The Misery Machine - Remembering Richard ”Beebo” Russell - The Sky King

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

In light of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, Drewby and Yergy discuss the case of Richard "Beebo" Russell - known posthumously as "The Sky King," and the legacy he left on the SeaTac Airport and meme culture today.  GoFundMe for Hannah Russell: https://www.gofundme.com/f/provide-for-mrs-russell A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Buy Us A Coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/miserymachine Join Our Street Team! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HfRUPQhB6LOqVupZm92OdV5rLDQcIMpHudmUZwt0C24/edit?usp=sharing Levi's Adoption Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/d658a3a7 Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Horizon_Air_Q400_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrambling_(military) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/beebo-russell-seattle-plane-theft-true-story-1187023/ https://twitter.com/KierraElfalanTV/status/1028462177747783680/photo/1 https://www.facebook.com/richardrussellskyking https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/orca-mourning-calf-killer-whale-northwest-news https://heavy.com/news/2018/08/richard-russell-rich-seatac-beebo/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/he-was-a-jokester-who-complained-about-his-job-but-friends-still-baffled-by-richard-russells-airplane-heist/ https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-XII/subchapter-C/part-1542  

Hi, we're the Misery Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And who's moving the camera right now? It's Callie, the Calico Cow. And this week, in honor of suicide prevention awareness month, we are covering a case that got quite a bit of media attention a few years ago. And that's the Sky King, Richard Russell. If you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. It's the best way you can support our channel. Yes, absolutely. Also, thank you to my friend Cody, who brought this to my attention. I had not heard of this case before. He's in a great band called Revision. Please check them out. I hope we just lost Callie. Well, without further ado.

Remembering Richard Bebo Russell, the Sky King. And Cuyen. 29-year-old Richard Russell was born in the island city of Key West Florida and moved to Wasilla, Alaska, home of the Iditarod Trail headquarters and former governor and VP hopeful Sarah Palin at the age of seven. From an early age, he was known by the nickname. Bebo to his friends and family, which originated from the book of The House that Bebo builds. Richard attended Wasilla High School, where he wrestled, competed in track and field, and played football. Richard was a hard-hitting fullback, scoring six touchdowns his senior year, after which he moved to

North Dakota to join the football team at Valley City State University. Unfortunately, his performance there was lackluster, and he left for Southwestern Oregon Community College where he met his wife, Hannah, at a campus. Crusade for Christ Meeting. They married in 2012, and together they started a bakery called Hannah Marie's Artisan Bread and Pastries in North Bend, Oregon. However, they sold the bakery in 2015 so Hannah could be closer to her family. The couple settled in Sumner, Washington, and Richard found employment with Horizon Air, a subsidiary of Alaskan Airlines. There he enrolled at Washington State University Global Campus, majoring in social science. He had planned to seek a

management position at Horizon Air or become a military officer after receiving his degree. Richard was active in his church and was a leader in the local Christian youth ministry, young life, and enjoyed traveling with his wife. His favorite author was Ravi Zacharias, and he was known to wear a t-shirt with Robbie's picture on it. And just to be clear, this took place before the controversies with Ravi being a predator coming out. So before you think, oh, why would Bebo support someone like this? It's far before that.

Richard was employed as a Horizon Air Ground Service agent. He had been part of a tow team which repositions aircrafts on the airport apron for about four years. Some reports have suggested that he also handled baggage on the tarmac. An operational supervisor for Horizon Air described Richard as a quiet guy who was well liked by the other workers. However, this quiet guy was about to change the history of C-TAC Airport Forever and launch himself into meme stardom. I mean, I would contest the fact that he was a quiet guy. A lot of people describe Richard as a jokester, a very warm, open, jovial person. People talk about him as somebody who they've never seen him not good-natured. This was a very approachable person, a very welcoming person.

