Behind the Bastards - Part One: Behind the Bastards Live Show: The Ballad of Bo Gritz

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Robert and Prop did a live show to raise money for the Portland Bail Fund. They discussed the life and times of Bo Gritz, a foundational right wing militia maniac.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now.

Listen for free on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. A new true crime podcast from Tenderfoot TV in the city of Mons in Belgium, women began to go missing. It was only after their dismembered remains began turning up in various places that residents realized. A sadistic serial killer was lurking among them. The murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence. Le Mestre, Season 2. is available now. Listen for free on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. On this podcast, InSells, we unpack an emerging mindset. I am a loser. If I also will me not want to tame me either. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge. This is InCells. Listen to Season 1 of Incells on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good. Good people and small towns.

Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Anybody mind if I ride her with the chair here a little bit? Welcome to Behind the Bastards Live, our first live show. This is our first live show in a little while because I don't like leaving the house. and am a deranged shut-in, who's increasingly losing his connection

to the world in reality. Like a lot of people, presidents, for example. Before we get into the show today, I have a couple of very special people to introduce, first off, my producer and business partner, the inimitable Sophie Luterman! And then, of course, our guest for tonight, the host of hood politics, and my good friend Jason Petty, aka Prop!

Yeah, what's Yeah, what's clack amassing, you know what I'm feeling? I've been planning that one all day, you know what I'm saying? What's clack of massing? We workshoped that. That was like $40,000 in development. Yep. Jay Leno's writers don't come cheap.

But worth it, obviously. Clearly. So welcome, everybody. Thank you for dealing with, you know, the line, the security measures and stuff. I think for obvious reasons, we're all a little bit extra careful these days. Why did something happen? No, not that I'm aware of. Oh, okay.

So we've got a special night planned for everybody. First, I want to thank all of you for coming out and supporting the Portland Defense Fund. It's a really good cause, and y'all have raised north of $30,000 so far for them. That goes a long way, and especially considering most of the people who need help with that, we're talking about, like, houseless folks, we're talking about people who have absolutely no access to resources, and this is the only lifeline they're going to get, and the only help they're going to get. So thank you all for helping to keep that lifeline. Alive?

Round of applause for you. Yeah. Yeah. Round of applause for everybody in the audience except one of you motherfuckers. They know who they are. Not you, Mom. Also, just a quick show of hands

because it's a gang of white people in here. It is Portland. It is Portland. If you got like a drip of melanin in you, can you make some noise real quick? I just want to see. Okay, you've got more than a drip. make some noise

you got a lot of it make some noise okay that's my section right there okay just making sure I was like it's got to be it's got to be at least five of y'all in here you know prop it's good that you introduce that because our subject for these episodes

hey look it's not a bit we never know like we never know what he's going to say before we start should we give them the drinking game rules we do have a drinking game yes there are let me yeah we'll do the so the drinking game rules are as follows. First off, be responsible. Don't drive. Don't operate heavy machinery unless it seems like it would be really funny.

So, first off, take a drink if the subject of the podcast directly or indirectly kills somebody. Second of all, if prop goes, you know what I'm saying? No, no, no, no, Sophie, we can't legally. The people will die. I'm doing it. Alcohol and poison. I'm trying to get y'all twisted. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. If Robert says right, take a shot. Second of all, what was second of all? No, no, I'm doing that one. Oh, God. Now that counted. Third is war crimes. Yeah.

When there's a war crime committed, take a drink. Yep. And this one might really hurt everyone. But if I have to go, Robert, no. So, when I was a young man in about 2005 or 2006, I came across a bunch of torrents from a documentary TV series called Weird Weekends made by a British feller named Louis Theroo. Now, one of the episodes released in 1998 was about survivalists. In it, Louis met a bunch of weirdo, libertarian, far right, and some outright Nazi weirdos who were living off-grid in rural Idaho. This was probably... Hold on, hold on, hold on.

What about that doesn't scan? Rural Idaho, okay, when you were a young boy. Yeah, it was like 18, 19. Yeah, when I was a young boy, my father took me into the city. To see a marching band? Wow. But rural Idaho, okay, so I think I know where we're going with this. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

So this is probably my first journalistic introduction to content on the militia movement and at that point still nascent post-Okloma city bombing white supremacist movement. Much of the episode took place in an intentional community for these people named Almost Heaven, which was founded and operated by the subject of our episodes today, a famous figure in the right wing underground named Bo Grites. Yeah, we got some Bo-knowers here. We got some Bo-O-Its out this month. Some boers, yeah.

So the spot was called Almost Heaven. Almost heaven. Almost. Okay. We'll get to there at the end. Yeah, they were really close. Okay. Just like all those people who nearly got raptured, right? I mean, look.

Almost. So, and by the way, Bo Grites, the name is spelled G-R-I-T-Z, but it's pronounced G-R-I-T-Z. That's irritating. It is. You can tell a lot about the journalists reporting on him, because they'll either say that his name rhymes when they're writing about him, that his name rhymes with sights, as in rifle sites, or bites, which I think was a subtle way

of expressing bias, because Bo Grites definitely bites. And like the late 90s, sense of the word, when did that? Yeah, like, bite me. Yeah, like, bite me, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the main claim to fame that you'll find,

if you read anything on Boe, is that he was the guy whose real life inspired the character John Rambo. He's the real Rambo. Rambo was based on him. Whoa, cool, right? Awesome.

Absolutely not. Absolutely not true. It's a partial true, right? If you've seen Rambo First Blood, the first Rambo movie, pretty good movie, it's about like a traumatized Vietnam veteran who gets abused by small town sheriffs, like an hour and a half north of here. It's about like PTSD. Yeah, he's got severe PTSD in that month.

It's like not jingoistic at all. It's not a very pro-American movie. The sequel to Rambo First Blood, Rambo First Blood Part 2, because we used to know how to name things in this fucking country. It's also a very great Nintendo game, too. Yes, yes, a banger, yes. The sequel, Rambo First Blood Part 2, was a very different movie.

