Gampsite Media Large Lash.

Okay, Rory, we're on the home stretch now, episode seven.

Where did we leave off last week?

I mean the big takeaway is that now everyone's caught, we're in the final we're in the red zone here, we're in the phase of sentencing and whatever.

How how the hammer is going to drop on on everybody, and we got to know how everyone did it.

Whydra the FBI agent who busted everybody, really really really did his job, covered every base and checked every box, and uh yeah, now we're gonna we're gonna find out what the sentencing is gonna be of everybody.

Okay, let's find out by getting into episode seven of Crimeless Hillbilly Heist.

Take it away, Johnny.

For Kelly Campbell.

It's been a long day and it's still not even eight in the morning.

Kelly was arrested by the FBI a couple of hours ago.

The agent's brought her to the women's holding cell at the County Courthouse.

She's been stuck there with Michelle Chambers ever since.

She was pretty distraught.

She's almost to the point of hyperventilating.

The reason that Michelle's freaking out other than being arrested by the FBI for her role in the second largest cash heist in American history.

Is because her husband is putting a lot of pressure on her.

From the other side of the wall in the men's holding cell, Steve's yelling an urgent message to Michelle.

It's the same message she's told everyone since the beginning, keep your big mouth shut.

Steve kept trying to talk through the wall, asking Michelle stuff.

For saying stuff to Michelle.

The only thing he was worried about, what's she going to say?

Don't say nothing, and this and that.

Kelly tells Steve to knock it off.

Even though it wasn't me and her that had the you know, close friend relationship.

I just kind of felt the need to protect her, and I'm like, just just leave her alone.

Finally, agents step in to isolate Stephen Michelle.

The criminal masterminds to separate rooms for interrogation, and Kelly has left to wonder if Michelle will crack under pressure.

Michelle is interviewed by John Wydra and another agent.

Apparently she's been able to compose herself.

The strength of her husband has given her new resolve.

She wouldn't say anything.

She didn't talk.

She wouldn't admit anything.

Whydra and the other agent work on her for hours, with Widra playing bad cop.

They show her evidence of all her extravagant purchases.

They show her video foot her depositing the exact same, just under the federal limit bundle of cash with bank tellers, over and over again.

She won't budge.

Meanwhile, her husband was in another room down the hall, just running his mouth, telling us everything.

He's singing like Leotine Price.

His criminal record may have been a bit lackluster, but his track record as a canary was much more solid, and he relied heavily on it.

Now because he knew the game, like he was an FBI informant.

He knew it was done.

He knows that the FBI, when they come to arrest you, we already have all the evidence.

We're not guessing.

What happened was right after the arrests, Steve immediately started talking about everybody, after having told them for a long time, you know, don't tell anybody anything.

He was the first person who kind of realized the strategic value of being the first one to talk in a multi defending criminal case.

And that benefit is that the person with the most information against other people winds up having a great advantage in the process.

Steve knows that he's facing a lot of time and he can get a more lenient sentence if he is the first to tell the FBI everything and screw over everybody else, and so that's exactly what he does.

He tells him about Kelly, claiming the heist was her idea.

He tells him about his wife, He tells him about his cousin Scott and Eric, plenty of new boobs pained.

He even rats out Michelle's parents for hiding money for him, and his own parents for hiding money for him.

His own parents don't know about you, but I wouldn't care if this fella's ass fell off.

Meanwhile, Wydras still isn't getting anywhere with Michelle.

Yeah, Michelle didn't care at all.

Widra confers with the other agents.

They agree to have Steve go in and talk to Michelle, now that he's had first DIBs on telling them everything.

He walks in sobbing and tells her to confess, which she eventually does.

Between Steve and Michelle, the FBI already has everything they need and Kelly is out of bargaining chips and weed from SmartLess media, campsite Media, and big money players in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

I'm Johnny Knoxville and you're listening to crime List Hillbilly Heis.

This is our seventh episode, The Dreams Done Died.

It's a real shit position to have to pay the price for a dream that never quite worked out.

It's kind of like owing money on a wreck vehicle or paying alimony to a wife that cheated on you.

The Loomis gang is currently dealing with a searing headache of regret while intense public scrutiny wears on their nerves.

Kelly's still figuring this out when she's led out of the courthouse in handcuffs after her interrogation.

