‘Greatest Escapes With Arturo Castro’ Episode 5: Holloway Burgl

Mental Floss is partnering with FilmNation and iHeartPodcasts to bring you the transcripts for Greatest Escapes, a podcast hosted by Arturo Castro about some of the wildest escape stories across history. In this episode, Kelsey McKinney (host of the hit podcast Normal Gossip) joins Arturo as they venture to 1960s London to meet the notorious burglar and self-proclaimed Queen of the Underworld: Zoe Progl. Read all the transcripts here.

Arturo Castro: Hey, guys, welcome to Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest true escape stories of all time. Today, we’re headed to 1960s London to hear about a life of crime and a legendary breakout by the first woman to scale the walls of London’s Holloway prison.

I’m Arturo Castro, and I’m here with the podcasting world’s number-one gossip queen: Kelsey McKinney. Wow. I am so excited to have you as our guest this week. Guys, this is Kelsey McKinney, and I’m sorry that it’s hard for me to pronounce, uh, English names.

Kelsey McKinney: Oh, it’s OK. I’m from the south, so the e’s and the i’s make the same sound to me, so it doesn’t matter.

Arturo: So I love—I love your podcast, Normal Gossip, and I gotta tell you also, I’m so jealous of, like, your, your ease with the English language and how you just, like, have just this wide breadth of vocabulary. I’m telling you.

Kelsey: Oh my god. Thank you. I feel like I have a small vocabulary, so I really appreciate this compliment, which I have never received before.

Arturo: So, for our guests that don’t know your podcast, which they should, can you give us a little bit about what it is?

Kelsey: Yeah, absolutely. So I host a podcast called Normal Gossip, where we take gossip from the world that listeners send in, and then we anonymize it, and then I bring on a guest and I tell it to them. And so, kind of the goal is to make it sound like you’re overhearing someone in a bar.

Arturo: Oh my God. And I tell you why I’m such a fan of it because in Guatemala, where I’m from, there is a thing—so, so gossip in Guatemalan slang is called chisme. And when you like, put out, like, guys, chismé on the group WhatsApp chat, people go f***ing nuts. They stop. They like—the doctor start[s]—stops operating f***ing people on the table.

They’re like, “oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my god. Tell me.” And the chismé—like, the juicier the chismé, like, the more, like, fanfare there is for it. Like it’s a—it’s a national sport. You have to be prepared to come correct with it. It’s always, you know—well, good-natured. It’s never like gossiping to like, destroy somebody.

But it is just so juicy because it’s like, uh, Guatemala City is like a big small town, right? So if you date somebody, it’s very likely that they dated the cousin of your friend and they know each other and they know a story about him.

Kelsey: Great. I love that.

Arturo: And so chismé, it’s just like—just picture all of us. The analogy would be all of us down by the river, like just washing some clothes and, like, turning to—“did you hear about that chismé,” you know? Uh, so that’s why I appreciate your show so much.

Kelsey: Great. I’m moving Guatemala City to the top of my cities to visit list based on this conversation alone. Thank you.

Arturo: They will all be like, “Your English is fantastic.”

1. Kelsey’s Escape
2. CHAPTER 1: Flaunt and Taunt
3. CHAPTER 2: Long Way to the Top
4. CHAPTER 3: Blame It on the Boys
5. CHAPTER 4: Progl the Professional
6. CHAPTER 5: Jump Up
7. CHAPTER 6: Holloway Heist … of Herself
8. CHAPTER 7: Back in the Clink
9. Outro
10. Credits

Kelsey’s Escape

Arturo: So I gotta ask you: Do you—do you have something that you consider your greatest escape?

Kelsey: Yeah. So I grew up in Texas, and I grew up in a very evangelical household, which was, uh, not great, I would say for me in general. And I was thinking like, OK, do I talk about like, going to college or moving to the East Coast, or like—what do I do? And I think, actually, the greatest escape I have ever made is that, [in] my sophomore year of high school, I switched high schools. So, like, I had been going to this, like, giant public high school, like 800 kids in a grade, huge like football culture, all this stuff. And I was like, “I can’t really find people to be friends with here.” And my sophomore year I switched to an arts-only high school.

Arturo: Wow.

Kelsey: And it was, like, a tiny school, and everyone only cared about art. And I was like, “This is bliss.” And so I like, created an escape hatch for myself from the place where I grew up.

Arturo: Gosh. I would’ve—dude, I would’ve loved that. Like, I had to pretend to care, give a sh*t about soccer for like five years of my high school life. I was like, ”Oh yeah, the f***ing, oh yeah, you hit the ball and then you run out. Oh, man, that’s crazy.”

Kelsey: “I love forwards for sure. Mm-hmm.”

Arturo: Yeah, that’s right.

CHAPTER 1: Flaunt and Taunt

Arturo: Let me tell you about our escape for today. And Ben, give me a little intro.

Kelsey: Oh my god.

[ORCHESTRAL STING]

Arturo: Thank you, Ben. So, today we start with a call to the London office, the London Police Office …

[Phone ringing]

Arturo: Thanks, Ben. That’s what a phone sounds like. It’s, uh, it’s August 10, 1960. Are you with me?

Kelsey: OK, I’m with you.

Arturo: They pick up the line. Yes, they get a tip. The notorious fugitive, Zoe Progl, has been spotted at a hotel at the Chelsea area of West London. Do you know her?

Kelsey: Who is she? No.

Arturo: Oh, I’ll tell you. Let me tell you. So, so–

Kelsey: It just felt like I should gasp. I got scared.

Arturo: Oh, I love it. Thank you. So it’s an upscale neighborhood. OK. Everybody’s having a good time. They’re like looking their noses outta people. It’s a kind of place where Zoe would’ve fit in. Fit right in.

Kelsey: Right.

Arturo: She was a woman with an air of luxury. OK. Old photos show her decked out in jewelry, cocktail in hand, and a perfect blonde quaff. Ooh, what a word.

Kelsey: French.

Arturo: Yeah, French perhaps, um—that gives her a Marilyn Monroe kinda look. So, like, go off, Marilyn Queen! She’s having the time of her life. It’s the ’60s.

Kelsey: Yes. I’m seeing like, red lipstick. I’m seeing a lot of like, flowing clothing.

Arturo: I love that the cocktail in the hand is just so specific. They’re like—everybody was like, complete alcoholics, but nobody dared say anything. They’re like, “No, they’re just, they’re just friendly kids.” Um, so the police have been hunting Zoe Progl for weeks, right?

