233 - Free Range Children | My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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This is exactly right. Bro, from the show last night to this drive, why is it never chill?

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Own the dream. Hello. And welcome to My Favorite Murder, where we talk about true crime exactly how you want us to.

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That's right. And the exact cadence and speech pattern as if we're human and slow and fast.

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Slow. A lot of pauses like this make it seem important. It's basically ASMR. Yeah. Hey, hi.

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Hi. Are you trying to fall asleep right now? Do you like the sound of zippers? Do you like zipper? Oh, zippers. Is that a thing?

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I don't know. The first. Then I just start talking so loud. The first time I saw an ASMR video, it was something like that.

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It was a very specific sound where I was like, this is for one person, maybe four.

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And it was just like, you know, it was like titled like plastic ski jacket zipper or something like that.

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Like something someone has always loved but never even realized it was a thing they loved.

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You know, there's like, I saw recently there's hair brushing videos with just the sound of hair being brushed.

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Oh, the audio of it. The audio for ASMR of hair being brushed. That's someone's thing.

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See, I might have the opposite of whatever the fetish is for hair brushing sounds because there's nothing that bothers me more.

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And this is very like when you're the first year living out of your parents' house when you're like, I'm living with the girls and we're living it up.

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Oh, it's the best. And there's always some roommate that will get out of the shower with wet hair and then brush her hair violently like in front of the TV.

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Oh, yeah. That's always driven me. Those kind of girls are like just just like pulling their own hair out, just like ripping through their hair with the tangles.

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Yeah. Just doing it really fast. You could tell they had they had the kind of mom or sisters that was like, too bad.

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Yeah. Suck it up. You have to get your hair brushed. Oh, my God. My mom used to make us cry by French braiding our hair.

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yeah because she pulled it so it was so tight and she'd yank it not on purpose but it's like

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maybe a little maybe a little maybe Janet was getting back at her it it does feel so good

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though I can french braid hair I know I've been meaning to get you to french braid a hair my hair

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it's been like absolutely do it I don't know why it's never happened like on an on tour or something

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I guess because we don't roller skate that much in 1984 how weird would it be You're like, we're going to go down to the Applebee's two blocks down.

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Will you French braid my hair first? You know what I just realized? Sometimes when I can't sleep, if I need like a soothing thought, I'll think of myself French braiding hair.

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Like just a long fucking French braid. That's my ASMR in my brain. French braiding.

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I love it. But it's the visual or the audio as well. The visual and then the feel of French braiding is like so soothing.

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Isn't it? Yes. So, yeah, as we said, this is true crime. So good. We're here to tell you about things that sound, ways that people have made sounds work for them.

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Whether it's this podcast, the old can opener ASMR. Can opener? What is that? I love the sound of Bumblebee tuna being opened.

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Being opened by an electric can opener from 1978. Listen, Chicken of the Sea is kind of my thing.

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I like the sound of my mom lighting a match and touching it to the end of a Benson and Hedges lights 100 at the gas station with the windows rolled up in the car.

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Oh, God. Do you know what I did the other night? I fucking smoked a cigarette for the first time in probably five years.

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Out of what? Boredom? No, I just was like kind of going crazy. I was having it just I was having a lot of anxiety about what happening indoors right now And which is nothing And the thought of smoking a cigarette like that thing of like it escape

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You get to walk out of a fucking party or bar or room or quarantine and fucking have a contemplative cigarette.

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And I don't fucking I'm not all for it. Smoking super bad for you and it'll kill you and all this shit.

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But I had a cigar, a Winston, and it was fucking, it was excellent. I thought I'd get nauseous, you know.

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Did you find that pack of Winstons under the floor mats of an old Nova that was parked in front of your house?

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No, but I did find a brat for sale. You know those four? A Subaru brat? A Subaru brat for sale, like a 1970-something.

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What color? It's silver, and I want it so bad. Holy shit. Okay, I have to tell my friend Sam Moen.

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Did I tell you about this? my friend Sam Owen was doing this thing on Twitter where he was posting pictures when he saw a Subaru brat.

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And I loved it. And it was like my favorite. And then I just started rip it. I just started doing it myself.

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I was like, oh, wait, the reason you love this is because it's Sam's idea. You're like, this is the best idea I've ever fucking had.

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This is the fucking that happens all the time to me on Twitter where I love something and be like all about it.

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And then two months later, I'm like, this is my original idea that it's never. It's so embarrassing.

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You have to assume that you never have ever once had an original idea. None of us have.

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For anything. We're ripping off terrible sitcoms we stared at as children. Yeah, this podcast is because we both were super into the last podcast on the left, to give them credit.

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It's like... We just cut up old scripts from the last podcast on the left and put them in a fishbowl and just pull out lines.

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So anyways, that's Marcus Parks. I'm Henry Zebrowski. No, I want to be Henry. um Elvis has been Kissel go okay what do you have for me I have for you your birthday present that's

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a month late those are the best kind I did not expect it it's um it was took a really long time

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in the mail and then I was like forget it it's too late and it's like I went past the like cute

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funny quarantine window and into the rude window um and then I was like but then I was like well

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what am I gonna do save it for Christmas God knows what could happen between then and now

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So here we'll do a Zoom presentation of your birthday present. Okay. Should we just say what happened?

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This prop here. Yes, definitely say what happened. Everyone doesn't know, but we just had a fiasco happen where we were recording.

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And it's been like 45 minutes of me trying to figure out why my fucking internet was down.

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And then I just had to come to the office instead to use the internet here. I haven't been out of the house in six fucking months.

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So this is very odd. I'm drinking the end of Paul Holes' Glenn Levitt because that was very stressful.

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Wait, you truly have not gone anywhere? No, we don't go anywhere. Yes, that's amazing.

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We don't go anywhere. We don't even go. We get Instacart delivered. Yeah, good. Yeah.

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You're the safest. This feels very weird and I'm digging it. Okay. Trip out. Well, while you were gone, Stephen and I, we did a mini-sode within the maxi-sode that was just a Karen and Stephen chit-chat.

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Awesome. We're going to put that on the fan cult. It's the most boring conversation of us being like, anyway.

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I wonder where she is. Is she okay? But basically, I was in the middle of giving you a belated birthday present.

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You were. It was such a bummer. Like, paused, right, as you're reaching your hand in.

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And the funniest part was it paused with you and your expression was my Internet's going out.

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So you look like, oh, and I was like, look, your birthday present. And you're just like, oh, I thought you were vibing me out.

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I was like, hey, fucking better late than never. And then Stephen goes, I think she's frozen.

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Oh, no, I love it. Oh, my God. OK, so I'm going to open your present at you. I love it.

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So you can see this gift bag is definitely recycled. Gorgeous gift bag. It's real good.

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And then I actually took the time to put paper in it and stuff. I will drop this off at your house.

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Okay, Stephen, are you recording this? Can you video this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you ready for this fucking thing?

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Yeah. What is that? I can't see. I can't see it. Hold it down. Close it. Oh, my God.

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Is that a book about cats? It's a fucking Tashan book. And this guy was this super famous cat photographer from 1942.

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Or maybe it's all the most favorite. Maybe it's not just one guy. It's all the best cat pictures.

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I am obsessed with it. Walter Chandoja is the name on it. This is everything I've ever wanted.

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Thank you so much. It's really heavy because it's a tashin book. Yeah. You know, I like books that you can put out and make people think you're artsy and smart.

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like in your living room. So this is perfect. Yes. And Tashin is the best. Tashin is number one,

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especially if you're looking for a gift. This is so pluggy, but I swear it's just a recommendation.

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It's something I believe in. Go to the Tashin website. They're big, fancy coffee table books.

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And I swear to God, it's the best present you would never buy for yourself. And there's like a whole book

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about like vintage boobs, like vintage porn and stuff. Thank you. I love it. Now look at this shit.

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Because of that gift bag, I now have gold sparkles all over the front of my shirt. Perfect.

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We both win. And then Stephen, in all of this, we discovered Stephen... Yeah, I also got you a belated birthday present

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too. Oh! What is it? Should I open it for you? Yeah! I love this! Opening presents for more other people She wrapped it all but So this one is one that i picked out presents for joe or jet

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let's do this every week you guys have to get me something every week no what i thought you

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switch it what's that it's a vintage cooking for two i almost bought that exact book the other day

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that's so good it's just like the cooking these cookbooks from the like late 70s 80s just have

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the most insane it's like cheese and like yes pineapple broccoli it's like broccoli cheese with

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sliced deli ham wrapped around it with some kind of like cherries as a garnish marshy margino

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cherries you guys like know me it's almost like we spent five years talking to each other about

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our most intimate bucket there's more recording our conversations and editing this conversation

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it's oh my god brenda found this it's a gourmet magazine from uh your birth year and uh month

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oh she's a good gift giver steven brenda knows her shit and it's just like these old like again

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it's like there's no food on it it's just uh like a temple or something like that gourmet was like

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the vanity fair of food magazines if i may be so bold oh are you crying look at it oh she's doing

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it oh my god these are the most thoughtful gifts thank you so much and honestly when i it's always

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been like i love getting books for a gift it's like i feel like it's a very meaningful thing

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that people think you're smart and shit and thank you mine's just pictures there's there's no words

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about cats but it's cats but it's cats that's smart i mean mine are mostly pictures too so

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happy birthday happy belated thank you covid birthdays you get to stretch it out for as long

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as you want yeah um i'm on i'm so touched thank you both so much okay i'm next week everyone so

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karen's next week what did vince vince got you um a cameo video from kevin um nash the wrestler

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kevin nash because if you tell vince that you have a favorite wrestler then for the rest of your life

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he's going to always like send you gifts or news updates or cameos for your birthday with that.

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And I didn't realize, like, first of all, it was fun to be able to pick a favorite wrestler.

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And the reason I pick Kevin Nash is because he's a very large man. He's gorgeous.

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He's a fascinating individual. But he also co-starred on an episode of Detroiters on a couple episodes, I think,

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playing Tim Robinson's father. And he was so funny and so good. And that's I learned about him backwards from the Detroiters first.

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And then Vince was like, that's Kevin Nash. And also Magic Mike, of course. Right.

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Although he didn't. I mean, he was like an amazing body in that. But he never I never felt like he got the character development he deserved.

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No, he's a body. He's a body. He's a wrestler. He called me. He called me sweetheart in my cameo.

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He's very exciting. OK, so next week is Karen. Yeah. And then, Stephen, you can go the following week.

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What if and also what if this is the rule? It's just it's called COVID random quarantine gifts to keep ourselves going.

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But if like so we just gave you books accidentally. But now this week, you can meet anything but books like you check off the column.

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OK, so that after we do this for like six months, it's going to have to start getting real obscure.

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Pack of cigarettes for Karen. next week. We're basically stealing Bridger Weinger's

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podcast. Shit! Well, this is a good segue. This is a great segue. Perfect segue.

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Exactly right corner. See, we were just talking about stealing, and we did it right

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in front, before our very eyes. Bridger, don't be mad, please. We got Bridger, we got

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last podcast on the left. Oh my god, that's fucking hilarious. Let's, since this is a

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great segue, let's go into Well, I will start with Bridger with I Said No Gifts because, as you know, last week we posted a live show.

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Almost had to post one this week. Because of fucking Wi-Fi. Get out your blessings if we're back.

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But so this week, Sashir Zamata is on I Said No Gifts with Bridger Weininger. And she's hilarious and brilliant.

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And you've seen her on lots of things. And she is a podcast star herself. I don't want to upstage her.

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But last week, I think it is a notable to mention that Bridger, as his guest, had on one of the great actors of our time, Emma Thompson, live from the UK.

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Tell everyone how that happened. It's just bananas. It's not bananas. It's I said no gifts.

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It's I said no gifts. it's the fall line apparently she listened to the episode of I said

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no gifts with Janelle James and then Emma and her daughter sent emails to Bridger

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and Janelle saying like we're big fans call us if you don't believe us so he called

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Janelle did Janelle's like I don't give a shit I'm gonna call and then they all found out it was

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real and not a prank and not you know some some weirdo trolling them and emma freaking thompson is yeah on was like i'll do your

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podcast it's amazing delightful i mean like what a joy what an exciting uh beautiful thing when

00:17:48

when we heard about that we were freaking out um because we're such huge fans another um another

00:17:54

podcast you can listen to on that on the exactly right network so why don you tell us who on the podcast this week Well this week it Matt Apodaca who an Earwolf producer and truly one of the sweetest sweethearts and talked about his two cats Hurley and Sawyer named after the Lost characters

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And it was just like a feel good time just talking about. Yeah, just talking about, you know, cuddling cats and all that good stuff.

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So that's what the world needs right now. All right. It's true. So check out the podcast as well.

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and there's a bunch of other if you look up exactly right network on iTunes, it'll show you all the podcasts we have on our network.

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And we are so close to having more. We just, you know, had some contracts signed and I can't wait to announce those coming up soon.

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Yeah. But not right now. Sorry. No, but very soon. Yeah. And then I guess while we're on the we're talking about it, we can talk about.

00:18:47

Well, the fan call. We'll put this put the unwrapping video up on the fan call. Maybe.

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Yeah. Nice. Okay. And then we also are putting up every week, we're now recording a video of us, of Stephen pitching the titles for the episode that he has been writing down the whole episode. And so we're posting that. It's always really funny. And then we also have new merch up on myfavoritemurder.com in the store. One of them we are doing, we're so excited about this, this beautiful design that Murderino Dana Marie Hosler, who's this incredible artist, aka, she's at MightyPigeon underscore art on Instagram.

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It's an we're all indoor cats now shirt. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. It's my three cats.

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So how can I not love it? Of course. But then, yeah, it's just the coolest design.

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So check that out. It's such a good design. We were so excited that she wanted to make shirts with us.

00:19:38

So definitely support your fellow Murderino artists. And I'm very thrilled. I think we may have hinted at this, but one other new we've got a bunch of new merch up.

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So if you feel like it and you're in that place, you can go look at it. The puzzle.

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The puzzle. People are sending pictures of it finished. There are those who can.

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And so they will and do and did. I started yelling at George about how it isn't that hard.

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And that I was lecturing her about how I George. Nora and I once did a puzzle that was just all the same gumballs over and over.

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It was like a huge thing. No. No. And then her internet went out because she was tired of me yelling at her.

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But I'm very excited because, you know, we have had the sweatpants in the store.

