Hey, everyone, my name is Eric Krosby, host of Tru, the podcast, it features strange events and bizarre tales that you won't believe are real, but they are because, yeah, they're true. Subscribe now wherever you get your favorite podcasts and keep listening until the end of this episode for a taste of the kind of stories you'll hear on through.

This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Stoney's discovery of a map hidden behind a crocheted picture frame his father made sort of threw a wrench in the spokes. It's not something we had planned on. Of course, if you find a map, you have to explore. When we arrived at the undisclosed location, we immediately set up after a customary shot of Stoney's homemade whiskey and started digging. We give get something to do in Iraq.

Some of us only got forty thousand dollars you. There's a chance you don't find money Stony couldn't help but be excited at the possibility of what we might find.

Oh, is he or the budget here? Oh, here it is. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute, wait. You actually walk hard the hard way with the black. Oh, my God, they.

From Imperative Entertainment, this is in the red clay. By the fall of 1973, Dilbert's younger brother Ray had been killed after pressing his luck. One too many times as the town bully. Billy was in prison in the Dixie Mafia, had slowed to a crawl without their leader, young Stoney and the rest of the family carried on and led normal lives the best they could.

But Billy would be released from prison after only eight and a half months of a two year sentence for the trumped up charge brought on by ATF Special Agent Jim West. Any hopes of that time in jail?

Knocking some sense into Burt quickly vanished because he didn't miss a beat. It was as if he had never left at all. Willie Hester was still missing, Harold Chance's nephew, Donald, was killed for taking money from Jim West for information on whiskey still locations. A woman named Carolyn Cooper was found in the bottom of a well.

She had been shot. Trash had been dumped on top of her and the well dynamited. She, too, had been providing information to Jim West about still locations. Billy's self-preservation mode kicked into overdrive and all witnesses were eliminated. While he was in Atlanta federal penitentiary, many times I've heard him say, I wish the hell I'd done five year because that little bit of time it was him and Harrel chance in and there at the same time, the black people were there.

They never got out of it. They just had a big, big vacation. Haley come up bolder than ever. He always regretted that he didn't get more time than to knock some sense into. It seems even Billy thought he had gone too far for his own good. This is far from making a little moonshine on the side for extra cash. Maybe even he could see that it had all gotten so out of control that the only way it would end was with him in prison for the rest of his life or with his death.

Still, he pressed on, as he always had, and Billy Wayne Davis was right by his side. Philharmonie Davis was secretly having an affair with a lady, a woman out of Marietta whose husband who drove by Platen Richardville, was the runner for beauteous for some kingpin which was not involved in the Dixie Mafia kingpins. Now, Davis was with information, he all he made his point to know stuff like this. He got a lot of information. Lawyers, most of it he just mentioned, find out as to whether he was having an affair with her.

And anyway, she told him about her husband holding these pills once a month or so, took me, showed him the address, told her that the pills always a couple hundred thousand and she had been waiting on if he runs. So Davis called my father the one more guy.

My father gets out and they go up there on a Monday and they took a sleeping bag with a pair of binoculars, lobola peels left out of there with binoculars. Right up the road from the house, we can see everything and the woods beside a church and his job was to stay there, stay awake. And let them know when that's available to. Well, I left him there on Monday, Monday evening, and every morning David would come from Alstyle and he will meet my father at mama and truck stop and he going to get out his sandwich, whatever, and they'd ride up there to see Otis and see if the car got there.

Now, this one on all the way through Friday morning, on Friday morning, when they pulled in Otis to believe that caudate being on 15 minutes.

He pulled up back the Holderness boxes in there right now. So my father, Davis, got Otis in the car, pulled back down there.

This is out of a car off right here, and I'm the last making me use his phone and when when I'm taking you back, the car ran up the steps right there. He cut the car off and Davisson Odey stayed in there and they got out, what, not knowing if they could use your phone? Sure.

So sure enough, he had them when he had to go to their Toyota to back the car in their. Little Wayne and my father had noticed was inside the house and. Now, been looking down the talking mostly because if they did, he couldn't talk plain enough for a stranger understanding. They say, what, too many times. So we've always said we know you got the dope here. We know you got the pills. All you got to do is you we want we want the pills.