From the recordings I've heard and the pictures I've seen, he just seemed like like a fun guy, not so much a quiet guy. Yeah, absolutely. There's many, many pictures of him joking around and just seeming jovial. So I'm just surprised to hear him characterize as a quiet guy. Maybe he didn't know Richard that well. Anyways, on August 10th, 2018, our Horizon Air Bombadier Q400 was stolen from Seattle, Tacoma, International Airport in Cetac, Washington. These airplanes I've heard called dash 8s. The aircraft landed at 135 local time. the afternoon of the incident after an in-service flight from Victoria, British Columbia. It was not scheduled to fly again that day.

The person flying the plane? Richard Russell. CETAC air traffic control maintained radio contact with Richard. The transmissions were on an open frequency, thus were recording, quickly posted on social media websites. And if you listen to the raw footage of this, it's hard to make out what Richard is saying sometimes because it's interlaced with all these other air traffic communications. However, there's many examples on YouTube where people have isolated the audio and splice them together to give you an idea of the more major communications. You know, I'll go into some of the things he said, but I think to really capture who Richard was, you have to hear it for yourself.

So obviously you can go find them. I'm going to include some stuff in the audio as well, so you can hear it right here. Just flying the plane around, you seem comfortable with that? He was quoted as saying that he was a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess, never really knew it until now. When air traffic control suggests that the plane be landed at Joint Base Louis McCord, Richard refused stating... Oh, I tried landing there. I think I might mess something up there, too. I wouldn't want to do that. They don't have any of that. Like jail time for life, huh?

He asked air traffic control if he could get a job as a pilot with Alaska Airlines if he successfully landed the aircraft. You think about laying this successfully, a lot of people give me a job as a pilot. And there was a lot of speculation. Well, what do he mean by the white guy thing? I don't. You have to understand. He's up in the air,

and he goes through some times in the audio where it seems like he's panicking a little bit. At one point, he throws up. I threw up a little bit. And we'll get into the potential psychology of it later. But by somebody who just did this potentially on a whim, I could imagine they were freaking out. And when you're freaking out and full of adrenaline, I know I have a hard time talking.

I know I don't make a whole lot of sense, but that's just me. So he spoke of wanting to do a couple maneuvers to see what the aircraft could do. And he also requested the coordinates of J25, which was nicknamed Talaqua. She was a mother orca, and she was brought to national attention after carrying her dead calf for at least 17 days for over a thousand miles, stating, Quote, I want to go see that guy. He also stated that he did not want to hurt anyone. He said a couple times that he didn't want to ruin anyone's day, and I think that's the appeal of him to the Internet is being like,

No, I'm not taking it to any jets. I'm actually keeping you away from aircraft there to trying to land at C-Tac. I was screwing up everyone on account of me. And he joked to the air traffic controller to... Damn it, Andrew. People's lives are at stake here. Now, Rich, don't say stuff like that. clearly trolling the guy.

So in the final minutes of the communication, he apologized to his friends and family. I got a lot of people that care about me, and it's going to disappoint. Near the end of the flights, the aircraft was seen performing a barrel roll over the Puget Sound, recovering a mere 10 feet over the water.

I'm going to land a nose down and it's all the night. A veteran pilot said the maneuver seemed pretty well executed without, stalling or pulling the wings off. When an air traffic controller requested that he land the plane after this maneuver, he said, quote, I'm hoping that it's going to be it, you know?

Yeah, when you hear this part of the transmission, he sounds like completely surprised, almost like he was playing to go out on the barrel roll. It's just a miracle that he was able to do that, especially somebody without a pilot's license and no prior flight experience. Like, I can't stress that enough when all these veteran pilots are coming out

saying, I don't know how this guy was able to do that, Like, there's seasoned pilots that could not do this in a dash 8, and Richard was able to do it. So during his communication with air traffic control, Richard made a complaint about wages, stating, quote, Okay. I think we talk about this later, but I should add. So Seattle was known as this place, and I live there, that kind of touted its $15 minimum wage. Well, that didn't apply to everybody. and some workers at the airport were not making the $15 minimum wage.

Richard was making $12.50 an hour, whereas somebody working at the food court was making $15 an hour. And I don't exactly know what the loophole here was, but I learned as well, there was quite a few people that weren't actually making that $15 minimum wage despite it being legally on the books that way. Which is terrible because that's a very expensive place to live. It is very expensive. I mean, I'm not going to sidetrack too much, but when my Muay teacher was working as a programmer in a company that produces very important medical software making over $100,000 a year, has a wife making over $100,000 a year, and they're told by a bank that they don't make enough money to afford a two-bedroom house.