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Fuck you. I'm married. Right. Well, now we're following that up with the lounge set.

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And it fucking says, fuck you. I'm divorced. Go get them. Are you divorced? Are you proud?

00:20:41

Is your friend getting divorced? And you want to make her laugh? Does someone cry a lot and need some sweats to make her feel like she's not alone?

00:20:49

Get those fuck you, I'm divorced sweats. They're available now. Are you getting divorced and you can't wear your fuck you, I'm married sweats anymore?

00:20:57

Throw those fuckers out. No, give them to fucking give them to Goodwill. Are you getting divorced and this is how you'd like to let your significant other know that it's over?

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Put on those fucking fuck you, I'm divorced sweats and let them answer their own questions.

00:21:11

The next ones we have to make are, fuck you, I'm married again, sweatpants. Fuck you, I'm remarried.

00:21:17

Fuck you, I'm remarried. Yeah. Fuck you, this is my second. Well, I was going to say husband, but that leaves a bunch of people out.

00:21:24

Okay. What else do we have? What do you want to talk about? I'm tired of business and I want to talk about our conversational things.

00:21:32

Let's do it. I got some topics. Now that your birthday party's over. It was fun.

00:21:37

It's just a couple things. I couldn't figure out Steve and I were trying this is what was happening while you were gone

00:21:45

running around trying to get your internet chilling casually chilling Steve and I were trying to figure this out because

00:21:51

I got a bunch of tweets and the first one I got was from Kristen and she wrote hi Karen Kilgariff a fellow murderino

00:21:58

in the indie murderino group who doesn't have Twitter reminded me to remind you to put your trash out tonight

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so but I don't think we talked about it on my favorite murder I think Chris Fairbanks and I talked about it on do you need

00:22:10

a ride that I keep forgetting to put my garbage out. Yeah, because I it's a boy's chore. And I'm

00:22:15

mad that I have to do it for myself. Absolutely. So I keep forgetting and then the then the garb

00:22:21

the garbage gets piled up. And then the dogs go over and they're like, Are you not home? We're

00:22:26

going to go like, shopping through the garbage. And it's a nightmare. And so now people have taken

00:22:33

it upon themselves to remind me I love that to put my garbage out. It's this sweet. It made me

00:22:38

laughed so hard it was just like i this is your life now this is your life now yes i'm having

00:22:45

conversations i can't remember yeah about bullshit that we're just trying to like fill the air

00:22:51

and then people are like hey now we're in your brain the best is when we put up a live episode

00:22:57

and people start like sending you a quote that you said and you're like don't have any fucking clue

00:23:02

who said that what it was said about when it was said you're just right you're just fucking and it's

00:23:08

Oh, that's funny. Don't bring a fucking don't bring a broom to a knife fight or something.

00:23:13

That's funny. But I don't remember any of that. I know. Sometimes it triggers a memory.

00:23:18

But for for the most part, the idea that we did all those shows and were on the road.

00:23:26

It's just such it feels like a lifetime ago. And it was only a couple months ago.

00:23:32

I've been really enjoying Karen Kilgare gifs on Twitter. Oh, shmoo. the hard work she does lovely schmoo she's uh she put up karen kilgare gifs and it's

00:23:42

very funny yeah and there's also uh my favorite murder out of context my favorite murder quotes out of context which i find it's almost i get why my mom is mad about

00:23:54

this podcast when i read this quote yeah we say some fucked up shit yeah We really do. It's great.

00:24:01

Who doesn't these days? I mean, we're not alone anymore. That's what's nice. Oh, speaking of, can I say real quick?

00:24:08

Nick Terry put out a new MFM animated video about from the what's her face? Oh, Typhoid Mary episode.

00:24:20

That's always a fucking joy to watch. It's so lovely. Yeah, he's it's so funny. You can and I, of course, have watched those so many times.

00:24:29

there's so many tiny jokes in it. It's just so well done. It's so well done. So thank you, Nick Terry, for your constant work.

00:24:41

And also I was looking because I was watching a bunch of them on YouTube and then they had his merch underneath.

00:24:48

Nick Terry makes merch of scenes and characters from those animated shorts. So if you love the animated shorts,

00:24:57

you can get like a t-shirt of a ballerina hippo yeah i didn't know that and i just started looking

00:25:02

i was like oh my god i did see the one my the one patty riley wears that has all of the characters

00:25:07

on like the lineup thing but he's got a bunch of really good shirts so so buy some support nick

00:25:12

terry as well uh oh so this just made me laugh because we just recently re-watched the second

00:25:21

season of succession oh yeah which is just i gotta rewatch that it's so good it's so it's it like a

00:25:29

good nick terry uh animated short delivers it there's it's just so good and um all the emmy

00:25:36

nominations just came out and so uh i knew that um nicholas braun was nominated and i knew that

00:25:44

cousin greg was nominated which is the funniest yes and he i mean who deserves that more than

00:25:50

But I want like actual cousin Greg to win that, you know, like, yeah, I'm sure the actor's fine and great. And I'm happy for him. He's so good as cousin Greg.

00:26:03

It's so enjoyable. So I sprinkles. I started thinking because I was like, I started getting mad thinking, assuming for reasons I can't explain because it makes no sense that Karen Culkin wasn't nominated.

00:26:17

I don't know. I'd never even looked. But I kind of had this thing of like, how dare they?

00:26:22

He's so good that people aren't realizing that he's acting, which is very much how Cousin Greg is, too, where it's like, that's not the person that actor is.

00:26:30

But it's so realistic and amazing. And it's such a I'm sorry to say it, a tour de force performance.

00:26:36

So I look I look up to be like, how many like who did get nominated and how many whatever.

00:26:42

And this is the subject line or the the headline that comes up. It's an Entertainment Weekly article that came out like two days ago that says Kieran Culkin says he'll punch Nicholas Braun in the balls of Succession co-star beats him for an Emmy.

00:26:56

So he is nominated. So congratulations, Kieran Culkin. That's something the character would say.

00:27:02

That's something his character would say. maybe you shouldn't get it because it's just who he is oh my god i wonder if it's the best i love it

00:27:11

also um love that guy watchmen got nominated for a bunch of shit which is awesome make sure to watch

00:27:17

it's so good oh speaking of glitter on your shirt and tv shows first of all so i've been watching

00:27:24

i'll be gone in the dark every week we watch it every sunday night before perry mason it is so

00:27:29

fucking good. It is heartbreaking and heart wrenching and scary. And like, I can tell Vince

00:27:36

is a little freaked out watching it because it's, it's so true to the book, which kept me up for

00:27:41

fucking months. You know, especially before he was caught. First of all, I want to say that you look

00:27:46

great in purple. Thank you. This week, you were in a really bright purple shirt blouse looks great

00:27:54

on you. You should do purple in your life. Yeah, I got my colors done in sixth grade. My mom,

00:28:00

my Aunt Kathleen, Aunt Liza was there. Are you a fall? My Aunt Jo. I'm a spring. I'm a spring winter because I dye my hair. So that actually that

00:28:11

color magenta, which I think I got it like the gap outlet or something. Oh, I didn't even know it was yours because like it's so not your thing.

00:28:18

Dude, my shirt and I did my hair and makeup. I was like, this is a disaster waiting to happen.

00:28:24

other fucking thing i was on where thank you people have been very nice it's very nice what's

00:28:31

very sweet is several of my friends and and my friends that are listeners who i don't know

00:28:37

have said when they see me in it and then they use that leonardo dicaprio um gif um from uh

00:28:45

once upon a time in hollywood where he's drinking a beer and pointing at the tv have you ever seen

00:28:50

that give no that's cute like he's like i love it it's so good and also paul holes i have to say

00:28:56

it's like classic paul holes why we all fell in love with him way back like it's got this like

00:29:02

he's so he is so effusive and so like you can just tell he's kind by listening to him talk and

00:29:11

cares and it's the whole show is just fuck it's it's one of the best true crime shows i've ever

00:29:16

watched for sure and it's heartbreaking i sent pat and oswald to like a fucking post show like

00:29:24

sad instagram message because it's just it pulls at your heartstrings about michelle too it's just

00:29:30

really beautiful and so yeah such a tough tough thing yeah billy and i have been talking about

00:29:36

where he's like have you watched it yet have you watched it because and then i'm just like i need

00:29:40

a year I think I just need distance and like not yeah whatever but it's I know it's another one of

00:29:48

those things where just like yeah I don't know if I want to sit down and like I know feel every

00:29:52

fucking awful feeling but yeah I so so glad it turned out great and I not surprised and Adrienne actually said the exact same thing She said when Paul Holes talks about Michelle and gets choked up it is one of the most

00:30:05

lovely and touching and heart-wrenching things. She said the exact same thing. I love it.

00:30:12

It's so nice. And it's so cool that they got such an unbelievably talented director.

00:30:20

That whole project. It's incredible. but I totally understand why you guys can't watch it I didn't know her personally

00:30:28

and I know you did so that was that just seems so hard how about the Madeline McCann updates

00:30:36

we're getting what I haven't gotten any oh they what you know about the guy in jail right

00:30:43

the German dude oh was that the guy that they linked the cars yeah but it's getting deeper

00:30:49

and I think they're about to find They just found a like a not a crawl space, but like almost like a basement cell or cellar space where he used to live that had been left over from some other tenants.

00:31:03

And like, I think they're about to find proof that because I think he's. Yeah, because he's that's the guy that lived on that property of that resort.

00:31:14

Right. I don't know if he lived there or near it, but he definitely it almost seems like he was in cahoots with someone who was letting who worked there.

00:31:21

and this is all fucking uh what's it called personal opinion conjecture personal opinion

00:31:27

that let him know when people were not in their room so he could steal shit not like it wasn't for

00:31:34

that reason to take a child but it seems like that was kind of his mo is is breaking into people's

00:31:41

you know holiday ors rooms and and stealing stuff and so i i totally think it's him and i think

00:31:48

they're about to find something big shit i have to keep my yeah i should set my some google alerts

00:31:54

because i did not i remember reading that article a little while ago but that could have been 14

00:31:59

years ago it could have been i could have dreamed it and it was from last night i have no clue

00:32:04

what's happening anymore yeah yeah yeah i get that i don't know i get that but oh i just want

00:32:09

to talk for a second about perry mason this week yeah how which yeah it's like i don't want it to

00:32:17

end and it's clearly like about to end and everyone is talking on twitter about somebody did a like a

00:32:25

fan post kind of like a loving post about how amazing those title cards are like how beautifully

00:32:30

designed the graphics are so beautiful and then so i was like yeah they they're they're firing an

00:32:37

all eight over there who whatever that team was that they put it all together they're nailing it

00:32:41

And then as that episode ended, and I know spoilers, but just in case, if you're some kind of, you know, reactive asshole, spoiler alert, which is nothing, but the guy steps into the doorway.

00:32:56

Remember at the very end when he was like, trying to see if he could find the fourth, I think it's the fourth man, but either way, the guy steps into the doorway.

00:33:04

And I don't see it's almost 10pm at that point. when we watch it. I've already watched I'll Be Gone in the Dark. So I'm emotionally drained and

00:33:13

a couple cans of wine in. Yes, no, true. And it's like that's it's the Sunday night pile up that

00:33:19

used to happen with Game of Thrones. There was one night where like everything was on on Sunday night.

00:33:24

And I can only handle like those two shows. I'll Be Gone in the Dark and Perry Mason are so intense

00:33:29

and dark that like I shouldn't be watching them side by side. But yeah, yeah, no, definitely not

00:33:35

at the same time no that's for sure right um but yeah what i was going to say is just that very

00:33:40

that very last shot the guy steps in the doorway and then you see he has a gun it's it's not a

00:33:45

spoiler but like whatever if you haven't seen it but as that happens this horn like this soundtrack

00:33:53

kicks in and it's basically the outro music like a jazzy horn it's like yeah it's like a trumpet

00:33:58

but it scared the fuck out of the way they did it was so perfect where i was like i think i'm

00:34:03

having a panic attack and it's not i don't usually is this in my house there's something in my house

00:34:09

right now am i being held it was so effective and then i listened to the whole outro song and i was

00:34:16

just like these guys are just it's you you can tell it's like all the honor students of show

00:34:21

business got together and they're like i'll direct it you do the yeah you do the title cards nailing

00:34:27

the music nailing it yeah it's so hard it's so good such a good show um what was i gonna say what

00:34:33

else anything we love it oh the alienist is out and i love that too but it's a different vibe yeah

00:34:38

oh is it good there's like four there's four waiting for you okay great i think it's four

00:34:44

we're just plowing our way through parks and rec at this point oh nice that's good i need something

00:34:50

like the alienist to come bring me down again don't get too high up there yeah with our with

00:34:56

with friend of the pod nick offerman oh my god just killing it he is a friend of the podcast

00:35:02

holy shit i'm not being a weird phony right now it's actually real wait this is the okay sorry

00:35:08

can i just read this yes please please this girl sent this tweet and i i think she was being funny

00:35:16

and sincere at the same time but that's the best duo of uh personality traits it was such a good

00:35:23

job she writes okay so this is from andrea at aka i fish i don't know but she says so she's

00:35:34

talking about all beyond in the dark but she says beautiful job done by friend of the pod karen

00:35:39

way to use our own joke against us i love it i get to be a friend of my own that's how we grow

00:35:49

you're a friend to yourself first. That's right. Then you can be a friend to all the pods.

00:35:53

You can be a friend of other people podcasts if you not a friend to your own podcast first First be a friend to your own podcast So she said the whole message which is very lovely is beautiful my friend of the pod

00:36:05

Last night in HBO Docs, I'll be gone in the dark, paying tribute to the iconic and badass

00:36:09

Michelle McNamara. That was the whole message. But so it was so sincere that the friend of the pod part caught me off guard.

00:36:16

Yeah. Good joke, Andrea. Good joke. Love a good joke. Good one. Way to turn it on its head.

00:36:22

Good. Good work. Good work. that's how I talk now. What else? I just have one book recommendation. Oh, great. Okay.

00:36:32

Because as you well know, George, I felt maybe just a touch insane at the end of last week. I was

00:36:39

feeling very... This is another tough business week. We had... Do you know that magazine business

00:36:46

week? It was like we were being... It was rolled up and we were being slapped with it. Right. But

00:36:51

No, there was just a bunch of stuff to do and think about. And I worry in these ways. I make up what I need to worry about so that I have it all in front of me in case one of the 37 things I've made up happens.

