another event like this.
0:17
Speaker 1: Except this robbery was so off the rails you can
0:20
Speaker 1: kind of imagine there might not ever be one like
0:22
Speaker 1: it again.
0:24
Speaker 2: Away we go, Welcome to Stuff you should know, a
0:32
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio.
0:40
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
0:43
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry, and we're just well, Jerry's not here. Actually,
0:48
Speaker 1: now that I mentioned it, those useoph habit, wasn't it.
0:51
Speaker 3: A ghost of Jerry?
0:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's not. She's still with us, said, she's driving
0:55
Speaker 1: the getaway car.
0:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's not that kind of ghost.
0:58
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no, no, she's the kind of ghost
1:00
Speaker 1: that drives a getaway car. Right. So I mentioned that, though, Chuck,
1:06
Speaker 1: because it's apropos of the heist episode we're about to
1:09
Speaker 1: talk about, which I guess this would qualify as a heist.
1:12
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, I mean heck yeah, Well, usually.
1:16
Speaker 1: To me, heists are a little more intricate most of
1:21
Speaker 1: the time successful. This is a little more brute firepower
1:28
Speaker 1: than than any other heist or most other heists, So
1:31
Speaker 1: that's why it kind of disqualifies it in my opinion.
1:34
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's my essay on heists.
1:37
Speaker 3: I don't even know what the definition of heist is.
1:39
Speaker 1: I just gave it to you.
1:41
Speaker 3: Apparently it is a robbery, So yeah, sure.
1:44
Speaker 1: I mean, of course it's a robbery. But and this
1:47
Speaker 1: qualifies as a robbery. It's just it's its own.
1:49
Speaker 3: Unique thing, for sure, man big time.
1:51
Speaker 1: And you know, as you're reading this, it's so theatrical,
1:55
Speaker 1: it's so just totally off the chain nuts that this
1:59
Speaker 1: actually has in real life. It's you have to remind
2:02
Speaker 1: yourself from time to time like these are like really
2:04
Speaker 1: really bad guys and what they were doing was beyond reprehensible.
2:08
Speaker 1: It's just we're so trained to get sucked into that
2:12
Speaker 1: kind of like action in the movies that when it
2:15
Speaker 1: happens in real life you have to like kind of
2:16
Speaker 1: turn off that entertainment part of it and bring yourself
2:20
Speaker 1: back to reality. Sometimes, at least I did. I had
2:22
Speaker 1: trouble doing it during research a few times.
2:25
Speaker 4: No, for sure, and we're talking about the North Hollywood
2:30
Speaker 4: shootout is what it's known a lot as the Battle
2:34
Speaker 4: of North Hollywood sometimes. And this was on February twenty
2:37
Speaker 4: eighth and nineteen ninety seven, when two dudes armed to
2:41
Speaker 4: the hilt with assault rifles like anything you can think of.
2:46
Speaker 4: And this is, as we'll see a time when and
2:49
Speaker 4: this is kind of one of the big sort of
2:52
Speaker 4: I guess, interesting and scary parts about this. This is
2:55
Speaker 4: when cops like people could be more out armed than
3:00
Speaker 4: the police that are trying to stop them, right, And
3:04
Speaker 4: that's what happened the day that they engaged, when North
3:07
Speaker 4: Hollywood became a war zoned for a little while.
3:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as a matter of fact, this episode, this
3:12
Speaker 1: event led directly to the militarization of police forces, as
3:17
Speaker 1: we see these two guys basically pressed that issue because yeah,
3:21
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Police Department was outgunned, out armed, but
3:29
Speaker 1: definitely not outnumbered. They outnumbered the robbers, but they were
3:33
Speaker 1: still getting pinned down and they were having no luck
3:36
Speaker 1: with anything. Well, I don't want to give too much away.
3:38
Speaker 1: Let's just start at the beginning, because we're talking about
3:41
Speaker 1: two dudes, a twenty six year old This is back
3:44
Speaker 1: in ninety seven named Larry Eugene Phillips Junior, and there
3:48
Speaker 1: was a thirty year old who he was friends with
3:50
Speaker 1: named Emil Mattiseranu. And even though Emil was older, Larry
3:55
Speaker 1: was the one who called the shots. He was roundly
3:58
Speaker 1: described by family members says manipulative, controlling, and he had
4:05
Speaker 1: Emil under his thumb a meal was described by his
4:07
Speaker 1: family members later as a follower. So even though he
4:10
Speaker 1: was a little older, he listened to what Emil told
4:13
Speaker 1: them to do, not just in their partnership as like criminals,
4:17
Speaker 1: but in life too. I read somewhere that Emil got
4:20
Speaker 1: married because Larry told him he should and that he
4:23
Speaker 1: shouldn't marry an American girl. So Eiel went to Romania
4:26
Speaker 1: and got himself a Romanian bribe because he was a
4:28
Speaker 1: Romanian immigrant. That level of control is apparently what they
4:32
Speaker 1: were engaged in.
4:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally previous to their meeting they met each other.
4:38
Speaker 4: They were bodybuilders, not professionally but just bodybuilding guys at
4:42
Speaker 4: Gold's Gym and Venice Beach in nineteen eighty nine, and
4:46
Speaker 4: just prior to this is when Phillips started. His life
4:51
Speaker 4: of crime started kind of small. I guess, like most criminals,
4:55
Speaker 4: just a heist of four hundred dollars from a seer's
5:00
Speaker 4: othern California, and then graduated to burglary, real estate fraud
5:06
Speaker 4: stuff like that. Apparently was sort of enamored of like
5:10
Speaker 4: Scarface and ultimately the movie Heat.
5:14
Speaker 3: So if this shootout.
5:15
Speaker 4: Sounds familiar, it sounds a lot like the one from Heat,
5:18
Speaker 4: it's because they seem to have been inspired by that movie,
5:21
Speaker 4: for sure, but love not only just the gangsters and movies,
5:25
Speaker 4: but also the white collar criminals. He would apparently like
5:29
Speaker 4: park in front of rich people's houses and just sort
5:31
Speaker 4: of fantasize about that life and wanted money like he
5:37
Speaker 4: you know, in the end, this whole thing was about
5:40
Speaker 4: money and like the thrill of it all largely because
5:43
Speaker 4: of Phillips.
5:44
Speaker 1: Right for sure, and Phillips was he kind of had
5:47
Speaker 1: the odds stacked against him in succeeding in a normal
5:52
Speaker 1: nine to five life because of the family he was
5:55
Speaker 1: born into. His father, Larry Eugene Phillips, Sr. Who would
5:59
Speaker 1: later speak about his son in glowing terms after this.
6:03
Speaker 1: He was actually an escape beef from a prison in
6:07
Speaker 1: Colorado when Larry Junior was born, so Larry Junior was
6:11
Speaker 1: born into an alias. His last name was False Orful.
6:15
Speaker 1: That's how he was born, and on his sixth birthday,
6:19
Speaker 1: apparently the FBI came in with guns drawn to capture
6:22
Speaker 1: his dad, and that helped set up what was referred
6:26
Speaker 1: to as basically a lifelong hatred of the police and
6:30
Speaker 1: by extension, the kind of normal society the police were
6:35
Speaker 1: charged with defending.
6:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
6:38
Speaker 4: As for Mattisonano, he was a Romanian immigrant. Came into
6:43
Speaker 4: the country when he was about eleven and nineteen seventy seven,
6:46
Speaker 4: was naturalized in eighty eight. And his mom, we'll talk
6:50
Speaker 4: about her a little bit. Her name was Valerie Nicolesque.
6:54
Speaker 1: I think that definitely gets it across sure Nicolescue.
6:58
Speaker 4: She says that he was bullied when he was a kid.