And the man the woman told them they didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't just lay on the floor right there. They'd laid down on the floor and Amelia found the pills. There's a shotgun house. There's two rooms. When you pull up the bed sheet, he's seen the box is on there. Pull one out of me. That feels when you look down there, get boxes that last boxes get out. He's twenty two rifle on forward headboard.

He pull it up chain.

It was loaded, you know, as they walked by he just shot them both in the back of the head just.

Like it was everyday thing. First time I have ever seen something like that, it was me, it was just Børge. So sure enough, two days later, they got a call from his wife, Tricia, his niece, she said, really, you got to come see something wrong with it. She said he's on top of the house, hugging Gimblett, talking crap, his head.

My father pull up over there. Get him now.

Talk to me so I can't get off my mom. I can't get off my mind.

Well, I was left there with him, and that's the last time he's ever seen. Davis made it clear to Billy that Otis had to go, how long would it be before his conscience got the best of them? And he went to the police to confess what he saw or confided in someone else that would go to the police.

They couldn't risk it, and Billy knew Davis was right, but he didn't kill him, he would. He would, but he knew he had to go.

Now, Davis didn't like Otis didn't like him at all because Otis behind the back call him a chickenshit. Otis was shot by Davis and because they loved him and didn't want have to kill him. And, you know, if you love somebody but they got there, I can see not this. I can understand that. My father let Davis kill him. Call him Bob again is Barry. So they buried him over there at the Wilbur. 24 year old Otis Redding was buried deep in the red clay banks of the Mulberry River.

And not long after Billy realized that there was another loose end to take care of Wayne Davis's mistress that had turned them on to the pill, robbery in the first place had become erratic and accused Davis of shorting her on her one third of the money made when they sold the stolen pills.

Burt was not a man who allowed loose ends, he had already proved that no matter how close to home a problem was, business is business.

Even if Davis loved or cared for the young woman, he needed to come around to Bert's way of thinking she was having an affair with those.

She's the one who told us all about it. She'd done it for her. One third cut the money for the pills.

She got upset because they were but one hundred twenty thousand pills.

When I spoke with two hundred thousand, according to her husband's normal home, she accused Davis of Medtner. They've asked my father why he thought he said it. Was she going to do it now?

I should to give now. We need to get rid of. They were there that night after I told my father it was set up for him to be on the road with the car so they would stop.

However, help and they would take care of it when they got the car, he said in the backseat. He said my whole way to a mile away, I want you to help me just take me home and my wife bring me back it.

The oh, the woman, she's like, I'll be home.

I want to go ahead.

Just for the get her Otis Byrd father pulls out a rope, chosen this route that apparently they put in there and buried.

And wishes that the. There's one family name that is synonymous with American culture, the Kennedys, they became a quintessential symbol of the all-American family of the 21st century. But as they cemented their place in history, the pressure to remain picture perfect became undeniable. And in the end, it proved to be deadly. As a young senator, Ted Kennedy mysteriously drove his car off the road and into a lake. He survived the crash. Those passenger did not.

Fearing his presidential bid would be tarnished, Ted waited 10 hours to report the fatal incident. As the investigation progressed, his story about the events leading up to the crash started to fall apart in word of the deadly incident spread quickly. Soon, he faced accusations not even the Kennedys could overcome.

Subscribe to even the rich on Apple podcast Spotify or listen ad free on the Wonder Rap.

Deep in the conservative south of 1970s Atlanta, Mike Thebus, the son of Greek immigrants, was a man driven by endless ambition. He had everything a wife and five kids, the largest mansion in Atlanta, and a rumored 100 million dollar fortune. But the success came at a price as the community shunned him and he became entangled in a web of murder, mob connections and love affairs.

It is the money, obviously, that attracts organized crime.

I don't have any knowledge as to what happened to Mr. Hanna. He was a personal friend of mine, and I just think it's a terrible tragedy.

There's no doubt in my mind that they are nervous at first about having to do business with Mike Leavis society.

