"The Hollywood Bandit: William Scott Scurlock"

Join us on this thrilling episode of the P.I.C. True Crime Podcast as we dive into the enigmatic life of William Scott Scurlock, better known as "The Hollywood Bandit." In the 90s, Scurlock captivated the public with his elaborate bank heists, donning intricate disguises and living a life straight out of a Hollywood script. From his daring escape routes to the lavish treehouse he called home, Scurlock's story is one of charm, brilliance, and inevitable tragedy.

Discover how this free-spirited adventurer, with a penchant for danger, went from a dreamer in Hawaii to one of America's most notorious bank robbers. We unravel the twists and turns of his criminal career, his relationships, and the ultimate showdown that sealed his fate. Whether you’re fascinated by criminal masterminds or just love a good story, this episode is packed with suspense, drama, and a touch of nostalgia for the larger-than-life figures who lived on the edge.

Don't miss out on this unforgettable tale of crime, charisma, and the chase for freedom. Subscribe now and never miss an episode of P.I.C. True Crime Podcast!

Transcript

Hollywood (00:00)

Every generation, a criminal comes along that just fires up the public. The kind of character who, even though they're breaking the law, people can't help but idolize.

You know what I mean. Bonnie and Clyde, who were romanticized for their love story and their daring adventures. Pretty Boy Floyd, who was a real life gunslinging Robin Hood who gave back to the starving people during the Great Depression.

Pablo Escobar, who was so loved by his countrymen that he probably would've been voted in as president one day. And then there's William Scott Scurlock, the Hollywood bandit.

The hero crook of the 90s who robbed Banks was such flair and dramatism that people just couldn't help but be enamored by his elaborate disguises. I mean, robbing the mega rich Banks is a victimless crime, right? He never actually hurt anybody and his hijinks were so entertaining, there seemed to be no harm in fanning over the ballsy bandit who was doing what all of us secretly wished we were brave enough to do ourselves.

Hollywood (01:15)

But there's no such thing as a crime without victims, and the fun and games have to end eventually. And in many ways, Scott was a lonely, tortured soul who suffered almost as much as the traumatized people he left behind, all for the sake of a movie plot running wild in his head.

To all of our new listeners, welcome. And for those returning subscribers, welcome back to the PIC True Crime Podcast. I'm Mike. I'm Bree And I'm Heather. Let's jump right in. Today is a fun one, more of an adventure than a crime.

That sounds about right. Strap in. Here we go.

Hollywood (02:17)

William Scott Scurlock was born on the 5th of March 1955 and grew up in Fairfax County, Virginia. He was one of four children and the only boy in the Scurlock household.

Scott, like everyone called him, was a bit different from the rest of his family from the get go. His father was a preacher and his mother was a special needs teacher.

Scott, on the other hand, was a pint -sized daredevil who wanted adventure. Everyone just expected him to end up living some kind of alternative lifestyle away from tradition and with as little to restrict his freedom as possible. It wasn't like he was a troublemaker. If anything, he was a little secretive and preferred to keep to a small group of friends.

His head was in the clouds, always dreaming and maybe a little wild. He wanted to run and climb.

The walls of a classroom were a suffocating experience for him, and what a shame too, because everyone who'd ever met him would tell you that he was exceptionally bright. Scott did the bare minimum in school, and he still managed to pull through with good grades. His teachers were incredibly frustrated with him.

Here was this obviously brilliant kid who could get a full ride to any college he wanted to with half the effort that it would have taken anyone else. And yet, Scott never opened a book and still managed to sail by with B's and C's.

To put it into perspective what his parents expected him to achieve, Scott's sister, Suzanne, went on to study psychology and later transitioned over to alternative medicine, even penning her own practice and authoring several books.

The Scurlock children all had a bit of a wild streak in them, but Suzanne grew out of it, and everyone was sure that Scott would too.

Scott didn't immediately leave for college like his sister did. Instead he went to Hawaii for two years. There he met up with a friend, Steve Meyers who was studying at the University of Hawaii.

Scott enjoyed the sun, the beach, and the vibes for a few months before starting work on a tomato farm. And here's where Scott dipped his toes on the wrong side of the law for the first time.

One day he was out hiking and stumbled across someone's little marijuana farm.

He stole some of the plants, sold them, and held onto a few of the seeds. Scott was tired of buying his weed from the local dealer, so he planted those seeds in between the tomato trees in the field. He kept them carefully pruned so they wouldn't outgrow the other produce in the field.

Meyers finished his two year course and joined Scott and his precious plants on the farm. But it wasn't long before the owner of the property discovered the little side hustle and kicked the duo off the land.

