My Oldest, Dearest Friend

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The most Texas story ever. Listen to Business History on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin. Hey everybody, it's Jake. When we're making these shows, we talk to a lot of people.

But we can't always include everyone's voices or everything they said.

So, what you're about to hear is a conversation that did not make our regular season. But, which really gave me a lot of insight into Keith Chimonko, both as a man and as the boy he once was. Because this is a conversation with one of Keith's childhood buddies. In fact, Keith introduced him to me as my oldest, dearest friend, a man named Mike Walton. Mike and Keith grew up together in fluorescent Missouri.

They ran around with the other neighborhood kids, getting into various shenanigans. Later on, as adults, they ended up living very close to one another. Mike lived just as stones throw away from the house that the police raided the night that Keith was arrested. Keith's arrest, floored Mike.

In some ways, he's still scratching his head with questions.

But when he looks back on that time when Keith was on his crime spree, there are a few moments that stick out.

“Small moments, the kind that didn't seem important then, but now looking back,”

feel like clues or perhaps even an omens of what was to come. When I spoke with Mike, he told me about one such moment. It occurred during the year leading up to Keith's arrest. At the time, Mike was working as a salesman at an auto dealership. One day, he got a call from Keith.

And he's like, hey, Mike, he goes, uh, I was in Philadelphia somewhere with his girlfriend over a week. And he goes, I left my wallet. He goes, you think I can borrow a hundred bucks. And I worked at the dealership. I was making really good money. I said, sure, Keith, come on up. Came up, gave him a hundred dollars.

And he says, I call you when I got your money. You know, about a week later, he called me and paid me my money back. Then he asked me again, you know, to borrow some money a couple weeks later. So again, Mike loans Keith a hundred bucks. And again, Keith gets the money to pay him back.

At that time, Keith was living in the little shoebox house. The one he moved into after the foreclosure. Keith was sleeping on the couch, so his daughters could each have their own room. Mike didn't know much about Keith's financial troubles. Keith tended to keep problems tucked away out of sight, even from old friends.

Anyway, Mike swings by Keith's house to pick up the money he's owed. And Mike still remembers the scene. When I went over there, and there was a table sitting there, a coffee table, a couch, and stuff. And he had to stack a hundred on the mantle there. And he's like, you know, grab your hundred and he handed me one.

And I was like, cool, man, I said, no problem.

And then I thought he was doing good on day trade. You know, and apparently he wasn't doing good on day trading. And he was doing good on bankrupt. Mike never suspected what was really going on. At the time, like so many people around St. Louis, he and his wife were following the story

of the boonie hat banded. But it never occurred to him, not even for a second,

that the man behind those robberies was his friend, Keith.

“Why hadn't Keith opened up to Mike about the trouble he was in before he robbed those banks?”

I mean, if he knew if Keith needed help, wouldn't he turned it was oldest, dearest friend? Friendship is a curious thing, especially male friendship, where often much goes unsaid. Being a guy myself, I have some sense of this. So, what does it say about us is men that sometimes we prize loyalty and pride over intimacy? And why do we sometimes not see the things that are right in front of us?

I'm Jake Alpern, and this is Deep Cover The Family Man. Today's episode, my oldest, dearest friend. Mike and Keith grew up together. They knew each other's families. In fact, listening to Mike's memories of their childhood, it almost sounded like they were family. Keith really liked my dad, because my dad, you know, did what he could form, because he knew he didn't have one here.

And I ain't seen he doesn't have a daddy, he had a dad.

But we never heard from him, we never seen him. I never met him.

What was his mom like?

“She was a cook at Snook's, the grocery store, and she was great.”

Marge was her name, and she looked just like my mom. She was a very, very pleasant lady to be around, let's say. You know, but she was a single mom. You know, so didn't really get to see her much. I was always over there with Keith, and we'd stay out of her hair.

Mike and Keith's friendship has that easy quality that says, you were there for it all. The good, the bad, and the mischievous. You know, come on, we were growing up in this neighborhood. And we broke into one house down at the end of the street. We were all little kids, you know, they were on vacation, and we knew they were on vacation.

And we got some biscuits out of the ice box. We weren't in there stealing money or nothing.

“We were just in there being kids and taking the little kids across the street with us.”

You know, there was like four or five of us went in his house and just tore it up. We didn't steal nothing though. Well, yeah, I guess we did steal some biscuit, though. That was about it. That was not as much of a life of crime as you'd seen Keith participated.

Perhaps it was the only crime I've seen him participate with me. And, you know, if he did stuff with other people after that, I didn't know about it. So they got into a little trouble as kids stealing biscuit dough from the neighbor's house. Good, clean, Midwestern fun. Think the little rascals.

