All language subtitles for The UnXplained S02E18 Outrageous Robberies 1080p AMZN WEB-DL DDP2 0 H 264-Kitsune_track4_[eng]

WILLIAM SHATNER:
A daring hijack that ends in terror.

A baffling heist
in which priceless paintings

vanish into thin air.

And an ingenious bank robbery

with a time bomb
ticking down to zero.

It seems whenever there is
something of great value,

there are also thieves
who want to steal it.

But what really motivates
someone to steal?

Is it for the money?

To show how smart they are?

Or could a criminal mastermind
have other, more secret reasons

for risking everything

to pull off a seemingly
impossible caper?

Well, that is what
we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

On the night
before Thanksgiving,

Northwest Orient Airlines
Flight 305 is about

to depart on a short flight
to Seattle

when a middle-aged man
dressed in a black suit

and carrying
a black attaché case

boards the plane.

But this man
is not flying to celebrate

the holiday
with friends or family.

He has other plans.

GEOFFREY GRAY:
As the plane took off,

he passed the stewardess a note.

The note said, "I have a bomb.

I would like you
to sit near me."

And, at that point,
she could tell he was serious.

SCOTT SELBY:
The stewardess asked him

if she could see the bomb.

He discreetly opens up
a briefcase

and show what appears to her
to be a bomb.

SHATNER:
The hijacker demands $200,000

and four parachutes

to be delivered to him when
the plane lands in Seattle,

or he will blow up the airliner,

killing everyone on board.

GRAY:
After the plane lands in Seattle,

in comes the money
and the parachutes.

And all the passengers
are escorted off the plane,

and the hijacker ordered
the pilots to take off

towards, of all places,
Mexico City.

SHATNER:
The Boeing 727 is refueled, and a 4-person crew

takes the hijacker
back into the air,

headed for the border.

But during the flight,

the hijacker
puts on two parachutes,

ties the money to his chest,

and opens the aft stairs.

No one knows exactly
when or where,

but at some point,

he leaps from the plane,

and is never seen again.

He was gone and vanished
into the night air.

LARRY LEVINE: There was
a manhunt that was launched

over a two-state area
where they had the FBI,

other federal agencies,
the army, state police,

and they were combing
that entire area,

and they didn't find anything.

SHATNER:
According to the plane's manifest,

the hijacker's
listed name was "Dan Cooper,"

but thanks
to a news miscommunication,

he is more commonly
referred to as, "D.B. Cooper."

However,
authorities soon learned

that this name
was merely an alias,

and the real identity
of the man was unknown.

D.B. Cooper's escape

was so ingenious

that it was nearly
ten years before the FBI

got a major break in the case.

GRAY:
One day in 1980,

having a picnic
on the side of this river,

a young boy found some money.

But this just wasn't any money.

This was the D.B. Cooper money.

It turned up in this sandbar.

The money was found in
a completely different place

than the path of the plane.

So what that means
is that the money

didn't just
flutter to the ground

and land into the sandbar.

It means it had to get there
by some kind of means.

SHATNER:
But why would D.B. Cooper

risk his life to steal $200,000

only to bury
at least some of it in the sand?

It seems to defy all logic.

Unless D.B. Cooper
had another reason for doing

the hijacking besides money.

DIANE BIRNHOLZ: Having money
be the object of this case

doesn't make sense

because he had to have known

that this money
would either be marked

or it would be
somehow traceable.

So, again, you have to wonder,

what was the real agenda here?

LEVINE:
You've got a man that

jumped out
of a moving jet aircraft

that was never found,

and he was
like a perfect professional.

And I suspect

that he was
probably former military,

possibly part of the CIA,

who had a mission
that needed to be carried out.

SHATNER:
It may sound like a far-fetched conspiracy theory,

but according
to some researchers,

there is evidence
to suggest that D.B. Cooper

had military training.

For instance, Cooper knew

that the Boeing 727-100
aircraft's aft staircase

was a good platform
for a parachute jump.

And, in fact, the CIA
had used this same tactic

with the same model airplane
to airdrop supplies

and spies
during the Vietnam War.

Air America, which was
the CIA's airline in Vietnam,

they used this same aircraft,
and D.B. had to have had

knowledge that the 727-100

had the stairwell
that could be lowered,

and it could be lowered
in flight.

