376 - That's a Good Bean! | My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.

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selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room

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Goodbye. Do we need a clap? What's that? Clap. We clapped. Did we? Shit. Can we do it again?

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I don't feel good. Wow. A mere 30 seconds ago. I still don't remember it. My favorite murder

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Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Gilgaris.

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And you know what? We have a lot of business this week. So let's just, we have so many things to do and discuss and see and be.

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Yeah, you can tell there's a lot of business because Karen has a pen behind her ear.

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And that's happening. Oh, you didn't know? No, I don't have a pen behind my ear.

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You don't, but wouldn't it be great if you did? That's how you knew you wanted to get down to business?

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I completely thought I'd put it there and then forgot about it. I was like, do I?

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I'm also like, were you old enough to watch the, what's the basketball team? Oh, Harlem Globetrotters.

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Yeah. Do you say it? Do you remember the Harlem Globetrotters? They had a cartoon.

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Yes. Where they traveled around the world and had adventures. I watched it, but didn't understand it because I was too young to understand it.

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But we watched it. You just remember the visuals? So do you remember, I don't think it was Meadowlark Lemon.

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Yes. and I think it was one of the other players, he would pull stuff out of his afro

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while they were playing to like do stuff to other players and stuff. Or if they got into,

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if they were in a pinch, they got locked out of something, he'd be like, hold on and pull stuff out of his afro.

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Yes. That's how I feel about my hair this moment where literally you're like, there's a pen in there

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and I'd be like, hold on, let me go check. Which one do you want? What color do you want?

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You want a blue? I have a nice, a nice Bic. I have a soft tip, whatever. there's a mechanical pencil over here.

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That's right. My lead is right here. It's right in my ear. Yeah, very busy. Also.

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Well, have you done the thing where you lose your phone and then realize it's in your hand?

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Almost every time. Same with, I don't know where my glasses are in there. I've now begun to wear my glasses like a headband.

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Yeah. They're always on my head at all times. Yeah. What were you going to say? It's gone now.

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I can't remember. All right. No, it's okay. That's how it is these days. It's just like, if you have anything

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that you need to convey to another person and you're not going to say it immediately,

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or I should say I, I better write it down on a piece of paper because it will be gone in moments, seconds.

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Can we just talk about the fact that I, we were about to start recording and I was like, don't we need to do the clap?

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Because we do the one, two, three, four claps and we're synced. And Karen goes, we already did it.

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Like we just did it. Like 15 seconds ago. But I had gotten up to grab something else.

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And then I come back and I'm like, we have to do the collab. We'd already done it.

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It's almost like these days, because we've all been through so much, aside from what we've already been through in our personal lives, which is plenty.

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Then on top of that, there's the national trauma that we're all experiencing, where our brains are just like, okay, enough of this already.

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Like, it's just like, let's refresh like goldfish every 10 seconds. And just like, keep it new.

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Let's not hold on to anything. Let's just keep it new. Yeah, we gotta take our ginkgo biloba.

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However, there's certain things I don't wanna fucking remember that I just read.

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You know, it's like- Is there a selective ginkgo biloba that we could be taking?

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Advanced? Good news. Scientists, can you please get on that? A good news ginkgo biloba.

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Please. Please, God. No bad thoughts. There are no bad thoughts. Only bad people.

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I think bad thoughts. Yeah. I have a piece of news for you, which is long ago, you recommended Bridget Everett's HBO show Somebody Somewhere.

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And do you know the reason I didn't take you up on it immediately? Because I had seen it on there.

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But the way she looks in the poster in the like promotional picture Yeah I like this is going to make me cry and I can deal with it That all it is

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And I love Bridget Everett so much. If you've never seen her listener out in the world and you get an opportunity to see Bridget

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Everett live, you must take that opportunity. You must fight for that opportunity because she is truly and legitimately one of the greatest

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live performers I've ever seen. And she is so fucking talented and so amazing. She's an incredible singer.

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She's so funny. She writes these original songs. She does covers. But then in this show, and my sister's the one who was like,

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please watch this. I just watched it. I can't be alone with this experience. So I finally did it where I was like, I can cry.

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It's fine. I have the bandwidth now. I didn't before. And I watched the entire fucking season in one night.

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Yes. I loved it so much. I didn't want to leave Kansas. And Bridget, of course, is amazing.

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But Jeff Hiller, the guy that's in it with her, is one of my favorite people on the planet now.

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He's incredible. It's such a heartbreaking show. And it is a cry fest and it's supposed to be,

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but somehow it's still so funny and touching and poignant. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful.

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and my friend Rob Cohen directed a bunch of episodes. So I saw his name at the end and I was like,

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oh my God, wait a minute, Rob Cohen is at the helm. Like, it's just so, it's so real.

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Yeah. It just, I want to do so many spoilers right now, but I won't. But anybody, if you have HBO or you have a friend

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that will give you their code to HBO, please watch somebody somewhere. It fucking deserves everything.

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And season two is starting in mere days. I know, I can't wait. Did you start season two of Barry?

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Season four? Whatever season it is, that's the last season of Barry? No, because I'm not caught up with season three of Barry.

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So now I have that binge waiting. Oh, good for you. Okay. Did you start it? Yeah, we'll talk about it.

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It's great. It's great. It's so well acted. It's beautiful. He's so fucking good.

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They all are. And has fucking... Bill Hader. Bill Hader. Has fucking Henry Winkler done anything bad in his life ever?

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Like not well? Like, does he like read the newspaper poorly? No, everything he fucking does is magical.

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It's because, I honestly believe it's because it's coming out of him and the spirit of the man himself,

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which I have already bragged to you multiple times that I got to meet him in real life.

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Me too, me too. Right, we've both done this brag to each other, but I truly believe it's like he as a person

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is such a delight. He so gets it, he gets the point of everything. Totally. So he can't, how could he do something like,

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inauthentic or insincere because he's just so goddamn good as a person. Yeah. That's what I believe.

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What else you got? Anything else? Well, the exciting thing is it's Stephen Ray Morris' birthday today.

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Stephen! Stephen! Thank you. Happy birthday. Thank you so much. Stephen! Stephen!

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Older, wiser, you know, all the things you should hope to get from age. Forgetfulness, you know.

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Yeah, welcome. Your mustache does look a little fuller today. Thank you. Doesn't it?

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Stephen, have you gotten any grays yet in your mustache? Yes, I have. But they only come on this side,

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so then eventually it just looks like this side is missing. Yeah. And it's just like a fun half-seas situation going on.

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No, that's not cool. That doesn't sound like getting older. That just sounds like, you know,

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you're stressed out about something one too many times and then like peekaboo. I think it all works out.

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You have the thing where you just pull, your stress thing is to pull on your mustache

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and then you've just pulled half of it off. Yes, I'm like a cat when they lick their belly.

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Yes. I also just realized that I'm the age that Georgia was when you guys started MFM.

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Oh my God. Was I 35? You turned 36. Yes, yes. I'm turning 36. So, I turned 36 today.

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So that just really put it in perspective. To everything. Turn, turn, turn. Well, we got you 5,000 cats for your birthday.

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Open your front door. They're all waiting. Oh, my gosh. They're stealing your car.

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Yes. Oh, my gosh. Thank you guys so much. Yeah. 5,000 cats. Happy birthday. Thank you.

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Did you get our birthday email yet? I don't think so. Unless it's in there right now.

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Just keep refreshing. We're going to sit here quietly. We'll keep refreshing. Wait, when did it come?

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Do you want to just tell him what it is? Stephen we got you tickets to Carly Rae Jepsen

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What? Oh my gosh Wait when? That's so exciting The Out Loud Fest I think It's happening because it's Pride Weekend

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And they're doing all these musical events And basically Our assistant Melissa found out

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That Annalise was going Who's a producer here exactly right And good friends with Stephen

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And so now you can go with Annalise Oh my gosh We've actually seen Carly Rae Jepsen together before

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I love it. So that's going to be so much fun. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. On a way, so I like one of our,

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like one of the tenets of our, like one of the pillars of our friendship is Carly Rae Jepsen.

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So I love that so much. We got you 5,000 Carly Rae Jepsen. Yay. So we're trying to build that relationship even stronger.

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Year by year. It's important to us. Oh, thank you so much. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.

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Is it, do you think it's better to open a gift or to have me just describe a gift to you

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that I guarantee you're going to get. I love it. That's the whole podcast, just describing presents that you're giving to people.

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Oh, that's a great idea. Oh, wait, that's I said no gifts. Oh, my God. It's I said no gifts.

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Go ahead and tune on in. Well, happy birthday, Stephen. Thank you for always being here for us We appreciate you Oh my gosh Thank you Yes we love you We love you Okay well Goodbye See you later And then he goes off the zoo

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Goodbye. Goodbye forever. But wait, come back because don't we want to do our jelly bean taste off?

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Oh, yes. Steven, you got them too, right? Yes, thank you, Alejandra. Yeah, Alejandra.

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To hook this up. That's right. So last week, Karen told us of a tweet where someone let us know

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that Brocks, who likes to do weird flavors of jelly beans, has actually outdone themselves.

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And instead of doing turkey and gravy jelly beans, have done desserts of the world jelly beans.

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Just a quick note, this is non-spawn con. So we are not being paid to do this. We just like doing it.

