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Data accurate as of 2020-26. Hello and welcome. My favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstart.
00:01:58
That's Karen Kilgareff. And this is a podcast that's also a video podcast. Why do I feel like we haven't done this in months?
00:02:05
Does it feel like that? Yeah, it feels very foreign. You know what it was? Because we flipped our record days.
00:02:09
Oh, right. So it actually is much longer between records in our minds. Which I hate.
00:02:14
Because like if we talk about the Super Bowl now and how amazing Bad Bunny was, that happened
00:02:18
fucking two weeks ago to people. People are like, shut up. Yeah. So Bad Buddy was amazing.
00:02:23
But then did we talk about the reaction videos from the families who are watching the Super Bowl and then watching themselves be represented and recognizing all the references and people who know Puerto Rico?
00:02:35
I mean, I have been just sitting around my house watching families have big emotional shared experiences and crying, staring at my phone.
00:02:44
It's amazing. It's so crazy. That thing was incredible. Yeah, it was. It was moving like so beautiful and wonderful, especially because there are people who just didn't like it based on the fucking based on nothing.
00:02:59
Based on fear. Yeah. Very stupid fear. And hopefully this did something to fix that divide.
00:03:05
I don't know. Well, 164 million people watched it and were into it or at least watched it long enough to be recorded.
00:03:14
Yeah. So I think that's all people need to know. Yeah. The majority of people are open, into it, want to be a part of things.
00:03:23
No. Support it. All the things. Dancing grass. All of it. What's going on with you?
00:03:33
Just exactly what I told you. Me watching families have experiences. Well, see, the problem is I took Instagram off my phone because I was getting just trigger upon trigger with the Epstein files shit.
00:03:44
Like, I just needed to stop. Because, you know, as soon as I start clicking on it, that's all they feed me.
00:03:49
Yes. So I'm getting fed and fed. And so now I took it off, but I'm just reading Virginia Roberts Jufri's memoir.
00:03:57
Yeah. Which is, you know, at least it's from her mouth. So you were reading it on social media and then listening to a book about it?
00:04:04
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's we got to measure out and meet out our horrible realities.
00:04:11
Right. And our in our unbelievable truths that we're all now living through. Yeah.
00:04:16
Because I just co-hosted Brief Recess with Michael. That's awesome. Foot. Yeah. On it, I was told for the first time, and I don't know if you've already heard this,
00:04:27
they're now getting together the evidence that Kurt Cobain did not kill himself.
00:04:31
That was breaking on that show where I was like, sorry. Like he was telling me. Like they have the evidence now?
00:04:38
Well, they want it to be looked at again. And then they did like point by point evidence that they have.
00:04:44
I fucking buy it. One of the things was that all of the caps were put back on the heroin needles that he supposedly used to.
00:04:52
No. The word is that he OD'd with three needles full of heroin and then shot himself.
00:04:59
And the caps were on those needles. Yeah. That doesn't really add up. That all together, I was just like, wait, what?
00:05:06
And then that's just the first couple of things you mentioned. Oh, my God. Okay, now I have to get back on it, but I can't wait to hear more about that.
00:05:12
There's just so much to absorb and accept. And by the time this comes out, that could already be solved completely.
00:05:20
Yes. So just bear with us, you guys. We're a little bit behind on our breaking weekly podcast.
00:05:27
You can't. Weekly's not enough. Daily's not enough. No, no. We're a little behind on the uptake.
00:05:32
Is that what they say? It's not behind on the uptake. It's slow on the uptake. Slow on the uptake.
00:05:38
That's right. I'm slow. I'm behind on the slow uptake. Took me literally seven full seconds to tell you what it actually is, to correct you
00:05:46
about being slow on the update. That's what we guarantee you here at My Favorite Murder.
00:05:50
Do you know what podcasting is? Because you just saw it in action. Okay so we have a podcast network called Exactly Right There many wonderful shows on it We love to tell you about some of them right now That right This week on I Said No Gifts Bridger does his best not to go for the throat when Alison
00:06:06
Tolman from St. Dennis Medical and Fargo shows up with a gift. The best. Alison Tolman is the funniest, best actress.
00:06:13
Rad. They talk about forever chemicals, we fit, and the complicated social politics of luncheons.
00:06:19
It's a real luncheon-based show. If that's something you're into. Tiny sandwiches.
00:06:24
Get over it. I said no gifts. Yeah. They're classy. Scones. Okay. And then over on Brief Recess, I teased this already.
00:06:31
Michael's joined by substitute co-host Karen Kilgariff with a special guest appearance from the therapist from Euphoria.
00:06:37
You know her. You love her. It's Martha Kelly. I love her. I love the trailer for the new season where she's just fucking bawling so hard.
00:06:46
It's so exciting. I can't wait to watch her do that. Martha is the funniest. And if you've never seen her stand up, one of the best stand ups there is.
00:06:53
It'll make this character even better when you know how fucking hilarious she is in real life.
00:06:57
Yeah, that's right. And then on Dear Movies I Love You, Millie and Casey honor Black History Month by revisiting the 2018 film Sorry to Bother You.
00:07:05
They also dig into listener emails and pose their eternal question. Should you finish a movie even if you're not feeling it?
00:07:11
No. No. Never. Right? I never do. Okay. I have to get up and go stand in the kitchen.
00:07:17
So why would I be sitting there watching something I don't like? I need to be over there.
00:07:21
Yeah. Puttering. Over on Trust Me, Lola and Megan have such a great time with Martina Castro, the creator and host of our newest podcast, Two-Faced John of God, that they actually had to make that episode a two-parter.
00:07:33
So rad. Precious. This week is part one of their conversation where Martina breaks down John of God's rise to international fame as a self-proclaimed psychic surgeon.
00:07:43
I just saw Megan and Lola in the kitchen here at Exactly Right Studios. And speaking of Two-Faced John of God, episode four is now out.
00:07:50
It follows journalists from Brazil's largest news organization as they investigate John of God's rape allegations.
00:07:56
As more women come forward, it becomes clear the story is far bigger than anyone realized.
00:08:02
Such a good podcast. Got to go listen to it. Also, if you're listening to us right now, you might be interested to know that you can also watch us on Netflix.
00:08:10
New episodes and then long take to the camera. Light surprise. Fear. Trepidation.
00:08:20
And joy. All right. New episodes of My Favorite Murder and Buried Bones are released weekly.
00:08:27
So when you're there, please remember to hit the double thumbs up. Yeah. Don't be confused.
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It's thumbs up in some places. It's double thumbs up in Netflix. Yeah. So don't forget that one.
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It's your way to star it, to like it, to heart it. And if you're outside the U.S. or not into Netflix, that's okay.
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Just remember the fan cult has you covered. Full episode videos are now available along with ad-free episodes, merch store discounts, exclusive audio and video content.
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There's a lot of that and more. Join at fancult.supercast.com to get access and join in the fun.
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For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Today's story is one most of us are probably familiar with
00:11:09
because it's been immortalized in a Bob Dylan song and a 90s biopic starring my mom's hall pass, Denzel Washington.
00:11:18
Janet. Janet is. Janet's right about that. Yeah. But the whole story actually has several more twists and turns.
00:11:24
This is the story of a promising boxer who was wrongfully convicted twice or more, depending on who you ask.
00:11:30
He went on to become one of the world's most prominent advocates for the wrongfully convicted.
00:11:34
As the Bob Dylan song goes, here comes the story of the hurricane. Such a good movie.
00:11:40
Such a good movie. Such a good song. I played it for Vince, who, of course, knows the song, but didn't realize what it was about.
