‘Criminal’ podcast tackles the wild Texas tale of bank robber ‘Cowboy Bob’

The bank robber wore a cowboy hat, sunglasses and gloves. He never spoke a word, but simply passed a note.

“Cowboy Bob,” as the press dubbed him, began his robbery spree in Irving in 1991 before moving on to Garland, Mesquite and, eventually, Tyler. In all, he was blamed for at least eight bank heists.

The shocking twist? Beneath the thick beard and mustache, Cowboy Bob was discovered by police to be Peggy Jo Tallas, a soft-spoken spinster from Garland who lived most of her life with her mother.

Yet even after serving time, Tallas was far from done.

This strange Texas tale is cleverly presented in a new episode of the podcast Criminal. Host Phoebe Judge (famed for her precise, breathy voice-overs) reconstructs the story with new interviews from Texas Monthly scribe Skip Hollandsworth (who wrote about the case in 2005) and Steve Powell, the former head of the FBI’s Dallas bank-robbery squad.

Regarding Peggy Jo: “She was one tough old bird,” Powell told The Dallas Morning News in 2005. “She was good at what she did.”

Details

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