At Skip Paige’s Little Bar in Palm Desert, narrative nonfiction writer and true crime sleuth Lou Schachter unpacks why crimes captivate us—and how travel fuels his reporting on Big Conversations, Little Bar with Patrick Evans & Randy Florence. He traces a personal origin story to his grandfather’s 1933 Los Angeles murder, a saga tangled with Bugsy Siegel and a corrupt DA, now chronicled at LustForPower.com. Lou also dives into two Coachella Valley capers: the 1995 “friends helping friends” pyramid parties that rattled the McCallum Theatre, and a 1986 freight-train crash near Palm Springs tied to bored Marines. Plus, he reveals how obsessive research helped surface stolen art—including a missing de Kooning and works taken twice from the Harwood Museum—and why he writes ten-minute stories at TrueCrimeRoadTrip.com. Expect sharp humor, local history, and a look at greed, obsession, and the very human motives behind notorious cases. We also preview new investigations, possible FBI collaboration, and the lure of mysteries hiding in plain sight.

Takeaways:

·      How travel plus curiosity powers Lou Schachter’s narrative nonfiction true-crime work

·      The family mystery that launched his investigations: a 1933 LA mob killing

·      Bugsy Siegel ties and a corrupt DA explored in Lust for Power

·      1995 Coachella Valley “friends helping friends” pyramid parties and fallout for the McCallum Theatre

·      1986 freight-train crash near Palm Springs traced to Marines decoupling cars for thrills/theft

·      How Lou helped surface stolen art: a missing de Kooning and Harwood Museum recoveries

·      Why he writes ten-minute stories at True Crime Road Trip and avoids gratuitous gore

·      Upcoming digs, possible FBI coordination, and his focus on human psychology over spectacle

#BigConversationsLittleBarPodcast #PatrickEvans #RandyFlorence #SkipsLittleBar #MutualBroadcastingSystem #CoachellaValleyResidents #SkipPaige #LouSchachter #TrueCrime #NarrativeNonfiction #PalmDesert #CoachellaValley #PyramidScheme #ArtTheft #HarwoodMuseum #WillemDeKooning #TrueCrimeRoadTrip #LustForPower #BugsySiegel

Patrick Evans, Host: Am

Randy Florence, Host: I coaching your acting? Yeah.

Patrick Evans, Host: Wow. Why not? Oh, I haven't seen a check. No. Well, it's free. That's, that's one of the reasons I went with you as opposed to some of the other folks. I'm a nominated actor. I know. You, you are. I don't

Randy Florence, Host: do free classes. I

Patrick Evans, Host: know you.

John McMullen, Producer: What if, if you win, you coach if Comedy coach too, you know?

John McMullen, Producer: 'cause you couldn't get Gene Smart. What? He's also your comedy coach now? No, I think I'm his comedy coach. Just say

Randy Florence, Host: yes. Oh,

John McMullen, Producer: I knew it was one way or the other.

Patrick Evans, Host: I'm pretty sure. Because you picked. The naked gun for us to go see in a theater.

Randy Florence, Host: I will not go see that movie. I said, do you know how many good movies you miss out because of that?

John McMullen, Producer: This was not one of them. This was, I went and one of the weirdest movies last night. What did you see, honey? Don't.

Randy Florence, Host: Oh, I heard about it

John McMullen, Producer: with, uh, yeah, it, it's Aubrey Plazas in it. I think that's right. Yeah.

John McMullen, Producer: Yeah. It's, it, it was okay, but, uh, it's an hour and a half. I will never get back. Did you

Randy Florence, Host: feel like killing yourself when it was over? If you didn't, then it was better than Naked Gun.

Patrick Evans, Host: The Naked Gun, every preview that we watched was better and more fully thought out than the actual film. The Naked Gun, it was, I mean, every one of them.

Patrick Evans, Host: In fact, actually the Coke commercial was really much more satisfying.

Randy Florence, Host: Wow. They had like five good lines and they were all in the first 15 minutes of the movie,

Patrick Evans, Host: the best line that they were toasting with some champagne, and the villains said, this is directly from Bill Cosby's private stock. That was, that was a funny line.

Randy Florence, Host: don't now.

Patrick Evans, Host: He brought this

Randy Florence, Host: on himself.

Patrick Evans, Host: Well, the good news is he's now dating, uh, Pam Anderson. So it all worked out.

Randy Florence, Host: It all worked out for him, but cost me $9.

Randy Florence, Host: Oh my God. I'm

John McMullen, Producer: so sorry to hear that, because we have, I worked with her too. Pam Anderson. Yeah, it's Serious Satellite Radio. I'll tell you that story some other time, but we're gonna have a Baywatch episode. Alright,

Patrick Evans, Host: that's great.

John McMullen, Producer: Well, it's,

Patrick Evans, Host: I'm just, sorry. So I'm

Randy Florence, Host: sorry about the movie.

Patrick Evans, Host: Well, we have to suffer for their love apparently.

Randy Florence, Host: But you did get some pretzel bites and I did, and I got some m and m peanuts. I got some

Patrick Evans, Host: pretzel bites. So the day

Randy Florence, Host: wasn't a total

Patrick Evans, Host: loss. Uh, it, that was, of course, it was a fictitious crime story. There was very little truth involved, but that is not the case with our guests this week. That's an

Speaker 4: amazing segue.

Speaker 4: Isn't

Patrick Evans, Host: that amazing? That

Speaker 4: was really good how you did that.

Randy Florence, Host: Welcome Lou. Thank you. Sorry you had to sit here and listen to all that stuff, Lou, but,

Patrick Evans, Host: but if we've talked you outta going to see Naked Gun you have then, then it's been worth it.

Patrick Evans, Host: Absolutely. We've done a service. I feel like there's

Lou Schachter, Guest: certain movies that are. Uh, saved for airplane rides, and I think that's in that category. My tolerance for bad movies is much higher on airplanes when I'm stuck. Oh. Well, I mean, I think I would've thought about

Patrick Evans, Host: opening the emergency bar. It was, it was pretty bad.

