Crime in Sports - #456 - Don't Talk About My Mother - Evel Knievel - Part 8

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

This week, Evel is again considering retirement, but not before he does a huge, primetime tv jump, that he hopes will allow him to make even more money. He needs that money, because he also gets really into yachts, and yacht decor. He stars in a movie about himself. He is also sued by just about everyone, and is arrested for a brutal baseball bat attack on movie executive, that dared mention the existence of Evel's mother, in a tell all book!!Start to tone down your jumps, because getting injured hurts your golf game, star in a movie, even though you can't act, and attempt to murder a man, in front of dozens of witnesses with Evel Knievel - Part 8!!Check us out, every Tuesday!We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail] Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports [e-mail] facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurderSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to crime and sports early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. When Luigi Mangione was arrested for allegedly shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, he didn't just spark outrage, he ignited a cultural firestorm. Is the system working or is it time for a reckoning? I'm Jesse Weber. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery+. When a young woman named Desiree vanishes without a trace, the trail leads to Kat Torres, a charismatic influencer with millions of followers.

But behind the glamorous posts and inspirational quotes, a sinister truth unravels. Binge all episodes of Don't Cross Kat early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hello everybody and welcome back to Crime and Sports. Yay! Oh yay indeed Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petragallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman.

Thank you so much for joining us today on another episode of Crime and Sports. We cannot wait. We are winding down the Evil Can Evil series here down to what should be our last three parts. Gonna make it a 10 part series, which is incredible. And it could have been 20 to be honest with you. It's just absolutely nuts. And Evil just keeps coming.

He keeps coming. We're gonna get more. We're gonna get some crime. We're gonna get Evil gets into boating, which is fun, obviously. Lots of good stuff here coming up. Before we get to that though, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com.

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That is patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the show as well. Jimmy will fuck your name up. Good. Don't you worry about that. That said, let's do this. Let's dive back into evil here. Um, evil, Knievel. We're going to start out in October of 1975, where his 12 year old son, Robbie Knievel, who will later be a daredevil on his own has a little bit of problems legally in

Montana you go how does a 12 year old have legal problems? Well, he stole the family pickup truck and smoked weed in it Yeah, so he got he got busted for it though by the cops at 12 because they saw smoke pouring out of the windows But nobody's head above the steering wheel. So they were like, what's happening? Also, he tried to jump something probably, which also I'm sure also, you know, gives it away in a minute.

So Evil had him, I don't know if he made a deal with the judge or something, had him sent to jail for three days. Jail, jail. At 12 years old. At 12. He gave him his own scared straight program here, which didn't work, by the way. Never does with Robbie. So in October of 75, they're talking about him

kind of making a return to jumping, because at this point, basically, he is not, he's basically not, he's not jumping every weekend anymore. He's not doing any of that kind of shit. No, now he's doing, he has a lot of business stuff coming in. People all over the world now are just sending in massive amounts of proposals to put his name on something,

so some product, so he just goes through them and tries to figure out what's a good product. Which merch can I sell? Which merch do I want? To put my name on basically so that's his main Like job now is just kind of hanging out and every once in a while He's got to go do a jump and you know go keep his name out there But he's also doing like they're doing celebrity roasts of him with Don Rickles and shit

Yeah, they're he's plays in all the celebrity golf tournaments. So his job now is to be a celebrity basically. Unbelievable. Which we had a real weird celebrity class in the 70s where it was a bunch of kind of over the hill. There was a lot of over the hill actors and musicians and shit that just their job then was just to be a celebrity. Just hanging on.

Yeah. Because the talent's tough to do anymore. Yeah, so it's all over, so now their job is to show up on Hollywood squares and shit like that and be a celebrity. So they're talking a lot about this jump. And the other thing is they're talking about the wide world of sports.

They're winding down this kind of you know their thing with him pretty soon here and you know ABC he'll be done with. Here's from the book Kings Island had been open for only three years located 26 miles northeast of Cincinnati in Mason Ohio. The park featured a one third size replica of the Eiffel Tower and a set of fountains that matched the fountains at Caesar's Palace. Okay, so after the requisite trip to Bute and requisite unorthodox negotiations, Knievel handed $100 to the waitress in the cocktail lounge at the War Bonnet Hotel in Bute and told her to give it to a noisy man at a nearby table if he promised to just shut up for the next hour.

There's a hundred dollars, shut your mouth. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. Which that reminds me of a story I heard about Vince McMahon being on a plane and being in first class but in the smoking section. Yeah. And a guy was chain smoking and he kept offering the guy money to stop smoking. Stop it.

And he got up to like $600 to stop smoking and the guy was like listen I don't need your fucking money I like cigarettes go fuck yourself I paid for my seat I'm gonna fucking smoke all I want so I don't know this guy didn't take another guy's he got more matter and matter he started smoking more fuck you so and the guys already in first class he probably has a couple bucks doesn't need your money yeah so they said that after all of this the deal was done the announcement of the jump was made in the closing minutes of an ABC special portrait of a daredevil so Knievel came into town two weeks before the jump his approach here

was entirely different from his approach in London or at the Snake River or for that matter anyplace else he was was all business. For the first time in his career, possibly the first time in his life, he brought caution into his operation. The jump over 14 Greyhounds scared him. He resembled a normal, everyday human being considering this jump. Holy shit, this was a long way. Yeah, it's fucking long. There was a reason for this caution. He decided this would be the final long jump of his career the final Attempt for any kind of record the possible consequences for this one last time suddenly were frightening He didn't want fate to nab him on the way out the door Yeah, now he's got money and like all the celebrities like I don't want to be in a fucking wheelchair

Yeah, I got places to go. I got a party to go to you know, Frank Sinatra's house. This is crazy. He said Guy told Cincinnati magazine. I'm convinced that he was serious about this being his last jump He was just too cautious too nervous about half the time in his practice jumps He was coming down on his front wheel instead of the back practice jumps. That's how serious this was He didn't like being banged up anymore, our friend said. He really loved golf more than anything. It killed him when he was banged up and he couldn't play. Yeah, that would probably hurt a little bit. That's a tough game to play if your if your body isn't doing it. Oh yeah, if you're all fucked, if you have a broken arm, you can't golf.

That doesn't work. Your back's all fucked up. Yeah. The crowd was a disappointment for this, though. Attendance for this final record jump was 25,000. Now a number that was diminished by the fact that 20,000 of the people had simply paid four bucks more than the basic eight dollar fee to enter the park and ride the rides. So basically they got in for four dollars to this. So management had hoped for a much larger turnout. This area was set up to hold 70,000 people. So it's like a fair, you know, a county fair or whatever. But the day was lousy, dark and cold, intermittent rain,

and the jump was shown live on Wide World of Sports. On the morning of the jump, Knievel had practiced again, something he never did. He cleared 10 buses this time, fine tuning. Even as he took the microphone to talk to the crowd, moments before the actual jump, he was still tuning. He asked the Kings Island crew to remove the extra length of plywood ramp they installed going out onto the street through the hole where the guardrail was removed.

With the threat of rain gone, he said, I think it would be safer without the plywood. He promised to make the best and safest jump of my life and away he went. One pass, two passes, three passes, thumbs up, he came down the adjusted ramp over the elevated ramp, this part adjusted to half the height of the buses because it sat on flatbed trailers, then the final ramp and into the sky. For half a second it looked as if he might flip backward. The front end of his, this time was too high, too high, an obvious overcompensation for the crash in London when the front wheel landed first.

The balance of the motorcycle is out of whack. Backward seemed to be the easier direction to travel, ass over nearest tea kettle. Then he brought the front end down, but not too much. The motorcycle landed on the back wheel in the middle of the safety plywood that had been extended onto the roof of the 14th bus. The front wheel landed perfect. 52% of all televisions in America were tuned to Wide World of Sports when he did this jump. 52%.

You can't, like nowadays when we say old TV ratings It's unfathomable if you're like a younger person because now a big rating is you know? nothing The highest rate the highest rated show on TV like a sitcom or an hour-long drama right now Would have been canceled immediately if they had those ratings in the 70s immediately Like we're talking 30, 40, 50 million people would watch the same fucking thing back then. Wow.

52% of the people of the televisions, an estimated 55 million people watch this. Oh my God. There's I think less than 200 million people in the country at this point. Wow. So think about that, how a quarter of the country. So people watched it live.

Yep, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. This isn't even like Tuesday night at eight o'clock. Right, Saturdays people have shit to do. They got shit to do, they have little league games and stuff. So this would ultimately be the highest rated show, 22.3 in Wide World's 45 year history from 61 to 2006. So yeah, it's he does all of that, but the business side of it isn't very good. That's the problem.

So that's the issue. Now there was some also some problem with a television network, I guess there was a television stations, a few of them that were welcomed all week to interview Knievel, show the buses in the jump area, and you know, do whatever promotional news story they wanted, but the day before the jump, they were all told they weren't gonna be allowed to film the jump, you know, because it's on ABC.

So one WCPO-TV, which had filmed a practice jump, was threatened with a lawsuit if they used the film and Knievel defended this decision by offering to let them or their network buy the rights to his next jump you can pay for it But I'm not giving you shit for free, which is totally fine Yeah, so anyway, he's looking for every buck he can we'll say that much anyway So that's kind of what he's doing right now Say that much anyway. So that's kind of what he's doing right now. After this Kings Island jump, he said that was,

he then announced his retirement again. Okay, retirement two. Retirement two, evil boogaloo. This time though, he again doesn't listen to that. It just sounds good at the end of a jump. And I'm sure he never wanted to do it again. I mean, you probably, you look at your bank account and you go, all right, I don't have to do this again.

But I may have to do this again, depending on. Keep it, yeah, just to keep me in there. Now, for the rest of time though, he'll never do these giant 12 buses, 14 buses, he's not doing that shit again. From now on, it's shorter jumps, easy, ones he knows he can nail, and it's basically, you're there just to see evil do something.

You don't care if it's a record or if he dies, you just wanna see him drive around on his motorcycle. January 5th, 1976, there's another article here, like we had in a couple, one of the other episodes, from the Southern Illinoisian newspaper. Children who follow Daredevil's feats often wind up with serious injuries. Again there's a couple of stories here. Here is one.

Evil Knievel's jump over 14 buses ended successfully, but Jerry Larson's bus jump over five empty trash cans didn't. After watching Knievel's attempt to jump 14 Greyhound buses, Jerry Larson, 8, took his high-rise handlebar bicycle out to an empty lot and tried jumping over five empty garbage cans. Knievel landed on the 14th bus but made it down off the ramp without injury. Jerry fell off his bike, breaking his arm and badly bruising the left side of his body. The doctor who attended to him in the emergency room said, sometimes we see kids come in with

broken arms, legs, separated shoulders, shattered jaws, crushed ribs, all from playing evil can evil. The kids see him jump and then they try the same thing on their bikes. But what the kids don't see are the hours of practice measuring in the failures before evil jumps. Really, there's no way to prevent these accidents as long as Knievel is glorified. So Representative John Murphy of New York wrote the Federal Communications Commission asking them to stop ABC's coverage of the Knievel jump.

And then also wrote directly to Knievel, asking him to stop ABC's coverage of the Knievel Jump. And then also wrote directly to Knievel asking him to use his influence to soften the television promotion of his recent jump. Obviously that's not gonna happen, Jesus Christ, are you kidding me? Not at all. One of the people here said, I don't think there's anything wrong with a kid wanting to be Evil Knievel

any more than he'd wanna be O.J. Simpson or any other kind of professional. I would to agree I would agree with that Wow there's nothing more wrong no idea no there's nothing there's nothing any more wrong with wanting to be evil than wanting to be OJ Simpson I agree with that yeah about yeah evil didn't kill anybody but he's's a dick. Oh, jay's a nice guy, but he might murder you So it's you know it balances out This guy said I'm not I'm not saying that he should not go out and jump or riding a motorcycle without super Without proper supervision. I'm in a different position as far as jumping cars

I'm a professional life risker Knievel said and there are very few professional life riskers in the world However, there's a lot of kids that identify with me just riding motorcycles and not jumping professional life risker, Knievel said, and there are very few professional life riskers in the world. However, there's a lot of kids that identify with me just riding motorcycles and not jumping. I don't advise kids or anybody else to jump cars, motorcycles, buses, or canyons. It takes a lot of experience, and you have to pay the price for success.

Yeah, something like that. So. Is it breaking arms and shit? Yeah, well they're talking about about this is like a big push every 10 years or so there's a big push to take, you know, unpleasant shit off TV, you know, for the kids and all that shit, you know. So the association for children's television headquartered in Boston fought a long battle with ABC TV to take David Carradine's kung fu off the air. Yeah, it's not cause it was terrible either.

His most offensive things. Dude, we have OJ, yeah, her Dean, this article has no idea how funny it's going to be in 44, 40 years. It just doesn't. It has,

it couldn't possibly know how funny it's gonna be. You're right, we shouldn't have David. He's not a role model for kids. No, not if we want them to breathe. So the guy from the network here said, children were coming into hospitals with broken feet and shattered hands and cracked elbows after trying to break bricks and boards

and do other stunts they'd seen on the show. Our kids too s- Belt wrapped around their neck. We found him hanging in closets, blue in the face, dicks in their hands. In fishnets. Holy shit. The situation in

Thailand also. I think that's where he was, right? Somewhere like that? Yeah. Some sex country though, Thailand, somewhere that you go to pay for weird sex things. Yeah, that's what I thought It wasn't probably the worst way to be found Yeah, it would have been even better if he had his kung fu outfit on that would have been fucking hilarious That would have been Found with a needle hanging out of my own

in that fashion. Yeah, oh fuck yeah. I'd rather be found like Kurt Cobain with my brain splattered on the wall behind me and a needle in my arm than fucking this. This is horrible. Because that at least looks like you meant to do it. This motherfucker, you go,

oh this guy tried to come and he died. That's horrible. This was all about coming. The only all about coming come is by nearly dying and he died shit no shit So they said the situation with kung fu had become so bad the medical journals had named it the kung fu syndrome So we have an evil syndrome and a kung fu syndrome Act was successful in getting kung fu off the air also Also, it got canceled because the ratings were low. That's what it was. Get it off the air.

Had nothing to do with the show. If the show was great and watched, it would still be on. It would be on now. This year, ACT is continuing to monitor television programs and rate them in terms of violence and age group acceptability. We haven't come out with our good and bad list yet, but when we do, we hope that parents will write the networks and try to get the programs off the air. Or

they could just tell their kids not to watch it. This wasn't like now where the kids can watch it on their phone and all that. There was one TV in the house. You can turn it to whatever fucking channel you want and say, you're not watching Kung Fu, you idiot. You broke your fucking hand last week, done. Be a parent. Fuck. Stuff like kung fu and evil can evil. You've got a broken leg and you got a boxer's fracture. Yeah, and then your kid didn't see evil can evil,

but some other kids saw it, now he's gonna try to jump something, which makes your kid wanna try to jump it. You can't, you have to teach your kids not to be morons. That's all you can do. And then hope for the best. so they're talking about a letter or an article here in the Fort Lauderdale News on February 26 1976 or it says evil Knievel has legal hurdle to jump apparently an attorney representing him

appeared at City Hall to accept an assault and battery warrant for his client. Really? Yes, according to Police Chief Edward Turner, Turner said the warrant was sworn out by William Kretschmeyer, 31, of 4250 Galt Ocean Mile as a result of an early Tuesday morning scuffle at the rooftop of a supper club at 3101 North Federal Highway. Kretschmar last night said that Evil can expect a civil suit in excess of $250,000 to accompany the assault and battery charges.

He said, I signed all the papers on the civil suit today at my attorney's office. I expect that Evil Knievel will be served with the papers soon. So according to police, Knievel and Kretschmeyer were involved in a fight in the restaurant at 2.49 a.m. That's when Evil's fighting.

