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Curiosityness

071 The Bank Robbery Capital of the World: Los Angeles | Peter Houlahan

Curiosityness

Travis DeRose

History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.8566 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2019

⏱️ 87 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Even as a child of the 90's in LA, I had never known that Los Angeles was once the bank robbery capital of the world. In 1992, there was a heist every 45 minutes!

The main reason for that, among others, is freeways! We're talking about guys who would rob multiple banks in one day and one particular bandit got in 64 robberies before being caught.

Join me in this episode with Peter Houlahan as he shares the stories of some of the most significant bank robberies in LA during the 80's and 90's!

 

Grab your copy of Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History at https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781640092129

 

And find Peter on his website at https://www.peterhoulahan.com/

 

 

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Claim your FREE Curiosityness sticker at https://www.curiosityness.com/freesticker/

 

Find me, the host of Curiosityness on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travderose/

Or send me an email to travis@curiosityness.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

A spontaneous and unrehearsed interview.

0:07.8

Hello and welcome to the 71st episode of Curiosityness.

0:14.4

This episode, oh boy, it's a fun one.

0:17.0

It's with Peter Houlihan.

0:20.0

And Peter shares the story of how L.A. became the bank robbery

0:26.5

capital of the world, Los Angeles, which I didn't even know about. It happened in the 80s, 90s.

0:32.7

So he talks about that, shares that whole story. We go in and it's kind of story time and Peter tells some really

0:39.1

interesting stories and bank robbery cases and shares a lot about that. So we dive into a couple

0:45.5

specific cases and then we really talk about a bank robbery that happened in Norco, California in 1980.

0:56.3

And I think you're going to enjoy it.

0:58.8

It's just a really fun, informative episode about an interesting subject.

1:05.7

And so, without further ado, here is Peter Houlihan with the story of how LA became the bank robbery capital of the world.

1:16.6

All right. What's going on? Peter. How you doing?

1:19.6

I'm good, Travis. Thanks for having me on. This is great.

1:22.6

Yeah, hell yeah, man. This will be fun.

1:24.7

Dude, the story that you're telling is awesome.

1:45.0

Never even had no idea this even existed, but it's fascinating. Yeah, it's kind of been lost to time. I mean, it's 1980, you know, Riverside. So you're in, you're in Los Angeles area, aren't you? Yeah, long, yeah. Yeah, so you got some familiarity with Riverside. But, yeah, you know, back then there was no, you know,

1:51.0

no ubiquitous cell phone cameras, no 24-hour news channels to loop it around, no internet to post it on.

1:51.9

So it kind of got lost to time, even though it's a really a remarkable event.

1:56.7

Yeah, interesting.

1:57.4

And we can, can we officially call, say that, you know, L.A. Riverside area was the bank robbery capital of the world?

2:07.0

Yeah, you can absolutely say that.

...

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