Patrick Evans, Host: It

Randy Florence, Host: was very

Patrick Evans, Host: bad. Um, so Lou, you call yourself a narrative nonfiction rider. Yes. Uh, and you specialize in kinda these true crime stories. Uh, so how did you, what attracted you to that genre?

Lou Schachter, Guest: You know, I came here almost by accident. I. Have always written about travel either for my friends or for myself. And the world of travel writing has really sort of disappeared in the last 20 years.

Randy Florence, Host: with Instagram, I mean, everybody's Exactly, yeah.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah. Instagram

Patrick Evans, Host: and TikTok, you get everything you need to know in about 20 seconds. I wanna go to that resort. Looks great. They got some free drinks. Free drinks. Uh, so you migrated out of the, of the travel writing and uh, uh, you've written some really fascinating stuff. I, um. I wanna know your process for picking the, the stories that you write about.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I'm always varying the crimes because I'm trying to get some insights into human nature that might come from those crimes. And [00:05:00] also maybe equally importantly, trying to understand that particular place through the lens of the crime that I'm writing about.

Randy Florence, Host: You had a personal reason, something that kind of got you interested in this.

Randy Florence, Host: Can you talk about that?

Lou Schachter, Guest: Down. I'm looking at things on microfilm at that point, but in the whole age of the internet, it had never occurred to me to see if there was anything on the web about him. And I was just thunderstruck when I got tons and tons of hits with things about him. Uh, so he was just a small time mobster in New York who was killed for some still [00:06:00] unexplained reason in Los Angeles, and I spent a lot of time investigating his story.

Randy Florence, Host: Was this a story that had come up through the family, or do you just one day thought, I'm think I'll

Lou Schachter, Guest: pull his name up.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I mean, at the time I thought this was really strange, but since then I've met other people with similar histories and it's always. The same, which is to say the family kept it a complete secret and lied about it. And so when my brothers and I just sort of stumbled on pieces of the story, and I didn't start looking into it until after my parents had died, so I never got another version from them other than the, the one I'd been told as kids.

Lou Schachter, Guest: was not alive in 1933. Okay.

Randy Florence, Host: That probably makes sense.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. My grand, my mother was only six years old when she died. When he died, so. Yeah.

Randy Florence, Host: So no,

Lou Schachter, Guest: he

Randy Florence, Host: didn't know his

Lou Schachter, Guest: grandfather.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I did by accident, wind up living across the street from where my grandfather lived in Los Angeles, and then later lived in that same building where he lived in Los Angeles.

Randy Florence, Host: And, and so what was the gist of the story? What did you find out? Did you, was it, did you get any

Lou Schachter, Guest: closure out of it? Yeah, I did. I mean, it took a long time to sort it out.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I think, you know, there, there are a few important questions like, who killed him? Why was he killed and why were those people who killed him never prosecuted. And I, I think that someone associated with Bugsy Siegel killed him. Bugsy Siegel was in Los Angeles at, for his first time. About the same time my grandfather was here.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So they were probably both here, beginning to make inroads, uh, into that. Uh, so I, I do think it was his men who killed him and in, in lust for power.com. I go through all the options and, and why I think it was him. Um, and then, uh. While he wasn't prosecuted, actually turns out to be the more interesting story, and that is because of the corrupt district attorney who was in power for 12 years in Los Angeles at that time.

Lou Schachter, Guest: He is a fascinating character. A World War II military hero who was disabled in the war, rose to become lieutenant governor and then came down to district attorney in hopes of running for governor. Soon after that. Wound up being DA for 12 years. Got elected on a promise to end corruption in Los Angeles and then became corrupt himself.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I mean, it, it's an amazing set of just. Crazy stories that happened in LA during the 1920s and thirties.

Randy Florence, Host: Did you have a feeling about your grandfather going into this? And did anything change after completing this?

Lou Schachter, Guest: I mean, I think I just had curiosity because I never knew him. Right. I, I mean, I knew his wife.

Lou Schachter, Guest: His wife was my oldest surviving grandparent, and, and I was fairly close to her, but even she died when I was quite young. So, um, I, I never heard a word about him from her. Uh, but, um. I really didn't know what the story was and, and I didn't necessarily presume anything. I guess the, the biggest surprise was that there was so much information out there.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Meyer Lansky Boey Siegel, who's

Patrick Evans, Host: what, what was the family that. They were, were they associated with,

Lou Schachter, Guest: they, the Jewish mafia was not organized in families like the Italian Mafia was. So they just had these leaders. Gotcha.

Randy Florence, Host: What a crazy story. That is a

Lou Schachter, Guest: crazy story. That is remarkable. Well, so

Randy Florence, Host: let, let's get back to the beginning.

Randy Florence, Host: Where were you born?

Lou Schachter, Guest: I was born in New York. Okay. Uh, in New York City. Actually grew up out on Long Island. Big Family. Uh, no. Two brothers. Okay. Um. Uh, went to school in Philadelphia, spent a year in Washington DC which I loved. And then I was one of those kids who always wanted to move to California. There was never any doubt in my mind that I was gonna move to California at some point, and I was one of those kids too.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. So, you know, know what that's like.

Randy Florence, Host: And that's what I was wondering. Is it, is, was it to get away from where you were or was it because it was specifically what you saw in California?

Lou Schachter, Guest: I, I think it, to some extent it's both. I mean, I, I love New York. I've always loved New York City. I, um, the weather was really hard to argue with Differe. Yeah. Yeah. The weather is pretty attractive, right? Yeah. So that was part of it. Yeah.

Patrick Evans, Host: What were you, so you went to school in Philly? Yeah. Uh, and then you were in DC for a little, what

Lou Schachter, Guest: were

Patrick Evans, Host: you

Lou Schachter, Guest: doing

Patrick Evans, Host: there?

