9. The Fall Guys | Lost Hills

0:15Speaker 1:Pushkin. Hey Lost Hills listeners, it's Dana. I wanted to let you know that you can hear the entire new season of Lost Hills ad-free along with other great binge listens by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus. Mickey Dora, the Dark Prince, had vanished from Malibu in 1974, but he didn't disappear from the surf world's collective consciousness. Everybody wanted to know where the so-called King of Surfers was. Some people claim to have spotted him surfing in California. Others said he'd given up the surf life and was a lawyer in Century City.

1:08Speaker 1:The article Curse of the Chumash said, quote, Someone kept tagging the wall at Surfrider with the words, Was Mickey Dora dead? Not possible. He was sending letters postmarked from all over the world. from anywhere but where he actually was. A few years into Mickey's vanishing act, two young surfers set out to find him.

1:45Speaker 2:Oh, hi there.

1:49Speaker 3:It's Craig, I'm Kevin, and this is Mickey. How's that? This is my son's T-shirt.

1:55Speaker 2:Can I take a picture of it?

1:56Speaker 3:I had to wear it, even though it's my son's.

1:58Speaker 4:You've got to take a picture.

2:01Speaker 1:Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson are pushing 70 now, still surfing, still close friends. I met them at Kevin's house in Laguna Beach, California. Kevin greeted me wearing a t-shirt printed with a photo of Mickey flipping off the camera at Malibu in 1963.

2:18Speaker 4:I'm Kevin Naughton, and I used to be a surf journalist, mostly for Surfer magazine, traveling around the world and writing stories of great adventure tales about our travels.

2:35Speaker 2:And I'm Craig Peterson.

2:36Speaker 5:I was the staff photographer for Surfer Magazine for over a decade and during our surf travels back in the 70s and 80s.

2:46Speaker 1:We made our way into the living room, and I noticed a photograph leaning against the wall. It was a picture of Kevin, his back to the camera, sitting on a bench, looking out at the Bay of Biscay in the south of France. The waves are peeling in perfect, clean, mostly right-breaking lines, and there's not a single surfer out.

3:07Speaker 4:See that photo there? That's where we first met Mickey. That's when we met Mickey at Gittery. And this is something that you'll never see again in your lives or anybody's lives from now until the end of time. There's empty, perfect. Gittery is perfect.

3:24Speaker 3:As it gets.

3:26Speaker 1:Gittery is a small fishing village on the Basque coast between Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

3:33Speaker 4:So oftentimes I'd look at it just to think that it's almost like going through a portal into another world to look at the photo, a world that will never come back. But we were a part of it. And then this is probably within the same week that we met Mickey in 1977. And it's a phenomena that only surfers really could appreciate to see a wave this good at a spot this famous and no one out. And this was Mickey's spot.

4:01Speaker 1:Here in France, Mickey had found a new Malibu. Gittery in the 70s was a surfer's paradise. It was hidden, tucked away, off the radar, and it had a perfect right-breaking wave. Mickey's kind of wave.

4:18Speaker 4:So we surfed it with him quite a few times, and quite a few times it would just be the three of us. That's just us out.

4:26Speaker 1:In France, Mickey was unexpectedly mellow. no messerschmitting other surfers or posturing with his Nazi surfboard, and he'd left his SS trench coat behind in the storage unit in New Zealand. There was no one around to intimidate anyway.

4:42Speaker 4:It was nice to get to know him in someplace other than Malibu where he was so entrenched, he was so ingrained there that it was like his little personal fortress or fiefdom. And when we're in France, we're all there sort of on this neutral, we're in Swiss neutral country.

5:01Speaker 1:He would have poured the boiling oil on you in Malibu, maybe.

5:04Speaker 3:Yeah, right.

5:04Speaker 4:Whereas in France, it was more like we were in neutral ground. Everyone was more on equal footing. And that's how you felt when you were around him there.

