Adeptus Ridiculous - One of the West's Most Mysterious Outlaws: the Ballarat Bandit | Detective Ridiculous

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousFor 11 months, the Bandit led state and federal officers on a 1500-mile chase through some of the most rugged and inhospitable terrain in America. They had pursued him with helicopters, planes, dogs, trackers, and entire task forces, on horseback, by car and on foot; he had escaped them at every turn by demonstrating incredible feats of physical endurance and wilderness ingenuity. As tales of his exploits mounted, he became a folk hero, an outlaw trickster in the tradition of the Old West.Support the show

Welcome everybody to another episode of Detective Ridiculous. My name is Bricky. My co-host is D.K., and he's going to be telling us all about the only thing more frightening than Warhammer, real life. But before we get into that, if you enjoy this podcast, head on over to Patreon.com slash Adeptist Ridiculous to get access to all kinds of great new stuff, bloopers, Discord access, posters that arrive every single month and more. Patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous and pick up some of that merchandise as well down in the description at Orkidate.com. Get yourself posters, shirts, hoodies, and more. Ooh. One take, easy.

Wow. Yeah, usually it takes like seven takes for Bricky to get all the Patreon stuff. You guys can't hear it, but Shai has to put in some serious work for Bricky intros, you know? Did your mom raise a liar? Yep. Yep, I can tell. She sure did. You bastard.

What? Hey, the people probably believe it, you know? I don't trust the people. Yeah. So are you ready for real life today, Bricky? Are you ready for the real life happenings of Detective Ridiculous? So I think earlier you were like, hey, Bricky, you know, remember that whole thing about wanting a short episode? That ain't going to happen.

Yeah, and it's surprising because, like, this, I didn't expect this one to be a long one. So usually, I write out like a script. So it kind of keeps me on track, and I don't go wandering off all over the place, even though I still do. And, you know, usually, I'll be in the ballpark of, like, seven, eight pages. This is 11. Oh, my God. So we should probably get started. What a, what God have I, have I harmed to have this upon me?

Your existence has offended all of the chaos gods, and I, I, I, I am their redeemer. Who is the chaos gods in real life? There's just one. It's me. It's you. It's me. All right, let's hear it. But we've, we've got a pretty interesting case on Detective Ridiculous today, because we're going over someone known

as the Ballarat Bandit. Ballarat? The Ballarat Bandit. So my mind is immediately going to like a ballerina rat. I assume. Now, Ballarat is a place. Okay. No, no, I didn't actually think that was what it was,

but that's where my mind was going. I just got to be sure with you sometimes. Whoa, okay. Okay, something, something, something pots and kettles. But anyway, so this one actually happened fairly recently. It happened back in 2004. So it didn't happen just yesterday, but it's also not something that happened back in like the ye olden days of 1800s.

It happened in the ye olden days of Unreal Tournament 2004. It is insane how you know the year of those games like that, just off the top of your head. You do realize that Unreal Tournament 2004 is the name. of the game. Is it really? It's just called Unreal Tournament 2. Well, okay, well, then it makes sense how you know it.

How did you know what Unreal Tournament 2004 came out? Anyway, if the name Ballarat doesn't sound familiar because you thought it was a ballerina rat or something, it's because, for all intents and purposes, Ballarat is a ghost town. Oh, yeah, it's in that part of Cali. Yeah. And it's not like a ghost story that has anything to do with ghosts living on. a roof. So put away your satanic Bible and your silver bullets because we're fine.

But legit, if you Google Ballarat and you look it up on a map, it will quite literally be labeled Ballarat, parentheses, ghost town, end parentheses. Google lists it as a literal ghost town. Literal. Literal ghost town.

Current population is three. and two of those people, two of those people run the Ballarat general store. Where did they live? You know, we'll talk about this desolate little place called Ballarat. But Ballarat is essentially this kind of nothing former mining town in Death Valley. And every source I've seen has been like, yeah, basically, the only people living out in Death Valley kind of around Ballarat

are people that have some kind of past that they either want to erase or they want to hide from or they want to just run away from. There are no one who lives in Death Valley that people want to live there. Because yeah, it's Death Valley. It's called that for a reason. Summers there

easily reach and surpass a hundred and twenty degrees. Even at its peak, because this used to be a mining town, it had back in the day, it had a little bit of a gold rush. There were some nearby mines that had some gold in it. Even when the allure of riches was there, it only had a population of like 500. Times were different. Also, Death Valley was about to have record heat recently.

of like a hundred and thirty-two and people were like going to go to Death Valley to check out the heat and I'm like oh yeah that's normal human behavior I can't wait to be in the hottest place in the world and people like actually die there people were going to Death Valley

because oh my God it's going to be so hot yeah that's crazy that's weird that is not normal behavior. That is abnormal. All right. Anyway. But like I said, about the only thing

in Ballarat worth mentioning these days is the general store. And they actually have this cute little green mailbox with an antenna on it and they're like, hey, everyone, you can mail letters to aliens here. All right, that's kind of cute. That is kind of cute, right? But in early 2004, this little general

store, the only thing Ballarat has going for it had been robbed. It had apparently been robbed of a quad ATV, cash, food, and a firearm. I think it was specifically a 22 caliber rifle had been stolen from the general store. If I was a betting man, I'd say that that quad probably belonged to whoever was tending the store because I can't imagine a rinky dink little general store in a ghost town actually selling an ATV. I kind of love the, I mean, I'm sad that the guy got his quad stolen,

but I'm very much like curious as to the whole like, damn, I got my quad stolen. How am I going to get out of here? Because he's living in Death Valley. Yeah, I guess, I guess he's just walking home.

He ain't going home at all. Yeah, I'm, I guess I just live in the general store now. So, you know. God damn. Poor guy. Yeah. So when you're basically in a ghost town, who exactly do you call when your general store has been robbed? The Ghostbusters.

No, there are no Ghostbusters. That's just a movie, Bricky. I don't know if you knew that. It's just a movie. But I saw them at Universal Studios. Oh, well, I guess you can call them then. But the closest police office is actually in a place called Inyo County, which is kind of sitting right between Nevada and the Sierra Nevada. And according to Wikipedia, half of Inyo County actually resides in Death Valley.

So you call the Inyo County Police. I'm assuming this is where Inyo Kern is. I have no idea. but that makes sense. Oh, I passed through Inyo Kern on the way when I drive to Vegas. So I assume. Yeah, I would say yes then. Oh, yeah.

The other problem is that Inyo County is some three hours away from Ballarat. So if this was like an urgent call and it needed an immediate response, well, you're kind of screwed. According to the officer who responded the call, I think his name is Jeff Holloway, the people living in the surrounding area kind of near Ballarat, they're getting a little scared because there's a bandit on the loose. And like we said, Inyo County is some three hours away. So if this on the loose bandit shows up to their little spot and robs them, what are they going to do?

they're kind of screwed. So a lot of people in the area legitimately start to arm themselves for their own immediate protection because there is no way the police can get there in time if this bandit starts to just take liberties. Right.

So yeah, the people around the area are they're arming up. Right. I mean, that's pretty common thing, I believe, in like the more rural areas of America with low cop response. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure the police don't love that idea, but, like, you've got to do what you got to do. If the police can't show up for three hours,

like, you got to do what you got to protect yourself and your property. So, when you picture the terrain of Death Valley, you probably are immediately thinking of, like, vast deserts, mountains, hills, and, of course, it being just unbearably hot, which is obviously pretty close to what the area is like, But it also means that tracks are going to be relatively easy to spot and follow, especially tracks from an ATV, which, of course, there are tracks from the ATV leading away from the general store. So there's a man named Terry Allen that's called in to sort of scope out the area.

