Texas Wine and True Crime
We review Texas wines and discuss Texas true crime.
Texas Wine and True Crime
How A Family Became Jewel Thieves And What It Cost Them
A diamond thief with a conscience, a father who thrived on beating the system, and a brother who asked the hardest questions—Bryan Sobolewski takes us inside a five-year run of New England jewelry heists and the aftermath that reshaped his life. The story starts with a “favor” to recover stolen money and spirals into armed robberies, fake storefronts, and a tight 90-second rule. Bryan breaks down how mom-and-pop stores relied on traveling salesmen carrying entire catalogs, why insurance policies demanded they be armed, and how that escalated risk on both sides. He explains the choreography behind Burlington’s most complex setup, and why control—not speed—was their true advantage when they could create the right conditions.
We go deep on recruitment, including the surprising role of a hockey mom, and the mechanics of moving stolen goods without touching pawn shops. Bryan reveals how they pre-sold, hosted private “gold parties,” and even unwittingly sold to a local police department. It’s a masterclass in criminal logistics and a candid look at the paranoia that follows: the weeks-long adrenaline, the constant rearview mirror checks, and the searing anxiety that becomes your new normal. When a perfect composite sketch of his father hit the papers, the cracks widened. Arrests rolled in across states, an insider flipped, and the crew took plea deals—twelve years for his father, eight for his brother, and nearly three for Bryan.
What comes next is raw and human. Bryan’s builds a new life with education, personal training, and speaking to students and recovery groups about choices and consequences. He confronts family loyalty, addiction, and the grief of losing both his father and brother in 2022, a case ruled a double suicide with lingering uncertainty. Along the way, he calls out the stubborn stigma of a criminal record and the urgent need for second-chance hiring. This is true crime with uncommon clarity—ethics, logistics, trauma, and the long road to redemption.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. Your support helps more people find stories that change how we think about crime, choice, and second chances.
www.texaswineandtruecrime.com
Today, Brian Seboluski joins me to share his story as a diamond thief in the early 1990s. Brian, along with his father, his brother, and a team of others, committed a string of diamond heist in the New England area. Brian served his time for his crimes, but since leaving prison, he's achieved a bachelor's degree. He currently works as a personal trainer and lives in the great state of Texas. He's a public speaker to those that need it the most, schools and substance abuse counseling groups. He started his podcast, Family Jewels, back in 2021, and he is the author of his book, Family Jewels. I'm so happy he's joining me today to share his story with all of you. Brian, thank you so much for being here.
SPEAKER_02:I'm psyched to be here, and especially after the Louvre heist, which I am applauding. Um so glad that that heist happened. I'm so glad that there's still people out there thinking this way, because I'm certainly not. But uh yeah, I've been following that story a lot. I actually got called by CNN, the New York Times, and a small um TV station in Minnesota to be on their shows about the Louvre heist.
SPEAKER_00:So well, I even asked you about it this week, and I will ask you about it um again on our show. Um, Brian, I always say stories inspire. They um are interesting, they are our lives. We all have one. We all have something to give in this world. And the most beautiful thing about it is when we share our stories, sometimes we touch people that we'll never even meet. Um, and I, Brian, I bet you have done that um with what you're about to share with us. So I um my interview style is just here we go, let's talk about it. So, what are we talking about today, Brian? We're talking about your life story, something that started when you were 20 years old that lasted for five years with your brother and your dad. So how did the conversation even come up to start to start robbing jewelry stores?
SPEAKER_02:Um Wow, every um job in a way was presented to us as we were going after somebody that was dirty. But the very first robbery was um was my dad saying that he had invested a bunch of money with somebody that was importing diamonds from Israel. And uh the guy just ended up saying that he never got the order and robbed my dad of his life savings. So my dad asked my brother and I if we would go after the guy, and it was such a, you know, it had a Western feel, you know, go after and save. Well, A, we were saving Christmas, because it was a couple of days before Christmas that we pulled this robbery off. Um we were saving my dad, which was something we never thought we would be in a position to be able to do. Um, my dad was a very strong guy. He was a that was a very complicated guy. And and to have him come and ask me to do this was something that I've that I've really tried to dissect over the past, you know, 20 years. Um, but it that that's how the first one started. I would have never imagined me ever doing anything like that with my family. And there I was.
SPEAKER_00:So you're 20 years old. What was going on in your life at the time? Um, and I can I can kind of see where, you know, I have a daughter. I'm close to my daughter. We share a lot of things. She shares a lot of things with me. I could see as we were getting older, our relationship and our bond is different. And you're an adult child at that point, you know? And so I'm sure your father was very open about his past and his life. And, you know, so what was going on in your life at the time?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, my brother and I were both addicted to drugs like crazy. Um, we were both up at Plymouth State College, which was a northern New Hampshire small little town that had a big campus in it. Um, and we were just up there partying our brains out and on a path to nowhere anyway. So this was a sort of throughout my adolescence and my early adulthood, um, I didn't I had no direction whatsoever. So I just kind of following my brother around because we were just party animals and we were just gonna try to spend as much of my dad's money as possible. My dad did okay. He was probably upper middle class. My dad worked very, very hard at what he did. Um, and and part of what my brother and I were doing were trying to make him crazy because we my dad wasn't an emotional guy. You you never saw him fly off the handle the same way you did my mother. Like my mother would punch you square in the face, like she would lose it when you made her mad. But we could never get my dad over that. Over that we can I never saw that part of my dad. And and we were trying hard to see it as much as we could. So um we were not heading anywhere good anytime during that period. I think that's part of the reason why um we started doing it.
