My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 233 - Free Range Children

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

Karen and Georgia cover the Zoot Suit Riots and the 1976 Chowchilla bus kidnapping.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome to my favorite murder, where we talk about true crime exactly how you want us to. I'm going to write in the exact cadence and speech pattern as if we're human and slow and fast. Slow. A lot of pauses like this make it seem important. It's basically ASMR. Yeah.

Hey. Hi. Hi. Are you trying to fall asleep right now? Do you like the sound of zippers? Do you like zipper? Oh. Zippers.

Is that a thing? I don't know. The first... Then I just start talking so loud. The first time I saw an ASMR video, it was something like that. It was a very specific sound where it was like, this is for one person, maybe four. And it was just like a, you know, it was like titled like Plastic Ski Jacket Zipper or something like that.

Yeah. Like something someone has always loved but never even realized it was a thing they loved. You know, there's like... I saw recently that there's hair brushing videos, which is the sound of hair being brushed. Oh. The audio of it. The audio for ASMR of hair being brushed. That's someone's thing.

See, I might have the opposite of whatever the fetish is for hair brushing sounds because there's nothing that bothers me more. And this is very like when you're the first year living out of your parent's house when you're like, I'm living with the girls and we're living it up or whatever. And there's always some roommate that will get out of the shower with wet hair and then brush her hair violently like in front of the TV. Oh, yeah. Like that's always driven me, those kind of girls that are like just like pulling their

own hair out. They're just like ripping through their hair with the tangles. Yeah. Just doing it really fast. You could tell they had, they had the kind of mom or sisters that was like, too bad. Suck it up. You have to get your hair brushed. Oh my God.

My mom used to make us cry by French braiding our hair. Yeah. Because she pulled it so tight. Because it was so tight and she'd yank it, not on purpose, but it's like, it was maybe a little. Maybe a little past. Maybe Jan, it was getting back, that hurt. It does feel so good though.

I can French braid hair. I know. I've been meaning to get you to French braid my hair. It's been like. I will absolutely do it. I don't know why it's never happened like on tour or something. I guess because we don't roller skate that much in 1984, what the fuck, how weird would it be?

You're like, we're going to go down to the Applebee's two blocks down. Will you French braid my hair first? You know what I just realized? Sometimes when I can't sleep, if I need like a soothing thought, I'll think of myself French braiding hair. Like just a long fucking French braid. Yeah. That's my ASMR in my brain.

French braiding. I love it. But it's the visual or the visual audio as well. The visual and then the feel of French braiding is like so soothing. Doesn't it? Yes. You know, as we said, this is true crime. So good.

We are here to tell you about things that sound ways that people have made sounds work for them. Whether it's this podcast, the old can opener ASMR. Can opener. I love the sound of Bumblebee tune up being open being opened by an electric can opener from 1978. Chicken of the sea is kind of my thing. I like the sound of my mom lighting a match and touching it to the end of a Benson had

just lights 100 at the gas station with the windows rolled up in the car. Oh, God, you know what I did the other night? I fucking had a nice smoke. I fucking smoked a cigarette for the first time in probably five years. Out of what? Boredom? No. I just was like kind of going crazy.

I was having it just I was having a lot of anxiety about what's happening indoors right now and which is nothing. And the thought of smoking a cigarette like that thing of like it's escape. You get to walk out of a fucking party or bar or room or quarantine and fucking have a contemplative cigarette. And I don't fucking I'm not all for it smoking super bad for you and it'll kill you and all this shit. But I had a cigarette a Winston and it was it was excellent.

I thought I'd get nauseous. You know, did you find that pack of Winston's under the floor mats of an old Nova that was parked in front of your house? No, but I did find a brat for sale. You know, that was for the Subaru brat Subaru brat for sale like a 19 fucking something. It's silver and I want it so bad. Holy shit. Okay.

I have to tell my friends. My friend Sam Mohan. Did I tell you about this? My friend Sam Mohan was doing this thing on Twitter where he was posting pictures when he saw a Subaru brat and I loved it and it was like my favorite. And then I just started ripping. I just started doing it myself or I was like, oh wait, the reason you love this is because it's Sam's idea.

You're like, this is the best idea I've ever fucking had. This is the bucket. That happens all the time to me on Twitter where I love something and be like, I'll eat about it. And then two months later, I'm like, this is my original idea that it's never. It's so embarrassing. You just have to assume that you never have ever once had an original idea or anything. We're ripping we're ripping off terrible sitcoms we stared at as children.

This podcast is because we both were super into the last podcast on the left to give them credit. It's like. We just cut up old scripts from last podcast on the left and put them in a fishbowl and just pull out lines. So anyways, that's Marcus Parks and I'm Henry Zabrowski. No, I want to be Henry. This is Ben Kissel.

Okay. What do you have for me? I have for you your birthday present that's a month late. No, there's the best kind. I did not expect it. It was took a really long time in the mail and then I was like, forget it. It's too late. And it's like, I went past the like cute funny quarantine window and into the rude window.

And then I was like, but then I was like, well, what am I going to do save it for Christmas? God knows what could happen between then and now. So here we'll do a zoom presentation of your birthday present. Okay. Should we just say what happened? This prop here. Yes. Definitely say what happened.

Everyone doesn't know, but we just had a fiasco happen where we were. Can you feel it? Recording and it's been like 45 minutes of me trying to figure out why my fucking internet was down. And then I just had to come to the office instead to use the internet here. I haven't been out of the house in six fucking months. So this is very odd. I'm drinking the end of Paul Holes's Glen Leavitt because that was very stressful.

Wait, you haven't, you truly have not gone anywhere? Um, no, we are not. We don't go anywhere. Yes. That's amazing. We don't even go anywhere. We don't even go. We get Instacart delivered.

Yeah. Good. Yeah. So you're the safest. This feels very weird and I'm digging it. Okay. Tripped out. Well, while you were gone, Steven and I, we did a mini-soad within the Maxi-soad that

was just a Karen and Steven chit chat. Awesome. We're going to put that on the fan cult for like, it's the most boring conversation of us being like, anyway. I wonder where she is. Is she okay? But that basically I was in the middle of giving you a belated birthday present. You were such a bummer, like paused, right?

As you're reaching your hand in and I was like, well, and the funniest part was it paused with you and your expression was my internet's going out. So you looked like, uh, and I was like, look, your birthday present. And you're just like, oh, I thought you were to get vibing me out or I was like, hey, I can better late than never and then Steven gets, I think she's frozen. Oh no. I love it. Oh my God.

Okay. So I'm going to open your present at you. I love this. So you can see, um, this gift bag is definitely recycled gorgeous gift bag. It's real good. And then I actually took the time to put paper in it and stuff. I will drop this off at your house. Okay.

Steven, are you recording this? Can you video this? Yeah. Yeah. Are you ready for this fucking thing? Yeah. Okay. I can't see it.

Hold it down. Close it. Oh my God. Is that a book about cats? It's a fucking tassion book. And this guy was this super famous cat photographer from 1942, or maybe it's all the most favorite. Maybe it's not just one guy. It's all the best.

What's the name on it? I am obsessed with it. Okay. Walter Chandoja is the, is the name on it. This is, this is everything I've ever wanted. Thank you so much. Really heavy because it's a tassion book. Yeah.

You know, I like, I like books that you can put out and make people think you're artsy and smart, like in your living room. So this is perfect. Yes. And tassion is the best. Tassion is number one, especially if you're looking for a gift, this is so pluggy, but I swear it's just a recommendation and it's something I believe in. Go to the tassion website.

They're big fancy coffee table books and I swear to God, it's the best, it's the best present note you would never buy for yourself. And there's like every, there's like a whole book about like vintage boobs, like vintage porn and stuff. Thank you. I love it. Now look at this shit. Because of that gift bag, I now have gold sparkles all over the front of my shirt.

We both win. Yeah, right. And then Stephen, we, in, in all of this, we discovered Stephen. Yeah, I also got you a belated birthday present too. Oh, what is it? Yes. Should I open it for you? Yeah.

Okay, okay, okay. I love this. Okay. I was just going to hate this because she wrapped it all, but, so this one is one that I picked out. Presence for Joe Ritchett. Let's do this every week. You guys have to get me something every week.

What? I feel like it. I'm not even, switch it. What's that? It's a vintage cooking for two. I almost bought that exact book the other day. Really? Oh my gosh.

That's so good. I love the cooking. I love it. These cookbooks from the late 70s, 80s just have the most insane, it's like cheese ham and like. Yes. Pineapple. Broccoli.

It's like broccoli cheese with the sliced deli ham wrapped around it with some kind of like. Cherries as a garnish. Marshino cherries. You guys like know me. It's almost like we spent five years talking to each other about our most intimate bucket. There's more. There's more.

And editing those conversations. Right. Oh my God. Brenna found this. It's a Gourmet magazine from your birth year and month. Oh, she's a good gift giver, Steven. Brenna knows her shit. And it's just like these old, like again, it's like there's no food on it.

It's just like a temple or something like that. Gourmet was like the vanity fair of food magazines if I may be so bold. Are you crying? Oh, she's doing it. Oh my God. These are the most thoughtful gifts. Thank you so much. And honestly, when I, it's always been like, I love getting books for a gift.

It's like, I feel like it's a very meaningful thing that people think you're smart and shit. And thank you. Mine's just pictures. There's no words. But it's cats. But it's cats. But it's cats. That's smart.

I mean, mine are mostly pictures too. So. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. Yeah. COVID birthdays, you get to stretch out for as long as you want.

Yeah. I'm on, I'm so touched. Thank you both so much. Okay. I'm next week. So Karen's next week. What did Vince? Vince got you a cameo video from Kevin Nash, the wrestler Kevin Nash, because if you tell

Vince that you have a favorite wrestler, then for the rest of your life, he's going to always like send you gifts or news updates or cameos for your birthday with that. And I didn't realize, like, first of all, it was fun to be able to pick a favorite wrestler. And the reason I pick Kevin Nash is because he's a very large man. He's gorgeous. He's a fascinating individual. But he also co-starred on an episode of Detroiters on a couple episodes, I think, playing Tim Robinson's father, and he was so funny and so good.

And that's, I learned about him backwards from the Detroiters first. And then Vince was like, that's Kevin Nash. And also Magic Mike, of course. Right. Although he didn't, I mean, he was like an amazing body in that, but he never, I never felt like he got the character development he deserves. No, he's a body. He's a body.

He's a wrestler. He called me, he called me sweetheart in my cameo. He's very exciting. Okay. So next week is Karen. And then Stephen, you can go the following week. What if, and also, what if this is the role, it's just, it's called COVID, random quarantine gifts to keep ourselves going, but if, like, so we just gave you books accidentally.

But now this week, you guys can't, you can be anything but books. Like you check off the column so that after we do this for like six months, it's going to have to start getting real obscure. Pack a cigarette. This is for Karen next week. We're basically stealing Bridger. Oh, yeah. Shit.

Shit. Well, this is a good segue. This is a great segue. Perfect segue. Exactly right corner. See, we were just talking about stealing and we did it right in front before our very eyes. Bridger, don't be mad, please.

We got Bridger. We got last podcast on the left. Oh my God. That's fucking hilarious. Let's, let's, since this is a great segue. Let's go into, well, I will, I will start with Bridger with I said no gifts because as you know, last week, we posted a live show almost had to post one this week. So it's a fucking Wi-Fi, your blessings and we're back.

But so this week, a Sashir Zamata is on I said no gifts with Bridger Weinegger and she's hilarious and brilliant and you've seen her on lots of things and she is a podcast star herself. I don't want to upstage her, but last week, I think it is a notable to mention that Bridger, as his guest, had on one of the great actors of our time, Emma Thompson, live from the UK. Like, tell everyone how that happened. It's just, well, bananas.

It's not bananas. It's, it's I said no gifts. It's I said no gifts. It's the fall line. Apparently she listened to the episode of I said no gifts with Janelle James. And then Emma and her daughter sent emails to Bridger and Janelle saying like, we're big fans. Call us if you don't believe us.

So he called, which is Janelle, Janelle did. That's right. Janelle, Janelle's like, I don't give a shit, I'm gonna call. And then they all found out it was real and not a prank and not, you know, some, some weirdo trolling them and I'm a freaking Thompson is on was like, I'll do your podcast. It's amazing. Delightful. I mean, like, what a joy.

What an exciting, beautiful thing when, when we heard about that, we were freaking out. Yeah. Because we're such huge fans, another, another podcast you can listen to that's on the exactly right network. Stephen, why don't you tell us who's on the podcast this week? Well, this week, it's Matt Apodaca, who's an earwolf producer and truly one of the sweetest sweethearts and talked about his two cats, Hurley and Sawyer, named after the lost characters. Oh, yeah.