00:11:45
So we'd like listen to it together. It's a great fucking song. The main sources I used for the story are Reuben Hurricane Carter's own autobiography,
00:11:52
The 16th Round which he published from prison and Reuben New York Times obituary And the rest of the sources are found in the show notes In regard to Ruben I going to call him Ruben for now his childhood
00:12:05
In his own words, he says, quote, The kindest thing I can say about my childhood is that I survived it.
00:12:12
End quote. He's born in 1937 to Lloyd and Bertha Carter and grows up in Passaic in Patterson, New Jersey.
00:12:20
Do you know them? I've heard of Passaic. Yeah, I have too. Isn't there a hot wives of Passaic or something?
00:12:28
Is there hot wives of Passaic? If there is, I mean, Molly, do we know if the Bravo team has gotten onto Passaic in the way that we think they should?
00:12:37
Isn't it near the falls, Niagara Falls? I think it is. I thought it was near an airport.
00:12:43
The Passaic airport. Sure. Hold on. Not on Bravo. Great. Confirmed. Potomac. I'm thinking of Potomac.
00:12:50
Yes. Got it. Okay, he's one of seven kids, and the family is more comfortable than a lot of their neighbors.
00:12:59
But Ruben has a very difficult relationship with his dad, who is physically abusive.
00:13:03
It's all the stories we've heard so many, so many times. And also Ruben stutters, which is hard for him.
00:13:09
But by the time he's eight, he does gain a reputation in the neighborhood for being a talented fighter.
00:13:14
And that outweighs the fact that he has a stutter. And so he falls in with sort of a kid's street gang that fights other kids and commits minor crimes.
00:13:22
It's just, you know, juvenile delinquency pretty early on. Also, I would imagine that his fighting and his stutter are interconnected because he's just like, you're going to let people bully you or say shit to you about something.
00:13:36
Go fight them. Right. Totally. It's like he kind of had to do that. It's like do or die sort of.
00:13:41
When Ruben's dad finds out about a petty theft that he and his friends committed in town, he beats Ruben and then turns him into the police, leaving Ruben alone with them for questioning.
00:13:53
And the officer also beats Ruben. Again, he's not much older than eight at this time.
00:13:58
Oh, my God. When Ruben is 11 years old, so we're talking like the late 40s, he and some other boys are at Passaic Waterfalls, which you've seen.
00:14:08
Ali says you've seen them in The Sopranos. OK. Oh, yeah, I remember them. Okay. Right.
00:14:13
When a man attempts to sexually abuse several of them, the boys fight back and Ruben, who has a knife in his pocket, stabs the man.
00:14:20
The man's injured, but he survives. But consequently, Ruben is sent to a state-run juvenile facility called Jamesburg Home for the Boys.
00:14:30
And just we can think about old-timey, you know, institutions. For children. For children who are not behaving is like nightmare.
00:14:39
Right. and it is a nightmare. There's no rehabilitation and no education actually going on.
00:14:45
The boys are assigned to work details, and Ruben works in the industrial laundry room.
00:14:51
Ruben writes in his book that kids from eight years old ended up there for varying infractions
00:14:56
and that the setting was a, quote, atmosphere more vicious than the slums they left could ever be, end quote.
00:15:03
Ruben is supposed to be paroled when he's 17, but when that's taken away by an abusive corrections officer
00:15:10
for a made-up disciplinary infraction, and now he has to stay longer, Ruben and another inmate escape.
00:15:16
He makes it home to Patterson, and miraculously, the police aren't waiting for him
00:15:20
at his parents' house, so his mother, Bertha, packs him a suitcase and sends him off
00:15:24
to a relative in Philadelphia. It seems like the dad was the one who was, like, vying for him to be incarcerated and locked up,
00:15:32
and the mom just sent him to a family member. I mean, it's one thing to punish a child,
00:15:36
but especially, like, we've all seen those and those kinds of like reformatory. Exactly.
00:15:43
Where it's just the adults aren't trained, you know. Right. It's for profit. It's child prison.
00:15:50
There's not enough of those employees. Yeah, there's just not enough of anything.
00:15:55
No. And if you're children of color, it's the worst case scenario. Ruben spends just two weeks in Philadelphia,
00:16:00
and then he joins the army. They don't know that he had been locked up, and he's basically got a warrant out for his arrest.
00:16:06
He goes through basic training in South Carolina. And while the other recruits struggle to get used to the discipline, the physical conditioning and the terrible food, it's actually a significant step up from Jamesburg. So he actually doesn't mind it that much. But then when a white superior who's berating him calls him a racial slur, Rubin punches him in the face and he gets some other disciplinary infractions along those lines.
00:16:30
So the movie with Denzel Washington kind of glosses over a lot of the rough and tumble, you know, of his life.
00:16:38
But, you know, you can understand why. So Ruben's unit goes to a base in Germany when he's around 18.
00:16:45
And on the base, there's a lieutenant who coaches the boxing team. The lieutenant has Ruben try out boxing with no prior training by entering the ring with the two year all army heavyweight champion.
00:16:57
and just get on in there and let's see what you can do thinking this will show him.
00:17:02
And Ruben is actually only 5'8 and like 150 pounds to begin with. But he knocks the guy out cold after three punches.
00:17:11
Oh, my God. Yeah. And after that, I think the lieutenant's like, oh, shit, you got to be like, you need to do this.
00:17:17
And he's assigned to a special unit so that he can become the new star of the Army's boxing team.
00:17:23
I mean, he's been training since he was eight years old. Right. That's incredible.
00:17:26
Yeah. After he starts boxing, other things start to fall into place. Rubin gets speech therapy and overcomes his stutter.
00:17:33
And that opens a new passion for expressing himself, for reading and writing and education.
00:17:38
And he writes, quote, silence was no longer a defense mechanism for me. It became instead a luxury.
00:17:44
If I kept quiet now, it was only because I wanted to and not because I felt I had to, end quote, to hide his stutter.
00:17:51
At this point in time Rubin also starts exploring Islam under the tutelage of a fellow soldier he finds its messaging empowering especially having been oppressed by multiple systems of white supremacy over the course of his life though he doesn ever formally convert
00:18:05
Now, even though Rubin is flourishing in a lot of ways during this time in his life, he's not exactly becoming a model soldier and he gets in trouble repeatedly in the army and he's eventually discharged.
00:18:17
He intends to become a professional boxer, but he first gets in trouble with the law.
00:18:21
He's sent to prison for 10 months because there's still that warrant out for something he did when he was a child.
00:18:28
Also, it makes sense that he has problems with authority. You know what I mean? It's just like the army would be perfect for him in some ways, but then it's not like he's getting therapy.
00:18:37
It's not like he fits in and there's a bunch of stuff he's natural at. But then he's also like the shadow of his past abusers are right there, but now they're his sergeants or his leaders.
00:18:47
And they're not racist. You know what I mean? And it's kind of the same thing. It's the, what, 40s, 50s?
00:18:53
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the 2026 and it's still fucking pretty goddamn racist. So he's sent to prison for 10 months and then he serves about three more years because he snatched a woman's purse and assaulted a man, both of which he did while he was drunk.
00:19:08
So he's released from prison in 1961 when he's about 24 years old. And this is when he actually starts to get his boxing career off the ground.
00:19:16
He's quickly named the Hurricane because of his aggressive fighting style. And around this time, Ruben meets a woman named, this is the best name, May Thelma Basket.
00:19:27
And they get married and have a daughter. There's a photo of him in the military.
00:19:32
Wow. And then this is him in the boxing stance. Oh, yeah. I know, right? He's serious.