Kelsey: Not well!

Arturo: Not well. She was just at a—having cocktails. So when they heard that she had been spotted, they spring into action.

They raced to the hotel and they burst inside following the description that they had gotten over the phone. A woman wearing slacks with her hair dyed red, drinking gin and a bitter lemon at the hotel bar.

Kelsey: Ooh.

Arturo: But they didn’t find Zoe. No. No. Instead, they found she had left something behind—a letter. It was addressed to the British Home Secretary. She seems really cool, but like—like would you go out on the night—first of all, the Home Secretary’s a f***ing terrible title for any office, the Home Secretary. But from this first impression, would you go—go out on the night for drinks with—with old Zoe?

Kelsey: Yes, absolutely. I wanna try this weird gin, bitter lemon drink. I’m down for that. I love the idea of, like, being out for a drink with her and her being like, “Can you just call the police and tell them that I was here? I’m just gonna, like, dip out really fast.”

Arturo: Oh, man. So the police—polite gents that they were, right? They passed the mail along to the Home Secretary’s office.

Kelsey: Wow. So considerate. [Laughs]

Arturo: Yeah. They’re like, “I don’t know. “We don’t wanna be rude. We’ll pass it on to–” … where they gave a statement to the press. It seemed that Zoe had wanted to be seen. Right? Because the letter she left behind was an offer to bargain.

Kelsey: Oh.

Arturo: She would turn herself into the police if they would lighten her sentence. But, you see, the authorities felt like she was making them look like fools.

Kelsey: They were—because she was.

Arturo: Yeah. You were, like, dropping the letter off, like not even checked, just to the Home Secretary.

Kelsey: She’s like, “I don’t wanna pay for postage, so I called the police to come pick this up.”

Arturo: “I have a package.” So—so, they started a kind of thing that you always hear, right? “The queen’s officers do not bargain with escaped criminals.”

Kelsey: Sure, sure, sure.

Arturo: Yeah, so Zoe stayed on the run, right? But that wasn’t the first time that Zoe taunted the cops who were chasing her. Now, spoiler alert, after she escaped from prison, and we’re getting into that story in a second–

Kelsey: Escaped from prison?

Arturo: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Greatest escapes is what we’re all about. Give me a “ba, ba ba pow.”

[Airhorn sound]

Arturo: OK. OK. OK. Thank you. Now, many months before her letter at the bar, she had sent the authorities a mysterious package.

Kelsey: OK.

Arturo: What’s in the box? Kelsey? What’s in the box?

Kelsey: Oh my God. What’s in the box? Is it a tape recorder?

Arturo: It would—it would’ve been a gramophone, maybe, back at that point.

Kelsey: Oh yeah, that’s a great point.

Arturo: A gramophone in a brown paper bag, which is a weird image.

Kelsey: Is it a bunch of bitter lemons and a jar? What’s in there?

Arturo: No, no. When they opened it, they found her prison armband and the uniform she had worn inside.

Kelsey: This woman rules.

Arturo: So, you gotta admire the audacity here. She—they’re like, “F*** you, and here’s your folded clothes. Thank you very much.”

Kelsey: She’s like, “I escaped from prison. I have no need of these. They’re very ugly. I’m returning to my wardrobe. Thank you for your service.”

Arturo: It had, like, inseams—like, just like, suggestions as to how to make it worn better.

Kelsey: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s like, “You know, I, so I recommend like, tucking the waist a little bit. It’s a little unflattering.”

Arturo: Yeah. “It’s not very form fitting, you guys, so.” So, when news got out that she had somehow given back her prison uniform, the press called her an honorable jail breaker. Very British.

Kelsey: She didn’t wanna steal, she just wanted to leave prison.

Arturo: She just—she wanted to leave prison. It wasn’t a great place to be. Police were enraged, but obviously, a lot of people were having a lot of fun with the fact that she was leading the authorities on a merry chase.

It wasn’t the first time. Over the years, Zoe had gathered an admiring audience. She had learned how to put on a show, right? That was specifically true for her longtime passion and pursuit of burglary.

Kelsey: Uhhhhhh!

CHAPTER 2: Long Way to the Top

[1920s jazz ditty]

Arturo: We’re going really back in time.

Kelsey: Beautiful. I love it.

Arturo: So who—who was Zoe? Zoe was born in London in 1928, and she got started on her career really early. Right?

Kelsey: Her career of burglary?

Arturo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kelsey: OK. I just wanted to make sure I was following correctly. Yeah.

Arturo: Her career of mixing gin with lemon bitters, her family, the Tyldesleys. Am I saying that right? Overlords?

Kelsey: Tyldesleys.

Carl/Overlord: It is as—as right as anyone can get it. It is the Tyldesleys.

Arturo: We’re just making sh*t up now. OK, fine. Overlords.

Kelsey: I love it.

Arturo: They were poor, and her father was an alcoholic. So, the family often went hungry. Zoe started stealing from her classmates at school.

Kelsey: Smart.

Arturo: She was rummaging through lunch boxes and pickpocketing school kids, but she knew that that wouldn’t feed her family. Right?

Kelsey: Right. School kids don’t have that much money. They don’t even have jobs.

Arturo: It’s a sandwich. How—how often are you gonna feed a family of six? So she started swimming in the Thames, right? Carrying a sack.

Kelsey: This seems really dangerous. I don’t like it.

Arturo: I know—she’s, like, a child! And so that she could climb onto the barges passing by and float away with nuts, bananas, and canned fruit. Like–

Kelsey: Genius.

Arturo: This is impressive. It’s pretty badass, isn’t it? As a kid, would you have had the guts to do this kind of stuff, when you were like, 10?

Kelsey: I could barely climb a tree when I was 10. I was like—I was a scaredy cat, to be honest.

Arturo: Also like—I have such, like, terrible leftover Catholic guilt. Like, I am not good at stealing cause I would just like, confess to my crimes and the crimes of everybody I’ve ever met, you know?

Kelsey: Also, I’m like, not a good swimmer, so I don’t think it would’ve worked out well for me trying to scale a barge.

Arturo: I still can’t figure treading water successfully. I can’t do it.

Kelsey: No way.

Arturo: During World War II, when Zoe was 12, she was sent out of London.

Kelsey: Oh, right, because of the bombings.

Arturo: Yeah, exactly. So, a wealthy foster family would take her in, out in the countryside.