He's the BLM Ranger for this little area, and that's the Bureau of Land Management. so he's called in it's like all right we got we got to find this guy you know someone someone robbed the general store and you know we got to find him so terry's following these at tv tracks and footprints and he actually finds that they do lead to some campsites here and there uh the tracks sometimes lead off in false directions but he finds some campsites here and there and some of them are kind of near like main roads and that worries them a little bit um but he does never find the bandit. The bandit is never at any of these campsites.

Okay. And in a true TV documentary, Terry actually believed that when he came up on like all of these campsites, that at some point, uh, the bandit could actually see him, like through a scope or something. Oh. Because, because they're thinking like what the bandit is doing is he is getting high vantage points and he is specifically waiting. for like tourists,

campers, hikers, stuff like that. And he's like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to scope out the campsite. And I'm going to wait for people to leave. And then I'm going to jump in there, steal what I need, and then just go.

That's a very, um, what was the movie with like Chris Pine and Ben Foster? Um, with, uh, Jeff Bridges. And it was like a rural county. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Okay, our viewers will know what I'm talking about. And it gives me that vibe. It also gets actually gives me a little bit of like a no country for old men vibe. Oh, yeah, a little bit, sure. The super long range kind of scoping things out kind of thing. Yeah. I don't know how long range this stuff is, but, you know. I mean, you know, you may not have a, well, a 22 rifle, unless chat can, can, I said chat, comment section.

You know what I mean. Yes, I do. You're a swimmer. I get it. Unless one of them is able to correct me, I'm assuming that a 22 rifle is not the premier choice of long-range weaponry. Because it is an e-de-bitty little bullet. Yeah, probably not. So I'm going to assume.

Yeah. But he's chasing these campsites day in, day out for like two months. Two months, every day, he's like, oh my God, I keep finding campsites, I keep finding just tracks. Some tracks lead nowhere. Some tracks lead to campsites. And it's just, oh, what a nightmare. But for these two months, while he's trying to track him down, people are still getting robbed. Tourists are still getting robbed.

Hikers are still getting robbed. Survivorists are still getting robbed. So authorities are no closer to finding him after two months. They keep finding empty or abandoned campsites where the bandit had been. They could just never get the jump on him. And it seemed like he was always somehow one step ahead of him or one step ahead of them. Okay. Which is kind of fascinating because you're literally doing like needle in a desert.

It's just one guy in the middle of nothing. Yep, one guy in the middle of nothing. I think he's mostly like losing him, like, in the mountains and hilly areas and stuff, you know. Sure, he's not running, he's not outrunning him in, like, dune sand. Well, we'll talk. Oh, my God. But public opinion is starting to shift, because, of course, initially, you're kind of expecting the police and these rangers are eventually going to grab this person. It's only a matter of time.

They have the resources and they have the experience. But the longer and longer it took, the more and more public opinion began to sour, and it was very quickly becoming more of, oh, they can't catch him. They won't catch them. They're not smart enough. They're not fast enough. This bandit is too good. He's too good for them.

They're never going to catch him. Damn, sheriffs. This is some super trooper shit. and that investigator, Jeff Holloway in a documentary, was like, dude, he was becoming a folk hero. People stopped looking at him as a criminal, and they started to root for this upstart bandit because he was giving the police so much trouble. It was like people were forgetting that he was out here robbing tourists and hikers and everybody that was in the desert, and they were like, oh, let's go, Ballarat Bandit. And since the first spot he hit was that little general store in Ballarat, people dubbed him the Ballarat Bandit. And the name just spread like wildfire.

Everybody was using it. Magazines, papers, internet forums. Anybody that talked about him, he was the Ballarat Bandit who was eluding the police and sticking it to the man. So, I mean, obviously, anti-police sentiment has increased a lot in the past couple of years. But this is in 2004. I mean, people were pretty, this is like post-9-11, like Bush administration. People were pretty hot on the cops. So I'm actually a little bit surprised, I don't think kind of just wanted him to be a Bonnie and Clyde kind of person.

That's, I'm thinking that's what it probably was like. They were like, oh, this is, you know, he's just kind of this cool little bandit. He's not really making any trouble. He's not really, there are no acts of violence going on. He's just kind of eluding the police, giving him a hard time. He's all right. He's just stealing supplies so he can live out there. He's all right.

He's all right. Now, if he was murdering people and they were finding, like, you know, body parts all over the place, then I don't think people would be too sweet on him. True, but he was, like, stealing from, like, general stores and stuff. Like, just good old working people. True, true. He was stealing from general stores. He was stealing from high stores.

So not great, but still, you know. So now we've gone around four months since they really started to try tracking down the Ballarat Bandit. Real quick, Shai made a good point. He was stealing water from people in Death Valley, which is, which is, I mean, he might as well be attempting murder at that point. Yeah, I mean, stealing people's supplies in Death Valley is still not great. It's really not.

Stealing their water, their food, their supplies, when they leave. camp to go on nature hikes. Not great. No, you're right. It's not great. But I guess public just ha-ha-h-h-he-h-h-h-hout out-rode. Yeah, yeah. So now we've gone around four months since they really

started to try tracking down the Ballarat Bandit, and still Terry and the local authorities are having basically no success. I would imagine at this point, they are absolutely furious. Because, like, not only can they not find him, not only are people still being burglarized, but the public is siding with this guy.

We're trying really hard to find him for your benefit. So I have to believe the pressure to find this guy is absolutely staggering because they want to find him and be like, okay, ha ha, we all had fun. You had your cute little folk here a bandit. We caught him. Everybody shut the fuck up. Let's end this. And they would finally catch a break because there were these four off-duty police officers from Los Angeles. And they were just kind of in the area.

They were tourists enjoying nature, hiking, just kind of bonding in the wilderness. And so these- Why didn't you say it that way? Is this some Brokeback Mountain thing? Like bonding in the wilderness. In the wilderness. I don't know why I said it like that. they were just four dudes that were enjoying their time in the, you know, maybe they were.

I don't know. Shy, I am making, too, them if they were. Shy, I am making fun of decay. That stands no matter what the context. Unbelievable, Bricky. How dare you? And so, these four off-duty police officers are out in kind of sort of no-man's land. It's not really no man's land.

It's just, it's just nature out here. There's really no civilization around. again, Death Valley. And while they're out there, they actually stumble upon a man sitting on an ATV that is just fully loaded with supplies. Like, there are enough supplies to almost entirely cover this ATV. Oh, wow. Yeah, he really is. You can barely tell there's an ATV under there.

But they also notice there is a scoped 22 caliber rifle sitting, sitting. on a bunch of those supplies. So suddenly, being police officers, they're all kind of on super high alert because this guy is just red flag central. He's out in kind of desolate Nowheresville. Nothing he says is adding up. He claimed he was just kind of out here camping,

but there's no camp gear, and he's just kind of chilling on his ATV that is overburdened with supplies. And it just seems everything about him seems strange and none of it sits right with the officers at all. Oh, it's my Starfield character. Hey, man, you gotta level up that fitness, all right? You gotta level up your fitness and make sure you can carry more weight.

What are you doing? I'm trying. I have to run a lot with high weight. The amount of times I run out of O2. So they kind of small talk with him for a little bit. And it doesn't really help because the off-duty office is just like, nothing this guy says sounds right. He's just like, oh, yeah, I'm just out here camping and enjoying.

stuff and they're just like okay whatever dude and so they start walking away and one of the officers like okay this is something about that guy's funky and he turns around snaps a quick picture when he isn't looking and he would eventually send this picture that one that you're seeing right there to the Inyo County police because he's like man I don't I don't like to feel of this guy I got to tell somebody about it it's my duty as a police officer to to let the local... What accent was that? Dude, these are L.A. cops.