Do not take it seriously when criminals kill each other. So Mike Thebus walked out this door to freedom. Some are speculating he may be in Colombia or Costa Rica, countries which before have harbored United States criminals.

This is Gangster House, the unbelievable story of Mike Thebus family man and the so-called Sultan of smut.

Listen and subscribe to Gangster House right now on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

The banks of the Mulberry River were now becoming littered with bodies. Burt was being pursued hot and heavy by Jim West on the east side of Georgia, and Davis on his turf on the west side of Georgia, had attracted the attention of a newly elected sheriff named Earl Daehlie, who would end up making it his mission to bring down Davis Sheriff Lee's number one arch enemy, Billy Davis, below Wayne Davis because he was sheriff of Douglasville, Georgia, that was built by Davis territory.

He didn't really know Billy Burt, the sheriff. Lee was a real old man. He never he never breached that, not to my knowledge, nor to my dad's. And if you're a real old man and you're a real gangster, you respect each other almost as much as you do the other gangster with that code, because those kind of lawmen are very few and far between.

Sheriff Earley was a real man's man, a fearless take no shit honest law man. He was then and still is highly revered. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office in jail or even located on Earl Dealey Boulevard. But in nineteen seventy three, Lee was gunning for Davis and he made it known the law was now coming at the Dixie Mafia from all angles.

Davis was working in Sheriff Lee's terror door. Sheriff Lee was tough, man. He didn't just hate looking for. Stores are not his own. He took care of his county when Davis was fool enough to keep out on No.

He couldn't catch Davis by normal procedure, so what he done was run a call off, which was his front, and he would call a bank or any business associates, he could find out and he called the server early. I understand that you're doing business a little way. Davis aren't saying you're giving this bank credit, but I need to tell you, this is cold blooded murder of bitch. And he's going down. Anybody's associated with him going down.

They put a hurting on Davis, that's why he killed my father, he said it's man's got to go. Davis hired Billy Bert to kill Sheriff Hurley. This was something that made Billy uneasy from the start. Oddly enough, he had a respect for lawman and he knew that killing a town's beloved sheriff could bring heat, which was the last thing they needed. But begrudgingly, he accepted the job a mile away and it took him to show him early.

It was in court one day later when he took him there, show him who he was, kill him. Now, you know, for all do the hard lesson in my day. They already have second thoughts about taking this job. But Sheriff Lee was such an intense force and he was notorious. He was a very, very powerful in Georgia.

So sheriffs were powerful, but some are bigger and less like me.

For Pusser Sheriff Lee, that way, Berts plan was to wait for Sheriff Lee to walk out of his church on a Sunday afternoon and gun him down. That being said, the first time he laid in wait on a chair, he changed churches and he never come out. The second time it was him and Charlie Reed. I've heard my dad tell me this at least three times. When he come out, he used a twenty eight inch swing bar shotgun with a slug, not shotgun with slug in the barrel.

You're accurate easily without a foot. And a slug is about the size of a nickel to a quarter big ball. That's why they call it a slug, just a big wallet.

When it hits a man, it really he's gone.

So when he come out, he had a shotgun, he was surrendered, he was the last one was out of church, he was surrounded by his wife, all his babies. He said something attacked him is not is I guess it's. But some just come over him. Charlie, look, they said Filii.

He said, you get out of here. He said, you know, he said, hell no. They live next day.

They've back money. He didn't pay him half. And the.

Told him, said the son at the took his job, but here's your money back. Don't know, don't do this, but if you do, you you really screwed up, it may have got a file on you and they don't come straight to you. Well, Davis had a fair amount of money. If you take down my Bohème in this whole damn thing about double the money, it was no use.

It was that moment. Madeley kind of like Bobby Gettis. Davis was kind of sadistic. What man wants to blow up a damn sure thing?

He want him so bad he wanted to kill his family to.

This might be the only time that Billy Burke had a man in his sights and decided to let him live for reasons unknown, even to him. I guess the thought of murdering a man with a shotgun in front of his wife and children as he walked out of church didn't sit well with Billy, maybe, just maybe, he was finally starting to see how far he had wandered from the man he used to be. He was a hit man paid by Davis to kill.