Lou Schachter, Guest: I was working in a small research center on Capitol Hill. It was sort of figuring out what I wanted to do next in my life. And it's funny 'cause I'd graduated from undergraduate business program and all my friends were becoming investment bankers and I. Didn't apply for any of those jobs. Within a year later when I'm, I moved to Los Angeles without a job, without a car, without a place to live, wound up with a job in investment banking.

Randy Florence, Host: You and I might have been at First Interstate Bank at the same time.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Well, we, I certainly was at first interstate, if you saw that in my history, I did see that. Yeah. And

Randy Florence, Host: I think it was at about the same time

Randy Florence, Host: Uh, mortgage home loans.

Randy Florence, Host: Okay, cool. Yeah.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Wow. A couple of retired bankers. Retired bankers. He's much more

Randy Florence, Host: successful since than I am.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Did you see the story I did about the first interstate tower fire?

Randy Florence, Host: No. Oh

Lou Schachter, Guest: yeah, that's there. I did a story about it 'cause I was there during that. I wasn't in the fire thankfully, but some of my colleagues were.

Speaker 4: Yeah,

Lou Schachter, Guest: I

Randy Florence, Host: had to read that tonight. Yeah. So you did. Did you feel like. If this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life, I'm gonna be an investment banker. I felt completely the opposite.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I thought I, I mean I, I've always sort of crafted my own jobs and so I was working in the investment banking division at first interstate, but I was doing marketing.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So, for instance, one of my. Projects, uh, or my clients was Home Depot. I did a lot of work with as they were putting new stores in and needing to work with the communities around them. But more importantly, one of my projects was the expansion of LAX and also the high speed rail project. So I got to do a lot of really interesting things, but even that I got bored with at some point and didn't want to do forever.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And I wound up spending the last 20 years of my career in the corporate training world helping salespeople be more. Effective.

Randy Florence, Host: And you wrote a couple of sales books. I did, yeah. Yeah. On purpose, I mean, I mean,

Lou Schachter, Guest: for a business person, particularly a consultant like that, a, a business book is a very expensive business card.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah, that's a really good way to say it. It just gives you a certain amount of credibility when you're speaking in front of audiences or being introduced to new clients. How,

Patrick Evans, Host: how were the sales of the book since you were sales guy nominated

Patrick Evans, Host: writing for a career.

Patrick Evans, Host: That's right. Uh, it worked out pretty well. Now you, uh, you have two stories that are very Coachella Valley centric. Yes, indeed. And I think the first one it really fascinated Randy did, and he said it to me, uh, was these pyramid scheme parties.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah. And, and my wife and I were in one. Uh, you work in the one that I wrote about?

Randy Florence, Host: No, no, no. In the Bay Area. It was just mortgage banking. Randy? It was mortgage banking. Oh yeah. No, I'm sorry. That was my career. That was your career. And then one day it just stopped and then it stopped. The person above me couldn't pay me anymore. Uh, yeah, we got involved and had the parties and you'd start out by asking if there were any law enforcement people in the room, and then you'd say, 'cause you have to tell us if you are.

Randy Florence, Host: You know, and that's how we confirmed for people that it was legal. So talk to us about that. Yeah.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So you gotta take yourselves back to 1995 and just down the road from us over at the Embassy Suites, there were these parties, there were other places too, but a lot of them were held at the Embassy Suites in the conference rooms and

Randy Florence, Host: different, different parties.

Randy Florence, Host: Did you have to put your car keys in a bowl? Yes, I did.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Never got 'em back

Randy Florence, Host: either.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And, uh, at these parties, there was a lot of celebration as people formed these, uh, these groups of 15 people each, and at the top of each of these, they didn't call pyramids, but they were, um, friends, right? Yes, exactly. They called it friends, helping friends.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And so that, uh, person walked away with $16,000. And then everyone moves up a level. The top two people split. And so now there are. Two pyramids of, you know, of uh, what, um, seven and seven, and then they have to find more people at the bottom so that they keep. Getting pushed up. And so as with your experience, people thought, Hmm, this looks like a pyramid, but

Randy Florence, Host: there's no police here, so must be okay.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Well, of course they had all of these, um, uh, things in place to help give people confidence that what they were doing would be fine. And they talked about how this isn't a pyramid because it's not an ever ending chain, because they had a judge look at it. Somebody said the DA signed off on it. There were all of these things that were done to make people more comfortable.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And so. You know, this whole thing didn't last more than a few months, but right at the beg and, and actually lemme start with where it started. It started at another hotel. It started at the Marriott Desert Springs because a concierge there had been invited to a, uh, similar, uh, party, let's call it in Yucca Valley.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And she, the concierge, imported it to the desert. And because she and her colleague, concierge knew so many people just because of their jobs here, right? They started bringing in influential people. And before long, the executive director of the McCallum Theater, the president of, uh, college of the Desert.

Lou Schachter, Guest: They, um, they at, at, um, it. I believe it was at the McCallum where the, the leader was really telling people directly in staff meetings that you need to be part of this. This is good for the community, and in fact, if you don't have the money, I'll Sometimes they were lending the money and the other side would say, you can take an advance against your paycheck to come up with the two grand that you need to.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Get into this,

Randy Florence, Host: and these are now known as

Lou Schachter, Guest: the muses

Patrick Evans, Host: Stop. Stop that, that is not true. No, it's not. Cards and letters to Randy Florence. Uh, that's just wild that, that predates my arrival to the desert by just a few years. Yeah. But that is un and, and. So tell me how all of this ended.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So, like all pyramid schemes, it's hard to keep it going.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And that's only partially true because as I show better than in words in a diagram, you actually need like 120 people behind you to get your money. And so you have to, 'cause you gotta

Patrick Evans, Host: fill it because it splits. It keeps splitting. Yes. And you have, and every time it's splits you have to find the bottom, the pyramid people

Lou Schachter, Guest: that Yeah, exactly.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And so, um. A lot of people weren't getting their money and uh, at first the leaders sort of played dumb, said either this wasn't connected to my work, whether it was the university, I mean the college or the school district or whatever. But then all this evidence came to light showing that they were using school resources to do.