Instead of a traumatized veteran getting, like, abused by police and kind of losing his mind, John Rambo has to go fight the, re-fight the Vietnam War, to rescue a bunch of POWs as part of a secret black ops operas. Eurasian, and this is the thing that's based on Bo Grites. Right? So that's where we're

building towards. So, James Bo Grites, I don't know where the Bo came from. Don't ask me. I can't answer that for you. What was that? She's like white people. Y'all just be throwing names

Willie, you know what I'm saying? They don't get whiter because our man, Bo, was born January 18th, 1939, in Enid, Oklahoma. Yeah. This dude is just hitting all the notes. As a white kid from Oklahoma, that Oklahoma white people hit different. I will say this about Oklahoma white people. Now, we don't have much time, but I will say this.

Where is this going? No, listen, like, Oklahoma white people know their way around a grill. That is true. Y'all can make some barbecue. They be seasoned in their food. Don't get in a car with him, though. Don't get in a car with him. So, he was born January 18, 1939,

the only child to a family who was about to be deeply rocked by war. His father was an Army Air Corps pilot, and once the U.S. entered the big double-dub-dose, he flew B-17s and was shot down over France in November of 1944. Bo was five. An article by Art Harris in the Washington Post describes Bo as feeling as if his father died fighting the right.

war. Bo is going to be in Vietnam, so this is pretty easy to understand, right? Oh, okay, I was like, I missed the good war by two wars, just two wars. Jesus Christ. So, as a child, Bo worshipped his dad and seems

to have never considered anything but a military career. And while his father had died over Europe, Bo fantasized for whatever reason about, well, I think there's one very clear reason, about fighting Japanese soldiers. Right? His dad dies fighting the Nazis. Bo's always going to be real interested in fighting the Japanese.

Here's a quote from Bo. We had a big wheat field in front of my house, and I had hide in there. I always saw myself in a jungle environment. There was a dirt runway, and I had a P-51 Mustang, and lived in a grass hut with a brown woman. Every morning, I put on my leather jacket, get into my aircraft, and fly off to do combat against the enemy all day long. Yeah, he just said that. What a brown woman. I'm like, wait.

A little bit of grasshut. What a brown woman. First of all, hard agree. But also... It's the hut for me. It's the hut. It's the hut. It's your hard agreeing on the hut, huh?

The hut is an issue. Yeah. Yeah, the hut's the issue. Okay. So, Bo spent a lot of time hiding in cover in his front porch with a BB gun, shooting at toys that he'd set up in the yard. One day he shot a toy truck.

the BB ricocheted and hit Bo in the eye. It was a bad enough injury. There's a weird right-wing militia guy thing of shooting yourself in the eye, if you remember the Oathkeeper's founder, Stuart Rhodes, who really blasted the eye out there with a straight-up real gun. But anyway, Bo doesn't lose his eye.

Otherwise, this would be a very different story. But he has to explain to the doctor what happens, and he just tells the doctor, and he uses a slur for Japanese soldiers here, shot back, right? Wait, wait, wait, but that's not what happened, all right? You just said he shot himself? Well, it ricochet.

It ricochet. I don't know if you want to count that as shooting himself. I do. It's bad gun safety. Right? Can we say that? That kind of, yeah. Yeah, it counts.

I mean, low-key. Like, he kind of shot himself. It's not a pattern yet, but it's weird that it happened twice with right-wing militia leaders, right? We're just waiting for one more of these guys to get their own eye. And then we, I don't know. No predicting things. Get like a free coffee? Okay.

Free coffee. I don't know. Bo was raised by his maternal grandparents, primarily, a fact which most of the articles I read about him, like in the Washington Post and stuff, just said he was raised by his grandparents. And I was like, but he had a mom. Where'd she go?

So I had to go digging, and I found an old parade magazine article from 1983 by Ovid DeMaris, and this is what that article says. His mother, a pilot with the Women's Air Force service pilots, would later marry a master sergeant, and remain with the occupation forces in Germany after the war. That's all they said. say, she just left?

She was just like, I'm starting a new family. I'm sorry. Your dad's dead. This is kind of a wash. Gramps and grandma are going to take care of you. I'm gone. They'll do a better job than me, kid. Yeah, yeah. Trust me, I intend to make that

true. So, yeah, aside from being abandoned, Bo had what you might call a normal life for a white boy in Oklahoma in the post-war period. He was in the Boy Scouts, He was in the Explorer Scouts. He did all the different scouting things you can do.

But he also had significant behavioral issues. We don't know exactly why, but Bo was expelled from high school. It may have had something to do with what we might classify as compulsive law breaking. The Post called him a self-style juvenile prankster, which is a term that people who grow up to be law and order conservatives used to describe the crimes they committed as kids. So that they're different from hoodlums. You're not a hudlum.

You're a... Precocious. Yeah, you're precociously stealing people's cars or whatever, right? Got it. Yeah. Must be nice. Um, he also claims to... It must be nice to be precocious. I'll tell you what, boy.

To get to be precocious? Hey, lucky. Yeah. So, Bo's stole cars and motorcycles, precocious. Prococious! Yeah. He's just an excitable boy, since you were listening to some Warren Zeevon on the way in. There we go.

He threw fireworks in school to disrupt events and assemblies. That one does sound fun. He describes himself from this time as right out of American graffiti and a tough guy. He also claims to have run with gangs. Although as best as I can tell from the context, he means gangs in the sense that, like, he and his friends committed petty crimes. Not that he was in, like, an organized criminal organization? I was like, bro, no, you did.

No. You and your friends drunkenly stole a motorcycle. Yes. And Enid, Oklahoma, sir. Tell me what turf you work in. You ran the one-stop sign. Yes. So, once he was kicked out of high school,

his caregivers sent him to Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. Hilariously, in early interviews, like the one with Parade Magazine, he told reporters that he chose to attend military school instead of going to high school. This is not true. I don't know why he would do that, because I'm like, I feel like it fits the mystique of, like, You know, I'm like a militia guy. I got kicked out, sent to military. Like, I had a little more hardcore than I chose.

