536 - Smart ‘n Tricky

Hello and welcome. I'm my favorite Murder. That's Birthday Girl, Georgia Heartstar.

That's Garen Kilgara, and.

We're here to birthday podcast for you. If you're watching us on Netflix. There's a gorgeous and I mean gorgeous set decoration by our set decorator, really Corey. It's so beautiful.

It's purple themed, which is just my color. These are, I guest sweet peas?

What is it? Sweet peas? I don't know? Correct? Oh flower beautiful?

And I asked Molly because I've been the other day really casually goes, so, what is your favorite flower?

Anyway? After fourteen years making small talk? After thirteen years?

Oh so, I was like, someone asked him, and I'm not going to ask him who it is, But what if he just wanted to know?

Yeah?

What if he was actually curious about you? Oh well, I guess it's just content. Everything is content.

Is it weird that if I were and I kind of was born when this podcast started, i'd be eleven years old today.

Oh my god, that's the best age to be. Yeah, eleven, Oh my god. I think when I was around nine I really started coming into my prime. Yeah, and then it's sunset. It around the age of twelve, and when I was thirteen, it was absolutely a disaster.

Because you're not a girl and you're not yet at one as everyone.

Knows, everyone but only me and Britney Spears really understood, really can talk about it. I thought these were fake. They're so beautiful? Are No? They are no? No, they are beautiful. Yes. Yeah, let's toast this so I can dreap this. Happy birthday, Georgia. Thank you you are eleven years old today. Congratulations, you too live there.

I have a book recommendation for your birthday.

If that's what you want for your birthday, you get one thing.

Okay, that's what I want. You're gonna love it. This is a book that's more your style. But I loved it so much so it kept me in because much like Pride and Prejudice right exactly. It's called When Winter Comes. It's about this teenage girl from Cincinnati in the mid eighteen hundreds. She has to flee town. She lives a rough and tumble life. Prospects are not good for her.

Steal some money, gets the buck out of town, finds the first way out, which is a wagon train that she pays her way on with this like German family. So they're going across to the west like to make their life in California, and she's gonna fucking like change her life, and so the Donner Party moves on and there they go.

Yes, Donner Party story perspective Angry seventeen fifteen.

Fifteen, Smart, plucky, ang but not given to me, naive, immediately weary.

It is so fucking good.

And it's just it's totally you know, of course fiction, but it's based on so much fact and I can tell you nothing will make you like stop feeling bad for yourself or the fact that it's to clean your house or whatever the fuck. Then listening to a girl getting through the fucking Donner Party Winter.

Like, I'm all, okay, wait, who wrote it? Okay?

So it's called When Winter Comes by a woman named Va Shannon, and I think this was her first novel.

In man, it's not gonna good. Yeah, amazing. Yeah. Do you think she picked Va Shannon in honor of VC Andrews? Oh? Possibly? It's a cool initial combination is it seems mysterious. It's so mysterious. It's great. I mean, I'm so excited, like yeah, historical fiction is like, oh, that's the way my weird school damaged brain can learn. It's like so exciting.

I mean, it's just it's immersive and that's what makes people able to identify with what's going on.

Yeah, just read it. It's great. Well, i'd like to give you a birthday present. Oh okay, I thought that was my birthday present. Just me listening to that recommendation and not turning my back. So I we recorded when it was my birthday episode and you were like, I have something for you coming right, And then I think the next day I had a day off and we were recording again that week and we were doing something ahead of time. So I got it into my head I had to give you a birthday present immediately, like I had to hurry up and do it. And also especially with us, where literally it's been like I'm going to get something to You've handed me things that are some of my favorite presents, like months after my actual birthday.

Look at the hot dog phone you gave me. Look at the corn dog portrait hanging in my office. It's just all hot dog theme, which I love.

It really is. Well, you know, that's how we know each other. Yeah, it's pretty superficial.

But it works.

And I'm eleven, and so of course hot dogs are my favorite thing.

So also cats are your favorite things? Well, cats and doing what you want is your favorite thing. Oh my god.

It's a tote that says I do what I want with like a cat drawing on it.

So I found that, and just this second I saw, I grabbed because I was like, I got to get her a present. So it's not like I searched and searched. Yeah, but then okay, what I did was include inside of fifteen step Crean skincare routine for you shut that I'm happy to walk you through at any period of time.

Oh did you go to the news store in Pasadena that.

Just opened all of young Yeah? Yeah, I went to my bathroom sink and under the counter.

Hell yeah, Oh my god.

I got some so estera. We've got skin one oh four, we've got clue editor hartleaf, spot pad. Oh you got some redness. That shit is truly. That's what I used on the road when my skin would get super dry and it would bounce my skin up before so I could put makeup on it. That's my six peptide.

I love that shit I like cound a lot. Yeah, if you want to see what she got me and see these purple decorations too, you can go to We're on Netflix.

We check out Netflix. We could do video. That's me telling you about how to do that. Okay, that skincare routine. Sure, if that's something that you would want to hear.

After the fan call. Yeah, so join the fan called if you want to see that. But just watch Netflix if you want to see this.

People have been asking for me to drop my skin ca routine, and essentially it is a version of this because these are all the products I like. I love it. Thank you so much. Fun, you're welcome. I'm going to bring this toe to Italy him. You got to let him know they're going to hate me. Thank you, you're welcome. Oh. Also, this is not has nothing to do with the present, but I follow so many Italian creators that do tiktoks.

There's a guy that just stands I think I've said this to you. There's a guy that just stands on the street in Florence and he's like Frenzi Forenza and he just goes like this and shows you different areas of his rent that day. There's a guy that one of the first ones I started following, walks around Milan. Oh, send it to me. I'm going to send it to you, but then I'm also going to watch that live stream and look for you. I'm going to find him send it to me so I know what he looks like.

He looks like a taller Italian or like an older Italian Brent Winebach okay, and he's very kind of like, oh, Milana Milano. That's always like don't you love it here, and always like yes, oh, I want to see that. I that I just love the idea that one day I'd be like that you and Vince are crossing. My God, I'm going to message him now.

I'm going to get my people, my reps us to message this Italy influencer.

What would be fun for me is if you went around and tried to find I think his name is Yugi, Who's the guy that speaks almost every language. So he walks up and goes, excuse me, where are you from?

And then they say you wouldn't know where it is, and then he starts speaking in the language and you want to cry because it's so touching.

And they love it, and it's like then they're suddenly like they are best friends.

So good that and the guy who's like, what's your people's dance? And then he learns their dance like whatever you know, customary dance?

Yes, and he does a little dance on the street. He does it with them.

They teach him and we're all friends. And there's world peace that's right through dance, through language, language and streets and peace.

Streets and up. Do you have some words of wisdom here on your birthday this year? Oh? Oh man, stop it, you know? Okay, listener, Georgie has just started poking the flowers to try to think.

I guess that your forties are so much better. Don't be scared of them. It's the chill not give a fuck that comes with aging is incredible. And also to remember that aging is a privilege and not everyone gets to do it, So shut the fuck up and get on the photo and live your life.

Yeah no, that was good. No, No, now I'd say it again, but go live your life and act like you believed it.

Okay, I'll say an Italian not to live your own life. And I guess live and we have a podcast network. Here we go exactly right.

Media. Here are some highlights nice this week. On Brief Recess, Michael and Melissa celebrate Pride Month with an important conversation about protecting LGBTQ youth. They also break down the Supreme Court's recent ruling and what it means for the future of conversion therapy laws. That's still happening. It's going backwards at a rate that is, of course alarming for most people, for most human beings that care about other human beings, it is insane.

No, if something was a joke in the nineties, you can't bring it back. It just doesn't fucking work that way. Then over on Dear Movies, I Love You a million, Casey continued you now with a deep dive into lucio ful cheese the Beyond from.

Nineteen eighty one. Good pronunciation, thank you.

Plus, they present yet another installment of film etiquette, tackling the proper way to behave during movie previews.

Very specific I yeah, it's the previous itself.

I love it.

Where to clap and scream? Where not to? I don't know these things, okay. Then over on Disgrace Land, Jake Brennan tells the story of the Hillsbro disaster.

You covered that.

This special World Cup episode examines the tragedy, the massive cover up that followed, and the fight for justice that changed sports forever. That is one of the most riveting stories I've ever heard. Riveting and horrifying. Yeah.

Over on Ghosted, Raz welcomes drag Icon Ginger Minge. They discuss psychic intuition, a haunted community theater, and gingers encounter with a ghost hand.

Forehand massage, just the single hand? Is that scarier or less scary than a full ghost? Less more? Yeah? Just a creepy hand bick one? What if Ginger was just on the Adam's Family set and didn't know it this week and I said no gifts. Bridger is joined by Booth Beck Bennett and Kyle Mooney of SNL Fame two for Over there, they discuss Lamborghini posters, you know, all this stuff boys like Lamborghini posters, cigar theft, and the best way to park at Disneyland Wow, goofy.