Lou Schachter, Guest: These parties, uh, and uh, and so

Patrick Evans, Host: that's wrong. Like that's probably against policy when they tried

Patrick Evans, Host: college

Randy Florence, Host: of

Patrick Evans, Host: the

Randy Florence, Host: Pyramid, college of the Pyramid, that violated at least one, one rule

Patrick Evans, Host: of ethics somewhere in there. But needless to

Lou Schachter, Guest: say, I hope all these people lost their jobs.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And actually I think they all left the area. Um, they were given probation, so they were con they plead guilty and were given probation. Okay. So it was finally prosecuted? It was,

Randy Florence, Host: yeah. And, and somebody, one specific person was responsible for kind of calling this all out, right? Yeah, I, um, there was an HR person,

Lou Schachter, Guest: or actually as you can imagine would be the case, there's a union at College of the Desert.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. And the union leader was fighting with the president. Yeah. And so what a perfect opportunity to mess up the president's life. Yeah. By calling out that he was doing Blowing the whistle. Yeah, exactly. Sure. Yeah. And so that's what happened. And then once that happened, um, I think one of the local TV stations was, um, interviewing someone in silhouette who was providing information, but everyone knew who she was.

Lou Schachter, Guest: She eventually, and he says, because. She wore these big,

Patrick Evans, Host: right. So let that be a lesson to you if you're gonna be interviewed off the record or post wear posts. Yeah, just wear posts. Yeah.

Patrick Evans, Host: That's what I do. There's an interesting ending to the story too. We almost never see your belly button in those interviews. Right.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Almost. Um, the ending that I found really interesting was that, uh, not surprisingly. Donors stopped giving money to the McCallum. They were like, wait a second, something not right.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Well, sure. You would

Patrick Evans, Host: lose confidence.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. And then an audit quickly found that the leader was charging personal expenses to the organization using credit cards inappropriately. There were no checks and balances. It was just a mess. And so donations dried up, and the only reason the McCallum is still here today is because President Ford took over the fundraising campaign, got a gigantic donation from Walter Annenberg.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And then others stepped aboard too. And then the, uh, McCallum obviously got back on its feet 'cause it was going under a result. And they also put in

Randy Florence, Host: nobody's allowed to go to the Embassy Suites anymore. That's right. That's the

Patrick Evans, Host: red, red flag. If you see Embassy Suites on your credit card, how crazy

Randy Florence, Host: is all that?

Randy Florence, Host: That's insanity. I know,

Patrick Evans, Host: but that's what those, those kinds of. Pyramid parties were common at that time? Yes. All over the place.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. I, I, I actually wrote about it because the woman who used to cut my hair, who I was very friendly with, I was living in Los Angeles at the time. She asked me to come to one, and I said, Stacy, that's a pyramid scheme.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And she said, no, no, no, it's not. It's friends helping friends, you know. How did you

Randy Florence, Host: get

Lou Schachter, Guest: involved, Randy?

Randy Florence, Host: Friends helping friends? Somebody asked us, I think we, I think we got like $200 the first. Meeting for some reason. I don't remember the whole thing, but, uh, then we were thinking, well, pretty soon we're gonna be in the big bucks and.

Randy Florence, Host: By the time we got our 200 bucks, it had already unwounded. Oh

Patrick Evans, Host: yeah. So, so you were up 200 and you cashed

Patrick Evans, Host: much. Did you write that down on

Randy Florence, Host: your taxes? No, I, I did not. Okay. All right. That's good to know.

Randy Florence, Host: Fortunately, the statute of limitations

Lou Schachter, Guest: has passed. Okay. I don't have to hide

Randy Florence, Host: that pyramid. That's, that's right.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Thank God. But the reason that I write about these crimes is, is really because I am fascinated by the psychology behind them.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So you are a leader of a big institution here. In the desert.

Lou Schachter, Guest: What makes you put all of that at risk to make, I, I think some of them made between 50 and $80,000, which is a meaningful amount of money and was even more then, but, but you're putting your entire career and life at risk for that. And I'm al I mean, you know, greed is one of many just sort of human needs Yeah.

Lou Schachter, Guest: That are fascinating to explore. And I like seeing different tests. So where did this

Randy Florence, Host: come from in you? What, what? Stimulates that.

Lou Schachter, Guest: If you're in sales, yeah, you have to understand psychology. Or if you're leading a big group of people, which I was for a long time, you have to understand psychology. I'm just curious about it. I mean, I'm also someone who's always liked mysteries and um, have. And, and I like stories and crimes are almost naturally good stories.

Lou Schachter, Guest: What are some of the most

Patrick Evans, Host: bizarre

Lou Schachter, Guest: crimes that you've written about? Uh, there's so many, 'cause I try to only write about bizarre crimes, but the one that comes immediately to mind is a, a woman in, uh, in Alaska who kills her husband, pushes him out onto the porch. Throws a tarp over him and then for a month and a half, as people keep saying something smells really bad out there, she just keeps making up different excuses and no one lifts the tarp.

Randy Florence, Host: How did that come

Lou Schachter, Guest: across to your attention?

Lou Schachter, Guest: Um, you know, I've traveled a lot. I've been to 70 countries and as of last year I had been to 49 states. And so for my 60th birthday, I wanted to go to Alaska, which was the last state that I hadn't been to. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so we did a cruise to Alaska and I just looked for a story up, up there. I found one in Ketchikan, which is where, uh, where this happened.

Lou Schachter, Guest: What was the most boring

Patrick Evans, Host: state of all the 50.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Um, I mean, when I think of boring, I think of boring to drive across. Although I think there are good stops in either of these. I think Nebraska and Kansas Yeah. Are really hard to drive across. They just go on forever. Forever. Yeah. And they're flat. They're very flat and they're not a lot of interesting places to stop.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So you have an entire day where you're just driving through corn.

Randy Florence, Host: We.

Patrick Evans, Host: Yay. That sounds so exciting. That sounds exciting. So

Patrick Evans, Host: train crash outside of Palm Springs. Yes.

