Thinking Sideways: Bill Brennan

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
things we simply don't know the answer to. Okay, it's
up Thinking Sideways. The podcast I'm I'm Devin, joined as

(00:28):
usual by Steve and Joe. Yeah, here we are. I
get things for joining us again or joining us new,
whichever you are, here's our podcast. I hope you like it.
Of course it will. It's like a school project. We're

(00:49):
going to hop right into it. Uh. This week's story
is kind of like something you only see in movies.
It really is a movie story, movie movie tails, so
kind of they're kind of like embellished it quite a
bit and made Oceans eleven. They added like ten guys,

(01:10):
a whole bunch of suspense, a lot of gear and
stuff like that. So. Bill Brennan, thirty four, had been
working as a cashier at the Stardust Casino in Las
Vegas for about four years when on September twenty two,
he left work either for the end of the day
or for lunch, yeah, in the early morning hours, never

(01:36):
to be seen again. Yeah. And I guess what makes
this day even more unusual is that when he left,
he left with a backpack or duffel bag stuffed with
half a million dollars in cash and chips. He just
walked out. Um, nobody questioned him. He actually missed all
of the CCTV cameras cameras, thank you. Yeah, without a trace,

(01:58):
just gone. Probably worth mentioning that a half million dollars
is equivalent to eight hundred and forty seven thousand, six
hundred and fifty five dollars and two cents in today's money. Wow,
that was very good man to get the two cents
in there. Yeah. I did it on the top of
my head. It's been hitting as harder than I thought. Yeah,

(02:22):
sure has This is the biggest quote successful robbery in
the history of Vegas. Also compounded by the fact that
it was carried out by one man, ostensibly one person.
Not many people actually win that well at Vegas, so
he actually he's one of the few winners. Yeah. I
support this thing because he uh yeah, he's using canine.

(02:46):
There's just such a big rip off. Yeah, so good
for him. Yeah, worked there for four years. I don't
know what, you know, finally broken but something maybe it
was the penny slots Ben. Yeah, so let's start talking
about Bill first. I'm talking about Bill. Then we're gonna
talk about the heist, then we're gonna talk about some
mother stuff. Bill was apparently kind of a loner. He

(03:08):
lived alone with his cat in an apartment with his cat,
with his cat. Do I remember correctly that everybody knew
he had a cat because he was one of those
cat guys who always talked about his cat. Yeah, he
loved his cat. He loved his cat. Was his cat

(03:28):
called Mr Snuggles? Do we know what his cat was called?
I never saw it in the reading. I was hoping
somebody else maybe it could be. Maybe it could be
Mr Snuggles. For all we know, it might be. His
apartment manager said that he was quote just a nice kid.
There are a lot of interviews around this, by the way. Yeah, however,

(03:51):
apparently Bill got a little mixed up with a big
time gambler or maybe a bookie or maybe a better
All of the stories conflict. Yeah, I've heard a couple
of versions of that. I've seen those. Yeah, and Bill
went from a promising, quote good kid to a problem.
His bosses started to take notice. This uh debtor that

(04:15):
he was hanging out with was a quote shady character
unquote so shady in fact that he apparently also disappeared.
Within a few months after Bill disappeared, Bill had made
it clear to his bosses that he really wanted to
work his way up through the casino. He was lobbying
to be a supervisor, but his boss was pretty leary

(04:38):
and said, oh, where what's the quote? With his quote,
with his change and attitude, I couldn't put in charge
of all that money. According to many co workers, Bill
was also reading books like how to Change your Identity,
how to hide dead bodies, So apparently people were noticing
that he was having a change in behavior. But I

(04:59):
guess no what he thought that there would be a
heist of any kind. In fact, the head of security
at the time was like shocked, apparently baffled. What. I
don't remember what did he do? Do you remember? What
was his job? He was a cashier, so he was
the guy that you wouldn't exchange your chips with. Okay, okay,

(05:20):
which is why he had access to all that money. Okay,
that that makes sense. I was just making sure he
wasn't a dealer or something. No, no, And actually that's
that's a great question. The heist is kind of a
work of pure simple genius in a way, stuff in
the bag and walk out. Nobody really knows what happened.
I mean, that's part of it, right, is that he
wasn't caught on camera leaving. Nobody really saw him leaving.