And it was just like a feel good time just talking about, yeah, just talking about, you know, cuddling cats and all that good stuff. So that's what the world needs right now. All right. It's true. So check out the per cast as well. And there's a bunch of other, if you look up exactly right network on iTunes, it'll show you all the podcasts we have on our network.

And we are so close to having more. We just, you know, had some contracts signed and I can't wait to announce those coming up soon. Yeah. But not right now. Sorry. No. But very soon.

Yeah. And then I guess while we're on the, we're talking about it, we can talk about, well, the fan call. We'll put this, put the unwrapping video up on the fan call. Maybe. Yeah. Nice. We're putting up every week, we're now recording a video of us, of Stephen pitching the titles

for the episode that he has been writing down the whole episode. And so we're posting that. It's always really funny. And then we also have new merch up on my favorite murder.com in the store. One of them we are doing, we're so excited about this, this beautiful design that Murderino Dana Marie Hossler, who's this incredible artist, aka she's at mighty pigeon underscore art on Instagram. And we're all indoor cats now, shirts.

It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. It's my three cats. So how can I not love it? Yeah. Of course. But then, yeah, it's just the coolest design. So check that out.

It's such a good design. We were so excited that she wanted to make shirts with us. So definitely support your fellow Murderino artists. And I'm very thrilled. I think we may have hinted at this, but one other new, we've got a bunch of new merch up. So if you feel like it and you're in that place, you can go look at it as a puzzle. The puzzle, people are sending pictures of it finished.

There are those who can and so they will and do and did. I started yelling at George about how it isn't that hard. And that I was lecturing her about how I, Nora and I once did a puzzle that was just all the same gumballs over and over. It was like a huge thing. And then her internet went out because she was tired of me yelling at her. But I'm very excited because we have had the sweatpants in the store, fuck you, I'm married. Well now we're following that up with the lounge set.

And it fucking says, fuck you, I'm divorced. Go get them. Are you divorced? Are you proud? Is your friend getting divorced and you want to make her laugh? Does someone cry a lot and need some sweats to make her feel like she's not alone? Get those fuck you, I'm divorced, they're available now. Are you getting divorced and you can't wear, I fuck you, I'm married sweats anymore?

Throw those fuckers out. No, give them to fucking, give them to goodwill. Are you getting divorced and this is how you'd like to let your significant other know that it's over? Put on those fucking, fuck you, I'm divorced sweats and let them answer their own questions. The next ones we have to make are fuck you, I'm married again, sweatpants. Fuck you, I'm remarried. Fuck you, I'm remarried.

Yeah. Fuck you, this is my second, well I was going to say husband, but at least a bunch of people out. Okay, what else do we have? What do you want to talk about? I'm tired of business and I want to talk about our conversational things. Let's do it. I got some topics.

Now that your birthday party's over, there's just a couple things. I couldn't figure out, this is what was happening while you were running around trying to get your internet. Just chilling, casually chilling. Stephen and I were trying to figure this out because I got a bunch of tweets and the first one I got was from Kristen and she wrote, hi, Karen Colgariff, a fellow murderer in the indie murdering group who doesn't have Twitter reminded me to remind you to put your trash out tonight.

But I don't think we talked about it on my favorite murder, I think Chris Fairbanks and I talked about it on Do You Need A Ride that I keep forgetting to put my garbage out because it's a boys chore and I'm mad that I have to do it for myself. Absolutely. So, I keep forgetting and then the garbage gets piled up and then the dogs go over and they're like, are you not home? We're going to go shopping through the garbage and it's a nightmare and so now people have taken it upon themselves to remind me to put my garbage out.

It's this sweet. And Amy laughed so hard it was just like, this is your life now. This is your life now. Yes. Well, I'm having conversations I can't remember about bullshit that we're just trying to like fill the air and then people are like, hey, now we're in your brain. The best is when we put up a live episode and people start like sending you a quote that you said and you're like, don't have any fucking clue.

Who said that? What it was said about when it was said, you're just fucking and it's, oh, that's funny. Don't bring a fucking, don't bring a broom to a knife fight or something, that's funny but I don't remember any of that. I know. Sometimes it triggers a memory but for the most part, the idea that we did all those shows and we're on the road, it's just such, it feels like a lifetime ago and it was only

a couple months ago. I've been really enjoying Karen Kilgare GIFs on Twitter. Oh, Shmoo, the hard work she does. Lovely Shmoo. She's, she put up Karen Kilgare GIFs and it's very funny and there's also my favorite murderer out of context, my favorite murder quotes out of context, which I find, it's almost, I get why my mom is mad about this podcast when I read this quote. Yeah, we say some fucked up shit.

Yeah, we really do. It's great. Who doesn't these days? I mean, we're not alone anymore. That's what's nice. Oh, speaking of, can I say real quick, Nick Terry put out a new MFM animated video about from the, what's her face? Oh, Typhoid Mary.

Typhoid Mary episode. That's always a fucking joy to watch. It's so lovely. It's so funny you can, and I of course have watched those so many times. There's so many tiny jokes in it. It's just so well done. It's so well done. So thank you Nick Terry for your constant, your constant work and also I was looking

because I was watching a bunch of them on YouTube and then they had his merch underneath. Nick Terry makes merch of scenes and characters from those animated shorts. So if you love the animated shorts, you can get like a t-shirt of a ballerina hippo. I didn't know that. And I just started looking. Oh my God, I did see the one Patty Riley wears that has all of the characters on like the lineup thing, but he's got a bunch of really good shirts. So buy some support Nick Terry as well.

Oh, so this just made me laugh because we just recently rewatched the second season of Succession. Oh yeah. Which is just. I gotta rewatch that. It's so good. It's it like a good Nick Terry animated short delivers it there. It's just so good and all the Emmy nominations just came out and so I knew that Nicholas

Braun was nominated and I knew that cousin Greg was nominated, which is the funniest. Yes. And he I mean, who deserves that more? No, but I want like actual cousin Greg to win that, you know, like, yeah, I'm sure the actor is fine and great and I'm happy for him. He's so good as cousin Greg. It's so enjoyable. So it's because of Greg Sprinkles.

I started thinking because I was like, I started getting mad thinking, assuming for reasons I can't explain because it makes no sense that Karen Colkin wasn't nominated. I don't know. I'd never even looked, but I kind of had this thing of like how dare they he's so good that people aren't realizing that he's acting, which is very much how cousin Greg is to where it's like, that's not the person that actor is, but it's so realistic and amazing and it's such a I'm sorry to say it a tour de force performance. So I look I look up to be like, how many like who did get nominated and how many whatever.

And this is the subject line or the the headline that comes up. It's an entertainment weekly article that came out like two days ago that says, Karen Colkin says he'll punch Nicholas Braun in the balls of succession costar beats him for an Emmy. So he is nominated. So congratulations, Karen Colkin. That's something the character would say. That's something his character would say.

Maybe he shouldn't get it because it's just who he is. Oh my God. I wonder if. It's the best. I love it. It's the best. I love that guy. Watchmen got nominated for a bunch of shit, which is awesome.

Make sure to watch that. It's so good. Oh, speaking of glitter on your shirt and TV shows, first of all, so I've been watching I'll Be Gone in the Dark every week. We watch it every Sunday night before Perry Mason. It is so fucking good. It is heartbreaking and heart-wrenching and scary. And like I can tell Vince is a little freaked out watching it because it's it's so true

to the book, which kept me up for fucking months. You know, especially before he was caught. I just only want to say that you look great in purple. Thank you. This week you were in a really bright purple shirt, blouse, looks great on you. You should do more purple in your life. Yeah. I got my colors done in sixth grade.

My mom, my aunt Kathleen, Aunt Liza was there, my aunt Joe, no, I'm a spring, I'm a spring winter because I dye my hair. So that actually that color magenta, which I think I got it like the gap outlet or something that I didn't even know was yours because like it's so not your thing. Dude, my shirt and I did my hair and makeup. I was like, this is a disaster waiting to happen. This is like every other fucking thing I was on where thank you. People have been very nice.

It's very nice. What's very sweet is several of my friends and my friends that are listeners who I don't know have said when they see me in it and then they use that Leonardo DiCaprio gift from once upon a time in Hollywood where he's drinking a beer and pointing at the TV. Have you ever seen that gift? No, that's cute. Where he just goes like, he's like, I love it. It's so good.

And also Paul Holes, I have to say, it's like classic Paul Holes, why we all fell in love with him way back. It's got this like, he's so, he is so effusive and so like you can just tell he's kind by listening to him talk and cares and it's the whole show is just, fuck, it's one of the best true crime shows I've ever watched for sure. And it's heartbreaking. I'm so glad. I sent Pat and Oswald like a fucking post show like sad Instagram message because it's

just it pulls at your heartstrings about Michelle too. It's just really beautiful. And so heartbreaking. Yeah, it's such a tough, tough thing. Yeah, Billy and I have been talking about where he's like, have you watched it yet? Have you watched it? And then I'm just like, I need a year. I think I just need distance and like not, yeah, whatever, but it's, I know it's another

one of those things where I just like, yeah, I don't know if I want to sit down and like I feel every fucking awful feeling, but yeah, I'm so, so glad it turned out great. And I'm not surprised. And Adrienne actually said the exact same thing she said when Paul Holes talks about Michelle and gets choked up, it is one of the most like lovely and touching and like heart-wrenching things. She said the exact same thing. I love it.

It's so, it's so nice and, and it's so cool that, that they got such an unbelievably talented director like that whole project, you know, it's really, it's incredible. But I totally understand why you guys can't watch it. I didn't know her personally and I know you did. So that was, that just seems so hard. How about the Madeleine McCann updates we're getting? What? I haven't gotten any.

Oh, they, what? You know about the guy in jail, right? And the German dude? Oh, was that the guy that they linked the cars? Like they found the car? Yeah, but it's getting deeper. And I think they're about to find, they just found a, like a, not a crawl space, but like almost like a basement cell or cellar space where he used to live that had been left over

from some of the other tenants and like, I think they're about to find proof that, that he took her. I think he did. Yeah. Because he's, that's the guy that lived on that property of that resort, right? I don't know if he lived there or near it, but he definitely, it almost seems like he was in cahoots with someone who was letting, who worked there. And this is all fucking, what's it called?

Personal opinion. Conjecture, personal opinion that let him know when people were not in their room so he could steal shit, not like it wasn't for that reason to take a child, but it seems like that was kind of his MO is, is breaking into people's, you know, holiday or rooms and, and stealing stuff. And so I totally think it's him and I think they're about to find something big. Shit. I have to keep my, I should set my some Google alerts because I did not, I remember reading

that article a little while ago, but that could have been 14 years ago. It could have been, I could have dreamed it and it was from last night. I have no clue what's happening anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I get that. I don't know. I get that. But oh, I just want to talk for a second about Perry Mason this week. Yeah. Which, yeah, it's like, I don't want it to end and it's clearly like about to end. And everyone is talking on Twitter about somebody did it like a fan post, kind of like a loving post about how amazing those title cards are, like how beautifully designed the graphics

are. So beautiful. And then, so I was like, yeah, they, they're, they're firing on all eight over there who whatever that team was that they put it all together, they're nailing it. And then as that episode ended, and I know spoilers, but just in case if you're some kind of a, you know, reactive asshole, spoiler alert, which is nothing, but the guy steps into the doorway, remember at the very end when he was like trying to see if he could find the fourth, I think it's the fourth man, but either way, the guy steps into the doorway

and I don't see it's almost 10pm at that point when we watch it. I've already watched I'll Be Gone in the Dark, so I'm emotionally drained and a couple cans of wine in. Yes. No, true. And it's like that's, it's the Sunday night pileup that used to happen with Game of Thrones. There was one night where like everything was on on Sunday night. And I can only handle like those two shows, I'll Be Gone in the Dark and Perry Mason are

so intense and dark that like I shouldn't be watching them side by side, but yeah. Yeah. Definitely not at the same time. That's for sure. Right. But yeah, what I was going to say is just that very, that very last shot, the guy steps in the doorway and then you see as a gun, it's, it's not a spoiler, but like whatever, if you haven't seen it.

But as that happens, this horn, like this soundtrack kicks in and it's basically the outro music. Like a jazzy. Horn. It's like, yeah, it's like a trumpet, but it scared the fuck out of the way they did it. It was so perfect where I was like, I think I'm having a panic attack and it's not. I don't usually.

Is this my house? There's something in my house right now. Am I being held? It was so effective. And then I listened to the whole outro song and then I was just like, these guys are just, it's, you, you can tell it's like all the honor students of show business got together and they're like, I'll direct it. You do the, you do the title cards, nailing it, nailing it.

Yeah. It's so hard. It's so good. It's such a good show. What was I going to say? What else? Anything else? We love it.