Kelsey: OK, so she leveled up during the war?

Arturo: She was like, “Glow up. It’s my moment.” London was really—but it was for kind of a sad reason, cause London was being bombed so often by the Germans that the UK got together to try to keep kids alive by sending them outta the city.

Kelsey: Right.

Arturo: But the kids are like, “Yeah, let’s see you later, guys.” With her foster family, she was well fed, given plenty of clothes, and was generally given everything that she felt like—that was missing from home.

Kelsey: Mm. She developed a taste for luxury.

Arturo: A taste for luxury. So, when she got back to London a year later, in 1941, Zoe was determined to live more like the foster family that she had than her real family.

Kelsey: Yeah, I bet she was.

Arturo: I mean, what trauma it must be to like, have to go back, you know what I’m saying? You’re like—you like, go back to like, your London basement flat. You’re like, “When—when is the horse carriage coming for me again?”

Kelsey: Right.

Arturo: You know, “Are we having a ball again? No. OK, cool.” But now she knew where to get the things that rich people had in their houses, right?

Kelsey: And also she’s a teen now, right? So, she has like a little more dexterity, a little more street smarts.

Arturo: So, at 13, she broke into a house for the first time.

Kelsey: OK.

Arturo: Yeah. She was like, “F*** it, I’m starting early.” She came away with a pocket full of stolen coins and paid for pictures to be taken of herself. Like, I love that her first act of self-care was with stolen sh*t, and she was like, “Buy me a headshot, you know?”

Kelsey: Yeah. Well, you know, she knew what she wanted. She stole those coins. They’re hers.

Arturo: They’re like, “Whatever, yeah, of course.” Now they are hers by—by property law of somewhere in the 1950s.

Um, so in 1946, when Zoe was only 16, she thought that she saw a way out of her life in poverty. Right? She marries a U.S. sergeant [U.S. anthem plays] named Joe Progl, thank you. Here is what America sounds like. And she went back to the U.S. with him, but Zoe was basically still a f***ing child, man. You know? She wasn’t really happy being so far from home. She wasn’t happy being married to Joe, and she definitely wasn’t happy spending her days doing all of his cooking and cleaning, which is apparently all that he expected, right?

Kelsey: Yeah. I mean also, like, no 14-year-olds in the whole world are happy. So like, adding moving across an ocean to live with an old man who makes you do chores? No, it’s a nightmare.

Arturo: Like, different times and all that, but seriously, do not marry a f***ing child to take them to a different country.

Kelsey: I agree, you shouldn’t marry children.

Arturo: We are firmly on the side of not marrying children, guys. Just so we’re clear. But after a year of enduring the marriage, Zoe told Joe that she wanted to take a holiday back to England.

Kelsey: Same.

Arturo: Everybody. So Joe, if, if—if you hear around, [and] you’re listening, please send us all to it too. Um, so he sends her off, but once she was back in the UK, she cut ties. She was never going back to America. Bon voyage, Joe, peace out.

Kelsey: Bye.

[Foghorn Sound + Ben: “Bon Voyage!”]

Arturo: Thank you, Ben, for that. So, Zoe said that she—she left basically because the life of a housewife was too boring. And which to be honest, that was—that’s a fair assessment for a kid, you know.

Kelsey: Also, [to] a kid that is used to doing, like, crimes, being a housewife is not interesting.

Arturo: She’s lived a high life. She doesn’t want to be stuck in the middle of f***ing nowhere. So back in England, Zoe kept their last name, Progl, but she swapped Joe for another soldier, a more adventurous chap, a Canadian gunman nicknamed Johnny the Junkie. Ooh.

Kelsey: Incredible nickname.

Arturo: Yeah. So together, they—they launched a life of serious burglary. OK. What is it with Canadians in these over the top names? Like ... like—like Johnny the Junkie, or Dudley Doright, or like—Ryan f***ing Reynolds, like, you know? If you were to date a Canadian in this time and age, how good of a nickname would they have to have?

Kelsey: Better than Johnny the Junkie, I think.

Arturo: A hundred percent. I’d also like to imagine that he was the most polite burglar of his era. He’s always like, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.” Um, but my stepdad’s Canadian, I can say that. To be honest, when I moved to New York at 19, I had this weird Hispanic slash Canadian accent. It was totally true, and it—it sounded like, “Hey, what’s up man? Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about, but like, I’m f***ing like, you know, ready to go chill in the house and whatever.” And people were like, “What are you?”

In her first big heist, Zoe was the getaway driver as Johnny the Junkie and a friend broke into a luxury store. They stole, check this out, $7000, 7000 pounds, sorry, of furs. Now, by one estimate, that’s over $350,000 of merchandise in today’s money. Isn’t that wild?

Kelsey: Incredible heist.

Arturo: Also, like—how expensive are f***ing furs, man?

Kelsey: Yeah, apparently very.

Arturo:  Like I just—I’ve never bought, bought one, I guess. I don’t know.

Kelsey: Yeah. I have no idea. But I love this. I love the idea of them running out of a store carrying these giant furs and, like, shoving them into the back of a car. That’s great.

Arturo: What if they were just like wearing them and trying to act really chill?

Kelsey: Just wearing seven coats.

Arturo: Yeah, like—like Joey in like Friends wearing all Chandler’s clothes, just like, walking by.

Kelsey: Both seem good.

Arturo: So to Zoe, this was like the thrill that she had been missing.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Arturo: You see, her only regret was that she was left out in the car while the boys were having all the fun, right?

Kelsey: Right.

Arturo: She was driving a stolen Jaguar, but still, Zoe decided that she couldn’t miss out on the excitement anymore.

CHAPTER 3: Blame It on the Boys

[’40s/’50s Stinger]

Arturo: Oh. A little further in time. This is telling me we’re in the ’50s. Is that it, Ben?

Ben/Overlord: Gettin’ there.

Arturo: Great. OK. Late ’40s, let’s say. Next Zoe and the boys broke into a post office where they grabbed a safe. 

Kelsey: Oh, I was like, “What’s in the post office?”

Arturo: I know, they just really loved stationary.

Kelsey: They loved letters.

Arturo: They love leaving letters for the police to carry.

Kelsey: OK. They stole a safe.

Arturo: They—yeah, and they carried it out and cracked it open.

