Crime in Sports - #447 - One Man Circus - Evel Knievel - Part 1

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

This week, we begin a special series about one of the most iconic, famous & absolutely insane people that we've ever talked about! We discuss his origin, where a few severe blows to the head may have helped contribute to his daredevil ways. His young life is filled with crime. From petty thievery, burglary, frauds, schemes, and outright extortion, to all the way to winning his wife, by kidnapping her. He also figures out that you have to be outrageous, to draw a crowd, or even to sell insurance.Grow up in a rough & tumble mining town, become a criminal mastermind by the time you're a teenager, and get your wife to marry you by dragging her by the hair, from her family home with Evel Knievel - Part 1!!Check us out, every Tuesday!We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail] Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports [e-mail] facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurderSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to crime and sports early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ends in tragedy. I'm Matthew Scherr, and on my new podcast, We Came to the Forest, we expose the hidden truths behind a shootout that left one activist dead and countless lives forever changed. Binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hello everybody and welcome back to Crime in Sports. Yay! Oh yay indeed, Jimmy.

Yay indeed. My name is James Petragallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on the beginning of a journey. That's what this is today We are gonna go on a little trip to evil Knievel land and I say that real specifically because Anywhere evil Knievel was if he's around it's evil Knievel land now because he's

The most like he's like a black hole that sucks every bit of light and it's just there's none in there like he's like this my god like most energy sucking human who's ever lived ever like he's a crazy person this is by far the craziest lunatic we've ever covered ever I guess I guess you have to be crazy to be Evil Knievel because he didn't have much talent. He had no talent. He wasn't even a good motorcycle rider. He wasn't even good at that. Like all guys that knew bikes were like, he's terrible at riding bikes. He's not even good at it. He's just crazy. Yeah, he's just dumb.

And more than that, because there was other people after him that did jumps and shit and did them You know did that more skilled and shit than him, but he was a showman like nobody else He knew how to promote it. He knew how to get people interested. He was the Muhammad Ali of of of This whatever the fuck this is Of just alternate sports, like anything now, X Games, all that shit, that's all traced right back to Evil Knievel, all of that shit. And the thing is too, before we get started,

in the 1970s, he was as famous of a person in America that has ever existed. Like, more famous than any movie star you could say more famous than any athlete you could say his toy was the top selling toy that existed for years a little figure of him so millions of dollars if you asked any like you know 12 year old boy in 1976 who are the coolest people in the world he'd say Bruce Lee Muhammad Ali and evil Knievel period no fucking question and the story so it's the guy is like the most iconic fuck too and he's a crazy bastard yeah a crazy bastard so we'll get to all

that before we do head over to shut up andMurder.com. You're gonna get tickets for live shows, merch, all that kind of shit there. The tickets for 2025 for Small Town Murder are all laid out right there. And we're gonna announce the virtual live show this year as well. The 420 virtual live show. I have some serious stuff for Jimmy to smoke out of.

It's gonna be hilarious to watch. God damn it. So we will get to all that, definitely though, but let's dive in. Oh, patreon.com slash crime in sports. That's all the bonus material, more than you can handle. Five bucks a month or above. You're gonna get hundreds of episodes immediately

upon subscription. You're really gonna like the Kobe one we did last week too, because it was wild and in-depth, the Kobe Bryant one. So we'll talk all about that. Nevermind all that all that shit you also get a shout out at the end of the show too Jimmy you'll fuck your name up let's get into evil can evil here let's do this Robert Craig Knievel yeah not evil his parents didn't go mmm EVEL would be cool right no trace it back to our homeland, Norway. Yeah, so the name Evil,

it came up way before you'd think it would be. You'd think this would be his showbiz name, but they call him that where he's from. The cops nicknamed him that and we'll talk all about it. So he's a bad guy. Everything he does is crime or stupid, one of the two. A terrible guy. A bad guy cheats on his wife, treats her horribly,

tells her right in front of her what he's doing. He's just an awful human being. You can tell just by looking at him that he's not a good- He's a mess. He looks like a little bit like Robert England with a little bit better hair. Kind of, kind of.

Because that's the thing. He's almost handsome Yeah, you know what I'm saying like he's six foot one or so so he's like, you know, he's a good-sized guy He's got he's everybody says like he's like handsome but in like a different way But he's got the most confidence of anyone who's ever existed Yes, and he's a great salesman like before before he did all this shit, he was an insurance salesman and he was like the top insurance salesman in the country for this company because he's so fucking good at selling shit. Wow. He has no shame whatsoever. None whatsoever. So he's the best looking guy in the dive bar. That's what he is. Yeah. In Butte, Montana.

That's where he's from. He's born and born Yeah, in Butte, Montana, because that's where he's from. He's born and raised in Butte, Montana, and that really, that painted his whole life, growing up in Butte. He's born in 1938, October 17th, 1938. This is when Butte was just a mining town. It was basically like Deadwood, except in 1950, because it was nothing but saloons and brothels and Just you know people doing

Kind of you know in the gray area of legality and a lot of that kind of shit going on Very little law and order it was mainly like oh everybody kind of knows each other and a little wink and a nod and that's How he grew up so he grew up being a serious criminal and around a lot of serious criminals. So he's born in Butte, like we said, and Butte is almost a character in the story because he's such a reflection of what that was back then, this different time.

They'll talk about in Butte at the time when he was growing up, the age of, you could drive just whenever. There was no license. Nobody had the driver's licenses. Nobody cared. You can drive when you can operate. Yeah, and the age to like buy alcohol in a bar

was as soon as you could reach the money up onto the bar. And they said the same thing with brothels. All these kids all went to brothels when they were 11, 12 years old, all these kids. What? Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. They went to get raped? They went, yeah. Well then they were like, they were thrilled about it. I don't think you can call it rape if they're that excited about it. I mean, they saved up like snow shoveling money to do this. I don't think. Yeah, there's never been a saved up money to get raped. I never

got raped by the Nintendo game after I saved up for it. I think at that point it's a purchase I really wanted. I don't know if you can even call it that. Banjo Kazooie felt like rape. That was a bad game. Oh yeah, yeah, no good. So obviously we're kidding about that ship. But yeah, it's a mess though.

He's, we'll talk about him here. His mom is Anne Marie Knievel. She goes, they call her Zippy. Okay. Which seems like it would be a better name for him. Wasn't the name of the clown in some fuckin', I think it was Zippy the Clown in Mad Magazine. I think that's what it's from.

Was it Zippy? I don't know. I think so. Maybe. Any clowns and idiots. It's a clown named Zippy from somewhere.. Was it Zippy? I don't know. I think so. Maybe. Any clown's an idiot. It's a clown named Zippy from somewhere. Clown named Zippy from somewhere. Father is Robert Knievel as well, but not.

Is he not a junior? Not a junior, different middle name. Robert E. Knievel is the dad. He's got a brother named Nicholas who's a very normal person, which is hilarious. Like just super normal, not crazy at all, not a lunatic here. His grandparents are also characters, Emma and Ignatius. They are Iggy, everybody

calls them. They're characters. Iggy's the one who came to Butte and started like a... Nobody in Butte was ever named Ignatius. No, well they started out in Nebraska like a farming family and then they spread out through the West here. And Ignatius, I believe ran, as we'll get into it, he ran car dealerships. Really? Then the father worked at and we'll find out

that Evil tried to steal blind from this place. It's wild shit. So he's the first, the oldest of the two sons. He's the first one here. He's German. They're a German family and his great-great grandparents on his father's side came to the United States from Germany and his mother's Irish. So German-Irish.

That's if we go to Godfather. All right, my half mick, half crout friend. So Bute is its own character, like we say. They called it the richest hill on earth. That was what they called it back then here. And basically, in Bute, they talk about this, in Bute, as long as, if you're working, working in the mines and doing all that,

you can do anything you want, nobody cares. Sure. Let's just do whatever the fuck you want. Yeah, you've got a job. So be debauchress when you're off. Absolutely here. So Butte is a wild place. I guess Anton Knievel, who was his great grandfather, became one of the leading businessmen in Butte. He was the owner of the Butte Potato and Produce Company here, which had a five-story warehouse on the corner of Iron and Utah Streets. He was a charter member of the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the YMCA, all that shit. So his dad was like Mr. Butte here. By the way, a lot of this is from a book called Evil by Lee Montville.

And if you wanna know everything about Evil Can Evil, this is the book to do it. Lee figured it out, huh? It's like a 20 hour audio book. So it is. Oh my God. That's where a lot of this came from. This was painstaking, these episodes. 20 hours?

Yeah, take everything from Evil Can Evil and a 20 hour long book and all of this other shit. And this was weeks and months in the making to make this show. So shout out to Ian for a lot of the research, tons of the research he did on this and everything else. There's so much here. So the Butte Potato and Produce Company there.

So his dad, now Ignatius was his younger brother. So that is his uncle. Uncle, yeah. Or his great uncle, I guess, so that is his uncle. Uncle, yeah. Or his great uncle, I guess, because that's his grandfather. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm evil, but evil's dad, that's his dad's uncle. That's his dad's uncle here.

Ignatius followed this guy to Bute and was not as successful. The evil Knievel wing of the family, not as successful. Didn't get into the, he tried to get into the family produce business, but they ended up kicking him out of it for some shady dealings. Yep, the criminal tree does not fall. The criminal fucking fruit doesn't fall far

from the scumbag tree here, it does not. So, and he ended up becoming a tire salesman, then a car salesman, and he would end up focusing on foreign cars. They had Knievel Imports, which became the first Volkswagen dealer in the United States on the west of the Mississippi. So, yep, so he was Iggy, and Iggy married his grandmother

there, and they got, they had Robert who was a dog, can evils dad. And yeah, they got married in 1938 and then they had little evil here. So and we'll talk, we'll talk about the nickname origin here cause it's very funny. But now his dad, evil's, was 21 when he was born, and basically just not into this whole family thing at all. He wasn't a family guy, he wasn't ready to settle down. He just knocked a girl up and then married her,

and now he's trying to figure out how to fuck to do that. Then they had another child here, his Evil's first, and then the mother was pregnant with the second son within a month of giving birth to the first son. Wow. Which you're not even supposed to have sex in that time period. You're not even supposed to touch,

you should probably be pat drying it, you shouldn't be wiping that. And he's going in there and wow, that's crazy. He's flowing it, Jesus. Holy shit. So his mom worked during the second pregnancy at the American candy shop in Butte with her mother and sisters.

And it's a big giant, it's not just a tiny store, it's a big giant three story store that includes a dance hall and a restaurant, an ice cream and soda shop, the whole thing. Picture the 50s. It's the 50s in a building. Wow. Kids fucking, you know, hoop skirt,

fucking sock hopping, and soda machine guys going, and soda jerks and all that kind of shit. So now Bob, the dad, is known around town as someone who fucks anything that moves. Really? Evil's dad, yeah.

Tons of girls. And they would all, it's a small town still. So this would always get back to his wife and she was just devastated the whole time that her husband was having sex with anybody that fucking was around here. So there's a lot of fighting and a lot of all that kind of shit here.

And then when she had her second child, after evil, Nick, the brother, she filed for divorce after the baby was born. Okay. So we're talking like a 1940 divorce, which is rare. Ugly too. You really gotta be unhappy to do that shit back then. So they do, they decided,

both parents decided to leave Butte. That's the thing, the one, both parents decided to leave Bute. That's the thing, the one, the father goes to Sacramento and the mom goes somewhere else and they leave the evil and his son and his brother Nick with the dad's parents. With Iggy and his wife. So they both move away and just leave the kids there with other people. And then they'll end up, both parents will end up

having other families, as we've talked about. They got remarried, they had stable lives with they've all had daughters. That won't fuck him up. No, no, that'll be fine. He's not gonna want attention at all later on. He won't dress up in a white jumpsuit and try to jump over a canyon later

with a bunch of people watching or anything. At his own peril. At his own fucking peril. So that is weird. And then the mother always said like, oh no, we're gonna figure out a way to bring you boys down and work you into the family. And then they just never did.

They just always ended up living with the grandparents. So it was hard. Yeah, so now Ignatius, the grandfather's 48 years old. His kids are raised and out of the house and now he's got two tiny children in the house. Literally like a baby and a three-year-old. That's a completely different deal here. And both of them, him and Emma, the grandmother,

they were overmatched. They didn't know what to do with these kids here. Ignatius not helping at all, that Ignatius is bipolar. Not good. He's mentally ill. He's also, yeah, he's also mentally ill, which isn't helpful, and who knows how much of that trickled down to evil.

But evil's just all manic, though. There is not even a, there's no other side to it. He's just manic. He doesn't sleep He does crazy shit. He's yeah Insane the the number of times during this book I'm gonna have a quote from someone where they say then he put a gun to my head is staggering Fucking staggering. Yeah, you know and forced me to do something whether it's read a script or some other shit. It's crazy. So and then forced me to do something, whether it's read a script or some other shit, it's crazy.

So anyway, we'll talk all about that. But they said that Ignatius would sometimes be voluble and talking and real happy, and then sometimes he would be silent for months. He wouldn't speak for months at a time. Ignatius did that? Grandpa, yeah. How do you?

Where evil's growing up. Yeah. So yikes, that's fucking hard, man. That's hard. And the boys. He's just non-verbal for months? Months, he just sits there in a fucking state of, I don't even know, just. How do you sell cars if you can't talk, man?

I don't know, maybe he did it, he talked at work and then came home and wouldn't talk, I don't know what his deal is, but they said he would just. He got all his words out at work. You didn't hear, he said, I've done all my talking. I'm just gonna sit here now. Iggy, how come you're not saying anything?

I'm all out of words. I don't, I did it all. Used them all up. Yeah. So apparently they, she, the grandmother really tried. She's considered really nice and smart and she would read like books on how to, you know, relate to the kids and care for them,

but they're extremely restless and extremely rambunctious, these kids. Evil, 1000% is ADHD to the max. So there's no fucking way that he was not a pain in the ass back then to a grandmother who was trying to chase her around here. And it's a very like calm, dull house. You know what I mean but so that makes evil even more kind of restless and rambunctious and wanting to do

things and wanting to move oh yes yeah yeah so they talk about that he almost felt like the kids who had there's a lot of kids who had fathers who got killed in the mines. Yeah. Because back then they said if you worked, they did a study and they said if you worked in the mine for 10 years, you had a one in eight chance of being killed in there. One in eight? One in eight in 10 years.