00:19:39
Yeah. I'd be scared if I were the opponent. Can I imagine me being a boxer? It'd go real fast.
00:19:45
He'd be like the hummingbird. Right? Yeah. Over the next three years, he climbs from the bottom of the top 10 middleweight fighters toward the top, and he becomes a well-known fighter.
00:19:58
It's got a lot of similarities to Muhammad Ali's story, which I've covered in the past.
00:20:02
And Mike Tyson. Yeah. Yeah. So in this background, Ruben gets a reputation for being very charming and charismatic, but also for being unabashedly critical of law enforcement.
00:20:13
in the buildup of several of his fights, he doesn't hide his contempt for the police
00:20:17
or his belief that black people should stand up for themselves when confronted with racist violence.
00:20:22
He says, quote, if you act like you're afraid of me, you better be afraid of me because I would do to you exactly what you would do to me.
00:20:30
And then he says, I just do it quicker. End quote. As a result of this, he is frequently stopped and harassed by police officers.
00:20:37
At this point, when Rubin's 29, mine, everything in his life comes to a screeching halt. So in the wee hours of June 17th, 1966,
00:20:47
in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Patterson, New Jersey, which is a dive bar in a bad part of town
00:20:52
that's also notorious for not serving Black people, four people are shot. Their names are Jim Oliver,
00:20:58
who is the bartender, and three customers, Hazel Tannis, Fred Nauyaks, and Willie Marins. Willie
00:21:05
Lee and Hazel initially survive, though Hazel will succumb to her injuries a month later.
00:21:10
Willie is blinded in one eye and he and another witness say that the shooters are two black men, one who held a pistol and one who held a shotgun.
00:21:19
One witness named Alfred Bellow is standing outside the bar when the police get there.
00:21:24
But he had actually gone into the bar after the shooting to try to take the cash from the register.
00:21:31
So this is going to become their main witness against Ruben. Yeah. So this is who we're talking about.
00:21:36
He says he saw two black men, both of whom were around 5'11". And let's remember, Ruben is famously on the short side for a middleweight boxer at 5'8".
00:21:44
Like those are not heights that you get mixed up. Right. So Ruben's car actually matches the description of the getaway car.
00:21:50
And so he had been out driving around that night and he is in the car with a 19-year-old man he knows named Don Artis, as well as another man.
00:21:59
They're stopped by the police who say they're looking for two black men. Ruben then quips, any two will do.
00:22:05
But the police actually let them go. And the third man gets out of the car and goes home.
00:22:09
But later that night, they were looking for two black men. The police circle back to Ruben and John and they are brought to the hospital where Willie Marins, the guy with the who's I got shot out.
00:22:21
He's conscious. And police ask him if Ruben and John are the ones who shot him. Willie and another witness who knows what Ruben looks like because he's famous in the area as being this prize fighter.
00:22:31
They both say it's not him. Oh, wow. Yeah. Despite this, Rubin and John are brought to the station where they're interrogated for hours, insisting that they were not at the Lafayette.
00:22:42
And they're actually let go at this point. And four months pass. And then in October of 1966, Rubin and John are arrested and charged with the three murders.
00:22:53
What happened over the course of those four months? Well, a $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest.
00:23:01
How much is $10,000 in 1966? 70,000? 100. I almost accidentally said it. Oh. So this caused Alfred Bello, the man who police had already spoken to outside the bar,
00:23:13
and another man, Arthur Dexter Bradley, to come forward. So Bello was the guy who stole the cash from the register after there was a shooting and people were fucking dead in a bar.
00:23:23
He actually got in there and got it? Yeah, I think like before the police got there.
00:23:27
Right. Which is just jarring how... Well, it points to like the desperation of everybody that it sounds like in a dive bar
00:23:35
in a bad part of town. Yeah. That's what happens. Right. And actually, it turned out that he had been a lookout that night while his accomplice Bradley
00:23:44
was burglarizing a neighboring factory. So they're there to burglarize. He goes in and steals money from a crime scene, but he's their main witness.
00:23:53
And despite the fact that Bella's original statement to the police had described men
00:23:57
not matching Rubin and John's descriptions, and despite the fact that Bella's original
00:24:00
fact that he had previously agreed that Ruben was not one of the shooters, he now changes
00:24:04
the story and says that Ruben and John were the men that he saw that night. And Bradley, the other guy who previously didn't admit to seeing anything, says the same thing.
00:24:14
So Ruben and John's case goes to trial in 1967. Bellow testifies that he saw both men at the scene that night, and Bradley testifies that
00:24:22
he only saw Ruben. The prosecution doesn't offer any kind of motive for the killings, and three other witnesses
00:24:28
provide alibis for both men for the time of the murder. Despite this, Ruben and John are both found guilty,
00:24:36
and Ruben is sentenced to 30 years to life and John 15 years to life. So does it feel like a setup?
00:24:41
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it feels like these guys want to get the money and the cops want to nab somebody for it,
00:24:48
and it's convenient that it all works out for all the white people. Yeah, well, but I was going to say that it seems like the cops,
00:24:55
like if Ruben was the kind of person that's like, any two will do. Yeah. Which it must have felt amazing just to be able to say that because it's
00:25:03
absolutely the truth that they had to live under. But then it's like you can I'm sure that there
00:25:10
was some white sergeant somewhere that's like that guy needs to be taught a lesson. Yeah,
00:25:15
absolutely. And sergeant isn't the rank I don't really know. While in prison, Ruben refuses to
00:25:22
wear his uniform most of the time, which means he can't leave his cell and he forgoes most prison
00:25:27
Meals heating up his own cans of soup on an electric coil. Basically, you know, it's his own way of fighting the system however he can.
00:25:36
And avoiding that food that you know is disgusting. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. He reads voraciously, especially books from the law library.
00:25:44
And while Rubin refuses to acknowledge many of the realities of prison life, like that uniform, he's also so respected by his fellow inmates that he is able to keep peace in the prison on multiple occasions.
00:25:57
when things could have turned violent. And in fact, one prison guard credits Ruben
00:26:01
with saving his life during a riot. Okay. In November of 1974, from prison, Ruben, now 37 years old,
00:26:10
publishes his autobiography, The 16th Round. The book gets a lot of attention and Bob Dylan reads it and visits Ruben in prison.
00:26:19
You should have heard me trying to sing that to Vince while I was like trying to remember,
00:26:22
do you know that song? And I just kept singing fucking terrible, terrible, stupid fucking, yeah.
00:26:28
It is a really good song, though. It's such a good. Also, it just makes me want to stop everything,
00:26:31
but it's going to take too long to tell the story. But I told you the story of when I walked into the wall
00:26:35
in the movie theater, right? Because we came in late. No. And it was the Bob Dylan movie.
00:26:40
Oh. So it's very dark, and it was like the beginning where he's visiting someone in the hospital.
00:26:45
And you thought you were turning into this theater, and you just walked into a fucking wall.
00:26:48
I thought that I was going to get to the stairs on the other side and go down, because I couldn't find my cousins.
00:26:53
Yeah. and there were no stairs on the other side. So I just very slowly walked into a wall,
00:26:57
a carpeted wall. But luckily, Sophie was sitting in the last seat. So she's like, what are you doing?
00:27:02
And I'm like, God damn it. I would have left. I would have fucking left. We laughed for the rest of the movie
00:27:08
and there was all these like, of course, heavy things in it. And we could not stop laughing.
00:27:12
It was the dumbest. Okay, sorry. No, it's good. And we're back. We needed a little stopover.
00:27:18
Yeah. Okay, so Bob Dylan visits Ruben in prison And then he releases the song Hurricane, which tells the story of what happened that night, which charts in the top 40 in 1975.