They found that they had made a huge haul. It was full of f***ing cash, bank notes, and the other government documents worth about 600,000 in today’s money. I ... I mean—imagine you were an 18-year-old and suddenly you have about 200,000 from the split dropped into your lap. What would you—like, what did you like at 18, what were you—were you like, “Oh my God, this is the best?”

Kelsey: Ooh, that’s a great question … like, concert tickets? I would’ve wanted my own apartment at 18, right? I would be like, “I’m gonna get my own place.”

Arturo: Wow, that’s so industrious of you. I was, I was—I would’ve just been like, I don’t know, “I wanna go see Death Cab for Cutie” or whatever.

Kelsey: Please let me see Connor Oberst. I’ll die.

Arturo: Also, is it just me, or does Zoe and The Boys sound like a great British invasion band that never was?

Kelsey: It does, yeah. It sounds like a punk band.

Arturo: So, it seemed like the world was Zoe’s oyster, right? But the heist got Zoe caught.

Kelsey: The post office heist?

Arturo: Yeah. Cracking open the safe. In 1947, while she was still 18, Zoe was arrested for the first time. She was also three months pregnant with Johnny the Junkie’s baby. Bum bum BUM!

Kelsey: Not good to go to prison if you’re pregnant.

Arturo: No. Johnny the Junkie Junior? I don’t know.

Kelsey: JJ.

Arturo: JJJ. So, she was using forged checks and trying to trade with stolen post office documents. Like, like what? Like stamps, like what are you—like you got a stapler that—like, I don’t know what you’re f***ing thinking, Zoe. So, the judge on her case decided that Zoe wasn’t responsible for her actions. So, since she was a woman, he said that she was easily influenced by the men and that they were the ones who were responsible for her actions.

Kelsey: And she’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s—yeah.”

Arturo: She’s like, “Oh my God.” Yeah. I didn’t even—weird like misogyny in the justice system.

Kelsey: Yeah. Misogyny that’s actually like moonlighting as feminism, right? Because it’s like, well, she couldn’t have done a crime, like–

Arturo: She couldn’t have done this; she’s too pure. Yeah, I don’t—“Officer, I thought they were just buying me a bunch of furs.” That’s so weird.

Kelsey: “They love me so much.”

Arturo: Yeah. “Have you seen my quoi—quaff? Quaff? My quoi quaff?”

Kelsey: Yeah.

Arturo: Um, so the judges, the judge sentenced—man, the Oxford Dictionary people are just gonna be calling me very, very angrily.

Kelsey: Not your problem.

Arturo: Not my f***ing problem, you guys. So, the judge sentenced Zoe to three years in a reform school and juvenile detention center, which the British called Borstals.

Kelsey: This seems like a place you don’t want to go.

Arturo: Yeah, well, you would think, but the school was supposed to be a place where crooked girls were straightened out, but where they learned new habits and took on domestic skills—like, holy sh*t, man, I apologize that this is what they’re like—as, as for all men, they all called me. They actually signed a release for me to be able to speak for all men.

Kelsey: Thank you.

Arturo: That is so f***ed up that it’s like, reform means teaching women domestic skills. You know what I mean?

Kelsey: Yes. It’s one of those things where it’s like, it’s f***ed up to have to learn domestic skills to reform from your criminal life. And also, if someone offered me to go to a reform school for three years and learn to sew, I would be like, “Is it free?”

Arturo: Yeah. Is it free?

Kelsey: I’d love–

Arturo: Like—“What’s ... what’s the food like?”

Kelsey: Yeah, yeah.

Arturo: Yeah. No, borscht at the borstals. That summer, Zoe’s son, Tony, was born in the Bortstals.

Kelsey: Tony?

Arturo: Tony, f***ing Tony. You know, she’s like Zoe, like Johnny the Junkie–

Kelsey: This woman’s like, “I’m a criminal. What am I supposed to name my son? His name’s Tony.”

Arturo: You went to Tony? You really lost your way, man. So, the pressures on her grew right? But not in a way that made Zoe decide to live, you know, lawfully. No, no. And then with flawless comedic timing, Joe Progl arrived in England, looking for his runaway wife.

Kelsey: She’s like, this is your son.

Arturo: He—he’s like, “I don’t know the math adds up, but yeah, I’ll take him.” I apologize to every person in the South that has ever existed, but when—when he found that she was locked up, he abandoned her and that was the end of Joe. He’s like, you know, “I will marry a minor in an instant, but a criminal?”

Kelsey: “A criminal, no way.”

Arturo: “Nay, nay, sir, nay. I’ve got morals.” So Zoe got to know the other girls in the prison, and they became something of a new family for her. Right? Many of them were young mothers like she was.

Kelsey: Yeah, because they all needed to be reformed.

Arturo: And many of them came into the Bortstal pregnant—like that’s a such a f***ing wild trend, right? Be like, “So we going to prison? OK, cool. We got about 30 days, you know.”

Kelsey: No, it’s probably like, “Oh, you got pregnant and you weren’t married. Reform school for you.”

Arturo: “Reform school for you.”

Kelsey: “Our little hussy. Get outta here.”

Arturo: “You need some Jesus.” Zoe learned a lot of things from them. Things like shoplifting, tips, how to better pose, really.

Kelsey: Yeah!

Arturo: She was—it was like a training ground for her. She was—how to better pose, this is an important one. How to better pose as an upper class woman to con shopkeepers.

Kelsey: Yeah, this is the problem. You put all these really smart women together, and you’re like, “Learn to sew.” They’re gonna learn immediately, and then they’re gonna be sewing up a storm. Like, have you ever stolen $45,000 in gems?

Arturo: Yeah. I love that you’re like, that you wove in sewing up a storm. I’m gonna keep that. We’re gonna rerecord it as, uh, as an album after this. So I also love the idea of this, like Karate Kid-like montage of training somebody how to be more British upper class. You know, like, “all right, now you have to find your cousin more attractive—more attractive, whatever.”

Kelsey: How to find your cousin more attractive?

Arturo: You know how British royalty all marry within cousins, you know, I’m like–

Kelsey: How to give your dynasty a Hapsburg jaw, hurry.

Arturo: So the Borstal became sort of finishing school for Zoe, right? Just not the one that–

Kelsey: Finishing for criminals.

Arturo: Yeah, exactly. It wasn’t the one that the judge expected. Instead, she came out at the end of her sentence, like, as a well-trained burglar and con artist, and she was finally ready to strike out on her own. Let’s go! 

