--:-- Host: Hey there. Today, we're bringing you something different. If you caught the latest episode of Apple News Today in conversation, you heard my interview with Josh Dean. He's a journalist and the host of a new podcast series from Apple TV Plus called Hooked.
--:-- Josh Dean: He's a journalist and the host of a new podcast series from Apple TV Plus called Hooked.
--:-- Host: Now, Hooked is a different kind of crime story. It's about one of America's most notorious bank robbers. He robbed 30 banks in one year. But before that, he was an engineer at Boeing, a guy who traveled the world in business class, who made a six-figure salary, until he got hooked on opioids, and his life quickly unraveled.
--:-- Josh Dean: Today, we're bringing you episode one of that series. And a quick warning, there is some strong language used in this episode. Enjoy.
--:-- Josh Dean: I do remember driving down the freeway with a nice little wad of cash and thinking that went a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I mean, I'm not threatening anybody or putting a gun in anybody's face. I'm just taking a little bit of money. And I mean, I hate to say this, but in some respects, it was kind of fun.
--:-- Josh Dean: Last summer, I found myself driving around the Seattle area with a guy named Tony. We were on a tour of sorts, looking for important sites from his past. His childhood home, the little coffee kiosk he used to own. But what he really wanted to show me was the last bank he ever robbed.
--:-- Josh Dean: Yeah, go straight. To be honest, man, I haven't been down here for a minute.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: According to Tony, the way this particular bank was situated made it the perfect target for a heist.
--:-- Josh Dean: What did you like about this location?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Oh, I'll show you. It's a great one. I'll show you when we get up here. This is, like, actually probably one of the easiest ones.
--:-- Josh Dean: This guy, Tony. Tony Hathaway is his full name. Let's just say he knows a thing or two about robbing banks.
--:-- Josh Dean: Yeah, I went to Marysville, Everett, Linwood, Bothell, Bellevue. Let's see.
--:-- Host: We've never led the show with a bank robber, but I am tonight because the FBI's Seattle Safe Streets Task Force needs your help identifying this serial bank robber.
--:-- Voice of FBI Announcement: Using not much more than a hoodie and a mask cut from a T-shirt, Tony Hathaway became one of the most prolific bank robbers in American history.
--:-- Josh Dean: But the bank we were looking for on this day, that robbery didn't go exactly as planned.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: It was just a single story bank, you know, with mostly glass panels all the way around it, which was nice because when I would drive by, I could easily see in there whether there's customers or not.
--:-- Josh Dean: The entrance faced this way. So, yeah, it made it very easy to get in and out of there without a whole lot of people seeing you.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: So I would park just down here around the corner, come out of the bank, walk down the sidewalk to my getaway car.
--:-- Josh Dean: This guided tour we were on was happening back in July of 2020, in the thick of the pandemic.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: At this particular moment, we were driving around University Village, or U-Village, a huge outdoor shopping center near the University of Washington.
--:-- Josh Dean: So hang on, so take a left up here though on this side street if you can. I think we can still drive through.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: It's a maze of upscale shops. Everlane, CB2, Lululemon, all made up to look like the downtown of an idyllic little village.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Tony didn't recognize it. His last clear memory of this place was from over six years ago.
--:-- Josh Dean: Boy, this is a nice shopping center, isn't it?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Not since the day his life of crime ended at a key bank.
--:-- Josh Dean: I think if you take a left, yeah, take a left here.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Oh, my goodness. Is it gone? Those little bastards tore it down.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Was it right there?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: It was right there. Are you kidding me right now? There's a big hole in the ground. That is crazy. It's gone. I'm very, I'm gravely disappointed that we just drove all the way down here and the one bank we really wanted to see has now been leveled.
--:-- Josh Dean: It does not, it's a hole in the ground. Dang.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'm Josh Dean. I'm a journalist and the co-creator of both The Clearing and Chameleon Hollywood Con Queen.
--:-- Josh Dean: But I knew even before I made those shows that I wanted to tell Tony Hathaway's story.
