Burn Out | 08

Listen to the complete season ad-free by subscribing to Curiouscast Discovery exclusively on Apple Podcasts. A word of warning before we begin. This part of our story includes mention of severe mental health issues and also suicide. Please listen with care. It's 1888 and there's a fierce storm over the Mediterranean. The Imperial yacht is being battered by monstrous waves. Six feet high. The ladies in waiting were all in their cabins throwing up. Everyone on board terrified and feeling utterly wretched. Well nearly everyone. Because Emperor Seacy of Austria, she's loving this. She's not cowering in a cabin. She's out on deck. Tied to the ship's mass. Letting the ocean smash over her head and slender body. Relishing its power. It's salt-sting on her face. She loved the forces of nature of the sea. This made her come alive. Seacy writes love poems to the waves. Ah, greatly do I love thee. Thou harshed and pestuous sea. Thy wildly tossing billows, thy storms that rage at me. She even has a tattoo of an anchor inked on her shoulder. In homage to the sea. It's done in secret of course. Body art was not considered to be very ladylike in the 19th century. The ocean is her new solace. Because Seacy can't ride horses anymore. She can't row and pump weights at the gym. Her body, starved and overstretched for so long, is failing her. And her beautiful face is weathered from all that sun and wind. She didn't care when it was raining. At the outdoors in those days without protective creams, would have aged your skin anyhow. Seacy pits herself against the elements. Defying nature. Proving she's still a force to be reckoned with. That she's invincible. She was pretty steely actually. But some storms are so huge that not even an Empress can weather them. From curious cast and blanchard house, I'm Seren Jones. And this is a most audacious heist. [Music] Episode 8 Burnout 2006 Winnipeg Canada. And there's a storm brewing in Daniel Blanchard's world too. He just doesn't know that yet. Because right now, just like Seacy, he's also feeling invincible. Although he's living it up in a fast, sunny climate. He's 6,000 miles away in fact, in Cairo, Egypt. So here we are in crappy little Winnipeg. Ben Hagueman was part of Project Kite. The special team sat up to catch Daniel. They've bugged Daniel's cell phone so they can hear every word he says. And some of those words make the investigators jaw drop. We're talking about Cairo, we're talking about London, we're starting to talk about what is likely a vast criminal enterprise. Police realized that Daniel's hooked up with a major gang, an international criminal organization, with connections to the Middle East. On the wiretap, we captured an individual giving Dan instructions and clearly they had a pre-existing relationship. In fact, Daniel has worked with this gang before in Canada, skimming credit cards. Basically, that means installing chip devices at ATMs to steal the card's data and pin numbers. They answered to a guy called the boss who was in London. Journalist Jennifer Bowers-Bani says the boss was impressed with Daniel and his skills. He started relying on Daniel for recruitment. Blanchard was part of getting the crew together to do this kind of thing for the boss. And at one point, the boss called Blanchard directly and said, "How fast can you get to Cairo?" The boss wanted Daniel to pull the same skimming stunt in Egypt. He asked him to choose a crew in Canada before hooking up with some local contacts in Cairo and then to lead that team on the ground. Jennifer thinks Daniel was flattered. I think in Blanchard's mind, this was the big time. Now he's working for a serious crime boss who didn't take any crap. I think he recognized that and didn't want to mess up because this job meant serious money. Listening to Danny on the wiretap, collect his group of Confederates, to head over to Cairo to milk what must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the local banking system there was super interesting to hear that unfold. And at first, it seems like Daniel's having a great time. He even gets to wear a disguise. Daniel's colleagues were talking about wearing burkas to conceal their identities. Burkas, they dressed up as Muslim women in head-to-toe veils. Now remember, Daniel's already contacted a lawyer at this point. Danny Gunn back in Winnipeg. And Daniel Blanchard's a loyal client. Oh goodness, Dan was a routine caller. Danny Gunn had already warned Daniel to see a clear of crime if he wanted to avoid trouble. Or if he couldn't manage that, at least not to leave a paper trail. My job is to basically explain and to advise people that it's, you know, if they have been implicated in a crime, not to create evidence for the police or the authorities. And of course, Daniel's aware the police are listening into his calls. And although he knows he has an audience on the line, Daniel just can't stop boasting. They netted millions doing this. Blanchard described at one point the bathtub in the hotel was absolutely stacked with