Now it's not like Scott was a full -on dealer. The way Meyers describes it is that Scott just wanted to supply himself and whatever he had extra he'd sell or give away to his buddies. Scott just wanted to be in the lush green of Hawaii, the jungle, the heat, and those chilled out vibes enthralled him. But then again, Scott was a daydreamer and it didn't take much to get his imagination going. Give him a forest to run around in or a good movie and he could live out

a fantasy just as deeply as he did when he and Suzanne were kids.

But this close call was enough to get Scott back on track. For a while at least. Before he got himself into some real hot water, he enrolled at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in 1978. Just like his sister, Scott had plans to pursue a career in medicine. And for a while, it seemed that his brilliance was finally being challenged enough to keep him focused. Scott excelled in his classes and his dreams of becoming a doctor consumed him completely.

But then Scott got assigned to work in the chemistry lab. And so the 90s Walter White came to be. Because Scott, with all those brains, began cooking up meth in the college chem lab. Now have to ask, where did he learn to do that? It's a big leap to go from growing a little pot to cooking up meth. It's not like it's just throwing a bunch of stuff into a pot and calling it a day. Cooking is, I want to say,

almost a specialized field.

Breaking Bad wasn't putting on a show when they made it look complicated. Doing it without blowing up a place or poisoning yourself takes some serious know -how.

I think everyone just thought Scott was bright, but that head in the clouds way of his hid the fact that he wasn't just intelligent, he was probably closer to genius than simply gifted. I think he found a couple of people asked around and filled in the gaps with the information he found at college. It's hard to say because Scott had become very secretive as he grew older.

His sister describes it that everyone thought he was a dreamer, so he withdrew into himself.

But she thought he wasn't just lost in his thoughts, she thought he was hiding his thoughts. So nobody really noticed just how smart he was or what was going on inside of his head.

This wasn't just an indication of Scott's brilliance. It was also the first clue we get that he had a taste for the dramatic. Scott didn't settle for stealing keys and alarm codes. No. He snuck into the lab by climbing into the ceiling and dropping in from the roof to enter the chemistry lab. Soon, Scott was making bank. He made so much money that he bought 20 acres of land near his hometown right in the heart of the forest.

I got a little confused here for a second. The research and the Netflix documentary seems to have gotten these two mixed up. They alluded that Scott bought the land before he went to college and made all that rock in the chemistry lab in the dead of night. But the paper trail indicates that he used the money from those drug sales while he was in college to buy the land and subsequently funded construction on the tree house in the treetops with it too.

That treehouse is like something out of a movie, just like everything in Scott's life.

If there's ever a reason to get a Netflix account, it should be to see the footage of his tree house.

Yeah, it was insane. He used half a dozen trees to support the massive structure. Olympia has some of the most gigantic and ancient trees in the United States.

The spruces there can reach heights of 100 feet tall.

This thing is massive and the place he built in those tops was nothing short of engineering marvel. He had multiple stories, bathrooms, bridges between trunks and the place had running water, flushing toilets and all of the furnishings that a regular house would have.

TVs, couches, stoves, you name it, it was there.

Hollywood (09:41)

And Scott walked around naked, pooped on a porcelain throne that overlooked the yellow sun shining above the green canopy, and he was never short of company to enjoy his treehouse mansion. They built that entire structure in less than a month.

How'd they manage to do that? Did you see the size of this place?

Well, with all that meth to fuel them, Scott and his buddies were building nonstop day and night.

There was no shortage of hands to help.

And it's not just because of all the free drugs. Scott had a talent for drawing people in.

I think they all felt that they wanted to be part of something awesome and they just wanted to bask in the light of this dynamic figure.

When you listen to people talk about him and the amount of work they were willing to do so freely for him, you kind of get the idea that this guy could have been a cult leader if he wanted to be.

But Scott didn't have that psychopathy in him. Drawing people in just came naturally and he always had a project or a plan to inspire them to join on his adventures. The place became famous, dozens of locals came by every week to take a look at this fabled tree house in the woods.

It got so bad that Scott and his friends had to put up a gated fence to keep people off the property.

Imagine bringing your kids to see a cool tree house and seeing a naked guy smoking a joint on the can.

I don't blame him for fencing it up. He built the place to create a getaway, a place where he could roam and dream to his heart's content.

Even though Scott had all of those friends around him, he was still reclusive with his thoughts. If he wasn't busy with construction to keep him occupied, he filled the place with people to keep him distracted. And even though his friends had a great deal of respect and love for him, no one could really say that they ever truly knew him. He had never had any long lasting relationships, and even though he was guarded with his friends, he valued them greatly and they valued him in turn.