SPEAKER_00:So the conversation comes up. Your father um had invested some money in order to get jewelry. It didn't work out. The guy took the money. So, what was the conversation around this actually attempting to get, you know, revenge or the money or the jewels from this person?
SPEAKER_02:God, it it feels like it just came together so organically because he wasn't the only, my dad wasn't the only person the guy ripped off. So there were other people that were all interested with no other legal recourse, which again is stupid. Don't don't give all your money to somebody without some you know legal means of getting it back. But I think the lesson that we learned from this was um, you don't you don't ever try to steal from innocent people. Um we always steal from thieves, and that that's who we went after. So this guy was dirty, ripping everybody off. And you know, they tend to not have a legal recourse, you know. So um it my dad's business partner made sure that this guy had a decent amount of um jewelry on him so that we knew when we were going to meet him at his house that this would be something that we would do, you know, we weren't doing for nothing. We didn't want to get an emptied briefcase because that's what we were going after. Um so it all kind of fell together relatively quick. I don't think my dad spent a bunch of time in the planning stages like we did other robberies. It was like, hey, there's a sh uh small window of opportunity right before Christmas when we know this guy is trying to sell Julie all over the place um to catch him somewhere in that and and get some of our money back. And and that's that's all it really was for us, man. I wasn't uh I didn't sit down and think of the legal ramifications, I didn't sit down and think of the moral ramifications. It was an instant yes. So I wish I had better go big skills, you know, at least take 10 or 15 minutes on the decision, but I was just like, no, let's go right now. And that's also sort of a, you know, uh a uh bravado New England kind of thing. You know what I mean? Is protect family at all costs. Um, this is your dad. Uh you gotta you gotta do what he says. So I don't, I know that there is no way I would do anything like this if that influence wasn't there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, you know, this piece of it I can understand, but you actually went on, I believe, to uh commit 22 additional highs somewhere in the ballpark of that. Whether they were break-ins, you know, you were again, your brother was sort of the muscle power of this, he that he would be the one to subdue. You were kind of casing, you guys started to each play a part in this. So why after getting your money or the jewels back from this guy? Why then the second one, the third one? Was there a sort of a feel and energy that you all felt? I'm just kind of figuring out why um it needed to continue.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And I am trying to figure out that same thing because you know, it there was always uh the question of what are we doing and why are we doing it? Is this worth the risk? And that second robbery, the one that we ended up walking away from, was another situation like the first one. It wasn't that my dad invested in anything, but people that had invested with the guy that owned this store just wanted the money that they knew was in the guy's safe. So they were just looking for somebody to go in there and do it. And we went in there, and and again, it's when you do an armed robbery, it's I have to constantly be assessing the threat level. What is the threat level to us going into this place? And and we didn't want to hurt anybody either. So, what is the threat level to the people that we're going into? What is the possibility that how horribly could this go wrong is what you really spend your time doing in the planning stages. And and how well can we manage that? And uh, we walked away from this situation because it didn't feel right. When we were in that store and that guy stayed strapped, he still had his gun on. We knew that this wasn't something we wanted, we didn't plan for it. We thought he was going to take his gun off. And we walked away. And when his best friend went in there a week later and shot him in the head, it was like, wow, because it did two things for us. It scared the hell out of the rest of the industry, but also made it very hard for us to get people to trust us and set them up the way that we wanted to, which is why we ended up having to use my dad's girlfriend later on and other robberies and other females to get the guy to the people that were traveling salesmen to get them to trust us so that they would come to the places that we wanted to rob them at. So um that that I think this is where my dad kind of snapped and and that sociopath, and and I don't know another word for it, um, because I truly believe that on a on a grand scale, my dad enjoyed beating a system. And the more that I think about it and the more that I explore it in my mind, you know, stealing was something that that we did. Um, you know, I say that my dad's second house, we stole two-thirds of it because we used to drive around to construction sites at night on weekends when we were with them after my mother and father's divorce. And we would steal the rest of what we needed from construction sites to build the rest of the house. So I mean, it and it was just very nonchalant. I mean, the Sobelewski family is probably the reason why now there are fences around construction sites, because we would just load up, you know, two by fours all night on a Saturday night because there was no nobody thought to to guard it. And we took the raw materials and went back, and my dad built a house that that he loved. So I think that we were sort of indoctrinated through our entire childhood to say, hey, you know, got to obey these laws, but you know, we can skirt a couple. Yeah, it's not a big deal. And uh it's so funny because as much as of that house as we stole, um uh I think it was a year after my dad sold it, the only tornado to ever have touched down in Massachusetts destroyed it. Okay, God, yeah. God says, God said, let's take that down. I don't like it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02:Pretty incredible, right?