We knew that the camera people were going to be out there, and it's like the vultures, you know, give them something to lick at.

Kelly stuck out her tongue and made a goofy face while holding up her shackled hands towards the camera.

The picture was widely circulated.

Kelly says she was trying to say hi to her deaf sister.

She happened to be walking down the sidewalk when we were coming out the back of the building, and I did this, which is I love you in sign language.

And then when they wrote the article they said she was throwing gang signs.

I'm like, that's not a gang sign.

But it was too late.

Kelly was about to have her moment with the judge, American public, and also with her court appointed defense attorney, James Gronquist.

And when I saw that, of course I was saying, Okay, here we go.

This is going to be a little bit of work to get this person back in line and see that she doesn't get too hurt by this.

James Gronquist has got the vibe of a patient, pragmatic high school woodshop teacher.

Hygiens will happen, Well, let's make sure not that many students lose a finger.

By the time I saw, she'd been in jail a little while and she had settled down, so to speak.

But she sort of looked tired, worn out, confused, upset about what was going on because she knew that her whole life was going to change as a result.

He quickly takes to defending Kelly, not just in the legal system, but also in the court of public opinion.

Quit laughing at these people, folks.

They pulled up something that you haven't done, you know, and probably couldn't do.

James knows that Kelly's going to have a hard time getting much sympathy, let alone leniency.

Steve's confession is already hanging over everyone in the case.

The moment that he knew the jig was up, he said, where's my microphonel, let me sing.

James advice to Kelly was to play the same game as Steve and confessed as quickly as possible.

You're one of the principal players in this and so you have a lot to lose, but you also have a.

Lot to gain if he pulled down.

The line began to fold after a while, when they realized that they're taking the weight for what somebody else wanted them to do.

I was really lucky when I got James Cronquist from my attorney.

He did care about my situation and my family that was going to be left behind, and I remember him, you know, talking to my mom and doing what he could to console her.

The consequences for her family weighed most heavily on Kelly.

She remembers her mom and kids in the audience at one of the pre trial hearings.

I had to get up there and tell the truth in front of my family and my kids and everybody watching.

It was hard.

And then she hears the crime she's charged with.

There was five different charges, I think, but the main ones were bank larceny and the one that really got me was conspiracy to commit murder.

For her, now, she's staring at many decades in prison and languishing behind bars until her young children were well into adulthood.

I think during the time that I was going to court, when we were, you know, all figuring out how many years we could get and stuff, when it all hit me, that was probably the only time in my life I feel like killing myself.

So yeah, it was pretty hard.

During the heist cruise reunion in the holding cell, David Gant is still in the process of being hauled back for Mexico, but when he got off the plane in Charlotte, he knew life in his hometown would never be the same.

When we landed in Charlotte, I'm looking and there's all these police cars, and there's the press gallery.

All these people being in custody is still a relief compared to being hunted by Bruno and Cancun.

After all, he really dodged a bullet or whatever hair brain scheme Steve was cooking up a bleach injection, exploding street tacos, or swallowing murder hornets.

But he still has a lot of adjustments to make.

The next few months are a blur, you know, until I get used to jail life and get used to dealing with my lawyer and the FBI.

And facing lawyers and judges and reporters is a lot easier than facing his wife and family.

Reconnecting with my family was very difficult, painful for both of us for all of us, and reconnecting with Tammy, which was painful.

David's FaceTime with the wife and family he abandoned was pretty limited.

He had more proximity to his co conspirators the company he chose in place of his family, but given that they had wanted to kill him, the government tried to limit their interaction.

I didn't see Kelly or Steve or Michelle except for fleeting glimpses here and there in the courtroom or when they were transporting us.

Because of the situation, I wasn't allowed to be transported with them.

I wasn't allowed to be putting the same cell with them.

And one time they were in the holesales straight across from me.

And then there was the time David accidentally got a little quality time with Steve.

One of the marshals made a minor mistake put Steve in there with me.

I'm like, I'm thinking my head, I may have to hurt this dude, or one of us is going to get hurt, possibly, so I'm prepared to defend myself.

And then the marshall comes back tack Steve out of there, because you know, they weren't supposed to put us together.

Yeah, when Steve got with an earshot of David, he said that Kelly was the one that wanted him killed.