(05:45):
He was a cashier, so he did have access to
the money, as we just said. But people in those
positions are usually like padded down, their bags are checked
things like that when they leave work, no matter what
their position is or how long I've been in that position.
Was that the procedure though in the early nineties, I
know that is today. I think cameras are everywhere, but

(06:08):
I'm pretty sure it's been procedure for a long time
that I can see that, and it makes total sense.
I just I know that things in the casino were
much different in the seventies and eighties and bleeding into
the nineties. So I just wondered if maybe they weren't

(06:29):
as security conscious as they should have been with employees
that they knew. Well, it's actually very interesting point I'd
like to talk about in a little bit in terms
of trust with the casinos in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Yeah. Absolutely,
we're getting to it. Okay, Okay, So the fact that
he didn't get patted down or checked or anything like

(06:51):
that has led to a lot of speculation that he
had an accomplice in the security department who allowed him
to just leave without checking his bag or ant him
down or anything. And that would make sense also because
he successfully missed all the cameras, although it seems like
that would be not so hard if you'd worked there
for four years. But also, cameras are in casinos are
meant to catch everything, so yeah, they I mean, if

(07:15):
he'd worked there that long, he knows where the cameras are.
And the cameras aren't comprehensive. They don't cover every square
foot of territory. Well, and I remember reading somewhere on
some forum somebody had put up the fact that, yeah,
I knew where the cameras were, and they don't actually cover,
as Joe said, every square inch. So it is possible

(07:35):
if you knew where they were to plan your route, Well,
you could could just walk through and not look out
of place. You were, you know, doing the uh the
mission impossible, duck and dive left and right, kind of
following a little serpentine path out the door. Yeah, of
course there's actolutely there's really no reason for him to
try to even avoid the cameras. I mean, so what

(07:57):
they go back to the tape and they see him
walking out, and that's not going to enable them to
catch him. That that's actually interesting and it brings up
a really interesting point is that I wasn't able to
find anywhere how they knew that it was him that
stole all the money and chips, right, Because if they
never found him and they didn't have him on TV
walking out, I would assume that the only thing that

(08:20):
happened is that somebody said, oh, yeah, I saw him
walking out of here with a bag, but like he
would have a bag anyways. And also then that person
was saying, yeah, I let him walk out of here
with a bag and I didn't check it. You know
that That's another layer of weird complex mystery around this
whole thing, is like, how do we even know for

(08:41):
sure that he did this? That's true, I mean, they
deduce set from the fact that he want he left,
he left work and never came back. But yeah, I
suppose I supposing you wanted to do something like that,
you wanted to steal this money and keep your job,
and you're willing to kill somebody. So after he leaves
where you you you, you know, sneak out with all

(09:03):
this money, and then you go over to his his
apartment and you invite about for a drink, and then
you murder him and bury his bodies somewhere on the desert,
and he gets, you know, he gets to wrap for it.
How long after he left, whether it be for lunch
or the end of his shift, do you know, because
I don't remember in the reading, how long was it

(09:23):
after that he disappeared that they realized the cash was gone. Yeah,
it wasn't too long. I mean, I think that that
must be the way, right that, like somebody went to
go cash him out and realized you're missing like a
half a million dollars, dude, that's not so within hours,
Yeah it was, and they you know, all of the
stories say that the police rushed to his apartment, where

(09:44):
neither he nor his cat were to be found. That's right,
Stuggles was gone. The others suggest that this mystery, like
Big Better or Yeah the Skis, was Bill's accomplice. And
there's a lot of allusions to this guy, allusions, but

(10:04):
nobody ever names names, so you can't go out and
do research on this, like mysterious shady character who also disappeared,
who also disappeared, But they're not willing to say, like
it was this dude who disappeared, and theoretically that guy
is made up. Maybe probably if if nobody's ever named
names and there's just interviews, he was hanging out with

(10:26):
this shady guy who bet in the casino all the time,
you don't know if that guy actually existed. So actually
it's interesting. I want to talk about the Stardust for
a minute, the history of the Stardust. This is because
this this connects pretty well with the whole It would
help explain why people are a little hesitant to name

(10:46):
names of some big, better, shady character sort of thing.
It's very true. So it turns out the Stardust has
some really strong mob connections. Yeah, I know it did
back in the day. Anyway, I'm not sure it still does.
We'll find out. This is Vegas, of course, of course.
In fact, I wanna I want to talk about the mob,
and let's talk about Jimmy Hoffa. You know Jimmy. You