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There's no promo code. Sorry, sorry. Write to Brocks at Brocks.com. You can write to Shasta on Twitter.

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It was her idea. I just want a churro one. I've been waiting this whole week to open this

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so I can eat a churro one. Let's all dig around for the churro one so Georgia can have a churro first.

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Okay, I'll read you. There's churro flavor, apple pie flavor, lemon sorbet, strawberry mochi,

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and chocolate macaroon. No. Macaroon. Okay, I think it's the spotted one, right?

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Yeah. I believe it's the... Yeah. Okay, I found it. I'm putting two in my mouth at once.

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Oh, shit. Okay, it's churro time. Here we go. Everybody go. All right. Minimal chewing.

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That's good. Yeah. Not much to report there. Yeah, really, truly very low-key, especially for people who made, like, whatever it was,

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stuffing, whatever the one was that we couldn't deal with. Oh. Thanksgiving. Hot dog.

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Hot dog. Should we do one more? Yum. Chocolate macaroon. Let's do lemon sorbet just because I love lemon so much.

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It'll clear the palate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm doing two again. Ooh, I love that.

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Ooh, that one is good. Wait, stop chewing. Okay. Oh. Ooh. Very springy. Very springy.

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It's got a tang to it. Oh, that's good. That's a good bean. My sister would be so furious if she heard the chewing on this.

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I think a lot of people just tuned out. Okay, the chewing has stopped now. The chewing has stopped.

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For people at home. Those are good. Yeah, those are good. There's really no substitute for a churro, though.

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I mean, like, you don't want a jelly bean when you're having a churro. Word on the street is that Jack in the Box has really good churros.

00:14:23

Whoa, really? Uh-huh. I haven't tried them yet, though. Do they come with dip, I wonder?

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I bet they do. Or like, are they filled with caramel or something? Yeah, I bet. I'll try that.

00:14:33

All right, should we do Exactly Right Corner? Let's do it. Cool. Hey, guess what?

00:14:37

We have a podcast network, and here are some updates. Right now, it's season eight.

00:14:42

It's the finale of Tenfold More Wicked. So tune in and learn what was really happening with the morphine murderess.

00:14:48

that story has been told. It's now coming to an end. Jump in if you haven't started it,

00:14:53

but tune in for the finale if you have. And we're really excited about this. None other than Shea Coulee,

00:14:59

winner of season five of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. Shit. Joins, amazing. Joins Michelle and Jordan this week on adulting

00:15:07

and it's live from the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. And Shea is just a magical human being,

00:15:12

as you already know, I'm sure. So you gotta check that out. Yeah, that's gonna be amazing.

00:15:18

And lastly, we're both so excited to talk to you about this because we put together a very last minute t-shirt,

00:15:25

which had that Pearl Heart quote on it. And we told you that we're going to put it up

00:15:29

and everyone should get one. And all proceeds were going to go to a donation for Planned Parenthood.

00:15:34

And you guys showed up, you got those shirts. And now we are donating $30,000 to Planned Parenthood.

00:15:42

So thank you to everybody who bought a Pearl Heart quote shirt. this is a fundraising, you know,

00:15:50

women having their rights taken away drive, which we, I guess now that's what we have to do.

00:15:56

Let's do a car wash for your fucking bodily autonomy because that's apparently the position

00:16:01

all women are in in this country right now. That's right. But I'm so, I feel so proud

00:16:05

that we get to give this money to Planned Parenthood. Like they helped me out when I had no money at all

00:16:10

and needed birth control. They've done so much good in the world and they're such an incredible cause and organization

00:16:17

that this just feels incredible. And you guys should be so proud of yourselves. And we are honored to be the conduit

00:16:23

to give this 30 freaking grand to Planned Parenthood. We're so lucky to have a community.

00:16:30

You guys built yourselves around this podcast and you show up and you show up and you show up

00:16:35

kind of no matter what is going on. And it's really impressive. So thank you all.

00:16:39

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Use code MFM15 for $15 off your first purchase at thirdlove.com. Goodbye. While the world watches the stars

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The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up

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an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye.

00:19:07

Is that it? I think so. I mean, you know. Yeah. We've eaten jelly beans. We've talked about important shit.

00:19:15

What more do people want? What? I mean. True crime? Oh, fine. What do you think this is?

00:19:22

I'm sweating. Why am I sweating? There's questions. Oh, are you getting nervous for your story?

00:19:27

Maybe. Okay. This is an interesting one. I'm first this week, right? Yeah. Yes. Today, I'm going to tell you the baffling Japanese mid-80s stories of the monster with

00:19:40

21 faces and the vending machine murders. Are those things related? They will be when I tell you how they are.

00:19:51

Okay, great. Amazing. Let's see here. So the sources used in today's episodes are a New York Times article by Claire Haberman,

00:19:59

a grunge article by Nicholas Vercatechi, a United Express International article by Marie Okabe,

00:20:05

an all that's interesting article by Bernadette Giacomazzo and a video from the BuzzFeed Unsolved Network.

00:20:12

I also want to just mention real quick that suicide is mentioned in part of this story.

00:20:17

So I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on that. Okay. So here we go. First, I'm going to tell you about the monster with 21 faces,

00:20:24

which is like such a crazy great name, isn't it? It really is. I kind of want to like lay down and I can't really turn the lights out

00:20:31

because it's like five o'clock, but... Like hear a spooky... A spooky bedtime story.

00:20:37

Yeah. Light a fire in your office. In the middle of the day. Yeah. Lean back. So it's 1984.

00:20:46

We're in Japan. The country is in the midst of what's later referred to as its quote economic miracle.

00:20:53

So during the 1970s and 80s, there's an enormous boom in industry and it catapults Japan

00:20:58

into a state of growth, expansion and luxury. And it's so interesting to think of like,

00:21:03

now Japan is one of the like, you know, bright stars of the world, but it took a while to get there.

00:21:09

So that's pretty interesting to think about it being a new thing, you know? You know, it's also interesting.

00:21:15

And I don't even know if this is a Japanese company, but Yamaha makes motorcycles and pianos.

00:21:22

Same company? I think so, yeah. That's wild. But also I could be wrong. Okay. So, but as the rich get richer,

00:21:30

the poor people, of course, as is the way of capitalism, get poorer. It's during this moment that one criminal

00:21:38

or a group of criminals, we don't really know, decides to make major corporations their target.

00:21:44

So on the night of March 18th, 1984, a man named Hatsuhitsa Ezaki is kidnapped by two masked men

00:21:52

from his hometown in Osaka, Japan. He's the president of the Ezaki Glico Company,

00:21:59

which is a beloved and highly successful Japanese food and candy company. They're your favorite candy company, Karen,

00:22:05

because they make Pocky. Oh, yes. Pocky. Pocky. Everyone loves Pocky, of course.

00:22:12

So from this point on, I will refer to the company as the Glico Company. and the president as Izaki to keep things simple.

00:22:20

Okay. Izaki's taking a bath after a long day, so he is fully nude when the two armed gunmen break into his house.

00:22:27

Nightmare. Nightmare. His wife and family are also home, and the criminals tie them up,

00:22:34

and Izaki's wife offers the criminals payment in exchange for leaving them alone,

00:22:37

but the kidnappers reportedly say, quote, be quiet, money is irrelevant. Oh. criminals escape with the naked Izaki

00:22:45

and eventually his family is able to untie the ropes and then call the police. The statement that money is irrelevant is confusing

00:22:53

because the next day a ransom note is sent to a Glico company executive. The kidnappers demand a 1 billion yen.

00:23:00

I want to thank my researcher, Sarah Blair Jenkins, for doing the math on this for us.

00:23:05

It's 1 billion yen. And she let us know that that's over 10 million US dollars in today's money.

00:23:11

Oh, wow. She not only did the yen math, but she did the math math. She did the time math, which we love.

00:23:17

Exactly. Wow. So basically they're asking for $10 million. And they also asked for 100 kilograms of gold.

00:23:25

And 100 kilograms of gold is about, where she wrote is how much a panda weighs. Which is adorable.

00:23:34

Okay, great. So we've got a gold panda, which is about 220 pounds. and that much gold today is worth over $6 million in the US.

00:23:44

So lots of fucking money they want. And they ask that it be put in a specified phone booth

00:23:48

in exchange for Izaki's return. Two days later, before anyone's able to make a payment,

00:23:54

Izaki, who we don't know if he's naked still or not, no idea, he escapes his captors.

00:23:59

Thank God. In one account, he manages to get his ropes loose, kick down the door of the empty warehouse he's been trapped in,

00:24:06

and find some bystanders to help him contact the police. Please don't let him have been naked that whole time.

00:24:13

It makes me wildly uncomfortable. Can he have a little bit of self-respect in this, please?

00:24:19

Let him have it. Throw him a robe or something. But he's unable to identify as captors,

00:24:24

and no ransom money ever changes hands. The mysterious criminals behind this abduction

00:24:29

soon start sending threatening letters to the Glico company. Their next letter asks for 60 million yen,

00:24:36

close to half a million US dollars in today's money, in exchange for no longer harassing the company.

00:24:41

So it's like, okay, well, we've tried to kidnap someone, it didn't work. We're gonna now harass you unless you pay us off.