And then finally on Trust Me, Lola and Megan sit down with comedian Maria Bamford to chat about her new book, Sure I'll Join Your Cult, That's the book they discussed the cultishness of twelve step programs, the Suzuki method, and how OCD can make people more susceptible to high control groups.

Interesting. I saw Maria on her way out after she recorded that, and I was like, what do you doing or whatever? She is just the funniest, you know, most fascinating person. I adore her. Everything that comes out of her mouth is just like she's so fun. Yeah, okay. And then also just over in the merch corner, we're celebrating George's birthday by reporting all of her artistic endeavors, including this is what we call the suped mug, and that's the subed Koozy. This is when Georgia went to art school. She came back and she said, I've got a project.

It's so disappointing, Like I can I know that's my handwriting and I can spot it from a million miles away because it's just so like it's like a teenage boy's handwriting.

Yeah, what is the subt reference?

Again, I thought the guy's first name was sucked the cop, but actually superintendent is what that stands for, so it kind of is like a teenage boy. Also, I wrote that when we were in a meeting like joking about what merch we wanted, so I didn't write that with the handwriting that I like, save for public consumption.

Right, which is I mean.

A better way.

Right. It's like a great trick.

So get your supped merch today.

If you are friends with anyone in law enforcement or any teenage boys, this is the merch for them. Great call, dads and grads.

You can get that on exactly right store dot com and.

Stay tuned after this episode because we will be showing you a brand new honking hooray. We just made it, just made a bunch of them and we really like them. Very fun.

Yeah, all right, because it's my birthday, you go first, Okay.

Let me get it. Just a little bit of a your birth nothing worse than a champagne drunk and then you have acid stomach and oh no god.

It's so fun for that just took you somewhere.

It really did. Like you just went away like little polaroids that drop out of a filing cabinet and I find them inside my mind and drop those years.

Thank god there weren't actual photos taken of the time, because we didn't have to deal with that again.

So lucky. Whoever's in charge, I appreciate you just sliding my timeline back a little bit so that eleven year old me doesn't go like the world needs to see me sing Annie or whatever stupid bullshit I was always doing.

Hence this podcast. This is what happens. This is the answer to not posting yourself is then you just make a whole podcast about yourself exactly.

My story begins in the summer of two thousand and four, when you were peaking. George W. Bush was president, you remember him. Final season of Friends had just wrapped up the song This Love by Maroon five was the only song they would play on the radio legally, and the steadily growing popularity of a new concept called online retailers was changing the way people were shopping. But we were still in the era where big box stores reigned supreme and for kids in the early two thousands, so of course there was nothing better than a trip to your local Toys r us Hell yeah. And although the Toys r Us in Charlotte, North Carolina was just like all the other Toys r us is around the nation, something weird had been happening at this particular store lately. When

staffers would arrive to open up in the morning, they'd see like bike tire marks on the lamin at flooring that were not there when they left the night before. Alarms would get tripped overnight, but when the police would show up, no one would be there and nothing would have been taken. So the staff starts to joke they're dealing with a ghost, a ghost hand. But after a few months, an employee notices that near a display, I would love to actually be able to watch how this person actually did this. But there was a display and someone notices a Spider Man sheet sticking out of the back of the display, and they're like, what is that?

And then they pull on the sheet and they basically expose that there is like a little space behind this display thing like in the wall. And so when they look into this space, they find an inflatable pool float that looks like it's being used as a bed. They find a Spider Man Too movie poster from the store's own shelves, and they see a couple other personal touches here or there. This is the moment that the Toys Rs staff realize their store ghost is actually a real man.

They assume it's someone homeless. And what I love about this store staff they don't call comp they don't correct thing, They just are like, well, that's none of our business. Yeah they should have though, because in truth, this man was a fugitive from the law, a criminal known for repelling down from ceilings into stores to commit his robberies, kind of like Spider Man. This is the story of the criminal known as roof Man. Wow was this move into a movie recently? Yes? It was starring now other than Channing Tatum. Oh my god. Okay, So sources for this story are several deep dive articles from the Charlotte Observer by reporters Theodin James and Julia Coyn, and then a twenty twenty four s f Gate article by reporter

Katie Dowd, and the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So this truly begins in nineteen ninety eight, when a string of robberies are reported basically a very short amount of time, back to back, mostly in northern California, although crimes with very similar emos are also reported on the East Coast too. More than forty businesses, often a McDonald's, are hit by what investigators will come to believe is the same person. They have no idea who this guy is.

Witnesses describe their robber as being somewhere between eighteen and thirty years old, anywhere from five foot seven to six foot three, and having an athletic build, so Channing Tatum, Channing Tatum, but real vague. Yeah. These are usually armed robberies. In some cases, the purp fires his weapon to maintain control.

In one case he actually did pistol whip someone. Then, usually the mo is, he locks the employees into the walk in cooler. Then he goes and bags up all the cash that he can find and escapes. But witnesses tend to describe him as very polite, except for those couple examples. Most of the time, the witnesses say that in all of these crimes he uses words like please and ma'am. One time, while forcing employees to walk into the walk in cooler, he told them all to grab their jackets first. In one robbery fitting this mo at a McDonald's in Belmont, North Carolina, in the year two thousand, witnesses say the robber tells the staff quote, you're the good people, I'm the bad guy. I'm sorry for doing this.

To you wow. End quote. Aside from all that, one thing that really makes these crimes feel connected is how the perpetrator breaks in. At each scene, he cuts a two foot by two foot hole into the roof and then he lowers himself through that hole and then repels himself down to the floor. Hence the nickname Roofman that he eventually earns by doing this over and over. I think we have a picture of one of those. Oh that's a hole, fitting himself through that in the roof.

Uh huh okay, that's smart with like climbing guy gearon Patagonia style. He always did it. Crampons. Can he borrow a crampon from you? He always did it. When businesses were closed, no customers were ever present. He would just ambush the staff as they were either opening or closing the store, which made me laugh thinking about when we used to work at the Gap and when we closed the store and we would have to fold everything down and get the store together. Me and my friend Don Fraser would sing so like someone else would be like sing a song Dawn or sing a song Karen, and we so obnoxiously was like blah blah blah, and the idea of that, and then a guy just busts through the roof and like holds a gun on. Everybody was like,

how I was picturing that. We're like, it's the least ready you can be in your twenties working retail.

Well, I was thinking, like what a bummer would be if he came at close rather than at opening, when you could go home for the rest of the day, Like, I have to work a whole fucking shift and then I have to fucking and I'm not scheduled again till Wednesday, so I can't be like I'm traumatized and not come in true, like, do it in the morning so I can go home now.

Counterpoint, if you do it at night, the cops come, the fireman maybe come, maybe an ambulance comes. Then you could go out with those guys after sure, everybody's like, is everyone okay, share blah blah, close it down, we got our report? When when let's go to Tji Friday's okay. Basically, these robberies go on for about a year and a half and then in May of the year two thousand, he robs the Belmont, North Carolina McDonald's. The one where he tells them he's the bad guy and they're the good ones. At that one, he grabs several thousand dollars in cash and he flees the scene. Almost as soon as he's gone, the employees break back out of the walk in cooler and call the police from like, how many times have you guys gotten stuck in the walk

in cooler where?

Sure?

They were just like, okay, do.

You know there's a latch, Wait until he's gone.

We always just put the broom in that. That's why we broke the door on purpose. So they call the police. Not long after, a policeman in the area notices a lone car parked in a church parking lot. But it's Saturday, so of course it's not a busy morning for the church, even in the south, So it stands out that this car is just sitting there, and so he's kind of watching the car and like assessing, and as he does, a man comes sprinting out of the nearby woods towards the car. Then sees the cop turns around, darts over a tall fence, turns and runs and jumps over a fence and runs back into the woods.

No darting when you're trying to avoid the cops. Darting is like a dead giveaway you've.

Got a stroll. Yeah, whistling wouldn't hurt, But no, you can't just immediately turn and run somewhere. You're not a cat really quick. My favorite story of being at a party and the cops came in San Francisco and then how'd you get out? Wasn't us? The two girls next to us turn and scale at ten foot fence and we're watching them do it, and then a guy that's standing on our side, like we watch them both go over. Yeah, I was like, holy shit, did they have fucking warrants or something? What's going on? And then this guy just reaches up and opens the fence and it was a fucking door right there, and they could have killed themselves.

Yeah, that's impressive that they just parkour over the fence.

They've drunk. They like panic parkored themselves over that fucking.

Drinking does Does it makes you think that you can just I can parkour?

Yes, it's like the confidence like, oh no, this is real, I'm really in danger.