00:37:09

You don't want to be caught off guard. I totally understand that. Future worry, is that what they call it?

00:37:14

Yes. Yeah. Like projection worries. But so that's where I was last night last week.

00:37:20

And I was really bumming me. I was just like, I didn't want to do anything. I was like, please, I can't do anything.

00:37:27

And then I remembered when I get into that place, it's because I got so into listening to the Ram Dass podcast for a while.

00:37:34

And Ram Dass is all about that's nice that that suffering that you're doing is what you're supposed to be doing because this is all the work of waking up.

00:37:43

And so I read, I went on because I was like, I've listened to I think every episode of that podcast.

00:37:49

So I went to look at what books he has. And there's a book called Becoming Nobody, which is the essential Ram Dass collection.

00:37:58

So it's kind of like a starter for me, definitely, because I'm very new to that whole realm of work and awareness and stuff.

00:38:06

But I swear to God, Becoming Nobody, it's such a good audio book. It's him talking.

00:38:11

they're like the original lectures he gave okay and it's basically this thing of like

00:38:16

we you're not your thoughts and your thoughts aren't real so the work is just when you're in

00:38:22

that shit stop taking it so seriously figure out there are different ways and it's like a practice

00:38:28

and you have to kind of be it's about awareness yeah but you can wake yourself up out of all those

00:38:33

thoughts and and just step away from it and it's possible okay and it's really cool when you

00:38:39

I think these days, I definitely am feeling those feelings where I just I don't even know what the fuck's going on.

00:38:46

So I don't even know where to put my stress sometimes or how to manage it or to like even to excuse it away.

00:38:53

It's impossible because it's true and real what you're feeling. It's not. Yeah, it's not just you spinning out or having too much coffee.

00:38:59

We're in a fucking global pandemic and on top of everything else going on. And right. And then you're the the reactions that you're having in this scenario.

00:39:12

Like I keep judging myself like I should I'm overreacting. And it's like, no, no, you're you're in a corn.

00:39:18

You're quarantined in a pandemic. There's kind of no way to overreact. I was telling Stephen, I went out the other day just to leave the house.

00:39:25

And as I drove my car, I started getting like motion sickness from moving fast in a car.

00:39:32

Yes, me too. Like, what the fuck is that? We went for a drive and I started having a panic attack that we were going to get killed in a car accident and motion sickness because I have been indoors for fucking six months.

00:39:44

Yeah, it's really weird. We're in a very weird place for sure. It's very weird. So if you're looking for, you know, if you have that feeling of like you're being hounded by your worries and your thoughts and these like there's a lot on your shoulders.

00:39:57

I highly recommend this book because it's about instead of analyzing all those ideas, it's about practicing just stepping away and like being your own personal observer.

00:40:09

Because like, yes, you're worried and that's real. And the suffering of it is real.

00:40:13

But there's another part of you that isn't worried that's watching you worry that can see that.

00:40:17

And that's what you start identifying with. Okay. Is that the ability to look at yourself doing it and go, I don't think I'm that worried.

00:40:26

Right. I'm just uncomfortable. The difference. This is sorry. One more. But my therapist just talked about this today.

00:40:33

The difference between actual danger and discomfort. A lot of people don't know the difference at all.

00:40:39

Because it's the same fight or flight mechanism that comes up inside of you. Your body doesn't know whether or not you're actually in front of a bear.

00:40:49

Right. Well, your eyes tell you. You're not. But your body is having this reaction.

00:40:54

And so you like you have to you have to teach yourself and remind yourself that you're safe, just uncomfortable because you can be uncomfortable.

00:41:05

It's not going to hurt you. And the discomfort is what people so many people think they're never supposed to feel anything bad ever.

00:41:13

And so that when they do, they flip out of like, this is all going down. I mean, this is what I do.

00:41:19

I should I should be just admitting it is that it's the thing of I'm not supposed to.

00:41:24

blank blank blank. Well, one time you told me it was before a show that a live show, which was so

00:41:28

is so scary for me. But you were like, don't my therapist once told me that being nervous and

00:41:34

being excited are the same feeling. And so now it's kind of cool to think of when I'm nervous

00:41:41

about something being like, maybe it's just excitement. And if you think about it in terms

00:41:44

of that, it's fun instead of scary. Yes. Which I like. And that reminds me, you said the funniest

00:41:51

thing. This was like two weeks ago when we were very stressed out and you go I don know I kind of like conflict so I okay And it made me laugh so hard Where it like yeah actually this is all it all like no one does No one doesn want to know what

00:42:08

going on. No one wants that feeling of like, huge question with no answers coming, that you're not

00:42:15

alone in that stress. Like, so don't, don't beat yourself up for being upset that you're like,

00:42:23

what the fuck and everything on our phones is making us more scared it is funny that we add

00:42:29

on this thing of like not only are you actually upset because a thing is going on but then you're

00:42:34

fucking on top of it guilting yourself and feeling bad about yourself and feeling like a loser because

00:42:38

you're upset about it just deal with the upsetness you don't have to also pile on the negativity

00:42:44

right yeah because then once you actually if you can sit there and breathe and go i'm really upset

00:42:50

I need to actually like feel it, let it, let it expand, see how big it can get. It doesn't get that big.

00:42:57

These were so afraid to actually feel things because we're like, I don't want to be uncomfortable.

00:43:01

I don't want to be, I don't want to cry. I don't want to be sad, whatever. But then it's like, but if you actually let it happen, it happens for three minutes max.

00:43:09

And then, and then usually there's like a little bit of a lull and you can feel that

00:43:13

it's like, it's like a sine wave, like anything else that comes and goes and it doesn't kill

00:43:18

you. And it does. And you can actually build up a tolerance and then start noticing like, this is this thing my brain does when I feel like I might be being betrayed.

00:43:29

Right. And suddenly it makes everybody everybody's betrayed. That's my trigger. Betrayal is a trigger of mine. And so it I spiral. Yeah, totally.

00:43:38

Guys, feeling feelings is a friend of the podcast. And welcome friend of the pod feeling feelings.

00:43:45

Feeling feelings, crying, turns out as a friend of the podcast, I've been trying so hard not to let this friend in.

00:43:51

And now it's in and it does feel good. And Stephen, who's first? You're first, Georgia.

00:43:56

Yeah. You did Elsie Christians from Amsterdam. Bro, from the show last night to this drive, why is it never chill?

00:44:06

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00:45:38

That's K-N-I-X dot com. Code FLOW15. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

00:45:48

This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Will Wheaton, who played Gordy Lachance in Stand By Me 40 years ago and now narrates Stephen King's The Body, the novella that inspired it all.

00:46:00

We talk about what it's like to return to a story that shaped his life, channeling his memories of River Phoenix and the recording booth, and why the friendships you have at 12 might be the most important ones you'll ever have.

00:46:14

I know Gordy Lachance. I am Gordy Lachance. Like, I mean, even when I was a little kid, I was Gordy Lachance when I didn't know it.

00:46:22

Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:46:29

so this week i'm going to do what were you reading something yeah can you hear it

00:46:39

no no reading oh yeah like you just said that so slowly and staring straight ahead where i'm like

00:46:46

what's this gonna be karen so so i am doing the zoot suit riots oh shit yes i don't know how this

00:46:56

has never crossed my mind to do it. Like, it's always just kind of been a afterthought. And then

00:47:01

I start looking into it. And it's bananas. Yes. And there's so much to know. It's our city here,

00:47:08

Los Angeles that we know and love. So this is when Los Angeles experienced one of the most

00:47:14

historically significant episodes of racial violence in the 20th century, known as the

00:47:19

Zoot Suit Riots. Yeah. So there's so much good information out there on the internet and podcasts

00:47:26

and books. Some of them I got from The Hundreds, an article by Brandon Diaz, Smithsonian.com,

00:47:33

an article by Alice Gregory, LADAilyMirror.com. They have a bunch of old articles that you can

00:47:39

read up there. There's an article by actual friend of the podcast, Alina Shatkin, who's a friend of

00:47:45

mine. She's a really great food writer, but she wrote an article on LAist about it.

00:47:50

Cool. the book about it. And then there's a podcast called Latino Rebels Radio. And they posted

00:48:05

an episode called from Latino Media Collective, where they interviewed Professor Gerardo Lacone.

00:48:13

And he's it's an incredible interview. Mercury News.com History Channel has a documentary

00:48:18

Thought Co article by Robert Longley Curbed LA article by Elijah Chiland. I mean, there's just

00:48:26

so much out there so did you now may i ask please did you watch the film zoot suit starring edward

00:48:32

james almost i did it's so good really it's so good yeah i mentioned i mentioned it at the end

00:48:37

of the end of this it's like i saw that in the theater you did i know it came out yeah 81 80 81

00:48:44

yeah i and all i remember is yeah but it was like if it was playing downtown we'd just go see we saw

00:48:51

everything yeah um and he i just remember edward james almost in those zoot suits or whatever and

00:48:59

that leaned back thing that like i think it just was the stylistic fascinating kind of thing that

00:49:06

i'd never seen or heard of before it was like did they invent something new and it's like no no no

00:49:10

this is this is latino history this is like this is origin shit this is and i just had no fucking

00:49:19

clue. And there's okay, and it goes, it goes so deep. And I'm obviously not going to do a great

00:49:24

job in 10 pages of getting to everything. So please do read about it and look it up because

00:49:29

it's there's so many connotations that come along with this. Anyways. Yeah. So let's first start

00:49:36

with a little history. The Mexican Revolution, which lasted roughly from 1910 to 1920 caused

00:49:43

many Mexican families to immigrate to Los Angeles. So much so that by the 1930s, new immigration

00:49:49

from Mexico, migration from other states, and the longtime presence of multi-generational

00:49:54

residents dating back to the rancheros had made Los Angeles home to the largest concentration

00:49:59

of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the U.S. The working class communities, most of which were concentrated to the diverse east side

00:50:08

of Los Angeles, everyone here knows that the east side was historically Mexican and Mexican-American

00:50:15

families like Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights were traditional, conservative and self-contained.

00:50:22

And actually, so my family immigrated here from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles in the 20s as well,

00:50:28

or late teens, early 20s. And Boyle Heights was kind of the only place where anyone who wasn't

00:50:34

white could live. So yeah, there was a big Jewish population there as well. And that's where my

00:50:38

family's from. So from Boyle Heights? Uh-huh. Oh, nice. Those houses are rad. Amazing. Yeah.

00:50:45

But it was like a lot of farmland, too. I have old photos of my grandma and like the farmland.

00:50:51

It reminds me of something else. And this could actually be in another Edward James almost film, Stand and Deliver, one of the greats.

00:50:57

Another great 80s movie that as a teen, I was like, I'm so inspired. Maybe I'm going to take calculus.

00:51:03

There's no fucking way. But and I can't remember. It might be from that. It might just be, you know, other stuff I read.

00:51:10

But it was some kind of thing where somebody yelling, like, go back to your country to Mexicans and Mexicans being like, bitch, this is our we were here long before you.

00:51:22

This is part of Mexico. Like, what are you talking about? You're in our country.

00:51:27

That's that's part of the story. Right. So the Mexican-American communities in Los Angeles have faced decades of discrimination, you know, including not being allowed to patronize or even work in many of the businesses.

00:51:39

So like even waiting tables at a restaurant they weren't allowed to do. They could be the busboy at the most.

00:51:46

And even they were expected to step off the sidewalk when white pedestrians pass them.

00:51:51

So it was just incredible discrimination. By the 1940s, L.A. had a Mexican-American population of over 250,000.

00:52:00

And many of those families now had teenagers that had grown up in Los Angeles. You know, so they this this is where they're from.

00:52:07

While their parents had been immigrants or, you know, had lived there for generations, this is their hometown.

00:52:13

This is where they're from. And so they felt like the city was theirs as well. And what do teenagers do?

00:52:18

They fucking rebel. And these teenagers were no different. So known as Pachucos.

00:52:26

So Pachucos are the youth of this counterculture. And they're experiencing this huge cultural and generational gap between themselves and their parents.

00:52:34

It kind of reminded me of like Rebel Without a Cause, the way they were like, we don't want the norms that you're used to.

00:52:40

We need to break out of what's going on, you know, and pave our own way. Yeah. And they were fucking over discrimination that their parents and grandparents had experienced and they wanted to create their own identities.

00:52:54

Enter the zoot suit. So the fashion trend, I didn't fucking know this at all, had first been popularized during the 1930s in Harlem's jazz dance hall scene.

00:53:04

and predominantly worn by black teenagers. So that's where it started. I didn't know that at all.

00:53:10

With black teenagers, the jazz scene, the extravagantly styled two-piece suit, so just people who don't know it, typically included the bright color fabric,

00:53:22

knee-length suit coats. So it almost looked like an overcoat, but it was a suit coat down to the knees.

00:53:29

They had excessively wide shoulders. It was very flamboyant and extravagant. the flowing pants that ballooned out at the knee and tapered really tight at the ankle. I read a

00:53:38

thing that sometimes they were so tight that you had to put lubricant on your feet to get it over

00:53:42

your feet. It was just like, it was just this like, it was a, it was purposely ostentatious.

00:53:48

Yeah. You know what I mean? And part of the reason that it was so tight, it was also like,

00:53:53

um function because they were jitterbugging they were doing these amazing dances And so having flowing pants at the ankle would get in the way So that pretty cool That where that came from

00:54:05

These weren't suits you could buy at the store. Either you had to go to a specialty tailor,

00:54:08

or you could take a regular suit that was two sizes too large and have that tailored

00:54:13

the right way. So what I didn't realize about this style of dress is that the ostentatiousness

00:54:20

And the flamboyance of the suit itself was a way of refusing to be ignored and dismissed as a minority.

00:54:27

Hell yes. Right. So and this is such a youth culture thing of fuck you. I'm not fitting in and I'm going to look, you know, loud and get attention.

00:54:38

I'm not going to fade into the background. Right. I'm not going to step off the sidewalk because you're walking by.

00:54:44

I get to be like it's like I get to take up space and I get to be here as I am. Exactly.

00:54:49

Exactly. So minorities and people of color have always been expected to blend in and kind of be behind the scenes.

00:54:56

You know, like they were menial workers. They were making everything comfortable for white people.