This wasn't common knowledge.

And this is
something that somebody

had to have already
had experience doing

in order to pull it off.

SHATNER:
If D.B. Cooper was trained by the CIA,

was the hijacking
something he did on his own,

or could it have been a mission

that he
was ordered to carry out?

And, if so, for what purpose?

BIRNHOLZ:
Back in 1971, there was not much security

in terms of airline travel.

And there were
a lot of hijackings

happening in the early '70s.

SELBY:
At the time you could have,

say, as many guns as you wanted
in your duffle bag

that you carried on,
on your person.

And this meant,
of course, that people

were hijacking planes
left and right.

It was also
oftentimes political,

so the terrorism of the 1970s

in which
people would hijack a plane

and then make demands

for various political prisoners
to be freed,

and then you take them
in the plane to Cuba,

and Cuba would let you
live there for free

as long as you wanted.

GRAY:
This was like a political act,

hijackings. People would say,
"Take me to Cuba."

So much so that
the FAA and agency officials

almost reconstructed a replica

of the Havana Airport
in Southern Florida.

The idea was if you got
hijacked to Havana,

you would just fly around
and then land at the fake site.

Some people theorize
that the D.B. Cooper hijacking

was really
some sort of false flag event

to create
a hijacking spectacular enough

that it will grab
everyone's attention

and lead to
some regulation changes,

so that these hijackings
can stop.

And that actually is
what happened after D.B. Cooper,

because the FAA came out

with all kinds
of new regulations.

LEVINE:
I wouldn't put it past the CIA to have an agent

like Dan Cooper
do whatever it took

to raise public perception

and public awareness
on airline security.

I mean, when you
really look at it,

who was hurt? Nobody.

I mean, he had all the makings

of an undercover operative.

GRAY:
The D.B. Cooper case-- what makes it noteworthy

is that it's actually
the only unsolved skyjacking

in the world.

And what makes it
so hard to solve

is that it's mysteries
and mysteries.

And once you get inside those
mysteries, there's others.

It's not just a story
about a hijacker.

SHATNER:
Was D.B. Cooper a CIA agent

whose mission
was conceived not by him

but by his superiors?

It's a fascinating theory

and suggests
that the true mastermind

behind a crime
can be hard to uncover.

Like in the case of another,
more recent crime.

A robbery involving $250,000,

a ticking time bomb,

and even more
unanswered questions.

SHATNER: It's an ordinary day
at a downtown PNC Bank

when 46-year-old Brian Wells

gets in line to see the teller.

But Brian Wells
is no ordinary customer.

JERRY CLARK:
Mr. Wells had a protrusion under the shirt

that was described like someone
had a medical injury

that was under his neck.

Mr. Wells handed
the teller a note

and said,
"This is a bank robbery,

and I need $250,000 in cash."

BIRNHOLZ:
The demand note said there was a bomb strapped around his neck.

The teller informed Brian Wells

that she couldn't access
the bank vault.

And so she ended up giving him
about $8,000.

SHATNER:
Brian Wells walked out of the bank

with only a fraction

of the amount
of money that he had demanded.

And he didn't make it very far

because the bank called the
police the moment Brian left.

I get dispatched like any other
law enforcement officer.

"Hey, there's a bank robbery,
7200 Peach,

potential, uh,
explosive device used."

After leaving the bank,
within five minutes Mr. Wells

is located and apprehended by
the Pennsylvania state police,

and he advises that he does
have a bomb under his shirt.

We didn't know
if he was a hostage

or if he was a cooperator.

We had no idea.

He said,
"I'm a pizza delivery driver.

"I went to deliver pizzas,
and these people accosted me

and made me wear the device
and rob the bank."

I think it's
one of those real moments

that you're thinking
it's probably a hoax.

Because I can't tell you how
many hoax bank robberies

I was at where people indicate
they have an explosive device,

and it's a hoax.

But you have to believe
that it's real.

And we notified the bomb squad.

His demeanor
was getting agitated

as we were waiting
for the bomb squad.

He was saying,
"Hey, can I have a cigarette?

This is heavy."

But we still don't know

if it's fake
or real at that point.

SHATNER:
At 3:18 p.m., without warning,

the bomb detonated...

...and Brian Wells
died instantly.

