00:00:00
This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.
00:00:33
Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. If audiobooks are your thing, or if you've been meaning to listen to more of them,
00:00:40
you should check out a podcast called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn.
00:00:46
Each episode spotlights standout audiobooks on Audible across all kinds of genres.
00:00:51
Sci-fi, comedy, romance, thrillers, and more. With Cal talking to guests who help break down what makes each story worth listening to.
00:00:57
It's a fun, easy way to discover your next great audiobook. Check out Earsay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:06
Goodbye. Pandora Jewelry brings the sparkle to summer, now with even better prices.
00:01:11
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00:01:16
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00:01:22
Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Goodbye. My favorite murder
00:01:36
Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. Hey, that's Karen Kilgariff.
00:01:52
And we're about to bring it to you once again. Are you prepared? Have you readied yourself for what is about to wash over you?
00:02:01
You might need to start walking. You might need to stop walking. Get a towel, you know, just in case.
00:02:08
I don't know. Boil some water. Yeah. Rip up some sheets. That's right. Because we're about to birth a brand new episode, baby.
00:02:17
Bite down on a wallet and get ready. And have this baby. I would love the idea. They shove wallets into pregnant women's mouths when they're having their babies.
00:02:30
That tastes terrible. Yeah. You know, when I used to work at like a restaurant in Santa Monica and like the bikers would come in and pay with cash from their back pocket from their wallet, the money was always wet from their butt sweat.
00:02:48
I'm sorry. I'm telling you that. No, let's just, I like the idea of kind of going over old job memories as a practice of gratitude.
00:02:57
When's the last time you've touched money that had butt sweat on it? Oh my God, it's been so, so long. And if it was anyone's butt sweat, it was probably mine.
00:03:06
So like, who cares? So that's the kind you enjoy. Yeah. You're like, suddenly this money feels silky and not disgusting and damp.
00:03:16
Listeners, tell us what the most disgusting thing from your job is. We want to know.
00:03:20
Hmm. What was yours? I think there's been plenty of like, you know, counter like staff jobs where
00:03:29
I had somehow I was in charge of making sure the bathroom is clean or anything like that. Yeah.
00:03:35
That was, you know, any anything related to that kind of where the public goes. And then I'm also
00:03:41
supposed to make it decent was always horrible. They don't put that in the job description when
00:03:46
they're like, you can work in retail. Right. Like, guess what? Guess what nightmare is waiting? Or
00:03:52
even just the simple, the going into cleanup, the dressing rooms after people tried stuff on at the
00:03:59
Gap where it's like, it's one thing to leave your stuff all over, but then there's people, it's like,
00:04:03
how did you make it smell in here? And all you did was try on clothes. Oh yeah. Yeah. The transfer
00:04:09
of BO in such a short amount of time is actually a little impressive probably. And also maybe a touch dirty.
00:04:18
Like I was positive there's people in there trying to get away with some sexy stuff
00:04:22
in the dressing room. No, ew, why would you do that? Because you're not supposed to, I guess.
00:04:28
It's the least sexy place. For someone like me who is folding down like sweaters on a folding board,
00:04:35
a mere 10 feet away, the least sexy situation possible. Absolutely. It's so risky.
00:04:42
What's going on with you? Well, you know what? I can take all of these gross topics
00:04:47
and be even grosser by saying, I don't remember if I told you about on Valentine's Day this year,
00:04:55
Blossom brought in a dead gopher for me. No. You should let everyone know that Blossom's your dog
00:05:01
in case they don't know that already. Oh, that's right. Blossom, my next door neighbor.
00:05:05
Blossom, my dog. A gopher? You have brought in. I've never seen a gopher in LA in my life.
00:05:11
Oh, yeah. They have huge front teeth. And also it's just, I'm lucky enough to have enough of a yard where my dog can catch a gopher.
00:05:19
So that, and she was like, of course you'd want me to show you this. You know, you're going to applaud.
00:05:25
And I just kind of made like a no sound because it's so awful. And then I just took a pile of paper towels and then did the lazy thing,
00:05:35
which is pick up the gopher and throw it off the back patio into the backyard. so that I, just as if now this is done because I'm saying it's done. Yeah. And you're in a kind
00:05:47
of a panic because this is so fucked up that you're just like, yeah, get it out of here. Yeah.
00:05:51
I don't want to touch it. Right. Exactly. I would say less than two hours later,
00:05:55
that same gopher was back on the same spot on the rug She thought you guys were playing a game You know what I mean Sure I go find it if you want me to
00:06:05
That sounds great. So that was February. It is now the end of June. And today, I'm sitting there working on my story for today.
00:06:15
And a very bad smell begins to waft. And I don't know really where it's coming from.
00:06:23
Oh, that's okay. Sorry. The first was I had eyes on it. So I see something across the patio,
00:06:32
which I think is like a big leaf. But then I'm like, as wind blows, whatever, it's not
00:06:38
going anywhere. And I'm like, that is not a leaf. Get out, walk over, yet another dead gopher.
00:06:44
And so I have to yell at the dog and I do the exact same mistake. It's like, it is a perfect example of what I'm like, where I already made this mistake in February. I'm going
00:06:54
to do it again with the same like wishful thinking. Yeah. Hope for different circumstances.
00:07:00
Yep. Maybe if I hope harder that this thing goes away and the dogs won't. And so I threw it off the thing. And then of course, like 15 minutes later,
00:07:10
this smell envelops the front room where I am diligently working on my story. and that, I now realize that gopher's been dead for a while
00:07:21
because it was like the worst smell and Blossom looking at me like, I'm loving this game for us.
00:07:30
I love this thing we've set up where I go find old dead rodents and bring them to you.
00:07:36
Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. So I don't think it was the same. The smell was terrible as if it was the same rodent,
00:07:44
but there's no possible way it could have been because I threw the other one away in a Ziploc bag.
00:07:49
So you did. Okay. It was still quite dead though. That's definitely horrible. That's gross.
00:07:56
I'm sorry to hear that for you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Although I do think it's like,
00:08:01
that's how much my dog loves me. Is she just- No, for sure. She won't stop bringing me
00:08:05
the biggest, deadest rodents she can find. That means she's like, you know, attached to you, right?
00:08:12
I hope so. You can't get mad at that. But I hope it's that and not her being like,
00:08:17
can we have more of these around? It's like that, can we get sugar cereal thing you do to your mom when you're a child?
00:08:23
Or it's like, she thinks you're so stupid that you can't fend for yourself. So she's like bringing you food.
00:08:29
She's just like, listen, I know if I don't feed you, you're just gonna waste away.
00:08:34
That's what, when we took Cookie to like a trainer, he was like, well, the reason she doesn't obey you
00:08:39
is because she thinks you're her puppy and you're too stupid to live. Like when you leave the house
00:08:43
and she goes nuts because she's alone. It's because she's like, I don't, my puppy's gonna die out in the world.
00:08:49
She has no skills. She's so stupid. Which I kind of got a kick out of. I know it's bad and she doesn't listen to anything I say,
00:08:58
but it's pretty cute. I know. She's my new mommy. It's hard to treat dogs the way you're supposed to treat them
00:09:06
to get them to listen to what you say. That's the piece I have a problem. Cats are like, it's the pre-agreed thing of like,
00:09:12
We'll both not listen to each other and it's going to work out great. Dogs, you have to treat dogs in a way as if you're pretending not to like them as much.
00:09:20
I know. Yeah, I don't take it. I don't like that at all. I can't do it. Yeah, I'm really bad.
00:09:27
I do a lot of stuff where like Blossom loves to stand on her back legs and make people pet her.
00:09:32
And I'm always like, don't do that. Get down. But I have a big smile on my face and I clearly think it's the cutest thing.
00:09:38
And if you didn't like it, it would still, it would happen anyway. because I think it's kind of cute.
00:09:44
It is. Okay. Speaking of dogs, I don't know. What else you got? Oh, I don't think...
00:09:53
I'm really at a loss right now for TV series. Did you ever watch Dave? I don't think you ever got into it.
00:10:00
Did you? I watched like one episode. It's just not for me. Not for you. Okay. The last season was pretty epic.
00:10:07
Brad Pitt is like the co-star of the last episode. Yes. It's just surprise Brad Pitt.
00:10:13
And suddenly he's just like in the last episode. And Brad Pitt's the best. He can like, he's such a good actor.
00:10:20
It was very entertaining. I love how much Brad Pitt loves comedy. He's like a real fan.
00:10:26
He's a real fan and supporter. And also I know people love that show. So my opinion, I don't think he's even relevant
00:10:32
because it's just, I'm not the audience. No, I get it. Let's see. What do I watch?
00:10:38
Brad Pitt in. Let's talk about Brad Pitt vehicles. Let's see. Yeah, I don't know.
00:10:45
Dave, I watched Mars Attack. Mars Attacks holds up. I bet. Tim Burton? Well, should we get to the news?
00:10:56
The news? The exactly right news. Oh, sure. I was like, what do you want to talk about?
00:11:03
The news? Oh, yeah, we do a news corner now. I didn't tell you that I'm doing that.
00:11:08
Can you imagine? We just have to start talking about international relations. Oh, Jesus.
00:11:14
Guys, the Exactly Right Network, with all its many and high-quality podcasts, as we've been alerting you for weeks,
00:11:23
it's now official, Do You Need a Ride, is back in the car. We are live from the streets of Los Angeles,
00:11:29
widely available. The second episode of the season's four premiere, we basically did a cliffhanger
00:11:35
because Chris and I were riffing so much on the drive to Margaret Cho's house that it took up a full episode.
00:11:43
And then she actually gets in the car and then that's the second half of the premiere episode.
00:11:48
Yeah. I love that. How fun. A lot of fun. That's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. And then over on That Messed Up and SVU podcast Kara and Lisa chat about episode PTSD from season 10 of SVU Then they joined by actor Dominic Famousa who you may also know from Nurse Jackie
00:12:05
And then That's Messed Up also recently announced fall tour dates, and you can get tickets
00:12:09
at thatsmessduplive.com. And the live shows are fucking epic. You should definitely get your butt to the seat.
00:12:15
Over on Wicked Words, Kate Winkler-Dawson talks to Jamie Gearing about her book,
00:12:21
Madman in the Woods, Life Next Door to the Unabomber, which Georgia covered in episode 179 way back in June of 2019.