CHAPTER 4: Progl the Professional

Arturo: Zoe had a lot of classroom learning, but she wanted to put her knowledge to good use. After all, she was a mother now, so with her second son, Paul, Zoe now had multiple mouths to feed. It was time to make some real cash.

Kelsey: Multiple mouths to feed and also a whole slew of new skills you gotta try out.

Arturo: Yeah, she’s gotta put ‘em to the test. And with that motivation, alongside the skills that Zoe learned in the Borstal, Zoe became extremely successful. For real. Like, she stole—she stole from luxury stores by posing as a wealthy woman and writing bad checks for jewelry and fur clothing.

Kelsey: That’s beautiful.

Arturo: Check this out. Eventually Zoe was running a mail-order shoplifting business.

Kelsey: Mail-order shoplifting.

Arturo: Uh huh. Uh huh.

Kelsey: OK, explain it to me.

Arturo: So, when an order would come in, Zoe would figure out where the item was, plan a heist and scam, con, burgle, and otherwise abscond the item and then mail it onto her satisfied customer.

Kelsey: And then did these customers pay her for this service? Just a reduced price.

Arturo: Reduced price. But imagine just like you’re just going around and be like, “I want this.” You tell her where, where it is, and then she would like–

Kelsey: You’re like, “I want a Mac laptop. I have a hundred dollars.” She’s like: “On it.”

Arturo: Yeah so—so business was booming, right? Uh, Ben, can we get a little rags to riches, ’50s Brit Dance Hall Tune right here?

[Doo-wop music]

Arturo: Oh, you know, imagine her with shopping bags down the street. You know, she’s like saying—waving hello to people. You know, Joe Progl is still writing her letters like, “Come back to me.” She’s like, “F*** no.”

So a lot of Zoe’s jobs were jump ups, right? She would steal loaded trucks around London and sell their cargo. F***ing Zoe. Holy smokes.

Kelsey: You have a whole truck, then it’s easy to run away.

Arturo: She’s going to the wholesale. She—she believes in recycling.

Kelsey: Costco, but for stealing.

Arturo: Yeah, that’s right. She has at least one regular accomplice, almost an employee, and she even had a regular spot where she would meet with the buyers at Tufnell Park in North London. 

For one of her most dramatic heists, Zoe and a couple of lock pickers travel out to Oxfordshire, where they spotted a likely mansion. They broke in and drove out in a stolen Jaguar, loaded with their loot.

Kelsey: Genius. I love the idea of being like, “Let me just get my two buddies who are locksmiths. Like, let me just get, I just, all my friends who are lock pickers, we’ll just go on a little adventure.”

Arturo: “Yeah, we have a little book club that we also like, just like, share our skills with.”

Kelsey: Yeah. My friends don’t know how to lock pick. Maybe I need to get some new ones.

Arturo: I know. So Zoe was not always able to escape the police. Right. But because she was often caught for only small time—small-time thefts, like shoplifting or whatever, she was hit with a variety of small sentences. Sometimes, like just a few months. Once, when Zoe and some other of her friends stole massive safe—this is so f***ing stupid. The police were able to easily follow them back to their hideout because the safe was so big that it had scraped a trail in the f***ing pavement as they dragged along. Is this true overlords? Did this actually happen?

Carl/Overlord: That is the sound of it actually happening.

Ben/Overlord: It took a while. Yeah.

Kelsey: It has, like, the vibes of going to CrossFit, right? Of, like, having to drag this safe, like to tow it together as a team.

Arturo: Yeah, so let’s push this tractor wheel. Oh my God. As ... as the story goes, once they were arrested, they made a phone call to a lawyer asking for help, but he told them that he was the one that they had robbed. They had stolen—the stolen safe was his. I’m f***ing dead. Oh my God. That sounds like not that true, to be honest but it’s f***ing hilarious. Like–

Kelsey: I love it.

Arturo: When you hear these stories, like, how believable do you think these accounts are back then?

Kelsey: I think they probably are, you know, it’s really hard to steal things now, um, in the world because there’s so much CCTV everywhere.

Arturo: Yeah. We used to be so much easier. Like, trains were a whole thing, you know?

Kelsey: But also just like, if there aren’t cameras everywhere, you can just break a window and go in.

Arturo: Yeah. And they’d be like, “It was you.” And you’re like, “No, it wasn’t—like, what’s your proof?” And they’re like, “Goddamn it.”

Kelsey: Right. And also now–

Arturo: We have this stick figure drawing of you.

Kelsey: Exactly. And all of our money now is on like those plastic cards, and it’s fake money. Whereas, like, if you—if there’s cash to steal, it’s easier.

Arturo: Right? Yeah. Exactly.

Kelsey: So, I believe that she was doing crimes.

Arturo: Is this how we form a crime syndicate of our own? Shhhh. Ben Chugg. Let’s play music over that when we—when we edit this over.

Ben/Overlord: You got it.

Arturo: So, without a good lawyer, Zoe was convicted for stealing the safe and she got 15 [months]. I’m sorry. Just one last thing–

Kelsey: For not having a good lawyer and for attacking a lawyer. Right? Like, none of the judges are gonna go easy on you if you stole from a lawyer.

Arturo: The last thing I’ll say about this f***ing safe, but I love like one of the robbers being like, “Nope, they’ll never know buddy. Nope, they’re not seeing it. It’s OK.” They’re like, “what is this, like, scraping thing?” They’re like, “Nah, dude. They won’t catch it.”

Kelsey: Right. It’s like if your dog steals food and then leaves, like, a trail of like, um, you know, food to them.

Arturo: Yes. Yes. OK. He stole food–

Kelsey: You’re like, “Oh, was it you? Was it you? There’s chips all the way to you.”

Arturo: And they’re like, “No, the dog’s not giving you that look of like, what—like who, who was it?” I don’t even know. So Zoe got 15 months in London’s Holloway prison for women. It wasn’t her first stay there … and it wouldn’t be her last.

CHAPTER 5: Jump Up

Arturo: Those 15 months in Holloway didn’t stop Zoe, right? Once she was out again, she went right back to work. After all, she had an operation to run, man. I mean—I mean, when she gave birth to her daughter Tracy in 1957, she only rested for a few weeks before her next truck heist.

Kelsey: Listen, if you have a passion, you have to pursue it.

Arturo: And who are we, the lawful system of society, to keep you from it. You know what I mean?

Kelsey: Yeah, come on.

Arturo: We’re not gonna hold this one down.