(11:09):
know Jimmy Hoffa. Something we got to talk about Jimmy. Yeah,
that's true. Yeah, he did disappear. Yeah we will be. Yeah,
we will be. I've been thinking about that one actually
for a while. And actually, yes, I freely admit we're
diverging from the story at hand for a minute, but
just bear with me. It's going to tie in, I promise.
Jimmy Hoffa, as you may or may not know, was

(11:29):
the driving force in the Union's UH and Teamsters kind
of movement in the fifties and sixties. In addition to this,
he was also heavily involved with the Mob, mostly Chicago,
but also in Kentucky and Kansas City. Kansas City. Kansas
City was kind of a big mom headquarters. Turns out
soon they're early sixties. Haffa, being a nice dude, loaned

(11:53):
six point seven million dollars via a secret deal with
the Las Vegas Teamsters to one Mr Alan to purchase
the Stardust Hotel. Gets for that, Yeah, we're getting to it.
We're getting to it. That means, I guess to clarify

(12:13):
that in effect, for a while at least, the Mob
legitimately owned the Stardust Hotel. Not only that, but they
were getting these kickbacks. And I just want to go
ahead and remind everybody. This is the sixties and the
seventies that we're talking about here. So when we talk
about millions, that's back when a million bucks was actually
worth something. Was you know, when being a millionaire was
actually something that's like mind blowing. All Right, we're gonna

(12:35):
talk about this little story shoot off here with a
man named Frank Lefty Rosenthal. Lefty, he started working at
the Stardust in two He's also got a strong mob connection,
and he basically takes over the place. It turns out
he and Glick were not pals. They butted heads a lot.

(12:57):
Lefty was kind of a bad dude. He was a jerk.
In the late nineteen seventies, the Nevada Gaming Commission rated
the Stardust Hotels counting room and uncovered a skim on
slot machines that was worth uh seven million dollars in
a year. Now do you by skim do you mean
that's that's money just giving off the top. That's unreported.

(13:22):
Lefty was solely responsible for that. The Gaming Commission struggled
for years with Lefty. They really wanted to Okay, they
wanted to kick him out for I mean obvious reasons.
Right He wasn't kicking back money too. He wasn't. In
nineteen seventies six, they denied his application for a gaming license,
which meant that he couldn't be involved in the casino anymore.

(13:44):
You couldn't be an operator, Yeah, they And they blacklisted
him actually a few years after that. So Lefty, Uh,
not one to really listen to voices of authority, quit
his job as casino manager, but not before he rehired
himself and gave him the title of Food and Beverage
Services and then entertainment director. He's also the reason that

(14:07):
Siegfried and Roy were at the Stardust. This is like
a little interesting. He's still the act. In the early eighties,
the Gaming Commission finished up an investigation that had been
ongoing essentially since Glick came into the picture, and Rosenthal
as well, and they found out that about fifteen million

(14:28):
dollars had been skimmed from the Stardust alone and kicked
back to Mr Hassa, back to the mob. All that
went back to the to the mob or to the teamsters.
I mean not all, but a lot of a big
chunk of it. I mean it was spread between Chicago
and Kansas City, but I don't know Lefty. I really
find him interesting now. He's he's the main character in

(14:51):
the movie Casino, which is, oh gosh, who's the lead
actor in that? Dustin Hoffman Nero de Niro plays him
under a different name in that movie. But Yeah, what
cracks me up is I was doing some reading about

(15:11):
Lefty and he during this couple of year period when
he was fighting with the Gaming Commission, they would put
him unto, you know, in talks, and he would be, uh,
he would badger them, and that's basically why he got
kicked out. He's he wouldn't play ball with them. And
when he was doing these things like you know, making himself,

(15:32):
what was he food and beverage services director? He actually
and he was entertainment director. He actually started a TV
show in the casino and he would he would interview
the acts and he would get them to talk about
the Gaming Commission and he would beat them up. And

(15:52):
evidently it was a terrible show. The Rosenthal shows a
picture of him sitting on this on the set with
Frank Sinatra. I don't know, I don't know what if
Sinatra mentioned that in his memoirs at all. Probably Yeah,
there's actually there's an awesome picture of Lefty that's like
the quintessential like mob picture. I'm going to do the

(16:13):
impression right now. I'll see if we can't like link
to it or something on the website. The duck face.
It's the one where he's just like, yeah, he's doing
kind of a duck face, like yeah. That was when
he was in one of those commission meetings and was
not being a very nice gentleman. So finally the Gaming
Commission got rid of Lefty. I actually think it was

(16:34):
the mob that got rid of Lefty. I don't remember
who got rid of left Yeah, he left the left
He disappear, No, he his car was exploded. Yeah yeah,
his car blew up with him in it. It was
a big enough Catillac that he didn't get killed. There
was a reinforced steel plate under his feet that saved him.

