June 12, 2023 • 10 mins
Lost Hills investigates the dark side of Malibu, California. Beneath a seductive facade, this city of billionaires, celebrities, and surf bums is hiding something menacing.
Season 3 takes a deep dive into the surf world to explore the legacy of Malibu’s Dark Prince: Miki Dora. A surfer known for his style, grace and aggression, he ruled Malibu from the 1950s to the 1970s. Celebrated for his rebellious spirit, he was also a conman who led the FBI on a 7-year manhunt around the world. To many he’s a hero, but there’s an evil undercurrent that runs through the surf world. And it all leads back to Miki Dora.
Hosted by Dana Goodyear (The New Yorker) and produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, Alphabet boys listeners, I wanted to tell you about
another podcast from Western Sound. It's called Lost Hills, and
the third season premieres today. Host Dana Goodyear takes a
deep dive into the surf world to explore the legacy
of Malibu's dark prints. Mickey Dora, a surfer known for
his style, grace, and aggression. Dora ruled Malibu from the
(00:23):
nineteen fifties to the nineteen seventies. He was celebrated for
his rebellious spirit. He was also a con man who
led the FBI on a seven year manhunt around the world.
Take a listen to a clip from the show, and
then go and subscribe. You can find the Lost Hills
podcast wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Mickey Dora was a born con man. He could talk
his way into anything and out of almost everything. His
alleged scams ranged from petty and kind of ridiculous, like
renting out surfboards that didn't belong to him, to blatantly
criminal credit card fraud, fake plane tickets, stolen ski equipment,
(01:06):
stolen antiques, stolen passports. Eventually, his schemes would land him
in federal prison. You associated with him at your own risk.
Denny Auberg has a story about this, the kind of
thing that would happen on a typical day hanging out
with Mickey in the early seventies, Denny was invited to
(01:28):
Kawai by a Hawaiian surfer named Joey Cabell. At the time,
Mickey was also in Hawaii. Cabell told Denny he'd like
to see Mickey too, So I.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Called up Mickey and told him, joe invited you to come,
and he came right over. He shut up. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Kabell, who was in peak physical shape, proposed the hike
to a beach to spend the night. It was an
eleven mile hike and not an easy one.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So I'm trudging along with Mickey Dora on this really
tough hike for us, and we'red like city slickers. Dora
had these leather boots on, really the wrong equipment, you know,
and I was kind of feeling a little sick myself,
and it got dark on us and we're going through
these canyons and pushing branches away. Micky was tortured.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Finally they arrived at the beach. They were exhausted and
Denny was starting to feel really bad.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
He passed out in some cave, you know. He woke
up in the morning and Micky could see that I
was a little sick, so he is mine started working like,
I can't hike back. I got to figure something out.
He saw this helicopter go by, you know it was
they had a tourist, so Micky had an idea.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Mickey slipped away and went down to the shoreline where
he gathered up some rocks and used them to write
S O S in big letters.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
The next thing I know, the helicopter lands on this
path down the beach and Mickey goes up and talks
to the guy. I don't know what he was saying,
but apparently he was telling the guy that my friends
died on the beach. We need help. And the guy said,
I can't come back right now, but you know, soon
did I take these people? And right before dark, this
guy came back and Micky says, come on, that's it,
(03:15):
let's go. Okay, start start doing the fifty yard dash
toward this helicopter down the beach, and Mickey says, slow down,
you got to act a little sicker, you know. We
walk up to the helicopter pilot and He kind of
looks at me, and I was trying to stick her,
and he opens the door. He let me in to
the helicopter and Mickey starts to get in behind him,
(03:38):
and the guy goes, oh, no, it's not you. It's
just a sick guy, you know, you know, no, Mickey
pulls out this little bottle. He said, having an asthma attack.
I can't breathe, you know, my feet are bleeding, I
can't walk, you know, just started crying the guy. You
could tell the guy wasn't buying it, but he let
him in so he got lifted off the pad. It
(03:58):
was the most beautiful majestic thing, I mean, the serrated mountains,
this colors, you know, and running this little bubble up
in the sky. And Mickey turns, he says, our magic carpet.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Right when the helicopter landed in town, there were news
reporters and cameras everywhere.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
They thought someone they were bringing the dead guy. You know,
we land and all these people kind of crowded around me,
you know, and as soon as I get out and
they go, where's the sick guy? Oh, that was me,
And they're all disappointed, you know, and they leave. Mickey
was disappeared. He's nowhere. I'm around. He disappeared on me.