Every single one of his old acquaintances spoke very fondly of Scott.

It's rare for a guy this charismatic to get through life without making a woman bitter for not giving her his full attention. He seems to have been a genuinely nice guy. Handsome, secretive, and his charisma was a little overwhelming to some.

Thank goodness for that likeability, because when he did get caught for using the college's equipment to make some of most dangerous drugs on the street, his professors didn't want to make a big deal about it.

They did kick him out of school, just a few courses shy of graduating with degrees in biology and chemistry. But he barely got a slap on the wrist.

If he tried something like this today, he'd have been in prison for a good couple years. That's for sure.

He left the grounds with a reputation and a group of friends that referred to themselves as the Tribe. With all the money he'd made, Scott had become used to the high life. He was known to frequent the finest restaurants, tip extravagantly, and to travel every chance he got.

But it was never long before he returned back to his paradise where he'd embrace the nudist lifestyle and videotape him and his friends ziplining between trees.

That daredevil streak of his that climbed the roofs of houses and jumped off cliffs was still very much alive. Scott sought freedom, but he liked it best when there was a tinge of danger attached to it.

I suppose now that his facilities was gone, so now is the money. Or did he take the operation to his tree house?

Scott wasn't going to allow the underbelly of the streets to set foot near his sanctuary, but he did need a new place to set up shop. He bought an old barn and called up a few of his tribe members to come and help him renovate the place. He already had a reputation for creating a very high quality product, so Scott and his meth weren't going anywhere for the time being.

But the business was becoming larger than he could hide anymore. Scott was making two million dollar deals in a single exchange by now. He was dealing with the Hells Angels and major gang members. But Scott didn't have the protection of a biker gang at his back like the rest did.

So when his middle man, between production and sales, a guy named Captain Pat, was murdered in his sleep in 1989, Scott got cold feet.

The drug world had a high mortality rate. And for all that, Scott was a sucker for a thrill. He didn't want to Dye for it.

It's not like he was the biggest drug user himself. Besides weed, he was very conservative with anything harder than that.

He just wasn't driven by addiction or desperation like most people who got into criminal activity are. So he had no incentive to stay in the business besides the good money that came with it.

Scott definitely liked the money, and he wasn't about to give up the lifestyle he'd built for himself. On his short hiatus, he returned to his love of movies, and that's where he got an idea from a new movie that came out in 1991. Point Break resonated with him on personal level.

The main protagonist in the film, Bodhi played by Patrick Swayze, was a thrill -seeking surfer who, with his motley crew, robbed banks wearing Halloween masks of old American presidents.

I've seen the movie. It's good. I can totally see Scott being enamored by Bodhi.

He's technically the bad guy, but he's likable, handsome, and enigmatic. Just like Scott. Yep, and Scott copied the movie's version of a robbery to a tee. Well, that was the plan going in anyway.

Scott was a plan man, he wanted to get the details just right. Daring zooms on a zipline between the trees was one thing, but this was a completely different ballgame. He talked a buddy of his into joining in on the heist, Mark Biggins, was facing financial ruin, and with his back against the wall he agreed to rob a bank to get him out of a tight spot.

On June 25th, 1992, they were finally ready.

The plan was to follow a customer into Seafirst Madison Park Bank, rob the place and use the Mark's car as a getaway vehicle. The two separate cars parked a few blocks away for them to use after they dumped the stolen car.

And obviously they were going to use masks of deceased presidents bought at a party store to disguise their faces. Scott was George Washington and Mark was Ronald Reagan.

Just like in the movie, they'd come in demanding everyone to get down and tell the tellers to fill out the bags with whatever money they had at the registers.

Getting to the safe would take too long. They wanted to be in there and out of there in less than a minute.

But the pair were a bumbling pair of idiots at the first robbery. They fumbled on the bags. Scott called Mark by his name

And Mark, a nervous ball of anxiety, nearly forgot to take the Mark's keys. On their way out the door, he politely asked the man, who was lying on his belly on the floor, for his keys. Please and thank you. Good boys remember their manners, even in times of stress.

Their first getaway car wasn't there. The guy had chickened out. They dumped the stolen car, ran through a golf course, and jumped the fence into someone's yard, where they were chased by angry dogs. Somehow, against all the odds, they made it to the second vehicle. Luckily, this friend hadn't abandoned them.

Mark Biggins would later say that he pulled off his mask and declared that he would never ever be doing that again. He was out. But Scott was thrilled at their success. They must have looked like bumbling idiots, but they had bags of cash at their feet. Nearly twenty thousand dollars that they got less for than two minutes of work.