00:12:29
And that was a live show in San Francisco. So go listen to that if you haven't. And then this week in the MFM store,
00:12:35
you'll find a flash sale on lock your fucking door merchandise, including key chains, patches, and of course, a doormat.
00:12:43
So go to myfavoritemurder.com to check that out. We got my dad a new doormat because he hadn't got one in so long
00:12:51
that his doormat was actually impeding your ability to open the screen door to get inside his house.
00:12:57
And so for Father's Day, we got him a doormat that says, hope you brought wine. That is so Jim.
00:13:06
We thought he'd like it. I thought you were going to say the doormat. Have you seen the one that says,
00:13:10
come back with a warrant? I mean, people these days. Oh man, takes all kinds. Yeah, it really does.
00:13:19
While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
00:13:26
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense, rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust.
00:13:37
Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach.
00:13:43
Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle. Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability.
00:13:50
And Hyundai continues doing it every day. From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game,
00:13:56
the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA.
00:14:03
Goodbye. If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook or just want help figuring out what to listen to next,
00:14:09
there's a podcast you should know about. It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn.
00:14:15
Each episode takes a closer look at some of the most talked about new audiobooks on Audible, spanning a wide range of genres from sci-fi and literary fiction to rom-coms, thrillers, and comedy.
00:14:25
Cal is joined by guests who dig into what these stories are about, what makes them stand out as audiobooks, and why they're connecting with listeners right now.
00:14:32
If you're looking for your next listen, this is a great place to start. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:14:42
Goodbye. Pandora jewelry brings the sparkle to summer, now with even better prices.
00:14:47
Shop now for up to 50% off select jewelry featuring personalized pieces to must-have
00:14:51
summer favorites. Timeless jewelry made to move with you through every moment. Shop in-store or online now through July 5th.
00:14:58
Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. All right.
00:15:04
I think I'm going first, right? Do it. Okay. When this story was suggested to me, I was like, I've done it already.
00:15:11
And then our crack staff, Hannah and Alejandra, was like, no, you haven't. We checked.
00:15:18
And I was like, this can't be possible. And I actually have a memory of doing the research, which must be implanted by the government.
00:15:27
That'll be on our spinoff show, Implanted by the Government. My favorite murder investigation.
00:15:35
So I guess it just turns out that I've heard lots of other podcasts cover this story.
00:15:39
We've never covered it. I personally apparently never have. So when at Rachel slash Dybel recently messaged me on Twitter
00:15:48
asking me to cover this story, I was like, Rachel, I've done it. And I was wrong. And Rachel,
00:15:54
you were right. And so was everybody else. Let me just preface it by saying this. A couple months
00:15:58
ago, I told you the story of Cleveland's 1974 10 cent beer night. So if you didn't hear that
00:16:06
episode listener. It was an event that started with a crowd of baseball fans getting wasted on
00:16:11
ludicrously cheap beer, and it devolved into mob violence and an appearance by the riot squad.
00:16:18
You can go listen to episode 366 if you want to hear that story. So some people may argue that
00:16:24
Tencent Beer Night and the chaos within that is the perfect encapsulation of what Cleveland was
00:16:31
like in the 70s. Fewer places in the United States had a worse reputation. They were dealing
00:16:36
with serious economic, social, and environmental crises all at the same time. So in 1969,
00:16:44
68 or 69, I think, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire due to pollution. I was just going to say, didn't their river catch on fire? But I was like, that's crazy.
00:16:53
It's true. There's no way. Okay. Yeah. It just straight up caught on fire. Also, Cleveland in the 70s became
00:17:00
the first American city to default on its loans since the Great Depression. Wow.
00:17:06
And then the job market took such a dive in that decade that around 200,000 Clevelanders just left the city to find work somewhere else.
00:17:15
But then as the decade goes on and the 80s arrive, everything kind of starts to turn around.
00:17:22
Thanks to a very passionate effort on the part of those Clevelanders who stayed in the city and dedicated themselves
00:17:28
to changing their bad reputation. They invest in new social programs, environmental cleanup efforts,
00:17:35
and investments to boost the economy. And then in 1986, Cleveland wins the contract
00:17:40
to be the permanent home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nice. This story I'm about to tell you
00:17:46
is almost like the continuation of Tencent Beer Night into the mid-80s. I think I know what this is.
00:17:54
Tell me. What we building toward here Uh and I excited Okay Locals and leaders in Cleveland realized they should be building off of this great PR from winning the bid for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
00:18:07
and from generally kind of turning the vibe around on their city. Yeah. So in 1986, someone comes up
00:18:13
with a big idea. It meant to grab America's attention and show the world that Cleveland
00:18:17
stands for something new, something positive and aspirational, even lofty. And this is the story
00:18:24
of the legendary 1986 Cleveland Balloon Fest, remembered as one of the most bungled PR stunts
00:18:31
in American history. We have talked about this for sure. Like you're not wrong in remembering it.
00:18:38
And I feel like sometimes it's because like years ago, someone wrote it in as a hometown
00:18:43
and that's how we remember it or what we remember it from. Or maybe when we did a live show in Cleveland,
00:18:50
someone did a hometown on stage and we just, it never went up. Maybe, or I think maybe I started to do this for the Cleveland hometown,
00:18:58
and then I switched it to the Circleville letter writer, those poison pen letters.
00:19:03
Yeah. And also there's a very, very hilarious dollop episode. If you've... Oh, yeah.
00:19:09
If you ever listened to the history podcast, The Dollop, Dave and Gareth cover this in one of their episodes.
00:19:17
That's how I first heard about it. And it's one of those things where you kind of can't believe
00:19:22
when you have never heard of it and someone tells you about it because it's like,
00:19:25
I was there. I was 16. I should have known about this. Like, I thought I had my finger on the pulse.
00:19:32
But no. Okay. I am excited to learn the details. Okay, great. Of this debacle. So the main sources for today's story
00:19:40
are a Fox 8 News report from 2021 called Balloon Fest 86, 35 Years Since Downtown Cleveland Event
00:19:47
Turned Disastrous, written by Susan Stratford. There's also a mini documentary from The Atlantic
00:19:53
entitled The Balloon Fest That Went Horrible Wrong. And an episode of a podcast called The Alarmist
00:20:00
entitled The Aftermath Balloon Fest 86. And you can find the rest of our sources in the show notes.
00:20:08
This is a very 80s story. And the 80s, it's so funny to me how they were so formative for me
00:20:16
and for the majority of people, They just kind of, they're like Cyndi Lauper and Billy Idol and like MTV.
00:20:25
And that's kind of, the 80s doesn't have a lot of like grounded meaning. It's just like maybe the 50s was to us when we were growing up.
00:20:34
So I'm going to try to paint a picture having been there. Georgia was only just born.
00:20:38
I was a teen at the time. Basically, pop culture was neon pink, over the top, built for spectacle, right?
00:20:46
Ronald Reagan becomes the president at the beginning of this decade. MTV is launched in 1981.
00:20:52
It's pretty early. And then that just, it directly starts beaming Madonna and Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper
00:21:00
and all these music, you know, superstars straight into our homes. Then in 1984, the Summer Olympics take place in Los Angeles.
00:21:08
Right. It features opening and closing ceremonies that stun audiences worldwide.
00:21:14
This is a Washington Post recap describing the ensemble of like basically what it took to put on both the opening
00:21:23
and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics. Quote, 10,000 singers and dancers, 2,500 pigeons, 1,065 balloons,
00:21:33
750 marching band members, 270 jitterbuggers, 84 motorized pianos, and a full-fledged rocket man
00:21:40
flying with a jet pack on his back. End quote. And a partridge in a pear tree. I mean, what a show.
00:21:49
You know. What a show. Why are the pigeons? Why pigeons is what I want to know. They're inside the motorized pianos, maybe.
00:21:56
Just being driven around. They're driving them. Doves were busy that day. So they were like, let's just get fucking pigeons instead.
00:22:03
Doves were too expensive. They were all with prints at the time. Excess. I feel like there was a lot of excess in the 80s.
00:22:11
And that proves it. Well, we didn't realize, or maybe we did, we had it good in the 80s and 90s,
00:22:18
especially compared to the 70s. So we're just coming out of like the recession, the gas crisis, Jimmy Carter, all these things.
00:22:26
Suddenly Ronald Reagan's there. He used to be a movie star. Now he's a successful politician
00:22:30
with his slick hair and his big smile. And he's just there to be like, we're good.
00:22:35
Everything's good. Yeah. Sweep everything under the rug and let's deal with it later.
00:22:40
Yeah, or never. trickle-down economics. The success of this ambitious, expensive,
00:22:47
and high-stakes performance of both opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics
00:22:51
basically instantly feeds the world's desire for more large-scale shows and events.
00:22:57
And then advocacy groups and nonprofits follow suit. In 1985, the Live Aid concert is televised around the world.
00:23:05
They raise $150 million for famine relief in Africa, and it is seen by 1.9 billion people.
00:23:14
Wow, wild. Right? Very big deal and also very unifying kind of like maybe one of the last moments like this
00:23:22
where it was like, we all understand that as much as we might have our day-to-day problems,
00:23:27
what we're seeing in Africa should not be happening and they need help right now.
00:23:31
And it's like famine relief became this really important thing. And all these huge musicians came together
00:23:38
to play that concert and basically give people this amazing show and then raise all this money.
00:23:45
So then the success of Live Aid birthed a nonprofit called USA for Africa. And the next year, that group plans this event.
00:23:56
And I don't know if you remembered or not. It's called Hands Across America. It rings a bell, I guess.
00:24:01
What year was it? 1986. Okay, so I was six. So I heard it. As a 16-year-old, here's what was crazy.
00:24:09
This thing, especially if you were watching daytime, like kids' TV, cartoons, anything like that,
00:24:14
there would be constant commercials for Hands Across America. It sounded like a Ford truck commercial
00:24:20
and also sounded just a touch Christian. And it had this, it was like a men's and women's chorus.
00:24:26
And they were like, Hands Across America. And then it just showed people grabbing hands like in a field.
00:24:33
It's like inspiring, right? Yes. Like made you, okay. Said it's like this message of like, we're all coming together.
00:24:39
And this time they were going to raise money for homelessness and hunger in America.
00:24:44
Okay. The way they were going to do that was on Sunday, Memorial Day weekend, 1986 at 3 p.m.