Oh, the Illynist is out. And I love that too. But it's a different vibe. Yeah. Oh, is it good? No, no, no. There's like four. There's four waiting for you.

Okay. Great. I think it's four. Yeah. So, I need something like the Illynist to come bring me down again. Don't get too high up there with our, with, with friend of the pod, Nick Offerman. Oh my God. Just killing it.

He is a friend of the podcast. Holy shit. I'm not being a weird phony right now. I know. It's actually real. Wait. This is the, okay. Sorry.

Can I just read this to you really? Yes, please, please, please. This girl sent this tweet and I, I think she was being funny and sincere. You're at the same time, but that's the best duo of personality traits. It was, it was such a good job. She writes, okay, so this is from Andrea at aka Eiffish, I don't know. But she says, so she's talking about all beyond in the dark, but she says, beautiful job done by a friend of the pod, Karen Kilgore.

Way to use our own joke against us. I love it. I get to be a friend of my own podcast because that's, that's how we grow. You're a friend to yourself first, then you can be a friend to all the pods. You can't be a friend of other people's podcasts if you're not a friend to your own podcast first. Right? First be a friend to your own podcast.

So she said, the whole message, which is very lovely is beautiful job done by friend of the pod. Last night in HBO ducks, I'll be gone in the dark, paying tribute to the iconic and badass Michelle McNamara. That was the whole message. So it was so sincere that the friend of the part pod part caught me off guard. Yeah. Good joke, Andrea.

Good joke. Love a good joke. Good one. Way to turn it on its head. Good. Good work. Good work. That's how I talk now.

What else? Uh, I just have one, um, book recommendation. Oh, great. Okay. Because as you well know, Georgia, I felt, um, maybe just a touch insane at the end of last week, I was feeling very, it's another tough business week. We had, do you know that magazine business week? It was like we were being, it was rolled up and we were being slapped with it, but no,

there was just a bunch of stuff to do and think about and, and, um, I, I worry in these ways. I make up what I need to worry about so that I have it all in front of me in case one of the 37 things I've made up happen. You don't want to be caught off guard. I totally understand that future, future worry. Is that what they call it? Yes.

Yeah. Like projection worries, but so that's where I was last week, last week, and it was really bumming me. I was just like, I didn't want to do anything and I was like, please, I can't do anything. And then I remembered when I get into that place, it's cause I got so into listening to the Ram Dass podcast for a while and Ram Dass is all about that's nice, that's, that's suffering that you're doing is what you're supposed to be doing because this is all the work of waking up.

And so I read, I went on because I was like, I've listened to, I think every episode of that podcast. So I went to look at what books he has and there's a book called becoming nobody, which is the essential Ram Dass collection. So it's kind of like a starter for me definitely cause I'm very new to that whole realm of work and awareness and stuff, but I swear to God becoming nobody. It's such a good audio book. It's him talking.

They're like the original lectures he gave and it's basically this thing of like, we, you're not your thoughts and your thoughts aren't real. So the work is just when you're in that shit, stop taking it so seriously, figure out your different ways and it's like a practice and you have to kind of be, it's about awareness. But you can wake yourself up out of all those thoughts and just step away from it and it's possible. And it's really cool when you, I think these days, I definitely am feeling those feelings where I just, I don't even know what the fuck's going on.

So I don't even know where to put my stress sometimes or how to manage it or to like even to excuse it away, it's impossible because it's true and real what you're feeling. It's not, it's not just you spinning out or having too much coffee. We're in a fucking global pandemic and a fuck and a, on top of everything else going on. Right. And then you're the feet, the reactions that you're having in this scenario, like I keep judging myself like I shit, I'm overreacting and it's like, no, no, you're, you're in a

corn, you're quarantined in a pandemic, there's kind of no way to overreact. I was telling Steven, I went out the other day just to leave the house and as I drove my car, I started getting like motion sickness from moving fast in a car. Yes, me too. Like what the fuck is that? We went for a drive and I started having a panic attack, but that we were going to get killed in a car accident and motion sickness because I'm, I have been indoors for fucking six months.

Yeah. It's really weird. It's a very weird place for sure. It's very weird. So if you're looking for, you know, if you have that feeling of like you're being hounded by your worries and your thoughts and these, like there's a lot on your shoulders, I highly recommend this book because it's about, instead of analyzing all those ideas, it's about practicing just stepping away and like being your own personal observer because like, yes, you're

worried and that's real and the suffering of it is real, but there's another part of you that isn't worried that's watching you worry that can see that and that's what you start identifying with. Okay. Is that the ability to look at yourself doing it and go, I don't think I'm that worried. I think I'm just uncomfortable. The difference, sorry, one more, but my therapist just talked about this today. The difference between actual danger and discomfort, a lot of people don't know the difference

at all. Because it's the same fight or flight mechanism that comes up inside of you. Your body doesn't know whether or not you're actually in front of a bear, right? Well, your eyes tell you, you're not, but your body is having this reaction and so you have to, you have to teach yourself and remind yourself that you're safe, just uncomfortable because you can be uncomfortable, it's not going to hurt you. And the discomfort is what people, so many people think they're never supposed to feel anything bad ever and so that when they do, they flip out of like, this is all going down.

I mean, this is what I do. I should be just admitting it because it's the thing of I'm not supposed to blank, blank, blank. Well, one time you told me it was before a show, a live show, which was so, is so scary for me, but you were like, don't, my therapist once told me that being nervous and being excited are the same feeling. And so now it's kind of cool to think of when I'm nervous about something being like, maybe it's just excitement.

And if you think about it in terms of that, it's fun instead of scary. Yes. Which I like. Well, and that reminds me, you said the funniest thing, this was like two weeks ago when we were very stressed out and you go, I don't know, I kind of like conflicts, so I'm okay. And it made me laugh so hard. Where it's like, yeah, actually, this is all, it's all like, no one doesn't, no one doesn't want to know what's going on.

No one wants that feeling of like, huge question mark with no answers coming, that you're not alone in that stress, like, so don't, don't beat yourself up for being upset that you're like, what the fuck and everything on our phones is making us more scared. And it's funny that we add on this thing of like, not only are you actually upset because a thing is going on, but then you're fucking on top of it, guilting yourself and feeling bad about yourself and feeling like a loser because you're upset about it. Just deal with the upsetness. You don't have to also pile on the negativity, right?

Yeah, because then once you actually, if you can sit there and breathe and go, I'm really upset, I need to actually like, feel it, let it, let it expand, see how big it can get. It doesn't get that big. Because we're so afraid to actually feel things because we're like, I don't want to be uncomfortable. I don't want to be. I don't want to cry. I don't want to be sad, whatever. But then it's like, but if you actually let it happen, it happens for three minutes max

and then, and then usually there's like a little bit of a lull and you can feel that it's like, it's like a sine wave, like anything else that comes and goes and it doesn't kill you and it does and you can actually build up a tolerance and then start noticing like, this is this thing my brain does when I feel like I might be being betrayed. And suddenly it makes everybody, everybody's betraying me. That's my trigger. Betrayal is a trigger of mine. And so it, I spiral, yeah, totally.

Guys, Feeling Feelings is a friend of the podcast and we... Welcome friend of the pod, Feeling Feelings. Feeling Feelings, crying turns out as a friend of the podcast. I've been trying so hard not to let this friend in and now it's in and it does feel good and Steven, who's first? You're first, Georgia. Yeah. Oh, fuck.

You did, you did L.C. Christians from... Oh, right. Amsterdam. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, HelloFresh has you covered. HelloFresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year.

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Hey, I'm Aresha. And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation, and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain.

In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So this week, I'm going to do what? Were you reading something? Yeah.

Can you hear it? Shit. No, no, reading. Oh, yeah. You just said that so slowly and staring straight ahead where I'm like, what's this going to be? Karen. Oh.

So I am doing the Zoot Suit Riots. Oh, shit. Yes. I don't know how this has never crossed my mind to do it. Like, it's always just kind of been a afterthought. And then I start looking into it and it's bananas. Yes. And there's so much to know.

It's our city here, Los Angeles that we know and love. So this is when Los Angeles experienced one of the most historically significant episodes of racial violence in the 20th century known as the Zoot Suit Riots. Yeah. So there's so much good information out there on the internet and podcasts and books. Some of them I got from The Hundreds, an article by Brandon Diaz, Smithsonian.com, an article by Alice Gregory, LaDailyMirror.com, they have a bunch of old articles that you can read up there.

There's an article by an actual friend of the podcast, Alina Shatkin, who's a friend of mine. She's a really great food writer, but she wrote an article on LAist about it. Cool. Scholar, historian, Eduardo O'Bregan Pagan, who wrote Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon, the book about it. And then there's a podcast called Latino Rebels Radio, and they posted an episode from Latino Media Collective where they interviewed Professor Gerardo Lacone, and he's, it's an incredible

interview. Nice. MercuryNews.com, History Channel has a documentary, Thought Co. article by Robert Longley, Curb LA article by Elijah Chaland, I mean, there's just so much out there. So. Did you, now may I ask, did you watch the film Zoot Suit starring Edward James Almas? I did. It's so good.

Did you really? It's so good. I love that, that end of this. It's like. I saw that in the theater. God, I love it here. You did? I know.

It came out in 81. 81. Yeah. And all I remember is, yeah, but it was like, if it was playing downtown, we'd just go see, we saw everything. Yeah. And he, I just remember Edward James, James almost in those Zoot Suits or whatever, and that leaned back thing that like, I think it just was the stylistic, fascinating kind

of thing that I'd never seen or heard of before. It was like, did they invent something new? And it's like, no, no, no, no, this is, this is Latino history. This is like. This is origin shit. This is. And I just had no fucking clue. And there's, okay.

And it goes, oh, it goes so deep. And I'm obviously not going to do a great job in 10 pages of getting to everything. So please do read about it and look it up because it's, there's so many connotations that come along with this. Anyways. Yeah. Let's first start with a little history. The Mexican Revolution, which lasted roughly from 1910 to 1920, caused many Mexican families

to immigrate to Los Angeles. So much so that by the 1930s, new immigration from Mexico, migration from other states and the longtime presence of multi-generational residents dating back to the rancheros had made Los Angeles home to the largest concentration of Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in the U.S. The working class communities, most of which were concentrated to the diverse East side of Los Angeles. Everyone here knows that that's the East side had, you know, was historically Mexican and

Mexican American families like Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights were traditional, conservative and self-contained. And actually, so my family immigrated here from Eastern Europe to Los Angeles in the 20s as well or late teens, early 20s. And Boyle Heights was kind of the only place where anyone who wasn't white could live. So there was a big Jewish population there as well, and that's where my family's from. So. From Boyle Heights?

Uh-huh. Oh, nice. Those houses are rad. Amazing. Yeah. But it was like a lot of farmland too. I have old photos of my grandma and like the farmland. It reminds me of something else, and this could actually be in another Edward James almost

film stand and deliver, one of the great, another great 80s movie that has a teen. And I was like, oh, I'm so inspired. Maybe I'm going to take calculus. There's no fucking way, but, uh, and I can't, it might be from that. It might just be, you know, other stuff I read, but it was some kind of thing where somebody yelling, um, like, go back to your country to Mexicans and Mexicans being like, bitch, this is our, we were here long before you, this is all, this is part of Mexico. Like, what are you talking about?

Totally. You're in our country. That's, that's part of the story, right? Yeah. So the Mexican-American communities in Los Angeles had faced decades of discrimination, you know, including not being allowed to patronize or even work in many of the businesses. So like even waiting tables at a restaurant they weren't allowed to do, they could be the bus boy at the most.

And even be, they were expected to step off the sidewalk when white pedestrians passed them. So it was just incredible discrimination. By the 1940s, LA had a Mexican-American population of over 250,000, and many of those families now had teenagers that had grown up in Los Angeles, you know, so they, this, this is where they're from. Yeah. While their parents had been immigrants or, you know, had lived there for generations,

this is their hometown, this is where they're from. And so they felt like the city was theirs as well. And what do teenagers do? They fucking rebel, um, and these teenagers were no different. So known as, uh, Pachucos. So Pachucos are the youth of this counterculture, and they're experiencing this huge cultural and generational gap between themselves and their parents. It kind of reminded me of like Rubble Without a Cause, the way they were like, we don't

want the norms that you're used to. We need to break out of what's going on, you know, and, and pave our own way. Yeah. And they were, uh, they were fucking over-discrimination that their parents and grandparents had experienced and they wanted to create their own identities, enter the zootsuit. So the fashion trend, I didn't fucking know this at all, had first been popularized during the 1930s in Harlem's jazz dance hall scene and predominantly worn by black teenagers. So that's where it started.