As they grew up, they remained friends. Keith's wife, Becky, even watched Mike's children for a period of time. But they weren't as close as they once were.

And Mike never knew about Keith's financial problems.

I knew him and Becky had split up that she wasn't living with him no more. It was just him and the daughters, but I had no inclination that they weren't making it. You know, he had a nice house. And I go over there and look like they're what and food and stuff. So you had no idea really that he was in financial trouble.

No, he didn't put that out of all to me. You know, he told me he was a day trader and what I thought he was doing good. What do you think, Mike? I mean, like you obviously are someone that he trust and he knows you have a long old friendship. What's your best bet for why? I mean, you have all people.

It seems there could be someone that he could tell but he was having a hard time. I mean, I don't know if he thought I wouldn't help him out. You know, I wasn't a position at that time. You know, if he needed a little help, I could have helped him. Maybe he was too proud to ask.

So I don't know. I just don't think he would ever came and say,

Hey, Mike, I need a hundred. It's one thing.

But you know, I need a thousand to another thing. Then I would have started praying. You know, hey, what's going on? What are you doing? That makes perfect sense to me.

Keith probably understood that a hundred dollar ask could fly under the radar. But a thousand dollar ask not so much. Mike says that he was well positioned to help his friend financially, because he was making good money as a car salesman. I worked at a local Chevy dealer.

Started as a porter for five years and worked my way into sales.

And I ended up being under top truck salesman for a bunch of years.

“And that's why I said, you know, I was making great money.”

I could have helped if he, you know, if he really came to me and said, Hey, Mike, you know, this is the deal. I don't, I've had gave him the money. Here, pay me back when you can't. I would have kept him from robbing a bank if I could have helped him.

So you were good at your job. You were at the top truck salesman. Oh, yeah, for a few, few years. Do in that line of work, I think you would probably have to be pretty good at reading people. Am I right about that? Oh, you know, I'm a great, yeah, yes.

One thing in car sales, you got 30 seconds to read somebody.

I could tell you in 30 seconds if I was going to sell a car or not. And I couldn't read Keith. It's still to this day. It makes me think, you know, how good was that? Because, yeah, I mean, I 30 seconds.

I knew if I was selling a car or not. How many years did I know Keith before I, you know, I couldn't read him to be robbing a bank. You know, so he was good at that. Not expressing.

We've talked in this series about how parents hide things from their kids to protect them from hard truths about the world. And sometimes to protect the parents from hard truths about themselves. But it's telling that Keith was doing that with Mike too. I mean, this is the man who Keith described as his oldest dearest friend,

who's dad was like a stand-in for Keith's dad. Their history, it went deep.

“I think that if there's anyone Keith could level with and reach out to,”

it'd be Mike. But I also get their silence. I grew up in Buffalo, and I knew guys like Mike and Keith. I knew teachers, coaches, and other dads who sounded a lot like them. When they hung out, they had this ease with one another.

You could feel the history between them. Sure, sometimes they were awkward. The way guys can be. But you could also sense among them a kind of stoic, gruff kindness, a brotherhood that came with shoveling each other's walkways,

and showing up at funerals and driving each other's kids to school. Growing up, I admired a lot of men like this. But I didn't often see them set down their bottle of a bat's blue after a bill's game, and just talk about their deepest fears or their shortcomings. I mentioned all of this, not because I think there was any kind of failure here in Mike and Keith's friendship.

I bring it up because the context of their friendship feels both familiar and illuminating to me. It helps me understand Keith's mindset leading up to the crime spree. It helps me put myself in his shoes, even if just for a little bit. I imagine feeling squeezed and scared, and so alone that even with my closest friend had to put on a show of being happy and trouble-free.

And I'm reminded of that Henry David Thoreau quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." "We'll be right back." [ Music ] Valveline, instant oil change presents wisdom from the road.

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Listen to Medal of Honor on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. One day, back in September 2008, Mike learned the truth that his longtime friend Keith had been living a double life. I was at work at this local dealership, and I got a call from my sister, and she's like turned on the news. They're interviewing dad right now. Keith got arrested for robbing banks. He's the boony hat bandit. So I was selling a car, and I told these people, I said, "Here, give me a minute.

I went downstairs where I was working to turn the TV on, and they're interviewing my sister." And my dad and stuff, you know, and I was like, "Wow. How do you wrap your head around that when she says that?"

“It was tough. I couldn't believe it at first. That's what I said. My wife had to go back and really look at these pictures they were putting on TV.”

Back in '08, the cameras, I guess, was at that great, but they had their blurry pictures of them and stuff. And me and my wife, we were looking at the TV after he got caught, and it's like, "Man, I can see the resemblance." Would you have any, if someone at the time asked you like, "Who do you think the boony hat bandit is?" I mean, who would you have thought it would have been?