7:01
Speaker 4: He became a computer and video game nerd. He ended
7:05
Speaker 4: up going to Deride Institute of Technology when he was
7:08
Speaker 4: nineteen and I'm sorry he got his degree when he
7:11
Speaker 4: was nineteen. But his neighbors also said things like this
7:15
Speaker 4: guy was bad news. He threatened one of the neighbors
7:18
Speaker 4: with a chainsaw because their dog came on his property
7:22
Speaker 4: and their family also had another sort of disturbing secret, right.
7:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had a family business. Emil and his mom,
7:31
Speaker 1: Valerie had basically a residential care center out of their
7:37
Speaker 1: home for people with disabilities, usually cognitive disabilities or mental
7:43
Speaker 1: health issues. And they were set up as a legitimate
7:48
Speaker 1: care institute. No that's not the word, I guess a
7:51
Speaker 1: care home.
7:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.
7:54
Speaker 1: The problem is is they were not a good care
7:57
Speaker 1: home by pretty much any standard. Caught multiple times doing
8:02
Speaker 1: or they were accused multiple times of mistreating the people.
8:06
Speaker 1: One of their residents was left in the hospital just
8:09
Speaker 1: kind of abandoned ditch there. There was supposedly some allegations
8:14
Speaker 1: that Emil had been abusive toward at least one of
8:18
Speaker 1: the patients there, and he was not allowed to come
8:22
Speaker 1: back into the house anymore, which is a problem because
8:24
Speaker 1: this is the family house. And eventually they got shut
8:27
Speaker 1: down for fire codes and later on we'll see it
8:31
Speaker 1: even got worse after the heist happened and all the
8:35
Speaker 1: news came out and the police and the press started
8:38
Speaker 1: looking into that family and their family business. Just suffice
8:41
Speaker 1: to say, like, his mom doesn't appear to have been
8:43
Speaker 1: a very good person herself, just based on the allegations
8:48
Speaker 1: of how she treated the people who were under her care.
8:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was pretty just I mean, this is one
8:54
Speaker 4: of the more disturbing parts of this whole story actually,
8:57
Speaker 4: and it's kind of a sidebar, which is after the
8:59
Speaker 4: shoot out, they found a they searched her like a
9:03
Speaker 4: commercial building that she owned in Pasadena and found a
9:06
Speaker 4: forty four year old mentally disabled woman locked in a
9:10
Speaker 4: room with no windows, with no food or water. And
9:13
Speaker 4: then later it turns out that she was charged for
9:17
Speaker 4: that initially, which was I mean, I guess just sort
9:20
Speaker 4: of like a neglect charge.
9:23
Speaker 3: She was sentenced to ten months.
9:25
Speaker 4: But then later in two thousand and two, I found
9:27
Speaker 4: an article in the La Times where because I was like,
9:30
Speaker 4: why would she do this? It was a social security fraud.
9:34
Speaker 4: She was collecting checks in her name and her and
9:37
Speaker 4: this other woman later on she you know, it was
9:41
Speaker 4: basically welfare and social security fraud. So she got pinched
9:44
Speaker 4: for that in two thousand and two.
9:46
Speaker 1: And if you read kind of some of the contemporary
9:48
Speaker 1: articles from nineteen ninety seven right after the heist, she's
9:52
Speaker 1: kind of portrayed by the press as like the thing
9:56
Speaker 1: she says about herself or her background, the press don't
9:59
Speaker 1: really take on face value. Yeah, like she's she said
10:04
Speaker 1: that she was an opera singer from the state opera
10:07
Speaker 1: in Romania who defected in nineteen seventy seven. And they
10:12
Speaker 1: use the words like claim and when somebody's described as
10:15
Speaker 1: claiming something about their own personal history, that's a signal
10:19
Speaker 1: from the press that this is probably not a trustworthy person.
10:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
10:25
Speaker 4: She would also say after this whole shootout went down
10:28
Speaker 4: with her son that she was like, he was depressed,
10:31
Speaker 4: his wife had left him and taken his kid, and
10:36
Speaker 4: I basically think this was a suicide mission for him.
10:39
Speaker 3: So whether or not that was true, who knows. That's
10:41
Speaker 3: what she claimed, right.
10:42
Speaker 1: So these are the guys who found each other in
10:46
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine at Gold's gym and became really good friends.
10:49
Speaker 1: And one of the things, in addition to bodybuilding that
10:52
Speaker 1: they had in common was a real pronounced love of guns. Yeah,
10:58
Speaker 1: and not just any guns, high powered to assault rifles
11:02
Speaker 1: in particular. And apparently Larry Phillips had a line somewhere
11:09
Speaker 1: on steel cased ammunition. He could get it from Russia,
11:14
Speaker 1: highly illegal, but apparently people weren't paying attention. And I
11:18
Speaker 1: saw there was this British National Geographic little hour long
11:22
Speaker 1: documentary on this called situation critical, which reminded me of
11:26
Speaker 1: that Seinfeld movie Prognosis Negative. But they said that he
11:33
Speaker 1: managed to import rounds of this really illegal, like incredibly
11:38
Speaker 1: powerful steel lined ammunition, by the thousands of rounds. So
11:44
Speaker 1: not only did they have really high powered assault rifles,
11:47
Speaker 1: they had immeasurably higher powered shells to put in those
11:52
Speaker 1: assault rifles, which made them extremely dangerous people.
11:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
11:57
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and as we'll see, maybe we should take a
12:00
Speaker 4: break here. These two guys were doing a lot of
12:04
Speaker 4: really dangerous criming before that ninety seven shootout.
12:08
Speaker 1: Let's take that break, all right.
12:40
Speaker 4: All right, so before we broke, I hinted around that
12:44
Speaker 4: these guys were criming around previous to the nineteen ninety
12:47
Speaker 4: seven shootout where everything ended, and that is very much true.
12:53
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety three, they were pulled over in a
12:55
Speaker 4: rental car in Glendale and cop said, all right, well,
12:58
Speaker 4: let me take a look in the trunk, and they went, oh,
13:01
Speaker 4: you've got two nine millimeter handguns, two forty five hand
13:05
Speaker 4: guns to coalition, a cofts, six smoke grenades, two homemade bombs,
13:10
Speaker 4: three machine guns, two bulletproof vests, one gas mask, six holsters, wigs,
13:15
Speaker 4: ski masks, two police radio scanners to stop watch, and
13:19
Speaker 4: close to three thousand rounds of AMMO, and they said,
13:23
Speaker 4: we're just going to the shooting range man. And you know,
13:27
Speaker 4: sometimes we like to wear wigs or ski masks, or
13:31
Speaker 4: listen to what the cops are doing, or time each other.
13:35
Speaker 1: We're big fans of the police.
13:37
Speaker 4: Obviously that all is, you know, to an outsider obvious bs.
13:43
Speaker 4: But shockingly, the DA said, you know, we don't have
13:47
Speaker 4: enough evidence to convict them of conspiracy to commit robbery,
13:52
Speaker 4: and they pled down to a misdemeanor weapons charge in
13:55
Speaker 4: about four months in county jail.
13:58
Speaker 1: Each It gets even worse than that. That was nineteen
14:01
Speaker 1: ninety three. Okay, they were not only led off with
14:06
Speaker 1: basically a slap on the wrist. What they had in
14:09
Speaker 1: their trunk was described by other people later on as
14:12
Speaker 1: a bank robbery kit. That's everything you needed to rob
14:16
Speaker 1: a bank right there, And it was so painfully obvious
14:18
Speaker 1: that's what that was. That but they still got a
14:21
Speaker 1: stick up note right, no, there wasn't anything like that.
14:24
Speaker 1: They hadn't gotten to that point. But the craziest part
14:28
Speaker 1: of this whole thing even crazier that they only got
14:30
Speaker 1: four months for these weapons. The DA and the judge
14:35
Speaker 1: agreed to give them their weapons back after they got
14:38
Speaker 1: out of jail, so they were re armed, ostensibly so
14:42
Speaker 1: that they could sell the weapons to pay for their
14:45
Speaker 1: legal costs, but no one followed up to make sure
14:47
Speaker 1: they did sell the weapons. They just gave them back
14:50
Speaker 1: their assault rifles and their handguns and probably their ski masks,
14:55
Speaker 1: everything they needed to go rob banks. And that's exactly
14:58
Speaker 1: what they did with that stuff.
