Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 52 - James Dean Murder Car

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Patreon - http://www.patreon.com/chilluminatipod BUY OUR MERCH - http://theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati Soundcloud - @chilluminatipodcast Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/ThatOneLaserClown Art Commissioned by - http://www.mollyheadycarroll.com Theme - Matt Proft Video - http://www.twitter.com/digitalmuppet

It's Jeep 4x4 season. Make your next adventure epic, and hurry in now for great deals. Now, while qualified returning FCA less seats, get a low mileage lease on the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee L Laredo 4x4 for $3.29 a month, for $24 months, with $3,999 due its signing, tax title license extra, no security deposit required. Call 1-889-25 Jeep for details, requires dealer contribution, a lease through Ally Financial. Currently, this must end by $6,324. Extra charge for miles over $20,000. Residency restrictions apply. Take delivery by 531-23. Jeep is a registered trademark. Music Fantastic. Hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Chilluminati Podcast, episode 52, as always. I am one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joining my two good buddies and co-host, Jesse Cox, who's already shaking his head. No, I don't even know why. By the end, by the end of this, he's going to be shaking his head. Yes.

I remember today was an Alex episode, and I'm pre-judging it. Get ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I realize the road that you're on right now. I'm excited, dude. Speaking of our other co-host, Alex Fasiana, what's up, my man? Hey, what's up? Hey, how are you? It has been like two months since you've done one of your episodes. It has, and in that whole time, all I've been digging about is the Patreon we have here on the Chilluminati Podcast. I didn't even, I didn't even sling you anything for that. I know. You don't need to sling anything, dude.

I'll sling it right here. For me, Alex himself, the tangerine LaCroix boy himself, please sign up for our Patreon. It's really all we have. So come on down, get your free mini-sode every episode. It's good shit. It's good shit. It has gone a long way. We have a researcher now who's part of the team, which is fantastic permanently. So, you know, those deep dives are just, they're going to be coming and they're not going to be stopping just like me in bed at 18. Whoa, what part? Coming and not stopping? That's just what happens, dude, when the hormones hit and puberty is happening. What is happening right now? This is what aliens have done to me, dude. This is what the greys have done.

I don't blame it on the greys. Don't do that. Don't blame your thirst on the greys. No, no, no, no, no. Did you see the J-O-I nut butter? Yes, I did. Or nut milk? I did. I didn't realize the extent of how funny that was until I was like, J-O-I nut butter. And like it all came together like, that's dirty as shit. I can't believe it.

Listen, if they want to sponsor the podcast, open arms, dude. I don't want them to sponsor this podcast. Open arms. The last thing I need to be associated with is more nut butter weird stuff. Maybe J-O-I nut butter is the greys end game. This is the greys end game. They're just reselling it back to us. I don't need my picture associated with this stuff. Then all the incels on the internet will come after me. As far as people that could come after you, let it be the incels.

That's like having the orcs come after you. It's like, what's going to happen? You're right. Everyone will rally to my cause. We know what the good guys are. Thank you for supporting the Patreon, everybody. You have allowed this to become like our thing now. It's fantastic. We're just going to keep putting out good ass shit like this episode. Please don't disappoint me, Alex.

I won't. I just sold you to these people. Okay. So I'm ready. I mean, look, I went deep. I read a book for this. I read a whole book for this. I read a whole book for this.

Usually, usually the stuff that I'm like researching, it's like too new to be a book. Yeah. You end up in like the HTML code of a website to determine whether or not their pedophiles are assassins. My book is like archive.org, like web archives. But to this time, way too old of a mystery for archive.org and a big enough mystery that it definitely merits many books. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of James Dean's car. That's right. I mean, I'll give a shout. I'm pumped.

But Jesse kind of like any idea. He went like, he went from like disbelief to processing to like processing is that before we started, Mathis was like, I think actually do a thing about Jimmy Dean's car. And in my mind, I was thinking the sausage guy. Sorry, I did not even think about it. So when you said James Dean, I was like, oh, this is an entirely different story. You're like, what happened to the guy with the delicious pork breakfast sausage? I can't. This better not be a milkshake duck.

I was like, Jimmy Dean. All right. I can't wait to hear what Jimmy Dean has to do with this. Now breakfast aside, we are talking about James Dean's car. Big shout out to the article, The Death of James Dean by underworldtales.com, Cursed Cars by Craig Fitzgerald at bestride.com and James Dean spider by Deb Andres at hauntedvehicles.com. And last but not least, the book James Dean, The Mutant King by David Dalton, which is an oldie but a goodie. Worth, if you like James Dean, definitely worth a read. I, you know, I just came at this kind of out of nowhere because I remember this mystery from a ways back.

And when you guys said the other day that you hadn't really heard about this, I just thought it was a perfect subject matter for like a weird little episode. So I just figured, you know, why not? Let's do it. Right. I mean, that's kind of the show in a nutshell, right? Like, why not? Let's do it. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I'll like, look, I'm just the truth is I'm daunted by JFK and it's taken me a really long time. And the fact that I could just shlorp this one out all good. So, okay, so definitely, let's just get into it. Definitely your parents will know James Dean from like just being around and him being like a huge figure in normal pop culture. But like nowadays in like the 2020s, unless you're like a film buff, or you're like some weird teenager who's like expressing themselves by falling in love with like a teen idol from 70 years ago. You probably only know the basics, which is this thing is I can like think of one girl in my high school. I know there's always one that person always one who's got like the like old teen idol from the 60s or 50s.