But even as far out of touch as he was at this point, he still stood by his convictions and his code of respect, even for a lawman. He would not kill sheriff early or any law man, for that matter, unless he was forced to do so and no amount of money could change his mind. A rift was slowly growing between Burt and Davis, Billy's boys in the Dixie Mafia never accepted him, and they were constantly in his ear about how Billy Wayne Davis could not be trusted.

Billy Sunday, Burt, was about to learn the hard way that even though sometimes you need to ignore what others say and follow your own path, sometimes you should just shut up and listen to what people are trying to tell you.

Since 1993, thousands of women have been murdered or disappeared along the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. My name is Lydia Cacho and I am here to tell you the true story of the femicide. Sing Juarez, listen and subscribe to the red note right now on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, you can also listen in Spanish. Just search for LANATA rocka in the same podcast app you are listening in now. True features the often weird but always true stories of strange events and unforgettable moments.

Each episode explores unusual, obscure, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy stories, stories that are so bizarre that you won't believe that the real. But they are because, yeah, they're true.

Listen and subscribe to True right now on Apple podcast or wherever you get your favorite shows. The Dixie Mafia continued on with business as usual, Billy would drive to Mexico once a month and bring back a truckload load of black beauties, which they were all eating like candy. At this point, the whiskey was flowing as much as ever and they were robbing banks left and right. Jim West was pressing hard to get to Billy, though he seemed to always be one step behind in.

Sheriff Earley was still gunning for Davis in west Georgia. The pressure was mounting and coming at the Dixie Mafia from all sides. Eventually, something had to give and eventually someone would slip up, he said.

Don't rub mine, he said. Pixelate insured and Ferlazzo that there were no charges hurt. Nobody but do not rob a bank because if you do and get away from it with it, you will never stop because there's no drug on earth that will give you the same feeling as robbing a bank and getting away with it. I was in the Loganville office, we had open a branch, open Loudonville, we had Botella two secretaries and I was the assistant manager.

That's Bob Brooks, the same man who worked as a stock boy in his younger years at Jim Dolz grocery store selling sugar to moonshiners.

He was working at the bank the day Burton Davis robbed it.

I remember it all like it was yesterday. It was kind of burned in my memory.

Bob Brooks is on a very short list of people who have had a face to face encounter with Billy Byrd in the midst of a crime and lived to tell the story truthfully.

He may be the only one on that list, but ten thirty in the morning when Billy Sunday Byrd came in, I was in my office.

Oh, I looked up and he leaned over the counter.

He jumped five feet in there with one foot on the counter and it was over.

I was looking at and what he did, Johnny Gaddis came into my office and got me and the bank manager and pulled us out through the lobby.

My secretary does lie down at gunpoint. Mr. Brooks mistakenly refers to Bobby Jean Gaddis as Johnny Gaddis.

It's important to make that distinction.

And he would later correct himself in saying that it was Billy Wayne Davis that came into his office. Gadis was the driver of the getaway car parked out front and was dressed as a woman to avoid suspicion, Garreth had two guns in his hand.

One was a 45 automatic. They had a barrel left behind.

It was in my notes and the 357 in the other hand stood over all the police lying on the ground.

Billy Sunday was behind the counter where the tellers were, and he was going and getting the money out the door in each drawer.

We had money. One hundred and fifty women within one section when he pulled them out and said anormal, Billy unknowingly set off a silent alarm when he pulled the money out of the tellers drawers.

This was fairly new technology in the 1970s, but within just minutes, police officer William Ritmo Cody arrived at the back entrance of the bank and immediately started exchanging gunfire with Billy Burt. One bullet came within an inch of Bert's head, so close as he would later say, he could hear the bullet whiz by his ear but retaliated with a shotgun with several of the pellets hitting Cody.

One pellet went through his jaw, Kurdish tongue almost out, come out. This one hit his arm. One hit him and said, well, when I got out, they were laying on the ground and they will get boy. And he was shooting out of there before I got to.

