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[rock music playing]
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This is real. This is a robbery. Step away from your cages.
[man 1] He was the most prolific bank robber in the Pacific Northwest.
[woman 1] He keeps changing his disguises.
He seems like he's in a movie, robbing bank after bank.
[man 2] Three or four banks,
one right after the other in the same evening.
[woman 2] In the FBI, we like to give nicknames to bank robbers.
His moniker was "Hollywood."
Pretty fitting,
especially when we learned that he really was inspired
by Bodhi in Point Break.
Why be a servant to the law when you can be its master?
You wanna open the vault, or do you want me to do it?
[woman 2] He'd been successful for four years.
That's why he became our number one priority.
He was not a stupid bank robber.
[man 3] Hollywood was probably one of the most dangerous people
that I went up against,
because he was a true professional.
[man 2] He wanted to decimate the city of Seattle,
and it was not only doable, it was winnable.
They knew that this man got millions over the years.
They knew that he humiliated them.
[man 1] When he walked into the Lake City branch to rob us,
he walked right past his wanted poster.
Don't panic. This is a robbery. Step away from your counter.
[reporter 1] What happened here reads straight from a movie script.
[reporter 2] He wears heavy makeup, a wig...
[reporter 3] His co-star is this 9 mm. handgun.
[reporter 4] The most prolific bank robber in the country.
He's number one on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
[man 4] They could not figure out who this guy was,
and where he was gonna hit next.
[man 5] Was this guy some kind of a ghost?
How does he just slip away like that?
[rock music intensifies]
[music fades]
[suspenseful music playing]
Hollywood was a unique case for us in Seattle.
We knew from evidence
that he was familiar with security practices.
He knew how long he had before he had to get out of there.
He was a smart bank robber.
He became our number one priority
after I became the supervisor of our task force.
[intriguing music playing]
Shawn Johnson was the FBI agent that was the lead on the case.
He was like an encyclopedia on Hollywood.
He's number one as far as, uh, the amount of money
that any bank robber has taken.
Hollywood was a professional bank robber. He worked at it. He perfected his craft.
I think he was enjoying what he did.
I think money was part of it, but at that point in time,
it was just the, uh, adrenaline rush, the challenge.
[Ellen] When I assigned Mike to head up the Seattle Police response to it,
I knew that it would be an electric relationship.
[man 3] Shawn and I were night and day, oil and water, two different styles.
My partner at the time summed it up.
"Shawn Johnson was the fire, and Mike Magan was the can of gasoline."
I heard one description that I'm not sure if I agree with,
but I was the brains and he was the brawn.
Don't agree with that 100%,
but the brain part I agree with for myself.
[Mike] Ellen Glasser was a very talented supervisor
who believed in the "KISS" method: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
[Ellen] As one of the first women agents in the FBI,
to be able to be supervising
this violent crime squad and the task force
was such an awesome thing for me.
Not only was I in this badass job,
I also was blessed to have four young children,
and so sometimes I feel like I was two different people.
A lot of the guys called me Agent Mom.
[intriguing music playing]
[man 4] In the '90s, Seattle was a city in major transition.
[intriguing music continues]
You went from a two company town, Weyerhaeuser and Boeing,
to then you add Microsoft,
and then all the companies that came around Microsoft.
Bezos from Amazon.
Starbucks was growing like gangbusters.
There was a flood of money that came into Seattle.
It was amazing how many banks were popping up.
I didn't put two and two together at the time
that all the cash coming in from the tech boom was fueling this,
but you could find a bank in the grocery store.
You could find a bank just about every corner.
[reporter] In Washington state, the number of bank robberies is exploding.
I told my wife, "Don't go into a bank in Seattle."
Chances are it'll get robbed."
[reporter 1] Three men ran into the US Branch Bank in Woodinville
with a shotgun...
[reporter 2] A man enters the bank,
and usually passes a note to the teller demanding money.
[David] There were a lot of bank robberies.
I don't know that we did one every night, but we did a lot of them.
Let's go to Deborah Horne, who's at the scene with the latest.
That's right, David. Just a very few moments ago...
[woman 1] Seattle was an exciting place.
We were sort of coming into our own as a city,
certainly in terms of being well-known around the country.
We had Nirvana, so you have grunge.
[David] Grunge, to me, to a certain extent,
was that frustration that a lot of people were feeling
about changes that were coming to their communities.
[man 6] The whole grunge thing, it was so anti-corporate
and anti-brands and big-name and fame was all... [scoffs]
Nobody cared. Nobody wanted any of that shit.
People were literally anti-establishment for all the right reasons.
They hated all the oppression, they hated the colonialism,
they hated the attack on human rights and the environment.
And ripping off banks, if they're getting away with it?
People love that.
[reporter] He's robbed 14 banks in Seattle since, uh, June of 1992.
Wow! He's pretty clever. [chuckles]
Darn clever.
It's the ultimate F-you to the man.
- [woman] It's Mr. Hollywood. - [reporter] Hollywood, right.
We knew that there was a guy with a bunch of disguises
who was robbing banks, not hurting anybody.
No shots were fired.
Sounds very bold. [chuckles]
There may have been some rooting for him, and people talk about Robin Hood...
[Jimmy] The mystique of the bank robber goes back to the Robin Hood thing.
You steal from the rich and give to the poor.
Duh. How noble is that?
[Ellen] He was kind of legendary in terms of bank robbers.
[Mike] But in terms of who Hollywood was, we couldn't have been more wrong.
[birds chirping]
Hey, Bubba!
[man 7] Wow, a man with his shirt off.
Come on back!
[man 7] Let's go, boys. Come on.
- You still filming? - [man 7] We're filming this whole trip.
You gotta hold the camera steady.
[man 7] That's a little easier said than done, man.
As you can see, we're deep in the forest.
And there's not a whole lot of light.
[pensive music playing]
- Okay, Tarzan. What do you want to do? - Go up top.
- [man 7] Go up top? - Yeah.
[man 7] We're going into Scurlock's domain.
What's the elevation here, mate?
- [Scurlock] 75 feet. - [man 7] 75 feet above what?
[Scurlock] The floor of the cedars.
Down there.
[man 7] Tell us the story, mate.
How long did it take you? What's the deal here?
Took me about two weeks to build this whole thing.
- [man 7] Two weeks to build this. - Six stories.
Fifty-eight tons of wood.
Did a little work. Kind of ate breakfast before I did it.
[man 7 laughs] Okay.
Okay, no, it really took maybe... I don't know.
- Three or four months? - [man 7] Three or four months.
[tranquil music playing]
[woman 3] The Treehouse was a really amazing, amazing place.
A place you could go to get out of the norm of society.
[woman 4] The first time I went to the Treehouse, Scott answered the door.
He was stripped naked except his tool belt.
I'd never had anybody answer the door quite like that,
but I pretended that it was an everyday occurrence.
You'd see furniture, like you would in a normal house,
and you'd walk across the deck, and here was a toilet, here was a shower.
It was like a real bathroom,
except you had a wonderful outdoor experience.
[Elizabeth] It was built around seven trees and it was really well-made.
It was like cedar boards and picture windows.
It was an extravagant tree house.
There was a huge oven range,
and we carried this oven range up the stairs,
70 feet to the first floor.
[man 2] My brother was good friends with Scott,
and he said he'd hire me to come out and build his house.
And I said, "Yeah, why not?"
We did some of the most insane construction.
We would be hanging from ropes from our ankles
to be able to nail it and bolt it in place. And...
It was insanely dangerous.
All of it was dangerous, but we didn't care.
[gentle music playing]
The Treehouse was Scott's inner personality that came to life.
He was safe. It was his harbor. It was his anchor.
He was free from it all.
[Scott] I'm sitting at my desk, 40 feet in the trees.
The deck extends off the rim like a ballerina's tutu in full twirl.
It's wide enough in places to bake in the sun's rays,
and maybe catch a wink of sleep if you're not scared of rolling off.