What was... What was that? It was just an accent. I don't know what you're... I don't know what you getting so upset about. I'm upset for good reason. But this picture gets emailed to the local authorities, and it does find its way over to Jeff Holloway,

same guy that responded to the initial. theft in Ballarat. And as he's looking at this picture, he's like, dude, that's the rifle. That's the ATV from the Ballarat General Store. So he's like, okay, it's not a great picture, but we've got a picture of this guy. Not only do we have a picture of this guy, I know that he's still in Death Valley. He hasn't fled off somewhere. He's still in the area, still stealing from people, okay. So at least, You know what? It's something. It's something. So, again, Emo of the Ballarat Bandit thus far, he's essentially, essentially he's praying on tourists, hikers, people out here enjoying the wilderness, stuff like that. Scopes them out, watches them from a vantage point, waits for them to leave their camp, and then just robs them blind of whatever supplies he so needs.

So, Terry Allen gets word that there are going to be a group of like tourists that are going out to this place called the Barker Ranch, which some listeners might be familiar with because that is the same Barker Ranch that Charles Manson used as a hideout. Oh, hot damn. Yeah, and I believe that's actually where he was arrested, and I think he was found like hiding under a sink or something. Charles Manson, you mean? Yeah, yeah. Okay, because I was like, damn, you just spoiled the bandits. He was arrested. Yeah, Charles Manson was arrested there.

I think Charles Manson also felt that, like, there was a secret network of tunnels under Death Valley that he could use to ride out Armageddon or something like that. Charles Manson was... Charles Manson thought a lot of things, yeah. Yeah, he is... He's not... Anyway, so this is a fairly infamous place

that's going to attract. tourists and stuff like that. So it's kind of the perfect spot to keep your eye on if you're the Ballarat Bandit, you want to rob tourists, or if you're the police and you're like, well, that seems like a likely target. Anyway, for whatever reason, the group of tourists that was going to go to the Barker Ranch decide, eh, we're not going to go. We're going to cancel the trip. They hadn't been warned. The Rangers didn't flag them down or anything. It was just kind of happenstance. They just decided, we're not going that day. So Terry Allen and another ranger decide, you know what, let's scope out the area anyway.

There might not be any tourists here, but you know what? Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe we'll find some kind of evidence that suggests that the Ballarat Bandit was scoping the area out. And to Terry surprise, he actually does spot tracks that were left by the Bandit's Quad. Oh. Yeah, in the documentary I keep mentioning, Terry specifically says, said that the quad apparently had some pretty distinct tracks. And I imagine if you've been tracking this guy for four months, it's probably super easy to pick up his specific tracks and footprints.

So they start following these tracks for a little bit, and then the tracks turn into footprints. And eventually, they lead to a camp that's sitting in kind of like this low ground surrounded by mountains, but this time the campsite was not empty and the Ballarat Bandit was actually there. So, Terry's got to be on Cloud 9 because, oh, I've got the Ballarat Bandit in my site. I, day and night for four months, every day I have been doing nothing but chasing this guy. And now I got him. He's right there. I got him. But the Ballarat Bandit sees them. them and he pops up in surprise he grabs a bag of essential supplies and then he takes off like a bad out of hell.

Like a bandit out of, never mind. Continue. You tried. I tried. It was stupid. Yeah, go, anyway. Go ahead. Go ahead.

So the Rangers take off after him. But this bandit, man, they're making no ground on him at all. They're huffing, they're puffing, they're giving it all they've got. And these Rangers are by no moment. means out of shape either. They are pretty fit and they are running as hard as they can, but this bandit doesn't slow down. He just keeps sprinting at this same crazy speed. He is just, as the kids say, he is shamovin. He is shamovin. He is shamovin. And so the Rangers like, okay, screw this. We're not making

any headway on the guy. Let's get in our Jeep and let's catch him. Let's end this. but they had already been chasing the bandit for like a quarter of a mile. So they've got a little ways to go to get back to their Jeep. And the bandit is still sprinting his brains out the entire time across these desert flats in a hundred and twenty degree weather. He just doesn't stop. So again, this is the thick of death. Valley. Not a cool spring day. This guy is on a mad dash. And even when the Rangers get back to their

Jeep, they said they had to bring out the binoculars to check and see where he was. He's still running. Still in the distance. He's leaving this little puff cloud of sand because he is still just going and just doesn't stop. He is so far away that even in their Jeep, they're like, dude, we can't catch him. He's too far ahead. We're screwed. He got away.

Man, adrenaline is a hell of a drug. Apparently, because he just, he outran him. He just completely, v-ro-hm. And it just added another notch to the folk legend that was the Ballarat Bandit, because they were onto him, and he just, boom, outrun him. And he just decided to outrun the cops on foot in, like... In Death Valley. The place named death.

And he just outran him. No problem. They wouldn't even try chasing him in the Jeep. But at the very least, they had a fresh campsite that is full of evidence they could at least potentially used to paint a little better picture of the Ballarat Bandit. Because remember, he didn't have time to clear anything out. All he had time to do was grab his bag of essentials, high tail it out of there. So maybe, maybe they can figure out motivations, get a better idea of why he's out here, what brought him out here, anything, something.

And as they're looking around his campsite, they realize that this guy obviously has to have some knowledge of how to survive in the great outdoors. Not just because he was able to sprint his ass so hard through the desert, but also because like, despite how his quad looked in that one picture, where it looks like he just stacked everything willy-nilly, his campsite is ridiculously well-organized. In that documentary, they said that he would bury his trash and his food. I'm assuming he buried his trash, so it wouldn't give away that he was there, because obviously if there's a bunch of trash blowing in the wind, there's just, you know, obviously someone's there. And I'm assuming he buried his food because, well, he's literally a bandit that steals food and water from other campsites.

So I'd assume he buries it so someone else doesn't come along and do to him what he's doing to tourists. Or possibly like wildlife. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want like a wolf or something coming around eating all your food. Fair enough. A wolf! I don't know. Something.

D.K., what do you think lives in Death Valley? I don't know. Scorpions, wolves. I'm going to lose it. What? They also said that even though he had left the campsite, they could tell that his camp was arranged in such a way that he could very easily pick up, move to another campsite,

and not really have to worry about anything that he left behind, like food, water essentials. So I'm guessing he probably always has like this panic bag right next to him just for such an occasion, so he is always just ready to go. Yeah, well, coyotes, wolves, tomato, tomato, right? Yeah, we're fine. No, he do not give him vindication. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you, shy. You know, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I'm worrying about it. But it seemed like the campsite actually made alarm bells start going off for the Rangers. Listening to this one documentary again and hearing the officers talk about it, they seemed to really worry that he was so willing to just run himself stupid. and he did have a bit of a cache of firearms that he stole from people, too, at this campsite.

So, if he... Oh, maybe he committed a crime a bit more rough than... Exactly. They're thinking that maybe he's not out here just for petty theft because he enjoys it. Like, sure, when they eventually catch him, is he going to get put in jail for petty theft of... Well, maybe not petty. He's going to get put in jail for stealing from people and all that, but it's like, okay, that's not like a life sentence.

But if he has a record and he's maybe like a lifer that's on the run from jail, that would make him run a little harder. Or if he was planning something on a much bigger scale, like if he's stealing all this stuff from people because he is preparing to do something a lot worse, you gotta be extra careful around him because who knows what he's, they don't know why he's out here.

Right, and we discussed earlier that you're not really living in Death Valley of your own volition. Yeah, there's usually a reason for you to choose to come out to Death Valley and like survive here. So, a little more time passes, like a couple weeks or so,

and I think they get an anonymous call from just a local, just an anonymous call and they're like, look, We found a campsite. I think it might be one you're looking for, so maybe scope it out. And naturally, this time, they're going to go as hard as they can at this lead. And not just because they kind of got embarrassed the first time, though I'm sure that played some small role in it,

but also because, again, they know he's got weapons. They know he's armed. They need to be extra careful and have a proper plan in place. Because, again, who knows what his motivations are? Who knows why he's here? Who knows what he's setting up? So they legit get as many Death Valley police and rangers as they can. And they're planning to storm this campsite.