And you had a one in three chance of being seriously injured. So. How do you take that job? There's no other jobs. Yeah. I mean, how do you not just go, well I'm gonna move. That would be the thing. Let's low Beverly Hillbilly style, grandma sit on the roof, we're getting the fuck out

of here. I'll suck dicks until we can get out of here. But during the depression there was nowhere to go. Yeah, what are you gonna do? That was that. I mean you were there. If there was a job to take you fucking took it. It was either that or you starved to death.

No kidding. Yeah, so it almost felt like that, like, because his dad wasn't around, he didn't see his dad that often, and he just, they were just kinda, his dad just started a new family. Back then when your dad started a new family, that was his family now. He didn't, you were kinda excommunicated, so.

His dad moved to Sacramento, but he, you know, he didn't see her, which isn't that far, but still. Anyway, he decided that the house that he was living in was a little too staid, just a little too boring for him. So he was gonna go out in the streets where there's some action. From a young age here, a very young age. He learned that right away, he likes to drink, even when he's a little kid. From a young age here a very young age he learned

That right away he likes to drink even when he's a little kid. Yeah Drinking gambling stealing cursing all that stuff very important in Butte and all that stuff for him very important Being a man. That's all it was because this was just Swaggering, you know mine where people go and there's a one-in-eight chance.'ll be dead in the next five years. I don't give a fuck. I'm going anyway. So the certain fatalism there that gives people, you know, a chin up, I guess. So he loves Butte, by the way. No matter what's going on in other places he has, his home base is always Butte. Even later on when he's super famous and everything else that's where he's the most comfortable. That's where everybody knows him and loves him and everything like that.

Now Iggy and Emma, the grandparents, they do well economically. So they're not evil and his brother aren't poor or anything. They have nothing. No, they have food. They have nice clothes. They have, you know, like that. No they have nothing. No, they have food. They have nice clothes. They have you know like that No, they don't well, they'll find out later on how they acquire that. Oh boy Yeah, so they said Bob was always extremely well-dressed

Yeah, he was the boy in town That the other kids mothers would go you need to look more like little little Robert. He looks look at how clean and put together He is he always never jeans always pants That sort of thing here So yeah, the problem is to Grandparents never know what kids are up to You're out of the loop. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so there's a generational disconnect and yeah every one of us I guess. Like my grandmother, Italian grandma, had four daughters,

and the last one, my Aunt Lisa, was way late, was almost 20 years after my mother. So grandma had no idea what was going on when Lisa was growing up. Like Lisa told her, yeah, they don't do report cards anymore. And she was like, oh, OK, she doesn't fucking know any different. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. She could tell her stuff and she'd be like, oh, OK. She doesn't fucking know any different. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. She could tell her stuff and she'd be like,

oh, okay, she doesn't know, because she was out of the loop. So you can kind of get over on grandparents a little bit more than that. The boys would see their parents on vacations just to visit and that was it, really. Reno to see mom, Sacramento to see dad. Gee, the scenery.

What a time. What a time. Both parents would tell them that, yeah, maybe we can get you moving down here and all that kind of thing, but it just never, never happened. His half sister, from one of the other relationships his parents had here, Loretta, said, quote,

my mother always had the thought that she would get the boys back. Then one Christmas, Nick came to visit, but Bob stayed in Butte. I remember my mother took Nick to see one of those department store Santas. The Santa told Nick he could have anything in the world, any toy, any bike. What did he want? Nick said all he wanted was to be with his brother Bob in Butte. Wow. Broke my mother's heart. She knew right then that she would never have the boys. She was like, well, fuck you then, if you don't wanna be here. You're not gonna be here in this shit hole,

you wanna be in that shit hole, fine. I waited an hour online for this shit to hear this, thanks a lot. So yeah, he is a crazy son of a bitch and he likes to do crazy things. Basically, he would like crazy son of a bitch and he likes to do crazy things basically He would like jump his bike over anything as a small child and do crazy shit Emma his grandmother said he was more than a handful. He was he was two or three bushels full

That is crazy that we used to do that We would try so hard to launch our bicycle fuck Yeah, as far as we could and as high as we could absolutely no suspension on that shit shit No, no suspension. You know you're probably gonna fall and you're gonna crack and if you if you jump it far enough You're gonna dump the bike halfway through it and fucking try to figure out a better landing. Yeah So that's uh, yeah, we did that too obvious. Yeah what to do man. So that's, yeah, we did that too. It was what to do, man. So, wow. One time, George Hamilton ended up playing evil in a movie.

Okay, yeah, over tanned old man. Over tanned guy, because George Hamilton was like a pretty boy at the time. This was the early 70s and mid 70s, and so this was like his, I'm gonna change my image and play a tough tough cool guy character. Didn't quite work. But Emma, the grandma, talked to George Hamilton.

George Hamilton wanted to talk to her to do research about evil, right? So this is from George Hamilton about what Emma said. Quote, she said that he had been a normal kid until he fell one day when he was ice skating and hit his head and was knocked out. He was always different after that. He didn't have the same equipment everybody else had.

He saw life in an entirely different way. He dummied himself up. Yeah, he had injured himself, yeah. And probably fucking damages his frontal lobe and doesn't have the, you know. But I mean, this is, we hear, Sam Kinison, that's the big story about him, was, Sam Kinison, that's, his brother tells the story.

Yeah, that he was like 10 years old or whatever and he was totally a normal kid and then he had this fucking head injury, got hit by a car I think, was knocked out for like two days or some shit, and then when he came to, he was fucking Sam Kinison. He's a different guy completely, personality totally changed. Yeah. And that's what happens here. There's a story

that we'll talk about from his cousin Pat here. His cousin Pat by the way was a United States congressperson from Montana also. Pat Williams here, his cousin. So there's a story about how evil will take shots to the head here. The two cousins were always playing together because they were about the same age. Pat, his cousin, was about a year older than him. So they said they were in the kitchen of the grandma and grandpa's house here, Iggy and Emma's house,

and the linoleum floor was all shiny and just had been waxed or whatever. And the two cousins were in socks sliding across the floor as you do. So much fun. Yeah you're fucking risky business sitting in that shit. That's what you want to do. How far you can slide. Yeah. You do it on ice, you do all that. Apparently you know they're bouncing off each other kind of rough house in a little bit and all that kind of shit. By the way Pat says that even though his cousin was a year younger than him,

he was in awe of him. Like he was like, this kid's amazing. Even though he was younger than him, which is interesting. He said he had a real easy athleticism about him and a kind of a weird, quirky mind. He'd come up with weird ideas and crazy shit and he had tons of energy and um, everything like that. So, um, they said the one thing he did was he always would pinch people. Evil did? Evil did when he was little, like five years old. Pinch but not just pinch like, ah, pinch and I got you.

He would pinch and hold on to you and squeeze and squeeze while you tried to get away. He'd hold on for as long as he can. And he said it was just to see the reaction from people. He liked seeing what they would do. It's called torture. Yeah. Somebody should have punched him in the nose. How's that refer a reaction? Pow, take that. Yeah.

So this happened again and again all the time. And Pat here, who he was always pinching because they were hanging together, Pat told him again and again, stop fucking pinching me. Stop fucking pinching me. And evil kept me and evil kept doing it kept doing it And so they're sliding on the floor and all that kind of shit and evil slides up behind him and pinches him as hard as he Could knee hangs on to his I think it's his arm his left arm So Pat turns around and fucking wallops him punches him, you know hits him in the stomach He said as hard as he could, and it knocked him out. Knocked him down.

Knocked him out, he said. What? He said it was an amazing punch. This is from. I guess. Really probably went straight to the solar plexus. Bobby Knievel made the sound a balloon makes when the air suddenly released.

Then he went, and he flew around in a circle and landed on top of the refrigerator. Yeah, that's the one. He said he went straight down, his head hit the linoleum. That's what happened here. Blam, that's what knocked him out. It knocked him down. Then his eyes rolled backwards

and then they closed and he didn't move. He killed him. That's what he thought a Trickle of blood came out of his ear So Pat started yelling at him to wake him up and he said he thought he killed his cousin He said oh my god, I'm gonna go to jail for the rest of my life. He was six. I killed him I killed the man strongest kid on earth. You're just Really they're just gonna put you in the circus. That's all So then he started to move.

He said he came back in stages the way like people come back in the movies. Like you know, he twitched a little bit, moaned, and then he seemed to kind of sort of kind of get back into consciousness after a minute and then kind of, they said once he like sort of came to, they said there was a weird smile on his face and then his eyes opened and he said nothing. He's asking him are you all right are you all right and he evil wasn't saying anything. Instead he stood up and went down in a three-point stance like a defensive lineman like a defensive tackle and there's a pantry door that had been left open on the other side of the room. He bursts from his stance and runs as hard as he could across the floor, puts his head down and wails into this door head first as hard as he can.

What the fuck? And knocked himself out cold again. OK, hit his head. Not only knocked himself out, it fell over, hit his head on the fucking back of his head on the on the Floor yeah out cold So he was like oh my god. He's got to be dead this time. Yeah, you don't get to these right He did it to himself. Holy shit And then he said he opened his eyes and popped back up again and said once he cleared the cobwebs after 30 seconds

He looked at his cousin and said you see see Pat? No, nobody can hurt me. Wow. Five years old. That's evil, can evil. Oh my God. Insane. He's a fucking problem. A few miles from the glass spires of Midtown Atlanta lies the South River forest in 2021 and 2022. The woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility, nicknamed

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or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scam Factory early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Yeah. And he said, Pat at six years old said to himself, quote, Jesus Christ, there's something wrong with this kid. What the fuck is it? And now there's more things wrong with them.

Yeah. He's fucking crazy. Another thing here from Pat says, when we were seven years old, there was a bunch of us, we were playing down by the railroad tracks. We had a contest, who could balance himself and walk the furthest on one of the tracks? Uh-huh.

Yeah, cause it kinda, it's slippery and it's hard to do. It's not easy. He said, nobody lasted very long, we all fell off one after another. Bob went last. I can still see this. He bent over and pushed himself into the air and walked along the track on his hands.

On his hands, brilliant. He's like, I can do it. Genius. He said he walked further on his hands than anybody else did with their feet. He never really fell off. He could still be walking on his hands if it hadn't become boring. He just hated it. He just, he just already bought by it. He's like I'm gonna go jump off that now

That's what he would do. He's just nuts. There's this story about a ski jump That's fucking crazy where he's just like fucking I'll just go off this Olympic level ski jump and crash. Yeah on skis He's crazy. So they said he always was going after something. His brother Nick said, you know how kids, when they start something new, they kind of go from onesies to twosies? This is like a 65 year old man saying onesies and twosies, by the way.

Bob never did that. He always skipped the beginning stuff. He didn't go into anything in onesies and twosies. He jumped right in. He went straight to threesies and foursies. Come on, Nick. Jesus Christ, man. That's hilarious. So he always had his bicycle. He's always racing around and everything like that. There is a story here that when he was eight years old, he saw a daredevil show in Butte where there was a guy named Joey Chitwood who was a stunt driver and he jumped a car over another car. Okay. He saw that. Yeah. That's it. Evil said quote I came home

took one garage door up put it on a can to make a ramp, got my bicycle and jumped. Wow. Right away. He said, my younger brother, Nick, yeah, on the garage. He took the garage door off the fucking hinges and laid it on a can and made a ramp out of it. Imagine the shit beating you'd get for taking your garage door off the hinges and using it as a fucking bicycle ramp. My parents would have murdered me for that. And they were probably not foldable back then, it was that like, just flat one?

Yeah, big piece of wood. Changes its position to go up. You can't just realign that. No, he took this fucker off. He said, my younger brother Nick got some baby breath and lit it and I jumped that. He's like, fire we need, that's what we need that's what we need make a spectacle here then we took off the other garage door and I tried to jump across the baby breath too but I hit it but I hit it head-on to make it worse the baby breath burned up the doors where are the

wire why won't the garage door close? Well, it's on fire. We set it on fire trying to jump it with a bicycle. That's the type of kid he does not think a second ahead of time of what a consequence might be up to and including, you know, death and shit. He's nuts. So that's, he's always in trouble as well too. He was a newspaper boy at one point and would outsell most of the local newspaper boys because he's a fucking, he's full of shit.

He's a sad and a lot of them are older than him and everything else, but he would, he would sell them on the corners and he would like make up his own headlines. That sounded more interesting. So if it was, you know, whatever, uh, back then, I don't know if I can know, Korean troops, you know, move farther into here, he'd go, Korean troops attack Americans. That would be his thing, where there was no Americans even there. He would just do that to sell a news, somebody come give him, you know, a nickel, and then he was gone with the nickel.

Fuck off. So, here's an article about him from the Great Falls Tribune here. This is from the 60s, but it's about when he was young. So a friend of Evil, who, a respected guy by the time he's an adult, recalls how they went through the sewers of Bute one time. Evil, he said they walked through the sewers

while Evil cut all the utility wires with a pair of electrician's pliers. Why the fuck would he do that? Be a dick. Just thought it was fun. That's it, yep. At one point, this guy says he remembers hunting in the Deer Valley Lodge when he was a teenager

and I think this is evil. He said nothing was flying so I clubbed a goose over the head at the game refuge in Warm Springs. He just went to a petting zoo and beat the shit out of a goose. Wow. Were they meant to breed and feel safe? Clunk. He's just out there clubbing them. He said, then I fired a couple shots in the air. My buddies were real surprised that I'd

shot a goose. They also said, wow, that's crazy. It seems to have blunt force trauma rather than a gunshot wound. That's lucky there's no medical examiner there. So he, yeah, he also is one of the, he's known for his safe cracking abilities back in the day. He's a hardcore, huge burglar back in the day. Safe cracking though? Safe cracking and burgling, that's what he does. Businesses, I mean he's going for the big shit.