That's when, I can't wait till we do the multi-part Billy Martin episode, because they basically say that like, they called him like Cinderella, because they were like, at midnight, he turns into a fucking monster, though, not a pumpkin, a fucking monster. monster like if it's midnight Billy's had He's in the sauce too deep and you just want to avoid him because he'll throw a punch at you for no reason shit Like that. I think evils in the same boat. I saw his ring is up for sale

Billy and yeah Billy Martins. I know I know it's so fucking cool. I love Billy Martin was crazy I'm not buying a $30,000 ring. That's fucking crazy It's a new car for Christ's sake All that wouldn't go down in value whereas a car would Be a good investment gold man. Yeah, I guess it's a and it's it's fucking Billy Martin So they said witness as well evil was reportedly signing autographs So they said, this is while Evil was reportedly signing autographs. The quote is, witnesses told us that Evil was signing

autographs when this man, Kretschmar, kept harassing him about buying him a drink. The witnesses said Evil walked away from the man, but later pushed him when he persisted. Said Turner, apparently this man lost his balance after being pushed and struck his head on a table. Oh. That guy though, Kretschmar, disputes this version.

He said he was walking by Knievel's table when someone hit him. He said, I didn't say a word to the man, Knievel, and had no intention of doing so. I couldn't believe how hard he hit me. Those rings he wears might as well have been brass knuckles. I received six stitches in the nose and two in the head from the single blow. Police said Evil was very congenial to everyone when police arrived at the scene. Kretschmar contends that Evil was not even in the building when police arrived. So that's even bullshit PR. He said Knievel came to Broward to participate in the Jackie Gleason Pro Celebrity Golf Tournament.

Pro-am, yeah. And he could not be reached for comment. He also is doing a lot with motorcycle helmet safety. Really? Absolutely, yeah. He's constantly encouraging all the kids to wear helmets. You gotta wear a helmet, kid. He says it everywhere.

You gotta be getting a kickback on helmets then. I think he's trying to sell a helmet probably. I guess the Bell Star helmet He used at the Caesars Palace jump is credited for having saved his life after he struck his head on the ground I mean any helmet he wore should be credited with that. That's what I mean Knievel once offered a cash reward for anyone witnessed him member the kid tried to Tried to fucking get that an later on, he'll end up supporting a mandatory helmet bill in the state of California as well.

So yeah, he said that he was the best walking commercial for a helmet law. Yeah, yeah. So another article here about evil Knievel syndrome and kids getting hurt. And there's just all these doctors fucking talking about, they suffered skin lacerations, broken bones, loss of permanent teeth, serious injuries.

Like it's a whole thing. And it's so funny because I have to show you this article because I have the newspaper screenshot. Evil Knievel syndrome causes kids to get hurt. And you see all this, we feel that television programmers have acted somewhat carelessly. Look at what is right into it, right next to it.

It's skin deep, give blood. Give blood to the American Red Cross. Give blood for injured children. So they now say, there's an article that's headlined, Riggs plans to take evil for $100,000. So they say that the world's number one male chauvinist pig has a Mother's Day promotion up his sleeve. And after that, the happy hustler plans to take evil

Knievel for $100,000. Okay, so apparently, Riggs here, Bobby Riggs, revealed his plans Wednesday night over a glass of beer as he prepared for his role as keynote speaker at the Great Men of Sports Dinner. Later, an all-male audience of more than 600, largest since the Kiwanis Club began the Great Men series 13 years ago, very exciting,

heard Riggs excitedly describe in detail his two world famous tennis matches with Margaret Court and Billy Gene King there's a great tennis player named Margaret Court that's awesome real co you like the co are yeah co you are take court that is cool as fuck man yeah that is like a ball player named hoop that's dope Justin Fields yeah field I guess yeah but court hoop that's dope. Justin Fields. Yeah, field I guess yeah but court and that's just good. These matches enabled Riggs to introduce mixed sex tennis to the world and tournaments into an instant millionaire. He claims to have made one and a half

million dollars since the 73 series through endorsements, tennis and golf promotions and the banquet trail and in all this time he's carefully nursed his reputation as a male chauvinist. He says, Evil wants to bet me $100,000 that I can't ride a bicycle all the way from New York to California. Why would you want to bet that? That's a long way.

That happens all the time. Yeah, people, I mean, Jesus Christ, yeah, Forrest Gump did it for fuck's sake. I mean, on foot. He ran it, but. On foot, it's foot harder people do it on bicycles fucking all the time on a bike You can sit and fucking cruise for a while. You don't have to pedal for a bit. Yes. He's giving downhill Yeah, he said I'm going he's giving me two months to do it I figure I can do it in six weeks. That'll give me a couple weeks leeway in case anything happens like an accident

interesting here So I guess that wouldn't be the first time he's hustled Knievel. He claims to have beaten Knievel out of $25,000 by riding a motorcycle from Las Vegas to Twin Falls, Idaho. Evil better be couldn't because he didn't ride motorcycles. He's like for 25 grand I'll figure it the fuck out. I'll figure it out. Is there an automatic? I'll just keep it off and walk it there. We'll do it that way for 25 grand back then. Six weeks, James, that's like a hundred miles a day, isn't it?

500 miles a week about? Because it's like a 3,000 mile trip. So 3,000 miles. That's a ride, man. That's a ride, dude. You got to really cruise. Here is a cool ad in the Memphis Press Scimitar newspaper from May 28 76. Central Hardware has the deluxe AMF evil Knievel model motocross bike. It's a bicycle. It's a bicycle 20-inch sport

bike it has like evil Knievel number one and EK on the seat. I've seen these all over the place on the internet. Like people have, yeah, you're going to land. Your balls are going to hurt otherwise. It's $74 and that is still no suspension on that fucking no rigid ass frame. Regular 90 bucks. It's called the most exciting bike ever. I don't know. But if the kids weren't encouraged to jump their bikes anyway, now you're giving them this and they're like, well, this is made for it. Evil said this is jump rated here. They even said it's built with many extra safety features, simulated rear shocks. That's not real rear rear shocks.

That's simulated. Yeah. It looks like shocks. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him. We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world.

And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas manjoni became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history was targeted premeditated and meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber host of Luigi produced by law and crime and twist this is more than a true crime investigation we explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.

He's awoken the people to a true issue. I mean maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system. Listen to law and crimes Luigi exclusively on one degree plus enjoying one degree plus the one degree at Spotify or Apple podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th 2024 CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.

This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him we're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world and the suspect he has been identified as Luigi Nicholas mangioni became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history was targeted premeditated and meant to sow terror. I'm Jesse Weber host of Luigi produced by law on crime and twist this is more than a true crime investigation we

explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever. He's awoken the people to a true issue. I mean maybe this would be rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system. Listen to law and crimes Luigi exclusively on one degree plus enjoying one degree plus the one degree at Spotify or Apple exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app,

Spotify, or Apple podcasts. There is also the AMF Evil Knievel 10 Plus 10. It's a 10 speed bicycle. Has nothing to do with Evil Knievel. It's bad. At least a regular 20 inch, you can kind of feel like a motorcycle. That's why people put cards in the spokes

and all that kind of shit. A 10 speed. But the other thing about a 20 inch, James, is that it has one fucking speed. You can only go so fast. On a 10-speed you can fucking move that thing. But on a 10-speed you never feel like evil Knievel. You never feel cool. You feel like a college girl or something. You know what I mean? That's like two rides at 10-speed. What is that? Shifting gears. And then there's the AMF evil Knievel hot seat. It's a little three-wheeler here. Oh yeah. But it's pretty cool. It's not like a Hot Wheels type deal. It's not like a big wheel.

It's got a real wheel on the front. Oh, it's like a fucking chopper. Yeah, it looks cool as shit. It's got pedals. It's badass. It's got raked out fenders. That looks awesome. I would've loved to have that when I was a kid. Big fenders over the back tires. Damn, and then we were only a...

That's a cool trike. We were a few years too late for this, Jimmy. If we were born... I wanna find one of those. Eight, nine, 10 years earlier, we could have had that. That thing's probably five grand now. There's a lot of them out for this, Jimmy. If we were born eight, nine, 10 years earlier, we could add that as children. That thing's probably five grand now. There's a lot of them out there too, though. But I'm sure a lot of them got wrecked or destroyed.

I don't know about the hot seats. The regular bike, there's a lot. Yeah, I want that too. That's dope as shit. We need to put that in the studio. Yeah. So we need to do, make that in the middle of the couch. Kristen Knievel, that's Robbie's daughter.

I'm gonna see if she has a hot seat. We've got a hot seat for us. We're also gonna see if a hot seat is for sale online right now. Yeah, I'm sure they are. We'll look at it after the show. Okay, all right. We'll look for hot seats.

We'll go shopping when we're done here. All right. June 11th, 1976, by the way, here. We have, this is very strange, there's an ad below an Evil Knievel article for China House Restaurant. It says specializing in Canadian and Chinese food. What's Canadian food?

Poutine. I don't know what. Is it Canadian and Chinese food? Is it Chinese food made in Canada? Maple flavored. But Ayer makes a big, yeah, that's a big deal. Not Canadian and Chinese food, Canadian and Chinese food

So maple flavored lo mein, I don't know what they have but I'm scared So, okay. Here we go. This is around 1976. Here's a crazy fucking story about evil Knievel and the level of Ego and insanity and out of control. I'm having whatever I want right now Ego and insanity and out of control. I'm having whatever I want right now Action here's from the book. Okay, the night was still alive Even if the bars in Fort Lauderdale were not the famous daredevil and a longtime friend from from Butte Ron Phillips had met two Women and the famous daredevil said they should move the party to his lavish hotel lodgings at the Bahia Mar Beach Resort Sounds great. This was a fine idea,

except the hotel thought the daredevil had checked out. Some other well-heeled visitor now occupied the lavish lodgings. No rooms were available at all, not even for evil. Oh. So his reaction to the news was a surprise. There was no reaction. He didn't get angry at all.

The famous daredevil, Mr. Knievel simply suggested everyone follow me. Okay, there was a backup plan. He had been thinking he might buy a boat, you see, and the Bahiamar Beach Resort was planted next to the Intercoastal Waterway and boats were docked along the marina. Big boats, yachts, and one of them surely would be for sale because boats were always for sale, Evil said. It's three o'clock in the morning, by the way. We're going to buy a boat right now. Right now. Sure enough, the search party of two men and two women found a yacht that had a for sale sign on the side. They said Knievel

knocked on the door or the hatch or whatever it was called. The time roughly was 3 o'clock in the morning. The owner of the yacht appeared after a long stretch of knocks. He was not happy, obviously. He was asleep on his boat. I want to buy your boat, Evil said. How much do you want for it? OK. Now, this is a big thing.

So the sleepy-eyed owner named a price. I'll buy it, the daredevil said. I'll take it for that price. He said I won't argue about the price I'll pay you just what you want with one condition What do you think that condition is Jimmy get off of it now the fuck off the boat right now Yeah, he said I'll give you a check and you get off the boat right now This guy's got his wife and kids in there by the way. He's not just out on a fishing trip. This is a family trip he's doing. Holy shit. So the guy said, okay. The deal was done. Just like that. The owner took the check, woke

up his family. They gathered their belongings and left like they were refugees fleeing from an invasion. The daredevil and Ron Phillips and the two women settled in for the night. The next morning, Bob's, uh, Phillips said, Bob decided we should take it out for our first boat ride. This was complicated by the fact that the boat that he purchased was an 87 foot Broward yacht. It's a giant boat. It's a fucking huge boat. You can't just take... it's not a fishing boat. You can just take it out without a license. Yeah, you need like a captain's license for this shit. So only a licensed captain would be able to operate a yacht this size.

So I said, the daredevil found a captain at the marina and the party went out for a pleasant day on the high seas. On the way back a problem developed. The captain steered the boat to one side of the waterway and stopped to make room for another boat coming in the oncoming direction opposite direction The daredevil was not pleased just keep going the hell with them Now the captain explains the the number one rule on the water is bigger boat right of way period Yeah, bigger boat as the right-of-way knows it matter what the fuck anything else is so

They were explaining that to him, and was like, well, that's bullshit. This is garbage here. What do I do here? So he said the next move was inevitable. The daredevil went on to the boat market in the succeeding days. He discovered the availability of a feed ship, which was 116 feet long. That's crazy. Feed ships built by First Export Association of Dutch Shipbuilders have been sold over the years to people like Henry Ford and Malcolm

Forbes and you know, captains of industry and people like that. This was one of the biggest yachts in the world at the time. Now they have 200 foot ones, whatever foot ones, now they're crazy. The daredevil of course wanted the feed ship on the day the deal was supposed to be completed paper sign cash exchanged skip von Lewin one of the long ago motorcycle racers at Ascot a short-term member of the Hollywood Motorcycle daredevils was Knievel's guest in Fort Lauderdale the devil the daredevil had given him a state room on the 87 foot boat the Broward a Painted wooden sign with Van Lewin's name was even hung in the stateroom door. Just a sign, a sure sign of nautical

stature. The two men went together to pick up the new boat. A truly big boat. Van Lewin's head was spinning. Some papers had to be signed, but Bob has to give this guy, the salesman, a $635,000 check. Huge money. Bob writes the check. This was a Saturday. The salesman a $635,000 check. Oh my god. Huge money. Bob writes the check. This was a Saturday. The salesman says the bank wasn't open so he couldn't take the check and the deal would have to be put off till Monday.

What did he expect him to come up with? Fucking a car, a trunk full of cash? Why did you make the appointment to do it on a Saturday? What other form of payment could you possibly have expected from this guy? Fucking pennies? What do you want?" So he said, the daredevil did not like this. He steamed and stewed and took out his car keys. He hung them in front of the boat salesman's face. These are the keys to my Bentley, which is worth $165,000. You hold on to the keys until Monday. If the check doesn't go through through you keep the car. Oh How's that so the boat salesman said all right took the keys and evil said quote now get the fuck off my boat

He would call the feed ship the evil eye one and the 87 foot Broward also would become the evil eye one What he's like George Foreman. he names all his boat the same thing he said even Tony's a friend I went with to okay yeah that's two gods too yeah and in rapid order an array of service boats would be added and an eventual evil Knievel armada of 13 evil eye ones you can't do that that's so many boys they give them names is so they can identify. Yes the fucking vessel if it's They're all mine. Don't worry about it Finding a place to put this many boats became a problem, right? Yeah, so he bought a house Yeah, now you have a fucking yeah, you have a battalion of boats

You literally there are most of the countries in the world don't have 13 boats in their Navy like there's 195 countries there's probably 150 of them that don't have 13 boats in their whole Navy I bet so I can't imagine you know fucking there's plenty of these places they can't have boats Sri Lanka can't have a Navy. Maybe it's probably pretty pissed off at you, Evil. So yeah, no shit. So he found a place at 2824 Northeast 28th Street in Fort Lauderdale on the intercoastal waterway with 300 feet of docking space. 300 feet of waterfront docking space?

Yeah. He not only was a boat owner, he was one of the biggest boat owners in the United States. Yeah. Linda would come down to Florida for a week,, he was one of the biggest boat owners in the United States. Yeah. Linda would come down to Florida for a week, two weeks, mostly without the kids. She and her husband would go down the intercoastal in the feed ship, dock for a week in Miami. Then she would go back to Butte. He never went to Butte much these days, but when he did, he went to his personal bank

vault. Okay. What? The vault was inside. Dude, this is crazy. If you wrote a movie about this guy, you wouldn't believe it. That's the thing. Like 13 boats. You're not going back home because you're going to be working on boats all day.

No, he's not doing shit. No, that's the thing. So it's inside an office building. He commissioned next to the Met tavern, uh, here across from the civic center. The building was substantial, a real office building with a real office where his secretary Meg Meager handled real business. The vault was also substantial, looked very much like one of those places Knievel would have robbed in the old days. The door to the vault had gold lettering that read, Evil Knievel National Bank, say National Bank, savings absolutely no loans. Money was piled randomly on the floor.

