‘Hooked’ tells the story of a skilled bank robber – but it’s not the true crime story you think it is
Journalist Josh Dean wanted to make a podcast about a bank robber. He actually started looking for someone to base the podcast around before he made his other uber successful podcasts “The Clearing” and “Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen.” He sifted through news article after news article to find who he was looking for, because he wasn’t interested in any old highwayman. No, he wanted to find a successful bank robber, like, a gifted bank robber. Someone who was seemingly born to steal.
That’s when he came across the story of a Seattle bank robber who’d robbed 30 banks in a single year before he was caught. But when Dean emailed this Tony Hathaway in prison, his response was more unexpected than you could imagine.
He told Dean that he probably didn’t know his whole story: how he was actually a technical designer and engineer for Boeing, traveling internationally on the regular in a luxurious business class. How a back injury sent him to the ER. How after two invasive surgeries on ruptured discs led to an addiction to Oxycontin, which led to an addition to heroin, which led to robbing 30 banks in a year. Which thusly, landed him in prison. “Hooked” is not the true crime podcast Dean thought it would be, but instead, it’s a look into America’s opioid crisis.
This 2021 Apple TV+ podcast is 10 episodes following the unorthodox career path of Hathaway, which in turn, shows us how the United States manufactured its own opioid crisis. Episodes are around 30 to 40 minutes long.
Episodes range from telling the story of the man who baffled the FBI, a shape-shifting swindler who robbed banks with merely a beanie and a mask cut out of a t-shirt, to telling the story of a dad of two children with a comfortable career. How Hathaway sums it up in his email to Dean: “It’s a painful story about a guy who had it made and lost it all because he became addicted to pain medication that he was prescribed by his family doctor.”
The podcast isn’t all tragic, though. Hathaway is extremely charming and his excitement is palpable when talking about his bank robberies. He was seriously talented when it came to the art of the heist. But, he was talented because he had to be. It was the easiest way to earn more money to buy more Oxy and heroin. By now, he and his 18-year-old son, also an addict, were living in a Subaru Outback in a parking lot.
The story dives into his living hell, from spiraling into addiction, to when he and his son, Connor, were finally caught, but only Connor was charged and sent to prison. His story in “Hooked” is simultaneously a look at the evolution of the opioid epidemic to the heroin epidemic. Hathaway’s story runs parallel to the crisis.
For a story so sprawling and messy, Dean makes “Hooked” a must-listen. Hathaway was released from prison in late 2019, now following the backlash against Purdue Pharma, and fighting the urge for one more adrenaline rush that comes from robbing a bank. Dean says that Hathaway’s story illustrates the precarious nature of life that we all find ourselves in – only some of us haven’t been prescribed what’s essentially pharmaceutical heroin.
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