I didn't know that at all. With black teenagers, super in, you know, the jazz scene, um, the extravagantly styled two-piece suit, so just people who don't know it typically included the bright color fabric, knee length, suit coats. So it almost looked like a, like a overcoat, but it was a suit coat down to the knees. They had excessively wide shoulders. It was very flamboyant and extravagant. The flowing pants that ballooned out at the knee and tapered really tight at the ankle.

I read a thing that sometimes they were so tight that you had to put lubricant on your feet to get it over your feet. It was just like, it was just like, it was a, it was purposely ostentatious. Yeah. You know what I mean? And part of the reason that it was so tight, it was also like, um, function because they were jitterbugging. They were doing these amazing dances and so having flowing pants at the ankle would get

in the way. So that's pretty cool. That's where that came from. These weren't suits you could buy at the store. Either you had to go to a specialty tailor or you could take a regular suit that was two sizes too large and have that tailored the right way. So what I didn't realize about this style of dress is that the ostentatiousness and the flamboyant of the suit itself was a way of refusing to be ignored and dismissed as

a minority. Hell yes. Right? So, and this is such a youth culture thing of, fuck you, I'm not fitting in and I'm going to look, you know, loud and get attention. I'm not going to fade into the background. Right. I'm not going to step off the sidewalk because you're walking by.

I get to be, like, it's like, I get to take up space and I get to be here as I am. Exactly. Exactly. So minorities and people of color have always been expected to blend in and kind of be behind the scenes. Um, you know, like they were menial workers. They were making everything comfortable for white people, but the rebellious youth refused to fade into the background and that's where the suit, what the suit represented.

Yes, the amount of material and tailoring required to make them, made them a luxury item. So it was like a defiance against their association as a second class citizen, you know, they'd save up all their money and they'd have these luxury tailor made suits. Yeah. They were essentially, I wrote, they were essentially balling, shot calling. One could say. If you're having a hard time relating to what this means, that truly the definition of balling and shot calling.

All right. And so the suit becomes a symbol of counterculture and empowers young black and Mexican youth to express their individualistic identity within their culture and society. Fuck, and both Caesar Chavez and Malcolm X were suit suit wearers. Nice. Right? Now, the female members of this counterculture are called pachucas and they wear tight sweaters and short for the time skirts that are like flared out.

You can see them in the movie, Zoot Suit. They have fishnets. They have high hairdos and big earrings and heavy makeup. It was rumored that some of the pachucas would hide knives in their like bouffants and big hair. Yes, I've heard that. So rare. Knives and razor blades sometimes.

Yeah, I mean, love it. I hate violence. I'm against violence. It really, well, because if you need it, if you need it, throw it up in that hair. That's right. Do it. Other pachucas would actually wear Zoot Suits themselves and that was a way to rebel against gender norms, which is so ahead of its time and incredible.

That's badass. I know. I know. So Catherine Ramirez, she wrote the book Woman in a Zoot Suit, wrote, quote, these youths refuse to accept the racialized norms of segregated America with their flashy ensembles, pink slang, extra cash generated by a booming war economy, and rebellious attitude. Pachucas and pachucas participated in a spectacular subculture and threatened the social order by visibly occupying public spaces.

Hell yeah. So in Los Angeles, pachucas adopt the Zoot Suit in order to brand themselves as rebels. But white people see Zoot Suits as unpatriotic and Zooters, as they're called, quickly become branded as a negative thing. So this is partly due to the fact. So it's early 1940s, we get into World War II, US enters World War II in 1941, and the rationing of resources and the commercial manufacture of civilian clothing become strictly regulated because both fabric and the time and energy is focused on the war effort.

So Zooters become a public enemy because of the amount of fabric it took to make the Zoot Suits. Because of racism. Because that's an excuse for you to be racist. Yep. So bootleg tailors continue to make the Zoot Suits, which uses a lot of ration fabrics. And so white people view the Zoot Suit itself as harmful to the war effort, and the young people who wear them are seen as un-American and unpatriotic, which is just an excuse

for the racism. It's always that. It's unpatriotic. Right. You're against the military. Exactly. It's all this. Yeah.

Right. Yes, 100%. Especially because by World War II, migration had peaked, so there was a lot of tension going on in Los Angeles. And don't forget that this was also a time when Japanese-Americans were forcibly sent to internment camps. Japanese-Americans who lived and thrived in Los Angeles were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war.

So obviously, racism is rampant and blanket society. And that this is just, I think we've talked about this before, but when the Japanese were sent to those internment camps, all of the, many Japanese people lived in Southern California because they were here to grow the citrus groves, which used to be everywhere down here, just everywhere. And like in Burbank, every other street has like a lemon tree or an orange tree on it. Yeah. It's why Orange County is called Orange County.

It was mile, mile after mile. And when they interned the Japanese, they stole their land, they stole their property. And people like Bob Hope went in and bought up all of this stolen land. And then it was just when those American citizens who happened to be Japanese got released from those internment camps, they just didn't have anything because it was, it's so ugly. That's one of the most disgusting historical times in our, well, they all are. Okay. There's so many.

There's so many to pick from. We'll talk about all of them on this podcast today. Okay. So throwing lighter fluid onto this fire is the fact that a naval school for the Naval Reserve Armory was built in Chavez Ravine. It's a primarily Hispanic neighborhood. It's named after Julian Chavez, a rancher who eventually served as assistant mayor, city councilman and became one of LA County's first supervisors.

So that area, you guys will know it's where Dodger Stadium is, which I'll get to later, but Dodger Stadium was built in Chavez Ravine. The area had been home and it's just, it's kind of these beautiful rolling hills. It's this really lush, lovely place in Los Angeles. It's right above Echo Park, if you've ever been here. And the area had been home to generations of Mexican American families. And the city used imminent domain, that motherfucking bitch, to clear out some of those homes and then sailors that had, so they put the sailors in this Mexican American neighborhood of Chavez

Ravine and then sailors had to cut through those neighborhoods to get downtown. So they'd be going downtown to drink, they'd come back through those neighborhoods. So of course there's going to be tension and there'd be cat calling, there'd be all kinds of tussles and that sort of thing happening. Stuff to start fights with. Exactly. I think those buildings are still there too. If you're driving off the 5 to get into Dodger Stadium to get tested for COVID now is what

it's for. Yeah. You'll see these old buildings and I think that's where it's from. Wow. Pretty interesting. Thank you, Sean Penn, by the way. You know, Sean Penn's the reason all that COVID testing is set up at Dodger Stadium. You're kidding.

I swear to God. I didn't know that. I don't know if he's financing it, if he organized it or what, but that's his thing. And I know a couple of people who have done it and they say, you pull up and the line looks insanely long, you're done like that. I've heard that too. That's great. Yeah.

Yeah. Everyone, be careful. This is not a joke. Wear a mask. Okay. By the summer of 1943, tensions between the thousands of white US servicemen stationed in and around Los Angeles and the Pachucos are running high because we also have ports here.

There was stationed in San Diego all along the coast up through LA. There's a lot of servicemen here. So many of the LA area servicemen view the Zooters as draft Dodgers, despite the fact that nearly half a million Mexican Americans are serving in the military at the time. And a lot of the Zoot suited Pachucos are teenagers. So like 12 through 16. So they're actually too young to even be eligible. So it's false.

Yeah. Okay. So with the Zoot rights, we have to go over the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, which happens a year before the riots and is considered a precursor to them. So Sleepy Lagoon was a rural reservoir. And this is another thing is a lot of Los Angeles, which is now overdeveloped and crazy was rural. So like even Chavez Ravine was rural, rural, rural, hate, rural, rural, rural, rural, rural.

So it's a rural reservoir and that you said of Los Angeles and what is now commerce. And it's a popular swimming hole, hangout spot, Lovers Lane for Mexican Americans, partly because they're banned from segregated public pools. So that's where they swim. In the early hours of the morning on August 2nd, 1942, a brawl breaks out at a birthday party near Sleepy Lagoon. When police arrive, they find an unconscious and mortally injured 22-year-old named Jose Diaz on a nearby dirt road.

He dies shortly after being taken to the hospital. His cause of death is inconclusive, although he has severe blunt force trauma to the back of his head. They think it's from being jumped or hit or it could be from a car accident. They actually, he might have gotten thrown off a motorcycle. They don't know for sure. But authorities blame his death and the big fight that had happened at the party on the so-called, quote, Mexican youth gang problem in Los Angeles.

So in the following days, and there's amazing pictures from this, and I'm sure we'll post one on Instagram in the episode post, the LAPD arrests 17 Mexican-American teens that are associated with the so-called 38th Street gang. The word gang is really different back then, you know, it's not what you think of now. So this, these kids who lived around 38th Street that hung out together are called a gang when really it's just teenagers hanging out together. Yeah, there's no, they're not getting jumped in. There's not, there's not like the, you have to go now do violence or whatever.

It's more just like kids that are all from the same neighborhood. I mean, that's how my dad grew up in San Francisco. It was just like your, you kind of represented your neighborhood. And then on the weekends, you'd get drunk and street fight people. My dad used to love to say that he goes, oh, if we couldn't find other people to fight, we just all fight ourselves because he had four brothers. So yeah. Oh man.

Yeah, exactly. So 38th Street gang, quote, and despite lack of sufficient evidence, the young men are collectively charged with the murder of Diaz. They're denied bail and they're held in prison and they become known as the sleepy lagoon defendants and they're paraded in front of the press. And part of the reason is because the LAPD, there's been a lot of false newspaper articles about this Mexican youth gang problem. And so LAPD is like, look what we're doing about it.

And they parade them in front of the press to make it seem like they're actually taking care of it. But really all it does is make people even more afraid. So by the end of the week, police have used the excuse of Diaz's death to further arrest hundreds of Mexican Americans in nightly sweeps for offenses that are just trumped up, like even possessing a draft card with an incorrect address you can get arrested for, unlawful assemblage, like all these, you know, they're just arresting people. And they single out youths in zoot suits in particular cops line up outside of dance

halls and they have like pokers that they with razor sharp blades that they used to rip the peg top trousers of the zoot suits of the boys as they come out. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of like photos from back then of kids that have clearly been in fights and the trouser of their legs are ripped. So the media doesn't help matters and prints incredibly racist headlines that history has shown weren't, were not supported by either facts or statistics. And in fact, the government statistics from that time found no increase in youth crime or delinquency.

So talking about it now, it's completely trumped up. And it's basically just how dare you wear these outfits and say that you belong, stay in that it's your city, stay in your fucking lane, essentially is what they're saying. So in order to scare people, the press referred to the Zooters as a quote, Mexican goon squad and they called them delinquents and hoodlums. And they also distribute false stories of Mexican boys prowling in wolf packs armed with clubs and knives and tire irons. They say they're invading homes, peaceful homes.

It's all nonsense. So after months of racist media coverage that goes nationwide, including a fucking Disney cartoon in which a Donald Duck beats up another duck dressed as in a Zoot suit for being unpatriotic in Disney, the sleepy lagoon defendants go on trial in October of 1942. There's never any testimony that anyone saw one of the defendants strike the victim. No one can put any of these defendants with or near the victim. And some of the defendants can't even be placed at the murder scene and yet Judge Frick permits the chief of the Foreign Relations Bureau of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office to testify

as a quote expert witness. He says that Mexicans as a community, he testifies this in court, have a bloodthirst and a biological predisposition to crime and killing because of the culture of human sacrifice practiced by their Aztec fucking ancestors. Jesus Christ. That's a stretch because the Aztecs haven't been around for a while, A, and B, have you ever heard of Vikings? Have you ever heard of the Celts?

Have you ever heard of every single human clan has always had? The trial ends on January 13, 1943, when three of the 17 defendants are convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Nine others are convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to five years to life and the other five defendants are convicted of assault. So following the Sleepy Lagoon case, there's a lot of hate towards the Mexican-American community and US servicemen, most of whom, by the way, grew up in other states, so they had had very little contact with people of Mexican and Latinx descent.

They're now streaming into Southern California to prepare for war and are getting into violent altercations with young Mexican-American Zooters. You also got to think they're fresh out of boot camp. They're also fucking young men and they have what they think is this patriotism that allows them to fight for their country and they see these others as not American and it's just, I mean, it's a, what's it called, tinderbox, you know? Yeah. So.

But also, but it is that thing of there, there's people from small towns all over this country where they show up and instead of going, I'm new to the big city, they start looking at people who've, who parents have lived there for generations and say, hey, get, hey, foreigner. I mean, like, that's just that American ignorance that's so tragic because this entire country is made up of foreigners. Yeah. I hate to tell you, I hate to tell you that. I love to tell you to tell me about it.