He would tell his visitors they were looking at over a million dollars. He sometimes would bring people into the vault so everybody could throw money into the air and sit underneath the shower of cash. He said there were a lot of $1 bills in the vault. Yeah. Uh, he said, I tell people there are no withdrawals, no interest. All they get is a wish of good luck for me. This personality business was a full-time job. Only once was there real talk about actual investments.

And even that didn't last long. His friend said, we went to New Orleans. There was a guy who owned 33 racetracks. He wanted Evil to be involved in some housing complex with him. Evil brought in Leslie Nielsen. Yes, that Leslie Nielsen. The actor, yes. Who had just, fuck, was about to do airplane

and be considered hilarious after being a serious actor. We played golf every day for a week. Leslie Nielsen was my partner. Evil played with the guy who owned the 33 racetracks. I don't know how it all came out I think maybe the guy had something to do with the mob. Yes in New Orleans owning 33 racetracks Not probably abso fucking lootly Guaranteed so he's driving one of the boats a friend said there's a restaurant on the inner coastal

This has nothing to do with this other part This is a separate thing where the owner had pissed him off for some reason Doesn't take much There are all these signs near the restaurant that this is a no-wake zone There are tables and chairs people eating right on the dock. This is lunchtime Evil guns it the water comes up like a tsunami. It's a fucking giant boat. This is crazy Knocks over tables and chairs Dinners go flying everyone gets wet. He just keeps on going

Probably with his finger up. Yeah, so here's a story from the book D Robinson 33 year old college Senior at the University of Maryland. Yeah, she was in the military for a while, so got to college late. For her final year, there was a partnership program with the Art Institute in Fort Lauderdale to study interior design in Florida. So she read a story in a newspaper about an upcoming comedy roast of Evil Knievel at a Fort Lauderdale disco. So she thought Evil was pretty cool because she always rode Harleys with her dad and still rides a motorcycle as her main form of transportation. So she thought evil was pretty cool because she always rode Harley's with her dad and still rides a motorcycle as her main form of Transportation so she's like he's pretty neat so she wanted to see him So she was supposed to study for a test the next day, but she went instead to this event

She said fucking it's evil So it was really packed and she was in the back and couldn't see anything so a bartender Let her stand on the bar so she could see yeah so the thing is halfway through all this proceedings here a guy comes up to her and said he's mr. Knievel's bodyguard and that mr. Knievel had spotted her back here and would like to invite her to a party in the back of his yacht after the roast. I think about you standing on that bar is that he can see you really well.

He really is stand out. And then, you know, he looked at you like shopping. So she said, he said, if you want to, I will drive you to the yacht, you know, afterwards. So she said to herself, I have a test in the morning, but it's evil can evil. It's a chance to meet evil and see his yacht. What are the odds?

I got to do that. So it's the 11nievel, it's a chance to meet Evil and see his yacht, what are the odds? I gotta do that. So it's the 116 footer here that they're on. So the feed, the feed ship, yeah. The night was amazing they say, maybe 12 people had come from the roast and Knievel gave them a tour and then everybody hung around the deck and had drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Robinson, single by herself, stayed in the background until the bodyguard came up again and said that Evil would like to talk to her in the pilot house. If you'd leave your shirt here.

This is not going where you think it's going by the way. No? No, that's the weird part. The meeting went fine, better than fine. Knievel was locked into his charming gear. Robinson slipped into the same gear. Somewhere in the conversation, evil asked her what she did for a living Not wanting to admit she was still a college student because her education was delayed by the time in the military She said just skipped a step and said she was an interior designer. That's what she's gonna be next year So Knievel was delighted. He started asking her questions about design and her career path. She just made shit up design and her career path she just made shit up finally need the whole thing that's the yeah she was like yeah and then you walk down this hallway and my offices there so he finally whips out his special evil

Knievel gold check book thing and says here I want to hire you as a designer I want you to start working on my yacht." And he handed her a check. She stared at the amount. It's a $10,000 down payment, he said. On her design, she's like, holy sh- Yeah, on her word. What the fuck? Yeah, she's like, this is crazy. So Knievel only had two demands for the renovation.

Both involved the sleeping quarters. The first was the bed had to be at least seven feet wide, large enough that he could comfortably fit between three women on each side. It's not big enough at all. I'd get ten feet at least. Well I guess if they're crammed in. The second was that a secret compartment had to be built somewhere close to the bed. So she said, what will you put in the secret compartment? Not wanting to be nosy. Exactly, just for designing. He said, I'll need room for a half gallon of wild turkey.

And for Bruno. Who's Bruno? She said, who the fuck is Bruno? And he said, my 357 Magnum. Obviously. I keep my booze next to my whiskey, don't you? Isn't that where everyone keeps it? I like to be fucked up handling guns.

That's what you want. Yeah, you want those next to each other. So when you're good and drunk, you have it near you to really play with and fire off. So she went back to the art institute and did shitty on the test, but told her teachers that I've just got $10,000 like to do this shit.

And they were all like, that's crazy. And she said, I can hire a bunch of you guys, the teachers. So she said let me slide on some shit, and I'll hire you guys basically so they were like okay Hey, we'll get this job done cool. So he took her all over he introduced her to people as my interior designer Yeah, she fit two queen mattresses into the sleeping quarters for his fucking orgy bed She created a secret place for Bruno in the Turkey. She had all the carpets ripped out or placed with patterns that included the initials EK in them all over the place. She added a life-size steel statue of Knievel on a motorcycle, a helicopter

landing pad for special occasions. Got to have that. I mean, I put that immediately when I moved into my house I was like well I mean I mean Jimmy comes over and he's gonna chop her in you know you did the same for me obviously we got a chopper in so because you never know she just she's spending tons of money she put it this way and this is a very interesting way to put it he was like the dog from Aesop's fables. The one who sees his reflection in the water while he's crossing the bridge.

The dog's carrying a bone in his mouth. When he sees the reflection, what he thinks is another dog with another bone, a bigger bone, he becomes jealous and begins to bark. His bone slips out of his mouth and goes into the water. Instead of two bones, he has no bone at all. That was evil in his boats, she said. He was always chasing the next thing that looked even bigger and better, chasing the illusion just because he could.

And that was in his boat? No, no, just fucking going around. She said one day he came aboard the yacht with a Cyprus clock that he'd been given at some dinner. He liked the clock and wanted to hang it.. He said where do you think it should go? She said I don't know everything is kind of clogged up here. We don't really have a space for it It doesn't really fit in with the design. He said I'll make it fit You just got a hammer and some nails and nailed the clock into the ceiling of the sleeping quarters there

He said there people will see it now. Yeah. She said, yep, that's, certainly they will. There it is. So she said, anyway, by the time I was finished, I had graduated from college and was in business for myself. I was an interior decorator for yachts. I'd gotten other jobs from that job.

Wow. Because he shows that shit to everybody, and if they like it, they're like, oh, well, let me get your card. And that's how it works. So 1976, July 8th, 1976, they said, here's an article that says he talks bigger than Mohammed Ali. He wears more jewelry than Liberace. At 38, he's the king of the daredevils.

He said, Kids look up to me than more than anyone else in the world. Sure, they respect Ali, but not everybody wants to be a fighter They all want to jump motorcycles and cars Huh? All of them I'd rather get punched in the face I'm not gonna fall from the sky at least that's better at least only one bone gets broken in yeah I that's much. I guess maybe because I've been in fights but never jumped a motorcycle. Maybe that's why I'm like, well getting punched in the face isn't that bad.

Well the thing is he doesn't jump bikes that are supposed to be jumped. I don't want to jump that. No, it's fucking crazy. He said, I tell people I'm evil can evil but I'm not necessarily evil. I want to do good with my life. Mostly I want to reach kids and tell them the dangers of narcotics. That's the biggest crusade of my life. I say I would do this picture, because now we're talking about a movie, only if I were allowed to include the speech that I give at every place I appear. I tell the kids that race car drivers at Indian

Apple is sometimes put nitro in their engines to give them an extra push, but it only lasts four or five laps and then it ruins the cars. The same thing with narcotics. Maybe it'll give you a lift for four or five years but then the body's ruined. I want to get that message across. He said easy rider was an important picture for motorcycling but it blew the narcotics stuff. It probably had more to do with the popular zing dope than anything in recent years.

Popularizing dope. There's a newspaper. It's hard to say. I was like, zing dope? What is that coke? What are we talking about? Whether fighting dope or promoting evil can evil, he is a zealot, the article says. He's scornful of all of his film biography that starred George Hamilton, arguing that with sound logic that no one but himself could adequately portray himself. Sure. I gotta play me. So he's doing it these days in Southern California on locations of his movie, Viva Knievel.

Holy shit. It is, it's made, by the way, by the same people who made The Towering Inferno, that 70s movie with oj in it So they're producing it for Warner Brothers Evil himself wrote the original story about dope smuggling and he is surrounded by an impressive cast Gene Kelly red buttons Marga

Mar Marjo Gortner Lauren Hutton is in this It's Marjo in this article. Really? This is my M.A.R. Joe J.O.E. Marjo. Yeah. Lauren Hutton, who is a big. Yeah.

With the gap in her teeth. Shit. Yeah. One day the company was shooting in the San Fernando Valley's exclusive Lakeside Country Club where Knievel recently joined. Already seems are already he seems to know all the members. Red buttons playing the inevitable sidekick told Knievel recently joined already seems are already he seems to know all the members red buttons playing the inevitable sidekick told Knievel told how Knievel enlightened the filming Knievel interrupted shooting one day to insist everyone celebrate in his style by taking slugs from his bourbon bourbon bottle everybody take shots this while Turkey let's go so like the crew people and the director reluctantly agreed, T. Toddler Buttons refused.

Knievel would not continue until Buttons drank. He doesn't drink. You're going to ruin your sobriety today, Buttons. He's like an old man at this point too, Red Buttons. I've got a problem, that's why I stopped. Fuck man, you have no idea what happens when I do this. I burned down a whole town one time, dude. It's bad.

This is gonna kill me. My Christ. The comedian finally swallowed a full bourbon bottle to the horror of the filmmakers. He staggered around the set until the plot was revealed. The second bottle was filled with tea. It was a joke that he was doing with people, yeah. When the company broke for lunch,

the assistant director told Knievel he had 45 minutes for lunch. Knievel replied, quote, look, Sonny. His his name isn't Sonny by the way, he's just calling him Sonny. Look Sonny, I've been risking my life for 10 years and I spent three of those years in the hospital. Nobody's going to tell me I got 45 minutes for lunch and he just leaves. I'll be back when I'm back essentially.

So yeah, he says there's an article talking about this movie talking about he can't stand waiting around. Most of acting is waiting. Sure. They shoot you for a few minutes, then you go sit somewhere while they reset everything, which takes an hour and a half and they do all this shit. In a big Hollywood movie, it takes even more because there's even more shit and they have stand ins, they have all this different shit.

Go back to your trailer, learn the rest of your lines. It's fucking boring. You really gotta like doing drugs in a trailer to do this. It's the only way. So he does all of that, but he says that making movies is at least easier than jumping. And he says he's a natural actor as well too. Okay, not senior acting. He's just a natural actor.

He's, yeah. And Lauren Hutton, or I'm sorry, the director says, "'Evil hits the screen like John Wayne, bigger than life. "'He comes at you like this "'and he makes a cannonball gesture.'" So I've seen this movie, by the way, and we'll talk about it. Have you?

Oh my God, absolutely. It's on Tubi. It's free. The Rift Tracks version of it at least is on Tubi. It's free the riff tracks version of it At least is on Tubi so you can watch you can listen while Mike Nelson and I make fun of it Which is the way to watch it for sure for sure So I guess he said at one point the second day of shooting his first line was I'm tired I've been all I've been up all night

He delivered the line about 830 a.m. Then he confessed I really was those actors can fake that stuff. I stayed up until 6 a.m. Drinking tequila. That's my method acting Yeah, I'm really drunk and hungover Yeah, so he said it's a movie that you can the whole family can see really That's what he's saying to because there's a there's a kid in it who... Drugs. It's so weird. Okay, the best way to explain this fucking movie, he's preparing for some jump. Some jump, whatever. It looks like a little round track coliseum type place.

It's got a big jump coming up now. And the opening scene is him busting into an orphanage, by the way, at two o'clock in the morning. Rescuing children. Waking all the kids up while the nuns are like, Wait, what are you doing, Evil? No, no, you can't be doing that. He's like, No, no, no, these kids want to see me. Waking up rousting all the kids and giving them Evil Knievel toys.

So he's even... The opening scene is like, Look, I gotta show my toys and give a speech about how drugs are bad. And that's what he does. And then the rest of the movie is his assistant. I don't know if it's red buttons or a different guy, cause I can't remember, but he, this guy has a son that he never has seen apparently. Oh. And the kid just gets dropped off with him

at the motorcycle racetrack. And it's like, now you gotta, now he he's yours so the kid doesn't know his dad he doesn't know anything and he's just sitting around this racetrack and so evil takes him under his wing of course and teaches him that his dad's a good guy but you know things happen and it's the fucking wildest plot at one point people are trying to sabotage his jump so like they bust into his trailer like knock him over the head and steal his motorcycle it's fucking wild dude it's such a terrible movie it's six pack remember

that movie yeah that's exactly it's so bad dude it's six pack just with one good at a time one good so evil says if I had to do this for a living I couldn't make it more than once every two or three years. I can't stand all this waiting around. I'm a man of action. Right. And by the way, he's not a good actor. No.

No, he's not a good actor. And he's playing himself. Just look at that, yeah. So now he's being sued here. This is a big deal. He's being sued for $11 million dollars in September of 76 by a cameraman who claims he was assaulted him with a cane. Oh, that's the suit thing too. That's that's that all checks out. He said Knievel shoved a heavy television camera into his face and struck the upper part of his body with a cane.

This is at the we described this incident at the Snake River. It's just catching up to him two years later now. So next up he's going to jump in Worcester in Massachusetts. So he's going to do that. Here's from the book about the 76 October 11th, 1976 jump. He finally jumped again in Worcester, Massachusetts of all places on October 11th. It was almost a year after the King's Island jump and it was only his third jump in the last two years since Snake River. He also signed on for two jumps at the end of the month at the Kingdom in Seattle. All of these events fit inside his new pulled back cautious schedule. He was scheduled to jump 13 U-Hauls in Worcester, 10 Greyhound buses per night in Seattle.

His younger son Robbie, now 14, would make his jumping debut in Worcester. Yeah, this is the beginning of it for him. From the beginning, Robbie was the one who had wanted the daredevil life, the one who had that gene that made him challenge anything or anyone in his path, the one that makes you steal trucks and smoke weed in your 12. You know, that gene. The stupid gene. Yeah, the gene his father had, it goes on to say, exactly. They had rubbed against each other from the start. That sounds gross.

Father and son, eww. Rubbing together. Rubbing together, collided, essentially because they were the same headstrong, obstinate character. The people in Bute who saw Robbie cutting up mainly said, quote, uh-huh, that's just what he deserves about evil. He deserves a kid who does this just like him. Robbie had been on stage before at both the Toronto and Kings Island doing wheelies, but this would be his first jump over anything. The hurdle of choice was four of those U-Haul trucks.

That's still a pretty goddamn good jump. I wouldn't do that. That's not an easy jump. No, his father had talked for years about how he didn't want his sons to follow in his career path but now he didn't seem to mind. Now also the other son, Kelly, who's 16, decided he didn't want to do any of that anymore and he concentrates on the business side of shit. Kelly Knievel. Kelly Knievel. At this time, this was Evil's negotiation tactics, by the way.

The promoters would come in with their contracts drawn up by lawyers. Evil would let them talk, explain everything, go over the contract. Then he would turn his copy of the contract over and he would list one, two, three. And he would write upfront percentage guarantee. He said, that's my contract. Let's start with number one. That would be in cash right now. Yeah You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps the ones that make you really question what's real Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest darkest and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests But instead in hospital rooms and doctors offices Hi, I'm mr Ballen the host of Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries.

