America's First Great Bank Robber: George Leonidas Leslie
Ridiculous Crime
iHeartPodcasts
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When people speak of the first American bank robber, typically, they think of Jesse James. While he may have been the first world famous bandit and bank robber, he was not the most prolific. That was a man named George Leonidas Leslie, the first truly great American bank robber. He was an underground figure, an outlaw folk hero who made his living robbing the original robber barons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:21.9 | Ridiculous crime is a production of IHeartRadio. And, uh-da-da-da-da-alizabeth. How do you do? How do you do? I'm good. You're good. Yeah, are you? I'm feeling pretty good. I do have a question for you, though, since you're feeling so good. Do you know it's ridiculous? |
| 0:22.4 | I do. |
| 0:23.2 | Really? |
| 0:27.0 | I'm not sure why this story has been bubbling up now. |
| 0:31.0 | It happened in 2016, and the reporting is from 2020. |
| 0:35.0 | But, you know, perhaps we were a little bit, well, it's February 2020. |
| 0:37.5 | So it's like, we didn't know it was about to happen, really. |
| 0:38.3 | Kind of. |
| 0:38.9 | Sure. |
| 0:40.2 | Is this COVID related? |
| 0:40.7 | No. |
| 0:43.1 | But I'm just saying, like, you think about the world then. |
| 0:46.4 | We were such an innocent group of people. |
| 0:47.9 | Anyhow. |
| 0:50.9 | Okay, so 2016, December 2016. |
| 0:51.5 | Yes. |
| 1:46.4 | This lady, she meets this guy on a dating app. I'm not sure which one. I don't want to besmirch. Sure. Why not? A dating app. Anyway, they meet up and they like, oh, let's go on a date. Okay, great. And so she goes to pick him up at his parents' house in Rhode Island. And then they drove 30 minutes east towards Massachusetts. So they're in a new state and go on. They cross state lines. And she's like, I'm not really sure about this guy. Like there's some red flags popping up. He pulled out a bottle of wine while he was driving. While she was driving because she picked him up. And he's just chug-lugging and she's like, oh, that's not really legal. Let's not do that. He's like, okay, well, hold on. I got a stopping at the bank and get some money. So he's like, wait right here. So she pulls into the lot. He gets out. She's waiting. Suddenly he comes running back, jumps in the car. He's wearing like, he's totally sweating. |
| 1:48.0 | He's wearing sunglasses, hat. |
| 1:49.5 | He has a gun in his hand. |
| 1:50.4 | He's got a wig on. |
| 1:53.3 | He robbed the bank for $1,000 cash. |
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