Send us your stories of parkouring out of trouble. That had my favorite order of Gmail.

Especially if they involve high school parties. A man hunt ensues. Of course, they call in a bunch more officers. They quickly track him down. He's taken into custody and he's identified as twenty nine year old Army sergeant jeff Manchester. Oh he's not a superintendent. No, he's nice as supped. He's he's in the army.

Now.

He admits to robbing two separate North Carolina McDonald's within the last twenty four hours. Wow. Just hours before he robbed the Belmont location, he had already targeted one in Gastonia, North Carolina. So the Roofman was born Jeffrey Manchester in Sacramento, California, in nineteen seventy one, according to reporter Katie Dowd for s Fgate. Quote by all indications, he had a typically sunny California childhood end quote. After graduating high school, he gets married, he has kids, He enlists in the military.

He's trained as a paratrooper, and in that training he is taught how to climb up to and jump from and repel off of nerve wracking.

Heights, all right, and from all lighting up.

Yeah. So by nineteen ninety nine, a year into the Roofman robbery, series. Jeffrey and his family are stationed in Conquered, California, which is in the area. November of that same year, Least responded to a domestic disturbance at Jeffrey's home. We don't know what that involved. What we know is that soon after his wife files for divorce and gets custody of the kids. So for the next few months, Jeffrey's life is the details are spotty. Less than a year after the domestic incident, he's arrested in North Carolina for robbery.

Then he tells police the locations are incidental. He's only been to North Carolina for a couple of days, being dispatched here for work, and the work is over. He's supposed to go back to California, but instead he decided he was going to drive his rental car west through North Carolina, and as he did, hit one McDonald's after another.

So wow, sounds to me like he's like the man who's lost everything that mattered to him. Yeah, and now he's just kind of that's a fuck it move, a true fuck it move. Coincidentally or not, Jeffrey used to work at a California McDonald's. Yeah, that makes sense.

I think people do that, like you have to look at your ex employees first, right when something like that happen.

Well, because there's this automatic familiarity like if you drop in, you know.

What time they do this and what happens here and to.

Get a made yeah, exactly what you can't get into. And Matt has keys to what We could go on and on and we will on the fan called that's what we do. We just list other options.

And then he could have kept his uniform and just strolled on in like he fucking worked there.

He could have loved frozen French fries and just ate him out of the bag. Yeah okay, So motive wise, he tells police, it was to quote, pay bills and buy things for my kids. End quote. He also says, quote, I will do everything I can to fix the situation. I still have a lot to give the community and the army. I thought it was going to be quick cash, and I ended up scaring people and wasting the police's time as well. And I am sorry for that little police ask kissing. And there at the end, it's nice to hear. In total, the amount stolen in all of these roof man robberies is somewhere around one hundred thousand dollars, which would be two thousand and four birthday style.

Hundred thousand in today's money is two hundred and ten thousand.

It's one hundred and ninety thousand. You're within twenty thousand. That means you win a birthday thank you. Would you have changed that number if you had known that nineteen ninety nine was really the era we were talking about kind of five years earlier. That would have taken it down by yeah, like I would have yeah, ding ding dings kind of you. Then you went up. It's all my fault. So ultimately doesn't really matter that amount because he's charged with several felonies and he ends up being sentenced to thirty five years in prison. WHOA. The police are confident Jeffrey is behind the forty plus almost identical robberies committed across the country. Many of the businesses hit are located in areas Jeffrey has either lived in or

visited because of work. He maintains that it was a different guy. It's not different paratrooper or whatever the fu Yeah, it was. It was a different guy that cut a two by two hole in the ceiling repelled down into the store, politely forced employees to walk into a.

Cooler at the same restaurant that he used to work at at his old job.

Both have athletic builds.

It's a different guy. Could be a copycat, could be a fan. I think we have a picture of Jeffrey. There's an arrest picture. Yeah, oh, that'sund a good picture. Well I disagree. First of all, you're going to go to Italy, they all look like this. He does look like an Italian.

He looks like a real Yeah, a mama me. Yeah, okay, So how do we get from this to Channing Tatum is my question?

Well, later on he will say when he is told that they're making this movie and they tell him they cast Channing Tatum, he said, you need to get someone out of here.

He's got a Jason Biggs.

Is that what his name is?

Oh?

Yeah, from Jason Biggs. But also, who's the guy? I actually went to see this guy live when he was in the Lena Dunham movie a couple of years ago. Molly, who's the guy? John Berenthal? Yeah, John Burnhal. Totally wish I could have pulled that name. That was good. Yeah, yeah, okay, here's the thing. Jeffrey does not go quietly and just serve his prison time. In January of two thousand and four, which is four years into a sentence, he escapes prison total parkour, but he does a kind of reverse. He clings to the undercarriage of a delivery truck until it gets outside the gates. Man, they should have given him that one.

I don't know.

I mean, like, well, yeah, dude, we should have caught that. If you're gonna Indiana Jones, this thing very few people can do.

They're bad, So I couldn't do it. Yeah, like Finder's keepers, I guess.

So somehow he's able to hang on underneath the goddamn truck until it gets far enough away. My god, then he lets go. I assume he rolls off into a dish, stands up, dests himself off, cracks his own neck, and then he waves down the next car and they pick him up.

Don't they have those signs that are like don't pick up hitchhikers?

Is what I'm sason right there, y'all. And on top of which, the driver turns out to be an employee of the prison.

Frienda for real need to not and is he wearing my prison fucking he must go.

I can't imagine he must have planned ahead enough, because right, I think that would be a huge give unless just gotten cities on as I would call it. Right, Yeah, somehow I wish I knew he worked in the laundry. I borrowed some clothes, told the warden that he had a wonderful way of pressing jackets.

He said, you're wearing that wrong. Let me show you how to wear that correctly.

Girl, give me that and sit down.

And then the warden was like, I'm gonna let you keep it because it looks so good on you.

You know what's so pretty in that jacket? You keep keep it? And then cut too that same warden being like, get in this car. Would that be amazing if it was all the one super stupid employee. Yeah, that was my thing, And I wrote in all caps, in what world are hitchhikers outside of a prison? Given the benefit of the doubt, and then dot dot dot buy a prison employee. Truly, maybe this was a situation that then brought us to the signs. Yeah, maybe they had to put up signs that say, hey, you're driving by a prison.

Hitchhikers would be a bad direction to take. Hey, you put two and two together if you don't mind. But the answer is no. So he then from the gas station, finds another ride, hitches about fifty miles down the highway to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then he sees a Toys r US store, the one I was talking about in the beginning, got it? He sees that in a distance and he starts to.

Get Okay, we're back to the beginning.

We've come back. Yes, The roofman knows that any big box store is going to have plenty of nooks and crannies for him to hide in, so he stakes out the building. He goes during normal business hours and walks around. He spots a small opening behind a store display, and he's like, this is it. This is my big chance.

Zoop's right in and waits until the store closes, and then zoops back out. Kind of brilliant. And also I don't like the fact that he has an athletic build, but he's he's shimming in and out of things that are very small. He's shimming. He's what was he doing earlier couring.

Parcorn but also zooping? But then what was the other one where he was not whistling and being whatever. Never darting, darting, darting. Yeah, he's he's got a lot of speeds. Yeah, and they're all effective.

Yah.

It is my nightmare to be like, hey, can you get behind that display really quick and be like I won't be able to. I won't be able to. Don't make me go back there. He does it. Then when he comes out when the store is closed. This is all twelve year old fantasies, which it seemed like he was living in every way. He raids the candy aisle.

Hell yeah, he raids the baby food aisle. That makes sense because he needs some protein. He needs the protein he needs and it's like, oh, I love apricots, all blended up, so organic. It's so smart. Then he starts shooting nerf basketballs into basketball hoops. He watches DVD's. He can watch any DVD he wants. They have them all.

He plays video games. He drives remote control cars, and he in his version of the story, he's doing it for exercise. He cruises around on the children's bikes and that's how they see the tire marks in the morning when the employ come in. But then it's more diabolical than just a man playing with toys. He actually figures out how to turn off certain security cameras and how to access the software that manages the staff schedules. He starts to pick and choose who shows up for work when based on his convenience or he's like, well, I want to ride my bag till seven am, so Maureene's not coming in till late. Oh my god. Type of thing is how I imagined it. Poor Maureene. She's like, I just need to manage this fucking toys rs. He

then rigs a bunch of baby monitors to make his own little security system. Dude, so he's able to with these baby monitors keep tabs on every corner of this store while he's eating baby food in a nook.

I'm sorry, but he would win Traders so fucking hard. Like he would win Traders or what's the one where they all live on an island?

Love island?

No, no, no, no, not the survivor the one when.