And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling, they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries

should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr.. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect

He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. It was meant to sow terror. He's awoking the people to a true issue. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on one degree plus enjoying one degree plus one degree app Spotify or Apple podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th 2024 CEO Brian Thompson

stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This a silent starts firing at him and the suspect he's been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was meant to sow terror. He's awoking the people to a true issue. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus.

You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple podcasts. That's one, two and three. The rest of the shit I don't care about. We'll get one out of the way because if that number doesn't match, I'm leaving anyway. That's all it is. So the Worcester contract and Worcester show were weird from the beginning, they said. The promoter Abe Ford, this is amazing by the way, was an old time wrestling guy from Boston. So you know he's full of shit. An old time wrestling promoter, the biggest scammers in the world.

After putting, he was talking about putting on a show in Foxborough at Schaeffer Stadium where the Patriots played at the time. That stadium that seated 60,000 people, it would be a big time event but the deal with the stadium fell apart. So Abe Ford convinced Knievel to go to Fittenfield which was where Holy Cross played college football and had an old time wooden grandstand that seated about 20,000 people. So it became a less big time event at that point. Still a lot of people. But Ford said he had to stage some kind of show somewhere to recruit the U-Haul trucks on Saturday, but the show was

rained out and postponed to a Monday afternoon, but it was Columbus Day. So the weather was fine on Monday, but the new Knievel brought out or brought out his new worries. The invincibility definitely was gone. He looked at the football field, a diagonal path set up to give him the most speed going into the jump. And he looked at the 13 U-Haul trucks and he pulled three of them out of the line. Before he'd just be like, well, fuck it, I got to do it. Now he's like, I'm not crashing. Get that out of there. The 95 foot jump became a 75 foot jump.

He mentioned the rainy weather and not enough room to get up to speed, even with the diagonal as his reasons. Even then he did a series of practice jumps. Two jumps over four trucks, three more over seven trucks before he successfully jumped the ten trucks. Robbie did land the four truck one by the way. The crowd was only 9,000 people. And the receipts at the end had disappeared.

Abe Ford and the other promoters had also disappeared. Evil got scammed for once. That, who could possibly scam Evil? Wrestling people. Those are the only people. And if he, maybe if he had like a standup comedy show, that guy could have ran away with his money. Those, the only other people who could be more insidious than Evil would be comedy or

wrestling promoters. One of the two. Holy shit. So since the show was in the afternoon, Evil had time to go to Boston to search for Abe Ford. Did he find him? He's going to hunt him. He said he screwed him out of $20,000 to $30,000.

And you don't screw Evil out of $20,000 to $30,000. Luckily for Ford and probably for Evil, the search was fruitless, obviously. His friend said he had that second cane, you know, the one that was really just a lead pipe disguised as a cane, and he was not afraid to use it. He'd broken some promoter's leg with it once. So October 22nd, 1976, there's a big ad here

for an Evil Knievel King Radio Evil Knievel Wheelie Contest. They're searching the greater Seattle area for an Evil Knievel King Radio Evil Knievel Wheelie contest. They're searching the greater Seattle area for a wheelie champion. So yeah. To ride against evil? No, no, just to see how far you can go. The prizes are an Evil Knievel AMF bicycle to three qualifiers, Evil Knievel Ideal toys,

so you could try to almost break your neck and we'll give you a $4 toy. Tickets to the Evil Knievel Ideal toys. So you could try to almost break your neck and we'll give you a four dollar toy. Tickets to the Evil Knievel Spectacular and Evil posters as well. So there you go. And he's also the Sky Cycle from the Snake River. It's touring malls without him, just making him money. Just wandering it around.

Yep, it's just touring. That's it. And then also, this is very funny, there's an article or an ad under it that says, life is for the living. I can teach you the social dances easily. Call Pam. And here's just, there's Pam. There she is. Hi, I'm Pam.

There you are Pam. Yes, that's the place she knows. I can teach you. That's it. That's the whole article or the whole ad. October 28th 28 76 here. Evil goes to Seattle to do his bullshit there and you know tickets are eight dollars and six dollars. This will not be on television here. The wide world of sports announced last Saturday while

profiling the famous motorcycle stuntman that his jumps in Seattle would be tell it nationally televised as part of the show however contract agreements between the promoters of the event and the kingdom and ABC Network apparently all got fucked up they said there's no current plans to allow the evil Knievel portion of wide world of sports to be televised at a later date in Seattle oh it's a blackout situation oh they're there's not enough people. They're not playing it there. There's a blackout so they can sell more tickets. So he jumps on October 30th at the Kingdome. He only jumped seven buses

when he said he was gonna jump 10. But the crowd didn't give a shit. They don't know, looked hard to them probably. They were happy to see him. They can't do it. But he still apologized to the crowd that he only did that. So it says, as showbiz, evil's a flop.

That's a headline in the Daily Herald here. The evil Knievel thrill spectacular unfolded Friday night in the kingdom without killing anyone, but that's not to say the show itself was an immortal danger from the beginning. A crowd generously estimated at 15,675 and about 45,000 empty seats watched the Knievel debacle here apparently so that's not good obviously and then they said also he he pulled the fucking buses out he said he apologized and said I didn't really do it right even I make mistakes. So he announced his retirement obviously again and yeah so

in 1975 he paid a hundred and sixty five thousand in federal income taxes last week he was notified he owes three hundred seventy thousand dollars more. Oh yeah I didn't think evil was paying his taxes properly. Can't possibly. And it costs a lot of money for Evil Knievel to maintain himself in the matter to which he is accustomed, with his stable of Ferraris and Cadillacs, a yacht, a jet, diamond rings big enough to make your eyes pop. Prior to the evening's climax, the audience watched about two hours of stunt work by lesser known daredevils. That included a group who took new 1977 cars over ramps to make them balance on two wheels

while traveling the length of the stadium floor. A little two wheel dilly there. There's also a couple of crashes of old cars into other old cars. Perhaps the most exciting event of the night was performed by a young man from Kettle Falls, Washington named Terry Brawner, who rode a snowmobile over five Honda cars parked side by side.

Wow. He cleared the cars with room to spare, but then it almost seemed as if he had forgotten to think of a way to stop after the jump. He bailed off his machine a moment before it slammed into one of Knievel's parked vans in a crash that could have easily taken his head off. Also, Robbie Knievel performed some wheelies and then made jumps over five parked Hondas. So that's how that went. So they say, here's the kingdom from the book. He looked at the 10 buses in the kingdom, looked at the ramp and pulled three of the buses out

of the line. He jumped seven both days. The second day live on wide world of sports, his shit, except not in Seattle, as we found out. His shoulder hurt after the second jump and he went to the hospital where he was released with no more than a shoulder strain. Now he's getting paranoid, see what I mean? Oh, am I hurt? The performance turned out to be

his final jump on Wide World. He'd been a part of 17 of the show's telecasts in 10 years. He was seen as an ABC attraction as much as Fonzie or Barney Miller or Robert Blake as Beretta. Yeah, no shit. He had helped bring- 17 episodes. That's huge. He helped bring the network back to life. ABC was dying when he came, when they got him. That's why, one of the reasons why they said, let's show him because maybe that'll help.

They said the network had given him life. It had been the great arrangement. He had ABC president, Rune Arledge's private phone number and would use it all the time. He would have an argument about sports with somebody, pre-Google, and he would just say, I'll call Rune Arledge, he'll know. I'll call the president of ABC sports, he'll know. Three executives.

He'll know at three, yeah, exactly, three o'clock in the morning. So, so they said that basically ABC executives pretty much agreed that the jumps were over. He said, I think there was an overall feeling that it was done. What else was there to do? Yes. Eventually things like that run their course, especially when it's like, I don't know, man, how many of these can you jump and you're pulling them out? You were, you were going bigger. Now you're going smaller. Exactly. exactly it's not it's time. It's time. Yeah, so yeah He talks all about how he's trying to I guess he wants to

Gift kids a bunch of toys, but they're his toys. So, you know, he said I was crazy about those talked about Raggedy Anne and raggedy Andy dolls that he got when he was six. And he said, I was crazy about those two dollars. Played with them for a long time. Like most little boys, I got a lot of trucks and cars for Christmas. Never really felt deprived. I really got everything I wanted. Except when I was 10 years old, I really wanted a new black Phantom bicycle. It did not work out though.

Besides the new bicycles that bear my name look a lot better than the black phantom so yeah he said it's a good thing there were no evil Knievel toys when I was a kid or I would have gone nuts trying to get them so he's just doing articles advertising his shit many also they talked about him spending money and he says money is for spending if God had wanted you to save it he would have put handles on it so you could carry it around like a suitcase. All right. Interesting here. He didn't put a handle on my exactly. It's the evil's. Evil's analogies are all fucked up, man. Very precarious. Very precarious. So they're talking all about his movie that's coming out and everything. Okay, now we'll talk about this show because it's crazy.

Apparently CBS picked up on him. CBS was like, we'll take him. We'll put his shit on TV. So the show was called Evil Knievel's Death Defiers. The date of the broadcast was supposed to be January 31st, 1977 on Monday night. Just after Monday night football's over. Another sports show, it makes sense, from 8.30 to 10 o'clock on the East Coast. It was his first jump on prime time television. All those wide roll of sports is at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

This is the real deal now, prime time. A number of daredevils were scheduled to perform their death-defying feats. Knievel would finish the night by attempting to jump over the world's largest indoor saltwater pool which would be filled with man-eating killer sharks, according to a press release. They're talking about how man-eating sharks had been the American demon of choice for the past three years since the book Jaws came out in 1974 and was a best seller for like two straight years. So then the movie came out and all that shit.

Obviously Jaws was a big deal. Killer sharks were everywhere. It's all anybody was talking about. Man-eating killer sharks. The Knievel Jump was a heavy-handed attempt to carve out a slice of this public fascination. A commercial scheduled to run in the days preceding the telecast would paint a picture of the battle between the fearsome sharks and the familiar daredevil in his white leathers. The announcer would describe Knievel's leap and the trouble that lurked below and warn

that if he doesn't make it, water wings won't help him. Right. Because if he's floating, he just looks like a seal. He's going to be dead. So the attempt would take place at the old Chicago Amphitheater. So that's where it's going down here. There's a producer, the independent producer would be

Marty Peseta Productions, credited with six Oscar Award telecasts, seven Grammy telecasts, plus the Elvis Presley comeback special, Aloha from Hawaii which Which played to the largest worldwide television audience in history So he's done some of these before this guy The hosts of this event would be telly Savalas who was Kojak bald guy with a lollipop if you don't know Yeah, speaking

Fuck he's such an icon then yeah Oh god, he was huge and Jill st. John who was famous as playing James Bond's girlfriend in the movie diamonds are forever. So Posetta himself would be the executive producer Michael Seligman a rising star in this specials business would be the producer The show would have that mashed together television buzz of an award show, a halftime at the Rose Bowl, a true made for TV event. He said the ratings are gonna be huge, there's gonna be sequels, this is gonna be awesome. Then they figured out it's not gonna be so awesome when they started dealing with evil.

Well, Seligman was the first to realize that this could be a disaster. He went to visit Knievel a few weeks before the jump in Fort Lauderdale. The two men had met once before in Los Angeles at Dino's Lodge, a bar owned by Dean Martin on Sunset Boulevard here.

So what happened that night, I guess it was the front of the bar was the site for the opening credits of a TV show called 77 Sunset Strip, which aired for like seven years. So it was on for a long time in the late 50s, early 60s building. The bar is built on the side of a hill. The entrance is at street level, but the back of the building dropped two flights lower. It's like on off a hill. So that was why Knievel dared Seligman to jump out of the back window.

Because it's low back there. No, you don't know how far it is back there. It's a drop of unknown proportion. So you just take it. But he walked in the front door and he's like, just jump off the back door. Yep. So it was the first night they met. He said they were just talking, having a cocktail. And he said, Evil said, jump, do it now, go ahead, go. So they said, well, you don't know how far that is down.

I don't know where, it's dark. What the fuck are you talking about? And who knows what's gonna be down there? A big rock sticking into my taint, anything could happen. So Evil said, you should do it. If you're gonna work with daredevils, you should be a daredevil yourself. And Seligman said, quote, I I'm a Jew Jews don't jump out of

windows we hire people to jump out of windows we hire our daredevils yeah you're you're my Jew you're yeah so I'm hiring you he said so Knievel laughed they laughed everybody got along everything's fine I'm a Jew I hire my daredevils Knievel suggested that this man's soon-to-be daughter, who is going to be born, should be called Evolette. What? So that's, yeah, you should call her Evolette. So, now the producer had to visit the daredevil in Florida to work out the details of the telecast.

Evol invited him to stay a night aboard the Evil Eye 1, the big one. Which one? The big one. His parents lived in Fort Lauderdale, so he could have stayed with them, but he said, ah, can evil invited me, fuck it. I'll go stay with evil. So he and his parents went out to a large dinner

with evil and his family, and then they could go back with, he could go back to the yacht with evil. Seligman said, quote, the dinner was fine. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Then we got back to the boat. This is horrifying, by the way. He'd been drinking. I went to bed and he started beating up his wife and children. What? Yeah, it was terrible. I didn't see it firsthand. No, but I heard all of it.

I heard the yelling and I heard the slaps and then I heard the crying. I heard his wife linda crying. I heard the kids crying. He just came home and started beating the shit out of his family for no reason They were probably sleeping. He probably woke them up to beat the shit out of them So he said in the middle of the night He sealed him in quietly gathered his things and got off the boat and went to stay with his parents So now they say nothing was funny now from the moment the show was conceived that it had been an inherent possibility for trouble, the chance that any of the live acts could draw an instant cloud over the proceedings with a bad result, scenarios had been created for what to do in each case,

how to handle hospital situations, how even to handle death. The first move in all fatalities would be go to commercial. Number one. Now there was an additional worry that the star of the show, the guy whose name was in the title, was a time bomb. Evil was again seen as a real jerk. The Shark Tank people had come to the same conclusions as the Snake River launch people. Steeligman said he was just an awful guy. So a press conference is held on January 25th, 1977, six days before the event. But this didn't make news.

It's just Seligman. That guy knows. Yeah. But he's going to break it, huh? He said this 30 years later. He didn't talk about this till the book came out like 2015 or something. So yeah, this is way late. I mean, he told everybody that he knew at the time,

but it wasn't, nothing got out publicly. So there's a press conference here and it's a press conference talking about the sharks and they have a whole, a miniature thing set up with a ramp and an evil Knievel figure on a little evil Knievel bike and a shark tank with little like plastic sharks in it and like to show what it is.

And Evil is supposed to be the guest of honor obviously and he's supposed to show up and walk everybody through it. This is how I'm going to go and I'm going to do this and everything. So he's supposed to come to this press conference and they wait for him and they wait for him and he doesn't show up. So they have to tell the press we were in contact with him all day yesterday then we lost contact last night. So then the executive producers like, all right, let's try to spin this to a positive.

He said he is what he is knowing evil. He could very well come walking into this press conference or he could very well not come walking into this press conference. He's unpredictable. So anyway, he's he's not there. Basically, he never not there basically. He never fucking shows up. And they're talking about all the other acts

that are gonna take place. Somebody's gonna walk on a wire stretch between the hotels, the Eden Rock and Fountain Blue in Miami. And another guy's gonna perform a trapeze that hung from a helicopter. Yeah, Ron Phillips, Evil Knievel's buddy from Butte, would drive a ski mobile off a ski jump in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Their Orville Kissenberg, Kisselberg, a daredevil who had known

evil almost since the beginning, would blow himself up with the Russian death chair. That's the guy who blows himself 30 feet into the air. And Jumpin' Joe Gerlach would jump off the roof of the Chicago Amphitheater, an 84 foot drop into a three foot sponge on the street. He didn't do that, right? He did. How do you do that? I have no fucking idea. But they're going to do it anyway.