As far as Scott was concerned, this was a success. And any hiccups? Well, he could tweak those on the next robbery.

But now that Mark was out, Scott needed another wingman, so he called up another buddy, Steve Meyers, who was a sculptor that had helped him build and decorate the fabulous tree house back in the day.

The struggling artist was desperate for cash, and with that creative mind of his, it wasn't hard for a convincing guy like Scott to talk him into it.

Meyer spent the next two months casing out banks, taking down schedules of armored trucks delivering cash. When and where police were during those times, and even got a pretty good idea of what the police's schedule looked like. And Scott was in his treehouse perfecting disguises. He wasn't going to emulate point break anymore. He was going to improve on the crew's MO.

Scott became so good at crafting his own silicon molds of prosthetic noses and cheekbones and beards that he could have walked into any movie department's makeup and design department and gotten hired on the spot.

Meyers might have done all of the surveillance work, but when it actually got down to business, he got cold feet.

When he saw Scott in full mask, he didn't even recognize him. And to make matters worse, Scott planning on hitting the same bank that they had robbed two months ago.

Meyers agreed to sit in the car and keep an ear on the police scanner so that he could warn Scott when the cops were on their way.

That's genius.

Scott knew that this was gonna hit the police like a brick. No one was gonna expect it at all.

But they definitely know that the two robberies were connected and maybe he wanted a little notoriety for all the hard work he had put in.

Scott was in and out of there in a minute with $8 ,000 in his bag. The heist went smooth as butter. Scott wanted no violence. The guns were real, but he never intended to shoot anybody. It was all about the money. And the thrill. yeah. Scott lived for it. And he liked doing the unexpected.

For one, by not targeting the safe, he could control the people in the bank and keep his stay there to under two minutes. Yes, he could only get the money that was at the tellers, but he could make up for that by hitting more banks. And his ballsy timeline made things even more unpredictable.

None of the customers came out with any injuries and given that his takings were relatively low, police didn't take him all that seriously for those first few hits. He went quiet for two months after those first two robberies and on September 3rd, he hit the US bank for $9 ,600. Then just eight days later, Scott robbed another bank, walking away with a little over five grand.

Scott knew that his low intake and the fact that he wasn't going for the safe was what he owed his success to. But these takings weren't exactly going to fund the extravagant lifestyle he was used to back in his meth days.

And it was probably getting too easy for him anyways. Scott wanted the excitement, the danger. I think the money was just the cherry on the cake for him.

So do I. But Meyers' was the money.

He wasn't going into the bank with Scott. He was just the guy who did the casing and the getaway driving. He made it clear to Scott that the payoff wasn't worth the risk.

If they weren't going to go for the safe, then Meyers wanted out. And with four robberies behind his back, police were starting to take notice.

Because of his elaborate disguises, Scott was dubbed Hollywood, and the start of a profile was beginning to be put together on him.

Scott needed his accomplices if he was going to make this work, so he got into contact with the teller working at Seafirst Bank. We have no idea who this woman is, she was only ever identified as Mustang.

Even Mark Biggins and Meyers, who had met her during their planning stages, never learned her real name. Meyers was sure that she knew what she was doing, though. Mustang got them all the information they needed inside Seafirst. The 19th of November was a game changer. Scott Stormdin demanded everyone to get on the ground and had the vault teller walk over to the vault

Well, he filled two bags with as much money as he could. I wonder how he kept everybody compliant. What do you mean? Scott was walking in there alone, leaving everyone to their own devices while he went into the vault with the teller. Why didn't anyone run or even group together to ambush him?

I assume the vault was in view of the floor and people in life threatening situations tend to do as they're told. Remember, Scott's still getting in and out of there in under two minutes, so I don't think anyone had time to process the situation.

There just wasn't enough time to get over the shock and formulate a plan of resistance or even consider running. Fear can take logic right out the window sometimes.

I think Scott knew people too. He wasn't this charismatic figure for nothing.

And if he could draw people to him so easily, I assume he'd be able to drive fear into them just as well.

The Hollywood moniker was appropriate for his disguises as well as his performance. How much did he get away with this time? $250 ,000.

Finally they were making bank, pun intended. You'd think that a thrill seeker like Scott would want to up the ante after every heist, but again he does the unexpected. Since he did the actual robbing, he got to keep around $200 ,000 of the main booty.

And that money lasted him a whole year. The cops all but forgot about Hollywood.

Scott knew the money would run out eventually, and he wasn't going to waste his time just blowing it. Instead, he spent that year thinking up ways to improve his system.

paid a stranger to buy them a cheap car, switching up who they used every time. They collected hair from random women, probably girlfriends and acquaintances, to leave behind in the getaway car just to add some confusion.