SPEAKER_00:That's pretty incredible. So you have this family discussion, you actually have worry about going into these highs, you're actually doing some planning. Now, I want to kind of talk about what role you played. Because eventually, you know, I kind of think of this. So when I asked you that question about why the second one, why the third one, why the fourth, right? It's kind of like my other podcast I do, and we talk about serial killers. So after they murder one person, they have an urgency to satisfy that need again and again and again, right? Just in a different way. You have people who rob places, you have people who commit murder, you have people who commit other crimes, but there's some, there's an urge of feeding that need, right? Whether it's beating the system, whether it's it's doing this, but there's something in the mind that goes with this. Now, another piece of this is having accomplices know what you're doing. So we have serial killers who then get recruit people to help them with their victims. You then recruited people to help you pull off these heights. So they always say the more people that know about what you're doing, the more likely you're going to get caught. So, what made you put trust into that?
SPEAKER_02:Stupidity. We were just stupid. We we just thought it it was so easy not to do it. You know what I mean? Like when um one of my podcast episodes is called Hockey Mom. We got a hockey mom to go into a store with us and take it down. And let me tell you something, she was excellent, she was amazing at it. She she got us a Michael Jordan rookie card that I didn't even see. I was a little embarrassed that she got that and I didn't when we were cleaning out the cases. Um, it was it was amazingly easy with a a relatively small amount of money uh to convince people. And uh yeah, you're absolutely right. There's there's yes, I got addicted to the thrill of it, but the adrenaline's not fun. It's it it eats away at you more than I think jumping out of a plane, getting down to earth, standing up and being like, hey, I'm back down here. Then the adrenaline subsides. This is adrenaline that kind of lasts and kind of slow burns you over a couple of weeks until you kind of get to the place where you're like, okay, we're not gonna get caught for this. Um you have this really uh it's not a good feeling. Um, so I don't know, I think for me and my brother, the robberies were a means to an end. Because we were so addicted to coke and we were so addicted to drinking and partying. Um, we did these things, A, to appease my dad, which has always just been a hulking figure in my life, and um, B to keep a lifestyle that we had grown accustomed to. You know, champagne diet on a beer budget wasn't working for us.
SPEAKER_00:Um so you bring more people in. I can't, that's so funny about the hockey mom. And no, I wonder, like, it's what what are other people needing in their life to say yes to something like this? Is it just you know, I just find it very fascinating on why people make the decisions they do, especially when it comes to never committing crimes and then all of a sudden wanting to commit a crime. Maybe it's thrill, maybe it's just to see if you can actually get away with it. I mean, human behavior is very interesting. So let's talk about the heist. What kind of jewelry stores did you target? Why did you target them? Did you target them in your local area? Did you now you said you always stole from thieves, right? So um, I know insurance. You mentioned this in a couple of your interviews, which I think I found fascinating. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about what that what the insurance life is like for people who own jewelry stores and the markup of jewelry, which we all know about, but my God, I learned so much from you about how much people are charging and paying for diamonds. So, what was y'all's mindset of who you're choosing, what you're taking, and how to pull this off?
SPEAKER_02:Uh geez, the 90s were a different time for the jewelry industry. So uh now you just see a lot of chains and you don't see a whole lot of mom and pop stores anymore. In the 90s, it was all mom and pop, and Jared only came out in the 2000s, or you know, that was one of the very first kind of franchises. The um importing and the exporting of this stuff is really difficult. Um, so these mom and pop places used to get visits from salesmen. So there were probably four or five different jewelry companies out there that had a catalog of merchandise that you could purchase from. And these salesmen would drive around with the entire catalog in their trunk. They were modified vehicles, meaning by the time you know you were trying to get in them, it's almost like an armored car. So it would be a Lincoln Crown Vic or Ford Crown Vic, and there would be multiple keyholes to get into the trunk. And one, one of them opened the trunk and you needed to know which one, and the other two set off an alarm. Uh, bulletproof glass. Um, because these guys were traveling around with so much money, their insurance protocol said this is what you got to do. The other part of that insurance protocol said that if you were driving around with this company's entire catalog in your trunk, you needed to be armed. So we always knew everybody we were facing was gonna be packing. So that you know, that that's always a huge concern for us. So my brother and I didn't have any weapons for the first two robberies, uh, but by the third one, we needed them. That the third, the Burlington robbery was our biggest and it was our riskiest. And this is one that we didn't think my dad was gonna be able to pull off in terms of what we needed to put in place to pull it off. We needed a storefront. We needed to make it look like we were opening a Jared's, and we couldn't do that because every lease that you sign, you're gonna give some sort of identification. And we were like, there's no way we're gonna find somebody that's gonna take cash and a fake ID. And my dad found it. And I think that my dad being a salesman his entire life just made it easier for him to do stuff like that. I don't know that my dad was a salesman or he was a con man who went into sales because he was excellent at it. I don't think I yeah, it takes a special person to go into sales, and I don't mean just sales. I mean go go into sales and crush it. And my dad crushed it because he knew the human brain, man. He knew how to talk to you and he knew how to take, you know, take money from you. And this was just something that I think brought that for him. And like you said earlier, what is the what is the impetus? Why do you do this? I don't think it was the cash for my dad. I think he was the one that's like every robbery just did something to him, man. He was alive. And and he was really, really, really good at it. He was a crit, he is a criminal mastermind. That is the one thing that I will say. Geez, every time I see the word mastermind, and then you you watch the rest of the documentary and you find how stupid they are, that wasn't my dad. My I think we got caught because of greed. Um, but that Burlington robbery was was really, really hard to pull off. And and pulling it off, again, here's we're at the tail end of a failed robbery, which is hurting the chances of another one. And Burlington was like like filling the house with Blackbeard's treasure. There was gold everywhere, man. I've never seen the inside of a condo shine so much in my life. And we got a there was a ton of cash. It was just that's the the piece that says, okay, I'm locked in here. Um let's go. But me and my brother just always just wanted to kick back after that. My dad's like, well, we got another one, and we got another one, and we got another one. And I, you know, my brother was was the moral compass. My brother was the one saying, Are we bad people for doing this? Why are we doing this? What is the end point here? Um, and and my dad kind of counted on me to keep Kev calm. We needed Kev more than anyone involved in the robberies. We needed Kev. Um and he was the only one asking, you know, the ethical and moral questions, which is is always, you know, curious to me um why his brain automatically went there. But we we all were thinking it, man. I, you know, I got a lot of guilt. I got a lot of guilt for what I did.