cash. And they were trying to figure out, you know, what do we do with all this? So Daniel's clearly having fun with his new friends. And it's easy money, right? He really feels invincible. But Daniel hasn't really thought this through. You know, Dan had become so confident and he had experienced so much success that, you know, I think he kind of lulled himself into a sense of false comfort. Has Daniel ever really stopped to think what working with an organised crime group actually means? I think Dan very much lived in the moment. And so I don't think he would dwell very frequently on the potential of things beyond his immediate control. He is more of a free spirit sort. So no, Daniel doesn't think. He just does his job and he does it well. No questions asked. But listening in on the wiretap, Ben Hagueman's worried that this time Daniel's in way over his head. When you're talking about moving suitcases of money in the fashion that Danny did, you know, where's that money going? You know, and whose hands are that going into? You know, there's going to be a level of violence in the background to all of that. Now remember, Daniel doesn't do violence. It's outside his moral code. So he's always avoided violent crimes. But when there's that much money involved, Ben knows things tend to get dirty. And that means people get hurt. And Ben's right to worry because one member of the gang gets greedy. And this is often the case. Things start to crumble from the inside a little bit when you start talking about a lot of money being around. And some of that money goes missing. It turns out one of Danny's newfound friends has betrayed him. One of Blanchard's crew, he absconded with some diamonds. that belong to the boss and a heck of a lot of cash. This upset the boss to no end. And who gets the blame? The boss doesn't hesitate. He blames the team leader, Daniel Blanchard. The boss was very menacing on the wiretaps to blanchored. And you can hear the worry in Dan's voice. And let's not lose sight of the fact that we're talking about a big time criminal enterprise. And people lose their lives all the time for much smaller values of cash than can be held in a suitcase. Being caught by the police is suddenly the least of Daniel's worries. He starts making a series of panicked phone calls, all of which are recorded by Ben and the Project Kite Officers. You could hear things really start to change for Dan here in this moment. Things weren't going his way. And he was going to be called to task in some form or another for that missing money. So Daniel comes up with a plan. It's a hell of a gamble. He raises the stakes massively. He said to the boss, "Why fight over this petty amount of cash when I can get you millions?" He just needs a little bit of time. But I'll tell you that based on my experience, people who are old showcases of money are not in the business of way very long to get what's theirs. Daniels in big trouble. Because the boss, he doesn't do Mr. Nysky. Charity in that world only goes so far. Daniels, living on borrowed time. Imagine you're a teenager. And because of your misbehaving, you get sent to a psychiatric institute. There, you become part of something much bigger. He is reducing people to babbling idiots. A systematic attempt to erase and reprogram people's minds. I got pregnant when I was at the Allen. Who by I don't know. I'm Dr. Julia Shaw, and this is Project Mind Control. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Summertime, 1888, and we're at the beach. On the island of Kofu, Greece, where Cece is back safely on dry land. But her heads still very much at sea. She's got an idea to build a grand new palace here. But then, she might go to Belgium instead to see her sister. Or maybe she should visit her brothers in Bavaria. Hiking in Switzerland could be fun. She had this almost pathetic urge to move, which goes back to her childhood. Austrian historian, Regina Neuhauser, says Cece could never settle. And as she gets older and less physically able, she becomes even more restless. Physically, she needed to move. It was very important for her later on in her life when she did suffer from depression. Cece's frequent down days really see her alone in a darkened room. Instead, the more tortured and unhappy she feels, the more active and fidgety she becomes. Historian Tessa Dunlop. She walks and walks and walks and walks until when her older sister comes to visit. She can't walk anymore, she's got a swollen feet. She's constantly on the move, hiking hills, flitting from palace to palace, from country to country. I am a sea girl from no land, no home upon a shore. I am bound to no place, no spot, from wave to wave I saw. Her agitation baffles her doctors. But today, German psychiatrists do understand her symptoms, as belonging to a very specific form of depression. A condition they call "Cece syndrome" after the Empress herself. But while Cece's travelling here and everywhere, she makes sure her image stays the same. And you can see right in front of us, this is a portrait