He even likes to cheat at cards. He even said in this article, I don't like to play cards unless I can cheat. Of course. Of course. He says that Las Vegas is a cesspool where all the money goes into the sewer. You can't even cheat these people.

It's ridiculous. They won't let you cheat. He said that most people think you just kneel down, talking about safes. He said most people think you just kneel down and fiddle with the dials. Hell, you just take a hammer and chisel and go at it. I can open a safe in two minutes.

That's not a safe cracker. That's not a safe cracker. That's just fucking devilish. It's a safe breaker. Yeah, that's a safe breaker, not a safe cracker. God Christ. Anybody, yeah, I can do that. I'm a genius with a safe.

I got a hammer. I just get three sticks of dynamite and it just opens right up. It's pretty easy. Yeah. Get everything inside. Oh man. He said that, um, anticipation of a big thieving job, the mechanics of the breaking and entering were thrilling. He said he loved it. He said, I always got a hell of a feeling about drilling a hole in a roof. And we'll hear one particular heist that he pulled off. That was like,

from the US Treasury. He's out of his fucking mind. He's crazy. He's fucking crazy. There is no thought of consequences. He said once a guy who owned a gas station bet me $25 I wouldn't live to be 23. When I turned 23 he wouldn't pay. That night I conked the attendant and robbed the place of $900

Wouldn't pay this is fucking crazy, man. Yeah, so Okay, there's a there's a guy here Kid named Clyde Kelly and he said give me your belt evil said to Clyde Kelly Here and he's like yeah, we're gonna we're gonna do this. He said just give me your belt, Evil said to Clyde Kelly here. And he was like, yeah, we're going to do this. He said, just give me your belt. And he said, what do you need it for? He said, just give it to me. I said, OK, I guess, yeah, sure.

Why not? So what he did was here, they said he's real cocky and kind of arrogant, and it just gets people to do what he wants as a kid. The guy said, OK, and he's taking his belt off. He said, but why do you need it? And Evil said, you'll find out, which is not an answer. No, honestly.

So they were like this motherfucker man when they all thought he was smart too and all that kind of shit. So it just was weird. They said, Evil said, give me a hand with this. He said to his friend and a group of football players they said okay and followed him interesting so they walk over to this car it belongs to a girl they call it she's kind of like a rich girl they call it from the affluent side of town she had a Nash metropolitan which is a tiny car right it's a little car yeah little tiny car here and so this was

to go back and forth to school so evil had all the football players get around this car And lift it up Jesus. Yeah, it's only 1,823 pounds this car so Volkswagen. Yeah. Yeah, so then he they had he had them carry it up the school steps and Park it in front of the front door Mm-hmm and just leave it there That was a few weeks earlier but now he was collecting all these belts and they're like why do you have all these belts? So okay I'll read from the book.

His plan soon was unfolded. He had a problem it seemed with the school librarian. She turned him in for some infraction and made his life miserable in some way. He decided to make her life miserable. While she worked alone in the library getting ready for the school day, he used the five or six belts he had collected to tie the doors to the library shut. Okay, from the outside. Picture this, he then pulled two wastebaskets large and full to the front of those doors and lit them on fire. Oh my God.

The smoke from the fire went under the doors and into the library and the librarian tried to get out of the room and the doors wouldn't open. Couldn't get out. Yeah. She thought the building was on fire and she was going to roast alive in here. She's trapped. She freaked out, yelled, screamed, called the fire department, everything else. The one person said, his friend said,

he smoked her out, except she couldn't get out. So yeah, that was a big deal. He could've killed that person. Oh, he could've killed her, or she could've had a heart attack in there, we thought she was an old lady or what the fuck, but that's the type of shit he does, to get back at her for turning him in for something.

He's always in detention too, that's the other thing. We'll talk about that in a minute. He's got, it's weird, he's a loner, but he's never alone. That's the type of guy. He does his deeds alone, but he's always got friends nearby. He's got no close friends, but he always is like pulling people in to facilitate whatever thing he's got going on or scheme he's got popping off. Everybody knew who the fuck he was obviously because he's a hyperactive

maniac. Yeah. One of his classmates said we'd sit in delinquency which is detention staying after school. He was the kid the teacher would say one more peep out of anyone and you'll stay here another half hour and he would say peep. Pe yeah he's the bender he's the Jonathan Bender he's a Judd Nelson here I got you for the rest of your natural born life so yeah he looks like Mark Furman he looks exactly like should play he should have played my first crazy he looks like a large nostril mark for oh you're talking about the principal. Yeah, the principal looks like him too. Yeah, a lot like him.

I think he did play him. Both of them look like him, yeah. Didn't he play him in a movie? He'd fucking better have. Like a TV movie or some shit? If he didn't, they fucked up. So this guy says, he'd drive everyone crazy. Delinquency was supposed to last for an hour, but when he was there, it would stretch to

two hours. Three. It would be six o'clock at night when you'd when he was there, it would stretch to two hours, three. It would be six o'clock at night when you'd get out of there. Kids would want to kick his ass. I would want to kick his ass. Robert, shut the fuck up. I want to go home. Bobby, Jesus, they said the other kids would be sent

to delinquency once in a blue when they got caught fucking skipping class or talking or doing whatever it was. He said evil was there every single day. He said he would serve 40 straight days and then miss a day and then serve 20 more. He was just always there. Always there. They said he couldn't sit still. He was nuts and that's how he was always was and he could never not be there. So in 1954, when old Bob evil here was 16 years old, his dad came back home. Well, came back to Butte, not to the house, but to view. So in 1954, when old Bob Evil here was 16 years old, his dad came back home. Well, came back to Butte, not to the house,

but to Butte here, and he's 16, his brother's 15, and his dad went into the family car business with his father, Iggy, okay? At Knievel Imports. So they also talked about, you know, he wanted to give some structure to the boys, but they're already 16 and 15. That's gone.

So, yeah, they talk in the book, they said, things happen fast in Butte. The driving age was 12 or 13. Whenever your feet could reach the pedals, no need for a license. The drinking age was the same as the driving age, except your arms had to reach over the bar in this case. Gambling was everywhere. Sex, the age of consent for a young boy was whenever he could collect enough money for the experience. The houses

of prostitution on Mercury Street awaited. Um, one guy says two bucks to get laid, three bucks for a half and half, five bucks for quote around the world. Which you definitely hit her wherever you want you definitely go and you're seeing Australia during that tour let's just say that oh man he said this guy said I was 12 years old when I lost my virginity one of his friends Sandy Keith here so that's how it was and I guess there's a lot of copper there and that's the big deal, that's a big copper. That's what they're mining? That's what they're mining here.

The bars are open 24 hours a day here as well. That's the other thing. And so when the Korean War kicked in, they needed even more copper. So it became a big fucking deal. One guy who grew up at the same time as Gnievel there said it was just the best place to grow up back then. There was a freedom to do anything.

Your house might not have been the greatest, but when you went outside, I lived right on Continental Divide and there was a million acre playground right behind my house. That's cool. So this guy said he did a lot of skiing with Knievel at the Old Beef Trail Ski. Yuck. Oh, god damn it. That sounds like what an asshole would say to some insult a woman. I went out with old beef last night. So they said when they

were in junior high school the mother this kid's mother would drive the two of them to the area and they would ski and go around. One day the temperature was 45 degrees below zero he said. Which happens in Montana. Is that how cold it gets there? Oh yeah, oh yeah, especially in the mountains. Jesus, fuck. And so they were the only skiers there, you know, because that's insane. Because you die in that. So they were the only skiers there and they had a big ski jump.

This is like a ski jump, like to practice for like Olympic ski jumps, like one of those big fucking giant crazy ramps that just shoots off into nothingness and you fly and land it's crazy. So they said they were out there, it was a man-made hill that shot you off the platform to the end of an uncertain fate at the end of a long long drop. This guy, his friend said it was the first time we'd ever gone up to the top. The jump wasn't even open. We were examining it when we could hear the ski patrol coming.

We knew they'd check the jump. They didn't want kids to kill themselves. Bob said we had to hurry. He was like, hurry what? What do you mean, hurry doing what? We gotta jump it. And he said he looked back and Bob was gone. He said he was down the ramp already,

waiting to do the jump. So this guy went, oh shit, I guess I better follow him. Fuck, I don't know what's going on here. he went down the ramp he said as he went down the ramp and went off of it he saw evil laying in a heap on the on the fucking snow just lying with his leg over his fucking head and everything else as he's flying through the air which isn't confidence building there so he went down and crashed also neck near him and he said this is that's what the type of shit he would do is you didn't even know what you were doing and you were just doing it because he was

there and he was nuts and he would make you do things. Eventually he's going to drop out of high school obviously and he has a we'll talk about his hubcap business here They're really a business a bunch of kids from school had a hubcap thievery ring. So he stole all their hubcaps He he found out where he stored them and just took them all he's like well That's much easier than collecting them off of cars wait till they're all in one place caught. Yeah. Yeah, so and eventually he ends up getting busted here and For that and they tell him that he has to either go to jail or join the army Those are your options which happened a lot back then so he ends up going into the army, which he fucking hated US Army Reserves the fire jump over there

No, they don't like that usually they they hate it when you do that generally unless it's like into enemy territory they're not real thrilled about it. Those tanks don't jump very high. No they're you're not getting over much with those. Not a lot of air. The 592nd Ordnance Company after he left Butte High and also this kept him from being drafted as well so twofold here. So he did six months of active duty at Fort Lewis, Washington. Hated every second of it. Imagine this kid

in a structured environment like this. Like not going to happen. So he came back for the five and a half years of weekend summer camp, reserve commitments, you know, doing the weekends there, one weekend a month. And he's a terrible soldier. His commanding officer in the reserves, who by the way also owned the Akoma Lounge in town, a bar, he said quote, he was the shits about Bob soldiering. He was the shits. I always gave him one order, stay the fuck away from me. That was the only order. He said I liked him in the bar, I didn't like him in the army. No.

He said we went on summer camp once to Fort Lewis. He fell out of the jeep on the first day and said he hurt his ankle and couldn't do anything for the rest of camp. He just didn't want to do shit. He said I told him that was fine, just stay the fuck away from me. As long as you stay away from me, I don't care what you're doing, great, good, sit there. He was drunk and fell out of it or was he fucking around in the Jeep?

He jumped down, pretended he hurt his ankle so he didn't have to do anything. He's full of shit, it's all a scam. Everything's a scam with this guy. Except for later on, the things he actually is famous for, they're not a scam and he just hurts the shit out of himself. He's just bad at it. So he gets back after the stint in the army here and he gets married because obviously

he's ready to settle down at this point in time. Really he's going to come home every night. He can't even soldier. Oh no, before six he's going to come home and he's going to eat dinner and probably just fall asleep in a recliner with a Reader's Digest on his chest I would imagine. Glasses on a chain hanging off on his cardigan. So he marries Linda Bork, this poor long-suffering woman who was treated horribly here. They have a child named Kelly and Evil realizes at this point he has to make money.

He does have to make a living and thieving is great. That's terrific. Don't get me wrong. It works, yeah. We'll talk about it, because he does all sorts of thieving around town. He makes an actual legitimate business out of it. It's fucking wild. So he marries this kid, he's married this woman,

he's got a kid, hopefully he didn't marry a kid, and so he tried to do something. He got a job in the copper mines with the Anaconda Mining Company as a diamond drill operator. He then got promoted to surface duty where he drove a large earth mover, but he didn't like that at all.

He called this the unimportant stuff in life and hated it. So he was fired when he took the earth mover and did a wheelie and lost control and drove the thing into Butte's main power line and shut down most of the power in the city. He did a wheelie and defeated her. Yeah, lost it, lost control, and shut down most of the power in the city. He did a wheelie and hit the feeder. Lost it, lost control, and shut down most of the power in the city for several hours.

So you're fired for that, sorry. You caused a blackout, you're fired. So he got fired from that, now he doesn't know what to do because that's where your work is in the mine, so he didn't know what to do. He ends up in 1956, he leads police on a chase on his motorcycle, crashes that and has taken to jail for reckless driving and abating and eluding and all that kind of shit as well. So there's a nice arrest form.

He's already got multiple arrests under his belt here. They said when the night jailer came around to check the roll, he noticed Robert Knievel in the cell here and he had William Knoffel in the other cell. Really? Now William Knoffel, K-N-O-F-E-L, Knoffel, and he's a real guy too. That's crazy. Yes, William Knaufel They were calling him awful Knaufel all the time the cops did William Knaufel by the way was such a fucking lunatic

That when he had a whole bunch he's been charged with murder all these different things He had all sorts of crazy charges that were like, you know not murder but all these theft and this and that all this different shit so that they basically made a deal with him that murder but all these theft and this and that all this different shit so that they basically made a deal with him that will call it time served if you leave Montana and never come back get out so the deal you have to leave Montana today right after this court is done you have to walk out those doors go to the train station a block away and fuck off and he did it so there was that so yeah he was awful can awful so. So the jailer,

and this is the guy that evil credits with this, with the, with giving him the name, he says, well, we got an awful, can awful. And now he got an evil, can evil. That was that. And he said, be real fucking. That's, that's what he keeps saying. Well, the awful can awful is definitely a thing. Tons of people in town are like, yeah, awful, can awful. they all know who he was. He was like the most famous criminal in town

because he was such a fuckup. And then... My uncle couldn't have been creative when he called... Anytime that we fell down and got hurt, he would call us awful-knaufle. And there's no way that he... There's no way he thought that up, right? No, no, no.