00:24:47

Yeah, that's not effective. No, bad planning. So Glico does follow the instructions though.

00:24:54

They come up with the money. The police stake out the specified ransom drop-off, and nothing happens.

00:24:59

Then about a week later, a fire breaks out at the Glico headquarters. No one's hurt, but the fire damages a lot of property.

00:25:07

And it's determined to be arson, presumed to be the work of the same people who abducted Izaki.

00:25:13

The letters and attempts at extortion, they're relentless. So I guess they were being really fucking annoying.

00:25:19

And letters are sent to newspapers, Glico executives, and the cops themselves. each assigned by, quote, the monster with 21 faces.

00:25:28

This name is in reference to a Japanese children's book from the 1930s about a mysterious thief who's excellent at disguises

00:25:35

and purposely tries to stir up trouble in the news. Can I make a point? Yeah. It's that thing of like, you can't nickname yourself

00:25:42

because you're complimenting yourself through the nickname and you're not actually very good kidnappers.

00:25:48

If the person you're going to get all this money from for ransom just kicks his way out of his place and gets free and is fine.

00:25:58

And it was a naked business executive who got free. Like that to me is like... Yeah, he wasn't some, it wasn't a spy

00:26:06

or someone that was like, you know, had a bunch of training in that. And then it's like, so then your plan

00:26:11

is just to be irritating with letters. Yeah, I'm not stopping. Sternly written and a bunch of them.

00:26:19

Yeah, that's right. So the monster with 21 faces, openly taunts the police in the letters

00:26:24

for being so bad at their job and even starts threatening the poison Glico products.

00:26:29

The police are starting to take this case extremely personally. The Japanese police force has an outstanding record

00:26:35

of solving crimes in the mid 80s and this massive public criminal enterprise is making them look like bumbling fools.

00:26:43

The letters contain specific details about the crimes that have been committed, proving that the monster with 21 faces

00:26:49

is indeed responsible, yet the cops can't actually find any tangible leads. Here's a portion of a letter that was addressed to the police

00:26:56

to give you an idea of the tone. Quote, to the stupid police, are you idiots? What are you doing with so many people?

00:27:04

If you were pros, you would catch us. So clearly it's a 12-year-old boy. Yeah, for real.

00:27:10

What are you, a stupid idiot? Stupid head. So almost two months after Izaki's kidnapping on May 10th, 1984,

00:27:19

The Glico Company gets a letter from the Monster with 21 Faces claiming to have poisoned several of their products with potassium cyanide.

00:27:28

But when all Glico inventory is pulled off the shelves and tested for poison, none of them have been tampered with.

00:27:35

There's no trace of poison in any product, but it doesn't matter. The damage has been done.

00:27:40

The Glico Company, because the public found out about this threat, loses $130 million worth of sales

00:27:47

and has to lay off at least 450 workers. Oh, man. Sucks for them. A few months later, in the summer of 1984,

00:27:56

the Monster Root with 21 Faces, quote, forgives the Glico company publicly in a letter

00:28:02

and proclaims that their products are safe to buy and to sell again. I swear to God, this sounds like a teenage kid did it.

00:28:08

It really does. It's like an internet troll. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The letter reads, quote, we're satisfied. The president of Glico has already gone around with

00:28:20

his head hanging down long enough. We would like to forgive him. But by that fall, the criminal

00:28:25

targets another Japanese food company called Morinaga. So in September 1984, the criminals

00:28:32

change targets and the Morinaga company begins to receive these really familiar extortion letters.

00:28:39

The Monster with 21 Faces first begins by demanding money. And when the company refuses to pay that money,

00:28:45

the criminals add pressure. They send a letter to newspapers addressed to, quote,

00:28:49

moms throughout Japan, and they say they have tampered with some beloved Morinaga candies, saying, quote,

00:28:55

we added some special flavor. The flavor of potassium cyanide is a little bitter.

00:29:01

No. Yeah. After this letter is published, police begin to search stores all over Japan,

00:29:07

And sure enough, they find over 18 boxes of Morinaga candies, particularly Choco Balls and Angel Pie, your favorites.

00:29:15

Oh, Angel Pie. That have handmade labels on them. So they put labels on them that reads, quote, danger contains poison.

00:29:23

The criminal did that. They're trying to screw with this company. Yeah. But they also don't want to actually kill a child.

00:29:30

Yeah. But they do contain poison. They do contain potassium cyanide. The risk is still there, but they're like, but please at least read this warning.

00:29:38

Yeah, there's a warning on the box. It's just different than it makes me think of, of course, the Tylenol poisonings where it's like.

00:29:45

Exactly. It's the complete inverse. Yeah. But miraculously, no one is hurt by these poisoned sweets with warning labels on them.

00:29:54

This attack and their use of the labels seems to show that the monster with 21 faces is less interested in killing people than in generating a climate of fear in Japan in order to shake down corporations and humiliate the police So the letters keep coming and even though police are

00:30:11

trying their best, they can't catch a break on this one. But after the potassium cyanide candy

00:30:15

debacle, some surveillance footage from a grocery store surfaces that appears to show a man placing

00:30:21

something onto the shelf where some of the poison candy was later found. So they actually have an

00:30:25

image of him you can see on the video camera. But the quality of the camera footage is not great,

00:30:31

and the man's body is turned away, and so there's almost no identifying information.

00:30:36

The footage is released to the public, but no one can figure out who it is. Throughout the course of these crimes, the abduction, the arson, the poison candies,

00:30:47

money continues to be demanded and sometimes it's actually paid. When ransom is paid,

00:30:52

bundles of cash are left at specific points and staked out by police, but no money is ever collected

00:30:57

throughout this entire ordeal. So they just make, they're just like making them play cat and mouse,

00:31:02

essentially. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's like if the kidnapping hadn't happened, I would totally think this is some kid

00:31:08

fucking with people. Right. But then they actually meant it when they said money is like not,

00:31:14

would they say money is no object or something? Yeah, or no, money isn't important or whatever.

00:31:18

Yeah. I mean, they mean it. They're not. Yeah. They just want to fuck around. Yeah.

00:31:24

And they're finding out. Yeah, they are. However, one suspect emerges from the police surveillance

00:31:29

of these random money drop-off locations. Someone nicknamed, quote, the fox-eyed man

00:31:34

because of his unique eyes is seen multiple times in and around these drop-off points

00:31:39

acting suspiciously. A sketch of him is even released to the public. At one point, police believe the suspect might be an infamous Yakuza boss,

00:31:48

and they actually bring him in for questioning. But despite a strong resemblance to the fox-eyed man, he has an airtight alibi.

00:31:55

So just like the videotaped man, the fox-eyed man is never identified or caught.

00:32:00

Also, I think that's such a different style than Yakuza, which are basically the mafia.

00:32:05

Right. They're not going to fuck. This is small time for them. Yes, they're not going to write stern letters and make threats.

00:32:12

Right, exactly. The Monster with 21 Faces terrorizes a total of 31 Japanese food companies,

00:32:19

in addition to the police and the public, for a year and a half from 1984 to 1985.

00:32:25

The perpetrators send over 100 letters in total. The Japanese police ultimately collect over 28,000 tips

00:32:32

and have had over 130,000 officers on the case at various points. Tragically, on August 7th, 1985,

00:32:40

the chief investigator into the Monster with 21 Faces case dies by suicide. No. Soji Yamamoto was 59 years old when he dies.

00:32:51

Just a few hours before his death, Yamamoto was fired from his position as head of the prefectural police in Shinga, Japan,

00:33:00

and was reassigned to a different unit. So I think he was just disgraced. Right.

00:33:05

And according to a United Press International article from 1985, Yamamoto was embarrassed by his investigative performance

00:33:12

and lack of arrests made in the Monster with 21 Faces case. I know, it's awful. Just five days after the police chief's suicide,

00:33:21

the Monster with 21 Faces sent this letter. Quote, Yamamoto of Chigot Prefecture Police died.

00:33:28

How stupid of him. Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us.

00:33:34

No career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decided to give our condolences. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies.

00:33:42

We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to leave a bad man's life.

00:33:50

Doesn't that just sound like, oh shit, this went further than I expected it to? Yeah, like we have to get out of this because we actually caused a man to take his own life.

00:34:00

Totally. Yeah. It's signed by the Monster with 21 Faces and the letters and attempts at extortion

00:34:06

and all other criminal activities surrounding this case abruptly stops. The monster with 21 faces is whoever it is.

00:34:15

They're never heard from again. And the case remains unsolved to this day. Wow. But wait, there's more.

00:34:21

So this kind of large scale criminal enterprise focusing on stoking fear and disrupting capitalism and creating mayhem in Japanese society continues

00:34:30

even after the supposed retirement of the monster with 21 faces. Can I please stop saying that?

00:34:36

they said it themselves in that last quote, there are many more fools who want to copy us.

00:34:43

And this leads us into the vending machine murders. So it's April 30th, 1985. Heruo Otsu is walking through the streets of Fukuyama, Japan.

00:34:54

He's about to go fishing and he's looking for refreshments to take with him. And so he stops at a vending machine,

00:35:00

one of Japan's 250,000 vending machines in existence that year. They love a vending machine.