00:24:51
Five million people would hold hands in a human chain stretching from Battery Park in Manhattan
00:24:56
to Santa Monica, California, across 4,000 miles of American terrain. And all those people would hold hands for 15.
00:25:04
No. Yes, all those people would hold hands for 15 minutes and it would raise awareness and money
00:25:10
for hunger and homelessness. It sounds sweaty, first of all, but that sounds impossible.
00:25:17
Metaphorically, I can under, like, oh, that's a great idea, metaphorically. Yep.
00:25:21
And then in actuality. The execution and the logistics to pull something like that off.
00:25:28
And they said, I was reading this article, because for a little while in my 30s,
00:25:33
I kind of thought I hallucinated Hands Across America because it is the weirdest idea in terms of a fundraiser.
00:25:40
I would love so much to watch a documentary about Hands Across America. But you can kind of see, like, just in doing this,
00:25:50
discovering that it was connected to USA for Africa makes perfect sense because they basically put on
00:25:56
one of the most successful charity events ever. Yeah. So I think this is the hubris
00:26:03
that kind of bled over into the next year of like, you know what we're going to do?
00:26:07
Everybody's going to hold hands. Something else. Let's do something else. Yeah, and it'll be like-
00:26:11
First idea, let's go with it. Come on. Holding hands. Right. Whoever talks the loudest gets their idea executed.
00:26:18
So I was reading this article. It was really short. I think it was on history.com.
00:26:22
But they were saying like that basically there were parts that like were stretching through
00:26:27
like big cow pastures in the middle of the country where nobody wanted to go and stand.
00:26:31
So farmers would put their cows out there to like take the place of people, just have the cows stand in that position.
00:26:38
There was parts in the desert where like no one was going to go. They wanted to do it through a major league baseball game.
00:26:45
but Pete Rose, who's the manager of whatever the team was at the time, was like, go fuck yourself.
00:26:50
It was like, no way. Because I used to think about it all the time. Like, I saw the commercial all the time, but I was like, they don't give you any information. It's not like,
00:26:59
hey, San Francisco, show up in this field and you'll be part of Hands Across America. Like,
00:27:04
it only seemed like there was a commercial and a concept, but no actual like boots on the ground
00:27:09
plan of how to be in it. So I thought about it a lot, where it's just like, how were they going
00:27:15
to do this? And they thought it was going to raise $150 million for these causes. It raised 15.
00:27:22
15 million. Ouch. 15 million. Still decent for sure. And back then, good money. Oh, I don't have the translation of
00:27:30
the money. But I'm telling you all of this because it just sets the stage and kind of paints the
00:27:36
picture of what was going on. We didn't have anything. It was the 80s. We didn't, right? You
00:27:41
still were going to the library for research. You were lucky if you had cable. You were lucky if you
00:27:47
had Atari, maybe Nintendo if you were super rich. You have to catch the news at like 6 p.m. and 11
00:27:55
p.m. or you just wouldn't know the news that day. Or I guess reading a newspaper too, obviously. But
00:27:59
like if something happened that day, there's no way to know it unless you fucking watch the news.
00:28:05
Yeah. There's no internet. There was a lot of trust for what was shown to you on TV
00:28:10
and what was advertised and stuff was just like, well, we better head down to Hands Across America and make a difference.
00:28:16
Like, there was a lot of following and the plan wasn't being analyzed in the way things, everything is analyzed these days.
00:28:23
Yeah, yeah. And if you planned Live Aid, that was such an unbelievably amazing plan.
00:28:30
Bob Geldof was one of the main people who did that. So it's like, yeah, they get to keep trying and maybe not kill it in the exact same way.
00:28:38
So this just is adding to the building the sense around what the people were thinking
00:28:44
when the Cleveland chapter of the nonprofit organization, the United Way, came up with
00:28:49
this plan. They're about to kick off their annual fundraiser. The donations that they raise in that fundraiser, it's their big annual event.
00:28:57
Those donations get funneled into 175 different Cleveland area social services programs.
00:29:03
So they're like, we got to go big this year and we got to really make a difference.
00:29:07
Also, another event that had happened in the year before in 1985 is it was the 30th anniversary of Disneyland.
00:29:15
When that happened, you may or may not remember, Disneyland released a million balloons into the sky to celebrate their 30th anniversary in Anaheim.
00:29:24
I don't remember that, but that's a terrible idea. Yeah, right? And also just a little bit more background is for the children of today.
00:29:36
At this time in the 80s and before it, I would say definitely during the 70s, superlatives, especially the Guinness Book of World Records, was a big deal.
00:29:47
People cared about it. It got talked about in the weirdest way where it was like being those kinds of like,
00:29:53
you the best you done the most you like perfect bowling game or five in a row whatever all those things Smoking the most cigarettes at once That my favorite one Tallest guy shortest guy
00:30:06
The nail, longest nails was my fucking favorite. Smallest waist, very disturbing.
00:30:10
Oh my God. That one was crazy. No, yeah, but we definitely had the book like in our house.
00:30:15
It was a big deal. It was like a bragging, right? If you were in it. Getting into the Guinness Book of World Records
00:30:21
was a goal of many people. And it's good PR, right? It's something you can say happened.
00:30:28
So what the people in Cleveland maybe weren't considering was that they were stealing an idea from Disney, essentially, or, you know, borrowing.
00:30:36
Yeah. And at Disney, they have dedicated teams of engineers, designers, experts,
00:30:42
figuring out the logistics to releasing a million balloons into the sky. They do things a very specific way at Disney.
00:30:49
And actually, a lot of the event planners who worked on that Disney 30th anniversary
00:30:53
also worked on the 1984 Olympics. So there were people who were like major event producer planners
00:31:01
that they basically, once the Olympics were seen, they were now the sought after team
00:31:08
to execute major events like this. In that group is an event manager and a logistics expert named Tom Holowalk
00:31:15
and a revered balloon expert named Treb Heining. I want that to be on my business card.
00:31:25
Balloon expert. Revered. Revered. Not a commonplace, not your run of the mill, but a truly adored balloon expert.
00:31:34
Now, Treb is his first name, unless I'm mispronouncing it, began his career when he was a teenager
00:31:41
selling balloons at Disneyland. That's how he got to be a balloon expert. Nice. And since that time,
00:31:47
he became known for creating unique. and intricate balloon art and decor. And Treb Hynek is credited with inventing balloon arches,
00:31:57
balloon spirals, and balloon columns. So he is revered. Let me tell you, in the 90s,
00:32:04
at least the 90s that I remember, if you didn't have a balloon arch at your bar or bat mitzvah,
00:32:10
you were nobody. You were garbage. You had to have a balloon arch. And then the coolest thing was
00:32:17
you got to bring it home with you after. So like my brother's, I remember my brother's bedroom being like full of a balloon,
00:32:22
like a blue and white balloon arch. And my sister and I were so jealous. It was like it.
00:32:28
It was it. Well, you know, that makes me think of, remember the lady to lady summer party that they had?
00:32:36
I guess it was last year because it's June now. Jesus Christ. Yeah. So hot. But they had a gorgeous balloon arch that I went to Brandy
00:32:46
and I was like, that is the most beautiful thing. She goes, we made it ourselves.
00:32:49
Oh my God. It really makes an impression for a party or an event. It's like something exciting is happening.
00:32:57
Yeah. We have Treb Heineck to thank for that. Before him, and this is Maren, my researcher, Maren at her finest.
00:33:06
Before him, unbelievably, no one was tying balloons together in big clusters. Not one person, apparently.
00:33:15
Oh man, the lack of imagination for him is sad. And also if he's a teenager that works at the balloon stand at Disneyland,
00:33:26
because that was, I remember, we went to Disneyland when I was five and it was coming up on my sixth birthday.
00:33:32
But it was just a family trip. It wasn't before that. But I remember getting one of those Mickey Mouse balloons
00:33:38
with the ears. And remember the balloon guy there, he was holding like 50 of those gigantic balloons.
00:33:45
and that effect, standing under that was awesome. It was magical, someone said. Yeah, for sure.
00:33:53
I'm also saying this too. I'm about to tell you the story. I'm a big fan of balloons.
00:33:57
Like I get balloon magic. It's real. Okay, that's good to know. That's good to know.
00:34:03
I mean, you know that about me because I told you the story of me when I thought the balloons were for me that time.
00:34:09
Oh, yeah. So the United Way in Cleveland wants to hire these two event producers
00:34:14
for their upcoming event. But unlike Disneyland, Cleveland doesn't want to release
00:34:19
one million balloons. They want to release two million balloons. And they're going to call it Balloon Fest.
00:34:27
Two million balloons equals Balloon Fest. So right up front, we'll say this. It's a terrible idea.
00:34:35
Hindsight is 20-20 vision. So the 80s, they were just coming around to going, it's bad that our river caught on fire.
00:34:43
Yeah. Or it's our, something we did, it was our fault. Yes. We can not do that anymore.
00:34:49
There's something to be done about it. Right. Yes. So the idea to be so forward thinking is to be like,
00:34:54
maybe releasing plastic latex into the sky forever. And everyone pretending that's the end of the story isn't great,
00:35:03
but it's just not the way things worked back then. Yeah. Logically, the balloons would fall back down to earth
00:35:09
and cause hazards for the environment and for wildlife. But contextually, the popularity makes a lot of sense in the 80s
00:35:18
because it's an era of flashiness and self-indulgence. And this is the funniest like Gen Z report on what this was like,
00:35:30
where I'm like, it wasn't that heavy. It was just balloons. But she's comparing basically the flashiness and the self-indulgence.
00:35:38
it makes sense that a wasteful, useless, fleeting, but captivating item like a colorful latex balloon
00:35:44
could drive an entire publicity stunt. And as the Cleveland television station Fox 8 reports, quote,
00:35:52
at that time the thinking about environmental impact was different and people thought the balloons would reach an altitude where they popped and disintegrated Yeah that like that not a thing Like it so ridiculous
00:36:06
It's almost like, well, that's as much as anyone's ever thought of it, so that's the facts.
00:36:11
Right. Before the internet, we were allowed to lie to ourselves like that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, the United Way contacts Treb Heineck to head up the balloon
00:36:22
Fest vision, and they hire Tom Hollowak and several other event planners who know their stuff.