5:14Speaker 1:But Kevin and Craig were not just 20-something surf nomads stoked to find a kindred spirit. They were traveling on assignment. And their assignment was to find Mickey. and report back to their boss at Surfer Magazine. Turns out, finding Mickey would be the easy part. The hard part would be getting away. I'm Dana Goodyear, and this is Lost Hills. Lost Hills Kevin and Craig got their start young. They published their first piece in Surfer in 1973, when they were still teenagers. And the two of you were a team act, right?

6:30Speaker 4:Right, we were a photojournalist team. And the funny thing is, Craig needed someone to take photos of, somebody who could surf. He was a good photographer, I was a good surfer, and... We both like adventure and searching for good waves.

6:43Speaker 5:A bonus, too, was that Kevin was a good writer. So we could, you know, write the stories and send them back to Surfer Magazine.

6:51Speaker 1:The pictures of them from this time are classic. Craig with his shoulder-length blonde hair and Jesus beard, wearing his frame backpack, a surfboard under one arm, and a silver briefcase full of photo equipment under the other. Kevin with a duffel bag and a board and a curly mane. Kevin and Craig filed dispatches from all over the world under the heading, The Further Misadventures of Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson. Early on, they wrote about a surf trip to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. At the time, it was terra incognita for surfers.

7:26Speaker 4:Surfers said, hey, you know, readers love this stuff. This is really popular because at that point in time, you have to think that most of the articles you saw in the magazines were about Hawaii, California, maybe Australia once in a while. But that was kind of it. So we kind of opened up this kind of window of, hey, there's a lot of surf adventure out there to be done. And Surfer, to their credit, they recognized that and said, hey, where do you guys want to go next?

7:58Speaker 3:Because this is working.

8:01Speaker 1:Their timing was good. Surfing had fully taken off in California, and the breaks were crowded. Here's Craig.

8:09Speaker 5:Malibu was crowded, Huntington, all these places. So when I approached Surfer Magazine and said, hey, we want to go down and try to find some waves down in Central America and see what we can find, they kind of didn't know what to make of it. They knew that there was probably good waves there, but it was like, well, we don't know how many articles we'll.

8:25Speaker 2:Do or get out of it. So let's just see what happens.

8:29Speaker 1:Kevin and Craig traveled to West Africa, the Canary Islands, the Caribbean, and back through Central America, publishing stories as they went. When they returned home, Surfer magazine asked them where they were headed next. Kevin and Craig were hoping to explore the unknown surf spots of Europe. They pitched a trip to Portugal, Ireland, and France.

8:52Speaker 4:So Surfer kind of scratched their heads and said, okay. And then right before we left, it was one priceless moment when the editor called or publisher called us into his office. And he said, okay, you guys are going to France and we know Mickey Dore is hanging out in France. He's been dropped off the radar now for a few years. and no one's heard anything of him or from him, but we know he's there. And you guys are going there, and no matter what, what did he say to you?

9:19Speaker 2:He said, if Mickey even farts, I want a picture of it.

9:23Speaker 4:That's how much they wanted coverage of Mickey, right? Of course, he was one of our surf idols from the 60s, so we were all stoked to chance to meet him. So we said, okay, we're on it.

9:38Speaker 1:Kevin and Craig had grown up on Dora stories. He was legendary, not just for his surfing, but for his celebrity surfer persona. The elegant, vicious prankster who'd show up to the beach in tennis whites, bilk a kid out of 20 bucks, and drive off in a Lotus.

9:55Speaker 4:He had this je ne sais quoi, this air about him. He had this more than just the surfer persona. He had another persona that he took you know, all the way on land. It's not just in the water. The cat, you know, the mysterious cat.

10:13Speaker 1:It made sense that Mickey had fetched up in France. Quietly, on the Surf World's whisper net, that stretch of Basque coastline that included Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Gittery, and Biarritz was becoming known as the next great spot. It was California as it used to be. Before Gidget, before the crowds. It's probably why Mickey was so relaxed.