Yeah, I wanted to go to military. No, he, he, it was that or he said. Like, nah, bro, like, get kicked out. I thought you ran it with a gang, homie, you know what I'm saying? You're in a gang, you feel me? Like, yeah. So the Academy does kind of turn Bo around. He ends his time there as the Corps commander during his senior year,

which is the child who's in charge of the other children, basically. Yeah. Awesome. Good idea. Depending on the interview, Bo claims he was either invited to attend West Point or he passed an entrance exam and was offered admission. I don't think either of these stories are true, because West Point doesn't work that way. Applying to West Point isn't at all like applying to a normal university. Back then, and I think things are a little bit different today, but they're mostly that work the same way. You get in because you have to get a nomination from a member of Congress. Congress, right? You can also be appointed by the president or vice president, but basically everyone who gets into West Point gets nominated by a member of Congress. So for Bo's story to be true, he would have had to write a member of Congress and convince them of his worth and then get accepted and then say, nah, actually, I don't want free admission to the most prestigious military university and a guaranteed fast track in my career as an officer. No, thank you. I think he's just lying about this. Yeah. At any rate, Bo doesn't bum around long after graduation. This is

also why I'm sure he's lying, because he immediately joins the military. In 1957, he walks into an Army recruiter's office. He is 18. He claims that when he's in there, he sees a poster of a green beret on the wall, and the poster read, the Green Beret Specialed Forces

are the world's toughest troopers. Now, that doesn't sound true. None. It cannot be true. This is in no way. That's true. Absolutely can't be true. So the Green Berets were founded in 1952 is U.S. Army Special Forces. By 1957, some of these guys had started wearing green berets in order to differentiate

themselves from normal soldiers, but they weren't actually supposed to do that, and sometimes they got in trouble for it. And no official Army recruitment ad would have called the unit the green berets because they weren't called that yet. Now, it's a good thing we didn't make lying part of the drinking game. No, no, no. Again, legally, we can't kill the audience yet. Again, give two more years of legislation. I think we'll have that right, but...

A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer. the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. In 1997, in Belgium, 37 female body parts placed in 15 trash bags were found at dump sites with evocative names like the path of worry, dump road, and Fear Creek.

Terrible discoveries of Saturday. Investigators made a new discovery yesterday. afternoon of the torso of a woman. Investigators believe it is the work of a serial killer. Despite a sprawling investigation, including assistance from the American FBI, the murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence and new suspects. We felt like we were in the presence of someone. It was going to the grave with nightnourish secrets.

From Tenderfoot TV and IHard podcasts, this is Le Mansre Season 2, The Butcher of Moss, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From the studio who brought you the Pikesin Masker and Murder 101, this is Incells. I am a loser. If I also women, I wouldn't date me either. From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset. If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you.

A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. A seed of loneliness explodes. I just hate myself. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. At a deadly tipping point. Incells will be added to the terrorism guide. Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd killing ten times. killing 10 people.

Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge. This is Incells. Listen to season one of InCells on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small, town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn, or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County,

a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So, U.S.S. Army Special Forces were founded as part of a general recognition brought on by certain events in World War II that the nature of conflict was changing. Military history has always had elite units who carried out special operations behind the lines, or you could look at like the Greek soldiers and the Trojan horse. is like an early reference to special forces kind of activity, and World War II featured commando units on both sides that carried out high-profile clandestine operations. So the U.S. Special Forces began as an attempt to systematize the training and deployment of such commando teams for the first time.

The idea, initially, with these guys, was that they would, they're not like Navy SEALs are today, right? The idea with the special forces that become Green Berets is that they would be stay behind guerrilla units and the event of a hot war with the Soviet Union. At that point in time, the discrepancy in conventional forces in Europe, the Soviets had a shitload of tanks, NATO had somewhat less tanks, meant that everyone's best assumption was that Soviet forces would steamroll through large portions of Western Europe before there

could be any hope of NATO stopping them. And thus, you wanted to have a bunch of special forces guys behind the line to train resistance cells, organize, and execute attacks to disrupt the enemy's rear, right? That's the idea with which these guys are founded. This is post-World War II. Yes, yes. We're talking the 50s, 57 is when... Yeah, I don't know, yeah, unless you're like a history nerd, I don't think we and in our era appreciate just how badass, like, Russia was.

Oh, yeah, I mean... Like, they were some ass kickers. They had a lot of tanks at the end of that war. They were some ass kickers, yeah. So, in 1957, when Beau first claims to have seen that poster, he definitely didn't see. That was the first year that Green Berets were deployed to Vietnam. So again, there wasn't like anything to brag about them doing yet. Like, they have a reputation now for doing all sorts of crazy shit,

but they had just started going to Vietnam, which I think was their first official combat deployment. If you've ever heard that U.S. involvement in Vietnam started with U.S. advisors going over to train the South Vietnamese Army, that's at least like a big chunk of what they're talking about are what becomes the Green Berets. So Bo's version of the story, which definitely isn't true, is that he asks the Army recruiter,

what do the Green Berets do? And that guy answers, they go out in the woods, live off bark and lizards, snoop around, blow up bridges, and garret people. They live in huts with Bradwick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Bo immediately responds, that's for me. Again, they've only ever been deployed before Vietnam to Europe. They're not eating lizards in fucking Italy. Like, I'm sorry.

That's not what they, they weren't famous for anything at this point of time, certainly not this. I kind of doubt he was thinking at all about the Green Berets when he enlisted. The unit didn't even officially start wearing Green Berets until 1961 when President Kennedy

made it a part of their uniform. In 1957, U.S. Special Forces hadn't really done anything special yet. Their first, oh yeah, I already said that. Anyway, that interview with parade goes on. Quote, although they only accepted sergeants in above, Beau was admitted contingent on his

passing all the schools. These included regular basic training, advanced individual training, parachute and special forces courses that teach unconventional warfare. And again, I mean, that's true about the things you have to do to be a Green Beret, but I don't think Bo entered with any special deal because

he doesn't, he has a normal military career for years before he gets into the Green Berets. In fact, he gets this is wild, court-martialed twice in basic training. See, yeah. I was going to visit. I was going to say, twice. Twice. I was going to say he was

thinking what most recruits think, which is poverty. Like, you know, I want some money. Or, you're going to pay for school. You're going to give me somewhere to live. Basically, you're going to give me socialism. I'm going to go into the army. You're going to give me socialism.