David's reunion with Kelly was not quite what he had hoped for when he stole the money.

David looked trained when I saw him after we'd all been arrested.

And I do remember saying to David when either when I went by his cell or he went by mine or something, and I remember telling him and I was sorry, I just didn't say anything.

Did you understand that I did.

Like the rest of his co conspirators, David was facing multiple decades in prison.

The biggest charge against me was bank larceny.

That's the most serious, the one where it was obvious.

Obvious meaning the Feds had video from the vault of him committing the crime.

It was technically bank larceny, not bank robbery, since David didn't stick up Loumis Fargo at gunpoint.

But the money laundering charges, if push come to shove, they would have to show some sort of documentation where I laundered money, which, even by the looses definition because I read up on it later, I didn't commit.

David's argument is that putting stolen money in a pair of pantyhose isn't money laundering, So why is he getting the same charges as the guy who used the money to buy a mansion.

The Feds didn't agree.

They would stack charges on people and just crush you with weight.

Adding to David's legal complications, he was going to have trouble making a sincere apology.

If I'm gonna be remorseful about anything, it's not about stealing money from the government or putting a hurting home Fargo.

My remorse comes from hurting my family.

My remorse comes from hurting Tammy.

That's still that's something I'm gonna always carry with me, you know, because it's always hurt me to know that if my brain and my mental state had been better, I would have never hurt Tammy, and I would have never hurt my family.

But stubbornness and pride, you know, calls me and them a lot of pain.

There weren't gonna be any trials.

It would be great to say that jury saw the video of David stealing all the money and they just let him off anyway, or that Michelle had a chance to give an impassioned courtroom speech about buying her boobs before the heist, or that Mike used a phone party as an alibi.

But the truth is, going to trial carries a high risk of a guilty verdict and a maximum sentence, So everyone worked to get the best deal they could, pled guilty and hope the judge would go easy on them.

The one exception was Steve's lawyer, who was charged with money laundering after storing some money for Steve in his office.

He fought the case in trial, lost and got a longer sentence than many of the people who actually stole the money for Mike McKenny party time was decidedly over.

Oh yeah, we were in the orange jumpsuits with.

The Billy chain shackle.

Ankles were shackled.

Oh it sucks.

Because I basically have to take half steps in shackles.

Mike prefers to disassociate from this whole chapter of his life when he talks about it.

He tends to say you instead of eye, like maybe all of this happened to someone other than him.

Whenever they actually give you your sentence, that is when it kind of feels like a sandbags laying on your chest.

I mean, my lawyer told me, you plead out, basically, you get seventy seven months, you take this to trial and lose, you can get one hundred and thirty five months.

I plaid out, and then whenever they sentenced me, it was one hundred and thirty five months.

Anyway, I kind of got pissy with him after that.

It's like, so basically, y'all just fucked me out of a trial.

I probably would have got at the same time or more from a trial, but at least I would have cost the Feds more money to do it.

You gotta take your spite however you can.

One hundred and thirty five months is eleven years and three months.

In the Slammer, Mike and Steve got the exact same prison term.

Mike is still pretty pissed about that one.

Steve was the kingpin, after all, he stole the money and paid Mike for a murder that never happened, unless, of course, you count the gallons of margaritas he killed at Senior Frogs.

And then he got a sentence reduced for just blabbing about the whole thing.

Yeah, there's not a whole lot of honor among thieves.

Words were exchanged, but that that's as far as I'll go now.

Then he was off to complete his sentence.

However, there's an advantage to being Mike McKinnie in the prison yard.

The prisons, it's full of predators.

I'm larger than the average person, was a drawer head, and I was in there for being a hitman, so I was kind of the last person they wanted to press, and I was in there doing my own thing.

I wasn't gambling, doing.

Drugs, messing with the punks, so I was basically left alone anyway.

But in there, if you are pressed, you have to be ready to roll.

You can't hesitate.

They come at you, You've got to go back hard.

It doesn't matter if you're actually very good at fighting.

It just depends on if you're willing to.

Because there's easier prey out there, and if you're willing to fight, it starts going in their head.

Well I might get hurt, so they go onto easier prey.

Well that's terrifying.

One of his most eventful days in prison actually came at the beginning of a sentence.