And not only are they sending in a fully armed ground team, they have helicopters circling the area so that if he tries to pull off this crazy modern marvel of sprinting away again, outrunning them, at least the helicopters are going to be like, okay, we know exactly where he is, here's where he's heading, here's where you got to go. So they are just like, okay, we're going to get this guy. We got him. The big guns. The big guns.

And so they storm the area, helicopters buzzing overhead. But the Ballarat Bandit is nowhere to be found at the campsite. Is all the stuff there? they don't really find it doesn't seem like they find anything new they just kind of find an abandoned campsite and they literally spend the rest of the day circling the area combing the area

helicopters get a better look at stuff tell us where he is what's going on come on and they just come up empty no one can spot him no one sees him he slipped through their fingers again the only moral victory they can take is at the very least, they showed the Ballarat Bandit like, this is the

force that is looking for you. We have helicopters, we have canine teams, we have armed guys that are looking for you. So maybe it'll, maybe it will convince him to just stop robbing people because, wow, this sure has gotten a little out of hand just for stealing supplies from tourists. Armed guys, guys with arms, dogs with arms, armed dogs. They've all got arms. They all have arms. They're all bearing them. Helicopters with arms.

And, you know, the Ballarat Bandit does go quiet for a little bit. According to some of the Rangers, and I think a journalist or someone who is writing a book on it, they believe that the Ballarat Bandit did go dark because he saw how crazy this search was getting. You know, after you get your camp raided by helicopters, armed police officers, and the whole nine yards, it's like, well, maybe things are getting a little hot and not in the temperature sense, because it's Death Valley. It's always hot. Don't forget about the armed dogs. Oh, yeah, and the armed helicopters, yeah. And the dogs with arms.

Oh, yeah, yeah, multiple arms, not just the four legs. They've got, yeah, anyway. So the Inyo County Police wouldn't hear anything about the Ballarat Bandit for several. months until they get a bit of a weird call from a place called Nye County. And Nye County is basically like central Nevada for the most part. It's just like this massive desolate desert area. It's kind of like Death Valley New Game Plus. Maybe not as hot, but still, it's just this big desolate desert area, just smack dab in the middle of Nevada.

I think Death Valley is already the new game plus. This is easy mode, Death Valley. True, true. Maybe, yeah, Death Valley is like, I guess it's the Nye County New Game Plus. Maybe it's a better way. Hard mode, yeah. But anyway, Inyo County police get a call from the authorities in Nye County, Nevada, because they had this really strange and kind of alarming finding in their area.

So first, there was like this little ranch owned by a man named Donald Jackson, and his ranch was rocked. of a tractor battery, and I kid you not, a little red wagon. Not like a red station wagon. This is legit little red wagon that children play with. And according to the documentary, the Ballarat Bandit dragged this little red wagon with the tractor battery in it for 10 miles. No joke, I think it was Donald Jacks, the owner of the ranch and his, I think it was his son-in-law, followed the tracks of this little red wagon and the footprints for 10 miles.

It should be noted that Donald said that that tractor battery was some 120 pounds. And not only that, apparently the bandit had made several dummy tracks, again, with this 120 pound battery, so he actually probably went more than 10 miles, because he made dummy trails that spawned off into nothing and then went about his normal way. Well, now I know why he took the wagon. He took the wagon so he could, you know,

drag around the battery. So, yeah, I mean, I guess he had to, he had to make sure nobody was following him, just like he did with the ATV back in Death Valley. This guy really is taking every part. possible measure. That does make it very suspicious. Right? He knows what he's doing.

So what they come upon at the end of these tracks was a Subaru that had been presumably abandoned by the bandit. I'm assuming he figured, hey, you know, I just, I need some kind of battery to jump the engine in my dead Subaru.

But I'm assuming the tractor battery didn't work out. He probably figured he had to ditch the whole thing before the authorities were on to him. Or he probably did his usual shindig, saw them coming like he always does from a solid vantage point, and then just high-tailed it the hell out of there. But what they discovered when they, like, ran the plates on the Subaru, is that this Subaru had been reported stolen in, you guessed it, Death Valley. And that is why they were following up with the Inyo County Police. Okay, so he's, you know, it almost sounds like he's trying to, you know, it almost sounds like he's trying.

trying to like escape. Yeah, kind of does. In a funny way. Mm-hmm. Like he's trying to lay low. He's trying to get out of Dodge. But, you know. The other worrying thing about the abandoned Subaru that they found is that they found a load of guns in this little Subaru.

I think the Subaru was a hatchback. Kind of looks like a hatchback. I guess it doesn't really matter. But yeah, he had like, I think they said he had 14. rifles and a bunch of extra scopes stowed away in this car. So this is naturally a problem. Like they're probably thinking that up until this point, we've been actually kind of lucky that this hasn't devolved into a firefight.

And also, it, again, it puts them on even higher alert because they really, really need to bring this guy to justice somehow because he's stockpiling a lot of weapons. Like that, one of those campsites they found before had a bunch of firearms. His abandoned Subaru has 14 rifles in it. What the fuck is he planning to do? This is, when did, I mentioned earlier, like, about the whole, you know, like, post-9-11 kind of mindset. When was, when was, when was Columbine?

What year was that? Oh, boy, I don't know what your Columbine was. Because I know there was a lot of like fear Like during that period of time Afterwards 1999 Okay It's pretty

It's in the ballpark Yeah yeah okay So they get another lead on a campsite of the Ballarat bandit And they're probably like look We've really got to take care of this We don't know who this guy is Why he's out here capable of. He knows how to survive out here. Like, dude, we, mm. Um, so, aside from, like,

and it's weird, because, like, aside from firearms and, like, supplies, he, he's also going after and looting really weird things. Like, he really loves to loot cooking spices and, like, true crime cassette tapes, like, cassette tapes that have, like, true crime stories on them. You know, I wonder if he had a copy of Detective Ridiculous. trademarks reserved. Oh man, are we gonna make like retro cassette tapes? I would love that. That would actually be so cool.

Oh, I... Wait, that's a great merch idea. Cassette tapes, hell yeah. Yeah, Detective Ridiculous episode cassette tapes. Oh, could you, yeah, like you could make that a shirt. Ooh. Like that could be the Detective Ridiculous shirt. It's just like it's this old school retro cassette tape with the logo on it.

Million dollars, baby. Million dollars. baby. So, they have a lead on another campsite and the Nye County police are like, you know what? Let's try to ambush his campsite. You know, we can ambush it because this campsite only has like two roads leading into it and one of them is just like, the road goes like right into the mountains. So like, ain't no way he's getting away from us there. So if we ambush him and we get that one road, where's he going to go? Because they haven't heard of the stuff that he's done so far in Knight County. So they're like, this is the chance.

We're going to jump him. We're going to outsmart him. Ha, ha, we've got this. We got him. So. But play always sunny in Philadelphia moment. They did not get him. The gang fails to get the bandit.

So from what I could determine, they actually were kind of close to getting him. Like, they showed up at this campsite, right? And there were two Rangers because they didn't want to have this massive, force show up that he could see coming a mile away because then he just bales out of there. So like there are two Rangers and they're and they're going to ambush him. They're going to get him. They're like okay, all right, we've got him. And they spot some pretty fresh tracks that are actually heading up the

mountain. So like, oh no, we just missed him. We got to go. So they took off in that direction. They do call in a SWAT team and a dog team too. And when one of the officers was interviewed, they're like, okay so we're following these tracks we are running we're hauling ass up the mountain because he went the tracks went straight up the mountain and the officer's like you know as we were following these tracks we're looking at the we're looking at the footprints his goddamn footprints never come together ever and that means this jerk never took a break he just hauled ass up and over the

mountain he outran them again but this time he ran up and over a mountain. I don't understand this person. I know. It's crazy. He did it again. This is some kind of like, this is some kind of crap where it's like, it's like, it's a scream. Whereas like, like, oh, were you the band the whole time?