Yeah. I certainly don't think he was planning on eating lizards. At all. Yeah. So, yeah, he doesn't, he gets court-martial twice in basic training. I wish I knew what for. I just don't have that information. Because he was trying to start a gang

because he's just like... He might have been... He was stealing jeeps. He's going to steal... Start a gang. After train. Westside, eat it. You know what I'm saying?

What, bro? I mean, ironically, U.S. Special Forces today often operate exactly like a gang. That's why I mean that's true. Running illegal drugs and murdering other special forces guys who find them running illegal drugs.

Who knew? That actually, a Green Beret got murdered by some Navy SEALs a couple years ago as a result of a bunch of bunch of drug shit. Fun story. Anyway. America. We'll talk about them later. After basic training, Bo was recommended to go to Officer Candidate School. And this is interesting. I don't know why he got picked out. It's fairly rare for that to happen because he didn't have any college experience, but he passes. He gets commissioned as a second lieutenant. And somewhere around this time, also in

1957, he marries his first wife, Dolores Benadidi. And while he was starting his military career, the couple has two children. They're not really that important to talk about because he is going to abandon them at the first possible. This is a classic family abandoner. I'm sorry. You hear a man's name is Bogrites. First thing you know is that that man has abandoned at least one family.

Yeah. Like his mom. Like his mom. Yeah. It's generational. Dang. I learned it from you, mom. I learned it by watching you. Ah. Generational trauma. That's his smoking.

Pot is abandoning his family? Exactly. Pass down from generations. How do y'all get that reference, though? I learned it from watching it. No, no, no, yeah. Y'all don't get that.

Those were anti-drug ads from back in the day. So after OCS, Bo goes to Ranger School, and he does well enough in Ranger School that he gets promoted steadily throughout the early 1960s, reaching the rank of captain by 1963.

In 1965, he joins the Green Berets. So again, he claims in 57, I knew what I wanted to be. I think the reality is his career just went along and eventually this became an option for him. And for whatever reason, he decided to lie about that later. He gets deployed to Vietnam in 1965 and he recalls being excited for the opportunity to, quote, go out and hit something. Other than his own eye, right? Other than his own eye with a BB, yeah. Yeah. Hit is interesting. Like, not shoot. Like, so you, and he actually, he does hit people to death, so I don't know.

He knew what he wanted. Bo was not among the very first Green Berets deployed to the country, but by the time he got over there, the mission that the U.S. was involved in had expanded beyond training the South Vietnamese Army to, I mean, a bunch of shit. But the green berets were operating mobile guerrilla

forces of different local fighters in dark zones of Vietnam and the surrounding countries where U.S. forces were not supposed to be. Right? A lot of these guys went up in Lao. They're not supposed to being Lao, but they're there. So he splits up

with his wife somewhere around this point and he hooks up with a woman that he describes most often in interviews as, quote, an ethnic Chinese former prostitute. These are those words. This man, I figured out as soon as you said first wife, I was

like, uh-huh, uh-huh, that man went down to the jungle. Yeah. And he was like, yo, they come like this? Like, yeah. And he's always really specific about the ethnic Chinese part, I think just because he didn't want anyone to think he had, like, married a Vietnamese woman.

Like, that was very important to Beau for reasons that I probably don't need to get into. Also, I'm guessing she wasn't a former prostitute when they met. That's just my theory here. Given that he's a soldier in Vietnam in 1965. But at least he was supporting sex workers. He was. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We stand. We stand.

Hey. We stand. Yeah. Listen, man, there's always some sort of redeeming quality. There you go. Low bar for this one. Low bar. No bar for Bo, you know.

Yeah, this will be... So, one thing you gotta give Bo, other than that, is that he was very good at being a Green Beret. He's, in fact, one of the best to ever do it. He claims to be the most highly decorated Green Beret commander of the entire war, and this is probably true. He ultimately received more than 60 citations for valor,

including both silver and bronze stars. Bo's descriptions of his time in Vietnam are harrowing reading. At one point, a Viet Cong fighter rises up out of a tunnel and tries to shoot him at point-blank range, and Grich only survives because the ammunition in the man's weapon was bad and failed to fire. One of the stories we get of Bo comes from General William Westmoreland's memoirs, and if you know Westmoreland, he was like,

if you're got to blame Vietnam on a military leader in the U.S., Westmoreland's the guy you blame, right? I think there's a couple of guys ahead of them like LBJ and whatnot, but Westmoreland is responsible for a lot of why Vietnam is the fucking nightmare that it is, right? And it says a lot about both Bo and Westmoreland

that Westmoreland like singles Bow Out as like an example of this guy was one of our best. This is like one of the absolute like the dudes who was really doing it right. And again, maybe that's why we lost the war. I don't know. Is this your king?

So Westmoreland writes in detail about one of Beau's missions, which is this U.S. spy plane has crashed in the Cambodian jungle, right? Now, writing for the Washington Post, Art Harris summarizes, Washington was desperate to retrieve the black box containing top secret codes. It had failed to self-destruct. If it got into VC hands, Moscow might be the next step. There was only one hang-up. Nobody knew exactly where the plane was.

Choppers dropped off Grites and his team, and they fanned out on foot, hacking their way through vines. snaking along elephant trails, setting booby traps to protect their rear, ambushing and getting ambushed. On the fourth day out, around Christmas of 1966, they stumbled on the U-2 wreckage. The black box was gone. V.C. sandal tracks led off into the bush.

He set up an ambush. Kill every man except the first two, he ordered. Grites and another sergeant would take care of them in hand-to-hand with zappers or CIA-issue Springsteel billy clubs. Now, that actually would kind of sound like. I ain't go, oh, do you have the adult movie? Look, it's a good scene in a movie. Nobody's denying that.

