Crime in Sports - #448 - Scamming Your Way To Fame - Evel Knievel - Part 2

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

This week, we continue the epic tale of one of the biggest icons, ever! He finds his place in the world, by putting his life on the line, for entertainment. After trying to sell motorcycles, and becoming a one man burglary ring, he puts together a "daredevil team", and begins booking shows. His horrible crashes make him a spectacle, but his lying & scheming gets him spots on tv, and a gig to jump the fountains at Caesar's Palace in Vegas! Will he make it???Lie, cheat & steal your way through life, make your wife perform stoop labor, while you mess around on motorcycles, and pretend to be an attorney while scheming your way into a career changing event with Evel Knievel - Part 2!!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.

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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 another really wild of course edition of Crime in Sports. We are going to continue with Evil Knievel today. Oh we've missed him. We've missed him.

The first part, he's not even famous yet. He's not doing, but he's played sports and he's been in crime. But yeah, it's been all crazy. He's already been in accidents and break always breaking the law like crazy. But we will get to breaking his legs. He's a bad man. We'll get to him making his wife do stoop labor here. This episode in a minute. Yeah, he's a terrible man. Just a bad guy We'll talk all about it in a second first of all shut up and give me murder calm You should head over there. Oh, yeah your tickets for live shows for small town murder here We just finished up our first weekend phenomenal stuff, and we cannot wait next stuff is st

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just like the name of this show. That will get you anybody five dollars a month or above immediate access to hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before hundreds and hundreds lots of them on there and then you get new ones every other week one crime in sports one small town murder we give them all it just take it here take it walk it walk out the door for the low low price of five dollars and this week what you're gonna get for crime in sports it's a disaster potpourri. Oh we've done industrial disasters and hot air ballooning disasters and all this and

amusement park disasters. It's a nice disaster potpourri this week. Terrible things happening. Everybody will be maimed. It's gonna be lots of maiming people walking around with less limbs than they had when the show started so that'll be fun. Then for small town murder we're gonna talk about when psychics actually did their jobs and like

Unbelievable. predicted something. Normally we do a lot of debunking, so this will be like a kind of, hey, maybe it worked. By the end of it, it might end up being that, you know, actually they found out this way and that way and had nothing to do with. You never know, we'll find out.

We'll explore the world of psychics finding bodies and such. That is on patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of that. That said, I think it's time to, oh you get a shout out at the end of the show too. That's important stuff. That said I think it's time to dive back into evil here. Here we go. This lunatic.

Let's see here. When we last left off this was him trying to be a daredevil at first. Right. It's his first... Yeah, the snakes, the snake box and the bobcats that hid under the ramp. Oh my god. The thought of these snakes going into the crowd and the way they described the crowd just like running away is so funny.

You couldn't get a worse scenario of like, there goes the box. Here comes the snakes. I have a heavy dirt bike hitting the edge of a box is going to just throw it. Like throw spaghetti from a colander. That's what it will happen. But a spaghetti that bites venomous spaghetti, poisonous spaghetti, throw that into the crowd That is gonna be horrifying. So nowadays here the guy he was working with in that he took off to To work on his master's degree in California. He decided he'd had enough working with evil Knievel here so evil

Tried to work a deal to buy the the motorcycle dealership That's what he was trying to do because we left off he was trying to figure out a motorcycle dealership. That's what he was trying to do, because we left off, he was trying to figure out a motorcycle dealership deal to work with. And he offered half of this deal to a guy named Ray Gunn, who we talked about, or it was a guy named another rider at the track here. And this guy said, no, he didn't want to do it.

And he said, you know, he said, quote, it didn't sound like a bad deal. Not a lot of money was involved, but I knew how it would all work. I'd do all the work. He'd spend all the money. I Knew evil well enough to stay out of that. Yeah, that's that's how everyone feels about evil unless you're mesmerized If you know him, you're not gonna give him money. That's crazy You know obviously the snake jump whoever financed and gave him money for that didn't get paid for that No, no, nothing. So evil never has money. That's the thing

He's living south of Moses Lake with the dealership doing all that kind of shit trying to sell motorcycles One resident of Moses Lake remembered when evil was quote so poor. He didn't have a cracker in the cupboard for his kids Cracker then the IRS started looking at the dealership too. So now it's getting worse here and it's not good at all. And then he needed money at this point. Obviously, he's got this trying to sell Hondas and he's doing all this shit. So what he does is turns into a what the book describes as a one man local crime spree. He has no stranger to burglary as we know. That's his jam.

There was a ton of robberies everywhere. And this Lake Moses isn't a big place, or Moses Lake. It's not a big place. Where? It's Montana, right? I think that's Washington, Eastern Washington. Oh, okay, all right, yeah. So it's not a big place, so it's not like,

if a guy comes to town, and then a whole bunch of crime happens. It's probably that guy. Look at him first, you know what I mean? That's what they're looking at here, especially if he's- What a conversation, yeah. If he goes by the name Evil, you know,

maybe check him out. Right. I guess he was the first suspect, and the only suspect in a shitload of robberies The only guy they looked at but they could never catch him in the act And so they could never catch him doing it. He's he's pretty slick. That's one thing about evil here His friend the guy who didn't want to go into business with him said he was always doing these little criminal Extracurricular activities. He robbed a lot of places burg burglarized, whatever you want to call it. Criminal, he's always doing these crimes. That's polysyllabic shit for saying crime.

Yeah, a little too wordy for crime. Criminal extracurricular activities. It makes it sound like, well that's nice, it's good for a kid to play sports. That's what it makes it sound. It's good that he's in band. He'll meet the other kids and get some confidence. He's breaking and robbing.

This is crazy. He robbed, whatever you want to call it. Crime is what we want to call it. Finally, the guy he was working with at the dealership, Darrell Tribber, he ended the arrangement at the dealership. Basically, the numbers never added up correctly, you know, because it's Evil Can Evil. Embezzling and stealing and shit. Yeah, and he thought about, he thought about evil,

he said he was a great salesman. That's the thing, I mean, we found out from selling the insurance, he's a salesman. I mean, he can do that and he's an engaging character and people would like to come there and talk to him, but he doesn't put the money where it's supposed to at the end of the day, so it really doesn't matter. The guy said he didn't pursue the problem

with the cops or anything like that, he really doesn't matter. The guy said he didn't pursue the problem with the cops or anything like that, he just ended the relationship. He just ended it. So the Moses Lake Honda dealership closed, and then Evil went to Sunnyside, Washington to work for a guy named Don Pomeroy at his motorcycle shop. So this doesn't seem like this guy's gonna be world famous in 10 years, or six years or whatever at this point

And anytime ever anytime ever it seems like he's gonna be a dirtbag who lives in a trailer and beats his kids. That's the Near him. Yeah. Yeah, so he takes his family back to Butte. Yeah, and We're and he tried to sell Insurance again the same combined insurance that he was doing, but he didn't have it in him anymore. He wanted to do the motorcycle thing. He thought he, he got a taste of that, I think. Sure.

When you get a taste from comedians who go on stage, when you get a taste of admiration from a live crowd, it's a weird drug that is, especially if that's the way your brain works, oh man, it is a tough drug to shake. Tough drug to shake. That's why you see 70-year-old men who are wealthy enough to not have to be on stage on stage.

That's why. They're still doing it. They need it for some reason. It's strange. So he tries to do this. Another rider from Washington, that's the Don Pomeroy guy, offers him a chance to sell Yamaha motorcycles in Sunnyside, Washington.

Which is- Yeah, his Honda's didn't work out, so it's definitely the brand. It's gotta be the brand. It's not evil, obviously. It's about 100 miles south of Moses Lake, this place, so he says, fuck it, we're going. Let's do this.

And this is how evil works, by the way. Okay. He tells the wife pack up. We're leaving Yeah, not what do you think about moving here? Doesn't matter follow let's let's fucking go here the book the way the book quotes it is wife came second kids came third Jesus period don't give a shit about them. Yeah, gotta do my thing. We can make new ones That's it. So they move into a trailer in Sunnyside, Washington Sounds attractive here Linda. That's uh, I bet that's an ironic name. It's what's Eastern Washington. So it's Sunny over there. Yes. It's shit over there. It's not like not the majestic mountains or anything like that

That's why he's familiar with the Snake River, isn't it? Yeah, yeah close to it, Idaho, Montana all this This is where he's all kind of spent all of his time And this is where he's the most comfortable his wife here has to get a real fucking job Yeah, and this is a hard hard job here the guy he's working with the Pomeroy guy has a seven acre asparagus farm So Linda takes a job picking asparagus. Wow. Yeah, I guess it was a lot of like teenagers worked there. Yeah.

And hard labor. So they have babysitters taking care of the kids and Evils selling motorcycles and she's doing stoop labor. Is that like, to pick asparagus, it's just like snapping it. Yeah, I think but it's down on the ground. You have to bend down. Do they grow in stocks like they like they pack them? I don't even know. I think they grow in stocks. They used to hang asparagus stocks to keep flies out of places. Oh, that was a thing like in Pennsylvania and shit

back in the day. They used to do that. Yeah. So like 1800 1700s. So I guess if it grew on like a on like a tree, it looked like a dick tree. So that would be. Yeah, so like 1800 1700s So I guess if it grew on like a unlike a tree it looked like a dick tree So that would be yeah, I've never said asparagus tree would be something I did you saw me do it again. Yeah, yeah, just but they'd be like leaning over cuz they're long Yeah, it'd be like the dick museum on fucking yeah Snap off. That's up there. That's ready And you have to cut the rest off here. They've gotta grow like grass, I don't know,

I've never seen it. Oh my God. And evil's selling this shit, Ron Pomeroy, who was one of Don Pomeroy's sons, I only name my kid shit that rhymes with me. They can't have my name, but it better rhyme, god damn it. So he said, quote, one of my first memories is the police coming to the shop and escorting him out

in handcuffs Taking evil out in handcuffs from work in the middle of a shit. Yeah, he's he's like hold on a minute I got a guy in the line about this 120 and they're like no no no It's time to go. You gotta go. You gotta go now. It's gonna cost me a sale man. Damn it. Come on finish up my sale I get credit for this. I got him on the the hook god damn it as they're dragging him out He said I'd never seen anything like it. It made quite an impression on me. I still don't know what he did I know he missed a few days work His friend Ron hazard who?

How is he not working on the in the in the shows team Ron hazard? He said he cashed a bad check, I bailed him out, he was in jail a couple of times. Okay. Police were trying to figure out a way to arrest him, but they could never figure out how to get him to, how to just catch him basically. He's good at crime.

Slippery, yeah. He knows what the cops are looking for and avoids it. His friend, the Hazzard guy, he's a bar owner, and he said he wasn't much of a drinker. He wasn't much of a pool player either, though he'd play. He'd play shuffleboard too. He wasn't afraid to fight, I'll say that. He had more than one fight and he didn't have to push him real hard. How about that?

Evil fights all the time. He's just always ready to take a swing at somebody. He's fucking... Doesn't drink, doesn't gamble. He drinks, he drinks like a fucking fish. He's just not in the bar. Oh, okay, he's never seen it. He's already drunk when he shows up. He's not much of a drinker type of guy.

In the bar, the bar is when he's going out to show himself off and peacock. It's not about getting drunk and having a good time. It's about telling everybody that he's gonna go do something special Like later on when he decides he's gonna jump jump the Grand Canyon. He pulls that out of his ass He'll just go around places and just be like stand at the bars and just be like so I'm gonna be jumping the Grand Canyon On my motorcycle as he's standing there and people are like, huh? The hell are you talking about? Like that's how he's trying to spread publicity, one bar at a time, it's fucking weird.

So he does get, he's a good rider of motorcycles for a layman. Like he'll try racing and he's not very good at it. Like the other motorcyclists are like, he's not a very good motorcycle rider, he's just not, like in terms of this. But on the street, he can ride a wheelie all the way up the street.

He can go fast real recklessly, but he can ride a wheelie all the way up the street. Most, you know. He can go fast real recklessly, but he can't get in the turns and do the technical shit. Exactly, exactly. He's just, he's not afraid of anything, is what it is. He's just got balls and will try anything here. So, by the way, Pomeroy's son Jim was a big international motorcycle racer.

I was gonna say, Pomeroy, I think, is a name of racing. Yeah, that makes sense. Jim Pomeroy, I think is a name of racing. Yeah, that makes sense. Jim Pomeroy was the first American to win an FIM International Race, which was the 250cc Spanish motocross Grand Prix in 1973. Wow. So during, at one race,

Knievel saw Pomeroy do the wheel walk, which is the wheelie standing on the seat. Okay, yeah. He saw that and he was like, putting that in my fucking shit, stealing that. He saw another comic do a joke and was like, nope. That's my joke now. No one knows this asshole, that's mine.

Yep. So he took that, he practiced it and practiced it and then did it in his next show. Again, he has balls. You can't give him anything like that. He, this is hilarious though. When he was really getting into it and trying to practice it, he was going to do it at a show, but he was doing it, I know he did it on a warm day wearing only a t-shirt, not his racing leathers. Oh. Because he was showing off, and it's on asphalt, and he crashed. Oh, no.

And took off most of the skin on his body, basically. That'll do it. Yeah. Went to the hospital, came back to the race, covered in bandages. And did it again? He went back to the hospital. He just went to the hospital and said,

just fucking cover up the bleeding spots, and then left. Wrap me up the bleeding spots and then left me up Wow, and then left and Palmer I said I'll never forget all that blood oozing through he was a crazy bastard Golly, he's a crazy fuck. That's I mean he's insane. He's he'll do a race later with a fucking broken I'll do a jump with a broken arm He's like I'll just hold it with one arm. I'll hold the fucking, that's insane. Don't do that. It's not the jump.

It's the landing, man. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. When he lands and then of course he didn't have good control and he flipped over the handlebars and almost killed himself for the 40th fucking time. With one arm. He's a maniac. Now, here's a few stories from locals in Butte from around this time.

Because Evil is having a hard time making a living and he's basically just robbing people all the time. So this is the owner of the Akoma Lounge who we've talked about before. I think that was where he sold somebody their own set of tires. Their own set of tires. Which is one of the greatest things ever.

