If you didn't know we have criminal merchandise available on our website, you can get T-shirts, tote bags and stickers and every now and then we've limited edition merchandise available to head did. This is criminal dotcom slash shop to get criminal merch now that this is criminal dotcom slash shop. Thanks very much for your support. Well, I can remember reading the newspaper and back then the newspapers would print the grainy black and white photos of bank robbers or suspects in crimes, and there was this photo of a man dressed in a cowboy hat and boots and leather coat.

It was like May nineteen ninety one.

Skip Hollandsworth is a writer for Texas Monthly. A man with a beard wearing a cowboy hat and a brown leather jacket walked into a bank in Irving, Texas, in May of 1991. Without speaking, he handed the teller a note that read, This is a bank robbery. Give me your money. No marked bills or dye packs.

And I don't know. Most bank robbers do not interest me. I mean, they're impulsive. They scream. When they come into a bank, they shout, they wave their guns, they screech away. They don't take any precautions. He was this polite gentleman, tipped his hat at the at the teller as he walked away with the money. He was very calm, very measured, got out just in time before the police came. And for some reason, I was sort of charmed by him.

And then he did it again in December of 1991, what appeared to be the same man again, dressed in a cowboy hat and leather jacket, robbed a second bank in Irving, walking away with twelve hundred dollars. And then in January 1992, the mysterious robber struck again, robbing a third bank, this time in Garland, Texas. He robbed a fourth bank four months later. Each time it was the same, he stayed very calm, didn't speak and was out of the bank before anyone quite knew what had happened.

I mean, if you've been to Dallas, you know that we're surrounded by this ring of suburbs. And he seemed to be picking off one suburb after another. Irving Garland, Mesquite.

Skip Hollandsworth says this robber was smart. He knew to keep his head down so security cameras would have a hard time getting a picture of his face. He didn't fidget while he waited for the teller to hand over the money.

These are not cinematic bank robberies. These are not the kind of bank robberies that produce huge amounts of money so the guy can go retire in the south of France. It was just this sort of lonely looking cowboy who was just getting about two or three thousand dollars a robbery because bank robbery is a federal crime.

The FBI was brought in to investigate. They nicknamed the bank robber Cowboy Bob, after his trademark cowboy hat. The FBI has no leads.

I mean, that's the secret of small time bank robberies unless the police get there in time to catch him in the act. If the robber gets away out of the parking lot driving his getaway car, there's a good chance he will not be caught. And it seemed to be that he had everything perfectly in control and it was driving Steve Powell completely nuts.

Oh, goodness.

I had seen many, many bank robberies.

I mean, you have to understand who Steve Powell was in the FBI in Texas. He was a lead bank robber specialist and he was tearing his hair out.

This cowboy Bob, as he came to be known around the Dallas FBI offices, was beating the best guy in the business.

You know, a perfect bank robbery, I guess. And I hope I'm not educating anybody that wants to rob a bank. But, you know, you want to get in, robbed the bank, leave as little evidence as possible. That's going to allow someone like me to track you down. If you can get in and get out very quietly and get the amount of money that you want and get away, then you have pulled off a successful bank robbery.

Former FBI agent Steve Powell in the 90s. He was based in Dallas, where he was the bureau's bank robbery coordinator.

I was responsible for connecting all the robberies. In other words, if we had I what you would call a serial bank robber, I would see that. Oh, that was the same guy that robbed that about a data bank or he may have robbed in Albuquerque or Oklahoma City. But I would study the bank robbers and tie the cases together.

Steve Powell had been with the FBI for just over twenty years. But this new bankrobber, Cowboy Bob, polite, quiet and hitting suburban banks for relatively small sums of money was outsmarting him. There is one thing about Cowboy Bob that didn't add up. When Steve Powell reviewed security camera footage, he noticed that Cowboy Bob was wearing his hat backwards. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal.

The first robbery was in May of 1991, the second was seven months later in December of 1991 in Irving, Texas. On that day, Steve Powell says Cowboy Bob parked his car directly in front of the bank, calmly got out of the driver's seat and walked into the building.

Now, with my experience, I knew either this bank robber is an idiot or there's something wrong with this, because most bank robbers do not want you to get a good description of their getaway vehicle and especially the license plate number, because we're going to be able to track that license plate number. And I may be at your house before you even get home.

Well, this person was using a plate that invariably turned out to have been stolen from another vehicle, which led us off in a wild goose chase. And again, we had no clues. We had a description of the vehicle. It was older, rust colored grandpre with a tan top, but the license plate did not lead us anywhere. The third bank robbery occurred a month later in January of 1992, Steve Powell says that once again, Cowboy Bob parked his car in plain view of plenty of witnesses, which meant that once again, Steve Powell had a license plate number to follow up on.