I have some questions. First off, why did the CIA have to issue them billy clubs? Why did the CIA need to make clubs to hit people with? I mean, I'm not questioning, like, why would the CIA what people beat into death? I'm questioning, why did they have to make the, like, I don't, I feel like I could make a steel club. You can, you're in the jungle. You can make whatever you want. I have a question.

Why is your chair? backwards. I'm, I'm Rikering, Sophie. Thank you. Yeah. Let's give it up. Commander William Rikert. Come on. There we go. There we go. I support the troops. So, you're really quick with that answer. I'm super impressed. We've been doing this a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like my back tattoo says, ABR, baby. Always be Riker. Oh. So. Jesus Christ.

That was some sort of like... School counselor, yeah, okay. So, other questions I have, why were they called sappers? They're just clubs to hit people with. Also, did the special forces need the CIA to give him the idea to beat men with metal clubs? These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Anyway, that patrol shows up, and Bozeman shoot them to pieces. Grites rushes his target and hits him, but he kills him immediately. He just kills the guy. with a club. There is a prisoner that they've taken, but he's defiant and so he had to be executed.

And here's where you can drink your first war crime drink. Because you are not supposed to execute prisoners. Because they're defiant? Defiant, yes. Pissed that you killed his friends and captured him? That's pretty natural. He ain't go tell us nothing. Goal kill him.

Now, get ready for another war crimes drink because Grites was forced both the guys they tried to take alive. They have now killed. But one of the wounded the Viet Cong fighters that they had thought they'd killed was just wounded, right?

And so they decided to convince this guy to help them. And they do that by, they use a mirror to show him the shrapnel embedded in the back of a skull. And they're like, hey man, you need medical attention right away, and we can't give it to you unless you help us out. So if you don't help us, you're dead, right? So

this guy agrees to lead them to the base where the black box had been taken and to make sure that he abided by the terms of the deal, bow attaches C-4 to the prisoner's neck and uses a detonation cord and uses a detonation cord as a leash to walk him around.

Let's have another war crime drink down. Wow. Again, you're not supposed to do this. One of my questions, as soon as he said, kill everybody but two of them, I was like, okay, so how do you know which two? Because you might have killed the one that was ready to snitch.

You know what I'm saying? But you don't know that. If you just walk up and be like, I'm just going to pick the two, you know what I'm saying? Part of Green Beret training is learning like what guy looks like he's best talking. Don't shoot him as much. Which one of y'all look like snitches? Just grenade that guy a little bit. He looks like he's got a talking mouth.

Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, homie, you got somebody back home you love? Okay, cool. Keep him alive. He's going to snitch. He's going to snitch. You got a family. You got a family.

You finish snitch. You don't know nobody. You can kill him. So, again, several war crimes down here, but the mission is successful. I'm sorry, I'm from the hood. I don't know why I know stuff like that. I'm sorry.

Anyway, go ahead. So the mission succeeds, which is why Westmoreland writes proudly about it in his memoir, even though I might be like, maybe you don't highlight all the war crimes. I don't know. If I'm given notes, right, which I'm not. So the whole thing highlights an important fact, right,

which is that modern American worship of special forces. as operators, begins as a distraction, right? That's why Westmoreland is talking about this to devote so much time to it, and that's why Bo is going to get. That's why the Rambo movies are such a big deal, right? Is because after Vietnam, the U.S., Americans are pretty clear, oh, we're not getting into good wars anymore.

Like that one time? Like, that was pretty fun, and it seems like a lot less fun these days. But we have these guys who are really well-trained to do all this cool stuff, and they look awesome. and, like, they can do really impressive things. They're not winning us wars. Like, him finding this black box in Vietnam. Like, the war still didn't go very well.

It was also very pretty, the last one we had was a pretty clear, like, good versus evil type vibe. Right, the whole World War II thing. You're not doing that anymore. This one, you're like, why is we there again? So, what are we doing over there? And we're not winning. So people are like, so it becomes a lot easier,

they're like, well, let's celebrate how cool these guys are, right? In lieu of celebrating, you know, the good cause that we're doing or, like, the fact that the war has gone very well, you know? And so Bo is kind of at the very first wave of special forces obsession in the United States, which is something that has really, like, come to a head during the global war on terror, right? If you look at, like, movies set in that period of time, they're a lot likely to focus on, like, a special forces unit because you can have them do some kind of rad, cool-looking mission and sort of ignore that like, well,

that everything else was a lot messier and didn't work quite as well. But zero dark 30, hey. Yeah. There's also like a, I don't want to belabor this point too long, but I think that there's a good way as like, as far as like some of the science I use for like social commentary or even, you know, when I did teach high school,

was like you always know what's going on. If you want to understand what was going on in a time period, just look at who the villain was in a movie. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. And, like, this one's so right now, like every show, streaming show, every action movie right now, what's the villain? A tech billionaire. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

You see what I'm saying? Right, right, you know what I'm saying? But before that, you know, during, during that, before that it was like some sort of terror, some sort of Middle Eastern terrorists, you know what I'm saying? So, like, you always know what's going on in the world. You had a lot of late 90s, right before 9-11, a lot of like militia, Nazi kind of guys. Yeah, after OKC. You're trying to kill us. Oh, I said, you know what I'm saying?

Every time. So, anyway, I'm bringing up the special forces stuff just to kind of set the zeitgeist, right? Which is that, Beau is going to really benefit personally in his celebrity from the idea that Americans have kind of switched gears to like, so what if we don't win wars anymore? We look really cool while we're losing, you know?

So Bo himself later stated of his time in Vietnam, we got paid for bringing them back dead or alive. We laid mines like sewing seeds. Among my greatest satisfactions in life, other than sex, was hearing the boom in the night. I'd turn over in my hammock after a boom and chuckle, got another one. Cool guy. Other than sex, I'm glad you let us know that, you know?

That's a bar, Bo. Thanks. Thanks, Bo. So, no amount. When I make the joke that men used to go to war, I didn't mean this guy. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately. Sophie, we've always been this. That's, I'm sorry.

I mean, look, would I set landmines if I had landmines and the legal? Sure. Of course. Who wouldn't want a couple of landmines, you know? Listen. Keep the raccoons out of your yard. Right. Keep the chickens out of your yard.

