Welcome to AirNManky's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm

and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

I like to think that everybody has an innate talent, something they can do that just comes

naturally to them.

It might be drawing or playing a musical instrument or picking up a new language, or how

about walking out of prison, not once, but four times.

Now that last talent belonged to Stephen J. Russell, born in North Carolina in 1957,

and raised by a religious couple who had adopted him as a baby.

At the age of nine, he learned the truth, and he didn't take it well.

His birth parents had had several other children and never attempted to make contact with

their firstborn, which sent him into a spiral.

By the time he was 12, he was setting fires and getting into fights.

As he got older, he discovered some things about himself, though.

For one, he was very smart, very, very smart.

He knew how to read people and gain their confidence quite quickly.

He also had a knack for mimicking people's voices, skills that would come in handy later

in life.

However, before he turned to a life of crime, he worked on the opposite side of the law

...