This guy says, Bobby robbed me. Bobby is evil by the way, if you didn't hear part one. That hurt because we were friends. The place was broken into during the night. I just figured it was Bob. I just assumed it was Bob. He said a few weeks later, someone broke into the Akoma Lounge again.

This time it was a reverse robbery. The robber left the amount that had been robbed the first time plus a hundred bucks. It was definitely Bob. It's definitely Bob. But at least he gave it back. Yeah, with interest. He just borrowed it is what he did. This guy was like, are you fucking kidding me?

Like he comes in, finds that and Evil happened to come into the bar that day that night after he found it and Evil said aren't you gonna buy around when the guy said fucking you know hey somebody gave me my money back he said I should buy around then for the whole bar. Heard you made a hundred bucks. Fucking balls on this guy yeah it's he he talks to his cousins a lot, and we'll talk about that. One of his cousins was watching him practice jumping his motorcycle, and he said, you're sure good on those takeoffs,

but you're not so good sometimes with those landings. Aren't you there? That's... And that's kind of the part that makes it impressive. That he keeps doing it. But I mean, the impressive feat is the jump, but it's not the guy in the air, it's the guy that does that and then sits that shit back on the ground, because that's what makes you different from us.

I could do that shit, I could crash a motorcycle too. That's what I mean. If you could stay on it enough to get it up to speed, fucking anybody could fly through the air, that's not hard. That's not hard. That's super easy. Yeah, the human cannonball part is the other side, is the thing. Yeah, it's that part where gravity brings you back.

Yeah, imagine if diving was just flipping around in the air, didn't matter how you hit the water. Fucking sideways, belly flopping. That's the point. It's that part where you do it better than us because you landed it. But that's the fucked up part, as we'll find out later on. The thing that made him famous was one particular crash

that happened to be captured amazingly on film in slow motion. Of the crash. Yeah, in like a very super slow motion. Oh, I've seen it. Everybody's seen it, where he lands and you can see his body tumbling. The bike wobbles, yeah, in like a very super slow motion. Oh, I've seen it. Everybody's seen it, where he lands and you can see his body tumbling. The bike wobbles, yeah.

That is the footage that made him famous. That was it, right there. He went on every talk show with it and they fucking, they were like holy shit. And he was pretty well fucked, no, he was pretty fucked up. Oh, he was fucked up. We'll talk about it. Yeah, he was fucked up, but it was his first

promotional thing, we'll get to it. That was the Caesar's jump, we'll talk all about all this shit. So anyway, his cousin here talking about him said there was nothing hidden in the fact that he was devious. That's just, he wouldn't, you knew it. He's trying to scam everybody and everything at all times. And that was what you have to know to be around him.

You know who he looks like is Jigsaw. The Saw movie, the guy that's in the wheelchair? They have the same face. It is similar. It's a very mischievous, diabolical face. And his squint, his whole face looks like he'll fucking steal from you. I'm up to something. Yeah, I will steal anything that's not nailed down. This is a sham.

Yeah. He has friends that I told you that didn't want to go out of town because he would come over and try to fuck their wives if he knew he was out of town. That's crazy. That's a bad guy. That's worse. Oh my God. The book says he had an attitude that should have made any buyer beware.

Tied to his track record of sometimes shady dealings, what saved him was a twinkle in his eye. A little stage laugh, sort of a he-he-he that made all sins smaller got him off a succession of hooks. Trouble that he was, he was fun to be around, he lit up people's dull lives. He was such a character that people were like, I know he's full of shit and he's trying to scam me,

but ah, he's, you know, look at him go. What a guy, yeah. It's really a weird human thing that we have where we will if someone is If someone has the gall enough, you know to put it right in our faces That they're full of shit Yeah As long as they have the gall enough to like do it with a do it straight face just a bald-faced fucking liar We're like the human brain somehow has weird respect for that when it

Absolutely shouldn't that's how dumb people are I know he's full of shit, but god damn it something about him I like well fucking who cares he's full of shit. That's the problem like the stories. Yeah, it's so weird Pat Williams here his friend there said I care his cousin said, I came back to Butte after college with this little MGB sports car. That was really different in those days. I think I might have been the first person with an MGB in Butte, maybe all of Montana. You're not a popular car up there, probably. It's a little British car. They're cool little cars. Yeah, not great in the snow, I would assume.

No, probably not or Anything really more more of a seems like more of a pickup truck environment up there in the mining towns Yeah, but he said that he was getting into his car when evil drove by Slammed on his brakes and double parked fucking like blocked him in yeah, and he was like what you got there What kind of car is that I like that He said let me drive it. Oh god And this guy was like I never letting you drive my fucking car. You're a lunatic You're gonna jump it off something no fucking way like everyone knew don't let him drive your car He said no, I absolutely not and I but within two minutes They were driving away and evil was driving he conned him into it

So a very balls thing to do in the first place is ask anybody to drive. Wow, that's hot. You got a brand new little car What? Especially not take it around the block. He's gonna do an evil Knievel test drive on it, which is gonna be Let me go pull the ebrake. Well, that's what he was doing. He said he just the tack was pinned in the red all the time He's just always just fucking doing that load my motor. He said it's just they're going twice the speed limit cornering. He's like let's see how it takes his corner at 70 and shit like that. He's a lunatic. Lunatic. He said that three minutes into the test drive they were coming down the original street and he spotted three men standing

around his double parked car because his car is still in the middle of the fucking street because the car he was double parked went, took off. Yeah, that's the other thing. They couldn't move because their car was boxed in. So Evil said, hey, what are those guys doing with my car? So the cousin said he fucking hits the brakes and spins it 180, does like a stunt driver spin with this fucking car, squeals out,

all this crazy shit, and this guy's like, oh my God, but he said the guy, William said he stopped a foot short perfectly. It was like the most perfect stunt fucking spin from a movie. It was like, holy shit. They really got the feel of this car. Quickly, quickly, yeah.

And Knievel fucking slammed on the brother like, holy shit, they thought they were gonna get hit by this guard and he jumped out, what's the problem? What's going on here? And then, man, so Pat once asked him, his cousin, are you scared before you do the stuff that you're doing? And Evil said, I better be. Yeah, I'm scared every time.

That shows I'm not crazy. If I was crazy, I wouldn't be scared. No, I'm dumb. I'm dumb, an idiot. I know the consequences and ignore them. Yeah, I know this is gonna hurt when I put my finger in this light socket. I just do it.

I guess in a weird way, that's the definition of brave. I know this sucks, but I'm doing it. Brave and stupid are real close in the Venn diagram. There's a lot of overlap there. Yeah, I know I could die, but I'm gonna do it anyway. A lot of overlap between brave and stupid, and he's right there in the middle of that shit. Because before all of his big jumps,

like the two days leading up to it, he's telling everyone he's not gonna do it. He's like, I can't do it, I'm not gonna do it, there's no way I can do it, it's crazy, what am I doing, this is crazy, we're canceling it, cancel it, cancel it, we're not doing it, there's no way I can do it. And then when show time comes,

he does like two shots of liquor, and he's like, well, let's go, and he fucking, let's go. Two shots of whiskey, and he's ready to rock and roll. It is so annoying, it used to be very, him and his son Robbie, watching them jump was like, dude, it was, because the jump is gonna take literally 10 seconds.

All this lead up for an hour on NBC. Oh God, they're gonna talk about it, he's gonna come out, he's gonna do a couple laps. It drove you crazy. Yep, an hour on Wide World of Sports for that shit. Just do the goddamn jump. Fucking do it. So pretty much when he's in Sunnyside, same thing,

cops are looking for him and all that kind of shit, so he had to kinda take off, and also there's a lot of men who wanna shoot him for fucking and all that kind of shit. So he had to kind of take off and Also, there's a lot of men who want to shoot him for fucking their wives He has no there is no like he doesn't even hide the fact that he fucks every woman He can like if his wife hears about it, he doesn't give a shit that not his problem basically So he started thinking I'm gonna be a professional motorcycle racer. Let's do it I'm gonna be a professional motorcycle racer. Let's do it and LA at the time Southern California was basically the only place in the country that had like a Professional motorcycle racing circuit at the time. So he goes I'm gonna go down there. He says Hollywood I've made for Hollywood. Look at me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm full of shit

There's no better place for me to be if I can't make it fuck. Let's go Yeah, if I can't make it as a fucking you know perform or at least be an agent something I'm I will pull this shit off though. God damn it. I'll be a producer. Yeah, those guys don't do shit They call it real well. Oh man wide collars. So he stopped in Spokane and To talk to a guy named Darrell triber, that's the guy who brought him into the motorcycle business. They hung out and talked and bullshitted and just had a great fucking time. And then that same night later on, his dealership was robbed.

Oh, what a coincidence. Hadn't seen the guy in months and months and months. Shows up, same day it's robbed. They got $350. And by the way, that's the only robbery that ever happened at that dealership before or after. It's just the one day evil showed up. Archie Treiber, Darrell's brother said, Bob did it. Obviously. We all knew he did it. There were things things that only someone who'd been around the store would know that made us sure.

Darrell never said anything to him. Dar never went after him darrell still liked him if he needed Money that bad to go to california. Okay. He had the money. Yeah, everybody just let his shit. Go. That's what I mean Well, he's taking like such Doable and man of manageable sums that's the other robbing people of a hundred grand. It's like bucks here 150 bucks there where they're like, fuck, it's not cost. I like him more than I need 150 bucks. That's what the people do, which is so weird.

I'm gonna call the police over $150. They're gonna throw him in jail. I'm gonna have to go to court. All this shit for $150? Cave is fucking skulling with a tire iron. He's stealing from me. That's like, what are you doing? This is insane.

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Have you ever gotten a message out of the blue? Maybe you ignore them. right now by joining Wondery Plus. But this isn't a story about people like you, the people receiving these messages. This is a story about the people behind the messages, on the other end of the line. Thousands of them, working in a micro-city built for scammers. From Wondery, the makers of Dr. Death and Kill List, comes Scam Factory, a new series about survival at the expense of Dr. Death and Kill List comes Scam Factory, a new series about survival at the expense of others. Follow Scam Factory on the Wondery app 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. So he, man, on the way there, he stopped at Ray Gunn's house and he had his motorcycle and a trailer hitched to his car.

Ray Gunn is one of the guys he was involved with. The break dancer from Australia. Yeah, exactly. He told Gunn he was headed to Los Angeles to be a motorcycle racer. He said he told him. That I'm going to Australia to become an artist. Yeah.

You know what? I'm gonna change my gender and not learn to break dance. If you can do it, I can do it. Anybody can do it. He said they'll eat you alive down there, is what he told him. You're not gonna be able to do it. He wasn't able to do it.

He goes down there. They said he basically, the one guy who did the payoff said he never made more than the minimum for the race. Like he'd never won a race or did anything like that. So he needed to make some money because he needs to hire more performers. He wants to put together a daredevil team.

This is 1966. And he's like, I need everything. I need like personnel. I need people to build shit. I need people to build shit. I need people to haul shit. I need all this type of thing. So he started looking for a sponsor and he ended up going to ZDS Motors,

which was the West Coast distributor of the Berliner Motor Corporation who distributed Norton motorcycles. Okay. Know anything about Nortons? No. No, I didn't. I thought it was just me.

British? I, Berliner, I think they're German. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, German bikes here. This guy offered to provide the motorcycles, but he wanted the name changed from, at this point it was Knievel and his motorcycle daredevils thrill show to Evil Knievel and his motorcycle daredevils. He goes, you gotnievel and his motorcycle daredevils. He goes, you gotta put evil in there.

It sounds cool. Yeah. So you can't just be. Knievel, nobody's coming to see Knievel. Don't come see evil Knievel. That sounds right. Knievel, what is that? They're gonna go is that Knievel?

Cause it's K-N. So is that Knievel? What is that? You don't even know. What is evil? It's gonna be Knievel. You know what it is? It looks like it rhymes.

So Knievel didn't want that. He said, well, I don't wanna be evil Knievel, you know what it is? It looks like it rhymes. So Knievel didn't want that. He said, well, I don't want to be evil Knievel because this is 1966. This is just when Hunter Thompson's Hells Angels book came out and that and Hells Angels were like this big national story of this motorcycle gang terror. He said, I don't want to be associated with that. He said, so evil, they might think I'm a Hells Angel because I'm evil So he said no, but this guy said that's how he got him He told him to That's what evil told this guy. I'll do it if I can be EV EL instead of EV IL Okay, because he's never had it with me before yeah, it's never been in print before evil

I just used it as a you know as his name Wow so he said what if I'm AVEL, that way I'm not evil. It looks like maybe that's my real name. So the guy said, sure, whatever, it's still evil. I don't give a fuck. It sounds cool. That's what we're going for here. So that's what they did. So that's how evil became AVEL anyway.

So January 23rd, 1966 is the debut of Evil Knievel and his motorcycle Daredevils. This is is he gonna jump on Norton? Yes, he's good. Yeah, that's what he's got His equipment for a while for years is not what it needs to be by the way now at all it's like this other guy that The the first daredevil a little story here side story Kind of the first guy who was doing like motor daredevil shit for like a show was a guy named lucky teeter Alright now lucky teeter was driving was jumping a Plymouth sedan though Okay, from the 30s like this heavy

Giant steel thing and the thing about those is that it's all front heavy Yeah, well you just got to get it off But he yeah, he would jump like a like a one truck sideways and then land on the other side of the ramp which was still an accomplishment Yeah, and he would do all of this shit And so this guy he was like a big deal in the in the daredevil industry of all his shows are the biggest deal But then the world war two came So he said the real daredevil shits going on over in Europe there and in Asia So I'm gonna join the army and this will be my last show.

And he has like a wife and three kids and they all come to watch it and he goes, for my last show I'm going to jump two trucks, it's going to be the greatest thing I've ever done and then I'm retiring from this. So he drives off with the Plymouth, comes up completely short and smashes into the fucking second ramp. Oh no! The people who built the ramp, instead of putting the boards sideways, put the boards fucking long ways.

So basically, he flew into a giant fucking spike wall of two by fours that impaled him in the car. And the car and the him were like stuck in the fucking ramp, it was crazy. Oh my God. Fucking dead, in front of his kids and everything, he did this.