10:37Speaker 4:Everyone at that point, surfers in California had been to France or raving about how much it was like California in terms of climate.

10:46Speaker 3:Food, waves.

10:48Speaker 4:So the word was out from like 1969 on that France was a cool place to be. And Mickey just I was one of the first guys there hanging out.

11:00Speaker 1:It was the ultimate assignment. Surf largely undiscovered waves in an idyllic place, the next Malibu, and in the process, meet the most mysterious figure in surfing, who you've worshipped since childhood. Kevin and Craig were in. They made it to the south of France in the fall of 1977.

11:28Speaker 4:It was late in the season, I think around November. So all the surfers that had been there kind of cleared out. There was this surfer migration at the time where everybody kind of moved on from France down to Spain and Portugal and went to Morocco for the winter when it was nice and warm. So everybody was gone and we pulled in in a kind of a stormy, cloudy day to Guitari. And lo and behold, there in the parking lot was Mickey's, you know, big green Mercedes van. And, you know, out steps Mickey and looks at us and it's just Mickey and us in the parking.

12:01Speaker 3:Lot, you know, no one else.

12:03Speaker 1:Mickey spotted the surfboards tied to the top of their car. He came over and they could feel him sizing them up. He could tell right away that Kevin and Craig were from California and he invited them to surf with him.

12:16Speaker 5:He's a, you know, a little bit of a initially shy guy, cautious, but, uh, you know, approachable in that way. And, uh, I kind of think he already knew who we were from our previous articles on surf travel and misadventures.

12:33Speaker 3:Absolutely, he did.

12:34Speaker 4:Because after a few days of hanging around in his Mercedes van, he was feeding us from this bottomless pot of stew that he would just keep throwing whatever he had into the stew. It never emptied. It never ended. It was great for us because he always offered us something in the van. We'd come in for a surf and we're freezing and get some of his stew and talk.

12:57Speaker 1:As far as the surfer assignment was concerned, they were killing it. They'd surfed with Mickey. They'd hung out in his van. They were gaining trust.

13:06Speaker 4:And then finally, after about a week of this, you know, the other shoe dropped and Mickey said, OK, look, I know who you guys are, you know, and you guys have done a bunch of stuff for Surfer. I've read your articles. I've seen your stories. And here's the deal. You know, I know you're here. You've probably been told to take photos of me. and write something about me because I just can tell. He said, but here's the deal I'll do. You guys are as broke as can be, broker than any surfers I've ever run across, which was typical for surf journalists at the time. And he said, I'll make you a bargain. I'll feed you on this pot of great stew. I have going to my Mercedes all the time for as much as you want. Door's always open. You're always welcome. And you're always ready to have a bowl of ice stew on the condition that You don't take any photos of me and you don't write anything about me. And if you're going to try to take photos and you're going to try to write about me, get out of the van right now and get out of my life. What's it going to be?

14:09Speaker 4:So it was like this 10 second of pause. You know, Craig, I looked at each other. Well, you know what?

14:14Speaker 3:Remember what Beth, remember you told you at Surfer? We thought, well, Mickey.

14:19Speaker 4:He never farted.

14:22Speaker 3:Hannah's a bowl of that stew. Yeah.

14:25Speaker 1:Kevin and Craig decided to ignore their assignment for Surfer in favor of something more sustaining. The stew was good. And a lifetime supply of Mickey stories? That would be totally worth it.

14:50Speaker 4:We took his offer up on the stew and Craig didn't take any photos of him and I never wrote about him. But we all hung out together and surfed together through New Year's and Christmas and had a great time surfing incredible ways through that winter. It was just an epic winter of surf in France. Nobody was around except it seemed like Mickey and us. And that was it, really. That was it.