Lou Schachter, Guest: It was a, uh, a freight train and someone was actually killed because there were people who would occasionally ride the trains. A lot of them either homeless or migrants coming up from Mexico, and someone was in one of the box cars and was killed in the crash. So when the crash happened, the uh, investigators pretty quickly realized that the train had separated and somehow the back part of the train.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Separated from the front and it was slightly uphill, although it's hard. You don't really realize it when you're there, but there's a slight grade and so the back of the, the front of the train stopped and the back of the train came slamming into it, and that's what caused the derailment and the crash.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And then as you know, the trains sort of come through here on their way east and. Eventually they found the group who did it, and everyone was surprised to learn that they were a group of US Marines serving at 29 Palms. Oh my God. This was a fascinating story for me, not just because you don't expect a bunch of us Marines to go robbing trains, but also because I decided that, again, this is my curious part about psychology.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I wanted to understand what the motivation. Was more, the newspapers made it sound like it was a big, uh, criminal theft ring where they were stealing sneakers and other things and then reselling them and, and there's a tiny bit of that going on, but that actually wasn't a big part of it. Um, what I wound up doing was.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And he responded right away saying he would be happy to do it. Which was amazing. Wow. So he told me his whole story.

Patrick Evans, Host: And does he live in the desert these days or No? No, he

Lou Schachter, Guest: lives in Florida. Oh. And I think he grew up in Florida or on the east coast before he joined the Marines. Yeah. Yeah. And he served a lot of prison time.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Actually. He served about eight years of war in prison. The, the rest of the Marines did not, but because he was the Ring Marine, and actually the night that the, the train, uh, derailed, he was on his own. And so it was, he was res, the others were responsible for. Some of the thefts, but he was solely responsible for the death that occurred, so that's why he spent all the time.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So he was

Patrick Evans, Host: involved in the actual decoupling?

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah, he decoupled the train. Yeah. He admits

Lou Schachter, Guest: Well, I mean, that's probably my editorializing it.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Okay. Because it was a migrant on the train and there wasn't a public outcry. You know, you can imagine if it was someone more known to the community or who had people who would influence the media or politicians, that would've been a different outcome. Um, the, the, you know, what, what had happened. And I think the most interesting part of this whole story.

Lou Schachter, Guest: The motivation for all this is simply that this guy. Was one of those people we occasionally hear about who are obsessed with trains. You know, occasionally I hear a story about like, some kid gets in a New York subway car and starts driving it, or there you read these stories every few years and he's one of those guys who's just obsessed with trains.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And so while his buddies were breaking into the. Um, the cargo and stealing it mostly just to sell on base and mostly to have something to do because they were so bored most of the time. They weren't making a lot of money on it. Um, he was just getting the thrill of being on trains as they moved through the desert, and that's why he was out alone that night.

Patrick Evans, Host: just bought him a Lionel

Lou Schachter, Guest: when he was, well, I think that he actually did, he said it started when his, I think I can, I, when his parents bought him a, a train set. Oh, and then he got him hooked. He wandered off from home one time when he was with his grandparents and there was a train yard next door and he just sort of trespassed into the train yard and got caught.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And then the next day they let him come back with, as long as his mom was with him and they sat in the freezing cold watching trains move through switches all day long

Patrick Evans, Host: When you sat down and interviewed this guy.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah.

Patrick Evans, Host: And you know, here we are, as you said, 40 years after the crime and he'd served time.

Patrick Evans, Host: Yep. What was the sense of the man that you got?

Lou Schachter, Guest: And so he keeps it completely secret.

Patrick Evans, Host: But he has gone on with it. He got, he did his time and yes, and, and, but

Lou Schachter, Guest: he has a good career. He's made some good money and, uh, you know, he's not rich, but he gets along fine and, and he's had a good life. And he also sells trains on the side. Model trains.

Randy Florence, Host: That's awesome.

Randy Florence, Host: And he's done 'em up to look like that train. So

Patrick Evans, Host: he can only show you how to decouple the cars, though He can't. Yeah, that's get decouple again.

Randy Florence, Host: What would you consider your first true crime writing for? What? Um, is there a piece that was number one.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I do a lot of road trips around the country and I had stopped in Tucson. And I like going to small art museums because they're [00:32:00] sort of manageable to do quickly, but they usually have something interesting to see. And I went to the University of Arizona Art Museum in Tucson, and I was struck by something I'd never seen anywhere else before.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And that was a empty frame on a wall with canvas backing, but no painting. And at first you wonder like, is that supposed to be art? And then put a banana up there? Right, exactly. And as I got closer, I saw that there was a little placard next to it that showed it. Picture of what was supposed to be there, which was a painting by Willem de Kooning and which is worth over a hundred million dollars by this time.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So when I started True Crime Road Trip, I knew I was gonna go to that story. Yeah. I also knew [00:33:00] that there had been significant developments in the time period in between, so in 2017. A man from the east coast comes out to, uh, New Mexico to sell his parents' estate, uh, sorry. Uh, aunt and uncle's estate. They had recently died and he was responsible for selling things off for $2,000.

Lou Schachter, Guest: He sold the contents of the home to an antique store in Silver City, New Mexico. They're clearing out the house. There's some paintings, a lot of trashy stuff. This one painting they bring back to their store and they just sort of lean it on the side. Customer comes in and says, you know, I think that's a de Kooning.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And this guy knew what he was talking about, and he said, in fact, I will buy it from you. I will give you $200,000 for it today. Wow. But I've gotta be honest with you, it's worth way more than that. So, um, the guy started doing some internet research and before long they discovered that this was the missing de Kooning from the.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Don't give it back. You gotta essentially hold it for ransom. You can get paid more. The guys who returned it. Season never accepted a reward. Nice. Or any kind of money in return really for it, because they just want something that had been stolen, returned to its proper place. Wow. They do have the gallery named after them in that museum.

Patrick Evans, Host: Well, that's worth something. Well, yeah, I don't that it's worth a hundred million dollars. I want take the money.