00:27:29
Rubin and John's case gains widespread attention at this point. And at that time, they're finally awarded a new trial.
00:27:36
So this is chiefly because Bellow and Bradley, the two witnesses, quote, had recanted their statements.
00:27:44
It had also been revealed that the prosecution had promised to be lenient to each of them on their own crimes they were committing in that moment that night.
00:27:53
Yeah. So they get the award money and they get leniency, you know. To raise money for their defense, Bob Dylan headlines a concert at Madison Square Garden.
00:28:02
Fuck. And then one at the Houston Astrodome. Jesus. I know. That's amazing. Yeah.
00:28:09
We don't do that anymore. Remember like all the fucking tribute concerts people would do?
00:28:15
And the like Farm Aid and Live Aid and USA for Africa. Yes, those. We need that.
00:28:21
I think it's because our center has completely exploded. So there's nobody outside of the bad stuff to be like, here's how we're going to help.
00:28:30
Everyone's inside of it going like, we don't know what to do. Also, our media is completely state run at this point.
00:28:37
We don't know what's going on. Wow. You just basically said it all. I know what's going on.
00:28:44
I don't know what to do about it. Right. We could play the Astrodome. It's not there anymore.
00:28:50
So the New Jersey Supreme Court overturns Rubin and John's sentences based on the recantations.
00:28:56
But the Passaic County prosecutor decides they want to try the case again and goes back to trial in 1976.
00:29:04
Rubin and John are out on bail for nine months. in between that and at the new trial,
00:29:09
Bellow recants his recantation. What? But Bradley doesn't. He's like, I swear it was a lie.
00:29:17
And so that means he's the prosecution's only witness placing Rubin at the scene
00:29:20
and for other people saying he wasn't, you know? Yeah. The liar and the stealer is the one holding out.
00:29:28
Exactly. The one who can actually gain from this whole situation is your only witness.
00:29:34
Yeah. This time the prosecution does offer a motive saying the killing was revenge for the prior shooting of a black bartender in town.
00:29:42
But there's no evidence to back this up. However, Ruben and John are found guilty again.
00:29:47
No. I mean, you're surprised. I guess I did see the movie, but I didn't. It just when you hear about the details of these things where it so thin and it so overt and it such a scam Yeah It just heartbreaking It is a scam Fuck man What do we do We work on it later We have to do this podcast
00:30:06
I know. Man. Gotta burn. It's coming down anyway. I know. They're found guilty again.
00:30:12
Ruben's second child, a son, is born two days after he's found guilty again. See, this is that heartbreak of like, you're telling me this man has spent so much time
00:30:19
in jail in his life and then he gets out for nine months for the retrial. Yeah. And he gets that taste of real life again.
00:30:25
Yeah. Like maybe this will work out. Maybe like I'm actually free. They saw their error of their ways.
00:30:31
There's tons of people behind me now. Like my story is being told. No. No. It doesn't matter who's on your fucking side.
00:30:38
Not if the system's corrupt. Yeah. Right. After his second conviction, Rubin tells the New York Times, quote, they can incarcerate
00:30:48
my body, but they can never incarcerate my mind, end quote. and that holds true as Rubin spends five more years in prison.
00:30:56
It's a dark time. Obviously, he and his wife get divorced and Rubin is so hopeless that he doesn't read any of the letters
00:31:02
that pile up in his cell from supporters of his case because now it's like a known story
00:31:07
and there's so many people writing in. And reading those letters would just be so bittersweet
00:31:12
if not just so depressing. Right. But for some reason, in September of 1980, he opens a letter, a random letter, and he'll later say it's because the letter had vibrations.
00:31:25
And the letter's from a 17-year-old kid. This is a fucking long story that I'm going to
00:31:30
just truncate, but it's a 17-year-old kid in Toronto named Lesra Martin. And Lesra had read
00:31:37
Ruben's book and was so moved by it that he wanted to get in touch and thank him. And so
00:31:42
Lesra's letter to Ruben leaves him so touched that he begins corresponding with the teenager.
00:31:47
So Lester had actually been adopted from a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn by a commune of artists and academics living in a mansion in Toronto.
00:31:57
Those Canadians. AKA heaven. It wasn't a great, it ended up not being a totally great place.
00:32:05
Oh shit. Right. But it's when there's a bunch of people together, it's always going to go to shit.
00:32:09
Yeah, that's true. After hearing about Rubin through Lesra, three of the members of the commune wind up moving down to New Jersey to work full time on Rubin's wrongful conviction case.
00:32:19
And after numerous appeals, the case is heard in the U.S. District Court in Newark and the judge overturns the conviction on constitutional grounds, ruling that the prosecutors had, quote, fatally infected the trial, end quote, with an unfound theory of racial revenge.
00:32:36
Reuben is free for good in 1985 at the age of 49. Having spent just about 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
00:32:46
And James had been paroled in 1981. So he leaves prison. And for his first six years after leaving, Reuben lives at the commune in Toronto.
00:32:56
Oh, wow. He goes back. Eventually the commune proves to also be too oppressive for him.
00:33:01
And he leaves it. It's a very long story that I'm making very small. But you can look it up.
00:33:07
When's independent in Toronto, Rubin founds a group called Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted, which is now called Innocence Canada.
00:33:15
They actively work on the cases of people who they believe are wrongfully convicted.
00:33:19
The group has helped to exonerate 36 wrongfully convicted Canadians. In addition, Rubin works as a motivational speaker and advocates for the wrongfully convicted all over the world, contributing to many, many more exonerations.
00:33:33
then in 1999 director norman jewison makes a movie about his life called the hurricane
00:33:39
denzel the movie glosses over his military discharge and his prior convictions to make
00:33:45
it look like he's a purely sympathetic figure but like when you know the truth of his actual life
00:33:50
and the violence and unfairness that he overcame the fact that he spent his formative years in
00:33:56
highly abusive and highly racist institutions it makes his later contributions to society that much
00:34:02
more impressive, meaning like we don't you don't have to gloss over them. You don't have to be a perfect person to deserve a perfect life.
00:34:09
And to not deserve being wrongfully convicted for a crime you did not commit to just then
00:34:15
be another body that's being warehoused. Yeah. In this prison system. Right. It's almost more impressive that he ended up being this incredible, you know, motivational
00:34:25
person. Oh, my God. The idea that he left prison to then turn around and help other wrongfully convicted people says it all to me.
00:34:33
Exactly. He could have walked away and just lived his life. Yeah. And he didn't.
00:34:37
Which is OK, too. Go live your fucking life, everyone. When asked about being played by Denzel Washington, Rubin says, quote, I didn't know I was that good looking.
00:34:45
End quote. Well, here's a photo of Rubin and Denzel Washington. Let's show that one.
00:34:52
Oh. I know. Oh, look at that. Such a cute pic. Reuben dies at 76 years old in April of 2014 of prostate cancer, and he spends his last week's campaigning for the release of a black man named David McCallum, who had been wrongfully imprisoned for 29 years.
00:35:09
He writes an op-ed for the New York Daily News called Hurricane Carter's Dying Wish, saying, quote,
00:35:16
If I find a heaven after this life, I'll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years and have been in heaven for the past 28 years.
00:35:28
To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all.
00:35:36
End quote. David McCallum is freed four months after Reuben's death. And that is the story of Reuben Hurricane Carter.
00:35:46
Amazing. What a quote. I know. That's a great quote. I know. It's really true. Wow.
00:35:53
Yeah. Very inspiring So read his book It called The 16th Round Calorie content has been reduced on average from 162 to 92 calories per serving.