00:55:00

But the rebellious youth refused to fade into the background. And that's what the zoot suit represented.

00:55:07

Plus, the amount of material and tailoring required to make them made them a luxury item.

00:55:14

So it was like a defiance against their association as a second class citizen. You know, they'd save up all their money and they'd have these luxury tailor made suits.

00:55:24

They were essentially I wrote they were essentially balling, shot calling. One could say if you're having a hard time relating to what this means, the truly the definition of balling and shot calling.

00:55:39

Right. And so the zoot suit becomes a symbol of counterculture and empowers young black and Mexican youth to express their individualistic identity within their culture and society.

00:55:50

Fucking both Cesar Chavez and Malcolm X were zoot suit wearers. Nice. Right. Now, the female members of this counterculture are called pachucas and they wear tight sweaters and short for the time skirts that are like flared out.

00:56:06

You can see them in the movie Zoot Suit. They have fishnets. They have high hairdos and big earrings and heavy makeup.

00:56:13

It was rumored that some of the pachukas would hide knives in their like bouffants.

00:56:18

Yes, I've heard that. So knives and razor blades. Yeah, I mean, love it. I hate violence.

00:56:24

I'm against violence. That's badass. It really well, because if you need it, right, if you need it, throw it up in that hair.

00:56:30

That's right. Do it. Other pachukas would actually wear zoot suits themselves. And that was a way to rebel against gender norms, which is so ahead of its time and incredible.

00:56:41

That's badass. I know. I know. So Catherine Ramirez, she wrote the book Woman in a Zoot Suit, wrote, quote,

00:56:48

These youths refuse to accept the racialized norms of segregated America with their flashy ensembles, distinct slang, extra cash generated by a booming war economy and rebellious attitude.

00:57:01

Pachucos and Pachucas participated in a spectacular subculture and threatened the social order by visibly occupying spaces, public spaces.

00:57:12

Hell yeah. So in Los Angeles, Pachucos adopt the Zoot Suit in order to brand themselves as rebels.

00:57:19

But white people see Zoot Suits as unpatriotic and Zooters, as they're called, quickly become branded as a negative thing.

00:57:28

So this is partly due to the fact. So it's early 1940s. We get into World War II.

00:57:35

U.S. enters World War II in 1941. And the rationing of resources and the commercial manufacture of civilian clothing becomes strictly regulated because both fabric and the time and energy is focused on the war effort.

00:57:49

So Zooters become a public enemy. because of the amount of fabric it took to make the zoot suits.

00:57:58

Because of racism. Because that's an excuse for you to be racist. Yeah. So bootleg tailors continue to make the zoot suits, which uses a lot of ration fabrics.

00:58:09

And so white people view the zoot suit itself as harmful to the war effort. And the young people who wear them are seen as un-American and unpatriotic,

00:58:17

which is just an excuse for the racism. It's always that. It's unpatriotic. You're against the military.

00:58:24

It's all this. It's yeah. Right. Yes. A hundred percent, especially because by World War Two, migration had peaked.

00:58:32

So there was a lot of tension going on in Los Angeles. And don't forget that this was also a time when Japanese Americans were forcibly sent

00:58:40

to internment camps. Japanese Americans who lived and thrived in Los Angeles were forcibly removed from their

00:58:48

homes and businesses and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. So obviously, racism is rampant and blanket society.

00:58:57

And that this is just, I think we've talked about this before. But when the Japanese were sent to those internment camps, all of the, they, many Japanese people lived in Southern California, because they were here to grow the citrus groves, which used to be everywhere down here, just everywhere.

00:59:15

And like in Burbank, every other street has like a lemon tree or an orange tree.

00:59:18

Orange County is called Orange County. It was mile, mile after mile. And when they interned the Japanese, they stole their land, they stole their property. And people like Bob Hope went in and bought up all of this stolen land. And then it was just when those American citizens who happened to be Japanese got released from those internment camps, they just didn't have anything because it was it's so ugly.

00:59:43

It's one of the most disgusting historical times in art. Well, they all are. There so many to pick from We talk about all of them on this podcast today Okay so throwing lighter fluid onto this fire is the fact that a naval school for the Naval Reserve Armory was built in Chavez Ravine

01:00:05

It's a primarily Hispanic neighborhood. It's named after Julian Chavez, a rancher who eventually served as assistant mayor, city councilman, and became one of L.A. County's first supervisors.

01:00:16

So that area, you guys will know, it's where Dodger Stadium is, which I'll get to later.

01:00:21

But Dodger Stadium was built in Chavez Ravine. The area had been home and it's kind of these beautiful rolling hills.

01:00:30

It's this really lush, lovely place in Los Angeles. It's right above Echo Park, if you've ever been here.

01:00:37

And the area had been home to generations of Mexican-American families. And the city used imminent domain, that motherfucking bitch, to clear out some of those homes.

01:00:46

And then sailors that had so they put the sailors in this Mexican-American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine.

01:00:56

And then sailors had to cut through those neighborhoods to get downtown. So they'd be going downtown to drink.

01:01:02

They'd come back through those neighborhoods. So, of course, there's going to be tension.

01:01:06

And there'd be cat calling. There'd be all kinds of, you know, tussles and that sort of thing happening.

01:01:12

Stuff to start fights with. Exactly. I think those buildings are still there, too.

01:01:15

If you're driving off the five to get into Dodger Stadium to get tested for COVID now is what it's for.

01:01:22

Yeah. You'll see these old buildings. And I think that's where it's from. Wow. Pretty interesting.

01:01:28

Thank you, Sean Penn, by the way. You know, Sean Penn's the reason all that COVID testing is set up at Dodger Stadium.

01:01:33

You're kidding. I swear to God. I didn't know that. I don't know if he's financing it, if he organized it or what, but that's his thing.

01:01:40

And I know a couple of people who have done it and they say you pull up and the line looks insanely long.

01:01:45

It's you're done like that. I've heard that, too. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone be careful.

01:01:51

This is not a joke. Wear a mask. OK. By the summer of 1943, tensions between the thousands of white U.S. servicemen station in and around Los Angeles and the Pachucos are running high because we also have ports here.

01:02:05

There was stationed in San Diego all along the coast up through L.A. There's a lot of servicemen here.

01:02:13

Right. So many of the L.A. area servicemen view the Zooters as draft dodgers, despite the fact that nearly half a million Mexican-Americans are serving in the military at the time.

01:02:23

And a lot of the Zoot suited Pachucos are teenagers. So like 12 through 16. So they're actually too young to even be eligible.

01:02:31

So it's false. Yeah. Okay. So before we get to the Zoot Suit Riots, we have to go over the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, which happens a year before the riots and is considered a precursor to them. So Sleepy Lagoon was a rural reservoir. And this is another thing is a lot of Los Angeles, which is now overdeveloped and crazy, was rural. So like even Chavez Ravine was rural, rural, rural, rural, rural, rural.

01:03:02

So it's a rural reservoir on the east side of Los Angeles and what is now Commerce.

01:03:07

And it's a popular swimming hole, hangout spot, Lover's Lane for Mexican-Americans, partly because they're banned from segregated public pools.

01:03:16

So that's where they swim. In the early hours of the morning on August 2nd, 1942, a brawl breaks out at a birthday party near Sleepy Lagoon.

01:03:27

When police arrive, they find an unconscious and mortally injured 22-year-old named Jose Diaz on a nearby dirt road.

01:03:36

He dies shortly after being taken to the hospital. His cause of death is inconclusive, although he has severe blunt force trauma to the back of his head.

01:03:44

They think it's from being jumped or hit, or it could be from a car accident. They actually might have gotten thrown off a motorcycle.

01:03:52

They don't know for sure. But authorities blame his death and the big fight that had happened at the party on this so-called, quote, Mexican youth gang problem in Los Angeles.

01:04:04

So in the following days, and there's amazing pictures from this, and I'm sure we'll post one on Instagram in the episode post.

01:04:12

The LAPD arrests 17 Mexican-American teens that are associated with the so-called 38th Street gang.

01:04:19

And the word gang is is really different back then. You know, it's it's not what you think of now. So this these kids who lived around 38th Street that hung out together are called a gang when really it's just teenagers hanging out together.

01:04:33

yeah there's no they're not getting jumped in there's not there's not like the you have to go

01:04:39

now do violence or whatever it's more just like kids that are all from the same neighborhood i

01:04:44

mean that's how my dad grew up in san francisco it's just like you're you kind of represented

01:04:49

your neighborhood right and then on the weekends you'd get drunk and street fight people my dad

01:04:53

used to love to say that he goes oh if we couldn't find other people to fight we just all fight

01:04:56

ourselves because he had four brothers. So yeah, man. Yeah, exactly. So 38 string gang quote,

01:05:04

and despite lack of sufficient evidence, the young men are collectively charged with the murder

01:05:09

of Diaz. They're denied bail and they're held in prison and they become known as the Sleepy Lagoon

01:05:14

defendants and they're paraded in front of the press. And part of the reason is because the LAPD,

01:05:20

There's been a lot of false newspaper articles about this Mexican youth gang problem.

01:05:28

And so LAPD is like, look what we're doing about it. And they parade them in front of the press to make it seem like they're actually taking care of it.

01:05:34

But really, all it does is make people even more afraid. So by the end of the week, police have used the excuse of Diaz's death to further arrest hundreds of Mexican-Americans

01:05:48

in nightly sweeps for offenses that are just trumped up, like even possessing a draft card with an incorrect address You can get arrested for unlawful assemblage like all these you know they just arresting people Yeah And they single out youths in zoot suits in particular

01:06:07

Cops line up outside of dance halls. And they have like pokers that they with razor sharp blades

01:06:13

that they use to rip the peg top trousers of the zoot suits of the boys as they come out. So there's

01:06:19

a lot of there's a lot of like photos from back then of kids that have clearly been in fights and

01:06:25

the trouser of their legs are ripped. So the media doesn't help matters and prints incredibly racist

01:06:32

headlines that history has shown were not supported by either facts or statistics. And in fact, the

01:06:38

government statistics from that time found no increase in youth crime or delinquency. So talking

01:06:44

about it now it's completely trumped up and it's basically just how dare you wear these outfits and

01:06:52

say that you belong stay in that it's your city stay in your fucking lane essentially is what

01:06:58

they're saying so in order to scare people the press referred to the zooters as a quote mexican

01:07:04

goon squad and they called them delinquents and hoodlums and they also distribute false

01:07:09

stories of Mexican boys prowling in wolf packs armed with clubs and knives and tire irons.

01:07:15

They say they're invading homes, peaceful homes. It's all nonsense. So after months of racist media

01:07:21

coverage that goes nationwide, including a fucking Disney cartoon in which a Donald Duck

01:07:27

beats up another duck dressed in a zoot suit for being unpatriotic, fucking Disney,

01:07:33

The Sleepy Lagoon defendants go on trial in October of 1942. There's never any testimony that anyone saw one of the defendants strike the victim.

01:07:44

Like no one can put any of these defendants with or near the victim. And some of the defendants can't even be placed at the murder scene.

01:07:54

And yet Judge Frick permits the chief of the Foreign Relations Bureau of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office to testify as a, quote, expert witness.

01:08:03

He says that Mexicans as a community, he testifies this in court, have a bloodthirst and a biological predisposition to crime and killing because of the culture of human sacrifice practiced by their Aztec fucking ancestors.

01:08:18

Jesus Christ. Yeah. That's a stretch. Because the Aztecs haven't been around for a while.

01:08:25

A. And B. Have you ever heard of Vikings? Have you ever heard of racial profiles?

01:08:31

Celts. Have you ever heard of every single human clan has always had? Exactly. The trial ends on January 13th, 1943, when three of the 17 defendants are convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

01:08:51

Nine others are convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to five years to life.

01:08:55

And the other five defendants are convicted of assault. So following the Sleepy Lagoon case, there's a lot of hate towards the Mexican-American community and U.S. servicemen, most of whom, by the way, grew up in other states.

01:09:09

So they had had very little contact with people of Mexican and Latinx descent. They're now streaming into Southern California to prepare for war and are getting into violent altercations with young Mexican-American Zooters.

01:09:22

And you also got to think they're fresh out of boot camp. They're also fucking young men.

01:09:27

You know, yeah, and they have this, they have what they think is this patriotism that allows them to fight for their country. And they see these, you know, others as not American. And, and it's just I mean, it's a, what's it called? Tinderbox, you know?

01:09:46

Yeah. So but also but it is that thing of there there's people from small towns all over this country where they show up and instead of going, I'm new to the big city.

01:10:00

Right. They start looking at people who who parents have lived there for generations and say, hey, get hey, foreigner.

01:10:09

I mean, like, that's just that American ignorance that's so tragic because this entire country is made up of foreigners.

01:10:16

Yeah. I hate to tell you. I hate to tell you. I love you to tell me about it. I hate. I love to tell you. Listen, New Zealand. Can you get me and Karen and Stephen? Can we get in there, please? Okay.

01:10:31

They're like, hell no. Only a week prior to the outbreak of what would become the Zoot Suit Riots, a number of Mexican-Americans dancing at the Aragon Ballroom in Santa Monica in Venice are attacked by a mob of American servicemen and bystanders after rumors spread that a sailor had been stabbed, which there's no police report to corroborate that.

01:10:53

An LAPD officer later says that, quote, the only thing we could do to break it up was arrest the Mexican kids.

01:10:59

yeah so that's that's it sounds like a setup yeah that almost sounds like a burning car at 3 p.m.

01:11:05

on on la bray and fairfax or a guy with an umbrella breaking a fucking window at a fucking what is it what was the place an auto parts that was in um minneapolis yeah

01:11:18

the big tall guy with the that covered him himself entirely and completely got caught

01:11:23

because everyone's now onto that shit. Yeah. Okay, modern times. Modern times. It's the worst.

01:11:30

I want to make clear that these are normal teenagers who are rebelling. So, of course, they get into trouble.

01:11:36

There's some escalated issues. There are some that are, you know, looking to fight.

01:11:43

You know, it's the normal teenage thing that both you and I and everyone we know who's cool

01:11:48

went through as teenagers. So, you know, there were these there were cases of shit going down, but it was normal teenage stuff.

01:11:57

But that's the same thing as like in. In the protest, there will be a person here and there that's going to be like, I'm going to loot that store.

