True Crime Campfire - Stooperheroes: A Grab Bag of Unlikely Avengers

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Most of us grew up loving superhero stories. My favorite was always the X-Men. I liked the idea of these people who were born with mutations that initially made them targets of bigotry or fear, then harnessing those differences to do good in the world. I’ve always been a big believer in “give what you’ve got”—if you have a special gift or talent, use it to make the world better. But here’s the thing: Most of us recognize that superheroes are a metaphor for this idea. You’re not supposed to literally dress up in a cape and tights and go around town looking for muggers to fight off, or create a mysterious fake identity to rally people toward a nebulous cause. Evidently, though, some folks never got the memo on that. We’re gonna tell you about a couple of them. Sources:Phoenix New Times: https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/penis-man-graffiti-returns-to-phoenix-after-yearslong-absence-15573929https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/penis-man-grafitti-tagger-sentenced-and-fined-in-tempe-11533751https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/penis-man-graffiti-tempe-arizona-vandalism-culture-neighborhood-11421292Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7943525/Penis-Man-tagger-reveals-just-one-vandals-using-slogan-Arizona.htmlYouTuber Gavin Wants Pizza Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattle-superhero-phoenix-jones-charged-after-undercover-drug-bust/The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/12/the-superhero-complex-masked-man-real-life-inspired-podcast-phoenix-jonesReal Life Superheroes Wiki, Phoenix Jones: https://wiki.rlsh.net/wiki/Phoenix_JonesYouTuber Interesting Stuff From Around the WorldYouTuber Atrocity Guidehttps://youtu.be/HWo9OchEdg4?si=onwsCoGnBIpAqRg6https://wiki.rlsh.net/wiki/Rex_Velvethttps://komonews.com/news/local/12-year-old-secret-agent-helps-foil-local-villainFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Most of us grew up loving superhero stories. My favorite was always the X-Men. I like the idea of these people who were born with mutations that initially made them targets of bigotry or fear, then harnessing those differences to do good in the world. I've always been a big believer in give what you've got. If you have a special gift or talent,

use it to make the world better. But here's the thing. Most of us recognize that superheroes are a metaphor for this idea. You're not supposed to literally dress up in a cape and tights and go around town looking for muggers to beat up, or create a mysterious fake identity to rally people toward a nebulous cause. Evidently, though, some folks never got the memo on that. We're going to tell you about a couple of them. This is Superheroes, a grab bag of unlikely Avengers. Case 1. A hard one to solve.

The Tale of Penis Man. So, campers, for this one, we're in Tempe, Arizona, right at the end of 2019. COVID hadn't hit the U.S. yet. We were all blissfully unaware of the chaos that was about to fall upon us, and in Tempe, a mystery was unfolding. The mystery of penis man. All over town, people were noticing his mark, the name penis man in a distinctive all-caps handwriting. Tempe was no stranger to graffiti, but this guy was prolific. He was tagging mattresses, dumpsters, the sides of buildings, pretty much any blank space you could point a can. a spray paint at. My favorite is when he put it on a row of port-a-johns, one letter on each one. That one was

pretty impressive. But nobody knew why he was doing this, and nobody knew who penis man was. His moniker was popping up all over the place, but like any good superhero, he refused to reveal his identity. Obviously, our guy was a grower, not a shower. And in the absence of a person to take credit for the tags and explain his motive, penis man's legend began to grow. Penis Man was developing a fan base. The thing that cracks me up the most about this, by the way, is that he wasn't out there drawing actual dicks.

He was just writing penis man all over the place. There's just something about that that strikes me as so funny. It's like something Dwight Shrewt would do. You know, like drawing, drawing the dongs would be a step too far. We don't want to get crazy over here. Right. That's so funny to me. The citizenry, of course, had its own opinions on the matter.

One of the local news stations did some man-on-the-street interviews, and reactions were mixed. One lady called the graffiti obnoxious. One guy said he thought it was pretty funny, but he'd hate for kids to see it. Y'all's just the word penis. Calm down. See, it's just a word penis. It's just a word. And it's the correct word.