SPEAKER_00:And I and and so well, then I can imagine your brother being the strong arm in the team having to um put someone under duress, right? Making them not feel like they have the ability to move, to fight back, to escape. And I think probably his conscious eventually, you know, he sees the fear, right? And I think did that affect you? Did that start to affect you guys? Did you see the fear in people? I mean, we talked about the 90-second rule, right? You go into a bank, if you stay in a bank too long, you're probably not coming out alive, or you're you know, you're gonna be surrounded. So you guys had 90 seconds to get in and out. Um were you scared? Was the adrenaline just too much? And what did the fear in people's eyes do, you know, along the way?
SPEAKER_02:Um it was always the fear of letting dad down. That was always first and foremost. You know what I mean? It's like, dad, we don't want to do this. This this doesn't it was always scary. It was never again, because we're carrying loading guns and we're going against people with loaded guns, and it was a different world back then, I think a little bit in terms of, you know, now people are not afraid to shoot. They really are not. Man, this is a this is Texas first and forward. For very little. But I lived in Florida, I've lived in Texas, you know, the stand your ground law are all kind of things that have made it okay for you to just whip your piece out and and and hit somebody in the chest. And and it wasn't like that in the 90s. So um it all of what you said in terms of, hey, this this is just screwed up, man. We are doing some screwed up stuff. And I'll tell you the worst part of it is that the second you commit a crime, it makes it feel like um, you know, a fish in a bag. And you know, you take that fish in a bag and you gotta put it in the tank, but I'm in the tank. And eventually the water in my bag will temper, but I'm still not part of the tank. And I know at any point someone can pull me out of that tank. And that's what it that's the part that is the worst. I mean, I spent five years of doing robberies, um, never driving and looking out my windshield. I looked in the rearview mirror because back in the 90s, they were still, you could still tell a cop was following you by square headlights. If I saw square headlights on a highway, man, I would lose it. I would pull over. And God, the anxiety that it gives you once you cross that line is probably the hardest thing to deal with. I mean, people are like, oh, the money's amazing and you and you're partying, and you, you, you know, you got the world by the balls, but no, not when you've crossed that line, man. It's a very, it's really hard to explain unless you've been there. But at the same time, it's probably the hardest part of dealing with, hey, I've just done something that could land me in a place that I've been spending my entire life avoiding.
SPEAKER_00:So well, and I, you know, that's another thing. Nobody wants to go to prison. I can't imagine any of you wanted to go to prison for this. Um, I'm sure that crossed your mind after every time you did this and the fear of getting caught. And so there was a moral compass, I think, in all of you and in some aspect of it. But I, but I, you know, your dad just happened to be very good at something that was illegal. And and that's hard, right? That's hard when we identify, you know, what we are good at. And and he wasn't probably an amazing salesman and probably could have put that effort towards something else. You know, who knows, right? I mean, all of those things I'm sure have crossed your mind through all of these years. Um, okay, so let's talk about. Um, I wanted to ask you, you said Burlington. What was your what was um the best heist and the worst heist?