--:-- Josh Dean: A few years ago, I was poking around, looking for stories about bank robbers. Like, really successful ones.
--:-- Josh Dean: I wanted to find someone who was gifted, I guess, at robbing banks.
--:-- Josh Dean: And I stumbled across a small thing in the Seattle newspaper. Local man robs 30 banks.
--:-- Josh Dean: Damn, I thought. That's a lot of banks. Like, an in-the-record books kind of number.
--:-- Josh Dean: Seemed like exactly the kind of story I was looking for. Maybe even better.
--:-- Josh Dean: So I wrote to Tony, who was in prison at the time.
--:-- Josh Dean: And when he finally got back to me by email, his response left me kind of speechless.
--:-- Josh Dean: Not sure how much of my story you're familiar with, he wrote. But in short, I worked for a very large commercial airplane company for 22 years as a technical designer and engineer.
--:-- Josh Dean: Injured my back, had two surgeries, then became addicted to Oxycontin, then heroin, robbed 30 banks in a year, and now prison.
--:-- Josh Dean: Airplane engineer? Did he say heroin? And he robbed 30 banks?
--:-- Josh Dean: I mean, what?
--:-- Josh Dean: I went in looking for a successful bank robber, found one, like maybe one of the most successful ever, and it turns out that's not even the most interesting part of this story.
--:-- Josh Dean: In an instant, the story I thought I was looking for spiraled into something totally different, almost unbelievable.
--:-- Josh Dean: It wasn't just a tall tale about some ingenious bank robber.
--:-- Josh Dean: It was about a middle-aged dad with a comfortable career who became an ingenious bank robber.
--:-- Josh Dean: That's one hell of a midlife crisis.
--:-- Josh Dean: How does that happen?
--:-- Josh Dean: In his very next email, Tony summed up his saga, I guess you could call it, as a, quote, painful story about a guy who pretty much had it made and lost it all because he became addicted to pain medication that he was prescribed by his family doctor.
--:-- Josh Dean: What I didn't know at the time is what I was really being prescribed.
--:-- Josh Dean: I didn't realize that this is basically pharmaceutical heroin.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Tony obviously never thought he would become addicted. No one does.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: But it happened fast, and it cost him everything.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: His job, his savings, his dignity. Everything.
--:-- Josh Dean: And his addiction still looms over him every day, which explains a lot.
--:-- Josh Dean: But it doesn't explain how he ended up wanted by the FBI.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I'm a heroin addict, and I had to do something, you know, to not just feed my drug habit, to also help take care of my family.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: So for me, it was bank robberies was the easiest way to get money.
--:-- Josh Dean: Well, easy until you get caught.
--:-- Josh Dean: This is Hooked, an Apple original podcast produced by Campside Media.
--:-- Josh Dean: A story about cops and robbers, doctors and dealers, and getting high versus getting by.
--:-- Josh Dean: Yeah, I was a mess.
--:-- Josh Dean: I mean, overall, I think I was a good person, you know, like to my friends and, you know, as far as like just being kind to people.
--:-- Josh Dean: But I'm robbing banks like crazy, which is obviously wrong.
--:-- Josh Dean: Part 1. The Fatal Funnel
--:-- Josh Dean: Once I understood the scope of Tony's story, I needed to know more.
--:-- Josh Dean: I asked if he would mind getting on the phone with me.
--:-- Josh Dean: He was happy, even eager to talk.
--:-- Josh Dean: This call is from an inmate at the Monroe Correctional Complex.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Can you hear me okay?
--:-- Josh Dean: Yeah, I can hear you fine.
--:-- Josh Dean: How you doing?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Oh, you know. Living the dream.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony was charming and refreshingly candid.
--:-- Josh Dean: I liked talking to him.
--:-- Josh Dean: We spoke almost every weekend, very early in the mornings, before there was a crowd around the prison's public phones.
--:-- Josh Dean: Are you around tomorrow?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm here every day, buddy.
--:-- Josh Dean: I ain't gonna lie, I love talking to you.