It's not dick. It's not dick, man. I know. That's the scientific, like that's the correct word. It's so white shrewdy. I just can't even. Another guy commented on the news station's website that penis man was the only thing lately that made him proud to be in Arizona.

A lady responded that she thought penis man was immature and tacky. And although there were some who agreed with her, she still got dog piled to dust. It must have been her first day on the internet. or something. And the longer this went on, the more penis man's fans adored him. A video about him on a news station's YouTube channel got comments like, the man, the myth, the legend, penis man. A Facebook group emerged, penis man fans, then a Twitter page and an Instagram account called Minus Pan. There was fan art. There were t-shirts. There were presidential campaign materials, penis man 2020. And before long, there were copycats. The real penis man had been

prolific enough. Now that there were impostors on the loose, the tags were springing up everywhere. The penis man fans were pleased about this for the most part. The account admin tweeted, Our official position on copycats is that they are a good thing. Y'all, they have an official position. The jokes write themselves. He went on, They help throw the Tempe PD off the real penis man's trail, but more importantly, they show that penis man is more than just a single individual. Penis Man is an idea, a movement. That's beautiful man. I feel like the national anthem should be playing in the background by now. A popular blogger named Koli Mick took it even further, writing, The Penis Man is a watchful,

silent hero of Tempe, Arizona. History books will be written. This time in society will be reflected upon. Do you want to be on the side against the penis man? Of course you don't. Long live the penis man. May no street corners stop sign or park bench go untagged in Tempe as long as you rain. So it was all in good fun, probably, but for some reason, heat-related delirium, maybe. As the weeks went by and the tags continued to show up all over town, the Tempe police decided that penis man was a top priority. These guys were determined. to catch him. Imagine they had a big Pepe Sylvia type board at police headquarters with like red yarn and thumbtacks, marking all the places penis man had left his stain.

Yeah, there's not much to do in Tempe, I'm guessing. Yeah, it sure sounds like it. I mean, you know, by this point, it was the very start of the pandemic. We were all a little weird in the heads of whatever. But considering that some of the other graffiti in town was like racist and stuff, it doesn't seem like penis man should have really been first on the list, but what do I know? Won't somebody think of the children? I can't allow them to see the word penis. 2019 saw over 300,000 graffiti incidents in Tempe.

But apparently, the town had some rule about obscene graffiti specifically, where it had to be addressed within 48 hours. Can't you just see him in the war room at the Tempe PD headquarters like, this filthy bastard just keeps coming? We must act now, gentlemen, or this minute. will only continue to spread his seeds of rebellion all over our city. Jokes aside, though, it's kind of understandable why they hated it. Yeah, I mean, for one thing, it was creating extra work for the cleanup guys.

That sucks. And for another, penis man had started tagging some local historical landmarks. It's one thing to spray paint a dumpster. It's another to unload all over the old Hayden flour mill, or the Big A on Hayden Butte. I guess they were just determined not to deliver a flaccid response. Hell no. Penis man had become Tempe PD's Moby. No, that's too easy. He was going to be there Battle of Gettysburg and he must be destroyed no matter how hard it would be. You got to make sure your police standoff doesn't last more than four hours, though.

Then you've got to go see a doctor. He tagged City Hall, too, by the way, in a bunch of spots on the campus of ASU. And finally, on Thursday, January 23rd, it all came to a head when the police got CCTV footage of penis man tagging a wall. They had a clear view of his face, and better yet, a clear view of his car. Busted. Penis Man, it turns out, was a 39-year-old guy named Dustin Schomer, and he didn't deny that he was responsible for some of the graffiti. But was Dustin Schumer the real penis man, or was he one of the many impostors? A cheap knockoff.

Was he Lifetime, or was he Trojan? Well, according to him, he's a copycat. Dustin told YouTuber Gavin wants pizza that he first heard about penis man from a childhood friend a few months after the whole thing started. He said he and his friend had actually been arrested together for graffiti when they were in high school. He told a few sources that he suspects this friend is the real penis man, but he can't prove it. The New Phoenix Times tells it a little differently, that Dustin was inspired to copycat penis man when he heard some people talking about the graffiti in a bar.