And he was trying to talk on the radio and full of blood and mouth before we had a first aid kit nearby.

I got get up and try and stop bleeding and the ladies inside call again while Byrd exchanged gunfire with Officer Cody Davis, continued to collect money and keep the bank patrons at bay. The three men made their quick escape while providing cover fire out of the back window of the stolen station wagon. They were in they would ditch that car a few miles away and get into another stolen car they had staged and once more, a few miles further when they would get into their own car and head back to split up the cash.

They would toss out their ski masks and gloves along the way, this was always how it was done. A father up banks mostly in Georgia, but it was a sick it will be Alabama third, it will be both Carolinas and the only reason he robbed him in Texas or New Orleans was because associates told him of one that was ripe for the picking. They would take it up. When you make lots of money and make I don't know what it is, but it goes to Vegas.

And he lived large.

But something bothered Billy. Officer Cody seemed to arrive on the scene way too quickly. Mere minutes after the robbers arrived. Billy immediately smelled a rat.

But he convinced himself it was just paranoia brought on by the black pills, and he let it go in the days leading up to a robbery like this Burwood case, the building, so that he could see the pattern of comings and goings to see when the activity was lowest and when the shift changes occurred. Sometimes he would create a diversion across town to see how police reacted.

Now he case the bike by using a water tower or smokestack with binoculars, and he would make a fire on one side of town, have some sort of he will watch the way the police and fire department reacted because he knew the number of policemen there. Then he calculated what would happen at the bank if they got an alarm on all of them. When he told his guys what their job was before they robbed the next day, they never knew only him.

It was one of the jobs that Davis had on his list. And when Davis when they went and checked it out, he had a mistress with him as she stood around the corner. But the mistress was. I say that as far as mistresses go, as far as affection goes properly, they warn, and she would never, what you might say, rather talk low, love it.

Not a very smart move. If you ask me that. I would guess the pills had something to do with that lapse of good judgment. The same mistress of birds had, in fact, been with him while he cased the Loganville Bank as well.

Well, when they rode into town on the croft and him up against away.

The second time, the first time he was there, if they look good for the road, they're to do it, he said that he looked he said every other truck had them going to record it and every other form of the straw hat looked like he had all gotten around. It was obvious to him it don't take six to read that his hair to the bone by his neck. That makes six. That's just reading Sirena's. I don't believe in such thing as six things.

My father didn't believe it. But there is such a thing as can't the. Steps of three steps ahead, as was probable. When you see too many farmers with straw has no natural you, your common sense tells you they probably don't farmer that in six sixth.

He walked in here already. Still, because he had he seen a woman and three men and they looked like professionals, damn sure did he get the hell out of there before he ever started to the told Davis, Babaji, get hell out of here. We set up road down the road and they were saying, oh, shit, Billy, you're paranoid. Escobar kicked that down, but he's all right. Turn around.

I go back and I go and then I look at it one more time.

I turn around.

He walked in when he got to them teller, he said he just needs they're going to blow away if we get out for a fat tasting low in their ass.

They were professionals. He changed our bill and he walked out.

He spent about, what, six cents or not. The rat that he thought he smelled just might have been real. After all, he had that car. He said, get the hell out of here. They did. Within fifteen minutes, I was in a cool car they wouldn't stolen while they was it the first hot car I about them trying to tell him he's probably paranoid. Let's go buy it. Come over the radio. There's news flashes of a radio call for bank.

This robbed two men, shot both dead baby who was him on the back on the way home. This is what they say into the news. What I don't understand is there was only two Gbara station in Athens. Those fourteen here within 30 minutes. So let's say he was lucky, I say he just wouldn't totally retarded.

You think? Two men had walked into the same bank on the same day just after Billy left and attempted to rob. They never stood a chance. Billy's gut told him they were being set up and this time his instincts proved to be true. They made it out alive, but he still had a problem, how did the police arrive so quickly and how did 14 GBI agents arrive within minutes to this tiny little town?

Obviously, it wasn't either of the two men with him when robbing the banks and he didn't talk about jobs on the phone. So it wasn't likely a wiretap. His mistress was closemouthed. He had no doubts about her.