--:-- Josh Dean: This is like the funnest part of my days.
--:-- Josh Dean: Eventually, I went out to see him in prison at the Monroe Correctional Complex in rural Washington.
--:-- Josh Dean: Good afternoon, can I help you?
--:-- Josh Dean: Yeah, I'm here to see an inmate at the camp.
--:-- Josh Dean: They are open for processing.
--:-- Josh Dean: You've got a good visit.
--:-- Josh Dean: Okay, what do I do, actually?
--:-- Josh Dean: It's my first time.
--:-- Josh Dean: Okay, I'm up here in the tower talking to you.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'd like to play you tape from that visit, but I don't have any.
--:-- Josh Dean: Because you're not allowed to record inside Washington State prisons.
--:-- Josh Dean: You're not even allowed to bring paper or a pen.
--:-- Josh Dean: So a journalist meeting a prisoner needs either a photographic memory, or you could do what I did.
--:-- Josh Dean: We pretended to play a game, and I used the scratch paper for scoring and a stubby pencil from Yahtzee to scribble some notes.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony and I kept talking when he got out of prison, too, at the very end of 2019.
--:-- Josh Dean: Can you hear me okay?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Yeah, I can hear you fine.
--:-- Josh Dean: So how's it feel?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: It's amazing.
--:-- Josh Dean: I mean, it's, yeah, it's good to be free, man.
--:-- Josh Dean: I mean, there was so much to talk about.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony Hathaway's story is sprawling and messy, as all the best stories are.
--:-- Josh Dean: It's about a guy who had it all, then lost it, who made desperate decisions that hurt people and himself.
--:-- Josh Dean: Most of all, it's about the extremely precarious nature of life, which can be totally fine one day and then fall apart the next.
--:-- Josh Dean: You know, I've been through a lot of shit, obviously, the last 10 years.
--:-- Josh Dean: It's been a long fucking road.
--:-- Josh Dean: So whatever, you know, whatever they throw at me, I'm sure I can handle it.
--:-- Josh Dean: We'll get through it.
--:-- Josh Dean: Yeah, we get through it.
--:-- Josh Dean: We be all right but we see what happens
--:-- Josh Dean: I get through it one way or another
--:-- Josh Dean: And Tony has gotten through it many times over because there another whole angle to his story that became very clear to me.
--:-- Josh Dean: The more I talked with him, the more I realized Tony's story was extreme, but it was also typical in a way.
--:-- Josh Dean: If you take away the crime spree part, his story, his downfall, is a lot like thousands of others in America, yet another victim of this epidemic we hear so much about.
--:-- Josh Dean: The fastest growing drug is America's opioid crisis.
--:-- Josh Dean: It's a phrase we hear constantly in the news.
--:-- Josh Dean: And I suppose I always thought I had a pretty good handle on what it meant.
--:-- Josh Dean: But getting to know Tony was like taking a college course on opioids and how they ruined so many lives.
--:-- Josh Dean: The crisis changed for me from something abstract to something personal.
--:-- Josh Dean: Because the arc of Tony's story, overlaid on a timeline of the opioid epidemic, lines up almost perfectly.
--:-- Josh Dean: Its inflection points are his, too.
--:-- Josh Dean: It's almost uncanny.
--:-- Josh Dean: Like millions of other people all over America, Tony fell into a trap laid by a powerful pharmaceutical company.
--:-- Josh Dean: And the little bottles of pills he picked up at Rite Aid set him on a trajectory that just blew up his life.
--:-- Josh Dean: He's lucky to be alive.
--:-- Josh Dean: And frankly, when you hear the story we're going to unspool over the next nine episodes, you'll see why.
--:-- Josh Dean: To help understand Tony's wild ride, We're going to start somewhere in the middle, by retracing the day when things truly unraveled.
--:-- Josh Dean: When Tony Hathaway woke up on February 11th, 2014, he didn't have to think about how he'd be spending his day.
--:-- Josh Dean: He knew exactly how he'd be spending it.