01:12:06

Yeah. And then that is what's manipulated and turned into this. They're all like these people are. Yeah. And it's.

01:12:12

Yeah. Right. So I don't want to seem like I'm I want to make clear that I understand that.

01:12:16

And it's partly from the fact that there's it's there's a wartime effort now that's growing and includes women being able to work in these labor in the labor force.

01:12:27

So women and like mothers and grandmothers are now working in the labor force. So they're away from home.

01:12:34

The fathers are either at war or they're working as well. The demands of the war effort made it so both parents were working and out of the house for the first time.

01:12:44

And they're also working through the night. So kids are, you know, they have a freedom they didn't have before.

01:12:51

And they're not being looked after the same way because of that. so and they're but then they're also being watched in a different way probably than they had before

01:12:59

yeah and uh police records at the time though show that there wasn't there's no escalation from

01:13:04

regular juvenile delinquency so it's not it there is no proof that it was worse at the time it was

01:13:11

normal juvenile delinquency government statistics reported at the time found no increase in youth

01:13:17

crime um and also the other thing that scared people is that the police officers a lot of them

01:13:22

are away at war as well. So people are already primed and ready to be scared of, you know,

01:13:28

this fictitious mob that's going to come after them because they're not protected by the police.

01:13:33

So it's a crazy story in that so many little things had to add up to what happened. Right.

01:13:40

And they fucking did. So all this tension is simmering. Rumors are flying. And just the sight

01:13:46

of a zoot suit at this point is enough to fucking piss people off until one night in early june an

01:13:52

altercation between a sailor and a pachuco escalates into a brawl outside a bar in downtown

01:13:57

la and this sailor gets maybe gets knocked unconscious we don't really know there's a

01:14:04

rumor that a sailor gets stabbed that's never corroborated and so the following day uh the

01:14:10

following night of June 3rd, around 50 sailors leave the armory flanked with makeshift weapons,

01:14:16

and they want to get revenge for the fight from the night before. So at the Carmen Theater downtown

01:14:22

in downtown LA, they get the house lights turned on. And like 50 sailors, they roam the aisles

01:14:28

looking for Zooters. They find two boys, their ages are 12 and 13. They yank them out of their

01:14:35

seats and it says ignoring the protests of the patrons. So, you know, the people there were not fucking cool with it.

01:14:42

The sailors drag them on stage. They rip the zoot suits off these kids and they beat the boys up and they set the zoot

01:14:49

suits on fire. Jesus Christ. And this is the start of the zoot suit riots. And so this becomes a kind of a theme of humiliation and violence.

01:14:59

The next night, over 200 sailors grab a fleet of 20 taxi cabs, which the taxi cabs waive the fare to transport them and decide to take the fight into the Mexican-American neighborhoods of East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights.

01:15:15

And the sailors cruise the neighborhoods. They storm into bars and cafes and theaters.

01:15:19

There's nowhere that's safe. And, you know, violence continues on the night of June 4th and 5th.

01:15:27

confrontations between servicemen and zuters occurring all over the city. And some military

01:15:33

person also are targeting anyone who looks to be of Mexican descent, like they don't even care

01:15:38

about zoot suits anymore. They're berserking. Yeah. On June 5, a group of Mexican musicians

01:15:43

from El Paso are assaulted as they exit the Aztec recording company, even though they're not wearing

01:15:49

zoot suits at all the racist press encourages a serviceman the hearst own herald and express

01:15:56

publishes inflammatory stories including one that warned of 500 zooters planning to kill every cop

01:16:03

they came across you know the los angeles time applauds rioters for teaching zoot suiters a

01:16:09

lesson but the media just happens to suppress any mention of the white mobs that are actually

01:16:15

you know, the fucking rioters. They're the rioters. And one Los Angeles paper prints a guide on how to

01:16:22

de-zoot a suit, a zoot suitor. So like, Jesus Christ. However, a reporter for the city's black

01:16:30

weekly newspaper, the California Eagle named Charlotta Spears Bass, she writes a piece

01:16:37

blasting mainstream newspapers for race baiting and calls for black readers to stand with Latinos.

01:16:43

And there is a camaraderie there with the zoot suits and these teenage rebellion that they understand that they're borrowing this culture, this jazz culture from another culture.

01:16:55

And they all kind of stand together, which is good, incredible. And also another thing that could fucking scare racists is, you know, camaraderie.

01:17:06

Yes. You know what I mean? Is marginalized people laying down any kind of biases or...

01:17:13

Yeah. Banding together. ...that they have and banding together. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

01:17:18

On the night of June 7th, a crowd of 5,000 civilians gather downtown. 5,000? It's civilians, it's soldiers, Marines, sailors from other stations as far away as Las Vegas.

01:17:30

They fucking get on board and come down to fight this fight. a witness to the attacks

01:17:37

a journalist named Carrie McWilliams writes quote marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles

01:17:43

a mob of several thousand soldiers sailors and civilians proceeded to beat up every zoot suitor

01:17:49

they could find and there's photos of this there's these two young boys sitting one has clearly been beaten and unconscious the other one like hunching over him naked And there a crowd circling them It pure humiliation and violence

01:18:09

A man named Vincente Morales and his girlfriend were at a show at the Ortheon Theater, which is a friend of the podcast.

01:18:17

Where sailors drag him out of the building, strip him of his clothing and beat him unconscious.

01:18:22

and when uh he comes to lap the officers arrest him for disturbing the peace it's so oppressive it's so it's so upsetting and oppressive and if you think it's that much

01:18:37

different from the way it is today you're reading the wrong fucking newspaper yeah you know yeah

01:18:43

yeah as writing spreads into predominantly black neighborhoods like watts latinos join with black

01:18:49

residents to mount a resistance with hundreds gathering. There's a Coca-Cola plant on Central

01:18:55

Avenue, I guess. Years later, participant Rudy Leavos tells the LA Times reporter, quote,

01:19:03

toward evening, we started hiding in alleys. Then we sent about 20 guys right out into the middle of

01:19:09

the street as decoys. They started coming after the decoys. Then we came out. They were surprised.

01:19:15

It was the first time anybody was organized to fight back. Nice. So they fucking joined forces like the fucking X-Men.

01:19:23

The police arrest dozens of young Mexican-Americans. And when one of them asks, why am I being arrested?

01:19:30

The response is that they get savagely fucking beat with a nightstick for asking that.

01:19:36

When the boy falls to the sidewalk unconscious, he's kicked in the face by police.

01:19:40

Please remember these are 13, 14, 15-year-old children. junior high students yep getting getting the shit kicked out of them by by adults who have been

01:19:50

trained in uh yeah military combat exactly so at midnight on june 8th my birthday um happy

01:19:59

again happy birthday thank you the navy and marine corps finally intervene and declare downtown

01:20:05

so all this you know they they intervene um all this shit happens that they they're like trying

01:20:11

to restore order so they say but the fucking the the riot lasts until june 10th essentially

01:20:18

oh my god their official position is that their men were acting in self-defense um on june 9th the la city council passes an emergency resolution that makes it illegal

01:20:28

ready for this makes it illegal to wear a zoot suit on city streets not to beat the fucking shit

01:20:35

out of someone for their outfit and actually what's really fucking interesting is that um

01:20:41

The War Production Board, which is a government agency that oversees industrial manufacturing, they put out all these guidelines.

01:20:50

They make it required that manufacturers use 26% less fabric when they're making suits, which effectively criminalizes the manufacture of zoot suits, which is the first time any piece of clothing has ever been criminalized.

01:21:02

Wow. Yeah. So, you know, it keeps happening in other cities as well. There's no reported deaths, but more than 150 people are injured in the L.A. riots and police end up arresting more than 600 Mexican-Americans on charges ranging from rioting to vagrancy.

01:21:20

Only a few servicemen are arrested overall. In total, the riots last 10 days from June 3rd to June 10th.

01:21:28

Shit. So no one died? Wait, that's not 10 days. The riots lasted 10 days from June 3rd.

01:21:34

Nope. June 13th. That's not 10 days. I'm going to say June 1st to June 10th. Or it lasted seven days.

01:21:45

But it's early June is like the known, you know, they ended. Who knows what the last day was, is what I'm trying to say.

01:21:52

Gotcha. What did you say? What were you saying? That no one died, you said. There's no reported deaths.

01:21:57

Reported deaths. Right. Like officially. Right. Right. So afterward, in response to a formal protest from the Mexican embassy, we're like, I'm

01:22:05

sorry, what the fuck? A special committee is appointed to determine the cause of the riots, and the committee concludes that racism is the root cause of the violence and also places the blame on the press for associating Zooters with a supposed crime wave.

01:22:21

Good. Yeah. But L.A. Mayor Fletcher Baueron is intent on preserving the city's public image and declares that Mexican juvenile delinquents and racist white southerners are the ones who caused the riots.

01:22:37

So their fault. We didn't do anything wrong. He claims that racial prejudice is not and would not become an issue in Los Angeles.

01:22:45

No, guys, come on. We got some news for you from the future. Yeah, it's not a friend of your podcast.

01:22:55

Admit it now. Admit it now. The Un-American Activities Committee attempts to prove that the Zoot Suit Riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread, you know, their Nazi propaganda between the United States and Latin American countries.

01:23:13

But of course, not surprising, nothing comes out of that. Yeah, but let's bookmark that for another time, because I feel like it couldn't be more relevant today.

01:23:22

Right. In the aftermath. OK, so that's the Zoot Suit Riots. In the aftermath, the Sleepy Lagoon trial. Remember that? Yeah.

01:23:32

fucking thing. The community organizes the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, SLDC. And by 1944,

01:23:41

they raise enough money to bring the case to the Second District Court of Appeals,

01:23:45

wherein the judge, Clement Nye, overturns the verdict citing insufficient evidence,

01:23:51

the denial of the defendant right to counsel and the overt bias of Judge Frick in the courtroom Nice All 17 defendants are released in 1944 from prison with their criminal records expunged So that post Zoot Suit riots Officially

01:24:09

the death of Jose Diaz from the Sleepy Lagoon murder remains unsolved. But before her death

01:24:16

in 1991, a former Pachuca named Lorena Encinas confides to her children that her brother,

01:24:24

Louis, who's dead, was the one who beat and killed Jose Diaz that night, which we don't know if it's

01:24:29

true or not. But that was a her confession. There's so much more. Please look into the

01:24:34

Chavez ravine and see about imminent domain and what ended up happening that they fucking

01:24:39

forcibly removed the remaining Mexican American homeowners who'd lived there for generations.

01:24:44

They ripped them out of their homes. They bulldozed them home. They gave them fucking

01:24:47

pennies on the dollar of what their homes were worth. And they for because they were going to

01:24:52

redeveloped land in high-end homes, which didn't happen. And the city ends up fucking selling that very fucking crucial land at a huge profit

01:25:03

is sold to the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Walter O'Malley, who starts building the Dodger

01:25:08

Stadium in 1959. That is a fucking blight on our fucking city, Dodger Stadium. And I really suggest people look into that.

01:25:17

I mean, it's a great fucking... I love the Dodgers. Love the stadium. Love going to it.

01:25:22

It is an ugly time in history of what happened there. Horrifying. Yeah. And it also hasn't changed too much in that.

01:25:30

And I won't get into it because I actually I've only very recently been reading about it.

01:25:34

But is this is like kind of the spine of gentrification in that way where people that are from an area, especially in Los Angeles, in the way people migrate to this town.

01:25:46

And then the actual families and the people that have lived there for a long time are forced out.

01:25:51

And then they try and because then those rents go up. Right. And you've got all the people that are like, I'm going to be on a pilot this year.

01:25:58

Well, it's urban sprawl. And so when you put when you put entire cultures in a certain neighborhood and segregate them to that neighborhood, then when you want that neighborhood back, it's not like, you know, the city is naturally growing.

01:26:12

You fucking steal that land back, even though you told them that's the only place they could live.

01:26:16

You build freeways through their fucking homes so that the houses are worth less.

01:26:21

Or they're divided from, you know, quote, better parts of town. You know, the whole L.A. freeway system.

01:26:28

There was a recent L.A. Times article about it. How fucking racist and how race played into us building.

01:26:35

Like the freeways make no sense here. You're on the 405 and you want to get to fucking Hollywood.

01:26:39

It's going to take you forever. It's because of those those neighborhoods. Because they were building them through.

01:26:45

They certainly weren't building them through Hancock Park. No, they were not. No, they were building them through Englewood.

01:26:50

So it's ugly. As for the Zoot Suit itself, although it did fall out of fashion eventually, the part it played in challenging the entrenched roles of race, gender and class identities of mainstream America during World War II has not been forgotten.

01:27:04

In 1978, actor and playwright Luis Valdez wrote the play Zoot Suit. It's the first play on Broadway made by someone of Mexican descent.

01:27:13

and oh i know and that got turned into a movie 1981 starring danielle valdez who's so cute and

01:27:19

sweet and edward james almost and actually in 2016 los angeles county museum of art searched

01:27:27

out a zoot suit to display as part of their like they had a men's like history of men's fashion

01:27:31

and it cost them nearly 80 grand to acquire a like legit old school zoot suit because they had

01:27:38

been destroyed and kind of targeted that way where it was so impossible to find them?

01:27:43

Probably. Wow. There's been a push from historians to change the name from Zoot Suit Riots, which fucking

01:27:49

implies that it was the Zooters who were rioting, to the Sailor Riots, but that hasn't stuck

01:27:55

yet. And yeah, that's the story of the Zoot Suit Riots and the Sleepy Lagoon Murder.

01:28:02

Wow. The book that you can read if you want to know more is Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon, Zoot

01:28:06

Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. by Eduardo Obringon Pagan. P-A-G-A-N is the last name.

01:28:14

Wow, that's amazing. That's such a good history lesson and living in the city, it's really embarrassing that I don't know anything about. It's just that feeling every

01:28:23

time. It's the same feeling of watching that OJ special and learning all about the Watts riots.

01:28:30

We're just like, how come I, you know, we don't know these things. They don't teach it in school because it makes us look bad.

01:28:39

Right. And that's somehow not okay to be like, we did a really horrible thing, but we're learning from it.

01:28:46

Yeah, because I think a lot of people aren't there yet, and a lot of people in charge aren't there yet.

01:28:51

Yeah. Whatever. Great job. Thank you. That was really good. Thank you. Thank you.