CLARK: I mean,
that's just some moment

you'll never forget
in your lifetime.

It's not uncommon
for a bank robber

to say they have a device,
and it's going to go off.

That's not uncommon.

What's uncommon
is for it to actually happen.

Brian was a very nice guy

and, for his family,

I will always be sorry
for what they went through,

to see that happen on TV.

But you immediately have
to gain control of the scene.

So we did a search
of Brian Wells' vehicle.

And inside we found
a series of notes.

Nine total pages.

Really bizarre notes
and way too detailed and complex

like you couldn't believe.

Some were made to the teller.

Some were made to police
and what not to do.

Some were made to Brian Wells
specifically, saying,

"Wells, after you rob the bank,

"this is the series of stops
that you're to make

to obtain keys to get
the device off of your neck."

LEVINE: It's like he was
on a scavenger hunt,

and at each location,
he would find a key

or a code that would be
one step closer

for him be able
to remove the bomb from him.

I mean, never in our history

has a man walked into a bank

with a bomb strapped
around his neck

with orders to complete
a scavenger hunt

to have the bomb removed.

CLARK:
The design of the collar

and the box that the collar held

was very unique.

It was basically
like a large handcuff

on the collar portion.

Below the collar was a box.

And the box held two pipe bombs

and two kitchen timers.

The bomb squad
said it was one of the most

diabolical killing machines
they had ever seen.

And that's because
it was one of a kind.

It was made specifically
for this event.

Initially, we had never seen
anything like this.

We just had to start very much
in a methodical process,

putting the pieces together.

The criminal mastermind clearly
spent so much time doing this.

The mastermind
is obviously delighting

in playing a game
with the police,

and then when
they can't solve it,

that is a huge boost
to their own ego,

and the longer
they could delay the police

actually finding real answers,

the more they would feel amazing
about themselves,

and the mastermind
behind the Brian Wells case

was clearly trying to do that.

SHATNER:
In search of answers,

investigators
traced Wells's movements

earlier in the day.

They went
to a nearby television tower

where Wells had made
his last pizza delivery.

CLARK:
He said when he went there

and got to the back of the site,

he was accosted
by a group of individuals

who told him to rob the bank,

and then he will have
notes to follow

to get the keys
to get the device off.

SHATNER:
But when the cops checked out the area,

they found that
the tower was abandoned,

and the trail went cold.

That is,
until three weeks later,

when local handyman
Bill Rothstein,

who just happened to live
right next to the TV tower,

called 911.

SHATNER:
The police determined that the body

in Bill Rothstein's freezer
was a man named James Roden,

the boyfriend
of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong,

a woman who was all too familiar
to the local authorities.

LEVINE:
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

was almost like
a black widow of sorts

where she left
a series of mysterious deaths,

her husband and several
boyfriends, in the local area.

Roden was a former lover,

boyfriend of hers,

and she ended up
killing the man with a shotgun.

She asked Rothstein
to dispose of the body for her,

and he ends up leaving it
in his freezer in his garage.

CLARK:
After interviews with Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

and others, we determined

that Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong's
father had a lot of money.

And she was the only child,

and she wanted the money,

and she wanted it now.

So, the whole idea to rob
the bank for the money

really came
from Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong.

Rob the bank to get the money

to pay someone to kill her
father to get her inheritance.

SHATNER:
On November 1, 2010,

Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

was convicted
of armed bank robbery,

conspiracy to commit
armed bank robbery,

and of using a destructive
device in a crime.

In the eyes of many,
these convictions confirmed

that Marjorie was the mastermind

of the collar bomb robbery,

and responsible
for the deaths of both

Brian Wells and James Roden.

But was she acting alone?

Not everyone agrees.

CLARK:
As soon as I met Bill Rothstein,

the night he turned
in the body of James Roden,

after I interviewed him,

I felt he was involved
in the Wells case.

It was at the Pennsylvania
state police barracks,

and Bill Rothstein
was in one of the rooms.

And I walked in the room

and I said, "Hey, Bill.
Jerry Clark from the FBI.

I'd like to talk
to you a second."

And he said, "I'll talk to you,
but I need to tell you

that I'm the smartest guy
in this room."

He was so,
so unbelievably into himself

and thought he was way smarter
than anybody else.

