How To Destroy Everything - Episode 6: How to Destroy a Career Part 1

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Wherein Danny and Darren dive into the absolutely bananas career of Richard Jacobs, from all its promise to its absolute peril. This episode covers multiple arrests and criminal charges, getting fired from the SEC for accessing a classified database, and winning a United States Supreme Court case. And this is only part 1! Listen to HTDE on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you would like to support this podcast, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/HowToDestroyEverything. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good afternoon. This message is for the maestro Steven Spielberg. My name is Richard Jacobs and I received your number from a mutual friend, let's just say. Anyway, I'm reaching out on behalf of my son, one Danny Jacobs, who just graduated from Stanford University and is heading down to Los Angeles for a career in the movies. And boy, would you be a great mentor. Hello, Mr. Rob Reiner. My name is Danny Jacobs. My dad had the great idea to give you a call. I hope you're still looking for a few good men, huh?

Because I will soon be making my way to Hollywood to follow in your illustrious footsteps. And I need the hookup. The way you handle those kids on goodies, it's just so inspiring to see them all working together like a big family. And Danny would be part of your family. Greetings, Mr. James Cameron. Or perhaps I should call you the king of the world. Shabbat shalom, Mr. Barry Levinson. Hello there, Mr. Jeffrey Katzenberg. Let me tell you about Danny's bar mitzvah speech. Howdy ho, Mr. George Lucas. Anyway, Stephen, if I may call you that,

as an actor, I feel Danny could follow in the footsteps of Richard Dreyfuss. I mean, he's just fantastic in that wonderful picture. What was it called? Oh, Close Encounters of the Second Kind. Why don't you make movies like that anymore? I mean, instead of another dinosaur movie, I could have really done without that.

I recently found a letter that I wrote to my dad soon after I had moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment. And it was born from the fact that I discovered that my dad was leaving those voicemails and writing letters to big Hollywood filmmakers and producers, sometimes even pretending to be me. Apologies, Mr. Spielberg. Obviously, I was mortified and furious, even though I could understand, at least to some extent, that he was coming from a place of truly wanting to help me. Still, I unloaded on him. In four single-spaced pages, I wrote about all the pain and

anguish and hurt he had caused me. And there's a lot I want to share about this letter, but for now, since we're gonna be talking about my dad's career, I wanted to focus in on one part when I pleaded with him to stay off the court. I literally said that, by the way. The letter is embarrassingly filled with too many sports metaphors, but you know, what can I say? I was in my early 20s. So anyway, I wrote the following. It's difficult in life sometimes to be the spectator.

I understand that your need to be a part of the game may be a result of feeling that you have missed your own chance to be a player in your own life. Perhaps you look back on what you have done and wished you had done more, tried harder, made different choices. Reading this quote, I wonder if I was more right then than I realized that my dad was interfering in my life so much in part out of a sense of regret about the choices he had made and the chances he had lost. So as we're gonna look at his career today, I can't help but start from that place, from seeing him as a man who could have done so much, but who failed to live up to his potential. My name is Danny Jacobs,

and this is How to Destroy Everything, a podcast about how one narcissist, my dad, destroyed his family, his neighborhood, and his career. This is episode six, How to Destroy a Career, part one. And with me as always, the pudding to my rice, the cream to my banana, the best friend who I once had an argument with during a childhood sleepover that ended with both of us shouting the phrase,

we shall see who will prevail over and over again, Mr. Darren Grotsky. Oh, hi, Danny. Oh my God. That is a true, true statement. I think now it's pretty clear he's prevailed. And who is that, Darren? Well, we shall see.

God damn it. But let's get to the matter at hand. I have been excited about digging into this since we started. Let's talk about the career of one Richard M. Jacobs. Yep, and I'd like to use as many more sports analogies as we possibly could. Goals, hashtag goals.

Well listen, to really understand my dad's ambitions and his drive, I think we gotta go back. We gotta go back to his childhood. Who was the boy who turned into the man. We spoke to one of your dad's childhood friends to get a sense of him, what Richard was like as a kid. Yeah, and before we get into it though, I think we should say up front that this was a profoundly strange interview.

Yes, yes it was. And the truth is that John isn't even his real name. No it is not. John and his wife were not comfortable using their real name, so we're going with John and Jane and, well, take a listen. In high school, what was my dad like? I didn't have any classes with him. Just a good, reliable friend. Did he have any kind of reputation in high school? I don't know. Not that you remember.