00:36:29
And this team of people who I'll now call the events crew, they actually are all from
00:36:35
Southern California and they relocate to Cleveland for this event. When they arrive, they hit the ground running.
00:36:42
They immediately realize that Balloon Fest is going to be a way bigger lift than that
00:36:46
Disneyland anniversary that they worked on, in part because they'll be dealing with double
00:36:51
the balloons, obviously. But beyond that, it's taking place in Cleveland's bustling public square,
00:36:57
which is in the shadow of the city's iconic terminal tower. So that's just basically kind
00:37:02
of their downtown. Please don't write in about how it's actually not downtown. I'm using that
00:37:08
symbolically. This is the launch site and it's a busy, confined downtown. Oh, it is downtown.
00:37:17
There it is. Downtown location. Okay. It'll also double as a massive balloon factory
00:37:22
and the balloons holding space while all the balloons get blown up with helium. So they start, they call this spot the balloon bin.
00:37:33
So they're coming up with this plan. They're coming up with the mechanics of executing this plan.
00:37:39
And then a date is announced. Balloon Fest is officially scheduled for Saturday, September 27th.
00:37:47
And now anticipation begins to build. It's no longer just about the United Way's fundraiser,
00:37:54
which is really important in and of itself, but now Balloon Fest becomes about the future of Cleveland.
00:37:59
This underdog city is at the forefront of something that's going to be both historic and beautiful.
00:38:05
And Hollowack will later say, quote, the city fathers were all behind it. The level of cooperation that was given to the United Way
00:38:12
and eventually to all of us, from everybody in Cleveland from the top down was stunning. So this is kind of beautiful as a beginning. Yeah. Because everyone's believes in
00:38:22
balloon fest. Yeah. It's like for a greater good too. So it's, yeah. Yeah. You don't question it
00:38:29
when it's like, okay, so you don't want to give money to this, you know, important cause. What
00:38:33
are, what are you fucking Debbie Downer? Like, come on. Right. And also it's at up until this
00:38:39
moment, no one can think of a downside to having a bunch of balloons in the air. Yeah. It's going
00:38:45
to feel like the biggest field day of all time and kind of like Disneyland. Like, come on,
00:38:51
this is going to be amazing for all of us. So now the city planner tells the events team
00:38:57
that whatever they build for this thing they're calling the balloon bin has to abide by building
00:39:02
codes. And of course, the events crew doesn't want to hear this because that means the balloon bin
00:39:07
will have to be built as if it's a permanent building. One of the stipulations is it'll need
00:39:12
to be able to withstand 90 mile per hour winds. So it can't just be something they throw up there
00:39:18
and cross their fingers. At first, this seems like a deal breaker in terms of time and expense,
00:39:23
and the United Way considers calling it off. But then the events crew says they think they can
00:39:28
figure something out, and Hollow Walk immediately hires a Cleveland-based architect to weigh in.
00:39:34
So over the summer of 1986, the team comes up with a blueprint for the balloon bin. It turns
00:39:39
out to be a three-story tall, 250-foot long, 150-foot wide rectangular structure made of
00:39:47
heavy-duty scaffolding. The sides are wrapped with tarp, giving it the feeling of a large
00:39:52
roofless tent. And at the top of the scaffolding, they have a massive net held down by huge weather
00:39:58
balloons. So the plan is, as the two million balloons are inflated by volunteers who are
00:40:05
going to be working inside the scaffolding structure. They're just going to be releasing
00:40:09
the balloons up into the net. And then when it's launch time, those large weather balloons are
00:40:15
going to be released first. They'll lift the whole net into the sky to fly away and thus releasing
00:40:22
two million balloons into the sky. Okay. So we're going to speed ahead September 26, 1986. It's the
00:40:31
night before balloon fest. You have a nervous stomach. You can't go to sleep. The curlers in
00:40:38
your hair staring at the ceiling thinking about balloon fest. Meanwhile, the events crew is
00:40:43
working around the clock on the balloon bin in public square, making sure everything is in order.
00:40:48
There's a 2 p.m. launch time the next day. In nearby offices, Tom Hollowock is on the phone
00:40:53
with the National Weather Service, and he is getting some very bad news. The weather official
00:40:59
tells him, quote, there's a serious, serious squall coming in. It's the kind of thing that
00:41:04
might spawn tornadoes. Oh, shit. So that night, a severe storm rolls in and forces the crew to
00:41:13
take shelter indoors. Just remember, the balloon bin doesn't actually have a roof. The roof is
00:41:18
balloons with a net over it. So as they wait out the storm, strong winds wreak havoc across
00:41:26
northeastern Ohio, causing extensive property damage. And the balloon bin, they go out after
00:41:33
midnight and check it when the weather finally lightens up. And the crew sees that the scaffolding
00:41:38
has, basically the tarps have been torn down and netting is ripped. And so it looks like,
00:41:44
you know, things are really bad. Yeah. So Heining wastes no time. He calls an emergency late night
00:41:50
meeting with the representatives from the United Way And he is ready to do something he never done before and that admit defeat But then when the events crew goes back outside they look and they see there no actual damage to the scaffolding
00:42:05
It's only the tarps and the net. And they're in bad shape, but they can be replaced.
00:42:10
So they send out people to get replacement tarps. Another group starts weaving the net back together.
00:42:17
They all work through the night. And by the time the sun rises on Saturday, September 27th,
00:42:23
things feel hopeful. The balloon bin structure is restored. The net's fixed. Balloon Fest is a go.
00:42:31
So, Clevelanders are giddy about this event. Around 8 a.m., thousands of volunteers,
00:42:36
including many high school students, turn up to Public Square to help inflate balloons.
00:42:42
And these volunteers are ushered inside the balloon bin, and they sit in folding chairs that are set up around a bunch of helium nozzles
00:42:50
that are connected via copper piping to three tractor trailers parked nearby that had hauled in all of this helium.
00:42:59
Holy shit. Yeah. So to hit the goal of 2 million balloons by 2 p.m., Heine says, quote,
00:43:06
we're figuring that each person will do about two to three balloons a minute. Each one is going to do correctly
00:43:12
about 700 balloons for the day and we'll do it all in about four to six hours. Oh my God.
00:43:20
It's a race to the finish. Who planned it? Yeah, yeah. Why did it have to happen at two?
00:43:24
Could we move this along? Move that up a little bit. Volunteers work on basically an assembly line.
00:43:31
They grab a balloon, they attach it to the nozzle, they fill the balloon up, they tie it,
00:43:35
and then they release it up into the netting above, over and over. So there's local reporters in the balloon bin with everybody,
00:43:43
and they're getting the story on how all these volunteers are working so tirelessly
00:43:49
for Balloon Fest. Many people have blistered and bloody fingers thanks to the repetitive knot-tying motions.
00:43:56
Yeah. And as high pressure as this kind of schedule for the event might feel, there's also free food and music being provided
00:44:04
by local DJ and TV personalities, Chuck Shadowski and John Rinaldi of the Big Chuck Little John Show.
00:44:12
Hey, it's the Big Chuck Little John Show. Honk, honk. Honk, honk. Beep, beep. So they're conducting interviews around the tent for their live broadcast.
00:44:21
Event officials are constantly reminding volunteers that they're actually becoming a part of Cleveland history.
00:44:27
And the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports one staffer yelling, quote, we need you to keep going.
00:44:33
You'll be known around the world. How many people were high as a fucking kite while they were doing that?
00:44:39
I mean, 86. That's the only way to get through. Probably not. They'd just do some huge rails of Coke and go down to Balloon Fest, see what happens.
00:44:48
I mean, the colors alone. Oh, what if a couple met? That's how they met, you know, and fell in love.
00:44:54
That would be cute. Yes. It's very possible. Or broke up because their fingers hurt so bad and they started to bicker.
00:45:04
Yep. Okay. Now, outside of the balloon bin, 100,000 Clevelanders have shown up to watch their city break a world record.
00:45:13
People are into this. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's an event. There's also several Guinness World Record representatives there
00:45:21
to be recording the event for the official. Yeah, there are. The official book. Before everyone's eyes, the netting at the top of the balloon bin
00:45:31
is slowly being lifted into the sky as more and more balloons fill it up. and everybody in general just seems kind of overjoyed.
00:45:40
DJ Chuck Shadowski interviews a local woman named Mary Ellen who's just shown up to Public Square
00:45:45
with two dozen already inflated balloons to donate to the balloon bin. But as she handed them over,
00:45:52
one of the balloon bundles caught on her watch, ripped it off her wrist, and just floated it up into the air out of her reach.
00:46:00
So Chuck Shadowski says, quote, if anybody finds Mary Ellen's watch tied to a bunch of balloons,
00:46:06
if you return it to the station, we'll have all kinds of rewards for you. That must have been a really delicate watch
00:46:12
if it that easily floated away, right? Yeah. My grandma wore one of those like elastic band Timexes
00:46:18
that were like real narrow. Yeah. So as he's giving this live report to the, to right to the TV camera,
00:46:25
Mary Ellen's standing next to him looking calm and collected. She's not mad about her losing her watch.
00:46:30
She loves being part of things. Cute. The party-like atmosphere continues for hours,
00:46:36
and now they're approaching midday. Everything's going as planned. And then Tom Holowalk gets another phone call
00:46:43
from his contact at the National Weather Service, and there's more bad news. Another round of storms is coming into the area.
00:46:50
He's told these ones won't be nearly as intense as the ones that were from the night before,
00:46:55
but they're serious enough to give them a warning about. They're expected to hit at 2 p.m.,
00:47:01
which is when they plan. The odds of that, like the odds of all of this are beyond.
00:47:09
It's a freak accident in every sense of the word. What's the thing of like whatever God is doing
00:47:15
when you're trying to make plans is something, something, something. He has plans also.
00:47:21
Of his own or her own or their own. Whoever. So now with this new weather news, there's a new call to make.
00:47:30
Obviously, they're not going to let their volunteers work in a storm with no roof.
00:47:35
And they understand that with bad weather, it's not going to be the same effect visually
00:47:39
that they wanted and that everyone was imagining. So again, the choice is they can either cancel the whole thing right now, call it a loss,
00:47:48
or they can forge ahead. As you can imagine, they decide to forge ahead, but with a small concession to try to beat
00:47:54
the incoming weather. They're going to now release the balloons 15 minutes early at 1.