made of her when she was already in her fifties. And if you look at her face, it looks absolutely perfect. So while in the later portraits, Franz Joseph becomes grey and whiskery, the court painters keep Cece perfectly preserved, still in the bloom of youth. They were told to Photoshop the Empress. She looks, and where I would say, maybe 23 or 25. But she's more than double that age. And remember all those crazy beauty routines? Their face masks stuffed with veal schnitzels or strawberries? Well, surprise, surprise. They didn't work. She would have these hot olive oil baths, and apparently, one time the bath was overheated and she nearly killed herself. But of course, much of what she did, she got wrong. Eating sand, I don't think so. Vingue compresses, I don't think so. Chain smoking at some point, I don't think so. For more lines, Cece sees on her face, the less she appears in public. She wrote, "As soon as I feel myself aging, I shall withdraw from the world altogether. There is nothing as gruesome as to gradually become mummified. Perhaps later, I might always wear a veil, and not even those closest to me will see my face. One should be able to disappear at the right moment. Cece's fairy tale world is a sad and selfish one. I think we have to own that she always put her own needs first. She was more important than her children. Emperesses came before the offspring. We know Cece lavishes love on her last child, Marie Valerie. But her other children, her son Rudolf and her elder daughter, Jazella, she's just never been there for them. She does seem to have been almost oblivious to the problems particularly that her only son was facing. And Rudolf's story is a tragic one. He's desperately unhappy in his marriage. He's sick, with syphilis, and abusing morphine. Now he's fallen for his mistress, a young Baroness nearly half his age. He's in complete turmoil, can see no way out. But who can he talk to? He feels he has no one. And then Rudolf does the unthinkable. He takes his own life. When Cece's told of her son's death, something in her dies too. Cece blamed herself. Historian Regina Neuhauser says Cece is overwhelmed with guilt. She found it extremely difficult to live with that. It's a brutal wake-up call for Cece. Rudolf's suicide knocked her door. Look, there is more than just traveling around, being beautiful, riding poetry, power walking. But it was too late. And the loss is not just personal. It's political. Rudolf's death means Emperor Franz Joseph no longer has an heir, or a way to secure the Habsburg dynasty. She's failed effectively as a mother. Now what she got left, who is she? Cece must face the reality. That she's no longer the stunning young woman in the Winterholtar painting. The one with a 27 diamond stars glittering in her hair. That however hard she tries, she will never be that young woman again. Historian Tessa Dunlop says Cece finally realises the truth. Her star has waned. Now it's time to recognise it's no longer working. That this is now the twilight, the beginning of the end. So she infussens the sparkling jewels from her hair. And one by one, Empress Cece of Austria gives her diamond stars away. To her mates, her ladies in waiting, to friends. To anyone she thinks might make use of them. By relinquishing the stars, she's relinquishing the dream. She knows the stars can't save her now. Their magic has disappeared. She's a reminder that we'll probably all fall back down to earth in the end anyway. Meanwhile, over a century later, Daniel Blanchard still clinging to his stolen Cece star, trusting and believing in its power. It's December 2006 and we're in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Where Daniel finds himself in a very tight spot, in the air duct of a bank to be precise. A brand new bank needless to say. One that's not quite open yet, but one that will very soon have its ATM stuffed with crisp dollar bills. Is Daniel familiar? It's Daniel's MO of course. He's back to doing what he does best. Or datious bank heists. Because this is how Daniel plans to pay back the boss. For the diamonds and the cash that went missing in Cairo. On his watch. But this time, things are a little different. Because Daniel normally likes to take a bit more time to scope out to job like this. I believe Daniel Blanchard was a careful man and he was good at what he did. Remember Nick, the US Special Operations Veteran. We first met him in episode 1 when Daniel was skydiving over the Shurn Brown Palace to steal the CC star. Like Daniel, Nick's an expert on surveillance. And he's admired Daniel's patience in the past. His coolness during his stakeouts. But this time, Nick believes Daniel's in far too much of a rush. I think Mr Blanchard acted like a desperate man. He needed money and he needed it fast. And he acted very quickly without doing his homework up front like he normally did. Now Nick's been in some sticky situations over the years. And he reckons the key to staying safe is knowing your limits. Daniel does too. But he likes to push the boundaries. He's