(04:39):
He left me holding the bag. So he pulled this
whole thing off, and I went through and got checked out.
I did have some little dysentery thing. The cops had
gone looking for Mickey and they found him trying to
rent a car at the airport, and they dragged him back,
you know, and they were trying to interview the guy,
and he showed him all these fake ideas, and one
said Chapin. And then then when said Dora, who are you?
(05:01):
Are you chapin our Dora? And he's laughing, I'm chaping Dora,
you know. And I don't know how it happened, but
he got out of the whole thing, and I was
the fall guy.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
To Mickey, Dora, the highest value was freedom, and that
to him meant doing whatever served him best in any situation.
For Mickey, freedom took priority over any other moral or
ethical consideration, and he would do or say almost anything
to get what he wanted. In nineteen seventy four, Mickey
(05:38):
left Malibu and set out on an adventure that took
him all over the world searching for the perfect empty wave.
He didn't have the money to travel like this, but
he did it anyway, using blank airline tickets that he
filled out for whatever destination he wanted.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Mickey had a whole bunch from a woman who worked
at the Pan American office.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
This is Linda Kai, Mickey's girlfriend, an accomplice for much
of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
You could actually write your own tickets back in those days.
They were paper tickets written on and all you needed
to know was the mile age, and he had all
the paraphernalia to work it out.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
Now.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
I don't know who the girl was to give him
the stuff. He must have made a sweet you know,
but you're flying on these sort of forged Everything was fake.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
They shopped and dined and stayed in nice hotels, all
of it, according to Linda, on forged credit cards, and
all while being tracked from surf spot to surf spot
by baffled agents of the FBI and Interpol.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Back in the day, credit cards were plastic, of course,
but they didn't have the strips on the backs like
they do now. In the manutroup, they had numbers and dates.
I was assigned to take little razor blade and changed
some numbers and we did and make it good for
another month.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Mickey had a way of justifying all this theft and deception.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Micky described it once as he says, I'm not a criminal,
he says, I don't commit crimes. He says, I'm an outlaw,
he says, and there's a difference.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Did you buy it?
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yes, I still do.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
One of the great accomplishments that Mickey set out and
probably was successful at was never working a day in
his life. That was his real goal, and he accomplished it.
I don't know if he ever actually had a job.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Jim Kempton used to be the editor of Surfer magazine,
and these days he runs the California Surf Museum. He
knew Mickey pretty well in the seventies when they were
both living in a surf town in the south of France.
In fact, he crashed at his place a lot, used
his shower and his kitchen. One day, Jim noticed his
passport was missing.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
And then sitting on the beach, you know, maybe two
weeks later, I see this South African guy look sort
of like me, and there's my passport.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Micky sold it to him.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I'm sure he did. I don't have I mean, how
would you ever prove that right unless you arrested them both,
which I was not going to do in any event.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Did you ever say anything to Micky about it?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
No.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In the surf world it was almost currency to be
scammed by Mickey. He'd come away from the experience with
a story to dine out on for years. Mickey's appeal
was not in spite of his criminality, but because of it.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
There's a lot of people who love the outlaw, who
loved getting away with it is something that for many
people is a great satisfaction to them to see people
be able to accomplish that, and Mickey for a long
time was able to do that without payment. We tend
to idolize our outlaws. Jesse James, pretty boy Floyd. You know,
(09:09):
you hear those stories about them, you'd think that those
guys were somehow like heroic. They are sociopathic killers, every
one of them, you know, that murdered people in cold
blood and yet did they give to the poor. Yeah?
They did, mostly though, to say, to make sure that
they didn't tell the cops where they were. We definitely
(09:31):
idolize our outlaws. That's just something that is I think
baked into the American psyche.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
And it's very prominent in surf culture.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Very few nice guys are as idolized as the bad boys.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Are, and as Mickey Dora the most idolized of the
bad boys.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
He's not only the most idolized the bad boy, who's
also the most bad guys of the bad guys.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
The darkest parts of Mickey Dora, though, don't have anything
to do with his hustles and his cons or even
with the more serious fraud for which he eventually served time.
