Pod Insights Infamous America MIAMI SHOOTOUT Ep. 1 | “Who are these guys?” About this episode In October of 1985, two armed robbers, Michael Platt and Bill Matix, begin targeting banks and armored cars in broad daylight in South Miami. They wear masks and army fatigues, and they have no problem opening fire in public places. Platt and Matix aren’t the most successful robbers in criminal history, but they have no fear, and they leave behind no clues for investigators.
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Transcript 0:10 Speaker 00 Probable the most classic setup line for a joke is the old "a guy walks into a bar" routine. Now, this one won't have a funny punchline and it doesn't have the rhythm of the classic, but it almost sounds like the beginning of a joke. A bank teller and a guard walk out to a drive-thru window. It was little before 10:30 in the morning on Friday, November 8, 1985, in South Miami, Florida. Florida National Bank was on South Dixie Highway, and today it's a Wells Fargo. Then, as now, the bank operated two separate facilities. There was the main bank building, where customers could park their cars in the lot, walk inside and see a teller or a banker. Across the parking lot from the main building was a separate, smaller building with a teller
0:55 Speaker 00 window for drive-thru customers. The female bank teller and the male guard were walking from the main building to the smaller drive-thru building to get the drive-thru window set up for the day's business. The teller carried a bag with $10,000 in it, and they had probably done the walk dozens or maybe hundreds of times without incident. It was about 200 feet from the main building to the drive-thru building, and most of the short walk would have been pleasant. The morning was mild and sunny, with the temperature rising toward 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which would have been a big rebound from the cold snap that had hit Miami earlier in the week. As the bank teller and the guard neared the drive-thru building, the morning turned from pleasant and routine to terrifying.
1:43 Speaker 00 A 1977 gold Chevy Monte Carlo screamed into the parking lot and stopped a few feet from the teller and the guard. Two men wearing ski masks, or "balaclavas" as they're called elsewhere, and army fatigues, jumped out of the car and pointed guns at the teller and the guard. They shouted for the guard to hand over his weapon and for the teller to hand over the bag of money. Both did as instructed. The robbers ordered the teller to unlock the door to the drive-thru building, so they could steal however much cash was inside. The frightened woman moved to the door of the small building and fumbled with the key. She tried repeatedly to unlock the door, but it wouldn't budge. Maybe in her fear, she didn't slide the key all the way into the lock.
2:26 Speaker 00 Whatever the reason, she couldn't unlock the door, and the robbers couldn't wait any longer. They were near the busy intersection of South Dixie Highway and Southwest 148th Street. They were wearing masks, waving guns, and shouting. It's safe to say they were drawing attention. After the woman's failed attempts to open the door to the drive-thru building, the bandits abandoned the rest of their plan and rushed back to their car. As they sped away from Florida National Bank, they hit another patch of bad luck. A police officer who had been nearby started following them. They wove through traffic and quickly lost the officer, but not before he noted the license plate number of their car.
3:08 Speaker 00 Minutes after the two men fled the scene, FBI agents and Miami police officers swarmed the bank. The previous month, in October 1985, a pair of heavily armed thieves had tried three armored car robberies. The first had been a partial success, but the second and third were failures. The key, though, the scariest thing, was that the thieves were not afraid to use their guns. During the second armored car robbery, they had shot and injured one of the guards and gotten into a shootout with the other two guards. After quick interviews at Florida National Bank, the FBI agents were confident that the armored car bandits were the same as the two guys who had just robbed the drive-thru teller. What the agents didn't know, crucially, were the identities of the bandits.
3:54 Speaker 00 And even more important than that, the agents didn't know that the bandits were about to strike again in ninety minutes.
4:15 Speaker 00 From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we're telling the story of the no-holds-barred robberies of Michael Platt and William Maddox in the mid-1980s in Miami, which culminated in a deadly shootout with the FBI. This is Episode 1: Who Are These Guys?
4:41 Speaker 00 Michael Lee Platt and William Russell Maddox had two things in common. One was pretty normal, and the other was decidedly not. The normal one was that both men served in the military, and that was how they met. Bill Maddox served three years in the Marine Corps from 1969 to 1972, before he received an honorable discharge. After a year of civilian life, he enlisted in the Army. He completed airborne Ranger training, and then he was assigned to the military police at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he met Michael Platt. Platt's father was a Navy corpsman, and Platt joined the Army in 1972, right after he finished high school. He became a military policeman, an MP, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he met Bill
5:26 Speaker 00 Maddox one year later. During their time as MPs at Fort Campbell, Platt and Maddox became close friends. They worked together for about three years, until Maddox's enlistment ended. He received an honorable discharge in 1976 and left military service for good. Platt stayed in the Army for another three years, and completed seven years of service before he was honorably discharged in 1979. Both men achieved the rank of Sergeant. Both had solid service records with no problems, and neither displayed any tendency toward violent crime. But then came the thing they had in common that was not normal: Both of their wives died gruesome deaths.