Yeah. It's a weird vibe. Shout outs to those people for holding it down. Hell yeah. We're alive. James Dean, as you know, was a famous actor from the 1950s. He was in probably the one everybody knows is rebel without a cause. But he was also in East of Eden and a movie called Giant.

And literally that is all the movies that he was in. Maybe he had something to do with Marilyn Monroe. I'm not sure. Maybe that's just an association that I have based on seeing him in like a million murals in Hollywood. I don't know. Also possible. That's very, very true. Yeah, actually.

But finally, and most importantly for us here today at the Chilubanati. He is perhaps most famous for dying when he was just 24 years old on September 30th, 1955. So let me just take you through that day real quick and what happened on that day. And then we'll get into what is so strange about this. Okay. If you'll indulge me. It was a beautiful if slightly chilly morning that day. Okay.

At competition motors in Hollywood. And I looked this up and it's actually just a couple blocks up on Vine Street from where the Cinerama Dome is by Amoeba Records. I was going to say, does that still exist? Competition motors does not exist, but it's right there. You can go right to this spot on Vine Street. And James Dean was there and he was hanging out with a former Luftwaffe pilot who was a factory trained Porsche mechanic by the name of Rolf Wutherich. Okay. Okay.

The reason that he was the reason that he was at competition motors that beautiful morning in Hollywood was that he had just purchased one week before a brand new rare one of 92 ever exist. 1955 Porsche 550 Spider. Can we make you on the page room? Yeah. Yeah. You can get that car. He bought it allegedly on the 23rd of September. Some people are saying maybe on the 21st of September based on my source, but I'm pretty sure it was the 23rd.

And he took it in almost immediately to be spruced up by a man whose name is George Barris. And that's somebody you probably don't know offhand who he is. But you definitely know his work because he is a super famous car customizer whose like trademark is that he eventually went on to make the iconic Adam West Batmobile. Oh, shit. But this was not like that. James Dean was not into that shit. He was into the cool shit. He was into the real deal stuff.

So he did his car up super nice. Any 24 year old would be. Dude, I'm serious. And it was a Porsche Spider. But you want to, okay. Side note about George Barris. He like low key got in trouble recently, like maybe like 10 years ago for like putting all these other like movie cars in his shop. Like he had like a DeLorean and all these other things.

And people were like, you didn't make this like you like these aren't your stuff. But I don't know. I look, I didn't go too deep into George Barris beyond like how he relates to this case. And honestly, it's a lot. But but I didn't go into like his personal life too much. But yeah, James Dean wanted a racing car. So he went to George Barris and he he wanted a classy one. So he added like some red tartan wool seats to the car, like that Scottish wool.

He added like red stripes on the rear like wheel wells of the Porsche. And if you look up a Porsche Spider 1955, this is a cool car. It's like a nice little silver bullet of a car. It looks really cool. He he had the red stripes on the wheel wells. And then he got lettering done like bespoke lettering done by Dean Jeffries, who not as popular as George Barris's Batmobile. But Dean Jeffries, who did the lettering on this car was also the man who built the monkey mobile,

which is something that definitely only your parents know. Yes, because yeah, it has to do with the monkeys like with the monkey, which was a band that was like a corporate rip off of the Beatles. That it was OK, don't it doesn't matter. The point is that guy wrote on the car. He wrote the number 130, which was his racing number. He wrote across the hood of the car over the engine cover on the doors. And then most importantly, just under the Porsche emblem that's like just above the license plate on the back of the car.

He also wrote a nickname that Dean received from legendary stuntman and dialect coach on Giant. Bill Hickman. That would eventually infamously come to describe the car itself much more than the man inside. And that name was Little Bastard. Huh. OK. Here's a quote from Bill Hickman about that name. He said, in those final days, racing was what he cared about most.

I've been teaching him things like how to put a car in a four wheel drift, but he had plenty of skill of his own. If he had lived, he might have become a champion driver. We had a running joke. I'd call him Little Bastard and he'd call me Big Bastard. I never stopped thinking of those memories, which honestly, I'm getting like a serious like Leo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt vibe from this, which I love.

So the plan was for this weekend, you know, brand new car. He's feeling good. He's been like really into racing, obviously. The plan for the weekend was to pack the car into a trailer that he was going to take behind his 1955 Country Squire station wagon, which if you look that up, it's like an idyllic 1950s, like woody sided station wagon car, beautiful car, and caravan up north to Salinas, which is like over by like Monterey Bay up north

with Wutherick, the Luftwaffe Porsche guy who was teaching him about the car. A photographer called Sandy Roth, who was like just trying to take pictures because it was hype that James Dean was going to go do this race, and Hickman himself and they were going to like a road race in Salinas. You know, nice sort of like isolated place to like go fast on some roads. But at the last minute, Wutherick decided that being brand new, the Porsche might need a little breaking in because ideally you want to have your car at like 1500 miles. As somebody who knows nothing about cars, why?

I guess it just gives everything a chance to like settle in and like, you know, like. I listened to like an awful lot of car talk. Like it's just, I love that show. And even though it's been off the air for a while now, they do reruns as a podcast. And so one of the things they constantly say on there, and I think I've heard this, I don't know that it's true at all, but like, if you get a new car, you're supposed to just not immediately jump on the highway. You're supposed to like drive it around a little bit and like,

let everything kind of warm up and get used to the fact that I have no idea if that's true, or if it's just something people have done for years and they just keep doing it. Because there's a lot of things like, you know, people will say, let your car warm up in the winter. Yes, yes. And originally cars had to do that. But now modern cars, you can just start and go. That makes sense.