--:-- Josh Dean: First, he'd fix himself up with some heroin, then he'd rob a bank.
--:-- Josh Dean: That day would have started the same as every other day, you know.
--:-- Josh Dean: I remember I left pretty early that morning.
--:-- Josh Dean: I think it was around 9 or 10 a.m.
--:-- Josh Dean: You know, I talked to my sister ahead of time, and she said I could, you know, borrow her van.
--:-- Josh Dean: A light blue Honda Odyssey with one missing side mirror and a large Seahawks decal in the back window.
--:-- Josh Dean: My plan was to go down to Seattle to a bank that I had robbed, I think, about five or six months earlier.
--:-- Josh Dean: It was super easy, and I got like $5,000, so it was a pretty good hit for what I was doing anyways at the time.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony's average take from a bank was $2,500.
--:-- Josh Dean: Not exactly the stuff of legend.
--:-- Josh Dean: If you're picturing guys in president's masks, carrying big black duffel bags and blueprints to a vault with a getaway driver waiting outside, well, forget all of that.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony's just a guy who needed some cash.
--:-- Josh Dean: He fits exactly nobody's stereotype of what a criminal mastermind might look like.
--:-- Josh Dean: He's just a middle-aged dad who these days mostly wears sweatshirts, cargo shorts, and sneakers.
--:-- Josh Dean: He often comes across as charming and confident, but he also smokes a vape to keep his nerves in check.
--:-- Josh Dean: But he was an engineer, a problem solver.
--:-- Josh Dean: And for a year at least, he solved one problem very well.
--:-- Josh Dean: How to rob a bank.
--:-- Josh Dean: Why do you think you were so good at it?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Like, you got away with it for so long.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Planning and patience, I think, are two of the main things that, you know, enabled me to continue on doing this for so long before I got caught.
--:-- Josh Dean: Let's talk for a minute about that planning.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony was meticulous, always looking for ways to fine-tune the operation.
--:-- Josh Dean: His disguise and methods evolved over time.
--:-- Josh Dean: I've kind of fucked around with a couple different mask ideas.
--:-- Josh Dean: Which he modeled for me when I visited him at his apartment north of Seattle.
--:-- Josh Dean: One of the masks looked like it was made out of a metallic sort of mesh.
--:-- Josh Dean: It turned out to be just a knit cap.
--:-- Josh Dean: Was the beanie, like, how did you arrive at that beanie idea?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I think I was messing around with different things, and I was in the bathroom, and I had pulled the beanie down over my face, and I was like, my face and I was like, wow, I can totally see out of this perfectly, but you cannot identify who I am.
--:-- Josh Dean: Voila, disguise.
--:-- Josh Dean: The next idea that I came up with, this was a disaster, but I still did it a number of times.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'd take a t-shirt, cut the sleeves off of it, and cut the back off of it.
--:-- Josh Dean: It was like a bib that he could wear under a dress shirt and yank up over his face.
--:-- Josh Dean: except the eye holes never lined up right, which is kind of a problem when you're trying to work fast.
--:-- Josh Dean: So then we switched up to this other mask, and this worked like a champ every time.
--:-- Josh Dean: So this became the one you used for a long time?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Well, I used a, I cut up a lot of T-shirts.
--:-- Josh Dean: This is the one he used for that last robbery, the key bank.
--:-- Josh Dean: It was simple but clever, made out of the sleeve of a Seattle Mariners T-shirt.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony cut two eye holes in the front and wore it as a headband up under his hoodie, so it's easy to pull down over his face.
--:-- Josh Dean: Then, when he was done, he could just yank it down around his neck and look totally inconspicuous on the way out of the bank, too.
--:-- Josh Dean: Gloves, the mask, a hoodie, and that's basically, I mean, that's pretty much all I needed.
--:-- Josh Dean: So that was the get-up.
--:-- Josh Dean: And then there were the run-throughs in the kitchen using household appliances to time himself.
