It’s always entertaining to hear stories about your parents’ lives when they were younger. For TikToker Chrisie (@chrisie9), one of those stories involves her mother, Diane, who broke a man out of jail and robbed a bank in 1973, when she was 17 years old.
She stole her own mother’s car and drove from North Carolina to Atlanta before the interstate highway system even existed.
Chrisie’s grandmother told her that she had called the police when she realized her car was gone, but they didn’t really take action on the report. The car also never made it back home because it broke down on the way.
Despite the dramatic chain of events—car theft, a jail break, and a bank robbery—Diane didn’t get in any trouble at home or with the cops.
Rather than responding with harsh punishment, Chrisie’s grandmother seemed to chalk the whole thing up to Diane just being Diane, so things like this were to be expected. Sadly, she passed away in 2010.
Diane had quite the reputation of being a wild child. She and her antics were well-known in the small town she grew up in. Her stunt has become the stuff of family legend, and her life story is heading to the big screen.
It’s being made into a movie titled The Misfit Diaries. The project is currently in preproduction and aims to capture the chaos and the larger-than-life personality that defined Diane during her youth.
In the comments section, several TikTok users talked about the crimes their own ancestors committed.
“My mom was a bank robber, too, in the ’70s. I wasn’t born yet…I do remember her telling me one time she went alone to rob the bank without her people. She slid the teller a note, telling her she had a gun and she’s not scared to use it. The lady started screaming and hit the panic button. She got a couple of dollars then tried to flee the scene, but she got caught, and she did four years behind bars. She robbed banks about three times prior to this one,” wrote one user.
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“My aunt went to rob a bank and could’ve gotten away with it, but turned herself in because her daughter got pulled over with the gun in the car. Instead of just saying she’s getting clean, she ran and said she did it,” shared another.
“My great-uncle robbed a bank in Ohio. This was back in the ’40s…I would have loved to know more about it!” exclaimed a third.
“My grandmother broke into some houses with a bunch of teens. She was not a teen. She was divorced with six kids, four grown and two in foster care. Her ex-husband, my granddad, was a conductor and a successful gambler. He was a pretty big deal down here at one point,” added someone else.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