Got it. And then did you guys keep in touch when I'm assuming when you went to California? Yeah, that was kind of there was a system where we could call each other on the questionable number system. What does that mean? Avoiding charges for the phone call. And like all this time during the childhood, like, you know, I mean, you didn't notice anything

that you would describe as troubling about his behavior? No. I gotta say, I'm just really surprised. I mean, everybody that I have talked to, from my aunt to my grandparents to other friends, to anybody that's ever known him, they have described a very complicated individual. I've never heard anybody sort of describe him

as just a normal, regular person. While I didn't necessarily suspect any unusual moving song or anything, I believe his parents did. Are you guys writing writing notes to each other? No. Okay, yeah, guys, I'm just really, I'm just, I understand that you have a reticence to talk about anything negative. But I'm again, I'm just asking, I'm pleading with you to help me have a fuller understanding of my father.

Is that something that you think you can do? Yes, but I'd rather not be involved in having my name involved in this. Okay, would it make would it would you be able to be more forthcoming if we didn't? If we gave you a fake name? Yes. Okay. All right. I think we can do that. Yeah, there's no reason why. Yeah, there's no reason why we have to say exactly who you are. And so, okay, so great.

Thank you guys. Again, I thank you. I know this is hard and I really appreciate you being more forthcoming. Then can you tell me about that shoplifting story? We went to a Western Auto store. I sat down on a bench while Richard was looking at fishing lures. Evidently, he found one he liked very much and got caught. So they didn't like, you guys were in high school, so they didn't arrest him or anything?

No. And in the aftermath of that, did you guys talk about it? No. You didn't say like, why did you do that? No, we you were not curious or? I want to know part of it. I see. I'm just sort of trying to imagine if I were with a friend of mine, and we were in a store and he just tried to sell something to any of Darren stole something from a store, it would be a thing. I mean, I

would want to talk about that a lot. I'd be like, what, what were you thinking? Like, I thought the fact that he was caught and apprehended or whatever you want to call it, I thought that was enough that he knew he was in trouble. Did that change your understanding of who he was at all? No, I just kind of wondered why did he do that? Yeah. Yeah, me too. So that was weird. Boy, it was, it was very weird. Very, very, and you know what was super interesting is that

so after the interview, we were listening back to it and we heard them whispering to each other at the start about how they were only going to talk about positive things. God yeah you know doing that interview made it clear to me that this exploration of my dad was gonna be harder than we thought. Yes people don't want to talk to us. Exactly and it also made me kind of understand what it must feel like to investigate the mafia. Oh I know yeah right it's like even in death, people are still afraid of him. Dude, I can relate.

I mean, it's actually, it's good to know that I'm not the only one he haunts. Indeed. Now, we did eventually get John to open up a little bit, and he told us something that I want to highlight. I guess you could say what I observed in him was not quite normal. But I mean, he was very smart. He couldn't be on the short way if he wasn't smart. He couldn't fly an airplane if he wasn't smart.

He just was directing his intelligence in the wrong way. That line, he directed his intelligence in the wrong way. That line, he directed his intelligence in the wrong way, I think that's it, man. I think that is going to be a real recurring theme as we go through your dad's career. Yeah, I think you're right. But, and one other thing that I wanna mention about my dad's childhood is something that we discovered

in this process in regards to my grandparents, my dad's parents. And it should be noted, these grandparents played a huge role in your childhood. Oh my God, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure, frankly, that I would have survived without them. They were my rock.

I mean, they were loving and generous and consistent, which was super important. So it was downright shocking to me, frankly, when one of my older family members told me about another side of them from when my dad was a kid. And now we can't go to the interview for this, right? You are correct, sir.

So yeah, this particular family member has made it abundantly clear that they do not want to participate in this project. But they did tell me that when my dad was a kid, my grandfather was super strict and my grandma was suffering from depression as a result of having survivor's guilt. She lost family in the Holocaust. Exactly.

So these are new revelations for you. What do you make of them? Well, I mean, you and I for years used to describe my dad as having been born this way, right? Yes. He wasn't some victim of some abuse as a child that could explain his behavior. No, no. We always said this was like a total nature situation rather than a nurture one. Yeah. So this was the first time that I've heard anything that might push back on that narrative,

that maybe my grandparents did inadvertently make things worse for my dad. Interesting. I can see that. Are you not suggesting that his condition was fully created by those circumstances? No. Definitely not. I feel confident that from birth he had the seeds of his condition, but for the first time I can also see that the circumstances of my dad's childhood may have kind of sped

up that growth. Interesting. And how does this connect back to his career? Well, I guess I wonder if perhaps his upbringing lent some fuel to my dad's fire. Oh, his ambition, you mean? Yeah, like he wanted success partly as a way of gaining the love and attention that he lacked from his parents.

Needing love from parents. Yeah. Tale as old as time. Sure is. You know, that actually goes nicely with something your mom said. And he was trying to find a job, to, you know, find a job as a lawyer. And he was wanting to go to the Security and Exchange Commission and watch NBC. Do you know why?