We both were. In reality, it's two people because holy shit, the volume of stuff he's done. Yeah, it's crazy. And so they're like, well, damn it. We'll investigate the campsite. We'll investigate the campsite. And they start to realize that the path that they took, the path they were following up the mountain,

there are little markers all across this path. The Ballarat Bandit had literally set up markers for his escape route that only he would recognize. They were markers and he was like, okay, if I followed this path, I can just bolt right through there and I never need to stop. and one of the officers that was chasing him down, his name was Ken Guthridge,

said in that documentary I keep mentioning, because it was a pretty good source, that with everything he found, he believed that the Ballarat Bandit had to have some kind of military training because the stuff he was doing, that was stuff that Ken legitimately learned in light infantry training.

So now they're like, dude, this is some kind of ex-military guy. Like... I could see that. Like, just a guy. guy out of the service, you know? Yeah, yeah, and he's using his training to not only evade police officers, but also to take advantage of the local populace and rob people and stuff like that. And man, no matter how hard they tried, they just cannot catch him.

No matter how many people they send out to patrol the deserts of Nevada, nothing comes back and they just cannot get the jump on the Ballarat Bandit. and this goes on for an additional six months. Oh my, my, gods. Six months. How is he, is he, he's still stealing from people this whole time? Yeah, he's still stealing supplies. He's still robbing ranches and stuff like that.

But that six months wasn't necessarily wasted because they did pick up a few things about the Ballarat Bandit from some of the camps. sites that they found. And these discoveries would actually make them really want to like ramp up their efforts and be like, whoa, this situation might be a little more dire than we first imagined. Oh, is this the time where we find out he never existed? No, we don't find that out. No, sorry. So aside from the guns, being an obvious worry, what they also found in some of his campsites were military maps, which not a great, yeah, not a great thing to find at the bandits's camp when you think he's an ex-military dude. But the other thing that they realized that made them really super worried is they start to like, you know, they've got their little pinboard of evidence

and what is it, Pepe Sylvia, you know, and they're looking at everything. And they're like, huh, you know, a bunch of his campsites, they're really close to top secret military bases. Like, he was camping, a bunch of his campsites are really close to Area 51. Like when he was in, and when he was in Death Valley, they were like, wait a minute, a bunch of his campsites were really close to the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Base. Oh, that's actually really funny. My dad lived around Ridgecrest for a while, and they would kind of go out near the China Lake area. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but they're like, man, a lot of his campsites are really close to, like, top secret military encampments. And now they're starting to worry that, like, he might be ex-military, but what if this is, like, a terrorist? What if he's scoping out high-value targets? Because, again, this is 2004. 9-11 just happened. It's still fresh in everyone's mind. So if this guy's camping around top secret military bases specifically, and he has military training, we got to find this guy now.

Like this could be catastrophic if we don't find him because what is he doing? Why is he camping near these military instants? Why is he stockpiling? What is he doing? It's like the kids would say a little suss. Yeah, it's a little suss. is, well, it is very suss at this. Yeah, it's actually extremely

suss. They are very worried. So they have people from Inyo County and Nevada combing the deserts again, literally day and night. They want to leave no stone unturn looking for this guy because if he's if he's planning

what they think they're planning, this is a problem. They also get so worried about it. They call in the Department of Homeland Security and they get them to send search planes. They get them to send helicopters and they're making damn sure that if he's

hiding in some little draw in the mountains or some little outcrop in the middle of nowhere, they're going to find his ass. The scruntled ex-military guy stalking up for a raid is a pretty rough one. Yeah, that's

but even with all of this extra manpower combing Nevada, he still manages to keep one step ahead of them. Like, it's crazy. He's still burglarizing ranches, still stealing cards as he's moving through the area, and they're still finding his abandoned campsites all over the place. So, they

kind of know the general direction that he's moving, and he's kind of moving north, but then he just comb the desert. Yeah, comb with literal comb, indeed. And I think he ends up stealing a Toyota, a Ford pickup truck, and I think he has to seal another different ATV just so we can properly move through.

But yeah, so he's moving through like northern Nevada, and then just the trail goes cold, and he vanishes again. Which, for the Ballarat Bandit, that's probably the smart thing to do. There's no way he doesn't realize that all of this mass of humanity is there for him to capture him. This, my friend, is the time to live.

lay low, cool it on the burglaries. Unless you really, really, really need water and food, there is no need to do anything. Just at this point, he's got to be thinking, I need to chill and just lay low, and I need to just not be seen. You know, in fairness, I mean, he might need these things because he is in, oh, what's the name with this place again? Well, he's in Nevada now, you know. Oh, that's true. Oh, wait, no. That doesn't make it any better.

He's still in the desert. He's still in the middle of a desolate desert. He still needs those things. People forget that Vegas is not some ghostly city. It's in the middle of nowhere. It is a desert. The strip is great, but outside of the strip, eh, not so much. There's nothing.

Have you not played Fallout New Vegas? But Terry Allen is thinking this too. He's like, you know what? He probably is trying to lay low. and he kind of thought that you know what that bandit he might straight up just not be in Nevada anymore like it's gotten so hot with patrols and helicopters and the Department of Homeland Security is there

so his thought process like you know what what if the Ballarat Bandit isn't in Nevada and if he's looking for safe haven what if he went back to one of his old hideouts where nobody would think to look for him you know, kind of hiding in plain sight because they can't see the forest for the trees. So Terry Allen is actually checking out one of the old cabins that the bandit used to hang out in. And he says when he comes up on this cabin, he can smell smoke, like maybe someone had been cooking, you know?

And when he entered the cabin, nobody was there. But he found a half-smoke joint that was still smoldering. So he's like, ooh, he was here. Maybe he saw me coming. he heard the Jeep and he just, he bailed. Oh, yeah, still smoldering is like... Yeah, that thing was still smoking. That's out of a movie.

Mm-hmm. Also in the area, there's another ranger that's kind of just out on patrol, looking around, doing his job, and he spots this really weird-looking Chevy flatbed truck. It's this kind of ugly lime green-colored thing, and it has all these, like, little five-gallon buckets around. It's got a bunch of stuff in the... the bed, and it's, it's just kind of out in the flats. Like, it's not all abandoned and picked

to death or anything. It's just kind of like there. Uh, so the rangers, his name is David Brenner, uh, decides to check it out. And in one of these little buckets, there's some marijuana plants in them, like little potted marijuana plants. Man, man was smoking joints in 2004 in the middle of Nevada. Mm-hmm. And it does, they're just tiny little saplings at this point. Just little, just little sproutlings, but they're also cooking supplies. There are these two wooden planks that are on the flat bed, which is probably a ramp for an ATV or something. In the driver's seat, he found a 22 rifle, some credit cards, and a driver's license for a

man named Seth D. D's nuts. I was waiting for it. I was giving a chance. Yeah, I did. I knew, I knew. and this is one instance where luck was not on the bandit's side because this particular ranger, Dave Brenner, had been working on the Ballarat Bandit case pretty much the whole time.

And he specifically remembered that stolen Subaru that was found abandoned in Nevada, the one that the bandit tried to jumpstart with the tractor battery. That car was stolen from a man named Seth D. And this, this, this. was his stolen driver's license. Oh, I thought we knew the bandit's name. No, no, we didn't. So Dave Brenner immediately, even though he's like,

okay, that's not the bandit's name and identity, but dude, this is his stuff. This is his truck. This is his weed. This is his gun. These are his supplies. Dude, we've got, I've got him. Man, smoking a J out in the middle of Nevada

while arming for Y2K, oh wait, we're past Y2K, while arming for the apocalypse. Yeah. But would you believe it, in this remote area of Death Valley, Dave Brenner can't get a signal. He can't call for backup yet. So he does the smart thing and he's like, okay, let me go ahead and disable the Chevy's engine. Because if I got to go out a little bit waste to get a signal, I got to make sure that if the bandit comes back, he can't leave. So he does that.