15:15Speaker 1:When Kevin and Craig met him, Mickey was alone and he was hiding. He was evading any number of angry innkeepers and restaurateurs and antiques dealers, having burned bridges from Hong Kong to Nairobi. There was a bench warrant out for him in California, a federal warrant for the alleged passport fraud, and another federal warrant for allegedly defrauding the diner's club of nearly $ 20, 000. Interpol was looking for him, too. Add to that, Linda had left. She was exhausted, sick of fighting, sick of running. And, she told authorities, she was afraid of Mickey. He was so paranoid. She'd run away from him in the middle of the night. A couple of wide-eyed surfers from SoCal were the perfect distraction for Mickey.

16:05Speaker 4:You know, he was so entertaining. I mean, it's hard to describe. He seemed to like company. You know, he wasn't like he was a reckless or a hermit. He wasn't completely antisocial. He was actually quite social, but he it was almost like a big game for him.

16:23Speaker 3:All the time.

16:24Speaker 4:You know, the, the social interaction with, with people he'd like to, he had a wicked sense of humor and he, he liked to keep it sharpened.

16:34Speaker 1:Mickey was as quick as ever mentally. And for a guy in his mid forties, he was surfing well.

16:41Speaker 5:At that time in the fall of 77, Mickey was very athletic, still, you know, a great surfer had his classic style. And, uh, We never really saw him physically surfing at Malibu. We did see it in movies and later on times, but you could definitely tell it was Mickey out surfing, you know, the waves when he was out in water.

17:03Speaker 1:Hanging out with Mickey, Kevin and Craig got to know his quirks. Mickey was convinced the world was going to hell, starting with his own body.

17:12Speaker 4:I remember him also as being somewhat of a hypochondriac. Remember, he had a shelf of pills he would take every day. I'm like, Mickey, what are all these pills? All my knees are popping. And he had pills for every conceivable ailment. He was taking them all the time. He did complain a lot about knees popping and backs hurting and a little prematurely, you know, because for my opinion now, because he would have been in his 40s then. And, you know, that seems like, wow, you're still in your prime now to be now. But he was already complaining quite a bit then.

17:50Speaker 1:Kevin and Craig were broke and traveling light. They had T-shirts and jeans. Mickey was always dressed to the nines. Even if he was a little threadbare from his years on the run living in a van, Mickey was still dapper.

18:04Speaker 5:I think that's a lot why the French liked him so much, because he really would, you know, make an effort to, you know, look his best.

18:13Speaker 2:You know, he had that classic California rogue look to him.

18:18Speaker 4:You know, we were coming up to New Year's, big party time. There's parties here and there. He said, hey, guys, what do you think of this one? I'm ready for anything. And he broke out this jacket, right? And it was, you know, he had some white pants on. He had the white jacket. I said, Mickey, that's pretty spiffy, you know, white on white. You're ready for stepping out. He said, yeah, but watch this. Just in case I go to a different party that has kind of a different scene happening, watch this. And he took the jacket and he turned it inside out. And it was leopard skinned.

18:48Speaker 3:So what?

18:51Speaker 4:Leper skin, it could be a leper skin jacket or it could be a white jacket, depending on what party it was you were going to. And he loved that. He just loved the fact that he could kind of go and switch personas from party to party.

19:06Speaker 1:During this time, Mickey was living in his van in the Gittery parking lot. But Mickey's van wasn't just any van. It was a gigantic, late-model, dark green Mercedes camper. It was his home, his safe place, and also his escape plan if anyone closed in. Or if the surf started sucking or the water got too cold and he wanted to move on. One of Mickey's girlfriends told Mickey's biographer, That van was Mickey. It had his heart, soul, story, travels, his secrets. which were in a black briefcase. Also his scent, which was quite like a lion.

19:44Speaker 4:Mercedes van was something else. It was state-of-the-art. Most of the surfers that had these converted VW vans and that, and this was a thing that was sizable. It was, you know, like a motorhome size.

19:56Speaker 1:Like a kitchen in there?

19:57Speaker 3:Oh yeah, kitchen, bathroom.