00:48:00
Okay. Which means they'll only be able to release 1.5 million balloons. Lame. Not the full.
00:48:10
Two million, but it still beats Disney's record. And apparently somebody wanted to beat Disney's record.
00:48:15
That was part of this. Also, I don't think that 15 minutes, they could have filled another half a million fucking balloons, right?
00:48:23
Are you going to go against adored and revered balloon expert, Treb Henning's plan.
00:48:31
I am. I'm going to call bullshit on that right now. This is probably one of the most controversial episodes
00:48:37
we've ever recorded. Well, at the same time as they're making this concession and basically just trying to keep it up,
00:48:45
because you have to think, if I was there and I was being forced to produce Balloon Fest,
00:48:50
which I truly would like lay awake obsessing about of how are we going to do this?
00:48:55
But that idea where it's like, okay, well, we can't, if we, we can't delay it any further, these balloons will just start
00:49:02
coming down. There will be no rising after a while. Like, it's not like we can delay this by a day or two, right? It's like now or never.
00:49:11
Totally. And also, I'm sure it's like the vibe, like it was about those good vibes. That's the whole,
00:49:16
that's the point. They're trying to keep it all going. And outside Treb Henning,
00:49:21
adored balloon expert Treb Henning is making an impassioned speech to the crowd saying, quote,
00:49:27
Cleveland, it's your time. It's time to say yes. It's time to say it's a happening city.
00:49:32
We're on the move. It's no longer the butt of jokes, end quote. Is he even from there?
00:49:40
No. It doesn't seem like it, no. But I think he's like, this is the point of all of this
00:49:45
and we're going to do it. If only it worked that way, Treb. Totally. So just before 145,
00:49:52
DJs Chuck Schadowski and John Rinaldi, They get the crowd to start a 10-9-8 countdown.
00:49:59
And then they get to one. The moment arrives. The net's pulled back and hundreds, thousands of multicolored balloons
00:50:06
fly up into the blue sky. Those first couple seconds are an incredible sight. You can go look at it on YouTube.
00:50:12
You can watch how this actually played out. Yeah, there's like a helicopter video of it, right?
00:50:17
I think. It's far enough away where you're getting a very large scope picture of what this is looking like,
00:50:26
you can imagine what they thought it would look like. And then with like, there's gray clouds and rain,
00:50:31
this big black net kind of slides away a little bit. And then these balloons start floating in a very,
00:50:39
in not the Disney-esque way that you're picturing in your mind. Right, right. But-
00:50:46
Nonplussed. The balloons seem nonplussed. The balloons are kind of bleeding to the right
00:50:51
from what I remember the video looking like, but it's still an incredible sight.
00:50:55
I'm sure from the ground, it was unbelievable. On the broadcast, you can hear Shadowski yell,
00:51:00
let's hear it for Cleveland. And tens of thousands of overjoyed spectators cheer in response.
00:51:06
And then Rinaldi adds, ladies and gentlemen, there is no mistake on the lake anymore
00:51:11
because they used to call Cleveland the mistake on the lake. And then the crowd roars, like they love that.
00:51:18
It all feels so good. People are overjoyed as the massive balloons fly up toward the terminal tower and beyond.
00:51:26
And later, DJ John Rinaldi would say, quote, It was unbelievable. It was a great sight. People were cheering. Everybody was happy. End quote.
00:51:35
This moment will be short-lived. Within minutes of the world's largest balloon launch,
00:51:40
bad weather moves in and the mayhem begins. And when I say mayhem, I mean the rain and the wind pushes a million plus balloons back down toward the ground before they've had a chance to pop at higher altitudes.
00:51:56
Deflated balloons, like there's some balloons that go up and they start to deflate and then they just fall back to earth like a rain of trash.
00:52:04
but what's worse and you kind of wouldn't imagine it this way with the weather system coming in
00:52:10
and pushing inflated balloons down they're bobbing in the air at different heights
00:52:17
all the way down to the ground basically making anyone's ability to see in front of them
00:52:23
whether they're driving whether they're in a plane whether they're anywhere it's impossible to see
00:52:29
cool yeah because it's fucking balloons Like, have you ever seen a person had to deliver balloons, have balloons in their car?
00:52:37
Oh, yeah. And what a disaster mess that is. It's like that, but it's the sky is the car.
00:52:43
I don't know how to explain that. But one time I watched a guy, we had gotten drunk, a day drunk in a TGI Fridays.
00:52:50
And when I came outside, there was a guy who was wrestling balloons into his car.
00:52:55
And I laughed for like four years. It was my favorite thing I'd ever seen. That's good.
00:53:01
That's a good one. But this isn't good. It's not funny. It's actually, it's that kind of thing
00:53:07
where you can see this team making decisions as they go. What's the negative effect?
00:53:12
There really wouldn't be any. It's just balloons. And then everyone kind of learns as they go.
00:53:17
The nightmarish fact of what's really happening. Yeah. So this barrage of balloons is now pouring down
00:53:23
onto roadways, into rivers, onto Lake Erie, like confetti. It creates a surreal multicolored latex version
00:53:30
of a whiteout snowstorm. Reporter David Moss remembers, quote, it was overwhelming.
00:53:37
You thought, wow, we're gonna drown in these balloons, end quote. Another reporter named Neil Zercher says that, quote,
00:53:44
or Zercher, sorry, says that, quote, we drove down the shoreway and it was like a multicolored river down the road.
00:53:51
Motorists were running into each other, running into fences end quote And across town operations at Burke Lakefront Airport grind to a halt as thousands of balloons fall onto the runway making it impossible to take off or land But it the
00:54:07
sheer number of balloons on Lake Erie that proved to be the real problem. Ahead of Balloon Fest,
00:54:13
the event's organizers and city planners knew that some balloons would wind up in the lake,
00:54:19
and they assumed it would be like 10% of the balloons that they freed. According to the Atlantic, quote,
00:54:26
because of the weather, 60% of the balloons launched landed in Lake Erie instead of the expected 10%.
00:54:34
This reminds me of one of my favorite childhood books, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,
00:54:39
except the meatballs are fucking balloons. Yeah, dangerous, dangerous balloons. Okay, and what's worse is
00:54:47
at the same time that balloon fest is happening, exactly simultaneously, the Coast Guard is running an active missing person search
00:54:56
on Lake Erie for 40-year-old Bernard Sulzer and 40-year-old Raymond Broderick, who had left on a fishing trip at 7 p.m. the night before.
00:55:07
They were expected home around midnight, but then there were those severe overnight storms
00:55:11
and they still hadn't come home. So early Saturday morning, their families report them missing
00:55:16
and within hours, the Coast Guard has tracked down the men's battered 14-foot aluminum fishing boat
00:55:22
docked along a break wall. Its motor is missing and the men are nowhere to be found.
00:55:28
Oh, shit. Yeah. So immediately after finding their boat, the Coast Guard expands its search
00:55:34
and more rescue boats are sent into the water on Lake Erie while helicopters are dispatched to search the lake from above.
00:55:41
But no one has communicated with the Coast Guard about balloon fest. Oh, no. So the helicopter's pilot is completely caught off guard
00:55:50
by the sudden thousands of balloons headed straight toward his aircraft. Oh, my God.
00:55:56
As bewildering as it is, he knows that he's in a dangerous situation, so he's forced to land his helicopter.
00:56:03
And later, reporter Neil Zurcher interviews the pilot, who'd say, quote, it was like flying through an asteroid belt you just couldn't see.
00:56:11
Oh, my God. And then down in the water, the inflated balloons are dropping all around the Coast Guard's boats. And as they blanket Lake Erie,
00:56:21
it becomes all but impossible for the search and rescue team to spot the fishermen because the
00:56:27
balloons are bright and colorful. So they look like any life vest those missing fishermen might
00:56:32
be wearing. And because of this freak accident, the two men's bodies aren't found for several weeks.
00:56:39
Oh, man. Horrible. So back at headquarters, the United Way officials who started off euphoric,
00:56:47
right, as this event launched, are just left speechless. It's horrifying. And as reporter Neil Zurcher says,
00:56:56
quote, it was almost like a volcano when it went off. Just about everything in the world that could go wrong
00:57:01
went wrong that weekend. So it's immediately clear Balloon Fest will not be the city's redemption.
00:57:08
Instead, the fallout from Balloon Fest will be shocking, far-reaching, and it's on par with a natural disaster.
00:57:16
Oh my God. So the United Way invested around $500,000. It had taken money from its special initiatives fund
00:57:24
to pay for Balloon Fest. But not only did it not raise money, it incurred the cost of the expensive cleanup efforts
00:57:33
and the multiple lawsuits against the organization, including one brought by the wives of the missing fishermen
00:57:39
who believe that balloon fest interfered with their husband's rescue efforts. All of these lawsuits are settled out of court for unknown amounts.
00:57:49
The one thing that could maybe be considered a win for balloon fest is the Cleveland chapter of the United Way did set the world record
00:57:56
for, quote, the largest ever mass balloon release. Congratulations. And it, right, it did make it into the 1988 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records,
00:58:08
kind of a Pyrrhic victory. Years later, a spokesperson for the United Way would tell the Cleveland plane dealer,
00:58:15
quote, we would not do a balloon launch ever again. We've learned a lot in the last 25 years.
00:58:21
And I'm sure it's like the other part of this quote after is like, stop fucking asking me about Balloon Fest.
00:58:28
Yeah. On the other hand, Tom Holowalk, who has spoken several times on podcasts and to reporters about this event,
00:58:36
which is kind of cool that he's like in, you know, like actually interviewed about it
00:58:40
and agrees to be interviewed about it. And he refuses to write off Balloon Fest as a total failure.
00:58:45
He openly and remorsefully acknowledges that a lot of regrettable things happened.
00:58:50
But Holowoc also says, quote, Balloon Fest was an incredible triumph over adversity
00:58:55
because we could have quit. We should have quit a number of times. Any reasonable person would have said,
00:59:01
oh, screw it, I'm not going to deal with this. But we didn't. And to this day, it's one of the high points in my career.
00:59:07
It's not so much that it had to do with balloons. It's that, damn it, I was not going to quit.
00:59:12
I'm not going to fail, end quote. Yeah, some would argue that giving up isn't failing when...
00:59:22
Good point. To move forward with something would fucking cause a lot of damage. Right.
00:59:29
In many, many ways. Except for that's information they didn't have because everyone was like, balloons.