They survived, not love Survivor. He'd win, yes, because he's going to figure out a way let's make this happen. Come on, okay, So he lives like this for a while but then he somehow discovers the Toys Rs shares a wall with the closed Circuit City next door. Fuck, and then he discovers there's the reporting is unclear. It's either a doorway or a tunnel that's connecting the two stores. Right, So he basically makes his second living area for himself over in the abandoned Circuit City in the combinations Circuit City Toys Rs. It's abandoned. It's closed. Oh closed, okay, got it. Abandoned would be weird for Circuit City. It's just not away, just run. Yeah. And actually in two thousand and four, I think it'd be really creepy to

have seen a closed Circuit City.

Yeah, that's like give us three years, yeah, and we'll close everything.

That's why when the bed bathroom beyond on Ventura closed, it truly I'd stayed in for the day because I was like, is not good?

Yeah, not good?

No, so scary? Yeah all the bed bathroom beyonds yeah okay. So over at Circuit City stairwell headquarters, Jeffrey is now upgraded from the old pool float to a children's mattress that he brought over from Toys Rs, along with another set of Spider Man sheets a bunch of a sort.

So telling that that's what he picks us his sheets. Yes, he can just grab a pair of sheets.

No, he shopped, and he also had the poster of Spider Man two. He's got a complex. There's some I mean, it would be really fun to live in a toy store. We've agreed that in third grade. There's also Yoda figurines, different ones, and of course a stack of DVDs, among them Spider Man two. So a couple more months pass and his little setup leads him to get over confident about his ability to evade detection. He starts going out in public during the day, not playing it cool, so he literally talks to anyone and everyone he comes across, introducing himself as John Zorn. He claims to work in a secretive capacity for the government.

Which is what you tell everyone when you're working in the secretive capacity for the government.

Yeah, of course, but you lead with it. Yeah you can say that, but then you just can't say what it is. I'm going to start a conversation by telling you I can't talk during this talk about this. Yeah, very normal. So a Charlotte police captain tells reporters. Quote, if you draw a donut around that circuit city, I bet he talked to everyone within a mile. So here's the other thing. It's like, you can go in and ride your bikes and meet your candy all you want, but if you're alone, you're going to get busted. Yeah you can have all of it, and if you're alone you'll go crazy. Yeah. Yeah, you need some people, You need some interaction. Totally. I'm saying this to myself. Leave the house, Karen. So he joins a gym. Okay, he

doesn't just talk to people. He joins a gym. He goes to the dentist. Please think that was because of all the candy and the baby food. Oh no, you can keep himself cavities. He also starts attending service at the local Presbyterian church, developing a close relationship with his new pastor and other prisoners, and in fact, he starts dating one of those prisoners, a woman named Lee. She later describes him as quote, funny, romantic, the most sensitive man I've ever met, guy that every girl would want.

Okay, except he lives in a Toys r Us.

And Spider Man fucking villain.

Villain.

He believes himself to be Spider Man too. It's me that's real Spider Man. I'm Spider Man two.

That's right.

It's a sad lens through which all women look at everything now where it's just like, truly, what do you some burglar that drops through the roof? Fine, the better you seem, the more you're like a burglar. You don't tell women to smile? Fine, we can date. Great, take me to Circuit City. Okay, So Jeffrey goes out every day and really carpets the DM I wrote that, Yeah, it's funny. Embarrassed at night, he quietly returns to his lair like the Phantom of the Toys arrests dash Circuit City in half a Spider Man mask. So it's been six months now since he's broken out of prison or escaped from as a fugitive. It's very hard for him to actually make money, and he has things to pay.

He has his teeth to pay for, he has the gym to pay for. He has his girlfriend Lee, who he's literally falling in love with, to pay for. I can't imagine.

Part of that is his alimony that he's paying for and the child support that is probably needed.

Yes.

Bye, very badly wife. Yes, while he's fucking around riding bikes, right, dating, that's such a great point. Maybe there is a real mental breakdown that was like, I will get away from everything and start.

All over again.

Be a child. Yeah, a child who can repel off of walls. So as these costs are adding up, he's realizing I need money. So he returns to his passion robbery, and on December twenty six, two thousand and four, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, day after Christmas, when he knows the registers will be filled with cash, he hits the Toys Rs that he has actually been hiding out next to He's living in the Circuit City, but still doing fun stuff at the Toys r Us.

He robs that Toysrus his vacation home.

Yes, but it's so so you rob the Toys r Us. The cops come. We don't know how much he actually stole. Cops come and then thoroughly search the Toys r Us and then of course find the connection to the Circuit City. Yeah, they find all of it. They find the stairwell living area, they take fingerprints there, and then those fingerprints trace right back to our own Jeffrey Manchester, who's the fugitive got it and the roofman. So they circulate Jeffrey's mugshot on the news and in newspapers, and it spooks him. He goes to the dentist's office and sets it on fire.

What that's not the next step I was assuming. Yeah, he'll keep you guessing. He's a true paratrooper that way. The police theorized he was trying to destroy any record of John Zorn existing. But the dentist's office does not burn down. They rarely do. They can't. It's all like porcelain, Yeah, cement and pain. But now pershoners are coming forward from his new church. I always not going to do that, man, And they are such fucking narcs. Well we know John John he's in conquered California, and I'm giving him that accent.

When police talk to his girlfriend Lee, she is a poor shell shocked, but agrees to help lure him out of hiding by asking him to hang out all right, she may, yeah, like you told me that you were a children's baby food salesman. That's why your breath always smelled like babyfood. Children's babyfood salesmen children's baby food. Well, I bet there is adult baby food. I'm sure there are saying there's adult diverse. Yeah, yes, put that away for now. So on January fifth, two thousand and five, Jeffrey shows up at Lee's apartment with a bouquet of flowers.

He is promptly arrested by police. Yeah that and also sadder still it all happens on Lee's fortieth birthday.

Totally Lee, she needs to listen to me. Is just gonna get better.

This episode is dedicated to you, Lee. She's like, ladies, it's twenty years from now doing fun. Jeffrey Manchester is incarcerated in Raleigh, North Carolina. As far as we know, he is still in jail there to the day of this podcast recording. Okay, he isn't set to be released until twenty thirty six, when he is sixty five years old.

Oh man Yeah. Reporter Katie Dowd notes the irony here. Even though Jeffrey is California born and raised, this means he'll have quote accidentally spent over half his life in North Carolina. Wow, it's a beautiful place, Ashville. Have you seen it, Charlotte? Gorgeous? Yes, very gorgeous and very close to Pigeonforge, Tennessee, where Dollywood is. Oh, that's why he went there. Probably he's like, I'm getting there, but for some toys. Of course, he has been given the full care of treatment over the years because of the kind of wackiness of his crimes. And then I told you the story about him telling the director of that movie that Channing Tatum is in from Last Years. His name is Derek Cea in France, and he says that you

need to cast sole one uglier. But he says, then he started talking to Channing and he was like, you know, Channing and I have a lot in common. We both have a very high motor, we both played defensive end, and we're both extremely good looking. So maybe this guy contains every possible multitude. Truly, there can be so many people, of course, point out the very important fact that Jeffrey's crimes were not victimless politeness aside. He traumatized innocent people showing up with guns at their work when they're just trying to close or open.

This podcast has actually taught me that from commons, we've gotten way in the past of like don't what's the word when you idealize, idealize this even though nobody you know, was hurt. That's a fucking lasting wound to be held up at gunpoint.

So oh absolutely.

You know.

I remember when we had like four guys shoplifted at the same time and ran out and pushed our security guard up against the wall as they ran out.

Oh my god.

And there's nothing directly threatening or violent about it at all. They just grab bags and ran and it still was Yeah, we were all for days like freaked out. So yes, introducing the idea that I could die over like gap jeans insane. Yeah, especially at a toy store.

Where everyone's having fun.

Except the guy in the Jeffrey costume. Oh, I didn't even think about that. Jeffrey the Roofman has the same name as the giraffe from toys and get into that costume.

Okay, what if he had hidden in plain sight in that costume?

Hi, and he's just pickpocketing but children stop giving children wallets?

Okay, So that's Karen's platforms.

I'm so sick of it. Oh say, we don't know, and we maybe can't know if Jeffrey has learned his lesson from any of this. It's been reported he's tried to break out of prison two more times since being rearrested in two thousand and four, though he attempted an escape in two thousand and nine and again in twenty seventeen.

So there may come a day when we have to give an update to the Roofman saga. But until that time, that's the story of the roof Man Jeffrey Manchester.

Wow, this is part of the segment we should call we Don't Need Another Hero, where we just tell the story of some fucking dude does all these things.

He doesn't have to be terrible and we don't have to love him. Yeah, but Channing Tatum has to play him. But Tatum has to play every dude we talk about from here from here on out, including Paul Giamani. Oh, it's perfect, credible. That was great for your best day.