Randy Florence, Host: I'll just

Lou Schachter, Guest: spray pay

Randy Florence, Host: my name on it.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah. Because this year all the sudden things have kind of exploded as a result of this story. Exactly.

Lou Schachter, Guest: There's all sorts of other evidence that they were the thieves. Um, and

Patrick Evans, Host: were they art thieves or was that, or was this a lark? What was their story?

Lou Schachter, Guest: Um, they were New York City school teachers who moved out to New Mexico somehow came up with the money to buy 30 acres of land and build a big house pyramid.

Lou Schachter, Guest: They

Randy Florence, Host: were in a pyramid. Oh, they did The friends helping. Friends. Friends, helping friends buy a ranch.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. Um, and they also took travels around the world every year with money that was just inexplicable. They also died with over a million dollars in cash investments that no one can explain. Um, so it's pretty clear that it was them, but when the.

Lou Schachter, Guest: FBI got involved, they searched the family home. There was a bunch of artwork, some of which was by the husband, but other artwork, which the FBI matched against its stolen art database and said nothing else was stolen really? And

Randy Florence, Host: yeah. That's interesting.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And he explained to me that sometimes institutions don't want to report. A theft. Oh, sometimes they get the insurance money and they're happy about it. Sometimes they're embarrassed about it and don't want press coverage. I later learned that sometimes this is not true today, but at that time, if a painting wasn't worth a certain amount, it wasn't, uh.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Put on the database. So there are all sorts of reasons why something might not be in the database.

Patrick Evans, Host: Okay, so, so there was probably stolen artwork in though.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Well, that's what I was thinking when I was driving back from New Mexico and I, on my drive, I was thinking, you know, I'd really like to see if I can find out if anything else in that house was stolen.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Auctioned off from the house that the FBI had cleared. So I thought I would start with those. Um, I'm really, really good at research on the internet and so I spent a Saturday when I got home trying to find out where those paintings were auctioned, and that didn't take too long to be honest. Um, I then had two really good pictures of the paintings and their titles, but I wasn't sure that the titles hadn't changed.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Because you don't always get the title on the back of a painting. No one might know what the right title was. Sometimes they invent new titles for an auction. And I looked and looked and looked, and I did a lot of Google reverse image searching where you drop in the painting and see if it's come up any place else.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Tiles, New Mexico. So now I had a place where that painting might have belonged. Now it So what, what's the feeling as you see that? It, it's eureka. Yeah. I mean, it, it's like, I mean, and 'cause it there is, there are so many hours of drudgery to get to this point. Yeah. It's so tedious. And then you finally get something and like, wow, this is kinda look at it for

Randy Florence, Host: a minute.

Randy Florence, Host: Like, is this

Lou Schachter, Guest: I don't know what happened, but by the next morning it was back up and these paintings weren't on the list, and so I thought that's weird. Now, I then started searching articles for thefts at the Harwood. And this also is drudgery. It takes forever to do this. Um, because the way news, there are lots of good newspaper search engines, but the way they all work is they just find the, the two words or the words you're searching for on that page, they don't have any understanding of what an article is versus a page.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Ah. So if there's a is gonna

Patrick Evans, Host: change all that, it'll be fine.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I hope so, as soon as they get the rights to all those newspapers. Uh, so if the word painting and museum is on the page and there was a robbery at a Sears on that same page. All those things are gonna come up, and so you have to drift through a lot of stuff that's not useful.

Lou Schachter, Guest: So now I'm like, wait a second. Well hold on. They're not there. So that was a little frustrating. Um, but I just kept looking and, and, and finally I found an article in the nineties saying that there had been another theft in the eighties. And I went back and found the theft in the eighties, and sure enough, these same two pennies were stolen a second time.

Patrick Evans, Host: The the same two painting, har the Harwood's not doing a real good job. Real they do today. Okay. That,

Randy Florence, Host: Marine in a thousand palms.

Randy Florence, Host: That's, no, it's almost, this

Lou Schachter, Guest: is weird how this all tied in. It's almost worse. He'd been fighting with the University of New Mexico, which owns the Harwood to get more security and he had actually gone to a museum security conference the day the paintings were stolen.

Patrick Evans, Host: Where they were having a friends helping friends party.

Lou Schachter, Guest: um. The second theft, I was pretty sure it was the right one. It also was the same mo as was used with the de Kooning. The, it was a distracting grab kind of thing.

Patrick Evans, Host: Sliced it out of the frame.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. Uh, they, and actually no, in this case, they took the frames. They broke one of them, uh, but they didn't slice it out.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Um, and the pork curator for 40 years, he said he's been thinking about these paintings every day. So he was shocked that they have been. Identify now. Before we get there though, I had to figure out what to do with this knowledge because it wasn't totally clear to me what my next step was. I could,

Patrick Evans, Host: because these paintings had been auctioned off.

Patrick Evans, Host: Correct? Somebody bought them thinking They, that is correct. Owned them. Free and clear. Not knowing they'd bought, they'd purchased stolen property.

Lou Schachter, Guest: That's correct. Okay. And so I could go to the auction house, but I wasn't sure that they would be cooperative. It wasn't necessarily in their interest.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah,

Lou Schachter, Guest: I could go to the FBI, but they'd have no idea who I was.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Um, what I decided to do was go to the head of the Harwood Museum. I just found an email address for the president of the Harwood Museum, and I contacted her. Tried to not make it too long an email, but also did not sound like a crazy person. And

Patrick Evans, Host: I know where your paintings are, lady.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Indeed they had, and it then took 18 months for the paintings to be returned. Oh my gosh. Because the FBI, I mean, it took the museum time to get its sort of documentation in order and make their formal request to the FBI and the FBI had to agree to do it. They had to go to the auction house, they had to get in touch with the buyers.

Patrick Evans, Host: What happens? When, when something like, how do you unravel that, uh, from auction house to buyer?

Patrick Evans, Host: I mean, obviously you don't want to own something that was stolen, you know that Right. But you paid money for it. Right. And it was like the, the question who is liable for X?

