The escape | The Gas Man Ep 3

Elon's Spies | Tortoise Investigates

Tortoise Media

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 5.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The team persuades The Gas Man to step out from the shadows. He reveals the first big clue in the investigation to how he got away with it – and makes a surprising claim about his role in the case

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Reporter: Chloe Hadjimatheou

Producer: Claudia Williams

Editor: Jasper Corbett

Narrative editor: Gary Marshall

Sound design: Hannah Varrall

Original theme music: Tom Kinsella

Original artwork: Jon Hill

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Tortoise. I mean did you did you have an inkling that he might
0:14.4	You know what in the line of work I was in you suspect everybody's going to do something
0:19.2	like that you don't trust any criminals I I sure didn't trust him. He was a slimy sort of guy you could tell from the minute I met him.
0:31.6	The operation to get Peter Valischek behind bars in the summer of 1988 was massive.
0:38.0	It involved a global investigation,
0:41.0	cooperation between enforcement agencies in the US, Pakistan and Germany,
0:46.6	two separate sting operations and months of sifting through piles of documents.
0:51.4	When the German through piles of documents.
0:54.4	When the German finally pleaded guilty to selling chemicals that could be used to make mustard
0:59.1	gas, he also agreed to help prosecutors nail his handlers in Iran.
1:05.0	It was ambitious, but Special Agent Dennis Bass could almost smell the win.
1:12.0	He just needed a few more months to tie up the investigation.
1:20.3	By December he was getting close. But then,
1:24.4	It was all over in a phone call.
1:30.0	Yeah, the halfway house, you know, reported it. He's going.
1:34.0	Peter Valischek had disappeared from the halfway house he was living in while waiting to be sentenced.
1:41.0	The authorities had lost him. I was more than pissed if I can say it that way. I was beyond belief.
1:53.4	It's been three decades, but clearly it still gets to Dennis Bass.
1:59.3	And losing him like that.
2:01.2	It hurt.
2:10.4	And even now, he has no idea how Peter Valestec escaped. There's only one person who can answer that question?
2:21.0	When Special Agent Bass wanted answers from Peter Valaestec, he tricked him into coming to the US. And then a few nights in Baltimore jail help persuade him to talk.
	...

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