But once again, it did him no good.

You know, a lot of times what will happen, Fabi, is the license plate may be registered to and I'm going to make this up, a yellow Volkswagen. Well, you know, that was not the description of our bank robbers car.

So up until the third, maybe even the fourth robbery, we didn't have a clue. We were praying for a little break.

They would give us something to lead us in the right direction.

And then on September 25th, 1992, Steve Powell got his wish.

He got a call that Cowboy Bob had just robbed his fifth bank in Mesquite, Texas.

And of course, now I remember it like it was yesterday. I was there. We conducted our investigation, but just like always same description. There's no fingerprint because this individual wore gloves. I mean, everything was the same. But the cowboy hat, the sunglasses, the beard never spoke, you know, put the money on the bag and boom, the bandit is gone. Got the license plate. Well, turned out, you know, the person didn't have a clue that their license plate had been removed from their vehicle before I left the bag.

I get a second phone call. This time our the office advises me that we had just had the second bank robbery within about within five miles. It wasn't very far right there in Mesquite. And course, I asked for a description and they gave it to me. And I'll be honest with you, I use the bad word because I knew it was the same silly bank robber.

And I went, OK, here we go.

I ask them, OK, do we have a license plate number in that robbery? Well, they advised me, yes, they had obtained it. I said, all right, you know, do we have agents in route to that location? Yes, we did. And I'm thinking, you know, it it's probably not going to lead us anywhere. But the registered owner was way out in the Irvine, Texas area, which is way on the other side of Dallas from where we were.

So I'm just standing by basically in the first bank. And one of our agents called me and he said, well, we found the registered owner, but this is the first time to be where the car and the license plate matched. That had never happened.

The car was a brown Pontiac Grand Prix registered to a man named Pete Tallas. FBI agents went to the Ford Auto Parts Factory where Pete Tallas worked. They asked him if he owned a Grand Prix and he said that he did. But he said that about a year ago he gave the car to his mother and sister. The FBI agents told him that the car had just been used in a bank robbery. And Petsalis was reported to have said, bullshit, that car can't go fast enough.

The FBI asked where they could find the car, and Pete Tallas gave them an address in Garland, Texas, where his mother and sister lived.

And I'm going, you know, what are the odds? Let's go check it out. So I left that bag and took off for this location. Well, this man had told us that she lives in a big apartment complex.

So I pull in and start, you know, looking for the vehicle. And sure enough, bam, I find it. And. Unbelievable to me, it has the right license plate on it, which matched what had just happened at the last bank, so I'm going, OK, this is real good. And so I backed up and position myself where I could keep an eye on the vehicle and call for some backup agents. So shortly thereafter, some of our other agents started arriving.

And while we are sitting there, you have to understand at that point, we're about to make entry into that apartment because we figure the bank robbers in their way. We're discussing our plans to make entry. Here comes a little lady walking out wearing shorts and a t shirt, and she gets them to the vehicle.

I'm going, OK, there is this girlfriend, we don't want to stop her, I don't know if the bank robbers in the apartment watching her or not, but we'll let her pull out and get close to the outside of the apartment complex and we'll stop her. So and that's what we did. So by then, we stopped the vehicle. Of course, we identify ourselves and I get this female driver out of the car and bring her to my vehicle and put her in the back seat.

Now, she identifies herself to me as Peggy Jo, tell us. And I said, All right, Peggy. I said, you know, this this car was used in a bank robbery. Who has driven it? Well, she said just me. And I said, it's going to be over here just a minute. I said, you need to tell me who he is and tell me. And she said, if just me drive in the car.

And I said, all right, who's in the apartment? Or just my elderly mother. So I got out of the vehicle. She wasn't going to share anything with me. And I, you know, I understand that. So I told the agent, I said, you know, we're going to have to go with. So I stayed with her and some of the agents made entry into the apartment. And finally, one of the agents comes back out to the car and he says, Steve, we've got the beard, the hat, the jacket and a firearm.

And I said, oh, OK. So he's going back in. And I said, back in the car. And I said, Peggy, listen, you know, we've got the disguise now. Where did he go? In just a moment, the agent came back out and I got out of the vehicle and he said, Steve, we've got all the money from both robberies.

And I said, OK, good, so I get back in the car and I said, Hot rod, I said, you know, this is over. I said, Now you've got to tell me who he is.

Did you call her Hot Rod? I'll be honest with you, I probably did, cause that that was kind of the way I spoke back in those days.

Did she seem scared at all? No, no. That was what was so calm. She was very calm. And maybe I'll say right up front with you. She never lied to me. In hindsight, I realize now she never lied.