This had to be a very common known thing. I would assume that during the 70s when Evil Knievel was on eight trillion talk shows all the time, because he's a great guest, this guy's crazy, I would assume he probably told the story a thousand times on The Tonight Show, on This, That, Decav it, on all these different shows, because everybody asks him, how did you get the name

Evil Knievel, and he'll always say, oh, I'm actually Bobby, but you know, blah, blah, blah. And he tells him that. Yeah. So that's probably where it came from. So, yeah. And he thought he was evil and the evil was like, fuck yeah, but I'll spell it. E V E L now we're talking. Now that's something. That's evil, can evil, but it's not evil because he said, I he didn't want to be considered evil because he thought that people wouldn't want to see somebody who was evil, E-V-I-L, you know. But evil, that's just his name, he can't help it.

It's just a word, yeah. Evil, yeah, it could have been, you know, it's a German name, Evel, and we pronounce it evil in America, who the fuck knows, nobody knows. But his motorcycling is his passion here, loves to motorcycle, a lot of ride his bike. He rode his first cycle when he visited his dad when he was 15 and almost killed himself.

Really? Almost fucking killed him. Yeah, crashed it, fucked it all up. And then later on crashed it when he was running from the cops as well. He bought a used Triumph TR5000. Hell yeah. From a guy in Great Falls,

and there were weekend races in Great Falls, which he joined, and he rode like a fucking psychopath, and he was always in every race and everything like that. He would drive his motorcycle 100 miles an hour around the city of Butte all over the fucking place. One of his friends said, he picked me up once. He had a motorcycle that could go 150 miles an hour. We went 150 miles an hour.

How do you know it could go that fast? Because we did it. We're doing it now. Look at the speedometer. He said, I was never so scared in my life. I was really mad. On the back of it? On the back of it.

He had to win 150 with a person on the back of his motorcycle. He's a crazy fuck. He had to win 150 with a person on the back of his motorcycle. He's a crazy fuck. He's crazy. They said he would just come by the high school fucking popping a wheelie and showing off in front of the school. He would do the bars at night and do the same shit and everything like that. He was just a crazy fuck.

One of his friends said he had a deal with some girl who owned a Volkswagen. Here's one of his scams, one of his many, many scams. He would have her park it outside whatever bar they were at. He would find somebody and bet that he could drive his motorcycle up and over the car. Oh yeah, because they're kind of like a ramp. They didn't know that he knew the person's car. They thought it was a stranger's car. Oh, I'll ride that car. So the guy would always think that he, Knievel would worry

about damaging the car, except he didn't. He knew this girl and they had a deal that he was going to do it anyway and so he'd just collect the money. They were like, oh, you won't do that. One time he said, his friend said, Muzzy Ferroni told me, or told the book, the author here, he sold a guy in the bar four tires. Yeah. He rolled them in and said, I got these four tires. You wanna buy these tires? So the guy bought the tires.

He said, the guy went out to my parking lot, this is the guy who owned the bar, guy went out to my parking lot at the end of the night, his car was on blocks. Evil had sold him his own tires. This is who we're dealing with. That's the best scam ever. It's incredible. Imagine selling somebody their own house. That's crazy. What kind of dickhead sitting in a bar goes, yeah, I'll take them. I'll put them in my car later. I'll get them later. Yeah. I guess if you're

drinking, he's got a smoking deal. I mean, that's what it is. You good enough deal, you do it. Be like, yeah, I guess leave him here. Leaned up against the bar, I suppose. He sold him his own fucking tires. Then he's, and his stealing is just legendary here. Here's a friend of his.

His father bought the first go-karts to the showroom in Butte. So the first go-karts to the showroom in Butte. So the first go-karts that ever existed in Butte were brought in by Evil's dad into the showroom there, which must have been fucking awesome for the kids to see. Yeah. So he said, Bob drove one of them to my house. I think they cost $250, like at the dealership.

He said it was his and he would sell it to me for $100. I bought it, I had the first sell it to me for $100. I bought it. I had the first go-kart in Butte. Then his father came around the next day and took it back. Bob Knievel sold me a go-kart that he didn't own. His father was not happy. He stole it from him, sold it, and he fucked over two people.

He's like, yay, and he had 150 bucks. Here's a guy, a friend of his, Mike Burns, a Butte resident that grew up with him, said, a guy told me he went duck hunting in Whitehall with Knievel. They ran out of ammunition. They went to the nearest sporting goods store to buy some more.

They were still wearing all of their gear because they were going back to hunt some more. So all the big, you know, giant shit. The guys buy the shells and Knievel starts motioning to him to get going and that they have to leave right now. We're not saying anything. Yeah. Knievel's hurrying but walking with a big limp.

When they get to the car, he pulls out a.30-06 Springfield rifle he had stuffed into his waders. He took a giant rifle and put it in his fucking pants Can't help it thing rifle my god can't help it help it man the hubcap ring here Can evil and another guy learned about a hubcap ring here thieves? They were all football players at the high school that were stealing hubcaps Back in the 50s these specialty hubcaps were a big fucking deal

Yes, yeah big deal because they were there big fucking deal. Big deal. Because they were metal. Like now it's just a plastic piece of shit with a metal ring in it that you just snap in. It was a metal hubcap with a lip on it that was, you had to slap it in. They were quality. They had spinners they were talking about back then and all that kind of shit. They were like embossed with Chevrolet or whatever, whatever the brand of the car was. They were very cool.

Something fucking cool. Well, they found out where all these hubcaps were, stole them all, and did that. The other guy that he stole them with said there must have been 500 hubcaps. We sold them off by bits to some character on the East Side for a buck, maybe two bucks a hubcap. The thing with Knievel, though, was that he was lippy.

He liked to tell people, hey, we stole all these hubcaps. Oh, god damn it, don't tell anybody. He liked the attention. I was worried that the police would find out, and more worried that the football players would find out. Yeah, don't tell anybody. They were gonna get arrested or beaten to death, what are you doing here?

So he was nuts. Now here is where his, the beginning of his daredeviling. And by the way, he actually plays an actual sport that we'll talk about too. Like on a legitimate level, yes. So evil is all crime and sports. So he, okay, there's an A&W root beer stand at the bottom of Woodville Hill

in Meterville, which is near there, I guess. One of the, you've named it. Metterville, Meterville, I don't fucking know. One of the, it's M-E-A-D-E-R. Could be. Doesn't matter. He was hip hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry.

The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Did he built an empire and live the life most people only dream about. I know a no party like a did he party so yeah, but just as quickly as his empire rose it came crashing down. Today, I'm announcing the unsealing of a 3 count indictment charging Sean combs with racketeering conspiracy

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exclusively with Wondery+. In the 1980s, a rose swept the country. Hey Mike, I really like this white Zinfandel. Well good, good. Now put it down, I'm gonna try another one. White Zin became America's top selling wine. But most don't know that this sweet drink has a sour history. Good, now put it down, we're gonna try another one. White Zin became America's top-selling wine. But most don't know that this sweet drink

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Welcome to Blood Vines. You can binge listen to Blood Vines exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts, or Spotify. Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and varied secrets from the darkest corners of history. From covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science to operations so secretive they were barely whispered about. Each week, unredacted, declassified mysteries,

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Who knows how they pronounce shit here? See, evil, it's fine. So one of the, it's a Butte neighborhood and the A&W parking lot was where the kids would drive their cars and do the drive-in thing and they'd come out do the drive in thing. And, you know, they come out with the trays and all that shit. 50s picture the 50s.

So they would all hang out and families would come there and everything else. And Bob would ride his motorcycle over there to put on a show. There was an old smelting plant up up the hill. And it was piled on the ground nearby were tailings, which were remnants from the smelting process, left over rocks. The biggest pile went four to five hundred feet high. It's the mountain of these shit rocks, right? A mountain of tailings, ugly and foreboding, they say.

A Mount Everest of refuse, so steep and loose that no one could possibly walk up the side. Because it'll all fall apart. So he said, I'm going to could possibly walk up the side. Because it'll all fall apart. So he said, I'm going to ride my motorcycle up the side. If I can't walk on it. Okay, yeah. All right. Yeah. So he'd start at the bottom and they said it perched over his little 250 tiger cub or

whatever he was riding. That's not going to make it. Nope. Get moving as fast as he could before he hit the mountain and then try to fight gravity and common sense to reach the top. That's great. He usually was the only one who would try this, a one man show. The diners at the A&W parking lot had a perfect view as he charged so hard at first and then

started to slow, then slipped somewhere in the middle or last third of the climb and then slid and went back to the beginning. Right. They'd watch, but they said he was entertainment. Up he went, down he came, up he went, closer, down he came, up he went, down, closer, up, down, that's how they did. So, every now and then, he would finish the entire climb.

He'd make it. Wow. And when he did, he would finish, he'd be all the way up there, and he would stand above and fucking put his arms up, and when he did he would finish he'd be all the way up there and he would stand above and fucking Put his arms up and the diners in the parking lot would blow their horns and cheer that he made it. Yeah So the management the manager there who was his friend Jim Lynch's grandmother gave him a standing offer of free food anytime He performed really so that's his first daredeviling. If I do this crazy dumb shit, no one else will do

because they're smart enough, too smart to do it. I get a free hamburger. Get food at the A&W. Yeah, so there you go. That's what started this. There is an article here from 1957 from the Montana Standard, and it is one man injured as fire flares and tire shop damages $20,000.

This is the Knievel, this is dad's tire shop. One 12 East Galena, one man, Terrold Hankinen, a tire repair man, was severely burned about the hands and one leg of his clothing was scorched when he became enveloped in flames. Jesus Christ. Man, I.J. Knievel, that's Iggy, who with his sons operate the establishment, yeah, right, suffered slight burns about the hands and his hair was scorched when he attempted to combat the flames with a fire extinguisher.

Oh, that's grandpa putting the flames out. Yeah, that's Iggy. Mr. Knievel said that a small amount of gasoline from a car tank had spread across the floor and he had given just instructions to wash the floor down with a hose when the fire broke out. So he said, I just told them to wash this shit. Mr. Knievel said he ran upstairs,

phoned the fire department, then with an extinguisher, attempted to make his way back into the basement, but was held back by flames and smoke. And so the fire trucks all had to come and it's a goddamn mess. So they said there were three others when at the shop when the fire broke out everybody escaped without injury except for that one poor bastard. Yeah. So yeah. The new Volkswagen car destroyed by the flames had been delivered Tuesday night to Miss Alice Miller. She returned the vehicle to the shop for adjustment Wednesday morning after driving at only 42 miles Well, it's gone now and now it's all burnt down. Holy shit. That is hilarious

so anyway January 12th 1958 here is Bob It says return this afternoon to test Leafs. Okay the fast skating slick stick handling smooth path passing Creston BC hockey team defeated the Butte copper Leafs 9 to 4 before nearly a thousand spectators in the Butte Civic Center Saturday night The big crowd was given plenty of action during the contest including The big crowd was given plenty of action during the contest, including fisticuffs in the third chucker between Bob Knievel of the locals and Don Vigny of the Canucks.

So yeah, he's a hockey player. No kidding. Yeah, that's what they say. Here's how it started too. They said Bob Knievel's center for the Leafs during the scramble around the Creston goal inadvertently assisted the Canadian club. The shot by M. Huscroft bounced off Knievel's skate into the net. Play in the opening chucker was on the Leafs ice most of the way and the Canadians displayed some fine stick handling along with some sharp passing.

The crowd gave Knievel a hand when he was beautifully blocked by Al Romer. Knievel went headlong over the fence but was back on the ice like a yo-yo. Okay, so he's getting knocked all around and he's fighting and doing all that shit. They said that he received a noticeable shiner. So he got a nice fucking nice black guy. Yeah, he is going to end up, went to a basically a skating rink where one of his friends dad zoned and he didn't know what he was doing he wanted to play hockey he was all tiny his friend went away to school for two years came back he said he came back he was six foot one and Bob's a good skater and

he's a fucking hockey player now it's fucking crazy and he ends up he's gonna end up starting his own team. In Butte? In Butte and actually playing games that matter, it's crazy. So they talk about in the book, his personal relationships depended mainly on his moods. That's how he is, his moods could change in a moment, he's very smart and everybody pretty much admired that he seemed to be one of these smart guys

that hides it. You know what I'm saying? It's what they think. It's a well-disguised. His whole act is, I'm not that smart when he is. They said he could still be profane and stupid. He could be incredibly rude. He could also be canny, clever, and shrewd.

He could be thoughtful, but seldom quiet, never shy, never reserved. A friend from his early motorcycle time in California told him years later that money had not changed him a bit. Quote, you're just as arrogant rich as you were when you were poor. He told him. Yep, always arrogant. He figured always that he knew the best what to do and that was that. My gut will tell me the way. Said he never apologized, he never did anything like that. He would just tell people all the time, I have a proposition, I bet you.

He's like Prop Joe, proposition for you. It's fascinating that this could be, like today this can't be a life, you know what I mean? No, no, no, no, no. You can't do this today. Google ruins this guy's life. It's amazing, yeah, right. It's amazing that he can just do this. Google ruins this guy's life. It's amazing. Yeah, right It's amazing that he can just do this. We could do all this shit

They say there'd always be another proposition another bet there'd usually be a twist somewhere in the outcome a trick The football game on television might be shown on a tape delay, and he already knew the score Something like that the trick could make Bob Knievel here The winner he said the loser would not be happy. One was, I'll bet you that my penis is soft longer than your penis is hard. What?

Okay, now think about that. He said he suggested it more than once, an example of a proposition handed to the new listener. They said the words would be a little rushed, slightly garbled, everybody's had a couple of drinks Emphasis on some parts of the proposition and not the other so the new listener would hear what he wanted to hear Usually a slight dyslexic arrangement of the sentence and they'd bet on that Of course, my dick hard is gonna be longer than your dick is soft, obviously

Your dick isn't longer when it's soft than mine is when it's hard. And they said the new guy would get himself fucking all situated in his pants there and he'd be like, let's whip him out, Bob. And Bob would say, not so fast. My penis will be soft longer than yours is hard. That was the bet. You can't keep that erection all day. He said, you thought the bet was supposed to be that your penis would be longer hard than mine was soft?