Kelsey: Sure.

Arturo: So this was about the time that Zoe moved to Clapham, where she rented a garage to pack full of her stolen goods.

Kelsey: Smart.

Arturo: So she would get frequent visitors from across the London underworld and supplied thieves and black market dealers with tools and items to sell to someone else.

Kelsey: Great.

Arturo: So that’s September. OK. We’re in 1958 now. OK, you with me?

Kelsey: Yup.

Arturo: So Zoe was recruited to be the getaway driver for a jailbreak at what must be London’s most ridiculously named prison, Wormwood Scrubs. Don’t you feel like the British like have the most random names in f***ing places?

Kelsey: Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing.

Arturo: Like, I feel like their marketing team is like, “Roight, roight. We—we’ll call this town Soggybottomsworth. Print it.”

Kelsey: It’s perfect.

Arturo: Like, there’s no like, you know, there’s no—there’s no workshopping it. They’re just like, f***ing first pitch always goes.

Kelsey: Yeah, congrats to them.

Arturo: God bless you guys. So, the escape from Wormwood Scrubs wasn’t actually all that complicated.

The gangster inside, Jumbo Parsons, had been assigned to the prison construction crew, which seems like a stupid idea to me, but OK. OK, Prison. OK, Bottomsworth, whatever you are. So, one day when he was working on one of the building roofs, he hid from the guards behind one of the smokestacks, then climbed down the drain pipe and made for the prison wall.

[Drain pipe sound]

Kelsey: Smart.

Arturo: Zoe—was that a drain pipe, buddy? That was a drain pipe. Oh my God. Ben, I love you, dude. He’s like—just like, the smallest clank.

Kelsey: It’s so nice.

Arturo: Zoe and the other accomplices were waiting outside. Right? So, they tossed a rope over and Jumbo (f***ing nickname) was able to climb up the rope over the 30 foot wall.

Kelsey: OK, athlete.

Arturo: Yeah. OK, buddy. The big reveal is they’re all CrossFit athletes and also really into parkour.

Kelsey: Yeah, imagining a version of this where I am escaping from prison, and then I’m just, like, looking at it like, “Well, we tried.”

Arturo: The good thing is we put in effort guys, and it means a lot to me that you came for me.

Kelsey: Exactly. So, Jumbo does not have this problem. Despite his nickname. He just—whoosh.

Arturo: No, no, no, no, no. He left the letter. He had the audacity to leave a letter for the prison officials.

Kelsey: I love all these people leaving letters. I think it’s great.

Arturo: Oh my God, it’s so British, isn’t it? That said that he enjoyed his time inside, and he was only sorry that he had to leave in such a hurry.

Kelsey: Yeah, sad.

Arturo: Like, ooh, you gotta—you gotta love the dry, English humor.

Kelsey: Yeah.

Arturo: Just being a getaway driver had never been Zoe’s style.

Kelsey: Right. Boring.

Arturo: Yeah, she doesn’t—it’s boring for her. So, when she received her next conviction for house breaking and larceny in 1960 and was sent to Holloway Prison again, she was finally able to show off.

[’60s Stinger]

Arturo: Oh, now we’re in the ’60s. You feel that?

Kelsey: I love it.

Arturo: You feel that change?

CHAPTER 6: Holloway Heist … of Herself

Arturo: Inside Holloway, Zoe spent her first few weeks cooperating with the guards and making friends. They liked her attitude, you know—she was sassy, she was cool, and they were convinced that she was going to be a model prisoner. They made her—uh, this is what they were called, a trustee, which basically was an inmate trusted by the prison officials. Which, again–

Kelsey: This girl came in there, she flirted for two weeks, and they were like, “Here’s your badge, honey. Have fun.”

Arturo: Can you imagine the lifers there being like, “What the f*** does she—like? I’ve been–”

Kelsey: “They’re like, her? She’s blowing kisses.”

Arturo: That’s right. “It’s the f***ing quaff, isn’t it?”**

Kelsey: I love prison.

Arturo: So she was given a special armband to mark her status. Ooh. Like how petty is that? They were just like, “Here’s a special arm band that you can show off to everybody else.” And so, it basically meant that she had lighter work duties.

Kelsey: She was like, “I’m too pretty to do hard labor.”

Arturo: Yeah, but you have fun though. Um, in fact, for her first work assignment, they made her a janitor and she was tasked with keeping the prison offices spick and span. Any idea of how this is gonna go to allow her to escape?

Kelsey: Ooh—well, I’m gonna guess she’s not really cleaning. That would be my first guess. My second guess is that offices—you just go through their sh*t, right? Like, “Oh, I’m cleaning. I’m just looking through this pile of papers. Oh, here’s a key to the prison. I’ll simply let myself out.”

Arturo: There you go. So she had access to all the offices, including the warden’s office, including the warden’s telephone. Dun dun dun.

Kelsey: Oh, OK.

Arturo: Yep. As soon as she had the chance, Zoe gave the phone a try and found that it had a direct line. Yeah, she gave it a try. She was like, hoping for the best–

Kelsey: Let me just pick this up.

Arturo: That—it’s not decorative. I love that we’re so impressed. Like, she figured out how to pick it up and dial the number. Um, it was a direct line to outside of the prison.

Kelsey: Perfect.

Arturo: So, if you’re in prison and you have the chance to make it so you get a phone call to plan an escape, who would you call? Is there somebody in your friend group that you’re like, “They’d f***ing do it?”

Kelsey: Oh yeah. I mean, definitely there are people in my friend group that I could call and they would come get me, I think.

Arturo: I would just be afraid that they’d be like, too stoked about it. They’d be like, “Oh, like …” Like, I would be afraid to call some of my friends cause they were great, but they would like, never let me live it down, like, that they had to help me. You know what I mean?

Kelsey: You need a friend who is responsible but not responsible enough to blab. Right? So it’s like, a very specific type of friend, right? It’s like, “Are you gonna be here to pick me up from prison after I’ve escaped on time?”

Arturo: That’s right. Yeah.

Kelsey: “But then also not tell anyone?”

Arturo: They’re like, “I’m just gonna like wing it. I’m just gonna organically feel when to show up if that’s cool with you.” 

So, Zoe was able to reach her boyfriend and the two of them cooked up a plan. In fact, the basics of the plan had been laid before Zoe’s conviction in the last days of her trial. So, when Zoe was still free, she had taken a walk around the prison walls with her boyfriend and they had taken measurements and even tried skeleton keys on some of the most remote outer doors of the prison.