Keep the dogs. Keep yourself out of your yard. You know? I draw the line at the dogs. Hey, but listen. Look, the great thing about landmines is they don't discriminate. And the thing is, you would only. only need just one dog.

After that, the rest of dogs are smart. The rest of them would know. See? Yeah. Yeah. This has been a paid sponsorship for the Coalition for Civilian Landmine Ownership. You can find a donation, Ben, up at the front.

Also, spade and new to your dogs. Yeah, spay and new to your dogs. Or let the landmine do it, you know? Bob Parker. So, we got so many more pages. Keep going. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers,

but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. In 1997, in Belgium, 37 female body parts placed in 15 trash bags were found at dump sites with evocative names like the path of worry, dump road, and fear creak.

The terrible discoveries made a new discovery yesterday afternoon of the torso of a woman. Investigators believe it is the work of a serial killer. Despite a sprawling investigation, including assistance from the American FBI, the murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence and new suspects. We felt like we were in the presence of someone who was going to the grave with nightnourish secrets. From Tenderfoot TV and IHeart Podcasts, this is Le Mansre Season 2, The Butcher of Moss, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple, podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

From the studio who brought you the Pikedin Masser and Murder 101, this is Incells. I am a loser. If I also a woman, I wouldn't date me either. From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset. If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you. A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment. Sentiment, cynicism, anger against women. A seat of loneliness explodes. I just hate myself.

I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. At a deadly tipping point. Incells will be added to the terrorism guide. Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd, killing 10 people. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge.

This is Incells. Listen to Season 1 of Incells on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward. with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people

and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small. towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. The U.S. Vietnam in 1973. And Bo transitions

to commanding all U.S. S porches. Bo transitions to commanding all U.S. special forces in Latin America,

a job he held from 1975 to 1977. And that's not quite the peak of U.S. war crimes in

Latin America, but it's not at like the low point, right? Like, it's like the upper third of U.S.

War crimes in Latin America periods, I think we can say. So maybe take a drink there. just assume, right? This is all so classified.

Some fuckery in Costa Rica and El Salvador. I'm guessing at least one. He retired... Huh? He retires in 1979, although that was not quite the end of his time working for the U.S. government. And this is a rare

case where Bo is telling the truth and someone else is lying because the U.S. government says, that was the end of him working for us. And Bo says, no it wasn't. Because after the USSR, in at Afghanistan at the end of 1979, the State Department hired

Bo to help train the Mujahideen. They flew Afghan fighters to Sandy... This is too close, man. Like, it's too close. They flew Afghan fighters to Sandy Valley, Nevada. Well, where Boe taught them to use

armor-piercing ammunition against Soviet vehicles carrying VIPs. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. If I'm from Afghanistan... you better not fly me to Nevada man come on there has to have been one night

where Bo and the Mujah Hedine all hit Fremont Street right there has to be one night where they're at the fuck was the lucky horse shoe I lay in Nevada and be like this that look like home what is we

this yeah so the U.S. government denies that this happened but Bo has footage of himself training a bunch of Afghan guys. They're setting off explosives in the desert. So I'm going to go with the government's lying here. Government would never lie. Yeah.

Oh, Sophie. I have some bad news. We'll talk about that behind stage. So decades later, for a 2021 mystery wire interview, Bo would insist that the specific men he trained were among the very last holdouts, resisting Taliban control after the Taliban won and stuff. And there's no way for me to know if that's true.

I don't think he knows. I don't think he kept track of names. I don't think you're certainly not emailing with, hey, you still doing okay up there? I think he just needed to tell himself that or wanted to tell the news that to sound cool. Anyway, another thing Boe needed to tell himself was that the U.S. government had left behind

a huge number of his comrades in Vietnam. He would later claim, without any evidence that I've seen, that he was tasked by the DIA, the defense intelligence agency, with searching for POWs left behind after the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Now, if you've driven past a VA hall or a post office or some other government building or just a shitload of rural homes, you've probably seen at some point, under a U.S. flag, a weird black flag with a silhouette of a dude's face in front of a guard tower

and the words POWS. slash MIA, you are not forgotten on it, right? most people you've seen you're aware of these stuff we're about to talk about where this fucking flag comes from right because this is our most conspiratorial flag in the United States if that is a silhouette of bow I'm knocking this table over there's a funny story for who silhouette that is though I'm knocking all your drinks out of your hands if it's both okay no so the idea behind this flag is that there's a and to this day the people who fly it tend to believe that there's a shitload of U.S. servicemen still being held captive somewhere, right?

Whereas less, they'd be like 80 now if they were from the Vietnam War, right? This is not true, and it wasn't true by the late 1970s, right? But belief in this conspiracy theory that we'd left a bunch of guys behind and they were still in camps in Vietnam and we got to go rescue him, that became a widespread conspiratorial belief largely due to bog rights. He is a huge, he's not the only one, but he is a major, major reason for that. Now, the flag itself that I just described was designed by a guy named Jeff Heisley in

1970, and when Jeff designs the flag, to be fair to Jeff, there were a bunch of U.S. POWs in North Vietnam. We were still fighting a war, right? Of course there were POWs. That's how war works. The silhouette was based on a real guy, his son who was 22 years old at the time

and not a soldier. Now, he had tried to be a soldier. I'm sorry. what? This is very funny. Jeff's son had been an officer candidate school for the Marine Corps,

but he'd had to drop out because he caught hepatitis. So he was like sick and he lost like 40 pounds, so he looked like he was starving to that. So his dad was like, hey, buddy, get on over here.

I think your silhouette looks perfect for something. Oh my God. It's big like, It's pretty good. It's big. Like, Michelangelo, like, Jesus statue, energy. It's giving, like... And that's all over our country. It's all over.