Why would I bet on something like that? You must have heard wrong. Fucking pay up. And all these bets, they said the person would either pay or fight, you gotta fight him if he does it. He'll fight you if you don't pay up. There was no like, haha, gotcha right this was just take your money period not for fun carny Yeah, like fucking is a car. Yeah. Yeah, he's a total carny. Yeah, that's a one-man carnival. That's all it is

That's a great way to put up the one-man carnival. He would fucking do all this type of shit That's that was his whole thing. He had tons of him. His friend said he was always talking. He said you couldn't shut him up. He was always the best, the best in everything. He was the best motorcycle rider. He was the best skier, the best skater, the best athlete. He wasn't the best in any of them. He was the best bullshitter. That was the only thing he was best at. Yeah. He's a, he's, god damn it. In a dive bar, he's the most popular man Oh, yeah, cuz he's gonna he's gonna have stories to tell he's a crazy fuck But then when he stumbles out at the end of the night you go that man's got a sad life

I bet oh that man's gonna ride his motorcycle home probably crash. Yeah, so he participated in local professional rodeos He did ski jumping events Basically anything that's like could I break my neck doing this? Sounds great. Right. He's not doing anything that takes, I mean, a lot of these things take skill, but he's bravery. Yeah.

It's just balls. It's huge balls. He won the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A men's ski jumping championship in 1959. You have to land that, right? I assume so or he just flew farther than all the other heaps of broken humanity all over the snow. I didn't say I was gonna land it I just said I'd go for it. I'd go far yeah. In his army, I think when he was in the army also he joined the track

team where he was their pole vaulter. What's the craziest? The tracks boring. Oh I could hurt myself doing that okay yeah. Yeah, that sounds good I gotta throw myself furthest. Okay, perfect. Yeah, is there a javelin that like you got a dodge? Is there a javelin dodging? I'd like that. Maybe that would be a thing. You got a rocket, you know Like the end of fucking yeah, like the end of the Kubrick movie there the dr. Strangelove ride the bomb on down so Knievel this his friend said that he was just hanging around the r Knievel, this is his friend said, that he was just hanging around the rink, the hockey rink, and his friend came back and found a different Knievel.

He said he'd grown to a six foot, 175 pound hockey player. Knievel's dad had been back by that time and had sent Knievel to a couple of hockey camps. Back then, one of them in Canada, and he had improved a lot. So they said that he shot every time he had the chance. He's not gonna be a big passer, you can't think. But he scored enough and was pretty decent.

They said he always talked like he was better than he was, though, no matter what. One of his Abute hockey players said he was decent. On a scale of one to 10, he was a seven. But I trust him about as far as I can throw him He was a real show-off had to be the life of the party all the time Here's somebody else said he was a good athlete, but he was always in a lot of trouble He was the biggest bullshitter in the world. I couldn't believe a thing

He'd say he'd sell it he could sell an Eskimo or refrigerator Which I mean if an Eskimo had a house he would need a refrigerator wouldn't he? You're assuming he lives in an igloo for Christ's sake. If he's in an igloo that's a refrigerator right? That is one probably yeah at that point, but if he's got a house like a normal person so He starts his it's September of 1958. He's 19. He starts his own semi-professional hockey team Oh boy, yeah. The Butte Bombers He was the owner, coach, and starting center. Interesting. He didn't take much startup money but he

borrowed some from his dad, got a little bit from his grandfather from the car dealership and all that, and local sporting goods dealer provided a bunch of uniforms and equipment on credit. So yeah, he had a civic center was there. He had they had dates to fill so they slotted him in here. He offered players $50 per game is what he offered the players and recruited some Canadian talent out of the Montana School of Mines in Missoula. He put together a schedule that included semi pro teams from the US and Canada, a few minor league teams, and some college teams like Minnesota and Michigan that were big-name college teams. Then he ends up playing the Czech national team who was like the world champions at the

time, which is fucking pretty crazy. They said the players learned after a while though that the $50 a game was a mirage. Oh and I showed off Yeah, they said you couldn't pin him down for money basically They said the only way to be on this team is if you really wanted to play hockey because he's not paying you shit One guy said we never got paid too often, but I remember a couple of good meals. God bless Phil Judd He kept the thing afloat giving credit for sticks uniforms and equipment. I don't think he ever got paid either That's the sporting goods guy No money so they they went through their first season and survived and came back for a second season and

That's when he scheduled games with a bunch of other people including the the Czechoslovakian Olympic team They were two-time world champions the Czechoslovakian Olympic team. They were two-time world champions. He must have lied his ass off to them. They had a game in California, and this was like on the way basically. Why don't you stop here? So this was a big deal though,

the two-time world champions, it was a big deal. The place he sold over 2,000 people came to watch. Oh my God. $2 for reserved seats, $1 for general admission, the whole deal, the Czechs beat the Bombers 22 to three. Ah! Ha ha ha. But they said that was nice.

One of the teammates said, the score could have been 105 to nothing if the Czechs wanted. They were kind to us. They did things we'd never seen before. A guy flipped the puck on end, picked it up with a stick, and just skated through everyone with the puck on his stick three feet in the air.

That's how good these guys were. They cleaned the ice with us. Hilarious. So the thing is here, to do this, he repeatedly would plead to the crowd between the periods to pass the mic around to get some more money, donate because the Czechoslovakian Olympic delegation was much bigger than expected.

There's all these officials. He's got all these expenses that are so much more than he expected and he's gotta pay for all their stuff and people filled up the hat and gave it to him and they didn't even get paid a dime, the Czechs. They didn't get paid the money they were supposed to, their hotels didn't get paid, nothing got paid, nobody got paid.

He kept all of it. He kept all of it and on top of that, the check locker room was burglarized during the game. Ah, he went through their shit too. He even stole their shit. Another story here said that Knievel had worked out a deal with a national hotel chain that included not only the rooms for the checks but their air travel on a chartered company plane. The

national hotel chain never saw a dime. Wow. At all. So the US Olympic Committee had to eventually step in and give the Czech government some money or the Czech Olympic squad. He's going to cause international strife. Yeah. He's going to cause international strife. He's going to cause the cold war to get him hot. That's what he's going to do over hockey. Fucking idiot. So one after this, they played one last game a week later. Half the roster wasn't there because they're not getting paid and this was embarrassing.

A 14 year old boy was in the starting lineup. They lost to the Montana School of Mines 11 to 8. Oh my. A bunch of guys covered in soot. Yeah. And fucking beat them 11 to 8. The first lawsuit against the company, against the Bombers, was filed a week later by the Greenfield Paper Company for $247.35 for unpaid printing costs. And there's a lot more after that, obviously, here. Knievel also played with the Charlotte Checkers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959, but decided that hockey wasn't for him.

It was too hard traveling and all that kind of shit. So there you go. He's a legit athlete. He played hockey against the Czech national team. So back to his personal life here. He's married like we told you to his wife and It's fucking this poor woman man, Jesus Christ They show her in the newspaper her taking Blocking pucks from him. He's shooting pucks at her. She's

Helping her practice. Helping him practice. Helping him practice, yeah. He said, greater love hath no woman than to stand in direct line with the hockey puck that can travel as fast as 100 miles an hour. God damn. Is the caption. And both pictures showed Linda dressed in a Bomber's Goal uniform, ready to take shots

fucking from her husband here. The caption said is, uh, that she was his target when no one else was around. Now, a little bit about her, um, her father owned the company that owned and service all the billboards in butte. So she had some money came from a good house. You know, she was a pretty cheerleader, that sort of thing. She was going to be going to college until she met this moron and now she's with him.

The one person said, I can honestly say that in Butte there was not much class consciousness. People just took you as you came along in Butte. I know that isn't true in most places, but it was there. So like nobody cared that he was like from the other side of the tracks or whatever kind of shit like that here. But the father did not like him at all. No, no. The father said, that's the idiot that I hear about that drives his motorcycle around and drives up the garbage heap by the A&W. You're going out with that fucking dipshit.

One student named Patty said, I had a date with Bob Knievel once, or at least I thought I did he pulled up in front Of my house and my father saw him and said no My father my father was six foot ten. He was known as the tallest man in Butte He went out on the porch and told Bob to go home Bob went that was the end of my date. Yeah Yeah, he's like well I'm not gonna get spiked to the ground by this giant so I guess never mind so yeah, he's like, well. He's like, well, a six foot 10 guy comes outside. I'm not going to get spiked to the ground by this giant, so I guess never mind.

So yeah, he didn't have a lot of dates at that time. Really didn't. Later on, he'll become a huge womanizer. And he brags about his one night stands and all kinds of shit like that. But he met Linda, and he liked Linda. And I guess at the time he was into some other girl and she didn't like him and then he met Linda and was

on to her. So he'd just pick a girl and be like I'm gonna go after her for a while till she till she gives in. One of the friends said all she wanted was for him to go away. That was the girl he was following so he said okay fine and settled on Linda here. And he's four years older than his wife. So she was 17 and he was 21. And one guy from school said, she sat next to me in English class. I kind of liked her and I thought she kind of liked me.

Then one day I saw Bob, he was driving a 1948 Oldsmobile. She was sitting next to him and that was that. She was his girlfriend Okay now how do they become married well, how there's several stories Most of them involve two separate kidnappings. Oh You know how you meet your wife and all so girl boy kidnaps girl. Yeah, it's fun This is some of the basic the way the book talks about it the basic legends that he attached to himself Okay, so this is what happened there possibly up to two kidnappings

Yeah, one was and this is a thing that everybody says was true He found Linda her parents didn't want him didn't want her seeing him obviously so he found her and at the ice rink, walked onto the ice rink, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her off the ice. I'm sure that's true. Now we don't know if this was in her backyard or at a park, but either way, this is what happened. He dragged her by the hair.

They headed toward Idaho where you could get married before 18, because she was 17. So this trip apparently was ended by a snowstorm and they found shelter in a highway maintenance shed and her father, Linda's father had called the state police and when they found them in the shed hiding, she was still wearing her ice skates. Oh my God, so you married her in her ice skates consul married earner ice skates no no no that's it that's they weren't married

that that was when they were going to get married snow block them so all the charges end up being dropped okay the second one here is that after this because of the first kidnapping story she was in college for the first semester and the father got in a restraining order against him to keep her away, keep him away because he had kidnapped her. Okay, obviously. So he showed up at the college, grabbed her and drove away to the Beaverhead County Justice of the Peace in Dillon, Montana. She was 17. He was almost 21 and they wanted to get married and they eloped and she called her dad and he said,

I hope you didn't do anything silly like get married. And she said, daddy, I am married. So yeah, this is the ultimate he'll settle down thing. He'll settle down, he'll be fine. This is gotta, she's gotta sow his oats. Yeah. His wild oats. There's a separate story where he kidnapped her,

like drug her away. It kind of combines the two stories. He drug her away. They ended up being found. The state police were looking for them. They were found in a hotel room. State police came and kicked the motel room door open and they had their marriage license there.

They had just been married so nobody could do anything. Oh my God. So they were like, well, you can't kidnap your wife if she's into it, I guess, so fuck it. And now we're trespassing, so we will leave. Yeah. Tell you what, we're gonna make a ramp out of this door if you don't mind.

So yeah, that's how that goes. And his idea of marriage, and he says this on TV decades later, I saw an interview with him from 1977 where it's him and the other guests are some blonde lady and John Ritter. I almost said John Tripper. Jack Tripper and John Ritter I got mixed up. And fucking John Ritter with a beard. Yeah, that's a weird look. It's a weird look. John Ritter with a beard. Yeah that's a weird look. It's a weird look. With a beard.

77 John bearded John Ritter. So they end up having this meal during this talk show and Evil's saying how like it's a woman's place to cook and all this and the crowd's like oooing him and eyeing him. He's like that's the way it is. That's a woman's place. I'll tell you what. Blah blah blah blah blah. He has no fucking shame whatsoever.

His idea of marriage is that the woman should serve the man the man should be in charge and the woman should do what he said to do that's it that's it he said that's you know old-school thinking or whatever the fuck it is but that's what it was he one guy said Bob I don't think ever understood women I know he developed a reputation all those women, but they were one night stands. Whatever a relationship with a woman, I don't think he understood any of them, though.

So anyway, he and his new wife live in a double wide trailer next door to his grandparents' house. That's how this goes, okay? So during this period, he's obviously trying to, we'll talk about his insurance and all that kind of thing, he started a hunting service called Sure Kill. I don't even know what that is. He was the- It just means you're sure to kill something.

They could say like guides, like hunting guides. So, he would, well, I mean, we'll go to the fucking petting zoo and I'll give you a club and hit that goose. You win. He was the president, CFO, and leading tracker of animals. That was his job there. It's just him. There's nobody else that works for him.

It's just him. He had a tendency to take customers onto posted land to fulfill his promises, which you're not allowed to fucking hunt there. And one time he went to the White House to try to track down John Kennedy. Really? Yes, he was very passionate about the elk.

The US Park Service announced the elk population had grown to 10,000 head inside Yellowstone Park, which is too many. Yeah. And they were going to send sharpshooters into the Park, which is too many. Yeah. And they were going to send sharpshooters into the park to kill half the herd of elk. 5,000. So, Knievel became super pissed off and opposed this. He wanted the sportsman's groups to get them to give permits to hunters to park to shoot

them. Yeah. You know, to do that and or to transport excess elk to other areas where there's not as much elk. We can get them out and rehome them. Yeah, and then I can take my people out there to shoot them, because I know where they are. That was his plan.

Yeah, he's going to strategically populate areas where he's going to be. Fuck yeah, he went to a public meeting on the subject at the Elks Lodge in Livingston, Montana I don't think you actually have anything to do with the elk population. He showed up and he was like these people Will be the most interested. I don't think they have any fucking clue nor care about him. No, he thought it was just Elks. He showed up there to tell them about it. I'm here to talk to the big bull.

Where's he at? Where's he at? I'm here to talk to the big bull. Where's he at? Where's he? Where's he at? He reported 90 elk had been killed by park rangers on Monday, 60 more on Tuesday. He organized a petition to save the elk and collected 3000 names. And then he's going to say that he hitchhiked to Washington. He said to deliver them to John Kennedy, the president at the time.