And they cleaned that car inside and out before a robbery took place, leaving only the smell of cleaning detergent and a few random hairs behind when they dumped it.

They also ran every note under an ultraviolet light to look for hidden markers, mixed up the cash so that coinciding serial numbers didn't follow up one after another. They buried the disguises and weapons far away from the treehouse, digging them up individually before every heist. Scott couldn't help himself, though. For all this meticulous planning, he wanted to add a little screw you to the authorities.

He wore a dare cap on his head like so many cops do and he decided to hit his last bank up again to announce the end of his hiatus. November 24th, just one year and five days after robbing Seafirst

Scott targeted the same bank and as an anniversary gift to himself, walked out with $98 ,000. Two months later, in January of 94, Scott robbed the US bank again, but this time it was a different branch than the one he'd hit before. He only got out with about $15 ,000 because Meyers heard on the police scanner that the police were on their way.

Hollywood was no longer an inside nickname to the police. He was beginning to reach the press. The masked bandit of Washington was made to sell papers and they just ate it up. Just before Scott went on his year -long hiatus, two very important people were already given the details of the case.

The first was Detective Mike Magan, who specialized in bank robberies. And the second was FBI agent Sean Johnson, who was into violent crimes. By the time Scott was eight robberies in, he was living the high life again, traveling the world. And when the money ran out, he just hit another target.

Since he was always kind of mysterious and kept his thoughts to himself, none of his many friends really had any questions about what he did to make all this money. Some still thought he cooked meth, maybe that he grew a little bit of pot in the forest, or that he had came from a wealthy family. Scott's place was there to go and have fun, not to ask questions.

Beside Meyers and Biggins, no one knew that Scott was the one that the papers referred to as the Hollywood Bandit.

And Scott saw himself as a Robin Hood -like figure, giving freely to foundations that were fighting against deforestation and quite a bit of financial help to his friends when they needed it. But Scott wasn't all steal from the rich and give to the poor. He knew that if he helped out a buddy now, he could always call in a favor later.

And here's where we start to see how his mind worked. In the same way of a serial killer validating his wrongdoings by objectifying his victims, Scott justifies his robberies as a victimless crime. No one got hurt, and people who deposited their money at these banks were still getting the money at the end of the day.

and everybody else who hung out with Scott owed him some kind of favor or another. People were only in his company if they were useful or had the potential to be useful. Heist number nine happened in February 1994, and for the third time, Scott robbed Seafirst

Damn, he had balls. The cops must have been fuming at this point. they were furious. Scott knew the layout of that bank like the back of his hand by that point, in every robbery, a bunch of people quit, leaving him with fresh faces who'd never experienced this sort of thing before. This run got him $114 ,000 more, bringing his total up to $551 ,250.

53 and 50 cents.

Just had to add the 50 cents, didn't you? Well, you know me, I'm a sucker for the details.

He got all of that half a million dollars in the Seattle area, and it was time to change up the scenery.

Hollywood (28:09)

Even a daredevil like Scott knew that his perpetual middle finger to the police was bound to catch up with him. So he moved over a little to Portland.

But Scott and his phony disguises were so well known that someone recognized him as the Hollywood Bandit before he even walked into the bank and called it in.

The disguises were excellent, but the overly large noses and waxy skin made it pretty obvious that it was prosthetics. Some witnesses thought that the robber had a skin condition of some kind at first, but now that the bandit was known all over the papers, it shouldn't have been surprising that someone would recognize him eventually. Meyers heard the chatter on the police scanner and called Scott out before he even got to the safe. Number 10 would be the first time that Scott got out.

completely empty handed.

In July of 94, they returned to Seattle to familiar territory and made up for their previous disaster by getting $11 ,000 cash. According to Agent Sean Johnson's calculations, Scott was burning through about 20 grand a month, and that's around $40 ,000 in today's money when you consider inflation.

Wow, and all that from living in a treehouse on land that he already owned outright? Well, if you tip waiters a few hundred dollars for every meal, I'm guessing he liked to spend. Remember, he was traveling a lot during this time too.

Portland became a sore spot for Scott. He'd failed on the first attempt in the city and he really wanted to make a successful run at it. But hit number 12 didn't go as he would've hoped. December 20th, 1994, he went in and only came out with $22 ,000. Not at all the Christmas bonus that they were hoping for.

The problem was that Portland had a different schedule and there was striking during the times that they knew the banks would be less crowded. But the cash hadn't been retrieved by the armed vehicles yet.