She lived to hear what he had seen them green ltt parked in front of the same kind, Jim Wexpro, and he suspect that her mother, or at least Jim was in contact, her mother, but he didn't say, well, he knew that the leak somewhere and he wouldn't hear it was so he just started thinking about it. But it wasn't a week. It went by that she asked him to come by on his way through and take her phone bill, but didn't come to her downtown.

Why did you pay your phone bill in the same place at the home?

And when you want to pay the phone bill, which probably ten dollars, you could ask Congress, no matter of fact, our first phone number or four digits, two, three, four one is he wrote it in a phone saying to call Monroe.

Well, this is really just me. And, you know, he's so when he paid that bill, he says, Can you tell me who this is? I don't remember the number. And lady done her thing and she said, Yes, sir. This is a to Jim.

Whistling Good hope, Georgia.

Like I remember now. It was as simple as this, if billion is mistress spent the day hanging out in Loganville, in a day or two later a bank was robbed in the same place. It was a good chance that if she spent time with him in Crawford or anywhere else, for that matter, there would be a robbery attempt there as well. Within a few days.

She would report Jim with his shoulder.

On that following Monday, Billy put into motion a plan to deal with the woman who he was sure had been feeding information to Jim West. Although it wasn't his mistress, it was her mother.

He's not outside of the house, her mother with an intention to kill her. Now, what saved her was this woman into her house with her two kids that he said I was about to hurt her. Pookie is for her.

The fact that Billy's mistress pulled up at that exact moment in time to visit her mother with her children, saved her mother's life and likely her own.

But what Billy didn't know was that not long after the Loganville bank robbery, a critical mistake had been made. In the red clay is a production of imperative entertainment. It was created, written and reported by me, Sean Qype and I wrote and created the original music score. Executive producers are Jason Hoak and Jeno. Falsetto story editor is Jason Hoak, produced and engineered by Shane Freeman, Jason Hoak and myself, cover art and design by Gina Sullivan. Voice Sessions recorded at three Sound Studios in Atlanta, Georgia.

Archival footage licensed courtesy of Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia and WSB TV in Atlanta, Georgia. In the Red Clay is a 12 episode series with new episodes available every Tuesday. Follow us on Instagram at In the Red Clay podcast. Have questions. Email us at Podcast's at Imperative Entertainment Dotcom. If you like the show, tell your friends and leave us a review. Thanks for listening. Hi again, everyone. Here's a taste of the kind of stories you'll hear on through the podcast that features strange events and bizarre tales that you won't believe are real.

But they are because they're true. Don't forget to subscribe on our podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows, most pranks are conceived and executed for the sole purpose of trying to be funny and are not meant to cause damage or injury. But what if a prank is intended to be harmful? And what if he recruited some random people who thought they were starring in a reality show to carry it out? That's exactly what happened to a couple of people in twenty seventeen.

It was all fun and games until they unwittingly assassinated a world figure. The new details in that bizarre assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his half brother, which played out, as you can see, on surveillance cameras. We're now hearing that one of the female suspect was just ninety dollars to help carry out the attack maple syrup. And with a value over 10 times that of crude oil, the market has become highly regulated. So when a group of thieves decided to steal some sweet liquid gold from a storage warehouse in Quebec, Canada, they weren't about to stop it.

A couple of bottles or cases, far from it. This would go down as one of the most lucrative and perhaps most unusual robberies in Canadian history, every high value product has a black market, the black market of maple syrup. On Saturday, December 13th, 2014, a man walked through the front door of a bank near San Francisco's Union Square. He walked up to the teller station and passed a note demanding money. The scene would have been a typical bank robbery had it not been for the fact that the man was dressed as Santa Claus.

The six foot tall imposter then quickly walked out of the bank and straight into a parade of Santa con partiers like a grain of sand on a beach.

The Santa Claus bankrobber disappeared into an ocean of red velvet.

A bad Santa has robbed a bank in San Francisco, and it's how he got away that's making it so difficult to catch him. It's turned into a Where's Waldo game for police.

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