I hate, I love it. I love it. I have to tell you. Listen, New Zealand, can you get me and Karen and Stephen? Can we get in there please? Okay. They're like hail now. Only a week prior to the outbreak of what would become the Zoot Suit Riots, a number

of Mexican-Americans dancing at the Aragon Ballroom in Santa Monica in Venice are attacked by a mob of American servicemen and bystanders after rumor spread that a sailor had been stabbed, which there's no police report to corroborate that. An LAPD officer later says that quote, the only thing we could do to break it up was arrest the Mexican kids. So that's. That sounds like a setup. Yeah.

That almost sounds like a burning car at 3 p.m. on, on Libre and Fairfax. Doesn't it? Or a guy with an umbrella breaking a fucking window at a fucking. What is it? What was the place? An auto parts store. That was in Minneapolis. Yeah.

The big tall guy with the, that covered himself entirely and completely got caught because everyone's now onto that shit. Yeah. Okay. So modern times. Modern times. It's the worst. I want to make clear that these are normal teen teenagers who are rebelling.

So of course they get into trouble. There's some escalated issues. They, there are some that are, you know, looking to fights. There's, you know, it's, it's the normal teenage thing that both you and I and everyone we know who's cool went through as teenagers. So you know, there were these, there were cases of shit going down, but it was normal teenage stuff. That's the same thing as like in these, in the protest, there will be a person here and

there that's going to be like, I'm going to loot that store. And then that is what's manipulated and turned into this is what these people are. Yeah. And it's, yeah. Right. So I don't want to seem like I'm, I want to make clear that I understand that. And it's partly from the fact that there's, it's, there's a wartime effort now that's growing and includes women being able to work in these labor, in the labor force.

So women and like mothers and grandmothers are now working in the labor force. So they're away from home. The fathers are either at war or they're working as well. The demands of the war effort made it so both parents were working and out of the house for the first time. And they're also working through the night. So kids are, you know, they have a freedom they didn't have before and they're not being looked after the same way because of that.

And they're, but then they're also being watched in a different way probably than they had before. Yeah. And police records at the time though show that there wasn't, there's no escalation from regular juvenile delinquency. So it's not, there is no proof that it was worse at the time. It was normal juvenile delinquency. Government statistics reported at the time found no increase in youth crime.

And also the other thing that scared people is that the police officers, a lot of them are away at war as well. So people are already primed and ready to be scared of, you know, this fictitious mob that's going to come after them because they're not protected by the police. So it's the crazy story in that so many little things had to add up to what happened. And they fucking did. So all this tension is simmering, rumors are flying, and just the sight of a zoot suit at this point is enough to fucking piss people off until one night in early June, an altercation

between a sailor and a pichuco escalates into a brawl outside a bar in downtown LA and this sailor gets, maybe gets knocked unconscious. We don't really know. There's a rumor that a sailor gets stabbed that's never corroborated. And so the following day, the following night of June 3rd, around 50 sailors leave the armory flanked with makeshift weapons and they want to get revenge for the fight from the night before. So at the Carmen Theater downtown in downtown LA, they get the house lights turned on and

like 50 sailors, they roam the aisles looking for zooters. They find two boys, their ages are 12 and 13, they yank them out of their seats. And it says ignoring the protests of the patrons. So you know, the people there were not fucking cool with it. The sailors drag them on stage, they rip the zoot suits off these kids and they beat the boys up and they set the zoot suits on fire. Jesus Christ. And this is the start of the zoot suit riots.

And so this becomes a kind of a theme of humiliation and violence. The next night, over 200 sailors grab a fleet of 20 taxi cabs, which the taxi cabs waved the fare to transport them and decided to take the fight into the Mexican-American neighborhoods of East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. And the sailors cruise the neighborhoods, they storm into bars and cafes and theaters. There's nowhere that's safe. And you know, violence continues on the night of June 4th and 5th, confrontations between servicemen and zooters occurring all over the city.

And some military person all start targeting anyone who looks to be of Mexican descent. Like they don't even care about zoot suits anymore. They're berserking. Yeah. On June 5th, a group of Mexican musicians from El Paso are assaulted as they exit the Aztec recording company, even though they're not wearing zoot suits at all. The racist press encourages the servicemen, the Hearst-owned Herald and Express publishes inflammatory stories, including one that warned of 500 zooters planning to kill every cop they

came across, you know. The Los Angeles time applauds rioters for teaching zoot suitors a lesson, but the media just happens to suppress any mention of the white mobs that are actually, you know, the fucking rioters. They are the rioters. And one Los Angeles paper prints a guide on how to desoot a suit, a zoot suitor. So like Jesus Christ. Yeah.

However, a reporter for the city's Black Weekly newspaper, the California Eagle, named Charlotte Spears-Bass, she writes a piece blasting mainstream newspapers for race baiting and calls for black readers to stand with Latinos. And there is a camaraderie there with the zoot suits and these teenage rebellion, like they understand that they're borrowing this culture, this jazz culture from another culture, and they all kind of stand together, which is incredible. And also, another thing that could fucking scare racists is, you know, camaraderie. Yes.

You know what I mean? Yes. It's marginalized people laying down any kind of biases or hatred that they have and banding together. I mean, yeah. Yeah. So instead of June 7th, a crowd of 5,000 civilians gathered downtown. 5,000.

So it's civilians, it's soldiers, Marines, sailors from other stations as far away as Las Vegas. They fucking get on board and come down to like fight this fight. A witness of the attacks, a journalist named Carrie McWilliams writes, quote, marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors and civilians proceeded to beat up every zoot suitor they could find. And then he says, streetcars were halted while Mexicans and some Filipinos and Negroes, he says, were jerked from their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic

frenzy. Jesus. And there's photos of this. There's these two young boys sitting. One has clearly been beaten and unconscious. The other one's like hunching over him naked. And there's a crowd circling them. It's pure humiliation and violence.

A man named Vincente Morales and his girlfriend were at a show at the Orthium Theater, which is a friend of the podcast, where sailors drag him out of the building, strip him of his clothing and beat him unconscious. And when he comes to LAP, the officers arrest him for disturbing the peace. It's so oppressive. It's so, it's so upsetting and oppressive. And if you think it's that much different from the way it is today, you're reading the wrong fucking newspaper.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. As writing spreads into predominantly black neighborhoods like Watts, Latinos join with black residents to mount a resistance with hundreds gathering. There's a Coca-Cola plant on Central Avenue, I guess. Years later, participant Rudy Leavos tells the LA Times reporter, quote, toward evening,

we started hiding in alleys. Then we sent about 20 guys right out into the middle of the street as decoys. They started coming after the decoys. Then we came out. They were surprised. Oh shit. It was the first time anybody was organized to fight back. Nice.

So they fucking joined forces, like the fucking X-Men. The police arrest dozens of young Mexican Americans and one of them asks, when one of them asks, why am I being arrested? The response is that they get savagely fucking beat with a night stick for asking that. When the boy falls to the sidewalk unconscious, he's kicked in the face by police. Please remember these are 13, 14, 15 year old children. Junior high students. Yep.

Getting, getting the shit kicked out of them by fully grown adults who have been trained in. Yeah. Military combat. Exactly. So at midnight on June 8th, my birthday. Happy birthday again. Happy birthday.

Thank you. The Navy and Marine Corps finally intervene and declare downtown. So all this, you know, they, they intervene, all this shit happens that they, they're like trying to restore order. So they say, but the fucking, the, the riot lasts until June 10th, essentially. Oh my God. Their official position is that them, their men were acting in self-defense. On June 9th, the LA city council passes an emergency resolution that makes it illegal.

Ready for this? Makes it illegal to wear a suit suit on city streets, not to beat the fucking shit out of someone for their outfit. And actually what's really fucking interesting is that the war production board, which is a government agency that oversees industrial manufacturing, they, they put out all these guidelines. They make it required that manufacturers use 26% less fabric when they're making suits, which effectively criminalizes the manufacturer of suit suits, which is the first time any

piece of clothing has ever been criminalized. Wow. Yeah. So all, you know, it keeps happening in other cities as well. There's no reported deaths, but more than 150 people are injured in the LA riots and police end up arresting more than 600 Mexican Americans on charges ranging from rioting to vagrancy. Only a few servicemen are arrested overall.

In total, the riots last 10 days from June 3rd to June 10th. Shit. And no, so no one died? Wait, that's not 10 days. The riots lasted 10 days from June 3rd to June 13th. That's not 10 days. I'm going to say June 1st to June 10th. Or it lasted seven days.

But it's early June is like the known, you know, they ended, who knows what the last day was is what I'm trying to say. Gotcha. What did you say? What were you saying? That no one died, you said. There's no reported deaths. Reported deaths.

Like officially. Got it. Right. So afterward in response to a formal protest from the Mexican embassy who were like, I'm sorry, what the fuck? A special committee is appointed to determine the cause of the riots and the committee concludes that racism is the root cause of the violence and also places the blame on the press for associating Zooters with a supposed crime wave.

Good. Yeah. But LA Mayor Fletcher Bauron is intent on preserving the city's public image and declares that Mexican juvenile delinquents and racist white Southerners are the ones who cause the riots. So therefore, we didn't do anything wrong. He claims that racial prejudice is not and would not become an issue in Los Angeles. No.

Guys. Come on. Yeah. We got some news for you from the future. Yeah. It's not a friend of your podcast. Admit it now. Admit it now.

The Un-American Activities Committee attempts to prove that the Zoot suit riots were sponsored by a Nazi agencies attempting to spread their Nazi propaganda between the United States and Latin American countries. But of course, not surprising, nothing comes out of that. Yeah. But let's bookmark that for another time because I feel like it couldn't be more relevant today. Right.

In the aftermath. Okay. So that's the Zoot suit riots. In the aftermath, the Sleepy Lagoon trial, remember that fucking thing, the community organizes the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, SLDC. And by 1944, they raise enough money to bring the case to the Second District Court of Appeals where in the judge, Clement Nye, overturns the verdict citing insufficient evidence, the denial of the defendant's right to counsel, and the overt bias of Judge Frick in the courtroom.

Nice. All 17 defendants are released in 1944 from prison with their criminal records expunged. So that's post-Zoot suit riots. Officially, the death of Jose Diaz from the Sleepy Lagoon murder remains unsolved. But before her death in 1991, a former Pachuca named Lorena Encinas confides to her children that her brother, Louis, who's dead, was the one who beat and killed Jose Diaz that night, which we don't know if it's true or not, but that was her confession. There's so much more.

Please look into the chop as ravine and see about imminent domain and what ended up happening that they fucking forcibly removed the remaining Mexican-American homeowners who lived there for generations. They ripped them out of their homes. They bulldozed them's home. They gave them fucking pennies on the dollar of what their homes were worth. And they, because they were going to redevelop the land in high-end homes, which didn't happen and they ended up, the city ends up fucking selling that very fucking crucial land at

a huge profit as sold to the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Walter O'Malley, who starts building the Dodger Stadium in 1959. That is a fucking blight on our fucking city, Dodger Stadium, and I really suggest people look into that. I mean, it's a great fucking, I love the Dodgers. I love the stadium. I love going to it. It is an ugly time in history of what happened there.

Horrifying. Yeah. And it also hasn't changed too much in that, and I won't get into it because I actually, I've only very recently been reading about it, but this is like kind of the spine of gentrification in that way where people that are from an area, especially in Los Angeles, in the way people migrate to this town and then the actual families and the people that have lived there for a long time. Yeah.

Or forced out and then they try and because then those rents go up and you've got all the people that are like, I'm going to be on a pilot this year. Well, it's urban sprawl. And so when you put, when you put entire cultures in a certain neighborhood and segregate them to that neighborhood, then when you want that neighborhood back, it's not like, you know, the city is naturally growing. You fucking steal that land back, even though you told them that's the only place they could live, you build freeways through their fucking homes so that the houses are work less or

they're divided from, you know, quote, better parts of town. Yeah. You know, the whole LA freeway system, there was a recent LA Times article about it, how fucking racist and how race played into us building, like the freeways make no sense here. You're on the 405 and you want to get to fucking Hollywood, it's going to take you forever. It's because of those neighborhoods. Because they were building them through. They certainly weren't building them through Hancock Park, that's for sure.

No, they were not. No, they were building them through Inglewood. So it's, it's ugly. As for the Zoot Suit itself, although it did fall out of fashion eventually, the part it played in challenging the entrenched roles of race, gender and class identities of mainstream America during World War II has not been forgotten. In 1978, actor and playwright Luis Valdes wrote the play Zoot Suit. It's the first play on Broadway made by someone of Mexican descent and I know.

And that got turned into a movie 1981 starring Daniel Valdes, who's so cute and sweet and Edward James almost. And actually in 2016, Los Angeles County Museum of Art searched out a Zoot Suit to display as part of their like, they had a men's like history of men's fashion and it cost them nearly 80 grand to acquire a like legit old school Zoot Suit. Because they had been destroyed and kind of targeted that way where it was so impossible to find them. Probably.