I'd like to think of that first failed Portland heist as the beginning of the end for Scott. The second bad haul drove them back to Seattle and this made them predictable. The disguises were being noticed, their crime radius was limited and anyone employed by a bank was on high alert.

This was crystal clear by January of 1995 when a smart vault clerk threw a Dye pack into the duffel bag that she was instructed to pile cash into.

The haul was already a terrible one, equating to only $11 ,000.

And when the dye exploded inside the getaway car, Scott was forced to chuck the bag out of the window, losing what little loot they managed to get away with anyway.

The car was traced back to the previous owners who provided the police with a sketch of the two men that bought the call from them.

But since Scott never used the same people twice and never bought their cars himself, this would be a useless lead.

Scott was getting desperate and his money was beginning to dwindle. Luckily, a week after the disastrous Dye incident, he managed to get away with the biggest score of his career,

A whopping $252 ,000 that lasted him a whole year before he had to go out again.

But this time, Agent Johnson and Detective Magan were ready.

They knew about how much he spent in a month and they knew he'd go quiet for a while after that last haul.

They were sure he'd go underground for a year, give or take, before coming out of the woodworks again. In the four years since his debut, Hollywood liked to hit a place late December or late January.

Seafirst Bank was a favorite place to strike and it was by far his most successful, so they assumed he'd target Seafirst when he reappeared and they calculated that he'd strike late January. They were right about the date, but wrong about the bank.

Given the knowledge Scott had gotten from the mysterious woman that they called Mustang, many on the task force thought that Hollywood had a law enforcement background.

One thing that they did get right was to let the public know about the full scope of the problem they had on their hands.

Netflix makes it look like the feds were at their wits ends and since they had nothing, they finally release the information to the public with the hopes of shaking something loose in last ditch attempt to mask their desperation. But I don't agree with that at all. Magan and Johnson knew that the information was already out. The people on the streets were fully aware of this Hollywood bandit.

and they were beginning to idolize the disguise wearing bank robber. Hollywood was every little kid's fantasy, every man's secret envy, and every woman's dream.

Before he reached Bonnie and Clyde level notoriety, it was better to give the world a picture of what the scope of his criminality truly was.

Because this was not a victimless crime. People were traumatized. They were walking out of jobs that were paying the bills and the ones that stayed at their posts were terrified to be there.

But being number one on the FBI's Most Wanted list takes away from the dazzle when you realize that this guy is looking at a life behind bars when this is all finally over.

Hit number 15 went down a little differently. Meyers was still the getaway driver, but Biggins was back on board.

With Scott's success this far, he felt it was time to get in on the action again.

While Scott went to the back with the vault clerk, Biggins held the crowd down. They got out with $141 ,000 but it was a close call.

Police cars were stationed all over the city at strategic points according to Johnson and Magan's instructions. So the squad cars took only minutes to arrive, even with their two minute in and out strategy, it was a near miss for the bandits. So close that Biggins nearly walked out for a second time.

The stress of it all wasn't just hitting Mark Biggins they were all starting to feel the pressure. Scott was beginning to withdraw more and more. He was never very open about his private life before, but he'd always wanted a house full of people to fill the void. But now, he just wanted everyone out. The get -togethers stopped almost completely, and his sister reported that he was tearful and depressed.

Meyers noticed that Scott began to drink on his own, and he sure drank a lot. Meyers was right to be worried. Scott's journal entries mirrored what the others suspected. In them, Scott wondered why he couldn't finish anything he started, why he never had any lasting romantic relationships.

and he questioned himself endlessly. He never expressed guilt over the robberies, but he did feel getting caught more and more.

and always looking over his shoulder is enough to get under anyone's skin.

Instead of stepping back and taking time to recover and reflect, Scott wanted one final hurrah before retiring. The trio hit one more target in May of 96, but after this one, Scott wanted to go out with a bang.

If they could get 1 or 2 million, then they would call it quits. But to do that, they'd have to strike three different banks in a single day.

Jeez, Scott really one all the fireworks in his final showdown, huh? Yep, and Meyers and Biggins thought he was nuts too. But this was Scott. No matter what he did, it always seemed to work out for him in the end. And if Scott believed in the plan, then so did they. And it's kind of genius when you think about it. Rob one bank, and while the police

or swarming that place go off to another. They'd be busy with the first crime scene that the trio could take their sweet time clearing at the next bank. And the next and the next.

The feds wouldn't be able to keep up with them with so much going on.

Still, that's one hell of an undertaking. Was it for the theatrics or did Scott want as much money as possible before he retired?