Because he thought if you worked for Security and Exchange Commission, then you could make a lot of money when you went on your own. And he would talk about making money and how he was jealous of some lawyer cousin that lived in New York because he had, I don't know who it was, but he was a lawyer in some big firm. And when we went to New York,

this guy took him around his building and he was like so jealous. He said, I wanna make all that money like that. Interesting. Yeah. That is interesting. Remember we've talked about the career episode and us trying to understand what's something

we've never really known, which was why was he a lawyer? Why the law? Do you know that? Yeah, was it money? Is that why he wanted to be a lawyer, Mom? Do you know what was? I think so, yeah. But he didn't say, he just was just really wanting

to make money, and he thought that's why he went to the Security Exchange Commission. If he could work there for a couple years, he could be a corporate lawyer or something like that. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, but it didn't last, so. Right, yes. Yeah. So that's certainly one explanation as to what was driving your dad. Yeah. And actually, you know what? This is all supported by something your family rabbi, Jeffrey Stiffman, told us.

Apparently, your grandpa came in to talk to him about Richard. The, as he put it, as I remember, he would say to me, I wish it weren't so, but my son is not completely right. And he said, it's hard for him and it's hard for me, but he's my son and I do what I can. Wow. Do you remember what precipitated him telling you that? I think it was one of the first times when Richard came to me and asked me to testify in court.

And as we sat and talked, I could tell that he was a little scattered, but also very determined. I asked Sid, his father, about it, and that's when he told me. And he said, I'm hoping that we can help him as much as possible. He did also mention that he was very bright, that he had a law degree. And that you don't get a law degree by being a dummy.

Okay, so we've got this guy with this nascent mental illness exacerbated by his upbringing growing into someone who is intent on a high standard of success. And also it occurs to me that, you know, becoming a big time lawyer as a Jew would be the kind of success that could make one's parents very proud, you know, especially back in the 70s. Right, totally. And also there's this idea that the law being so much about, you know, technicalities and what's written versus what's the norm, like it's a profession that is tailor made to my dad's particular set of skills to quote taken. Yes, yes. You got me there. But look, then there's also another

aspect to your dad's development that I think we need to talk about because it ends up being a huge part of his professional trajectory as well. And that is his relationship to technology. Oh man. And the word that you use, their, is totally the right one. My dad had a real love affair, I'd say, with technology. And it started very early. Yeah, when he was a kid he would apparently put up cameras throughout his house. Wow. You know, he'd constantly manipulate the air conditioning just to fuck with people. Fair. My aunt told me that he would listen into her phone conversations even as a teenager. Gross, Even then. Yeah. Yeah. I also found out that when my aunt was preparing to take her driver's test, my dad jerry-rigged the taillights on her car so that they wouldn't work

and she wouldn't pass the inspection. Jesus. That's insanity. Yeah. But one of his biggest focuses in terms of technology was that he developed a real passion for ham radio. Okay, yes, so let's dig into that one. So for the uninitiated, ham radio means... What exactly? Basically like amateur radio communication? Yes, it's using the radio frequency spectrum for a non-commercial exchange of messages, basically. That sounds like you looked it up. Did you look that up?

I did, Darren. I sure did. And I think I just copy and paste it. We don't even know. Isn't it just like the thing that like the big rig truck drivers use to talk to each other, you know, alpha echo niner, this is Zippo mocha latte. Do you copy? Yeah, no, that's right. Only it's not just for big rigs. My dad actually had one of these in his house when he was a kid. Calling CQ. This is ST5PM. Sierra, Tango 5, Papa, Mike. Come on. Come on. ST5PM, this is AF2RZ Alpha Foxtrot 2 Romeo Zulu. Oh wow it worked! Hi there, I'm a junior in high school.

I'm broadcasting from my home in St. Louis, Missouri. Howdy kid, I'm hauling a piggyback just outside of Cleveland. Copy that AF3RZ. There was also this whole subculture that developed around it. Totally. Like a kind of community in a way, because basically it enabled you to speak with anybody all around the world. You know what? It was an internet chat room before the internet.

Yes. Yeah. It's just like I'm trying to imagine my teenage dad talking to these people. Talking to these people. Like about what? You know? Are you in Russia? And by the way, they can't even understand each other sometimes, they're speaking different languages. I'm not sure what you just said,

but I'm speaking to you from the United States. And what would he possibly have to share with anybody? I mean, I don't know, small talk? Yeah, I mean, this is how child abductions happen, right? Oh God, internet chat rooms. Yeah. Where do you live? What do you do to entertain yourself? Oh, current weather here is a breezy 62 degrees Fahrenheit, partly cloudy skies with a 50% chance of rain, but I don't know, it feels pretty humid.