[man 7] What's going on?
[Scott] I like just sitting on the edge, gazing across the trees at Mount Rainier.
[man 7] Talk to us.
[Scott] I get a feeling of subtle exhilaration.
I want a lot out of this life.
I think it will be a long search
before I find the place where God wants me.
My mind is like an undisciplined child that has gone wild.
I'll just have to catch it.
Everybody loved Scott. Everybody loved the Treehouse.
The two were connected.
We clicked right away when we first met in school
and we just both had a lot of energy, wild and free.
We'd like to drink beer.
Mark Biggins is an interesting character.
He and Scott went to Evergreen College together.
[Elizabeth] People that came to Evergreen were in some ways misfits.
Me included.
People are pretty progressive.
It wasn't like people taking crazy drugs and drinking and being crazy in that way.
It was very earthy.
Playing drums and taking mushrooms and sitting around fires.
It was also a very tight community.
[Mark] Fate just threw us together.
Scott was this wild and free guy.
Even more so than the other Evergreen students
who were considered wild and free.
Mark is just a really tender, gentle soul, you know?
He played guitar and wrote poetry.
But he was having a really hard time. He was struggling.
So I think Scotty really helped him out.
[Mark] I called him on the phone, and I said, "Man, my marriage is over."
"I don't know what I'm gonna do, where I'm gonna go."
And he says, "Well, get on up here! Move in with me."
[Steve] Mark Biggins was a big, gruff man.
He smoked Chesterfield straights. He probably did a pack or two packs a day.
He would knock bourbons down like it was no big deal.
That was the bond between him and Scott.
Biggins could drink Scott to hell.
[Mark] I lived at the Treehouse for many years. So did my daughter.
And perfect strangers would come knocking on the door
and they'd say, uh,
"Oh, we heard there's this really cool tree house on this property."
Or "Can we go see it?" And we'd have to turn them away.
I mean, it got so bad we actually built a gate across the driveway.
And the Treehouse was not built by Scott alone,
even though it's been quoted in many places,
but, uh, dozens of people worked on that place.
[woman 5] My brother Scott was never gonna be controlled
and he wanted to be free.
He was an adrenaline junkie. He loved doing daring things.
We're sitting at 60 feet up in the air at six stories and
this is the first time I've ever done this.
[laughter]
[Mark] So he's gonna do approximately a 100-foot climb upside down.
Anytime go, Rambo, Tarzan.
[Scott] Woo!
- Whoa! - [Mark] Oh! [laughs]
He just kept wanting to go higher and higher and higher
and he needed more and more and more.
[Mark] Right now, if he slipped he's gonna fall
60 feet to the ground.
[Scott] This is hard!
[Mark] I told you. This is a death act, my friend.
[Suzanne] He was, uh, an adventurer.
He loved the excitement of life, and wanted new things and new experiences.
But he made certain pivotal choices
that led him into directions he couldn't turn around and back out of.
[intriguing music playing]
[Scott] In my studies, I've gotten on the wrong track,
delving into areas not good for my spiritual growth.
A voice speaks loud and clear.
"Remember what you are here for."
I understand, but do not change course.
He was always in pursuit of something of his own world.
[Mark] When I first met him,
he was aspiring to get a degree in medicine,
but that fell by the wayside once he worked in the chemistry lab
and he saw an opportunity to make a lot of money.
Scott was the first person in my life I had ever known to produce crystal meth.
He would, at nighttime,
go up through the ceilings and crawl into the laboratory.
Scotty's professors discovered him. They kicked him off the campus.
Said, "Don't you ever, ever, ever, ever show your face here again."
He was smart enough to have been a doctor.
He was one course short of graduating in chemistry and biology.
He would have been pre-med.
But he didn't wanna be.
That was not who he was and he knew that.
And then he just continued right on down that road.
[Steve] This grew and grew and grew and he became so prolific,
and his product was so absolutely pure.
If you were ever to try his stuff,
I'm telling you, it was something unbelievable.
He did have a reputation for producing some of the finest substance, uh, around.
I never heard anybody say... say that somebody else's meth was better.
Scott's use of crystal meth was very moderate and controlled.
He just enjoyed it and it inspired him for creativity.
[Steve] As time went on, he bought a piece of property with a barn on it.
And so I went out there to renovate the barn.
In the loft of the barn, he had his whole laboratory set up.
Captain Pat was the front man. He was the finance man.
The only times they met were in the forest,
transferring product and money.
When Scott would bring 180 lb. to Captain Pat,
he would give him $2 million.
[Mark] Pat was the one who introduced Scott to the meth world.
The Captain, that was Pat's nickname.
He'd take it down to Barstow and sell it to the Hells Angels.
And then Scott would come back to the Treehouse
with these boxes full of $20 bills.
Scott and I would sit and count it out. We'd be up all night counting money.
But this got dangerous. I mean, really dangerous.
Captain Pat was murdered by some person who was trying to rob him
and he was murdered in his sleep.
Scott was devastated when he heard.
But that's what people do in that world, and he didn't want to be any part of it.
And that's when he quit.
[Alban] Crystal meth was his income, period.
And so when he quit distributing, he needed a new way to make money.
[Steve] At that time in the '90s,
Point Break was one of the big bank robbery movies.
[Bodhi] Little hand says it's time to rock and roll.
[Steve] Scott would watch films and see different things to get ideas from.
[Jimmy] Scott was down on banks and insurance companies.
It feels like everyone at the time was.
[Bodhi] On the floor, asshole.
The money's insured, so it's not worth dying for.
He was always wanting to find a way to beat the system.
- He's a real searcher. - What's he searching for?
[woman] The ride. The ultimate ride.
[Steve] What he liked about Point Break was the individualism of Bodhi
and his fearlessness toward life,
whether it was robbing banks or whether it was surfing on wild waves.
And so when he got out of the drug business,
that's when he said, "I'm gonna become a bank robber."
[Bodhi] Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,
and please don't forget to vote!
[tense music playing]
[Mark] The first bank we robbed,
we were just talking about it, kicking the idea around.
How would we do it? Could you do this and get away with it?
Scott told Mark before the robbery,
"Do not say anything. Just come in and keep people orderly."
"Okay, okay." He called him Boss. "Okay, boss."
[Mark] A friend of mine dropped us off a block away from the bank,
and she was supposed to meet us at this designated spot.
Our plan was to wait for a bank customer to arrive,
then use his car as a getaway car.
[Steve] Biggins puts his Ronald Reagan mask down.
Rock and roll!
[Mark] Scott went in first. He was gonna announce the robbery
and then I would come in and make sure that nobody left.
I was so freaked out.
Like, "I can't believe this is actually happening
and I'm actually doing this."
[Steve] Biggins has his gun in his hand
and he says, "Every motherfucker on the ground!"
Scott turns around and says, "Everybody stand up! Stand up!" [laughs]
Because he doesn't want anybody walking by to see people on the ground.
[Mark] I think Scott ordered everybody on the ground.
I think everybody was down when I walked into the bank.
If you've ever been in a car that you've lost control,
and it, you know, things slow down,
that's what happened to me in the bank.
Everything was in slow motion.
Finally, it was time to leave,
and Scott goes, "Mark, did you get the keys?"
He actually used my name.
I bent down and I said, "Sir, can I have your car keys?"
And the poor guy, he was really frightened.
It's a brand-new car and I couldn't hear that it had started.
[engine starts]
And as I was doing that, this other car pulls in.
Finally Scott goes, "I think the car's started."
"Put it in reverse. Let's get out of here."
We started driving through suburbia.
We get out at this designated spot and there's no van.
My friend panicked and went to point B. We had a backup.
And we end up running across this golf course.
We could hear police cars coming. There are sirens.
And there's my friend, parked where she's supposed to be.
[sirens wail]
That's the way it was. It was a comedy of errors.
I don't know how they didn't get caught, but they didn't.
[Mark] And then I started thinking
about all the possible clues we might have left behind.
We used Scott's van.