--:-- Josh Dean: I did use the, um, I mean, it's kind of stupid, but in the early planning stages, I used the timer on the microwave just to kind of go through the motions of what I figured it would take me to get in, get to the tower, get the money, and get out the door, basically.
--:-- Josh Dean: Now, here's where the patience came in.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony was very careful.
--:-- Josh Dean: He would only enter a bank under the right conditions.
--:-- Josh Dean: He preferred to hit banks late in the day, during rush hour.
--:-- Josh Dean: Right, because for one, it's easier for me to get out and just blend in with, there's cars everywhere, right?
--:-- Josh Dean: And two, the police response time is going to take longer because the roads are packed full of cars.
--:-- Josh Dean: And his ideal situation? No customers inside.
--:-- Josh Dean: I mean, I'm always driving by, checking to make sure as best I can that there's nobody in the bank.
--:-- Josh Dean: You know, because that puts me at risk and probably puts other people at risk too, right?
--:-- Josh Dean: I might sit here all day driving around, go park for an hour, do it again.
--:-- Josh Dean: Most important of all, no weapons.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony's moral compass was badly bent, but it wasn't entirely broken.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'm not using weapons.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'm not threatening anybody.
--:-- Josh Dean: I never even touched anybody.
--:-- Josh Dean: The way Tony likes to remember all of this, he wasn't threatening.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'm not so sure the tellers would agree.
--:-- Josh Dean: 9-1-1, what are you reporting?
--:-- Josh Dean: I'm working to think in Woodinville and we were just robbed.
--:-- Josh Dean: Okay, okay.
--:-- Josh Dean: So there's no weapons seen or implied, correct?
--:-- Josh Dean: No weapons.
--:-- Josh Dean: He just was really loud and vocal.
--:-- Josh Dean: We're going to Key Bank. Got it.
--:-- Josh Dean: The map looked like the eyes were cut out of it.
--:-- Josh Dean: The face was not seen.
--:-- Josh Dean: The FBI has been advised.
--:-- Josh Dean: We're not sure if they're responding or not.
--:-- Josh Dean: He hit Banks all up and down the Puget Sound area.
--:-- Josh Dean: Plotted out his pins on a map, Tony's spree would resemble a wishbone.
--:-- Josh Dean: arcing up from Seattle to Marysville and then swooping back down to Bellevue, just across the bridge over Lake Washington.
--:-- Josh Dean: It was, for most of 2013, almost a full-time job by necessity.
--:-- Josh Dean: Because as I mentioned, bank robbery is not as lucrative as you'd think.
--:-- Josh Dean: It's not actually lucrative at all.
--:-- Josh Dean: One of the things that struck me back when I originally read about Tony was that in all of those robberies, 30 of them, his total haul was only about $76,000.
--:-- Josh Dean: He put his life on the line 30 times for what amounts to a middle-class salary.
--:-- Josh Dean: But the amount doesn't matter to banks, and the longer Tony kept at it, the more banks began to react.
--:-- Josh Dean: They were starting to take precautions.
--:-- Josh Dean: After, I don't know, 15 or so robberies, I think a lot of these local banks started hiring security guards.
--:-- Josh Dean: You know, banks that didn't normally have them.
--:-- Josh Dean: And if there's a security guard there, I'm definitely, you know, that's scratched off the list immediately.
--:-- Josh Dean: The last thing Tony wanted was a struggle.
--:-- Josh Dean: or to run into a hero.
--:-- Josh Dean: So banks with even a hint of security were out.
--:-- Josh Dean: And there were only so many banks.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony had become so successful that he started to run out of targets.
--:-- Josh Dean: He had to go back and rob a few banks more than once.
--:-- Josh Dean: Man, I don't know.
--:-- Josh Dean: At what number would I have gotten to?
--:-- Josh Dean: Had I not done this next dumb thing we're going to talk about?
--:-- Josh Dean: It's hard to say.
--:-- Josh Dean: Which brings us back to that day in February when Tony gathered his kit, hopped in his sister's minivan, and headed 25 miles south from his home in Everett.