I think there is, on some level, a yearning for connection here. Yes, I think that's exactly right. On my way to Memphis, don't get me good night's sleep. Yeah, it's about 3 in the morning here. I should probably get some rest. I've got an algebra test tomorrow. This guy taught me all sorts of things. Captain Crunch. I think you should talk to him. I can't believe how much trouble Captain Crunch had. You like phones, huh? You don't want to talk to Captain Crunch? I keep hearing about him. Who is this Captain Crunch is there, yeah. You like phones, huh? You don't wanna talk to Captain Crunch. I keep hearing about him.

Who is this Captain Crunch guy? So, the Captain Crunch guy. The Captain Crunch guy. Captain Crunch. Now here's the thing, I don't have specific dates for what I'm about to tell you, nor do I know exactly what my dad's particular role was, but here's what I know.

In the 1980s, when corporate automated phone systems were becoming all the rage. Speaking of those phone systems, actually, my dad was part of that rage that you're talking about, because he started this company in the 70s that helped design some of the early versions of those phone systems. Well, isn't that just great, Darren?

Okay. Isn't that just great? Why don't we save that for the podcast about your dad? Wow. Okay, the how to be a great father spin-off, you lucky son of a bitch. Fair enough. Proceed. Anyway, my dad apparently discovered that the toy whistle provided in Captain Crunch cereal boxes was a particular frequency that if blown into a phone at exactly the right

time would bypass these new automated phone systems. Like what? I mean I know that I know that story but you're kidding me. Yeah. I'm just, how does one even figure that out? Well that brings us back to the Captain Crunch guy. See we actually found him.

When I was on these conference calls, they said, well, you should have a name. Yeah, that's a good idea. Has Captain Crunch been taken? I said, no. OK, I am officially Captain Crunch. And then that name stuck. So this guy, John Draper.

I'm John Draper. I'm US Air Force retired. I'm 80 years old. Made a name for himself in this community called Phone Freaks. That's P-H-R-E-A-K-S, by the way. Fat. And a lot of the things this group was interested in was exactly the things my dad was obsessed with. And one of the other reasons we were so excited to talk to Mr. Draper was that...

Mr. Crunch, please, Danny, show some respect. Oh my god, I am so, so sorry. Good lord. You're right. One of the reasons we wanted to talk to Mr. Crunch, please Danny, show some respect. Oh my god, I am so, so sorry. Good lord. You're right. One of the reasons we wanted to talk to Mr. Crunch is because he could finally clarify and explain a bunch of the technical things that my dad was up to. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world.

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and if you like those, then we think you might like his weekly podcast, Flightless Bird. So each episode sees the journalist exploring a different part of American culture. Spending the day with the Gladesmen and the Everglades, or trying to figure out why Americans love flags and leaf blowers so much. Some episodes are light and breezy, and others take darker turns exploring the pitfalls of capital punishments or the story of Spaceman Barry, the housemate you thought you knew, but really, really didn't. And I look at you, and I was like, Barry has a nickname. And you're like, oh yeah? And I go, it's the space man molester.

And you say, well, that's not good. So check it out, flightless bird, wherever you get your podcasts. But why don't we start with like, because one of the things that I think my dad did and used and it sounds like it came from you was this, was the Captain Crunch thing. I wonder if you can just tell us a little bit about how you discovered the Captain Crunch

whistle thing and how that came about. I was working at a small Silicon Valley company as an electronic tech, and I get a random phone call from a guy named Denny. He just called my number up at random, And I asked him why he called me. He says, well, I'm a phone freak. I'm just scanning for numbers. I said, oh, what's a phone freak? And we got on this subject of phone freaking.

And Denny said that, well, we make free phone calls. I said, well, that's cool. I can sure use that. And he introduced me to the Captain Crunch Whistle. He says, I gotta get me one of these. Oh, he did? Yeah, he did, yeah. And in terms of how it bypassed corporate phone systems?

Yeah. Basically, the whistle blows 2600 hertz tone and that is the magic frequency that the telephone company uses to disconnect phone calls, disconnect long distance calls. Yeah. In other words, if you want to be really annoying, what you can do is you're at an airport, all these banks of phones there, you walk along blowing the whistle. It's disconnecting what he's calling. Hello?

Hello? Hello? That's amazing. So this is really interesting. So one of the things that we learned about Danny's dad, and we heard this from multiple people who knew him long ago, I mean, this might've been in the late 60s, early 70s,

was that he had this device that could be used to make free long distance phone calls. And are you saying is that the Cap'n Crunch whistle or is that something else? No, that's a blue box. I believe what he must be talking about is a blue box. Let me explain that. I can call an 800 number, which is toll free, and just before they answer I blow the 2600

tone, it disconnects from the call, and then I'm on an open trunk. Once I'm on an open trunk I send the blue box tones, which is a keep pulse tone, followed by the area code and the number and then a start tone. And that will process the call. Instead of me going to that 800 number that I called, I went to another phone. I'm billed for only the 800 call. Which is to say you're not billed at all.