(16:57):
He had like minor cuts and bruises. I gotta or
if he had that put into that, because that's not
standard in that vehicle. And they half inch thick steel
plates underneath your vehicle. Sah, yeah, you know. I mean
if I were in that business, I would probably have
like an armored like like bulletproof glass and armor in

(17:17):
the doors and everything like that. Yeah, that would be
a good idea. So after Lefty Rosenthal left. Sorry everyone.
The Gaming Commission, I guess, somehow was instrumental in installing
the next two owners. They facilitated the deal of these
owners buying the Stardust and in the mid eighties it

(17:41):
turned out, oh oops, these guys had been skimming to
they were fined what at that time was a record
setting amount three point five million dollars each. That was
the most that any individuals had been fined for. The
Gaming Commission basically hated this artist at this point, it
sounds like they did. And then somehow magically in the

(18:06):
Startust was declared mob free, and but that there's no
explanation on like how that happened or like, you know,
they they put some bad guys in those seats. One
they probably they probably co opted the game and still
still kind of skimming off the top. Well, but you know,

(18:28):
think about the mob was big in the fifties, sixties
and began to wane in the seventies after that, and
the government was going after them everywhere, so it's much
harder for them to just freely operate and do what
they want, and they've got to move more and more

(18:48):
behind the scenes, which means it's it's much harder for
them to do their business. And something that is that
regulated gambling, you know, with the board and everything. I
can't see it where they could just sneakily put somebody
in anymore. Well, I think it's just generally, you know,

(19:08):
they weaned down the population of mobsters in high positions
and they were just stealing trucks and that was it.
And so now I know they were doing more than that.
And then yeah, so the government brilliantly got rid of
the mob and now and now, of course we don't
have any thing as organized crime in this country, and
definitely not or you know, criminals in positions of power,
or people who let greed take over their sense of

(19:33):
think that I think actually it may in the end
have been a mistake to get rid of the mob,
because these guys at least played by a set of rules,
whereas a lot of their successors and organized crime in America.
So they had some serious rules and they gotta gotta
admit there were some things that I liked about the
mob days when you read about them, like, you know,

(19:54):
the mob guys see some dude beating up his wife
and suddenly the mob shows up at his house and
he's got two broken legs and he never hits his
kid again. Kind of thing. Like they there was some
old school rules that they played by that were good things.
They did a lot of bad things. Yeah, but for example,
if you if you, if you whacked a guy, you

(20:14):
didn't kill his family, and you did make sure not
to do it in front of his family and then
and they had all kinds of rules like that. Yeah,
which they did bad things, but there's a there's a
silver lining to sub of it right now, and that
we are totally out this isn't a show about the mob. No, no,
I'm sorry. Go ahead, We'll talk a lot more about
the mob in our Jimmy Hoffa episode. Yeah, well, you

(20:36):
guys want to talk about billsmore, we probably should. Yeah. Probably.
I guess that whole tangent was a little bit to
explain the history of the startups, to explain that people
in power in the stardust have not always been the
most honest. Well, yeah, it's Vegas. I mean, everybody knows
about Vegas and its origins and all that stuff, and

(20:58):
like say, maybe the mob is still there and may
be not, but if they're if they're still there, that
I would tell you why he's never heard from again.
You know, it's not there anymore. What's that started stars? Yeah?
I saw a picture of you guys probably saw it
too on the web page of the old original Classic
Startust Junkyard in a junkyard. Yeah, I want it so cool.
I wonder if I wonder if they want to the

(21:18):
Smithsonian Institution or something like that. You know, it's only
an institute should have gotten that somebody should take. Hopefully
somebody got a hold of it. You know, maybe I'll
put it in my backyard. Yeah, we'll go over really
well with my neighbors. I think it might be bigger
than your backyard. You're gonna have to they're gonna have
to get airspace rights over your neighbor's yards. Possibly. When

(21:39):
it comes to Bill, there's really only two theories. You know,
there's sub theories under it, right, but either he's a
live or he's dead. Quick question. Yeah, of the cash
and ships that he took, what how much was cash
and how much was Yeah, that's that's kind of a
big thing. Is that nobody knows? I mean, I'm sure
they know, right, they wouldn't know, but it's not publicized