SPEAKER_02:Oh boy, I it the best heist has to be either, I'll give you one of three, the very first one, which again, keep in mind the timeline here is the first one that me and my brother did was not my father's first one. And my brother and I did not know that until we were doing the discovery phase of getting ready for trial or pleaing out. And that was a shock to both of us. We thought the very first robbery was my dad coming to us and pleaing to us to help him get money back. And he had tried to hit a traveling salesman with his friend that was on the inside of the jewelry industry. And keep in mind, we could have not done any of the 22 if we did not have that inside person. So our 90-second rule was we got to be in and out of a store or a situation in 90 seconds, because that's most police response times in most cities. But if we can control the situation to the extent that we can control it, we could take as much time as we want. And that's what Burlington allowed us. Um so it's either the very first one that me and my brother did, um, the first one my dad did failed. It's um Burlington, or it's hitting Jacob twice. So the second time we hit Jacob, who was the first person that we robbed, just standing behind the guy's house, it was a simple unarmed robbery. Um case full of diamonds. This the second time was uh uh I don't know, I don't know how my dad thinks this way, but we he was walking, we set the same guy up the second time and had him tied to a chair, and we were on our way, we were leaving. Everybody had left but my dad, and my dad just says, I don't know, I'm gonna go pat the guy down, does, and finds two holstered, uh, two holsters full of diamonds under each of his arm. So that's probably like cash-wise and clever-wise, probably one of the best. Um, I just love that story. I just love my dad just had this thing that I wish you could have taken and done something good with. Like if you put that brain towards, you know, world hunger, you probably could have got something good out of it. But no, it it went to the dark side and it's a shame because it could have done some real good. And and my brother had the same brain. Um you know, I'm not saying that I don't, but I have uh I don't know, I'm a little too sympathetic to to stop.
SPEAKER_00:So was it hard to unload the jewelry? Is it easy to sell stolen jewels? Um I I tell me about that. Did you keep the stuff? Was it was the point to always sell it? What was the idea behind it after you had it?
SPEAKER_02:Uh I always stole something from what we stole. So from the very first robbery, I stole either something small or I took a huge, like we we would they would come in big velvet rolls. So if you had a bunch of 18 character chains in various sizes and thickness and length and all that stuff, they would all just be set up in this velvet roll so you could just whip it out and display it. Um, and we'd have, you know, a hundred of them. And I would just grab one and and I don't know, I did it every single time, mostly so we could just leave right away and convert it into cash and go and do a bunch of drugs. But the problem is, is, is unloading this stuff, the first thing that happens after a jewelry store or something like this is robbed, um, they go after the pawns. So they'll they'll go out to all the pawn shops and say, hey, this robbery just happened. Be on the lookout for any jewelry stamped this way, or anybody coming in with these things. And the the pawn dealers, you know, get get ridden pretty hard by the cops because that's the first place you would think to go to convert that into cash. I the best way to do it is to have it pre-sold. And that's how we did it. We had people on the inside of the jewelry industry, we had people that were salespeople already, and my dad had a decent um following of people. He would he would go to a business lunch and then say, Hey guys, look at this. You looking for anything for your wife? And kind of gave the idea to have uh jewelry, jewelry parties. We had jewelry parties the way they had Tupperware parties of the 70s, and again, around Christmas or any holiday that we came in and laid out and and decorated your entire living room with chains and necklaces and rings and and all that stuff. Um, and selling it for 50 cents on the dollar is uh that's amazing to get. You'll never get that on the street. Most if we ever go. Got somebody to buy it in bulk and say it was a pawn a pawn shop, they would pass 10 cents on the dollar because they're assuming a tremendous amount of risk. You don't know how hard the cops will come down, not only on us, and that's a stupid way for us getting caught, but they'll come down on that pawn shop because he's accessory after the fact. And and you know, they always like to make an example of those people. So you couldn't go near those places. It was dumb, and it was an easy way to get caught. So we were lucky. Uh, our best customer were the Waltham police. And and my dad loved that. Yeah, the Waltham, Massachusetts Police Department uh had gold parties with us three and four times. Of course, they never knew that any of it was stolen. They never connected it to, hey, wasn't there just a jewelry store robbed down the street or whatever? But um, yeah, they were our best customers.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Okay, so did you ever go out of the area to jewelry store or did you feel comfortable? So I always say when people commit crimes, they tend to do it in places they're comfortable with. They know the area, they know how to get in and out, they know the traffic, they know the police department. So, was there any thought into where you're actually committing these?
SPEAKER_02:Nope. We went wherever the opportunity presented itself, wherever we could set up somebody the way that we needed them set up, or wherever their store was. Um, the worst robbery we ever did was in downtown Boston, where uh in the middle of Christmas, in the middle of, you know, the highest foot traffic, we went after a delivery kit. So they, you know, this jewelry store had a kid that would bring all of their mail orders in big boxes. He'd had he had like 12 boxes, um, and he would bring them down to FedEx, which was two blocks away. And we cased this kid. We knew exactly what time he came out, we knew all of these things. We had inside people um call this jewelry store for orders so we knew that the boxes contained what we needed to make it worth it. And um, as we were communicating that day, waiting for this kid to come out through walkie-talkies, the walkie-talkies came through on the police scanner in the jewelry store. So the jewelry store owner heard everything. And we got 12 boxes of catalogs because he just said on a whim, you know what, something about that doesn't sound right. We weren't on there like, hey, is the kid less. We would just, my dad had this code like, hey, is the gravel coming yet? Like you were picking up a construction site talking, and so we had a code, but at the same time, this jewelry store owner said, you know what? Uh something about this I don't like. And he he he changed the whole order to 12 boxes of catalogs. And boy, was my dad mad.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Yeah. So I mean, but look at but look at something like that that could have, you know, got you caught. I mean, just something as simple as picking up through the radio, you know, police radio inside of the place. That's wild. Okay, Brian. What was what was the demise? You said we know this lasted for five years. How did it end?