01:28:54

That was a really – thank you to Lily for all her research notes. That was a really – that was an interesting one.

01:29:00

I definitely spent a lot of time researching that, and I could have spent a lot fucking more time.

01:29:04

Like there's so many good articles from every different angle. Cool. I definitely want to look up.

01:29:09

Did you say the Getty is the, is the museum that got, cause they were doing the fashion.

01:29:15

Sorry. No, no. In 2016, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They had a thing called reigning men,

01:29:22

reigning, get it. R E I G N I N G. Reigning men, fashion in menswear from 1715 to 2015.

01:29:29

Oh shit. Sounds fucking cool. Yeah. I was going to say one thing really quickly.

01:29:34

I, texting my grandma to confirm because my mom's side of my family has been here uh i mean for

01:29:39

generations and my grandma's brother was actually a zoot suitor but he entered the army so i wonder

01:29:47

if he and i now i want to like call my grandma and ask her like i wonder if maybe he avoided

01:29:51

this because yeah and they were in orange county they were in la in orange county right yeah yeah well my grandma specifically grew up here my mom grew up in Atwater Village Whoa Like we grew up yeah So I really now next time I see my grandma I want to learn more of this because I want to know

01:30:07

Steven, do it. Please ask your grandma if she has a picture. Yes. Oh, my gosh. I would love to see an actual, legit Morris family.

01:30:16

What would that be? What's your mom's maiden name? My mom's maiden name is Valdez.

01:30:21

Raymond Valdez was my grandfather. And then my grandma, her maiden name was Flores.

01:30:26

So Sarah Flores. Oh, my God. If she has a story, please get it on video or record it.

01:30:31

Yeah. That would be incredible. I'm so bummed I can't ask. My grandma was very old, but I'm so bummed I can't ask her if she remembers it.

01:30:38

Although I know she would have just said, yeah, that was scary. Yeah, that's incredible.

01:30:45

Steven. Why is it always chaos when we link up? Because nobody plans anything, bro.

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01:32:24

Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Ear Say, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

01:32:31

This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary,

01:32:40

massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.

01:32:48

I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.

01:32:55

And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.

01:33:08

But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.

01:33:14

That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh, my God, I cried at the end.

01:33:19

It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

01:33:28

I got a tweet from a listener named Emma. Well, her Twitter handle is Emma Malia.

01:33:39

Emma said, hey, Karen Kogareff, ever heard of the 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping? It's bananas, and I feel like I should have heard about it before.

01:33:48

Emma, really good suggestion. I thought I'd already done this. I thought you did.

01:33:53

This isn't the chicken coop one. No, no. That's the Wineville Chicken Creek Brothers.

01:34:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Wineville? Yeah, sure. No, this is, okay. So I have a very distinct memory of this report coming, like my family.

01:34:14

So it was 1976, so I was six years old. And my parents never caught on that maybe the six-year-olds shouldn't watch the seven o'clock news along with them.

01:34:26

So and I paid a lot of attention to things. So when this report came out the night that it happened, I heard it and then would not stop asking my mom about it.

01:34:38

And she was like, I don't know. We'll find out. It was like I remember it so distinctly.

01:34:44

Yes, you were a murdering a baby murder. I was a baby. Well, and also it was that feeling of like, I'm sorry.

01:34:50

I just came off a nice run of Sesame Street. Yeah. what are you talking about this mass kidnapping hold on a second and then like we're never going

01:34:59

to hear about it again you're never right this should be the only thing we talk about right you

01:35:04

will you will not sweep this under the rug patent jim because it's now on the table and you need to

01:35:10

explain it to me and i do remember asking my mom like explain to me why yeah and she was like i

01:35:16

don't know i'm tired um so this is the chowchilla bus kidnapping of 1976 okay i think i know yeah

01:35:24

oh it's so good it's so good emma good catch i swear to god i was like there's no way i haven't

01:35:31

done this already oh my god california legendary and okay so there is a reel you can go look on

01:35:39

YouTube you can watch the news footage as this story plays out in the news someone has compiled

01:35:46

all of it is this the is this the buried one yep this is horrific and insane and I'm so excited

01:35:54

I'm so excited for this me too okay and just the majority of this information and like the shape of this story is from an episode of 48 hours live to tell where they

01:36:08

interviewed now grown children who were on this bus. Are they all just still screaming?

01:36:15

I mean, okay, so no, no, it's kind of amazing. Okay. So aside from 48 hours live to tell, which did an amazing and incredibly thorough job

01:36:25

and all of these people got to tell their own story. Yeah. Best way to my favorite, favorite way to experience true crime.

01:36:32

Karen Kilgariff. Yeah. You tell me what happened to you. That's all I care about.

01:36:36

So but the other sources, CNN, CBS News, SF Gate, Wikipedia. So here we go. So this basically starts July 15th, 1976.

01:36:48

It's around four o'clock in Chowchilla, California. and the Dairyland Elementary School's bus driver, Ed Ray,

01:36:55

is dropping kids off after their summer school field trip that day. Is this Northern California, like near you?

01:37:02

No, Chowchilla is about 50 miles north of Fresno. Okay, so centrally. It's central, yes.

01:37:08

Okay. It's very central, but it's that part of California. So it's below Modesto.

01:37:14

It's above Fresno. It's right there on the 99. Farm land and stuff. It's all far.

01:37:19

I mean, it's the Dairyland Elementary School. It's all cows. And that's also it really gets me because all of this footage from 1976, it looks like this things that are in my head as childhood memories, because it all looks the same as where I grew up to of just like rolling hills with oak trees and big cow pastures.

01:37:42

Lots of brown. Lots of brown shades. It's lots of brown. And as the people in the 48 Hours Live to tell you and describe it, Chowchilla was it had less than 5000 people living in it.

01:37:54

It was a tiny cow town, as one of the guys describes it. People did not lock their doors at night. They didn't know. They couldn't even imagine why they would have to.

01:38:05

It was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So it's central, central California.

01:38:09

Yeah. And people in Central California, they have accents like they're from the South. It's really funny. It's like that part of that. It's very agricultural and people. It's like they're there for generations with the same ranch.

01:38:23

They came from like the Dust Bowl. So it just kind of stuck. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think

01:38:29

that's what it is. Like, that's what this is how my mom talked. But there's like a lot of that kind

01:38:33

of accent where you're just like, we're in California. This is amazing. So it's my it's

01:38:38

one of my favorite things because California is gigantic. But there's definitely a lot of the

01:38:43

likes a south in or Midwest in it. So element. Yeah, I love it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So Ed Ray is

01:38:50

the bus driver, right? Now these kids, their age range is from five years old to 14 years old.

01:38:58

This is summer school, right? So they're just, it's like a group of kids that are just doing

01:39:03

stuff while their parents are at work. And on this day, the field trip was to the town swimming pool

01:39:09

that was at the Chowchilla Fairgrounds. Take me there. Take me there. You can see it. Everything

01:39:15

is golden it all looks like it's like everything's all this news footage looks like it's being shot

01:39:21

at golden hour but it's like no this is just what it looked like back then it was so weird

01:39:24

there's one little girl who goes through this whole experience wearing her bathing suit so it's

01:39:30

that kind of thing where like they left the pool and they got on the bus like wearing the that like

01:39:36

get out no you have to get out or you're gonna get in trouble jennifer and so like it's like ran

01:39:41

They ran on the bus. They ran on the bus. It was a boiling hot day because it's Central California in July.

01:39:49

And the kids talk about how they remember driving the bus. They loved Ed. They all called him Edward.

01:39:56

He had been the bus driver in that town for 26 years, I believe. Yes, 26 years. So wait, I'll go back to this a little bit.

01:40:04

Ed is just beginning the route home. So he's dropped off a couple kids just at the beginning of the drop off route.

01:40:12

He approaches a T-stop intersection and there he sees a broken down white van that's blocking the intersection.

01:40:21

So right now at this point, there's 26 kids on the bus, 27 people total, including Ed.

01:40:26

So Ed Ray has like lived his almost his entire life in Chowchilla. He's been the school bus driver for the past 26 years.

01:40:34

he knows everyone in town as well as he knows these country roads that make up his daily route

01:40:40

so when he sees this white van blocking the intersection he doesn't think twice about

01:40:45

pulling right up and opening the bus door to see which of his neighbors might need help

01:40:49

because that's the kind of town it was yeah um it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere so it's

01:40:55

not like it's like oh strangers you know right that's not anyone's first thought plus it's like

01:41:00

if you keep driving then that person's fucked it's not like they have cell phones to call

01:41:04

It's like you're going to be the only car in for hours, maybe. I'm telling you, this footage from 1976, you might as well have.

01:41:12

It looks like it's the turn of the century. It's so old looking and it's so funny to me because like it doesn't seem that long ago to me.

01:41:21

Yeah. But when you see this footage, it's like, yeah, it's it's there was there was if you had a if your car broke down.

01:41:28

In the middle of the afternoon on a July day in Chowchilla, you would be boiled to death by the sun.

01:41:36

Okay, so Ed pulls right up and opens those doors to see what's going on and who needs help.

01:41:41

And as he does, two men climb onto the bus wearing pantyhose pulled over their head, bank robber style, which would be so scary if you were a little kid.

01:41:51

And one holding a sawed shotgun at Ed and tells him to get into the back of the bus Then that masked man turns the gun onto the kids as the second man gets into the driver seat and begins to drive A third man is following in the white van that

01:42:07

they pretended was broken down. So with Ed and all the kids on board, these three masked men

01:42:14

have just hijacked a school bus full of children. So, yeah. So one of those kids is nine-year-old

01:42:22

jennifer brown who is in this episode of 48 hours um live to tell she's she's an amazing uh

01:42:29

it's it's one of those things where they keep showing pictures of her at nine years old

01:42:34

because there's so many pictures of these kids and she looks the face is exactly the same and

01:42:40

she has this kind of like um so she's the one that says when ed walks through the back of the bus he

01:42:46

says to all the kids really harsh he says just be quiet sit down do what they say and she had

01:42:52

never heard him talk to the kids like that before. So she knew, she knew that's how she knew something

01:42:57

was really wrong. So the hijackers take off down the country road. They eventually drive down into

01:43:04

a dry riverbed in the Berenda Slough, which is seven miles outside of town. And basically,

01:43:12

they drive down into this area. And there's, of course, you can see pictures. the slough had all these trees and bamboo that were like double high a normal school best.

01:43:27

What the hell is a slough as someone from suburbia? It's like a riverbed. It's basically and I believe I didn't look it up, but I think it's

01:43:36

when they make a riverbed cement, so they make sure that water can go, runoff can go or whatever. It's not just a river.

01:43:44

But you know what? Hey, all you slew heads out there, slew arenas, I'd love to hear how wrong I am. Please educate me because I don't feel like it.

01:43:54

Okay, so the weird thing is, because these bamboo trees are so high, they drive this bus in, and it's perfectly hidden.

01:44:04

You can't see it at all. So they park the bus. The third driver from the white van now backs a second van that's green up to the bus doors.

01:44:14

He opens the rear doors of the van, and that reveals an interior of a van that's been reinforced with wood paneling,

01:44:23

and all the windows have been blacked out and there's no ventilation that's been added. So

01:44:28

they've customized the inside of this van so that no one can see in or out. And that, and basically

01:44:35

that it's, it's a little cell and they basically tell the kids to jump from the bus into the back

01:44:41

of the van. So no footprints go on the ground and they can't see that anyone has been there.

01:44:47

What the fuck? Why? He'll tell us. Yes. So at gunpoint, Ed and all the kids have to jump from the bus to the van.

01:44:57

They fill up one van, drive it away, pull the other one up, and the rest of the kids have to do the same thing in the second van.

01:45:04

I believe that Ed was in the second van. And six-year-old Larry Park, who he's six when this happens.

01:45:12

He's obviously an adult when he's telling his story. he says that as he walked toward the man holding the shotgun the barrels started looking like they

01:45:22

were getting so big that they were going to swallow him up he's six years old he's a baby

01:45:27

he's a baby so so jennifer isn't a nine-year-old jennifer isn't in the first van she gets put into

01:45:35

the second van and she gets separated from her 10-year-old brother jeff and that's when she

01:45:40

starts really getting scared she keeps telling her friends i i want i want jeff um none of the

01:45:47

kids know what's going on like it's couldn't be more uh frightening and or more like getting loaded

01:45:53

from their bus into the back of a dark van and they're just in pitch black and they're jammed in

01:45:59

there they're jammed in yeah so meanwhile um jennifer and jeff's mom joan brown she comes home

01:46:06

from work and to what would normally be a house full of kids waiting for her to get home from work

01:46:12

and instead as she says it quote there's no peanut butter on the counter there's no chairs out there

01:46:18

they just weren't there so because it's the 70s they wait a little while to see um and it is the

01:46:27

thing where it seems so bizarre now but like this was the this was the era where your parents would

01:46:32

be like in the summertime it'd be like go outside until the streetlights come on totally like it was

01:46:37

all kids were very self-regulating sometimes you just go to your friend's house for dinner and

01:46:41

they wouldn't they'd be mad at you but you wouldn't yeah they wouldn't worry yeah right

01:46:45

no cell phones no uh helicopter anything this was when it was like free range children um but

01:46:53

uh after a couple hours parents start calling each other and realizing that almost none of the kids from summer school made it home that day. Only those kids that got

01:47:04

dropped off right at the beginning. So the parents, so it takes about almost two hours,

01:47:09

the parents call the police. But two hours in the 70s is a modern day, almost immediately. So stop

01:47:15

judging. Okay, so police and parents go out together and they retrace the bus route,

01:47:22

But there's no sign of any of the kids. And it isn't until police start a search by air that they spot the bus in the slough hidden in the bamboo.

01:47:33

So Madera County Sheriff Ed Bates and his deputies rushed to the scene. But the bus is abandoned. There's no footprints on the ground. They don't really know what's happened.

01:47:44

but they are able to track the van's tire marks and they make it clear that they make it clear

01:47:53

what happened that someone pulled up those vans So now they know that basically all those kids that were on the bus have been loaded into another vehicle that they don know what it is and have been transported somewhere

01:48:06

So Sheriff Bates calls Governor Jerry Brown and asks for the help of the FBI immediately.

01:48:13

Thank God. So 30 FBI agents are called in to assist the investigation. Meanwhile, Ed and the kids are being driven into jam-packed vans.

