Bonus: Mysterious Crosby Cowboy, Robin Thicke Bank Robbery, and More

DISGRACELAND

A bonus Disgraceland episode explores shocking true crime twists behind music icons David Crosby and Robin Thicke, revealing Crosby's violen

Key takeaways

• David Crosby, despite his hippie image, was a gun-toting, violent man who defended his home with a Colt 45 during a break-in
• Crosby was taught to shoot by an ex-CIA mercenary known as 'Cowboy,' linking him to real-life espionage and danger

Main topics

• David Crosby's violent past and gun ownership
• Robin Thicke's real-life bank robbery at age 18

Notable quotes

David Crosby, hippie icon, was taught by an ex-CIA mercenary how to shoot.

Conclusion

This bonus episode reveals that music legends like David Crosby and Ro

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:01) This is exactly Speaker 2 (0:02) right. Double Elvis. Speaker 7 (0:13) I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 3 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want. Speaker 1 (0:29) Cindy said I had to choose between the truth and my family, and I had to choose the truth. Speaker 7 (0:34) Listen to Season 3 of Burden of Guilt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:44) Dancing with the Stars is looking for a new pro. And since last season, I came in eighth place. I'm basically an expert. I'm Danielle Fishel. And Speaker 1 (0:52) I'm Val Chmerkovsky. Speaker 3 (0:53) And we have a new podcast called Stepping on Toes with Danielle and Val. Speaker 1 (0:57) Every week, we're breaking down Dancing with the Stars, the next pro, to find out who I'll be sharing the ballroom with next season. Speaker 3 (1:03) Listen to Stepping on Toes on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Stepping on Toes and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today. Speaker 8 (1:14) When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I Speaker 1 (1:22) vowed I will be his last target. Speaker 8 (1:25) He Speaker 7 (1:25) is not going to get away with this. Speaker 1 (1:27) He's going to get what he deserves. We Speaker 7 (1:29) always say Speaker 8 (1:29) that. Trust your girlfriends. Listen to The Girlfriends, Trust Me Babe, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (1:47) Hey, Discos. Need a little more Disgraceland in your life? Just a touch to get you through? Yeah, me too. This is the podcast that comes after the podcast. Welcome to Disgraceland, the afterparty. Speaker 2 (2:19) Some random thoughts on music, murder, and movies for the week of September 17th, 2026. David Crosby, the subject of this week's full episode of Disgraceland, is one of my least favorite characters from music history, but that doesn't make him any less interesting. My disdain for Crosby isn't because of the music he made, though even as I can recognize the brilliance of the Byrds or Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, It's not like I'm a massive fan of either group. But again, my dislike of Crosby as a character doesn't have much to do with his music. It's because whenever he's popped up in my research, he just always seems to come off as an asshole. The first... taste I got of this was when I was researching my John Denver episode, and Denver was part of the California folk scene in the mid-60s when the birds really started to happen. And Crosby, from my research, not only demonstrated this kind of staggering arrogance, but he also didn't seem to have a sense of humor about much. And when you're an arrogant asshole, like I say, I don't know, like someone like Liam Gallagher or someone having a sense of humor. goes a long way in not only making your behavior somewhat acceptable, but also entertaining. And David Crosby didn't seem to understand that or care, at least not from the research that I came up with. Then there's this side of Crosby that stands in contrast to his... image, the gun-toting, free-basing lunatic, doesn't exactly jive with all that late 60s, early 70s peace and love and all those vibes that Crosby and his group seem to serve as avatars for. Now this, this contrast interested me. That picture of David Crosby by Henry Diltz. The one with the gun, the sort of makeshift gun that he's holding to his head. He's got the long hair. He's got the mustache. Looks like a biker extra from Easy Rider or someone you'd run into, a villain you'd run into perhaps in a Sam Peckinpah movie. Maybe one from an old Western, something like that. A saloon bad guy. Not a hippie. He looks like a character from a murder ballad or something. This is what I was thinking about this morning when I was thinking about David Crosby. As you all know, I'm obsessed with murder ballads, so I started digging around a little, and no real juice there regarding David Crosby and murder ballads. But there is some interesting Crosby true crime information that wasn't part of our