But people still do it because they're like dad or dad's dad told them that. Oh yeah. That's something I even still do to this day without realizing like, I don't need to actually anymore. I don't want to hurt the engine if I don't let it warm up and let everything. But it's one of the things where like the engine now is designed to handle that before it wasn't. So it's, you know, who knows if it's true to this day that you can't just like get off the lot and then drive it away.

But definitely back then. Yeah. And not to mention this is like a very rare sort of like precision instrument racing car. So there was an element of that to it. And the car only had about 150 miles on it. So he was like, I need to have like 10 times that much. So we might as well drive it up. So they decided to do that.

Dean decided to get into the rhythm by driving it himself. Because he also wanted to like groove with the car, I guess. And then he brought Wutherick with him in the passenger seat to give him like pointers as he drove. Which left Hickman and Roth following slowly behind them in the station wagon with the trailer. So they still brought all that stuff. Probably because on the way back, they were going to throw the car in or whatever, you know, like looking good. And according to the very detailed account of this that they have in the book, The Mutant King, the whole group, the whole group, all four of them after having lunch with James Dean's dad and uncle across the street at a coffee shop.

Hell yeah. The four of them left together in a caravan from a coffee shop at around 1.15 p.m. And I don't know if you understand this distance, but it only took them from Hollywood to get out to about Bakersfield. Only took them about two and a half hours, which is pretty crazy. Like, you know, you know, they were going fast. And we're also like double confirmed that they were going fast because at 3.30 p.m. a chips patrolman by the name of OV Hunter stopped both cars to write them speeding tickets. So he was ripping down the road.

Yeah. So Dean got one for going 65 and a 55, which is just 10 miles over the limit, though in the 50s. That's a little bit more hardcore than it is now because cars were like just barely right. Most cars were just barely cresting over that. Hickman got an even worse ticket, though, because he was going 45 miles per hour. But because he had a trailer attached to the car, that's like you're only supposed to go 25 miles an hour. So he got a ticket like even worse than James Dean's for going slower. But the timing is the most significant part of all because considering the different distance traveled in such a short time,

while they got some relatively tame tickets, it's like Dean was hitting speeds of over 100 miles an hour sometimes when he was out there to make that time. That's scary, man. I've been in the car. God. I was in high school. Storytime. I used to go and I just a carpool because it was like going to my private school was like 30 to 45 minutes away from where I lived at the time. My parents were terrified of putting me in the public school of where we lived.

And there was only one other kid in the area who went to that private school. And so my parents had work. So we would do do carpools and I would be terrified on the days that I'd have to get carpooled by her dad because her dad would with every single time at six o'clock in the morning, going over 100 miles an hour, bobbing and weaving between traffic to get us there in about 20 minutes every single morning. And he was in like one of those like, I wouldn't even call it a race car, but it's like one of those slicker Chrysler's that was like red, of course. And it had like a spoiler in the back and shit, you know, some middle-aged man's idea of speedy race car. It was horrifying. I used to go up the five from California to like Washington pretty quick, but I'm not going to reveal my speed.

Because it's embarrassing. I was pushing over 100 miles per hour in a minivan. I've never been caught for speeding. Actually, it's a lie. The one time I got pulled over for speeding was I was trying to follow my dad and I got caught. And he like had to come back and got an argument with the officer because he was like, oh, my son wasn't speeding. And then the minute the officer left, he was like, what were you doing going so fast? I'm like, I was following you.

But I learned that based like, I understand how people can get caught speeding, not even thinking about it now, especially in higher powered cars. Like for most of my life, I had like a clunker. And when it would hit 60, it would start shaking, right? But the ride is too smooth now. Yeah. And now I'll like look down. It's like 85.

I'm like, how the hell that happened? So even riding my Corolla with like 2016 Corolla, which is still not that old. I recently rented a sports car for a few days. You would hit 80 and go, wait, why? How? How? How do I drive? It doesn't feel like you're going that fast.

No. And then you go down like 93. What? Oh, slow down. Because thankfully in LA, there's no way you're doing that unless it's like two way quarantine. Yeah. Unless, yeah, unless it's literally a pandemic keeping people off the road. Sorry to tangent.

Continue. No, no, no. It's all good. So they got the tickets. It took them a really short amount of time to get to Bakersfield area. And then a little while later, they stopped for drinks at a charming little rest stop on Highway 46. There's your problem.

Called Blackwell's Corner. Okay. Don't drink and drive. No. I know. Well, I mean, I don't, the only thing that it's on record that James Dean actually drank there was like a huge cold glass of milk, which I think is like the most James Dean thing.

Yeah. It's like so badass. But even today, if you go to that rest stop at Blackwell's Corner, they have like a big sign, big mural of James Dean. It says James Dean's last stop. You can dine at the forever young restaurant. You can grab some fudge at East of Eden fudge factory. Oh my God.

To memorialize him while you pee on the side of the road somewhere. God capitalism, man. Look what happens. According to the Google images, there's a dust bowl like educational display with a very scary fake old lady. All right. But you know what? You know what?