Yeah, pretty much. Can I, what I'd love to do is, there's like a number of things that my dad did that I wanna ask you about to see if you can give me an explanation for what he was up to. Okay. So when I was... one of the things that he would always have me do when I was a kid is he would have me call him collect and then he would reject that call and then he would call me back.

That's what I did in prison. Exactly. Okay. So what was going on there? Okay. Well, calling collect is just a notification call to let the person that you're calling know that you want to call them. And whoever it was that accepted the call would not accept the call and he would give the number out to the person, which is of course the B side of a loop, and you could call them on that number. Right.

So you're saying in the rejection of the call he would say another number, and he would say call this number. Right, that's the only way, yeah, just alert the other side. Right, that's right, he would do that. Because you had to get, Yes. Yeah, because loops come and go all the time.

They're always being disconnected or reconnected. And so, if the phone company wants to use a loop around, they'll connect it for a while, we'll leave it connected, and phone freak start using it, then they'll find out that it's being abused, and they'll disconnect it. But then when they have to it connected, and phone freaks start using it, then they'll find out that it's being abused, and they'll disconnect it. But then when they have to use the loop again,

they have to reconnect it again. So often the time they just leave it connected, they don't even bother. One of the things that we heard about from people that knew my dad was that he would call them and ask them, he'd be like, hey, can I have the phone company install a phone in your house with my phone

number? Yeah. Does that make any sense to you? The reason for doing that is so that the person who wanted to use that external phone on somebody else's line would probably be doing something nefarious on that phone line. You're making blue box calls or using that a, what they call a cheese box. Usually bookies will have a cheese box. It's a device that connects two phone lines together.

And so if a bookie wants to give out a phone number, and you don't want the phone company to know who that phone number is, they'll give a phone number to one of those, like your friend's phone that you wanted to get there. That phone number would give it out to, let's say, a bookie. It would not tie in anybody except whoever installed the phone. So you're saying it would be sort of like an elbow to my dad's actual phone that would prevent anybody from knowing that it's actually connected to my dad's phone? Exactly. Let me ask you this. If I am, I remember being on the phone, and look, honestly, this all kind of, as you can

imagine, gave me a degree of paranoia growing up. But I remember being, I would be on the phone and I'd hear maybe like a beep or a click or some sounds and then thinking, oh, I wonder if that's my dad. Would there be sound, like, was I right? Was that nothing? That would seem to indicate to me that you're using auto-verify to tap in on the line that way. Because if you're talking on the phone, okay,

and you come in on auto-verify, there is a beep every 10 seconds. You just let that call party know that their line is being monitored. Let me ask you another question, John. This is sort of an emotional question, which is, like, what do you get out of all of this emotionally for you? What is emotionally valuable to you about just knowledge?

It's knowledge. Strictly knowledge. I had no intention of making money on it. It was no intention of... You got a pleasure out of the knowledge, getting the knowledge. Yeah, being able to discover a new routing into a new country, into a country that you couldn't route. Like, for instance, calling Russia was impossible back in the day.

Man, it's kind of crazy to hear some of the similarities between Cap'n Crunch and your dad. Right, totally. I mean, it made me wonder if there's something deeper going on here. Like, it's odd to me that these two guys had the exact same obsessions. Like, I'm just thinking, like, is there something

about a certain kind of personality that drives one towards those things? It could be. I mean, also, they're around the same age, you know? And so they came of age at a time when, I mean, think about what they saw in terms of technology changing and developing and communication and what was one science fiction they could

actually do. Right. You know, and another thing that's coming to mind is that I think that this kind of technology gave people a sense of control over a rapidly changing world. Oh, yeah. And that is obviously something that was always a thing for my dad. Absolutely. Well, and beyond that, there's a that was always a thing for my dad. Absolutely. Well, and beyond that, there's a kind of like ahead of their time quality to this.

Right. You know, like there's a drive to see what is possible and to get ahead of the world. You know, and that actually brings us back to my dad's actual career because it's not just the technology, his relationship with technology that he was doing that with, but also with the law and his work as a lawyer. My name's Lee Patton. I'm a lawyer that's practiced in Missouri for 41 years, primary plaintiff's personal injury. But I started out doing extensively criminal work

because I wanted to be a trial lawyer and that was the quickest way to get a case to trial was criminal. Your dad was probably a genius. And he would find out ways where somebody forgot to dot the I or cross the T and he would turn that into a big deal. Yeah. And did you, had you heard of him prior to? Oh yeah. RMJ. Yeah. And did you, had you heard of him prior to?