He said, I thought it was a good message. This isn't the only instance where we'll find Dustin telling a couple of different stories, by the way. We'll get to that later. Dustin seems like an interesting guy. He's got a degree from Arizona State University in Japanese language and literature. After graduation, he moved to Germany. Natural choice when you've just spent the last four years painstakingly learning Japanese, right?

and lived there for nine years. Interestingly, he says the Germans have a really casual attitude about graffiti. It's not the kind of thing you get arrested for there. Dustin also admits he struggled with his mental health over the years. In an interview with YouTuber Gavin wants pizza, he said he was in a manic phase when he found out about penis man, and he was totally reckless in the way he went about it. He didn't wear a mask, he didn't try to hide his car.

If you didn't know better, you'd think he'd think he, wanted to get caught. But he said that A, he wasn't thinking clearly at the time. And B, it didn't even occur to him that he might get arrested for this. And look, you know, I'm all for harmless folk heroes, especially ones as funny as the anonymous penis man. But people keep talking about the message behind the tags. Like, penis man will not be silenced. Okay, but like, what message are we talking about? What is the message? I mean, he's writing penis man on stuff. He's not like Keith Herring over here, right? I guess maybe it's just a message of general rebellion, and I guess I can get behind that.

I hate it when people refuse to have a sense of humor. It's like, come on, man, is it really going to traumatize a kid to see the word penis? Really? I would have been delighted with that as a kid. It's hilarious. So, go on, penis man. Keep on, keeping on. We're all behind you.

Dustin himself had a pretty firm idea of what the message was. He posted on Facebook that penis man was a, quote, protest. against corrupt local government, which seems like a little bit of a reach to me, but whateves. He wrote, Penis Man is neither man nor woman. You nor me. We are all penis man.

Are we, though, Dustin? I mean, are we? I, for one, am not. Interestingly enough, though, Dustin told a different story to YouTuber Gavin once pizza. To him, he said, he just thought it would be funny to write penis man all over stuff. Plus, he liked the superhero vibe. He was into superheroes. So maybe he was trolling with all that corrupt local government stuff.

I mean, on what planet is that activism? If somebody could explain that to me, I would love to hear it. He did tag the front of one of the municipal buildings in Tempe, but come on. You know, he's not exactly a freedom fighter over here. He did enjoy all the penis man fan pages, he said, and he participated in some of the discussions. He got into a back and forth with that lady who called the tags Tacky, for example, told her if she didn't like penis man, she should go start her own movement. Some of his comments were funny.

Now, there are two different accounts of how Dustin's arrest went down. Dustin tells it like this, and this is again from the Gavin wants pizza interview. Go watch the whole thing if you're interested. It's really, you know, it's fascinating. Dustin said, I was sitting at my computer. I'd woken up kind of late in the day. I was up late the night before, I think maybe tagging. And I was at my computer, which was by the front door.

There was a loud knock at the door, I opened the door, I was still in my boxers, and there was a police officer with a silenced machine gun, a police officer with a shotgun, a police officer with a beanbag shotgun, a police officer with a pistol, police officer with a battering ram, and then several other officers downstairs. These officers were all on my balcony outside my door, and they basically said, put your hands behind your back, you know, you're under arrest. They were ready to pound down my door if I didn't open it in seconds. and there was officers all over the complex, dozens of officers in the bushes, plane-closed officers, uniformed officers, there was news media there, I think Channel 3, and yeah, it was scary. He said he thinks they were hoping for the chance to shoot him. He says he has PTSD from having all those weapons in his face.

Sounds absolutely awful, right? Just a grossly outsized response. But here's the thing. There's news footage of the cops' walk. walking up to Dustin's door, cuffing him and perp walking him out of his apartment building and into a police car, and it tells a different story. We see three cops, one with a canine, and no sign of anybody in SWAT gear. Nobody bursting out of the bushes, nobody carrying a battering ram. The cops seemed to have their bulletproof vests on, but that's about it.