6:14 Speaker 00 Both men got married shortly after they left the service. For 25-year-old Bill Maddox, that was in 1976 when he met Patricia at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. Maddox made regular trips to the military hospital to receive treatment for the stutter which had plagued him his entire life. Patricia worked in the therapy unit where Maddox received treatment. They fell in love, got married, and eventually settled in Maddox's home state of Ohio. Maddox grew up in Dayton, but the young couple settled in Columbus. Maddox seemed to be a little bit listless without the regimented life of the Army, and he didn't stay with any of his employers for very long. He was a good cook and took some early steps to pursue it as a career, but it didn't go
6:58 Speaker 00 very far. Patricia, whom Maddox called Patty, worked at Riverside Methodist Hospital Research Foundation. Patty had a solid career, and she and Bill were raising their young daughter, until a tragedy in the final days of 1983. On December 30th, someone entered Riverside Methodist Hospital and stabbed to death Patty and one of her coworkers. The vicious crime was never solved. Bill Maddox was obviously a suspect, but the Columbus Police could never establish a link between the murder and Maddox. The age-old motive of money seemed to be a good option if Maddox was a suspect. Maddox received a life insurance payment which was thought to be around $180,000,
7:43 Speaker 00 and an FBI report stated that he was bitter that the settlement was lower than he had hoped. In addition, he received Patty's social security benefits, as well as a monthly payment from Patty's employer as her surviving spouse. But part of the reason why the police had trouble establishing money as a motive for murder was that Bill Maddox kept very little of the money for himself. He put most of it into a trust to help their daughter. And then, on the same day Patty was killed, Bill Maddox learned his father in Cincinnati had had a stroke. His father passed away from terminal cancer four months later, in April 1984, and at that point, Maddox decided to leave Ohio.
8:26 Speaker 00 That summer, he pulled up stakes and moved to Miami, Florida to work with his old Army buddy, Michael Platt.
8:33 Speaker 00 After Platt had served a one-year tour in Korea toward the end of his service from 1977 to 1978, he returned home to his wife Regina in Monterey, California. A year later, in 1979, he received an honorable discharge from the Army, and he and Regina and their newborn son moved to Regina's hometown of Miami, Florida. Platt initially worked for Regina's father, but in 1982, Platt started his own business, a landscaping company, with his brother. Regina became the company's bookkeeper, and in the summer of 1984, after two years in business, Platt's old Army buddy Bill Maddox moved to Miami to join the company.
9:15 Speaker 00 Six months later, the Platt family experienced tragedy. On December 21, 1984, Regina Platt died from a gunshot wound to the head, which was reportedly self-inflicted. Her death was ruled a suicide, but like the death of Bill Maddox's wife, Regina's death would receive new scrutiny in the near future. Investigators would start to wonder if there was a more sinister story behind the deaths of the two wives one year apart. But in the new year of 1985, Michael Platt and Bill Maddox continued to work together at the company owned by Platt and his brother. In August of 1985, Platt and Maddox split off to form their own landscaping company, Yankee Clipper.
9:58 Speaker 00 Two months later, they committed their first murder. Six days after that, they committed their first armed robbery.
10:09 Speaker 00 Emilio Brielle's adulthood was brief, but it featured the two standard hallmarks of "young love and heartbreak." Emilio probably wasn't a country music fan, but if he were, he would have experienced the two components which make up 99% of country songs. In 1985, he was 25 years old. Three or four years earlier, he had a whirlwind love affair with a girl from Canada who was visiting Miami. They got married, she got pregnant, and then she left Emilio and returned home to Canada. Emilio went to Canada to try to fix the relationship. He appeared to have been in Canada for at least a year and a half, but he couldn't salvage his marriage. He returned to Miami at the end of 1983 or the beginning of 1984,
10:54 Speaker 00 around the same time that Bill Maddox's wife Patty was murdered in Columbus, Ohio. Emilio worked part-time at a restaurant, and in his spare time, he occasionally enjoyed target shooting at a local rock quarry. It was a fairly common activity in South Florida, and on October 4th, 1985, Emilio borrowed his father's 1977 Monte Carlo and drove to a local quarry with his .22 caliber rifle. Emilio set up some cans and started shooting. At some point during his afternoon at the makeshift target range, a series of events happened which were understood only through inference. In less than a year, there would be no surviving witnesses, so the specifics could only be guessed.