Oh yeah, RMJ. RMJ, the seminal case that has exploded lawyer advertising in the state of Missouri. He took a case all the way to the Supreme Court because the Bar Association said you can't advertise. And he won. And thusly now the pendulum is swung so far to the other side I've got you know, you can't watch Judge Judy without seeing six different ads consecutively for lawyers, right all of all of whom get every client a quarter of a million dollars So yeah, here was my dad, still ambitious, despite, you know, being arrested in Chicago and being fired from the SEC, which are both things we talked about in previous episodes. And he sees the sliver of an opening to still have the kind of success that he dreamed about.

Yeah, I think it's worth it here to slow down and talk about how revolutionary this was. I mean, lawyers couldn't advertise. Yeah, not only that, they couldn't even use phrases that are like everywhere now. Like personal injury was like a personal injury lawyer. That was not a thing. My dad used that when he initially advertised. Yeah, he saw something that no one else saw. And now as we look at these billboards everywhere, we have your dad to thank, you know, or people did people did see it by the way they were too afraid to do anything about it right right it's occurring to me that like it's such an

interesting thing that like this development okay came out of the very same unwillingness to follow convention that got my dad into so much trouble that's right the very same anti-establishment anger that fueled so much of his chaos ironically ironically also fueled this. Became his strength. It's, you're right, that's exactly right. I think, and in fact, in one of our interviews with Roy Simon, a law professor at Washington University, who would go on to represent your dad in a different case, you talked about that very idea. So you're kind of saying that the tumultuous nature of his life and who he

was, that in some ways is responsible for his audacity, that you can't have one without the other. Well, maybe so. I mean, it certainly seemed to go in a pair with him, that he wasn't gonna be pushed around by people who weren't abiding by the law as he saw it. And he wasn't going to take no for an answer if he thought that the true answer was yes. Now, I do think that he was a person who had enormous belief that he was right. And I'm sure there were times, as with everybody, where he wasn't right, but he nevertheless was convinced that he was right. But that, you know, that self-confidence,

maybe maybe it was self-righteousness led him to challenge things that other people would have just accepted. Or another way that he could have responded was to say, you know what, I'm going to see if I can make some friends in the Bar Association. And over a gradual process of five years or 10 years, I'll see if I can get the Missouri Supreme Court to change the rules to what I think they should be.

But that didn't seem to be... I don't think patience and the things you want to do. Like this. Bye bye old tile, hello new bathroom. This. Oh wow, is that a volcano? And this. Encore, encore, woo! Personalized human support and a proven track record of performance. RBC helps you maximize your return on life.

Start investing with RBC today. So there you have it. There was good in your father, some balance in the force, some yin to the yang. And so remarkably, you know, this man who had obviously already destroyed so much made this one little choice, simple choice, advertising his craft, and then refusing to give in, even as the Missouri Bar Association took him to court, even in spite of the fact that nobody, no lawyer, had ever done what he was trying to do, he pressed on.

Yeah, through the various levers of justice and all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Oh, yay, oh, yay, oh, yay. When dad won the Supreme Court case in 1981, what do you remember about that? I thought that was good because he got the lawyers to advertise. Was he happy about it? He was happy about it. I mean, it's kind of a cool achievement to win a Supreme Court case.

Yeah, I know. In fact, we were all excited. We were going to go to Washington, DC and watch the Supreme Court judges you know the argument in front of the court. And did you? No, because at the same time that that stealing by deceit and all that stuff came out and he was arrested and everything and and so they wrote in the article in the newspaper that by the way this lawyer has been article in the newspaper that, by the way, this lawyer has been this barred for this and they, you know, they wrote it all up and he was, you know, he was, I don't know why he didn't want to go. I remember begging to him. I really wanted to go. Yeah. And he,

and he just didn't, he just said no. And then he went and he stole the newspapers of our neighbors so that they wouldn't see that article from the morning. Wow. Wow. So this would be the pinnacle of any lawyer's career, the legal Super Bowl. Yeah, and maybe even a chance to make his parents proud, to redeem himself. But then, before he could go to Washington

and have his time in the sun, the Empire strikes back. Oh, hello again. What can I do for you? You think I'm a fool? I'm sorry? I am not a fool. Uh, is something wrong with the television? It's something wrong with the...

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's something wrong with the gosh darn television. It's not new. What? No, don't be ridiculous. Does this look familiar to you? No. Well it should because it was in the box with the factory sealed television you sold me. What is a children's toy doing inside of a box that you promised

in your ad had never been opened? Well that sounds to me like an issue you should take up with the Sony Corporation. Not not with me. Or maybe your own child. I don't have any children. I'm a proud bachelor. And you, sir, I believe I have a couple of rugrats running around somewhere. So I bet it probably just slipped in this box. OK, OK, OK, OK.

That's quite enough. We all need to calm down. I'll calm down after I call the police. Oh, no, no, no, no. Hang on a second. Hang on a second. Listen, I'm a good guy. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll buy it back from you for $600.