If anybody took down the license plate,
I thought, "Well, they're gonna show up any minute."
At one point, I sat up and said,
"I am never doing that again."
Scott goes, "Are you sure? Let's go do another one! Right now!" [laughs]
[Steve] After the robbery, Biggins got real scared and drove off to Montana.
But all of the failures inspired Scott to go deeper into it.
He realized he could handle the banks himself
as long as everything outside was controlled.
And that's why he came for me.
He was very scientific, analytical.
I was more improvising, artistic.
I had worked in sculpture throughout Europe, in Germany and Norway.
I didn't care about the banks themselves. It didn't matter.
"Great. Take 'em down."
"Take every last penny they have in the bank."
"That's no problem for me."
But I couldn't imagine doing it. I just thought, "This is... This is insane."
But it's Scott and he's convincing.
He said, "Man, this is the easiest thing. It's like taking candy from kids."
"There's millions to be made in this."
But, as we always said,
there is no school of training for bank robbers.
Doing what Scott and I did
is the most creative thing I've ever done in my life.
Much more than the art world.
Finding the perfect bank was a moment of exhilaration.
It's like finding a piece of marble that is perfect for some image
that I have that I want to sculpt.
I would sit on the street, close enough that I could observe it.
I'd write down the time of arrival of armored cars.
The deliveries were an important time of day
because that's when you've got the most money in the bank.
If it was summer, I would have my windows down
and I'd have Bach or jazz going on.
I'd be on the scanner all day, listening to the police calls.
[police radio chatter]
[Steve] And I would watch the patrols in that bank area
to know when they'd come. I would log down the times.
A number of the banks we did,
there was a very consistent patrol route
that the cops took at certain times of the day.
We learned these routes
so that five minutes after the cops left the area,
we knew it was time to hit the banks.
I spent months driving around the streets doing surveillance.
You can't get a jump on a bank going in with some stupid mask on.
It's ridiculous.
So I would prepare these prosthetics, like they do in Hollywood.
["Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazzarus playing]
What we wanted were just components, like a nose, a chin, cheeks.
["Goodbye Horses" continues]
He wore D.A.R.E. caps for two reasons.
The first thing people think of
is that he's probably a cop who wears a D.A.R.E. hat,
and also to smite the police.
'Cause it's like, "Here I am." You know what I mean? "Dare me."
♪ I see my hopes and dreams lying on the ground... ♪
[Steve] When I first saw him, he came back from the woods
and I just stood there frozen.
I go, "Oh my God Almighty. What in the fuck is this?"
I could look at it and there'd be no way you'd ever think this was Scott Scurlock.
♪ Goodbye horses... ♪
[Scott] I feel transformed in an eerie, magical way.
♪ I'm flying over... ♪
[Scott] I'm changing rapidly in this stage of my life.
♪ Goodbye horses... ♪
[Scott] I feel like a different person.
♪ I'm flying, flying, flying ♪
[tense music playing]
[Steve] The very first bank robbery that I did
was the same bank that he did with Mark six weeks earlier.
The important thing in taking down a bank
is that initial 15 seconds when nobody thinks anything's happening.
And he looked like a person that might have had a skin ailment.
So people would avoid looking at him.
[teller] How can I help you?
This is a robbery. Nobody move.
[Steve] He would pull the gun out casually.
Nobody in their right mind would ever say no to this man.
You two! Money in the bag. Everyone stay calm.
[police radio chattering]
[Steve] I was sitting with the scanner and the radio, and that was it.
There was never any risk on my part because I had my own alibi.
I had my own reason for being there, and I would never be caught,
unless of course I had to call him out of the bank.
And the beauty of all of this
was creating and developing one of these robberies
so that everything would work flawlessly, safely,
and that the actual outcome was what we wanted, which was the money.
We didn't talk the whole way.
When we got to the Treehouse and began counting the money,
it was just five or ten thousand dollars.
I go, "Man. This is ridiculous."
"Who wants to go to prison for this little bitty kibbles and bits?"
[tense music playing]
[Mike] In the early 1990s, I arrested my first bank robber,
and I thought, "Shit, this is like shooting fish in a pond."
I don't mean to say it in a braggadocios manner,
but within a period of five or six months,
I had cleared close to 80 cases, and it became very addictive.
I was subsequently assigned to the FBI's violent crime task force.
Hollywood flew under the radar
for the first couple of robberies because of the low take.
When a suspect gets on top of the counter and dances around
and tries to get command and control,
and you have to carjack an old man for his Cadillac,
it showed that these guys were bumbling idiots.
They probably started to ask themselves, "Hey, what are we doing wrong here?"
[Steve] I said, "Scott, I'm not gonna do this for 10, 15, 20 thousand dollars."
"It's stupid."
"We either do this right, and we either go for the vault,
or I don't do it anymore."
"I don't wanna be messed up in this nonsense."
He goes, "We can't do the vault 'cause I don't have enough information."
- So he hired Mustang. - [telephone rings]
Mustang was a special young woman. I've never quite met a woman like her.
[sultry music playing]
She was hired to work in the Seafirst Bank as a teller.
She got the manuals and she got all of the bank protocol
for teller stations, for the vaults, the armored car deliveries.
Once we had all the inside information from Mustang,
we knew we could do what we needed to do.
[funky music playing]
[Steve] We learned from the protocol what to say.
This is real. This is a robbery.
[Steve] There's certain terminology you use to the bankers,
and when they hear that terminology, they know you know what's going on.
Who's the vault teller?
[woman] That's me.
[Steve] This was the phenomenon of Scott.
He could control the lobby
and still deal with the vault at the same time.
[tense music playing]
[Scott] Quickly.
[tense music continues]
[Steve] He wants them to be calm.
"Go over there. Just open the vault."
"There's no problem. Don't worry. Everything will be fine."
"Just let me get in and get out."
[tense music continues]
[Steve] It's like he's going into this catacomb of fantasy.
[tense music continues]
Do you have another bag?
[police radio chatter]
[Scott] Everyone on the floor. Let's go!
[tense music continues]
[Steve] When we got home, we drove into the back of the studio.
I said, "How'd you do?" And he says, "Oh, man, it wasn't... Not good."
"It was another bad one." I go, "Oh, fuck me, man."
"What, are you kidding me?"
And we get in and he dumps out this big bag.
And it's just like... And I go, "Oh, man."
[tense music continues]
That was the biggest haul. It was the game changer.
Not only for us, but for the FBI.
[music fades]
I began with the FBI in 1987.
By the time of the Hollywood investigation,
I was the most experienced agent in the Seattle division
working bank robberies.
I'm trying to recall the cases I worked where somebody did what Hollywood did,
from doing teller drawers
to doing armed takeovers to doing vault takeovers.
I can't think of anyone else that took that route.
The Hollywood investigation was similar to a jigsaw puzzle.
We had little clues here, little clues here.
Starting to put the big picture together.
I think Hollywood was enjoying what he did.
First four robberies, he got more than the average bank robber.
But then he started going into the vaults.
Doing vault robberies on your own is very risky,
because you have no idea what's happening in the rest of the bank.
It's more exposure. It's more potential for alarms going off.
At that point in time, his level of sophistication went up.
The threat went up.
It was a challenge to him, and he wanted to challenge us.
But the big picture here was what?
It was, "Who is Hollywood? Who is Hollywood?"
- [man] All right. You ready? - Welcome to the Treehouse. Come right in.
[Suzanne] My parents were totally in awe of the Treehouse
because my dad loved building things.
[man laughs] This is going to be the dining room.
[Scott] Yup.
[Suzanne] It was one of the most remarkable edifices ever.
So they were in awe of who Scotty was and what he had done in that arena.
[wistful music playing]
We grew up in a loving household.
My father was a minister, a very well-loved minister.
My mother was a teacher of learning disabled children.
We were preacher's kids, and darn it, from a very young age,
we were gonna prove to everybody that we're not goody-two-shoes.