I would have had to look at the pictures better, you know, because I wouldn't, one thing I did never think that it was a friend of mine.

Not one time did I think the boony hat bandit was somebody I would have known. It was a shock to me to say at least.

“Suddenly, Mike is looking at all of his memories of Keith through an entirely different lens.”

The borrowed money, the stack of hundreds, this weird set of facts that kind of added up, but not really. I mean, when I walked in that house, there was nothing that would make me think, "Oh, man, this guy must have just robbed a bank. Look at all these hundreds." That wasn't what I thought. I mean, the way he talked about date trading, he didn't tell me what to do and good in it. Obviously, he wasn't going to tell me that, or else, then I would have probably questioned, "Hey, where do you get these hundreds?"

But the two times he borrowed that money from me, I got $200 bills back. So it was like right after he borrowed it from me and then had to rob a bank to pay me back. Yeah, I mean, like, how did he explain the fact that, like, one week he's asking you to borrow a hundred bucks and then when you go to repay him, he's got to stack hundreds. Well, like I said, the first time his girlfriend, he said his girlfriend was in Philadelphia or something. He came back and he forgot his wallet. That was the first time.

And the second time, I just gave him the money. You know, I didn't pry, let's see. And I kind of wish I would have, but I guess it wouldn't have mattered if I did because he had already started robbing the banks. Did he seem nervous at all? No, not at all. Not whatsoever. You know, and shit if I didn't know when he was robbing banks, I sure as hell wouldn't have went to his house, they can ran and I'm gonna get over there and then they're gonna raid him.

You know, I would have never went over there.

Yeah, he was on his computer doing this thing.

“Do you think that like he had some like off switch in his brain where he could like compartmentalize it or something?”

Because like honestly, like if I had just robbed a bank and I think I'd be a hot mess. I'd be nervous about getting caught and and everything. I'd be up walking to windows and all that stuff. No, he was just Keith sitting at the computer, you know, here, here's your money. You know, what are you doing now? Keith, I'm day trading and I don't know a whole lot about that day trading stuff. So I just thought he was, you know, doing his job. And when I went over there, I mean, he's on the computer doing something. I didn't look to see, you know,

maybe he had another wrap up of the next bank he was gonna get or something. I don't know.

“Do you think that his brain works differently than yours that he would be able to be that calm like that?”

And most of, you know, that mean he wasn't never took off nervous to me, even though he was borrowing a hundred dollars from me.

I didn't think nothing about it. Nothing, it was Keith. You know, Keith, I've known since I was three years old. There you go. Buddy, pay me back when you get it. And then I first know that he was calm, cool, and collective. And it makes you feel like you might not really know this guy as well as you thought he did.

Right there at that time, you know, that's obviously at that time. You know, I knew Keith, but I didn't know him that good, that where I would have thought he would drop of me. There's this old Icelandic saying, roughly translated, it goes keen as the eye of the guest. The idea being that sometimes being a stranger means you see things more clearly. Because being overly familiar with a person or a place, well, you can kind of put you to sleep so that you miss things. So often we believe that intimacy means knowing someone well, but in some ways, the opposite is true.

intimacy means not knowing someone or seeing important aspects of who they are or who they had become. Because after a while, we just stop looking, just like we stop looking at the artwork that hangs in our living room or the crack in our bedroom wall.

Basically, we stop paying attention to the details in our lives, especially if those details and their implications might invite unpleasant questions.

But after Keith's arrest, Mike was being forced to see and just like Marissa and Elise, the media was now counting him to speak. The news and stuff, and I told him, I'm not going to do it. I said, I'm not going to sit and talk bad about a friend of mine that had an issue. Everybody has issues, and I knew it would come out, you know, what was going on and why. Obviously, I didn't get to speak with Keith after he got arrested, but now I wasn't going to, I don't care what he did. I wasn't going to say bad stuff about him, you know, and that's all they wanted. They didn't want to hear none of the good stuff.

They blew my phone up. I mean, blew it up. I had to block so many numbers. It was a joke.

“I think Mike did feel protective of his friend, but I also wonder if part of the reason he didn't speak to the media was that he himself was struggling to make sense of Keith's actions.”

What could he say? Even now, all these years later, he says he still can't fully understand it. I can't figure out what made him go that way because I got three kids. And I couldn't have fathom doing what he did, but I wasn't in the position he was in at the time. You know, I can't justify what he did. And any means, but I noticed, you know, you do the crime. You pay your time. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, he did his time. It just over his time, probably.

I think they, they might have run him into the ground a little bit on the sensing because there's people out here killing people getting out of jail quicker than he did. Which I think isn't right, you know, he didn't kill anybody, but I know he terrorized a lot of people. When you're out of 11 banks to get caught on the 12th one, there's, you know, at least 12 people that you traumatized that I know of. And I mean, I don't know where to go from that, you know.