19:59Speaker 4:The whole works. It had everything you would see in a Winnebago, but with that great German engineering and style. So it was top of the line, a van. You would not see any surfer driving around. Only Mickey had this van, and he was known for it.

20:15Speaker 3:Fancy. Yeah, very fancy. It cost a pretty penny at that time.

20:20Speaker 5:We would usually be sitting in the front two seats, and Mickey would be cooking up the stew or serving it up, and the conversation would go on back that way. Usually these conversations would go on for either a half hour, depending on the surf, or up to two or three hours at night. So it was a lot of good conversation, I remember, covering all kinds of subjects.

20:44Speaker 1:Subjects like Mickey's apocalyptic philosophy, the surf, the price of gold, politics, the surf, and of course, the surf. But Kevin and Craig noticed a wistfulness in Mickey for his youth and for his home.

21:02Speaker 5:There was a certain kind of sadness for Mickey being around him that I remember. Kind of, he wished he could still be in California for years. aside from all of his other troubles, that he still loved California. And now he could not go back to California, really. I think there was a certain sadness to his character when he talked about California to us.

21:23Speaker 2:He'd want to know what's going on, what's being developed.

21:26Speaker 4:He was in exile because of his grifter ways. But part of him also had this sort of romanticized, idealized version of going someplace and finding more empty, great ways, like he'd had in Malibu in the 50s before it turned into something else. Because a lot of our conversations would kind of talk about where did you go to to get Empty Waves? What was it like? You want to know all about Central America and what the waves were like and where we found empty great spots. And he was really inquisitive about the details. So I think he kind of sensed in us this sort of, we had this romantic idealized version. We were going to escape the crowds, the madness of Southern California and That's what got started on our travels. You know, that was the driving force, the impetus to get away and find new empty waves and hopefully find our own personal Malibu. And I think Mickey always held on to that kind of hope and ideal.

22:25Speaker 1:But there was always the possibility lingering in the back of their minds that Mickey was playing them. They knew Mickey's reputation as a hustler. Kevin and Craig, by their own admission, were pretty naive. but they weren't fools.

22:41Speaker 5:Even the people that got taken advantage of by Mickey, he was so charismatic that in a lot of ways they were kind of like, wow, I've got a Mickey Dora story to tell, even though I lost my camera or something else or my girlfriend or something else, but it was Mickey Dora who did that.

22:58Speaker 4:You had to always be kind of cautious about what you were stepping into.

23:03Speaker 5:I think he did have a reputation around, so just kind of People say, just be careful around Mickey, because.

23:13Speaker 2:You don't know what he's kind of up to or thinking.

23:15Speaker 5:So we knew that we really enjoyed the relationship that we had with Mickey at the time while we were in France.

23:22Speaker 2:But somewhere, something was going to pop up.

23:26Speaker 1:And of course, something did pop up. Eventually, inevitably... Mickey's charm seemed less companionable and more intentional. He wanted something from them, but they couldn't figure out what.

23:44Speaker 4:As we got to know him, we realized this guy's always up to something, and we never quite knew what it was. Remember he would have us take bottles of wine back and.

23:53Speaker 3:Forth across the border?

23:54Speaker 4:Yes. Can you take this wine and bring it back? And why is he having to... Why are we bringing this errand for Mickey?

24:00Speaker 3:I don't know.

24:01Speaker 4:We would good naturedly go along with some of these things. And I think he was just kind of sensing about how he could kind of work with us or manipulate us or deal with us for.

24:15Speaker 3:One of his schemes.

24:18Speaker 1:Later, they'd figure out that Mickey had been testing them, seeing how far he could push them.

24:23Speaker 4:He said as often, he's kind of fools errands to get. refill, not even refill a bottle of wine, bring the wine and bring it back. I think he wanted to see if we're going to do anything with the wine they'd given us. Looking back on it, probably that we were too naive to even know at the time, what's this all about? But I think he was kind of testing the waters to see how far, you know, what would we do?