(22:01):
how much. Because that's actually one of my big problems
with some of these theories is that we don't know
how much of it was money and how much of
it was chips. I gotta be honest. If he was
smart and he intended to get out of town, I
wouldn't take a single chip. Well, I think it's interesting.
You know you can if you plan this ahead, you say,

(22:22):
I'm in a steal a bunch of chips, will you
pay them for me, you know, at a reduced rate
and market? Yeah, and then you can go. You set
that deal up prior, you do it quick, and then
you That's kind of what I was thinking is with
the one of his gambling friends, you could have said, look,
if I got you a pile of chips and I'm
in a huge pilot chips, how much would you give me? Like,
would you give me seven seventy cents on the dollar,

(22:45):
you know something like that somewhere some reduced traight and
just make a bulk sale. Yeah, absolutely, because yeah, obviously
he can't go back and gamble rate chips, so he's
gotta he had cash him in it. You don't even
have to gamble him. You can just walk up and
cash him out. And as soon as it was known,
the casino put out all the other casinos. Hey, we
had a whole bunch of chips stolen, so'll be watching

(23:06):
out for random people walking in with huge stacks of
our chips suddenly to be cashing you do. Well. Do
other casinos honor the chips from from the other casinos?
And I don't you know, I never gambled with chips
in Vegas. I've always played slot machines because I weeny uh,
and so I don't really know. I wouldn't think that

(23:27):
they would, but I remember seeing stuff in the reading
about them alerting other casinos to large denominations of their
chips coming in. So I've got to imagine that there's
a bit of a barter there. Now, maybe they don't
give them a hundred face value, or maybe they do.
May yeah, I don't know, but it seems like they'd

(23:49):
have to have some kind of exchange when people are
walking from casino to casino with getting paid in chips.
I mean, selling them in bulk on the black market
would be the smart way to do offload them fast. Yeah. Absolutely,
Let's let's say he's alive for now, shall we. This
obviously means he's not in America anymore, because he's on

(24:11):
the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitive list and also has appeared
numerous times on America's Most Wanted. Well, you could have
grown a beard and moved up into the hills and
become a unibomber type living living in a little shop.
That's true. But I also do want to think a
little bit about half a million dollars, you know, five
hundred thousand dollars. It's not such a high amount that
you could totally live for the rest of your life

(24:34):
on it. Suffice to say, you know, you can do
the math. And actually a lot of people on the
internet do do this math what they say, and it's
been twenty two years since this happened. Five thousand dollars
about by twenty two years equals about twenty two dollars
a year, which is not enough to live on, as

(24:56):
it turns out in America. Well, you could live on that,
but you'd be yeah, and that that means that it
would only be twenty two years that you're living You know,
that number gets smaller and smaller the longer you live
off of it. In the beginning, that's probably decent money
to living. So I admit he probably ran out of
cash if he's in this country. Yeah, and that's I

(25:16):
think that I don't know why you would stay here.
First of all, it's to live way cheaper places to live.
I mean, he could he's probably not living in Europe
because somehow that's even less money. But I just want
to think about like the Pacific rim areas, lots of
parts of Asia, South and Central America. I mean, I
I have friends, you guys know, my friends that do

(25:39):
this where they go and they work up in in
the fish farms in Alaska and make thirty dollars in
the summer, and then they just literally travel around and
live on it for a whole year because you go
cheap places to live, and that's so sufficient that it's crazy.
I mean, so if you're gonna go, maybe like to

(26:01):
the Philippines with half a million dollars, you canna live
like a king. Yeah, you can do pretty well. Or
another place if you got If your listeners are looking
for a cheap place to go, Bolivia, Bolivia, it's really
cheap Wow. Yeah, So for me, it's not a problem
to say that it's not enough money to live on.
I think it's not enough to live in America, but

(26:21):
there are a lot of places you could go or
would be enough. It also explains on like most of
the other theories, that that his cat was gone, right,
I mean, like if he if he got murdered, his
cow would still be at his apartment. If you're a
detail rated murderer, then you're gonna go take You're gonna
go to his place and pack a bag and take

(26:42):
the cat and hopefully you're not going to kill the cat.
Hopefully you're gonna find him a new home, you know,
but probably Yeah, yeah, that's what people who kill their
cat society puts up. Puts up like a Craigslist d
My my owner got whacked. I need a home, signed

(27:07):
Mr Snuggles. Mr Snuggles. Anyways, I think, you know, it
would have been pretty easy for him to have just
drunk his cat up, stuck in the carrier, hopped on
a plane. It just moved. But again there's the problem
of we don't know how much money versus chips. Yeah,
let's say it was half and half, and of course
I say I had to cut a deal with somebody,
and let's say knock it down to like seven seven

(27:29):
cents on the dime, do you think so? Yeah? You know,
also that's how much I say, rough figure grand No,
no's it'd be about so it's come out to about
four if he's getting seven said, Yeah, let's say he's dead.