15:00
Speaker 3: This was Los Angeles.
15:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, for goodness sakes, I know, it's crazy.
15:04
Speaker 4: So later on, this was after the you know, the
15:08
Speaker 4: final shootout that we're leading up to, but later on
15:11
Speaker 4: there was obviously all kinds of investigations and stuff, and
15:14
Speaker 4: they learned that these two guys were in fact what
15:18
Speaker 4: were known as the High Incident Bandits, these two dudes
15:22
Speaker 4: that robbed well, it was technically it was two incidences,
15:28
Speaker 4: but three banks, because they hit two banks at once.
15:31
Speaker 4: In ninety five, they robbed a well, not a bank,
15:34
Speaker 4: but they robbed a Brinx truck in front of a
15:36
Speaker 4: Bank of America in the valley and they killed a guy,
15:40
Speaker 4: They killed the driver. They opened up fire on these dudes.
15:43
Speaker 1: Without warning, without it. Put your hands and they just
15:45
Speaker 1: came out of nowhere and just started firing on them.
15:48
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, which will you know, we'll see as an
15:50
Speaker 4: obvious precedent. And then in nineteen ninety six, they robbed
15:54
Speaker 4: two Bank of Americas, one of which was the one
15:57
Speaker 4: that they had previously robbed the armored carn from and
16:00
Speaker 4: killed that guy. And you know, it was the same
16:02
Speaker 4: type of deal. They had these automatic rifles, they were,
16:06
Speaker 4: you know, screaming that they're going to kill you.
16:08
Speaker 3: They had body armor.
16:09
Speaker 4: Ski masks, sunglasses. They took their time as far as
16:12
Speaker 4: bank robberies go, by being in these banks for six
16:16
Speaker 4: minutes and eight minutes, that's very long, which is that's
16:19
Speaker 4: a long time for a bank robbery. I tried to
16:20
Speaker 4: get out of there in less than three.
16:22
Speaker 1: Well yeah, that's you know, that's what everybody does.
16:24
Speaker 4: That's our goal. But they made off. I mean they
16:27
Speaker 4: these guys had a lot of money. They made off
16:29
Speaker 4: with between one point three and one point seven million
16:32
Speaker 4: bucks combined from this these two heists.
16:36
Speaker 1: Let alone, then whatever they got from the Brinks robbery, oh.
16:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
16:40
Speaker 4: And they were you know, they were well known, they
16:42
Speaker 4: were the high incidence bandits. The FBI was you know,
16:45
Speaker 4: actively tracking them, and also had a theory that they're
16:49
Speaker 4: not alone, They're part of like a larger crime ring
16:51
Speaker 4: or terror string that's funding them.
16:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like that's not only funding them with arms,
16:56
Speaker 1: but the bank robberies are meant to fund some sort
16:59
Speaker 1: of like right wing paramilitary group or terrorist organization or something.
17:04
Speaker 1: That was the point. That was the premise they were
17:06
Speaker 1: going on because these guys were so incredibly well armed.
17:09
Speaker 1: And just for context too, one point seven million dollars
17:15
Speaker 1: for two bank robberies is an eye popping amount of money. Yeah,
17:19
Speaker 1: it's up there in like the top probably fifty bank
17:23
Speaker 1: robberies in the United States history. Like, those are really
17:26
Speaker 1: big hauls. I saw at the time. Back in nineteen
17:29
Speaker 1: ninety one, the average bank robbery in the United States
17:33
Speaker 1: yielded the robbers about three thousand dollars robbing a bank.
17:37
Speaker 1: The takes were usually so paltry that it wasn't worth
17:42
Speaker 1: the bank's money to invest in other protections like screens
17:47
Speaker 1: that go up really quick between the tellers and the
17:49
Speaker 1: bank robbers. It wasn't worth them installing those in banks
17:52
Speaker 1: because the robbers rarely got away with more than a
17:55
Speaker 1: few thousand dollars. So that was a huge, huge score
17:59
Speaker 1: for almost two mansion dollars between just two bank robberies
18:02
Speaker 1: for these guys.
18:03
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I don't think murder usually occurs at those
18:06
Speaker 4: bank robberies too.
18:08
Speaker 1: Supposedly, I can't remember the number. I think it was
18:11
Speaker 1: like sixteen people died in bank robberies over like I
18:15
Speaker 1: think eighty five to ninety five or something like that,
18:18
Speaker 1: and twelve of them were the bank robber. It was
18:20
Speaker 1: a statistic somewhat like that. So yeah, yeah, and I
18:23
Speaker 1: think eighty five percent of bank robberies get caught. It's
18:26
Speaker 1: a really high risk, usually low reward crime. But if
18:32
Speaker 1: you do it like these guys did, armed to the teeth.
18:35
Speaker 1: And the other reason that their yields were so big,
18:37
Speaker 1: they scouted out the banks and they knew when the
18:41
Speaker 1: bank was going to get some big delivery of cash.
18:44
Speaker 1: Usually it was a payday or something like that. That's
18:47
Speaker 1: why their robberies paid off so well. They had done
18:50
Speaker 1: their homework ahead of time.
18:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's how they do it in the movies.
18:53
Speaker 4: And apparently these guys were inspired by movies.
18:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess everybody else in real life doesn't do
18:58
Speaker 1: it like the movies.
19:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they were, you know, they were living kind
19:03
Speaker 4: of high on the hog for a little while.
19:04
Speaker 3: They had a lot of money.
19:06
Speaker 4: Phillips himself, he was the one that really sort of idolized,
19:10
Speaker 4: you know, being wealthy and all that stuff. He like
19:13
Speaker 4: bought fancy cars, he bought rolexes. I think mattisonana rented
19:18
Speaker 4: a big house for his family. So, you know, I
19:20
Speaker 4: think looking at the timeline, one was in June of
19:23
Speaker 4: ninety five, one was almost a year later, in ninety six, so,
19:28
Speaker 4: and then this final one was in February ninety seven.
19:32
Speaker 3: They weren't you know, they weren't doing this.
19:34
Speaker 4: It's hard to say they were being smart about it
19:36
Speaker 4: because they were so brazen, but it seems like they
19:38
Speaker 4: were doing this as like, all right, well here's our
19:40
Speaker 4: annual salary and then we'll go out and do it
19:42
Speaker 4: again in about a year.
19:44
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, No, they were. It was like their new
19:47
Speaker 1: job and their new hobby and their new life, I
19:50
Speaker 1: guess from what I understand. Right, So, on the day
19:54
Speaker 1: of the robbery, their third heist, February twenty ath, nineteen
19:57
Speaker 1: ninety seven, a Friday, and since it's the end of
19:59
Speaker 1: the mon month, a payday they had targeted a Bank
20:03
Speaker 1: of America. It wasn't one they had hit before, but
20:05
Speaker 1: for some.
20:06
Speaker 3: Reason hated Bank of America.
20:07
Speaker 1: They really and I kind of get why, but being
20:12
Speaker 1: a former Bank of America account holder myself. But they
20:17
Speaker 1: they hit one in North Hollywood. It was on Laurel
20:19
Speaker 1: Canyon Boulevard. Are you familiar with this area? Oh?
20:22
Speaker 3: Of course?
20:22
Speaker 1: Okay, so you knew. Were you in LA at the time? No?
20:27
Speaker 3: I didn't.
20:27
Speaker 4: Oh wow, this is kind of right before that though.
20:29
Speaker 4: I didn't move to LA until two thousand, okay, yeah.
20:34
Speaker 4: And North Hollywood just for references, you know, Hollywood Central
20:37
Speaker 4: Hollywood was kind of right in the middle of sort
20:40
Speaker 4: of central LA. And then just over the mountains as
20:43
Speaker 4: you go into the valley, that's where North Hollywood is.