Wow. There's been a push from historians to change the name from Zoot Suit Riots, which fucking implies that it was the Zooters who were writing to the Sailor Riots, but that hasn't stuck yet. And yeah, that's the story of the Zoot Suit Riots and the Sleepy Lagoon Murder. Wow. The book that you can read if you want to know more about his murder at the Sleepy Lagoon Zoot Suits, Race and Riot in Wartime LA by Eduardo O'Bringon Pagan, P-A-G-A-N is the

last name. Wow. That's amazing. That's such a good history lesson and living in the city. It's really embarrassing that I don't know anything about. It's just that feeling. Every time it's the same feeling of watching that OJ special and learning all about the Watts Riots.

We're just like, how come I, you know, we don't know these things. They don't teach it in school because they don't, because it, because it makes us look bad. Right. And like, that's somehow not okay to be like, we did a really horrible thing and, but we're learning from it. You know? Yeah.

Because I think a lot of people aren't there yet and a lot of people in charge aren't there yet and whatever. Great job. Thank you. That was really good. Thank you. That was a really, thank you to Lily for all her research notes. That was a really, that was a, that was an interesting one.

I definitely spent a lot of time researching that and I could have spent a lot fucking more time. Like there's so many good articles from every different angle. Cool. I definitely want to look up. Did you say the Getty is the, is the museum that got because they were doing the fashion search? No, no.

In 2016, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, they had a thing called reigning men, reigning get it, REI, GNIT, reigning men fashion in menswear from 1715 to 2015. Oh shit. Sounds fucking cool. Yeah. I was going to say one thing really quickly, I texted my grandma to confirm because my mom's side of my family has been here, I mean, for generations and my grandma's brother was actually a zoot-suter.

Really? But he entered the army. So I wonder if he, and now I want to like call my grandma and ask her like, I wonder if maybe he avoided this because he is. And they were in Orange County, they were in LA in Orange County, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, my grandma specifically grew up here.

My mom grew up in Atwater Village. So. Like we grew up. Yeah. So I really, now next time I see my grandma, I want to learn more of this because I want to know. Stephen, please ask your grandma if she has a picture. Yes.

Oh my gosh. I would love to see an actual legit Morris family. What would that be? What's your mom's maiden name? My mom's maiden name is Valdez, Raymond Valdez was my grandfather. And then my grandma, her maiden name was Flores, so Sarah Flores. Oh my God. If she has a story, please get it on video or record it.

Yeah. That would be incredible. I'm so bummed I can't ask my grandma, it was very old, but I'm so bummed I can't ask her if she remembers it, although I know she would have just said, yeah, that was scary. Yeah, that's incredible, Stephen. I got a tweet from a listener named Emma, well her, her Twitter handle is Emma Malia. Emma said, hey, Karen Colgar, have you ever heard of the 1976 Chow Chilla kidnapping? It's bananas, and I feel like I should have heard about it before.

Emma, really good suggestion. I thought I'd already done this. I thought you'd, is this, this isn't the chicken coop one. No, no, that's the, that's the wine, what was it, wineville chicken coop, right, wineville? Yeah. No, this is, okay. So I have a very distinct memory of this report coming, like my family. So I, it was 1976, so I was six years old, and we, my parents never caught on that maybe

the six year old shouldn't watch the seven o'clock news along with them. So and I paid a lot of attention to things. So when this report came out the night that it happened, I heard it and then would not stop asking my mom about it. And she was like, I don't know, we'll find out. It was like, I remember it so distinctly. Yes, you were a murder, a baby murderino. I was a baby, well, and also it was that feeling of like, I'm sorry, I just came off a nice

run of Sesame Street. What are you talking about this mass kidnapping? Hold on a second. And then like, we're never going to hear about it again. You're never, this should be the only thing we talk about. You will not sweep this under the rug, Patton Jim, because it's now on the table and you need to explain it to me. And I do remember asking my mom, like, explain to me why.

And she was like, I don't know, I'm tired. So this is the Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping of 1976. Oh, okay. I think I know. Oh, it's so good. It's so good, Emma. Good catch. I swear to God, I was like, there's no way I haven't done this already.

Oh my God. Chowchilla, California Legendary, and, okay, so there is a reel. You can go look on YouTube. You can watch the news footage as this story plays out in the news. Someone has compiled all of it. Is this the, is this the buried one? Yep. This is horrific and insane.

And I'm so excited. I'm so excited for this. Me too. Okay. So the majority of this information and like the shape of this story is from an episode of 48 Hours Live to Tell where they interviewed now grown children who were on this bus. Are they all just still screaming? I mean, okay.

So no, no, it's kind of amazing. Okay. So aside from 48 Hours Live to Tell, which did an amazing and incredibly thorough job and all of these people got to tell their own story. Best way to, my favorite, favorite way to experience true crime. Plastic Karen Calguera. You tell me what happened to you. That's all I care about.

But the other sources, CNN, CBS News, SF Gate, Wikipedia. So here we go. So this basically starts July 15th, 1976. It's around four o'clock in Chowchilla, California and the Dairyland Elementary Schools bus driver Ed Ray is dropping kids off after their summer school field trip that day. Is this Northern California like near you? No. Chowchilla is about 50 miles north of Fresno.

Okay. So centrally? It's central. Yes. Okay. It's very central, but it's that part of California. So it's like, it's below Modesto, it's above Fresno. It's right there on the 99.

Far, a lot of farmland and stuff. It's all far. I mean, it's the Dairyland Elementary School. It's all cows and that's also, it really gets me because all of this footage from 1976, it looks like this things that are in my head as childhood memories because it all looks the same as where I grew up too of just like rolling hills with oak trees and big cow pastures. Lots of brown. Lots of brown shades.

It's lots of brown. Because the people in the 48 hours lived to tell you and describe it, Chowchilla was, it had less than 5,000 people living in it. It was a tiny cow town as one of the guys describes it. People did not lock their doors at night. They didn't know, they couldn't even imagine why they would have to. It was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So it's central, central California.

And people in central California, they have accents like they're from the South. It's really funny. It's like that part of, it's very agricultural and people, it's like they're there for generations with the same ranch. I wonder if they came from like the dust bowl. So it just kind of stopped. Yeah. I think so.

Yeah. I think that's what it is. They say, oh, my mom talked, but there's like a lot of that kind of accent where you're just like, we're in California. This is amazing. So it's one of my favorite things because California is gigantic, but there's definitely a lot of the like a South in, or Midwest in it. It's like an element.

Yeah, I love it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So Ed Ray is the bus driver, right? Now these kids, their age range is from five years old to 14 years old. This is summer school, right? So they're just, it's like a group of kids that are just doing stuff while their parents

are at work. Yeah. And on this day, the field trip was to the town swimming pool that was at the Chow Chilla Fairgrounds. Take me there. You can see it. Everything is golden. It all looks like, it's like everything's, all this news footage looks like it's being

shot at golden hour, but it's like, no, this is just what it looked like back then. It was so weird. There's one little girl who goes through this whole experience wearing her bathing suit. So it's that kind of thing where like they left the pool and they got on the bus like wearing the, that like, get out. No, you have to get out of, you're going to get in trouble, Jennifer. And so like, it's so trippy. They ran on the bus.

It was a boiling hot day because it's Central California in July. And the kids talk about how they remember driving the bus. They loved Ed. They all called him Edward. He had been the bus driver in that town for 26 years, I believe. Yes. 26 years. So wait, I'll go back to this a little bit.

Ed is just beginning the route home. So he's, he's dropped off a couple kids just at the beginning of the drop off route. He approaches a T stop intersection and there he sees a broken down white van that's blocking the intersection. So right now at this point, there's 26 kids on the bus, 27 people total, including Ed. So Ed Ray has like lived his, almost his entire life in Chowchilla. He's been the school, the school bus driver for the past 26 years. He knows everyone in town as well as he knows these country roads that make up his daily

route. So when he sees this white van blocking the intersection, he doesn't think twice about pulling right up and opening the bus door to see which of his neighbors might need help. Because that's the kind of town it was. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. So it's not like, it's like, oh, strangers, you know, that that's not anyone's first thought. Plus it's like, if you keep driving, then that person's fucked.

It's not like they have cell phones to call. It's like, you're going to be the only car in for hours, maybe. I'm telling you, this footage from 1976, you might as well have, it looks like it's the turn of the century. It's so old looking and it's so funny to me because like, it doesn't seem that long ago to me. But when you see this footage, it's like, yeah, it's, it's, there was, there was, if you had a, if your car broke down in the middle of the afternoon on a July day in Chowchilla,

you would be bowled to death by the sun. Yeah. Okay. So, so Ed pulls right up and opens those doors to see what's going on and who needs help. And as he does, two men climb onto the bus wearing pantyhose pulled over their head, bank robber style, which is so scary if you were a little kid. And one's holding a sawed off shotgun at Ed and tells him to get into the back of the bus.

Then that masked man turns the gun onto the kids as the second man gets into the driver seat and begins to drive. A third man is following in the white van that they pretended was broken down. So with Ed and all the kids on board, these three masked men have just hijacked a school bus full of children. So yeah. So one of those kids is nine year old Jennifer Brown who is in this episode of 48 hours live to tell.

She's, she's an amazing. That's one of those things where they keep showing pictures of her at nine years old because there's so many pictures of these kids and she looks, the face is exactly the same and she has this kind of like, so she's the one that says when Ed walks through the back of the bus, he says to all the kids really harsh, he says, just be quiet, sit down, do what they say. And she had never heard him talk to the kids like that before. So she knew, she knew that's how she knew something was really wrong.

So the hijackers take off down the country road. They eventually drive down into a dry riverbed in the Berenda slough, which is seven miles outside of town. And basically they drive down into this area and there's, of course, you can see pictures. The slough had all these trees and bamboo that were like double high, a normal school bus. It was a slough as someone from suburbia. It's lose like a riverbed.

It's basically, and I believe I didn't look it up, but I think it's like that when they make a riverbed cement, right? So they make sure that like water can go, it like runoff can go or whatever. It's not just a river. But you know what, hey, all you slough heads out there, slough arenas, I'd love to hear how wrong I am. Please educate me because I don't feel like it. Okay, so the weird thing is these, because these bamboo trees are so high, they drive

this bus in and it's perfectly hidden. You can't see it at all. So they park the bus. The third driver from the white van now backs a second van that's green up to the bus doors. He opens the rear doors of the van and that reveals an interior of a van that's been reinforced with wood paneling and all the windows have been blacked out and there's no ventilation that's been added. So they've customized the inside of this van so that no one can see in or out and basically

that it's a little cell and they basically tell the kids to jump from the bus into the back of the van so no footprints go on the ground and they can't see that anyone has been there. What the fuck? Why? You'll tell us. So, so at gunpoint, Ed and all the kids have to jump from the bus to the van. They fill up one van, drive it away, pull the other one up and the rest of the kids have

to have to do the same thing in the second van. I believe that Ed was in the second van and six year old Larry Park who he's six when this happens. He's obviously an adult when he's telling his story. He says that as he walked toward the man holding the shotgun, the barrels started looking like they were getting so big that they were going to swallow him up. He's six years old. He's a baby.

He's a baby. So, so Jennifer isn't a nine year old Jennifer isn't in the first van. She gets put into the second van and she gets separated from her 10 year old brother Jeff and that's when she starts really getting scared. She keeps telling her friends, I want, I want Jeff, none of the kids know what's going on. Like it's couldn't be more frightening and or more like getting loaded from their bus into the back of a dark van and they're just in pitch black and they're jammed in there. They're jammed in.

Yeah. So, meanwhile, Jennifer and Jeff's mom, Joan Brown, she comes home from work to what would normally be a house full of kids waiting for her to get home from work and instead, as she says it, quote, there's no peanut butter on the counter. There's no chairs out there. They just weren't there. So because it's the 70s, they wait a little while to see and it is the thing where it seems so bizarre now, but like this was the, this was the era where your parents would

be like in the summertime, it'd be like go outside until the street lights come on. Totally. All kids were very self-regulating. Sometimes you'd just go to your friend's house for dinner and they wouldn't, they'd be mad at you, but you wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't worry. Yeah, right. No cell phones, no helicopter anything. This was when it was like free range children, but after a couple hours, parents start calling

each other and realizing that almost none of the kids from summer school made it home that day. Only those kids that got dropped off right at the beginning. So the parents. So it takes about almost two hours. The parents call the police, but two hours in the 70s is a modern day almost immediately. So stop judging. Okay.