00:59:36
Yeah. Here's the thing. If they did the research and talked to enough people that they found out 10% of these balloons
00:59:43
might end up in Lake Erie and everyone was fine with it, then you can at least say that these events coordinators
00:59:52
were not fully informed like we today are fully informed They weren looking at it in the same way It was like everyone agrees this is fine The idea also and the thing that really weird
01:00:05
is watching the weather push balloons back down to the ground. It's not, I don't think anything anyone has experienced,
01:00:13
really, to be able to anticipate it. Yeah, yeah. Like what happens when? I don't know.
01:00:20
It's tough because it's like, you're right. It's like, when do you, there's so many things these days where you could think of many in the
01:00:29
news lately where it's like, yeah, yeah. Admit defeat and know that you're still a great person
01:00:36
who had great intentions. Totally. We got to have a new name rather than failure because like making
01:00:42
the smart decision to not move forward with something or to like end something isn't failing.
01:00:48
It's like critical thinking. That's right. And it's making tough decisions and standing by tough decisions.
01:00:54
I like to think if I was a revered and adored balloon expert, I would have said,
01:01:00
hey, we saw what the weather did before. Yeah. We're going to lose some balloons,
01:01:07
but we can just, we can keep this super positive vibe going and keep these volunteers here
01:01:13
and just keep blowing up balloons as the other ones fall down. Ah. Within the balloon bin
01:01:18
so that if they did delay for weather. Yeah, yeah. They should have had a sunny, bright, sunny day with no weather.
01:01:26
Totally. That makes sense. But again, easy for me to say. Also like September? Let's do this thing in June.
01:01:34
Okay. That's, yeah, that's true. In a way, perhaps, you can tell I'm going to wrap it up because the word perhaps is in this paragraph.
01:01:42
Perhaps Balloon Fest encapsulates an underdog chapter in Cleveland's history when the city felt like it had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
01:01:51
Today's Cleveland is far removed from its quote-unquote mistake on the lake reputation days.
01:01:57
But what hasn't changed over the years is Cleveland's big heart, strong spirit, and sense of genuine creativity.
01:02:05
Reporter David Moss once said of Balloon Fest, quote, One thing you can say about Cleveland, they're always creative.
01:02:12
Doesn't always work out, but it's a creative city. End quote. And that's the story of Cleveland's 1986 Balloon Fest.
01:02:22
Oh, wow. I bet if you went to a thrift store in fucking Cleveland, you'd find a Balloon Fest shirt.
01:02:29
Or a Balloon Fest mug. Oh, yeah. Someone send us a photo if you have that. Gotta see it.
01:02:35
I wonder if those are like collector's items because of the... Right. We're in the Guinness Book of World Records.
01:02:44
Balloon Fest. Mistake by the lake. Balloon fest. It was a good idea on paper. Oops, we tried.
01:02:57
That was great. Good job. Thank you. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
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01:03:46
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01:04:48
Thank you. That was a fun one. Today I'm going to tell you a story I recently stumbled upon.
01:04:53
It had been a cold case for many, many years, and it finally got a crazy twist ending.
01:04:59
So we're not going to end on a cliffhanger this time. Okay. I like the sound of this.
01:05:05
This is The Secret Life of William Leslie Arnold. Hmm. So the main sources I use in today's story are a series of articles under the header,
01:05:15
The Mystery of Leslie Arnold from the Omaha World Herald, written by journalist Henry J.
01:05:20
chords, and all the other sources are listed in the show notes. So let's start in 1942 when
01:05:28
William Leslie Arnold is born on August 28th. He goes by Leslie. His parents are Opal and William
01:05:36
Arnold. Opal is a good name for a girl. Opal's a great name. Opal. So he grows up in the Nebraska
01:05:45
town of Axarbin. It's Nebraska backwards. That's how creative that town's name is.
01:05:53
Hey they no Cleveland but they trying That good It just like someone had named cities all day that day and was just fucking done with it you know Yeah So Leslie is a talented musician
01:06:06
At 16 years old, he plays the saxophone for Omaha's Central High School Marching Band.
01:06:11
He plays in the dance band and the ROTC band. He's a good student. He like has his shit together.
01:06:18
He even has a girlfriend from a neighboring high school named Crystal, which sounds like a lie that you make up, right?
01:06:23
Like my girlfriend. It's from a different school, but it's true. Crystal. So he seems fine from the outside,
01:06:30
but life at home is really difficult for Leslie. Opal struggles with undiagnosed mental health issues
01:06:37
that have on two occasions sent her to the hospital for what they call at the time nervous breakdowns.
01:06:43
And she has a really overbearing, authoritative parenting style that Leslie has just is slowly wearing away at Leslie.
01:06:52
One of Leslie's best friends, Jim Child, notes that, quote, his mother was excessively and compulsively hard on him. And Leslie feels like he
01:07:02
can't do anything right in her eyes. And as he gets older, he's like a 16-year-old, you know,
01:07:07
man now, and his mother still treats him like a child. The other thing is that Opal doesn't approve
01:07:12
of this girlfriend, Crystal. They've been together for about a year, but she looks down on Crystal
01:07:16
and her family as well, because they're from a lower class than they are. And she thinks he's
01:07:23
not good enough for her son. And so Leslie's resentment for his mom grows stronger. So Leslie
01:07:29
in his photo has like a baby face. He's got, you know, a 1950s or 60s crew cut. He could
01:07:38
totally be played by Elliot Page. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like looks like that. Elliot Page is like the
01:07:45
hotter actor version. Okay. Yeah. Central casting version. Yeah, exactly. Got it. On the night of
01:07:51
September 27th, 1958, Leslie asks his parents to borrow their car so he can take Crystal on a date to the drive-in movies.
01:07:59
But Opal refuses. Leslie and Opal get into a screaming match in the family's dining room,
01:08:05
but Opal won't budge. So Leslie grabs his .22 caliber rifle and points it at his mom,
01:08:11
hoping to scare her. So allegedly, he just wants to scare her into submission, but it doesn't work.
01:08:17
She just laughs at him and tells him to put the gun away. Instead, Leslie shoots.
01:08:23
Opal drops to the ground and Leslie stands over her and fires five more shots into her chest,
01:08:29
killing his mother. So Leslie's dad, William, hears the gunshots, runs into the room.
01:08:36
He sees his wife dead on the ground. He charges towards Leslie, you know, in a fit of rage and swings at his son.
01:08:42
But Leslie ducks the punch and he points the gun at his father and fires six shots, killing him as well.
01:08:49
Oh my God. So according to Leslie, he then curls up on the couch. He cries about what he's done.
01:08:56
He didn't mean to. He's like traumatized by it. He later claims he never wanted to hurt anyone,
01:09:01
but instead of turning himself in and coming clean, he comes up with a cover. He concocts a story that his grandfather,
01:09:09
who lives in Wyoming, has become senile and wandered off and is now missing. And so Opal and William, he tells people,
01:09:17
had to go to Wyoming to help look for him. So that's why they're not accounted for.
01:09:22
But here's a problem. Before he does that, that night he takes Crystal out to the movies
01:09:27
in the family car. So like he still goes to the drive-in with his girlfriend. I just got to this story.
01:09:36
I'm new to this story. I'm new here. But it doesn't really feel like it's adding up
01:09:43
in terms of what he's saying. he meant to do or not meant to do. How do you do that?
01:09:50
You murder both of your parents and then you're like, let's go on a date. It's hard to argue any kind of remorse
01:09:57
when that happens. But at the same time, like we don't know how bad the child abuse was in his home.
01:10:03
He might've been pushed to the edge and had no feelings about it whatsoever. Right.
01:10:08
Then why are you claiming remorse and that you didn't mean to hurt anybody? You did and you just should admit it,
01:10:16
put the gun down and turn yourself in. Right. So a day later, Leslie waits for a nightfall
01:10:21
and then he drags his parents' bodies outside and buries them in a shallow grave in their backyard.
01:10:28
Essentially, it takes two weeks for his extended family and the authorities to get hip to his lies.
01:10:35
On Wednesday, October 8th, 1958, Leslie's grandparents finally go to the police and report Opal and William missing.
01:10:42
Exactly two weeks after the murders, police take Leslie in for questioning and he immediately crumbles under the pressure.
01:10:49
He comes clean, recounting the murders as they happened. And while handcuffed to Detective Glenn Gates
01:10:56
and Detective Earl White Jr., Leslie leads police to the spot in his backyard where he buried his parents.
01:11:02
And so Leslie's placed under arrest. So Leslie pleads guilty to two counts of second degree murder.
01:11:09
He's given a life sentence for his crimes. He's taken to the Nebraska State Penitentiary.
01:11:15
Now, because Leslie is so young at the time of the murder, is just 16 years old,
01:11:19
there's a good chance that the Nebraska Pardons Board will wind up commuting his sentence.
01:11:24
They could release him on parole and he could go on to live a full life. And in fact, he does behave very well
01:11:29
for the next nine years while he's in prison. He happily takes on shifts in the mess hall.
01:11:35
He develops his cooking skills. He plays music in the prison band. A prison official later says, quote,
01:11:41
we all just kind of felt that Leslie would ultimately make parole and make a success out of himself.
01:11:47
So while he does do really well in prison, he makes nice with the prison guards and fellow inmates,
01:11:53
Leslie is hatching another plan. He and another inmate, another murderer named James Harding,
01:12:00
form a plan to break out of prison. A friend of theirs is released on parole and that friend finds a good day
01:12:07
when the coast is clear and throws a storage tube over the fence into the prison yard.
01:12:12
And inside that tube, Leslie and James find two saw blades and two rubber masks.
01:12:17
And so basically they go to this part of the prison where people who have good behavior
01:12:21
are allowed to kind of hang out by themselves. It's like also a music room and no one ever bats an eye
01:12:26
about them being in there. So he and James take advantage of that fact and during their free time alone,
01:12:32
use the saws to cut the bars in the music room window. They saw completely through them
01:12:38
and then they use chewing gum to temporarily like hold the bars together, which is just like, Jesus.
01:12:44
Total MacGyver. Yeah. Finally, the opportunity comes for them to escape on the night of July 14th, 1967.
01:12:52
Everyone's asleep. The guards aren't looking. Leslie and James craft makeshift dummies in their beds using those rubber masks.