It's an expensive place to live. So two F-15s attempted to direct the aircraft towards the Pacific Ocean and did not fire at it. The Q400 ultimately crashed at 8.43 p.m. local time on Ketron Island in the Puget Sound in Washington, killing Richard and destroying the aircraft. The fire burned a two-acre area, but was extinguished the following morning. No injuries were reported to residents on the sparsely populated island, despite the crash site being in close proximity to at least one cabin, which was occupied at the time of the incident. The Pierce County Sheriff's Office both thanked the public for its accurate information and acknowledged on August 11th that federal agencies would be leading the investigation, primarily the Seattle office of the FBI. They described Richard Russell as suicidal and said his actions did not constitute a terrorist incident.

Alaska Air Group CEO Brad Tilden announced on the same day that the airline was coordinating with the federal aviation administration. the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board and was, quote, working to find out everything we possibly can about what happened, end quote. On the same day, Richard's family also released a statement. So I actually have a copy of that statement right now, and I can read that for you. So on behalf of the family, we are stunned and heartbroken. It may seem difficult for those watching at home to believe, but Bebo was a warm, compassionate man. It is impossible to encompass who he was in a press release. He was a faithful husband, a loving son, and a good friend. A childhood friend remarked that Bebo was loved by everyone

because he was kind and gentle to each person that he met. This is a complete shock to us. We are devastated by the events and Jesus is truly the only one holding this family together right now. Without him, we would be hopeless. As the voice recording show, Bebo's intent was not to harm anyone and he was right in saying that there were so many people who loved him. We would like to thank the authorities who had, been both helpful and respectful. Alaska Air for their resources, the community, his friends and family,

for their incredible support and compassion, and for Jesus whose steadfast love indoors. We'd also like to thank the media for their sensitivity and acknowledging this as the only statement that will be released by the family, and we are requesting that we now be given the space to mourn. At this time, the family is moving forward with the difficult task of processing our grief. We appreciate your prayers. Thank you, the family of Bebo Russell. The following day, the FBI said that it had recovered the flight data recorder, along with components of the cockpit voice recorder. The equipment was sent to the National Transportation Safety Board for processing. On November 9th, the FBI stated that it has completed its investigation.

Terrorism was ruled out, and Richard was found to have acted alone. The final descent on Ketron Island was determined to be intentional. So he had talked about how one of his engines was going out, and he hadn't quite run out of fuel yet, but the plane was going through fuel pretty quickly. But what they found is that, even though he was descending, that he pushed forward further than he needed to intentionally. So they were able to rule this as an intentional suicide, an intentional crashing of the plane, and not just a mechanical malfunction that brought the plane down. The FBI stated, quote, interviews with work, colleagues, friends, and family and review of text messages exchanged with Russell during the incident,

did not identify any information that would suggest the theft or the aircraft was related to wider criminal activity or terrorist ideology. Although investigators received information regarding Russell's background, possible stressors, and personal life, no element provided a clear motivation for Russell's actions, end quote. Horizon Air CEO Gary Beck stated that as far as the company knew, Richard did not have a pilot's license. Beck said the aerial maneuvers were incredible and that he did not know how he achieved the experience that he did. During his conversation with air traffic control, Richard said that he, quote, knew what he was doing a little bit because he had experience playing video games. After the incident, Joe Monteth, a pilot with SkyWest Airlines, relayed to an emergency dispatcher that in 2017, that he saw Richard and another man pointing and flipping switches in the cockpit of a SkyWest aircraft parked at CETAC Airport.