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. So I'm not a lawyer and I don't know this for sure, but I, I believe that auction houses have insurance. And so the buyers. My understanding is would've been able to recover from the auction house.

Lou Schachter, Guest: The auction house would've had to pay them for selling them stolen goods. Essentially the auction house would've recovered from its insurance company and their rates would've gone up.

Randy Florence, Host: Was there any, ever any insurance money paid out for those

Lou Schachter, Guest: losses? For the original thefts? Yeah. Yeah. In fact, there was, this is interesting too.

Patrick Evans, Host: They, their, their whole business was insuring these two paintings and they guys stole twice, so they paid out it. Like, this is like, now we gotta fold up short. This is a bad business. Was this the only, well, it obviously

Lou Schachter, Guest: wasn't very good at assessing rates for the Harwood.

Randy Florence, Host: True. You better do some looking around, had they ever had any other losses?

Randy Florence, Host: In. I don't believe they this believe No. Wow.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Mean there were, there are so many of these cases, I mean, I've looked at dozens of them. There are so many small institutions around the country. It's different now because technology is cheap. But at that time there were no cameras there. There was very little security in museums and especially small museums.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Hardly it, it seems. But now there's a lot of

Patrick Evans, Host: security. Now there's a time. So you're saying that Randy and I should not go on a. Art crime spree. That's not the way to get rich. I think it would be a great story for me. If you go down to the Palm Springs Art Museum,

Lou Schachter, Guest: I'm always looking for new stories.

Randy Florence, Host: So over the last. Five years maybe. It seems like there's been this proliferation of True Crime podcasts and um, but you were kind of early into all of this. Have you thought about shifting away from just exclusively writing?

Lou Schachter, Guest: I've thought about it, yeah, but you'll be happy to know you're not getting what you committing true crimes.

Lou Schachter, Guest: What? I'm not sure what,

Randy Florence, Host: well, I've got these two paintings, so I could have funded my podcast.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Um, I've thought a lot about it, but you'll be happy to know. I'm not going to create competition for you because I think there are enough podcasters in the world, but I also think, and there are enough true crime podcasters, but more importantly, this is the joy of being retired.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I know what I love to do and what I don't like to do, and I'm pretty fortunate that I can just do the things I like to do. What I like to do is write. I like to travel. I like to do research, but I also like to write. All of the things that you have to do to keep this podcast going are probably fun for you.

Randy Florence, Host: There was one a couple of weeks ago. Nah,

Patrick Evans, Host: uh. I believe I read that you're married, your husband? Yeah. Uh, does he travel with you sometimes? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sometimes. I mean, 'cause you seem like you're on the road a lot

Lou Schachter, Guest: doing

Patrick Evans, Host: this

Lou Schachter, Guest: research.

Lou Schachter, Guest: I am. Right, right. I mean, and he, he does trips too. We've always, we've been together a long time and we've always been fairly independent. So we travel together, we travel separately. I find these stories whenever I can. We're gonna be in New York soon. I'll be writing up some New York stories. Does he share your passion for true crime?

Lou Schachter, Guest: Uh, no. Probably not. Like most couples, you know, you get together with some of the opposite.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah. He does ask a lot of odd questions though, you know, on this fun story. How did this happen? Yeah.

Patrick Evans, Host: What is, uh, so you're gonna go to New York and you're gonna be doing Treat what's. You said they're all bizarre.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Well, I, I'll, I'll say this versus a caveat. There's certain kinds of crimes I generally don't cover, or I try to avoid covering them because I, I don't think my readers just want gruesome.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And then there are other people who will supply that, if that's what you want. I, I'm. More into the human nature aspect of the writing. And so I try not to do them, but I, I did recently do a story that is gruesome in its own way. Not bloody necessarily, but still gruesome. And, and that is after the New York Times did their story about me about a month or two ago.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And it left this sort of lingering Paul over the family that she still finds somewhat unresolved, I believe she's about my age. Um, so. I said, look, there's not much [00:48:00] chance I can do anything with this, but if you'll give me information about your grandmother and where she lived and all that, I'll look around.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And so the story she basically told was that someone had come into the home in the middle of the night. And, um, attacked her, possibly raped her, although that word was never used and, um, may have stolen a little bit of money, but not much. But it was traumatizing as you would imagine, for the grandmother, and then impacted the family for generations afterwards.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Both the shame around it and, and the mental, physical toll. But it, but also, you know, secrecy in families has a lot of problems associated with it as well. Secrecy is poisonous things. I completely agree. So. It didn't take me long to solve this crime. It turns out there was a serial rapist in that neighborhood at that time.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Um, most times he sexually assaulted her, um, and then took off with loads with some money and he was eventually caught and um, and went to prison for crimes. Came out, was being arrested for another crime when he tried to stab a detective and, uh, the detective's partner wound up shooting and killing him.

Speaker 6: what, so you provided her

Lou Schachter, Guest: some closure and that's what she said and what made the story work. I would never have covered a crime like that except for the wraparound story.

Lou Schachter, Guest: At which she graciously said she'd let me share. Again, I anonymized her name, but she, she herself is a really good writer and, and she had emailed me all of these things around her family and how they responded to this tragedy over time. And so the wraparound story was so good that I think it all worked.

Lou Schachter, Guest: But I mean, I, I do try to avoid that really gruesome stuff.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Uh, you know, no, but we'll see. I mean, people always say that, and I've lived in long in Los Angeles long enough to not take that talk too seriously.

Randy Florence, Host: I think there's some people in town we need to introduce him to.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah, we got a lot of producer and filmmakers and stuff in this town, I guess. Yeah, send

Lou Schachter, Guest: Send it to my blog actually, if they want. Yeah.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah. Soon as we tell 'em the McCallum was going down, everybody will be involved in that.

Patrick Evans, Host: associated with that no longer associated with the McCall? They're all gone, but I do, well at

Randy Florence, Host: least not using the same names. That's right.