From my perspective,

the mastermind is
Bill Rothstein,

because he masterminded
how to do this

and the notes, and the bomb,
and making the bomb,

and the intricacies
that went into it.

Unfortunately for the case,

Bill Rothstein died
in July of 2004.

I think Rothstein--
he knew he was dying of cancer,

and I think he wanted
to go out saying,

"I'm the smartest guy around,

and I pulled one over
on law enforcement."

SHATNER:
Was the collar bomb robbery Bill Rothstein's attempt

to pull off a crime that
would outsmart the police

before he died?

Unfortunately,
Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong

also died in 2017,

so it's hard to say for sure.

But there are
other robberies that,

while the motivation
behind them may be more clear,

are no less baffling.

Like in the story of
the largest property theft

in American history,

a museum heist in which
priceless pieces of art

were taken and, to this day,

are still missing.

SHATNER:
Police officers responding to a call

arrive at
the Isabella Gardner Museum

and are shocked to discover

that several works of art
have vanished into thin air.

WITTMAN:
Many of the pieces that they stole were paintings.

Some were drawings
and some of the pieces

they took were priceless.

One of the pieces they stole
was a Rembrandt seascape

called The Storm Over
the Sea of Galilee.

It's the only seascape
that Rembrandt ever painted.

Another piece was a Vermeer.

Uh, it's called The Concert.

Both of these pieces
are considered almost priceless.

All told, 13 objects
of art were stolen.

The total value, as of today,
is over five hundred million,

making that the single
largest property crime

in U.S. history.

SHATNER:
Police found the two security guards on duty

handcuffed and tied up
in the basement of the museum.

After questioning the guards,

they learned how the heist
had been carried out.

SHERMAN:
Two thieves dressed as police officers

entered the Museum at 1:24 a.m.

They approached
one of the security guards

and told him that
he fit the description

of a suspect in another crime.

They asked the guard

to lift himself up
from the security desk

so that they could get
a better look at him.

And when he did,
they grabbed him,

they shackled him, and they
tied him up in the basement.

SHATNER:
Once the guards were subdued, the two thieves

spent the next 81 minutes
methodically stealing

the 13 masterpieces

and then disappeared
into the night.

The FBI immediately launched
a full investigation,

and there were several persons
of interest they looked into.

One of those persons
was none other

than James "Whitey" Bulger,

the leader of the notorious
Winter Hill Gang.

SHERMAN:
James "Whitey" Bulger was the godfather

of Boston crime in 1990

when that heist occurred.

So, immediately,
the FBI and the Boston police

pulled Bulger in
and all of his associates

and asked them,
"Where are the paintings?"

WITTMAN:
Whitey Bulger was intensely questioned at that time

about knowledge
about the Gardner heist

and claims he had no knowledge.

So, there's no reason
to think he was involved

because there was
no evidence of that.

SHATNER:
As the years went on

and the FBI was unable
to charge anyone with the crime,

museum officials offered
a $10 million reward

for information
leading directly to the return

of all 13 works of art.

No one came forward,

and the case continued
to stump investigators,

but FBI Agent Robert Wittman

was determined
to solve the mystery.

My active investigation
into the Gardner heist

started around 2005.

In 2005, I was contacted
by a Parisian police officer

who told me that a Frenchman

uh, was interested in selling
the Vermeer and the Rembrandt.

The thieves were actually
connected to two brothers

from Corsica
who were actually in prison.

They were waiting
for the right time to sell

these paintings
for the right amount of money

that they could set up
their families for life

because they were never
going to get out of jail.

They wanted, uh, $30 million

for the paintings to come back,

uh, and I was willing
to pay it as far as being

a shady undercover,
uh, you know,

criminal dealer
in the United States.

SHATNER:
15 years after the Isabella Gardner heist,

FBI agent Robert Wittman
believed that he was on the cusp

of recovering
the stolen works of art

and, hopefully, finding out
who originally took them.

But before the Corsican
brothers would sell him

the Gardner Museum pieces,

they wanted to unload
other artwork first.

They decided to offer me,
uh, four more paintings

that were stolen from the Museum
of Fine Arts in Nice, France.

We took them up on their offer

and were able
to recover those in Marseilles.

The problem was, though,
in that recovery,

one of the French policemen
told the individuals

that, uh, I was an FBI agent.