11:38 Speaker 00 More than likely, a white Ford F-150 pickup truck drove into the rock quarry where Emilio was doing target practice. Two men probably got out of the truck. They were Michael Platt and Bill Maddox, and they would have towered over Emilio Brielle. Emilio was 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighed about 120 pounds. Michael Platt was 6 feet tall and weighed 175. Bill Maddox was 6 foot 1, but a skinnier 150 pounds. Almost certainly, both men stepped out of the truck, pointing weapons at Emilio. Based on upcoming events, the weapons could have been anything from .357 Magnum revolvers,
12:20 Speaker 00 to pump-action shotguns, to Ruger Mini-14 rifles. Whatever they were holding, the weapons were probably enough to disarm Emilio Brielle. One of the two soon-to-be robbers shot and killed Emilio. The rock quarry was on the western edge of the city of Miami, where the city fades into the Everglades. Platt and Maddox loaded Emilio's body into one of the vehicles and drove deeper into the Everglades. They drove Emilio's body into an open field and stashed his car somewhere for future use. Six days after Platt and Maddox killed Emilio Brielle, they started their armed robbery careers with a flourish.
12:59 Speaker 00 On Thursday, October 10th, 1985, at 12:25 PM, Platt, Maddox, and a third unidentified man drove up to the Steak and Ale Restaurant on Southwest 97th Avenue. They were in a gray car instead of Emilio's Monte Carlo, though the Monte Carlo would make its debut soon. The unidentified getaway driver stayed in the car, while Platt and Maddox leapt out and rushed toward a Loomis armored car. Platt and Maddox had clearly studied the routines of armored cars. They knew that armored cars made daily pickups at businesses during the traditional lunch hour between 12 noon and 1 P M. They had been waiting and watching. The Loomis armored car parked in front of the restaurant.
13:44 Speaker 00 A guard stepped out of the truck, went inside, and collected money for deposit. When he exited the restaurant and started to walk to the truck, the robbers raced up behind him. Platt and Maddox jumped out of the car dressed in full army fatigues with black ski masks covering their faces and army helmets on their heads. They carried weapons which were identified as "machine guns," and they quickly took the bag of money from the guard. They shouted at the armored car driver to open the truck, but the driver stepped on the gas and sped away. The robbers opened fire and missed the truck, and at that point it was time to leave. They threw smoke grenades to cover their retreat to the getaway car and then drove away.
14:31 Speaker 00 The first robbery netted Platt and Maddox $2,800, but they missed the $400,000 that was in the armored car when the driver sped away. Regardless, the first robbery announced to everyone in South Miami that there were new players in town. Over the course of one week, their presence and their pattern would be noticed by everyone from the staff writers at the Miami Herald newspaper to Special Agent in Charge of the Miami FBI Field Office, Joseph Corliss, to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Leon Kellner. Two men, wearing military fatigues and carrying military-style weapons, were committing armed robberies of armored cars in broad daylight in public places.
15:15 Speaker 00 And frighteningly, they had no problem opening fire in those public places. They had fired at the armored car during the steak and ale job, and then, on October 16th, six days after the first robbery, they did it again during the second robbery. At 12:05 P M., the robbers ambushed a Wells Fargo armored car at a Winn-Dixie supermarket two and a half miles from the steak and ale restaurant.
15:40 Speaker 00 Wells Fargo guard Jose Sanchez was exiting the supermarket and moving toward the armored car when a car rolled up to him, a man jumped out with a shotgun and shouted "Freeze!" Without giving Sanchez a chance to do anything, the robber with the shotgun opened fire. So did his partner, who was still sitting behind the wheel of the getaway car. The driver was using a pistol, or a rifle, or maybe both. His shots missed, but a partial load of the buckshot from the shotgun hit Sanchez in the left leg and he fell to the ground. The two other guards in the Wells Fargo crew returned fire and forced the robber with the shotgun to retreat to his car.