--:-- Josh Dean: Finally arriving at the Seattle Key Bank that's now a hole in the ground, the same bank he'd successfully robbed a few months before.
--:-- Josh Dean: Honestly, at that point, it's like just another day in the office.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'm just going to do something that I've become very comfortable with.
--:-- Josh Dean: Still, Tony would never just roll up and rob a place.
--:-- Josh Dean: His process the day of was cautious.
--:-- Josh Dean: He wanted to stick to his own most important rule.
--:-- Josh Dean: What I'm looking for is that there aren't any customers in the bank.
--:-- Josh Dean: But on this day, at that Key Bank, people kept showing up.
--:-- Josh Dean: And the customers weren't Tony's only problem.
--:-- Josh Dean: Over the course of several hours, as he drove around and around and parked and scouted and watched for an opening, Tony noticed some other things that didn't sit right.
--:-- Josh Dean: I mean, I remember the point where I realized I was being followed and I knew it was law enforcement because they were in a black SUV that was all tended out.
--:-- Josh Dean: I had flipped a U-turn in the Husky Football Stadium parking lot.
--:-- Josh Dean: I'd whipped in there and I'd noticed that the SUV made a quick U-turn in that same area, which confirmed to me that I was being followed.
--:-- Josh Dean: The first time I heard about the black van, I was suspicious.
--:-- Josh Dean: Tony was at the tail end of a year-long heroin-fueled bank robbery bender.
--:-- Josh Dean: And it's probably safe to assume his judgment and instincts weren't exactly firing on all cylinders.
--:-- Josh Dean: Turns out, as impaired as Tony's perception may have been, he was right.
--:-- Josh Dean: They were on to him.
--:-- Len Carver: I already had the SWAT team on standby.
--:-- Len Carver: This is Len Carver
--:-- Len Carver: He worked for the Seattle police for 27 years first as a patrolman and then later as a detective
--:-- Len Carver: Carver retired now by the way and lives in a lovely house overlooking Puget Sound
--:-- Len Carver: Back in his uniform days, in the 90s, Carver really loved getting called to bank robberies.
--:-- Len Carver: It was one of the funnest things you could do is chase bank robbers.
--:-- Len Carver: It was really the good guys and the bad guys, the cops and the robbers.
--:-- Len Carver: By the time this particular detective learned about this particular robber, He was also in charge of an FBI task force.
--:-- Len Carver: Carver had been thinking about this case, this day, for a long time.
--:-- Len Carver: It was a frustrating case.
--:-- Len Carver: It was embarrassing a little bit, you know.
--:-- Len Carver: We've had pattern robberies and a lot of robberies.
--:-- Len Carver: But this one was baffling and a little bit embarrassing that we just can't seem to catch the guy.
--:-- Len Carver: We're always just right behind him, you know.
--:-- Len Carver: In his nearly three-decade career, no robber had been more prolific.
--:-- Len Carver: He didn't really have, did I recall, any physical evidence.
--:-- Len Carver: No latent prints.
--:-- Len Carver: There was no DNA.
--:-- Len Carver: There were no tips.
--:-- Len Carver: Didn't have a vehicle description.
--:-- Len Carver: He was able to do it for, you know, a long time, much longer than other people.
--:-- Len Carver: That's Steve Hoover, now retired from the Bellevue Police Department, who worked the case as part of the same task force as Carver.
--:-- Len Carver: He kept it very simple, and, you know, he didn't get sloppy.
--:-- Len Carver: A lot of them, after they've done it a few times, get a little sloppy or they start talking about it.
--:-- Len Carver: You know, his MO is really no different than most of the bank robberies, but he kept it simple and stuck to that pattern.
--:-- Len Carver: And for a long time, it worked.
--:-- Len Carver: It took detectives months to connect the dots.
--:-- Len Carver: They were basically stymied until February 11th, 2014, when things finally broke their way.
--:-- Len Carver: There is a point, you know, you feel deep down that this is about to break open, you know?
--:-- Len Carver: And I remember calling Hoover, Detective Hoover, and saying, Steve, I think this is it.