And, at that point,
we kind of lost the possibility

of working with them to get the
Rembrandt and the Vermeer back.

That was done.

It's very difficult
to infiltrate

Corsican society.

Uh, French police
have had a hard time

with that for many, many years.

So, we can't go any further
with it at this point.

SHATNER:
FBI agents believe they came tantalizingly close

to retrieving
two of the stolen paintings

from the Corsican brothers
only to have them

slip through their fingers
at the last moment.

But then, on March 18, 2013,

on the 23rd anniversary
of the heist,

the FBI made
a surprise announcement.

FBI agents developed
crucial pieces of evidence

that confirm the identity
of those who entered the museum

and others
associated with the theft

who belonged
to a criminal organization.

SHATNER:
Although they claimed to know the identity of the two thieves,

the FBI refused to name them,

and in 2015,
they further announced

that both of them are dead.

I think the FBI knows exactly

who committed
the crimes in 1990,

but they have no idea
where the art resides today.

So I think the FBI wanted
to provide a carrot

to the public to say,

"Hey, we're still working
on this case."

They need the public's help
to solve this crime.

WITTMAN:
I've heard some people have said

that all 13 pieces
are sitting in somebody's attic

two blocks from the museum.

I don't believe that.

I've never seen that happen.

After doing investigations

in art crime for 30 years,

what I've found
is that when you have

13 pieces out there, the
paintings have been divided up.

They're in different places.

SHERMAN:
Now it's been 30 years,

and there has been
no sign of the artwork.

And that's the enduring mystery

of the Isabella
Gardner Museum heist.

Thirteen paintings
that vanished in thin air.

And those empty frames
sit there like gravestones

today in the museum.

If the FBI knows

who did
the Isabella Gardner heist,

then why won't they name names?

Could it be because
the perpetrators are dead?

Or is there another,
even more incredible reason?

One that won't be revealed
until the paintings

are all recovered
safe and sound?

SHATNER:
Not all outrageous robberies involve stealing

large amounts of cash

or valuable works of art.

In recent years, there have
been an increasing number

of so-called "cybercrimes,"

in which criminals illegally
exploit computer systems

to do everything from stealing
a single person's identity

to manipulating
the global financial system.

JEFF LANZA:
Cybercrime is a huge issue today.

Companies are getting
their computers hacked into

on a daily basis.

Fraud is a regular part
of their lives.

And every CEO
of a company knows that.

And my biggest worry is not just
these individual cyberattacks

but also cyber threats
on our infrastructure,

the flow of money
on a nationwide basis.

And what we've seen,
uh, over the years

is an increasing, uh, capability

of the cyber criminals

to stay one step ahead
of law enforcement.

SHATNER:
32-year-old Sindri Thor Stefansson

and a group of thieves

break into
the Advania Data Center,

which is home to one
of the largest concentrations

of computer power in the world,

and steal 550 computers.

The value of these devices
is about $2 million,

but the bigger score
is not the computers themselves,

but the information
stored inside them.

What these devices could do
is mine Bitcoin.

And mining Bitcoin can produce

millions and millions
and millions of dollars.

These computers
are basically like gold.

But they're not mining gold.

They're mining digits
and mathematical formulas,

which, in the 21st century,
is something of value.

SHATNER:
Released in 2009,

Bitcoin was the first
of a new kind of money

known as cryptocurrency,

a form of digital cash

that eliminates the need
for traditional banks.

Unlike normal forms of currency

like the dollar or the euro,

the value of a Bitcoin

is not tied to any nation
or government.

For Sindri Thor Stefansson,

the benefit of stealing
550 Bitcoin computers

was in the future Bitcoins

they could create.

What you get for the risk

is essentially
a money-printing machine.

And the difference is
it's not printing cash,

it's printing billions
of dollars' worth of Bitcoins

at a very rapid rate.

And all that information

is encrypted and untraceable.

It's the perfect crime
if you can pull it off.

SHATNER:
Less than a month after the Bitcoin heist,

Stefansson
was arrested and charged

with stealing the computers.

After confessing,
he was sentenced

to four and a half years
in prison.

But the case wasn't resolved

because the stolen computers
were never recovered,

and Stefansson claims
to not even know where they are.

There was a greater conspiracy

behind this Bitcoin heist,

and he blames it on a guy

whose identity
he's never revealed.