Monteth stated that men told him they were trained to use the aircraft's auxiliary power unit so that way they could tow it. but said it was suspicious that they left when he confronted them. Montief also recalled that Richard had been in the cockpit of an Embraer, 175, I hope I said that right, and that he asked about his flows, which is basically the pre-flight preparation that he does for takeoffs. Some co-workers said that Richard had probably trained himself to fly using amateur flight simulation software, though I recall watching a news reporting that the FBI said they didn't find any flight simulation software on his. computer. Now, I have to state, I would say it's pretty irresponsible that Montief did not bring this forward because in a lot of situations, this would probably be a clear firing. Now, I did a little

research on tow teams. You're regularly alone in cockpits for stretches that range from 10 to 45 minutes. You'd have one guy working, for lack of a better term, the tow truck, the vehicle that actually tows the plane. And then you'd have somebody in the cockpit who would turn on the power unit, which is essentially the battery, and communicated with air traffic controllers and would use the plane brakes in emergency, but they never turn on the engines or the propellers. I read something from Mary Shivo,

who was an aviation attorney and former inspector general of the Department of Transportation, noted that pilots are never alone in the cockpit. They're always required to be joined by a colleague, but ground service agents enter the cockpit alone, with their partner driving the pushback tractor on the ground, which is something I did not know, Because going into this, I was like, why would he have any business being in the cockpit?

So if he's discovered in the cockpit by a pilot, wouldn't that have led to a firing? Wouldn't that be a huge red flag? But apparently it's not. Instead, the red flag is asking about the pre-flight startup procedures and saying that they're there to tow, but then leaving immediately when confronted. In the days after the crash, cleanup and recovery crews contracted by Alaska Airlines and their insurers were present on the island to remove debris. As of 2019, this cleanup effort was still ongoing with pieces of the aircraft wreckage still being located on the island after the first anniversary of the incidents. Residents of the island bore some of the costs for cleaning up and negotiations were initiated for the reimbursement by Alaska Airlines insurers. The aircraft was worth $30 million, all of which was paid under the company's insurance policy with no deductible.

So if you're thinking, oh, poor airport, no, they got their money. Trust me, they got their money. Rolling Stone magazine investigated the incident and reported in 2021 that some of Richard's friends and family believe he may have suffered brain injuries during his football years in high school and college. A football teammate suggested his mental instability has been caused by undiagnosed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which may have come from repeated concussions. Now, of course, this was never diagnosed, and this is hard to diagnose. I don't know the condition of his body and if it would have been able to be autopsied and then you have to have the family consent to an autopsy. CTE is massively underdiagnosed.

It's still very relatively new in the science of things. If it wasn't for Aaron Hernandez getting an autopsy done on him, I don't think it would have really brought this into the broader knowledge in the media about this. You know, you look at Aaron Hernandez, you look at Chris Benoit, CTE can cause you to do unthinkable things, make you very impulsive. However, the one thing that stops me from saying 100% that CTE is a factor is the fact that nobody else really characterized Richard as an impulsive person, as a person quick to act or quick to anger.

Now, could it just have all of a sudden come to a head that moment, especially if he's depressed or frustrated with what's going on. Sure, absolutely. I think that the possibility of CTE definitely needs to be in the debate and should be, especially when there's so many child athletes, college athletes who have received multiple concussions, and they're not receiving any sort of screening to see what type of impact that has in their long-term health. I think we're really doing people a disservice by not focusing on that. So that Rolling Stone article actually was extremely informative, and we have linked it in the show notes. If you you want to check it out.

Yeah, it's, it was done not too long ago, and I'm very happy that they did it. Absolutely. So, Richard's ashes have been spread in a few places around the world. So he was spread near the Ephesus in Turkey at the House of the Virgin Mary, as well as the Dolomites in Italy, Cook Inlet in Alaska in Key West. He was brought to Ephesus because he loved the book of Ephesians and had a tattoo on his risk that was actually inspired by Ephesians 213. Now, according to his mother and I found this information on a tribute page from Facebook,

which was actually extremely informative. So shout out to the young lady that runs that page. Yeah, absolutely. She does a great job. A great job. So according to his mom, quote, Bebo liked to call it the biggest but in the Bible. BUT.

It is the connection between what was, a time when the people were separated from God and lived without hope. But because of the blood of Jesus, we have been brought near to reconciliation to God the Father. End quote. So he also had a really interesting obituary as well that was pretty upbeat. And I really feel captured who he was as a person. Do you want to read that? Yeah, sure.