(27:49):
Oh yeah, I'm kind of guessing that's a big probability.
I think there are two kind of sub theories here.
One is the accomplice theory, one is the mob theory.
And then I guess there's like a third sub theory
that we'll talk about after we're done talking about the
accomplice in the mob. I mean he but he clearly
had an accomplice, right, Either he walked out of a

(28:11):
casino with a backpack or a duffel bag full of
money and chips, he he would have had to had
somebody let him through security. He would have had somebody
at the very least by those chips off of him.
He's not back in here laundering them the chips, right,

(28:31):
I mean, somebody else has the chips at this point,
I mean, not this current moment. After the Yeah, so
it's it's not as though he just had nobody helping him.
I don't agree with that. Yeah, Okay, when the casino
gets robbed, they rarely tell exactly how it was done

(28:54):
and what was done right. They're a little sketchy on
the details because they don't want any other Yahoo's figure
you're in it out. Okay. So maybe he does have
some shady guy who he knows he can take a
hundred thousand dollars worth the chips to and sell and
the rest is in cash and then he just skips.
But I personally think that I think this guy would

(29:16):
have to be smart enough to know that chips are
not the way to go. I would imagine that you
would want to take the majority of what you steal
in cash so you can just bounce with it. And
he could have I mean, you know, if he's hanging
up with a debtor and this guy is getting him
to gamble and do bad things, he might have owed

(29:36):
money to other people and he might have just walked
by and said, hey, so I know I owe you
a hunter grand here's chips from the stardust I'm out by,
and takes off and then skips, like we've talked about.
But he's got the other four hundred grand in cash,
and we don't know how much he took. He might
have just taken. He might have taken just a couple

(29:56):
of hundred chips. He might have taken him just enough
for his home poker set. Yeah, it's true, that's definitely true. Yeah,
just a souvenir kind of thing, you know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
I think that's that's fair. I guess I would qualify
somebody buying chips as some sort of accomplice, and that
that person may be thinking, oh, you have this many chips,

(30:19):
Well where'd you get him? You know, And if he's
a smart guy, he says I accidentally walked out with
him or something, right, it makes it a story, didn't
tell every exactly. But he may not be a smart guy.
He may be like, oh, I'll just rip the start
ust off. I walked out of there with like half
a million dollars, at which point somebody says, oh, oh really,

(30:41):
I'll take that. Yeah. You think it would have kept
his mouth shut about the cash, you would think that. Yeah.
But if he did have an accomplice, which again I
think he does. Steve apparently thinks he doesn't, And I
think it's a it's a good possibility. Then that wasn't
necessarily accomplice who helped commit the crime, but just somebody
he arranged with the time to deliver a bunch of

(31:01):
ships to Yeah, I think I think it's a good
possibility that that person would have decided maybe all of
the half a million dollars sounded better than just the three.
All is better than half, all is better than hals these.
Then there's the mob. Yeah, they were angry, so they attractive,

(31:21):
but they are still involved in the Stardust. They don't
have a good history of not reacting people who steal,
turning the other cheek and all that stuff so much
into that it turns out, so you have a mob
or just not great people who run the Stardust. I mean,
we talked a little bit about the Ocean's eleven connection,

(31:43):
but since this is a story kind of ripped from
a movie, Steve Well, all right, so I've been reading
this and I really liked the story, but I'm not
a super fan of the two main theories, so I've
just kind of been spitballing, as I like to do.
Time to spit is, I was thinking about it, and

(32:04):
I've got two ideas. Okay, okay, So the first off,
let's step back and remember that nobody saw him leave
that I could have been murdered on set that he
can Yeah, maybe not murdered, but like he may have
made it out of the casino. Yeah, he may have

(32:25):
been pinched in the casino. And they said, we don't
know what happened to him and all this money, and
now we've got us file this claim against insurance because
he lost half a million dollars. Oops. Yeah, and actually
added to that, it would be pretty easy for them to,
you know, say, hey, homeless dude, here's a bunch of money.
Launder it back into the company for a something like that. Right,