At the end of the presentation with No Evil, the producer walks up with a note in his hand and he said, I got a note from a messenger from evil. He just messaged her this year. It's shopping sharks. Yeah. He says, wait till we get to the shark shop. He says, the note says this is a more dangerous jumped in the snake river Canyon or any of my other jumps signed evil can evil.

That's what he would have said. And all the press was like, yeah, right. None of them even wrote it down. So he never showed up. Everybody went home. So Knievel was still in Fort Lauderdale. That's where he was. So a reporter named Joey Goldstein tracked him down there and asked him what's your excuse

for missing the press conference? He said this is the second Goldstein said it was the second time in his life that he's fucking you know had to deal with shit. So evil tells him the truth. I guess truth at the moment. He said evil told him among other things quote I'm sick and tired of dealing with Jews. That's what he told a reporter named Joey Goldstein. Okay, now evil, he said maybe evil had said it only for Goldstein's benefit, a personal

ethnic dig because he liked to do that with people. Maybe it was no more than an insensitive joke. Maybe too he meant it. Whichever the case, it got printed in a Chicago newspaper the next day along with the previous quote that he told Bob Aram that it the three Things he hates most in life are lawyers New Yorkers and Jews So they said the star of evil Knievel's death defiers was left to scramble long-distance and denial He said he'd received 91 phone calls, which is a totally made-up number

90s to round 91 phone calls sounds ridiculous. That sounds- 100 sounds crazy. Hundreds too many, 91, that's the number. As a fucking, what a liar. He said that with people that were upset with him, he said he never said those words and he never would. Knowing what we know about evil, he absolutely said that.

100%. 100%. He said it- In case you misheard me, I'll say it again. Yeah, and and then he probably he threw goddamn Jews in there probably first. I was probably spelled it for him j-e-dubs He said K. I know that's That's how he spelled it for He said I had a wisdom tooth that was giving him shit. That's what it was. That's why he wasn't there He said he yes, I have a lot of friends who are Jews.

Oh yeah. He said, including Howard Cosell. He's my friend. He said, I owe all my success in the world to these people. He said, he, I'm probably a Jew myself because I believe in life. Then he says, if any son of a bitch in Chicago says I'm anti-Semitic, I'm going to beat the shit out of him

Especially if it's a Jew I will really kick his Jew ass if that's what he wants If he's in Chicago, and he's a lawyer from New York He's getting it I'm gonna run him over with the motorcycle So there's a couple of problems with this venture and the main problem is the sharks yeah Now first problem is local animal rights people even in the 70s were worried about problem is the sharks. Yeah. Now, first problem is local animal rights people, even in the 70s, were worried about injuring the sharks. Right. The city's commission on animal care and control

said it might have to stop the show. They said, what do we do if he falls into the tank and the sharks attack? Right. The guy said, he said, to save his life, you might have to kill sharks. Like, why are you putting him in that position? So they were waiting for something.

The second problem was whether there was even gonna be any fucking sharks. The people, well the people in charge of catching the sharks in the Florida Keys were worried about if they could find enough sharks or not. It might not be shark season. And then even if the sharks would look fierce, the press release promised, quote quote 13 man-eating

sharks in the fucking tank. So you gotta have 13 sharks. They gotta be like at least jaws level sharks here. So they said about it, this is shark expert Garrett Clay reported to a columnist in the New York Times quote, we've got maybe four acceptable animals, maybe five. Six or seven lemon sharks. They're lemon sharks. Are they really?

They absolutely are. The weather's been terrible. And they said the sharks were far from man-eaters. The biggest boxes Clay had for shipping the animals to Chicago were eight feet long. Yeah. These aren't going to be big fish. No. So they said he was hoping to catch lemon sharks or blue sharks, but they pretty much

they were looking for anything with a dorsal fin at this point just look Something that you go down it down it when you see it. That's all we're asking to Breach the surface with just their fin. That's it They said there would be no white sharks great white sharks like the killer and jaws White sharks can be as large as 36 feet long Yeah, but you got you got those deep, you gotta go find those. And a shark expert said there's not gonna be any danger. The shark guy said if Knievel should fall in, he'd spook these animals right out of

the pool. They'd be scared shitless of what happened. Cause the splat that would incur, they wouldn't go, oh good food, they'd go holy shit a meteor and be fucking swimming for their lives Motorcycles coming in before him and I fuck Absolutely, that's gonna kick up some water So they said the Smith article was syndicated across the country Marty Peseta was forced to scramble again He described to reporters the size of the salt saltwater pool that being built, 90 feet by 50 feet, four feet deep.

For the animal rights people, he described the care that would be taken with the sharks, the 25,000 pounds of salt and varieties of chemicals that would be put into the water to create a familiar environment. For the potentially bloodthirsty viewers, he described the dangers involved. The sharks definitely would be lemon sharks. They would all be at least 10 feet long, which isn't true and they wouldn't have been fed for three days before the job. We're gonna starve him Yeah, he said they're gonna be mean Jacques Cousteau assured us that lemon sharks are mean So

Knievel finally appeared in Chicago on Friday and did the Phil Donahue show, which was a local show at the time. He did AM Chicago and other television. He said again that he's not anti-Semitic. Over and over and over again. I got a lot of Jew friends. Got a ton of Jew friends. I'll list them for you. He promoted the jump.

He did his job. The Sharks finally appeared on Saturday and were released into the world's largest indoor saltwater pool. They were definitely a long way from home. Chicago was in the midst of a record 45-day stretch where the temperature never got above 32 degrees. Oh no! Horrifying. You're going to freeze these things.

Well, it's inside, but still, it's not good. The temperature outside two days earlier was a record negative 13 degrees and the coldest day in the coldest month of Chicago weather history. The windchill was negative 60 degrees. The chill now extended to the show itself. Who wanted to come out of the house in that weather? And they said, Peseta's staff was distributing free tickets to Chicago high schools in an attempt to draw some kind of crowd just for the TV so it wouldn't

Look terrible Tickets were almost ticket sales were almost non-existent The sports columnist Robert Marcus in the Chicago Tribune said this time the Sharks are gonna be the good guys Oh Man that is fucking hilarious so The play-by-play announcer assigned to the jump was Brent Musburger.

Oh, is that right? Years and years and years of football and everything else. He'd become CBS's prominent sports voice. I remember him doing all the college basketball when I was a kid, all those big East games. Front and center for the past two years as anchor of NFL Today. That's the other one.

The pro football show that dominated the Sunday ratings with a cast that included former Miss America, Phyllis George, Philadelphia Eagle, Irv Cross, and Jimmy the Greek. Musburger was a Montana native. Grew up in Big Timber. Yeah, which was located between Bozeman and Billings, so he found a measure of acceptance from evil.

He was a local guy. Musburger said, we could always talk about Montana. It was an easy entree. I'd met him at some kind of event a few years earlier in New York, maybe when he announced that he was going to jump the canyon. I didn't know him well, but I had memories from Butte when I was a kid.

We could talk about Butte. There were some good restaurants in Butte. I'd go there with my parents. Musburger, the day before the the show looked down into the tank. He was surprised. He thought the sharks looked like minnows. He didn't feel afraid. This was a challenge?

He said maybe with the right camera angle it would look better. He sure hoped so. Oh man. You gotta get them from below. It's only four feet deep and they still don't look big. Those fish don't get that big. They're maybe eight feet long if they're at a mature, ready to die level.

This is the best, okay? So he went back to his hotel room to get ready for the big night. That's fucking Musburger. They say, oh, in the book, this was a mistake though. He missed the action. Knievel crashed and landed in the hospital before the event even began. What?

Yeah. Busburger said I wasn't there in the afternoon but I guess the director wanted Evil to do a practice run. He went to the trailer where Evil was drinking Jack Daniels with another guy. I bet it was Wild Turkey. They'd been there drinking for a while. The director said he wanted Evil to do the practice run. Evil told the guy to go to hell.

The director said that if Evil didn't do the practice run there would be no show. So Evil punched the director, just whacked him, sent the guy spinning out of the door of the trailer right down the stairs. Then he put his helmet on and said something like, you want a practice run? I'll give you a goddamn practice run. Well, the guy's holding his jaw. and said something like, you want a practice run? I'll give you a goddamn practice run. Well, the guy's holding his jaw. He went over to the bike, kicked the starter,

jumped onto the saddle. Cameramen scrambled to get their equipment. And he just took off, and he crashed. God damn it, because he was drunk. Went over to the side. He was drunk, and he crashed the motorcycle. It was something straight out of Hollywood. They carried him off to the hospital.

Awesome. Now there's other versions of this event that happened here. Here's another thing where they say Musburger's account of the events was backwards. Other accounts flipped the scene 180 degrees. Knievel wanted to do a practice run. The producers didn't. He was drinking, drunk. There was an argument that part is never wrong different in any story he's drunk and belligerent that we know it's what he's mad at that we're trying to figure out no shit so according to Michael Seligman Knievel pushed Marty Posetta against the wall of the trailer

and something like it said something like, I don't care what you want, I'm doing a practice run. Posetta was left in pain in the trailer, Knievel stormed off, jumped on the bike, crashed, landed in even more pain than Marty Posetta. Seligman said, thank goodness we were ready for anything. We had all the cameras in position, we were rolling, we had all the angles covered except from the cavern except from the cameraman Knievel crashed into oh shit a Third version of the argument inserted Sandy Wernick part of the production staff into the role of pushy in the trailer

Wernick according to this story tried to convince evil not to take a practice jump because it would jeopardize the primetime show the two men Argued Knievel finally asked Wernick if he was a Jew Wernick said he was Knievel pushed him went out and crashed. He's turned into maybe Mel Gibson just idolized evil Knievel I'll bet you that's what it was Because he's literally it's the same thing. I bet you're any time. He's upset with somebody's like you're a Jew aren't you? What are you a Jew or something? So he said Wern over 30 years later, now the manager of comedian Adam Sandler. Wow. Is that right?

Talk about making a lot of money for nothing. That is something there. No kidding. Refused to talk about the moment, Posetta, retired, also refused. His spokesman said he has never talked about the Death Defier show and he never will. Why? That seems like a pretty fucking great story. I'd talk about I'd want to hear about that

This is all right fuck man the result of the incident and everyone agreed there was an incident that involved a push Anger and then a crash that happened. We just don't know what order or or why yeah Or why it was all the same in all the stories Knievel was in the hospital This was different from any of the other crashes he had suffered in the past. The easy jump, no more than 90 feet in the original plan, the distance in baseball from home plate to first base had been made easier when he pulled a safety deck into place that shortened the distance to 64 feet. That's much shorter.

Yeah, that's 30 feet shorter. Christ, that's more like the pitcher's mound at that point to home home plate because that's 60 feet. Roughly the distance from home plate to the pitchers mound. There you go. The idea that he could not make that jump was almost inconceivable yet he crashed. He easily cleared the pool of sleeping docile sharks but seemed to turn the handlebars in mid-flight. He hit the landing hard trying to correct his path and overcorrected, maybe because he's shit-faced. This is probably not good. He took a hard right off the elevated ramp,

went through a barrier, clipped a 29-year-old cameraman from Arlington Heights named Thomas Garan who was filming the jump and had no idea what was coming. The motorcycle flipped and Evil went flying as it went upside down, everything out of control, and he landed on concrete. Whoa. This is like his worst crash ever, it sounds like.

He was taken to the Michael Reese Medical Center on the south side where he was diagnosed with a broken clavicle, collarbone, broken right forearm, wrist and leg contusions, and bruises. Garin was also taken to the hospital, but minor injuries. Somewhere in the ambulance, on the ambulance ride, or perhaps in the emergency room, while he was having his injuries treated,

Knievel figured out an explanation for what had happened. He figured out a doozy. He wasn't drunk, he was a hero. That's what it is. Also, he was gonna hit something? He wasn't just a sloppy drunk who fucking crashed a motorcycle. He was actually Taking one for the team. He had crashed in the afternoon to save innocent people

Paying customers who would be in the crowd at night He had decided a day earlier that a crash was inevitable because the setup in the amphitheater was too confined and cramped and not right Simply to get enough room to gather enough speed a hole had been made in the amphitheater wall and he would have to fly through the hole onto the ramp over the sharks and land on the ramp that went upward again over the same seats. It was all crazy. Rather than force the promoters to make the jump safe or for him to decide not to jump at all and back out, he took things into his own hands. Crashed on a prelim run, now nobody's there, saved a bunch of lives. Just magnanimous, that's all it is. Just being a good guy. He said, I knew there was going to be an accident and the show couldn't be cancelled, so I decided to take what was coming to me and I didn't want to see anyone else hurt.

I made the practice run before an empty house so no parents or children would be hurt. He not only removed all blame from himself but he turned into Audie Murphy, Congressional Medal of Honor winner, jumping on a ticking hand grenade to save the rest of the platoon. This was grand audacious stuff. Yeah this is evil, full of shit to the highest order here. He said, I knew when I squeezed it all together yesterday that it wasn't gonna work. We put it when we put it all together, the tank, the ramp, the ski slope. It was too cramped.

I felt I fell Sunday when I took a practice run up the ski slope. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was too steep to climb. He said, I'm not placing the blame on anybody or anything. It was a combination of pressure and faulty hasty preparation because of the ski jump construction. I felt someone would have been killed. It was my obligation to make it safe and there was a misunderstanding between the production company and myself.

The show had to come off but I couldn't take a chance with people's lives so I told the cameras to roll and took the run. Thank God for evil. Oh, thank fuck for evil. He saved countless. Can't imagine. Countless fucking lives, man. That's the thing. He was treated countless children would have been impaled by the people.

Hadlebar 10 sharks, 10 sharks. The whole place would probably burn to the ground. I would imagine. Right. So I mean, with the ensuing fire, who knows how many lives he saved. So he was treated at Michael Reese Center by Carlton West, a 33 year old black orthopedic sir physician. West had been put on alert, told that business might be arriving from the death defier show at the amphitheater.

Hey, we might have an influx here. They're doing dumb shit downtown. He was still surprised when the emergency room began to fill with hubbub. He said I didn't have time to think about evil Knievel as a celebrity. That's what he does what he tells Jet magazine I guess I just started to think about It after all the reporters and cameras came the angle for the Jet magazine story Here was basically black doctor treats famous white man

Still seen as news in 1977. You're looking. Yeah, we're squinting going where's the story, but in 77 that was a story. The reporter wanted to know if Knievel had mentioned Dr. West's race. I'm going to give everybody out there a chance to answer that. Let's have a trivia here. A, yes. B, yes and with slurs. Or C, no he was unconscious. Which one do you think it was?

Was it B? Let's find out. Quote, his comments regarding that were actually complimentary, but I think my youthful appearance was more striking than my color. So that's what he did. He was like, oh, you're pretty smart for a black guy. That's probably what he said or some shit like that. Uh, he, evil said I being accused of being an anti-Semite by some newspapers, but that's not true.

When I was a little boy, the only man I wanted to be like was Joe Lewis. I think he's done more for race relations in this country than anybody. So there it's what he said. So yeah, all the newspapers are reporting is his practice jumps and all that shit He said he had to do it because it was so dangerous, you know, just every newspaper article He's like I'm a hero really these Irresponsible television people really is what it is. It's just a it's just irresponsible So the sharks had been in there for three days

They didn't know what happened their own piss and shit and how long are we gonna be in there for three days. They didn't know what happened. Just doing their own piss and shit and unfed. How long are we going to be in here for? Jesus Christ. Someone better jump into this tank already because I've got to eat somebody. Throw us a baby, Jesus. Jesus, something here. So there we go. There's that.