Thank you, and everyone crossed my mind to do that one. I that's yeah. Wow, I had no idea.

And I will say this, I did it without watching the Channing Tatum movie because sometimes and I'm like just retelling the movie.

Yeah, I gotta say I made the stop playing it because of that whole you're holding people up at gunpoint and We're making this guy this fucking hot. You know, he's hot and great, hot and great and just down on his luck. And it's like, well, well, well so I made him turn it off. I'm sure I'm so much fun to be married too.

Well, listen, there's other things to watch, truly, he doesn't give a shit. You watched it alone by Yeah, that was great, thank you. Do you want to do one? I'll do one.

I have a fun special birthday one. Yay, it's my birthday. I can do what I want to go shorty, let's do this.

Yekay.

It's early twenty sixteen.

Sorry zips mm.

Think he's out terlie twenty sixteen? Yes, or in New York City? Yeah, Manhattan?

Oh the main one.

A Vanity Fair photo editor in her mid twenties named Rachel Williams is out at a small basement club on the Lower East Side.

It's called Happy Ending. Oh, okay, casual clever.

Yeah.

She's with a group of young people.

They're all kind of adjacent to the fashion industry, you know, friends kind to go out.

After work with. In New York City, you're Koch friends. Yeah, exactly, that you never speak to after that's right. You get a good job. You said it all right.

When a girl about her age materializes at their table, and with her is the wait staff bring in along bottle service, so an immediate.

Wow, who's she? Yes, who's that girl?

Rachel has seen this girl a distance before, they go to the same parties, they run in the same circles.

She's seen her on Instagram.

This girl woman speaks with a vague European accent, and Rachel gets the sense that she's some kind of heiress that Rachel will soon find out she's not. And more than that, Rachel's taken on a wild ride along with several major financial institutions and New York luxury hotels. This is the story of scam artist Anna Delvy.

Can I just tell you always? The reason I'm so excited about this is because I heard about that happening, But I've never read an article. You didn't watch the title. I tried to watch the beginning and whatever was going on. This has been this story of me and entertainment for the past five years. It has to turn my brain off entirely or I can't get involved with the accent.

Bother you. I felt like I'd already missed the train. So it's it seemed like a thing that everyone already knew what the story was, and I was like, huh, and I hate that feeling. So then I just go I'll revisit this later. That day is today? Yeah, I'm gonna tell you everything. Okay, good, okay.

The main sources for this story are a article in New York Magazine and a vanity fair.

I don't know why I want to do that. Georgia loves these flowers.

The rest of the sources can be found in the show notes.

Good. So, I'm so glad you don't know about this? Do you mind if I have a hot flash?

Really?

Group before I first? How's your turn?

Jesus?

Yeah, keep it in. It's real.

So, shortly after that fateful night at Happy Ending, Rachel goes out to dinner with this chick Anna and a group of other people. They go to a steakhouse in the financial district called Harry's. It's real high end, and so in this biopic called Inventing Anna, Anna is played by Julia Garner from.

What was that amazing show she was on? That was?

She's so good at Ozark? Oh, yes, Ozark. She's such a terrific actress. The accent in it is annoying, but it's real, so she's not bad at it. She's accurately portraying. Yes, this woman's accent well.

And also, I guess I'll say this, it wasn't about the acting. For me, it was the idea that I had to go into a world with this person who in real life, if I was around that person, I would immediately confront and insult and then despise. Have a problem with a scammer.

Right, And that's what's so hard to like wrap your head around these kinds of stories, is you're like, you don't really feel bad for the victim in it because you're like, how did you not know?

So we'll get into that, which we love to do. That's kind of I think most people who follow true crime, you're always like, oh, I'm the wise person, right.

That could never happen to me. But here's the thing, maybe you just don't know yet. The scammers are so good and you're so dumb that you haven't figured out what these scammers are in your life.

Absolutely, I'm sure there's got to be one.

There's absolutely months this hasn't been recording the whole time.

It's just slowly, but truly, money is falling out of my purse for some reason. Insult Fay company. This hasn't been recording. The scam is that we've never recorded a podcast. It's you've somehow tricked me into all of this. That's right, Okay, Well, what are you going to get out of that? Well? Over oysters and espresso, Martini's your favorite. Yeah.

Rachel learns that Anna had first come to New York to intern for the French fashion magazine Purple, after having worked in their Paris office, but she quit and now she's focusing on creating the Anna Delvey Foundation, which she describes as a quote dynamic visual arts center dedicated to contemporary art end quote. So she has these big dreams of opening this.

It's a young person who dreams of opening her own museum.

Art gallery, museum slash soho house like members only club for riches, fuck people.

We sure.

She often all uds to having significant family money, which would generally track for someone in their early twenties who's an intern at a fashion magazine.

It's not something that you just do for fun. You don't wait tables and then switch over to that.

But while the name the Anna Delvey Foundation, suggests that she's trying to establish some sort of nonprofit. It actually is looking more like she's trying to start a social club. Over the course of that winter twenty sixteen to twenty seventeen, Anna and Rachel hang out a lot, sometimes in groups and sometimes one on one. They get really close, really fast, which is always, you know, a red flag, but that's what girls do in their twenties and thirties, Like you bond forties and fifties.

You like bond quickly, especially if you have like those similar interests, right, similar, Like I've seen you at other clubs, okay.

That kind of know you all the time, or I'm alone in this big city and it's kind of scary and isn't this.

So exciting and cool? Yeah? Yeah.

In Vanity Fair, Rachel says about Anna, quote, Anna was a character. Her default setting was haughty, but she didn't take herself too seriously. She was quirky and erratic. She acted with the entitlement and impulsivity of a once spoiled, seldom disciplined child, So her personality fit this thing. She was selling that she was an heiress and came for money, so.

Kind of like, if you're just willing to act like an asshole, people will believe you are rich or used to be rich one hundred percent.

Rachel has seen Anna around for a while, but what she doesn't know is that other friends Anna has made in the past couple of years have quietly distanced themselves from her, So there's kind of like rumors going on. A year or two earlier, Anna had struck up a friendship with a UPenn student socialite and art collector named Michael Soufu Wong, and Anna had suggested that they go together to the Venice biennally.

What the fuck is that? Oh? That Bianali Well, you better learn to say it because it's in Is it like the Biannual? It sounds like something. That's it. It's a festival.

Yeah, But so she asked that he booked the flights in hotel and his credit card because she had some minor rations with her bank, and so he did. They go on the trip, and Michael notices that Anna pays for everything in cash, and then when they get home it seems like Anna forgets to pay him back and kind of ghosts him a little on that. But Michael's family is actually extremely wealthy and the amount in question is quote only three thousand dollars, which to Michael is not a lot of money, so he kind of just.

Forgets about it. Must like nice.

Yeah, He's like, she's flaky. I don't want to like chase her for three grand.

It's all I wanted is to find a person like that. In my twenties, I was always just like, where are the high rollers that I'm like, I will be the personality member, sixth member at the table. I'll just bring this, let's spend your money. I'll gesture it up. Yeah, I'll keep it cracking.

Here can be weird and walk away in the middle of a conversation. I don't care because you're rich and you do that pay for me. So that's kind of what happens to Rachel. Anna is vague about her background, but she explains to Rachel that she's originally from Germany and she doesn't have a permanent residence in New York because she isn't able to day long periods of time, so she stays at hotels, nice hotels.

Because there's so many Bionali's she has to go to exactly okay.

In February twenty seventeen, Anna checks into a boutique luxury hotel in Soho called eleven Howard, where you'd love to stay.

I go there sometimes seasonally.

And what's super fancy about this hotel eleven Howard is that it's celebrated an eye wateringly expensive French restaurant on the ground floor called lit Cuckoo.

Have you ever been to lit Cuckoo? Now? Get you that right? I don't know. Let's do it. Why didn't you go? Absolutely? Can we look at their menu really quick? I don't know why I didn't do this before. It's just basic research. I think everyone knows this. But Georgia is a foodie. Yeah, she's obsessed with going to restaurants.

She's obsessed with looking at the menu.

I am, okay, guess how let's see they'll probably have front onion soup. So let's guess how much it is? Twenty nine dollars. Okay, that's not eye wateringly expensive, but it.

Is suits for soup soup.

Okay.

Hold on. There're lots of tiny food menus lunch, dinner, thirty two.

I can't read any of this. It's all in French. Hold on, I took French one and two, so hand me the phone. I refuse.

Oh they're still fans that they don't even have French onion soup?

What what do they have? Let's see, let me just like diamond soup.

So the tartar is ninety eight dollars.

Whoa, that's an appetizer. Yeah.

The asparagus girrelled asparagus is twenty eight dollars.

Does it have salt and pepperona? It has crab? Oh it does? Yeah?

Oh and then let's just go here. This is actually a bargain they must have. I don't know what any of this is.