20:46
Speaker 1: Right and that's where Hank, the Cheshnian gangster in the
20:50
Speaker 1: HBO show Berry is from. That's why they call him
20:54
Speaker 1: NoHo Hank.
20:55
Speaker 3: I need to do, Barry you do.
20:58
Speaker 1: It's one of those shows that gets insanely off the
21:03
Speaker 1: rails and yet they still manage to make it work.
21:05
Speaker 1: It's really good, you know.
21:07
Speaker 4: I watched a little bit of it years ago when
21:09
Speaker 4: it first started and just got distracted and never got
21:13
Speaker 4: back around to it. But I'd love everyone in that show.
21:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you should. You should give it another shot, all.
21:20
Speaker 3: Right, I'll bury up soon.
21:21
Speaker 1: It's weird though, it's it's deceptively gritty. It's a comedy
21:28
Speaker 1: through and through, and it's just bizarre and all that.
21:31
Speaker 1: But there's if you really kind of get into, like
21:33
Speaker 1: the the violence, the meat of it, it's it's pretty hardcore.
21:37
Speaker 1: It's a crazy show. It's hard to pin down, but.
21:40
Speaker 3: It's worth seeing, all right, I'll follow up.
21:42
Speaker 1: So Friday, February twenty eighth, nineteen ninety seven, Larry Phillips
21:47
Speaker 1: and Emil Mattiserano walk into a Bank of America and
21:53
Speaker 1: they are covered head to toe and technical gear ski masks.
21:59
Speaker 1: It turns out Larry Phillips is covered from neck to
22:02
Speaker 1: ankle in body armor.
22:05
Speaker 3: Yeah.
22:05
Speaker 1: That he helped. He apparently so did himself and it
22:08
Speaker 1: was really effective. Yah. Emil matesan who has a trauma
22:12
Speaker 1: plate basically like a bulletproof plate covering his chest and
22:18
Speaker 1: his vital organs. And they walk in and apparently the
22:21
Speaker 1: first thing they did was started firing into the air
22:24
Speaker 1: from their AK forty sevens, and you would think that
22:28
Speaker 1: that would capture the attention of the police, But that's
22:31
Speaker 1: a moot point, because the police watched them walk into
22:34
Speaker 1: the bank from the first moment this started.
22:37
Speaker 4: Boy, I mean, you can do all the planning in
22:40
Speaker 4: the world as a bank robber, but you can never
22:44
Speaker 4: count or discount bad luck for them good luck for
22:48
Speaker 4: everyone else. Sure, but literally there was a police cruiser
22:53
Speaker 4: that were like sitting there and watched two guys walk
22:57
Speaker 4: into this bank armed like this yea, And I'm sure
22:59
Speaker 4: they were like, what the oo and immediately called this
23:04
Speaker 4: is at nine seventeen And they immediately called for backup obviously,
23:08
Speaker 4: and I think once they saw and heard the shots
23:11
Speaker 4: and everything, they all immediately knew that these were the
23:14
Speaker 4: high incident bandits.
23:15
Speaker 1: Yes, And for those fans of Snoop Dogg and Doctor
23:18
Speaker 1: Dre and Ice Cube and NWA, you're well aware that
23:21
Speaker 1: what the police called in was a two to eleven
23:24
Speaker 1: an armed robbery in progress.
23:28
Speaker 3: That's good.
23:29
Speaker 1: So one of the things, a little detail that kind
23:32
Speaker 1: of emerged later on, apparently Larry Phillips and Emal were
23:37
Speaker 1: not drug users whatsoever in any way, shape or form,
23:40
Speaker 1: but apparently they had taken phena barbital just before the
23:43
Speaker 1: bank robbery to basically calm their nerves. They were the
23:47
Speaker 1: kind of bank robbers that you see in the movies
23:50
Speaker 1: but that don't actually exist in real life. These guys
23:52
Speaker 1: existed in real life. They would knock down old ladies
23:55
Speaker 1: and put guns in their faces. They would tell moms
23:58
Speaker 1: that if they didn't shut their kids up, they were
24:00
Speaker 1: going to kill their kids. They fired wildly into the air,
24:03
Speaker 1: they fired wildly into the bank. They just shot everything
24:07
Speaker 1: up everywhere. They were really abusive, They were really tough,
24:10
Speaker 1: They were really scary, and they were also really on
24:15
Speaker 1: point as far as like knowing where the money is,
24:18
Speaker 1: knowing who would have access to the money, and just
24:21
Speaker 1: making this whole thing work. They had also figured out
24:24
Speaker 1: that they had about eight minutes before the average response time.
24:27
Speaker 1: They hadn't noticed the cops watching them walk in, and
24:29
Speaker 1: so they had timer stopwatches on during this whole eight
24:33
Speaker 1: minute robbery.
24:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is what they had in the trunk when
24:37
Speaker 4: the cops pulled them over four years earlier.
24:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, the stopwatch. Yeah.
24:41
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean they had this thing planned out,
24:43
Speaker 4: but they also didn't know certain things, like they asked
24:47
Speaker 4: the bank manager to open up the ATMs, and he's like,
24:51
Speaker 4: I can't open the ATMs, Like I literally can't do that.
24:54
Speaker 4: So he tried to shoot them open, which did nothing
24:58
Speaker 4: to get into the atm, but of course it you know,
25:00
Speaker 4: bullets ricochet everywhere and injured the bank manager. They also,
25:05
Speaker 4: you know, would shoot I think one of them, Phillips,
25:08
Speaker 4: wasn't it, who literally shot into a safe and like
25:13
Speaker 4: shot up a lot of the money that they could
25:15
Speaker 4: have gotten, yeah, ruining that.
25:16
Speaker 1: Out of anger, they learned that the Brinks truck that
25:20
Speaker 1: was supposed to be delivering hundreds and hundreds about three
25:22
Speaker 1: quarters of a million dollars by their estimate, was running
25:26
Speaker 1: late or had been rescheduled to throw off bank robberies,
25:29
Speaker 1: and out of anger, Emial just shot into a safe
25:32
Speaker 1: and basically just ruined a bunch of cash that they
25:35
Speaker 1: could have taken.
25:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.
25:37
Speaker 4: There was also a cell phone on the scene, which
25:39
Speaker 4: is not the most common thing in nineteen ninety seven,
25:42
Speaker 4: for sure, but it was la and they locked a
25:46
Speaker 4: bunch of the They were about, you know, thirty bystanders
25:50
Speaker 4: or you know, just people doing bank business. They separated
25:53
Speaker 4: them out from the tellers and put them in a
25:57
Speaker 4: vault and shut the door and one of the I
26:00
Speaker 4: believe one of the women inside had a cell phone,
26:02
Speaker 4: and I'm not sure how much it help, but she
26:05
Speaker 4: was at least able to be in touch with the cops,
26:08
Speaker 4: sort of describing what she was hearing while all this
26:10
Speaker 4: is going on.
26:11
Speaker 1: Right, this is at a time before people knew what
26:14
Speaker 1: lol meant, and one of the cops she was texting
26:17
Speaker 1: with was like, LOL meaning lots of love. But she
26:21
Speaker 1: didn't take it that way.
26:23
Speaker 3: Lots of love. I thought it was laugh out loud.
26:27
Speaker 1: Right, that's what it means. The cop didn't know that.
26:29
Speaker 1: He thought he was saying like, hang in there, I.
26:32
Speaker 3: Gotcha, I got cha, Okay, I miss I'm a little sick.
26:35
Speaker 1: Today, that's all right. I stole that joke from family guy.
26:37
Speaker 4: Anyway, In the end, though, they did get, you know,
26:41
Speaker 4: a pretty good take. They got about three hundred thousand
26:44
Speaker 4: dollars worth of cash, and then I guess we should
26:48
Speaker 4: probably take a break here. But then they exited the
26:50
Speaker 4: bank and all h e double hockey sticks broke loose.