There's also under that an ad for Studio Blue Adult Theater. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic XXX movies. We got a John Holmes movie here. John Holmes dares you to see the most erotic film he's ever made, Liquid Lips. Gross. Gross.

That is. God, Jesus. And then number two is rated XXX. They couldn't call it Mouthful of jizz, is that why? Mouth full of liquid lips. Couldn't call it Jizz Garglers 3, so they called it liquid lips. Rated triple X, next one starring Johnny Wad,

with two Ds of course. Tropic of Passion. Have you never heard of him? I've heard of him, but I didn't know how his name was spelled. Him and Holmes, I know I know is the big one because they made the movie about him Yeah, those are the two and I do the big two and also it's adult book night bring any adult book Give us the book and be admitted for two dollars Give us a book and you still got a pay you got a pay but less because it's normally

It doesn't say the rates here doesn't say but you get in for two dollars here My favorite part of this ad though is under the times when they're open it says special rates for senior citizens. That's my favorite That's why that's my favorite the old folks love Johnny wad. He's a favorite among the old Are they a target audience for Doug? I guess. I mean, who knows? I suppose seniors though, back then I didn't think they were going out jerking it, but I guess they are full of old people.

Oh my God, that is disturbing as fuck, dude. She to two attractions too. So the book goes on to say left without the main attraction for Evil Knievel's Death Defiers, Evil Knievel, Marty Posetta Productions and CBS were forced to improvise. There were no thoughts of cancellation, but adjustments certainly had to be made. The film from the different camera locations was edited in a hurry, a package prepared for the show. A camera crew was sent to the Michael Reese Center to be ready for live updates and an interview with the injured star from his hospital bed. Telly Savalas and Jill St. John were briefed and told they had to add Lib-A-Lot. The show that followed was a mishmash

of mistakes. An artistic disaster. Savalas and St. John struggled. They looked like they were a weekend replacement anchor team at a small station in the Midwest, unprepared, off-stride from the beginning. All dialogue was stiff. The film of Knievel's crash was shown. The daredevil was interviewed a number of times from the hospital. Savalas kept saying, it's only orthopedic about Knievel's injuries, whatever that meant.

Yeah, what does that mean? With Knievel, his fucking, I guess his organs aren't damaged. With Knievel out of action, the death defiers took on an added importance. They were the live action. This became another mess. The first death defier to perform was Wilenda, walking the tightrope between two hotels in Miami. The problem was he hadn't even arrived

at the hotels on time. He was caught somewhere on the streets of Miami in a traffic jam. He would perform later on in the show, but the schedule had to be ripped up again. Civalas and St. John kept ad-libbing. Commercials came at strange times. Everything was strange. It's a fucking mess. Random intervals of commercials.

Just up there, here's more commercials. Ron Phillips said I was at the top of the ski jump waiting with my snowmobile. It was cold up there waiting and waiting. All the snow around the base of the snowmobile had turned to ice. I didn't know that. Oh my god. Wired for sound, able to hear the broadcast through a plug in his ear, able to talk into a little microphone, Phillips received word that he should go. He made a few practice runs earlier, no problem, but now when he started moving and stepped onto the foot pegs to lift himself, one leg slipped on the ice that had formed on the foot peg. Fuck. That caused him to let off the throttle, and by the time he was able to give the machine more gas, he knew that he would not be traveling fast enough, which was 50 miles an hour when he

hit the edge of the jump, and he knew he would crash hour when he hit the edge of the jump and he knew he would crash He went off the edge of the jump. He bailed he went one way the machine luckily went another He landed luckily he landed lucky on his back sort of lucky nothing had been broken But the air in his body had been expelled with the force of landing and he couldn't talk Are you all right Ron Jill st. John asked in his ear from Chicago. No answer. Was that the practice jump we just saw, Ron? Ron, was that the practice jump?

The air came back into Phillip's body. You gotta be shitting me, he said from the ice and snow. The Russian death chair was another problem. Kisselberg was receiving only $5,000 from Knievel for his act, but now he was the star of the show in the grand finale. He was very nervous. After all this time on tour, all the stunts, this was his first time on national television. This was also his first time in a tuxedo. Ron Phillips said Orville always dressed up as a clown when he performed

But evil told him this was national television and he couldn't dress quote like a fucking clown And he had to and he had to wear a tuxedo. I don't think he knew what a tuxedo was when evil said it Phillips Turk took Kisselberg to a tuxedo rental establishment Told him to say if anyone asked that he was going to a wedding and not gonna explode himself Fitted and dressed for the big night. He added another extra for his performance and his normal act He blew himself into the air with three sticks of dynamite for national television He decided to add a fourth stick for a bigger blast a record the trick was to place a 50 pound bag of cement over the dynamite.

As part of the finer print in the laws of physics, a cone of silence, maybe 2 feet by 2 feet, exists over the exploding dynamite. Stay inside the cone, put something in your ears to absorb the noise, fly into the air, and it'll be alright. Kisselberg always put cotton in his ears. Oh God. He'd been told that earplugs could be blown straight into your brain by impact so cotton seemed a better choice. That can't possibly be true. I don't know how that would happen. Yeah as everybody hurried on this night though schedules out of whack he'd forgotten to put the cotton in his ears. He realized this five four 3 as the countdown came and he girded himself for the blast.

Here was this guy in the middle of a field in Skokie, Illinois, strapped to a chair with three or four sticks of dynamite strapped to the seat. He said he was going to blow himself up. It was a challenge to broadcast. How do you do play by play of something like that? There he is ladies and gentlemen, his finger is moving closer to the button. What if all goes wrong? The four sticks of dynamite explosion was bigger than the three sticks explosion, bigger than Kisselberg had imagined it would be.

He went flying 10 feet, 15 feet, 20 feet into the air air the 50 pounds of cement in addition to absorbing a bunch of the concussion split open to cover the scene with gray dust that it dust that it covered everything including Orville Kisselberg oh my god he was knocked silly stretched out on the cold ground and his hearing was gone Phillips and the EMTs on duty ran to him and finally he got him to his feet. He's alive! Brettenmussberger exalted as the broadcast from the amphitheater and tried to get him into an ambulance. Kisselberg, uninsured in the daredevil business, refused. He figured his hearing would return when the ringing stopped. He's like, don't put me in an ambulance, that's expensive. The only other problem was that rented tuxedo.

It looked like shredded wheat, Philip said. He and Kisselberg zipped the suit into the handy carrying case, took the carrying case back to the rental place and left in a hurry. Never heard from the people again. Now, the reviews of the show are terrible, obviously. It's a fucking disaster.

Joan Ryan, almost killed multiple fucking disaster Joan Ryan almost killed a guy almost killed multiple guys three guys almost killed Joan Ryan of the Washington Post said evil Knievel's death defiers now must be considered the worst TV program ever yeah the worries of the animal rights people were justified as half the sharks died did they they really? They just died from... Can't move them around like that. They're sensitive. And also, you ignored them while you were exploding dynamite and shooting a man

onto ice. Only 12 sharks in the end had arrived for the show, not the unlucky 13 that were advertised. One died before the show, so that left 11 in the tank when Knievel shot off the ramp and crashed. One died when the pool was being drained, and another died from bites it had received in the tank from another shark.

Yeah, because they were hungry. And three died in the transit to their future home in Boston at the New England Aquarium. God damn it. Shark expert Clay said, quote, I'll tell you I'll never work with TV people again. He was angry that he only had three days to prepare the water for his clients instead of the promised 10 to 14 days like they had told him. He said they went back on their word. The final verdict however came in on the

show in the weekly Tuesday meeting at CBS headquarters in New York that autocratic network chief William S. Paley held with his department heads. Careers, lives, and lives were known to change in an instant in these meetings. Bob Wussler had his people at CBS Sports. They were all terrified. They suspected they could all be fired.

Paley, according to one account, went through some other business until he reached the death defiers. He looked at the Nielsen ratings numbers and said something like, quote, pretty good. If we can improve our production qualities the next time, perhaps death defiers too can be even better. We get a zoom in close up of a man exploding himself. Doesn't matter.

That's Michael Seligman said the numbers were everything. That's television. television. That's it He said it's all about the fucking numbers. They said Seligman said your act was sensational That is what Seligman and Posetta wrote in a cosign letter to Orville Kisselberg a month later as you know the show had the Highest ratings on CBS this year a 50 share crushed it Definitely gonna be more of that. So March 9th, 1997 here, Jesus Christ, Bing Crosby hospitalized by a fall from stage, got a joking offer of aid and a phone call Tuesday

from a physician with plenty of experience patching up battered performers, Evil Knievel's doctor. Bing had quite a chuckle but turned down the offer, saying Bing didn't break any bones unlike Evil. So there you go. He's expected to be there. Just laughing it up. Having a good chuckle of a laugh. Didn't Bing have some problems by the way? Wasn't Big real bad to his family if I'm not mistaken? I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know.

I think Bing, I think there was some shit that came out later from Bing's kids that he was not good to his family. Bing Crosby? Yeah, yeah. White Christmas and all. Really? Yeah. I think so.

I really do. I think those kids came out and said he beat them up or some shit. Family abuse? I'll just say that. Yeah, yeah. Bing Crosby never admitted it. He said he was strict and hard on his kids. He beat the kids. Forty style.

In other words, I beat the shit out of them on a nightly basis. Two committed suicide, James. Yeah, that's not good. If two of your kids off themselves, that's your fault. And two struggled throughout life in and out of trouble. Bing was a bad dad. Yeah, it sounds like a, so him and Evil together really sound like the buddies here.

Holy fucking shit, man. That's crazy. This is so much. Who knew? I thought I had heard it. I thought I had heard it, but yeah, you know, one of those deals. I don't know. Didn't know though. Oh my God. His niece is a child molester. Oh, perfect. Yeah. We're going to do a bonus episode about the Crosby family. Well, that explains it. They're out of control. They're out of fucking line here. Holy shit.

So I guess there's a court decision on Evel Knievel and the cleanup expenses incurred in the city of Twin Falls after the Snake River Canyon jump. Yeah, because he just littered like crazy out there. That's the thing. Apparently, in the appeal of Knievel Snake River Canyon enterprises and United Pacific Insurance Company from a summary judgment entered in the favor of Twin Falls County The county brought the action to recover costs incurred by the city about all the fucking debris that's left everywhere So that's how that goes. There's appeals to that

1977 kids you can win a three-day trip to New Orleans for the world premiere of Evil Knievel's new movie, Viva Knievel. Oh my god, you can meet Evil Knievel in person, have lunch with him, attend a premiere party with him, and see New Orleans. Holy goddamn shit, that's what you want, your kid having lunch with Evil Knievel. Kid will be shit-faced by the time the fucking Andre comes out. So yeah, there's also the world premiere of Evil Knievel. There's different age categories. Instructions for performing the stunts with the toy Evil Knievel stunt cycle are available

with each of the stores, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So there's a whole thing to fill out. June 1st 1977 Viva Knievel opens. Viva Knievel on IMDB by the way has 1.4 thousand ratings yeah 3.5 out of 10 it is a bad fucking movie and the description is he's powered his Harley over cars trucks lions infernos and plummeted headlong into a Canyon. But if the mob has its way,

he it's his next incredible leap will land him six feet under. That's what it is. Yeah. It's him fighting the mob. And ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous directed by Gordon Douglas. Gene Kelly is in it playing Will Atkins. Lauren Hutton is like a reporter who's gonna shadow him, like a follow him around. She was the head vampire in Once Bitten. Once Bitten, exactly, yes. I was gonna use that reference,

but I'm like, nobody's fucking seen Once Bitten. Literally, I was like, me too, because I saw it a million times when I was a kid, and we did it for PSA, I hate this movie too, so I've seen. Oh really? Oh yeah, yeah, we did Once Bitten for that. Well this movie, too So really oh, yeah. Yeah, we did once Shit, but yeah, yeah sure. She was in other things, too She had she was in a ton of shit. Yeah red buttons Leslie Nielsen's in that that's right. I forgot

Yeah, Leslie Nielsen's in it. Yeah I wonder if I wonder if his connection to evil is why he ended up in Arizona at the end. I don't know. I have no idea. I think maybe he was just old and went to Arizona like everybody else. They were old in the 80s. Evil was always in fucking,

I remember him being in Arizona all the time. He was always there. Also some people you wouldn't expect. You got your Frank Giffords. Dabney Coleman in this movie. Is that right? Absolutely. You don't expect that very often here to see a fucking...

That's a star-studded cast for like people that I would have loved in the 80s. Yeah, people, I know that guy, I know that guy. So it comes out, bad movie, here's a review of it, one star, I'll give you one review from IMDB. Viva... the title is Crash and Burn, first of all. Viva Knievel has to be one of the worst movies ever made. But like Plan 9 from outer space, it's so bad that it makes for a hilarious night. That's the thing about it.

It's a fun watch. He thinks it's so good, obviously, when you're watching it, that it makes it hilarious. Like, it takes itself so fucking seriously that you can't help but laugh. If you like bad movies, this is a must-see. In the film, Knievel is presented as some sort of cross between Elvis and Jesus. One scene at the front of the film even has Knievel seeming to heal crippled children by presenting them with evil Knievel model kits.

That's true. He's been shown as a beacon of hope in a dark world, yet he's also shown nearly threatening the life of Red Button's character because Red hasn't paid him his money yet. By the way, how on earth did people like Red Button's Gene Kelly, Lauren Hutton and Leslie Nielsen end up in this turkey? Turkey. Jive turkey.

If you can't appreciate an incredibly bad movie, stay as far away from it as you can. Yeah, that's a very perfect review of that thing. So here is a review of it from Edwin Howard from The Front Row, which is the Memphis Press newspaper, a couple days after it came out. Evil Knievel, who will take a flying leap at almost anything, makes his most ill-advised leap ever, jumping flat-footed into the movies in Viva Knievel, which opened yesterday at all these different theaters. It is his worst landing ever and you know how many bones he's already broken. It isn't just that Knievel can't act his way off a cycle ramp, he also has been given a script to negotiate that makes his Snake River Canyon jump route

look as safe as a 10-foot driveway. Nobody can make it across the stereotypes, cliches, and trumped-up action hammered together by scenarists Antonio Sentillin and Norman Katkov. Knievel is called upon to make a couple of actual stadium jumps in the picture once leaping a cage of Allegedly hungry lions and tigers the other a bed of what is described by television commentator Frank Gifford as burning flaming fire Which of course is the most dangerous kind? You know You know yeah

Knievel is represented in the film as a beautiful person who spends most of his free time looking after ailing, crippled or homeless little boys. It's absolutely what it is. Hey, where's these kids? I want to help them. Giving them evil Knievel toys and setting the crippled ones a wonderful example by always doing his utmost to walk away from his crashes. He is such a cloyingly great guy that only over his dead body could 50 million dollars worth of cocaine be

Smuggled from Mexico into the US and his tractor trailer and this is exactly how fake promoter Leslie Nielsen plans it He and cohorts cohorts Albert Salmi and Cameron Mitchell was another one He's in a lot of bad movies Cameron Mitchell's in so many Fucking move bad movies like Cameron Mitchell's in so many fucking bad movies. Like, he is famous for them. Who is he? He was kind of a star in the 60s and 70s, and then after that made, he was like a name

that was sort of recognizable that you could stick in a low budget movie and give him $1,000 and he'll do it. Well, the poor bastard is outshined by the CEO of Mitchell's steakhouse and there you go And what's that's him? I can't be no it's not there's the other guy He's 50 yeah, oh yeah, I know his face. Oh, yeah, you'd seen his face in movies He's everywhere though He and cohorts Albert Salmi and Cameron Mitchell make exact copies of all Knievel's rolling stock, including his jump cycle, which they rig to blow a tire on an electric signal from them.