Yet, as far as we could tell, Dustin stick into his story. Could it be that his perceptions were clouded because of his mania and the stress of the situation? Maybe, but dude, there's footage of it. At some point, you've got to consider that you're wrong. And we've got to consider that he might just be lying. In the aftermath of Dustin's arrest, the allegedly real penis man came out of the shadows with a YouTube video. And y'all, this thing has to be seen to believe. It's so wrong. It's a guy in a latex penis mask that looks like something out of a Hironas Bosch painting. Like, that thing's going to haunt my nightmares. penis man on a piece of poster board to prove he's the real guy.

How that proves anything, I don't know, but yeah. Maybe he thinks like some handwriting graffiti expert is going to come out and be like, yep. And I really, I mean, it does look like the tags, it does. But come on, man, like that proves nothing. He said that he regretted that Dustin Schumer had to suffer for his sins, but he still didn't identify himself. So he must not have felt that bad. And I mean, Dustin admitted that he did some of the graffiti, so it's not like they had an innocent man. Innocent man. See, I'm doing it too,

talking like the guy's Hannibal Lecter or something. That's contagious. Anyway, for reasons I cannot fathom. They decided to throw the entire book at this man. They charged Dustin with eight counts of criminal damage to property, 16 counts of aggravated criminal damage, and one count of first-degree trespass. Some of these were felony charges. Yeah. If he'd been convicted on all counts and gotten the maximum sentence for each, he could have served 20-plus years in prison, which I hope we could all agree is some bullshit. Good God. That is so dumb. Yeah, like, they don't, they don't yell at Banksy for his shit. I know, right? In England. Like, you know, England. England has Banksy. We We have penis man.

Yeah, penis man. It's about equivalent. Well, they're both making deep political statements, evidently. I know. And they're about equal as far as they're Deb, in my opinion. I'm joking. I'm joking. Get out, really?

I didn't pick up on that. I don't like Banksy. That was the joke. Anyway, lucky for Dustin. He was offered a plea deal. In the end, he was sentenced to three years of supervised probation, a deferred four-month jail sentence. He won't have to serve it if he completes 500 hours of community service, and he had to pay eight grand in restitution. It's a lot for a few graffiti tags, but hey, it's not 20 years, so that's something.

Later, he told Gavin wants pizza that after his arrest, he got a ton of DMs from random people who wanted to get to know him, wanted to pick the brain of the penis man. It wasn't great for his mental health at the time, he said. so he ended up not enjoying his notoriety much. The alleged real penis man remains a phantom, and he seems to have stopped tagging. So that's where the case stands today. And now that this chapter of his story has apparently reached its climax, only one question remains.

Is he all worn out, or will penis man rise again? Penis man, penis man does whatever. penis can. He rises up in the night. He's coming fast to win the fight. Look out. Look out for penis man. I've been waiting to do that the whole time. I know you have.

So that's got to be one of the weirdest stories I have ever heard in my life. And this next one is even weirder. Case 2. Up from the ashes and back down again, the strange story of Phoenix Jones. For this one, we're in Seattle, Washington, January of 2020. The city was in shock. A superhero, Phoenix Jones had followed. Not to the devilish plans of some nefarious foe, not in some noble act of self-sacrifice,

no, Phoenix Jones, an icon of Seattle's weird real-life superhero scene, had fallen for an undercover sting operation where he thought he was selling ecstasy and cocaine to a bunch of women in town to celebrate a birthday. So how in the hell did we get here? Well, Benjamin John Francis Fodor, or possibly Fodor, I'm not sure which, was born in Texas in 1988 and spent his early years bouncing through the foster care system until a Seattle couple adopted him at the age of nine. Both he and his new brother Caros loved comic books, martial arts, and movies that dripped with testosterone.