Is there a video of that. It's 1942 So I highly doubt it. Yeah, no So then it is it's that black and white shit like the carpet bombings of Germany, which are really bad videos Yeah, all those are terrible. Yeah, so bad. They fixed them up a lot. They have World War two in color There's these I don't think they're really good. They're given the doctor version of these. I don't think they're really good. I don't think they're given the doctor version of digitizing to Lucky Teeter's death ride. Lucky Teeter's death ride. I doubt it's happening. So this is how evil though became kind of started though because from Lucky Teeter was this the wife, the widow now with these children and and shit, had nothing and said, I'm gonna sell all of this stuff

that he has for his traveling show. So she asked this guy if he could help her sell this shit. And this guy just said, well, I'll just buy it. And then he started his own fucking Daredevil thing. I can't remember if it was Shitweldr or something like that, but he's had Daredevil shows up until like the year 2000. And that's the first guy evil saw doing a daredevil act.

So this lucky teeter guy impaling himself begat Evil Can Evil doing this basically. I know that was a side story, but it's something I read in the book. And you know, I mean, really though, the first daredevils were like cowboys that would do tricks and shit from horseback and stuff.

Stunt shit, stunt shooting. Yeah, we've always been fascinated by anybody doing something that's like they could die. Risking your life for money. Yeah. For my entertainment. They could really die doing that. Yeah. Just risking your life.

Thank you Houdini, you really paid the price. The lucky teeter guy had a guy on his crew that would just they put up a giant pole and he would climb up to the top of it and jump off of it and they dig a big hole in the ground and put a bunch of like air mattresses in it and he'd dive off of it and the way the perspective was it looked like he just fell into the ground and they'd give it like five seconds and he'd pop up in the crowd go oh my god he lived. That was amazing. They can't even see the mirror mattresses in there. They had no idea, so that's how this whole thing got started here. So this day is his first debut at the January 23rd, 1966, national date festival in Indio, California. Oh, is that near a date land? Yes, exactly, not bring a date, eat some dates.

Right, no, it's not, Indioio is like india's on the way to la Yeah, pass through it date lands down. Oh Yeah, that's the other it's on the eight. Yeah, it's the other way. Yeah. Yeah, it's india's worse though Oh india's a shithole, but that date land you pass it that gets get your date shakes. I'm like, yeah Oh girl, it's like in shit my pants by Hila Bend. No one eats that a date shake anywhere in the country. Why would it be tasty just cause it's here? Cause I'm in the middle of the desert. It's going to be good.

Now have a date shake. It's 119. Yeah, thanks. No, I'll have a normal flavor. Thank you. Not really strawberry. So at least I can have diarrhea and feel okay by myself. Next time you go to Dairy Queen or any place like that fucking. Ask them if they have dates. You get a date shake. What the fuck are you talking about? Weirdo. So Evil for this performance he does wheelies, he crashes through the plywood that set on fire. That's an old trick that he did there. He jumped over two pickup trucks. All right. And it's a big, it's a big success. Yeah.

A lot of people after that start asking him to bring the show where they are. Yeah. People showed up. That's a heavy fucking bike to be throwing over two trucks. Oh yeah, that's. You gotta get a lot of air to, you gotta let the momentum be the,

cause it doesn't just fucking jump, you know what I mean? No. And a dirt bike, you can throw those fucking everywhere, but these are so heavy, six, 800 pounds. And that's, he's talking about too, like the fact that you have to get like, the back wheel has to be really torquing off right at the right time on the jump to get the right angle,

and there's a lot of, there's a lot of nuance to it, I guess, that you can't just, can't just go fast and fucking fly off the end of it there has to be a certain that's a thing but not like this you gotta get up you gotta get lift but the second he gets booked to do a show in Hemet California but it rained which it never rains there so that's should be a sign for evil The next performance was in Barstow, California. And this is the one where he's gonna try a new stunt here where he's gonna jump. Okay, a motorcycle's coming at him.

Someone's gonna drive at him at full speed and he's gonna jump up in the air and have it go under him like a leapfrog. Okay, yeah, they're doing that on Instagram today. Probably CGI, but okay. They've been doing that since the 60s That's a an old trick. So how's he he's gonna get his body up in the air enough to go over it Well, that's the thing and he's got a guy that you he's in his stunt crew. There's a guy that usually does it

But he fucked himself up and got hurt. So evil's like fuck it. I'll just do it I've got the and the other guys the Achilles for this well the other guy's name is like jumping John something like his his whole act is that he jumps real high yeah evil's just like yeah I'm a fucking 511 guy from Butte I can fucking jump over this fucking motorcyle he's out of his mind so I jump motorcycles the same thing oh man here's an article in the Desert Dispatch newspaper about this. This is from February 11th, 1966 after the Barstow show and it says, Evil Knievel and his motorcycle daredevils of Hollywood, making it sound real fancy, will be here in Barstow this Saturday performing the 12th and 13th for all interested spectators at the Barstow

Raceway. They're talking about, oh, it's it will feature a special contest in bike riding for kids under 18. In order to win a participant must pedal his or her bicycle farther on one wheel than other contestants. You gotta do a fucking wheelie. And you win a US savings bond of $25. You win some shit that'll be worth $25 in 15 years. Enjoy. You get $25 later. Which will be worth way less by the time you cash this by the way. Yeah. So the show spotlights the longest ramp to ramp jump in the world. A stunt which is performed by Evil Can Evil. In this spectacular event on

a motorcycle, spectacular event, a motorcycle is ridden off a 32 foot ramp at nearly 70 miles an hour. It sails approximately 80 feet through the air over the top of two 3.25 ton trucks parked end to end then lands on another ramp. It is the only known jump of this tremendous distance throughout the world. Other stunts which Knievel performs include a five in a row firewall crash and riding a motorcycle on 60 miles an hour on one wheel while standing on the seat. Which sounds, I mean kids, I see guys do that up my street all the fucking time and I yell crash, crash, crash, crash and have all the cars behind you run over your corpse,

you fucking idiot. Where are the deer when you need them? Oh God. Kamikaze Pearl Harbor this May. Fucking A fucking a oh please god just run right out make him fun it probably wouldn't even hurt the deer no oh god no they keep running they know they're tough man yeah I've seen him get hit by cars and keep running they just they're tough yeah well if he just like hit him with his chest. You know what I mean? Yeah. That'd be great. He also has, quote,

Butch the Midget Daredevil. Okay. Okay. This guy, let's look at the ad. Here it is, featuring Butch the Midget Daredevil. He's got it. This was a poor little guy who, I say poor little guy because evil just abused this guy so bad, basically.

He gave him a little mini motorcycle That doesn't ride very well and made him do like crazy stunt shit And he used to just crash all the time because he wasn't good at it and evil was just like that's all right crash It's part of it. I crash all the time, too but if you're a little person you got different health problems too and shit so a fucked up little person is real fucked up physically. So and they made it like silly, like he would ride his motorcycle into an outhouse.

Yeah. Like by, you know, supposedly by accident and then the outhouse would collapse. You know what I mean? And he'd be standing there with the motorcycle and shit like that. It was like a little calm like it crashed into the toilet.

Like in that cute, You know what I mean? So this is about, this is his jump. He's gonna do the, not the jump over the trucks, the jump over the motorcycle, which is more dangerous, honestly. Right. So the book says he stood there waiting, and the guy driving,

who's the guy who usually did the jumping, but now he's gonna be the driver because he's hurt, he fucked up his leg, he came from the direction at the speed he was supposed to go and evil fucking jumped, not quite high enough. Did the sack catch him in the face? Let you fill in the blanks of what fucking happened. If you try to leapfrog a motorcycle going 60 miles an hour, what would happen? And he took a man's helmet to the the chest 65 miles an hour in the ball sack Well not in the head he said quote

The he described the point of impact as quote the handlebars hit me right in the balls Yeah, he did handle bars That's how far away he was from successfully completing this fucking thing He may as well have not even jumped. He didn't even practice. This was the first time he ever tried to do it How do you think that's gonna go? Yeah He didn't say come at me at 20 and see if I can do and then come at me at 30 and we'll work on It from there and I'll but he just said fucking fired up. Let's go. I'm ready and those motorcycles

That you would lean over to put your foot down. They were so high. Oh yeah. It was crazy. So if you get up on it, you're actually taller than you usually are. He thought he could leapfrog six feet. He thought he could get his taint six feet off the ground, which is... That's insane.

But if he could do that, he could reverse dunk for Christ's sake. He wouldn't need to do this. And a lot of people can Do that remember remember when you're in high school your friend would run up behind you grab your shoulders and throw push Oh, you you can do that, but you can't do that when a guy's going 65 That's what I mean. That's you got to get up off the ground. That's why the other guy's nickname was jumping Yeah, because he could jump so So it flipped him into the air. He fucking tumbled and flipped and flew off

into the fucking dirt. And he was all messed up. I mean, he got hurt bad. This was one of the worst injuries he's ever had that took him out for the longest. He got taken to the hospital. Show was over at that point. He had cracked ribs and bruises and all sorts of sprains,

way less broken bones than some of them. But it fucked him up good. His friend said he was hurt really bad. In fact, I don't think he was ever healthy again. This was the start. I think he was always hurt after this. This was the start of something is wrong, so he's gotta compensate and then he hurts himself that way

and it just keeps going on and on forever basically. I don't know that he's ever said it ever publicly, but I'll bet this is why Johnny Knoxville does what he does. Oh, I guarantee, his age, absolutely. Yeah, he's of that certain age. Absolutely. He grew up with this shit. Jackass does not exist without Evil Can Evil.

Absolutely fucking not. Nothing like that exists without, this is what it is. I'm gonna do something crazy, watch it. I probably won't even pull it off which will be just as entertaining The reason I would say that is because the bull incident that where he took a bowl, you know, I mean, yeah He was blindfolded and took a yeah, that's the same thing that evil just did It's he just didn't have a blindfold and the bull runs 65 Guarantee you Johnny Knoxville had that evil K Knievel ideal toy, the one with the little bike that did it, I guarantee you he had that, like no doubt.

So they said that he was hurt really bad and they also said that he never did that again. Yeah, I would have. Never tried that again, because he didn't even get close to it. So it was like that was stupid. He knows he can't do it. I can't jump that high.

Not even half, I'll be honest. So the problem is when you're a daredevil and you make your living doing these shows, when you hurt yourself and can't do it again for four months, you're not getting paid. No money, yeah. There's no money there. You don't need it.

So it's really bad. He was in the hospital, he was released. He, I guess he went back to, they said he was gonna do another show the next week though there and Yeah, he said he was gonna try to do it. Oh The other guy riding the bike was also in the hospital Yeah, cuz he crashed to he crazy hit a man on a motorcycle took a man to the chest Fucking crashed a motorcycle. Yeah

So yeah, Knievel vowed to return to Barstow to complete the performance when he will attempt to successfully repeat the stunt which he was injured with, which he never does. He never does that. Just he wants to do the other thing. So the first booking outside of Southern California was scheduled for Post Falls, Idaho, June 1, 1966 at the State Line Speedway. And the State Line's because it's between Idaho and Washington, and it's right there.

So he brings his whole fuckin' little circus up there. His one partner, Tim Perrier, who's one of the guys who's given the money and all that kind of shit, started to have doubts about all the whole thing now. Okay. He saw the way evil operated operated and he said that, I don't know what I'm here for basically. This guy's, he spends, he does all the everything

on his own and spends all the money too. So I don't know why I'm here. Like I'm getting nothing out of this whatsoever. So he said he made all the decisions. He said Knievel ordered him around the same way he ordered everyone else around. Said Knievel was in charge of everything. He said this wasn't exactly a partnership of any kind.

He never said what do you think? There was never any of that shit. It was just go do that. Not even- I need your help. That's it. This guy said everything was about him. He was convinced he was going to be famous.

We'd go into a bar and he would have himself paged. What? Oh wow. Yep. He would go outside, call the bar from a phone booth just to have himself paged. What? Oh wow. He would go outside, call the bar from a phone booth just to have his name spoken over the loudspeaker. He did that always by the way. He'd do that in Vegas.

What a great move. It's a famous old fucking move to look cool. Yeah, people do that in movies to try to look cool, love themselves paged, they'll be so, oh that's me, yeah they must be me. Yeah, and you walk away and the women are like, oh boy, he must be important. He's being paged at the bar.

That's free advertisement. That's the way he looks at it. That's advertisement he can get for free. He has no fucking conscience about any form of trickery or bullshit or anything. The way he gets the Caesar's Palace jump later is insane. It's all bullshit. He just bullshit his way into it.

It's great, he pretends to be a lawyer, it's wild stuff. So. Hilarious. Wow. So one of the guys, the Perrier guy is talking about something that stuck in his mind that happened before this. He said that they were, that it was Christmas time,

this was a few months earlier, and he heard Evil say that he didn't have any ornaments for his Christmas tree for his family. So Perrier said he owned a box of ornaments that he puts on his Christmas tree in Michigan and he felt bad for Evil so he brought the box to the track where Evil was practicing and gave it to him. So he said that was nice He said somehow the box wound up tied to evil's roof rack

Of his car Somehow perrier was in the car and the box hadn't been tied tight enough and went flying off the car into the road Oh, no, so perrier said oh shit. All the ornaments flew back and evil said I fucked those and kept going So he said you could have just stopped and we could have picked him up and evil said no so this guy said this guy has no doesn't think about anyone else's feelings but his own doesn't give a fuck he said those were my ornaments that my family had I was being nice and giving them to him I would have at least like them back if he didn't want them not just leaving them on the highway

Yeah, he was like this was in a you know He said I thought I was giving him something important that he would appreciate and he didn't give a goddamn shit about it So yeah, he was just bitching about not having ornaments one day That's all he probably was looking for money from somebody or something. So June 1st 1966 is the state line Speedway show in Spokane that we talked and they said that this guy said two things happened right before this as Perrier guy said. He said first was he discovered Evil had spent twice, almost three times as much money for publicity and advertising as they had agreed to spend.

He wants to see his name in print, period. He never consulted this guy, He just spent the money. And at one point, a pariah asked him, what's how much have we spent on advertising? And evil lied to him about it. So, oh, really? Yeah, it's beyond just slipping between the cracks. He actually lies. The second thing happened in a strip club.