always reached for the stars. And he's touched them. He's even managed to steal one. But when he got wrapped up with that organized criminal gang, Nick thinks Daniel stretched himself way too far. I think his real undoing was getting involved above his head in a very dangerous world and realizing that he wasn't really untouchable. So here's Daniel crawling through the air vents in an unopened Chilawak bank. But the Winnipeg police don't know that yet. They think Daniel's simply lying low. Since he came back from Cairo, the team hasn't heard much from him on the wiretap. So Ben Hagueman of Project Kite has a problem. When you have your target now starting to drop off of radar, communications are becoming less complete, less frequent, and there's some indication that he may not make his way back to a location where you can intercept him. You start to worry. Imagine all that wiretap work for nothing and the team also worries for Daniel's safety. That the boss might find Daniel before they do because they don't like the path Daniel's career is taking. So it goes from just a bank break in Winnipeg to something that spreads across the country and that it spreads internationally. Gordon Schiemacher oversaw Project Kite and they uncovered some pretty unsavory information about the boss and his gang. There's no question that some of his money that he got from those trips had been destined for Kurdish rebels in Iraq. So then you have to have these discussions with international police. You have to talk to Scotland Yard in London. Basically, the boss has been bankrolling paramilitaries, rebel fighters. His journalist Jennifer Bauerzbani. They did some research and they found that the boss was funneling some of the millions that he was making from Blanchard and Blanchard's crew into a terrorist organization in the Middle East. Daniel's crime scorecard is already heavily loaded with charges, but now, now suddenly Blanchard is connected to something very, very serious under international law. Detective Ben Hagueman agrees. It was true that he was really facing the weight of the world here, like there was a ton of hurt coming for him. After months of listening in to Daniel's every move, the Project Kite team now knows a lot about Daniel, what he does and what he very much doesn't do. In the direct evidence, I don't have any information to suggest that Dan was a violent individual. And Ben insists on a legal distinction here. Daniel's a thief, not a robber. There is that distinction in Canadian law, so robbery implies violence, theft is no violence, that's the difference between robbery and theft. So officers' guess that Daniel must be feeling very uncomfortable in this new dangerous gang he's involved with, and that makes him vulnerable. I think they realised that at this point Blanchard was shaken. He was in over his head and he was probably going to start making mistakes because he was rattled. The officers of Project Kite just hope he'll pick up the phone again soon and start talking. Giving them clues as to where he is and what he's doing. Till then all they can do is sit tight and wait. But unlike them, the boss is not a patient man. The boss doesn't wait. He needs answers and he needs them now. So he's crawling through this air duct of this new bank and suddenly his phone rings and he's up there hidden and there's a guard just below him. Yes. Daniel Blanchard, international jewel thief and master of the bank heist has forgotten to turn off his phone. And it was the boss saying where's my money Danny and Blanchard was saying, well I can't talk right now. I'm in the shaft of this bank that I'm going to rob and there's a security card that I can see below me so I'm going to need to go. Somehow the guard doesn't hear Daniel whispering above his head. But of course the officers at Project Cite do. They hear Daniel loud and clear. His cover. You've been listening to a most audacious heist, a Blanchard house production for curious cast hosted by me, Seren Jones. It's written and produced by Emma Jane Kirby, research by Hannah Tava-Coliseard. The original music is by Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis Nank-Manel and Toby Matamong. Sound design and mixed engineering by Toby Matamong and Louis Nank-Manel. The part of Empress C.C. is played by Rianne on Needs. Poetry translations courtesy of Regina Neuhauser from the book Empres Elizabeth of Austria. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pai. The head of content at Blanchard House is Lawrence Grisel. For Blanchard House, the executive producers are Amika Shautino-Nolan and Lawrence Grisel. For curious cast, the executive producers are D'Leva Lasquez and Chris Duncom. A most audacious heist is inspired by the book Stealing Cece Star by Jennifer Bauer's Barney. My name is Mickey Boss. Friday, February 27th on Global. Meet every investigation. It's close to home. Secrets, loyalties and small town just as collide in a new hit drama. Sheriff Country returns Friday, February 27th on Global. Stream on Stack TV.