Yeah, he had killed a six-point buck elk himself and removed the antlers, then hitchhiked to Washington to present the petition and the antlers to JFK. He wants to give him the antlers? It's a six-foot wide rack, by the way they're talking. It's crazy. I brought this on the plane. Yeah.

Oh no, he hitchhiked. He put that in the back of somebody's fucking car. And that's what the book talks about. There's a lot of people in Butte that said his fucking friend drove him to DC. He didn't he didn't fucking hitchhike. He claimed he had 27 rides between Butte and DC. Oh, come on. He loves to make up large numbers that sound like that must be true because he said an exact number. He does that all the time and it's always a lie. Most people that do that, it's a lie. 27 would be like from Montana to, that'd be like every 80 miles, right?

No, that makes sense to some people who are going here. You'd think you'd catch somebody who's going a fucking few hundred miles on the interstate or whatever, but 27 rides, which think about taking these giant, they were 54 inch wide antlers Yeah in and out of the car come on so he reached Washington DC on December 9th 1961 on December 10th his picture with Montana Congressman Mickey Boyer and antlers in the foreground US Capitol Dome in the background was sent across the country to all the wire services.

He had a jacket and tie and a buzz cut and looked like a real earnest young feller there. Yeah, that's how he did here. He finally in 19, the next day he had a 15 minute visit with the secretary of the interior, Stuart Udall. And Knievel told the UPI press people he was very interested in the situation. He said we've got a lot of room to kick about what they're doing in Yellowstone. Okay. On December 12th, he visited the White House and presented the antlers to JFK's assistant,

Mike Menados. And Knievel said, I'm sure he will call the situation to the president's attention. That's wild. That day, his picture and a story were on the fourth page of the B section of the Washington Post. That's fucking funny, man. He said that when he couldn't find a car sometimes that the antlers would fit in, they'd put them in the trunk or tied them on top.

Tied it on the roof. Yeah. So how the hell is he supposed to get back? Right. Yeah. This is where he figured out though that if you talk to reporters They write down shit you say and tell other people about it That's where he says he's figured he got power out of this and he was like, oh you make a spectacle

Yeah, if I showed up with no antlers, nobody cares. I show up with a photo op They give a fuck so we figured that out he said, the more interesting the story, the faster it'll come out. And also, props are good. That's the other thing he learned. They certainly help, yeah. They help. So listed on here as his occupation,

because they say he's from Butte, he does this, is merchant policeman. What the fuck is that? Okay, I'm gonna explain what that is. It's not a real job. It's a job he invented. It's a job the Italian mafia has been calling extortion and protection money for the last 100 fucking 50 years or so.

Oh really? That's what he does. He made a legitimate business that you pay taxes on from extortion. Wow. It's fucking amazing. It's wild. We'll talk about it, but the merchant, a merchant policeman was not a Butte policeman was a private contractor and called a door knocker. Okay. Okay.

Now he offered his clients protection from robbery and vandalism. Every night he checked their businesses, make sure their locks were locked, the windows unbroken. He'd keep an eye out for suspicious characters and strange doings. And you sign a contract with him, he's the only private policeman in Butte, and the thing is, he's the person that he's protecting you against.

He breaks into your place, and then a month later comes and says you could really use a guy that'd do via door knocker, and then they pay him, even though he stole from them. I don't do this anymore. It's exact same thing It's the mob would they throw a thing through the window. Hey, you don't watch your windows getting broken all the time You should pay us. I'll never happen again So that was all the cause of this shit They said if you didn't want to sign a contract then there'd be a robbery and a broken plate glass window

Just like extortion or a fire or something like that They said decide to decide to sign the contract and the robberies and broken windows and small fires would cease See how it goes. Yeah, so yeah the door knocker Business was nothing more than an extortion scheme This book says the old protection business a staple of illicit income around the world, and it fucking worked. He put together a client list that even included many of his friends in the bar business. They said he was able to rob them with a purpose

and have one business help the other. Because that's you're getting paid twice, you got to rob a man that's there. They said the robbery would show the problem, the service would stop the problem, see? His one friend here who owned the Met Tavern said, he robbed me. He robbed me more than once.

These are his friends that he would, they'd still talk to him. That's what's crazy. One guy here said, Muzzy Ferroni, the freeway tavern guy, who was the guy that he sold the tires outside his place. He said, I made the tires outside his place. He said, I made sure he did his job. I stayed up all night after I hired him.

I made sure he checked the locks. I made sure he didn't come in. I was sitting there with a shotgun in the dark just in case. One friend said, I do some of the robberies for him. He would stand guard in the parking lot. I'd go inside. It worked out fine. Unbelievable.

So he'd make his rounds, so it would look official. He'd leave a piece of paper under the door for the owner to see, so it's sliding under like evil was here. Yeah. You know, so one of those deals. And people, he'd advertise in the Montana Standard, and sometimes there'd be articles about some chase of some suspicious character and all that kind of shit. He and the cops would be in pursuit and shots were fired.

It was always evil that fired the shots, by the way, because that gets in the paper when you fire shots. He carried a gun all the time, showed it to everybody. Yeah, one of his stops when he'd go out and hang it out was the Yellowstone, which is one of the tougher bars in Butte. He's there one night and bullshitting and hanging out with the other guys. One of the older regulars takes offense and he said these guys are too noisy and he asked

the bartender to throw them out. Apparently he placed a hand on Evil's shoulder while he spoke and Evil took offense and Evil said open your mouth and the guy said what and he said open your mouth and then pulled a pistol from his boot And stuck it into the man's mouth. Oh my god Yeah For saying you guys are too loud and he said quote. What do you say now? Is it still too noisy? Oh my god This is who were it's fucking Joe Pesci from good fellas is who we're dealing with here Imagine Joe Pesci from good fellasellas trying to jump a motorcycle,

and that's what you have here, essentially. I mean, he probably couldn't reach the gear shifter, but yeah. He'd have a hard time. It's a tiny, it's a mini bike, Jimmy. It's a tiny motorcycle. He can maybe jump the go-kart. Maybe. So they had a son, Kelly, August 21st, 1960,

who was followed by Robbie Knievel. It's always weird when they name the second kid after somebody, not the first kid. But Robbie is the one that ended up being more like his dad, too. That's he has his name, he's his namesake, he's Robert. Robbie did all the stunts and all that. He was born in 62, then they had another daughter

named Tracy, so they lived in this double-wide trailer. And they ended up renting other places. They're always moving around. Shit places. Bouncing all around all these different places and always on the move. I don't know if they're on the run or on the move, but they're always there. They're always moving. Yeah.

One of his friends said, I live down on Idaho Street, the low rent side of town in this little apartment. They live near me. I remember I'd see Linda all the time outside with the three kids. They'd all be in their snow suits buttoned up. She'd be running around after them. They'd be giving her a workout. I never saw Bob. He was off, gone, doing whatever he was doing. Robbing people. Just not here. He was spent very, very, very little time at home. Very little time. He's always looking to rob for more money

because he spends money. Think about Evil Can Evil is he gets money and he's spending it right then. That's as much money as he gets is as much money as he has to spend. Doesn't give a fuck about that, doesn't think about tomorrow ever. He's living for today, every day.

Living for today. So one guy who knew him said, we were looking for a place to rob one night. We stopped to buy gas. The attendant was in the garage, didn't see me when I went up to pay. I tried to open the register and take the money, but the register was locked.

I unplugged it, lifted it up, and carried it to the car. Just take the whole thing. Just take the whole thing, fuck it. We drove away, broke the thing open someplace else. else the next day Bob saw a story in the paper. He started laughing He said hey you got that guy fired The owner heard about the robbery and fired the guy for not being at the register So he even lost that so all of these are a lot of robberies every fucking where he talked later on about how the excitement

of entering a building, looking to rob it, and just how it gives you adrenaline and everything like that. He brought in a safe to the freeway tavern one night because he had been bragging that he could open safes and they said he was full of shit. So he went out, stole a safe, brought it back to the bar to open it in front of people to show them.

I've just committed a felony. Let me show everyone. Look at. That's fucking crazy. He would later apologize for these things and all that kind of thing here. He robbed pharmacies, sporting goods stores, grocery stores, any place that could be robbed,

the book says here. One robbery he admitted was left as unfinished business when he attempted to break into the vault of the Prudential Bank When they switched headquarters and moved from one side of the street to the other He and his robbery associates tried to cut through the wall next door then through the vault But they were too slow and once the Sun came up they hadn't got there yet. So they had to leave they were done another robbery Happened at the courthouse okay the

safe at the courthouse was filled with money silver dollars okay someone bob came through the roof broke open the safe and stole all the silver dollars okay now this is fucking funny his friend said it was the weekend of Lincoln's birthday. A bunch of us were going down to Las Vegas for go-kart races. On Friday, I talked to Knievel. He said he really wanted to go, but he was flat broke. He told us to have fun.

The rest of us put our carts on a trailer and went. On Saturday night in Las Vegas, there's Knievel. He had all kinds of money. He's got $4,000 spread out on the dice table. He said he got lucky. I heard he was, well, listen to this. He said, I heard he was stopped by the police on the way back. He had thousands of dollars in silver dollars. He said the same thing. He got lucky and what could they do at the time? Bets were paid off in Vegas and silver dollars. The cops knew he did it, but they couldn't prove it. He took them there and laundered them.

He took them in, gave them them, said give me cash, fucking did that, then got silver dollars. But he was fucking crazy. He just laundered them for one, traded in his silver dollars for more silver dollars. How the fuck are you gonna prove it? So he thinks like that. He thinks of how the scam works.

So yeah, they said most of his accomplices would have, end up not being as successful as him. Most have ended up in prison or being drug addicts, but you know, not him. It's fascinating if he was able just to get away with all this shit. That's what's fucking crazy here. He keeps getting away with everything,

because he's ballsy, he just doesn't think. One of his friends said, I'd see him in a bar, and he said, I'd watch him. He'd be looking at the jukebox or the cigarette machine, trying to figure out if it was full of money or not. If he thought it was full, he was gonna try to figure out a way to get that money. That's just the way he was, a hustler.

Jukebox, like, he's breaking open the fucking meters on the table. They just try to crack it, yeah. He's doing the shitty heist, but nobody else is doing it, so he's getting away with it scot-free. It's, that's it. And there's somehow, there's so much going on in Butte,

nobody cares apparently. So he started doing more motorcycle racing type shit, but not enough, couldn't make money to support a family racing dirt bikes and shit. So in 1960. You gotta be the best in the world at it now to make good money. To make good money, yeah. And it cost a lot to do that shit. In 62, he broke his collarbone in a racing accident.

And the doctor said he couldn't race for at least six months. So what the fuck is he gonna do? Because that's how he was making the little bit of money he could make. So this is when he switches careers and decides to sell insurance, which is the opposite. That's what you say when it's like, I might as well just go sell insurance. Like that's a boring job that, you know.

Yeah, I don't know, the guy from Oz is doing it pretty well as a, as a, Well yeah, as a spokesman. Yeah, Mayhem's doing great. Ryan O'Reilly is doing fantastic. That's the dream job for evil is being that guy. Dennis Duffy's crushing it out there. So yeah, he decides though he's going to sell insurance.

This is door to door at the combined insurance company of America working for a guy named W Clement Stone who's this awful crazy fucking guy, this Clement Stone guy. So one of his friends said that it was another salesman at combined said he told me he thought the police were waiting for him to make a mistake. They knew that he had robbed the courthouse. Everybody knew he robbed the courthouse. They just couldn't prove it. So between that and the broken collar bone, this was a good time to get out of the thieving game and try to do something.

So he was hired here. He did a two week sales course in Chicago. And he said this was a different thing. It wasn't like school and it wasn't like the army. It was totally different. This was like teaching you ways to get over on people school, and it wasn't like the army, it was totally different. This was like teaching you ways to get over on people basically, because it's a sales course and you like that.

The head of the company is a guy named W. Clement Stone, who was this multi-millionaire guy who he basically like, he would do like big into motivation and that sort of thing. Like he was way ahead of his time. He's like a Tony Robbins type, you know what I mean? One of those guys. So they suggested that he can evil read success through a positive mental attitude. And this is a book that this guy wrote.

And he credits much of his success in all of life to this book, evil does. Success through a positive mental attitude. Absolutely. One guy said, a lot of guys shut themselves off from all that rah rah stuff, thought it was corny. Not Bob. He followed what you were supposed to do.

I did it too. I believed it. That stuff worked. It could make you a lot of money. Just by having your head in the right space while selling. Right. Yep. Just to have no... He doesn't care. If you tell him no, he doesn't hear it.

He just keeps plowing forward. You don't understand. You need this chamois. He tells people that, you don't understand, I'm selling the best insurance in the world right here. What are you doing? He'll yell at people. They're like, Jesus, calm down, Bob.

So one of his friends, his boss at the place, said he could talk to anyone. He wasn't afraid to talk to lawyers, doctors. A lot of guys are intimidated by education, not Bob. He went right in there and women just loved him. He'd go inside a beauty salon. He'd sell everyone in the place. They'd all be laughing. He had that charm.

Good looking guy. They'd all buy policies for their husbands too. What he was selling basically was like these $3 policies. It was like if anything happened to you, you got this certain amount of money within six months or whatever, but they were low cost policies where he'd get, you know, a dollar for every $3 policy he sold or whatever the fuck it was here. And he was very, very successful. Absolutely. He even sold insurance policies to several institutionalized mental patients I don't know how they let him do that he's gonna end up quitting the company eventually because they won't promote

him to vice president after he's been there for like three months that's how he is he wants to skip all those steps yeah make me the CEO I'm good at hockey so I should own a team and be the coach and the star. So that's what I want to do. So here's a story from that. Two salesmen finished the day at the Capri bar at Helena, Montana. They sat next to each other. It's one guy, Tamburina and Evil Knievel, and they're joined by the county attorney

who's a Helena lawyer who knew both of them. And there's a big crowd and most of the seats are filled around a large circular bar. They said, you know, it's all around it. So they said, can evil seem preoccupied? So the one guy asked him, what are you doing? And they said, what's happening here? And he's looking at the bar and figuring out like some kind of calibration about the end of the bar, really focusing on it.