00:35:07

They really do. And I love them for that. Yeah, me too. He buys a bottle of something called Ornaman C,

00:35:13

which is a sugary juice drink with some added vitamins. So it's just basically like a vitamin.

00:35:17

So it's high C. Exactly. These drinks are specifically marketed towards middle-aged men like Harou

00:35:24

and the soda company that makes them are in the midst of a big promotional gimmick.

00:35:30

Basically, if you buy one from the vending machine, you get one free. Sorry. The idea that there's a drink that's marketed toward middle-aged men is hilarious to me.

00:35:41

It's got it. The poster is like a middle-aged man with glasses on, you know, like cheersing or whatever.

00:35:47

He's like, this is the drink for me. Yeah. And like, why? It's just a soda. It not like it anything special So specific It so specific Herou gets two bottles of the drink one for free when he gets it from the vending machine So he drinks one bottle and then starts on the other

00:36:07

but before he can finish that second bottle, he begins to feel sick. And a few hours later,

00:36:11

he goes to the hospital. His symptoms are acute, intense, and they're getting worse fast. The next

00:36:18

night he stops breathing and he ultimately dies from his mysterious illness. Oh no.

00:36:25

Tests later reveal that harau died from paraquat poisoning. So paraquat is an herbicide that was popular around the world in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

00:36:36

More recently, it's been banned because it can cause serious long-term health effects if people breathe it in.

00:36:42

But there are even more serious and horrible short-term effects if paraquat is swallowed.

00:36:48

Basically, it chemically burns a person from the inside out. No, that's horrible.

00:36:53

That's a horrible death. It horrifically damages all the internal organs, but attacks the lungs in particular,

00:37:00

causing that tissue to thicken and harden, making it increasingly impossible to breathe.

00:37:07

So it sounds like a fucking nightmare. It's extremely painful. And Paraquat is extremely lethal.

00:37:12

Unfortunately, Harou's poisoning is not the last. Between April 30th and November 17th of 1985,

00:37:19

11 people are murdered after drinking poison drinks found in or around vending machines.

00:37:25

Fucking 11 people. 35 others are poisoned but survive. In most of these poisonings, it's the same combination as the first incident,

00:37:35

the poison paraquat and Orinamon C, the drink. Sunny D. I don't know what it is.

00:37:41

Sunny D. It's almost though the inverse of the monster with 21 faces because they didn't actually hurt anybody, right?

00:37:51

Except for, you know, the policeman who was so shamed. But this is like so much worse than that.

00:37:58

Yeah, to go after the public is a completely different thing than going after corporations, the big guys, you know?

00:38:04

To go after the public in the most, like here's the thing that is going to be the worst kind of death.

00:38:10

Totally. Horrifying. These vending machine murders terrorized the Japanese public

00:38:15

and baffled the police. There's a widespread panic around food safety. The attacks are spread out at random intervals

00:38:21

with no pattern to follow. They're not really centralized, meaning they're taking place

00:38:28

at different vending machines all over Japan. And at this time, Japan has more vending machines per capita

00:38:33

than any other country. Warning signs are placed on the machines themselves, but beyond that,

00:38:39

there's really not much the police can do about it. Soda companies blame the customers

00:38:43

with a spokesperson from the Japanese Soft Drink Bottles Association saying, quote, if only consumers were more cautious,

00:38:50

they would have seen that some tampering had been done. Sir, and I'm assuming you're a man,

00:38:55

shut the fuck up. Like, what are you doing? No. The soft drink industry also believed

00:39:02

that some of these Paraquat poisonings are actually suicides, is what they determined,

00:39:07

not murders. Paraquat was used in 1,402 recorded suicide attempts in 1984 alone.

00:39:14

which is just terrible. 1,402? Yeah, is that what I said? Yeah, no, you said 1,402, which is the same.

00:39:23

Yeah. That's so horrible. What a horrible way to die. Totally. Then the poisonings abruptly stop in November of 1985,

00:39:32

just a few months after they start. Police have almost no information. They really can't build a case at all.

00:39:37

The company that makes Orinam and C does eventually change the top of the drink to a pull tab,

00:39:42

making it much more difficult to tamper with, but there's no real motive established in the case ever.

00:39:49

Wait, I'd love to know what it was before it was a pull tab. It was just a little piece of tape over the top.

00:39:55

Like a smasking tape. What was it? Well, they had to make it easy for middle-aged men to open it,

00:40:02

so it couldn't have been like, you know, hard to open. If you have iron poor blood, this is your drink.

00:40:07

Don't worry. You can do it. Okay, so let's talk about the motive and the impact.

00:40:13

These two highly publicized crimes both involved randomly poisoned food and beverage.

00:40:18

It's worth noting, as you mentioned also, during this time, the whole world was on high alert

00:40:22

after the Tylenol murders in Chicago, which had just happened in 1982. I covered that in episode 43, if you want to check it out.

00:40:30

I still think it's one of the most fascinating stories. And just in 1985 in Japan,

00:40:36

there were two other poisoning scares. Wine imported from Austria was discovered to contain antifreeze,

00:40:42

and poison cartons of milk were found at several schools in central Japan. I know.

00:40:47

So sad. So it's a fair statement that this is a decade where anonymous attacks on consumers were on the rise.

00:40:54

Luckily, this wave of poisonings ultimately causes companies to take consumer protection more seriously

00:40:59

and invest in new tamper-proof seals and security measures. So if you ever have a hard time opening a bottle or a thing of aspirin,

00:41:06

it's because they don't want your children to kill themselves with it. Yeah. And also if you have an easy time, throw that thing away.

00:41:13

That's right. And write a strongly worded letter. Have you ever done that though, where you open a bottle of water

00:41:20

and then you go to take a sip of it and realize there was no resistance on the cap?

00:41:24

There was no seal. It wasn't sealed. That's a scary one. You know, like, do I just, I always just drink it though.

00:41:30

I mean, I have in the past and I'm here today. I'm here to tell you. I'm here to tell you about it.

00:41:35

So with these crimes in mind, Japanese psychologists start generating profiles for the new kinds of criminals they're seeing emerge.

00:41:45

Two interesting terms they come up with are yukahan and gekijo hansi. So those are the two probably missaid words And you telling me you fluent in Japanese You telling me this is your mother tongue Oh you didn know that It amazing How do I not know that about you

00:42:06

I know. I know. I sound amazing. So the term yokohan literally translates into quote,

00:42:12

happy criminal. And the idea is that a criminal gets a thrill out of the public's reaction to

00:42:17

their crime. They don't need to personally witness the crime in order to feel satisfied

00:42:22

by it or like make any money off of it or anything like that. Yeah. Renowned criminal psychiatrist Sosumo Oda describes that quote as,

00:42:32

they cynically enjoy superiority by imagining the victims groaning and do not feel any remorse.

00:42:39

Geki Johansi roughly translates to crime as theater. The idea that one of the motives for a crime is to stir up massive

00:42:47

public attention and outcry, specifically through the use of media. Mm-hmm. So these psychological terms give at least some grounding

00:42:54

into what otherwise looks like a motiveless crime. So the monster with 21 faces,

00:43:00

despite constantly attempting to extort, never collected any money. The vending machine killer didn't seem to need to know

00:43:07

or even interact with the victims in order to justify random murder. But both of these crimes, anonymous and highly publicized,

00:43:14

could be understood as being motivated by the psychological need to provoke a strong and deep public reaction

00:43:20

in order to feel powerful. None of these crimes have ever been solved and there are still no substantial leads.

00:43:27

Police often tie the vending machine murders and the monster with 21 faces together

00:43:31

due to the fact that they both use unassuming consumer products to potentially kill strangers,

00:43:37

but no evidence has ever been found that they're related. And they don't seem to be to me, right?

00:43:42

There you go. Well, no, because of exactly what we talked about, Where one was the threat of it, and it really did feel like a great way to ruin a food company is like, oh, your stuff isn't safe, and now everybody thinks that.

00:43:56

Right. But they truly were like, don't eat this. We poisoned it, but don't eat it.

00:44:01

Totally. And then the inverse of that is the vending machine murderer who's just like, I'm going to kill middle-aged men.

00:44:08

Come on. Terrible. But undeniably, both of these cases significantly disrupted the booming economy

00:44:14

and highly capitalistic society of Japan in the 1980s. And here's the last tip I'm going to say it.

00:44:21

And those are the dystopian stories of the monster with 21 faces and the vending machine murders.

00:44:27

Wow. I've never heard of either of those. I just had heard the monster with 21 faces

00:44:33

because it's the creepiest fucking name I've ever heard. Yeah. Yeah. And it's obviously that it feels like that was, it was marketed.

00:44:46

It was about marketing. Yeah. Where it's like, we've got a name, we're going to sign this creepy name to the letters we send to the police.

00:44:53

We're going to do this thing that's affecting this corporation that they're going to have to make a statement or their all their products get pulled.

00:45:01

Like, there seemed to be a real public facing awareness about those crimes. whereas Vending Machine was just like, oh, just like terrible, horrible and a horrible death.

00:45:14

And just like you picked the wrong bottle. Yeah. So shitty. Yeah. Wow. Good one.