[man] Both of us were very adventurous. That's what made us friends.
He had a different quality, a fearlessness.
There were showroom houses all around Reston, Virginia.
We knew how to get into all of them.
Scotty and I both learned how to pick locks.
We did not learn to pick locks to steal anything.
We learned how to pick locks
so we could get to the other side of the door.
[wistful music continues]
[Suzanne] As he grew older into his teen years,
he became more and more and more secretive.
And we used to call him the master of disinformation
because he wouldn't outright lie to you,
but he would tell you something that you knew wasn't quite right
or he would leave something out.
When he first started to do crazy stuff,
one of the things he did, and I think he was 15, maybe 16,
was that he and this friend stole a car,
a van I believe, from a local day care center,
and drove it to the beach, and they got caught.
And I think that was a big break for my father,
because he realized with that event
that something had really gone south in Scotty.
[wistful music continues]
He grew up and didn't outgrow the behavior that we had as kids or adolescents.
He just sort of refined it and kept right on going.
[Steve] Everything with Scott was a stepping stone.
The Hawthorne Hills Bank was the opening of a new world for us.
Once you enter the vaults, you're on another level.
At this point,
when we would intentionally leave a vehicle for the cops,
we would make sure we hired a person,
either a woman or some guy that looked totally different from us,
maybe he'd be 6 ft. 3 in. and long, scraggly hair or whatever,
give him $1,000,
he would go purchase the car, drive it to me, and I would take it.
We sanitized them with mineral spirits.
We would get female hair and put that in the back seat.
Tried to make it always as confusing as possible.
Sometimes there were multiple roads
leading to the bank where police would be coming,
so we would hire somebody as a lookout.
My role, only two occasions I did, uh, was to be a point man.
He gave me a radio, told me to park here.
When you see the police coming, just say, "Mama's coming."
That's all you gotta do.
There was no hesitation on my part to help Scott out.
You know, it was just a thing among friends.
[Steve] One of Scott's main methodologies was to repeat robbing the same bank.
Nobody's gonna believe that you're gonna come right back
and do the same thing again within a few days.
The first thing we'd do, we'd dump all the money out
and then we would go through with ultraviolet lights
any money that looked like it might be marked.
New money was the most dangerous
'cause you have sequential serial numbers, so we would scatter those around.
We would lock up all of the equipment in military canisters
that we would bury in the ground.
Then we took the clothes back into the forest
and we had a pit where we burned everything.
After that, I had to go launder the money.
["I Want More" by Can playing]
Scott did a lot of sportsbook gambling.
And the laundering of the money, he thought of that.
That was his creation. It's an ingenious creation.
You place the same amount of money on both teams that are playing
at two different casinos,
and one of the teams is gonna win.
So you end up getting back all your money
except for what the house receives on the losing team,
which is 5%.
We weren't losing anything, really.
["I Want More" continues]
Scott did a lot with his money
and he just lived his life the way he wanted to live it.
["I Want More" continues]
Travel, seeing the world, meeting different people.
That's what he loved.
[Scott] I have been realizing lately the virtues of traveling alone.
All my wildest experiences have happened while I'm alone.
[T.J.] Scott was definitely a man of mystery.
He would disappear for a while.
One time I thought maybe he was CIA. Maybe he was a pot grower.
[Jimmy] I never really asked him what he did for money.
He must be a contractor. I don't know. That's why he was so handy building.
I found out that he was really interested in stopping the logging of the forest.
[Steve] He worked with Earth First,
and he would give donation money to these environmentalists.
And I said, "Why do you do that, Scott? Why waste money on these hippies?"
[Alban] Scott did view himself as a Robin Hood figure.
And I think it was, uh, evident in the way he acquired the money
and then also the way he dispersed it.
[Jimmy] In terms of him being a Robin Hood figure, I know that was true.
He gave money to me. He gave money to other people and other things.
I saw him give money away.
[Steve] He helped people.
They needed something, he'd give them a few thousand dollars for whatever.
He spread the money around.
[Mark] It's a funny relationship you have with money.
You didn't earn it. You stole it. You took it.
Spend it freely, and then go get more.
[Scott] Mmm, mmm.
[Steve] He wasn't Robin Hood.
If you look at Robin Hood, it was idealistic.
He stole from the rich and gave, you know, all of that nonsense.
And Scott wasn't like that.
He helped people that he knew
if he needed something in the future to be done,
he could call on them and they would do it.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Steve] Regardless of how successful it all was,
there's a certain point where you're challenging fate
and it doesn't always turn out the way you want it to turn out.
[suspenseful music continues]
One robbery we had to abort
because a customer recognized him as he was walking in.
I got the dispatch call, and I had to call him out.
[Steve on radio] We're out. Let's go, let's go.
[Steve] For the next one, as soon as he got in his getaway car,
the dye pack blew up and he threw that whole thing out.
[suspenseful music continues]
[tires screech]
We found the vehicle just blocks away from the bank.
I sat in that station wagon at the scene for a couple of minutes,
just absorbing that.
That was the closest I had come to him at that point in time,
sitting in that car waiting for the next robbery to happen.
We were able to trace it to previous owners.
Through that, we were able to develop composite sketches
of individuals who had bought cars.
[Ellen] We had a police profiler come in
and brief all of the people that were working on the case
who suggested that he might be a police officer.
We thought that because of the skill that he had when he was robbing banks.
There was suspicion that Detective Magan had
that Hollywood might be a police officer.
Shawn Johnson had the belief that Hollywood could be a police officer.
Did I believe he was a police officer? No.
I didn't buy that theory.
We definitely considered it,
and we thought that that made him more dangerous.
We wanted to get the word out so we could solve this case.
So we used the media,
and that was part of a very carefully laid-out plan.
We told you about a bank robber nicknamed Hollywood.
He's number one on the FBI's Most Wanted List.
[reporter] Disguises are the reason the FBI dubbed this man Hollywood.
He's successfully hit more than a dozen banks
in the past four years.
[David] It changed the story dramatically
when the FBI came out with this nickname of Hollywood,
because we knew that they were having a hard time tracking this guy,
and it seemed to be on a cycle.
Like every six months, a bank was being hit,
and it became, "Was this Hollywood again?"
[reporter] FBI agent Shawn Johnson's mission
is to find anyone who knows anything about Hollywood.
I think initially, we'll start off, uh, door-to-door,
half of us on one side, half on the other.
[David] You didn't usually see an FBI agent walk into a neighborhood
and say, "Can you tell me anything about this bank robbery?"
That was wild, to see an agent, you know, being so open.
Also a clue that they had no clue.
Maybe I wanted him to know that I was there, you know?
I was there too. So here's me on TV.
[mysterious music playing]
[Mike] Most suspects followed their media.
In fact, I think they actually loved it.
[Steve] The first time we heard about Hollywood
was from the two-page article with Shawn Johnson.
He was saying,
"Somebody out there knows who this man is and we need your help."
- [reporter 1] His nickname is Hollywood. - [reporter 2] Hollywood wears makeup...
[Steve] That name influenced him immensely.
I think it built him up even more.
I think it excited him,
without him saying it or acknowledging it, but I know his personality.
Deep inside, he was proud.
[Ellen] We thought he would rob again if he was getting so much attention.
[tense music playing]
[Steve] Each robbery was an opportunity to try something new.
For the getaways, we would try to figure out what the FBI would expect us to do,
and then we would just do the opposite.
For the bank we wanted to do, to get away,
you either go down Madison toward the police coming in,
or you have to go all around the lake.
So I said, "Why don't you get into the van and just stay there?"
"And I'll go to a restaurant,
and I'll sit and wait for the heat to go."
"When the police are gone, I'll get back out in my car,
and I'll radio you and let you know, uh, that it's clear to come out."
He had a van and we had it retrofitted so he could get under the floor.
So if they shined lights in there, they couldn't see him.
[tense music continues]
I told Scott, I said, "Man, this is gonna be big."
"I just had a dream last night."