27:25
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, it's about nine to twenty five. I believe
27:29
Speaker 1: eight minutes has passed. The timers going off on their
27:32
Speaker 1: stopwatches and Emil Mataseranu and Larry Phillips are now planning
27:38
Speaker 1: on leaving the bank. They have a duffel bag with
27:40
Speaker 1: about three hundred grand in cash, and supposedly right when
27:44
Speaker 1: they walk out the door, the die packs in the
27:46
Speaker 1: bag go off and completely ruin the cash. So the
27:50
Speaker 1: cast that they thought was going to be there wasn't there.
27:52
Speaker 1: The cast that they did get was now completely ruined
27:55
Speaker 1: forever because the die packs. And they come out and
28:00
Speaker 1: realize that the cops have them surrounded, that this eight
28:03
Speaker 1: minute response time thing doesn't count when the cops watch
28:07
Speaker 1: you walk into the bank with ski masks in AK
28:09
Speaker 1: forty sevens.
28:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, what kind of surrounded are we talking about here?
28:13
Speaker 1: We're talking about surrounded on every side with police helicopters
28:17
Speaker 1: hovering overhead. That's what they walked out of the bank into.
28:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the end, there would be more than three
28:23
Speaker 4: hundred cops from five different agencies that were engaged in
28:27
Speaker 4: the shootout.
28:28
Speaker 3: So three hundred EGITST two. That gives you a little.
28:33
Speaker 4: Insight into just how much more heavily armed these guys were.
28:37
Speaker 4: That it lasted this long, But they walked out to
28:39
Speaker 4: that scene and immediately turned North Hollywood into a war zone.
28:45
Speaker 4: I've watched a lot of video this stuff, and this
28:47
Speaker 4: is one of the remarkable things is a lot of
28:50
Speaker 4: this stuff is on video. You know, LA is notorious
28:54
Speaker 4: for you know, anytime something like this is happening, there's
28:58
Speaker 4: six helicopters, news helicopters overhead, like within minutes, just kind
29:02
Speaker 4: of live streaming, or I guess you wouldn't have called it
29:05
Speaker 4: live streaming.
29:06
Speaker 3: Then what would you just say?
29:07
Speaker 5: Broadcasting live broadcasting there you go, oh man, it's been
29:10
Speaker 5: so long, you're so twenties, I am so yeah, live
29:14
Speaker 5: broadcasting this thing from above. So you can watch a
29:17
Speaker 5: lot of this take place, which is horrifying. But again,
29:20
Speaker 5: if you've seen enough movies, you're like, yeah, it looks
29:22
Speaker 5: like a lot of movies I've seen. But a lot
29:25
Speaker 5: of the interviews that you know since then that have
29:27
Speaker 5: happened with cops that were there and taking place basically
29:30
Speaker 5: said like these guys just came out and started shooting
29:34
Speaker 5: at everything that moved, citizens, cars, buildings, police cars at
29:40
Speaker 5: the times at the time didn't have kevlar siding in
29:43
Speaker 5: their doors and stuff, so like hiding inside a police
29:47
Speaker 5: car was no good. Hiding behind a police car was
29:50
Speaker 5: better because the bullet going all the way through it
29:52
Speaker 5: at least is going to you know, ricochet around and
29:55
Speaker 5: probably not go like straight into you. But you know,
29:58
Speaker 5: they were it was all of a sudden, it was
30:00
Speaker 5: like Vietnam out there in North Hollywood.
30:02
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. When the cops had them surrounded
30:05
Speaker 1: and were waiting for them to come out. Number one
30:08
Speaker 1: in the cops mind, they had no idea if the
30:10
Speaker 1: whole place inside had just been massacred, because most robberts
30:14
Speaker 1: don't walk in and start shooting into the air. Again,
30:16
Speaker 1: that's movie stuff that these guys were influenced by. So
30:19
Speaker 1: they heard like I think fifty rounds of automatic rifle
30:23
Speaker 1: fire in the bank while they were waiting for these
30:25
Speaker 1: guys to come out, and they didn't know if everyone
30:28
Speaker 1: inside was just completely killed. That was number one. But
30:31
Speaker 1: number two the cops also presumed, based on experience and history,
30:37
Speaker 1: that when these guys came out and saw they were
30:38
Speaker 1: surrounded not just by cops and cop cars but also helicopters,
30:42
Speaker 1: that they would just you know, put their guns down,
30:44
Speaker 1: put their hands up. So they were surprised at the
30:47
Speaker 1: response that these two guys took on just even just
30:51
Speaker 1: this first initial wave of dozens of cops, and then
30:54
Speaker 1: they were further surprised when the guy's bullets started going
30:58
Speaker 1: right through any kevlar vest, started going right through the
31:01
Speaker 1: police cars, started going through buildings, through concrete buildings. There
31:06
Speaker 1: was a concrete locksmith like kind of like a photo
31:08
Speaker 1: mat in the parking lot that they were taking shelter behind.
31:11
Speaker 1: The bullets were going through them. This was it just
31:15
Speaker 1: suddenly turned completely one hundred and eighty degrees from their expectations.
31:20
Speaker 1: And then even worse than that, they were finding their
31:22
Speaker 1: own guns were having basically just pinging. The bullets were
31:26
Speaker 1: pinging off of these guys because they were wearing so
31:28
Speaker 1: much body armor. So this is about the moment almost
31:32
Speaker 1: immediately out of the gate when the cops were like,
31:35
Speaker 1: this is nothing like anything we've ever experienced before, and
31:38
Speaker 1: we are out gunned right now.
31:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this sounds unbelievable, but it's true. It was
31:44
Speaker 4: so bad right away that the cops realized that and said,
31:48
Speaker 4: if there's any available units, go to the gun store
31:52
Speaker 4: down the street and get everything you can. Like they
31:55
Speaker 4: literally went to a gun store to re arm or
31:59
Speaker 4: you know, I guess what would you call it.
32:01
Speaker 3: When your armament. Yeah, I guess.
32:05
Speaker 4: So they leveled up on their guns and they did
32:08
Speaker 4: get guns. Apparently, according to like recovered ammunition stuff, they
32:13
Speaker 4: didn't actually end up using those in the firefight because
32:16
Speaker 4: I guess, you know, the whole thing didn't last that long,
32:19
Speaker 4: and I'm sure it took a while to you know,
32:21
Speaker 4: talk the store owner and giving up these guns and
32:24
Speaker 4: getting the matching ammunition and all that. But they sent
32:27
Speaker 4: for backup for themselves by going to a gun store,
32:30
Speaker 4: which is just crazy to think about. And they were like,
32:33
Speaker 4: we need the SWAT team. This is we're police cruiser guys,
32:37
Speaker 4: and that we have revolvers or nine millimeters and this
32:41
Speaker 4: ain't happening.
32:42
Speaker 3: Swat team is downtown.
32:43
Speaker 4: Took them about eighteen minutes to get there, and they
32:47
Speaker 4: got there though. They finally showed up, and apparently it
32:50
Speaker 4: was such a quick sort of let's get their quick
32:52
Speaker 4: thing that one of the SWAT officers was about to
32:55
Speaker 4: go on a jog and he shows up in like
32:57
Speaker 4: jogging shorts.
32:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you watched like the footage of the of
33:02
Speaker 1: them taking Mitosurano, he's the first one to them and
33:04
Speaker 1: it's kind of silly looking to be honest. Yeah, but
33:09
Speaker 1: so yeah, this first wave of cops that they encountered,
33:12
Speaker 1: I don't know how many cruisers there were, but let's
33:14
Speaker 1: say there's probably six and maybe a dozen or so cops.
33:17
Speaker 1: There were also two bystanders who got caught in the crossfire,
33:23
Speaker 1: both of whom ended up getting shot by those ricochet
33:25
Speaker 1: bullets going through cop cars that they were hiding behind.