00:45:21

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00:46:08

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00:47:02

Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Goodbye. This is actually a fun left turn

00:47:11

because we don't have to left turn that far away from anything horrible. Great. But my story today is probably on the outer edges

00:47:21

of a true crime story. Okay. It's very criminally layered or involved, but at the same time, it's more of a salute

00:47:30

to, you know, kind of an old-timey criminal that maybe should be a little more well-known than he is

00:47:38

because he's a regional hero. But okay, so here's what I'm telling you. Basically, a listener named Chrissy Wolfe

00:47:46

sent me a tweet linking an article from a website called thesmokies.com. And it's about a man named Popcorn Sutton.

00:47:55

And she wrote, praying popcorn's colorful life gets the MFM treatment And if nothing else, the YouTube documentary will certainly entertain.

00:48:03

So I send this tweet and the article that's attached to Maren. And I say, hey, can you look and see if this would be worth doing?

00:48:13

And Maren writes back, Karen, I kid you not, this man is a hometown hero for me.

00:48:18

Would truly be an honor. Oh my God. So then it's like, well, now we're doing it no matter what the story is.

00:48:25

I was like, I don't even care. Let's do it. Because what are the odds that Marin is from near where Popcorn Sutton became famous?

00:48:32

Yeah. So I'm going to tell you today about a man who's become a celebrated symbol of Appalachian heritage.

00:48:40

It's the story of the legendary bootlegger, Marvin Popcorn Sutton. All right. Right?

00:48:46

So sources used in this story are the 2008 documentary, The Last One, by filmmaker Neil Hutchison,

00:48:53

excerpts from the book Daddy Moonshine by Sky Sutton, who was Popcorn Sutton's daughter,

00:48:59

a 2012 Maxim article called The Last Hillbilly Hero by David Kushner, and then the Smokies.com article that Christy sent me,

00:49:08

Popcorn Sutton and his Moonshine, Six Surprising Facts by Morgan Overholt. We'll start by talking about Appalachia,

00:49:16

which you and I learned a little bit about by doing live shows in that area, including how to pronounce it correctly.

00:49:22

I've learned more about Appalachia doing this podcast than I knew in the 35 years before it at all.

00:49:29

Yeah, which has been one of my favorite things about doing this podcast and so unexpected.

00:49:34

Yeah. And in touring, how much I've learned about my own country. Yeah. How much I've learned that I did not know.

00:49:41

Just all about this great land of ours. That's right. And the crimes. The horrible crimes that its citizens have committed.

00:49:48

And still, we don't deserve fascism. So let's take our country back from this psychotic fascist dictatorship that's trying to take over.

00:49:56

Okay. Hey, fucking men. Amen, amen. So we'll just tell you a little bit about Appalachia just as a brief overview.

00:50:04

If you don't know, it's a huge swath of land that spans over 200,000 square miles.

00:50:11

It covers 13 states from southern New York to northern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

00:50:18

So it basically is kind of the same shape roughly as California, at least when I was looking at it on the map.

00:50:25

And it looks like it was just picked up from the southern east coast and slid in a little bit and then is just sitting there from New York down to northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

00:50:37

All types of people live in this region, various ethnicities, religions, political ideologies.

00:50:43

But for many outsiders, our first impression of Appalachia was from oversimplified and reductive

00:50:49

movies and TV shows like Deliverance or the Beverly Hillbillies, right? It's like known as like, oh, people that live there are hillbillies.

00:50:57

Right. But the truth is that this region has a rich and important history and heritage that's

00:51:02

influenced many aspects of modern American culture. And one of the kind of biggest ones, which I think a lot of people know, but if you don't,

00:51:12

it's kind of hilarious and surprising, is that moonshining and the making and transporting of moonshine,

00:51:19

especially during the Prohibition era, is like the beginning of NASCAR. Oh. The first, like, kind of era of NASCAR drivers

00:51:28

that, like, got famous were moonshine drivers. That makes total sense. Because you're like, race car drivers, get the fuck out of town.

00:51:36

Kind of, like, outrun the cops. You have to outrun the cops. you have to build your cars so that you can carry all this moonshine and still move faster.

00:51:44

You have to know those back roads. You have to take the turns. You have to, you know, high speed,

00:51:49

blah, blah, blah. It's all kind of connected, which I absolutely adore. Which is what it's like,

00:51:55

that's the kind of thing that's great about this country is there's things like that where it's like,

00:51:59

it's all about people making the best of oppression, people making the best of hard

00:52:05

and bad situations. I think moonshine basically being the grandfather of NASCAR is one of my favorites.

00:52:14

Yeah. This story begins at the meeting point of the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains

00:52:20

in an area spanning eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. It's a beautiful pocket of the country

00:52:27

with a rich Southern Appalachian history. And right now it's currently experiencing

00:52:32

a population and a development boom. I think we played Asheville, North Carolina, right?

00:52:38

Yeah, definitely. That beautiful little town. Yes, I loved it. Yeah, that's one of the, I mean, there's tons of metropolitan cities that are in Appalachia,

00:52:47

including Pittsburgh is in Appalachia. Oh, okay. Asheville, Knoxville, you know.

00:52:53

Got it. But then, of course, it's like, it's known for the incredibly mountainous areas and the

00:52:58

people that were able to move into those mountainous areas during both the Revolutionary

00:53:03

War and then the Civil War to basically get it. They all just wanted to get away from the government.

00:53:07

They wanted to get away from people telling them how to live, you know, whatever. And that's,

00:53:11

that's kind of how that the spirit of Appalachia and the quote unquote hillbillies that live there,

00:53:19

that's what it's all about is people that just want to be around their family. They want the

00:53:23

government to stay out of their business. They want to be able to do what they want and just

00:53:28

live free. And they're very like, they're all about nature. Some of the original tree hugging

00:53:33

hippies that are just like, don't come onto our land and exploit it and exploit our people to

00:53:40

exploit the land. Got it. So the Sutton family are descendants of Scots Irish settlers who first

00:53:47

moved into this area in the 1700s. These settlers brought the practice of distilling whiskey from,

00:53:53

the UK and Scotland and Ireland or whatever And at the time that was no big deal Most people would rig like stills right on their front porches Very common

00:54:05

In fact, George Washington had a whiskey still built near his Virginia home, and he hired a Scottish distiller to like work it for him.

00:54:14

So that was kind of the way it was. So around the time of the American Revolution, whiskey consumption in the U.S. is booming.

00:54:20

becomes a very popular spirit served in taverns. So of course, in the 1790s, the feds slap a tax on it.

00:54:30

The federal government needs cash following the Revolutionary War, and it sees an opportunity to capitalize on whiskey sales.

00:54:37

So basically like, yeah, we get a piece of that and it'll all go back to building this country of ours.

00:54:42

But this decision causes an absolute outrage and it actually culminates in the violent whiskey rebellion protests.

00:54:50

which I've never heard of. And, you know, I've been a big fan of whiskey for a good portion of my life.

00:54:57

But even after President Washington successfully calms the rebellion, the whiskey tax remains a sticking point.

00:55:03

Many people just don't pay it. And within a few years, the tax is repealed. So then later in the 1860s,

00:55:11

when the federal government needs cash to fund the Civil War, they decide to give the whiskey tax another shot.

00:55:18

This time, the feds put in even steeper taxes on whiskey. And as you might expect, people still don't want to pay them.

00:55:25

But instead of taking their fight to the streets, many distillers, especially in the South and in Appalachia,

00:55:31

they just take their whiskey stills underground. They figure it's the best way to avoid paying high taxes,

00:55:38

basically just to go off the government's radar. Yeah. And this is where the word moonshine comes from,

00:55:44

because people start making liquor by literal and metaphorical moonlight in secret

00:55:50

and anytime the eyes of the law can't see them. Oh, that makes sense. I love that.

00:55:55

Yeah. So after the Civil War ends, these heavy whiskey taxes don't go away entirely,

00:56:01

but they are significantly reduced. That said, many of the rural distillers who took their operations underground don't care.

00:56:09

By now, a localized culture around making illegal moonshine has taken root. And over 50 years later, when the prohibition starts,

00:56:19

and that goes from 1920 to 1933, that secretive culture around making moonshine kicks into overdrive.

00:56:26

It grows stronger, more secretive, in some cases, more lawless. And even though laws are passed to make it a crime,

00:56:33

bootleggers continue to sell their liquor, untaxed and unregulated directly to buyers.

00:56:39

And this is essentially how, like I said, how NASCAR starts is they start running moonshine,

00:56:46

which means you have to go do deliveries. You make a bunch and then you go deliver it.

00:56:50

But if the cops like are onto you and then chase you, it's also kind of the, like the underlying plot of the Dukes of Hazzard.

00:56:59

That whole thing of outrunning the cops and like driving a car that you have basically rigged

00:57:05

to make it so that you can outrun the cops. Okay. So by the time Marvin Sutton is born in 1946,

00:57:11

in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, generations of Sutton men have been learning the tricks

00:57:17

of the illegal whiskey trade. But the Suttons aren't big, scary bootleggers. They're a family devoted to their faith and to each other.

00:57:25

In fact, Marvin's daughter, Sky Sutton, who wrote about her father in the book, Daddy Moonshine,

00:57:31

describes his childhood home as, quote, full of lots of love and a lot of music too.

00:57:36

His mother played the fiddle, his father played spoons, Marvin and his sister danced.