So cargo shorts. Bebo kept everything in his cargo shorts. Sometimes it was a bottle of craft beer. He had the deep pocket style. Sometimes it was an open bag of Swedish fish, or shells from Cabo for his wife's collection. And other times it was a wild coconut fusion pastry he picked up from a new bakery,

which he would then gently wrap in a napkin to share later. However, the sweetest things in his life were his love for Christ, his tender adoration of his wife Hannah, and his commitment to gently caring for his family and those around him, especially those in the margins and in pain. Bebo, in all his jokes and charisma, was a man who cared deeply and used how he was designed to serve other people. He fashioned his humor, his wit, his intellect, and his energy as tools to make people feel at home, as if they were the only ones in the room. He listened, truly listened to people's stories to understand who they were and where they came from.

He had a strong sense of awe for creation and desired to experience its goodness. He brought these gifts throughout his travel. and by doing so spread the gospel by word and deed to those he encountered. Simply, Bebo was a good man who made things better. He made us all better. We know this by his fruit, Matthew 720. He will be greatly missed. That's a really good obituary.

Very good obituary. And the research we've done on him, I'd say that summed him up very, very well. A GoFundMe has been set up to establish a trust for Richard's wife, Hannah. So we'll also link that in our show notes as well for you, if that's something that interests you. So in doing some research on Richard's case, I feel bad that we're calling him Richard, but I don't think we have his permission to call him Bebo. So we're going to keep with the Richard. I mean, I think a lot of people call him Bebo.

I think you can use Bebo and Richard, though a lot of people called him Bebo. I think it's totally fine to use it interchangeably. Yeah. So when we were doing research on this, we came across a video on YouTube that, had the... It was the full unedited transcripts of the air traffic control transmissions.

In a lot of the comments that we found, really I feel like, painted a really good picture of who he was as a person. His niece actually was one of the commenters, a post that was done over a year ago by a username Gweny who says that she was his niece. And I'll read just a bit about it.

It's quite long, but she writes, I know it's been almost two years, but I'm his niece and I still think about Bebo every day. I was only 12 when he died. I mean, I just think about the future about him not being around to see me or my siblings and cousins grow up at our weddings and it brings me to tears. This is the first time I've actually listened to this, though. I thought I was ready, but I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to this without bawling my eyes out. People just make assumptions about him that he was a bad person, didn't care about what he was doing or the people he might hurt.

That's probably all he thought about. He didn't harm anyone and didn't want to. I know that for a fact. He was a great person and a hell of an uncle. I miss him so much. My family in Alaska barely got to see him when he lived in Seattle, so it just feels like he hasn't visited for a while, you know, but then I remember he's actually gone, for real. And then you have like other people who never knew him, but were just inspired by his story. I saw one comment saying, oddly, this helped give me the courage to keep living. God bless Richard Russell, rest in peace. Somebody else wrote, I think about Richard in this accident a lot, but I never heard the full audio. There was something he said at the end that changed my mind of the whole thing. Richard says, quote, you know, the sights went by so fast. Dude, I was

thinking I was going to have this moment of serenity, you know? I was going to be able to take it all in, all the sites. It was a lot of pretty stuff, but I think they're prettier in a different context. And then he continues to write, for the past two years, I was very sad. This kind man had decided to kill himself. I felt some comfort that he went out having a blast. The audio I had heard before led me to believe that he did have this almost timeless moment up there flying around me using pure bliss, but that audio now fills me with dread. that he was starting to have some sort of regret. This just kills me because seeing him pull this off in a safe way as he did

just proves he could literally have accomplished anything. I don't think we mentioned earlier. Why is he called the Sky King? Because when this hit social media, a bunch of people on Twitter started putting airplane symbols after their handles and they referred to him as Sky King. He became revered that he went out on his terms doing this fantastic thing that people dream about doing