"We're gonna have over a quarter of a million dollars
and you're gonna get out safely."
"It's not gonna be a problem."
[tense music continues]
[sirens wail]
[Steve] It was a good 45 minutes I was in the restaurant.
There was four or five cop cars out there,
and I could just look out the window
and see when it was dispersed and finished.
I arrive at the scene and I'm thinking,
"Is this guy some kind of a ghost? How does he just slip away like that?"
[tense music continues]
[Steve] One thing he discovered while he was in the van
was the condensation from his breathing.
If the police had been aware,
they would see that and think there was someone in there.
I went over to a wine shop across the street
and when I came out of the wine shop, they had all gone.
And I went to the car
and I got my radio out and I radioed Scott,
and I said, "Boss, let's go."
It was this cat and mouse game.
It was clear that police and law enforcement were frustrated.
They couldn't figure out who this person was.
[reporter 1] What everyone seems to remember
is how he orders people around and threatens to shoot them.
[reporter 2] FBI agents are frustrated
that Hollywood has been able to get away with so much for so long.
They fear that he will turn violent before he's caught.
[David] I think that's what changed the Hollywood story,
is that, until we started to hear from the tellers
who told these horrifying stories, he hadn't hurt anybody.
[tense music playing]
[Shawn] He got more desperate sometimes. He tried to get in the vault.
The vault tellers weren't there to let him in, he got real upset.
He said, "It's Christmas. I don't want to kill anybody,"
and used a stun gun on one of the employees.
So he was willing to use weapons.
I've seen people crying.
I mean, just very emotional, and you're trying to get to the point
where you calm them down a bit to... to talk to them, what happened.
It was unlike any robbery that any of them had ever gone through before.
[bank teller] We could not tell from one second to the next
what he was likely to do.
He was extremely threatening.
[Ellen] Bank robbery is not a victimless crime.
The people that are in the bank are traumatized,
tellers are traumatized.
When you have a gun pointed at your face, where people threaten to kill you,
these take a toll on human beings.
I've been robbed 14 times,
and one of those was the Hollywood bank robber.
He commanded this presence,
and he told everyone to freeze and everyone froze.
It's unusual for a robber to have that much control.
It doesn't ever leave you.
You can go on with your life, but it doesn't ever leave you. Ever.
[bank teller] There's got to be something more that we can do to stop these people.
Somebody's going to get hurt.
He thought that he was just having the greatest time,
living his best life.
But for him to think that he was gonna get away with this
was just a false premise.
[laughter]
[Steve] When you step into the world we were living,
you have no idea the toll it's gonna bring upon you.
It's impossible.
After so many years of bank robberies,
you are no longer the same person that you were before you began.
[Alban] Scott started to get stressed.
He was no longer the casual, happy-go-lucky person.
That person was gone.
[T.J.] The vibe around the Treehouse changed.
He became more closed off, and more isolated, and way less social.
[Steve] Scott had me live up at the front house
to keep people out of there.
More and more, his life was becoming secretive
and he needed to have people away.
He didn't want people around, seeing what he was doing.
[Mark] Once you do cross the Rubicon and start living that life,
you have to lie to everybody about everything.
Everybody you care about. Everybody you meet.
[Scott] I keep going in the wrong direction.
I start things and then stop before the great benefit can be gotten.
Many females have felt my no-follow-through.
Do I just want to want? Is that why I get no satisfaction?
I one time kidded with him when I'd observe him with certain women.
I'd say, "What do you do? Treat women like condiments? Give me a break."
[T.J.] Is he single or what? You got women in your bed?
[Scott] Things don't compute like they used to.
I usually feel free and secure about my plans in life,
but now I'm beginning to feel captured.
[T.J.] Cheers!
[Suzanne] He showed up at the door, "Gotta talk to you."
And as we're sitting there, he's sitting across from me
and he just starts to cry, like tears streaming down his face.
And he says, "Suze, I don't know what's going on."
"But when I look in the mirror, the face looking back at me isn't my own."
"What is that?"
I knew at that point he was really in trouble.
This light and dark tussle in him, he was losing the battle.
[Steve] He started drinking more and more and more to subdue the anxieties.
But Scott wanted one final act,
and that was three or four banks,
one right after the other in the same evening.
We get 10 to 15 million dollars and we call it a day.
I go about my business, you go about yours.
[tense music playing]
We had three banks figured out.
First, you hit a small bank, go in and get out,
and you don't care about the money.
You just care about diverting the police to that small bank.
Then you go back and hit a bigger bank.
Then by the time they get there, there's a third one.
I mean, what are they gonna do?
We wanted to decimate the city of Seattle,
and it was not only doable, it was winnable.
[tense music playing]
[Shawn] I was getting a bit frustrated during this investigation.
We had come up with a couple of getaway vehicles and such,
but it was getting close but not close enough.
I got tired of waiting, just reacting to his bank robberies.
I started digging back through the files,
back through the MO,
the time of day, the day of the week,
location of the banks, how much money he was taking.
I knew he had an ego.
That's why I knew he was gonna come back at some point in time.
I sat down and did the math,
figured out that he was going through approximately $21,000 a month.
So with that in mind,
I predicted that he was going to hit one of three days
the following year in January.
I knew that he would be back.
Certain locations I thought were likely targets.
It was a waiting game for them to come back,
and that we were in the right spot at the right time.
[Steve] After the last big robbery, we took a year off.
We were finally planning to take down three banks,
but we needed another person
because of the logistics of taking down these banks.
[Mark] After the first bank robbery,
I went right to Montana and was hiding out there
and then Scott showed up and drew me back into it.
Scott's been going into the banks by himself,
and he was having trouble with crowd control.
So he told me, "All you have to do is stand in the lobby."
"Make sure nobody leaves. That's all you gotta do."
[Shawn] A year had passed since I made those predictions
on three days in January that he was gonna hit.
- [police radio chattering] - So myself and a task force member
surveilled banks I figured were logical targets for Hollywood.
First day, nothing happens.
Second day, nothing happened.
The third day, I was out there waiting for him by myself.
[Steve] With Mark back, we decided to hit one bank,
just to get the feel of it, before we hit three.
[tense music playing]
[Mark] My second robbery was so different than the first.
More under control, went a lot smoother.
It was more like a job than an adventure.
[tense music continues]
[indistinct radio chatter]
[Shawn] I knew immediately based on the description,
"Oh shit, it's Hollywood."
He's hitting another bank a mile up from where I was waiting for him.
He came back just as I said. He came back the third day.
I was getting closer and I felt like, "I'm just a couple of minutes behind you."
"Not months, not weeks. Just a few minutes behind you now."
[tires screech]
[Shawn] I proceeded up to the bank. We had secured the scene.
I was the first follow-up person at the scene.
And I get to the bank and I'm looking at Shawn Johnson,
like, "How did you get here so fast?"
And I found out that he and FBI agents only
were running their own surveillance looking for Hollywood.
He cut everybody else out on the task force.
Other task force officers decided that what I was doing was crazy.
"He's not gonna come back. He's not gonna be here."
[Ellen] I remember how that kind of ramped up everybody's energy
to work this case,
'cause it had been some gap since his previous robbery.
[Mike] Everybody on the task force thought at that point
that something bad was definitely gonna happen.
And to Ellen's credit,
she saw that this case was spinning a little bit out of control,
and we needed to put an end to it.
[Ellen] Hollywood was kind of predictable
in terms of the times of day and where he would rob.
We hatched a plan to do surveillances,
hoping that one of our guys would be out on the street
when he robbed a bank.
We needed the Seattle Police Department. We needed their special patrol unit.
We needed aerial resources.
- We added extra FBI resources. - [camera clicks]
To get all of that in line was an absolutely Herculean effort.
So we made a commitment to bring all these resources together
for an indefinite period.
This was a time when one of the new techniques was ProNet.
It was using these electronic tracers that were attached to money.
They would shoot their signal to towers.
And so then you had to have a mechanism to follow the tags.