--:-- Len Carver: I think this is going to be the day, man.
--:-- Len Carver: That day, Carver found himself sitting in a cruiser, tracking Tony's movements over the police radio.
--:-- Len Carver: He drove around all day, you know?
--:-- Len Carver: I felt like he was getting nervous that he knew he was being tailed or something because he was all over the place.
--:-- Len Carver: Yeah, I mean, I was nervous and scared.
--:-- Len Carver: I remember just freaking out because I'm, you know, I know these guys are on my tail and I'm trying to hide everything in the van as I'm driving down the street.
--:-- Len Carver: At some point I lost them.
--:-- Len Carver: I mean, at least that black SUV was no longer behind me.
--:-- Len Carver: And I decided to leave the area.
--:-- Len Carver: Tony drove back north toward his home and went through some other towns like Kenmore and Lake City, scoping for a backup bank that he could maybe hit instead.
--:-- Len Carver: So I spent maybe an hour or so kind of casing out a couple different banks, and it was no good.
--:-- Len Carver: I mean, there was just way too much traffic, too many customers coming in and out.
--:-- Len Carver: He was on edge, paranoid.
--:-- Len Carver: I remember pulling off at a gas station at one point and crawling under the van.
--:-- Len Carver: I was trying to see if they had put a tracker on the vehicle, because I couldn't figure out, like, how did these guys get on to me?
--:-- Len Carver: Lan and his officers held their positions down in Seattle.
--:-- Len Carver: I think I recall, you know, I recall making a decision that to avoid being burned, let's scale back the eyes on Tony and let's stay in the area around the bank.
--:-- Len Carver: Because this is going to be the fatal funnel.
--:-- Len Carver: This is where he's going to come.
--:-- Len Carver: This is where it's going to happen.
--:-- Len Carver: So yeah, I mean, that day got a little bit crazy.
--:-- Len Carver: It was certainly different than all the rest, you know.
--:-- Len Carver: So why didn't you just pull the ripcord and call it off?
--:-- Len Carver: I certainly thought about it.
--:-- Len Carver: I knew that there was a risk, but I think at that point I was willing to accept that.
--:-- Len Carver: I mean, I'm so burnt out by then.
--:-- Len Carver: I was committed to getting this done.
--:-- Len Carver: I mean, I had no money, so there was no backing out for me.
--:-- Len Carver: Because it's important to remember, Tony was almost out of dope,
--:-- Len Carver: And the whole point of becoming a professional bank robber was a desperate attempt to keep up with his addiction, which was always snarling at his heels.
--:-- Len Carver: So Tony needed to make a pit stop.
--:-- Len Carver: He knew a local fast food place with a secluded parking lot.
--:-- Len Carver: I think I had one shot left of heroin.
--:-- Len Carver: So I decided to go back down to University Village to where I'd started.
--:-- Len Carver: I remember going to the Burger Master, which is real close to the bank.
--:-- Len Carver: I pulled in there.
--:-- Len Carver: It's probably like 3 o'clock in the afternoon by then.
--:-- Len Carver: So I'm kind of running out of time as far as having an opportunity to get in there before they close.
--:-- Len Carver: I remember doing a fat shot of heroin and I just nodded off.
--:-- Len Carver: I was out for, I don't know how long it was, maybe an hour.
--:-- Len Carver: It was the last of his dope.
--:-- Len Carver: And, in fact, it would turn out to be the last time Tony Hathaway ever shot up.
--:-- Len Carver: And when he woke up, he was lucid, fixed, maybe a bit high, but at least not dope sick.
--:-- Len Carver: His mind was clear to go about his business.
--:-- Len Carver: So just after four, Tony drove over to the bank and parked, just down the street.
--:-- Len Carver: What he did know is that he was still being watched by Len Carver and a small army of cops.
--:-- Len Carver: Agents were hovering nearby in unmarked cars, at the ready, wearing street clothes with law enforcement raid jackets.
--:-- Len Carver: All of them waiting to pounce.