SPEAKER_02:Uh, in one of the podcast episodes, you'll see the composite drawing that was drawn of my dad. And uh it was probably close to like the 15th robbery that my dad called me. At that time, I was trying my hardest to um straighten myself out. I was trying hard not to do the robberies anymore. It was hard for me. You know, I could have bowed out, but I was always the person that was there to look after my brother, who was a type one diabetic. I mean, every single robbery, we had a duffel bag with duct tape, gun, extra bullets, zip ties, and Jolly Ranchers. Because my brother's blood sugar would go low and he would get it, it it was my brother would typically get violent when his blood sugar went low. So from the very first robbery, once we knew we were gonna have guns, I pulled my dad aside and I said, This ain't this is not okay. If Kev's blood sugar goes low, and the first thing that'll bring your blood sugar down is stress. And I'm like, if Kev's blood sugar goes down, he's gonna kill us all. He'll shoot at all of us. It's not just the victim he may accidentally shoot. So me and my dad agreed that at no point would my brother have bullets in his gun. And we followed that for all 22 robberies. My brother did not find out that he did not have bullets in his gun until we were all locked up. And he was so mad. He was, if he had a gun, then he would have shot us both. But no, we weren't gonna give him a full clip and then have him with a sugar of 20, you know, just start shooting. It I don't think he would have, but I think it's the third podcast episode. I talk about how my brother almost shot me. And we we were just playing around with my dad's gun. I played with it by myself first, and I shot, I shot a bullet. Man, I wasn't gun savvy. Dad never taught us how to operate these things, and I was scared to death of them. And once the the bullet went off, and I uh the gun went off, I was just scared to death. I was like, oh my god, this thing I uh how stupid could I be?
SPEAKER_00:And I makes it real, you know? It makes it like a big thing. Oh my god, I was so Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So I put the gun away, and then my brother came home, and I was like, I tried talking to him about it, but then of course my brother just freaks out and he goes and he gets the gun. And I'm sitting on the couch as a pillow next to me, and he starts lecturing me on it while he has the gun in his hand, and boom, it goes off and it hits the pillow right next to me. It would have been an abdomen shot, I would have been done. That's that gives you a little clue of it. We should not have been playing with firearms in any way, shape, or form. And the fact that we didn't put uh or let my dad my brother have bullets was very comforting for me. But um I was I was going to college at the time, and that composite drawing came out, and my dad laughed at it. He called me up and he said, Bruh, you have to see this. It looks completely different from you know, this isn't me. And I met him for dinner and he slid it across the table, and I automatically panicked. This was the perfect likeness of him. I'm like, I that's how blind I knew at that point my my dad was to, you know, what's going on here, man. These people want us to stop, and they're they're willing to come after us for it. Because this composite drawing was brilliant. Whoever this artist was, man, to be able to create that likeness from nothing, from descriptions of strangers is is wow, what a job they do. That is talent. Um, and and it started making me very scared. And um, that's when it started to fall apart. That's when we knew that there was a uh state police detective that was in charge of the entire case because it was multi-jurisdictional. We had done jobs in Rhode Island, we had done jobs in New Hampshire, we had done uh jobs in Massachusetts. So this was all over the place, man. We like I said, we went wherever the money was. So uh the second part of that downfall is when they picked up one of the women that we typically use to get people to trust us and and show up at a place. Um, her name was Ernestine. Uh, when they pulled her in and questioned her, she folded like a house of cards. I'm sorry. I it when I go around and I talk to kids at schools, one of the first questions, like, there's always this one kid in the class. And the reason why I like doing this is when I go and I talk to these schools, you immediately know the kid that's in the most trouble because he asked the stupidest question, like, What did you do about the woman that ratted you out? Uh I applauded her because she's not in prison and I was, you know what I mean? I was like, good job, man. Um, the whole ratting thing is such is it's just complete BS. Um, any the first person that tells you I would never rat is the first person that's gonna rat. That's the rule.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And to to rat somebody out to save your own ass, literally. Um I'm I've just there's probably three people in the history of prisons that went away for not ratting, and they're all sitting in their cells like I will rat now.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, we talk a lot about that. Yeah. Yeah, we talk a lot about that in these crimes too, right? False confessions or people that take the fall and you know, someone else is responsible for it. I mean, it happens all the time. But yeah, I mean, human nature, our instinct when we're put under pressure is so different, right? Than when what you would normally do in your everyday life. I mean, people feel the pressure, they don't want to go to prison for the rest of their life. So, you know, human nature is to get yourself out of it and do whatever they want you to do. So, you know. Um okay, so then you all get caught. Do you how long do you go to prison, Brian? How long did your brother and your father go to prison? You know, were you still talking to each other while in prison? What was that like?