This, done just as he lands in a record challenging Mexican jump, is supposed to assure his death. Never mind that no previous crash has killed him. Then the crooks will put his casket in their dope loaded twin to Knievel's trailer and head back across the border confident that no customs inspector will search a funeral fucking deal here. A naive notion in itself. Yeah, of course they would. The film is so idiotically conceived and so badly written and acted that I was embarrassed for Gene Kelly who plays Knievel's chief mechanic and Lauren Hutton Who is the love interest Knievel is just spinning his wheels here? Yeah He throws her on the back of the bike and goes for spins and shit

She was right tormented on that set by him Horrified and everything else So yeah, he's doing his victory lap here for his fucking, his whole movie outing here. He has also been voted, this is hilarious, he has been voted one of the 10 most admired men in the world in a poll of US school children conducted by Ladies Home Journal. That's true, man. These kids loved him. He says he wants to, this is amazing, jump the Suez Canal for peace.

You know, because there was a lot of shit going on there. And for 10 million dollars. Yeah, and he wants 10 million too. He also applied to the city of New York for permission to jump his motorcycle across the Twin Towers. Between one and the other. The ones in New York? Yeah, yeah. He's going for that too. A hundred and whatever feet or a hundred and fucking whatever stories above the earth.

That's the one. That's the two. Now how the fuck did these people that were good actors end up in this movie? Yeah, what? People like Gene Kelly who probably don't need the money at this point. Right. Well, there's an answer here in this article. Kelly's kids, Knievel fans is the whole thing here. The same reason why tons of old people who didn't know what the fuck the Simpsons were

in the early 90s were on the Simpsons because their kids or their grandkids told them they liked it. That's all. So they said, or why Bob Hoskins played Mario in fucking Super Mario Brothers because his kid said Super Mario was cool so he did it. How did Gene Kelly wind up playing Gabby Hayes to Evil Knievel's Gene Autry in a motorized horse opera because that's what the film Viva Knievel essentially is? You may wonder but Kelly said he had two reasons for making the movie, a young son and a young

daughter. wonder but Kelly said he had two reasons for making the movie a young son and a young daughter when I was first approached about making this movie I said no but then this evil Knievel picture came along and when my children heard about it they asked me to do it so I agreed to do the picture another reason I made it is that it's family entertainment I've shot my mouth off a lot about pictures you can't send your kids to so when I got this chance to make a family picture I thought maybe this chance to make a family picture I thought maybe I should do it a family picture. It's about cocaine smuggling. How is it a family movie? Holy fucking shit, man

Okay. Now here is some crime and this is gonna be a big one Okay, well, this will take us to our next episode and everything probably here. So Here we go. His residence is from the book. His residence when he was in Los Angeles in Hollywood was now the Sheraton Universal Hotel. He could sit in his suite in the 20 story hotel located on a hill overlooking Universal City and almost be able to see the old Hollywood Motel on Ventura Boulevard where he had spent his early days in the city.

He could think about how far the trip had been from one stop to the other. His neighbor was Telly Savalas, the host of the ill-fated Shark Spectacular, a perpetual resident of the Sheridan because it was close to the Universal lot where he filmed Kojak. The hotel was also convenient for Knievel when he filmed an episode of The Bionic Woman with Lindsay Wagner at the beginning of the month in September of 1977 at Universal. He liked the hotel, he sometimes stayed for a few weeks in a row. If he was catching good tail, you know how that works. So, a funny thing happened during that Bionic Woman show. He was on the set and some guy came to him and asked him for his car keys. The guy said the Stutz D'Italia Roadster, the Stutz valued at $129,500 was blocking traffic.

Knievel flipped the keys to him and the guy tried to steal the car and just drive it away. He wasn't part of the crew. He was just a guy trying to steal his car. The guy panicked. I guess the security guard tried to stop him and the guy panicked and he crashed the car into the front gate. He tried to go though. Yeah, he tried to take off. Just today the studio had settled on a figure of $9,588 to pay for the damages. Very good, maybe it was an omen. There had been a run of not so good in the past year. Start with the shark fiasco.

Continue with the movie, Viva Knievel with Lauren Hutton and Gene Kelly and Red Buttons and all those people. It opened in the beginning of June and pretty much was a bomb. The critics hated it. Hated it. The public never showed up. The toys. The toys looked like they needed a boost too.

Lee Majors, the six million dollar man, had taken control of the sales figures for two Christmases now. What did Lee Majors, the six million dollar man had taken control in the sales figures for two Christmases now. What did Lee Majors ever do? Because yeah, the bionic man and woman dolls were big shit. Those are still out there a lot. Then there was the Internal Revenue Service always on his back and some guy in Twin Falls that he hadn't said he hadn't been paid for the chemical toilets still from the from the from the Snake River Canyon Jump from the snake.

Yeah. And even old watch a McCollum, the pilot from Snake River, was looking for money. Said Knievel not only doesn't know the meaning of the word fear, he also doesn't know the meaning of the words account payable. Yeah. That's fucking great. Maybe this was the payoff, this payoff for the Stuts was a start. Maybe the critics would love the Bionic Woman episode when it played in a couple weeks.

Maybe the deal he had signed with Ralph Andrews Productions right here in LA would develop some great television ideas. Maybe there'd be another movie, though probably not right away. Maybe the revenue stream would get back to its normal flow. Maybe. He was here anyway. Hollywood. This is where deals happen. He had lived long enough and tipped heavily enough in the Sheraton Universal that he knew the different people who worked the different jobs in the hotel. That was why he nodded hello to the cashier in the gift shop, looked toward the rack of paperback books and said on this fine day, do you have something new I'm going to like? That's why when the cashier said no, but I have something you're not going to like.

The book was Evil Knievel on Tour, which promised on its front paperback cover that it would tell the inside stuff on the high-flying daredevil no PG rated movie could ever show. Uh oh, that's not good. The cashier said the book was trash. The high-flying daredevil put down the buck and a half price plus state and local tax and took the trash to his suite. I can't imagine him reading. Can you?

He's going to try. Like shit faced. He's got to be. He and I both get headaches reading. I guarantee it. The author was Shelly Saltman, the chatterbox publicity man from the Snake River Tour that at the canyon. He shared the credit with someone named Maury Green.

Saltman had mentioned more than once to Knievel on the private jet during the tour that he was going to write a book, but three years had passed. The timing seemed strange. Why did he wait so long? Saltman said years later, I had the tapes and I was going to do the book and then I was involved in other things. So I sort of forgot about it. Then I was talking with some people one night the way I normally do and Maury Green, a writer

was there and he said with all my stories about famous people if I ever had thought about doing a book. I said funny you asked that and we eventually put the book together. The tale was basically a chronicle of the tour. The book publicist said he wanted to do this tour that they did. Knievel's words, Knievel's deeds and misdeeds, Saltman's observations were woven together, stop by stop for 205 pages. As often happens with books, especially mass market paperbacks, the most provocative writing was on the covers. The back cover promised even more than the front cover did.

They say that it takes a hustler to know one, and Saltman got to know Evel Knievel very well the text read. On a breakneck nationwide tour to promote the Snake River Canyon Jump, Shelley got a good honest look at the man behind the myth. Here's everything that goes on behind the scenes. Big money, big wheeling and dealing, big hoaxes, parties, boos and broads. As America's stuntman wags his tongue and shakes his fist at death for the sheer crazy money-making hell of it Though Saltman certainly did not draw a flattering portrait of Knievel

Various episodes on the tour were recounted from the pistol shots in the hotel pool in Austin to the bars We remember that from an early episode to the various incivilities toward Linda in Butte. Yeah, friends of Knievel who later read the book Found Nothing Wrong. That sounds right. Yeah, but the other part is he thinks he's doing damage to this man. What he's doing is making him a fucking rock star. It's just more, yeah.

Well, it goes against what he's saying he is, though. Sure. He doesn't want to be a hypocrite. He's saying he's Mr. Upstanding All-American, and he's talking about just the shit he does. He's also. Sammy Hagar claimed to be Mr. America too and he's a pretty fucking rock star doing bad shit.

Yeah, now you can write a book about yourself doing bad shit and people go, yeah, cool, rock and roll. But in 1977, it wasn't like that at all. So they said there was nothing wrong with it. The character painted in the pages was the character they knew. Maybe Saltman could have been nicer in some descriptions, but this was Knievel. Things that the daredevil said in the book were things his friends had heard him say for years. That was him. Knievel though didn't agree.

No? Thought he was getting screwed over. He would later say the book was a filthy lie and pornography. Oh, porn. Which is a lie because I tried to jerk it to it and it didn't work. He gave it to those old men at the Jack Theater and none of them came. They did, nobody came. They had all the audience in the world. It didn't work. He would claim the book insulted his mother, wife and children and portrayed him as an

alcoholic pill addict and an anti-semitic and an immoral person. He would make the book sound as if it was the worst thing ever written about anyone in the history of the written word. There was no record of how long it took him to reach this conclusion, how long it took him to read the book. There was a chance that he did not even read it, relying on other people to tell him how terrible it was. That's what I'm thinking.

Though he did give a copy of Evil Can Evil on tour a few years later to a friend in Bute and the friend frowned a number of underlines and notes in the margins that indicated Knievel had read the book with great interest. Some pages were ripped out too, the friend said. I have to think those were the ones that really got him mad. On the very first page of the book, the very first paragraph, Knievel found exception. This was a page that was an extension really of the front cover, a browser's inducement to buy the product in his hands. Other than the headline, X-Rated Evil, Saltman offered three paragraphs of quotes on the subject.

Quote, I've made love to more beautiful women than all you guys put together even know, the first paragraph read. Hell, I never knew a broad who wasn't a pushover. I've got more broads than you ever saw. Penthouse knows it, Playboy knows it, now you know it. Even my wife knows it and my grandmother knows it too. I don't bullshit anyone.

The headline was underlined. Assorted words in the paragraph were underlined. The word constitutes adultery were printed in ballpoint pen at the top of the page. Underlines and comments continued through the book. This is a lie and not accurate was followed by lies lies, which was followed by lies lies lies. A quote on 169 where Knievel complained to producers about appearing after Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show, that fucking Burt Reynolds, why the hell should he go first, was underlined with the comment, quote, never said it to anyone.

Even Saltman's final sentence in the book, which expressed joy at Knievel's survival at Snake River, quote, I fell into the arms of Evil Knievel's father and cried my eyes out. I was so glad to see that god damn cantankerous son of a bitch alive and well was found offensive. The phrase son of a bitch was underlined with the word insult put underneath it. Dude, Knievel. He's mad. Good lord, try putting out a podcast every fucking week if you want to look for slights.

Jesus Christ. Evil would have killed our listeners by now. Again, there was no record of how long these feelings were allowed to marinate after reading. There was no record of how much drinking took place, how much wild turkey was consumed during the marination process. And there was no, however, there was however

a record of Knievel's feelings at the time in his life about the First Amendment. He was not a big fan. George Hamilton had seen that when he first brought the movie script for Knievel to Evel's low rent motel room and was forced to read at gunpoint. Joe Esterhaus had a glimpse of it when his unflattering Rolling Stone article was published and he received phone calls that put the magazine's office on Evel Knievel alert. Automotive writer Joe Scalzo had also felt the heat.

Scalzo, who wrote for an assorted publications and had written a number of auto sports books, wrote a couple of paperbacks, Evil Knievel and Evil Knievel and other daredevils in the run up to the canyon jump. These were the first books written about Evil Knievel, pretty much the only books before Saltman's effort. They did not make Knievel happy. He called Skalzo to make his displeasure known. You're a rip-off prick, he said to begin the conversation.

The words came out in an angry hurry. Knievel said he would sue for all royalties from the books plus damages for using his name without permission. The bluster continued for an appropriate length of time, Scalzo unable to get in much of a rebuttal or even mention that the First Amendment existed before Knievel abruptly hung up. Scalzo never heard from him again. The legal threats did not bother the writer much because he knew the book was not defamatory in any way.

No court could rule against him. The belligerence did not bother the writer either because he was in California and Knievel was calling from Butte, Montana. A punch in the nose could not travel that far. This was not the case, alas, with Shelly Saltman. He worked about 15 miles from the Sheraton Universal. Not a bad drive if you caught the LA traffic just right. Oh boy, this is bad. So, Saltman was now at 20th Century Fox where he was a vice president in the telecommunications department. He had taken the job because he was tired of the travel involved with sports promotions and ready for a different corporate kind of challenge.

His department worked with the new concept of made for TV movies for HBO and other cable channels and with another new concept, the sale of existing movies to companies that would put them on VHS and Betamax tapes to rental. This is he's at the beginning of all this. The officers were on the or the offices, not the officers, were on the 20th century lot famous for all the movies that had been filmed there. A touch of glamour and Saltman was on his way to the famous studio commissary shortly after noon on September 21, 1977. He was his enthusiastic self, tracking down a rumor that the commissary now had a frozen

yogurt machine. He would see if that was true. Now though, he spotted Evil Knievel coming toward him. Yeah, he was not surprised. All kinds of famous people came to 20th Century Lot. He smiled. Hey Evil, he said. This was when someone grabbed him from behind, threw him to the ground and held him there. What the hell? Saltman looked up and saw Knievel swinging a metal baseball bat at his head. Oh my god.

I'm going to kill you you son of a bitch, Knievel said, for what you wrote about my mother. What about his mother? Call them a son of a bitch. I'm happy that son of a bitch is alive. son of a bitch," Knievel said, for what you wrote about my mother. What about his mother? Call them a son. I'm happy that son of a bitch is alive. Son of a bitch, yeah. That was what Saltman heard. Just in time, the blow coming toward his head, he was able to free his arms and hold them

in front of his face. The blow shattered his left arm and his right wrist. Or if it didn't, the subsequent blows did. I'm going to kill you, Saltman heard. Wh subsequent blows did I'm gonna kill you Saltman heard whack I'm gonna kill you what he just kept saying I'm gonna kill you well he's gonna try them with a metal baseball but yep in front of everybody too this is in the middle of a the commissary at the fucking 20th century Fox is going to get through yo dude you're not eating sprinkles today no somewhere in the beating Saltman passed out what happened

after that he didn't know Knievel obviously stopped swinging after a while he and his accomplice walked off that walked away off the lot No one stopped them there were a number of witnesses, but nobody stepped in saltman later said this was a movie lot people You're used to seeing all kinds of things happening around them none of them thought it was real Now this is like when the wrestlers get into fights at the hotels back in the day and they're like, no you don't understand we're doing a thing and the cops are like, oh my bad I won't fuck it up. It's the same shit. So he said no one thought it was real they thought it was another scene from another

movie. When the executive on the ground of the pool, on the ground in the pool of blood didn't get off the ground and head for a sandwich people grew suspicious. What the hell? When he continued to lie there his friend Alan Rice decided this was for real. He lifted Saltman onto a golf cart and took him to the medical office on the lot where an ambulance was called. The police were also called and told that Evil Knievel had beaten the bejesus out of

a man right here at 20th Century Fox. Damn near killed him. I would say so. Saltman was taken to Los Angeles' new hospital. A warrant was put out for Knievel's arrest. Saltman didn't awaken until after surgery had been done on his left arm. The arm was in a large cast. He told reporters, I don't know the provocation, but I assume it had something to do with the

book. Alan Rice had called Saltman's wife, Molly, with the news. She thought the two men were playing a joke. Tell the truth, Shelley was going to be late for dinner. That's what she was like. Come on. At sundown, Yom Kippur would begin and he was supposed to be home for dinner with her entire family. Is he going to be late? Is that what you're telling me in Las Vegas? Bob Aram already, uh, already was at services at a synagogue.

He was called to the rabbi's office for an important, important phone call. The phone call was from Shelly. Shelly says, watch yourself. Evil attacked me with a baseball bat and now he may be coming after you. Aram said I wasn't too worried. Evil didn't even know what synagogue I went to. Knievel was stopped by the police that night on Lancashire Boulevard on ramp to the Hollywood freeway. He wasn't exactly trying to hide driving around in the Stutz with a bodyguard. You can see him from fucking space. This is ridiculous.