Everywhere. Now, every time you see one of those flags, you'll know where they came from. So great. Fucking hepatitis awareness. So, before Nixon got elected, we didn't use the terms P-O-W-M-I-A, right? I mean, the P-O-W existed as a term, but that was not what the military used officially. the terms used were KIA slash B&R, which meant killed in action, body not recovered, right? And this was the term for,

this was not the term for, if we knew someone was a P-O-W, you'd call them a P-O-W. This was the term for guys who disappeared and we don't know that they died. We don't know what happened. And most of these guys had, they'd just been, you know, they'd been blown up or something. There was not enough left to do a positive identity.

Some small number probably just like went AWOL, like, you got a couple of weirdos who like just, There were a couple of guys in Korea who just like went to North Korea. Like that kind of stuff happened every now and then, right? And then some number of them, you assume, were captured and were, and this was happening at points in the Vietnam War, and were being held, right? And the government just was not aware of their specific name, right? So that's what we used to call it.

And it's worth emphasizing that prior to 1969, the U.S. government, and specifically the Department of Defense, wanted to discourage any talk about U.S. servicemen being imprisoned by the enemy. This was not just a Vietnam thing. This had existed beforehand, but it really became heightened in Vietnam. And so when, like, the military would tell someone that, like, hey, your

kid or whatever is missing, they would also tell them, keep quiet about it. They might still be alive. Don't tell anybody, right? Which is kind of a fucked up thing that's been on the family. Like, what? That's really fucking crazy. Per an article in time by

Heathley, quote, if the women dared to discuss it, their government warned them, the men might be badly treated, or even executed. With this heavy burden to bear, the women were supposed to go about their daily existence, telling no one what they were up against.

Supposedly, this would help bring the men back home safely. The policy... How? This policy had been applied to prisoners and missing troops in previous wars, and was one president Lyndon B. Johnson would adhere to during the Vietnam War. The U.S. government tried to use its well-worn template

of quiet diplomacy to reason with the North Vietnamese. Now, this is very fucked up, and you might think that it's a good thing that the Nixon administration changed course, and like, well, at least now we're admitting, like, these guys are captured or missing, right? Like, that's an improvement over telling their families to lie, right? But this is Dick Nixon, we're talking about. Oh, it's like, hold up, yeah. This change was not made out of compassion.

It was made for it even more fucked up reason. As H. Bruce Franklin outlines in his book MIA, MythM. in America, which is a great book about this exact subject. The Nixon administration changed courses because this was, they wanted to get Americans to back a disastrous war, right? They wanted to build support for Vietnam, which was fading. And in May of 1969, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird admitted for the first time that some 1,300 Americans were MIA and as many as half might be POWs. And this is when the use of the term really changed. As Nathan Smith summarized in an article for the outline. This transformed the war from a political issue into a humanitarian one,

trading public support for sympathy. It didn't matter why we were there in the first place. Our boys were there. And by God, we were going to do anything to get our boys home. Right? So people are wondering why we're there. I feel like, okay, far be it for me to try to tell the U.S. government how to do their branding pictures. I just feel like for you to tell me in a war, already didn't want to be in. Now you're admitting what we already knew, which is Earl's son ain't came home yet, while everybody else's son came.

So now you want to admit it, and you're telling me that's a justification for you? I would be like, my G, it sounded me like we shouldn't have never fucking been there. Maybe my son would be home. I'm sorry. No, I know you're angry. I know you're angry that all these people are dying.

And that we're fighting this war. But look, we have to keep fighting the war. otherwise the guys that we sent to the war might not come home from the war. Right? Don't make no damn sense, sir. There's a lot of logic there. Don't make no damn sense.

I'm just saying maybe you should stop fighting a war. Maybe we should have stopped. You can't be a prisoner of a war that ain't happening, sir. I bet if we left, they'd give the guys back. I bet you if we left. Anyway. Because they probably don't want to keep them. Look, and at this point, what is that winning them?

And at this point, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, the first group to prove how much money there is in this newly created conspiracy theory was a student organization, Viva, or Voices in Vital America. One of the worst acronyms I've ever encountered, just as a heads up. Just fucking dog shit. Now, Viva started out selling nickel bracelets in the early 1970s with the names of missing servicemen engraved in them. Celebrities would buy one to be spotted supporting the troops and giving something back without doing anything. Yes. Livestrong. Right.

Yes. Lid Strong only pro war. Yeah. Yeah. Now, then the war ended, right? And Vietnam returned the prisoners they had because, you know, why wouldn't, why would they keep these guys past a certain point? You know, there were negotiations, there were things they wanted.

It doesn't happen immediately. But there's a congressional inquiry in 1976 to try and make sure, did we get everybody or there's some guys left or not, right? So this is... That's nice of them to check. Right. You should double check that. Did we leave a guy or two behind?

It's like looking for your keys after you set up at the bar, you know? But like with 700 guys who got shot down for bombing Hanoi, you know? I'm pretty sure Vietnam would know, though. It was like, y'all see any white people? Look, do my friends always notice if I lose my wallet in their couch? Yeah. Pilots are a lot like that. Listen.

I'm just saying, go back into the prison and be like, hello? Hey, anybody here? Anybody here? ain't nobody here jean like i think we're good i think we're good i don't know where they went after they left here i'm just saying they're not here right so there's this inquiry in nineteen seventy six and congress concludes we they're all there's not any guys still over there right there's no more us p o w's in southeast asia but a certain number of americans could not get over their rage at losing a war and refused to accept that the hundreds of men who were still missing in action were just dead

and not being kept in a secret prison camp. And when it comes to like the families, obviously, I don't blame like someone for like not wanting to believe their dad's dead or whatever. But on a societal level, this is just a delusion, you know? It's an open question as to whether or not Bogue Wright's ever believed there were hundreds, some said thousands of Americans still being held prisoner in Vietnam, or if he just saw it as fertile soil for a grift. Now, I am inclined to believe the latter explains some of his logic,

that it's a grift, right? Because in the early 1980s, he starts traveling around and giving speeches about how all these guys left over there. My brothers are still behind the line being held by the North Vietnamese, and we've got to free them, right? And, you know, since the government's not going to do it, you know, they're corrupt, they're laid, you know, and then the cowardly media is convinced everybody keeping troops in Vietnam is a bad idea.