01:12:59
And they sneak down to the music room, remove the gummed bars from the window, and they slip out.
01:13:05
Go over a barbed wire fence out into the field where their parolee friend is waiting for them in the getaway car.
01:13:12
They make a clean escape to Omaha. And then in Omaha, they meet up with Leslie's old childhood friend, Jim Child,
01:13:18
who gives them a change of clothes, some cash and tickets for a 3 a.m. bus ride to Chicago.
01:13:25
Wow. Yeah. So by the time anyone even realizes in the prison that the guys are missing,
01:13:29
they're already halfway to Chicago. So a few days after they make it to the city,
01:13:34
they separate, but James and Leslie link up and give each other a status update.
01:13:40
James is still trying to find his footing, but Leslie has already gotten himself a job
01:13:44
as a line cook at a diner. He's even started dating one of the waitresses there,
01:13:49
an older woman named Jean Bovia. But he doesn't tell James about his new identity.
01:13:54
So like he's on it. He's already like figured his shit out. How much time has passed?
01:13:58
Like a week, a few days, a few days. Okay, sorry. Can I just now, I feel like in my armchair quarterback way,
01:14:08
I just want to say, sounds to me like the actions of a psychopath, that he would be that compelling and magnetic
01:14:16
to be able to charm his way into getting a job and a girlfriend like immediately.
01:14:21
Yeah, there's also something to be said for the fact that you've been in for nine years
01:14:25
and everyone is like, yeah, you're going to get out soon probably. Like, why not just finish your time
01:14:31
and then go on to live a normal life? Like, you know what I mean? Escaping is just so bold and so like,
01:14:38
it didn't sound like he was having a bad time in prison, you know? Right. Almost just like it's been so long
01:14:45
you couldn't just finish that. You couldn't finish it. You had to get out right then.
01:14:50
Crazy. Totally. Boggles the mind. Less than one year after their escape, police catch James and throw him back in prison.
01:14:58
He serves the remainder of his sentence and eventually gets paroled, living out the rest of his life as a free man
01:15:04
until he dies in 2008. But as for Leslie, police are completely stumped on his whereabouts.
01:15:12
The biggest potential break in the case comes a year and a half after his escape
01:15:16
when authorities get a hit on someone registering an immigration card in Brazil under Leslie's name.
01:15:22
But that lead turns out to be fruitless and with no other leads, the case of this escaped convict
01:15:28
who killed both his parents when he was 16 goes cold. Wow. Okay, then let's cut to August of 2020,
01:15:37
53 years after Leslie's escape. So Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Westover of Omaha is sifting through his caseload,
01:15:44
he comes across the case of Leslie Arnold. He's surprised to find the case from 1958 in his docket,
01:15:50
but when he reads up on it, he's just totally captivated by it. He learns that a former Nebraska Department
01:15:56
of Correctional Services investigator named Jeff Britton had dug into this case years prior.
01:16:01
He'd never solved it. And so Britton had moved to California in 2013 and the case still had kept him up at night.
01:16:08
So Westover calls Britton and they like talk about the case. They discuss different theories and tactics
01:16:15
to try to track Leslie Arnold down. But one method in particular stands out for Britain
01:16:20
because he had been in California. He was able to follow the case of Joseph D'Angelo,
01:16:26
the Golden State Killer, very closely. He had even attended some of his court appearances
01:16:31
after his capture in 2018. Wow. Yeah. So he sees that DNA, genealogy, all that stuff
01:16:38
is like catching people now. So Britain wonders if something similar might help Westover crack the Leslie Arnold case.
01:16:44
Westover takes Britain's advice. He tracks down Leslie Arnold's little brother. He had had a little brother this whole time.
01:16:49
His name's James. And in November 2020, James agrees to provide a DNA sample. So Westover submits it to the registry.
01:16:58
It takes nearly two full years, but Westover is about to get a break in the case
01:17:02
from a completely unexpected part of the world. We're going to Australia. Oh, hello.
01:17:11
That's not the accent. That's right. That's British. G'day, mate. Yeah, that was British,
01:17:17
but they both sound the same when I say them. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, so we're going back to 2010.
01:17:24
This 19-year-old dude named John Vincent Damon, his father passes away and John goes on a 10-year-long quest
01:17:31
to learn more about his father's history, you know, as you want to learn about your parents.
01:17:35
Sure. All he knows about his dad, John Vincent Damon, is that he grew up in an orphanage in Chicago.
01:17:41
So in 2018, when he's 27 years old, he finally makes a trip to Chicago from Australia
01:17:47
to go to the orphanage himself and try to find his father's records because he couldn't find anything else about him.
01:17:53
But when he gets there, he discovers that the orphanage his father had told him about doesn exist Confused he takes his dad Illinois birth certificate to the vital records department to see if they can help
01:18:05
When they check out the birth certificate, they discover it's a fake. Ooh. So now he's totally, like, imagine fucking your dad, Jim,
01:18:13
just being like, oh, everything he told you about his life, not, and none of it's true.
01:18:18
I would laugh so hard. It'd be really hard for your dad because you have so much family, but.
01:18:25
You're telling me all of these redheaded people are actors that you've surrounded me with my entire life.
01:18:31
This is crazy. So now he's totally confused by this. He calls up his father's stepdaughters,
01:18:36
who he had from a previous marriage, to see if they know anything about his past.
01:18:41
Because they're older. They knew him when they were older. But unfortunately, all they know is the same story
01:18:48
that he got as a kid, that the dad, John, was from an orphanage in Chicago. That would be so, sorry, but I just really put myself in that position of you're holding your
01:18:59
dad's birth certificate in that kind of like ancestry.com, you know, I just want to know my
01:19:05
people vibe. And suddenly you're just- Like maybe I want to go see if his childhood home got turned
01:19:10
into a 7-Eleven, like basic shit. Yeah. And suddenly it's like, no, there's no one by that
01:19:16
name that actually there might be a touch of fraud. Anyway, goodbye. Have fun on your 19-hour
01:19:23
a plane ride back home. Jesus. So as a last ditch effort in 2022, he submits his DNA to an analyst
01:19:32
and posts the results on a public registry, hoping to find some link. And to his surprise,
01:19:38
he gets a match on August 9th, 2022 to a man named James Arnold, who's a little brother of our
01:19:45
fucking parent killer, Leslie. Okay. Got it with me? Yes. Yep. The man gets a call from this
01:19:53
police detective Westover explaining that his father isn't a Chicago orphaned turned Australian salesman
01:19:59
named John Vincent Damon, but your dad is a 1967 escaped convict named William Leslie Arnold.
01:20:07
Whoa. So not only do you find that the fucking orphanage doesn't exist, the birth certificate is fake.
01:20:15
Now he's an escaped convict with a totally different name. Can I just say that this is a little bit similar
01:20:22
and I know I've told you this story like five times, but it's a little similar to the night
01:20:25
that it's summer night, me and my sister are laying in bed, windows open because it's hot.
01:20:30
We hear heavy breathing outside and walking through the tan bark. My sister runs in to tell my dad.
01:20:35
My dad pulls open the nightstand drawer and pulls out a switchblade and flicks it open and goes outside.
01:20:42
And it's of course a golden retriever that's just wandering in our front yard. But I literally after that,
01:20:48
I was probably 11 years old when that happened. I was like, damn. You gotta like change your perspective on your dad a little bit.
01:20:55
I switch play. Mr. Goodtimes. I was like, oh shit, you're like from West Side Story style, Street Fighter.
01:21:03
Didn't you feel a little safer after that? Absolutely. For sure. But it is that kind of like, kids don't ever think of their parents as people.
01:21:12
It's just, you're my parents. That's what you are on this planet. Yeah. My dad just told Vince, Vince told me that my dad had been in a band
01:21:21
that had been on the radio in high school and that he played, I think it was the guitar.
01:21:27
What? He told Vince that over breakfast one day. And I didn't know. I had to find out from my husband
01:21:33
that my father had like been on the radio. Your dad's like, it's locker room talk.
01:21:40
We're just going to keep that between the boys. Jesus, dad. Okay. Brag, dad. I mean, you got to ask your parents questions
01:21:46
or they're not going to tell you anything. I think for real, you know? Yeah. And the stuff that they don't,
01:21:52
like Marty doesn't think that's a big deal and we'd all be just like freaking out to hear it.
01:21:55
It's like, come on. I want to know. I want to know. Okay, so after years of stagnation,
01:22:01
Westover is so stoked to finally have solved the mystery of where Leslie Arnold disappeared to,
01:22:08
but he needs to know what happened in between his disappearance and his prison break
01:22:13
and his death. How did Leslie Arnold become John Vincent Damon? And so in March of 2023,
01:22:18
Westover flies to Australia to meet this son of the man he and his colleagues spent so much time
01:22:25
trying to find. This is four months ago. March of 2023. Yeah, this just fucking came out. I like
01:22:30
read this at late night when I, you know, I was looking up cold cases on Google. This is a late
01:22:36
night story that came up. Discovery. Amazing. Yeah. Like recently. All right. So let's go back
01:22:44
to when Leslie and his partner who prison broke with him, they see each other for the last time in Chicago
01:22:51
in July of 1967. And Leslie tells James, I've got mine, you get yours. Yeah. He's like, I got my job at this fucking diner
01:23:00
and then a lady, let's both just like live our lives. Take a hike. And also it's just like,
01:23:05
well, it would be easy to believe that Leslie basically married that lady. It's like, if you can get that done in one week.
01:23:13
Yeah. You're like, you'd probably have a family in two months. Like, what's happening?
01:23:17
The story writes itself as you are writing it right now. So he gets himself a new home, a new job,
01:23:24
and a new girlfriend, and a new name. So as he's working at the diner, he's going by the name John Vincent Damon.
01:23:31
He manages to get himself a forged Illinois birth certificate. And then he uses it to get a legitimate driver's license
01:23:38
and social security card in that name. So boom. And then just, I don't even think
01:23:43
I could get myself a real birth certificate if I fucking needed it right now. You know what I mean?
01:23:47
You know, you have to sign up for real ID now. That's like a California law that you have to like,
01:23:52
I tried four times to do that online and can get it done This guy and this guy goes I mean at the time it probably like fucking Sharpie and mechanical pencil on paper but on the back of a napkin
01:24:05
He just had to get one lady in the filing office to turn around for four minutes
01:24:09
while he did something. Exactly. Then he had started dating Jean Bovia and just days after they started dating,
01:24:17
Leslie, aka John, moves in with his new girlfriend. So you were fucking right about that.