The darkest parts of Mickey have to do with his
soul and the attitudes he harbored there of exclusion, racism,
and xenophobia, a pattern of hate that maps onto the white,
(10:19):
white world of mainland surfing, where he was Malibu's superstar
in his sunglasses, with his cheshire cat smile, showing all
the little sociopaths how it was done.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It's an amazing story. You'll love Lost Hills the Dark Prince.
Search for Lost Hills and follow all episodes wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hey, Alphabet boys listeners, I wanted to tell you about
another podcast from Western Sound. It's called Lost Hills, and
the third season premieres today. Host Dana Goodyear takes a
deep dive into the surf world to explore the legacy
of Malibu's dark prints. Mickey Dora, a surfer known for
his style, grace, and aggression. Dora ruled Malibu from the
(00:23):
nineteen fifties to the nineteen seventies. He was celebrated for
his rebellious spirit. He was also a con man who
led the FBI on a seven year manhunt around the world.
Take a listen to a clip from the show, and
then go and subscribe. You can find the Lost Hills
podcast wherever you like to listen.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Mickey Dora was a born con man. He could talk
his way into anything and out of almost everything. His
alleged scams ranged from petty and kind of ridiculous, like
renting out surfboards that didn't belong to him, to blatantly
criminal credit card fraud, fake plane tickets, stolen ski equipment,
(01:06):
stolen antiques, stolen passports. Eventually, his schemes would land him
in federal prison. You associated with him at your own risk.
Denny Auberg has a story about this, the kind of
thing that would happen on a typical day hanging out
with Mickey in the early seventies, Denny was invited to
(01:28):
Kawai by a Hawaiian surfer named Joey Cabell. At the time,
Mickey was also in Hawaii. Cabell told Denny he'd like
to see Mickey too, So I.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Called up Mickey and told him, joe invited you to come,
and he came right over. He shut up. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Kabell, who was in peak physical shape, proposed the hike
to a beach to spend the night. It was an
eleven mile hike and not an easy one.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So I'm trudging along with Mickey Dora on this really
tough hike for us, and we'red like city slickers. Dora
had these leather boots on, really the wrong equipment, you know,
and I was kind of feeling a little sick myself,
and it got dark on us and we're going through
these canyons and pushing branches away. Micky was tortured.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Finally they arrived at the beach. They were exhausted and
Denny was starting to feel really bad.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
He passed out in some cave, you know. He woke
up in the morning and Micky could see that I
was a little sick, so he is mine started working like,
I can't hike back. I got to figure something out.
He saw this helicopter go by, you know it was
they had a tourist, so Micky had an idea.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Mickey slipped away and went down to the shoreline where
he gathered up some rocks and used them to write
S O S in big letters.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
The next thing I know, the helicopter lands on this
path down the beach and Mickey goes up and talks
to the guy. I don't know what he was saying,
but apparently he was telling the guy that my friends
died on the beach. We need help. And the guy said,
I can't come back right now, but you know, soon
did I take these people? And right before dark, this
guy came back and Micky says, come on, that's it,
(03:15):
let's go. Okay, start start doing the fifty yard dash
toward this helicopter down the beach, and Mickey says, slow down,
you got to act a little sicker, you know. We
walk up to the helicopter pilot and He kind of
looks at me, and I was trying to stick her,
and he opens the door. He let me in to
the helicopter and Mickey starts to get in behind him,
(03:38):
and the guy goes, oh, no, it's not you. It's
just a sick guy, you know, you know, no, Mickey
pulls out this little bottle. He said, having an asthma attack.
I can't breathe, you know, my feet are bleeding, I
can't walk, you know, just started crying the guy. You
could tell the guy wasn't buying it, but he let
him in so he got lifted off the pad. It
(03:58):
was the most beautiful majestic thing, I mean, the serrated mountains,
this colors, you know, and running this little bubble up
in the sky. And Mickey turns, he says, our magic carpet.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Right when the helicopter landed in town, there were news
reporters and cameras everywhere.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
They thought someone they were bringing the dead guy. You know,
we land and all these people kind of crowded around me,
you know, and as soon as I get out and
they go, where's the sick guy? Oh, that was me,
And they're all disappointed, you know, and they leave. Mickey
was disappeared. He's nowhere. I'm around. He disappeared on me.
(04:39):
He left me holding the bag. So he pulled this
whole thing off, and I went through and got checked out.
I did have some little dysentery thing. The cops had
gone looking for Mickey and they found him trying to
rent a car at the airport, and they dragged him back,
you know, and they were trying to interview the guy,
and he showed him all these fake ideas, and one
said Chapin. And then then when said Dora, who are you?