Well, apologies, can I just see it from one second? So French full on French.

Invite us loukuku, please wear believers. We'll record from your restaurant.

We'll edit out all those prices.

They go there a lot, and guests of Howard like Anna can charge their meals to the room. So it's kind of a winning winter dream life. So Anna quickly becomes known around the hotel for being a very generous tipper. Anytime anyone does anything for her, they're gonna get a hundred bucks.

Wow. Yeah, and she seems to tartars. No, it's not, it's one that's just one.

Whenever a package arrives for Anna, and it seems like she does a lot of online shopping, the staff fight over who gets to take it up to her room because they're gonna get a fucking hundred bucks and it does something. She's a really good tipper and really generous with like the regular workers, not management.

They love her. Yeah.

Anna quickly develops another intense friendship with the hotel's concierge, a twenty five year old filmmaker named Nefatari Davis who everyone calls Nef and she's played by Alexis Floyd in the biopic. So Anna starts doing the same thing, taking Nef out to fancy dinners, sometimes one on one, sometimes in groups, always paying, being like I'm going to pay for everything. And Anna sometimes seems to rally groups of investors and actual celebrities for dinner, like she does enough little things to seem legit to everyone, and they often go to lekuk who for dinner.

Oh that's their spot.

Yeah, And on one occasion, Nat is seated directly next to McCauley culkin, So she's like, this woman has to be legit. This is a whole world. I don't know, it's exciting. You have to think of it from terms of like if you were in your twenties again, you can barely pay rent. This woman comes along and starts taking you to fancy dinners, you know, paying for things, and it's just exciting.

Yes, And it's like a more adult version of being a scenester, right, because when you're younger, you do go to clubs and bars or whatever. Yeah. But then yeah, as you get older, if you have the money, there's other worlds available, right, like beautiful foods. And then why would these women question her be like this isn't real, but like he's paying for that beef tartar.

Exactly sitting next to mccaullay McCauley's in on the scam.

No, he's not just kidding. He was just sitting at the restaurant one time. Yeah.

In the Vanity Fair article, it says, quote, the world was charmed when she was around. The normal rules didn't seem to apply. Her lifestyle was full of convenience and it's easy. Materialism was seductive.

Yeah, I mean, and I do credit the kind of personalities that can actually keep that whole scam train moving forward, Like the energy and the kind of the real charisma it takes to do that is valid. It's you're dazzling.

Yeah.

One day, Anna asked nef to come along with her for a session with the celebrity personal trainer and life coach one in one named Casey Duke, who's played by Laverne Coxe.

She's so great.

At the end of the session, Anna buys a package of you know, coach training sessions and pays forty five hundred dollars in cash. So some money is there and they're seeing it.

So it's believable, Yes, except for that no one pays anything in cash for thousands and thousands of dollars where it's like was so did it take a while for her to count out twenties or does she carry around one thousand dollars bills exactly? Or just like pays in beef tartar from her pan pounds do you want five pounds?

That's her, got my birken full of tart full of raw meat to trade and barter at.

Well.

So Nephty's Anna all the time on calls and taking meetings.

With finance types.

She's fucking busy, and you know she's a business lady Anna has told Neph that she's fundraising to open that art focused social club, and she implies that she may be buying the property from the eleven Howard owner, a New York real estate mogul named Abby Rosen, and that's why she's staying there, and like it's that's why it's kind of being comped, and she knows that I know the owner.

What you say, sure, but there are red flags.

One night, Nef and Anna go out to dinner and Anna's credit card is declined. In fact, all of Anna's credit cards are declined. Have you ever had a credit card declined?

This just happened to me. What we went to smokehouse. We were going to go to a party. So Alison and I went to jar first. Oh it's that beautiful steakhouse on Beverly.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I had just lost my wallet that day. So I went into my junk drawer and I there's like a divider in there, and one of the seconds is all credit cards. Yeah, old and new, but but this fucking credit card thing. I just went in and grabbed four credit cards because I was like, one of these has to not be canceled or one of these has to not be whatever, right, And so when it came time to pay the bill, I gave the first one and the guy came back. Heause, I'm really sorry.

I go, no, no, no, that's okay. Here, this one will work. And then he comes back he goes, I'm really sorry this was and then I go, okay, I swear to God this one. And I gave him the third one. And then he walks the machine out and he goes, maybe there's something wrong with the machine. And then I had to tell him this story. I was like, I'm so sorry. It sounds like bullshit. It sounds And also as he's walking back out, Alison looks at me and goes, we're going to prison.

Yeah, it was so imagine that was happening, right, and it's legit. And then you said, Alison, can you just put it on your card and I'll get you back by the morning.

You'll have it in your account.

Yes, And she knows you like you guys are good friends, and so she'll do it.

Yes. And the restaurant where she's talking about and Delvey's bringing people to that's probably too.

Grand right, right, Okay, so yes, so crazy Bill, Well wait about it now, pall. You never passed to foot the bill, which comes to around three hundred and fifty dollars. But nep is a concierge at a boutique hotel in New York City where everything is a million dollars. She does not, and I remember this, like that was half my rent.

I did not. I went on a date once and he said, let's split the bill.

He invited me, he ordered everything, he picked the restaurant. He definitely wanted to fuck me, and he said let's split the bill. And I was overdrawn because of that, because of the like sixty dollars that I paid half of.

And when this happens to you next time, this is what you do. You go, yeah, oh my god, hold on one, hey, Hi, high yourself out bill.

I always flip the bill, and I am not married to this man to this day.

That's how I met vince No. But especially in New York City, money goes so fast and you have to be so tactical about eating out. That was probably tails.

The three hundred and fifty dollars that wasn't even dinner. So much money, so we know where her head's at. It is a huge deal for her.

It makes her panic.

But the next day Anna pays her back in triple in cash. Yeah, so everything's cool, right, But then nef's managers tell her there's a.

Ste that reminds me I'll have to fail.

Shut the fuck up, Are you serious?

I got to jump on that venmo the second this records.

And then nef's managers come forward. They say, when Anna had first checked in at this point more than a month earlier. Can you imagine staying in a hotel in a month? That's Banana's love it. She had never provided a working credit card. Instead, she had gotten the hotel to agree to a wire transfer in the amount of thirty grand, and they had extended this courtesy to her because she was supposedly a potential client of the hotel's owner.

So a thirty thousand dollars wire transfer does really arrive from City Bank. But then Anna leaves New York to go to Omaha to go to Warren Buffett's.

Annual investor summit.

Okay, the butt just the douchebags that are circling with their fucking what do they have vapes and there and their cannabis lease vests or beef tartar.

It's like straight out of succession. I'm sure there's a whole basement in the parking structure where they're just passing illegal beef tartar back and forth snorting. I truly, I keep saying it on TikTok, where people are like, we went to this restaurant in washing Tea with me, and beef tartar is always at the beginning of it, like suddenly everyone's cool with eating raw meat. Yeah, that's crazy observation.

It's your birthday. I can say anything I want. That's my gift on your birthday. Thank you.

So she goes to she goes to Omaha, the most beautiful place on the planet.

I don't know what it's like.

No, we've been yes, Oh it's actually really fawty.

Yeah.

And while she's there, she fails repeatedly to provide a working credit card to the eleven Howard Hotel for the balance of her bill and reoccurring charges, and they put her stuff in storage and tell her that they're kicking her out.

Wow, because she had.

Never put a credit card down okay, and never paid. When Anna returns, can I ask a question? The wire transfer for thirty thousand dollars didn't cover her total expenses because again, she's charging all those le coucou to her room. Oh right, she's probably charging so much shit to her room. Thirty thousand for a month is not going to cover it.

They're kicking her out.

They put her stuff in storage.

When Anna returns to New York, she makes all kinds of furious threats at the staff of a love and Halber like, how dare you?

Do? You know who I am? You know my father is?

She collects her things and drops them at the Mercer Hotel, another high end hotel.

We're my favorite, really, I swear to god. We used to stay there for work back in the day, and it is the greatest. It's so lovely. It's in soho uh right, And they dice their eggs instead of scrambling. They're minced like tiny, tiny, chopped up tiny.

Like coke.

It's Karen, I think that was coke. Oh my god, I love coke. You're doing coke for breakfast. I just it was the kind of place where it was a first job I ever had where I got to stay at a place like that. So I was everywhere I looked. I was like everything, memorize this. It's not coming back. This is how people live. Yes, yeah, it's very charming.

That's where I fell in love with staying in hotels and eating breakfast in hotels.

Yeah, I hear you. So she's moving to the mercer. Next she drops her stuff off and then embarks on a planned eight day trip to Morocco in early May twenty seventeen. Okay, So on this trip to Morocco are Anna herself, Rachel, the friend Casey who's the trainer slash life coach, and also a friend of Rachel's who's a filmmaker who will be recording the entire trip. So this is Anna's idea because she's thinking about making a documentary about founding her social club, and she wants to practice having a camera around all the time. So she's just like, i want to take all these people to Morocco.