01:48:25

The windows are blacked out. There's no ventilation, and they can't see where they're going.

01:48:32

It's a brutally hot July night at this point. There's no food or water, and they don't let anyone take bathroom breaks, and they drive for almost 12 hours.

01:48:42

What? Yeah. So you can imagine there's kids that throw up from the motion sickness of not not being able to see out.

01:48:51

And it's a bumpy it's bumpy country roads. There's, of course, kids crying. There's lots of crying.

01:48:57

And then other kids, the older kids are trying to keep, you know, keep everybody like keep kids from crying.

01:49:05

So they start singing the hits of the day. They all sing Boogie Nights together.

01:49:08

they sing um love will keep us together which was never not on the radio back then um 12 the

01:49:16

fucking hours 12 hours of being in the back of a car i mean i was i drove 15 minutes over the

01:49:23

weekend and i almost threw up that's like oh my god yeah and little kids um that are scared and

01:49:31

like trying to comfort each other at one point the older kids have everybody sing if you're happy and

01:49:37

you know, clap your hands, but they change the lyrics to if you're sad and you know, which I

01:49:41

fucking love. Because they're not being creepy, like nothing's happening. It's like, no, no,

01:49:47

we're all freaking out. Let's let's sing the song. So that's the new. That's our new quarantine song.

01:49:53

Hey, look, if you're sad, and you know, clap your hands, you might as well. That's so I love that.

01:49:58

Okay. Okay. So finally, around 330 in the morning, this van comes to a stop. It's now Friday,

01:50:06

July 16th, early in the morning, the one of the vans back doors opens, and the masked men yank it

01:50:14

out first, and then shut the door. And then the kids just sit there waiting minutes past, they

01:50:18

don't know what's going on. Ed's gone. And then, you know, and then the door opens again. And one

01:50:26

of the men reaches in and just grabs the nearest kid to the door. And they do this, this is how they

01:50:31

unload both vans. So there's little kids just sitting there waiting. They don't know if people

01:50:37

are getting taken out and killed. They don't know anything. They're just sitting there waiting to

01:50:41

see what's going to happen. It's the idea of it is horrifying. And there's a really sad moment.

01:50:48

Okay, so the oldest boy is this 14 year old boy named Mike Marshall. And he is one of he's the last

01:50:55

kid in the van with a five-year-old girl. And he doesn't want to send her out by herself.

01:51:03

And he's making they're making them come out one by one. So he has to literally like pry her hands

01:51:09

off of his arm so that he can get out. And he he's I mean, he talks about how horrifying a

01:51:16

decision it was, because he was like, I can't send her out there alone. I have to go out before her.

01:51:21

But then I don't then a five year old is left in the van by herself. It's just a scare.

01:51:26

Like you don't know which one's scarier yet because. Right. You have an experience.

01:51:30

Oh, right. So, OK, so when they when they do lead the kids out, they realize they get walked from the van over to basically what looks like a ladder going into a hole in the ground.

01:51:44

There's they're out in the middle of nowhere. It's kind of sandy. there's there's no it's like pitch you know it's the middle of the night um and jennifer brown says

01:51:55

that when she came up on that ladder she remembers thinking to herself oh they're sending us to hell

01:52:00

and so then they go down the ladder and realize they're in an underground bunker and all the kids

01:52:08

and ed have been loaded down there so every kid that gets down the ladder then realizes no one's

01:52:14

been taken off and killed so they all are like happy and you know they're all like it's reunited

01:52:19

they're all together again um the problem is though it's pitch black down there it's they

01:52:27

can't see a thing but they like their eyes adjust they realize there's a table that's got some

01:52:32

jugs of water on and some food and then there's these kind of um like slapped together kind of

01:52:41

toilets that are built in these boxes that are where the wheel wells are just like a hole in the

01:52:47

ground or a hole that they like built just so people could have somewhere to go and but the

01:52:55

good thing is they can hear fans spinning so that they know there's some sort of planned ventilation

01:53:01

so um fuck yeah so then this is like this is like the the prequel to saw it feels like it's it's

01:53:11

Horrifying. I mean, imagine if Saw was 26 kids. It's so it's so awful. So basically, once all the kids and Ed are down inside the kid, the kidnappers throw down a roll of toilet paper, pull up the ladder and say, we'll be back for you. Then they cover the opening with what everyone believes to be a manhole cover. It's very it's like it sounds like one. It's really heavy.

01:53:34

um so this is not how i thought it was i always pictured in my you know i hadn't read enough so i

01:53:41

pictured them in the school bus being buried in the school bus this is this is fucking crazy

01:53:46

yeah no they yeah they transferred them into another thing and this is the horrifying part

01:53:52

there so they down there the manhole cover closes they standing in the dark and then they hear material being poured on top of whatever they in So they realize they being buried alive So back in Chochilla the parents are gathered at command post that set up at the fire station

01:54:10

Of course, everyone, the whole town is worried sick. Everyone knows about it. Everyone's trying to figure out what's going on.

01:54:15

And the police are trying to like formulate how anyone could kidnap 26 school children, let alone who would do it, let alone why they would do it.

01:54:29

They just are baffled by all of it. And of course, this story makes the national news.

01:54:35

So that night, Walter Cronkite's opening, like, oh, I'm sorry, I don't know if it was opening, but this is how I'm picturing it because this is how I remember it.

01:54:45

Yeah. Walter Cronkite going, 26 school children and their bus driver have vanished.

01:54:50

Anguished parents, President Ford and hundreds of police are asking the question, where are the children?

01:54:57

I mean, OK, six year old Karen should not have fucking heard that. First, I'm over here playing with matches.

01:55:04

What's this now? Oh, mommy. Karen, go play with your matches. Don't worry. It's too late.

01:55:13

And then I just light one of her cigarettes. I already saw it, mother. It's ruined.

01:55:18

OK, so it's declared to be one of the biggest kidnappings in U.S. history. But no one's heard from the kidnappers or has any idea who they might be.

01:55:28

So they don't understand. You'd hope it would be ransom so you could pay it and get your kid back.

01:55:33

But that's not right. That's that's terrifying. Yeah, they're just everyone's holding their breath waiting.

01:55:38

But that's but then calls pour in to the Chowchilla Police Department from all around the world.

01:55:46

Well-wishers, reporters. I mean, this is like it's it's blowing up. So 12 hours go by.

01:55:56

People wait. They're just waiting for word in Chowchilla. Well, down in the hole as the kids be like come to call it.

01:56:03

Um, things get go from bad to worse. So they've run, they've run out of food there. They have a little bit of water left and the, the fans that they could hear, um, that were providing ventilation have stopped.

01:56:19

Now, this is kind of fascinating. And I love this kid. I love this kid, whoever he is, because he doesn't get named.

01:56:28

But there's so they basically there's blocks that are on the ground that these four by four pillars.

01:56:36

There's four by four pillars kind of stay around every in each corner of this box that they're in.

01:56:44

And there is basically holding up. It looks like it's holding up the ceiling. And and kind of like they're bracing the sides of it and holding the ceiling up.

01:56:55

So one of the boys starts kicking at these blocks and just out of pure fury and fear and, you know, everything.

01:57:04

And with every block, every kick, he's moving the blocks. And when the blocks move, the ceilings, that means the beam is moving and then the ceiling starts to cave in a little bit.

01:57:14

And the walls of the box that they're in start to bow inwards. And dust and dirt start streaming in.

01:57:23

So everyone's terrified that the ceiling's going to collapse. But Ed and the older kids, they get together and they decide together, if we're going to die, we're going to die trying to get out of here.

01:57:35

so ed and the oldest boy mike marshall they decide they're going to stack up these mattresses that

01:57:41

are have laid all around like the outside and all the kids are just have just been laying on them

01:57:46

they stack them up um so mike can get climb up them and reach the hatch from the top

01:57:54

the peace dial right they get up to that manhole cover but then um when mike gets up there he tries

01:58:04

to push it and it's like it's so heavy he can barely yeah he can barely push it he basically

01:58:09

says then he talks about it he's he's like got his you know he looks like a classic like rancher

01:58:16

oh you know he's got like his his cowboy shirt on and his hat and his whole thing and he was like

01:58:21

i'm getting i'm giving it everything i got and the kids are cheering me on you know come on mike

01:58:26

you can do it you can do it and all of a sudden it they say it moved it moved so the this

01:58:34

this cover that he's pushing against um he gets he is able to move it to the side a little bit

01:58:41

um so that there's a hole about half a foot wide and basically he has to climb up through that hole

01:58:50

and then figure out whatever's up there like the guys could be standing there with the guns they

01:58:55

don't know what's up there but they're like but we got we have to get out of here because the

01:59:00

ventilation, there's no water, like we have to get out of here. So Mike, at 14 years old is like,

01:59:05

I'll go up there. So he gets up out of the hole and realizes he's standing in a little box. And

01:59:12

the box has dirt in it. And it has two truck batteries that were on the manhole cover. And

01:59:19

that was the reason it was so crazy heavy. But once they started moving it, they knocked the

01:59:24

batteries off and they knock this dirt off um so then he's in this box and he's like so he just

01:59:31

starts beating on the sides of the box and realize it's just this fabricated wooden box

01:59:35

that like was covering over the hole he beats his way out of the box and oh my god i'm fucking okay

01:59:45

yeah i know this is some fucking i have a tiger fucking parkour extreme fucking sports with little

01:59:53

kids and medium kids and big kids and then ed himself who's the beloved school bus driver you know who i'm

02:00:00

picturing ed as is um on bob's burgers who's the guy who's teddy teddy yes that's exactly what he

02:00:07

looks like really i'm not joking yes totally looks like him without the beanie okay so mike is like

02:00:13

punching these wooden like walls and then um he breaks through and larry park the six-year-old

02:00:21

he described seeing uh mike punch and this ray of sunshine come down into come down in from the box down into the hole and he says looking up the dirt was falling through

02:00:37

the hole and the sunshine made it glimmer and it looked like shooting stars to him like all of a

02:00:43

And they were like, we're out. So after. And this is the craziest story I've ever fucking heard in my life.

02:00:52

It's fucking insane. It just gets crazier, too. So Mike steps out first outside the box to make sure the coast is clear.

02:01:01

He doesn't see anyone. They see hills and trees and it all looks kind of the same.

02:01:07

He and Ed help all the kids get out of the hole. by the time they get out it's eight o'clock um on july 16th in the morning they have 8 p.m sorry

02:01:17

okay it's 8 p.m on july 16th they've been in captivity for 16 hours and jennifer when she

02:01:25

finally gets outside the nine-year-old she looks around and looks back at where they were

02:01:29

and says it looked just like a sand dune with like a little uh rectangle and a ladder yeah not the

02:01:37

ladder, like a little rectangle. But other than that, there was nothing around. She said,

02:01:41

if they were just, if they just stayed in there, no one would have ever known they were down there.

02:01:46

So they just start, they hear in the distance engine sounds and whirring and metal. And they

02:01:54

don't know if that's where their captors are or what, but they just start walking toward the sound,

02:01:59

everyone together. And when they get up close to it, they realize they're at a quarry. And so it's

02:02:05

all those like those machines that you see around machines yeah the big core a quarry courier a

02:02:14

quarryizer so these guys in hard hats imagine if you're this guy that you've got the night shift

02:02:21

at the quarry and uh you turn around and there's 26 kids that are like that look like they i mean

02:02:30

it's when you see these these pictures too of these kids later on it's unbelievable but they

02:02:35

They basically walked up to these guys that worked at the couriers and Ed said, we're from Chowchilla and we're lost.

02:02:45

But of course, they knew who they were because it was the huge story. So do we know where they are?

02:02:50

Are we allowed to talk about where they are at this point? Yes. At this point, even though they drove for 12 hours, they were in Livermore, California.

02:02:58

Oh, that's not far. No, it's actually only a couple hours up the 99 and over, but they didn't go straight.

02:03:05

there. They just drove around. So they were trying to confuse the kids or let time pass or what?

02:03:10

Yes. Yeah. They wanted to make sure no one knew where they were. So they were basically 100 miles

02:03:18

northwest of Chowchilla. Livermore is the city when I'm driving from LA to Petaluma,

02:03:24

you go up the five. And then finally, when the five is up by the East Bay, you basically take a

02:03:32

left off the five and now you're going into the East Bay and Livermore is that for it's pretty

02:03:37

much the first big city. Okay. That's off of that. Um, the five 80. Um, so it's kind of right there.

02:03:43

So they get, um, the police are called obviously, and they get there, they take pictures of all the

02:03:49

kids and this is in that 48 hours. They just start showing these kids that are like wide eyed

02:03:54

and kind of dirty. And you know, they have stuff on their face and they're like, look like they

02:03:58

were all cried out um then they load them into a bus no so 70s listen to this shit listen to how

02:04:06

70s like 70s were pro trauma they were like we gotta if we're here let's do it let's double down

02:04:13

on this fucking let's double down oh my god they get these kids onto a bus and take them all to the

02:04:18

santa rita rehab center which is a local jail but it had yes so jennifer talks about driving onto

02:04:27

the grounds and being like, Oh, I think we're in trouble. But but basically, once they get there,

02:04:34

it's great because they they don't, you know, they get inside there, there's they're in a

02:04:39

classroom now. So basically, it was just the one spot that they had nearby that could hold all of

02:04:44

them. And like, basically keep the situation contained so they could interview everybody and

02:04:48

see what was going on. Yeah. So the kids are led into a classroom, they're given soda and apples,

02:04:54

The healthiest snack after fucking 28 hours of being. Yeah, they are also given jumpsuits from the jail to change into adult jumpsuits.

02:05:06

So all these kids and they were, of course, really little. So some of them had to roll the pant leg and the arms up and then some of them are just letting them flap around.

02:05:15

But when you see those pictures, these kids are so happy to be, you know, there's there's two female police officers that are in.

02:05:24

right in there with them and holding the little ones. And like they're they all are like, we're

02:05:28

safe. We're all safe. And we're all together. Oh, my God. Yeah. So doctors arrive quickly,

02:05:34

check everyone out, make sure that no one's hurt or, you know, dehydrated, whatever. Aside from

02:05:39

some bruises and some scrapes. Luckily, everyone's okay. Physically. Incredible that no one's hurt.