Kelsey: I—I love that. You know, like when you go to a party and you think you might wanna leave early, cause you’re not sure you’re gonna have a good time, and so you’re like, “OK, what’s our strategy?”

Arturo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kelsey: “What’s our strategy for leaving this party?” I love that in their life they’re just like, “Let’s go ahead and have a strategy for you getting out of this prison, just in case.”

Arturo: What—what’s your strategy for leaving a party? What—what do you use often?

Kelsey: Irish goodbye.

Arturo: Irish goodbye? You just get the f*** outta there? Oh man. I err on the side of like, over-explaining my lie. Like I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I have to go, I have to go to the doctor cause of my knee. Cause my knee is bad. Like, you wanna see my knee? Like I have a cut in it. They’re like, just f***ing go dude.” 

Um. So the keys that they tried, they didn’t work, so they agreed that Zoe would get out over the wall—again, these f***ing parkour people making us all look bad. They were just, like, practicing jumping all on the–

Kelsey: Just like, scaling walls. Yeah.

Arturo: Yeah, so they were following the pattern of Wormwood Scrubs escape, right?

Kelsey: Right, right, right.

Arturo: So on the morning of Sunday, July 24, 1960, Zoe took advantage of a five-minute gap between the end of her work duties and the time that she was supposed to arrive back at the cell block for breakfast.

Kelsey: OK. And so she scaled the wall?

Arturo: So—well, in that gap, Zoe walked calmly across the prison yard. I think this is the—the trick, right? You gotta act calm.

[Footsteps sound]

She climbed up a mound of coal. That’s a mound of coal. Thank you, Ben. That was piled up against the inner wall and—and slipped over the top.

Kelsey: So, see, she didn’t have to climb the wall. She had a strategy.

Arturo: No, no, no. Here we go. She was faced, then, with the outer wall of prison.

Kelsey: No!

Arturo: Twenty-five feet high. When she reached it, she heard a ladder hitting from the other side.

Kelsey: Uh-oh.

Arturo: The boyfriend peeked over from the top and tossed her down a rope ladder.

Kelsey: Wow.

Arturo: Zoe climbed up with him, but as she reached the top, the two of them heard a commotion down in the street.

Kelsey: Yeah, I bet they did.

Arturo: Yeah. Two of—two of Zoe’s friends had arrived to watch her escape, and they had pulled up in incredible style. OK. They were driving a f***ing pink Ford Zephyr, complete with leopard-print seat covers and had parked right in front of the main gate. Like–

Kelsey: See, those are the friends you’re not supposed to call. You’re not supposed to call them.

Arturo: They’re like, “Hey guys. A lot of you have been asking me how I’m gonna bring my friend out … ”

Kelsey: They’re going live to Instagram. They’re like, “Our girl’s back!”

Arturo: Yeah. Like, “LOL, missed you, love you.” Um, obviously, after they had been sitting there for a f***ing while waiting for the show, the prison guards had gotten suspicious, right? So, just as Zoe was actually escaping, a few guards had come out to ask them why they were sitting outside the prison in that f***ing car. The spectators in the car were able to keep the guards occupied, but they didn’t spoil the escape. They didn’t actually spoil the escape.

Kelsey: Decoy.

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah. They’re like, “Do you like my red leather seats? You like this music?” I don’t know why they’re suddenly German.

Kelsey: They’re like, ”Do you wanna see the trunk? Let’s look in it really carefully.”

Arturo: So, fun fact, this was the first—this was the first time that a woman had escaped Holloway over the wall. A few, yeah—a few guards actually did see Zoe leaving, but they later told newspapers that it was so funny watching Zoe climb over the wall that they couldn’t even talk because they were laughing so hard. Are you f***ing serious?

Kelsey: Honestly, relatable. That’s, you know, they don’t pay you enough to be a prison guard. Like, you don’t need to tackle that woman.

Arturo: They’re like, “Well, we’ll get to it. We’ll get to catching her. But for now … ”

Kelsey: Also, you already mentioned that she had like, befriended all of the guards, so they’re like,
“Oh yeah, we thought it was so funny.”

Arturo: They’re like, “Look at her. She’s just being our Zo Zo … “

Kelsey: Yeah. They’re like, “Look at our Zoe … ”

Arturo: So, eventually they did go back to the prison to send up the alarm, but by then they let–

Kelsey: Too late.

Arturo: By the,±by the time they led the other guards to the spot, all they found was an abandoned ladder. So again, they don’t, you know … they—they recycle. They’re like, “If you guys need this ladder, just f***ing keep it.”

Kelsey: “Go ahead and use it.”

Arturo: Zoe and her accomplices had disappeared and the police swept London for Zoe. They really did. This was when she wrote her letter to the Home Secretary and called the police.

Kelsey: She’s like, “I can’t go to any bars. There are cops everywhere.”

Arturo: “Please f***ing leave me alone. I’ll negotiate.” Right?

Kelsey: “I can’t steal anything.”

Arturo: “And plus, I do really well in prison. Like, prison people really love me.”

Kelsey: She’s like, putting in—she’s putting in a request like for a dorm. She’s like, “Can I go to Holloway? All my friends are there.”

Arturo: Holloway House, you guys. So, for a while she was able to stay ahead of them, right? Zoe had colored her hair. She picked up a new wardrobe.

Kelsey: They do seem stupid, to be honest.

Arturo: Yeah, they were like—it’s not really a good look for the London Police of the time. She picks up her daughter Tracy, and they hid in the countryside for a couple weeks. Then together with her current boyfriend, they spent some time relaxing along the beaches of England’s south coast.

I wish I knew where little Paul and Tony were at this point, but there’s not a lot of news on those guys. She was just like, “Tracy’s my favorite. F*** you guys,” like, “you know, you’ll figure it out.”

Kelsey: Yeah. Tony’s doing crimes.

Arturo: That’s right. They, they—they send him back to—they send him to reform school to learn how to–

Kelsey: She’s like, “I was treading water in the Thames at 8 years old. You guys gotta get it together.”

Arturo: Yeah. Yeah. “Figure it out guys.”

Eventually though, after the beach getaway, Zoe was captured when police caught her using—get this—1958 license plates on a stolen 1959 car. They tracked the car to Zoe’s hideout, and at the beginning of September, they launched a night raid on the apartment. She and her boyfriend were caught sleeping.

