The Uncatchable Outlaw: Greece’s Helicopter-Riding Robin Hood

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2026

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vassilis Paleokostas, and his big brother Nikos, grew up shoeless in a Greek mountain village. When the boys moved to a city, they discovered a talent for robbery — and honed it with a mysterious criminal known locally as The Artist. Before long, the trio were pulling off some of the most daring heists in European history. At a volatile time of financial crashes, leftwing guerrillas and political corruption, the brothers dove into a new gig: kidnapping billionaire business magnates. What confounded cops the most was how Vassilis Paleokostas distributed his loot among the poor, and how the Greek people loved him for it. If authorities did catch up with the country’s Robin Hood, there wasn’t a prison in the land that could hold him for long. Cue decades of capers that could keep a Hollywood writers’ room busy for months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Some follow the noise.
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0:07.7	dollar swings.
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0:17.9	The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board.
0:22.0	They weren't guessing.
0:23.1	They were asking the victim who killed them.
0:25.9	Sounds unbelievable, right?
0:27.3	But it happened.
0:28.5	And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder.
0:33.0	Hi, I'm Karina B. Miniserfer.
0:34.7	And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real,
0:38.7	chilling true crime story connected to that exact day in history, from killer cannibal
0:43.4	brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult, and the strange story of the bloody
0:48.6	hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop
0:55.7	and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each
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1:12.7	morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember,
1:18.8	stay safe. June 4th, 2006, 615 p.m. Athens, Greece. A pilot, surname Caracas, is firing up the rotors of his white twin-engine
	...

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