I kept saying, you know, who are you protecting? One. Nobody. Well, who's been in the car? Just me. And we just kept going around and around that tree. All right. Now, at about that point, I guess the sun had changed a little bit. And you've got to understand, I'm sitting in the back seat with her. I looked over it at Peggie and I saw this and I hate to say it like this, but this white stuff kind of like flaking out of her hair.

And I, you know, basically, I mean, it would be like is this person has an extremely bad case of dandruff or and then it hit me she had taken and which I located myself in the apartment later some spray that you get at like a Halloween costume store where you can spray your hair and turn it kind of white and it was just falling out of her hair onto her shoulder.

And to this day, I remember sitting there and when I spotted that bone, finally the light went off with me and I realized, Jiminy Cricket, this is the bandage.

When she realized that this was who you were looking for, did you say to her, it's you? What did you say to her?

Well, I you know, I told her, you're my bankrobber and you're under arrest. And, you know, now you've got to understand, she never admitted anything to me.

And once I told her she was under arrest for bank robbery, I saw no emotion from her.

Steve Powell and his agents arrested Peggy Jo Tallas and immediately took her into custody. She was 48 years old. Had you ever been so stumped in your whole career, I mean, when you think about all of the bank robberies that you handled in your long career, was this the one that does this one really stick out?

Well, it no, it does. I'll be honest with you, because if you Phoebe, I'll have to show you the surveillance pictures from the robberies. I mean, if you could have told me. Well, that a female I'd like to hear you say that because it was so far from what I was looking for there when it actually happened. Yes, I was I was amazed. And, you know, Phoebe, if you can understand, I mean, I feel like an idiot.

It just never clicked with me that it was her.

You know, I wonder if she'd been so smart. All all through those other bank robberies, what do you think happened? You know, it seems like an amateur mistake.

I know what you're saying, and invariably they will finally make a little mistake. Now, this one was a little mistake, but she had robbed that first bank. And I'm sure once she got away from that bank, she counted the money and said, oh, Jiminy, I didn't get enough. So she was in a hurry for some reason. And she took that stolen plate off of her car and went and robbed the second bank with her real license plate visible.

And that's what brought her down that they have that not happened. Lord knows how long we would've been looking for her. Peggy Jo Tallis was convicted of three counts of bank robbery and sentenced to three months in federal prison. Skip Hollandsworth wrote about her for Texas Monthly in 2005. He reported that a psychologist named Richard Schmidt sat down with Peggy Jo Tallas, Richard Schmidt said that when he would ask her questions, she would just sort of look at him and matter of factly smoke her cigarette, shrugging their shoulders, shaking her head as if she wasn't sure what what else to tell him.

She didn't know how to tell him. She said, you know, she needed somebody to help out her mom who was sick and whose medications cost too much money. And. This psychologist, Schmidt, was enamored with her just as Steve Powell, the FBI agent, was enamored with her. What was she doing? She goes, well, I just wanted to pay for my mother's medications, but I really had no intention of robbing a second bank or a third or a fourth.

And then she pulled out her cigarette case and led another cigarette. And what Schmidt realized was, is that she deep down just enjoyed the heck out of robbing banks. Richard Schmitt would later describe Peggy Jo Tallas as a nice, normal looking woman. When she got out of prison, she laid low, she continued to live with and care for her sick mother. She got a job at a marina just outside of Dallas years past, and after her mother died, Peggy Jo bought an RV.

That same year, Steve Powell retired from the FBI and moved from Dallas to Lubbock every once in a while. He teach a class for bank employees on how to spot bank robbers. He'd always tell the story of Cowboy Bob.

And then a couple of years later, someone walked into the Guaranty Bank in Tyler, Texas, with a mustache, wearing a big hat and gloves and walked out with a bag of money. And if Steve Powell was working still for the FBI, I think he would have known immediately who that was, that he'd robbed that bank.

There was a robbery at a bank and in east Texas, a very small bank called the Guaranty Bank in the town of Tyler, and according to the tellers, the robber was an older man with a round stomach, a scraggly mustache. He wore a big floppy hat. He had on baggy clothes. He wore gloves. He placed a green canvas bag on the counter and he said out loud, Give me all your money. No bills, no blow up money.

He got a stack of cash. The teller later said to the FBI that his voice sounded sort of strange and the mustache appeared to have been glued on and his stomach looked more padded than real.

This was in 2004. Bank tellers told the FBI that the bank robber had taken the money and just calmly walked out of the bank and down the street. No one saw a car. The FBI interviewed an older man they thought matched the description of the bank robber. They gave him a lie detector test, which he passed. So they continued their investigation and continued interviewing older men. Seven months later, on May 5th, 2005, Paquito Tallas parked her RV across the street from that same guaranty bank in Tyler, Texas.