16:22 Speaker 00 The two robbers, who again wore army fatigues and ski masks, sped away empty-handed, but undeterred. Because of the masks, and the speed and the chaos of the action, no one ever determined which robber typically acted as the assaulter and which one was the driver. But if nothing else, Michael Platt and Bill Maddox were committed. They were using some of their military training, and definitely military apparel, but their attempts were pretty haphazard. Still, they kept going. The next day, exactly 24 hours and 50 minutes after the attempted robbery of the Wells Fargo truck at a Winn-Dixie supermarket on southwest 104th Street, Platt and Maddox
17:02 Speaker 00 attacked a Loomis truck behind a restaurant on southwest 88th Street. In the alley behind Dalton's American Grill, the Loomis armored car crew who had been hit by Platt and Maddox seven days earlier, were hit again. The same guard who had lost $2,800 to the robbers outside the Steak and Ale, was not surprised this time. As the guard walked out of the restaurant and into the alley with a bag of money, he spotted the two robbers hiding behind the armored car. The guard drew his .38 revolver and fired four shots at the bandits. This time, the driver did not speed away to save the money that was already in the truck. The guard didn't hit the bandits with any of his four shots, but his quick reaction forced them to retreat.
17:46 Speaker 00 They ran down the alley and turned out of sight, where the police said later, they must have jumped into a car to make their escape. The cops scrambled a helicopter to try to find the robbers, but the search was fruitless. That made three attempted robberies in seven days. The attack on the Loomis armored car at the Steak and Ale Restaurant on October 10th. The attack on the Wells Fargo armored car at the Winn-Dixie on October 16th. And the attack on the Loomis armored car at Dalton's American Grill on October 17th. The only attempt that was even partially successful was the first, where the robbers stole $2,800. The FBI thought the bandits might be part of a loose-knit gang of thieves.
18:28 Speaker 00 Two months earlier, agents had busted four men who had been robbing armored cars. It was a logical thought that they were all associated, but it was wrong. Platt and Maddox were not part of a larger crew. And they only waited three weeks before they struck again.
18:49 Speaker 00 The seven days between October 10th and October 17th, 1985, had been a flurry of adrenaline-fueled action for Michael Platt and Bill Maddox. Armored cars must have sounded like easier scores than banks when the guys had been planning their crime spree. But the reality turned out to be different from the dream. They had undoubtedly believed that they could strike hard and fast, utilizing their military training, and quickly escape with huge amounts of money. But that hadn't happened. So it was time to change the target. They weren't ready to stoop to the level of a liquor store rip, but they were going to take a step back from armored cars. They would, however, retain everything else: audacity, speed, army fatigues, ski masks, and serious firepower.
19:34 Speaker 00 And, they were going to debut a new getaway car: the gold 1977 Chevy Monte Carlo they had stolen from Emilio Brielle one month earlier. At 10:30 in the morning on November 8th, 1985, they sped into the parking lot of the Florida National Bank on South Dixie Highway. They ambushed a bank teller and a guard who were walking from the main bank building to the smaller drive-thru building. They took a bag containing $10,000 from the teller and tried to force her to open the door to the drive-thru building, but she couldn't get the key to work. After a few tense moments of waving their guns and shouting, they abandoned the rest of the robbery and raced away.
20:15 Speaker 00 Within minutes, a swarm of Miami police officers and FBI agents descended on the bank.
20:25 Speaker 00 It took one quick interview with the bank teller and the guard to realize that the men who had struck Florida National Bank were likely the same ones who had attempted three armored car robberies three weeks earlier. The FBI was building a case file on the robbers, who seemed to have used a third man as a getaway driver in the beginning, but had now slimmed down to just the two partners. Much of the modus operandi remained the same, but there were two new twists. The robbers targeted a bank instead of an armored car, and they were driving a brownish-colored getaway car. And that was an important distinction of the 1977 Monte Carlo. The color was listed as gold, but it looked more like a tan or a light brown color.
21:08 Speaker 00 If it had been a bright shiny color, it would have attracted attention. As it was, the car blended in very easily in 1985. And while investigators gathered information at Florida National Bank, the robbers struck Professional Savings Bank, a mile and a half away. Just ninety minutes after the Florida National robbery, and a mile and a half up the road, Michael Platt and Bill Maddox drove up to Professional Savings Bank. They parked the car in front of the bank, pulled down their masks, and ran into the lobby. November 8th was a Friday, so the bank was packed with nearly forty customers. One robber carried a handgun, and the other carried a rifle. They shouted at the customers to lay on the floor.