Lou Schachter, Guest: But I do think you guys are gonna start asking your podcast guests to bring $2,000 with them.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Oh, a hundred percent. Starting with

Randy Florence, Host: you. And none of us are law enforcement, so it's okay. Yeah, that's right. And so what are you working on, John? John just

Patrick Evans, Host: looks like a cop.

Randy Florence, Host: Yeah.

Lou Schachter, Guest: These are essentially true crimes from the 1930s in Los Angeles that are just fascinating wild characters. Some of them have celebrities in them. Most of them are just oddball people, like the guy who tried to kill his wife with a rattlesnake. Um, things like that. Um, and that is on Lust for Power. Yes, it is.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Thanks very much. Yeah. Lust number four, power.com And the rest of the stuff is on True crime road trip.com. True crime road trip.com. Yep. There you go. And on that, um, in the fall, I will start sharing information. I mean, I don't sit out to solve crimes. Mostly what I do is cover crimes that once happen.

Randy Florence, Host: are, are you ever contacted by law enforcement? [00:52:00] As somebody who might be able to help them.

Randy Florence, Host: I don't think law enforcement works that way. No, I don't think. Well, but it seems like in some of these, uh, think I should be a psychic. Well, like the, the show Murder Only murders in this place or something like that. In the building. Yeah, the building Only murders in the building, whatever it's called in Palm Springs Convention Visitors Bureau.

Randy Florence, Host: Um. Th there is a part of that in which they're so good at figuring out what's going on and eventually the police are coming and saying, ah, I think that may only happen in television. Yeah. You think it was only Steve Martin let Steve Martin,

Lou Schachter, Guest: when I, even when I found the paintings at the har with the FBI never contacted me.

Patrick Evans, Host: So, but now you said you might be working with likely, so

Lou Schachter, Guest: you reach out to them. Um, now what's happened? First of all, because I solved the other crime, I have a little bit of credibility. I don't look like just a crazy member of the public. Number two, a retired FBI officer. Has been giving me some advice and so that's helping me understand better.

Lou Schachter, Guest: If I'm going to approach the FBI, here are the things I need to do to do them. So I haven't made a decision for sure yet, but I think that's what's gonna

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah.

Patrick Evans, Host: So there's no guy in la There's Lou again.

Patrick Evans, Host: Got a hot one. Right, right. Yeah. I'm sure there are people like that. Yeah. Look, this has been fascinating. I've loved it. Thanks so much for having me. Alright, and so, uh, you, you, we've given out the, the websites where you can find these and, and you write in short form mostly. Yeah. So all

Lou Schachter, Guest: of my stories are designed to be read under 10 minutes.

Patrick Evans, Host: Yeah. That's one of the things I, I found really interesting. But you were like, yeah, you can, you can just pick this up and, and in just a few minutes, get the whole story and, and move on. Which I think, uh, a lot of people, you know, we, we have much shorter attention spans these days. So it's, uh, I think that's really a fascinating way to work when you're a writer.

Patrick Evans, Host: 'cause a lot of people lean into the long form, but you definitely see the value in the

Lou Schachter, Guest: short form writing. Um, you know, you hear a lot out there about people reading less than they once did, and maybe they're reading fewer books than they once did. But what I've observed is people are reading more than ever.

Speaker 6: Yeah. And so

Lou Schachter, Guest: when I started doing this. I looked for a platform that would allow me to get my writing onto people's phones. And then once I was doing that, it didn't make sense to create really long texts. I, I want something that people can read at lunchtime, just take a break.

Lou Schachter, Guest: And so that's why I do this 10 minute nuggets.

Randy Florence, Host: Well, I have to tell you, you were referred to us by a gentleman who was the entertainment writer at the Desert Sun for. 40 years. Oh my gosh. And he had read an article in you Yeah. About you in the LA Times. The New York Times. The New York Times, yeah. And called me and said, oh, that's great.

Randy Florence, Host: You have to talk to this guy. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So,

Lou Schachter, Guest: yeah, I've gotten zero public coverage here. I, I haven't tried to get any. I'm sure I could, but, um, well, this won. So this, this will start. This was not it.

Patrick Evans, Host: Well, I would, I'll just, it's, I'd love to have you on eye on the desert. You've definitely, okay, great.

Randy Florence, Host: Are you familiar with his show? I on the desert? I'm not, it, it's, well, it's your show. Well, doesn't know about it, so the hell with

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah, we've actually had a home here since 1997, but we're here, we've been here full time for about five years.

Lou Schachter, Guest: Yeah.

Patrick Evans, Host: Yeah, it's one of the great places. Agreed. Yeah. Once you, once and once you get out here full time, it's so nice. I know.

Randy Florence, Host: Well, we've had some crime writers on, uh, Todd Goldberg. Todd, yeah. But he's a fiction, fiction, fiction writer. This is the first true crime writer, although I think

Patrick Evans, Host: he's covering up for a lot of crimes that he's committed

Randy Florence, Host: or other.

Randy Florence, Host: Didn't you get that sense from Todd family members or family members? That's true. It's, well, no, I didn't say that. Uh, I think Todd is awesome. I don't know anybody in his family who's ever done anything wrong. Love you, Todd.

Patrick Evans, Host: Alright, well you can find Lou's work and I recommend it. And Lou, thank you so much for spending your time with us today.

Patrick Evans, Host: Really appreciate it. Gentlemen, this, this is really a blast.

Randy Florence, Host: Thank you so much, Lou.

Patrick Evans, Host: All right, that wraps up this edition of Big Conversations Little Bar on behalf. Of my great co-host, Randy Florence, our great producer, John mcm. I guess. Welcome back

Randy Florence, Host: Howard.

Patrick Evans, Host: It's so nice to have. Was, is he okay? Did he need the money? Is that why he came back? Glad to have Howard back. We're glad to have you back as well. And you can subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Uh, big Conversations, little Bar. And again, our thanks to Skip Paige and his whole team here at Little Bar for making us feel comfortable at our home away from home.

Patrick Evans, Host: Once again, you're listening to Big Conversations Little Bar.