--:-- Len Carver: Told to stand by and basically wait for this man to rob a bank.
--:-- Len Carver: It's a conundrum.
--:-- Len Carver: You don't ever want to let a robbery go down if you could prevent a robbery, right?
--:-- Len Carver: This detail really bothered me at first.
--:-- Len Carver: I even pressed Carver on it.
--:-- Len Carver: You let a guy rob a bank?
--:-- Len Carver: But his response helped me to understand a little bit.
--:-- Len Carver: Until Tony robs a bank, he's just a guy walking into a bank.
--:-- Len Carver: So what can cops really do?
--:-- Len Carver: So, yeah, we had those conversations and he's a free person at that point.
--:-- Len Carver: If he wants to get out of his car and go into the bank, it would be improper to stop him.
--:-- Len Carver: I'm not nervous.
--:-- Len Carver: I got people.
--:-- Len Carver: I got skilled, trained, well-armed.
--:-- Len Carver: Capable people with eyes on.
--:-- Len Carver: I'm not nervous at all.
--:-- Len Carver: I'm excited that the likelihood that this whole thing is about to come to an abrupt halt.
--:-- Len Carver: This series is going to end.
--:-- Len Carver: A bad guy is going to be in custody.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Tony, though, he was feeling the pressure.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: This wasn't a 24-hour bank.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I'm up against the clock, right?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I mean, I don't know if the bank closes at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., but it's...
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I don't have any options after that, right?
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I mean, once that bank closes, all the other banks are going to be closed.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: And then I'm done for the day, so.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Tony's alert, even with the heroin coursing through his system.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: And he notices something else.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I remember there was some guys at the apartments across the street were doing, like, landscaping or something, which was weird because this was in February.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I was already nervous because I knew I had been followed earlier that day.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: And so I'm seeing these guys over there, and I'm thinking, man, these guys seem out of place.
--:-- Len Carver: I just didn't want anybody to get hurt.
--:-- Len Carver: You never do.
--:-- Len Carver: And there was a decision not to engage inside the bank and to let him get out of the bank if indeed it was going to be a robbery.
--:-- Len Carver: Inside the bank, five employees were wrapping up their shifts.
--:-- Len Carver: Melissa Coulson was the lead teller that day.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I do pretty well in pressure situations.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I can keep my cool.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: She had no idea that Tony was sitting in the parking lot at that very moment, waiting to rob her, of course.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: But Melissa was pretty well equipped to handle what was about to happen because, unbelievably, Melissa had also been on duty the last time Tony robbed this bank.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I had the best view of the door, and I saw him walk in and immediately knew that he was there to rob us.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: He had not even a mask.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: It was like a burlap bag over his face with holes cut into the front.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: And yeah, he just went straight for me
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I had my 19-year-old part-time teller, who was a student at UW, behind the line with me.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I think she was very scared.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: She'd never been in this type of situation before.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: She was young, and I wanted to keep her safe, which is why I told her to just go in the back room.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: So she ran into, like, our little vestibule where our vault is in, like, a locked, secured room.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: Kind of had, like, tunnel vision.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: Melissa worked quickly.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I just grabbed large bills, handed them over to him, and just wanted him to leave.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: He scared the crap out of me and, you know, my coworkers.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I can't deny that.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: There was one extra step for Tony at the counter.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: An important one.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: I went through the money real quick to make sure there wasn't a tracking device or a dye pack in there.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: And put the money in my pocket.
--:-- Melissa Coulson: Then it was time to go.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Tony was inside that key bank for less than a minute total.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I think I'm literally in and out of the bank in 30 seconds.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: And then when I leave, right, I go back towards the door.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I'm looking down again.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Looking down at his phone, he means.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I pull this down over my neck.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: And I walk out of the bank like anybody else.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: And that is when all hell broke loose.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Right here, right here.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: Finally, after almost a year of Tony's low-key successes, these insignificant, relatively stress-free robberies, it did look exactly like that scene you'd picture in a movie.
--:-- Tony Hathaway: I remember walking out, and all of a sudden