The three of us get into an accident and we all die. What do they put? Whoa. No, no. Okay. What do they put up? You two die. I want to tell the story.

Thanks. What? What? What? Where do they, what do they put up? Yeah. What ends up going up to memorialize our deaths? What the fuck?

Wow. I don't want to die with y'all. That's what's going to happen. It's a chilluminati. It's like a chilluminati. What? Woodside memorial. Yeah.

I don't think it's associated with that. Utilated cattle with a pyramid garden. I was hoping for like Mothman's maid cafe. No. What the hell is what? What? What? Expectations of post-death.

I want like, I want like a subtle but tasteful like display at the crash site. I want a giant bronze anal suppository. What? What? What? What? Of alien design. What the fuck?

What the hell is the matter with you? I feel like it gets across my, it gets across my interest and my out there sense of humor. I don't want to be a part of this. I need to live through this. These improv scenes. I'm afraid now, man. I want you to know, now that I know if I'm ever in a life threatening situation with you two, I will try so hard to live because if I die, this is what I have to look forward

to. Oh my God. I will fight with every last ounce of my strength to live through that situation. I must live a framed picture of me vomiting at a party. No. All right. It doesn't matter. Okay.

Okay. Show up and play a song. That's, you know what? I'm into that. If he's down, I'm down. I'm dead. But you know, he's down. He's alive.

I'm dead. All right. Anyway, I'm going crazy. While they were there at the Blackwell's corner rest stop, they happened to run into the air of the Woolworths Fortune, a man named Lance Reventlow and his racing driver, Bruce Kessler, who were also on the way to the races in Reventlow's Mercedes-Benz 300 SL coup, which is a very sexy car as well. And that because they met them, that is how we know that at 5.15 p.m. that day, that's

when James Dean, Wooderick, Hickman and Roth the photographer continued their journey heading West and Highway 46 towards Paso Robles, about 5.15. About a half hour later, heading the other way, which is East, in a black and white 1954 Tudor Coupe, was a 23 year old student from Cal Poly. And listen, I know that I haven't gotten into the possible paranormal elements of this episode yet, but to me and many other people who have written articles about this online, it is very strange, though unrelated, that this guy's name just happened to be Donald Turn Up Speed. Literally his name was the one word the word turn, then up, then speed, all condensed into

one word, Donald Turn Up Speed. That's insane. That is crazy. Anyway, Mr. Turn Up Speed was making a left on Route 41 off Highway 46. I love how you keep saying it that way when you definitely know his name was like Turn Up Speed. That motherfucker's name is Turn Up Speed. There's no mistaking it, dude.

Turn Up Speed. You definitely got a different name. Why do you sound like the spaghetti guy? And you're like, Mr. Turn Up Speed. Dude, Donald, his first name is Donald. There's no way his name is like a Donald. No, but you'd be like, Do Nald Turn Up Speed. Yeah, Donald Turn Up Speed.

Donald Turn Up Speed. He was making a left on Route 41. James Dean, who was very excited about the idea of racing around in his round new car, he was likely going about 85. He swerved to avoid, but instead he fucked up. He failed to get out of the way, and it caused them to slam into each other head on, which sent Turn Up Speed's car going 39 feet in the direction he was coming. Straight backwards.

Jesus Christ. If you can imagine going one direction and getting hit so hard by something going the other way that it sent you backwards while you had momentum going the other way. The speed he was going versus the speed Turn Up Speed was going is like crazy, crazy level different. And you basically just add them together, to get the force with which it hit. And also, I'm not sure if you know this about old cars. Maybe you're a car person.

Maybe you're not. But especially a car like a 1954 two-door coupe. If you have a second, look up this car because Google it or something. It's not a big car. Yeah. Well, it's not a big car, but if you look at it, it looks like it's like from Batman the Animated Series. It's like that type of car.

Like one of those shaving razor looking cars. And essentially that just means it's like a huge, heavy piece of solid metal. It's like a bullet. Like cars today are designed when you hit someone to like evaporate. Like the car. Yeah. Well, they're cheap. They're cheap little like car.

You know, it's like pre-war car. Like this thing is a big, heavy piece of metal. And when it comes into contact with a super expensive, precise extra light racing car like James Dean's 1955 Porsche 550 Spider, it's like hitting a can, a soda can with a baseball bat. You know what I mean? Like you're just according to hauntedvehicles.com and the mutant king. Someone at the scene referred to the car as looking like a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

Sure. It's pretty fucking wild. And actually you can look up pictures of the crash if you want, but I don't advise it because it is very nasty crash. Yeah. I've seen some. Yeah. It's it's pretty bad.

Wooderick, the Luftwaffe guy was thrown from the vehicle. He broke his jaw and his leg and had some internal injuries and he was taken in the hospital with James Dean. But he nevertheless lived and turn up speed thanks to his enormous metal car literally walked away from this with nothing but a scratch nose. They haven't like he refused medical attention. He didn't need it. He was totally fine, which is crazy.

But James Dean was not so lucky. He was pinned in the car with a broken neck and heavy internal bleeding. And by the time he got to the hospital with Wooderick at 6.20 p.m., he was pronounced dead on arrival. It was pretty, pretty fucking crazy. Here's another quote from the stuntman, Bill Hickman. It's pretty messed up. He said, we were about two or three minutes behind him.