Disables the Chevy's engine and he has to drive out a little way so we can get a signal to call for backup and be like, guys, I found him. I know where he is. It's right here. It's right here. It's right here. It's right here. So he does that. But when he comes back to the campsite, it's actually super clear that the bandit had returned. Because when Dave Brenner left, he left, I'm not sure which door he left open, but he left one of them open. Comes back, the door is closed. And there is. My heart would be pumping. Right? And there was a visible shit.

shoe print on the side of the door. Bandit must have come back to the camp, realized his Haida had been found, his truck disabled, and he just, oh, damn it! And he kicks the door shut. And since he couldn't use the truck, since it was disabled, the Bandit

takes off in his ATV, which left obvious tracks leading away from the truck. So, like, Dave got him on the run, and Dave Brenner's just like, dude, like, and he calls it, and he's like, these tracks are leading away, you know, we We got him. We've got him.

And at this point, people might be thinking, well, whatever. Ballarat Band is just going to fool him again, like he always does. He's going to outsmart him. You know, he's going to out-maneuver him. He's going to out-sprit him in the desert. It'll be fine. Big problem is it seems like the Ballarat Bandit did not expect them to find him. Because it seems like he was just completely unprepared for this moment.

And he didn't have his usual, like, well-thought-out escape route to dodge the authorities. Because usually he'll like, you know, he'll hit the mountains, he'll hit high ground or something like that. But these tracks are just leading right into flats. They're not leading to any mountainous area. They're not leading to any brush area or anything like that. They're just going right into the open valleys of the scorching death valley heat that he

returned to. So at this point, I got to believe that they're like, okay. This manhunt for the Ballarat Bandit is coming to a close today. Even if he's got an emergency bag of supplies with him, you only got so much gasoline in that ATV. Those supplies are only going to last you for so long. The direction he headed in, there's nowhere for him to hide. He finally made a mistake and they are ready to pounce on this guy.

So it would be a ranger named Patrick Shields that finally spotted the Ballarat Bandit. but at the time when he did spot him he wasn't sure it was him because as he's patrolling around he's like okay you know I'm looking around he spots someone that's sitting by a call box with like one of those red plastic gasoline jugs and he looks completely spent exhausted malnourished and probably like he's just going to keel over and this is basically maybe a little way into the San Bernardino County and for some reason Patrick Shields

initially just kind of drives past, you know, thinking it was strange seeing someone in such distress, but he just kind of drives past. But eventually he turns back and he wants to check on this man. He's probably thinking, you know what, that was a pretty destitute looking dude. I should probably check on him, make sure he's okay, you know, stuff like that. Or in the back of his head, he might have been like, hey, I mean, I'm out here patrolling. This is the, this might be the guy that we're looking for. I mean, he's getting supplies. Do they have like a profile on the guy though? Well, they've got, they have a drawing of what they think he looks like,

but there was like a problem because like the Inyo County did a police sketch of him, right? And the Nye County did a police sketch of him. And if I remember correctly, there was some dispute about them not looking the same and the sketches being a little different. So they kind of sort of have a sketch on him. They kind of sort of know what he looks like, but, you know. But when Patrick Shields makes his way back to this call box, nobody's there. There's some footprints leading away from it.

So Patrick Shield calls in to Dave Brenner, and he describes the tracks. He describes the footprints to Dave Brenner. And Dave Brenner's like, that's him, that's him, that's him. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, that's him. Those are the tracks. That sounds like the footprint I saw on the side of the Chevy. we've got him, we've got him. And so they get 15 Rangers

armed with AR-15s. They've got planes and helicopters swooping over the area. There is nowhere for the Ballarat Bandit to run to. And man, as they are coming up on where these tracks lead, those Rangers have got to be gripping their AR-15s.

Tight, tight, tight, tight, tight. Because who knows what you're walking into, There's nowhere for the bandit to run and hide anymore. He's probably out of supplies. He's exhausted. A cornered animal is the most dangerous animal, right? So these 15 Rangers are coming up on the Ballarat Bandit. They spot him.

He's sitting under a tarp that he hooked up to his worn-out ATV so he could least get some, like, relief from the heat. And they're like, they're doing the rates of like, police, don't move. We've got you surrounded. There's nowhere for you to. run the usual stuff. And they noticed that he's got that 22

rifle again. And everybody kind of tenses up because the range is like, yo, he's got a gun. Oh my God, he's got a gun. And so they're just on high alert. They don't know what his motivations are. He might be a common criminal, might be ex-military, might be a tourist, who knows? And before they know it,

they're creeping up on this makeshift camp and, you know, they're announcing that they're there, you know, put everything down, don't move, freeze, and bang, gunshot rings out. And I think at this point they all like hit the deck, you know, shots fired and they're just like, oh my God, we're in a firefight. But a second shot never comes. It's just the eerie desert quiet. And as they creep up on the camp, they see that the Ballarat Bandit had taken his own life with that 22 caliber rifle.

Ah, I was like, okay, Bandit Man's got one or two options. It's either he kills himself or he fired. then just start running away. Yep. Like, because he's really good at the running part. Yeah, he was,

but he was completely spent too. Like, he was just done. Yeah, that's true. He was all malnourished and stuff. But I mean, I don't know,

man. This guy was a hoffing. He was. He was. And so the hunt for the Ballarat Bandit was finally over. And.

All right. I want to know, I want to know about his notes. I want to know about his journal. I want to know about all his stuff. And even as, after the Ballarat Bandit died, they still didn't know who he was for a really long time.

When they came up to his body after he had died, he was completely naked, stripped everything off, and there was basically no trace of who he was. Didn't have any idea on him. There was no manifesto at his campsite or anything like that. Just what few supplies he had before he just took his own life. This man's really going to really just going to hit. hit me with the nothing answer.

So naturally, when you want a body identified and you want to know more about it, you send it to the police corner. And you get the fingerprints, the dentals, whatever you can, checked out in their database. And surely you're going to get a hit back on something. Something's going to key you in to who this man was. And since they are basically in the San Bernardino County, the body was handed over to a corner named David Bannett, Norman.

in the San Bernardino Police Coroner's Office. And this guy is a cocky guy. In that documentary, he was interviewed, and his statement was like, you know, I'm pretty arrogant. I'm never going to fail. I'm always going to figure out who these people are, which is probably the minds that you kind of have to have

if you're going to be a police coroner. Anyway, first thing he does is run the prints, which is logical first place to start. But the fingerprints don't yield any results, no matches. So he starts doing DNA tests, dental tests, any test he can think up, and they all

turn up negative. No results. They can't figure out who the hell this guy is or what he was doing in the area. Somehow, even when the Ballarat Bandit was dead and gone, he was still eluding

the police. He was still putting them on the chase. And it would take a lot. long time before Van Norman got any results. It took so long. He had to take the body out of refrigeration and bury it because it was coming up on a whole goddamn year since the body had come to him.

Wait, bury it? Do you mean like put on ice? No, like, so I guess the coroner's office has this little potter's yard and any sort of unidentified bodies that they have, I guess after a year they have to bury them in that potter's yard in like unmarked graves. What the hell? Apparently that's the thing because that's what they did. They buried him in like a potter's yard that Van Norman seized to like all the time in the,

I guess in out back of the coroner's office or something. It's something like that. That is incredibly bizarre. I had no idea that was a thing. Yeah. I didn't either until this. But again, Van Norman, like you said, he's an arrogant guy. It's not going to fail.

And he's been obsessing over this thing the whole time, the whole year, still trying to figure out who this guy is. And he gets so desperate that he sends out photos of the Ballarat Bandit via email to like every police office he can think of, to media outlets, to anybody in hopes that somebody knew who this guy was and what he was doing here and why he did what he did. Are you allowed to do that? apparently because he did it

and he did get a reply that actually kind of helped it wasn't from the police and it wasn't from media he got an anonymous email that read I'm sure you've already thought of this but who talks like an American looks like an American acts like an American but isn't an American a Canadian

maybe the bandit is a Canadian What a weird thing to say. What? Yeah, it's just anonymous emails like, hey, here's my two cents. Maybe he's Canadian. So then Norman's like, you know what? I got nothing left to lose. I haven't got any hits in America.