Go on. OK. Now it's pariah Knievel and a couple of the daredevils went to the strip club, which you can imagine that's gonna be a class. That's worse than a football team going to a strip club, these fucking lunatics. So there was one stripper there, one of the dancers paid extra attention to this Perrier guy, liked him for whatever fucking reason.

And you know, they were talking and flirting and all this type of shit, beyond the normal strip club, you know, back and forth here. Either she genuinely liked him or she saw something in him that she could get more money. Something, yeah, whatever it is. But Knievel was pissed because he liked her

and he was trying to flirt with her the whole night and she wasn't flirting with him, she was flirting with the other guy. So that's a big deal. So Evil kept getting madder and madder and madder. Obviously, you can't like him, you're supposed to like me because everyone's supposed to just pay attention to me. I'm the guy.

So as Perrier talked, Knievel kicked him under the table. And he said it wasn't like a kick like, hey, we're going to go do something. One of those. He said it was a like a you know a kick like hey, you know, we're gonna go do something one of those chin He said it was a hard kick that really hurt Yeah, and he said my first inclination was to punch him in the face because that was my first like fuck you doing And this pair your guy said I couldn't figure it out. I was single. He was a married guy I was just talking to the girl and he was upset that she wasn't interested in him Wow, that's the kind of guy evil is.

Even a stripper that you're talking to. No, no, no, you can't even have that. I need that. Right. It's wild. And she doesn't want either of you. She probably wants the other stripper in all, in all. Probably, she probably would just like

to go home to her boyfriend. Well, yeah. Well, nowadays, most strippers are lesbian or at least bi at this point. That's that right? Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the way it goes now. I mean, I don't care either way. No, I'm trying to take them home. Just trying to have a good time. The scores book, the guy was saying that he said 80% of the girls were had girlfriends, not boyfriends. And they would they would get these old guys on the hook and they think they had a relationship

and it was they're just spending it all with their girlfriend and laughing at this old guy. That's how it works. It is very funny. It's, you're just, do you think that this is a transaction that's really going on with you? It's wild. So this pariah guy said that was it,

he got out of the partnership and he said he was mad about the money that was spent without him, but he said, mad about all that shit, but he told Evil he was done. He said, I bought a bus ticket back to LA, I'm outta here. He cost him $36,000 where he's in debt, this guy. Oh, Jesus. Yep, and he said all he saw was the number getting bigger.

He didn't see any way that that was gonna cut down. And he said, maybe if I had a partner I could trust, I woulda done it, but not this guy. He said, I took my chance, it wasn't as crazy as it sounds now, this was Hollywood where people mortgage their houses to make a movie. It took me a long time to pay off that money, 36,000,

but I can't complain. I was young and I learned a lesson, never go into business with someone you can't trust. That was a good lesson to learn. Not a bad one, yeah. That's a real good one, learn. Not a bad one, yeah. That's a real good one. Too bad it cost him $36,000 in 1966 dollars, which is half a million dollars now.

It's a shitload of money. That's a lot of money. If someone did that, I would fucking be very upset with that shit. That's 10 homes in 1966. Yeah, especially if I didn't have it. I was in debt that money. It wasn't like, oh, I had a big trust fund and it just took a bunch out of it, but the debt is a lot.

So Evil said, please, no, he tried to convince him, but the guy said, no, can't do it. Can't do it. And this guy said, Perrier said, the show should have worked. Bob had a great idea, had a lot of things going for him, everything was there, except it was just a click off. Bob did things where he couldn't help himself. It was all about Bob Knievel He wanted to get ahead and if someone was in his way, he'd just kick him down the side of the mountain

That was the way he was Okay, so the daredevils end up breaking up after the barstow show really Yeah, not exactly the Rolling Stones. They really didn't last that long. This is a short one here. They didn't get a goodbye tour out of this. Nothing at all here. It was mainly just from injuries and the guys can't sit around waiting for work so they all go take other jobs and that was that. That's kind of how it worked here.

So after he recovered, he started traveling from town to town as a solo act and other motorcyclists started doing these jumping things, but they were jumping animals or pools of water and shit like that. He's like, I'll jump shitloads of cars. Those are hard. So he did that. State line jump was his first jump over a string of cars. He jumped over 11 of them and declared it a world record just because no one

had ever tried it before. I don't know if it's happened anywhere else, but I'm gonna say I'm the only one. He was the only one who did it, so they were like, I guess it's a world record. And no one else was doing it. I mean, it wasn't like you won the Olympics for something that was established.

So June 19th, 1966, this is as he started adding more and more cars to the jumps, because he said that he knew that then people might return if he said I'm gonna add more cars on so he could come Back for another one here. So he hadn't had a serious injury in a couple months, which is good for him June 19th 1966 in Missoula is when he's gonna attempt to jump 12 cars and a cargo van and The van and the van so that's what's going on here. He's trying to break his world record that's three weeks old.

Okay. Here we go, fuck. So he learned, and this is from the book here, that the most important component for making these jumps was to reach a proper speed at liftoff. Had to do that. Too much speed, you overshoot the target, you fuck up. Too little speed, obviously that's not great either. You're going to land on

the target. Not enough speed and it is Titty Tedesky's Death Ride. What was his name? I can't remember. Yes, exactly. So he learned that that's the thing. Now this time he thought he had nailed it, but he was a little short. Yeah. The speedometer said he was going fast enough, but he wasn't fast enough.

The speedometer was wrong. He figured out later the wheel must have spun in some gravel on the way to the takeoff that made the speedometer say faster, but the bike's not moving faster. And you know, physics know the difference. You know, if you can't be, you can't fool physics. That't fool physics that's the part about it it knows so that's what he figured out and he figured out that that is what happened so after this he never looks at

the speedometer again on a jump he goes by completely by feel really goes 100% by feel speedometer in my chest that doesn. That's where I know where it is. He never looked at another speedometer again because he didn't trust it. He only trusted his balls, the feeling in his balls. The tingle. The smashed balls, his recovered balls. So that's his problem here.

He clears the 12 cars, put the back wheel of the motorcycle, clipped the cargo van at the end. He's not good with that back tire. Not great with that. That's a big deal too. The motorcycle went flying, he went to the hospital, he had a severely broken arm, cuts all over him, broken ribs and yeah from then on no speedometer. He did give a quote to the newspaper in Missoula saying I'm sorry that we didn't give the folks a better show. I promise we'll come back and jump newspaper in Missoula saying, I'm sorry that we didn't give the folks a better show. I promise we'll come back and jump again in Missoula. And then he loved showing the reporters his wounds.

Yeah. Because they were fascinated by it. Look, this guy's fucking crazy. What'd you do to yourself? That's what gets it, yeah. One of them said his arm looked like a stitched together baseball. It was all, yeah, it's a mess, like big stitches here.

So yeah, not enough speed, all fucked up, but the publicity from the crash was way bigger than the publicity from the race if you made it. They all covered the crash. So now the Grand Canyon is the famous one he wanted to jump. He kept telling everyone he was gonna jump the Grand Canyon. It's on a reservation, unfortunately, the one he wanted to jump. He kept telling everyone he was going to jump the Grand Canyon.

The reservation, it's on a reservation, unfortunately, the party wanted to land on, and they obviously weren't going to let him do that. Now, you're not going to fucking come over here at your stupid motorcycle. So I'm going to fly into this play. No, yeah, you got to walk in or drive in or something. So he's at a place called there's a guy named Good Time Charlie. They all call him here, Charlie Shelton, and he lives in Kalispell, Montana, and this is where he stayed after he got released from the hospital.

He stayed with this guy for a while here. Now he had another show scheduled in a couple days at some campground in Kalispell, that's why he was staying up there. It's an RV park actually is where he was. Oh nice, yeah. Yeah, so basically whatever campers were there, they said maybe 50 people, this is gonna be four. And his arm's in a cast, he's all fucked up.

He appears but he doesn't jump because he's all messed up here. So he told Good Time Charlie that he cleared $400 from the Missoula jump and then paid over $300 in hospital costs So he put on for comic paying pain parking pain parking and travel whenever we look at these road features And we go how do you survive? Yeah cost you fucking $400 to get there, and you made 350. What are you doing? It takes one guy out there to say, who's that? Kyle who thinks he can just get on a microphone

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from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+. What's wrong with you? So he said that he put on four shows and had been seriously injured in two of them. So that's not good. No.

That's a bad deal there. So if you're a stat person, that's not a good stat. Those are terrible stats. Terrible stats. So Charlie said, good time Charlie, they're drinking. And he said, you know what you have to do you have to jump something big oh He said you nobody gives a shit if you jump 13 Volkswagens or whatever it was you jumped in Missoula if you're going to take the risk you have to jump something that will get people's

Attention something big you're gonna get fucked up anyway might as well be worth it He said you have to jump soldier field in Chicago you have to jump the Washington Monument. You have to jump the Grand Canyon. He said You got to jump something that's miles. Why you have to do with the people will go you can't do that They'll pay attention. Yeah, you'll crash, but they'll know who you are. You can make a spectacle of it I'm gonna jump the Grand Canyon then you grow you jump like a 20 foot gap of the Grand Canyon Yeah, exactly. See, I did it. I could have fallen three miles to my death.

See, it's only a 20 foot gap, but I did it. I did it. So he said, as soon as those words came out of his mouth, his evil turned to his wife who was in the kitchen and said, Linda, I'm going to jump the Grand Canyon. Well, it's settled. She went, okay, like, sure. Nope Nope, she didn't even have an argument. Imagine, I just thought if I went and told Sarah, I'm going to jump the Grand Canyon, there'd be conversation.

Rightfully so. No, it's not being a pain in the ass. Which one? Not that one. There'd be conversation. What are you fucking stupid would be the first thing she'd say. Well, no, you're not. Bye.

Yeah, you're not doing that. You're a moron. Stop that shit. So, it was, that's all, from then on, all he said, all he told everybody was, I'm gonna jump the Grand Canyon, I'm gonna jump the Grand Canyon. That's when he'd start going to bars and everything like that, just saying that.

And crazy, at one point here, he and Good Time Charlie, that afternoon went to Moose's saloon Which was owned by a guy named Moose Miller who played football for the University of Montana at one point and evil soon as he sat down pointed to a picture on the wall and Said that's the Grand Canyon and I'm gonna jump over that one a motorcycle And by the way, it wasn't even the Grand Canyon. it was Flathead Lake, the picture was, but didn't matter. It's a hole with water in it, that's gotta be the Grand Canyon.

It's fucking hilarious. And so later on when the story got out, people, reporters would call and say, do you still have that picture up? They'd go, no, no, we don't, we don't have the Grand Canyon up anymore, ha ha. We never have. So Knievel went to a local television station that night to promote his RV park appearance.

That's a very local television station. Appearing at the RV park tonight, it's this fucking idiot here. Come on in. So he didn't even talk about the RV park. All he talked about is how he's going to jump over the Grand Canyon. He's promoting the RV park. Yep, and he's doing this. He's instead promoting a thing that doesn't even exist. Right.

Rather than a thing that might make him a couple bucks later tonight. And it certainly exists. It's definitely happening. He even said, good time Charlie said, quote, he said that Robert F. Kennedy was going to be there, senior obviously, this is before he was assassinated He said Kennedy had promised to be part of the rescue team No, we didn't sir Hannah something to say about yeah. No, he didn't well. He was alive for this job, but no yeah Fucking the Attorney General former Attorney General at the time and future presidential candidate in 68

Wasn't gonna show up to scrape you off the fucking floor of the other side of the Grand Canyon and also not a fucking doctor at all, a lawyer. So they're right away comes out in the newspaper. Here's the news and observer October 18th 1966 cyclist plans leap over Grand Canyon. Doesn't exist. No one's planning anything. Yeah. They say Robert Evel Knievel of Butte who plans to attempt to leap the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle says he'll take the flying leap sometime in November 1967. Again a date pulled directly from his asshole. Sometime in 67. Yep. He said he'll be in Arizona next week to examine a point on the northern Grand Canyon which is said to be 3,000 feet deep on one side and 2,000 feet deep on the other. The professional cyclist said he will display the machine and his jumping abilities at Daytona,

Florida during Speed Week in March. The specially rigged cycle will have two side-mounted jet engines and a Delta wing," Knievel said. What? Pulled that out of his ass too. That never happened in his career. Well it did in Snake Canyon. He had the rockets? He had the rocket bike, the jet bike he called it.

I don't remember this at all. The stake, well it crashed, he crashed. Didn't work. It was almost, but he wasn't like, it was like a motorcycle in an enclosure thing. So it was like a little rocket ship thing. It was crazy. So he had no control over anything. It was not good.

Perfect. We'll talk all about that. Don't you worry. He said that the cycle will be equipped with parachutes. It says here's how he plans to make the leap, which could range from one mile Or more across the canyon a mile or more or more when the sky cycle That's what he was calling him at the time leaves the takeoff ramp Knievel must have attained the speed of a hundred and thirty miles an hour At that point one jet engine cuts in to accelerate to about 300 miles an hour through the sky.

300 miles an hour on a motorcycle? Well it's got an enclosure but still that's crazy. And they said so you think that'll work and he said hopefully. Fingers crossed that doesn't even exist yet. Yep it's everywhere Arizona Daily Star daredevil motorcyclist to zoom over Canyon. Like it's gonna happen. That's what's so fucking funny. They talk about, he said, yes, I've been aware of some people looking at me as if I'm some kind of weird bird, but that only lasts only

until they get to know me. I'm not some nut just looking for publicity. That is exactly what he is. That's what you are, yeah. I know that if anyone can ride a motorcycle across the Grand Canyon, I can. They thought Charles Lindbergh was a weird one too, when he said he could fly across the Atlantic.

They stole his baby and then celebrated him. And he showed them that it could be done. I only hope that they'll be behind me or pull for me. But planes existed back then. That's the thing. He just said, I'll fly it farther. This is, I'm going to make a motorcycle that also is a jet engine. That's insane. And no one's done that. That doesn't exist. That is fucking insane. He said once he leaves the ramp of the North Rim of the world's biggest Gully, however, it's going to take a whole lot more than people pulling for him to get him across So he said he's planned and prepared but he's just getting started now

He still he'll still be planning when he mounts the sky cycle one for the once-in-a-lifetime try at the impossible He said I've got over a hundred thousand dollars invested in my equipment Says the handsome blonde daredevil and the rockets at Cape Kennedy Don't get better care or go through more inspections couldn't be less true His shit that he put it just slaps it together and goes I think that's fast enough and tries to fly over fucking things He's crazy. He said I went to the Grand Canyon a couple weeks ago and looked over the terrain I've picked a spot where I hope to cross. It's a mile and a half north to south.