These were definitely kids who could happily sit and watch Predator three times in a row. I mean, same, honestly, but whatever. Carros joined the Marines as soon as he could, but that evidently wasn't for Ben. There aren't any crowds in the military. Ben fought in his first amateur M.MA fight in 2006 at the age of 18. He used the name Fear the Flat Top, so you can guess it as hairstyle, straight up and topped with gold like a duracell battery. The black and gold color scheme would stay with Ben,

although not in his hair. That would go back to black, but for the rest of the story, just assume it gets a little wilder with every year that goes by. Ben could fight. As an amateur, his record was 15 wins and two defeats. He would briefly go pro in 2013, but we have to be clear what that means, okay? This wasn't like playing Major League Baseball.

This was fighting in front of small crowds for not much money. By now, Ben had two kids, and his real job was at a daycare center for children with special needs. But like any good superhero, it was soon time for young Ben to come face to face with his nemesis. A crushing, ravenous need for attention. According to Ben, a couple of things triggered. his superheroic metamorphosis. First, his car got broken into, and his young son fell and cut himself on the glass.

What really pissed Ben off was that plenty of people apparently saw the break-in and did nothing at all about it. I don't know what he wanted him to do. The thief had left a ski mask in the broken glass beside the car. You know, those ski masks that car thieves always wear and discard at the scene of the crime. Ben put the mask in his glove compartment. Look, okay, maybe the dude's car.

got broken into. It's not that uncommon in big cities. It happened to me like five times when I used live in Baltimore, but the mask stuff just sounds made up to me. Either way, as origin stories go, this is hardly Batman's parents getting gunned down in Crime Alley. There has to be an acceptable bar of criminal activity that inspires a vigilante lifestyle, or the streets would just be full of costumed weirdos and double Parker vengeance, man will be slashing tires all over town. I would be the vengeance woman of the people that don't put their shopping carts back. I'm not sure what that would be called, but anyway, it's, it irritates me. There is a guy.

There is a guy. I know. The cart marks. Yes, I know. And he's, and he's so mean and it's so entertaining. Yeah. It's so entertaining. And listen, I love it because I used to work at a grocery store and I was the cart girl and it was a fucking nightmare.

I'm sure, absolutely. A fucking nightmare. And people are so rude. And it takes two seconds, people. Put your card away. And obviously there are exceptions for some people. We get that. But like, if you're perfectly able to do it, fucking do it for God's sakes. Because here's what, here's the excuse I constantly hear, right?

Well, I'm a mom and I'm afraid of being abducted at the grocery. You're not going to be fucking abducted at the grocery store. Wait, what? And people say that? Yes, because they think their children are going to do. My beautiful blonde daughter. daughter is going to be child trafficked. I'm like, well, first of all, that's based in racism.

So shut the fuck out. And the parking lot of the Kroger? Your child is more likely to be trafficked by you or a family member than a stranger at a parking lot in, like, Target. Absolutely. You can walk your child in the cart to the cart corral, pick them up where they are safe with you, and walk back to your car. And honestly, if you're.

genuinely worried about that, do not bring the kids with you to that. Like if you really think that is likely to happen, which I promise you, it isn't. I have been a true crime obsessive for almost 30 years and I have never heard of anything like that in terms of trafficking or whatever. If you're that worried about it, then for the love of God, don't take the kid with you. It's a war zone out there, apparently. If you're genuinely scared of like statistics about missing children, I urge you to look into why the statistics are the way they are. 90% of missing children are found, okay? And most of them are abducted by a custodial parent.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the reason, because of the way the Amber Alert system is, they have to be reported. So when people say, there's, whatever, I think I said somebody say, there's 300,000 missing children every year. I'm like, that would be like a national crisis. So, no.

There's a lot of weird misinformation out there. There aren't. But some children go missing multiple times. Some children run away, but they're returned by the end of the day. Some parents, there's custody issues. That's all it is. Anyway, sorry, I digress. Well, it's not all it is.