21:51 Speaker 00 When everyone was down, the robbers demanded the three Wells Fargo money bags, which had been delivered by an armored car about half an hour earlier. Employees handed over the three bags, and the robbers left without a shot fired. They sped away in the Monte Carlo, and likely celebrated their windfall. The bags contained forty-one thousand, four hundred sixty-nine dollars, which brought their total for ninety minutes of work to fifty-one thousand, four hundred sixty-nine dollars. That would be almost one hundred fifty-eight thousand dollars today, and it would be enough to tide them over for the next two months.
22:31 Speaker 00 After the pair of robberies on November 8th, 1985, all was quiet for a time. Of course, the FBI and Miami-Dade Police didn't know it was going to be quiet. After five armed robberies in 34 days by the same pair of bandits, the authorities had to assume the spree would continue, but it didn't, not for the rest of the year. From what is known, Michael Platt and Bill Maddox settled back into their "normal lives." Those around the pair had no idea that the Army buddies, who had become inseparable during the year Maddox had lived in Miami, were committing robbery. Platt and Maddox worked regular hours at their landscaping business, and they both stayed fit.
23:13 Speaker 00 Platt played in pickup basketball games, and Maddox had a black belt in karate, according to the Reverend of Maddox's church back in Ohio. Maddox became active in the Baptist church in Ohio after his wife was killed, and he remained active in a local congregation when he moved to Miami, though an investigator told The New York Times that some members of the church quickly suspected Maddox was using the church for social purposes rather than religious worship. The investigator noted, "Someone said Maddox used the church the way some men use a singles bar." Reportedly, Maddox proposed marriage to more than one woman he met at the church. He was actually engaged for a brief time, but the woman broke it off.
23:55 Speaker 00 Less than a year later, he married Kristy Lou Horn. After just a month together, she moved home with her parents and started divorce proceedings. Meanwhile, the FBI and the Miami-Dade Police were trying to figure out what they were dealing with. The FBI had busted a crew of armed robbers in August of 1985, two months before Platt and Maddox got started. So, the two most obvious questions were: Who were the two men who wore Army fatigues and masks and carried serious weapons and had no problems using them? And, were they affiliated with the crew who had been busted in August? If not, the FBI had a new crew on its hands.
24:40 Speaker 00 Whoever the guys were, they had chosen a preferred area for their crimes. All the robberies happened in an area of 15 square miles. Plotted on a map, investigators could draw a nice neat box around the locations. Because of the close proximities of the crimes, it stood to reason that the suspects lived in the area and were familiar with the locations and the streets. The suspects had obviously done their homework in terms of timing. They had done reconnaissance to understand the pickup and delivery schedules of the armored cars. Based on the planning, the weapons, the willingness to use them, and the army fatigues that the suspects always wore, it was certainly possible that the two men were former soldiers.
25:23 Speaker 00 But that detail wouldn't help narrow the list of suspects until investigators could add more information to their profile. There were five major Air Force bases in Florida, which were home to more than 50,000 soldiers from all branches of the military. Homestead Air Force Base was right there in Miami. And of course, there was no way to know if the suspects were from Florida, or had served in Florida, or were from somewhere else in the country. The local cop who had briefly chased the bandits after the Florida National Bank robbery, the first of the two on November 8th, had noted the license plate number of the 1977 Monte Carlo that the thieves were driving. But based on FBI reports, it's hard to know if that information was passed on to the Bureau.
26:07 Speaker 00 Presumably, Miami-Dade Police investigated the car and discovered it was connected to a missing person report. Emilio Brielle's family had reported him missing on October 4th, when he didn't come home from target shooting at the rock quarry. But they did not report the car stolen, so the car itself did not have a police report connected to it. At that moment, Emilio Brielle's body was lying in a field in the Everglades, a huge national park and wetland area which encompasses most of the southern tip of Florida. As of November 8th, 1985, only Michael Platt and Bill Maddox knew anything about the disappearance of Emilio Brielle. And that was where things stood as the robbers went dark for the rest of 1985.
26:52 Speaker 00 When they showed up again in the second week of January 1986, their previous crimes would look like child's play compared to what was coming.
27:11 Speaker 00 Next time on Infamous America, Michael Platt and Bill Maddox storm out of the gates in January 1986 with a brutal robbery that demonstrates a major escalation of their violent methods. They need a new getaway car, which leads them to another innocent victim. But law enforcement finally learns key details of the suspects, and the FBI assembles a team to bring them down. That's next week on Infamous America.
27:48 Speaker 00 To binge all the episodes of a new season and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, or sign up through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. The series was researched, written, and produced by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.
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