Mile and a half. Okay. He said, but I still have to arrange it with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Forest Service for permission to use the spot. They won't let me jump in the park itself. Unbelievable. No shit, I guess, here, obviously. So he says he's been riding motorcycles since he was seven, but he's gonna put

Never had one with a rocket on it. So he said each jet will deliver 370 pounds of thrust with 3320 horsepower Okay 3000 horsepower He said each of these jet engines can propel a motorcycle with a manaboard from a dead stop to 158 miles an hour in 3.71 seconds. Oh my God.

So that's some zero to 60 time right there. What kind of fuel does that shit take though? Jet engine fuel, right? I would've said it's a fucking jet engine. He says he doesn't plan to use the jets until the exact instant he hurtles off the hundred foot high takeoff ramp he said but I'm not sure how long it'll be just quite yet the ramp the jets will burn for only 14 seconds he says so I don't want to waste them on the ground none of these things

are times and any of this shit exists he pulled all these numbers out of his ass he doesn't have the fuel he doesn't have the tank and or the engine or the bike to burn that to know how it's gonna burn that. Or the permission to do it or any of these things. This is just out of his asshole. It's wild. He says he figures he'll leave it at 150 miles an hour and he fires up the jets and he said hopefully he'll attain an altitude of 500 feet. He's gonna go 500 feet in the air for a mile is what he thinks? Well, he said that should give me 1500 feet of altitude from the North Rim to the South

Rim. For the first half mile though, it's 3000 feet straight down. One thing I don't want is to lose control leaving the ramp and drop straight down. Okay so now he thinks he has an education in science of physics trajectory and physics This is actual physics. This is what physicists do. Yeah, this is he's not a physicist by the he goes Yeah, he fight he goes from that's that feels about right. That's not a physicist at all Then he says this is the fast the fastness that I need to go. And here's more bullshit. Listen to this.

I've dropped test streamers and weighted parachutes into the 3000 foot deep section. These are cross currents and downdrafts. They're cross currents and downdrafts that'll collapse a parachute. There's no way a man can parachute into the canyon and live. That's why I have no choice but to make it across. He didn't go there dropping parachutes down. And that's not even true. People have parachuted into the canyon a bunch.

They base jump into the canyon. You're out of your mind. He figures he'll have a pretty good chance of surviving past the first half mile. You understand there's downdrafts. That's why the ground has collapsed there. That's the thing. Ha ha ha.

He said the canyon starts rising and there are trees and shrubs on the other side that can help break any fall if I fail. Yeah, fly into the trees, that'll help. You don't look at a tree as breaking your fall. And it's not just soft, flat ground out there, it's jagged ass rocks. Yeah, they're not going to set that up. He said the parachutes are strictly to break my fall on the other side. There's no way you can land a motorcycle at 300 miles an hour. Airplanes don't land that fast.

He said when my pickup team on the south rim fires a flare, that'll be my signal to abandon ship. on the south rim fires a flare that'll be my signal to abandon ship I'm hoping to have 1,400 feet altitude when I reach the other side so that I can pop the parachute open but that's shaving it pretty close skydivers on a static line open their shoots at 3,000 feet oh okay so they keep he said I've been back at work for only a month it's taken a lot of guts for me to try leaping cars after I get out. I got out of the hospital, but I cleared 13 on my second try at them. And on October 6th, I cleared 14.

And he's also working with the Highway Patrol in filming motorcycle safety films, which he does nothing. So those crash test dummy commercials are just stealing that's what that is so man then they kind of it's funny too they they go into his background that also hasn't happened like and then he says quote I'm jumping across the Grand Canyon because it's never been done And I've got to do it if anyone can I can I'm going to give it a real go Yes, I expect to make some money on the jump. I figure at least a half million dollars. Yeah. Yeah, okay

This is my work. I enjoy it, and I want to be a success just like others want to be a success at their business They said well. Why do you call well, why do you call yourself evil? And he says, my friends used to call me evil. I hated it, but they didn't. That's not what happened. He says, but now I find it catchy. I changed the I to an E so no one would think I'm a bad guy though. Nobody would know you're a bad guy.

I wouldn't be advertising my shittiness. So the secret doesn't get out. Yeah. And they said, well, you have a wife and three kids. How does your wife feel about your leap? His answer should have been, who gives a fuck? Yeah, I don't care. Not my concern.

I don't know. I tell you to ask her, but I don't know where she is. I left her somewhere. He says, she thinks it's wonderful. She hopes I make it and retire. Okay. He says she thinks it's wonderful. She hopes I make it and retire Okay, so and here is a Thing from the Tucson Dragway an ad from the paper here evil Knievel motorcycle daredevils from Hollywood, California

See the first attempt by a stuntman to parasail from behind a jet car the longest ramp to ramp jump over at least 10 Dodge cars, a complete motorcycle daredevil show, plus full drag race events. Show starts at 8 p.m. at the Tucson Drag Race, Dragway, and it says, quote, the place where everyone can race. That's not safe. That's not safe. That is very common in Arizona.

Everyone. They have so many race tracks in Arizona. Oh, I know. Anybody brings anything and you just get to go. They just have so much room to stick shit. They're like, just put it over there. There's nothing there. As long as you wear a helmet, you're allowed.

So December of 1966, Butte Sky Cycle in auto show. So they said he plans to jump plans to jump the Grand Canyon. They go through all that crap. And he says an attorney for evil for Knievel C.E. Wellington of Pittsburgh said Knievel will try to break his own record by jumping 15 vehicles

at the Phoenix Raceway in January. And evil previously jumped 14. He's also planning to hurdle the scoreboard at Soldier Field sometime this year. He took that in. Okay, the scoreboard is in the fucking stance. How are you gonna do that?

I don't know. I could put a ramp on the other side and jump to the field or jump out to the street, I guess. Oh yeah, probably jump off the roof over it. Yeah, that's what I would imagine here. So anyway, they're talking about also Ascot Park in Gardena, California was apparently the best motorcycle racetrack in the country in 1967

That's where he tried to be a racer and didn't fucking work there so he There's a guy there. The proprietors a guy named JC aga Janey and he's a motorsports guy He wore a cowboy hat and a big cigar, he's one of those guys there. And they talked about, he was kind of interested in his shit here. One guy, a writer said, Evil proposes to jump the Grand Canyon in a motorcycle, you heard me over it, not across it or through it.

That's a national fucking thing, which is interesting. So he said, Evil, when asked about it said, I told him you bet your life I wouldn't fly over the Grand Canyon and anything that doesn't have stewardesses, somebody else said. Yeah. Ha ha. So there's another part where they talk about Knievel made a jump a 15 car world record without problems. This agajanian guy after the show finished This was their first time working together. He was supposed to basically they had a deal which was Evil told this guy look what you do with your show last year. How many tickets did you sell? He said you don't pay me a cent except you pay me one dollar for every ticket above last year's number. That's all

So that's what I bring in because you're hired because he hired him late all. Okay. So that's what I bring in, because he hired him late, so he said, that's only what I bring in. So he sold an extra 2,300 tickets. Wow. So the guy paid him, the guy gave him an envelope with $3,000 in it. And Evil picked it up and fucking threw it back on his desk

and said, there's too much money in there, which is odd for Evil. It's like, I like to steal it, but I'm not gonna just take it. I his desk and said, there's too much money in there, which is odd for Evil. It's like, I like to steal it, but I'm not gonna just take it. I don't do this, honestly. Tell you what, put it down and turn around, and then we'll talk about it. You turn around, it's gone, and we won't do anything.

So he said, yeah, Evil said there's too much money in the envelope. He said he gave me $700 too much. And this guy said, well, it's a bonus. I like your work, and I to work with you in the future So I thought I'd make you a happy guy. So evil was like, wow, that's crazy people paying me more than they're supposed to What's up with that? Look at that earning. Yeah, so there's all sorts of articles in the in the paper about everywhere He goes it's a you know, he fucking

Headline is one cycle racing and ask God again Grand Prix today dare devil evil Knievel and then in parentheses honest He says he'll hurdle 15 cars too. So that's it's they're advertised everywhere So the wide world of sports the first time he gets some national attention other than like an AP article in a newspaper Was the wide world of sports? Okay, this is March 25th, 1967. This is where, this is why he went to this guy, because this guy had a race where the wide world of sports was gonna cover it.

So Evil went to him and he said, let me fucking be a part of this shit. I just wanna be a part of it. You don't even have to pay me, just pay me a dollar, let's do all of that kind of shit. So this was a 100 lap motocross race, which is boring as fuck. Let's be realistic here.

So Evil here, he's gonna do a jump on the show as well. Now they proclaimed him, quote, a most unusual young man. They said his specialty in sports is that he's able to jump 15 automobiles on his motorcycle. And they asked him you ever jumped 15 before evil and he said bill I never have I Missed a jump in the northwest part of the United States over 13, and I was hospitalized and laid up for over five months I'm sure hope that I sure hope that doesn't happen today They said how many cars were you attempting at that time? He said 13

They said 13 and you missed and he said, yep. And they said, you're trying 15 today. And he said, well, parachutes ready, the motorcycles ready and I'm ready and I'm not going to miss today. Let's do it. So gotta do it. It went perfectly. Yeah. And he's a showman. He shows up. This is his black and yellow leathers. His was belief is he's put on. Yeah, he put those on. The ones that say Evil Can Evil, Motorcycle Daredevils, and Hollywood on the back in black with the big stars down the side.

The 70s he went to the red, white, and blue shit. But this was when he was doing this shit. So he did his normal false start where he comes up and oh, not getting up speed, no, the crowd always boos. And then- At the top of the ramp and then he stops. It's so fucking annoying. Every fucking time. So then he hit the ramp, did it. Boom, nailed it. That's it. 15 cars. He did it. Wow. So they announced, that's a wild way to ride a motorcycle. And people were like, huh?

And you have to think too, this 1967 early 67 there's nothing this is what's on TV there's three channels there's no video games no phone there's no internet there's no fucking even VCRs or DVD there's nothing it's just these three channels or go outside period read a book. I remember when he when he was when he would do these they would like when he would go off the first ramp they would shoot like fireworks and shit, and then, the amount of flashes, cause cameras were a flash, you remember?

The bolt, the tower of square of square flashes. The amount of blurry pictures being taken by the crowd. Yeah. Of a streak of something, yeah. But it was so wild to watch that happen, watch the puff of smoke and fire and then this bike goes flying flashes everywhere he hits the ground and then it's over fuck do it again and they show they just replayed

it a couple of times to fill this time because it takes two seconds like you said so on May 30th 67 he jumped 16 cars in Gardena. Wow. So he's doing it. The final show at the Ascot racetrack there was in May 30th, 1967. That's the way he jumped 16 cars. Then he went back to Butte. He scheduled a string of jumps in the state of Washington and all this type of shit and everything like that.

So he is kind of building a schedule now like a road comic. He's trying to figure out what he's doing here. And one owner of a speedway here, this guy says that he was sure he was at one of evil's first jumps in the state. And he said he showed up one day and asked if I would promote a jump here. He said we talked and he said that he want $3,500. I agreed. And I asked if he wanted $1,000 in advance. He said, we talked and he said that he'd want $3,500. I agreed and I asked if he wanted $1,000 in advance. He said that floored him.

He said no one had ever offered him in advance before. Really? Holy shit, I'm getting legitimate. This is crazy. So they agree on a date, he would jump 10 Pepsi trucks, not the semis, like the box trucks basically. Yeah, Cypress. So he's going to jump a bunch of those pickups like that.

That's how he's gonna do it. No, no, long ways I think. He doesn't. He doesn't really long ways, yeah. Bumper to bumper. He appeared to set up his equipment. They said he showed up with a little house trailer. He parked in the middle of the infield

and all this type of shit. Now the Pepsi people, instead of sending 10 trucks, they sent 13 trucks for some reason. So Evil said, fuck it, throw them out there. Line them up. Let's do 13. He goes, if I can do 10, I can do 13. So they line them all up, and then a couple hours later,

he called the promoter, this guy Pollock, and said, I can't do 13. No. He said, come down and have a drink with me in my trailer, talk with me. So this- That's another like, at least 150 feet further. Or, well they're not, they're just the box trucks,

but it's still another probably 50 feet, at least. It's at least 50 feet. 75. Well they're probably, they're probably 25 feet long. Yeah, it's a lot. That's probably 75 feet. It's a lot, it's a long distance. So then this guy's gotta go to a trailer, the trailer in the middle of the infield to talk with this guy

Who's gonna be drinking before he attempts a motorcycle jump of 13 Pepsi trucks? So Pollock had his 10 year old son with him for the day. So he brought his son with him, which is a weird move so they sit around talking to him and Evil said that they should all have some whiskey. And he pulls out three glasses. Here you go kid. Literally and pours wild turkey in all of them. He deserves a drink.

He's completely oblivious to age. Kids are thirsty too. In Butte that's normal. So the kid was like holy shit he just poured me a drink. And the Pollock guy, the father said, it was okay. There's worse things to say than you had your first drink of whiskey when you were 10 years old with Evil Knievel. That's a pretty badass thing to say.

Yeah. Over the next few years, that's the coolest story ever. Fuck yeah. I had my first drink with Evil Knievel. But they had one drink and then Knievel kept drinking. Okay. Kept drinking. He was saying he never jumped 13 Pepsi trucks had never gone that far. He said there's a finite limit to the passabilities of a motorcycle and the physics of the whole thing and he doesn't know if he could do it. He said he goes I'll do it I'll fucking jump but I don't

think I'm gonna land it. He goes I think I'm gonna fucking kill myself. He says you know I don't know but this Pollock guy was just wondering if he was gonna do it. He goes, I think I'm gonna fucking kill myself. He says, you know, I don't know, but this Pollock guy was just wondering if he was gonna do it because otherwise he had to refund a shitload of money. So he was like, okay, he's gonna do it. He said he still didn't want like, this death on his fucking conscience, but still.