I pulled him out of the car and he was in my arms when he died. His head fell over. I heard the air coming out of his lungs the last time. Didn't sleep for five or six nights after that. Just the sound of the air coming out of his lungs. Pretty fucking nutty. Jesus. Yeah, he, it was because of crashes like this that they started to be like, we need to make

driving safer. Yeah. Yeah. No shit. It like, okay. Just to give you an idea of like where we're at with this, like this was like the thing that happened. Like this was like a big deal.

James Dean was like fucking famous. You know what I mean? Like this was like, this would be like if like, like Adam Driver just died today. Like randomly. Like somebody that everybody knows, you know what I mean? Crazy. But I know what else you're thinking. You're thinking to yourself, Alex, why in the fuck did you just tell me this super sad

fucking story about a legend, an American legend dying in a car wreck? And there's a podcast about weird mysteries and unexplained phenomenon. Here we go. Well, yes. Well, yes, it is my boys. I do believe it is. I'm ready. I'm ready.

We're going to get into that shit right now. And so submitted for the approval to Luminati society. I call the rest of this story the curse of the little bastard. Now you know the rest of the story. Now as you can imagine, okay, Rebel Without a Cause, a generation defining movie for teenagers basically invented teenagers for people like the teenagers that we know today were pretty much spraying out of the idea of them from that movie, Rebel Without a Cause. This movie did not come out till about one month after James Dean died in this car wreck.

So think about that. So this is like a Heath Ledger Dark Knight. Yes. Exactly like that. Except in the minds of these teenagers that are watching this, this is like such an extremely romantic way for him to die. Like Heath Ledger was like fucked up because he like lost himself in the Joker and did a bunch of drugs or whatever he did.

And it's like, you don't want to think about that. But James Dean was like the real Rebel Without a Cause. He just drove off and died following his dream, being free, you know, like that's where people's heads were at. Yeah. I mean, it's like totally. I can see that. I can see that jump to that conclusion.

Yeah. Especially if you're a kid. He was only in three movies. Yeah. In like two years, but it immediately catapulted him to like legendary status in pop culture. And as is often the case when celebrities know other celebrities who have died and then go on to write their memoirs, stories began to surface of people having dark premonitions about the car.

Even in just the short week that Dean owned it, hinting that beneath its sport custom exterior lies something else, something darker, something possibly even evil. For an example, while joy writing the car in LA, the day he bought it on September 23rd, 1955, he ran into the man himself, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alec Guinness outside of a restaurant. And here's the thing about this. Like normally, whatever, Alec Guinness also very popular at this time. This was like when he was like kind of a hot guy, right? He was kind of like good looking.

This was like 22 years before Star Wars, right? He's looking good. He's like a distinguished gentleman. He actually was so affected by meeting James Dean that day that he actually wrote about it in some private diaries. So we have a quote from it right here. The sports car looks sinister to me, exhausted, hungry, feeling a little ill-tempered in spite of Dean's kindness.

I heard myself saying in a voice I could hardly recognize as my own Luke, please, never get in it. If you get in that car, you'll be found dead in it by this time next week. That was very specific of his voice for one. I'm glad he had such clarity. And obviously, as we know, he literally died one week later. Could it also be that this man is seeing a roaring engine of a sports car for the first time?

And it sounds scary. It could be. I mean, looking at a 25-year-old dude with all the money and status in the world, and he's got this crazy Dieben car that he's like, I'm going to go ride it around. It's like. Yeah. Obviously, that's like good enough to give like an old, like, like sort of like together British guy a start.

Yeah, of course. But if this was just him, if this was just Obi-Wan Kenobi using the force one time in real life, this would not be material for the pod. So I'm going to give you a couple of other weird. That was it. If Alex is like, well, fuck you debunked it and the story, you're right. I gotta go. Yeah.

Wow, that's crazy. See you guys later. No, but here's a few other signs that this wasn't just a fluke and that people were actually picking up bad vibes from the little bastard. Ursula Andrus. She is a Swiss actress who was in James Bond. She was Dean's girlfriend at the time of his death. She was there present at the dealership when he purchased the car.

She refused to get inside it, said it made her fucking freaked out and she wouldn't even get in it with him to go home. Also famous singer, sex symbol, Catwoman, Isma from the Emperor's New Groove. For the kid. Ooh. Yeah. She was said to have quote, expressed feelings of unease around the spider. She said that it was fucked up and then Nick Adams, who might be actually the real guy

that Leo was based off of in a once upon a time in Hollywood. He was a television cowboy and a close friend of Dean's and Elvis Presley. He brought up that he was concerned about a bad feeling he was having about the car. But Dean brushed it off, allegedly even saying, I am destined to die in a speeding car in response to the morning. And then how do you like that? I know, right? And then another babe that James Dean was dealing with was somebody named Myla Nermey,

who was the actress who played Vampira on TV, the original Elvira. Like that Elvira. Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm looking at it right now. Yeah. She was supposedly so worried about something happening to him in the little bastard that she left a note on his windshield telling him to be careful.

And then even on the day, Wutherick himself was quoted in his own words at about 3 p.m. on his way to Blackwell's corner. He told Dean, don't go too fast. Don't try to win. The spider is something quite different from the speedster, which was Dean's old Porsche. Don't drive to win. Drive to get experience. And yet in the end, none of that made a difference.

They couldn't stop the little bastard from claiming its first victim. But what's worse? Oh boy. Is that it wouldn't be its last. That's right. So here's so so so so far. Are you getting evil car vibes from this? Are you feeling like maybe something?