I mean, abductions happen, but they're very rare. They're very rare. It is vanishingly rare to have a stranger abduct your children. child it just really is i promise you so anyway that was a hell of a rabbit hole yeah sorry um all right so next one of ben's friends was getting beat up outside a bar and again no one was doing anything ben ran back to his car to get his phone and call the police this was 2010 well into the cell phone era any of you out there leaving your phones in your car because i'm not anyway when he was getting his phone ben found the ski mask the car thief had left and he put it on and i imagine there was like

theme music going when he did that, you know, slowly put the ski mask on, ran back to the bar and chased after and detained the guy attacking his buddy until the cops got there. Now that's a little weird, right? Why did you need the mask? So what I think actually happened is that Ben bought a ski mask and kept it in his glove compartment just in case an opportunity came up for him to have some fun playing Daredevil. And evidently, he did have fun because from then on, Ben Fodor decided he was going to be a superhero. If you ask me, the itch Ben was feeling would have been scratched just as well if he joined a little community theater. Because at heart, he's just a big drama-seeking ham, but he chose the grim, lonely life of a crime fighter instead.

Well, not really so lonely because one of the first things Ben did was recruit a crew to follow him around and back him up. It's dangerous out there, you know. You could get hurt. That, though, was a little later. At first, Ben just drove around Seattle at night, and if he saw anything suspicious, he just put on the ski mask, take off his shirt, jump out of his car, and start shouting. Okay, if you want to keep a secret identity, I get the ski mask, but why is he taking off the shirt? Ben had distinctive tattoos, which everyone got to see at MMA events. This wasn't helping him keep a secret identity, but it did let him show off his pecks and abs, which I kind of think was.

the whole point. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure how reassured victims of street crime were to have a big half-naked dude in a ski mask running towards them and yelling, but Ben apparently did successfully scare off some criminals. Not surprisingly, he was also apprehended by police several times. If you're an officer responding to a crime scene, I don't think you're just going to accept the word of a guy in the ski mask that he's there to fight crime just like you.

Ben developed a proper superhero identity, Phoenix Jones. Well, I say proper, but the second name part is a bit weird. It's not Aquaman Johnson or Black Widow Smith. It's probably nod to Indiana Jones because his first costume featured a fedora, black fedora, black ski mask, black cape, gray shirt, black pants. It was terrible. Yeah. He also wasn't finding it easy to dive into the superhero life.

one time from the rooftops he saw a woman being mugged Batman might be able to swing down in a second but Phoenix Jones had to clatter noisily down a fire escape when he got to the ground panting the woman said he left already and you look like Count Chocula

you look stupid this woman is my freaking hero oh my god you like Count Chocula forget the local community theater like he would have loved like he would love just being part of like one of those like small like not quite WWE like wrestling groups like I think he'd have a blast he created a character like yeah I agree completely he's very theatrical yeah like he'd love coming down from the top rope to, you know, hit the criminal.

Like, I just, uh, anyway. Maybe he tried to get down that fire escape as fast as he could, but as we'll see a little later, reacting slowly to situations where he might actually get hurt would turn out to be one of Phoenix Jones's signature moves. He started arming himself with Batman style gadgets. He got a grappling hook, but discovered they're a lot harder to use and it looks like in the comic books and soon ditched it. And speaking of ditching things, he also got a net gun and one time tried to fire it at a fleeing criminal, but the net just tangled up Phoenix Jones himself and he

tripped and fell into a ditch where he started drowning in four inches of water. The crook he was chasing, came back, turned him over so he wouldn't die, punched him in the face, robbed him, and told him to give up being a superhero, which I think was excellent. advice for free. For freezes. Oh, my God. When the police turned up and found the fedora-wearing superhero tied up in a dish, they laughed and took photos of him. Oh, Lord. A less titanic ego might have been bruised, but Phoenix Jones kept at it. While he tried to break up a street fight, he got cut with a knife, and that inspired him to get a new look, a sleek rubber suit, complete with molded pecks and abs, very obviously based on the DC Hero Nightwing, but with gold instead of