24:45Speaker 1:He sent you with a full bottle to bring, just cross the border and come back with that same bottle?

24:50Speaker 3:Yeah, just to see, I want you to do it.

24:52Speaker 1:Why?

24:52Speaker 3:Just go ahead and do it. Don't ask questions. Just, you know, go ahead and please do this for me.

24:57Speaker 1:I mean, cult leaders do that when they want to start to create. They do... Groom.

25:04Speaker 2:It's grooming, yes.

25:05Speaker 4:This went on for like a week or two. And I can't even remember all the other little nonsensical errands that he was asking us to do. And some we said yes, and some we said, come on, Mickey, we're not going to stop. But then that was the warm-up to the big prize.

25:23Speaker 1:Mickey hadn't just been toying around with them for fun. and he didn't really need that bottle of wine taken over the border and back. He was laying the groundwork for something much grander, a plot they came to think of as the van scam. Kevin and Craig had come to France with the goal of finding Mickey Dora. They'd played it cool, worked their way in, cultivated him. But then they'd fallen under Mickey's spell, gorged themselves on his stew, stayed too long in the van, gone to parties with Mickey dressed in his magic reversible suit. Mickey'd even introduced Kevin to his future wife.

26:16Speaker 4:I'd seen her on the Gittery, the streets the day before. We'd kind of seen each other, but we were both too shy to talk. And then a few days later, I'm at Lafiteña looking at the really good ways and up pulled a Mercedes van. And lo and behold, in the passenger seat, she was sitting there. She's friends with Mickey. So Mickey stepped out and, you know, there I am and he introduced me. Hey, Kevin, here's Jocelyn and introduced us and took it from there. We've been married ever since.

26:49Speaker 1:Maybe Mickey Dora had found and cultivated them, not the other way around. He'd wooed them over to his side, played on their weaknesses, shaped them to his ends. Because he had something big in mind for these two carefree young men. Look, they'd already given up on the Surfer Magazine assignment. They might as well work for him.

27:13Speaker 4:He came up with a grand plan one day where he sat us down in the van with, of course, the bowl of stew and the bottle of wine. He said, look, I can see you guys are, you know, broke even beyond any of them. thing I would believe in but you are that broke you know and so I've got a plan where we can all keep traveling and surfing and doing the stuff we like to do and you just have to go along with my plan and it's all going to work out so we said okay Mickey we're all open for anything fill us in and he said okay I've got this Mercedes van here you're all sitting in and which by the way he had bought in England and written a bad check for of course so Interpol was out looking for him and in the France. Anyway, so the van was bought on a bad check and Harry was hanging out, hiding out in France. And he said, what I'll do is we'll go to Spain, three of us, and then I'm going to sell you guys the van there.

28:11Speaker 1:In Spain, Mickey told them, they'd be able to buy a Swiss insurance policy on the van in their names.

28:19Speaker 4:And you guys are, of course, established photojournalist team, so it won't be a big deal and you're travel around Europe doing some stories. So then you drive the van to Italy and to a place I'm going to instruct you to go to. Well, it turned out at this time there was a lot of activity going on in Italy.

28:38Speaker 3:With the Red Brigade.

28:40Speaker 1:The Red Brigade was a violent far-left guerrilla group.

28:44Speaker 4:A lot of social unrest and they were blowing up cars and burning down buildings. So The Red Brigade, they were very active in Italy. Mickey was going to send us to a town where they were doing a lot of mischief. And we were checking the hotel there. And then Mickey would sort of, in the stealth of the night, jump into the van and drive straight to Greece, where he had somebody in Greece who was going to buy this van, no questions asked. And we wake up the next day and we report our van stolen to the Italian authorities and.

29:19Speaker 1:Mickey thought the Italian police would be ready to blame the Red Brigade and sympathize with clueless Americans who had just rolled in in a Mercedes van.