(32:49):
So you make the insurance claim of half a million dollars,
which again is a significant amount of money, almost closer
to a million dollars at this point in today's money,
You launder it back in, you've made your claim, you
kind of come out on top, and you've eliminated a
problem child. Yeah. But the problem with that I have
with that theory is, and that's not a bad one,
but if I were planning on doing something like that,

(33:11):
I would have probably given the guy more responsibility and
access to more cash, and then you whack him and
then you and then you disappear to three million dollars.
Oh well, this is this is they didn't realize he
was going to do it, and they caught him, and
they caught him. They catch him in the act and
somebody acts rashly. Let's say, he freaks out and a

(33:34):
gun goes off, as it does in the movies, and
he slumps down dead in the hallway and one of
the back hallways, and uh, we got to get rid
of his body. Oh conveniently there's a desert out there,
and explained this guy suddenly gone. That works for us.
So I kind of wonder about that aspect, which we

(33:55):
don't really see in any of the reading. That was
my third Oh was it? I'm sorry? That's okay. I
do have another idea. Yeah, so this one is even
farther off the rails. Okay, I know I do, And
I know Joe has a cat, and you're not a
cat person. I am not a cat person. Okay. Sorry.

(34:16):
Anybody that has a cat knows that your cat is
out to kill you. So what if it was Mr Snuggles,
Mr Snuggles with the candlestick. Mr Snuggles plotted the whole
thing and then killed him. I went to Venezuela to
eat sardines for the rest. What if Mr Snuggles wasn't
actually a cat? What if he was paused? Why not?

(34:49):
I'm really, if we're gonna be just accusing random things,
may as well accuse the chupacabra. Absolutely. Um yeah. And
if you have to say, an accomplice in the casino,
and then of course, like it could be that he uh,
they plotted it out together, and that is accomplished, just
like you know, cat him with a lead pipe and
stuffed him in a laundry cart and you know, took

(35:09):
the body out that way. And that's the other thing
is that that's how I explained why the cat has
gone from the apartment if he did have an accomplice
that knocked him off once he left, as he says, Hey,
I'm gonna skip town. I'll meet you and give you
your cut. So he's got his cat in the car
cat carrier. He meets him at some abandoned lot. The
guy waxed him in the head with a lead pipe

(35:31):
and kills him, opens up the cat carrier and then
sets the car on fire. And Mr Snuggles runs free
to live with the you know, other feral cats in
the neighborhood, and the car is destroyed or they run
it out into the desert or something that would explain
why the one thing that is disguy's anchor, the pud,

(35:53):
is gone. Yeah. Do you know did they search the
Humane Society to see if he cats turned up. I'm
kind of guessing they didn't. The probably didn't. It's my
guest too, so though they are the theories, and I
guess unless you guys have anything else, If you're Bill Brennan,
please call, would you please? Seriously? Won't we won't tell

(36:14):
the FBI. They probably are monitoring this podcast. Well, obviously
they are. We solving a lot of their mysteries for them. Yeah.
With that, it's a nice little short episode for y'all. Yeah,
on the back of like four or five. If you
would like to read some of the links that we

(36:37):
have been referencing tonight, they are as always on our website.
That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You may
be listening to us there. You're probably listening to us
on iTunes. If you're listening to us on iTunes, drop
as a comment narrating if you would. If you forgot
to download us, you could be streaming us on Stitcher,

(36:59):
which is not the only thing that we're on these days.
I think we're also in the Zooe Library, because apparently
that's the thing still is still around. Yeah, I guess
now we're in the I think getting into the Zooe
Library puts us into the Microsoft library. Yeah. Evidently you
can find us on Windows eight phones. They have a
podcast app. Gosh, I guess. So we're on tune In

(37:22):
as well as well. We're we're kind of all over
the place these days. Yeah, we're also on Facebook. If
you would like to connect with us there, please feel free.
You know, we've got the group and the page. So
like us and friend us. There's gonna be some interesting
stuff coming along there pretty soon. Steve's making a face

(37:42):
there is Yeah, Okay, what's it going to be. That's
a surprise. It's interesting. We can't tell the teaser, Joe,
that's what the teaser is. Yeah. Also, we're trying to
make Twitter work for us. Everybody in this room is
making a face. Sorry everyone. I'm reading a lot of