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00:37:31
All right. So I'm going to take a left turn as we like to do. We play levels. We do different
00:37:37
tones and tastes. Right. We contain multitudes. We always have. And I'm going to tell you a
00:37:44
survival story, which is one of my favorite things to do. Classic, Karen. Our story begins in Alaska
00:37:49
on December 21st, 1943. Okay. We're in the thick of World War II. It's around 945 in the morning
00:37:56
and a crew of five Americans in a B-24 Liberator bomber plane has just taken off for a test flight
00:38:03
from what used to be called Ladd Field, but is now called Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska.
00:38:09
Okay. Here's the plane. Oh. Right away. Oh, yeah. So old school. So old school. The co-pilots of this plane
00:38:17
are Lieutenant Leon Crane and 2nd Lieutenant Harold Hoskin. The flight crew is Sergeant Ralph Wenz,
00:38:24
Master Sergeant Richard Pompeo, and Lieutenant James Seibert. As of this day, there's no active threat,
00:38:30
but the Allies are afraid that there could be an enemy invasion of America by way of Alaska.
00:38:34
So the troops are taking these routine flights and patrolling the area. So here is a picture of Lieutenant Leon Crane.
00:38:44
Hi. He's one of the pilots. Yes. So I'm sorry. The other day I was in Jess's office and I don't remember we were chatting about
00:38:55
but one of her Christina said do you know if you ask any man if he thinks he could land a plane
00:39:01
they all say they can they think they can. Really? Yes. That's like when men were saying they thought
00:39:08
they could fight off a bear. Exactly. I asked Vince and he laughed and said hell no. So like
00:39:12
I'm really happy for that. That's actually pretty wild. I also recently just saw what was a viral video.
00:39:20
Do you ever see that one of the girl who had just gotten her pilot's license? She'd flown three times and her...
00:39:25
She was with her dad? No, she's by herself. And the landing gear like locked up and she just didn't have any landing gear in the back, I think.
00:39:34
So a commercial pilot jumps on and talks her through the landing. Yeah. And she does it.
00:39:40
And it's fine. It's one of the scariest, craziest things that I was like, I don't want to watch this, but I have to see what happens to the end.
00:39:47
It's so scary. It's amazing. Okay. So it's all business for this flight crew until just after noon when the bomber is about 130 miles out from Ladd Field flying over the Alaskan interior when one of the engines fails.
00:40:01
So the bomber begins to spin. The pilots fight to regain control, but the plane goes into a nosedive at 300 miles an hour and smashes into the snowy earth.
00:40:11
Oh, shit. It's silent until one man's voice can be heard calling out for the others.
00:40:17
And what begins as a tragedy now restarts as an incredible story of survival that will play out for the next 81 days across the Alaskan interior.
00:40:27
This is the story of 24-year-old Lieutenant Leon Crane's long journey back to civilization.
00:40:34
Oh, I forgot it was a survivor story. That quickly. It's that easy. Show you a couple of pictures.
00:40:41
Done. Right? Oh, my God. So the main sources used today are the book 81 Days Below Zero by Brian Murphy and Tula
00:40:48
of Lahu, also a 2023 Anchorage Daily News article by journalist David Reamer entitled
00:40:55
Lost in the Wilderness for 81 Days, a write-up on the National Park Service's website entitled
00:41:00
WW2's Survival Story from the Charlie River, and the rest of the sources are in our show notes.
00:41:06
So when the plane was crashing amid all the chaos, Lieutenant Crane somehow gets his parachute on
00:41:13
and is able to eject himself from the bomber or bail out. So as he's floating down to the earth,
00:41:21
he watches the bomber in the distance as it smashes into a mountainside and erupts into what he'll later describe as, quote, a huge blob of red flame.
00:41:32
Yikes. Miraculously, he was like out before any of that ever happened. Yeah. When I first was reading it, I was like, this man survived a nosedive into the earth.
00:41:41
I was totally picturing that. Just like climbing out of the wreckage. No. Snow isn't that powerful.
00:41:48
The problem, though, is that he's floating down to Earth. He doesn know if any of the other crew members have also been able to get out of the plane like him Also as he floating down the air around him is somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees below zero But the wind chill makes it more than 100 degrees below zero
00:42:09
He's wearing his army issued flight suit, a downfilled parka and canvas mucklucks.
00:42:14
And luckily, he also has several pairs of socks on. What he doesn't have on are his heavy duty
00:42:19
gloves because he had to just, you know, escape. Bail out. So the air stings his exposed hands and face as he's floating toward the earth.
00:42:29
Somehow he avoids all the trees and rocks and everything that's super dangerous and
00:42:35
he lands without injury, but then he immediately sinks hip deep into snow. He's about two miles from where the plane crashed.
00:42:43
He has no idea if any of his crewmates are alive or dead. He just starts shouting anyway.
00:42:49
just in case someone could hear him, but he is met with silence. Lieutenant Leon Crane is now faced with the fact that he'll have to figure all of this out on his own,
00:42:57
which would be a huge problem for anybody, but especially Lieutenant Crane, who sources describe as, quote, a city boy from Philadelphia.
00:43:06
Oh, shit. So it's not like he's got some survivalist experience or anything. And despite being stationed in Alaska for the last two months,
00:43:14
he hasn't gotten any practical survival training for this cold, rugged environment.
00:43:20
The good news is there's some things that are just plain common sense. He knows the temperature is going to plummet once the sun goes down,
00:43:27
somewhere between 2 and 3 o'clock, and that means he has just a couple of hours before he's at risk of freezing to death.
00:43:34
And if by some miracle he does survive the night, he knows whatever food, water, or supplies the bomber had on board have gone up in flames.
00:43:42
so that can't help him like if he just hikes to the wreckage. He also knows that the last time he and his crew gave their location via radio contact
00:43:51
was around 11.08 a.m. when they were about 65 miles out from Ladd Field but they continued traveling for nearly an hour after that without checking in.
00:44:02
So he realizes to the army he and his crewmates could be anywhere. So Lieutenant Crane starts with what he's got in front of him.
00:44:10
He wraps himself up in his parachute for warmth, and he looks at the tools that he actually brought.
00:44:16
Two matchboxes with about 40 matches between the two, a Boy Scout knife that he carries with him everywhere, and a letter from his father back in Pennsylvania.
00:44:27
Then he scans the area around him, identifying a small frozen over river, and he heads toward that.
00:44:33
Always go toward the water. Yeah, right? Yes. So then you can follow it down. Right.
00:44:38
Because it's always going down to meet bigger water. Right, where people build homes because it's near the water and we need water to survive.
00:44:46
That's right. You are very smart. I made that all up. What? So Leon can't know this at the time, but he is at the headwaters of the Charlie River, and that empties out into the Yukon.
00:44:59
He starts collecting driftwood from the riverbanks, which he then cuts down with his pocket knife and arranges into a little cone to start a fire for warmth.
00:45:08
But his hands are so ice cold as he does this, they've gone completely numb. So he struggles to get the fire started and he ends up having to use the letter from his father as kindling.
00:45:19
But he does get a small fire going, so he warms himself up as much as he can. He's obviously exhausted and he can't help but start wondering if he might die out there all alone.
00:45:30
Fortunately, he does wake up the next morning bundled in his parachute, still very cold, increasingly hungry and unsure of what comes next.
00:45:38
But he is alive. Do you carry a knife? I carry a knife. Do you carry a knife? I always make sure there's something sharp in my purse that something kind of like could cut through something.
00:45:49
Yeah. But I don't I so easily forget things of like I'm not going to I'll walk through a security.