You gotta let a guy do it. If he said he wants to do it, you gotta let him do it. You gotta let him do it. He said he checked in with him a little later, getting closer to showtime, and he had drank the whole bottle of wild turkey whole thing Fucking did it just we said he was shit-faced fucking shit-faced in there drunk as shit

Saying he still didn't want to do the jump still didn't want to do the jump, but he did While a bottle of wild turkey in a system. He goes out there Does the takeoff he's flying through the air and fucking landed perfectly nailed it the promoter said the guy couldn't walk but he could jump 13 Pepsi trucks he was so drunk they had to like guide him to the motorcycle to put him on it no no it's over here that is handlebars turn around wow so this guy ended up working with Knievel 17 times setting up shows Graham Washington he attempted the same jump in

June June 28 1967 but he landed his motorcycle on a panel truck that was the last vehicle and was thrown from his bike pretty fucking horribly here he was all fucked up actually. He lay right on the 16th car he landed. He was going about 70 miles per hour at the time, which is not good obviously. And they had 6,500 people there though for that. He sold 6,500 tickets. That's a lot. That's a really fucking, there's NHL teams that don't draw 6,500 fucking people. That's pretty good. It's tough to do that today.

That's a lot. That's not bad. Yeah. He said, they interviewed him at the hospital. He said, I don't feel too bad. They haven't taken any x-rays yet though. I guess I'll be here for another four or five days. And they said, well, what do you remember from the crash?

And he said, can't remember anything after hitting the car. It's called whiskey. Yeah. It's called whiskey. Yeah, it's called whiskey and fucking brain trauma, the two of them together. He had a serious concussion too, was the problem. I believe that. Yeah. Which he probably would have been hurt worse

if he wasn't drunk. Yeah. Yeah, because you flail. You loose. You got to fall loose. So he said he'd return in three weeks and complete what he started out to do. And he returned August 18th, 1967, just like he said.

16 Volkswagens, crashed again. Got the jump. This is Volkswagens for Christ's sake. They're so much smaller than Pepsi trucks. So tiny. He broke, he couldn't hold onto the handlebars, broke his left wrist, his right knee, and a few ribs back in the hospital.

He's a fucking mess, man, obviously. The suspension on those back then was so precarious. It's just springs. Oh yeah, these are not... It's not what they have today. This is not as complicated of machinery as we have today. This was just an engine with wheels strapped to it with a couple of springs. Good luck.

A couple of springs and a very unforgiving handlebars. Yeah, absolutely. And now they have bikes that are made for this type of shit. They didn't have those bikes back then. They weren't. Nobody else was doing this dumb shit. But there are very few that are built to jump 16 fucking cars. That's the thing.

Yeah, you'd have to really build a specialty bike. They were talking about, you know, you keep hurting yourself, but you're going to jump over the Grand Canyon. And they said, why are you going to do that if you can't jump these Pepsi trucks and shit? And he said, if I make it, I'll be rich. If I don't, I won't have as many problems as you do. So he splattered it. Okay, so Richard's dead, but either way, you got more problems than me.

Get Richard Dyche Ryan. That's what he's doing. Yeah. He's hustling, man. Holy shit. He said it before anybody. He said it. That was it. That's fucking evil's doing. Yeah. He's hustling, man. Holy shit, he said it before anybody. He said it. That's fucking evil, his quote. So September 24th, 67, he's all fucked up.

And he's still got a broken wrist. His knee's fucked up. And he tries to clear 16 cars at the Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington. And they said two months ago, He tried to clear 16 Volkswagens and wound up in the hospital twice So he did it again. He cleared it, but landed hard enough to fuck his spine up and go back to the hospital He landed so hard it compressed his spine. Yeah, that's that's the problem with that suspension And body is not made for that. Yeah, something's gotta take the shock

Yeah, you can't drop that shit bike out of the sky may as well be a rigid frame motorcycle again physics Something has to take the shock and it's gonna be your spine because that's what it's just about every time. Yep They said a motorcycle coming down 30 feet at 70 miles an hour gives you a terrible jolt I would have that's gonna be like electricity going through your fucking back interesting shit here, so miles an hour gives you a terrible jolt. That's gotta be like electricity going through your fucking back. Interesting shit here. So they say that Evil Knievel is going to jump his motorcycle across the Grand Canyon, he keeps saying, but he's gotta get permission from the Navajos.

Right. He's gotta get the Navajo Nation permission here. They talk about, by the way, Evil Knievel, who isn't nearly as sinister as the name sounds, is hopeful of gaining their confidence so that he will be, that way he'll be declared, it will be cleared for him to attempt the big jump next Labor Day. September 2nd, 1978, he and his backers have raised $100,000 to show good faith and soften tribal resistance to what at best would appear to be a crazy scheme. Evil said, we won't just give them the money.

What we'll do is show them how they can earn it. Okay. And more besides by working for it. Yeah. He just, wow. That you can't get any more patronizing than that shit. We'll show those fucking lazy drunken Indians how to fucking work for money. That's what he just said. Yeah. Showing these charity cases. The fuck he's doing here. Um, that is goddamn wild. Uh,

they said enough. They had to, they would have to basically construct an earthen incline or incline or ramp 735 feet long and 200 feet high at its highest end from which point he would take off. Yeah. So they're like, that's, that's a lot to do to the desert and shit out there, not the desert, but the environment. Still the desert, yeah. Yeah, so they're talking about,

he's averaging about $3,000 per appearance, and he's doing about 40 of them a season. So he's making money. Decent cash, yeah. Making really good cash. I mean, this is like $6,000 is the average salary in the country at this point, $5,000, something like that. So that's not bad.

He's doing that pretty decently here. He says that he wants to do it because of the challenge of it all and that there's a possible fortune in it. As they keep asking him, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? I'm trying to get rich. What are you talking about?

What do you think? So they ask him again, what happens, what are you gonna this trying to get rich what are you talking about what do you think they ask him again what happens what are you going to do with the canyon and he says if i can bring it off it will be one big graceful arc something like a rainbow first up and then down with a pot of gold at the end okay now with caesars here it is yeah okay, the Caesars thing is this is fucking. Yeah. Or is it fountains? It's the fountains at that, at there, but he gets to Vegas not to do the jump or do anything. He gets there to watch a boxing match.

There's a guy from Butte named Roger Rouse and he is supposed to face Dick Tiger. Remember Dick Tiger that we talked about a couple episodes? He's a famous he was a Nigerian champion. He's a very famous boxer. We've talked about him a few times Dick Tiger is a funny name. So it's fantastic They all the guys come down from Butte to watch the this local try to fucking win a title basically is what happens here So they're gonna fight they're gonna do all this shit. So they all arrived earlier, a few days before the fight. Evil had I think 300 bucks in his pocket

is how he showed up. He also with a Volkswagen off his father's lot. He just stole a used Volkswagen off his dad's lot, stuck 300 bucks that I'm sure he stole out of the cash register. Probably, yep. And took off, checked into a $6 motel and hung out with his friends. Oh, the old strip.

Yeah, the boxer, Rouse, came to see him, knocked on his door and came in the room and he had a very tiny hotel room. Basically the guy, it was Roger and another guy is with him, a stranger. He walks in, the stranger is a guy named Gil Rogan who is, was a writer with Sports Illustrated. Yeah. And he was doing a story on Roger Rouse. And so they walked in and this guy said, the writer said, I was writing a long story on Roger.

I had been up in Montana, met his family, learned a lot about him. He said one day in Vegas, you want a story? I'll introduce you to a guy you won't believe. Yeah. He said he wants to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle. So this guy was like, wow. He said the first thing he noticed was the motel room was so small. It was the smallest room he'd ever seen in his life. It was so small that the evil had to put a suitcase under the bed because it was the only place it would fit. There's not enough room around the bed to place a suitcase under the bed because it was the only place it would fit. There's not enough room around the bed

to place a suitcase, that's insane. So he said also, he said Evil was very talkative. He said he was a quote machine. He was like, wow, he said, I always like to do stories about underdogs and I always like to do stories about people who could talk. That made everything so much easier if they're their own publicity person.

So he said sometime during all of this, he meets this guy and all this type of shit, that'll come up later, because this guy will write a big story on him in Sports Illustrated based on this meeting. He's walking around with one of the guys he knows, a Butte fireman around the hotel, and the guy says, hey hey Bob you should get a motorcycle

and jump across those fountains. That's what you should do that's a spectacle and he said oh interesting and he said it was just a throwaway line in a you know somebody else's idea yeah he's just somebody else so all of a sudden a guy from Wide World of Sports said he called me up, he said he was going to jump the fountains at Caesars Palace and we should do the broadcast. Nothing is scheduled. Holy shit. Okay?

This was one guy said you should do that so he called Wide World of Sports and said he was doing that. I'm doing that now. Yeah. So the guy from Wide World of Sports said I really didn't remember him at the time, I wasn't interested but I told him he could send me some film after he did it and we would take a look. That was the best we could do.

I forgot all about it. I guess from there he used my name as if we had a deal. That's the story I heard. Holy. Yeah, this is crazy. So they said the story has a lot of versions, the names and organizations and details are tweaked a little bit here and there, but the basic tale is this. He sent or he called the president of Caesars, the Sarno guy with tons of calls about this.

Is this happening? I want to go. How's it drove this guy fucking nuts. All of the calls involved Knievel's going to attempt to jump the fountains with a motorcycle and blah blah blah blah blah and he's like what the fuck is going on here this is ridiculous okay so what he ends up doing is he ends up pretending to be an attorney okay he pretends to be an attorney and we'll talk about all of this it's fucking crazy he sends because it's been in like in publications now that he's gonna do this he makes up an attorney evil makes

up letterhead sends Caesars a cease and desist letter uh-huh then calls pretending to be the attorney and he says listen yeah my guy canvel Knafel and can waffle and can fucked up. So and contusion He said listen check this shit out. He goes my client is evil Knievel. He goes. I also represent Lawrence Welk He goes, you know the guy with a TV show. He said now I'm about to go on a European tour I'm just about to get on a plane to go on a European tour with Mr. Welk. Now, if I wasn't about to get on a plane, I'd be filing a lawsuit against you

for using my client's name for advertising in something he is not booked in. He goes, but I have to go on this tour. So basically, if it's not worked out by the time I get back, you can expect a major lawsuit to be filed. He said, but I am gonna give you my client's name and phone number and I'm gonna try to make, you guys try to work it out amongst yourselves

and then I'll come back and see what happens. If it's all hammered out, I won't sue anybody. Yep. So this guy called Evil. Evil came in to talk about it and they worked out a deal to jump the fucking fountains. That's how he got in to jump the fountains. He made it all up. Unbelievable. Made it all up until they, talk about it, fake worked out a deal to jump the fucking fountains. That's how he got into jump the fountains He made it all up made it all up until they talk about fake it till you make it an evil canopling contusion. That's me

Holy fucking balls. That is crazy shit. That's that's a bit the balls on this guy. That's amazing I I don't have that creativity in me. I don't think. I don't know if it's completely... No. It's showmanship of a certain kind, but it's a certain amount of bullshit that I can't even bring myself to. I can't bring myself to that level of bullshit. It's a bullshit that has consequences. Yes, exactly.

It's wild. Here's a quick story, by way from the book here one night as part of you know Hanging out and drinking and doing his general carousing evil left a bar and butte With a prostitute, okay Short while later the car the bar phone rang and it was a call for the Rouse brothers That's the fighter and his brother who's also a fighter. So tough guys This you know, they're like, okay, they get a call at the fighter and his brother who's also a fighter, so tough guys. This, they're like, okay, they get a call at the bar

and it's Knievel, he's at a phone booth at a gas station and he said there was a problem with the prostitute and the pimp and all this shit, can you pick me up? He said, sure, and now they said en route to the gas station in the middle of Main Street, right in front of a bar at the stoplight was Knievel's car. It was running and both the doors were wide open. Uh oh.

But no one's in it. And he called to- Is that bait? And he called to pick them up at the gas station so it was odd. So they picked him up and they said, why is your car over here? And he said, quote, the pimp pulled up beside me in his car, pointed a gun out the window right at me. I got the hell out of there.

He wanted to kill me. That's the problem. That's all they said. He never, he never explained why the pimp wanted to kill him or what happened or. Yeah. But yeah, I'm running from a pimp. That's why my car's in the middle of the street. That's fucking wild.

So by the way, his law firm, that's hilarious that he created a fucking law firm. That is so fucking funny. Did he give, does it have the name of it? Yeah, yeah, we can get to all that. Basically, he was trying to come up with different, anything that sounded, he said he would call himself Fred Blumenstein or like Goldfarb. He said anything that sounded, he said he would call himself Fred Blumenstein or like Goldfarb,

he said anything that sounded Jewish, he would use that, and that would be it. That's his lawyer. We're high powered around here, you know what we mean. Yep. Man, that's fucking funny. So, Knievel would change his voice too, and act like he was from the press and say,

oh, this is Gil Rogan of Sports Illustrated for Mr. mr Sarno I need to know about this fucking fountain jump and then oh, this is Fred Blumenstein from NBC in Los Angeles. I need to know we got it We want to send a camera crew to your thing and I'm sitting here with a Ruben That's yeah, I got I got a pastrami sandwich. It's a fucking bigger than your head right now My corned beef sandwich is huge. I got it from cats as's. I get it delivered across the country. They send it to me on a plane. So that's what he did though. That's how we got in. And it's pretty, pretty fucking brilliant. He said his name was Epstein, I think, at this particular, in this particular manner, not Jeffrey, I hope.

It wouldn't today. No, that's not the name you want to go with there. He's not landing there. So it's very fucking funny that he did that. So this guy finally agrees after evil's line of bullshit basically. It's supposed to be New Year's Eve 1967. That's when this is going to take place. The wide world of sports is going to air it fucking live. Really? Live shit here. It's pretty fucking interesting here. Now they didn't commit to showing Evil Knievel on it right away, but you'll see what happens. So anyway, he ends up, he does some other shit here that he's trying to do. He does his jumps in Long Beach and does all that kind of thing.