02:05:46

It's incredible. It's an unbelievable and it's I bet you they must have been dehydrated. Oh,

02:05:52

to some degree because also it a summer day It like and the crying That yes And so much crying so but you know the everyone fine um the police questioned ed and the kids for four hours before finally yes please before

02:06:09

seriously please before finally putting them on a greyhound and two buses after this two buses

02:06:18

stop it stop it stop it yeah stop doing they can't they didn't know it's it's like back when

02:06:25

the doctors used to first of all doctors were barbers and barbers would just bleed you like

02:06:30

if you had a fever they'd just like bleed them yeah that's that's how they did stuff back then

02:06:34

but these kids the picture the the pictures of them on the greyhound in there they're still in

02:06:40

their white jail suits it's the cutest they're all now they're all stoked and they're fine yeah

02:06:44

And at this point, it's four in the morning. They get a police escort while they're on this Greyhound bus back down to Chowchilla.

02:06:54

And they arrive at four in the morning. So they probably left at two or whatever.

02:07:00

The bus pulls into Chowchilla. And as the kids get off, they're escorted by the police through a big group of news reporters.

02:07:09

You see Mike Marshall, the oldest. He's so cute. He's such a 70s, like, cute 14-year-old boy.

02:07:15

Are we talking, like, Matt? He'd be played by Matt Dillon, a young Matt Dillon? He would be, yes.

02:07:20

He was definitely in the Matt Dillon spectrum of a cute kind of Italian, probably maybe either Hispanic or Italian or Portuguese.

02:07:33

Yeah. And he's, and one of the reporters yells, Hi, Mike, what was the pit like?

02:07:38

so like all these all these people that these kids have no idea who any of them are they all

02:07:43

know them by name that's how these people have been following this story and reporting the story

02:07:49

when ed ray steps off the bus he's met with a round of cheers and applause so the investigators return to the burial site at the end at the rock quarry and they dig up

02:08:01

a moving truck that has been buried in this big open field at the rock quarry and they start looking for clues that's the weirdest part it's a moving truck that looks

02:08:12

like it's from 1965 so it's got the big round wheel wells and the trailer is like kind of

02:08:18

separated from the back um so they took uh the work that it took to bury a truck that big yeah

02:08:27

it's really big um and plan everything out it must have taken weeks if not months so investigators

02:08:34

immediately surmise whoever is behind this must have had access to this quarry somehow.

02:08:41

So this is now this is the part where it flips over because it's so sinister. It's so scary.

02:08:47

Like you said, it's like, what is this saw? Now we're going to get into the slapstick insanity

02:08:53

aspect of this story because it boggles the mind. Okay, so of course, if they go, well,

02:09:01

I wonder if it's someone that has connections to the quarry. How about the quarry owner's son,

02:09:06

24 year old Fred Newhall Woods, who has a criminal record just two years before him and two of his buddies,

02:09:14

brothers, rich James and Richard Schoenfeld. They were all arrested together for grand theft auto.

02:09:21

Yeah. Fred and James worked together selling used cars and they were arrested, teaming up with Richard to steal one,

02:09:29

But they all got away with that without ever serving jail time. They just received fines and probation because all three of them were from rich white families.

02:09:39

How quickly did it take them to investigators to zero in on them? Was it like immediately?

02:09:44

Like one day. Okay. Like two hours. It's so obvious. Well, because, yeah, they just stood back there going, the energy, time, whatever it took to bury a full-size moving van, moving trailer.

02:09:57

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's an inside job. It's a quarry inside job. I feel like I'm not into like Grand Theft Auto, but I feel like if you get caught planning it instead of even doing it, you're not very good at it and you should quit it.

02:10:12

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Okay, so authorities review the quarry security footage.

02:10:18

They find that the three had spent months leading up to the kidnapping, digging a massive hole at the quarry.

02:10:24

and security guards do confirm the identity of fred woods so they they they all said yeah that

02:10:31

guy's been around here a ton so police they go to fred's dad's estate um these motherfuckers are

02:10:38

rich like rich i mean he owns a quarry yeah it's like that's fucking fred flintstone right yeah um

02:10:46

they get to the dad's estate and in and there uh they find the shotgun that was used in the

02:10:54

kidnapping they find papers detailing a kidnapping plan it literally they show they have the um

02:11:01

the uh police footage in this and they show a piece of binder paper or no it's yeah it's the

02:11:08

it's the assistant da now who pulls this piece of binder paper out of an old box and it just has

02:11:14

an all caps the word plan written at the top no joke i'm laughing because nobody died but

02:11:21

the fucking fact that they're so stupid and did this so poorly so poorly and strangely okay and

02:11:31

this is the reason my mom couldn't explain it to me she was like because when you're on the other

02:11:36

side of it it's like this is so sinister this is so horrible well okay so so it says plan at the top

02:11:42

of the page the ransom note was never delivered it demanded five million dollars in exchange for

02:11:47

the return of the 26 children on the bus. But they still had the ransom note No one ever received it I tell you So arrest warrants are issued for Fred Woods James Schoenfeld and Richard Schoenfeld And Richard turns himself in on July 23rd

02:12:08

eight days after the kidnapping, but James and Fred both take off in different directions.

02:12:14

James zigzags all over the western United States. Fred tries to head north for Canada.

02:12:19

Two weeks after the kidnapping, James is apprehended in Menlo Park on the morning of

02:12:24

july 29th and fred is caught in vancouver trying to go over the border british columbia um on the

02:12:30

same night they don't want you man no yeah don't worry about it and they and they don't want us to

02:12:36

this day to this day during their interrogations the kidnappers revealed that they had been plotting

02:12:41

this crime for a year and a half and what what they were supposed to do was um after they had

02:12:50

kidnapped the bus full of kids they were supposed to call the chowchilla police department and demand

02:12:58

their ransom and then say we're sending you the note but the story had already broken worldwide

02:13:04

so they couldn't get through the phone lines were busy so they decided they were going to wait it

02:13:11

out and they took a nap and when they woke up from their nap they turned on the news and ed and all

02:13:17

the kids had escaped so listen i'm gonna make a fucking educated guess that meth was involved

02:13:25

somewhere or just really shitty weed you know what i mean where it just kind of they were just

02:13:31

confused stems and seeds man yeah just not enjoying themselves and confused um when asked for a motive

02:13:39

james schoenfeld explains despite being from wealthy families all three men were in debt of

02:13:45

course. He says, quote, we needed multiple victims to get multiple millions and we pick children

02:13:50

because children are precious. The state would be willing to pay ransom for them and they don't

02:13:55

fight back. So these guys bungled their plans so badly that they had no choice but to plead guilty

02:14:02

to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom and robbery in July of 1977. And they're also charged with

02:14:12

eight counts of bodily harm for the physical injuries that some of the kids sustained.

02:14:16

But their lawyers advise them they're facing life in prison no matter what. But if they're found guilty on the charges of bodily harm, they'll have no chance for parole.

02:14:26

So the men plead not guilty to the bodily harm charges. Many of these kids, including Jennifer and Michael, testify against these kidnappers in court.

02:14:39

And I tell you, there is a video of this little girl, this nine-year-old Jennifer, who talks about and they had all the kids make to retell the story on tape afterwards, like for themselves to basically like process the story.

02:14:57

So they have tape of these children at that age telling what happened that they play in this in this 48 hours.

02:15:04

It's really amazingly done. um so basically um they talk about the horrible conditions of the hole and the chronic nightmares

02:15:13

and ptsd that they now suffer from their testimonies lead to a guilty verdict on the bodily harm

02:15:19

charges and on february 17th 1978 fred wood and james and richard sonfeld are all sentenced to

02:15:27

life in prison without the possibility of parole so five weeks after the kidnapping

02:15:33

Ed Ray and all 26 kids get taken on a trip to Disneyland. Yeah, they do. Right? On August 22nd this same year, basically, they basically waited about a month.

02:15:46

And then Chowchilla celebrated their first annual Ed Ray and Children's Day, complete with a parade down the town's main street, honoring the 27 brave survivors.

02:15:58

but of course the kids are traumatized by this experience there's some suffer panic attacks

02:16:07

almost all of them have recurring nightmares that haunt them and their families so it's they you

02:16:15

know it's really tough I mean they they went through something horrible and like to look at

02:16:19

it from the other side to come up out of that pit and turn and be like what the fuck is one thing

02:16:24

But to be down in it when you're six years old and you can't understand all you want is your mom and you're just stuck somewhere.

02:16:31

I mean, it's a nightmare. So basically, then in 1980, four years after the kidnapping, Fred, James and Richard all appeal the bodily harm charges.

02:16:41

Their lawyers argue that the cuts and bruises on the children are not enough to warrant the official legal charge of bodily harm.

02:16:48

And they win this argument. The bodily harm charges are reversed and now they're all eligible for parole.

02:16:56

Two years later, in 1982, parole hearings begin and all of the survivors get dragged back into court to further testify to try to keep their kidnappers behind bars.

02:17:10

All told, the survivors of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping have had to endure 60 parole hearings so far.

02:17:18

Six zero? Six zero. That is additional trauma to the trauma they already fucking endured.

02:17:25

And that is not fair. Every however many years. Every however many years. I fucking hate that.

02:17:32

It's horrible. So in this period of time after all this time is passing, Larry Park becomes, in his own words, an angry child.

02:17:41

Which is absolutely beyond justified. his rage leads his parents to put him in a juvenile detention facility when he's 15

02:17:49

to try to rehabilitate his behavior it doesn work by the time larry 21 he using meth crack and other drugs recklessly and this is what happened to a lot of these kids Mike Marshall the 14 year old hero he said when he was a kid he could see all the years

02:18:06

ahead of him. Then after the kidnapping, I could not see tomorrow. So he begins drinking excessively when he's 18 years old and he does it until he's 48.

02:18:17

But then he finally finds the strength to treat his alcoholism. But I mean, it's, you know, 30 years of being in the bottle because of this trauma and what it did to him.

02:18:29

Jennifer Brown is also haunted by nightmares and PTSD for years. But today she's married and she says she's worked through her struggles with the help of her family and, quote, her church family.

02:18:41

So she has a lot of support. And there's this really amazing moment where they have footage of a reporter.

02:18:49

it was when she went back I believe to testify there was a reporter that asks her

02:18:56

and she's just this little girl and she's kind of like rocking back and forth you know and she's like

02:19:01

one of her front teeth is gone and the reporter says why do you think they did this

02:19:07

and she goes I don't know they didn't get enough love and she says it like super

02:19:13

she has this big smile on her face also that she tells a really funny story of taking

02:19:18

her gum out taking her gum out before she testifies because she didn't want to spit it at

02:19:23

them when she went to tell this she didn't want to get so mad she'd spit it at him so she gave

02:19:28

her dad her gum and then when they cut to her talking to that reporter she's chewing the gum

02:19:33

again i want just i want that one i want that one my favorite she's the cutest okay so uh in june

02:19:40

of 2012, 36 years after the kidnapping, Richard Schoenfeld is paroled, and his brother James

02:19:48

follows three years later in 2015. Many of the now grown children and their families are angry

02:19:54

that the bodily harm charges were reversed and that parole was a possibility for them,

02:19:59

but there's a notable exception. After years of suffering and substance abuse, Larry Park says

02:20:05

that he finally realized his resentment for the kidnappers was killing him. So he decides to meet

02:20:12

to he he decides to ask to meet with the Schoenfeld brothers who had recently gotten out of prison

02:20:19

so that he can forgive them. And they agree. And yeah, and he says about this experience,

02:20:26

quote, it changed my life. Something washed over me. And there was a peace like I'd never known.

02:20:32

I knew that day I would be okay. And now he's Larry's sober and he runs his own handyman business.

02:20:39

And he sometimes volunteers as a pastor at his local church. Fred Wood still remains behind bars.

02:20:45

From the beginning, police suspected that Fred was the mastermind behind the entire plot.

02:20:50

A true sociopath who had roped the Schoenfeld brothers into his plan and who to this day shows no remorse for his actions.

02:20:58

His last parole hearing was October 2019, where he was denied parole for the 19th time.

02:21:04

And his next hearing is set for 2024. After the kidnapping, Ed Ray goes back to driving a school bus and he does it for 12 more years until he retires in 1988.

02:21:17

And then on May 17th, 2012, Ed Ray passes away from natural causes at the age of 91.

02:21:24

And the town of Chowchilla still continues to celebrate Ed Ray and Children's Day every February 26th in honor of these guys.

02:21:34

In 2016, the survivors of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping file a lawsuit against their three kidnappers demanding monetary compensation for the horrors they experienced, and they wind up receiving a settlement.

02:21:46

the exact amount is never publicly disclosed but one survivor says it was quote enough for some serious therapy

02:21:54

but not enough to buy a house and that is the horrifying story of the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping

02:22:01

layers upon layers isn't that nuts so that goes so much deeper than I fucking knew

02:22:10

wow great job great suggestion it's just so funny i so this story is such a weird close to my heart true crime like grew up

02:22:23

with story yeah it's so weird that i haven't done it no the same one zooms it right wow that was

02:22:29

incredible good job i fucking thank you love that you told that story so before we go um we just

02:22:36

want to talk to you about uh something that's vitally important that you know about already

02:22:40

And I'm sure you've been hearing all about it. But we want to remind you we're less than 100 days away from Election Day, which is November 3rd, 2020.

02:22:51

So between a global pandemic and rampant voter suppression efforts, it is critical to help every American registered to vote, to be prepared to do so safely and to ensure that every vote counts, which includes encouraging as many Americans as possible to request to vote by mail.

02:23:09

So VoteSaveAmerica.com is a one-stop shop for voter registration and engagements.

02:23:17

And it's being put on by our friends at Crooked Media. And they've created this incredible hub that's compiled every freaking tool you need.

02:23:25

So you're able to request your vote by mail ballot early, which I've already done.

02:23:31

You can volunteer to call young voters in battleground states, which is so important, and talk to them about voting by mail.

02:23:38

That's huge. Yeah, you can donate to groups on the ground working to mobilize diverse voters.

02:23:44

And you can volunteer as a poll worker if you're healthy and you're able. Yes. And you guys, we're all in this together to win in November. We need to do everything we can.

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Every single one of us voting counts, even though you think you're is this or that, it doesn't matter. We need to show our forces. So we need to get involved and

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last vote and get involved. It's such a great resource. Those guys in Crooked Media and Pod

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02:24:39

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgi

233 - Free Range Children

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