SPEAKER_02:It was as awful as you can imagine. My dad was the first person to be arrested. Um, I hadn't we had no idea why. There were multiple reports of where he was when they arrested him. Uh, the one newspaper, and this this is what this is what taught me how ridiculous the news can be. There were so many different reports in the media, uh, right up until recently in 2022, when my father and brother died, that were misreported and never corrected. And um, one of those was that my dad led the police on a high-speed chase. My dad was arrested a couple blocks from his house on his way to get Chinese food uh to go over to his girlfriend's house. And the girl that he was going over, that her house, she was the one that eventually ratted me out to save her own ass. So again, nice job, Nancy. Um, so there was you just can't, you can't ever trust what you read, unfortunately. And you think that these people are beholden to a standard of truth, they are not. And it it's unfortunate because throughout the whole reporting um of the case, and if you look in the back of my book and on my Instagram and stuff, I frequently post the news articles that were posted about the family. And most of them are right on the money. I'm not gonna say they were all wrong, but a lot of them are wrong enough to be like, that ain't that's disturbing because that you know, you don't have to embellish something that doesn't need embellishment. And and you guys were way off. So it it was it was eye-opening to say the least.
SPEAKER_00:So you go to prison, your dad is arrested first. Is your brother then arrested, or are you then arrested?
SPEAKER_02:So it's it's dad goes down first, my brother goes down next, Nancy went down third, um, Ernestine went down fourth, all within four months of 1995. So it was May through towards the end of the summer, and then things just got quiet. And me and my co-defendant, the guy that was helping us with inside information with every robbery, um, we would meet kind of regularly and just be like, what is going on, man? Why didn't they come get us? And it was just it that, yeah. And I probably spent, I spent till December 26th of that, of 1995 wondering. I was talking to my brother on the phone while he was locked up in county, and I was talking to my dad a little bit and got little bits of pieces of you know what the lawyer was saying, but we hadn't done any discovery. And discovery is just when they prosecution has to give every bit of evidence that they have on you so you can sip through it and find out, you know, what you're facing. Um me and the co-defendant went down on the same day, December 26, 1995. Um, and from there we all pled out. I wasn't going in front of a Massachusetts jury. I wasn't going in front of a Massachusetts judge who sentencing guidelines for what I was facing, and I was charged with arm robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, larceny over 250, kidnapping, and robbery through confinement. Kidnapping is because I duct tape a guy to a chair. Um those all carry life sentences. So the sentencing guidelines just for armed robbery were three years to life. So the judge can basically say, okay, I'll give you five years, whatever the judge wants to do. But we heard that there were a couple judges that counted the pigeons outside their um office window to determine how much time you were gonna do. And no way, man. No, there were a lot of pigeons in Boston. I'm not playing that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So we planned out my dad got 12 years, my brother got eight, but eventually went back and did his last two because he didn't want to be on probation. Um, and I did um close to three years.
SPEAKER_00:Close to three years, okay. So what happened after prison? You get out, you get an education, you start to use your time for the good, the better. What did your brother and dad decide to do?
SPEAKER_02:I lost it.
SPEAKER_00:What did you and oh are you losing for a second? Okay. Um so you got out of prison and then got an education. You started focusing on how to give back to your community, how to how to go past and live past what you've been through. What did your brother and dad do when they were out?
SPEAKER_01:Uh they did another robbery.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't find out about that. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I I stayed away from both of them for 10 years after after they got out. I didn't talk to either one of them for a very long time because I was sorting some stuff out in my head. Uh, you know, and and most of it had to do with my dad. Um, I knew deep down in my heart that I could never do that up by myself. So that his influence was paramount in my decision making process. And I've been through a lot of therapy to try to understand that um and to try to come to some understanding of it and be okay with it. And then I started talking to my dad again. My dad wrote me a letter and said, you know, I haven't talked to you in about 10 years. Um, if you want to be part of this family, blah, blah, blah. And we started talking again, but I I could only spend small amounts of time with any of them because I saw how sick they were. When you become psychologically or mentally healthy, all you can see sometimes is, oh my God, that's that's where it came from. Holy crap. And me and my brother just could only get along for short spirit, short periods of time at that point. Um, you know, we have had a history of both physical and mental just violence towards each other. Um it because we're just anyone who has a sibling knows, so I don't have to go too deep into that. But so it was kind of in and out the doors uh until I got to the podcast. Um, and once I started doing the podcast, I just started, I came to this understanding that this is my dad, man. This is the man that he is. Uh, he's not changing for anybody. We you can see, so the podcast allowed me to record conversations with my dad, and you can hear what he thinks of everything that we did, and he's not sorry. He obviously, after getting out of prison, thought it okay to go and pull another job down in New York where they stole gold coins, I think. I don't know a whole lot about it. Um, and I didn't want to know because I was just too angry. I'm accessory after the fact in that scenario, just knowing it. And at this point, no way, I'm I'm not ashamed to rat both of them out because you're putting me in danger, and that's unacceptable. So if you're gonna bring me down to the basis level of survival, uh, no, I'm not going back to prison for anybody. Anybody. So that was hard. That's another reason why. Once I heard that, I was like, okay, bye. You people are just never gonna learn, but he got away with it. And uh, you know, what do you say about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um a shocking ending to some of this, Brian. Your brother and your father both died. Um, police classified it, um, please correct me if I'm wrong, as a double suicide, but you and I did talk about the fact that it could have been a murder suicide. How did you move on? How did you cope with that? You know, how did were you talking to them at the time? Um and what do you why do you think this happened?