So we had to put 'em in a lot of police cars.
[Shawn] I had to go back again through the robberies to date
to find out logical targets that I would hit again
to put devices into the banks.
[Ellen] We put two of these electronic tracers in as many banks as we could.
[Mike] Everything revolved around time.
The more of these tracking devices that were in the vault,
the more time it allowed me to get there.
[Al Pacino] If it's between you and some poor bastard
whose wife you're gonna turn into a widow,
brother, you are going down.
[Mark] Scott and I had watched Heat, which was a pretty intense movie.
- [screaming] - [grunting]
[man] Don't move! Don't fucking move.
[Mark] The bank robbing scenes in that movie are spot-on.
And then the shootout just scared the bejesus out of us.
I remember Scott and I looking at each other, just going,
"Oh my goodness, what if that happened?"
And that was the game we were playing.
It was a real possibility, which put the fear of God into us.
Fear of our own mortality.
[dramatic music playing]
Throughout my time working on this case,
I always thought there was a great possibility
that someone could get hurt.
I've been close to other bank robberies before in the FBI
where colleagues of mine were killed
in a major shootout in Miami in 1986.
[reporter] In a firefight lasting over four minutes,
two special agents of the FBI were slain and five other agents were wounded.
We may not have known who Hollywood was,
but what we did know is that if we faced off with him in the street,
he would not go down without a fight.
[somber music playing]
[Steve] At some point in the middle of everything,
I had a very vivid dream.
I was crawling up a beach from the water
and a shark had just bitten both of my legs off.
[somber music continues]
[Steve] I took the dream as advice.
The advice was to get out of it.
I could sense that Scott felt that there was something looming.
We took hikes up in the Olympics. The Olympics were special to Scott.
That was our time of peace.
We cleared our mind of the city, of the chaos,
and we would go up there in nature and we'd challenge ourselves.
On the top of Mount Washington,
Scott said to me, "Listen. No matter what, let your own hand be the hand of fate,
and never let your enemy dictate your fate."
"You make sure you're in control of what you do with your life."
[Alban] One bank was not enough for Scott.
He wanted to do three banks.
I said, "You're nuts, man."
I talked to Steve and I told him,
"Listen, man. I think this guy is getting out of hand here."
"And I'm going to California and I suggest you come with me."
And he actually was thinking about it,
except he didn't want to let Scott down.
[Steve] With the final robbery, I knew I had to go through with it,
because something had to culminate. Something had to finalize itself.
The last time that I saw Scott,
I had this really bad dream.
The dream involved guns, a shootout.
It was in Seattle. People were running.
And I'm telling him this dream and he got all white.
He took a big breath and says, "You're probably not gonna see me again."
"I'm probably gonna go to the Seychelle Islands."
And I go, "Really?" I said, "You're gonna come back, right?"
He goes, "I don't think you're gonna see me again."
[somber music continues]
[Scott] I walk into the night and scream at God to make his message known to me.
God is not responding and I sense rejection.
It is a time of pain and anger and resentment.
Where the fuck do I go from here, oh great winged white horseman in my mind?
This will be the last entry for a long time.
[music fades]
[Steve] We prepared for years to rob these banks.
And about two weeks before Thanksgiving,
Scott said there's good news and bad news.
The bad news is that they now have ProNet tags in the vault money.
There is no way to beat the tags in time to do our original plan.
So we had to abandon the multiple banks scenario.
[tense music playing]
The good news is, we take this bank up on 125th Street.
Mustang told us that there should be
five to seven million dollars within the bank.
So our whole game plan changed.
But the tracers we had to figure out, and we had to figure out quickly.
We did a bank just to see how we had to deal with it.
We de-disguised Scott into a ski mask.
We didn't want them to think it was Hollywood taking out the tracers.
And I said, "Listen, just go in there. Don't even fuck around with the tellers."
"Go into the vault, get the money,
and when you come out, we'll have the tracers."
"Then we'll find out how they're planted in the money."
All of these tags were put between $20 bills,
because you can fan it, you can feel this lump.
In a very short time, we got two that we discarded out the window.
And then after all of that,
we both felt comfortable and confident that we could actually do it.
[tense music playing]
[Shawn] I woke up the morning of Thanksgiving Eve 1996.
My wife says to me that morning before I leave, "This is the day."
"This is the day. You're catching Hollywood today."
And I'm thinking, "Well, yeah, I... I don't know about that."
[Mike] Thanksgiving week was always a short week
and most of the people aren't even in the office.
[Steve] We wake up Thanksgiving Eve.
We look out the windows. The rain was pounding.
It was gray and dark. It was beautiful. Wonderful.
Perfect day for what we were doing.
[tense music continues]
I'm in there cleaning, setting things up, making it perfect.
[Mark] We go to the makeup room
and we put on the prosthetic pieces and the wigs,
and there wasn't really a lot said.
[Steve] I walk into the studio. Scott has the guitar case out.
He has his assault rifle out. He has the shotgun out.
[Mark] The idea was that if a cop car came up on us,
we would grab the shotty, jump out, and shoot out the engine,
and disable the cop car.
[Steve] Everything was finalized.
We were ready to get in the van and take off for Seattle.
We had Mustang as a lookout on the hill.
It's time to do it.
[music fades]
We had been trained specifically on the Hollywood Bandit.
And when he walked into the Lake City branch to rob us,
he walked right past his wanted poster.
Don't panic. This is a robbery.
[Steve] Scott walks in first, sets the motion of getting everybody in place,
and then Mark comes in,
and he starts directing the patrons in there.
[Mark] You're not even afraid.
You've rehearsed it in your mind and you've done it before,
and so you do it.
My worst nightmare. Not one Hollywood, but two, walk through the door.
And shit just hit the fan.
So I started pulling up the bill trap, which sets off an alarm.
Who's the vault teller?
So I said, "Well, that's me."
So we both went back,
and the vault can open with a special duress combination
that activated another alarm.
[tense music playing]
I wanted every fucking law enforcement agency in Seattle there,
and there as quick as possible.
[Mike] The office was a ghost town. Nobody was there. Lights were out.
[Ellen] I'm at my desk, just trying to tie up some loose ends.
[Mike] We're monitoring the Seattle police radio
when the tones go out.
And you hear this beep, beep, beep.
They're in there for two minutes, three minutes, five minutes.
I don't hear anything from Mustang. Everything is cool.
And then finally I get the radio.
[dispatch] We have two suspects who entered the bank with hats on.
Long green coats,
wearing white pancake style makeup on their faces.
[Scott Levine] I hear someone calling in over a radio, "You've been seen."
- He was not calm. - Get in here. Help!
[Scott Levine] He was angry. He wanted in, he wanted out.
He meant business.
[Scott] Let's go, let's go, let's go!
[Scott Levine] I dumped the ProNet into the bag.
As he has a gun aimed at me,
I'm thinking, "Is he gonna come back and shoot me?"
[keys tapping]
Mike runs by and he says,
"A bank's been hit. I think it's Hollywood."
[Mike] We ran to the car, turn on the lights,
turned on the siren and took off down Second Avenue.
[Shawn] I leave my office about five o'clock,
thinking the day's over with.
I walk into the kitchen of my house, my pager goes off.
I looked down. It was Hollywood.
[Mark] Scott was in the vault for a little too long, I thought.
But then here he comes bounding out of that area,
and he had this great big duffle bag, which I took immediately.
I'm grabbing the 1,080,000 in this duffle bag.
[tense music playing]
- [sirens wailing] - By this point, we can hear the sirens.
And that's when we noticed that there were cops everywhere.
Thick as flies.
[sirens continue wailing]
[Steve] Scott yells, "Steve, maybe we should just abort right now."
"Let's just quit."
I say, "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Let's go! Get this shit done. Get these tracers out."
I was driving that fucking car like it was stolen.
We were getting updates constantly from the chief dispatcher.
Two suspects armed with handguns,
but I'm trying to focus on the tracking devices that left the bank.