Excuse me? I paid $675 for this TV. That doesn't make any sense here. Well, now it's been opened. Oh my god! That factory tape is very valuable. I could honestly smash you in your nose right now. And I don't do that sort of a thing, sir.

I'm a dentist. You pushed me to the edge. Yeah, well, I'm a lawyer, and in your nose right now. And I don't do that sort of a thing, sir. I'm a dentist. You pushed me to the edge. Yeah, well, I'm a lawyer and I would sue you for assault. Felony assault conviction carries at least six months. Is that what you really want? Then I'm going to the police. Fine, fine. You know what?

Be my guest. Tell you what, I can't wait to watch your story on the news on my brand new television. Okay, so catch me up on what exactly happened here. Actually, why don't we hear it from Gordon Ankeny, who was a special assistant county prosecutor in St. Louis back during this era. I recall he had advertised the brand new television

in a box and a woman, I think she was a single mother, purchased it and paid him for it, and obviously it was over $500. Of course, back then there was those big bulky TVs. And when she went to open it and got it out, the first thing she found that there was a toy car or something in the box, which made her suspicious. And then it was clearly a used TV.

And when she went back to him, he was very threatening to her. And she finally went to the police after, he threatened her quite a bit because she was very reluctant to proceed with the case. Wow. So in hearing this story, I guess my main question is,

Mr. Jacobs, where were you and your toy car on the day in question? Cue the fugitive music. No, that, my friend, is one of the mysteries that this show will never be able to answer definitively. It's just remarkable to think that here in what should have been your dad's crowning moment of triumph He was able to do something So phenomenally dumb. Oh god. Yeah, and the thing is he'd apparently gotten away with it for some time But you want to know something really wild? Okay, I'm gonna tell you anyway, okay So even though he got caught there, right? Even though he got arrested even though the scheme that scheme with the TVs came at such a critical juncture in his career and threatened to derail his moment at the Supreme Court, he didn't stop.

He didn't stop. Well, what I mean is throughout my childhood, okay, every so often, we'd get new televisions. Oh, no. Yeah, okay, just hold on. So what he was doing was because it's slightly different than what he did here with the TV. He adapted. He adapted. What he was doing was he would go get a new television, he'd bring it home, he'd carefully take it out of the box.

He put his old television in the box, tape it back up and then return it to, I believe it was Venture, which is kind of like a Midwestern target. Oh, RIP Venture. Yeah. But that's insanity. Yeah, yeah. He, you remember this? Like you saw this with the televisions? Well, I wasn't quite aware of all of it happening. I do remember new televisions. I pieced this

together by talking to people in my family. What's astonishing to me is that he just couldn't seem to learn a lesson ever. Yeah, well, get this. At some point, he even got tired of having to go back every 30 days to return the new television because Venture had a 30-day return policy. So he realized that he could just call the store near the end of those 30 days and tell them that he had made a mistake and used the wrong credit card and he wanted to transfer the charge to a different card. And when he did that, the 30 day return policy would restart. It worked?

Yeah, so he wouldn't have to actually go into the store. He could just do that a couple of times. My God, that is both so incredibly brilliant and so remarkably lazy at the same time. Brilliant but lazy is what I hope to be on my epitaph. God, another thing to aspire to. So back to the scheme that got him arrested, it turns out that it prevented your parents from being able to go to Washington DC for the Supreme Court hearing. And his only way out of

this arrest and the turmoil that resulted was to agree to a plea deal in which his law license was suspended. Yeah. So this thing that was so important to him, his pathway to success and redemption, was at least for a time taken from him. And according to your mom, as a result of this he came tumbling down emotionally. When he got this barred, actually they put in the, you know, it was because of these cases that he had was trying to like take a television and it was called stealing by deceit. Take a television, buy a new one, put the old one in it and then return to the store.

This time he decided to do it in the mail and that made it some kind of federal offense or something. So when the guy complained and there was an arrest, I was still married at that point, he went to complain to the prosecuting attorney and they arrested him on that. But then that was going crazy. He was depressed and then he was going to psychics, seeing what the psychic would say about how that toy car got in the box.

Just- Was he actually going to psychics or was he telling you- Oh no, that's what he told me. Yeah. I mean it was like- I can't imagine how he tried to escape. No, no, no, was going to psychics? Oh no, that's what he told me. I can't imagine him going to a psychic. No, no, no. But this is interesting because that's the beginning of what would be a very common refrain

for him over a long period of time. Using psychics as a scapegoat or blaming psychics for his own. Yeah, so that was the first time he started using psychics, I guess. So there you have it. The promise and the peril of Richard Jacobs colliding in real time. Yep. Also, the psychic thing was a bit of a curveball. I did not see that coming.

