Johnny Ramensky: the Gentleman Safecracker

0:00Pam, are you here to game with me? In a minute, Ryan, but first, it's time to share what's happening on the 10 news podcast. The 10 news is a kids news podcast for curious 8-12-year-olds that even grown-ups can learn from. What else is there to say? That we cover everything from the Supreme Court and the warn Ukraine to Pokemon and Minecraft, and we'll always tell you 10 things you need to know. And we're available wherever you get your podcasts. Is it game time now, Pam? It's game time, Ryan. Let's go! It takes a special skill to be a burglar and a safe cracker, at least one that wiggles their way through skylights and across rooftops. It takes even more skill to escape from prison half a dozen times, and a whole lot of charisma to become a folk here while doing it. Oh, and why not fight some Nazis while you're at it? This is the story of the infamous safe cracker, gentlemen, Johnny Ereminensky. Hello and welcome to History Dispatches.

1:01My name is Matt, I'm here with my son McKinley. Hello, how are you doing today, Dad? I'm doing good. You're across town. Yeah, we're across town, so I was just going to say today we are doing a Zoom episode. We have recorded the other day and due to circumstances, mainly user error on my son's part. We were not able to record all of our episodes. And so we got together a few days later and did this one over Zoom. It's just to keep up the schedule. So if you do notice a little bit of sound differences, that's because we're chatting over our Zoom call right here. And you can blame me. Yeah, so today we are going to talk about a famous safe cracker. And I know nothing about this one. I was excited just to hear the opening thing that he's not just a safe cracker and folk here. Oh, he's a Nazi fighter. So McKinley, you take it away. Yes, I had never heard of this guy either until Ian sent this in. It's been on my list for a while and I haven't done a good criminal in a while. I do enjoy a good crime once in a blue moon.

2:02Our hero today is a guy named Jonas Ramanowskis, better known as Johnny Remanenski. He was born in 1905, 1906 in Scotland to Lithuanian immigrants. His father worked in the clay pits of the area and he grew up around explosives and it was tough life. It's tough to be a minor in any age, any profession, but 1905 can't imagine safety precautions are very high or work hours very regulated. And meanwhile, Lithuanian immigrants were detested by the scots of the area. Many saw them as strikebreakers because they would work for lower wages. And mine work was exceedingly tough as you can imagine. Accidents killed numerous workers. And I couldn't track down if our subject of today's father died while in the mine, but he died when Johnny was just eight years old. Jonas Ramanowskis, there's several other spelling variations, but at some point when he was a youth, he started going by John Ramanenski or John Ramsey.

3:04It was very, very common for centuries to localize your name. And I don't think he was particularly proud of his Lithuanian heritage, so he wanted to be more Scottish as it were. He was a bit of a wild child to say the least. Without any sort of father figure and his mother died just a few years later, he basically had no one to raise him. And so the streets are what raised him. And very early on, he started committing crimes. What crimes did he commit? Well, burglary. He was an exceptionally talented burglary because he was extraordinarily athletic. He could climb and jump and wiggle and worm like nobody's business and became a very, very good cat burglary. He could get into a three-story window up a drain pipe that anyone else would look at and say, no. During his youth, though, what you'll learn about Johnny is that he's a really good thief, but he's not always the best at not getting caught.

4:05It seems as though because he just commits a lot of crime. So if I sheer volume, eventually the police will catch you. And eventually, Remanensky was caught and spent some time in what the UK calls Borestal or in the United States. We know it as Juvie and spent three years there from the age of 15, 16 or so until about 18. But rather than reforming the young man, it only increased his drive. He got out and became an even better criminal than when he started. He did get a job as a coal miner. As you can imagine, coal mining is not high paying unless you're very creative. And in his case, that creativity came from his ability to get comfortable around explosives. Possibly smuggle them out, though I'm not sure about that. Because soon enough, he returned to his criminal ways. This time, he used his high degree of athleticism and gymnastic skills to get into places that no one thought plausible, such as through skylights and the like. But instead of just burglary, he went for big things and that was safe.

5:09His specialty was safe cracking. Largely thanks to his use of explosives. So not safe cracking, safe blowing up. Exactly. He would blow them up and loop the contents two ways from Sunday. And no safe was safe from Johnny Remanensky. However, this whole time, he was known as a gentleman bandit, a classic archetype. He never resorted to violence. He never fought. And on several occasions, actually alerted authorities to unexploded ordinance at a job site in order to make sure that no one got hurt. He genuinely seems to have not wanted to hurt people. He was just a thief. At this point, he is raiding homes. But later on the line, he switches to just raiding businesses. Because partially, I think there's more money there. But also, he didn't like to hurt people. In any case, though, the police tried to stop him. You can imagine that a guy sneaking in through skylights and blowing up safes causes quite a start. And so they put their sights on him.

