[HN Gopher] The Bicycle Thief
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The Bicycle Thief
Author : herbertl
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-10-29 12:59 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chicagomag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chicagomag.com)
| jascii wrote:
| Note to self: Report my bike stolen, just in case I'd ever want
| to rob some banks in the future...
| latchkey wrote:
| Woah, I was likely at the olympic training center (for cycling as
| well) at the same time he was.
| mynameishue wrote:
| Wow, Tom is a bad guy. His MO is fascinating, his story is
| capturing (the first story I am reading on this site to the very
| end), it's a mixture of intrigue, suspense, humor, care for Tom's
| well-being. I love that he cried for relief from the loop he was
| in, he felt relieved from the matrix of problem-solving thoughts
| natural to anyone doing something illegal and morally wrong
| (especially those who know that they are doing this in their
| hearts). I admire the guy, not the crime. He is really a great
| bad guy.
| adwi wrote:
| Great first-person account of this story from equally great
| podcast: https://loveandradio.org/2014/08/choir-boy/
| quacked wrote:
| Wow, great article.
|
| Poor guy. Some people's minds are constructed in a way that
| simply doesn't mesh with modern life. If only he'd discovered
| extreme sports; he's got the exact personality profile of a
| champion hang glider pilot/kiteboarder/BASE jumper.
|
| Edit: I wrote that earlier bit about 40% of the way through the
| article. Now, at 75% of the way through the article, I don't
| think extreme sports would have scratched the itch for him,
| either. The level of novelty and adrenaline he trained himself to
| need could only be satisfied by the professions of drug addict or
| ancient raiding warrior.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| To him, robbing banks was an extreme sport.
| Theodores wrote:
| With extreme sports you can tell people what you did, and it
| ain't subversive!
|
| With a well executed, audacious bank robbery you can't tell a
| soul and every day there is that fear that they will catch you.
| Even if you ditched that small thing that uniquely connects you
| to the crime into the uninhabited wilds of Siberia, someone
| will have seen you go there. Plus you have to explain where the
| money is from. Even if that is just to your mum.
|
| The thrill is two fold, in the immediate aftermath, getting
| away with it. And secondly of deception. You have secrets you
| can't tell. It is human nature to always tell, so this requires
| mental agility.
|
| What makes this bank robbing special is the bike. It is the
| perfect getaway vehicle in a society where the police can only
| follow things up if they have car things to work on.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Why ancient raiding warrior? The military hasn't gone anywhere,
| if he's that dedicated I'm sure he could get into units that
| see more action than normal on top of it
| dandotway wrote:
| Military would be too bureaucratic and disciplined for his
| sort, but being a _mercenary_ might be a fit.
| buescher wrote:
| He tried the Legion Etrangere but it didn't work out.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Legion Etrangere
|
| French Foreign Legion for those of us who don't know
| French
| jascii wrote:
| While anecdotal, this article seems to confirm my suspicion that
| motivation for crime is seldomly rational. It seems more often to
| be driven by some form of mental or emotional trauma.
|
| Makes you wonder if treatment rather than punishment wouldn't be
| a more effective remedy...
| blowski wrote:
| In my school A-levels, I did a study on this. It was pretty
| obvious then that the main requirement of the law is to make
| people feel like retribution has been handed out, that the
| criminal has been made to suffer justly for their crimes.
|
| As you say, if the aim were to reduce crime, then alleviating
| poverty and providing better mental healthcare would be far
| more effective solutions.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Nope in my country you can get basic assistance which is
| EUR1100 per month. But when you see drug dealers driving
| around in BMWs...
| kevingadd wrote:
| Is that enough for food and rent?
| hirundo wrote:
| I can't recall many stories about an actual Robin Hood. I'd
| expect a jury to be much more likely to cut him a break than a
| typical bank robber. I don't think I could vote to acquit, but I
| might be tempted to convict on a lesser charge if available. But
| I wonder if what he did with the money would even reach the jury
| before they decided.
| fitzn wrote:
| He only ditched the money initially. He had more than 20
| robberies and the article makes it sound like he was keeping
| the money from the middle onwards.
| ehnto wrote:
| Commendable for being non-violent I'll give him that, but I
| think it would be a leap to call him a Robin Hood. He was
| stealing for a narcissistic rush and he ditched the cash out of
| pragmatism. I doubt even he believed it was for any kind of
| altruism. As soon as it could get him an even bigger fix,
| through drugs and lifestyle, he kept the money.
|
| I'm trying not to be cruel, he served his sentence and I don't
| exactly care that banks lost a few thousand here and there, I
| hope he's found some kind of peace now. It's just not quite the
| feel good story that Robin Hood was, this was more a story
| about unchecked narcissism and substance abuse.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Banks didn't lose money, their customers did. Mom, kids,
| families
| jascii wrote:
| You realize that banking is a highly regulated industry and
| that their customers are insured for these events?
| toast0 wrote:
| Customers don't lose money from theft directly (assuming
| it's theft of bank cash, not theft of deposit boxes),
| because the theft is replaced from bank capital or
| insurance or whatever. But it increases the cost of
| operating the bank, either directly or through higher
| insurance premiums, which eventually gets passed to
| customers in lower interest on deposits and higher
| interest on loans, or higher fees.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Or, as most banks are for profit institutions, as lower
| profits for shareholders.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| At most you could argue insurance or the government lost
| money. The bank is not deducting money from your account
| because they got robbed.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Where does the government get money from? The tooth
| fairy?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The costs of the money robbed is so far removed from the
| individual customers who use that bank that it's just as
| absurd as saying the government gets money from the tooth
| fairy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Where does the government get money from?
|
| Assuming its a government that operates in its own fiat,
| it creates it. It may engage in play-acting to pretend
| that it is working in an external currency where spending
| must be balanced by revenue plus borrowing, but that is
| just a fiction and residual habit from a time when it
| worked in something other than fiat.
| dhosek wrote:
| That bit in The Dark Knight where the Joker claims to
| have only stolen the money of the mob in the bank robbery
| always bothered me. I wanted to scream in the theatre,
| "that's not how banks work!"
|
| I didn't though.
| silexia wrote:
| He claims he ditched the cash, but maybe he did not?
| knodi123 wrote:
| why lie? he confessed to the crime, and he confessed to
| becoming a crack addict, and he confessed that he stopped
| giving it away.
| RankingMember wrote:
| > Every morning at the YMCA, Tom worked through the Olympic
| strength-training regimen to build muscle mass. Within a month,
| he was squatting 500 pounds.
|
| I know he was already a category 1 cyclist and thus in great
| shape (particularly his cardiac health), but going from not
| squatting to squatting 500 lbs is not something that happens in a
| month no matter who you are or what you're on. Something was very
| likely lost/garbled between the source and writer on this point.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Owen Ashworth's "Tom Justice, The Choir Boy Robber, Apprehended
| at Ace Hardware" is great for this.
| drooby wrote:
| Damn that was entertaining. Can't wait for the movie.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Appropriate long drink to match the long read:
| https://imbibemagazine.com/recipe/the-bicycle-thief-cocktail...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| About the time I came back to Denmark about 20 years ago there
| was a bank robbery in Norrebro (IIRC) and from what I remember of
| the description it was at the time of day that everyone was
| heading home from work and the robber escaped on bike - which of
| course at that time of day there are hundreds and hundreds of
| people biking in the same direction.
|
| I thought that was a pretty good plan that guy had.
| bink wrote:
| Sounds a lot like the guy who placed an ad on Craigslist to be
| his cover: https://www.cnet.com/news/bank-robber-hires-decoys-
| on-craigs...
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(page generated 2021-10-29 23:01 UTC)