HOCHMAN:
Mr. Stefansson has said that the idea of doing it

did not come from him.

But there's this Mr. X

that he mysteriously ascribes
the mastermind role to.

There are a lot of wild theories
about who Mr. X could be.

One of them is
it could be Satoshi Nakamoto.

SHATNER:
By all accounts,

"Satoshi Nakamoto" is an alias,
a pseudonym,

for the shadowy creator
of Bitcoin,

whose real identity is unknown.

HOCHMAN:
We don't even know if Satoshi Nakamoto

is a he or a she or a they

because Satoshi Nakamoto
has never come forward.

WITTMAN:
In 2009, when this started,

Nakamoto was very enthusiastic

about spreading his ideas,

spreading out this code.

This allowed him
to establish a new currency

called Bitcoin, which was
not government controlled.

Around 2011, he just went dark.

And no one knows who he is.

SHATNER:
There are those who believe

that Satoshi Nakamoto and Mr. X
are one and the same.

And that this unidentified
person, or group of people,

has been hoarding
and manipulating

the value of Bitcoin
from its inception

to the heist in Iceland
right up to today.

HOCHMAN:
Every single state and every single country

is doing its best to rein in
the Wild West of cryptocurrency.

So the IRS,
in the last couple of years,

is very much stepping up
its enforcement

to go after people
who are not reporting

their
cryptocurrency transactions.

Because they, by themselves,

could crash the market
or they could grow the market.

LANZA:
Cyber fraud-- it's one of the top three priorities of the FBI.

And in order to really
get ahead of this problem,

we need to be thinking
more in an innovative way, uh,

just as the criminals
do in the cyber world.

EBNER:
Somewhere on this planet,

those computers are humming

and they are creating
Bitcoin revenue

for somebody somewhere.

Is it just some amorphous Mr. X?

We don't know.

But those 550 computers--

I can guarantee you

they didn't wind up
in a waste dump somewhere.

Whoever this mysterious
"Mr. X" may be,

it appears that, for him,
crime does pay,

at least in Bitcoin.

But is money, in all its forms,

the ultimate drug
for the criminal mind?

Or are there some things

that are even more enticing?

Perhaps the answer
can be found by examining

the case of the man
who stole the brain

of the world's smartest man,

Albert Einstein.

SHATNER:
Albert Einstein, the celebrated physicist

considered to be
the father of modern physics,

dies at the age of 76.

While Einstein's wish
is to be cremated,

Princeton hospital
chief pathologist Thomas Harvey

must first determine
the cause of death.

But with
the body of Albert Einstein

on the autopsy table,

Harvey's interest
is drawn to something else.

He wanted to find out

what made Albert Einstein tick.

And he sees,
"Wow, there's the source

of it all. The brain."

LEPORE:
There was something about the brain that fascinated him.

And with
no small amount of effort,

he cut the skull,
removed the brain,

perfused it with formaldehyde,

and the next morning
The New York Timessays

that Thomas Harvey has preserved
the brain for scientific study.

SHATNER:
Thomas Harvey believed

that somewhere
within Einstein's brain

was the secret to his genius.

So he persuaded Einstein's son,
Hans Albert,

to let him do a study
of his father's brain.

LEPORE:
Hans Albert and Einstein's executor

came down
to speak to Harvey about it.

And Harvey impressed
upon them just the uniqueness

and criticality
of looking at Einstein's brain

as a way
of approaching how people

of intellect and genius think.

SHATNER:
Harvey took more than a dozen photos of Einstein's brain,

dissected it,
and shaved off thin slices

for microscopic study.

But years passed,
and Harvey never published

any papers
or scientific observations.

He also never returned
the brain,

but, rather, stole it

and kept it for himself

with no intention
of ever giving it back.

Once Thomas Harvey
had the brain,

he didn't
let it out of his sight.

He left his position
as chief of pathology

at Princeton Hospital,

and he headed out
to the Midwest,

and he went
into general practice.

But the brain
was always with him

stored in two large glass jars

and in cardboard boxes.

EBNER:
There's been a historical trend

of examining the brains
or the gray matter

of geniuses to try and find out

what makes them tick.