6:11But because of his polite nature, the authorities nicknamed him gentleman Johnny. And it took until 1925 for them to pin him down. So several years of safe cracking before they were able to actually catch him. And despite dozens of crimes, he was only given 18 months. A lot of that thanks to his genial nature. And he just didn't seem like a bad guy. And so they said, well, all right. I don't know if this is taken from his first arrest in 1925 or from a later one. By the way, it's indicative of his character. Upon being taken into custody and put in jail, the next morning, the police found all the bricks connecting his cell to the neighboring one, removed, and he had climbed his way through there. Now, the cell next to him was locked so he couldn't get anywhere. But apparently the police just kind of shrugged and said, that's Johnny for you, resourceful and driven. He could do whatever he wanted. Upon being released from prison from that 18-month stint,

7:11he did marry a woman named Margaret. However, this did not keep him away from his criminal career. I saw some speculation that maybe she thought she could reform him, but that was not the case because he lived for the crime. He lived for the thrill of it. This is when he started tackling businesses, including banks in the like, so not just Joe Shmo office building, but legit places that would have been exceedingly hard to get into. Post offices were a common target of his as well. And his favorite tactic was sneaking in through the skylight. However, he wasn't perfect, and I like that we have this anecdote. One time, he accidentally blew up a fridge. I don't know how that happened, but either way, he nevertheless was a very good thief and stole a lot of money. However, like I said before, his quantity of thevery was a big problem, and he eventually got caught. I will say right here, there is some contradictory information out there. The thing about Remensky is that his life has kind of slipped into legend and folklore,

8:14and so it's hard to narrow down exactly what's true and what's false. So I'm going to try and give what I believe is the correct version of events, but there may be some dates that have shifted in such. When he was in prison, it was a place called South in prison, just through talking and being nice to people. He managed to get transferred to a prison that was closer to his family. He had no necessity to do that, but he managed to swindle his way there anyway. But here's some of the contradictory info. He staged a protest by escaping and then climbing up a 70-foot drain pipe to the roof of the prison and then started throwing roof tiles off the top. Either because his wife had died and he wasn't allowed to go back to the funeral, or because he wanted to go back to that original prison because courted him the inmates were nicer. I saw those two completely contradictory stories. I don't know which one's true, but either way, what we do know is he climbed up a 70-foot drain pipe sneaking out of his cell and up to the roof.

9:16It just shows he can escape in any manner he wished. And for this one, he didn't even try and leave. He just wanted to protest, essentially, and it required the prison governor to basically come and talk him down. Either way, he was a relief from his sentence and he was caught once again. This time brought to a place called Peterhead Prison, which was legendary because it had never once been escaped from, to which he promptly said challenge accepted and escaped not long after being thrown in there. He managed to last well over a day and made it 20 miles before finally being caught. Most of the reason because his shoes fell apart and his feet were in horrible condition when they caught him. 20 miles barefoot, that'll do that to you. After this, he was permanently shackled, which was uncommon, but still a thing they did, and essentially they put leg irons around your feet permanently. You can't have them off even when you're in your cell. In many countries, no longer allow this because some see it as cruel and unusual punishment. But by this point, he is kind of celebrity, especially in the prison,

10:21and he's such a genial guy, that his case made it all the way to the British parliament. They convinced the prison to unshackle him so that he could wander around freely, and to this day, no Scottish prisoner has been shackled since. His wife died at some point around this time, probably in 1937, and he committed some more crimes and was back in prison in 1938, so less than a year out. This time for a five-year stint. However, World War II swept across Europe, and so John Reminensky put his safe cracking skills to use this time against the Nazis. Every Tuesday, we talk Apple, a Mac break weekly. Hi, this is Leo LePort, inviting you to join me this week with Jason Snell, Andy, Anaka Kristina Warren, and a very special guest. David Pogue is here to talk about his new book, Apple, the first 50 years. We celebrate Apple's 50th birthday on Mac break weekly. I hope you watch. We've got an audio and video available at our website, twitter.tv, slash mbw, or subscribe,

11:26wherever you get your podcasts. I've seen some sources say he was pardoned in order to join others that he had got out of his sentence early. I'm not sure exactly which one. But either way, he did join the British Army in about 1942. And like much of Johnny, his war service is even more steeped in legends. He did join a commando unit, so that was no joke. And apparently, he was blowing safes filled with Nazi loot, at least according to legend. For example, it has been claimed that he blew safes containing archival information and treasures from Gerber's Hitler and Himmler. Most of that is not true. For example, the Gerber's one. Gerber's office in North Africa was taken before 1942, so there's no way a reminensky could have done that. But for whatever reason, that's what the legend says. Another good example is apparently he blew 14 safes in one day while he was in Rome.