He had just been moved from the county jail in Charlotte to another county jail.

I stop over on the way to federal prison.

So I went shuffling in there, and the first person I saw was David Gant coming down the stairs.

He saw me, his eyes got about this big ran straight to the garden, said that was the guy that was hard to kill me.

You need to get him out of here.

And so I was pulled over to the sun asked the fare was going to be a problem.

I said, no, no money on Gant anymore, and so they shipped me over to actually the Christian pod.

Those were all the dope fans that found the lord before trial to try to reduce her sentence and all that, and I was just the odd ball.

I was a fed prisoner that had already been sentenced, and that was the only place they could stick me.

I guess because I had done anything to have to sit in the hole.

I have used his time in the Christian pod to preach the virtues of the Unholy Trinity or pay homage to the Father, the Son, and the Holy hot tub.

But he didn't.

He just slept pretty good in the Christian pod.

Beds were pretty comfy, And actually that was the last time I actually slept on a true mattress for what the next nine years.

As a reward for his impeccable squealing, Steve was sentenced to the same eleven years and three months as Mike McKinney.

Steve's parents were convicted of money laundering and serve their sentence on house arrest.

Michelle gets seven years and eight months her annex.

On the day of her arrest, when she hid the forty three thousand dollars diamond ring from the FBI, did it exactly help her cause.

Michelle accused me of stealing this diamond ring that was missing.

We were looking for it because I had a receipt for forty three thousand dollars.

Now, think about the logic of that I have in the search warrant that I'm looking for dollar ring, right, and she accused me of stealing it.

Meanwhile, she put it in the suitcase.

Grandparents were holding on to it.

They weren't going to say anything, and then we arrested them.

We arrested the grandparents.

The grandparents are Michelle's parents, her children's grandparents.

They later received probation.

I wonder if that ever comes up at Thanksgiving.

It added to his prison time too, took away any cooperation that she had, so she didn't get any kind of break.

Kelly ends up getting five years and ten months.

The charge of conspiracy to commit murder for hire added extra weight to her sentence.

And that prevented me from doing things when I was in prison.

I couldn't participate in programs like where they got to go out into town where there was a firefighter program and they'd get to go out into town and do different things.

I couldn't participate in that because it would consider a violent crime.

I couldn't participate in the drug rehab program and get time knocked off of my sentence because it was considered a violent crime.

In addition to her prison time, Kelly was also ordered to pay restitution to Loomis Fargo and its insurance company.

Even though the Feds have recovered just about all the money, and it's a big number, almost five million dollars.

The rest of the crew has to pay restitution as well, but somehow, singing Steve Chambers figure is a million dollars less than Kelly's.

It's like you're gonna be penished for the rest of your life because they know I'm never gonna pay back five million dollars.

Where am I gonna get five million dollars?

I mean, if you think about it, it's like you're gonna make this person go out and commit another crime to pay this crime off.

Kelly is sent to one of the most notorious prisons in the country.

From West Virginia, but it was called Camp Copcake because there was no towers, no barbar fences.

I mean, if somebody wanted to leave, they could leave.

It's actually where they sent Martha's steward.

I actually left probably a couple of months before she arrived, so I missed out there, but I wouldn't have wanted to stay just to hang out with Martha.

Maybe that's why to this day, Kelly's dining table centerpieces are not what they could be.

When Kelly arrived, she too was greeted by a familiar face.

When I went into prison, they asked me if there was going to be an issue if Michelle and I worked at the same place or housed in the same area, And I told them in the beginning that I would prefer that they keep me and Michelle separate from each other.

The thing about it is if you did something bad, if you got into a fight or something like that, then you know Camp cl Cake was over for you.

You went somewhere else.

Camp Cupcake is tamed by prison standards, but it's still a prison.

Like all the new inmates, Kelly is assigned to a giant building everyone calls the Titanic.

And the way that's set up is just they had half walls for instead of the wall to your cubicle going all the way to the ceiling, it was just half walls, so anybody on the top bunk could see everybody else on the top punk.

So if you're on the top bunk, you didn't have any privacy and of course, without any walls, there wasn't no privacy anyway, because you can hear everything that's going on.

The system was set up so that, with a long enough stretch of good behavior, Kelly could work her way into more comfortable accommodations.