And you know what? Him being from Canada? Kind of a novel idea. So he sends what he has to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. At this point, I'm not sure what he was expecting. Maybe he thought it was a wild goose chase. But he's like, you know what? it couldn't hurt. What, you know, I find nothing, same as everything else.

But after four months of waiting, then Norman got a call that the prince had been matched and that they had the identity of the Ballarat Bandit. And before I tell you specifics, Bricky, I am curious, what direction do you think this is going to go? Do you think he was a petty thief that was in over his head, some wilderness survival-free rogue, maybe a disgruntled ex-military man with a bone to pick, or was he actually a terrorist? I mean, at this point, I'm kind of in the whole disgruntled military man vibe. Okay, okay. So you think he's ex-military?

All right, all right. It's an option. Definitely, sure, sure. So that's the direction you're leaning in? Yeah, yeah, why not? Why the hell not? Okay, okay. So are you, are you ready to hear who the Ballarat Bandit actually?

actually was? Sure. His name was George Robert Johnston. Wasn't a terrorist? He wasn't ex-military. It's just a guy that did drywall from Canada. Okay, it's a little more complicated than he was just some dude that did drywall from Canada. I understand this is probably setting up as a joke thing or something, but I'm assuming there's more.

There is more. So George did have a history of kind of getting mixed up in drugs. When he was younger, he loved to live as fast as possible. He just loved the speed. He wanted to become a race car driver. He convinced his parents to let him attend racing school. But he got kicked out because they just wouldn't let him go fast enough. And apparently he was making weird modifications to his cars.

I read an article that said he removed the governor from his engine, and I was like, I have no idea what that means. I don't do cars. I don't know what that means, but apparently you're not supposed to do it, and they wouldn't let him go fast enough. In high school, he was caught for selling marijuana, and he would spend some time in juvenile detention for it, and that put him on the straight and narrow for a while,

and when he grew up, he pursued an honest living, doing drywalling for a career. And he was really good at it because apparently George Robert Johnston had kind of an obsessive attitude where once he got into something, he obsessed over it and he got

really, really good at it. I mean, this explains the pot part, at least. Well, well, we, a little bit. And he would eventually marry a woman named Tommy,

and they would have four daughters together. And I think Tommy had a son from a previous marriage that she was having legal troubles with. They moved to Arizona for a little while, and they kept under the radar because George had a really paranoid worldview. Like, he didn't like the government. He thought they were out to ruin the world. So he didn't socialize much. He was kind of introverted. And it wasn't until his wife was diagnosed with leukemia that they decide we're moving back to Canada, Prince Edward Island specifically, because we want to be closer to family, because leukemia, leukemia sucks. It was also around this time that George would start to get really

serious about growing marijuana in order to not only ease his wife's pain with leukemia, but also to make a little scratch on the side. The way I read it in an article was, I guess somebody gave Tommy a joint because she's dealing with the pain of leukemia. She's no appetite, she can't sleep, and it's just awful. And as soon as she smoked this joint, she was like, whoa, my appetite's back, I'm not in as much pain, and God, this is like the first, this is like the first peaceful sleep I've had in a really long time. This is great. And so George is like, yeah, well, you know what, eff it. F the government's drug laws, I'm going to homegrow you the best weed you've ever had. Listen, wife, I am going to make you so damn comfortable.

Wife. I don't know if he actually said that. That's just kind of an on the spot thing. Listen here. Wife. Yeah, I've teleported myself back to the 1930s, apparently. Anyway, so he obsesses over making the best weed possible. And like I said, he has an obsessive nature. So when he puts his mind to something, boy, he is going to do it and he is going to do it properly. Like he's using underground farms. He's using solar energy. He's using all the tricks to make sure he is making the best, best weed possible. And apparently, he got so obsessed and he made some real premium shit.

Like, sure, it made his wife comfortable. But when he started selling it, if the article I read is accurate, he made like a hundred K, his first year selling it. That is actually extremely impressive, yeah. Yeah, especially in 2000. Well, I guess this would be like 2002, 2003. That's really good money for that time frame. And George is also super confident.

He's never going to be found out. He was good at hiding, good at eluding people, this fast guy because he loved the speed so much. And also, he had a really low opinion of the government. So he figured he was rock. solid. But his wife is getting a little worried about the whole thing. Obviously, she thinks it's great that

he's trying to help her out, and the money is nice, but she also doesn't want to see her husband arrested and leave the kids without a father, so she gives it to him straight. It's either her and the family, or his marijuana farm. One or the other.

And one of the articles I read paints this really sad depiction of, like, after she says this, he's like, okay, babe, you know, and he gets down on one he properly proposes to her and he's like look one more harvest little safety net cash and then we call it quits and then like the next day one of the neighbor's pigs gets out from their farm and i guess choose its way through like one of the fences in george's place runs through the field the neighbor comes running in after like oh i'm so sorry about the pick and he's right in the middle of this

marijuana farm and he turns george in Oh, crap. Yep. And George was sentenced to, I think, four years in prison, which was lowered from the 12 years. Because he could have had 12 years, but he cooperated, and I guess he got a plea deal or something. So it was reduced to four. But he only spent about a year of that sentence in prison. But his mental health took a massive spiral downwards.

because he was kind of obsessive and paranoid person, life on the inside was really, really brutal on him. He couldn't sleep. He was uneasy all the time. According to his wife Tommy, when he asked for medication to help him sleep, they gave him some weird prescription pills that weren't actually meant for use as a sleeping aid,

and instead they made him like even more paranoid. They caused hallucinations. They gave him anxiety. attacks and it just really, really screwed him up. Like, she said she could tell he had some kind of mental breakdown in prison after just like a week. It hit him hard and it hit him fast. So, when he was paroled in 2000, because he only spent about a year in prison, his life

was a total mess. Like, he couldn't do a whole lot. The article said that Tommy mentioned he would kind of just sit and hide in his closet it weeping all day, tugging at his beard, just very kind of like manic, depressed. And eventually later that year, George would leave his family, who were now

in British Columbia, and he would make a trek to the United States. His intention was he wanted to find a faith healer that could help him. He could be out in the wilderness. He loved the wide open wilderness. According to his wife, Tommy,

he loved the romantic idea that he could live out in the wilderness where a man could be a man, a woman could be a woman, and a handshake meant something. So he's just, he felt really guilty about his mental condition. He felt like he was ruining the family, that he was just this massive burden, and he just hated seeing what he was doing to his family. So he just, he wanted to head out to the States, find a faith healer, get his mind right, and then come back to his family and live happily ever after. Is there any particular reason why he chose the states to find a faith healer?

Was there not one in Canada? Or did he just sick of the Canadian government? Probably all of the above. And like I said, he really liked the sort of desert wilderness. And he was just like, oh, that's going to be the land that gives me peace. And maybe that's where I'll find my faith healer. And that's how I'll get my mind right. I was just thinking because, like, if he likes the wilderness, he's got plenty of that in Canada.

Yeah, in Canada, sure. But he might like deserts and, you know. Sure. And that's what led George Robert Johnston, the Ballarat Bandit, into Death Valley. That's why he was there. And it seems like, and it just seems like his mental health did not get better. No, it did not get better. And, you know, it seems like it just got worse.

And he just got more manic and he just got more paranoid. And obviously, uh, the wife was. completely flabbergasted when she heard the news. If I'm not mistaken, they actually heard that he was the Ballarat Bandit because I think one of their daughters saw a news clipping about it and they saw his identity in there. And then of course they got the call from the coroner that was like, hey, you know, we got to talk to you about your husband. And yeah, that's great.