[Mike] Do we have any signs going at all at this time?
[dispatch] Wedgwood and Lake City are both hot.
[Shawn] I'm following this tracking device.
It's hitting different areas of the city,
different antennas, hot and cold, hot and cold.
I'm trying to follow that signal.
Finally Scott yelled out, "I got one!"
He gave me two $20 bills
that were glued together with the ProNet tag,
and I threw it out the window and kept going down the street.
[Mike] An officer pops up on the radio and says,
"I'm starting to get a real strong indication here."
I roll up on the scene
and found on the street the tracking device discarded.
And immediately, I said, "Oh, shit."
But I knew there's one more tracking unit still out there.
They were back there working. I said, "Biggins, straighten your mind up."
"Get the fucking shit going. Don't be afraid. Just get it done."
[Mark] It was such a panic with all the police out buzzing around.
We knew that they were hunting us.
We had taken $1,080,000 out of the bank
and it was too difficult to find the tracking devices.
[sirens wailing]
All of a sudden my display lights up and goes, "Poof!" It's game day. Showtime.
[dramatic music playing]
[Steve] Scott said, "Pull over. I want to drive. I know better where...'
I said, "I know where I'm going. Just do what you gotta do."
And he was stubborn.
[Scott] Get over here!
[Steve] And I finally said, "Okay," and I looked behind my driver's seat,
and there was this pile of money.
And they didn't have any order to what they were doing,
and I go, "Oh my God. Oh my fucking God."
[Scott] Just drive! What are you doing? Let's go!
I'm still a ways back. I need to get there.
It's my case. I need to be there.
[Mike] I'm listening to the tone and it's going, "Eeee."
And I'm following the display
and it's guiding me in towards this white van.
And I shut off all my lights
and I'm just following the display
right towards the rear end of this Chevy van.
I could see there was condensation on the back windows.
[Ellen] And we could see lights through the back window.
It looked very odd.
So we knew they were scouring through the money.
I said, "Radio, we're gonna be doing a felony car stop."
[Mike] We're gonna have to do a felony stop here.
I'd like to have more units.
[Steve] And so Scott, as he pulls up, we're on a little knoll,
he pulled up to the street to turn left.
And as he turned left, I saw the cop cars.
Three cop cars behind us.
[Mike] The van coasted to a stop against the curb.
As I was getting out of the car and drawing my pistol and going on target,
I realized that the suspect was already out of the van.
The police have always said we shot first. It didn't happen that way.
They were the ones that ambushed us and began shooting at us.
Meyers' mouth is moving again, so he's obviously lying.
Let me tell you this. Let me tell you this.
I could see, along the driver's side door, a silhouette,
and it was dark, but I could see they had a rifle.
And I saw the rifle come down on me.
[Ellen] I didn't see it.
I... I could only see through the front windshield.
So I never saw anybody get out of the van.
[Steve] The reason for those guns wasn't to have a shootout with the cops.
It was to disarm the vehicle.
No. That rifle was pointed right at me.
Everything that I was taught was kicking in.
He went down to take aim at me,
and I thought, "Oh, shit."
And for some reason the rifle was not firing.
And then, "click, click, click." Three clicks.
I go, "Oh my God."
Suddenly the cops started shooting into the back of the van.
I could tell my rounds were going through the back door.
[Mark] All I remember is getting hit by a bullet, and getting knocked over.
Suddenly, my left arm just starts flying in front of my face.
"They fucking shot my arm off! They fucking shot my arm off!"
I'm screaming.
And then a little bit further up, Scott stops again and gets a shotgun.
When we get to that second location, a firefight really ensues.
As I was getting out of the car to draw down on the van again,
I heard three of the loudest booms.
[gunshots]
[Ellen] There are bullets whizzing by my head.
All I could see was glass breaking.
I didn't have my body armor, and I am in the middle of a shitstorm.
I'm trying to communicate with the FBI office.
I'm telling 'em, "Shots fired."
[Mike] The van takes off again.
[Steve] My left arm is just floating in the air.
Biggins is shot in the abdomen.
Blood everywhere.
And then suddenly the van comes to a thud. Boom.
[van crashes]
As I lay in the back of the van, Scott runs off.
I'm thinking, "This is what we always spoke about."
We were all in this on our own.
[Mike] As I was running towards the vehicle,
I'm seeing a silhouette of a body running south in an alley.
[Steve] The wipers were going, it was still in gear,
and Biggins is not saying a word,
so I don't know if he's alive or if he's dead.
And Scott's gone
and all I could hear were all the cops yelling,
"He's gone. He's running over there."
"Shoot that motherfucker! Kill him! Kill him!"
I went to the alley and I... I stopped.
I thought, "Don't go down this alley. This is what we call the Fatal Funnel.
At that point I realized I should back off and go back to the van
where other officers had two suspects down.
And I saw this white male down on the ground handcuffed.
I said, "Who are you? Are you Hollywood?"
And he says, "No. He ran down the alley."
I said, "Shoot me, son of a bitch. You were doing it a minute ago."
"Just shoot me. Kill me, get it over with."
He said, "Don't worry about it. The courts will take care of your ass."
When he told me to shoot him, I said, "No. You're not getting out of this one."
"We beat you at your game."
[Steve] I didn't want to go to prison.
I mean, at that point nothing mattered. Life was over as far as I was concerned.
And suddenly, the fear and the pain and all that goes away,
and I looked in the van and I saw this pile of money
and all the bullet holes that the cops put in the van
were like laser beams of light.
And suddenly, this beautiful divine music came into my head.
I'd never heard earthly music like it.
And the money became almost like this talisman of...
"What is it? It's a bunch of paper. Who gives a shit?"
"Who does what people do
for this stupid stuff that has no meaning, really?"
[ethereal music playing]
[Mike] The Fire Department was at the scene treating Biggins,
and he was motionless like he was dead on the ground.
As I was looking at him, the firefighter looked up at me and he went...
He gave me a thumbs down. I thought, "Oh, shit. I just killed somebody."
I took a deep breath and I said to myself, "This is something I never thought about."
I'd been in one previous shooting, but I was not in a shooting like this.
This was a shootout.
[Mark] Outside of the van, I was in and out of consciousness.
I remember Mike Magan opening one of my eyelids,
checking to see if I was living or dead.
I remembered having a sense of relief that it's finally over.
I can let it go now. I don't have to live like this anymore.
[reporter 1] The two men who were shot were taken into custody
and then taken to the hospital.
One man remains at large.
[reporter 2] Dozens of officers, FBI agents, K-9 units,
even the SWAT team were called in to look for the fugitive.
Especially if somebody's still on the loose, that's a scary thing.
They could be anywhere.
[Shawn] I follow the ambulance down to Harborview Hospital.
I would deal with the crime scene later. I need to talk to Steve
and find out who else we were looking for that night.
This is it. I'm not putting up with this anymore. This has gotta be the closure.
[Steve] In the waiting room in the hospital,
Shawn Johnson asked me questions.
And if you can imagine me being shot up and I'm in a situation, here we are,
Scott's on the loose, I don't know if he's dead or alive,
Biggins might die.
Your mind is not clear.
So I'm trying to protect myself.
After two hours, Steve Meyers finally tells me
that the person I'm looking for is Scott Scurlock.
He said Scott Scurlock is Hollywood.
[dispatch] Seattle Police and Fire 19.
[man] Yeah, I know they're doing a search in our neighborhood.
- [dispatch] Yeah. - [man] Somebody just pounded on our door.
[woman 1] There is a canoe with a tarp over it.
[dispatch] Uh-huh.
[woman 1] I don't know if anybody should check it.
[woman 2] I didn't see anybody, but I'm thinking that, um, under my deck
would be a good hiding place.
I keep hearing that the officers are going door-to-door
throughout the night and throughout the day,
trying to find some lead.
Nothing is turning up.
[woman 3] I'm just wondering, in my area there's police all over and helicopters...