Like he's like, what's this here? And pointing that stuff. His fellow worker was like, what the hell's going on here? And he keeps, they said the distance between the edge and his glass seemed important. Like he put his glass further on the bar and he'll kind of try to figure out exactly what the distance was and he wasn't talking. This was all he was doing. So they said the distance between the edge and his glass first, it was like about a foot. And he said, K between the edge and his glass first it was like about a foot and he said

Knievel said no and then he moved the glass like a half inch three-quarters of an inch and said no and then maybe moved it another half inch and then like adjusted it a millimeter you know was doing that and his little tiny bits and everyone's going what are you doing he's like a waving them away no no no no you know whatever so by the end of it it's about two and a half feet from the edge of the bar his glass okay so he turns to the county attorney who's been really trying to figure out what the hell this guy's doing and he said I think that's it evil says the guy says that's what and he said I've been trying to figure out if I stood at the edge of the bar, if my dick could still reach the glass. He said, how far away would the glass have to be to be as far as I could reach?

You know, like Chinese football thing, like it's hanging off the edge. And he said, I think this is it. I think I got it. And they said he was dead serious. So the county attorney and the other guy looked at the distance and they're like, this is fucking ridiculous. Yeah. This is, you know, a rhinoceros penis. It's crazy. looked at the distance and they're like, this is fucking ridiculous. This is a rhinoceros penis. It's crazy, that's, what the fuck? They're like, he's gotta be out of his mind or delusional, whatever.

And the county attorney said, nobody's dick is that long. You're out of your fucking mind. And Evil said the magic words, because he was waiting for someone to say it. And he said, you wanna bet? And the guy said, abs a fucking lutely, I'd love to. Yep, and the, so Evil said 500 bucks.

And the county attorney said, fuck yeah, this is easy money, it's on, let's fucking do it. So, they shook hands, Evil got out of his chair, stood up, moved up to the bar, and started to unzip his zipper. And the county attorney said, what are you doing? And he said, I'm gonna show you. This is the only way to do that.

And basically they talk about this is a circular bar, but it's not a flat one. One edge at one end is higher than the other, and they were at the low end. So everybody on the high end is just looking down at everybody on the low end. That's how this works. So everybody is looking over there. They said, if Knievel took his dick out and put it on the bar, everybody would have seen it. And he's standing next

to this fucking county attorney. There's also a couple of reporters there and there's a judge in the, in the crowd. So he can't be seen with a guy whipping his dick out on the bar, the county attorney. I don't know what the guy expected that, you know, he was the guy said, you can't do that because you're going to ruin my reputation. You can't do that. He goes, you got to see it. Right. And evil said, sure.

I can and start sun zipping. He said, no, no, you can't. You can't do that. So evil said, then I win the 500 bucks. Said, if I can't show you, you have to take my word, give me the money. And eventually the guy paid him the money. Just don't pull it out in here. That's it, he bribed him to not take his dick out.

It's fucking wild. And the guy. What a ridiculous thing. And his salesman, fellow salesman said, looked at him, this motherfucker plotted this whole thing out. He knew his dick isn't two and a half feet long. He knew this guy wouldn't let him fucking whip it out. He knew it, so he said, that motherfucker,

he said, this guy's sharp as a tack. Fucking crazy. So he ends up moving his family to Moses Lake, Washington. Evil does. Where he opens a Honda motorcycle dealership and promotes motorcycle racing. Which Honda motorcycle dealership in the early 60s was a great investment because it was like by the end of the 60s they had fucking three quarters of the market share. They were like crushing everybody. So they were, you know, they weren't bad though. They offered a hundred dollar discount to anybody who could beat him at arm

wrestling. That was his, that's his gig. That's his advertisement. A hundred dollar discount. If you could beat me at arm wrestling. Um, one of his friends said, I went to into the dealership in Moses Lake when it had been open about two weeks, I had an old Harley one 25 where he had to mix in kerosene and oil with the gas. Oh Yeah, two-stroke. She's what pain in the balls. Yeah for every time you're driving around. Yeah, and I wanted to move up I also had five kids in six years, so I didn't have any money

I just went down there to see if I could work out a deal with this new guy Can evil saw the bike and laughed at the guy And the guy said well, what can I do to get something? I'd be prouder to drive. And evil said, you can work for me. Come on in. So this guy said, he never met anybody like evil before. He was charming and devious and crazy and just thought he was interesting. So he said, not only would he say anything, he would do anything. He could sell anybody's anything. He was really, he could close a deal that most when people were wavering, he said, but you couldn't trust him for a minute.

He said he was dangerous and fun and cool to hang out with. He called him quote a strange circus. Yeah. That's what it is. That's it. So, uh, one example, he had a standing offer for the arm wrestling where he would put up a Honda 50 motorcycle against a hundred winner take all. Whoever wins. So news about this deal filtered around the bars and restaurants and everywhere of the state of Washington.

And the starting price for the Honda was $245. So the bet was more than two to one. So a bunch of people showed up, $100 in hand, big guys, you know, all that. And Evil would fucking beat them one after another. He'd beat him, he'd win. So a report that he was going to take on yet another challenger would run through the neighborhood and a small crowd would assemble to see if he could beat them a hundred people or so would come in there and one guy said he had a strong right forearm maybe from hockey I don't know he just wore out those kids after a while they

didn't even come around as often because he'd beaten them all That's it One guy had this this friend had a next-door neighbor who was a sheet metal worker and the sheet metal worker was a real big guy and He wasn't interested in the bet because he didn't give a shit about motorcycles, but he was in the boats So this the intermediary tells evil Knievel Are tells this guy that Knievel had taken a boat and trade for a motorcycle, so you should go beat him for that boat. So the dealership guy showed up,

or the big guy, the sheet metal worker, showed up to dealership with $200 to bet, because the boat was more expensive than the motorcycle, and he beat the guy, and he walked out with $200 and a boat. How is he? He's a scam artist at everything, but how does he win it? It's like a feat of strength.

He's actually good at it. But this guy beat him. He lost this time and the friend said there were only three people in the shop. I was the third one. I'll give it to Bob. He didn't complain, didn't try to get out of the bet. The only thing he did was get my neighbor and me to swear that we would never tell what happened. But he paid up and did his thing.

Here I am telling everybody. That's telling the world here. So evil's big promotional idea was to build a racetrack. He figured that would simulate stimulate the sales of the bikes and accessories and give people a place to ride them if they saw it. It's like having a skateboard shop, putting a skate park behind you. See what you can do on the skateboard that you should buy for me? So yeah, everybody would do well and they tried to build it. They were thinking about it. There's a lot of farms around and vacant shit like that. And they said, what would be a good choice? And so they were looking

all around for everything. And his friend said, I was driving in my car. The announcer on the radio started describing the races as a big show at the new Moses Lake track. The feature event, he said, was the Moses Lake English teacher and wrestling coach, Gary Fry, this is the guy who's listening to the radio, driving through some flaming boards.

Gary Fry says, I couldn't believe it. And I said, oh no, that's never gonna happen. He's like, I didn't say I was gonna do this and it's being announced on the radio. He said, no, it's too dangerous, it's too stupid. I never did anything like that. I have five kids. My wife will fucking kill me.

I can't be doing crazy shit. So, you know, that's insane. I'm not doing it. So they said the pieces of particle board would be doing crazy shit. So, you know, that's insane. Not doing it. So they said the pieces of particle board would be set on fire. They're, what are they, four feet by eight feet, they said. And he's supposed to ride through them. And he said, no, fuck that.

So Evil said, listen, this is gonna be fun. It's gonna be great. You can do it. The guy said, fuck no, I'm not doing that So he said I'll fucking do it myself then evil. So don't give a shit So he said the you know, he had to run the races and run the show, but I'll do it anyway, so Can evil said but I got all this shit to do you should do it and you have to do it because you're the local Big name and so the guy said no no no

anyway the do it because you're the local big name. And so the guy said, no, no, no. Anyway, basically this fry guy here started getting around that he was fucking not gonna do this. And so the district superintendent of schools called, this guy worked for that, for the superintendent of schools, and he told this guy, he heard the ads on the radio, and so you're not allowed to do this.

We forbid you to do it. So this guy said, I'll do it. They told me I'm not allowed, so I'll do it. I didn't wanna do it, but now I do. Picked out a bike from the trade-ins, I would have the best chance of success. Like a big, it was a big, giant, heavy Harley that'll get through the particle boards.

The bike had a hand shift, this guy drove it for days working it all out, figuring it out. Evil told him he should be doing 40 miles an hour to go through the boards, but he thought the bike was so big he might be able to get away with a little bit slower. So he grand opening of the of the racetrack here, he's wearing Bob's helmet and leathers, which he'll have for a long time. Evil Knievel, he loves his helmet and leathers here. He tried to get the Harley up to speed. I guess the races had broken down the oiled topsoil, made the dirt loose and the motorcycle slow.

So he only got up to 25 miles an hour. That's as fast as he could get to. Evil said, you'll be fine. Don't worry about it. So he said, okay. And he pulls out and he said he starts going, he gets up to, all he could get up to is 25 miles an hour and then he turned away and the people booed him. Oh yeah. So then he came back through again and which Evil would do that all the time, that was

his shtick. He would go and then do another run. So he came around again, gave the Harley as much gas as possible. He said he sort of hung down to one side to protect himself from the collision, hit the first flaming board at 25 miles an hour, crashed through that, then the second and the third, and came out the other side.

He said, Knievel was right. He had enough weight to go through the shit. He said he was alive and doing great, and now people were cheering, and they were on the radio here. So Fry told Knievel he was happy that that was it for that. And Knievel said, fuck that. I booked, you just booked you on another show coming up.

And he said, bullshit you did not fucking happening. But he did anyway. And he, the guy kept doing it. So they, every of those races were all on Saturday mornings, and that was kind of the big thing here. They did all sorts of weird shit at this racetrack too. They tried to make it like, they said, four or five riders were left at the Corral on a Saturday, not too long after the grand opening of the track.

They'd been there for a while. Knievel was not a particularly big drinker, but was already known to do strange things in Moses Lake when the beers piled up. Example, riding with the logging chain making sparks. On this Saturday, the beers had piled up. Part of the entertainment had been watching a couple of workers unload a flatbed trailer across the street, bringing appliances into a Swartz's electric store. The job was almost finished. Maybe one or two boxes left on the truck. The ramp was still attached.

Evil excused himself from the table, went outside, put on his helmet, kicked his motorcycle into action, put it into gear, pounded on the gas, went across Broadway, up the ramp, and onto the back of the flatbed. And that was fun, everyone was like, hey, look at that. So then he started doing stationary wheelies on the flatbed, just holding the bike steady, and they were like, hey, look at that So then he started doing stationary wheelies on the flatbed just holding the bike steady and they were like that's hard to do

That's pretty cool doing stationary wheelies, but he didn't hold the bike steadily enough The back wheel caught some traction somewhere on the flatbed Maybe hit some tape or some shit like that But the motorcycle shot forward with him on, flew through the plate glass window of the electric store into the store. So everyone went, holy shit from the restaurant, ran out to see what happened. He was inside the store all stretched out on the fucking showroom floor covered in glass. He stood up, checked everything, didn't have a scratch on him.

Plate glass window, nothing. So they were like, that's the kind of guy Laid his ass open. That's fucking crazy His friend the Gary Fry guy said I seriously think it was right here that he got the idea that he led a charmed life And he said he went through Swartz's window and nothing happened. I think this opened him up to everything that came afterward He did apologize to the store owner and offer up his insurance information. So there is that. Very fucking interesting. So we'll tell one more little tale here and then we'll kind of call it a day. There's set up who he is here. And we'll get a lot more crime too for crazy shit, which is he's already stole so much stuff. So much stuff.

They said while trying to support his family, Knievel recalled the Joey Chitwood show he saw as a boy and decided he could do something similar using a motorcycle. So promoting the show himself, Knievel rented a venue, wrote the press releases, set up a show, sold tickets and served as his own MC. Yeah He's done the whole fucking thing. One time on a Monday morning, he started building a ramp. He told the Fry guy that he was going to jump over some rattlesnakes. Uh-oh.

He said, I'm gonna jump over some mountain lions and rattlesnakes. Mountain lions, okay. And Fry said, where are you gonna get mountain lions and rattlesnakes? Right. And he said, there's a guy. I got a guy.

Up in Cooley City, yeah. He said, he has a roadside zoo. I guy. Up in Cooley City. Yeah. He said, he has a roadside zoo. I want you to go up there. Get him to bring the mountain lions and snakes down to Moses Lake. You don't have a rattlesnake guy? What's your problem? I have a snake guy, but he's sick all the time.

It's weird. So, Knievel said that he was going to perform the second set of races at Moses Lake, and he saw the reception that the guy received for going through flaming boards so he was like, well fuck it, I could do that myself. He goes, I'll do this though. He, this is fucking hilarious. Anyway he said he didn't like going on the road for Knievel to go up to Cooley City because every time this Gary Fry guy would go out of town for Knievel, as soon as he left town,

Knievel would show up at his house and try to fuck his wife. Literally. His wife Rita. There'd be a knock at the door. So Fry had seen this happening again and again. He said there was a pathological streak to Knievel's womanizing. Friendships meant nothing. He pursued all women all day every day 24 hours per day. Oh he's a horny. It's really great. This guy, understandable, he said this guy was astounded at how many women would fall for this too. Good looking women, married women. Wow.

Upstanding women. He said he knew that Knievel didn't worry about consequences and he said one time, we were coming back from the races somewhere and he had me stop at this woman's house. It was a farm that she and her husband ran. They had kids. This was five o'clock in the morning.