He was tailed by a car that contained his lawyer also. So follow me around. I know if you want lawyers to type up papers and shit, it costs a certain amount of an hour. What is it just to follow you around? Bianca. He explained that he was on his way to the West Los Angeles police station to surrender. The police redirected him to the North Hollywood station, then went to then to West Los Angeles,

where he was booked. Stan Rosenfeld, a young publicist in Hollywood, had been hired recently to work with Knievel and various movie projects. The work really hadn't begun, had been hired recently to work with Knievel in various movie projects. The work really hadn't begun, so he didn't know much about Knievel. The start of his education was a phone call during the afternoon from Rona Barrett, the print and television gossip queen. Do you have a statement about evil Knievel? She asked.

He said a statement about evil Knievel. And Rona Barrett said he just took a baseball bat to Shelly Saltman's arm and Rosenfeld said and then as they say hilarity ensued okay he and Knievel prepared a statement for reporters at the police station Rosenfeld read evil's words I stand by what I did and his appraisal he didn't say I didn't do it he's like stand by beating that guy's. And his appraisal, he didn't say I didn't do it, he said I stand by beating that guy's ass. And the appraisal of the book is a filthy lie that called him an alcoholic, pill addict,

anti-Semite, immoral person. Wow, this is fucking. So he just says, yeah, I did it. He said, yeah, that's right. He goes, I did it and I'm proud of it. That's literally what he was like, yeah, that's right. Fucking, I did did it and I'm proud of it. That's literally what he was like, yeah, that's right. Fucking, I did it. So they arrest him on the spot?

I do it again. Oh, he's already arrested. He was a warrant out for his arrest. So he said, I stand by what I did, blah, blah, blah. The daredevil here is booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He's released on $1,000 bail and told to appear next Wednesday for arraignment.

So Knievel answered one question on the way out of the door. They said, what are you gonna do tonight? And he said, I'm gonna go out and have a good time, like I do every night. Okay. So he's free, booked on the assault charge and free. And Saltman said later on about the being held. He said, I felt a hairy arm around my neck

throwing me to the ground. Next thing I saw was Evil coming for me with a baseball bat. The other guy held me while Evil hit me. Who the hell was it? That was one of his bodyguards. One of his friends. Who knows?

God damn. He said it was crazy, Saltman said, we lived together for three and a half months while he was getting ready for that jump. I felt I had a right to write a book about it. Said what the fuck? He said no one came to help because at a studio, someone might be shooting something

You don't want to fuck up the scene so anyway Knievel's brother is hurt now Okay, remember he's got a younger brother Nick Knievel. Yeah. Yeah He was practicing for a hundred and twelve foot jump from one ramp to another in a mini car race and a mini race car He was doing stunts to fractured three vertebrae in practice when he overshot the landing ramp. Jesus Christ, he want to do this too. I have no fucking idea.

Now we've talked a lot about the boat and the direct and the yachts and all that. So we'll end with this story and then we will pick up evil in jail next week. And it is he has a jail experience like no other jail experience you've ever fucking heard. It's insane. There's limousines involved, it's wild. Okay, here's a story. I like how the book, when there's just something

out of the timeline, they just say a story and then they put this in here. After the attack and before he surrendered, Knievel made a call to Dee Robinson, his decorator, back in Fort Lauderdale. He told her that some problems had arisen, so plans for the new house with the 14 stained glass windows were going to have to be shut down for a few weeks. He was going to build a house and he told her to order 14 stained glass windows, each depicting a different one of his jumps. Like the Stations of the Cross? And make a big window out of it like a church.

Holy shit. How fucking crazy is that? So yeah, he said there's some problems, so let's take a little break on that. What kind of problems, she asked. Oh, you'll find out soon enough. She found out the next morning she was in a convenience store and noticed the front page of the newspaper.

She couldn't believe the story. A baseball bat? An attack? A few days later, another unbelievable story emerged. Mike Anderson, the captain of the Evil Eye 1, told her that the owner of the boat wanted to meet her. Oh? Yeah.

She said she knows the owner of the boat. Yeah. Evil can evil. No, Anderson said, evil only leased the boat. Yeah. Evil can evil. No, Anderson said evil only leased the boat. Oh, the lion son of a bitch. He doesn't even own it. The real owner had stepped forward and was taking back control.

Payments had been missed. Evil had never even, had never been the owner no matter what he said. So Robinson met with the real owner who was not a happy man. He said she had ruined his boat with all of her designs. She apologized. She said she thought doing work to this thing that he doesn't even know. It's like remodeling a rental home. Yeah. Do that. And she, she did.

She fucked every tour, everything out, ripped everything up. I mean, it's crazy. So she apologized and said, I thought I even loaned the boat. I was just following my, the orders. The real owner said he now had a set of different orders. He would hire her to make the boat look exactly the way it did before Evil did that. That is fucking amazing. Could you do that? She said, sure. So this has to be the greatest interior design job in history. You have paid a shitload of money to transform it and then be like, sure, so this has to be the greatest interior design job in history. Get paid a shitload of money to transform it and then be like, no, put it back and they'll pay you even more.

That is fucking amazing. She said the first job of her career was redecorating evil's yacht. The second job was removing all the decoration she had done in her first job. She never worked for evil again and didn't see him for like more than 10 years, so a long time. The famous daredevil had hired Paul Caruso, a big time Hollywood attorney to represent him. Caruso had worked with a number of celebrity clients, including James Mason, Jaja Gabor, Jane Russell,

Brenda Vaccaro, Kirk Douglas, there you go, Elroy Crazylegs Hirsch. He successfully had defended actor and war hero Audie Murphy on a charge of attempted murder against a dog trainer who allegedly brutalized Murphy's dog and romanced his girlfriend. Yeah, you beat up my dog and fuck my girlfriend. I'm going to beat the shit out of you for that. We're fighting, absolutely.

I will attempt to murder you. The key to the defense was Caruso's contention that Murphy, credited with killing 282 German soldiers in a day to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, holy shit, couldn't have fired four times the dog trainer and missed. He would have hit him. Yeah, that guy's a good shot. And he's found not guilty because of that. If he wanted to hit him, he would have hit him. He's, yeah, that guy's a good shot. And he's found not guilty because of that.

If he wanted to hit him, he would have. Smart move. Knievel's defense for beating Saltman came straight out of Butte, Montana. Quote, I kicked his ass because he deserved it. Which is not a legal defense. No, it's not. It's not that you can hit him or hurt him

if they did something bad to you, unless they're actively doing something bad to you It's not something and you're preventing more bodily harm. Yeah, that is not that might work in the court of public opinion But in court court of law that doesn't work at all So there's no debate about whether he had done the deed too many people watched him He got a whole lunch shift watched I can do this So they said none of that the explanation he offered was what that he justified was justified anyone in Butte would see

that he said okay a longtime friend Louie said it was the way we grew up you could get away with a lot of things in Butte but one thing you could never do was bring a family into something as soon as you brought family and it was a whole different story I think that was because so many kids came from such bad family situations. They didn't have a father They didn't have a mother Bob didn't have either growing up But he never talked about it never talked about his mother never once never ever asked about her because they knew no one ever asked About her because they knew he wasn't educated Bob. He dropped out of school when the guy talked about his mother I think that put him over the top. You didn't talk about family like that. No one talked about his family

Nobody they they called him a lucky son of a bitch. It's a figure of speech. He's hung on the bitch part Yeah, I'm the son of a bitch. How about that? So he said I think I this is Jim Blankenship another old friend said I think he thought he was going to be seen as a hero a bunch of Books have been written about Celebrities tough things he was going to show that one celebrity wasn't going to take this He was going to take matters into his own hands The victim became the villain when Knievel took the case to the public So whose side are you on of the famous daredevil or the creep writer?

Knievel was Buford Pusser walking tall he was He was Gary Cooper at high noon, Dirty Harry, Gene Hackman in the French connection. He was on the side of good and justice. He said, because of what I did in this manner, I will never lose the love and respect of my family and friends. I have personal convictions that must not be violated by anyone. Okay, now, we'll do this and then we'll end it here. He brought this defiant attitude with him in the courtroom when he was arraigned October 12th, 77.

A two week delay had been granted to allow attorney Caruso to familiarize himself with the case. Knievel said he wanted to plead guilty. He did what the policeman said he did. Saltman deserved it, end of case end of case defendant would take his punishment Caruso extund at this development. What are you stupid? You at least negotiate a plea you don't fuck is wrong with you I did he said the punishment. Yeah He said that he advised evil to plead not guilty because there were ramifications in any civil trial that might follow to a stupid

Don't admit to this in open court. He asked for a day to consult with his client. The judge, Frances Rothschild, granted the delay. She said that she had never come across such a situation in her West Los Angeles court of somebody just going, yeah, I plead guilty, give me what you got. Like that just doesn't fucking happen in court because, you know. Because you're dealing with self-preservation and trying to get the lightest punishment possible even if you're content and contrite yeah still it's crazy so they

were like this is weird the next day at Caruso announced to the court that he was resigning as Knievel's attorney uh-huh yeah Knievel announced to the court that he pleaded guilty but acted he pleads guilty but acted because Sheldon Saltman had written a vicious book of pornography about him. Wow a vicious book of pornography. That is certainly something. That's something I guess. He said he had broken Saltman's arms because you write a book with your hands. Judge Rothschild scheduled the sentencing for a month later. Saltman, still in the hospital, was amazed at all of this.

Knievel's strategy seemed to work. That's the way it seemed reading the newspapers. His side of the story was everywhere. Saltman's was nowhere. There was things he'd like to point out too, but no one seemed to ask. Like first of all, the slander about Knievel's mother. The only mention of Knievel's mother in the entire book was, quote, evil wouldn't stay in Denver because his real mother lived there and he didn't want to see her.

Quote, my mother's never taking care of me, he said. I'm taking care of the woman that raised me, my grandmother, and that's all there is to it. You dig? That was the righteous cause for a beating? That shit that he told everybody? Saying his mom's worthless and that his... That's what Evil told everybody.

Yeah, right. And that was like his thing of why he's cool too. Like, my mother didn't even want me, my grandparents the only thing. A second thing, Knievel didn't attack Saltman's arms. He, the victim, put his arms up in self-defense. If Knievel planned His planned path with the baseball bat had been unimpeded the bat would have landed directly on his head

This was attempted murder. Nothing less. Why wasn't it being prosecuted as attempted murder? And he said a third thing the accomplice Yeah, yeah Why was nobody trying to find the accomplice Knievel mumbled something about not knowing the guy and something else about never saying the guy's name Nobody seemed to care about the accomplice. Nobody seemed to care about the seriousness of the crime So there we go. We're gonna leave off with that because Unhinged reckless son of a bitch at the moment fucking psychopath of all psychopaths. He's out of his fucking mind He's gonna of his fucking mind.

He's going to be going to jail, obviously, and his jail experience, like I said, is like no other you've ever heard of. So it's going to be a lot of crazy fun. We'll get into all of that next week. But first, before we do that, we definitely want to say thank you for listening, number one. Thank you for hanging out. Thank you for hope you enjoyed the scummies last week as well.

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Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never ever have us pinned down and beaten with baseball bats for simply mentioning that their mother existed. Jimmy, hit me with them right fucking now. This was Xander Broussos, our Elena Zemmell son. Noah, happy birthday, bud. Mentioning that their mother existed Jimmy hit me with him right fucking now this was his dad of brussels are Elena Zemmell son Noah happy birthday bud Hey, happy birthday birthday

Happy fucking birthday you called him bud like he was a Raptor one happy birthday Raptor takes it so Raptor one and two Gary Howard and Jordan Brock well Brock hell Thank you all so much for what you're doing. You're fucking great people. You're superstars. You're amazing. Other producers this week are Michelle Centeno and her Wolf Pack at Centeno Farms in Centeno Kennels in Canada. Peyton Meadows, Elizabeth Rockefeller. We got Rockefeller money. Janice Hill. Oh boy, give more

Tiffany Townsend Robert Baker your highness Justin Daggett Travis Freeman Shell Sinclair Rosie would know last name Devin Devin Hughes or maybe it's Devon Brandon M Tyler Blevins Vince Oswald, Corin Nilka, Janilka, Sierra Cash, Sophia Hernandez Ortiz, Derek Patterson, Madison Benson, Jeremy Brent Kilmas, Ramon Wutrich, Sierra Payne, Heidi with no last name, Matt and Tiffany Laws. Ian Harrington. Jeff would know last name. Michael Wareme. Wormy.

Bamfer. One nine eight seven. Maybe it's bad motherfucker. Bad M. Bad motherfucker. I think that's what it's supposed to be. Connor Brown. Jen Vinstra.

Lindsey Nadolski. Amy Ice. Rusty Ingersen. Heather Annis. Boy oh boy. OG. Jen Veenstra, Lindsey Nadalski, Amy Ice, Rusty Ingerson, Heather Annis, oh boy, oh boy, OG Bumpsniff, okay. Shawna, Shawna Cummings, I think. Sienna maybe? I think it's Shawna.

Bumpsniff is putting your cards and your coke right on the table, isn't it? That's telling you a lot. Letting you know what they do. Kjell, Kjell, Kj Kjell Anderson Faye McCalkey McCully Brynn Koffer Kaufer Rachel ruthless That might be a type of that a roller derby name. What is it? Is that a roller derby name? Kailin spiker Spicher maybe another roller derby chick. Darcy Lenhart.

Todd with no last name. Tabitha Martin Aslin, Aslin, Ashlyn Smith. Hey, there we go. Aslin Smith. Terry Brewer, Brewer. Brewer, delicious. Yeah, that's her last name. Is that it?

Oh, cool. Isn't that a type of cheese that's outspoken? Oh yeah, Breiera's absolutely a cheese Christine har net Carter row Amanda clay bow Nick Nick Cameron that Nick Cameron is there an actor or somebody famous named Nick Cameron I don't know it's possible no but he says maybe that guy April would know last name Kerry O O'Brien, Riley Foster. Courtney Jones, Skip with no last name, probably not that one.

Anamia, Anamia, and Anamia, Anamia Rumley? Oh, like, all right, like Anne Marie, but somebody named somebody Anamia? That's crazy. Anamia, well, I guess it's people are named Mia and people are named Anna. Right, that's a fascinating two together. Megan Boone, the nature girl, James, the one.

Oh, Flare's daughter. John, with no last name, Bernie with no last name, Vaughn Holden, Jessica Armstrong, Jeanette Seeley, James Scheidel, Manchester United, and Pints. They drink that shit and watch that shit. Sue, Dematia, Dematia, Dematia. Sandra Usery, Allison Michaela, Snana, what? That's not a name. Joan Marie, oh boy, Ernie, I don't know. Daniel Barnes, Biff Deadlift, KK's Blogs, Corey Strong, S Wolverine, what is this one? Wilson very easy Cody LaVala lot vola carry

Dixon Tim Boehner Boehmer so yeah Dixon and Boehner back to back Carrie Dixon and Tim Boehner right back to back alright Elvin Dixon Tim Boehner Justin with no last name cake with no last name Virginia Gibbons homie like homie tighter James Southern girl Tyler Foster squishy Cthulhu. What are those things? Come come come quat McGillicuddy. That's not a no Becca with no last name Mike O'Neill Carly punt Punt maybe Brandon Johnson Lisa Dominic Jen with no last name David D Christina with no last name. Big Ein T85. I don't know what that is.

Casey Pearson. Biblur or Bibler. Moss with no last name. Cindy Wolf. Morgan Greaves. Monica Schulte. Steele Toe Joe. T Remy.

CJ Frisch. Anita Lindsay. Johnny Bravo, probably not. Kate Heiberg. I'm sorryg Tierra and mr. Cassandra to bore Tabor maybe Molly the move theme you team you Jack Mason Josie Smith Elizabeth Stanton yep Drew con court Cochran Corcoran bill on a motto poopopoeia Pants. Kylie Tric.

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