00:57:41

he loved to dance. Just gives you a little background on what that family was like.

00:57:48

Yeah. And making moonshine was part of their lives as well. So technically doing it made them criminals,

00:57:55

but making moonshine is not something the Sutton's are ashamed of. In fact, Marvin's father would make enough money

00:58:02

off of the moonshine that he made to bankroll the construction of the community's Baptist church.

00:58:07

Hmm, okay. So they're taking all their profits and putting it back into the community,

00:58:13

which is what, you know, billionaires should be doing. The Baptist community though.

00:58:18

Oh, that's true. I don't know if there was a ton of other communities. I would love to actually know the history

00:58:25

of like Jews in Appalachia. Was it happening? Was there a temple anywhere? Yeah, good question.

00:58:32

Could it be possible? So Marvin's father teaches him everything he knows. Together they build stills,

00:58:37

they make their mash and they churn out very strong alcohol. Marvin would later say that, quote,

00:58:42

me and daddy made moonshine together for 30 years and never was caught. I swore when I was a little old kid, if I ever got big enough,

00:58:51

I'd make liquor and haul it. And I did. I actually went to the NASCAR Hall of Fame website

00:58:58

to get a little information on hauling moonshine and how that basically became NASCAR.

00:59:04

And so I'll just read you this chunk from that website that I thought was so good.

00:59:09

So they say on there, quote, In the first decade or so of NASCAR racing, the transportation of illegal liquor in the South was huge business, and a lot of the sport's early stars drove, owned, or built moonshine cars.

00:59:22

Junior Johnson was the best-known bootlaker in Wilkes County, North Carolina, a hotbed of the moonshine industry.

00:59:29

But of all the moonshiners who raced, Johnson was the most legendary. He knew the back roads of his native Wilkes County like the back of his hand and was an exceptionally skilled driver.

00:59:39

Just as importantly, Johnson was a brilliant mechanic who could milk every ounce of speed out of the Fords and Oldsmobiles

00:59:46

that he used in his whiskey runs. Johnson did a lot of things other haulers did back then.

00:59:52

He modify the engines of his cars to produce more power add heavy suspension components to safely carry the extra weight of all the liquor and remove all but the driver seat to maximize the room inside for mason jars filled with booze

01:00:08

Clever moonshiners would sometimes rig their cars to produce clouds of smoke or drop oil or nails from the rear of their cars

01:00:16

to thwart pursuing law enforcement officers. That's like, you think that's from James Bond?

01:00:21

Yeah. It's from fucking Appalachia, baby. Others installed steel plates in front of their radiators

01:00:28

To keep police from shooting holes in them And causing their engines to overheat and break down

01:00:32

Ever the innovator, Johnson studied aerodynamics by trial and error He learned that by removing the windshield wipers from his car

01:00:40

And taping up the openings around his headlights He could pick up 10 miles per hour in top speed

01:00:46

Enough to outrun his pursuers It's no coincidence that Junior Johnson was never caught on the road

01:00:52

with a load of moonshine. After all, he knew what would happen to him if he did get captured.

01:00:57

So he built the fastest cars in Wilkes County. And then it says, quote, moonshiners put more time, energy, thought,

01:01:03

and love into their cars than any racer ever will, Johnson once said. Lose on a track and you go home.

01:01:10

Lose with a load of whiskey and you go to jail. That's one little piece that is interesting.

01:01:15

But also there's a thing I found years ago on Tumblr and it was just a picture. And they're an invention, a moonshiner invention called cow shoes.

01:01:26

So basically, they attached cow hooves to a piece of metal and then attached that to the bottom of their shoes so that no one could track them.

01:01:37

If the cops were coming, they could run away and not get tracked. And if the cops were looking for them in the mountains, they wouldn't find them because they're looking at cow prints instead of men's shoe prints.

01:01:49

That makes total sense. Okay. Isn't that genius? Yeah. That's so smart. That's my favorite. Then that picture got put

01:01:57

into a paper in Florida in 1922. And then basically they weren't able to use that trick anymore.

01:02:03

But it's like that kind of thing where it's like, well, if you have to go quote unquote underground,

01:02:07

how creative you have to get, or you need to get to basically stay, stay that way.

01:02:13

Totally. Fascinating. So, okay. So we're getting back to Marvin Sutton, who didn't have the name

01:02:20

Popcorn. He's a moonshiner with his dad his whole life, but it's not until the early seventies that

01:02:26

he gets the nickname Popcorn and he gets it after violently attacking a popcorn vending machine that

01:02:32

had just eaten his money. He hit it with a pool cue until it broke. And so after that, everyone

01:02:37

called him Popcorn. Okay. That is how you get a nickname. It's like something like that.

01:02:43

And the fact that everyone called him that was kind of making fun of him. Yes. Like he got the name of the thing that bested him.

01:02:51

And that is like, it's like an insult kind of. It's a little bit, it's a light slam because it's like,

01:02:56

well, you must love popcorn if you're willing to like break a pull cue over a vending machine's head.

01:03:02

He basically is, he's known as a very, what some people would call colorful man,

01:03:08

which essentially means he's raunchy, he's rude, and he has a very rugged persona.

01:03:13

but his moonshine on the other hand is considered pristine some of the best ever made popcorn has

01:03:21

perfected his family's secret recipe and he's gotten the distilling process down to an exact

01:03:26

science he builds stills with all copper piping he uses the highest quality white corn for the mash

01:03:33

and he carefully seeks out the most remote and cleanest streams that he can find to ensure that

01:03:39

his liquor is made with the purest mountain water. So he's basically doing like,

01:03:44

what's that called these days? Like- Oh, like, what's it called? Bespoke? Yes. It's like high quality, bespoke, fancy ass shit,

01:03:54

but it's just like, it's popcorns moonshine. Yeah, yeah. The final product is smooth, sweet, and very strong.

01:04:01

Journalist David Kushner says that it, quote, tastes like sweet, buttery corn, but his infusions of pears, peaches, figs, and black cherries are what cement his greatness.

01:04:12

That sounds great. Yeah. He's like, he's doing some stuff with that. It's not just moonshine and like,

01:04:19

you know, it tastes like Windex and then you get fucked up. It's like, he's really making

01:04:24

wonderful, delicious, incredibly strong whiskey. And Maren made a note for me saying,

01:04:30

I'm not sure how potent popcorn's moonshine was back in the day. And potencies can

01:04:35

very widely between distillers and their batches. But moonshine at its strongest typically tops out

01:04:41

at around 180 proof. And compared to regular liquor like whiskey, vodka, those are all sold

01:04:49

at 80 proof. Good night. For real. It's like you what you need like a cup of it. Yeah. Yeah.

01:04:57

Which also is the kind of thing that's like, it's that kind of thing where it's like, yeah,

01:05:01

Because you don't, you're not going to take all that time to make a thing that then you

01:05:05

have to drink a ton of. It's not wine. Right, right. You're trying to like, you worked all day.

01:05:12

You worked in a fucking coal mine. You worked in the scariest, hardest job I think there might be.

01:05:18

You're going to come up out of that. You're going to want a little something that works quickly and like gets the job done.

01:05:24

A shot. A shot to clean you out a little bit. Yes. And then be like, wow, okay. Like now I can, you know, now my back doesn't hurt so fucking bad.

01:05:33

And I can beat a popcorn machine with a pool cue now. And if a popcorn machine starts shit with me, I'll win.

01:05:41

Making such excellent liquor. And by the way, a popcorn Sutton spells liquor L-I-K-K-E-R.

01:05:47

Nice. Love it. It's very labor intensive work. He has to lug around heavy equipment.

01:05:53

He digs into the earth. He has to build things with his hands It also dangerous There very little room for error in making moonshine If you build your still wrong it can explode

01:06:05

That's a huge issue and a huge threat always. And also a bad batch of moonshine can lead to lethal methanol poisoning.

01:06:14

On top of everything else, you know, it's illegal. So popcorn's risking jail time with every new batch he makes.

01:06:23

but as challenging as all that is, popcorn considers it his calling. He says, quote, I've dug ditches.

01:06:29

I've worked on construction. I've done everything. And there ain't nothing no harder than what I'm doing

01:06:34

because it's just in my blood, end quote. And I'm sorry, I don't want to do like a Southern,

01:06:40

you know, I'm not going to do a voice for popcorn. No, it's okay. But you can get the sense of this, you know,

01:06:46

this is a born and bred Appalachian man. So he's got an accent. I like that he called himself a little old kid.

01:06:55

When I was a little old kid. So Popcorn Sutton and his moonshine, you know, over the years, basically,

01:07:05

they become famous. He's famous. He's well known. And he will sell moonshine to just about anybody.

01:07:11

The only requirement for buying it is you have to track down popcorn himself. He sells moonshine out of his Eastern Tennessee home.

01:07:18

He sells it out of the junk shop that he runs in West North Carolina. and he also sells it out of the trunk of his car.

01:07:25

Buyers can even approach Popcorn on the street. According to David Kushner, quote,

01:07:29

if strangers seem trustworthy, Popcorn would take their cash, about $40 per gallon at its peak,

01:07:35

and tell them to pick up their moonshine from one of his secret drop boxes hidden in the woods,

01:07:40

either a baby casket or an old toilet. I'll take the baby casket. Those are the drop boxes.