[dispatch] Right, you need to stay inside, ma'am,
and, uh, try not to tie up the emergency lines with calls.
When I learned that Hollywood had escaped,
I was angered because so much work had gone in to try to apprehend him.
The only word that kept coming to my mind is, "Fuck. Really?"
Hollywood was right there. How did he get away?
[suspenseful music playing]
[Mike] For the next several hours, I was walking around with nervous energy
when my pager went off.
[man] I think that bank robber might be hiding in my camper in the backyard.
[dispatch] And what makes you think that?
[man] I saw somebody's in there and it's all locked up
and nobody's supposed to be in there.
It was my old partner and he said to me,
"They have your suspect cornered right near the shooting scene."
[dispatch] Could you tell if it was male or female?
[man] No, I just saw some dark hair.
- [dispatch] Okay. How long ago? - [man] I just came in, right now.
[Mike] The officers are dispatched to the camper.
They're pounding on the camper, trying to see who's inside.
So they bust the window and spray in pepper spray.
And a moment later they hear a single gunshot.
[gunshot]
[Mike] The officers fire back into the camper.
- [gunshots] - [smashing glass]
I was told that 76 rounds had been fired into the camper
by officers who were at the scene.
[David] Good evening.
Thanksgiving has been interrupted for dozens of families.
It's a police standoff,
and the suspect may be the bank robber known as Hollywood.
[reporter] Right now, Hollywood the bank robber,
one of the luckiest, most prolific in the country,
looks like his luck has run out.
[tense music playing]
[Mike] As I was arriving,
Seattle police was getting there simultaneously
with their armored vehicles and setting up a command post.
[Shawn] We had helicopters. We had armored vehicles.
There were probably a couple of hundred law enforcement officers there that day.
I'd never seen such a huge response.
This is Thanksgiving Day.
The whole city is at home with their families
and able to watch what's happening on TV.
Not only does the entire neighborhood come out,
but if you live near that neighborhood, you come out.
People come to see what is happening,
especially when something that's almost like a movie
is so close to their homes.
[David] I mean, a quiet North Seattle neighborhood,
and you have hundreds of police, the SWAT team.
All this happening on Thanksgiving.
A Thanksgiving that nobody's going to forget.
Our last of our guests were leaving
and I got a call from my Aunt Helen who lives in Seattle,
and she was hysterical.
[reporter] Our top story...
[Suzanne] It was all over the Seattle news that there was this police shootout
with this bandit named Scott Scurlock,
and there's a SWAT team around this little trailer
in this lady's backyard.
And then I, at that point, sat down
and just said... [exhales] "Whoa. Whoa."
It was just so mind-blowing
to find out that he's been robbing banks for five years.
[reporter 1] People are out of their homes,
their Thanksgiving disrupted by this, uh, police manhunt
that has been going on now
for more than 24 hours in this neighborhood.
[reporter 2] Police and FBI agents have been in standoff mode,
guns drawn, and negotiators in place.
[David] The standoff is still underway.
We know that shots have been fired.
They've been banging on the door. They've tried to contact him. They can't.
They wanted this to end in the way they wanted it to end.
They weren't gonna take any chances.
[Shawn] And after two hours of no response we decided to make entry into the camper.
[tense music playing]
[Shawn] I walk in with the Tactical Team.
We found a body underneath the table.
I had a picture with me. I look down.
[tense music continues]
Scott.
At that point, I knew that it was... We had him.
And turned out that he had killed himself.
That first shot the officers heard was him killing himself.
[reporter] Good evening.
A suspected bank robber who died yesterday during a standoff with police
apparently killed himself.
[David] Scott Scurlock, who police dubbed Hollywood,
was found dead in a camper last night...
[Steve] I woke up the next morning in the hospital and the TV was going
and the news was carpeted with us,
and my name and Scott Scurlock from Olympia, Washington, deceased.
A self-inflicted wound.
And, uh, I kind of looked and I just go...
"Thank God," you know. I just said, "Thank God."
The shootout was the end.
Not only the end of our endeavors, but the end of a certain life that I had.
We were like two comets that came together
and we met up and we started flying through the fucking universe
and suddenly, boom! It's all busted up in one second.
It's gone.
[Ellen] I feel like this episode tested me in every possible way.
I was thinking about my kids when the shooting started,
and wondering, you know, am I doing the right thing
by doing this job when there's a lot of other jobs
I could be doing in the FBI?
[somber music playing]
[Mike] A day doesn't go by where you don't think about it.
My only question to him would probably be, "Why did you take your life?"
And I'll quote Mark Twain,
and Mark Twain said that he would never wish death upon a man,
but he's read some obituaries with great pleasure.
[Shawn] The major regret I have in this investigation
is the fact I never got to sit down with Scott
and talk to him face-to-face, man-to-man.
If I had been in the vehicle that night, in front of that pursuit line,
would I have done what Mike did, shoot into the back of that van? No.
There's always another day to catch him. Seriously, there's always another day.
[somber music continues]
[camera clicking]
[Suzanne] It was heartbreaking for the whole family.
It was almost like a... like a double whammy of... of,
"Whoa. He was doing what? He ended up here?"
My father adored Scott and was heartbroken.
Not only that we lost him. We also lost who we thought he was.
[Scott's father] I miss being able to love him.
I miss being loved by him.
And he really genuinely loved me.
I don't think there's any question about that at all.
And I loved him dearly. No matter what he was like.
The number of secrets he had about the life he had been leading
were so huge
that if he had walked out of that trailer, put his hands in the air, and surrendered,
he would have had to have faced his entire world.
And I honestly believe that the last decade of his life,
he was making choices that he knew were gonna come down to a dead end.
[Steven] I received a call.
"Scotty's died. He died in a bank robbery."
My mind immediately went into,
"He was trying to stop the bank robbery. He was being the hero."
And so I asked the question. "Well, how did he die in the bank robbery?"
And the answer came back that he was the bank robber.
It felt like my heart and my brain exploded.
[Steve] When I was in prison, Mustang visited me four or five times.
She would always come on the anniversary, the day before Thanksgiving.
She'd always think of Scott.
And I got a letter from her sister, said that she'd committed suicide.
She just couldn't bear the fact that all that she'd been involved with
over the years with Scott and me,
and that suddenly he's dead and I'm in prison for all these years,
and that she is walking free.
It's like, she's not walking free in her own soul.
I don't think she believed she was walking free.
[T.J.] Steve Meyers, who used to go to Shakespeare plays
with my husband and I.
He's going to prison.
We have Mark Biggins.
Sensitive guy. Poet, guitar player.
He's going to prison. Blows my mind.
People always say, "Oh, you knew the guy in the Treehouse?"
"You knew Hollywood?" I'd go, "Hey, I didn't know Hollywood."
"I knew Scott Scurlock."
[Mark] Scott and I had several discussions about,
"What are you gonna do if we get caught?"
And he would always, always say,
"I'm not going to prison. I'm gonna head for the white light."
I've read the victim impact statements
and some bank tellers and some customers in the bank were... were truly traumatized
by the... the whole experience, and that I regret sincerely.
[somber music continues]
[T.J.] Scott had a T-shirt that said "Live Free or Die."
And I think he spent a lot of years figuring out how to live free.
But in the end,
he died and he wasn't free.
[Steve] After his death,
the Treehouse died within a year, a year and a half.
It crumbled and fell.
I mean, this tree house and Scott were one soul, inseparable.
And Scott's death was its death.
And it had to be that way.
[Mark] After being released from prison, I went back to the Treehouse.
It looked like a shipwreck.
It was just a pile of timber.
And I took some of Scott's ashes and spread them and said goodbye, finally.
[Scott] I have just finished reading my whole diary
and it seems like a thing of the past.
I feel like a completely different person.
So many things have happened to me
that there's no way I could write them all down.
My mind seems to be farther than my body from the earth below.
I feel excited but scared.
It is a time of new beginnings.
[soft rock music playing]
[music fades]