Shortcut: The Bank Robber Who Lived in a Treehouse - ATC International

**Meshel Laurie** (0:03)
This is Australian True Crime International with Meshel Laurie.
Today, we're joined by Steven Meyers, author of The Treehouse, The True Story of Hollywood the Bank Robber, and someone who knows his story from a perspective very few people can ever get close to. In the 1990s, Steven was the main accomplice of his friend, Scott Scurlock, better known as the Hollywood Bandit. Together, they carried out a remarkable series of bank robberies across Seattle using elaborate disguises and meticulous planning to evade police. As you'll discover, they're both eccentric fellows and there is indeed a treehouse involved in this story. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Scott Scurlock built a treehouse, a grown up treehouse, and he lived in it. And it was like six stories and it had a bathroom and it had, I mean, and you've called your book The Treehouse. That really does, it seems to me that sums him up in so many ways. Do you agree?

**Steven Meyers** (1:15)
Yeah, very perceptive. I mean, that's why I named the title the book The Treehouse is because if the treehouse never existed, none of this would have happened. The Treehouse was an extension of his rogue view of the world.

**Meshel Laurie** (1:29)
What lured you away from your life? You were a very successful artist, a sculptor. You were working, selling work in Europe.
For many people, for many artists, that's the dream. You were living the dream. So what made you, what lured you away from that?

**Steven Meyers** (1:46)
I mean, there's a big part of me that I've always been a renegade. I mean, I just, everything is, if I finish a sculpture, I don't dwell on it. It's done. It's out of my life. I want the next thing. The next thing is for me.
And we were close and he's telling me the story. And I said, why would you do this? You know, for whatever, his first robbery was 20,000 or 25 I said, you risked all this for that little bit of money. He says, yeah. I mean, I can remember we're in this Italian restaurant and he goes, yeah, but man, you can't believe it. It was so easy and I got a lot to learn. There's a lot I've got to learn, but man, we're going to make millions out of this.
I sort of laughed. I go, all right, I sold my place, but because he had all this property, I could move my studio. I had a warehouse in Chicago and I moved everything. It was the most creative point in my life. The criticalness of non-violent, not harming people, not anybody getting hurt ourselves or anybody else or the police or any of that.

**Meshel Laurie** (2:45)
And you've spoken about the fact that a large element of it was the challenge of outwitting, not just the police, but then eventually the FBI was not even the money, maybe for Scott, although he needed money to continue the lifestyle that he enjoyed and to be generous. But yeah, it seems like you had this academic approach, like you called it, what did you call it, before a mission, a project to every robbery, to do better than the last time?

**Steven Meyers** (3:12)
No, it was. And it was a challenge for us. It's more something not to directly evade the police or the FBI. It was more to show the system. You're not all that you say you are. We're not even criminals. And we can figure you people out better than you do. And when you do it nonviolently, you're going after their jugglers.
You're taking their fruits that they do to us daily and showing them that we can do this to you.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:43)
A lot of us, I think, if we decided to rob a bank, would the first sign of anything freak out? And that's, I think, where people get shot and people get caught and all of those things. But you guys seem to have a level of confidence that was derived from the work that you put in.

**Steven Meyers** (3:58)
Well, when you understand that when you're in a bank, like Scott was, I never went in with him. I'm always on the outside. I have my eyes on the roads for police intrusion. Then I have the scanner, which is the main thing. And so he could be in there for half a day, as long as there's not a call. I mean, he just can have the confidence and the calmness that it is, because it's a psychological game inside there. You have to know the words, the verbology that you need to use with the tellers, which we, after about two and a half years, we hired one of our friends.