01:24:22
She's a divorcee with four daughters, ages 14, 12, nine, and five. So she's like, I'm not wasting time
01:24:30
dating you for months on end. Yeah. They live in the project. So, you know, she needs the extra income
01:24:37
that this person's making. It's not a great choice, but, you know, it turns out okay.
01:24:41
Yeah. She's an older woman. She's 34 years old, while Leslie is just turning 25.
01:24:48
And the two get married in a courthouse on November 25th, 1967, just 134 days after first meeting.
01:24:56
Hot. So a little more than two months, but yes. Oh, two months. Yeah, okay. A little more than that.
01:25:03
Sorry, I'm completely like jumping on your story and then being like, wait, let me guess more.
01:25:08
Let me guess more. I'm gonna call him Leslie for the story, but he goes by John.
01:25:14
Okay. He never shares much about his life with his new family. He says he grew up in a Chicago orphanage
01:25:20
and doesn't like to revisit his past. Fair enough. But he's a good provider. He helps take the family out of a housing project
01:25:27
and into a nicer apartment. He and Jean's daughters get along fine. They do later say that he was a tough, strict parent
01:25:34
who made them all get jobs once they turned 13. Yikes. And often punish them by putting them into, quote,
01:25:41
restriction, which he used as the term for grounding. Which, of course, later they put it together
01:25:48
that his strictness is something he inherited from his mother that he killed for the same reason.
01:25:55
And the term restriction is one he picked up while in prison. So like fucking mind boggling.
01:26:01
The clues were kind of there if you knew to be looking for them, which of course they didn't.
01:26:06
Nobody would have. Yeah. In 1969, two years after landing in Chicago, Leslie leaves his job at the restaurant.
01:26:13
He gets a higher paying job in sales. It's long hours. He travels a lot, but it allows the family to move into an even nicer home in Cincinnati.
01:26:22
Nice. Even though Leslie could be strict, his stepdaughters really do love him. He took care of them.
01:26:28
He passed on his love of music to them. He took them to concerts, taught them how to play the piano.
01:26:33
And he's the only man the girls had ever and would ever call dad. Wow. Yeah. That's a good vote for Leslie slash John.
01:26:42
Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like he was a good man. Yeah. So then in 1971, Leslie and Jean take a trip to the Bahamas, leaving out of Miami.
01:26:51
Essentially, for some reason, they end up moving to Miami very suddenly without any real explanation.
01:26:56
So you wonder if Leslie was like thinking that someone was on his tail, maybe. Yeah.
01:27:02
Three or four years later, Leslie starts getting antsy in Miami. He wants to move again.
01:27:08
Jean doesn't want to. And they, you know, fight about it for years. and eventually by 1977, the two split up.
01:27:15
John gets himself an apartment in Burbank. What? Because, yeah, Burbank of all places.
01:27:21
Because he'd been traveling there. He'd been traveling to LA a lot for his sales job.
01:27:25
So he just moved there. He maintains contact with his stepdaughters though, calling them regularly and attending graduations
01:27:31
and other special life events. Oh. Even though he and their mom divorced. Huh. I know.
01:27:38
I didn't have a fucking stepdad like that. Yeah. Like, guess I do now as an adult.
01:27:42
but like, that sounds nice. That's when it matters. And the idea that he's actually coming through,
01:27:48
that, wow, that's really, okay. Yeah. That's nice to hear. Yeah. Then in the late 70s, early 80s,
01:27:55
Leslie starts dating another woman in LA. They get married in 1983. They have two kids,
01:28:02
a daughter born in 1986 when this John, when he is 44 years old and a son born in 1991
01:28:10
when Leslie is 49. So he has some later in life kids of his own. But before his first biological daughter is born,
01:28:19
one of the stepdaughters sits John, sits, so confusing with the John and the Leslie thing,
01:28:25
sits Leslie John down and advises him to be kinder to his biological kids than he was to his stepkids
01:28:32
to like kind of chill the fuck out a little bit and not be so harsh with them and let them know when they've done something good
01:28:38
or done a good job rather than just disciplining him. And it looks like Leslie John took her advice
01:28:45
because his kids say that he was like a wonderful father. His bio kids. Oh, wow.
01:28:51
So life's good for John, Leslie, and his new family for a while. But in 1992, we have the LA riots
01:28:59
and he decides that he doesn't want to stay in LA anymore. He says he doesn't think it's a good place
01:29:04
to raise a family, but he could also be nervous about advances in technology and the DNA thing is kind of coming around.
01:29:12
And it could be that he thought someone was on his heels again and got nervous because that year, right before they move,
01:29:19
he gets a noticeable mole surgically removed from his cheek. Oh, okay. That he had had his whole life, like a defining characteristic.
01:29:28
And they moved to New Zealand for five years. Then they moved to Australia in 1997.
01:29:34
And it's here that Leslie and his family settled for good. He raises them with love, kindness, and understanding
01:29:41
while he continues his career in sales under his own company. Like he did with his stepdaughter,
01:29:47
Leslie shares his love of music with his kids, but for fear of being discovered,
01:29:51
he never ever plays music to them and with them and never lets them know that he like really good at the saxophone So that another thing they didn know about him that he fucking rips it on the saxophone He never picks it up again And his son thinks it because it another defining characteristic of who he was
01:30:09
Yeah. Which is so sad. So in the late 1990s, Leslie has a heart attack. He survives, but his health never quite recovers.
01:30:18
And so between his heart problems and his frequent flights while traveling for work,
01:30:24
Leslie develops deep vein thrombosis, which is difficulties with blood clots. And it worsens.
01:30:30
So on August 6th, 2010, at the age of 69, but really he had been 68 because he had forged that birth certificate.
01:30:38
Oh, right. He collapses and dies in his home in Australia. At the age of 69, 68, that's kind of young.
01:30:45
Yeah, it is young. And that's when his son starts trying to find out more about his father.
01:30:49
So while none of Leslie's family members want to minimize the severity of the murders he committed back when he was 16,
01:30:57
they all truly feel he had repented and reformed his life before his death. His criminal record as John Damon, this new person, is totally squeaky clean.
01:31:08
Couple parking tickets is all he has under his name. His kids even still have Leslie's old Bible,
01:31:14
which he carried with him since living in Chicago. They all remember seeing their dad reading through it.
01:31:20
And looking at it now, they noticed that he highlighted two subjects frequently,
01:31:25
which was sins and forgiveness. Mm-hmm. For Leslie's kids' part, they've all gone on to lead happy, productive lives.
01:31:35
Opal and William Arnold may never have gotten the justice for their murders at the hands of their son.
01:31:40
But it seems safe to say, thankfully, that the next generation Leslie left behind
01:31:45
is working to heal the family's history and trauma. and that is the story of the secret life
01:31:51
of William Leslie Arnold. Good Lord. I know. That's like deathbed confession post-deathbed.
01:32:01
Yes. Like he had to know they were all going to find this stuff out eventually, right?
01:32:06
Well, yeah. I mean, it's just such a huge thing to go through and it does point to, first of all,
01:32:17
like how people viewed abuse and child abuse and abusive behavior back then where it was kind of like
01:32:24
spare the rod and spoil the child mentality. Yeah, yeah. So how bad it was for him
01:32:31
comparatively when it was that long ago could really be saying something. Obviously to be to the point
01:32:37
where you kill both your parents is just wild. I just think it says something that like
01:32:43
he did this horrendous thing while under, let's say it was true, it was under duress. You know, his friend vouched for his, how awful it
01:32:53
was at home. And then he went on to like never abuse his children. He kept a job. He, you know,
01:33:01
didn't ever break the law. He just lived a good normal life. It's juxtaposed in such a way that
01:33:09
makes you wonder if, had he not had these circumstances as his child, this never would
01:33:14
have happened, you know? Well, and also I wonder if, say there was a statute of limitations on the
01:33:21
crime that he was running from all that time, because I think that's why he didn't break the
01:33:25
law. Like he had to live a quiet life. You could kind of go through, and if you wanted to be really
01:33:29
negative about it or kind of jaded about it, you could be like, well, he married that woman for
01:33:36
cover and he kept that family for cover and he moved towns, whatever. It's, you know, you could,
01:33:43
you could see it in a bunch of different ways. The one way to look at it too is like,
01:33:48
it's a very interesting conversation about, you know, like crime, youth crime, and how many kids stay in jail for things
01:34:00
that they were too young to understand the full weight of what they were doing or the full impact
01:34:09
on their future lives. Totally. Because that's the kind of thing where it's like, if there's jail, any kind of like jail reform or anything like that, it's like, you know, there's kids that get thrown into the system and just never come out.
01:34:23
Right. And that's kind of, that's the way they adapt. And that's, you know, if that could be a positive out of this, as opposed to just this guy kind of like had a secret life, but then it's kind of like, yeah, what if there really is redemption in a way?
01:34:41
And there's a way to kind of like help that truth of like a kid in a bad situation makes it worse and then just runs for his entire life.
01:34:51
Well, the first thing to do is to un-privatize prison, right? And to for-profit prison is the, you know.
01:35:00
For-profit prisons is a horrifying, fucked up concept that should not exist. well great job
01:35:11
thank you wild so wild so I mean there's nothing like the old double life secret life
01:35:19
running from your past story how many others are there out there and please we always say this
01:35:26
tell the people on your deathbed so we can have something to talk about yes don't keep it to yourself
01:35:32
we have questions we want to ask out with it whatever You might think it's too embarrassing.
01:35:39
You won't be here while we discuss it. Also, just the idea of like people coming and hiding out in Burbank is such a good idea.
01:35:47
I have to tell you, like if you're... Burbank is so low key, you could hang out there and blend in and nobody would ever, ever find you.
01:35:56
Nope. It's so quiet. You live your quiet little life. there. Totally. Totally. Go to that mini Target on Hollywood Way. Enjoy. There you go. Well,
01:36:07
we've done it again. We did it again. Thanks for listening, you guys. Yet again, we, as always,
01:36:14
appreciate you. We did it for you. It's literally for you. Literally, figuratively, all the things.
01:36:22
Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Good day! Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:36:40
Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.
01:36:47
Our researcher is Maren McClashen. Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
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Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
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