33:30
Speaker 1: Cops were getting shot like through their kevlar vests. I
33:33
Speaker 1: think a number of cops were injured, and even worse,
33:36
Speaker 1: they were pinned down. They were in what's called the
33:38
Speaker 1: kill zone. Like these guys were very easily able to
33:41
Speaker 1: shoot any of these people who were fairly close to them,
33:46
Speaker 1: and so these these cops had to basically retreat or
33:49
Speaker 1: be pinned down. And some of them were pinned down
33:51
Speaker 1: because they were shot. So if you if you kind
33:54
Speaker 1: of watch some of the footage or you you know,
33:56
Speaker 1: read about it, that kind of gets left out. That
34:00
Speaker 1: was something I thought that the Situation Critical documentary really
34:03
Speaker 1: kind of drove home, like there were some people who
34:06
Speaker 1: were in grave, grave danger in the first like ten
34:11
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes of this firefight before backup arrived. And I
34:16
Speaker 1: also saw it described that the Phillips in Mattisaranu at
34:21
Speaker 1: one point, especially when they were engaged with that first
34:24
Speaker 1: wave of cops who were totally unprepared and unequipped to
34:29
Speaker 1: deal with them, that they could have made a getaway,
34:32
Speaker 1: and they seemed to have decided that they were wanted
34:35
Speaker 1: to stay and fight instead.
34:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's unusual, and I'm curious about the wisdom of that.
34:44
Speaker 4: Like if they had left, if these guys just would
34:46
Speaker 4: have went and got in their car and tried to
34:48
Speaker 4: get out.
34:48
Speaker 1: Of there, I don't know. Who knows. I mean, I
34:50
Speaker 1: don't know the fact that they had a helicopter on
34:52
Speaker 1: them would have made it pretty difficult, but who knows.
34:55
Speaker 1: Could have been way worse. It could have been shorter.
34:57
Speaker 1: Who knows what could have happened. But yeah, I think
34:59
Speaker 1: the point was that they, like bank robbers, don't try
35:03
Speaker 1: to stick around when they're given the option to try
35:05
Speaker 1: to make a run for it.
35:06
Speaker 4: And these guys, Yeah, I'm not gonna Monday Morning quarterback
35:10
Speaker 4: this thing years later in my podcast Booth because I
35:14
Speaker 4: wasn't the one, you know, getting shot at on the street.
35:17
Speaker 4: So there was one citizen hero among this crowd, which
35:22
Speaker 4: was a dentist doctor Jorge Montes, had an office across
35:26
Speaker 4: the street, and two cops that were injured, like crawled
35:30
Speaker 4: up the stairs to his office and he it sounds
35:33
Speaker 4: like he had saved at least one of their lives.
35:35
Speaker 4: He treated them immediately, and one of the cops had
35:38
Speaker 4: shrapnel in his ankle, and Montes was smart enough to
35:44
Speaker 4: be like, we should leave that in there, Like, I'll
35:46
Speaker 4: treat you, but I'm not taking that out because it
35:48
Speaker 4: could get worse. And that officer later said that he
35:50
Speaker 4: probably saved my life because I probably would have led out.
35:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty great. So a few minutes before ten,
35:58
Speaker 1: this firefight has been going going on for thirty plus minutes. Now, okay,
36:05
Speaker 1: Phillips and Mataseranu decide that this is a really fateful
36:09
Speaker 1: decision and no one has any idea why, probably will
36:12
Speaker 1: never know why. But Mataseranu gets in their white Chevy Celebrity,
36:16
Speaker 1: the ugliest getaway car ever. Oh there's one other thing
36:20
Speaker 1: about that white Chevy Celebrity. They had it backed up
36:22
Speaker 1: to the bank in a parking space, and so when
36:25
Speaker 1: they came out and they were shooting at the cops
36:27
Speaker 1: and everybody that moved for thirty minutes with their assault weapons.
36:32
Speaker 1: Whenever their assault rifle would like run out of ammo
36:36
Speaker 1: or jam or something, they just throw it down, go
36:39
Speaker 1: to the trunk of the car and come back with
36:40
Speaker 1: a brand new assault rifle. And they had like drums,
36:43
Speaker 1: like one hundred round drums as clips, So they were
36:47
Speaker 1: really doing a lot of damage. And at some point
36:50
Speaker 1: they decided let's head out. Matisranu gets in the Chevy
36:54
Speaker 1: Celebrity and rather than get in with him, Larry Phillips
36:59
Speaker 1: decides to walk alongside, just firing at everybody while Matti
37:03
Speaker 1: Serranu slowly drives with him. And then the really faithful
37:08
Speaker 1: decision is made where they decide to split up, and
37:11
Speaker 1: Larry Phillips peels off for Mattiseranu and starts walking down
37:16
Speaker 1: the sidewalk of a street, a side street that a
37:18
Speaker 1: residential street to a residential area.
37:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's you know, I think I read a
37:25
Speaker 4: lot about this too. I think he might have thought
37:26
Speaker 4: he was providing some initial cover and the whole split
37:30
Speaker 4: up thing is just, you know, judging from the movies,
37:33
Speaker 4: I think sometimes that's just what they decide to do, like,
37:37
Speaker 4: you know, instead of concentrating everything on us.
37:39
Speaker 3: If we split up. That'll that'll split the you know,
37:42
Speaker 3: the burden or whatever.
37:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I get that. I also, based on
37:47
Speaker 1: how quickly things happened after that, it also makes me
37:50
Speaker 1: wonder if he was like, I'm just gonna go take
37:52
Speaker 1: my last stand.
37:53
Speaker 4: Well maybe, I mean, who knows. We're never gonna know, basically,
37:56
Speaker 4: and you'll soon find out why. So in the end,
38:00
Speaker 4: and Phillips was shot eleven times. He's walking down this
38:04
Speaker 4: side street.
38:05
Speaker 1: He's still walking after he's some of these most of
38:07
Speaker 1: these shots.
38:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's walking down the side street.
38:10
Speaker 4: He's firing at everything he can, and he gets just
38:14
Speaker 4: like in the movies, like an old Western or something,
38:17
Speaker 4: a cop shoots his hand, like shoots the gun out
38:19
Speaker 4: of his hand by shooting his hand, he reaches down,
38:22
Speaker 4: picks it up, puts it under his chin, and in
38:25
Speaker 4: an attempt to kill himself and pulls the trigger. And
38:30
Speaker 4: you know, it was sort of a bang bang thing.
38:32
Speaker 4: No one sure which was the kill shot, but sort
38:35
Speaker 4: of right along that time at either right when it
38:38
Speaker 4: happened or right after he fell, a cop had shot
38:41
Speaker 4: him true romance style, through the side of his body
38:47
Speaker 4: where there was no protection, no protective vest because that
38:51
Speaker 4: stuff is usually like it's on your back, it's on
38:53
Speaker 4: your chest, but kind of not through the side, and
38:55
Speaker 4: he severed his spine and he was dead immediately from
38:59
Speaker 4: one of the two wounds.
39:00
Speaker 1: So Larry Phillips is now dead one way or another,
39:04
Speaker 1: either by his own hand or by the cops shot. Uh.
39:08
Speaker 1: And that is not the end of things, because Mattisranu
39:11
Speaker 1: is still on the move. He's in his White Celebrity
39:15
Speaker 1: moving down the street past where Phillips has just died.
39:21
Speaker 1: And here's what's crazy, because, as we'll see, the LAPD
39:26
Speaker 1: is very much feted after this for having saved North Hollywood,
39:29
Speaker 1: taken on these guys who outgunned them. But there's a
39:33
Speaker 1: really critical point that I think people just move right past.
39:37
Speaker 1: When they were moving up Archwood, this residential street, it
39:40
Speaker 1: was not closed off, so people were driving past Emil
39:46
Speaker 1: Madiseranu within feet, like a handful of feet of this guy,
39:50
Speaker 1: and they were confused, they didn't know what was going on.