Yeah, but now that the guy from Sports Illustrated hears this, now he starts hanging around Evil. And he's trying to get kind of the logistics of how this is gonna work and all this type of shit. So he said he would, Evil was living in a bus in LA at this point. Really? Yeah, just living on a bus. So he said he'd meet Evil was living in a bus in LA at this point. Really? Yeah, just living on a bus.

So he said he'd meet him at the bus, this sports illustrator guy, then follow him around LA as he promoted himself, essentially. When he went to go to Vegas, this guy said he went with him and Evil drove, they drove a 1937 Purple Rolls Royce, which he said he had got the day before. Yeah. They said he he the funny thing was The whole time he's driving

He said he fucking he's driving ten and two seatbelt on 50 miles an hour the whole time He goes he's the most boy drives like an old lady. He goes fucking hilarious He drives like an old lady with this guy in the car So he said one thing that was a little weird while they're going, he said is the amount of anti-Semitic jokes he told. Oh, nice. While knowing this guy is Jewish and has a star of David necklace on and everything. Like he's like, he kept doing it. He goes, he just kept doing it. He goes, just these little jokes, kind of little things he kept doing and he kept doing it. But he said, quote, he wasn't really a rough neck, which I thought he might be, he was good company

and I actually enjoyed being around him. Weird. Even though he was saying jokes at his expense, he didn't care, which is wild. So they talked about it, Evil said, if I keep making these jumps, I'm gonna wind up dead, and I just don't wanna wind up dead. Okay. Yeah, no shit.

So anyway, getting ready for it It's a big deal. It's gonna be a 150 foot jump and he's all ready to fucking do it here and Everything like that. So he is 29 years old He uses his own money to hire John Derrick to produce the film of the jump He said I want this on film for me John Derrick. Yeah, John Derrick to produce the film of The Jump. He said, I want this on film for me. John Derrick is a filmmaker, he's an actor director, and he is the guy who was Bo Derrick's husband later.

Oh really? That's how Bo got Derrick. Yeah, at this point John Derrick was married to Linda Evans, the actress. Is that right? Huge in the 70s and 80s. How fucking handsome is this guy? Dynasty, and apparently extremely handsome, because those weren't his only two wives either.

Really? He had like other hot wives too. Yeah. And Bo Derek was the last one when he was like older and she was like 19 years old or something. Yeah. She was walking out the pool and shit. Fuck yeah.

Amazing. She was the first white woman to go to a fucking tropical beach and get dreadlocks and fucking braids and braids and cornrows and shit. First one. She literally was in a movie called Ten as a ten. The box was just her running on the beach. Remember in the video stores when we were a kid I'd see that constantly and it was just here's this hot chick in a fucking bathing suit.

Ten. There she is. So to keep the costs low, this guy hired just his wife to be one of the camera operators, Linda Evans, who is an actress but not a camera person. She is actually the one who filmed the slow motion footage of him falling. She's the one who captured it and she said, I didn't even know what I was doing

or if I was getting it in. Oh, you got it. You did great. So that is fucking funny here. So on the day of the jump, they had one camera with a normal lens, which was a long range, your hard camera basically for wrestling terminology, and that was Derek,

he's gonna use this camera to capture the crowd, the whole everything, the panorama, you can get everything. The second camera with a long lens was for a closeup, and that would be trained at the landing ramp, which will catch the flight in the landing there, basically. So Evans. Or the not landing. Now, Linda Evans never worked a camera like that at all

in her life, and she said she was super nervous, and all that kind of thing. Linda Evans said, we went out to dinner at Caesar's, the three of us, John and Evil and myself. It was supposed to be low key, except John and Evil got into a terrible fight. Oh? Evil told Derek that the jump

was not going to be a success. He goes, I'm not gonna make it, just so you know. So yeah, he's what he does before every show. Everything, yeah. Every show, it's one of those things. Oh, this crowd's gonna suck, it's that. Oh God, these people are terrible. Oh my God, listen, oh, they're terrible, obviously. It's gonna be a terrible show.

Look at the pizza they make here. Obviously, this is gonna be the worst. It's gonna be the worst. Then you get out there and they're fine. It's one of those. So this guy didn't know that. He said, but evil's telling him, look, I made all the calculations, there's no way I'm going

to make the fucking jump because I'm going to land short, I'm going to crash, I'm going to do it. And obviously that's normal, but they didn't know that. Now this John Derrick guy, he was like, well, I don't want to film a fucking tragedy. Yeah. I don't want to film you get killed here. I don't want to do this. And he said, just cancel the show.

And Evil said, I can't cancel the show and he said But you could kill yourself and he goes Abby. All right, I'm gonna crash. I'll fuck. Yeah, I'll fuck myself up But I'll live basically not and that's the idea Yeah, and they went back and forth and the John Derrick said this is a stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard of my life. You're gonna do something that you know, you're gonna hurt yourself And why would you do that? You could kill yourself and he said no and Evil said well the promise is a promise, I signed a contract, this is my job, like can't just not do it. So finally John Derrick said I quit. Really? He said look I'm your friend, I don't

want to be a partner in any production that you're gonna die in, I'm not doing it. He said basically I'll film the jump, it's the night before, so he said I'll film the jump because I promised and you don't Have time to get anybody else but afterwards he goes I'll process the film We'll edit it and he goes I'm just gonna give it to you. I want no part of the enterprise I'm no book cuz they were gonna do a documentary type thing. He said I'm not gonna do that I don't want to put that out. I'm just gonna give you the footage of the jump and that's that Okay, and I'm done washing my hands of it. So he was like, all right, well fine

So, you know, there and that's that. And I'm done washing my hands of it. So he was like, all right, well fine. So, you know, there's that. Now his wife and kids show up, Evil's wife and kids, his father came, his mother came from Reno. Oh yeah, this is a big deal, man. Evil told a sports writer that day, I've got to admit I'm getting a little edgy. I'm still confident I can make it,

but my nervous system doesn't seem to agree. I'll be glad when it's over. Yeah. Now morning of the of the event he's walking through the casino and he stops and places a hundred dollars down here on the, no there's different things. People say he placed a hundred dollars down on a hand of blackjack and lost. Then he went and bet on black and it came up red on roulette. So. So now I'm gonna go jump.

Not good. So yeah. So he does a few little warmups and pre-jump show and all that kind of thing here. Yeah, so anyway, he says this. He says that he felt the motorcycle unexpectedly decelerate when he hit the takeoff ramp. Really?

Felt like he went slower and the loss of power on the takeoff caused him of course to come up short and land on the safety ramp which was supported by a van and he hit the van part of it. So it caused the handlebars to come out of his hands and he went over them onto the pavement where he skidded and skidded Through the end of because there was like a parking lot where he was they moved all the cars Yeah, yeah, yeah, cuz the the the the phones aren't just out in the middle of openness There's a parking lot. Yeah shit right there. There's shit everywhere So they had to move all that shit and then he tumbled through the retaining wall into the dunes property next door

So he ended up in a different casino completely That's how fucking far he went. So they said he bounced and that's the thing is it's a Bounce and a roll and the footage is just is crazy It is locked onto it and the fucked up part is the motorcycle looks like it's gonna crush him and kill him too because it's bouncing behind it's a fucked up piece of footage you really got to see the footage if you haven't seen it. And it's crazy though handlebars are aimed right for him. Oh yeah he like hits it and like fall as whole body goes fucking limp and I mean it's a it's a spectacle nuts. It looks painful. It's crazy So they carry him off obviously to an ambulance clearly

So he yeah, he went flying and people screamed. They thought he was fucking gonna die. I mean thought he was dead They didn't know what the hell happened They didn't know So John Derrick asked Linda what kind of would, what'd you get, did you get it? And she said, I don't fucking know, maybe. Perhaps. Possible. Press rewind.

And back then you couldn't, you had to wait till it went to the lab, get processed, and then watch it. So it was like, I don't know, I guess we'll see in a week when it comes back. So she didn't know if the focus was right, the lighting was right, any of that shit. I mean, I got the frames, I don't know if they're in focus Yeah, so they said if he if the cars hadn't have been moved that morning He would have landed right in the middle of them and one of the observers said quote

I thought he was dead. He had to be dead the way he landed and somehow he fucking didn't die so Yeah, now the next day the stories come out They're saying the doctors are deciding whether or not they're going to fuse his pelvis. And if they fuse his pelvis and he wouldn't be able to walk and obviously wouldn't be able to ride a motorcycle or do any of this shit anymore. The AP, the Associated Press sent out a two picture photo spread that was used all over the country, showed him in full flight above the fountains and all that kind of shit and then showed him rolling in the parking lot in a ball of dust here and it said the end of a stunt driver's

career. That was the title of the pictures. They're calling it over. They're calling it over. They said Evil Can Evil, 29 year old Hollywood stunt driver, is pictured here in what probably will be the last such feat of his career," the caption read. Flying high at left, Evil fell short of the mark, the 150-foot flight over the Las Vegas casino fountains and crashed. Knievel was thrown against a retaining wall and suffered a badly fractured pelvis, probably ending his career. Front page of the Las Vegas Sun said injured stuntman fair

Medics holding up big decision So I mean it is other sports columnists wrote that they'd been refused entry into evils room and The columnist said it was just so much thinking about he that he could have been decapitated if he landed a few feet shorter Yeah, oh my god. Yeah one um, I once knew a veteran sports writer who, after losing several friends in auto racing, refused to get acquainted with other drivers because of the way he felt when they were killed. Now I think I know some of the feeling he had.

So it's a lot. Three days later, the doctors at the hospital announced that fusion surgery would not be necessary but that Knievel would probably be in the hospital for months and They said the treatment originally diagnosed from mr. Knievel is going to be continued and unnamed doctor said no surgery is considered needed So they said 15 years ago surgery was felt necessary for a fresh smashed pelvis But now improved techniques allow it to be treated with traction So that's the thing in the paper It looks like yeah, it looks like he's dead. Okay? Yeah

But then they said friends and family would come and they'd come expecting to see him half dead like on a you know Beeping heart monitor and everything and they'd show up and he's hanging out bullshit and doing fine. It's all bullshit. He does have a broken pelvis. No he does he has injuries but he's gonna be fine like soon. And he's totally gonna be fine but they're acting like he's near death. And he's doing it on purpose. Yeah one of his cousins said that he showed up and to like help evil He's gonna go help him out somehow in the hospital and he said he got there and he said they told me at the front desk

He couldn't have any visitors except for family. I told him I was family I was his cousin from Butte and they let me in evil was a little groggy from the drugs But he was sitting up his leg was wrapped in plastic. Otherwise, he was fine He spent the whole visit showing me newspaper clippings about the crash, magazine articles, I think he showed me something from Time magazine. One man carnival. Yeah, so Evil right away knew, the second he got there I was like I'm hurt way fucking worse than they say I am. He knew, he goddamn knew and he got out of the hospital a week later.

That's a quick fusion. It's what I mean. It's a big plot. Him and the Sarno guy came up with it together. It's fucking hilarious. So after the crash, Derek and Linda Evans sent the film to LA to get developed and all that kind of thing. That took about five days.

They said that during that five days, they went camping. So they just went out in the wilderness. And this is by the way, you don't have, if you're not around a TV or something, you don't know anything. There's no phone for, there's no social media or anything. So if you're in the woods, you're in the woods. The world stops as far as you're concerned.

So they went to pick up the film and the technician said, that's the most extraordinary film I've ever seen They said what do you mean? He said he's been doing this for a long time. He's developed Academy Award-winning movies He said he's never developed anything. That's as graphic as this. He said it's crazy He said I showed it to everybody everybody's amazed Linda Evans said you could see everything It was just so stunning to me the camera captured every twist and turn of his body arms legs hips everything disconnecting Holy fuck so yeah, then there here's an article from the newspaper talking about how he's almost dead He was I mean yeah

The surgeon made a preliminary estimate that Knievel would be hospitalized for a long time, perhaps four or five months due to the injury. He was conscious but in pain when they picked him up. And I mean, it's just a whole big- He's got us all snowed. Oh, he absolutely does. He's got him snowed. Now, Jay Sarno, the guy who was running the casino, is watching all- he watched the crash from the roof of Caesars with his two sons.

Yeah. And he said they were you know everyone was all excited and everything like that the kids ended up seeing this horrible crash so those there's all kinds of activity outside reporters television crews it was like one of those alerts for nuclear disaster what year was that sixty eight sixty seven years he's sixty seven whole year's he's yet What year was that? 68, 67. New Year's Eve 67. Holy shit!

So he said he went to the hospital, left his kids in the car to go see him. He just wanted to know if he was alright. And the sons remembered that their father gave them a memorable lesson in promotion. They said he got back to the car and the kids were like, is he okay? Oh my god. And he said the first thing his dad did was smile he said yeah mr. Knievel just fine. So he said that as a matter of fact we were just up there laughing together about the crash. Sarno and he said there was some broken bones but he's his leg had been pushed back and was pelvis so he said there might be an operation but it's really only whether he's gonna have a little limp or not So the father said this was you know, not what you're gonna see on TV or in the newspapers though He said the injuries are gonna be much more serious. They're gonna be saying he's almost dead. He's fucking fine. Don't worry about it Everything's alright. Yeah, so he said this is just good business is what he said

So the kids were like interesting Knievel they said the guy went to see him, Sarno, and him and Knievel cooked up the plan in the ER before he was even in the room. Before they even knew what the problem was. He's like, it's not that big of a deal, but it's a big deal. Sarno said he was late getting back to the car because he'd been spreading around $100 bills throughout the emergency room to order Lee's doctors and nurses to make sure if they're asked you say he's almost dead He's almost dead. That's what it is

J Sarno jr. The Sun said it was all fabrication all horse shit my father and Knievel were like two giggling sneaky teenagers They were putting something over on everybody. They were a couple of promoters He's a fucking it's exactly wrestling that's it. So yep he look he broke his neck oh my god somehow he's wrestling again right now. So they said that Sarno told other people in the following days he visited Knievel and paid him they had set up for three jumps for 1500 bucks a pop to get 4500. He said the last two won't be performed, but he said he felt sorry for him and gave him the whole $4,500 and agreed to pay hospital costs, hotel room, meals, bar bill, and his gambling debts too.