It's thought that Scott's depression and the weight of the crook's life was just getting to be too much for him to bear. Reading his diary entries, you can tell that it was eating at him.

I he knew that eventually it was going to catch up to him, and if it was going to get to that, well, he'd rather go out guns blazing.

None of his robberies had ever culminated in violence, unless you count the handful of times that he used a taser against an uncooperative teller.

He'd always been quick enough to avoid a standoff with police. I think he'd decided long ago that he wasn't going to go to jail, come hell or high water. But getting out of the business meant that they needed one final big score, bigger than they'd ever gotten before. Meanwhile, the FBI was sensing a final showdown too,

and they needed to up their resources if they were going to catch this slippery character. Since Johnson was right about the date and the time that the robberies took place, that was their starting point. They also got the Seattle police force to station their patrol cars in strategic positions, hoping that they could get lucky enough to have one in close proximity. They had helicopters on standby,

and most importantly they delivered trackers to every bank in Seattle. These tiny tags slipped between stacks of notes,

So no matter where he hit, the Hollywood Bandit was bound to take at least one trackable stack. They'd also been training bank managers on how to handle a robbery, specifically a robbery committed by the Hollywood Bandit.

Before they could put their plan into action, Mustang tipped them off about the electronic trackers hidden in every bank. She also told them another Seafirst bank would have five to $6 million in the safe around Thanksgiving. That was the bank they needed to hit. This changed things completely. With that one big payoff, they wouldn't have to take down multiple banks after all. Just that one was all they needed. So in November of 96, Scott, Biggins, and Meyers robbed another bank.

This was a trial run to see if they could get to the getaway car and get all the trackers removed from the packs before they dumped the car for a second vehicle a few blocks away.

They'd need to get it all done in under five minutes. And without practice, they couldn't think of attempting the heist of all heists. Scott ditched his prosthetic disguises and went with a ski mask instead.

They didn't want the feds to realize that Hollywood was onto their tracker tags.

This had to look like just a random robbery. The run was a success.

They got in and out. And while Mark was driving, Scott was going through the bags by fanning the stack like a deck of cards. It was easy to see the tracker placed in the

He didn't bother taking the tracker out. Scott just chucked the stack of 20s out the window as they

By the time they got to the tree house, the money that was left was clean. They were ready, sure that their plan was foolproof.

27th of November of 96, the day before Thanksgiving. The day dawned as a rainy one. It was D -Day. The big hit had finally come.

The team chose Thanksgiving holiday because they knew that there would be plenty of police and FBI agents who'd taken the day off. And because Mustang was adamant that that would be the day that the vault would be full of millions. They saw the rain as an advantage. It would mask their van and traffic if they did run into any tails following them. Seafirst Bank was packed. And when Biggins and Scott walked in, Biggins was tasked with keeping the crowd in place.

The manager that day was compliant, but he'd secretly already hit the panic button. And he even had enough sense to use the emergency code to the safe to send out another signal. Every safe is equipped with two codes. One just to open it for the regular day -to -day needs, and another code that opens the safe as it normally would, but sends out an emergency signal. And now time is ticking. Every helicopter, squad car.

an available officer were deployed. The manager fumbled with the notes, partly because he was nervous with a gun pointed at his head, but also because he was buying time.

Outside of the vault, Biggins was yelling for Scott to hurry up. Nearly five minutes had gone by, double the time they usually took to get the hell out of Dodge. They did manage to make it out eventually, but they could hear the sirens in the background already. They'd been spotted. That manager's actions gave authorities those valuable extra seconds that they needed.

In the van, Scott and Biggins were going through the notes to find the tracker tags.

But the overcast day made things difficult.

They needed to use flashlights and with a jumble of notes in front of them, they were making a bigger mess than they had planned for. They found one, threw that stack out the window and continued to search for the rest.

We now know that they'd accidentally taken two stacks that had trackers in them, but they had no way of knowing how many they were.

The one tracker that they threw out was picked up by police almost as soon as they got rid of it. Now the cops knew that they knew about the tags and by extension that there was a leak within the banking system too. To make matters worse, the trio was panicking, the money was a mess, they had no order to sort through it. The cops were somehow behind them and Scott was insisting that they switch places so that he could drive.

They pulled over and Scott took the driver's seat just as the blue lights pulled in behind them. No one knows who shot first. The police say that Biggins got out pointing his gun right at them, so they had no choice. Biggins says that wasn't the case. They opened fire without warning and when he wanted to shoot back, his rifle jammed. Regardless of who was telling the truth, the police were firing at them. Biggins hopped back in the van with Scott.

at the wheel.