39:53
Speaker 1: And he's strapped with like this ak driving the White Celebrity,
39:56
Speaker 1: which now has this tire shot out, looking for another car,
39:59
Speaker 1: and at he's three or four pass him before he
40:02
Speaker 1: finally stops and picked one and start shooting at the car.
40:06
Speaker 1: And that was a huge, huge failure on the LAPD's
40:09
Speaker 1: part because those guys could have gone anywhere on Archwood
40:12
Speaker 1: Street and started taking hostages easily.
40:15
Speaker 3: What was the failure that they didn't close the street off?
40:18
Speaker 1: Like, I don't understand how you can get it.
40:19
Speaker 3: They had time bank robbery.
40:21
Speaker 1: You could close it off somewhere back there there was
40:24
Speaker 1: through traffic still coming down Archwood, like right by the bank.
40:28
Speaker 1: If you watch it, it's crazy that that's not now.
40:31
Speaker 4: I just don't I don't know, man, I think that's
40:33
Speaker 4: also Monday morning quarterbacking. I don't know if they could
40:35
Speaker 4: have they were in the middle of a shootout. I
40:38
Speaker 4: just I don't know.
40:38
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole LAPD was focused on this shootout.
40:42
Speaker 1: I feel like they could have shut the street down.
40:44
Speaker 4: It's just crazy to me, all right, agree to disagree, Okay?
40:48
Speaker 4: At any rate, he's firing at cars. He gets in
40:50
Speaker 4: this guy's jeep pickup truck, and the guy got injured.
40:55
Speaker 3: He was fine.
40:56
Speaker 4: He ran out of there and you know, got away
40:58
Speaker 4: at least, and he starts he still thinks he can
41:01
Speaker 4: get out of there. I guess he's transferring weapons from
41:03
Speaker 4: that chevy to the truck, and three swat guys drive
41:08
Speaker 4: over there. He comes out again, and all of a
41:11
Speaker 4: sudden there's another shootout on the street, movie style, with
41:14
Speaker 4: both of them kind of crouched behind these cars, and
41:18
Speaker 4: the cops do a very smart thing, which is shoot
41:22
Speaker 4: underneath the car, at his feet, at his legs, whatever
41:25
Speaker 4: they can hit, and they end up hitting him twenty
41:27
Speaker 4: eight times and dropped him.
41:29
Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, can you imagine taking twenty eight shots in
41:31
Speaker 1: your legs and feet?
41:34
Speaker 3: I can't imagine one.
41:35
Speaker 1: He put his hands up, he gave up, he surrendered
41:39
Speaker 1: and was laying behind the celebrity. I think in the
41:43
Speaker 1: end when they captured him, twelve officers had been injured,
41:48
Speaker 1: had been shot somewhere in pretty bad shape. Miraculously all survived.
41:53
Speaker 1: Eight bystanders have been injured. All of them survived. Everyone
41:56
Speaker 1: in the bank survived, and it turned out that the
41:59
Speaker 1: only two people people who didn't survive were Larry Phillips
42:03
Speaker 1: and Emil Mattiseranu, who ended up bleeding to death from
42:06
Speaker 1: his injuries lying behind that chevy celebrity. Isn't that nuts yet, Chuck?
42:12
Speaker 1: I think seventeen or eighteen hundred rounds were fired in
42:16
Speaker 1: this forty four minute firefight, and only two people died,
42:20
Speaker 1: the bank robbers.
42:22
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that became a matter of just sort of
42:25
Speaker 4: further scrutiny because Matti Serrano, you know, he's laying there,
42:29
Speaker 4: he's bleeding, and he says, you know, why don't you
42:33
Speaker 4: put a bullet through my head? And when the EMTs
42:35
Speaker 4: show up, the cops keep them away. They said, don't
42:38
Speaker 4: come over here. EMT has never examined him, and he
42:42
Speaker 4: slowly bled out basically over the next hour and died.
42:46
Speaker 4: They were, you know, heavily scrutinized. I think there was
42:49
Speaker 4: an attorney that ended up filing his suit on behalf
42:52
Speaker 4: of the kids that said, hey, you know, regardless of
42:56
Speaker 4: whether this guy was a bank robber, you can't you know,
43:00
Speaker 4: you still have an obligation to treat an injured human
43:03
Speaker 4: on the ground as a cop. The cops response was like,
43:06
Speaker 4: we didn't know if there were other people involved, if
43:09
Speaker 4: they were around, if they had a sniper, if they
43:11
Speaker 4: had explosives on their body. We didn't want to put
43:14
Speaker 4: those EMTs in danger. And in the end they dropped.
43:17
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
43:18
Speaker 4: It was a deadlock jury at first, so it was
43:21
Speaker 4: a mistrial, and then they decided not to go further
43:25
Speaker 4: with another case because they might be countersued for malicious prosecution.
43:30
Speaker 1: Well put, did you read the La Times article on that.
43:35
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they really went to town putting this thing together,
43:37
Speaker 1: and no one came out looking okay, you know.
43:41
Speaker 4: No, And it was you know, the LA PD has
43:44
Speaker 4: always had a checkered reputation, so like, at first they
43:47
Speaker 4: were heroes because this was all over the news, and
43:50
Speaker 4: this was, you know, a handful of years after Rodney
43:53
Speaker 4: King when they had probably an all time low opinion rating.
43:56
Speaker 4: So they were like, look, look at the cops like
43:58
Speaker 4: protecting you and and putting.
44:00
Speaker 3: Their lives at risk.
44:01
Speaker 4: So it was good for PR at first, but then
44:04
Speaker 4: this they let them bleed out in the street for
44:06
Speaker 4: an hour. I'm sure a lot of people were like
44:08
Speaker 4: good and a lot of people are like, yeah, you
44:09
Speaker 4: still can't do that.
44:10
Speaker 1: Sure. So one of the other outcomes of this was
44:15
Speaker 1: that it changed police forces across the United States forever.
44:20
Speaker 1: Like the police realized that they were not equipped for
44:25
Speaker 1: something like this to happen in not only Los Angeles
44:28
Speaker 1: but every other town in the United States, and in
44:32
Speaker 1: the Defense Spending Act I think of nineteen ninety seven,
44:36
Speaker 1: they passed a section called ten thirty three that said
44:41
Speaker 1: that the Department of Defense can sell any excess armory
44:45
Speaker 1: weapons materiel to local police departments. Now that's a new thing,
44:51
Speaker 1: and it turned into what's been roundly considered the militarization
44:55
Speaker 1: of the police. That's had all sorts of knock on
44:58
Speaker 1: effects include, according to multiple studies, an increase in death
45:04
Speaker 1: during police shootings. And that's a big criticism of this
45:08
Speaker 1: that rather than people saying, let's reduce the public's access
45:11
Speaker 1: to things like assault rifles that can kill tons of
45:15
Speaker 1: people and have firefights like this, instead the push has
45:19
Speaker 1: been to let's arm the cops equally to these criminals
45:24
Speaker 1: that can be armed to the teeth as well, to
45:28
Speaker 1: make it even which there's a logic to it, sure,
45:30
Speaker 1: but you could also reduce the public's access to those
45:34
Speaker 1: kinds of things as well, and that didn't really happen.
45:38
Speaker 4: Well, one of the good things that came out of
45:40
Speaker 4: it was PTSD counseling for police officers. Was not such
45:45
Speaker 4: a big thing at the time, and after this it
45:47
Speaker 4: became much more just sort of implemented across the country.
45:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a good thing for sure. Anything else,
45:54
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. I think there's in Grand Theft
45:57
Speaker 1: Auto five, one of the heists. The Palletto score is
46:00
Speaker 1: based on this too. And there's a movie called forty
46:04
Speaker 1: four Minutes that was made for TV on FX and
46:06
Speaker 1: it's terrible. I bet if you want to know anything
46:11
Speaker 1: else about the North Hollywood shootout, there's plenty to see
46:16
Speaker 1: and read about that. And while you're reading and seeing
46:19
Speaker 1: about the North Hollywood shootout, I think it's time for listener.