After a while, she got moved to a cottage with several roommates.

This is Camp Cupcake we're talking about.

They literally call it a cottage.

Then she got to move to a cottage with fewer roommates, and finally.

I did manage to work my way into a private room with the door, which was fantastic.

It made things a lot easier.

Beats pooping in front of people.

You have free rain on the prison yard.

If you was to leave your cottage, you'd have to write down what time you were leaving and where you were going, and then when you'd come back, you'd sign back in so they would know where to find you if they needed you.

There's a reason they caught it Camp Cupcake.

Kelly sent us photos of her time at Camp Cupcake, and they're pretty incredible.

She's wearing civilian clothes, sitting on a rock, head turned to camera, smiling like the photo shoot you do when you graduate from high school or get incarcerated on a murder for higher scheme.

The grounds are surrounded by a lush, old growth forest like a summer camp with Stooley's and shame and the finest pruno.

Kelly also got closer to the Lord while she was in prison.

Her faith helped her get through the time away from her kids.

Meanwhile, David is sentenced to seven and a half years, and even though he only saw maybe one hundred grand of the stolen money after the first night, he owes his former bosses at Loomis Fargo almost four million in restitution.

After his close call with Mike McKinnie in County jail, he was sent to a medium security federal prison in North Carolina, a prison that is not named after a dessert.

A lot of those guys have like really long sentences, or they've done violence or certain crimes, and they're probably never going to some of them are never gonna leave.

And that's where I did all my time.

The prison is an open dorm, which means that the inmates aren't kept in individual cells.

Instead, they all sleep in bunks in the same giant room and.

Up at the front what they call the beach.

There's four beds under the lights, ten feet from the guard shack, and that's where all the new fish go.

And it's a horrible place to live because the bathrooms are right there, the TV rooms are right here, the guard shacks here, mail calls here.

People in and out all night, all night, all day, no sleeping.

But David didn't have to do any time on this beach.

I got lucky.

When I showed up, the beach was filled with people who had pissed the guards off.

Instead, David got put in the part of the prison run by a violent biker gang.

So they put them with the bikers, which is cool.

Lucky.

Mike McKinny got by in prison thanks to his size and his reputation as an ex marine turned hitman.

David got by by being David.

For example, one of his acquaintances in prison was a member of the Pagan motorcycle Gang.

One of the coolest guys you ever meet.

Play guitar.

Was generous with his food and stuff, but you know that in real life when he had to be he was, you know, not somebody to be trifled with.

You spoke to him wrong, you might end up beat the death.

David Gant can charm anyone into not beating him to death.

He's just that kind of guy, and during his time behind bars, his optimism never wavered.

You think of all the movies and stuff you've seen on TV, and you think it's gonna be a certain way, and I hate to bust people's bubbles.

But you get there.

The grass is nicely cut.

There's an education center and library where you go eat, medical, the special housing unit, visitor center, and if you didn't know any better, you think it was just a really bizarre college campus.

Still, David isn't exactly enamored with his new life.

His frustration comes to a head one day early on.

Being famous in prison is kind of terrible because they had done a rerun of Was It twenty twenty some show?

And so here I am, I'm crashed out on my bunk, comfortable, and here comes six people.

Hey man, you're on TV.

You're gonna go watch it?

And they wake me up?

And if you wake me up without coffee, I'm not gonna be happy.

And so I rolled, I said, what do you idiots?

Won't just as sarcastic as a possible can marriage without being overly rude and like, oh you're on TV.

Don't you want to come see it?

Like m Efforts I.

Lived, go away.

David got himself here because he was hoping to get himself unstuck from a dark period in his life.

He was in a deadened job that he hated, a marriage he was unsure of, and just feeling like he could never get ahead.

Now he's literally stuck in the same building for the next seven years, and he owes the former employer who spent all those years underpaying him four million dollars.

When he gets out, he'll be in his early thirties with a criminal record, and it'll be time to figure out his next chapter.

He's like Zach Galifnakis to meet you, would you mind flying out here to Los Angeles?

That's next time.

On the final episode of Crimeless, Hillbilly.

Heist Steve Man, after all that, he's just singing like a canary or a parrot, whatever songbird is the appropriate bird to use in this metaphor.

Any bird that talks.