and he wanted to do it in a way that didn't hurt or inconvenience anyone and he did go through it in a way that didn't hurt or I mean he I'm sure he inconvenienced a lot of people with the succeeding investigations to follow but he could have done a lot of damage he could have killed many people

but he did not that doesn't make what he did right per se but I can see why people relate to him, especially when he has just this infectious personality. It's really hard to turn away from that. So obviously, there is talk about what would push somebody to do this. And now we've talked about CTE before. Could that have been an impulsivity factor? Sure. The big debate is, did Richard plan this, or was the spur of the moment, or a little mix of both? I think based on what the pilot said, finding him in there, learning about pre-flight procedures, it's possible he was planning this. And I've read other pilots say that if this guy only knew the

startup procedures, but didn't know how to fly a plane, he would have ended up in the ocean. There was no way he would have been able to keep that thing up. So that pilot's thought was that obviously he must have had some training. So for somebody to have that kind of experience, does that give credence to it was planned? It does. But it also could be one of those things where and people do this, they prepare themselves as if they were going to do something, but they never really follow through with the act. I'm sure you've met many people in life that talk about, oh, if I wanted to go out, this is how I do it. I do it like this. I do it like that. Or even on a lesser extent, oh, if I was going to quit my job, I would do exactly these things on my last day. And I would tell

this person off, this person off. People say these things. They don't necessarily go through with them. And I don't know if Richard thought he was going to go through with them. The one thing that makes me think that this was impulsive was Richard got up there and he said that he was a broken guy with a few screws loose but didn't really realize it until then. And maybe he had a lot of pain in him that was building up that he didn't really realize or focus on and this is a thing

at the end of the day this is a suicide case and I don't like when people talk about this case and minimize what he could have been struggling with because clearly he was struggling with something or else he wouldn't have done this

and for men in this society when you have pain you have grief you have things that you're struggling with you are made to feel like, one, you can't talk about them, but to a greater extent, you feel like you can't even focus on them. You can't even give them mental energy because that is weakness. And not only that in our society, male bodies are meant to be worked to death.

Yes. Yes, they are. And that brings us to the next topic, which is, you know, there's workplace motives. Minimum wage, he's making very little money for what he's doing. This is a workforce that's not unionized, depending on your feelings about it. But politics aside, just know that he had no real bargaining power here. And yeah, there's going to be somebody coming here being like, well, if he didn't like it, he could have found another job. Well, maybe he couldn't.

I don't know. Maybe he could go find something that actually pays the $15 minimum wage. I don't know. I don't know his situation. I know that he wanted to be in management. So maybe there was something about the airport industry that really he found a passion with, so he was willing to kind of stick it out where he was in the meantime. I don't know. We can only speculate. But I'm sure that was a difficulty. Furthermore, many employees and

former employees have gone a record to say that under Horizon Air, they were overworked and extremely underpaid and that they characterized the workplace culture as dysfunctional and toxic. Wages were complained about often, and one worker gave the state anonymously, and I quote, This is going to sound bad, but I'm kind of surprised it took as long as it did before something happened, end quote. And again, is this going to be a reason why somebody kills themselves? No, not necessarily, but these are all factors, all factors that together lead to someone snapping. And so before you come in here and try to dumpster us for talking about this and making it seem like, we're trying to be political, I'm not.

We would be doing Richard a disservice if we did not discuss all these possible factors, discuss the potential CTE, discuss the place that he was working at, and most importantly, discuss suicide in America, this silent killer that is getting worse, especially with men. Men are more likely to go through with suicide. We talk about this time and time again in a lot of our episodes, that there are are little resources and little respect when it comes to the mental health of men, whether it's in domestic violence situations or suicide situations.

Think of how Richard is characterized. This really supportive and warm person, he was described as somebody that wanted to really listen and understand other people. That takes a lot of strength. And yes, it's a great quality in a person, but to hold that up constantly, there's this quote of who will heal the healer. And when you spend all this time devoted to other people, again, very noble, but you don't get any time to focus on yourself. You can't talk about yourself.