I'm footing the whole bill well, knowing the end. This is especially bold. Yeah, where it's a mental state of I'm so in this that it, yeah, that I'm believing myself. I think that's what I think. At some point.

That's what happens is she believes it herself. She thinks she's not hurting anyone in her mind. She clearly is, but I think she's just a lulu a bit.

Yeah, well, she seems like she's hopped up on like clout.

It sounds like yeah, or ambition. Yeah, maybe she thought she would eventually get to that anyways, so she's just like living on a borrowed dime. Anna had selected the legendary five star resort La Mammonia, where villa's run about seven grand a night, and she got like the fanciest place. Rachel had been very upfront that she could not afford this trip, and Anna had made it clear that she would be paying. But there's already even an issue with Anna's credit card, so Rachel had to put the flights before they even left on her own credit card.

And Rachel makes sixty.

Grand a year after her little girl. Now, yeah, Anna says she's going to reimburse her. Rachel has no reason not to believe her, just like neh. For months, she's been eating at lacuq who and working out with the celebrity trainer, all on Anna's dime.

She thinks she's good for it. Yeah, and you don't want to be the buzzkill, you know, Like, Yeah, and you don't want to cut off a potential friends connection. Everybody wants to be in the world of people at La Cuckoo, Right, Long story short.

Two days into their trip to Morocco, two big security guards are waiting in the hotel lobby with the concierg for Anna. The contier explains that a hotel staff member has already been fired because he didn't get a credit card upon booking for the hotel room. She scammed, scammed him, she dazzled him.

He agreed.

The guys followed the group back to the villa while Anna makes phone calls since text messages like I need to get a hold of my father. I need to get a hold of my father's you know, trustees at the bank of the company, Like, I'll get it. This is going to be fine, but ultimately they leave empty handed.

The next morning, Casey, who's the trainer who had gotten sick in Morocco, is like fuck this shit, and she goes home. The security guys come back and they refuse to leave the room. Anna finally turns to Rachel and says that she needs to put down a credit card just for the security hold the hotel wants to put on Before Anna smooth things over with her bank. So I'm dealing with this, but just to get them off our back and get them out of our room. Put down that you hold that you always get when you go to a hotel room. And again Rachel is being told this is just for the hold and that the sixty grand bill will not be charged to her room.

The bill is sixty grand right now, so crazy, that's this is what I made it two years in my twenties.

Yeah, sixty grand.

This is more than Rachel's annual salary as a photo editor at Vanity Fair. The two big eyes also start urging her to put her card down, so finally she does it, knowing that she only has about four hundred dollars in her checking account.

God. Also, this is a time where in my life where they'd be like they'd touch my credit card and be like declined. Like the idea that people even have the option to do this.

Yeah, I'm so glad. All my friends were broke as fuck. No one was expecting anything from anyone else.

Socco Bell everybody. Yeah, that's right. They have steak tartar there too. I'm not on purpose.

We love you talk about Rachel leaves a Morocco day before Anna and the filmmaker friend, and when she lands, she gets a text from Anna saying she will wire her seventy grand in the next day or so.

So that hold wasn't true.

The whole thing went through for sixty grand on her fucking credit card, which she doesn't have, and Anna is like, I'll give you seventy grand, Like, don't worry about this. Back in New York, Rachel texts Anna daily and can't get the money. She spends the next month in a pure panic, texting Anna and getting deflections. Anna moves from hotel to hotel. Eventually, towards the end of the summer, she tells Rachel that she has a cashier's check for her, but neither the check or Anna materializes, and she's fucking freaking out. Rachel spends the summer digging around and dodging Anna's request to crash at her apartment. Anne is like now like old yeah. At the same time, Anna is sometimes crashing with Casey the trainer, and then she and

Rachel try to have an intervention with Anna. In early August, the day before, the New York Post had run a story about the so called heiress who has been running up hotel bills all over downtown, and even with this evidence, Anna keeps deflecting, saying the money is there and she's making the same excuses. Here's a photo of Anna from the New York Post article. The next day, Rachel goes to the police precinct and the civil court, and then finally calls in a New York Attorney General's office saying she believes Anna is a con artist, and they call her right back because they've already been investigating her. When it all starts to unravel, this is the story that emerges. Basically, she goes to City National Bank in a private investment company,

and asks for a twenty two million dollar loan for her social club. She asks this other investment company for thirty five million, and she tells both financial institutions that she can secure the loans with substantial family assets that are held in Swiss banks. City National turns her down, and Fortress says they will do it if she can give them one hundred thousand dollars deposit while they do their due diligence. And she does this because she's somehow convinced City National Bank, who denied that twenty five million dollar loan to lend her that money.

Halfway through the process with this.

Company, Anna says she's withdrawing and she doesn't want to work with them anymore, and withdraws the remaining amount of money about fifty five grand, and so she puts that money into a City Bank account. That's where she wired the money to the eleven Howard's. So she actually had that thirty grand and uses the rest. She takes it all out in cash and uses it to fund her lifestyle.

It doesn't go very far. And she had also opened various other accounts with bad checks, so she'd like deposit this big check and take out as much as she could before it cleared or not cleared, Yeah, before it bounced. And that's what the money she was paying everything with. Anna, whose real name is Annasorican, is arrested in October of twenty seventeen outside of Passages, Malibu, Oh No. Which, as everyone knows, is a rehab facility in Malibu for rich people right and their kids.

Trying to go there.

I think she was trying to go there. It seems like that's where she had been receiving treatment and which is such a great escape to be like what I'm saying, is is it the perfect cover?

Is it it is? Who? Who can't say?

Well, we can't her, it's all alleged. We can't say what her deal was. But that's what happened. Okay, and she's extradited to New York.

Did you imagine you're in You're in passages trying to get sober. You're in group therapy talking about how mean your dad was tearing your fingernails off as you chew them down. Wait a second, what's going on? Right? I thought she also thought she'd meet some new marks there.

Yeah.

Right, it's people that their most vulnerable.

So and so's daughter who's like on drugs, and like they're famous and rich, and can I come stay with you after? Like I need we can be sober together. Yeah, brilliant, let's do that. Let's make a movie about that.

Let's stop it, Let's go see who we can meet at rehab. Okay.

At this point, information finally begins to trickle out about who Anna really is. She'd been actually born in Russia in nineteen ninety one, and her family had moved to Germany.

So isn't fake? Okay? Maybe she puts it on a.

Little bit who knows her father has a heating and cooling business, And it seems like her family does have some money, but certainly nowhere.

Near the level that people believed.

Anna starts college in London in twenty eleven, drops out, moves to Berlin, works at a PR firm, then moves to Paris for the Purple Magazine internship, and then asks to work out of their New York office, and that's how she ends up in New York.

In New York, Anna had stayed at.

Some other hotels, crashed with new friends, and it seems like she was being somewhat supported by her parents, even though they're not wealthy, but they do enough to support their daughter while she builds a career. The problem is that living modestly had not been in Nana's plans. I think she just had this like these grandiose ideas.

Also, I feel like somewhere along the way she spent time with a scammer herself, because you wouldn't know to do sarulate people that way. Ye take out loans and I'm going to take this money and put it over here and then bring it back over here.

And I mean Shalmelsey's taking money from people I don't have. It is not the thing, you know, like it's gross.

But also the idea of like papering the staff, the low level to face people, so that you've got these kind of like people allies unknowingly defending you and saying no, I know her. I mean that's very wily, diabolical. Even who did she learn this from? Yeah, that's a really good point.

After a trip back home in Europe in twenty sixteen is when she comes back and checks into the eleven Howard and sets up this elaborate scheme, this new one in motion. So Rachel, her friend from Vandy Fair, writes her first person account of the story for Vanity Fair.

Yeah, good job girl for her at yours.

And then Jessica Pressler remember her, she is a journalist. She's reported many big stories, including the one that became the.

Basis for the movie Hustlers. Oh yeah, you know her.

Yeah, she writes a big story for New York Magazine. That story is adapted into a Shonda Rhime series. That's what the Inventing Anna series is. In it, Jessica herself is played by Anna Lumpski.

Oh yeah, which is so fun.

In twenty nineteen, Anna sentenced to four to twelve years in prison. And here's a photo of her at her trial.

Legendary. I love that picture. Yeah that's me showing up for work where it's like, Karen, we were supposed to be recording fifteen minutes ago, and I'm like, can I just please put on some contour? Do you know what I bet she?

I bet she was fun in prison. Fuck yeah, I bet she made so many fucking friends in prison.