He wanted me to let him off. He said she'd give him a ride to work. I said, okay, well, what if her husband's there? He said the husband's gone. She told me he was gone. I said, but what if he returned? Bob pulled out his penis right there in the front yard. He said, at the husband's home, I'll tell him I'm the milkman and he hasn't paid his

bills and I'll piss in his shoes. With his dick out. With his dick out. Then he went up and rang the doorbell. With his dick out probably still. With his dick out. Yeah. This Fry dude got in a fist fight with Knievel about sweet talk and his wife here.

Fry said he didn't like it and his wife really hated it and would complain about it. Knievel always would say that he wanted to make a trade. Linda Farida, I'll trade your wives. Wow. They said it was funny if anyone else would say it but creepy when he says it because he probably meant it. He said Fry and his wife not only had five kids but they also had a big Chesapeake Bay retriever that they kept mostly in the basement. On the day evil sent fry on the road, Rita let the dog out of the basement for protection so he wouldn't come

over and try to molester. So fry told Knievel to cut it out one day at the shop. Evil took issue with the words and said, what are you going gonna do about it? And so they said with while he said that he grabbed a chain to use as a weapon and swung it around at him. So Frye, who's the wrestling coach at the school he works at, dodged the chain and tackles Knievel to the floor and puts him in a submission hold. And that was that. And he said that curtailed the romantic proposals but you know that's still he's still evil Fry said you had to know two things about him You had to know that he would steal from anybody and that he would chase all women

It didn't matter how good a friend you were if he saw something you had that he liked He tried to take it if you understood this from the beginning and it was a lot to understand You could get along with him. You just have to watch him Yeah, holy shit. So The woman had the dog in the lawn of his house here while Rita worried about any strange car that might appear in the driveway That's crazy. There's she's that scared of him That's fucking wild So the guy with the zoo agreed to bring the two mountain lions and an unspecified number

of rattlesnakes to the event. He really does have a guy. Oh, he has a guy and Knievel would pay him $50. That's what it is. So it's very, very interesting here. Basically a crowd of 300 people laced with friends and relatives of the racers gathered at the track on this farm for an event. Hot day, all this shit.

The man from Cooley City appeared as scheduled with two mountain lions and a dozen rattlesnakes. So the mountain lions were small, no more than 70 pounds a piece, and not threatening looking. They just looked like big cats laying there. And they seemed exhausted because it was hot out too. So there's laying there's like a zoo So the owner didn't want them put in any danger

So they were chained to the sides of the jump ramp Which makes no sense to what he's doing here. The two of them immediately crawled under the ramp for shade So there they're gone. Not a spectacle The snakes were put in a large cart a large cardboard box that had a rolled fridge box The snakes unlike the mountain lions were energized by all the activity. They rattled and moved around and did all that shit. Yeah, because they're threatened. Yeah, they're like, what the fuck am I doing?

They're scared to death. So, Knievel roared around on a Honda 350 building up suspense. The mountain lions were prodded to come into the sun and at least watch what was happening here. The snakes continued to do their thing He started the run up for the jump as he had done it all here and if he could make the jump he would make it here He's trying to make it over. He basically set up a thing where there's two mountain lions Sleeping and 12 rattlesnakes in the middle. Yeah, the middle of these, he's gonna jump over them. That's gonna be the big thing here. So they said, but it was a dirt track.

The same problem that it confronted Gary Fry on his flaming boards jump here, confronting evil. Yeah, your tires just spin, you can't get speed. Yeah, the races had loosened up the track. He couldn't get any speed. And if he couldn't get any speed, he couldn't clear. It's a 40 foot jump over the cardboard box You know

Anyway, he tried to get up as much speed as he tried and he flew off This is his first kind of big jump and his back wheel hit the box. Oh the box flipped over Oh God opened and fucking snakes went everywhere and Knievel landed and sprained his ankle But he didn't fall off the bike. And he didn't get bit. Yeah, so the rattlesnake started slithering around and going toward the crowd. So the old man's going, get my snakes, get my snakes.

And Knievel's going, fuck you, I'm not touching your, fuck you, dude. Look at the snakes, that's terrible. Him and Gary Fry are running away going, fuck you, man. Those are your fucking snakes. Deal with them. So the crowd ended up scattering as the snakes pour into him. Imagine this. He's on his leathers from rooms flies over and hits it. Snake. It's like a Homer Simpson thing. Like they go everywhere.

Snakes go to the crowd. The crowd then scatters. They're driving the other. It's fucking hilarious. So, man, anyway, the guy said he should get his $50 here, and Knievel said, the check'll be in the mail, which of course he never paid him for this. No check, but this was the first professional daredevil show in his career, a disaster but an evil Knievel disaster. It's a spectacle, it's not a failure. It's entertainment.

No matter what happens, it will be a spectacle. And by the end of, by the seventies, people weren't even watching to see him succeed. They were watching to see him crash. Right. Cause they thought he was going to crash. He had that slow motion footage. You've seen it of him crashing. That was like they, he got a filmmaker to do that and it was like, he took that on every talk show in the world and did that. So then when he went back to work on Monday, Evil started to experiment with larger jumps. He started to jump over objects, whatever he could find in the back of the store.

He started with boats. There's a couple of boats that he took in and trade. So he'd start his run up across third Avenue next to the plumber store shot across the street up the driveway through the alleyway and over the boats. Then he started jumping car a car then two cars. Then he'd add to his totals as the days went past to just, you know, build up speed and get a couple of boats, a couple of cars, and fly over them. And he said, if I could get people to watch this,

I got something. I got money, yeah. And that is what we'll figure out on the next edition of Evil Can Evil Rides Again. Yeah, so this is, Evil's already insane. We've gotten his backstory a bit, so you kinda know, because you'd say, kinda like, who the fuck, what kind of psychopath would act like this?

What would do this to somebody? Brain damage is what does this to somebody. No frontal lobe action, I think, is the problem here. Between hockey and kitchen doors and his cousins, he had... He's just nuts. He was gonna do this. He was gonna do this. It's just interesting that his first jump,

I mean we're talking later on, Caesar's Palace over the fountains and the Snake River and all this type of shit started out with essentially some fucking parking lot and a farm with a box of snakes that he fucked up. That's hilarious. He didn't even make it over. That is, I would just love to see all the people scatter.

That would have been absolutely the funniest shit ever. So yeah, we'll get back into it next week with him starting off his daredevil career and doing so much crazy shit. It's not even funny. I don't even mean just that. I mean also scamming people and scheming people and doing wild shit.

Dragging a woman by the head to Idaho. Remodeling things that he doesn't own, things like that. He's out of his fucking mind. Yeah, kidnapping wives, all that type of shit. The IRS is going to have a good time with that. We'll talk about everything and more. Can't wait to get to that. So tune in next week.

And for a few weeks after that here, this is going to be be a really really fun series. Can't fucking wait for this so been excited for a long time. You should definitely tell everyone about it get on whatever app you're on. Please give us five stars tell the fucking world that you love the show and they should listen as well. Tell your friends tell everybody. Also follow us on social media at Crime and Sports on wherever you follow people shit. Do that listen to our other two shows, Your Stupid Opinions, which is fucking hilarious, and of course, Small Town Murder,

which is also fucking hilarious, and there's murder. So check those out for sure. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports is where you get all of your bonus materials. Anybody, $5 a month or above, you are gonna get, number one, hundreds of episodes of back episodes immediately upon subscription. These are bonus episodes you've never heard before, never been available publicly.

You'll get all of those immediately and new ones every other week, one crime and sports, one small town murder, and you are going to get it fucking all. And we know you're going to like last week's. We got new stuff coming up for you this week. And at the end of it also, you are going to get a shout out here where Jimmy will mispronounce your name, even though believe me, he would love to get this shit right. So I would like to hear the names of these people. Jimmy starting right now,

hit me with the names of the people who would never ever, ever try to hit on our wives while they sent us on a mission to get an old man, to bring mountain lions to a parking lot hit me with them right now This is executive producer Gary Howard Elena Zemmell. Hey Gary and Tyskaiba Tyskiba Tyskiba Thank you all so much for what you're doing that's You don't have to do it and you do and we appreciate it other producers this week are Peyton Meadows Happy hour in Pecos, Texas Jan Janice Hill, Scarlett Horvitz

III, Nicholas Palmieri, Melissa Coffin, Church Meet, Jessica with no last name, Steve Dermaine, Juliana Morgenthaler, Rob Renner, Blackheart2000, Angela Tatry, GKKKkk Santina Galvin Marcy Smith Michelle Kiggins Christina jinx Michael Maglio Maglio Jesse Carlson Carlson the dude no just the dude Lisa McChrystal dude there is Matt Maddy Maddy Petoskey Pettiskey Josh Piper Amanda Amanda Matthews, Darren Scott, Charlotte Dolan, Nicole Gray, Tanner Brusco, Susan Fisher, Natalie Contra,

Bill 2344, Aspen P, Amber with no last name, Holly Arnold, Katie with no last name, Ashley Dawn, John Donahue, John O. Donahue, Kate Pat, Kay Pat, I don't know, Jenny Crosby, Amanda Haas, Kate Pat, Kay Pat, I don't know, Jenny Crosby, Amanda Haas, Haas, Haas, Jennifer Track, Stacey Guy, T-Ray Bergeron, Bergeron, Michelle Harris, Michael with no last name, Angela Schmeiser, Gail with no last name,

Olivia with no last name, Alex Herkamp, Robert Scaffone, Lizzie with no last name, Bethany Stevens, Joseph Nicholsonson Kate and Chris from New Jersey Olli Oxenfree Clinton Salisbury Salisbury Haley Lock Luke Salisbury twice Salisbury the first time Thomas wait Sarah with no last name. Oh, is that Walti or wait? It's wait Benjamin Madison

Sarah with no last name. Oh, is that Waltie or wait? It's wait. Benjamin Madison, Matteson. Peter Goysen, oh, it goes in you, James, the Peter. The Peter, it goes in you. As you were trying to figure it out, my eyes were getting wider like, Jimmy, are you not, you're gonna keep trying to pronounce this?

Anemmous, Alva Thompson, Michael. They gotta want to offend the Dutch, it's a Dutch name. Cernadewski, D-Stack, Alexandria Krukelink, Jessica Anderson, Jan Harris, maybe Jan, Rick Calhoun, Colin Forseks, Emily Bond, Danielle- Forseks? Colin Forseks? Colin Forseks, that's what he's doing. Danielle Crumb, it does.

Berto Calez, Mookaulele, Roy with no last name. That's funny. Keana Price, Cat Proctor, Rian with no last name, Ryan, Rian, Rian, Erica Brimhall, Kelly Wrights, Lauren Stites, Cher with no last name, Cheryl with no last name, Joy with no last name, Midnight with no last name, Thelma Borgensdorfer, Arlen,

Thelma, you've got a fucked up last name, Arlen, also, Gruconaz, Gruconaz, I don't know, Jillian with no last name, Laura Hyatt, Lillian with no last name, Leon, Yana, Yana, Carol Shook, Kendall. Did you get Yana out of Lillian? You started out all, that was a journey.

I got Lillian out of Yana. That was a journey. Lolo Smirnoff. Lauren Loham, Tiasha, Tiasha Deakins. Court with no last name. Stephanie Bean Kepler with no last name. Colt Kibbe Christine, likeiasha Deakins. Court would know last name. Stephanie Bean Kepler would know last name. Colt Kibbe Christine, like the car that killed people. Haley would know last name.

Austin Bath, Peyton Rabideau. Hinn Hine Time, Shane Shipley. Tree would know last name. Craig would know last name. Also Craig King, probably the same person with two of them now. Tassarath. Twice.

Tassarath Shazafoochie Shozathil. Tassarath. Twice. Tassarath, Shazafoochie, Shozathil. Shozathalli. That's not right. Okay, sure. That's probably not even somebody's name. Mike would no last name. I don't believe him. Nicole would no last name.

Megan Johnston. Alan's mom, Carolyn would no last name. Drew Dogg, 34, just my luck. Lori would no last name. Rhonda just my luck lori with no last name ronda morland dem zero dem Oh Andrew can off enough Maybe it's come off. It's possible Jacob Jacob Walker, Antonia Antonia valace Randy with no last name the system

Melanie Lilis Jordan Volrath Edith Serna. These are the most fucked up names ever. This is like all of Eastern Europe has fucking decided to. Anthony Festa, Cindy Archibald, Freida White, Michelle Coppila, Jenny Showman, Stephanie Sing, okay. Sina Conorath. Sina Conorath. Oh. Sina Conorath.

Now, that feels dirty. I don't know what it is. I was gonna say, is that Dick Kizinya, Part Two? John Randall Armza, with no last name. Amanda Walsh, Edgar Edward Galligan. Galligan. Veronica B. Galligan. Kayla Lanyer, Cody Richardson, Emily Stewart, Aislinn Burgess,

Jas B, Joss maybe, Heather Nelson, Kira would know last name, Christopher Banville, Tila Taylor, Talia Christ, Joe Gladhill, it's probably Chris, Elise, Elise Bridges, Becky with no last name, JBW89, also J and J. JJ, the letters J and J. Thank you all so much for everything you're doing. Thank you everybody so much. You fantastic, wonderful bastards. We can't tell you how much we appreciate all that you do for us, but just trust us. We do. That's why we try to put out all these goddamn shows.

So keep hanging out with us. You want to follow us on social media, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Get your tickets while you're there for 2025 live shows. We are very excited and live from the Crime and Sports studios, we will see you next week. Bye. If you like crime and sports, you can listen early and ad free now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. In the 1980s, a rose swept the country. Hey Mike, I really like this white Zinfandel. Well good, good. Now put it down, I'm going to try another one. White Zin became America's top-selling wine. But most don't know that this sweet drink has a sour history.

What began in 1986 with counterfeit bottles… A big fraud. A multi-million dollar fraud. sent investigators chasing one of the most powerful families in the business, the Lachartes. But the closer the feds got to them, the more dangerous things became. It's a story of deceit.

At the time I was paranoid. Threats. You touch my kids, I will kill you. And murder. With a.22 caliber bullet to the head. What started with a scheme to mislabel wine spilled into a blood-soaked battle for succession. Welcome to Blood Vines. You can binge listen to Blood Vines exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

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