(38:04):
Twitter help blogs. Yeah, I figured because I've never really
used to Twitter trying to I'm reading Twitter for dummies. Yeah,
I'm not. I figured out some of some of those
medieval terrorist types over in the Middle East can figure
out Twitter. Then a weekend too, probably that's true. Yeah,
I hope you would. Hope. Also email, it's the best

(38:27):
way to get in contact with us. That email address
is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. We have
some listener mail. Actually, we've been putting off for so long.
I'm so sorry. Mail bag is huge. Actually these days
it's kind of over a little overflowing. So why don't

(38:49):
we read those emails? Yeah, let's do This one is
from Aubrey. She said, Hey there, my name is Aubrey.
I'm a college student, sophomore studying psy call Gy, and
I've been obsessed with your show, listening between classes and
putting off work to listen as well. I promise I
will keep my grades up, though, especially since I am
nearing being caught up in horrified at the idea of

(39:10):
running out of my ability to binge listen. Yeah, step
your studies not really do want to really responsible think
that that was actually one of the first things that
were one of the big things. Keep your grades up
because I was trying to think of something for a podcast,
and everything had either already been done or so famous
that I'm sure that you would eventually do them, or

(39:32):
are tired of hearing them suggested. Bottom line, I had
the a very disturbing but good idea. Anyways, that's you know,
she the suggestion, and she just says keep podcasting, and
she's classed up two thousand and seventeen, which is scary. Yeah,
that's super scary. So thank you for the suggestion, Aubrey.

(39:52):
I think that I will not be taking it, but
somebody in this room probably well maybe. Yeah. It's uh,
it's a disturbing idea or a disturbing story. It's it's
very different from us but from what we do normally,
but kind of vaguely like it. So it deals with
bodily functions. Gross, it's gross. It's gross. Well, we'll get

(40:15):
to it at some point in the near future. And
I think, all right, well, we've got another one here
that I wanted to I wanted to read for everybody,
and this is from Linley. Linley says, Hi, guys, I
adore your podcast. I look forward listening to it every
week Thursday nights. I work alone in the basement of
a library processing books, and your podcast is the perfect

(40:39):
mood center. I don't alone in the basements. Yeah, I
can't listen to our stuff when it's like dark out.
Sometimes I leave, like from recording and I'm like, it's
too creepy out here. Actually, After After Dark the only
the only podcast I listened to our in the Muppets

(40:59):
and Barney, Yeah, thank you for providing me with hours
of entertainment and getting me through these long hours in
a dusty room stacked with books. Literally, then goes on
to suggest a story which I've got to admit I
was really intrigued with. I hadn't ever heard of before,

(41:20):
but yeah, working in a dark basement at night on
your own listen with us. Yeah, I've been doing a
lot of research on the library basement murders, and uh,
we're probably gonna that just reminded me of that. I
sort of let that slip and let us and so yeah,

(41:40):
we'll be covering that soon. Yeah, don't worry. Yeah. Yeah,
And you know that actually makes me think, is I
don't know that we share with our listeners or our
listeners share with each other sometimes, is the other shows
that they listened to for some folks that are in
that situation where it's like, that's a creepy spot, you
should listen to this instead. And I know I listened

(42:03):
to a bunch of shows. I know, Devin, you listen
to the Couples, Um and Joe listen to one or two.
So I mean, you know, I don't know if it's
worth it at some point for us to share that
with our listeners and have our listeners share what they
listened to. I think that might be fun for us
to do sometimes. I mean, and you know, there's another
thing I wanted to say. You know, we really appreciate

(42:25):
the positive messages that we get, and I would say
that of our emails are positive like that. But also,
don't be afraid if you if you think that we've
left something important out of a mystery, don't be afraid
to chime in and let us know about that. Oh yeah,
we've missed the mark on a point or two and
about something wrong, and please let us know. I mean,

(42:48):
and you know, it's nice that you say good stuff
to us, but I feel free to criticize us to
Joe needs to start going on Reddit because yeah, a
little bit, Yeah, thank needs to be. There's some verbal ticks.
Some of us have habits. They're habits that we're trying
to get rid of. We're really really working on it,

(43:09):
and no, thank you, And with that, I think I
think we're going to call this one solved. Obviously Mr
Snuggles voted for Mr Snuggles, So yeah, anyways, thanks for listening.

(43:30):
We'll talk to you guys next week. Yeah. Well that
a hard hitting mystery will be sold sweet