00:45:57
Oh, like deeper with a knife easily. Yes. I had to replace my pepper spray so many times because I don't take it out at the airport.
00:46:04
Yes. I'm not like savvy. savvy, smart, aware enough. You know what I mean? There you go.
00:46:12
I'm still putting my phone down when I start looking at sweaters and walking away.
00:46:16
I just can't. So me and knives aren't, you know. I'll have you carry the knife. So he wakes up.
00:46:23
It's day two in the Alaskan wilderness. And Lieutenant Crane is still holding out hope that rescuers will find the crash site
00:46:28
and then be able to save him. He focuses on that short-term survival. So he keeps his driftwood fire going as he makes an impromptu campsite and he stays hydrated by eating snow.
00:46:40
This is actually something experts say can be risky to do because it burns a lot of your energy because it's cold.
00:46:47
And so then you have to heat it up. Your body expends too much energy to heat it up.
00:46:51
It also risks cooling your body to the point of hypothermia. Oh, man. I was like, snow, you have unlimited water.
00:46:58
Nope. Careful. Also, ice cream headaches. but it does work for lieutenant crane in this situation he waits for the sounds of a rescue
00:47:08
plane all day long then the next day and the next day after nine days pass he is forced to accept
00:47:14
no one is coming for him so on top of that he hasn't had anything substantial to eat in that
00:47:20
long right but the problem is he can see squirrels running in the trees above his campsite
00:47:25
So the hungrier he gets, the more desperately he tries to basically hunt these squirrels.
00:47:32
But he doesn't have any real weapons to help him. And he tries to make them, but he has very limited materials.
00:47:39
So he attempts linking rudimentary clubs and a slingshot. And he tries to fashion a sort of spear.
00:47:47
None of it works. The squirrels always get away. Lieutenant Crane's morale is sinking.
00:47:51
And fearing he might starve to death, he decides his best bet will be to follow the frozen river, hoping it just leads him to people.
00:48:00
Can't just stay at this campsite. But following the river turns out to be a treacherous hike through ice and snow along sometimes very steep rocky inclines.
00:48:09
The Anchorage Daily News reports that it takes Lieutenant Crane several hours just to travel a few hundred feet.
00:48:16
So he's in some serious wilderness. Do you have a picture of what it looks like?
00:48:21
Yeah. Can we put up a picture of maybe the crash site? But the crash site is too clear.
00:48:26
oh but it's he's on snow right well he bailed out right like uh i think what it would be like two
00:48:36
miles away from here okay yeah that's where where the crash site like they probably went back to
00:48:41
take that picture right totally so of course he's getting exhausted but he is able to find breaks in
00:48:46
the ice um and he's able to drink river water which is good he still isn't eating that much
00:48:52
though aside from a few plants here and there. And then at night, he follows the same routine.
00:48:57
He lights a small fire. He warms himself up. He wraps himself up in his parachute.
00:49:02
But the hungrier he gets, of course, the more he's dreaming of food. He has vivid dreams about steaks and potatoes and frothy milkshakes every day.
00:49:12
So this goes on for another week for Lieutenant Crane. And at this point, he's been out in the wilderness for over two weeks. He is nearly just depleted.
00:49:22
But he keeps on. He gets up to hike one more time. And one day as he's trudging along the river, something amazing happens.
00:49:31
He looks up to see a small log cabin in the distance. As he gets closer, he discovered this cabin is not only unlocked, it is fully stocked with food and supplies.
00:49:41
Come on. And this is not a mirage. It's actually customary in the frontier as a sort of pay it forward practice by hunters and trappers who know how lethal getting lost in the Alaskan wilderness can be.
00:49:53
So they leave their stuff open and they leave it fully stocked for anyone who might need it.
00:49:58
That's amazing. It's kind of beautiful. That's like that in certain towns where polar bears are always around.
00:50:03
People leave their car doors unlocked just so if you're like walking along with a fucking polar bear, you can jump in someone's car.
00:50:09
Oh, I didn't know that. It has to be Alaska, right? Oh, makes sense. And Leon finds a name on some of the items around the property, and that name is Phil Berrail.
00:50:20
And he figures it's the cabin's owner, and he is like, I'll never forget this person.
00:50:25
Because this cabin is a literal lifesaver. Lieutenant Crane finds clothes. He also crucially finds a pair of mittens among the supplies.
00:50:33
There's also shelf-stable food. There's a gun for hunting. There's all sorts of tools.
00:50:39
There's a stove. There's a supply of ready-to-use firewood. Like he doesn't even have to go chop firewood.
00:50:44
It's like he leveled up in a video game. Yes. You know, he earned this cabin. Yeah.
00:50:48
Yeah. He even finds himself some hot cocoa. Oh. Yeah. So he warms up. He feeds himself.
00:50:54
He stays the night in Phil Burrell's cabin, desperately hoping that means that some other
00:51:00
person, maybe Phil himself, if not an entire homestead, is nearby. But this is the part of the movie where if the camera pulled up and out of the roof and
00:51:11
then expand it out, you would be able to see high in the air that Lieutenant Crane is 100
00:51:16
miles away from the nearest settlement. Oh, no. Yeah. He doesn't know that, though.
00:51:23
What Lieutenant Crane knows is that he's fed and rested and that the next morning, with
00:51:27
mittens finally covering his frostbitten hands and pockets filled with raisins that he's
00:51:32
found at the cabin, he sets out on his course along the Charlie River. He spends the entire day hiking that same punishing terrain, hoping that he is going to find a cabin a mile away, two miles away.
00:51:45
He doesn't find anything. So then he has to turn back and hike all the way back to the cabin.
00:51:51
When he gets there, he's exhausted and defeated and he collapses. A pocket full of raisins.
00:51:56
With fucking raisins. Gross. Those don't keep. But back then, it was like the 40s.
00:52:01
People were like, this is nature's candy. It's a delicacy. I love this shit. So Lieutenant Crane spends the next six weeks venturing out of this cabin a couple miles at a time, hoping to find something other than vast snowy expanses.
00:52:16
It never happens. And he doesn't know what else to do. What would you do? Stay there.
00:52:22
Just keep staying. Just live. Yeah. Ration. Stay. Yeah. Hope that someone comes back at some point.
00:52:28
I think what I would do is light the forest around me on fire and be like, try to find some liquor and be like, if they don't see this smoke, I don't know what, I don't know how to help these people.
00:52:38
My stomach is growling now because I think I'm so in it with you. Yes. That happened.
00:52:44
I was working on this this morning, but I was sitting outside. And of course, everyone's going to hate me and you when I say this.
00:52:50
It was freezing. It was like 53 degrees this morning. What? So I was typing and I realized I thought I was really into the story, but I was like, no, my hands are cold.
00:53:00
I'm not used to any temperature fluctuation whatsoever. OK, so your plan is what his plan was at first.
00:53:06
Lieutenant Crane was just going to subsist on what was in Phil Burrell's cabin until warmer weather comes and basically thaws everything out.
00:53:14
But then he realizes that even if he really rations, barely eats every day, there isn't enough food to sustain him for that long.
00:53:22
So he is forced to once again set out along the riverside. But this time he has fashioned himself a very simple sled so that he can take as many of the supplies and tools with him as he can, which is great.
00:53:35
So now he has a tent and a sleeping bag. So as bad as the situation is, it is definitely better than it was before.
00:53:41
He's gained strength. He's gained morale. He's gained some mittens. So he heads out once again.