I'm feeling it. I'm feeling like Harold might mean to have a ride in this car. I don't think that he's allowed in the car. I think I think I think if we're talking about power of of paranormal objects, I feel like the little bastard might be like too much for Harold. Yeah. I think he might be like one of the top tier boys. I don't know, man.

I don't remember. Harold kills by car. He kills by vehicle. But he just cuts the brakes. But this car. OK. Let's let's just get into it. We're just going to get into the other victims of this car that we know about.

OK. Shortly after the crash, George Barris, the Batmobile guy, he bought the wreckage for about two point five thousand dollars. Some say that he did that so that he could sell tickets to see it. But the only thing that he ever actually did with it, and it's funny that you said this Jesse, was that he actually lent it to the CHP, the Highway Patrol, as part of like safety exhibits so that you could like take they take it to like a school and the kids would walk by and they'd be like, see that see the car.

Yeah. They'd be like, that's James Dean's car, assholes, fucking wear a seatbelt and don't speed. Right. But when he was first transporting it back to his shop in LA, the little bastard allegedly slipped off the trailer that it was on and broke a mechanics leg. So right up right at the gate, bad juju, right? Barris then sold off some parts of the engine and chassis that worked still to two doctors

who were also prospective racers, a doctor, Troy McHenry and a doctor, William Eskrid. OK. On October 21st, 1956, just about a year later, while racing their cars on the same day and the same race in their cars that each had pieces of the little bastard inside, Dr. McHenry's poor spider spun out and killed him instantly when it slammed into a tree and Dr. Eskrid's car rolled over and like his car rolled going around a curve and he was injured and in critical condition for a long time. Same day, same race, same parts from the same car, right?

Barris. So they just spread to the evil like each individual piece is just as powerful as the whole. You know, I don't I don't propose to know. Jesus, I'm just saying I'm saying governing this car. I'm just reporting the facts as I know them. The only other part of the the car that had ever been sold off by anyone were two tires that Barris sold the tires because they're racing tires, kind of expensive, sold them to a young man from New York.

Both tires blew simultaneously while the guy was driving around and ran him off the road into a ditch. So that's another thing that happened. A weird obsessive fan type person tried to steal the steering wheel from inside the wreckage while it was kept away in storage. And he ripped his arm open on a jagged piece of metal. Just absolutely goring him. And he needed to go to the hospital for it.

And there's actually evidence out that this may have happened twice with two separate groups of people, but the stories are a little conflated on that. But at least one time it happened probably twice. Someone tried to break in and steal something from the car and hurt themselves in the process and didn't get anything from the car. During an anti-speeding presentation at a local California high school, the little bastard allegedly fell off its display and broke a student's hip. While being stored in a garage in Fresno, California, the garage caught fire and

everything inside it burnt down, except for the little bastard, which was largely undamaged beyond the damage that was already causing the accident. Amazing, amazing. Incredible. While transporting the little bastard between a safety display and its home storage spot, a truck driver lost control of his vehicle, but was luckily thrown clear of the wreckage, only to be crushed to death when the Porsche fell off the flatbed and rolled over him anyway.

Oh my God. That's not funny. That's not funny. Then another innocent person was killed in a separate accident involved in the little bastard, which fell off a flatbed and just landed on his car and killed him. Oh my God. And then in 1958, which by the way is only three years after this car was first destroyed, a third transport truck holding the little bastard smashed the windshield

of the car parked downhill from it because while the guy was inside somewhere, the brakes in the car gave out in the truck gave out and the whole big rig slid backwards and like smushed the front of the car behind it. Jesus Christ. And then finally, in 1959, after being put on display in New Orleans and strangely falling apart into 11 separate pieces, just out of nowhere, the little bastard was allegedly loaded into a truck and shipped back to California, but neither the car or the truck carrying it were ever heard from since it just disappeared.

No one knows what happened to the truck. No one knows what happened to the car. What? Yeah. Uh, I've never heard the story before. I know, I know. Barris, Barris, the Batmobile guy did keep one of the doors for himself like back. Like he always held it because it was like sort of undamaged and he thought it was a

cool thing because it had the number on it and everything. But in 2005, after much noise had been made about where the car was or who rightfully owned it, there is a museum in Illinois called the Volo Auto Museum, which issued a bounty on the car offering to buy it from whoever owned it and could say where it was for $1 million. Okay. So that's where the story stopped in 2005. And it stayed that way for 10 years until randomly in 2015, uh, there was this 47

year old dude from Washington state called Sean Riley, uh, and he started going through some psych psychological counseling. Okay. And he apparently had always been troubled by a weird scar that was on his finger, um, that he'd had for almost as long as he could remember, but he had no idea where the scar came from, right? So he always was like, where the fuck did I get this scar? Like, why do I have this on my finger?

Like what happened? Um, however, one day while he was in a therapy session, he started to remember that in 1974, his dad, who was a carpenter, took him along on sub job. He was working on back when this kid was only six years old. Okay. At an undisclosed building, which according to Sean Riley's lawyer, uh, still existed at least in 2015 when this was happening, uh, though he was perfect. He was purposely holding back the location, uh, because of the million

dollar reward. So like he literally, like after he like had this like regressive dream or whatever, he literally got a lawyer to like speak for him because he was so worried about this. Jesus. He remembered that he and his father met with several men about a wrecked sports car, which he thinks could have been the little bastard and that it was hidden behind a wall in the building they were in.