46:22
Speaker 3: Man, I'm going to call this.
46:28
Speaker 4: Follow up that I feel pretty bad about. We did
46:31
Speaker 4: our podcast episode on Kenton Greua Grand Canyon River Adventure
46:36
Speaker 4: not too long ago, and we actually heard from his wife,
46:40
Speaker 4: Michelle Grua, who was She's not a stuff you should
46:43
Speaker 4: know listener, but someone told her about it. She listened
46:46
Speaker 4: and she wanted to clear up some things, and so
46:49
Speaker 4: I'm going to read it. It's a little lenkdy, but
46:51
Speaker 4: I feel like we owe it toured. Hey, guys, I
46:54
Speaker 4: was surprised to be informed by a friend of your
46:56
Speaker 4: podcast about my late husband Factor.
46:59
Speaker 3: Yes, Archilllren and I all called him Factor. That was
47:02
Speaker 3: his preferred name.
47:03
Speaker 4: I appreciate that you obtained most of your information from
47:05
Speaker 4: Kevin's book The Emerald Mile, which is for the most
47:07
Speaker 4: part accurate. There are some things that you said that
47:09
Speaker 4: are not accurate, and depictions of factor that I'd like
47:13
Speaker 4: to set straight. These things are likely only important to
47:16
Speaker 4: me our children into his two brothers if they were
47:19
Speaker 4: to ever hear your podcast. I can tell that you
47:21
Speaker 4: appreciated his adventurous spirit and the grandiosity of the things
47:24
Speaker 4: he did, But I would gently suggest that you might
47:26
Speaker 4: consider the feelings of those left behind with regard to
47:30
Speaker 4: the way you depict someone. He's not just some character
47:32
Speaker 4: and a really cool story. He's someone's husband, father, and
47:36
Speaker 4: brother who has sorely missed. I do not expect any
47:39
Speaker 4: kind of retraction public retraction. I just wanted to let
47:42
Speaker 4: you know about the inaccuracy so you could have a
47:46
Speaker 4: more clear picture of him. He was the most humble, gracious, generous, respectful, considerate,
47:51
Speaker 4: fear soul I've ever met, truly one of a kind
47:53
Speaker 4: and the greatest factor in my life. Regarding the description
47:57
Speaker 4: of him really liking booze and hiking out to obtain
48:00
Speaker 4: extra liquor, the passengers on that particular commercial trip are
48:04
Speaker 4: the ones who requested extra booze, and given that there's
48:07
Speaker 4: no delivery into the canyon, he offered to hike out and.
48:10
Speaker 3: Procure a resupply for them.
48:13
Speaker 4: Regarding the moccasins, he was a purist, and his reasoning
48:16
Speaker 4: was that the ancient Queblins who'd lived in the canyon
48:19
Speaker 4: had likely worn moccasins and he wanted to pay homage
48:21
Speaker 4: to them and not have any unfair modern advantage like
48:25
Speaker 4: hiking boots. He had scouted the route before, and the
48:28
Speaker 4: first through hike attempt he had placed food caches, cases, cases,
48:34
Speaker 4: cashes for that hike, as well as doing so the
48:37
Speaker 4: second time.
48:38
Speaker 3: As an insight into his character.
48:39
Speaker 4: He hiked back in to remove all of them after
48:42
Speaker 4: the hike, leaving no trace.
48:43
Speaker 3: You said that he was obsessed.
48:45
Speaker 4: If you can say that about someone who smokes that
48:47
Speaker 4: much pot, I feel like you may have missed a
48:50
Speaker 4: key element of Kenton's character and you're reading about him
48:53
Speaker 4: that he had a fierce intellect, an intense focus, and
48:55
Speaker 4: once he got a hold of an idea, he ruminated
48:57
Speaker 4: on it, turned it over and over in his mind
49:00
Speaker 4: until he worked out all the details. Not consistent with
49:03
Speaker 4: the sleepy image you conjure up when thinking about a
49:06
Speaker 4: typical stoner. It also bears mentioning that the original idea
49:09
Speaker 4: was Wally Wrists. Wally, Rudy and Kenton did the original
49:13
Speaker 4: speed one, but Wally was no longer working on the
49:15
Speaker 4: river in eighty three and thus not able to partake.
49:18
Speaker 4: This time around, Kenton came up with the idea to
49:22
Speaker 4: put a second set of oar locks on the boat,
49:25
Speaker 4: so you could have two rowing stations to tackle the
49:27
Speaker 4: flat water at the far west of the canyon. As
49:30
Speaker 4: far as the fine, the fine that was imposed as
49:33
Speaker 4: reportedly five hundred dollars, but I have the cancel check
49:37
Speaker 4: to the Cocochino County Magistrate and the amount of two
49:39
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty dollars paid by Kenton, so your assertion
49:43
Speaker 4: that he couldn't afford.
49:44
Speaker 3: It is not accurate.
49:46
Speaker 4: He never mentioned any imposition of community service to me
49:49
Speaker 4: as well, and we are also quite sure of how
49:52
Speaker 4: he died. He died not due collision or impact, but
49:56
Speaker 4: from the spontaneous a ordit dissection, not an aneurysm. He
50:01
Speaker 4: was found unresponsive on the trail by a hiker while
50:04
Speaker 4: the kids and I were home awaiting his return.
50:07
Speaker 3: He was not dead when the hiker found him.
50:09
Speaker 4: He was taking to the local hospital, where resuscitation efforts failed.
50:13
Speaker 3: He wasn't laying in a peaceful position. The hiker said.
50:16
Speaker 4: He was still astride as his bike, and it appeared
50:19
Speaker 4: that he had just tipped over. Indeed, he had a
50:21
Speaker 4: little cut over his ear where his sunglasses dug into
50:23
Speaker 4: the side of his head when he landed. As a
50:26
Speaker 4: physician myself, I can tell you he was probably in
50:29
Speaker 4: significant chest pain, and he died about two hundred yards
50:32
Speaker 4: after passing through what would have been a busy trailhead
50:35
Speaker 4: parking area, So he was probably peddling like hell to
50:39
Speaker 4: get home just a couple of miles away, but dissected
50:42
Speaker 4: and lost consciousness less than a minute after passing through
50:45
Speaker 4: the lot. I only discovered it when he was two
50:47
Speaker 4: hours late getting home from the ride and called the
50:50
Speaker 4: hospital where I worked to see if they had any
50:52
Speaker 4: mountain bikers that had come in. They said yes, but
50:55
Speaker 4: they weren't able to identify him, and that was the
50:57
Speaker 4: last moment of true peace that I had. I am
51:00
Speaker 4: glad you found a story so compelling. I'm sure he's
51:03
Speaker 4: glad people are hearing of it and he doesn't have
51:05
Speaker 4: to do the telling himself, but accuracy is important. Please
51:09
Speaker 4: don't paint him as a caricature. Best Michelle Grua and
51:14
Speaker 4: I emailed her a very long email back, and I
51:17
Speaker 4: felt terrible about all this, and she was very sweet
51:20
Speaker 4: and much more graceful than I would have been in
51:23
Speaker 4: her position.
51:24
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, if you're
51:26
Speaker 1: going to get taken to task by a living relative
51:28
Speaker 1: of someone we profile, it's about as nice as it
51:31
Speaker 1: can get, for sure.
51:33
Speaker 4: Yeah, So thank you Michelle for that, And just publicly,
51:35
Speaker 4: I'm sorry for anything we did that costs you any upset.
51:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. It was definitely not our intent to create
51:41
Speaker 1: a caricature out of him. That's never our intent. So
51:43
Speaker 1: sorry that that happened inadvertently, And thank you for taking
51:47
Speaker 1: the time to write all that, and thank you Chuck
51:49
Speaker 1: for reading all of it. Certainly, if you want to
51:52
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, like Michelle Grua did, you
51:55
Speaker 1: can use email as she did as well. Send it
51:58
Speaker 1: off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:04
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52:07
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