It bothered me that he was capable of doing something so stupid, you know, that's the way I look at it.

“I mean, I got three kids and I couldn't have done nothing like that knowing that if I got caught, I was going to prison.”

No way, I would have done anything like that. You know, I ain't saying I was the best person in town. I mean, I had my dipples and dables too, you know, don't get me wrong. But when it came down to my kids, you know, I, they were my kids.

I would have had to do anything I could form and that's the way I felt Keith must have felt when he was robbing these banks that that was his best resort.

But it wasn't. I know he didn't think it was the right thing to do, but I can't believe he thought that was the way he needed to handle things. It didn't make me think less of them. It just, it made me think, you know, why would you go to do something that you're going to try to help your daughters with knowing if you get caught, you're not going to have your daughters.

“You ain't going to get your raise them no more. That's the only thing that really gets me is, you know, how did you not think that?”

Why would you not think you aren't thinking about your daughters trying to keep them in school? That's the way I feel about it. You were thinking about something different because what he was doing was going to take him away from his daughters and, you know, he didn't get to see him graduate. He didn't get to go to his mom's funeral. He didn't get to do a lot of things because of his decision. What do you think he was thinking of if not his daughters? I wish I knew. I really don't. I don't know. He wasn't thinking as far as I'm concerned. You know, how can you say you were thinking?

“Have you talked to Keith since he got out about why he did, what he did, or what a thinking was?”

No, no, we haven't really sat down. I'm not one to pry. You know, I don't live in the past. That's the one thing I won't do. You know, living in the past is not good. I'll visit there, but that's about it. Anything else that you think that is that I didn't ask about that you think that's worth the things that your member sends out your memory about Keith, when you think about all this. He's a good person, man. I just, you know, something had to click in his head that I can't figure out what it was to make him do what he did.

And like I said, I would love the opportunity for him to sit and tell me, you know, what made him do what he did, but he's only been out of presence in September. And I know he's lived with that for 18 years, you know, and prison thinking about all that stuff and he'd even call me on the phone and when he called me on the phone, we'd get to talk, you know, whatever length the phone would last in the prison. Ten minutes or whatever, twenty minutes and yeah, I wasn't asking him land neither, you know.

Like here, I just want to talk about good stuff. Yeah, I'm not going to, like I said, I don't live in the past. And one of my conversations with Elise, she told me that at a certain point, she just had to stop trying to make sense of what her father had done. She'd spent years turning it over in her mind, searching for an explanation that would make it all add up. But the harder she looked, the more trapped she felt by the question. Eventually, she realized that she wanted to move forward, and if she wanted to have any chance of rebuilding a relationship with her dad, well, then she had to let it go.

I sent something similar here with Mike. Mike was and is a loyal friend, he stood by Keith through all those years in prison.

And even though he was curious and maybe even unsettled about Keith's explanation, Mike says he never pressed the matter,

which to me seems a bit surprising, but maybe also wise, because sometimes I still think those old dads and teachers and coaches that I knew back in my Buffalo days understood some fundamental truth about friendship. That sometimes friendships not always about knowing, it's about showing up and being there to loan your buddy 100 bucks when he asks for it. No questions asked.

Original scoring and our theme were composed by Louise Garra. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney, fact checking by Monica Robbins.

“Special thanks to Karen Chicurgey, Morgan Ratner, Kira Posi, Jake Flanagan, Karin Gillierd Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan and Greta Cohen.”

I'm Jake Halpern.

If you like your true crime, like you like your coffee, Redhandard is the podcast for you.

“It's dark, intense and might just keep you up all night, I'm Hannah, I'm Serity, and every week on Redhandard we break down a different fascinating case.”

From the most recent US trials, everyone is obsessing over like Brendan Banfield, Karin Reed and Ellen Greenberg,

to the most unbelievable stories from around the world. There's nothing we love more than digging into every detail of the cases we cover,

“getting beyond a basic analysis and cutting to the heart of the story. Redhandard has over 400 episodes ready to binge right now.”

Plus, be sure to check our weekly sister show, shorthand, where we unpack everything from the Black Death to Area 51. If you're looking for smart, detailed true crime with personality, check out Redhandard wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Odu. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business.

In this episode, House Southwest Airlines used cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airlines. The most Texas story ever. Listen to business history on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. As America marks its 250th anniversary, we're looking back at two and a half centuries of rebellion and liberty through the eyes of the heroes who defended it. The whole thing about this country is freedom. If we're not careful, we could lose that. On Medal of Honor, stories of courage, we bring you the defining moments of valor that went above and beyond the call of duty.

Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast, guaranteed human.