So, so police and parents go out together and they retrace the bus route, but there's no sign of any of the kids. And it isn't until police start a search by air that they spot the bus in the slough hidden in the bamboo. So Madera County Sheriff Ed Bates and his deputies rushed to the scene, but the bus is abandoned. There's no footprints on the ground. They don't really know what's happened, but they are able to track the van's tire marks and they make it clear that they make it clear what happened that someone pulled up those

vans. Okay. So now they know that basically all those kids that were on the bus have been loaded into another vehicle that they don't know what it is and have been transported somewhere. So Sheriff Bates calls Governor Jerry Brown and asks for the help of the FBI immediately. Thank God. So 30 FBI agents are called in to assist the investigation. Meanwhile, Ed and the kids are being driven into jam-packed vans.

The windows are blacked out. There's no ventilation and they can't see where they're going. It's a brutally hot July night at this point. There's no food or water and they don't let anyone take bathroom breaks and they drive for almost 12 hours. What? Yeah. So you can imagine there's kids that throw up from the motion sickness of not being able

to see out and it's a bumpy country roads. There's of course kids crying. There's lots of crying and then other kids, the older kids are trying to keep, you know, keep everybody like keep kids from crying. So they start singing the hits of the day. They all sing boogie nights together. They sing love will keep us together, which was never not on the radio back then. 12 the fucking hours, 12 hours of being in the back of a car.

I mean, I drove 15 minutes over the weekend and I almost threw up. It's like, Oh my God. Yeah. And little kids that are scared and like trying to comfort each other at one point. The older kids have everybody sing if you're happy and you know, clap your hands, but they change the lyrics too. If you're sad and you know it, which I fucking love because they're not being creepy like nothing's happening.

It's like, no, no, no, we're all freaking out. Let's sing the song. So that's the new, that's our new quarantine song. Hey, look, if you're sad and you know it, clap your hands. You might as well. That's total. I love that. Okay.

Okay. So finally around 3 30 in the morning, this van comes to a stop. It's now Friday, July 16th, early in the morning. The one of the vans back doors opens and the masked men yank it out first and then shut the door. And then the kids just sit there waiting minutes past. They don't know what's going on. He's gone and then, you know, and then the door opens again and one of the men reaches

in and just grabs the nearest kid to the door and they do this. This is how they unload both vans. So there's little kids just sitting there waiting. They don't know if people are getting taken out and killed. They don't know anything. They're just sitting there waiting to see what's going to happen. Oh my God. The idea of it is horrifying and there's a really sad moment.

Okay. So the oldest boy is this 14 year old boy named Mike Marshall and he is the last kid in the van with a five year old girl. And he doesn't want to send her out by herself and they're making them come out one by one. So he has to literally like pry her hands off of his arm so that he can get out. And he talks about how horrifying a decision it was because he was like, I can't send her out there alone. I have to go out before her.

But then the five year old is left in the van by herself. Just to scare. You don't know which one's scarier yet because you have an experience. So when they do lead the kids out, they realize they get walked from the van over to basically what looks like a ladder going into a hole in the ground. They're out in the middle of nowhere. It's kind of sandy. There's no, it's like pitch, you know, it's the middle of the night.

And Jennifer Brown says that when she came up on that ladder, she remembers thinking to herself, oh, they're sending us to hell. And so then they go down the ladder and realize they're in an underground bunker and all the kids and Ed have been loaded down there. So every kid that gets down the ladder then realizes no one's been taken off and killed. So they all are like happy and, you know, they're all like, it's reunited. They're all together again. The problem is though, it's pitch black down there.

They can't see a thing, but they like, their eyes adjust. They realize there's a table that's got some jugs of water on and some food. And then there's these kind of like slapped together kind of toilets that are built in these boxes that are where the wheel wells are, just like a hole in the ground or a hole that they like built just so people could have somewhere to go. And but the good thing is they can hear fans spinning so that they know there's some sort of planned ventilation. So.

Fuck. Yeah. So then this is like, this is like the the prequel to saw. It feels like it's it's horrifying. I mean, imagine if saw was 26 kids, it's so it's so awful. So basically once all the kids and Ed are down inside the kid, the kidnappers throw down a roll of toilet paper, pull up the ladder and say, we'll be back for you. Then they cover the opening with what everyone believes to be a manhole cover.

It's very it's like it sounds like one. It's really heavy. So this is not how I thought it was. I always pictured in my, you know, I hadn't read enough. So I pictured them in the school bus being buried in the school bus. This is this is fucking crazy. Yeah. No, they, yeah, they transferred them into another thing.

And this is the horrifying part there. So they're down there. The manhole cover closes, they're standing in the dark and then they hear material being poured on top of whatever they're in. So they realize they're being buried alive. So back in Charchilla, the parents are gathered at command posts that set up at the fire station. Of course, everyone, the whole town is worried sick. Everyone knows about it.

Everyone's trying to figure out what's going on. The police are trying to like formulate how anyone could kidnap 26 school children, let alone who would do it, let alone why they would do it. They just are baffled by all of it. And of course, this story makes the national news. So that night, Walter Cronkite's opening like, oh, I sorry, I don't know if it was opening, but this is how I'm picturing it because this is how I remember it. Yeah.

Walter Cronkite going 26 school children and their bus driver have vanished. Anguished parents, President Ford and hundreds of police are asking the question, where are the children? I mean, okay, six-year-old Karen should not have fucking heard that first of all. But I'm over here playing with matches. What's this now? Mommy? Karen, go play with your matches.

Don't worry about it. It's too late. It's too late. And then I just light one of her cigarettes. I already saw it, mother. It's ruined. Oh, Jesus. Okay.

So it's declared to be one of the biggest kidnappings in U.S. history, but no one's heard from the kidnappers or has any idea who they might be, so they don't understand what the plan. So I hope it would be ransom so you could pay it and get your kid back, but that's not right. That's terrifying. Yeah. They're just everyone's holding their breath waiting.

But then calls pour in to the Chow Chilla Police Department from all around the world, well-wishers, reporters. I mean, this is like, it's blowing up. So 12 hours go by. They're just waiting for word in Chow Chilla, well, down in the hole as the kids come to call it, things go from bad to worse. So they've run out of food, they have a little bit of water left, and the fans that they could hear that were providing ventilation have stopped.

Now this is kind of fascinating, and I love this kid. I love this kid, whoever he is, because he doesn't get named. But there's, so they basically, there's blocks that are on the ground that these four by four pillars, there's four by four pillars kind of stand around every, in each corner of this box that they're in. And it's basically holding up, it looks like it's holding up the ceiling. And kind of like, they're bracing the sides of it and holding the ceiling up. So one of the boys starts kicking at these blocks, and just out of pure fury and fear

and, you know, everything. And with every block, every kick, he's moving the blocks. And when the blocks move, the ceilings, that means the beam is moving, and then the ceiling starts to cave in a little bit. And the walls of the, of the box that they're in, is start to bow inwards and dust and dirt start streaming in. So everyone's terrified that the ceiling's going to collapse. But Ed and the older kids, they get together and they decide together, if we're going

to die, we're going to die trying to get out of here. So Ed and the oldest boy, Mike Marshall, they decide they're going to stack up these mattresses that have laid all around, like the outside, and all the kids have just been laying on them. They stack them up so Mike can get, climb up them and reach the hatch from the top. It's in the P style, right? They get up to that manhole cover. But then when Mike gets up there, he tries to push it, and it's like, it's so heavy,

he can barely, he can barely push it. He basically says, then he talks about it, he's like got his, you know, he looks like a classic like rancher, you know, he's got like his, his cowboy shirt on and his hat and his whole thing. And he was like, I'm getting, I'm giving it everything I got and the kids are cheering me on, you know, come on, Mike, you can do it, you can do it. And all of a sudden they say, it moved, it moved. So this, this cover that he's pushing against, he gets, he is able to move it to the side

a little bit, so that there's a hole about half a foot wide. And basically he has to climb up through that hole and then figure out whatever's up there, like the guys could be standing there with the guns, they don't know what's up there, but they're like, but we got, we have to get out of here because the ventilation, there's no water, like we have to get out of here. So Mike at 14 years old is like, I'll go up there. So he gets up out of the hole and realizes he's standing in a little box and the box has dirt in it and it has two truck batteries that were on the manhole cover.

And that was the reason it was so crazy heavy. But once they started moving it, they knocked the batteries off and they knocked this dirt off. So then he's in this box and he's like, so he just starts beating on the sides of the box and realize it's just this fabricated wooden box that like was covering over the hole. He beats his way out of the box and, oh my God, I'm fucking, okay, yeah, I know. This is some fucking eye of the tiger, fucking parkour extreme fucking sports with little

kids and medium kids and big kids and then Ed himself, who's the beloved town. He's a town school bus driver. You know who I'm picturing, Ed, as is on Bob's Burgers, who's the guy who's. Teddy. Teddy. Yes. That's exactly what he looks like. Really?

I'm not joking. Yes. Totally looks like him without the beanie. Okay. So Mike is like punching these wooden like walls and then he breaks through and Larry Park, the six year old, he describes seeing Mike punch and this ray of sunshine come down into, come down into from the box down into the hole and he says, looking up, the dirt was falling through the hole and the sunshine made it glimmer and it looked like shooting

stars to him. Like all of a sudden they were like, we're out. So after, and this is the craziest story I've ever fucking heard in my life. It just gets crazier too. So Mike steps out first outside the box to make sure the coast is clear. He doesn't see anyone. They see hills and trees and it all looks kind of the same. He and Ed help all the kids get out of the hole by the time they get out.

It's eight o'clock on July 16th in the morning, eight PM, sorry, it's eight PM on July 16th. They've been in captivity for 16 hours. And Jennifer, when she finally gets outside the nine year old, she looks around and looks back at where they were and says, it looked just like a sand dune with like a little rectangle and a ladder, not the ladder, like a little rectangle. But other than that, there was nothing around. She said if they were just, if they just stayed in there, no one would have ever known they were down there.

So they just start, they hear in the distance engine sounds and whirring and metal, and they don't know if that's where their captors are or what, but they just start walking toward the sound. Holy shit. Everyone together. And when they get up close to it, they realize they're at a quarry. And so it's all those like, those machines that you see around the quarry. The big quarry, a quarrier, a quarry iser.

So these guys in hard hats, imagine if you're this guy, that you've got the night shift at the quarry and you turn around and there's 26 kids that are like, that look like they have. I mean, it's, when you see these, these pictures too of these kids later on, it's unbelievable. But they basically walked up to these guys that worked at the quarry and said, Ed, the quarriers and Ed said, um, were from Chowchilla and were lost. But of course they knew who they were because it was this, the huge story. Okay.

So do we know where they are? Are we allowed to talk about where they are at this point? Yes. Okay. They, at this point, even though they've been, they drove for 12 hours, they were in Livermore, California, which is, no, it's actually only a couple hours up the 99 and over, but they didn't go straight there. They just drove around.

So they were trying to confuse the kids or let time pass or what? Yes. They, yeah, they wanted to make sure no one knew, uh, where they were. So they were basically a hundred miles northwest of Chowchilla, Livermore is the city when I'm driving from LA to Petaluma, you go up the five and then finally when the five is up by the East Bay, you, you may basically take a left off the five and now you're going into the East Bay and Livermore is that for, it's pretty much the first big city that's off of that, um, the 580.

Okay. Um, so it's kind of right there. So they get, um, the police are called obviously and they get there, they take pictures of all the kids and this is in that 48 hours. They just start showing these kids that are like wide eyed and kind of dirty and, you know, they have stuff on their face and they're like, look like they were all cried out. Um, then they load them into a bus. No.

This is so 70s. Listen to this shit. Listen to how 70s, like 70s were pro trauma. They were like, we gotta, if we're here, let's do it. Um, let's double down on this fucking drone. Let's double down. Oh my God. They get these kids onto a bus and take them all to the Santa Rita rehab center, which

is a local jail, but it had, yes. So Jennifer talks about driving onto the grounds and being like, uh, oh, I think we're, I think we're in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but basically once they get there, it's great because they, they don't, you know, they get inside their, there's, they're in a classroom now.

So basically it was just the one spot that they had nearby that could hold all of them and like basically keep the situation contained so they could interview everybody and see what was going on. Um, so the kids are led into a classroom. They're given soda and apples. Oh, the healthiest snack after a fucking 28 hours of being, yeah. They are also given jumpsuits from the jail to change into adult jumpsuits. So all these kids and they were of course really little.

So some of them had to roll the pant leg and the arms up and then some of them are just letting them flap around. But when you see those pictures, these kids are so happy to be, you know, there's, um, there's two female police officers that are right in there with them and holding the little ones and like they're, they all are like, we're safe. We're all safe and we're all together. Oh my God. Yeah.

Um, doctors arrive quickly, check everyone out, make sure that no one's hurt or, you know, dehydrated or whatever. Aside from some bruises and some scrapes, luckily everyone's okay physically. Incredible that no one's hurt. It's incredible. It's an unbelievable and it's, I bet you they must have been dehydrated to some degree because also it's a summer day. It's like, yeah.