You know, I'm not going to lie. He was probably just was horribly confused by he was being chased by the military for stealing food and water on a quad. From the point of view of George Robert Johnston, he must have been absolutely just so confused as to why such a massive force was coming after him. Did he not? He stole so many guns, though. He did. I'm not sure what the reason. Again, not much is because he was confused. He didn't like the government. You know, it might be just kind of one of those anarchist things where it's like, oh, I have to properly prepare for anything. You know what I mean?

So, yeah, from his point of view, it's just like, oh my God. And of course, Tommy's like, why didn't anybody try to help him? Like, you're chasing this guy and there's obviously something wrong. He's not violent. Why didn't anybody try to help him? He's clearly crazy. He's clearly having a mental breakdown, why did you... Like, and when you send that many people after him, what did you expect him to do besides run? Welcome to America. Welcome to America, baby. Enjoy your welcome.

And of course, like, the police... 9-11 had just happened. They're on super high alert. They don't know why he's out here. It's not like they can just kind of tiptoe around it. So it's just a bad situation all around. It is a really... bad situation all around. And he is, as far as I know, his body is still in San Bernardino

in that corner's little potter yard or whatever. And the family is trying to get his body exhumed and brought back to Canada so his final resting place can be with them. Still? Still? I think it's still there. After 20 years? I believe so. Well, I don't know. The documentary and most of the sources I've scene were written a while ago, like 10 years ago or something. So maybe they got him back, but I didn't, there are shockingly not a lot of sources on the Ballarat Bandit. There's a couple YouTube videos. One of them was the true TV documentary I mentioned. There's maybe two articles

and like two videos of like other true crime podcast that mentioned the stuff that happened. But there's shockingly little out there about him. I'm, you know, my opinion of him softened a lot, when I heard about his wife and everything. But I'm not going to lie. Like, okay, it's very obvious he had a mental breakdown in prison. Oh, yeah. Very, very obvious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But at the same time, I feel like abandoning his leukemia-stricken wife to go on a, on a spirit journey, it feels rather irresponsible as well. True. But at the time, like, his mental health was so bad that the care. dynamic had completely shifted. If I remember right, they were like, at that point, they were like at that point, it was basically the leukemia-ridden wife that was trying to care give for just this mentally broken man that was just a pile of depression and anxiety and worry and paranoia that was just sitting

in the closet weeping all day. So, uh, I wonder what happened to him in prison. He just had a mental breakdown. Like, prison just does that to people. And, and like we said, he was already, he was. is already kind of paranoid and obsessive and not sleeping. And then they give him these medications that just don't jive with him at all. And he just,

I guess maybe, yeah, I guess the medication could have definitely played a role into it. But considering that he wasn't there for, well, a year is a long time still. It's just, it's interesting to see how significant of a breakdown it was. And it's,

it's like a little, I don't know. I mean, obviously, I've never been to prison. I can't really discuss it, but. Hopefully it stays that way. Hopefully it does stay that way.

Maybe the guy was just like your classic hippie. Because he was a bit of a hippie kind of guy. Maybe just going to prison, just the fact of being in prison just screwed with him so much. And in his mind, he probably didn't want to go back because prison is what started this whole mess to begin with. It screwed him up so bad. That's why he was trying to look for the faith. He was like, no, I'm not going back. It also does explain.

why he was running so hard. So hard. Yeah, I don't want to go back to prison, not because of the, I mean, obviously, I don't want to go to prison. That's bad, but because the last time I went to prison, it ruined me. Ruined you, yep, and it ruined the family. It broke up the family, basically.

And yes. And most people, like, you know, if 9-11 hadn't happened, probably wouldn't have been as big of a deal as it was. They probably wouldn't have assumed he was a terrorist. And, you know, he probably would have just, gone down in history as just some rogue outlaw and they wouldn't have tried so hard to, you know. This really does feel like a major, like 9-11 was a big part of this

because, um, because like is right after this dude getting guns at a military base. Like, I mean, we are still suffering the effects of 9-11 in our, in our fucking airports. Mm-hmm. You know? And this was only a couple years after. So they're even on higher alert and,

So you can't really blame the police either Because I know In the few interviews I saw with Tommy She is very critical of the police Not trying to help Being like, oh yeah They're just a bunch of bozos Tracing a crazy guy through the desert

And they refuse to help him And it's like, yeah, but again Considering what's just happened And they don't know And he's stockpiling guns And like what are they supposed to do at that point, right? In hindsight, it's easy to be like Oh, come on.

He was just a, he was just an outlaw guy. It's like, yeah, it's post 9-11, guns, you don't know the motivation. There's a military base here. There's a military base there. What are they supposed to do? It's definitely one of those things where, like, you wish times were just simply different. Like, it's hard to, it's really hard to explain for, I mean, I'm sure we have, we have fans that were probably born after 9-11. You know, people who were born.

after 9-11 can drink now, which is insane. That makes me feel so old. Why did you say that? I know. I'm sorry. Why did you say that? It happened 22 years ago. Why did you say that?

Why did you tell me that? But to continue that point, the whole, like, it's hard to describe, especially now with how hypercritical we are in this day. and age of the American government and stuff like that. How, like, rabid people were after 9-11, how much they were like, hell yeah, war, let's go. It's crazy. Yeah, the country wanted blood. Yeah. Like, I think, this might be wrong, but I think it was, like, one of the highest approval

ratings for any president in a while was right after that. It was pretty crazy. So it makes a lot more sense now thinking of like why they just they hunted this man across Death Valley. Department of Homeland Security, helicopters, search planes, K-9 teams, AR-15 armed rangers. Like, yeah, they thought they had a terrorist on their hands. Is AR-15 like really that big of a deal? I guess not really in the grand scene. I mean, it's more than a 22.

It is certainly more than a 22. More than a 22 anyway, yeah. Anyway, but that is the Ballarat Bandit. And unless I missed anything shy that you would like to add, that is what I have on the Ballarat Bandit. The Ballarat Bandit, he says. The Ballarat Bandit, the Bandit from a ghost town. The Bandit from Canada.

Yeah, the drywalling Bandit from Canada. Yeah, that's that's it. That's the show. Hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, and it was as bad as long as I thought it was going to be. You know, this is one of those situations where I just feel like nobody won. No, definitely nobody won. I think, I'm trying to remember, I think it was in that same documentary.

It was David Brenner. He was like, you know, in hindsight, yeah, it was just a bad situation. And now when something weird like this happens, now I'm just like, oh, yeah, that Ballarat Bandit thing, I should maybe look at this from a different point of view and not immediately jump to like, oh my God, terrorism. Yeah. Yeah. That's, well, that's good that there was a little bit of hindsight, at least available.

Yep. Shai says, imagine the faces the police when they're like, we figured out who he was. He wasn't a super agent or terrorists or ex-military. You were completely out-phaziqued, outsmarted, and outmanned by a mentally ill-dry, Walt Canadian guy. You're forgetting the stoner part. Yeah, I mean, he Yeah.

And like, apparently he made some crazy hybrid of marijuana too That everybody was very impressed with. Crystal blue persuasion. Yeah, yeah. Well, there you go. Interesting story. Not how I thought it was going to go. Me too.

Me too. When I was researching this, I was like, okay, surely this has got to be some some kind of crazy special angel. No, Canadian drywaller that was just not having a good time. And it was like, oh, well, that's sad. I like that phrase. Yeah, no, just Canadian drywaller. Yeah, and it's just like, oh, that's.

And then as you hear the deed is like, oh, well, this is, oh, my day just got a lot more depressing. I'm not happy anymore. This was fun. And now it's not. I lost my smile. Anyway. All right. Take us home, Bricky.

Thanks for, for listen, everyone. Remember, if you're going to outrun the police, smoke more weed We hear at Adeptus Criticus do not recommend outrunning the police while on weed We do recommend weed God damn it Bricky