You can't let somebody reciprocate and take care of you in that fashion, just to have somebody to just vent to. Sooner or later, that is going to crush you. It is very hard, very, very hard to operate like that permanently. without focusing on your own needs. Because when you let these things unresolved sit in your brain and your body, it charges interest on you. And sooner or later, that debt's going to be collected.

It's either collected in your physical health. You see what stressed out people end up looking like, their bodies, what becomes of them, or it comes collected on your mental health and you snap. In Richard's case, planned or not, he snapped that day. I don't fault the family because clearly there's not a single person. And I think people are more apt to talk about how, oh, I saw this coming after, after, like people always do this after somebody kills somebody, kills himself. They're like, oh yeah, I saw this coming.

That was a weird guy. But I have not seen a single person talk about Richard in that way. In fact, it's been quite the opposite. People have been like, I never saw this coming. There was never anything off about him that would ever make me think that he would do something. such a thing. And what does that tell you about how much of a problem this is? I think a lot of people are going to come in here and just be like, well, he did something really dangerous. I don't care. Look, you can really disapprove of what he did. And I'm going to go into afterwards the

potential dangers of what he did. So don't worry, I'm going to be fair about this. But you cannot ignore the mental health factor in this. You cannot ignore the problem that is suicide. the epidemic that is suicide. And I know a lot of people want to downplay men's issues. As if caring about men's issues means you're some sort of misogynist. There's this weird take going on right now where if you talk about men's issues in a vacuum, and I don't mean men's issues in light of misogyny, I'm not talking about in-cell culture or anything that. I'm just talking about men who struggling with depression, addiction, any sort of problem like that. The act of merely bringing it up means you're a misogynist. Like, I don't understand this at all. And because of that,

it's even harder for men to talk about this. And it's harder for other people to advocate for men. It's harder. I've seen women advocate for men. I mean, I advocate quite a bit for men. And it's very interesting when I do. If I post something, let's just say in my personal Facebook that is regarding my cats or women's issues, it's lit up with all sorts of reacts and comments. The minute I post some sort of men's issue. And generally it's for men's mental health or men's body positivity, radio silence. Yeah. And that's not as bad.

I remember the person who made that Richard Russell Facebook page we mentioned earlier. She was actually harassed by two women for, I believe it was talking about men's mental health. They basically swore at and things of that nature. It's like when you get this type of static talking about this, it makes it hard for people want to talk about. And that's on top of the feeling of weakness, the feeling of embarrassment you get from or you have to struggle with and telling somebody, you know, I'm not doing well. I have a problem. I'm very happy with our comment section when we released the Catherine Knight episode talking about men who are sufferers of domestic violence. I don't think we got a single negative comment that we spoke about that. Instead, we got a lot of positive comments being like, yeah, you're. you know, this is really a problem. You know, men's domestic violence is a huge issue that we're not talking about. And again, like domestic violence isn't a factor in this case specifically,

but these are one of these many issues that men face that they are made to feel like they cannot talk about. And that needs to change. Because if it doesn't change, there is going to be a whole lot more cases like this. And if we could go even further, I am not condoning. anyone who does something like this. But think of other ways that men snap. Richard snapped, and he did something, I mean, just basically wild and crazy and ultimately took his own life.

Did property damage? Yes, ultimately took his own life. What do other people do when they snap, especially when they feel unheard, and they feel resentful of society? They take other people's lives along with them. They take people down with them. they mean to take people down with them. And I'm not condoning that at all.

No. But this is a side effect. This is a side effect of a culture where people feel like they cannot talk about their issues, where they feel like they don't matter. So think about the type of world that you want to foster. So with that said, let me be fair and talk about what could have happened. I did not know just how long Richard was flying without a tail. What does that mean? He didn't have any other planes tailing him for 20 full minutes.

It took a while for air traffic to get in contact with the government to send out two fighter pilots that had air-to-air missiles to basically track him. And if he was going to do a terrorist act, they would basically get the clearance to shoot him down. there were people meeting and talking about what to do and ultimately no clearance was given to shoot him down or to engage him but just to follow him and he ended up bringing the plane down anyway so it wasn't needed but if Richard had this grand scheme and he took that plane up in the air he had 20 full minutes in that period of time he could have gotten to downtown

Seattle he could have crashed it into the space needle he could have crashed it into downtown Seattle he could have taken a lot of people's lives There was at the time I read a Pearl Jam concert going on in a stadium. A lot of people gathered together in a small area where one plane crash could have taken hundreds, if not thousands of lives. And there was nothing in place to stop that. Nothing at all. They had those planes. They were authorized to come up supersonic.