00:53:47
He walks for miles and miles. At one point he stops to get cold water from the river but he slips and he falls into the river It of course ice cold Somehow Lieutenant Crane manages to get back out but now his clothes begin to freeze You so embarrassed All those little animals that saw him fucking
00:54:08
Lands like on the side of his face and shoulder with his butt in the air. Grown man falling is like just not, no one wants to see that.
00:54:14
No, grown man, child, doesn't matter. Falling is the ultimate humiliation. Alone or not.
00:54:22
Or walking into a movie theater wall. alone where then you're like grunting and getting up like you're really left no one comes and says
00:54:30
oh no are you okay we can laugh together about how funny and clumsy that was no i remember every fall
00:54:35
it's just you and yourself beating yourself up for falling down okay wait sorry because this is
00:54:40
supposed to be exciting okay see because oh he's going down the river and he's like maybe i'm
00:54:45
making progress he falls into the river immediately he's in danger like he's his life is immediately
00:54:51
in danger. Like as he's trying to assess the situation and fix it, he has to do it as quickly
00:54:56
as possible, but he's shivering so hard he can barely control his hands. And he also kind of
00:55:02
can't think straight because his body is in shock. So he pushes through and he is able to start a
00:55:08
fire. Then he runs a rope above it. He strips off all of his icy clothes, hangs them across the rope,
00:55:14
and then he runs into his tent naked and like, you know, wraps himself up praying that the flames
00:55:20
won't burn so high that they burn his clothing. Right. But like basically I have to dry out that clothing
00:55:26
and then warm myself up. Yeah. Fortunately, his clothes do dry out. He does warm up.
00:55:32
He puts his clothes back on. He gets into a sleeping bag and he just goes to sleep.
00:55:37
So he then just has to get up the next day. He's back at it hiking along the river.
00:55:42
Occasionally he manages to catch a squirrel or a bird. Eating a bird. All those little bones.
00:55:48
He covers a couple miles a day. He does this for two more weeks. At one point, he has to abandon his sled. It's just too heavy and clunky and it's too hard. So whatever supplies or tools he can't carry, he has to leave behind. So just another devastating moment of like, is this, am I just like bread crumbing my life away here?
00:56:09
Totally. Trying to get somewhere, which is kind of what life feels like a lot of the time.
00:56:14
For sure. We don't all get a sled. Some of us get sleds. You got to make your own sled.
00:56:18
Right. And then you just got to focus that there will be a cabin that's unlocked.
00:56:21
Right. There will be. You just got to keep going. There's hot cocoa in the future.
00:56:25
There is. And a pocket full of raisins. Don't. We want people to keep going. You can put the raisins in the hot cocoa.
00:56:34
Raisins mean whatever you want them to mean. Like raisins are symbolic of. You're right.
00:56:38
Of positive things. Right. Even though they don't seem like it. So he doesn't know if doing this is the best plan for him.
00:56:45
He just simply has no choice. and he continues. And then, once again, the unlikeliest miracle happens.
00:56:53
Lieutenant Crane comes across another unlocked and fully stocked cabin. Come on.
00:56:59
Swear to God. This is actually really like life. We're like, some people just get fucking, come across cabins stocked full.
00:57:06
Yeah. And some of us don't. And you can't forget it. No, I'm going to continue this.
00:57:11
Yeah. You know what it is? What? It's the people who keep trudging along. Right.
00:57:14
It's the people who take risks. Yeah. And it's the people who dig down and go like, I want to live and I want to make this.
00:57:21
Yeah. And so I'm just going to I'm going to play the odds. I'm going to do my best.
00:57:25
I'm not going to let my brain get me down. And I will believe that there are unlocked cabins filled with raisins to the brim.
00:57:32
But meanwhile, the motherfuckers who were born in the cabin full of food are saying that the people who weren't.
00:57:39
I could just go on and on. I know. Are lazy and taking their their skiing jobs. I mean, those people do exist, but let's focus on the people who leave the cabin unlocked filled with supplies.
00:57:52
Because those people are—there's more people like that. That's us. I think that's us.
00:57:57
That's us. That's America right now. Those blamers and those cabin people, those original born-in-the-cabin people, let's not worry about those guys so much.
00:58:07
Not in this story. Okay. This story is filled with raisins. Okay, so Lieutenant Crane lays down his pack and once again just sets out to recover just like he did the first time.
00:58:19
He stays in this cabin for about a week. Now it's March 10th, and that means it's been 81 days since Lieutenant Crane parachuted out of the bomber on December 21st.
00:58:29
He's back on the riverside walking along just trying to find someone. I mean, what a frustrating hike this would be to be like, you're just going to hike until you try to find something.
00:58:40
There has to be something somewhere at some point. But you're in the Alaskan interior.
00:58:46
Oh, thank you. Rough. He's walking along the riverside. He notices a neat trail of packed snow.
00:58:52
And to him, it looks recent, and it looks like it could be tracks from a dog sled.
00:58:57
So there's something to be excited about. He follows these tracks until they lead him to another cabin.
00:59:03
Oh, my God. And this one is occupied. Leon approaches, and a man steps outside to greet him.
00:59:09
It's the first person Lieutenant Crane has spoken to in more than three months. And he tells the man, quote, I've been in a little trouble.
00:59:17
Boy, am I glad to see you. Wow, I bet. Yeah. So this man explains that he is a trapper named Albert Ames, and he lives in this cabin with his family.
00:59:26
So he actually lives out there. Crane apologizes for not being particularly coherent.
00:59:32
He can barely talk to this man. Like once he said, I'm in trouble. I'm glad to see you.
00:59:37
It was like the man was Albert Ames was trying to talk to him and he couldn't have a conversation.
00:59:42
He hadn't seen people in 81 days. No, for sure. Albert Ames shows him mercy. He takes Lieutenant Crane inside, offers him food, lets him spend the next few days recovering.
00:59:52
And Crane will soon learn he has walked just about 100 miles in the last 81 days Here a map of what it looks like Whoa Him crossing all those rivers
01:00:05
Yeah. And there's really nowhere else he could have gone. Right. Kind of, you know, where it's like,
01:00:10
I hate those stories where it's like, if he had just gone the other way, those 10 feet.
01:00:14
Yeah, I know. He would have been in fucking whatever. It's Triangle of Sadness where it's like,
01:00:19
there's a sandals right on the other side of this mountain. But you went that way.
01:00:23
Wow. Right. Well, and also if he had followed, say, a different river or something else, he wouldn't have gotten to Albert Ames.
01:00:31
Right. Which is you need people. Right. The fact that he came upon two cabins is just so unbelievable.
01:00:37
Yeah. Crazy. Kind of meant to be-ish. Yeah. This is also when Lieutenant Crane sees himself in the mirror for the first time in months.
01:00:44
And here's how he describes himself when he sees himself. He says, quote, I had a two-inch beard, black as coal.
01:00:51
My hair was long and matted, covering my ears and coming down over my forehead, almost to my eyes,
01:00:56
so that I looked like some strange species of prehistoric man. I was dirty and sunburned and windburned, and my eyes stared back at me from the centers of two deep black circles.
01:01:07
Jesus. Yeah, end quote. So as he's recovering, Lieutenant Crane tells Albert about Phil Burrell's cabin
01:01:14
and how it was this godsend that he found at his lowest point. And he's shocked to learn that Albert knows exactly who Phil Burrell is
01:01:23
because actually everyone in the area does. Phil's a regionally famous hardcore trapper
01:01:29
who's described in the book 81 Days Below Zero as having, quote, an almost scary tolerance for discomfort or pain.
01:01:36
Nothing seemed to make him wince, unquote. Wow. So he's basically a local legend.