For instance,
the Brain Institute in Moscow

has kept the brains
of dictator Vladimir Lenin

and around 200
Russian scientists

on a dusty shelf for years
hoping that

they may, too, one day

unlock the secrets of genius.

But there's a fine line

between science
and grave robbing.

Harvey got a little bit
greedy here, because

not only did he swipe
Einstein's brain,

it was basically a memento
for him to have on his shelf.

You'd think that the next
of kin might have something

to say about it.

LEPORE:
Harvey segued from his job,

which is to determine the cause
of death of a patient

at Princeton Hospital,
and he did that

when he completed the autopsy.

And at that point,
all we know is that

he didn't want to hand it over.
And that's why he said,

"I keep Einstein's brain.

I'm the pathologist,
and I'm studying it."

SHATNER:
Two decades after the death of Albert Einstein,

the rest of his body
had been cremated,

his wife and children
had passed away,

and the world
had all but forgotten

about what happened
to the famed physicist's brain.

But that all changed in 1978,

when a young reporter
named Steven Levy

tracked down the whereabouts
of Einstein's brain

for a magazine article

and discovered
that Thomas Harvey

was still in possession
of Einstein's brain.

EBNER:
Levy wrote about this,

and all of a sudden,

it brought renewed interest

to what in the hell was going on
with Albert Einstein's brain.

So the medical community
was scratching their heads.

They were like,
"Okay, he's got the brain,

"in pieces as it were.

Let's have a closer look."

SHATNER:
As it turns out,

when Harvey gave back the
dissected pieces of the brain,

scientists made
a remarkable discovery.

A discovery that could
finally reveal the secret

behind Einstein's genius.

SHATNER:
Neurologist Frederick Lepore is given the rare opportunity

to photograph the remains
of Einstein's brain.

The pathologist
brought out two jars

containing little
gauze-wrapped cubes

which were the remaining
sections of Einstein's brain.

That's a very interesting
and provocative moment.

How did that inanimate
brain tissue

develop world-shaking theories?

And the process begins

by looking at the anatomy

and trying to see
if it can give us

some answers to the question of,

"Why was Einstein
such a profound genius?"

SHATNER:
What made Albert Einstein different?

It's a question
that Thomas Harvey first asked

in 1955
and one that led him to steal

Einstein's brain in hopes
of getting an answer.

I had the opportunity
to meet with Thomas Harvey

in retirement
in the spring of 2000.

He had never
really had given up that dream

of trying to,

from every possible avenue,

look at this piece of tissue

and try to come up with answers

as to Einstein's genius.

SHATNER:
In 2007, Thomas Harvey died

of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Ironically,
because Thomas Harvey

stole Einstein's brain and
preserved it for so many years,

scientists had the opportunity

to examine it
with modern technology.

And when they did,
they discovered that the brain

of this visionary genius
was, in fact, different.

JOHN MARTIN:
Neuroscientists found that Einstein's brain

had enlarged parietal lobes.

And, in addition, they found

that part of the parietal lobe,

instead of having
all these grooves,

it was sort of an enlarged,
flattened area.

Uh, and so it looked
quite remarkable.

LEPORE:
The parietal lobe is an area of the brain

that helps us with
visuospatial recognition,

and neuropathologist's
conclusion

was the exceptional brain
of Albert Einstein

was due
to the parietal lobe being

anatomically different
from the human norm.

EBNER:
I think that Thomas Harvey

might have been pleased
that by just

hanging on to that brain
for so many years

and having it looked at
by professionals,

some sort of credibility
had rubbed off on him,

so that he, in turn,

could become more respected

as a man of science.

LEVINE:
People want to stand out.

They want recognition.

And the bigger the crime,

your notoriety of committing
that crime lasts forever.

HO: In understanding
the criminal mind,

it's a certain type
of psychological profile

that makes people feel like
they can sort of

not follow society's rules.

They kind of buck authority,

but they have their own
authority, and their authority

is their internal sense
of right and wrong.

SHATNER:
It seems that no matter how hard we try,

we just can't seem to figure
out the criminal mind.

But, then again,
do we really want to?

Because if we could truly
put ourselves in the shoes

of someone who is always

scheming, and plotting,
and thrill-seeking,

then we might just be
tempted to take a chance

and carry out
a daring heist of our own.

So perhaps it's better for us

that the mind of
a master criminal remains...

unexplained.

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