Well, okay. Now that will become a thing that he would later start to use on me as a way of explaining how he knows things that he shouldn't. Oh, like when he broke into your emails and that's how he would explain away his knowledge by saying, -"Oh, I saw a psychic." -"Exactly, exactly." So, anyway, he misses out on this opportunity to participate in his case being argued

in front of the highest court in the land, all because he wanted a free fucking television. I mean, it's bananas. It is. It's sad, too. I mean, I feel bad for him. Yeah, I mean, well, to me, it's just more evidence of this enormous loss of potential. You know, like the things he could have done

with the gifts that he had. I can't even conceive of it, right? Like he had the ingredients, he just squandered it. Yes, you're absolutely right. That brings us back to where we started this episode, to the letter that you wrote to your dad when you were 22. You know, and looking back on it now, there was something that strikes me. Okay.

Is that you had so much hope for your dad back then. Let me read you just something you wrote here. Actually, this is the way that you ended the letter. Okay. You said, my hope is that you will take more control of your life, get out of your bed, out of your house, make a living, become a member of your community, make some friends, and create a world of your own. I mean, first, let me just say first of all, it's a remarkable thing for a 22-year-old

kid to write to a 58-year-old father. But again, it's like you're saying that, I don't know, you tell me how you thought you were saying it or how you feel about it now, because to know, you tell me how you thought you were saying it or how you feel about it now, because to me it sounds like someone who believes he could do that. Well, I think at that time I did. I mean, I definitely had that hope.

I wasn't ready to give up on that dream. I mean, like now, looking back on it though, I can see how misguided that hope was. Like, it's so clear to me now by doing this podcast and talking through all this and learning what we have that my dad's life ultimately was destined to be a tragedy. Like if it wasn't the TV scheme it would have been something else. You know, he was brilliant and cunning, sure, but another word for that would be diabolical.

Or damaged. Yeah, I mean, I guess. Whatever it is, whatever it was, was always going to prevent him from achieving the heights that his intellect might have suggested he could achieve. Yeah. It feels like we're coming to the end, and we are, of this episode. But the remarkable

thing is that this is hardly the end of your dad's career. Oh yeah. A long shot. Yeah. In fact, the year we've been building towards in this episode is actually just 1981. That's the year of the Supreme Court case and the TV scheme arrest. And the crazy thing is that your dad was only 38 years old. 38! I mean, it's nuts to think that we're at a similar age now. That's right. And he had already been through all of this. All the ups and the downs.

And it is literally just the half of it. Yeah, because once it became clear that my dad wouldn't be reaching the heights of the legal profession and with his legal reputation ruined and his license suspended, his days would be freed up to engage in all kinds of chaos. Indeed, which brings us to Barbara. Yeah, so we've gotten a lot of emails from a lot of people telling stories about my dad, but I would say that Barbara's stands out. Yeah, I mean just the subject line alone grabbed our attention it was

assault in 1994 in the St. Louis Airport. Yeah and in it Barbara detailed an eight-year legal saga that changed her life forever. I was scared that my cigarette had even asht on him because he was putting this paper over the tray, this silver dish. So by the third time he had his hand now over it and my ash fell on him, I was petrified of this guy. So he hit me and took off running. And I mean, yes, I went to the police and I said well this

man said he was allergic the ambulance came for him they even checked Mr. Jacobs out he refused to go in the ambulance and that is next as we explore the second half of Richard Jacobs career and episode 7 of how to destroy everything Jesus you scared me first of all and secondly you're stealing my thing? Hey listen, what can I say? The apple doesn't fall far after all, Darren. We shall see who will prevail. Oh, I see what you did. We shall see who will prevail. We shall see who will prevail. We shall see who will prevail. We shall see who will prevail.

We shall see who will prevail. We shall see who will prevail. We shall see who will prevail. We shall see who will prevail. Prevail. We will see. We shall. We shall see who will prevail. We will see. We shall. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] How to Destroy Everything is written, directed,

and created by Danny Jacobs and Darren Grotsky, executive produced by Michael Grant Terry, and edited, sound designed, and music supervised by Dashiell, Reinhardt and Robert Grigsby Wilson. Original music by Jesse Terry, starring in alphabetical order, Manuel Bermudez, David Goral, Tom Hwang, Jonathan Kaplan, Mariana Novak, Mike Terry, Ben Tolpin, Jono Wilson,

Jono Wilson? Jono Wilson, Yair Bendor. If you knew Richard Jacobs and have a story to tell, please reach out to us at Iknowrichardjacobs at gmail.com. Additionally, if you would like to support this podcast, please consider becoming a patron at www.patreon.com how to destroy everything. And of course you can find us on Instagram

and Twitter as well. How to Destroy Everything is available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Special shout out to Spotify Studios for hosting us in this beautiful studio space in downtown Los Angeles.