12:30Most of these are exaggerations. But what we do know is that he was part of a commando unit. And this commando unit's job was to search for intelligence. Apparently, they were also parachuted into places. So it's more than likely that he was doing some legit stuff, breaking into the personal safe of Hitler. No. But doing important and probably really cool work, absolutely. He even stayed in Europe through 1946 and was part of a unit that was tracking down wanted Nazi personnel. Legends aside, he had a cool service, that's for sure. And he didn't get thrown in jail for it. No, he did not. Unfortunately, by 1946 upon leaving the service, he was back to safe cracking. And in 1947, he was back in prison, this time with a seven-year sentence that was reduced to five thanks to his wartime record. And he only spent three years due to good conduct. This is something we see all the time with Johnny Reminensky.

13:32He gets put in prison a lot. He ends up spending half or so of his life in jail. But while he's in prison, he's amenable and polite and except for always trying to escape. He's not breaking rules, he's not starting fights, and he just seems like a decent fellow. Whatever that means, I don't know, but it's just fascinating. He did get out, like I said, on good conduct. And we actually have some quotes from him from his sentencing hearing and sounds like he did have some PTSD from the war. But once again, he was back to safe cracking. And this time, he ended up in Peterhead prison, the supposedly inescapable prison. However, you remember how he escaped from Peterhead once? This time, he decided to escape three separate times, once for 40 hours, meaning at this point, he's broken out of jail five or so times. It's insane. He served out most of the sentence and was out in 1964. But crime keeps calling. And literally, the rest of his life, he was in

14:32an out of jail. Sometimes he would get a year, a year and a half, and he would be caught not long after. By this point, he's in his 60s and age is just starting to catch up to him. I mean, in your 20s and your 30s, you can climb a drain pipe, no problem, but try to in that when you're 60, he's just starting to struggle. At one point, he took a really bad fall from an office building and spent 14 weeks in the hospital before being put in jail. He was in jail by 1970, once again, and he passed away in 1972 after suffering a stroke. His place in history as a gentleman bandit, along with Remedensky's wartime service and daring escapes, have earned him a place in British history as a folk hero. People loved him even at the time, most notably in 1959, with a song called The Ballad of Johnny Remedensky. This isn't after he has died and it's passed into legends. He's actively a figure at this point. And this was written by a future British

15:34member of Parliament. He was really, really well liked by the general public, the newspapers, and it was just hard to hate the guy even at the time. We can only guess what his motives were in doing all this because going to jail five, seven times, at some point, you'll learn your lesson. But if he asked me, he lived more for the thrill of the act and getting caught was just kind of cost of doing business in the safe cracking industry. But that is the story of gentleman, Johnny Remedensky. That was a fun story. And again, I had never heard about it. So that was cool. I'm going to concur with you there. You know, there are some people that make bad choices because that's what gets them going in life. And they keep making those bad choices, whether it's drugs or whatever. But in this case, it was just the thrill of the thieving and of escaping. I guess he's probably not much different from Skydiver or Bungie jumpers or mountain climbers, you know. Alex Hommel, the guy who freestoled El Capitan. You only do that if you just have to do it.

16:38Just calls to you and you can't not do it. Yeah. And that's my guess is what Johnny was like. Well, McKinley, thank you for telling the story of gentleman Johnny Remedensky. And thanks to Ian for sending it in. Yeah. Otherwise, I'm going to leave you with our tidbit of the day. And that is that while it's not totally clear what the largest heist in history is, one of, if not the most successful, was Henry Avery's raid on the gunsway. This pirate raid would loot more than 325,000 pounds worth of gold and jewels. That is the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars to date. The treasure has never been found. And if you want to learn more about that, check out our episode on it. It is about Henry Avery. So there you go. More fun there. Henry Avery's men were a lot nastier than gentleman Johnny, if I remember right. I would get a beer with gentleman Johnny. I don't think I'd do that with Henry Avery. Plus he'd be awfully old like 400 years old. But anyhow, that is the story of gentleman Johnny Remedensky. Fun story.

17:39Thanks again McKinley for telling me. Yes, sir. I want to just let you know that if you have any interest in sending us ideas like Ian did today, go to our website history dispatchers.com. We have a form there. Just fill it out. Hit submit and we will get it. We love to get stories like this because you know what? We don't know everything. When you guys help us out, we love it. Otherwise, take care and we will see you next time. Bye.