01:07:49

Popcorn also starts dressing the part of the classic moonshiner. He sports a long beard.

01:07:54

He's got a floppy hat. He wears overalls over a long sleeve flannel shirt. To be very clear, Popcorn sticks out like a sore thumb

01:08:02

in the mountain towns that he frequents. And everything about him, including his dress and mannerisms

01:08:07

and his devotion to moonshine, might feel a little dated or like it's a costume.

01:08:12

But to locals, Popcorn is committed to keeping the mountain heritage, which feels like it's slipping away in the modern world,

01:08:20

alive and honored. Filmmaker Neil Hutcherson, who develops a close friendship with popcorn,

01:08:26

adds, quote, it's not a put on. Everything that popcorn is pulling from and putting into play

01:08:31

is from his legitimate cultural background. He just knows when to lean in and exaggerate it a

01:08:37

little bit. So he's just like, I'm the moonshine guy. It's who I am. It's who I grew up to be.

01:08:43

Yeah. So I'm going to play the part and like, you'll know it's me. nothing about popcorn sutton is understated he's an outrageous character with an undeniable folksy

01:08:53

charm but he's also a self-professed outlaw and not to be messed with this story is fucking crazy

01:08:59

his daughter regina tells reporters about a particularly harrowing childhood memory

01:09:04

one afternoon she was walking toward her house when she saw a man stumble out the front door

01:09:09

with a butcher knife stuck in his neck it's unclear what happened to this man or why but

01:09:15

Regina immediately suspected her father was responsible. And as a direct result of this

01:09:20

incident, Regina pursues a medical career and she ends up becoming a trauma surgeon in Alaska.

01:09:27

That's like the best way to make trauma, you know, livable. Yes. And we're kind of work for everybody else. Jesus fucking Christ. But I mean,

01:09:37

but that's the kind of thing where it's like, you can't do that kind of business and not be willing.

01:09:42

to, you know, that's the business. That's what comes with illegal stuff. Maybe every once in a while,

01:09:49

a butcher knife in the neck. It also didn't say how far out the knife was sticking.

01:09:53

What kind of knife it was. Could have been a smaller butcher. Okay. So there's all sorts of tales

01:10:00

about Popcorn's bad behavior. Occasionally it catches up to him. Skye Sutton, who's Regina's sister,

01:10:06

once wrote about her father crashing his car while being chased by the police. She says that Popcorn, quote,

01:10:12

crushed his car and his face. He laughed that it took him a whole week to pass all those front teeth.

01:10:19

Oh, God. He swallowed. He smashed his teeth and swallowed them. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, God.

01:10:27

That is... Yeah. That's a good image right there. You know what it is? It's hardcore.

01:10:31

It's hardcore. Yeah. It's not the only time Popcorn faces consequences for his actions.

01:10:38

In the 1970s, he's charged with his first alcohol-related offense selling untaxed liquor.

01:10:44

He's found guilty. He takes it as a rite of passage. I mean, his father and his father's father

01:10:50

had their own share of moonshine-related legal troubles. It's just part of doing business.

01:10:55

Then in 1981, Popcorn is arrested again. This time, it's felony charges. He's given a five-year prison sentence.

01:11:03

It's hard to track what these are about. There's no public information. He's found guilty again in 1985

01:11:09

and convicted on a felony assault. charge and he is sent back to prison for three years. So that's the thing that he, Popcorn

01:11:18

Sutton gets into a lot of fights. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of brawling, but a lot

01:11:23

of people think that the 1985 prison sentence is for that knife attack. Okay. So after Popcorn

01:11:31

serves a sentence, he goes right back to making moonshine. And actually this, his problems with

01:11:36

the law make him more popular to locals. He's gained a ton of respect across Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.

01:11:44

He loves the attention, which is why in the 90s, he agrees to build a moonshine still

01:11:50

for the Museum of Appalachia, which is just outside of Knoxville. For the museum's highly anticipated homecoming event, which thousands of people will attend,

01:12:00

will be there operating his still in person. Wow. But to keep things legal, he's explicitly instructed to run water through that still.

01:12:09

So on the night of the event, Popcorn changes his mind, and he makes actual moonshine right there in the museum.

01:12:18

And then he hands it out to the crowd in little cups. So he even gives a sample to Tennessee's then governor.

01:12:27

And the result is, as Maren puts it, light chaos. According to the Associated Press, complaints start swirling that popcorn is, quote,

01:12:37

getting everybody drunk. And apparently that included children. Oh, no. He was just handing

01:12:43

out little cups of moonshine because I'm sure he drank it as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. Probably part of it.

01:12:48

So he's like, yeah, everybody drink this moonshine. It's really fucking good. It's bespoke.

01:12:53

Yeah. He's reprimanded by museum staffers and he's told to toss his moonshine immediately.

01:12:58

but Popcorn, who, in my opinion, is rightfully offended by these instructions, refuses to comply.

01:13:04

Instead, he breaks down his still, packs up his things, and leaves the museum. Oy vey.

01:13:08

It's like, you guys want to party, then party. If not, don't go through this bullshit of pretending.

01:13:15

Not long after, in 1999, Popcorn and his then-girlfriend, Ernestine E. Upchurch,

01:13:21

co-write and self-publish Popcorn's autobiography, and it's called Me and My Liquor.

01:13:26

like K-K-E-R. Popcorn makes the copies himself. They're sold as spiral bound booklets

01:13:33

out of his North Carolina junk shop. And because of that, it's hard to track down a copy of this book today

01:13:38

without actually paying big bucks, which I think is, that's Maren's way of saying

01:13:42

I would have bought the book if it wasn't so expensive. Right. My exactly right credit card only goes so far.

01:13:48

Yeah, exactly. Giovanna's going to say no to those expenses. But the book has been described as,

01:13:54

quote, a rambling, obscene, and often hilarious account of Popcorn's life in the trade.

01:13:59

So it's a tell-all that he authored, which is great. That's smart. Popcorn's motivation behind Me and My Liquor seems to be entirely self-promotional.

01:14:09

He's advertising both his moonshine and his colorful persona, and people can't get enough of it.

01:14:14

He is still more or less a local celebrity, but then Popcorn catches the attention of a young

01:14:20

filmmaker named Neil Hutchison. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Neil starts filming Popcorn for a low-budget documentary called

01:14:28

This is the Last Damn Run of Liquor I'll Ever Make. And it candidly follows Popcorn as he makes moonshine

01:14:36

for what he swears is the very last time. But of course, it is not the last time Popcorn makes moonshine.

01:14:44

So this documentary becomes a cult classic. Popcorn's big oddball personality absolutely shines,

01:14:50

and he has incredible lines like, quote, I've made all kinds of liquor in my time.

01:14:55

I've made the fighting kind, the loving kind, the crying kind. I even made some one time and sold it to this couple.

01:15:02

They was happily married. The next damn week they was divorced. Like, damn. I don't think it was the moonshine, but who knows.

01:15:13

Eventually the documentary is recut and entitled The Last One and it goes on to win a regional Emmy award.

01:15:21

Oh. So, yes. So, Neil Hutchison is the real deal. Yeah. He's not just some dude with a camera.

01:15:28

With each screening, more and more Popcorn Sutton fans pop up. And by the 2000s, Popcorn's happily making a name off of being a bootlegger.

01:15:35

And it's clear that discretion is not something he entertains. He makes business cards that advertise his moonshining operations.

01:15:44

and over at the junk shop he sells vhs copies of the last one alongside his autobiography me and my

01:15:53

liquor basically he's walking around town with a big sign that says i'm breaking the law sure so

01:15:58

according to the new york times a close friend of popcorns named mark ramsey once told him quote

01:16:03

you can't be a movie star and make liquor too and popcorn replied by saying quote you can't sell it

01:16:09

if nobody knows you got it, which is a very good point. So the publicity is definitely paying off.

01:16:17

It's reported that tourists swing through eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina with the sole intention of finding popcorn and buying some of that famous moonshine Wow Basically starts feeling like he has some sort of legal invincibility in his little corner of

01:16:33

Appalachia. He's worked hard to achieve it. He's intentionally made inroads with leaders in the

01:16:40

local government. He has friends on the police force. He even sends police officers little gifts,

01:16:45

quote unquote, at Christmas. Little moonshine gifts. But as popcorn's illegal moonshining fame

01:16:50

grows, his ability to sidestep legal consequences becomes more difficult. And this all comes to a

01:16:56

head in 2007 when an indoor still on his Tennessee property explodes. Yeah. Luckily, no one's injured

01:17:04

by the blast, but it's serious enough that officers are dispatched to the scene. Popcorn

01:17:09

reportedly tries to shoo the police away, telling them, quote, don't tell nobody what you've seen

01:17:13

here. But it doesn't work. Popcorn's arrested and he winds up on probation. But even on probation,

01:17:23

he refuses to stop making and selling his liquor. And it's never been more popular. In the spring of

01:17:28

2008, just months after his arrest, three of Popcorn's buyers turn out to be undercover

01:17:34

federal agents. So they're kind of like enough with the messing around. You can't do, you know,

01:17:41

obviously. Because three of them? Yeah. It's like, really? It's like, because she's kind of

01:17:47

knocked on the door. I don't think like, I think a sting operation was really necessary.