SPEAKER_02:Um I don't know that my dad didn't kill my brother. I just don't know it. Uh there's it's almost exactly 50-50. So the report was that my father shot my brother and then shot himself. Uh, February 13th, 2022. That was the original report. The detective called me the night that it happened and played my dad's 911 call. And my dad's 911 call was two people are severely hurt at this address. Please come quickly. So he basically called 911 before he shot himself. Um, there's just this little tiny piece of me which pushes the 50% over the 51% my dad's suicide. Uh I think that if he shot my brother, his only recourse would be to kill himself. I don't, my dad wasn't gonna go on trial for murder. He just wasn't gonna do it. Uh it there's no way he was going back. And and it's this this is just really tough to answer your question. It's been four years and I'm not over it. I haven't processed it, I don't understand it. I've had multiple psychiatrists um say, hey, you know, you could have a complete transcript of what happened in that room, and it still wouldn't matter. It just doesn't matter what happened. There the it just happened. And that's all fine and good, but I still have a brain that wants to process, understand. And this was just the the medical examiner ruled it a suicide suicide. She said, uh, according to the blood spatter, according to this, according to that, we think that it was a uh double suicide. And that just again just doesn't change, it doesn't make it less sad. It just is a different version of my dad. My it's selfless, it's it's it's sacrificing his own life because he can't live without his son. Uh I don't know, man. That's not the dad I knew. My dad was a selfish person that, you know, at the at the bare bones of it drug dragged his two sons into something that had reprisals. And and, you know, my dad never understood the struggle of being an ex-con in this country, man. You know, he was he didn't get out and start having to fill out job applications that asked every single one. Even today, I'm still filling out job applications that ask that question. And I have to say, okay, well, what do I say? Do I be honest about it and risk never hearing from an employer again? Or do I just say no? Because they're probably not going to do background checks. Background checks are expensive.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So that that that's the story. I mean, that you could not have come up with a better ending to this entire story than how my dad ended it. And yeah, I'm the last Sobelewski.
SPEAKER_00:And the uncertainty of why, right? The uncertainty of why. And, you know, was there a conversation that they were having?
SPEAKER_02:You know, that's yeah. My dad, my my brother, my brother was having um seizures pretty regularly because of his diabetes and seizures on a regular basis, and he was having them daily. Eventually it just starts damaging the brain. And my brother would he was just as sad as you can imagine. He didn't have friends, he didn't go out, he was supporting a decent but manageable drug habit. My brother was one of those guys that could use and just stay under the radar of, oh my God, I just sold everything I own to get another fix. He was smart enough not to get that bad. But at the same time, he was nursing a pain that I don't think any of us um would fully understand. Type one diabetes is tough to live with. It's like a handicap.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, um, I'm sorry about, you know, uh what happened. And I'm sorry you don't have all the answers. Um and I'm and I know, right, we just talk about human nature in this of thinking and wondering. Um, you know, and I and I think that I think what's great, what you said about filling out the job applications, there are so many people in this country who have to answer that yes, who try to support a family, who really want to do better in this world. And I always say, like, between our justice system and our um, you know, and and and and job numbers and employees, there really needs a better be, a better way to to get more people into the workforce that are coming out of prison, who who have who are able to to lead a good and decent life. Um, I I hope some of that changes in the in the future, because I know there are a lot of people out there um that do that do good things after they have they have time. But Brian, thank you again so much for being here. Where can people find your podcast and your book?
SPEAKER_02:Uh I'm on Spotify, so it's Family Jewels Podcast if you're looking for that. The book is on Amazon. Uh, so you can look up Family Jewels there. Um, you can look me up Brian Soboluski on Instagram. I was on a reality show recently this summer called The Snake. Um, that was on Fox, and now you can see that on Hulu. I was eliminated in three episodes. Um, I was in season two, episode three of um America's Most Wanted, not as a suspect. Um, and you can look me up on YouTube, uh, how crime works is uh just a probably about a half-hour show. All they wanted to know is the business side of you know what we did with everything. And it's a cool spot. They flew me up to New York to do that. So that's been in the past eight months that I've done some TV spots. Like I said at the beginning, once the Louvre robbery happened or any robbery that happens, they just usually will Google jewelry thief and I start getting, you know, they'll ask me to be on shows. So the snake was a lot of fun to do. The reality show is fun. So check that out. You only have to watch the first three episodes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we talked about um the heist in the Louvre, and one thing you said that you said today was they probably had someone that was going to purchase and buy that before they actually went in. They're not going to go in and just take this and try to just sell it off the street. So kind of crazy that you have a couple of guys, you know, during the day walk in as construction workers and were able to steal crown jewels um in broad daylight, but they did and they have yet to be caught. Um, so Brian, thank you so much again for being here. Everyone, please go ahead and follow Brian Soboluski um on his Instagram. Please check out his podcast, Family Jewels Podcast. Brian, it was a pleasure. Thank you again.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you.