This time, she walked in with no cowboy disguise, which I've just always found fascinating, why she would change her M.O. after so many years successfully getting away with dressing as a man. So she parked across the street in our RV. She walked into the bank to see, of course, didn't use the gun. She was very polite when she told the teller that she wanted her money and the teller gave her everything in her drawer. Eleven thousand dollars, Peggy, Joe.

Thank you.

And she walks out the door and her heart must have been this is always what I've thought is that her heart must have been racing. Eleven thousand dollars was a huge amount of money for her. She had always wanted to go live on the beach in Mexico and this was a chance to do it. She would be able to pay for a trip down there. And as she walked out the door, however, the teller had slipped in the dye pack.

It looks like real money, but if you walk through the door with the alarm on it, the dye pack blows up and all this red smoke sort of blows everywhere. It gets on you, gets on the bank, gets on all the money. And so she had screwed up by letting the dye pack get in there.

Yet she kept walking resolutely toward her RV and got in the RV and drove away. Was he she had to drive up a hill from the bank to get away. And the RV was old and it was going through gears really fast and the exhaust was pouring out of the way out of the pipe. And soon there was this line of police cars following her through Tyler because they still weren't sure who was in the RV and who was driving it and who else was in there.

They thought there could be an entire gang of bank robbers in there. So they were very careful as they ordered her on a cul de sac. And so they all lined up behind their cars with their rifles pointed at the door and they said, come on out.

A spokesperson for the Tyler Police Department later said that the female suspect got up from the driver's seat, went back into the coach and pulled down the shades on the driver's side.

According to a police sergeant on the scene, the officers waited outside the RV with their guns drawn for nearly 10 minutes.

Skip Hollandsworth says Peggy Joe Tallas smoked a cigarette. He says she could have picked up the 357 Magnum she kept under her pillow, but instead she picked up a toy pistol.

The cops almost gasped when this elderly lady opened the door and stood on the steps. And she says, I'm not coming with you. I'm not going back.

According to police, she waved the toy pistol in the air and said, you're going to have to kill me. The police spokesperson later said that the pistol, quote, looked real. There is nothing to indicate it was a toy. When Peggy Jo Tallas pointed her toy pistol at the police officers, they shot her, she was 60 years old when she died. I think she knew this was down to the last inning and she still had one chance at bat and she had gotten away so many other times that I think that she thought maybe I've got one last bat and I can I can hit it over the fence.

And let's be honest, if she had gotten away, if the Dipak had not gone off and she had gotten into that RV undetected and she had made it up that hill, she was on her way to Mexico, this land that she always talked about with her friends, the beaches of Mexico where she can go and hide away and not be held accountable to anyone and live the life she had always wanted to live instead of a life that she had to give up for taking care of her mother for so many years because this would have been her second.

Arrest and conviction for bank robbery. She would have spent the rest of her life in prison. She said it's worth going down and doing it with a toy pistol so I don't hurt anyone else. And she did. You know, I'll be honest with you, Phoebe, I am in my mind, I am convinced Peggy Jo was not the type of person that wanted to go back to federal prison, that were just not in her game plan, so to speak.

What? What did you think when you heard what happened in 2005? How did you hear? Well, it I didn't you know, I'll be honest with you, I didn't wanna hear that. And there was a part of me, even though, you know, she never lied to me when I was with her, you know, years prior, you know, there was a part of me that said, damn, I wish I would have been there.

Maybe I could have talked to. But it didn't happen, so, you know, I never harbored any ill feeling against her.

There was a lot that she did that I hate to say it this way, but as a bank robber that I respected, I really don't think she would have hurt anybody.

So, you know, to hear that she had been shot and killed, it just it kind of hurt me. I didn't want to hear it, but it was the way things went. FBI agent Steve Powell says Peggy Jo Tallas came close to being the most perfect bankrobber he's ever seen.

Is created by Lauren S'pore and me, Nidia Wilson is our senior producer, Susanna Roberson is our system producer, audio mix by Rob Byers, special thanks to Christoph Waltz.

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at this is criminal dotcom. We're on Facebook and Twitter at criminal show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio WNYC, where a proud member of Radio Topia from PUREX, a collection of the best shows around shows like Articles of Interest, a show about what we wear and why their second season is coming out.

Now with six episodes about luxury, people don't realize it's fantasy. It's always this thing that you have to work extra hard to get in. That's so good. No one dresses like a king anymore. How you make money doesn't make money, love. There are lots of things that we take for granted that would once have been considered luxuries. Go listen.

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