(05:01):
Are you chapin our Dora? And he's laughing, I'm chaping Dora,
you know. And I don't know how it happened, but
he got out of the whole thing, and I was
the fall guy.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
To Mickey, Dora, the highest value was freedom, and that
to him meant doing whatever served him best in any situation.
For Mickey, freedom took priority over any other moral or
ethical consideration, and he would do or say almost anything
to get what he wanted. In nineteen seventy four, Mickey
(05:38):
left Malibu and set out on an adventure that took
him all over the world searching for the perfect empty wave.
He didn't have the money to travel like this, but
he did it anyway, using blank airline tickets that he
filled out for whatever destination he wanted.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Mickey had a whole bunch from a woman who worked
at the Pan American office.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
This is Linda Kai, Mickey's girlfriend, an accomplice for much
of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
You could actually write your own tickets back in those days.
They were paper tickets written on and all you needed
to know was the mile age, and he had all
the paraphernalia to work it out.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
Now.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
I don't know who the girl was to give him
the stuff. He must have made a sweet you know,
but you're flying on these sort of forged Everything was fake.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
They shopped and dined and stayed in nice hotels, all
of it, according to Linda, on forged credit cards, and
all while being tracked from surf spot to surf spot
by baffled agents of the FBI and Interpol.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Back in the day, credit cards were plastic, of course,
but they didn't have the strips on the backs like
they do now. In the manutroup, they had numbers and dates.
I was assigned to take little razor blade and changed
some numbers and we did and make it good for
another month.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Mickey had a way of justifying all this theft and deception.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Micky described it once as he says, I'm not a criminal,
he says, I don't commit crimes. He says, I'm an outlaw,
he says, and there's a difference.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Did you buy it?
Speaker 4 (07:25):
Yes, I still do.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
One of the great accomplishments that Mickey set out and
probably was successful at was never working a day in
his life. That was his real goal, and he accomplished it.
I don't know if he ever actually had a job.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Jim Kempton used to be the editor of Surfer magazine,
and these days he runs the California Surf Museum. He
knew Mickey pretty well in the seventies when they were
both living in a surf town in the south of France.
In fact, he crashed at his place a lot, used
his shower and his kitchen. One day, Jim noticed his
passport was missing.
Speaker 5 (08:07):
And then sitting on the beach, you know, maybe two
weeks later, I see this South African guy look sort
of like me, and there's my passport.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Micky sold it to him.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I'm sure he did. I don't have I mean, how
would you ever prove that right unless you arrested them both,
which I was not going to do in any event.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Did you ever say anything to Micky about it?
Speaker 3 (08:29):
No.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
In the surf world it was almost currency to be
scammed by Mickey. He'd come away from the experience with
a story to dine out on for years. Mickey's appeal
was not in spite of his criminality, but because of it.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
There's a lot of people who love the outlaw, who
loved getting away with it is something that for many
people is a great satisfaction to them to see people
be able to accomplish that, and Mickey for a long
time was able to do that without payment. We tend
to idolize our outlaws. Jesse James, pretty boy Floyd. You know,
(09:09):
you hear those stories about them, you'd think that those
guys were somehow like heroic. They are sociopathic killers, every
one of them, you know, that murdered people in cold
blood and yet did they give to the poor. Yeah?
They did, mostly though, to say, to make sure that
they didn't tell the cops where they were. We definitely
(09:31):
idolize our outlaws. That's just something that is I think
baked into the American psyche.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
And it's very prominent in surf culture.
Speaker 5 (09:42):
Very few nice guys are as idolized as the bad boys.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Are, and as Mickey Dora the most idolized of the
bad boys.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
He's not only the most idolized the bad boy, who's
also the most bad guys of the bad guys.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
The darkest parts of Mickey Dora, though, don't have anything
to do with his hustles and his cons or even
with the more serious fraud for which he eventually served time.
The darkest parts of Mickey have to do with his
soul and the attitudes he harbored there of exclusion, racism,
and xenophobia, a pattern of hate that maps onto the white,
(10:19):
white world of mainland surfing, where he was Malibu's superstar
in his sunglasses, with his cheshire cat smile, showing all
the little sociopaths how it was done.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It's an amazing story. You'll love Lost Hills the Dark Prince.
Search for Lost Hills and follow all episodes wherever you
get your podcasts.
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