This is the first time he's getting all the money. Yeah, he's getting everything. And Sarno said he gave him everything and then he told Knievel in the hospital, now get the fuck out of my life, I never want to see you again. You've cost me a fortune. But the problem is he said he got back to the hotel and the next day it was the most packed hotel on the strip for the next month because everybody wanted to see it. Everybody just wanted to see the site of the crash so people were showing up he said that's

imagine how much money they gambled. How much money did he make just for that just for that Yeah, his his debts and his whatever the fuck well worth that shit here So yeah as a result of this crushed pelvis and femur fractures to his hip wrist both ankles and a concussion as well But the rumors circulated that he was in a coma for 29 days Really obviously he was fine, but he that's that's what there's he was in a coma for 29 days. Really? Obviously he was fine, but that's what there is, he was in a coma for Christ's sake. He was gonna fucking die, man.

So it's a big deal here, obviously. Evil owned all the trademarks and copyrights to that film footage now, so he's pretty happy about that. And that is when he became a cult figure, is that film footage and the Dennis Lewin who was the former vice president of production for Wide World of Sports said it's hard to imagine how big he became how how he was such a cult figure. Evil, Ali, Monday Night Football, Howard

Cosell, they were all huge. Everything was anti-establishment at the time. Evil was a reaction to that. He really did believe in America. He was always a real package. He always delivered. He always did it. He was part of seven of the 10 highest rated shows in wide world of sports history. People loved him. Really? Yeah. He was money. That's the thing. He's fucking money. And it's He's not spending it on technology for that motorcycle to land this shit No, and later on when he tries to do the snake canyon jump

He tries to cheap out the engineers to really like yeah, and that's why he crashed because the fucking bike is all fucked up It's not what doesn't do what it's supposed to do So that is kind of what he's got going on here Obviously, it's a bit of a mess here. Here's a little story and then we'll close this up here. They said the first time the film was shown on national television, there was a guy, Matt Tunning, who was one of the kids watching. And it was a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

Wide World of Sports was on TV just in the background. And he said, you know, everything was quiet, but then he sees the daredevil come onto the screen, and he hears Evil Can Evil. Hell yeah. And this guy is just a guy in Montana, and he goes, wait, Evil Can Evil? Is that Bob?

He goes, I know Bob, Bob from Butte. He goes, that's that crazy salesman from the insurance company, that guy's fucking nuts. He said, I know that guy. He goes, he's the one who sold the mental hospital. He sold somebody a mental hospital, by the way. Unbelievable. Yeah, he did, he sold it.

Yeah, you can buy the whole building. The one who conned the lawyer in the bar about betting on the size of his penis. The same Bob Knievel. He said, I never heard anybody call him evil back then, but it's gotta be the same guy. Right. So yeah, he said that the filmed action from's got to be the same guy. Right. So yeah he said that

the filmed action from Vegas became totally compelling to this guy. He said there was good reason. Tunning had been contacted in the intervening years a few times by Bob. He said there'd been some genial conversation, a few laughs and then Bob asked him to buy some insurance. Or Bob had asked to buy some insurance. This is one of the guys he bought. He sold insurance with. He know he was no longer employed by combined, but he was still a true believer. He had bought a policy, then another, then another. He bought 10 policies in all. The company had rules that a salesman should only sell two policies maximum to a customer.

But Bob was a friend and he really wanted to be, you know, insured. He was insistent. He wanted to be protected. He didn't tell this guy he was jumping fucking motorcycles. He said that this guy said, oh shit. So he looked and he basically this toning guy had entered other salesman's names to sell the extra policies. That's what he was.

So he wouldn't be saw a scene. He said, now this guy's a fucking daredevil. This is his job. So this tunneling guy said he watched the proceedings with a sense of dread. He said he knew the ending before it happened. He said, quote, there I was sitting at home watching my career skid and crash across the dunes parking lot. I knew right then I was going to be fired.

Turns out he bought up to 50 policies from different agents. Is that right? He bought 50 different insurance policies from different agents. Is that right? He bought 50 different insurance policies from agents from this company. So they owed him fuck tons of money. So much money. So much money. It's bad. And his boss said, what the hell were you thinking?

They called him to Chicago to talk about it. And he said, I don't know. I blah, blah, blah. And they fired him. How are we supposed to know? He fired him. So we'll leave off there because that is when he's famous. So we just got him to fame.

We'll say grace right now. He's got so many jumps left in him. So many. Oh, he's about to be the most famous, literally fucking Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, fucking Evil Can Evil. They are the heroes of the seventies. Maybe OJ throw him in there too. Maybe, yeah.

That's what I mean, he's that big. So, now he's gonna get big, he's gonna go on the Dick Cavett show and all this type of shit. We'll talk all about that shit. So, but he's famous now, and we know that. So there you go, that is part two of Evil Knievel. We have brought him from a crazy. Yeah a crazy kid to now Fame everyone's turned everyone to evil Knievel. I've heard who's that? I've heard that name now. It's yeah on the tongue

Now we know and he's about to be very very very famous in our next part we will talk about exactly how famous he becomes, which is a crazy amount of fame, honestly. An absolute. I wanna see the black and yellow, that's fucking cool. That is cool, yeah, you can see it. There's pictures of him in black and yellow. Yeah, I'm gonna show you the interview

from Dick Cavett next time, too. Terrific, can't wait. Because I want you to see the outfit he's wearing, and I really want you to see the interview that he wearing. And I really want you to see the interview that he does later on when John Ritter's there also where he's talking about women's places and shit. It is wild stuff. You're like, Evil Can Evil, what are you talking about?

It is fucking hilarious. So there is Evil Can Evil part two, everybody. So hope you're enjoying that so far. If you are enjoying that, there's a very easy way to let the world know about it. You can get on whatever app you're enjoying that so far. If you are enjoying that, there's a very easy way to let the world know about it. You can get on whatever app you're listening on and give us a review. It doesn't matter. Tell us, tell us how long you think evil is actually spent in a coma in his career. That's fine. Say whatever the fuck you want. Doesn't matter. Hang out and do that. Also get on social media, tell people about it. Fucking do whatever

you got to do. Help drive people to the show. Also, listen to your stupid opinions in Small Town Murder. You should definitely follow us on social media at Crime and Sports. Oh, for sure. You should absolutely head over to shutupandgivemurder.com and get your tickets for Small Town Murder live shows throughout 2025.

A lot of them are selling out already. So if you wanna go see a show, get them now. St. Louis, and I just said the next shows are St. Louis and Chicago, throughout 2025, a lot of them are selling out already. So if you wanna go see a show, get them now. St. Louis, and I just said the next shows are St. Louis and Chicago, but I think St. Louis is sold out. If it's not, it's right there. So Chicago, same thing, get your tickets to Chicago.

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is where you get all of your bonus material and there is a ton of it. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get hundreds of back episodes immediately upon subscription that you've never heard before and it's funny shit You're gonna love it Then you get new ones every other week one crime and sports and one small-town murder and you get them all for that five dollars

This week which you're gonna get for crime and sports since we're doing evil Knievel and crashes and disasters We're gonna do a disaster potpourri Yes, steel felt factories melting down and fucking people falling out of the sky of hot air balloons and industrial accidents, amusement park accidents, you name it. It's going to be a lot of fun. Then for small town murder, we're going to talk about the times when psychics actually

found something they were looking for. Right. Psychics that have, it's worked somehow. And we've always spend time like debunking shit like that so we'll see when it worked and see if it actually worked or if it came from other information or all that kind of shit it'll be a good time I'm gonna look into it because you always hear once in a while their body was found by a psychic and you're like when how did this happen I want to look into this I want to find out how so check all that out and

more patreon.com slash crime in sports and you get a shout out at the end of the show Which is right fucking now Jimmy hit me with the names of the people who would never ever ever make us jump over a fountain To get our get their attention Jimmy hit me with them right fucking now This week's executive producer Gary Howard Jordan Bennett and Simon Yes, thank you for coming to the show guys we appreciate it Neil and blow me James Neil and blow me Neil and blow me that's good. Oh, that's that's very nice. It's very clever

Think that I didn't want they for sure know that I knew that right I would hope so You've seen it Andrew Dice Clay act from 1987 so yeah, you probably have Tara Lathan a little turpentine will do the trick James. That's Captain Ron. Yes Stephanie Chaitin chatting maybe Danae Lynn. Thank you Danae Good to thank you other producers this week are a happy hour in Conroe, Texas checking in good to see you. Other producers this week are Happy Hour in Conroe, Texas, checking in. Good to see you, Happy Hour. Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows, Janice Hill, Tiffany Gonzales, Sata Morris, Jen with two N's, no last names. Alicia Sanders.

People, good people. Yeah, they're terrific people. God damn good people, sorry. Mindy Bybert, Bo Yo Nasty. Okay, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what them Brielle heard Amandola would know last name. I'm a mandala That is last name last name amandola certainly Hope it's not a first name It might be a mandala Chandler Jensen Zachary McAdam brandy compro corn probes

Adam Brandy corn probes. Corn probes, corn like the band probes, like the host of fucking Survivor. Beck J, Matthew Graf, Santa Ferrets, Michelle, M-I-S-H-A-E-L-L-E, that is not Michelle. Stop it. Your mom is so mean. Gap seven, John Via. Amber with no last name. Liam Ostrander. Michael Ryan. Anthony Legobo. Anthony. That's a tough one.

Kerry Kelly. Emily with no last name. Courtney Daschner. Samantha Beechler. Courtney Dashner, Samantha Beechler, Amanda Martinez, Blake Zerbees, Olivia Atturio, Carrie Redman, Amy Pearl, Mike on a horse with no last name. Okay, he has no last name. A horse with no name. Him or the horse? The horse has no name or does he? Brittany Jiner.

You son of a bitch. Right in the Jiner. I don't like that at all. Sarah with no last name. Peggy Johnson, Amber Jackson, Nathan Couch, Sabrina McCracken, Sarah Drullo, Jeff Moose White, Mackenzie Adams, Jeff Simpson, Ebrooke 16, Adam with no last name, Eric Linville, Golden Roses, not all bitches wear capes. Okay. Jim Jam, Marsha Gleason, Nicole Halaiko, Misha Robinson, Louise Meeks, James Bruce, Jay Brooks I'm is that Josh Brooks? Perhaps maybe just Jay Brooks. Danny with no last name, Keith Wilson, C, H The letters C and H. Chilly Willie, Josh Rhea, Rhea perhaps, Morgan Olsen, Jennifer Stringer, Kay

This show brought to you by the letter K, Karen Bamford, Laura Lavoie, Cheryl Brands, Brandes, Brandez, Paula Ricard, Adam Schaefer, Justine with no last name, Luis Mwerhead, Mwerhead, Chris Drew Carey, I don't believe you, a Crooked Pinky, a Crooked Pinky, Adam with no last name Joni Jones Johnny Jones I don't know Nikki Marie Quinton with no last name Ruben Ravias Ravellis Sam Ellis Chris Cosolino Alexandria Andrea Alexandria We're telca fucking Wow G with no last name sky with no last name Sarah T Monica Horton Jill Kelly best little cat house in no last name, Sarah T., Monica Horton, Jill Kelly, best little cat house in Wyo, Nebraska.

Is Wyoming close to, it is close to the, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're connected, I think, by a corner. Do they touch? Is there a cat house there? Yeah, you can drive across Wyoming and through Nebraska, because it doesn't. Can you get a, in Wyo, Nebraska? I don't know.

I think so. That's great. Qualifying, Kenry, Kenny. That's great. Qualifying, Kenry, Kenny. Qualifying, is that a, okay. Alright, Melanie Buckley, Christina Plyler, Billy White, Casey with no last name, Jennifer Cox, Jeff Dabwigny, Dabween, Jason with no last name, Jason Cecil also.

Absolutely connected to Nebraska, by the way. Is it really? Yeah, absolutely. I wonder if it's legal though. I've driven so all connected to Nebraska by the way is it really yeah absolutely wonder if it's legal driven through there yeah yeah yeah Igor odd holy fuck should be a well that's a weird name she John of it she John of CV with holy fuck is your name I think that's easier for people I said go with holy fuck that was easier for Jimmy to pronounce Igor Igor. It's pronounced Igor Jessica Vandervelt Michaela Hansen Jacob Gonzalez James would know last name a Bell will hung. I hope is that William no fucking way That's the real guy Beth Sylvie Shannon pool electric Diva creations. Michelle Gulch, Emily Bulkeely, Catherine Vogler, Vogler, Voeller maybe.

Corey would know last name, Chris C., Alexandra Wong, Rachel Gaziel, Carrot Ruth, Carson Oster, Oster out. Laura Myers, Becky Sargent, Samantha Hercules, Charles Withrow, Carolyn with no last name, Maris Lohr, Jessica Johnson, Andrew with no last name, Kay the letter K, Emily Garcia, Christine Struze, Rob Hire, John James Webb, Sarah with no last name, Olivia Christensen, Paul Caracato, Sabrina M, Sabrina Harvey, Peter Runnels, Chris with no last name, Alicia Porter, Christina Reisbeck, Alisa Shrom, Only Zeki, Jay Lin with no last name, Rose with no last name, Mike Mieke, K E is that meek Mike Jolie vet

That's a foreign name Laura would know last name Amy de Broome Shannon Sullivan Kara shocks Libby Kilgore and all of our patrons Thank you so much. Thank you everybody so goddamn much from the bottom of our hearts We really do appreciate you hanging out with us and giving us a chance to entertain you on a whole other Medium there and on page not really medium, on a whole other medium there and on page not really medium but a whole other area on patreon so thank you platform platform that's the word i'm looking for gee how did that evade both of us we're both like what's that word that we use all the time for a fucking service wow that was horrifying we are fucking idiots that's it's been a long week though. Jesus. We were just got back

We just got off planes. So we're just landin shit. We're trying our best here. So thank you so much more evil Knievel next week He's gonna be doing way more dumb crazy shit He's gonna be assaulting people and acting like a lunatic So we'll get into all that shit and so much more next week Don't you worry you want to follow us on social media? Shut up and give me murder.com follow the fucking Links all the places you want to go keep hanging out with us live from the crime and sports studios We will see you next week 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 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. 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 Lacharties. 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 Plus.

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