story this week. You might remember from our Cass Elliott episodes where we explored the Manson Helter Skelter story, there was a character from those episodes that I refer to as Cass. Cowboy. Now, Cowboy was a fictional name that I gave to a real-life character who's still alive and who was at some point very dangerous. And I'm not going to reveal Cowboy's real name here, but in Tom O'Neill's book, Chaos, Cowboy is one of these shadowy ex-CIA government military turned mercenary types who wormed his way into the hippie Hollywood hills. and the canyon scene, and who potentially had something to do with the events that inspired the Manson murders. Now, I'm not going to go into all that right now because it's too big of a diversion, but you just check out those episodes if you want to learn more. That's not the point. The point is that in Chaos, Tom O'Neill says that the cowboy character, again, I'm using a fake name here because the dude is still alive. O'Neill uses his real name though, and apparently because he's less afraid of dying than I am or whatever, but O'Neill says, in his book that this dude, among other things, taught David Crosby how to shoot. Which, when I read that, I just stopped right in my tracks. David Crosby, hippie icon. was taught by some dude, some ex-CIA murderous military operative, how to shoot. This is what I love. Rock and roll is fucking so weird. It is so twisted, the history of music, the history of rock and roll, the history of pop music. Somehow this Crosby true crime string that I was pulling on, it led me to these incredible Lil Wayne lyrics. Don't ask me how. The lyrics for a song called Shooter from the album The Carter 2. The song features Kirk Cameron's TV dad's son, Robin Thicke, on this Lil Wayne track. Now, why does this Lil Wayne song feature Robin Thicke? Well, this is where it gets interesting and true crime-y. Shooter by Lil Wayne is a remake of Robin Thicke's song. O Shooter, which is a song Thicke wrote to detail the bank robbery that he was caught up in. Yes, Robin Thicke was caught up in a bank robbery when he was 18 years old. Now talk about the counterpoint that we were discussing with David Crosby earlier. This is extreme counterpoint. You don't think of Mr. Blurred Lines himself, Mr. Growing Pains offspring as being caught up in a real life bank robbery. This story. is very interesting to me. It's very fascinating. Zeth and I are going to be revealing what went down, exactly how Robin Thicke was involved in a bank robbery at 18 in the exclusive section of this bonus episode coming up later in the show. You're going to be an all-access member. Though to hear that, go to disgracelandpod.com to sign up for exclusive and ad-free content just like this. All right. David Crosby in the feed this week. Our latest full episode of Disgraceland on David. Crosby, check that out if you have not already. Now, David Crosby was a musician who you did not fuck with, all right? Not only did he carry a gun everywhere he went, but he was not afraid to use it either, okay? After the Manson murders, everyone in the California cannons was on high alert. And so one night when Crosby was asleep with one of his many guns on his nightstand, he woke up to the sound of breaking glass. And when he saw the man in a ski mask knocking out his window with the butt of a revolver, David Crosby sprung into action and grabbed the Colt 45 that was next to him and fired at the masked man. And he missed. And he then saw that there were more. of these dudes in his house. Without hesitation, Crosby sprinted across broken glass on the floor. His bare feet got all bloodied. He chased these dudes out. His pregnant girlfriend at the time, Debbie, grabbed a shotgun and the masked gunman freaked out and headed for the hills. Okay, you did not fuck with David Crosby. You would not think this from the birds. You would not think this from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. So this is the David Crosby that we're giving to you. And the new episode this week, if you haven't heard it, we highly recommend you check it out. Especially if you're like me, you grew up in the punk scene, you grew up in hardcore, you hear Crosby, Stills, Nash, and whoever the fuck, and you're like, whatever, man, this ain't for me. Crosby was a different cat. And very interesting, despite what I might think of him. Now, coming up next in your feed, right after this episode, in our Rewind episode, this Sunday, we're going to have our archive episode on Travis Scott in Astroworld. Now, no one wants to admit they played a part in creating a monster, especially one that takes the lives of 10 innocent people. But in 2023, Travis Scott sat in a room in Houston where he was grilled for eight hours by authorities. A Texas grand jury had declined to indict him on criminal charges, but 387 lawsuits were brought against Travis