He is imitating them.

One thing gets.

Shocking Kelly being a little Kelly being a little surprised that she was being charged with conspiracy to commit murder for hire, even though she had openly on a tapped phone call, talked about doing that.

Interesting that she was like, Oh, I didn't remember even I'm doing that.

I don't.

There's a lot of things I forget throughout the week.

For myself, I think I would always remember for the rest of my life when I tried to have someone professionally killed.

I just feel like that would be a core memory.

I mean, this continues to be a psa about the dangers of marijuana smoking.

Yes, here's what I want to know your own personal feelings.

What do you think about Mike's lawyer telling him to plead out and then he still got the same amount had he fought it.

That actually kind of upset me a little bit about his lawyer.

I totally agree.

I feel like that.

I don't know if you can like punish a lawyer.

Can you say, like, I don't know that a person who has been convicted of, yeah, of murder for hire has much recourse.

But yes, he told him to take a plea to get less time, and then he got the same amount of time, Yeah, than if he had fought it and maybe been clear.

Yeah.

I kind of thought, when you take a plea when they say a plea bargain, it's been there's been a bargain, there's a bargain.

The literally the word bargain meant you won't get the same thing because there's a bargain.

And so the fact that he pleaded guilty and yet still got the same that I don't know enough about the law how these things work.

And I realized Mike McKinney was hired to kill someone and obviously was doing something illegal at its core, no matter how you cut it up.

But that does seem shady that he would be treated like that when he's being represented by a lawyer, and I can't wait to find out who his lawyer is and write a letter.

I got.

David's affinity for his prison is just the that's the clearest cut example of his optimism.

That he's in prison and he's like it seems like a nice college campus and yet he's been paired up with like murderous biker gangs, and yet he's like it's like college, Like, you know, college is different for everybody.

What's it gonna take for David to like be bummed out?

Don't I don't know that it can happen.

I think the only thing that ever bummed him out, and he even talks about it pretty optimistically now, is just Kelly never reciprocating his love.

Yeah, well you're right.

Everything else, he's kind of like, Eh, yeah, it's prison, but it's not bad, not bad, It's not that bad of a place.

I got to say, I was kind of surprised with all of it, the sentencing, the amounts.

I did feel strange that Mike got the same as Steve.

That just felt very bizarre.

I don't know if Steve got less because he rat it on everybody, and I think, as they stated, he knew that he would get less if he got in there, got on the microphone first.

But yeah, I will say it was interesting that Kelly got to go to Camp Cupcake with Martha, with Martha or just mister, but yeah, Martha, it's pretty incredible.

I did like that David got out early for good behavior.

That made perfect sense because he's so he probably they were like, this isn't even a punishment.

He doesn't even think he's in a bad place.

I just imagine David volunteering for like job in the prison.

He's like working in the kitchen, he's cleaning bathrooms.

He's just whistling.

Yes, I mean he was down in Mexico.

He's probably so lonely, and he's like, this isn't so bad.

Hang I got roommates.

He probably thought there were roommates everybody in prison.

Oh man.

He just continues to be the best character.

Yeah, absolutely, all right.

Well, we have just one episode left in our season.

Next week we get a little meta because I think Hollywood comes calling.

That's right, Crimeless Hillbilly Heist is a production of SmartLess Media, Campside Media and Big Money Players in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.

Bill Billy Heist is narrated by me Johnny Knoxville and created by Liz Elkington and Stewart Bailey.

Written by Michael Kenyon Meyer with Liz Elkington and Stuart Bailey, Produced by Lane Rose and Sierra Franco.

Additional production help by Rejeeve Gola.

The series with sound design and mixed by ewin Le Tremwen, fact checking by Gray Lanta, and a special thanks for our operations team Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara and Destiny Dingle, iHeart Podcasts and Big Money Players Executive producers are Jack O'Brien, Lindsay Hoffman, and Matt Appadeca.

Campsite Media's executive producers are Josh Deen, Vanessa Grigoriatis, Adam hoff and Matt Cher.

Executive producers are Liz Elkington and Stuart Bailey from SmartLess Media.

The producers are Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Richard Corson.

Bernie Kaminski is the head of production.

The associate producer is Mattie McCann.

If you've enjoyed Crimeless Hillbilly heis, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.