01:01:43
Yeah. So three days later, when Lieutenant Crane is fully rested, Albert Ames loads him up on his dog sled and takes him on a two-day trip to Woodchopper, Alaska.
01:01:53
So even on a dog sled, to get back to civilization takes two days. Two days. Which just shows you how far he went.
01:02:00
Yes. And how far he had left to go if he hadn't met anyone. Yes, alone. Right. With no sled, with no dogs.
01:02:07
Got dogs. And also, I think that the thing, it's like there was so much snow because he's on a sled, but Albert Ames is in snowshoes.
01:02:18
Right. So they have to get through. It's like there's no paths. Yeah. There's no, it's been snowing.
01:02:23
Like, it's the true wilderness. Why don't you understand? It's like Griffith Park on a rainy day.
01:02:29
It's like, get me out of here. When there's a light breeze in Griffith Park. Okay.
01:02:34
So they get to Woodchopper, Alaska. Okay. Best name of all time. This is an old gold mining settlement that's a ghost town now, but there's an airstrip there.
01:02:43
So Lieutenant Crane is able to contact his unit and have him come and pick him up there.
01:02:48
Hey, guys, it's me. I know you thought I was dead, but it's me. Woodchopper also happens to be where Phil Berrail lives.
01:02:57
So they roll into town. Then Albert takes Lieutenant Crane to Phil's house and basically says, here's the man that saved your life from a distance.
01:03:07
The two men drink rum together while Lieutenant Crane tells Phil his story of survival over the past few months, and they bond over their shared toughness.
01:03:16
Wow. Because who could appreciate that story better than the man who doesn't win?
01:03:19
For sure. The next morning is March 14th, and Lieutenant Leon Crane boards the airplane that takes him back to Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska.
01:03:28
All this time, he's been wearing his now-tattered flight suit, so when he de-planes at Ladd Field, everyone is stunned.
01:03:36
It's not like he got to Woodchopper and was suddenly able to get it all together.
01:03:40
It's a ghost town. Yeah. Makeover. Yeah. So, no, he walks off the plane looking pretty bad.
01:03:47
After taking a hot shower and getting a medical exam, Leon asks for a milkshake.
01:03:52
It's reported that when Lieutenant Crane learns his four fellow crewmen have not yet been located,
01:03:58
he immediately gets back onto yet another plane to help the Army find that wreckage site.
01:04:03
Wow. And it leads to the recovery of two crewmen's bodies, Sergeant Ralph Wentz and Lieutenant James Seibert.
01:04:09
It's not until half a century later in 2006 when remains found not far from the wreckage are positively linked to Second Lieutenant Harold Hoskin.
01:04:18
But to this day, Master Sergeant Richard Pompeo's remains have never been found.
01:04:25
So despite Lieutenant Crane's story becoming legendary, especially within the U.S. military, he actually goes on to live a very quiet life.
01:04:32
He eventually returns to Philadelphia. He starts a family. He becomes an aeronautical engineer.
01:04:38
And he is credited with working on some of the earliest versions of modern helicopters.
01:04:44
Wow. So, yeah, he's a very smart man. In 2002, and also maybe, ooh, that's part of why it was meant to be.
01:04:53
Which part? That he basically found those cabins and took the right path because modern helicopters needed to be invented.
01:05:02
Okay. You're not seeing the fate? I'm following that trajectory. With a lot of doubt in your eyes.
01:05:09
I'm trying to be deep. In 2002, Leon Crane passes away. He's in his early 80s, and he leaves behind six children who then, in the summer of 2005, three years later, decide they're going to revisit their father's journey along the Charlie River.
01:05:24
Oh, my God. They go via plane and then raft. For a week, they witnessed the world their father survived for 81 days, including the ruins of Phil Burrell's cabin.
01:05:35
Wow. They take it all in. They even find some of the tools their father left near Phil's cabin that he had described to them when he told the stories.
01:05:45
Wow. Leon Crane never sought fame or seemed to want much attention. So we don't really have many firsthand quotes from him on this incredible survival saga.
01:05:54
But he did agree to a recorded interview in the 90s where he makes his feelings very well known in that he says quote God awful place Alaska ice and snow and cold as hell
01:06:07
And that is the story of Lieutenant Leon Crane's incredible survival in the Alaskan wilderness.
01:06:13
Wow. You did it. He did it. Right. But that. But we did it. We did it. Ultimately, this is our victory.
01:06:22
We're going to claim it as our own. Let's all. Yeah. We're in the car. We are in the car.
01:06:37
And you know what that means. That means new honking hurrays. Presented by Hyundai.
01:06:44
You want to go first? Sure. This email was sent to us. It says, hey, ladies, excited to share my hurray with you.
01:06:51
This year I turned 40 and I did something I've wanted to do for many years. I joined my local civic choir. What is that? That's the town choir. Wow. Okay. I was in chorus
01:07:02
all through high school, performed in musicals and was a member of the prestigious all-female
01:07:06
ensemble called, you know, we're an ensemble called the Melodiers. It's been 22 years since
01:07:14
I graduated high school and I really missed being in a choir. Every Monday I'm excited to go to
01:07:19
rehearsal and I've made some wonderful friends these past few months. It's been such a fulfilling
01:07:23
addition to my life and I'm so glad I overcame the fear of thinking I was too old or it was too
01:07:28
late or people would laugh. You're never too old. It's never too late. And don't listen to anyone
01:07:33
who laughs at something that brings you joy. SSDGM, Alana pronounced Elena. My parents couldn't be
01:07:39
bothered to add an extra vowel. I don't know if I messed that up, but I love that one. I love the
01:07:45
idea of doing something you loved as an adolescent and like you're allowed to do it as an adult.
01:07:49
And also there's a bunch of other adults that want to go back and like recapture some of that swing choir glory that you had long ago.
01:07:57
I'm going to join a soccer team. Okay. I love that. Mine is. I'm going to start drinking by a rock again.
01:08:04
Start going to a field with random convicts. That's right. Okay. This is from Mike Kelly via Instagram.
01:08:10
Next week I'm starting a job as an emergency room social worker after leaving a toxic workplace as a therapist.
01:08:16
Jesus. Wow. Although I was sad to leave my colleagues and the clients I was working with, I'm so excited for a move to a new city and a job that is going to be so fulfilling.
01:08:26
Hooray. Emergency room social worker. How bad and toxic does your job have to be?
01:08:31
If you're like, you know what, I need to go for some peace and quiet. The ER. The emergency room.
01:08:36
Thank you. I'll handle people's problems at the emergency room. Yeah, it's much more calm here.
01:08:41
It's just my zen place. Well, congratulations for making that move. Yep. Parallel.
01:08:46
here's this next one it says email titled hooray it's fun to type hi mfm fam gosh i just love y'all so much
01:08:57
my hooray is after literal years of searching i finally landed the perfect job i work for a small local mom and pop
01:09:04
bakery she's not working for a small local mom which is how i read it just this little tiny mother
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i work for a small local mom and pop bakery where i get to make sourdough bread, cookies, and cinnamon rolls on the daily. I finally get to do what I love and get paid for
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it. Stay sexy and eat local carbs. DJ, she, her. Eat local carbs. I love that. Right? That's on par
01:09:28
with joining choir. Totally. Just all the stuff that makes you feel good. Brings you joy, like
01:09:33
the ER. And brings me joy, like the ER. It's like social work in the ER. Thanks to you guys for
01:09:39
tuning in to Honking Hoorays. Thank you, Hyundai, for making all this possible. Stay sexy. And don't
01:09:44
get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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And now you can watch My Favorite Murder on Netflix. And when you're there, hit the double thumbs up and the remind me buttons.
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