And he remembers seeing the car and looking at it and checking it out and getting cut on his finger when he went in to explore the car wreckage. It's like Star Wars. If you line up the scar on your finger with the crescent moon and a hill in North California, it'll lead you to the forgotten wreck of James Dean vehicle. Dude, but here's the crazy thing. Okay.

Cause the, the, the one thing that he like, the most surprising thing about this like weird regressive dream is that he thinks that one of the dudes that was there talking about the car could actually have been none other than George Barris, the Batmobile guy again. That's so weird. So now just in case you think that that is total horseshit, that that guy just like made that up to like make some kind of weird million dollar power play. That story was actually, it actually passed an impartial lie detector test

that was carried out by the Volo auto museum, totally impartially, and they made it very clear to all parties involved that they still want to buy the car for a million dollars. Okay. So this guy came out of the woodwork in like September of 2015, which weirdly is like 50 years after the death of James Dean. They are 60 years actually. Um, they, they, it's so weird.

Okay. So how do, how do I describe this? So the director of the museum said that even though for years, everybody's been like, Oh, the Barris family owns this car. That's just been sort of the general wisdom because he bought the car back when the wreck happened in the fifties, right? Uh, but according to the director from the museum, nobody, including Barris, has been able to produce a single document providing, like proving that

anyone owns the car. And that's just where the story has totally languished, right? Um, however, one thing that's worth mentioning is that of all the parties gunning for this car and being like, I own it, whatever, because basically the guy knows he can't get any money for it, right? The guy who had the therapy session, he knows that he's not the owner of the car. So he's maybe trying to work something out with the person who does own the car so that he can get a piece of whatever kind of money's come in their

way, but he's waiting because there's like all this squabbling over who that person actually is. And now another guy came out, a lawyer who is representing Dr. Esgrid, who was the guy, the doctor who survived the race, where the two guys got in car accidents. And since, according to him, ownership of the little bastard was always registered to the engine plate and not a plate on the chassis, like most cars. When he bought the piece that he bought from the car, he actually bought the

plate. Oh, my God, registration number. So he believes that he, that he actually owns the car. So there's no, so there's no solution there. Nothing has happened for five years. Nobody knows where the car is for sure. Nobody knows anything except for where this one door is, right? But before you think that the car is only physically dangerous and simply

involved in a bunch of freak accidents. Oh boy. Yeah. The last thing, the last thing I wanted to take a look at before we go today was the ghost of the car. No, no, was some stuff that happened to some of the people who stepped in and tried to warn Dean of the evil aura of the little bastard. We're going to do a little catch up on what happened to some of these people.

So Nick Adams, remember this guy, the TV cowboy who confided into Dean that he was worried about the little bastard killing him? Yeah. He actually ended up dubbing some of James Dean's lines in Giant that he didn't get to film because they were like finished with principal photography. But the movie was still in post production when he died. So this guy stepped in and did some of the lines. And it was weird because after that happened, he started like getting

obsessed with the accident himself. And he was often seen posing with fans at the grave and he'd he'd write articles in like James Dean fan magazines. And he had all these weird stories where he was getting stalked by fans. And he told reporters that he'd taken up James Dean's racing hobby. And there's a quote from him from him that said, I became a highway delinquent. I was arrested nine times in one year. They put me on probation, but I kept on racing nowhere.

Isn't that crazy? Eventually in 1968, he was found dead in his home under extremely mysterious circumstances, with sources claiming it was everything from an accidental overdose, a la like Heath Ledger kind of thing, to a murder hit that was intended to keep him from publishing a book of closeted gay Hollywood secrets. Because apparently that dude was like super gay and was into the whole like underground Hollywood gay scene at the time.

And so, you know, somebody like that's going to publish a book talking about all the people that he saw and stuff, you know, maybe somebody want to hush him up, but it's another mystery. And then that's it for Nick Adams. But shortly after Dean died, tabloids printed stories alleging alleging that Vampira, Nermi Malia, Myla, had been practicing black magic out of a shrine in her bathroom, and that she cursed James Dean for rebuking her by cutting out pictures of his eyes and ears and sticking them on

her living room wall with a ritualistic dagger, and that the knife didn't fall out of the wall until the moment James Dean died. This was likely not true. Well, according to her website, that's not true. And that she became the target of obsessive fans because of it and that she like tried to commit suicide because of it. But I don't know because because here's the thing that's weird about this. He died in September.

He died on September 30th, right? That Halloween one month later, Vampira was photographed with her boyfriend at a Halloween party. And her date was dressed exactly like James Dean had like his jacket, had his glasses, had his haircut, but he was like totally bandaged up like a corpse, like a mummy, like he was dead because she was making a joke on the fact that she used to date James Dean and now he's dead. But like, isn't that like fucking weird?

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. And it was a matter of public record that she'd sent him a postcard of herself sitting next to an open grave with the text, darling, come and join me. And obviously she is Vampira, so it's like part of her stick. Yeah, but like, there's like, you know, it's, it's weird. It's a weird thing. Like I'm not saying she tried to curse James Dean or anything like that, but she definitely wasn't like just some person who was trying to like do

right by him, you know what I mean? There's some, she was making a joke about it. You know, there's like some weirdness there. Uh, but she was Vampira, you know, could be just that she's twisted. Uh, and then finally I want to talk about, uh, the passenger again. Rolf Wutherich, who again, remember, tried to convince Dean to drive slower that day. He also developed severe psychological problems, depression, suicidal tendencies, alcoholism.