29:29Speaker 4:They'll go on that premise. He said, and then what happened is the insurance company in Switzerland, you know, you can cash in on the policy there and we all meet back here in France afterwards and we divvy up the money, half to me and half to you two guys. We're involving now five countries, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland. The list goes on. But I'm not doing justice to the detail with which Mickey had planned this. He really had it down to like all these things a time schedule was going to happen just as he had planned it we were going to just go along with his instructions and everything was going to be cool and we were going to end up cashing in on this great policy come back to france celebrate over a bottle of wine and divvy up the money and i mean he made it sound like so enticing like this can't go wrong this is great. We're going to have, we're going to have money to travel for the next year. We go wherever we want. Just, we just have to go with Mickey's grand plan.

30:32Speaker 3:Let's do it.

30:33Speaker 4:And so we said, okay, just give us a little bit of time to think about it. Cause it did kind of cross a little, uh, there were some moral issues that it was crossing some boundaries. We kind of had ourselves. And then of course, getting involved with something with Mickey, you always got to a little wonder, uh, is it going to backfire? And then, so we thought about it overnight and went back and forth. And then the next day said, Mickey, it sounds really good, but what happens at the end? You know, when let's say it all goes through and Mickey said, no problem. We just meet here and, you know, half the money goes to you and half to me. He said, of course I will have to make deductions for whatever it costs me to, you know, support you guys for the month or two it takes to this, you know, it's, it's not going to be a free ride for you guys. And, So I will make whatever deductions I think I have to make.

31:23Speaker 3:I linked each other. Okay.

31:26Speaker 4:That tells us we're going to end up with a bus ticket to London. You know, that's, that's pretty much it. Not even a plane fare home, just a bus ticket.

31:33Speaker 2:An Interpol looking for us.

31:34Speaker 4:An Interpol looking for us. And Vicki hightailing it off somewhere else to, in the world, New Zealand, whoever, where skiing in Switzerland. And we're going to be the, the straw guys and we're going to be the fall guys for this. So, We politely said, you know, Mickey, it's really not in our wheelhouse. We're not going to go with this. We'd rather be poor and broken honest than get involved in something like this.

31:57Speaker 3:And he just said, okay.

31:58Speaker 4:He just wanted to put the offer out there, and it's there if you guys want to do it. And I said, well, Mickey, if it's so good, why don't you do it yourself? And he said, well, actually, I've already done it. I can't go back to the well. I can't do it again. So, okay, now we see it. Then we saw the big picture.

32:18Speaker 1:Mickey's M.O. was to embroil other people in his elaborate plots. And if they got burned, so what? Mickey would pussyfoot away with his Cheshire Cat smile. But maybe he was losing his touch. He was definitely changing.

32:37Speaker 4:He had a certain paranoia streak in him. The suspicion about society in general and who was out to get him. And I sense this kind of paranoia to his personality that was kind of strange.

32:55Speaker 1:Or maybe it was just that his luck was running out.

33:00Speaker 4:You know, you're never really fully free from your past deeds. And I think Mickey is a good example of that.

33:06Speaker 1:Kevin and Craig got out of Gittery a little wiser to the world, but with their morals intact. and a classic Mickey Dora story. They'd escaped, and just in time. Being a friend of Mickey's was getting dangerous. Next time on Lost Hills, the FBI's got questions.

33:37Speaker 6:I got a visit from the FBI. So they came and they asked me all about Mickey and what I knew. And I went out of my way to give them as little information as I possibly could without lying to them, because I knew lying with the FBI was a crime. So I wasn't going to tell them anything untrue, but I was going to, I don't recall as many times as I could, or I don't know as many times as I could without being obvious.

34:05Speaker 1:That's next in Episode 10, Aging Boy of Summer. Lost Hills is written and reported by me, Dana Goodyear. It's created by me and Ben Adair and produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can binge the entire season right now ad-free. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.