A bullet went through the back doors and hit Meyers in the arm. Scott stopped the van again, this time just long enough to fire three rounds from his shotgun at the police. Then he gets back in and drives off once again, but then Biggins got hit in the stomach. Then the van came to a halt for a third and final time.

They'd hit a curb, and before the two injured men at the back could react, Scott was out of the car, gun in hand and running full speed down the nearest alley. Hollywood had escaped yet again, but at least he left behind his accomplices. Biggins was unconscious and hanging on for dear life. Meyers, who'd been hit in the arm, was conscious. As soon as they got him to the hospital, he spilled the beans.

The Hollywood Bandits name was Scott Scurlock Finally, authorities had a name. Every available man, dog, and helicopter was scouring the neighborhood where the van had crashed. It was a circus. On Thanksgiving Day, almost everyone was home. Men, women, and children were completely taken off guard. One moment, everyone was unbuttoning their pants because they'd eaten too much turkey.

and the next armored vehicles were swarming over the neighborhood. More than a hundred police officers and FBI agents were going door to door and searching alleyways. News crews were reporting live on the scene, then civilians started showing up from close by neighborhoods wanting to catch a glimpse of the infamous Hollywood Bandit themselves.

Scott had taken refuge inside an old camper van in somebody's backyard. He was spotted by the owner and within seconds the police converged on the scene.

They threw a pepper spray canister through the window. Almost immediately, they heard a single gunshot from inside. They opened fire thinking that this was another gun showdown, but 76 rounds later, there were still no response shots from inside. That one shot was not aimed at them at all. Scott Scurlock the Hollywood bandit, was dead by his own hand.

He decided to take his own life rather than spend eternity in jail.

The five -year streak was finally over with, just like that. And then the bombshell hit. Every television had Scott's face plastered on its screen. His friends, his family, and the world were made aware of Scott's double life. Biggins and Meyers learned of their friend's death from their hospital beds. Altogether, the Hollywood Bandit robbed 19 banks, stealing a total of $2 .3 million.

Biggins took the most time to recover, and after several surgeries he and Meyers were both sentenced to more than 20 years behind bars each.

Scott's tree house was valued at $106 ,000, but his parents, who'd inherited the property after his death, were forced to sell it when several police officers and bank employees sued them for emotional distress.

on now, they sued Scott's parents for that? yes, and the parents had to pay off his debts. Not the money he stole, just debts on property.

and for appliances, that sort of thing.

I find that to be terribly unfair. mean, Scott was a criminal and all, but how in the world was his parents supposed to be responsible for what he did as an adult?

It doesn't make sense to me either, but then again, people have sued for less in the US. Anyway, two years after Scott's death, the treehouse fell apart. By the time Meyers was released from jail 20 years later, he went to go see the old place to scatter Scott's ashes. There was only a pile of wood beneath the trees, moss was growing over the pile, and nature had reclaimed it all.

All that Scott left behind was a pile of ruins, a jar of ash, and the shock that the free -spirited character that was so dearly loved by his friends and family was Seattle's most successful and notorious bank robber.

Even after all of these years, all of the people who knew him still can't fathom that he could have done the things he did.

Mustang later took her own life too, though we still don't know who she was and Meyers, the only one who did know, isn't talking.

And the irony is that if Scott didn't fall for the Thanksgiving millions in the one vault and gone to the original plan of hitting multiple banks all at once, they'd have probably gotten away with all the money they needed to retire for good. And no one would have been the wiser.

The Hollywood Bandit would have been one of those eternal internet mysteries that people spent decades trying to solve.

I don't think so. He might have stepped away from bank robbing, but Scott would have found another dangerous way to make money. One way or another. He just lived for the thrill of it all.

Maybe he would have gone back to meth and became a real -life Walter White. Maybe something else. Either way, I think the crook's life was the only life he could have lived. Always on edge, always an inch away from the cops.

It's hard not to like him though. I can see why Scott became such a legend. It's not the amount of banks he robbed, or the money he made doing it. It's that carefree nature of his.

how he was living life by his terms. Even at the very end,

He'd rather go out by his own means than live it trapped in a cage.

I know what he did was illegal and immoral,

but you just can't help but wonder what he'd have managed to accomplish if he pulled off that last heist.

Or what he could have done if he put his head down in college and never went into cooking meth.

I think he'd have gone on to great things. What a character.

And that's all he'll ever be now. An interesting character. Interesting enough to get his own Netflix special and maybe even a movie someday.

A man who was a mystery and an enigma to all who knew him and all who heard of him.

Scott Scurlock left behind more questions than he did answers and a story worth telling over and over again.

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