He was plagued by stories of James Dean fans committing suicide when they heard James Dean died. Jesus. And, uh, he'd get letters from people telling him it was his fault for years. So it fucked him up really bad. He had four marriages and though the first one ended before, uh, the accident for other reasons, just like sometimes marriages fall apart. The second marriage actually ended because his wife accused him of killing

James Dean and he got so upset by it that he became violent and was committed to a psych ward. He came out, he went through a whole other marriage and then he tried to stab his fourth wife, Doris to death while he was, while she was sleeping in 1967, uh, while he was trying to do a murder suicide again. So he went back into an institution for three more years in 1970. And then after that, he worked for 11 years as a mechanic and a rally navigator. Um, until 1981, he just put the whole James Dean thing behind him until 1981

when he signed a 20,000 mark contract, uh, for a German TV show about the death of James Dean, but he never got to film it because the same month that he signed the contract, he died in a very similar car accident of his own at the age of 53, where he was pinned in his own car with a broken neck and he died. Jesus man. And that is the story of the little bastard. Was it an evil car? Was it a coincidence?

Honestly, uh, even, I mean, you know, you don't believe in any of the paranormal stuff, the fact that pieces of that car were involved in wrecks and it goes missing and all those other nonsense is killed alone. Multiple people, the car itself, but like just stripping away the paranormal like layer. The story itself is just fascinating on it's own. Unbelievable. The guy who like got thrown free of the car and then like died anyway,

cause the car, that caught, that caught those in my mind. It was just final destination. Look, I, I think this is a fascinating story. I'm going to poo poo a little bit and just say, uh, during the fifties, a lot of terrible car accidents happened and also happening cars. And this one is just, it happened, you know, it's known. It's a famous car, but other things happened. I will say that, uh, my favorite trope of like accidents is he was,

he was thrown free and then he died 30 years later. Like spoiler, he was going to die eventually. He was going to die eventually, but he died. Like he was like, his whole life was fucked up by it. His marriage fell apart because of James Dean. He said, okay, you know what, I'll talk about James Dean again. And then he died the same month. Yeah.

I mean, I, you know, it's, it's a fascinating story, but if I really tried, I could like be a dick about it and be like, let me destroy this. But like, it's a fun story. Best guess. What happened to the car? Uh, best guess is in transit. Well, they tried to, it was 1959. Yeah.

1959. The car was in pieces. Yeah. It was like shipped like, you know, private shipment. You can't like ship a car like FedEx. My guess would be like a scam. Like they weren't like a real company and they just probably took it. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, an opportunity to snag it. Traveling from East coast to West coast was like an ordeal, right? You root 66 that thing. It would take days. And so there's area where there was nothing around. So I imagine you could easily just take it. But what, who took it and why and where is it? And how comes James Dean's magic death car?

I'm sure someone out there was like, I must have it for my own. Do you think this story has any weight? Do you think that like a cabal of people hidden in a wall somewhere and they're like waiting for the perfect time? I mean, like on the surface, yeah, definitely. I can definitely see like a deal gone wrong or never going through fully because, you know, maybe they didn't know was going to be stolen or something. And then that stuff happens all the time now and usually ends up in

like the middle of Saudi Arabia or some shit. I think this dude knows more than he lets on. I think I think the dude who had the vision or whatever, the like psychiatry vision, I think he knows more than he let on. And I think we'll get a deathbed confession from someone that's like, hey, this is what actually happened. Now, 100% will happen. It's he's about to confess and then like he gets run over by like a car.

It's him. Yeah, I have to tell you. That's a great story, Alex. Yeah. Yeah, one one. Thank you. Thank you. James Dean's evil murder car. A little bastard. I like coming for you. It could be anywhere. Or we'll just be seeing rubber. No, yes. Great.

Rubber is a movie about a tire that kills people. Great B horror film. That makes sense. It's definitely it's definitely like two AM movie. I have a I have a light. I have a pink fluorescent light in my living room. That's a pink light movie for sure. It is a movie.

It's a good mystery science theater style film. Oh, yeah, those are fun. Those are really fun. Well, worth a watch. We're going to go record a mini-soad for patrons. So go check that out. Those I think you get over at a Chaluminati pod Patreon at Patreon.com.

So right now, right at the end of this, it's already like you want to just keep listening. It's already live right now for the $15 tier and above. And you don't have to listen to any ads or anything. Nothing, nothing at all. It's great. And God damn, that's for those who want to know what it's like to get exclusive minisodes. Next week will be a mini-soad compilation of four of the previous ones.

However, there'll still be one or two ones that will always be exclusive up for Patreon for. So if you enjoy it, there's there'll be two more waiting for you. You can jump another one that comes out the day of the of the of the compilation upload. Exactly. It's glorious. It is glorious. That's it for us. Thank you so much for listening. Oh, my God, you can go ahead and drop your stories and all that good stuff

over at the subreddit, which is Chaluminati pod. You can reach out to us on our social medias, myself at Mathis Games, Jesse at Jesse Cox, Alex at Faustiana A and the podcast itself at Chaluminati pod. If you've been listening and enjoying, drop us a review wherever you listen to. It's a and please share your rabbit holes. More things like this, please. And tell your family and friends about it. Word of mouth is our strongest way of spreading.

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