So they got there. When they were finally authorized, they got there in a matter of minutes. They were scrambled from, I believe, Oregon. So they got their supersonic in a matter of minutes. However, they didn't get there soon enough. And I'm critical of TSA and certain security measures we have in America, but this is just unacceptable. You'd think in a post-9-11 world that we would have something in place that if somebody hijacks a plane, they're able to be taken down, at least have the option to take them down pretty quickly.

So be very thankful that Richard was just out there looking to see the Olympics, see Mount Rainier, which is beautiful, I might add. Very beautiful. And do a barrel roll. And to see that orca. And to see that orca, which he didn't end up getting to see the orca, but he saw the Olympics and he saw Mount Rainier. And it is quite the sight. I recommend it to anyone. I really hope wherever he is now, he got to see that baby orca.

I hope so too. And this isn't something that happened 10 years ago. This happened three years ago. I'm not going to go too much more into this, and we've been going for a little while, but it begs the argument, are we strict in ways that don't matter and not strict in ways that do matter? Such as this case, most hijackings, if you look at aviation hijacking history, comes from insider jobs. You would think there'd be a plan in place here. You would think if somebody takes off the tarmac unauthorized, there is some sort of plan that. is mobilized immediately so you get countermeasures. I don't know what was going on there. Given the other options, this went as well as it could have. And that's all I really have to say about that.

Agreed. So with that out of the way, if you've listened this far, and again, this is one of the longer episodes we've done in some time. Suicide prevention, mental health awareness, these are very important things to us, things I'm very passionate about. And September being Suicide Awareness Month, Suicide Prevention Month. I felt this needed to be done. I apologize if I got a little long-winded

here, but I hope you understand the sentiment behind it all. I think it's important that you got long-winded because a lot of things just needed to be said. I think so. And I mean, it's probably going to happen again. I mean, last year when we did this, we did four episodes. I'll probably try to do another one into October if we can. Please, if you know any major super, suicides, suspicious suicides, suicides that really highlight the epidemic in America or in any country. I would consider it a worldwide epidemic. Please send them to us, Missouri Machine Podcast at gmail.com, YouTube comment section, message us. I want to be able to do more cases like this.

The hardest one for me was doing Ronnie McNutt, but I think there's many others that have kind of, you know, fallen by the wayside, which most these do that I'd like to give attention to if for nothing else than to raise more awareness around mental health and suicide next week we're going to be doing one that's extremely important to me and I know important to a lot of listeners out there yes and well why don't we say it right now because it's anthony bordain and if if you have any thoughts and feelings about what he meant to you what his life meant to you and how he impacted you during the time that he was alive we'd love to hear from you about it as well so that that's goes if you have any pictures, if you have any art, anything you'd like included into the

episode, any quotes, please send it to us and we will, you know, definitely make it part of our episode. Have you have your picture taken with him? Like, send it to us. We'd love to put that up. We'd love to include our listeners in this. And if you listen this far, this is my way of saying, thank you. So please, please reach out to us.

We'd love to facilitate that. If you're listening on YouTube, please like and subscribe. This is the best way to support our channel. Many people have been sharing our episodes with other people. This is a fantastic way to help us grow and build as a channel and as a podcast. So thank you so much for doing that for us. It goes a very long way. We also have a very wonderful group of people that have gone the extra step to support us on Patreon.

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goes back into making this podcast that much better for you. And please go to the Richard Bebo-Russell's Sky King tribute page on Facebook. We'll link it in the description. His mom's a member there. Go show some love. Yes, absolutely.

I reached out to her for a comment. I haven't heard back yet, but I very much support this page and I think you should check it out. Absolutely. But until next week. We love you. We love you.

Bye. Bye.