CHAPTER 7: Back in the Clink

Arturo: So, Zoe sat out her final sentence in Holloway, where she was very popular, so–

Kelsey: Yeah, she’s having a great time in Holloway. She loves it there.

Arturo: We’re not worried about her. So 18 months on top of her earlier sentence, there’s no record of any more escape attempts and no—nothing else that would risk her future freedom with her children. Zoe did have one more victory over the police, though.

Kelsey: Good.

Arturo: They had seized her belongings, including an incredibly valuable ring, and even though she was locked in Holloway, Zoe sued the police, demanding that they [return] the f***ing ring. And representing the police was the sergeant who had taken all the belongings when she was arrested in 1960. So, Zoe and the sergeant started yelling–

Kelsey: She’s like, “I stole that ring. Fair and square.”

Arturo: Yeah. “You give me back that stolen ring that you stole from me.” So, Zoe and the sergeant started yelling accusations at each other, bickering so furiously that the judge immediately ended the session. He ordered the police to return the ring to Zoe, and I love that—the judge just being like, totally not giving a f*** about the case and just giving up. “Please. I got other sh*t to do. Can you just … ?”

Kelsey: “I have a headache.”

Arturo: “I have a 5:00 p.m. meeting at Soggybottomsworth, please. Let’s get this going. OK?” So, after her release, a tabloid writer worked with Zoe to ghostwrite a memoir that was published in 1964, called Woman of the Underworld.

Kelsey: Ooh, OK. Great title.

Arturo: It brought Zoe plenty of press attention. It’s great. That’s a good title. It brought Zoe plenty of press attention and a few TV appearances in the ’60s, and why wouldn’t it? You know, the memoir included some really wild stories of orgies in various nightclubs across London, of the drug culture of the club scene, and much, much more, right? So recently, Zoe’s family has said that none of that was actually true, and that it was actually made up by a ghost writer who worked with Zoe to make sure that the story would sell. But, I would like to believe that there were a bunch of orgies that she attended.

Kelsey: OK, well, one: her family would say that.

Arturo: That’s right. Yeah. They’re in denial.

Kelsey: OK, sure.

Arturo: We know Zoe.

Kelsey: And two. OK, so she embellished a little, so what? She stole some ideas, whatever. But like,  this woman is a seasoned criminal. Right? Like why would you tell the truth in your memoir? What’s the point?

Arturo: Who’s gonna check? There’s no receipts back then. You know what I’m saying? So it’s just like, have at it.

Kelsey: Yeah! What? You’re gonna pay someone to fact-check your memoir? No.

Arturo: Yeah, well, you guys couldn’t even catch me while I was f***ing drinking martinis at bars and sh*t.

Kelsey: Good luck! Prove I didn’t have an orgy.

Arturo: Prove it. Prove it. OK. Ask everybody in London if I haven’t had sex with them.

Uh, of course her memoir ends up, uh, with how deeply Zoe regretted her crimes, but her family actually says, and this I believe, that it was wrong. One writer interviewed Zoe’s daughter and granddaughters in 2019, yeah, and they said that she was proud of her exploits.

Kelsey: I bet she was.

Arturo: Yeah, I bet she was.

As for Holloway Prison, it closed in 2016 to be rebuilt and transformed into a rehabilitation and housing center for women, as part of a transformative justice campaign, which is kind of cool.

Kelsey: Oh!

Arturo: Also, you’ll be happy to know—that the rope ladder has since been removed.

Outro

Arturo: That’s our story. Kelsey, what do you think? What do you think of Zoe?

Kelsey: I loved it. I think she’s an icon. I think that it’s too hard to do crimes now.

Arturo: She’s a mother. She’s a sister. She is an icon.

Kelsey: B*tch, lover, child, mother, thief.

Arturo: To be honest, like, I’m not promoting burglary, uh, but–

Kelsey: I wanna be clear that I am promoting burglary. Mm-hmm.

Arturo: On different sides of the coin on this one. Uh, we’ve been debating for decades over this.

Kelsey: Yeah, yeah.

Arturo: But—but she did what she thought she could under the circumstances that she was dealt. And for—and I see this a lot with ... with these stories that we tell—there is a level of genius to all these heists that they pull off. And so, you know, for a woman of that time, uh, fighting against misogyny and fighting against, like, having to escape her husband, I think there’s a real resilience in her that I very, very vaguely admire. I’m sorry, London Police.

Kelsey: Yeah. She made it work. You know, she figured it out, and I also think, like, she was clearly good at it, right? Like, that is a skill: stealing things.

Arturo: And she was the—she was actually the originator of parkour.

Kelsey: Yeah, exactly.

Arturo: Legend has it.

Kelsey: And you know, it is a great lesson to take away from this: to leave the police a note.

Arturo: Yes!

Kelsey: Like I think if you’re gonna do a crime, you should leave the police a note. That’s funny. Like do a little bit.

Arturo: I would leave it in German and just confuse the f*** out of them.

Kelsey: Yeah. Translate it.

Arturo: Like, they’d be like, they’re like, goddamn it.

Kelsey: They translate it, it’s just Shakira lyrics and they’re like—they’re like, “what?”

Arturo: They’re like, “Oh my God. His hips don’t lie. What does this mean?”

Kelsey: What does this mean?

Arturo: Kelsey, thank you so much for being on this show with us. It’s such a pleasure.

Kelsey: Thank you so much for having me.

Arturo: I’m such a fan of your podcast, and, also, I can’t wait to check out your new book, which is out now, and it’s called You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip. It’s available wherever you get books.  Kelsey, where else can listeners find you?

Kelsey: Yeah, I’m on all the social medias, unfortunately. Um, @McKinneyKelsey, and I am the host of Normal Gossip which you can find wherever you listen to podcasts, wherever you got this one.

Arturo: There we go. Thank you so much Kelsey, we’ll see you next time!

Credits

Arturo: Greatest Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and FilmNation Entertainment, in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me, Arturo, Alyssa Martino and Milan Popelka from FilmNation Entertainment, Andrew Chugg and Whitney Donaldson from Gilded Audio, and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio.

The show is produced and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chugg, who are also, respectively, our research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is Tory Smith, who is our other overlord.

Nick Dooley is our technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Ryzack, Sara Joyner, Nicki Stein, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright.

Hey, thank you so much for listening, and if you’re enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review. My mom will call you each personally and thank you, and we’ll see you all next week.