And the crying. Yes. And so much crying. So, but, you know, everyone's fine. The police question, Ed and the kids for four hours before finally, yes, seriously, before finally putting them on a gray hound and two buses after this, two buses, two bus rides. Stop it. Stop it.

Yeah. They can't, they didn't know. It's, it's like back when the doctors used to, first of all, doctors were barbers and barbers would just bleed you. Like if you had a fever, they just like bleed them. Yeah. That's, that's how they did stuff back then. But these kids, the pictures of them on the gray hound in their, they're still in their

white jail suits. It's the cutest. They're all, now they're all stoked and they're fine. And at this point it's four in the morning. They get a police escort while they're on this gray hound bus, back down to Chow Chilla and they arrive at, sorry, they arrive at four in the morning, so they probably left it to you or whatever. The bus pulls into Chow Chilla and as the kids get off, they're escorted by the police

through a big group of news reporters. You see Mike Marshall, the oldest, he's so cute. He's such a 70s, like, cute working old boy. Are we talking like Matt, he'd, he'd be played by Matt Dillon, a young Matt Dillon? Who'd be? He would be, yes. He's definitely in the Matt Dillon spectrum of cute kind of Italian, probably maybe either Hispanic or Italian or Portuguese.

Yeah, and he's, and one of the reporters yells, hi Mike, what was the pit like? So like all these, all these people that these kids have no idea who any of them are, they all know them by name. That's how these people have been following this story and reporting this story. And Ed Ray steps off the bus, he's met with a round of cheers and applause. So the investigators return to the burial site at the, at the rock quarry and they dig up a moving truck that has been buried in this big open field at the rock quarry. And they start looking for clues.

That's the weirdest part. It's a moving truck that looks like it's from 1965. So it's got the big round wheel wells and the trailer is like kind of separated from the back. So they took the work that it took to bury a truck that big, because it's really big and plan everything out. It must have taken weeks, if not months. So investigators immediately surmise whoever is behind this must have had access to this

quarry somehow. So this is now, this is the part where it flips over because it's so sinister. It's so scary. You said it's like, what is this saw? Now we're going to get into the slapstick insanity aspect of this story because it boggles the mind. Okay. So, of course, if they go, well, I wonder if it's someone that has connections to the

quarry. How about the quarry owner's son, 24 year old Fred New Hall Woods, who has a criminal record just two years before him and two of his buddies, brothers, rich James and Richard Schoenfeld, they were all arrested together for grand theft auto. Food. Yeah. Fred and James worked together selling used cars and they were arrested teaming up with Richard to steal one, but they all got away with that without ever serving jail time.

They just received fines and probation because all three of them were from rich white families. How quickly did it take them to investigators to zero in on them? Was it like immediately? Like one day. Okay. Like two hours. It's so obvious that, yeah. Well, because, yeah, they just stood back there going, you, the energy, time, whatever

it took to bury a full-size moving van, moving trailer. Yeah. Yeah. It's an inside job. It's a quarry inside job. Like, I feel like I'm not into like grand theft auto, but I feel like if you get caught planning it instead of even doing it, you're not very good at it and you should quit it. Yeah.

For sure. For sure. Okay. So authorities review the quarries of security footage. They find that the three had spent months leading up to the kidnapping, digging a massive hole at the quarry and security guards do confirm the identity of Fred Woods. So they, they, they all said, yeah, that guy's been around here a ton. So police, they go to Fred's dad's estate.

These motherfuckers are rich, like rich. I mean, he owns a quarry. Yeah. Like that's fucking Fred Flintstone shit. It does. Right? Yes. They get to the dad's estate and in, and there, they find the shotgun that was used in the

kidnapping. They find papers detailing a kidnapping plan. It literally, they show, they have the, the police footage in this and they show a piece of binder paper or no, it's, yeah, it's the, it's the assistant DA now who pulls this piece of binder paper out of an old box and it just has an all caps, the word plan written at the top. No joke. I'm laughing because nobody died.

But the fucking fact that they're so stupid and did this so poorly. So poorly and strangely, okay. And this is the reason my mom couldn't explain it to me because she was like, because when you're on the other side of it, it's like, this is so sinister. This is so horrible. Well, okay. So, so it says plan at the top of the page, the ransom note was never delivered. It demanded $5 million in exchange for the return of the 26 children on the bus.

But it was still, they still had the ransom note. No one ever, no one ever received it. I'll tell you. So arrest warrants are issued for Fred Woods, James Schoenfeld and Richard Schoenfeld. And Richard turns himself in on July 23rd, eight days after the kidnapping. But James and Fred both take off in different directions. James zigzags all over the Western United States. Fred tries to head north for Canada.

Two weeks after the kidnapping, James is apprehended in Menlo Park on the morning of July 29th. And Fred is caught in Vancouver trying to go over the border, British Columbia on the same night. They don't want you, man. No. Yeah. Don't worry about it. And they, and they don't want us to this day.

To this day. During their interrogations, the kidnappers revealed that they had been plotting this crime for a year and a half. And what, what they were supposed to do was after they had kidnapped the bus full of kids, they were supposed to call the Chow Chilla police department and demand their ransom and then say, we're sending you the note. But the story had already broken worldwide. So they couldn't get through the phone lines were busy.

So they decided they were going to wait it out and they took a nap. And when they woke up from their nap, they turned on the news and Ed and all the kids had escaped. So. Listen. I'm going to make a fucking educated guess that meth was involved somewhere in there. Or just really shitty weed. You know what I mean?

Where it just kind of, they were just confused stems and seeds, man. Yeah. Just not enjoying themselves and confused. When asked for a motive, James Schoenfeld explains, despite being from wealthy families, all three men were in debt, of course. He says, quote, we needed multiple victims to get multiple millions and we picked children because children are precious. The state would be willing to pay ransom for them and they don't fight back.

So these guys bungled their plans so badly that they had no choice but to plead guilty to 27 counts of kidnapping for ransom and robbery in July of 1977. And they're also charged with eight counts of bodily harm for the physical injuries that some of the kids sustained. But their lawyers advise them they're facing life in prison no matter what, but if they're found guilty on the charges of bodily harm, they'll have no chance for parole. So the men plead not guilty to the bodily harm charges. Many of these kids, including Jennifer and Michael, testify against these kidnappers

in court. Amazing. They tell you there is video of this little girl, this nine-year-old Jennifer, who talks about and they had all the kids make retell the story on tape afterwards, like for themselves to basically like process the story. So they have tape of these children at that age telling what happened that they play in this in this 48 hours. It's really amazingly done.

So basically, they talk about the horrible conditions of the whole and the chronic nightmares and PTSD that they now suffer from. Their testimonies lead to a guilty verdict on the bodily harm charges. And on February 17th, 1978, Fred Wood and James and Richard Schoenfeld are all sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. So five weeks after the kidnapping, Ed Ray and all 26 kids get taken on a trip to Disneyland. On August 22nd, this same year, basically, they basically waited about a month. And then Chow Chilla celebrated their first annual Ed Ray and Children's Day, complete

with a parade down the town's main street, honoring the 27 brave survivors. But of course, the kids are traumatized by this experience. There's some suffer panic attacks. Almost all of them have recurring nightmares that haunt them and their families. So it's they, you know, it's really tough. I mean, they, they went through something horrible and like to look at it from the other side to come up out of that pit and turn and be like, what the fuck is one thing, but to be down in it when you're six years old and you can't understand all you want is your

mom and you're just stuck somewhere. I mean, it's a nightmare. So basically then in 1980, four years after the kidnapping, Fred, James and Richard all appeal the bodily harm charges. Their lawyers argue that the cuts and bruises on the children are not enough to warrant the official legal charge of bodily harm. And they win this argument. The bodily harm charges are reversed and now they're all eligible for parole.

Two years later in 1982, parole hearings begin and all of the survivors get dragged back into court to further testify to try to keep their kidnappers behind bars. It all told the survivors of the chow chilla bus kidnapping have had to endure 60 parole hearings. So far. Six zero? Six zero. That is additional trauma to the trauma they already fucking endured.

And that is not fair. Every, however many years, every, every, however many years. I fucking hate that. It's horrible. So in this period of time after that, you know, all this time is passing, Larry Park becomes in his own words an angry child, just absolutely beyond justified. His rage leads his parents to put him in a juvenile detention facility when he's 15 to try to rehabilitate his behavior.

It doesn't work. By the time Larry's 21, he's using meth, crack and other drugs recklessly. And this is what happened to a lot of these kids, Mike Marshall, the 14 year old hero. He said when he was a kid, he could see all the years ahead of him. Then after the kidnapping, I could not see tomorrow. So he begins drinking excessively when he's 18 years old and he does it until he's 48. But then he finally finds the strength to treat his alcoholism. I mean, it's, you know, 30, 30 years of being in the bottle because of this trauma and what

it did to him. Jennifer Brown is also haunted by nightmares and PTSD for years. But today she's married and she says she's worked through her struggles with the help of her family and quote her church family. So she has a lot of support. And there's this really amazing moment where they have footage of a reporter. It was when she went back, I believe to testify, there was a reporter that asks her and she's just lit.

She's just this little girl and she's kind of like rocking back and forth, you know, and she's like, got like one of her front teeth is gone. And the reporter says, why do you think they did this? And she goes, I don't know. They didn't get enough love. And she says it like super, she has this big smile on her face. Also that she tells a really funny story of taking her gum out, taking her gum out before she testifies because she didn't want to spit it at them.

When she went to tell this, she didn't want to get so mad. She'd spit it at him. So she gave her dad her gum. And then when they cut to her talking to that reporter, she's chewing the gum again. I want that one. I want that one. I want that one. My favorite.

She's the cutest. In June of 2012, 36 years after the kidnapping, Richard Schoenfeld is paroled and his brother James follows three years later in 2015. Many of the now grown children and their families are angry that the bodily harm charges were reversed and that parole was a possibility for them. But there's a notable exception. After years of suffering and substance abuse, Larry Park says that he finally realized his resentment for the kidnappers was killing him.

So he decides to meet with the Schoenfeld brothers who had recently gotten out of prison so that he can forgive them and they agree. And he says about this experience, quote, it changed my life. Something washed over me and there was a peace like I'd never known. I knew that day I would be okay. And now he's Larry sober and he runs his own handyman business. And he sometimes volunteers as a pastor at his local church. Fred Wood still remains behind bars from the beginning.

Police suspected that Fred was the mastermind behind the entire plot, a true sociopath who had roped the Schoenfeld brothers into his plan and who to this day shows no remorse for his actions. His last parole hearing was October 2019, where he was denied parole for the 19th time. And his next hearing is set for 2024. After the kidnapping, Ed Ray goes back to driving a school bus and he does it for 12 more years until he retires in 1988. And then on May 17th, 2012, Ed Ray passes away from natural causes at the age of 91.

And the town of Chaochilla still continues to celebrate Ed Ray and Children's Day every February 26th in honor of these guys. In 2016, the survivors of the Chaochilla bus kidnapping filed a lawsuit against their three kidnappers demanding monetary compensation for the horrors they experienced and they wind up receiving a settlement. The exact amount is never publicly disclosed, but one survivor says it was, quote, enough for some serious therapy, but not enough to buy a house. And that is the horrifying story of the Chaochilla school bus kidnapping.

Oh, layers upon layers. Isn't that nuts? Oh, my God. That goes so much deeper than I fucking knew. Wow. Great job. That was great job. Thank you.

Great suggestion. It's just so funny. I saw this story is such a weird close to my heart true crime, like grew up with story. It's so weird that I haven't done it. No. The same with Zootzer Riot. Wow. That was incredible.

Good job. Thank you for that. You told that story. But so before we go, we just want to talk to you about something that's vitally important that you know about already. And I'm sure you've been hearing all about it, but we want to remind you we're less than 100 days away from election day, which is November 3rd, 2020. So between a global pandemic and rampant voter suppression efforts, it is critical to help

every American register to vote, to be prepared to do so safely, and to ensure that every vote counts, which includes encouraging as many Americans as possible to request to vote by mail. So votesaveamerica.com is a one stop shop for voter registration and engagements. And it's being put on by our friends at Crooked Media, and they've created this incredible hub that's compiled every freaking tool you need. So you're able to request your vote by mail ballot early, which I've already done. You can volunteer to call young voters in battleground states, which is so important,

and talk to them about voting by mail. That's huge. Yeah. You can donate to groups on the ground working to mobilize diverse voters, and you can volunteer as a poll worker if you're healthy and you're able. Yes. And you guys, we're all in this together to win in November. We need to do everything we can, every single one of us voting counts, even though you think

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Let's do it. And you know what else? What? Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yeah.