01:17:51

Go to the junk shop. He's got business cards and an autobiography telling you everything he's done.

01:17:57

In separate transactions, he sells them nearly 200 gallons of moonshine. Whew. Yeah. So he's kind of, he's selling in bulk. He's like moonshine Costco.

01:18:08

Once again, he's arrested, and then his property gets raided. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel,

01:18:14

the federal agents find, quote, guns, bullets, three 1,000-gallon stills, copper line and more than 800 gallons of moonshine,

01:18:23

and hundreds of gallons of sour mash and other ingredients. So he's got 1,000-gallon stills.

01:18:30

This is no small... That's huge, yeah. Yeah. The sting operation was directed by an ATF agent

01:18:36

and Tennessee native named James Cavanaugh, who also worked on the Unibomber investigation

01:18:42

and Waco. Okay, those seem way more important to me than a fucking moonshiner. Agreed.

01:18:51

You know? Agreed. You think he was bummed that he was like, do you see what I've done?

01:18:57

I've done these amazing things. Yes, the accomplishments. And also it's like, I understand,

01:19:03

but this is like, this is a crime of no paperwork. is what it feels like to me. This is like that kind of thing

01:19:09

where like all the pot dealers that are still sitting in prison. Right. Like every, you know,

01:19:15

Los Angeles is covered in Apple store level pot stores now. Yeah. And where it's just like,

01:19:21

oh, this is just like, it's basically you didn't have the money to get legit. Right.

01:19:26

And basically pay for all the stuff to go through to basically legitimize this business.

01:19:31

Right. And you could have and maybe you should have because you're so good at it.

01:19:34

Yeah. Yeah. So Popcorn is indicted on federal charges. But he also is like, you know, he basically was like,

01:19:43

you could indict me on federal charges. That's like, that's how he lived his life.

01:19:47

That's what, that was the quote underneath his name on his business card. He shows up to court wearing his signature overalls.

01:19:54

And even though the charges against him are serious, Popcorn reportedly doesn't think he's going to have to do any prison time.

01:20:00

his health he's in his uh early 60s but his health is starting to fail after the federal raid he goes

01:20:08

through a serious mental health crisis and also simultaneously like right in that same time he was

01:20:16

diagnosed with cancer right so like then the raid happened and he basically kind of lost it because

01:20:20

it was like everything's going to shit right essentially he believes he'll be able to carry

01:20:25

out any sentence given to him from home, but the judge in this case shows little mercy and popcorn

01:20:31

is given an 18 month prison sentence. Yeah. So now it's early 2009. Several weeks are passing

01:20:39

between popcorn sentencing and the date he has to report to prison. He spends his time in his

01:20:45

Tennessee home trying to figure out how he can avoid avoid incarceration It a low point in but it also ironically the peak of his fame News that Popcorn Sutton the wiry foul bootlegger

01:20:57

is going to federal prison, drums up a lot of publicity. And for many, Popcorn is a throwback

01:21:03

to old school outlaws who found themselves on the wrong end of a battle with the federal government.

01:21:08

So he's basically become a modern day folk hero. Right. In early March, filmmaker Neil Hutchison

01:21:14

talks with Popcorn on the phone and Popcorn, despite the circumstances, is his normal, colorful self.

01:21:21

But one thing stands out to Neil. Popcorn makes a point to thank his friend for all the time they spent together.

01:21:27

And then in typical Popcorn fashion, he starts complaining about the many admirers

01:21:31

who've been calling him a hero and calling his house nonstop. Neil later says, quote,

01:21:38

Popcorn didn't like to be called a hero because he was an outlaw and that was his identity.

01:21:42

When people kept calling him and saying, I'm pulling for you, you're my hero or whatever,

01:21:46

He said, the next time someone says that, I'm going to say fuck you and slam the phone down.

01:21:51

But Popcorn is receptive to some admirers. Tennessee native Johnny Knoxville of jackass fame travels to Popcorn's house to shoot some footage with him and raise publicity around his case.

01:22:05

And you can actually go see that shoot on YouTube. Wow. It's a very silly interview, but it does take a serious turn when Popcorn talks about going to prison.

01:22:14

He tells Johnny Knoxville, quote, I hope and pray they don't send me off. I ain't got much time the way it is.

01:22:20

I'm just about a dead man now. Whoa. So more time passes. And then Popcorn's visited by a motocross racer named Jamie Grosser,

01:22:29

who is a big fan of Popcorns. The two men wind up talking for hours. Popcorn shares one of his biggest fears, saying, quote,

01:22:37

I don't want Moonshine to die with me. So before their meeting ends, Popcorn offers to sell Jamie his secret recipe

01:22:44

with the hopes that Jamie can find a way to keep it going, keep it in production.

01:22:50

Jamie accepts Popcorn's offer and the two men make a deal. But then on March 16th, 2009,

01:22:56

just four days before he's supposed to report to prison, Marvin Popcorn Sutton is found dead at his Tennessee home

01:23:03

of an apparent suicide. He's only 62 years old. Wow. When Neil Hutchison hears the news,

01:23:10

he immediately thinks back to the last phone conversation he had with Popcorn and says,

01:23:15

quote, after the shock, it was sort of like, oh, right. He was calling all his friends and saying goodbye.

01:23:20

Oh, my God. Yeah. Popcorn leaves behind a huge, complicated legacy. To many, he's an anti-establishment hero.

01:23:29

To others, he's a cocky criminal. Some consider him the real deal when it comes to moonshiners.

01:23:34

Others say he's a marketing genius. and many people, especially in Southern Appalachia,

01:23:39

view him as a keeper of the region's spirit, tradition, and individualism. It's unclear if Popcorn had any inkling

01:23:46

that his story would resonate with so many people. Neil Hutchison once told Smoky Mountain News that,

01:23:52

quote, he always kind of banked on the fact that people couldn't get enough of him,

01:23:56

but I think he was probably very surprised at the intensity with which people grabbed onto him.

01:24:01

In Tennessee and North Carolina, distilling any type of liquor without permits is still illegal,

01:24:07

but in the years since Popcorn's death, micro distilleries with proper licensing are allowed in both states.

01:24:15

Ironically, because of the deal he made with Jamie Grosser, Popcorn's recipe is now bottled and sold in stores across the country,

01:24:23

and the name on the bottle is simply Popcorn Sutton. Wow. Wow. Now, a lot of diehards don't think it's possible to legally sell moonshine

01:24:33

because to make it real, it has to be illegally made. Right. But it's pretty great to know that you can buy a version of Popcorn Sutton's moonshine out there.

01:24:44

Popcorn Sutton's daughter, Skye, said, quote, I think that over-the-counter moonshine and mountain-made liquor are two different beasts.

01:24:52

The over-the-counter kind now has its place on the shelves of liquor stores. the mountain-made kind is still elusive,

01:24:58

mysterious, and much stronger. That said, there might never... I wonder if this is Maren's accent coming through.

01:25:07

That said, there might never been a moonshine more sought after. Oh, shit. I think it a typo but maybe she just got into it Yeah There might never been a moonshine more sought after than the liquor popcorn Sutton distilled himself He once put it this way quote

01:25:24

I can brag about one thing, making liquor. They ain't no damn body that can beat me making liquor.

01:25:31

End quote. And this last part, I'm just going to read you. It is a lift from the article from thesmokies.com

01:25:40

by Morgan Overholtz. And it says this, quote, As only a legend would be, Popcorn Sutton was actually buried twice.

01:25:49

Originally, he was buried in an isolated plot in western North Carolina near the graves of his parents.

01:25:54

Reports vary on why he was exhumed and reburied. Either way, months later, his wife Pam held a large public memorial service, which Hank Williams Jr. famously attended.

01:26:05

Whoa. Right. Sutton's exhumed body was transported via horse-drawn carriage to his property in Parrotsville, Tennessee,

01:26:13

where he remains today. Beside his grave is a marker that reads, Popcorn Said, Fuck You.

01:26:20

And that is the story of legendary Southern Appalachian moonshiner, Marvin Popcorn Sutton.

01:26:28

Wow. His grave stone says, Popcorn Said, Fuck You. You know I respect that so much.

01:26:36

I mean, that right there, like, it was at the top of the story. And I'm like, I need to save that for the end

01:26:42

because it kind of justifies the entire thing. It's like the popcorn Sutton in us all,

01:26:48

which is that just free spirit, fuck you attitude. Oh my God. It's my favorite. I love it.

01:26:56

Right? Great job. Great story. Thank you. Great job, Maren. Because, you know, hometown hero.

01:27:02

She really put her heart into that one. Love it. Wow. Yeah. And with that, we send you off into the world with the spirit of Popcorn Sutton.

01:27:11

That's right. Tell someone to fuck off today. Speed. Don't get caught by the cops.

01:27:16

Yeah. Drink a little liquor. L-I-K-K-E-R. Yeah. Wear overalls and a floppy hat if you feel like it.

01:27:26

And of course, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

01:27:36

This has been an Exactly Right production. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.

01:27:47

This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Sarah Blair Jenkins.

01:27:54

Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.

01:28:04

Goodbye. We'll be right back. And see just how stress-free vacation planning should be.

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Goodbye.

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgi

376 - That's a Good Bean!

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