We'll all judge away, judge away. Here's the thing that's a creative, inventive mind that's got an engine behind it. Yeah, there was always a girl like evil. It's for evil that these are the girls that are like, let's go down to the seven to eleven. We've all grown.

We pretend to have a seizure. Yeah, and you put some shit in your pocket.

Go steal the snickers. It'll be great. Now you're in an alley giggling your ass off and being like this is what life can be like.

Or even worse. Hey, I stole some pills from my sick aunt. Let's do that fucking snort them, which is so fun. When that's what your twenties are for.

It's like there's an exploratory date, Like, here's the thing. There's a lot when you're a young woman growing up, especially in America, there's a lot that you're told to be afraid of. This is a person who's clearly fearless and then also able to put on the character of no, fuck you, I'm rich when she's actually not truly that that's incredible.

Yeah, and I bet she can cry in command easily, easy. Okay, So she's actually she goes into twenty nineteen and she's actually been paroled since twenty twenty one. Rachel never gets all of her money back from Anna. Anna does PayPal her five grand, which Rachel finds so odd because she says, quote, this gesture tugged at me knowing what I know, which is that she really didn't have the money. Why would she give me anything at all. Surely she would have paid me the full amount if she could have, right, So I think Rachel's like me, We're just like, I don't know if she's getting her the benefit of the doubt still.

And she's trying to go I didn't get fucked over, get scammed. She's actually a good person. That's this whole Thing's miss underfold. Why did she give her that money? You know, it's because that's the thing that keeps a fucking channel open good gesture, which means good faith. No, it fucking doesn't. That's money. And it's like, what do you like? Do you like money? Here, I'll push this towards you. What do you like? Do you need to be loved? Okay, well, I won't stop staring at you.

Like the plays are the plays, it's just different material. Gas Lighting is gas lighting.

America Express does forgive the rest of Rachel's debt.

Thank god.

I know.

In twenty twenties they saw the Netflix show. They're like Shonda Rhymes. Okay, that's fine.

And they probably tweeted about it.

Okay.

In twenty twenty four, Anna appears on Dancing with the Stars.

Did you know that? Hold up? What?

Wearing a bedazzled ankle monitor. She got let out of prison, but she still has an ankle.

To see that picture again?

Please wait, I'm sure you had the Dancing with the Star picture or her ankle monitor on Let's see it?

Whats up?

Which so reminds me this is magic from upt the last season of Euphoria. Wearing a neck brace Thatt's be Dazzled is just the most fucking iconic thing I've ever seen.

I bet it's a reference. Don't you think, Oh, maybe she look how cute she is? Okay, yeah she's no, she's yes, no she is.

People will get upset about the fact that there's a contestant with an ankle monitor.

You shouldn't do that.

She gets voted off the second week, so Buddha those people. She recently demonstrated to her one million plus Instagram followers how she puts tights on under said ankle monitor.

Still like get ready with me?

Yeah, she still awares it and she does this like so her Instagram now is like glamorous and she's fucking gorgeous. She really is really beautiful.

Now, Yes, she could be played by the Claire Danes, the Claire Danes, Ariano Mattox, who else. She's my girl, She's from vander Pump Rules. So look, she's fucking beautiful. She's an actress. You're tasting a reality start to play. She's an actress. We love her.

Uh, she's just kind of like she has like her her whole Instagram is like scrolling. It's just like a tongue in cheek glamorous and NYC lifestyle.

That's it is cheeky.

It is a little like winkie of like fuck, yeah, I'm that girl. Like the song she plays are like scammy, like she knows what people want from her, yes, and she's delivering it. She did fuck people over, for sure, so let's not forget there are victims.

So let's not forget the feeling of like being in debt where Yeah, that feeling of just like pushing debt upon other people who said no fifteen times. Yeah, and now you're just fucked until you can prove in the courts. Hey, you didn't do it right. Crazy.

According to her, she's writing a memoir and making a documentary chronicling her life.

It was up to her. She wants Jennifer Lawrence to play her maybe. Yeah.

And that is a story of Anna Delvi, the fake soho airess who was punished more severely than any of the men who were in the Epstein files, including the pedophiles.

Yep, because God for a bid a young woman be smart and tricky.

She didn't smile enough. Send her to prison.

She had a weird accent. We don't like her. Yeah, great job, thank you. What a great comprehensive way to learn about her. Yeah, it's a question you can never answer in scam stories, which is like, how did they get away with that for so long?

Right?

And the answer is like, you had to be there? I think yeah, I think so.

I definitely think I would have I would have been swept up back then.

Oh yeah, you know. Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.

All right, well that was my birthday episode.

How do you feel?

I feel like a birthday I feel, I feel good. I feel Yeah, I'm like, we did it.

Yeah, we did.

Join the fan cult if you want to see me, take you through my modeling, my childhood modeling photos.

Georgia's Barbizon days are going to be up for your eyeballs to grab.

In the fan call in the fan Cult video. My favorite murder dot Com. Thank you guys so much for listening. Do you have a scams story? We want to hear it.

We love it.

My favorite murdered Gmail. Did you ever get scammed? I'm sure there's listeners who got scammed, Like, here's how it happened.

Everyone's been scammed in some way or the scammer big or little. Yes, if you're the scammer, and you have the guts if you're in a delvy level brave with your own scam tell us go ahead, come and admit it.

Yeah.

Well, we're about to do a batch of honking horays and it's presented by Hyundai.

Let's get into it. Let's do it.

This one starts off strong and it's in all caps. It's from Kelly B who wrote in on the fan coult and said, I finished an entire aqua for lip Bomb without losing it.

Never finish a.

Lip bomb in my life, Never finished a lip bomb or even the lipstick I love the most.

I get down that far and it disappears right.

So Kelly bre congratulations.

First person in history it was ever finished a limb. This one is check it before you wreck it on Instagram. Sure. While searching for something that was just for me, after raising my kids up to be self sufficient, I ended up joining a.

Roller derby league.

Can you imagine, Well, the kids are out of the house at the.

Age of thirty nine.

Hell yes, I have found my people in a little bit of myself in the process. My Derney name is Shreddy Better.

Have you ever been on a roller derby team?

No? I've fallen on roller skates before, and I'm not I'm still broken.

I think the reason I thought you had been on a roller derby team was because of that picture you took during COVID with your helmet and your knave pads on. Yes, it was your picture that was one and done.

I got so scared I never did it again.

This one is from Jennifer M from the Fan Cult, and it says I got laid off two hundred and twenty seven days ago after over one hundred and twenty two applications, one hundred and eight of which never responded.

This is what everyone is going through these.

Days, for second and third interviews and more tears than I'd like to specifically count. I finally got a wonderful job. I can't wait to start using my brain again. Oh my god, congratulations Jonathan for m hooray for you that.

Feeling of like needing a job and then finally getting one.

Morrisey wrote about it. He was right, he said literally exactly those words.

There was a reason it's a Morrissey song legendary. Okay, here's one from evangeltee. I planned my besties medieval themed bachelorette party and it went perfectly.

Wow. So no one drank too much meat and threw up a turkey leg.

Oh they did, and that's why I went perfect Oh because that was the theme. I think more weird themed bachelorette parties need to start trending.

Let's pitch some now.

Okay, let's dolphin theme. All clowns, clown things, ax clowns, ax clowns, ax clowns, and the paperwork you go through to fill out to make a divorce happen. And then the final theme, hot dog. I've made me seen those ones before. This one's from Mira and then in parentheses it says like mirror but with a Boston accent.

We're already getting directed in this email.

The subject line of this one is my mom's promotion made History. It says, high all love the podcast and listening for years, love all that you do to support communities.

Let's get into it.

My heray is that after working in the FDNY, the New York Fire Department, four years and studying her ass off, my mom, Michelle Fitzsimmons, was promoted to deputy chief. Not only is this a huge personal victory for her, because she literally had to study for months for the test and put in all the hours to be eligible. But she is the first woman to be promoted to deputy chief and the FDNY. With all the interviews she did for TV and newspapers, she just kept talking about how excited she was to show little girls that they can do and be anything they want.

She loves her job and being a first responder.

She is the reason I always correct people when they say fireman. It's firefighter, stay sexy and break the glass ceiling, Mira.

I want a hero mom to grow up with.

Also that mom has to deal with living in the firehouse for three or four days of the week, which is brave, just because of the smell.

She's a wonderful, wonderful woman.

All right, Well, thank you to Hundai for sponsoring these honking horays.

We love doing them, we love hearing them. Please write them in Yes and stay sex and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis, Do you want to cook y? This has been an exactly right production.

Our senior producer is Molly Smith and our associate producer is Tessa Hughes.

Our editor is Aristotle lass Vedo. This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci. Our researchers are Mary McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail.

Dot com and follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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That's the best way you can support our show.

Goodbye,

536 - Smart ‘n Tricky

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