I'm going to bring them back. I'm going to put together a squad, a hard-nosed badasses. A gang, you might say. A gang, you might say. So that's the Rambo. That's okay. I was like, please connect these dots. Okay, got it.

If you just give me some money, I'm totally going to put together a volunteer force of American veteran commandos. And we're going to return to Southeast Asia and we'll find proof that Americans are still being held captive there. And that'll force the government to, I guess, reinvade Vietnam. Right. He just wants to commit more work on life. He just didn't get enough Vietnam, you know?

It's the, again, like sometimes, you know, you go to the buffet, you don't get enough plates, you know? It's like that. I've been to a buffet with you. You get enough plates. Right. And I would argue the United States had more than enough Vietnam. Had plenty of plates. Should have cut them off a while back.

Shouldn't have even gone into that buffet. Golden Corral. Right. Don't even go in. Bo starts touring. Is there golden corrals up here? Are there? No, no, no, no.

No. Although, if you ever want to, I did this when I was like 22 years old and fucking coming down from a shitload of acid. Like, you and your equally young, equally coming down on acid friends coming to a golden corral at 6 in the morning because you haven't slept the night before, the looks you get from the golden corral regulars, beautiful, beautiful experience. I recommend it to everyone. is not sponsored by Golden Corral, but maybe it should be. Yet? So, Bo starts tour in the country. He starts guesting on different TV shows.

He starts speaking at churches and at veterans' organizations. He starts taking donations. Why do we let them do this? Who's going to stop him? But how do you get to the TV, though? Oh, because he's famous. Oh, because he's a famous. He's won a bunch of awards.

He's a great green beret. And it sells, right? On TV, they're like, there's a bunch of men. men trapped, you know, your fellow citizens trapped, you know, and he's, Bo is charismatic. Was he good at talking? Was he a babe? Was he handsome? I would not say so, but that's an opinion

that people can have or not have on their own, you know? It's not my job to tell you which war criminals are hot. Yes, it is. I beg to differ. That's literally your job. Do I have a short list of really hot war criminals? Listen, at this point,

were we at home, you would have pulled up some sort of picture that we would try to describe. You cut that, you forced me to cut that 28 minute digression out of the pole pot episodes, so I don't know what to do.

I'm sorry. Should have called him pole hot, am I right? Pol hot! That's all, folks. Thank you so much, man. We're dead, everybody. Wow. Wow.

That's such low-hanging fruit. Like how we never thought of that. Yeah. After that, turn your chair around. Why? I don't know. It's been bothering me the entire time. Sorry, some of us remember, again, the troops. Just one.

Well, because one part, one version of Riker was left behind after a transporter accident, which is how his transporter clone came to be. Yes. Some people know their history. Thank you. Don't clap for him. Yeah.

Yeah, let's give a real big round of applause for the Riker that joined the McKee. There we go. Big Rik. Oh. Okay. All right. So, Bo starts touring. He goes all around.

He's taking donations. He's given lots of interviews. He's getting on TV all the time. And he's telling stories about his time in Vietnam to get, like, the saddest stories he has, right? Because the more emotional people are, the more willing they are to give him money for this stupid shit. And his favorite go-to story is the tale of a real guy, Sergeant George Hoagland. George was a Green Beret, a comrade, who Grites said had been wounded during an ambush. And so Grite says, you know, Hogan gets wounded, and me and some other guys, we have to run back and we're trying to rescue him, right?

And Hougland, being such a hero, realizes that his teammates are going to die in this ambush if they try to save him. And so in an act of utter selflessness, Hougland puts his own AR-15 to his head and, quote, the trigger eliminating the need for us to be there. That's what Bo says. Now, this would certainly be a shocking and sobering story of sacrifice, if any of it were even slightly true. Now, the problem is, Bo has chosen to lie about a real dude who really died and who he had not served with, but other guys had. Most of the press, for a long time he gets away with this, because most journalists are like, well, he's a green bray. I must be telling the truth. He wouldn't lie about another green beret. That'd be fucking.

up. Thankfully, the Washington Post was still a real newspaper back at the 80s. And Art Harris reached out to Chuck Heiner, who was one of two members of Hoagland's squad who survived the actual ambush that killed Hoagland. And Heiner claimed, quote, Grites wasn't even on that goddamn team. I was with George when he died. He just got blown away. Must have taken 150 rounds.

Very dead. Damn. Yeah, that's a lot of dead. They were not taking chances. They were not taking chance. Yeah, right. That's pretty bad. Now, this is the kind of lie that shouldn't have even taken an interview to bust.

My first thing would have been like, wait, so this guy got wounded, and then he shot himself in the head with an AR-15? Like, for one thing, they usually have, like, pistols, right? Seems a little overkill. It's just weird that he'd lie about this specifically, right? and I think the weirdness But like why? You have a real story

Such good stories already It's because men lie Men lie Well yeah And Bo and Bo is a compulsive liar Right Like he's someone who absolutely cannot control it

And what matters Most of him isn't the truth It's continuing to live As if he were a movie protagonist Long after he'd gotten Too old and slow To continue shooting people For the government

Now folks We're going to continue this story Don't you worry and we're going to continue and conclude with a Q&A to let you guys ask some questions and whatnot, but we're going to take an intermission because that's a thing that we do here. So go get yourself a drink, use the restroom, buy some t-shirts. There's merch, t-shirts, stickers, merch to support the Portland Defense Fund. And then in a couple of minutes, we will come back and we will learn more about Bo Grites,

who I think is going to become a good guy by the end of this. I don't remember the remaining five pages of the script, but I think it's as well. episode. Who knew? Yeah. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer. in New York since the son of Sam available now listen for free on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts wherever you get your podcasts a new true crime podcast from tenderfoot tv in the city of maus in

belgium women began to go missing it was only after their dismembered remains began turning up in various places that residents realized a sadistic serial killer was lurking among them the murders have never been solved three decades later we've unearthed new Evidence. Le Monstre, Season 2, is available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On this podcast in cells, we unpack an emerging mindset. I am a loser.

If I also women, I want to tame me either. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge. This is Incells. Listen to season one of Incells on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better wake the hell up.

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