blue. It's honestly a pretty sweet outfit, and I assume Ben Fodor paid somebody else to design it because he had zero sense of style himself. Initially, he still tried to pair his sleek new look with his fedora and cape. And when you see a picture of it, just imagine that. Imagine how stupid that would look. He claimed that his suit was stab-proof and bulletproof titanium and steel, which it very obviously was not. Actual bulletproof vests are a real thing, of course, but as far as I know, they don't come with a molded six-pack, so that wouldn't do for Phoenix Jones. The new outfit also featured clunky boots that looked suspiciously like their main purpose was to add an inch or so of height. A local comic bookstore had a neat little back room with a hidden door disguised as one

of the shelves holding the comics, and this was where Ben Fodor would go to change into his Phoenix Jones identity. Obviously, everyone at the comic book store knew who he was, and if this was about preserving his supposedly secret identity, he might as well have changed back at his apartment and saved himself some time. But that wasn't what it was about. He was a big kid playing a game, and the secret quick change was part of that. A local news story drastically increased Phoenix Jones's profile in the Northwest. If you've ever spent much time watching local news, you'll know they're very fond of their, look at this freak stories. Along with his upgraded profile, he got an upgraded arsenal, a stun baton, handcuffs, and two million scovil pepper spray, which would very

quickly become his go-to weapon. Now, I'm not going to say Phoenix Jones didn't do any good. He chased off or pepper sprayed a couple of would-be car thieves and used the stun baton to convince a drunk driver to get out of his car. And in 2011, he broke up what he claimed to think was a street fight. The participants said they were just dancing, and the end result was a young woman chasing Phoenix Jones down the street trying to beat him with her shoe saying, you shit, you got pepper spray in my eye. I love how hard the women were on him because it's like, you know he was hoping he was going to get laid out of this. And they're just like, fuck off count chocula. Oh, Lord. Someone on the street made a pretty confused 911 call. Um, there's a huge.

A huge fight on Columbia and Western, a huge group of people are fighting in pepper spray and superheroes. I don't know. Phoenix Jones was arrested, but was released without charge. But when you're arrested, Phoenix Jones crime fighter isn't really going to cut it as an ID. They got his real name, of course. Anyone with much interest in Phoenix Jones had already long since put two and two together and figured out he was Ben Fodor, but he decided to do a dramatic reveal anyway, pulling off his mask outside the courthouse and saying, I'm Phoenix Jones. I'm also Ben Fodor. I also

protect this city. I also am a father. I also am a brother. I'm just like everyone else. The only difference is that I decided to make a difference and stop crime in my neighborhood and my area. Like we said, he really should have just joined a community theater, the big goob. Phoenix Jones was soon joined on the streets by other attention-hungry weirdos like Ghosts. Midnight Jack, and notably El Caballero, a lanky, pasty white dude who described himself as a luchador crime fighter and patrolled the streets in a Mexican wrestler's mask and red sombrero. Now, this led to one uncomfortable confrontation with an understandably pissed-off Mexican dude who thought El Caballero was making fun of his heritage.

El Caballero's response was, well, you're wearing an Argyle shirt. That's Scottish. The Mexican dude just said, what? Which I think is pretty much exactly the right response. Why are they always, why are they trying hats? The capes I kind of get, why are they all trying hats on top of masks? Hats, I know, it is weird. That hat's going to fly right off in a real combat situation. Come on.

Not to mention the, you know, the implications of the sombrero on a white guy. I know, it's so wrong. Oh, God. That's so funny. Another member of Phoenix Jones' superhero crew was Purple Rain, his girlfriend. Apparently they met on a dating app with Ben Fodor using a fake name and identity. A few hours before their first date, he messaged her and said, I sort of moonlight as a superhero. I'm going to come in my super suit.

I'm not going to take my mask off because I have a secret identity. You have to refer to me as Phoenix, and I'll see you there. I think a lot of people would go on that date just for the story, but apparently they really hit it off. Phoenix's date said, your suit looks wet. Apparently, Phoenix Jones had been stabbed earlier in the day and had super glued the wound shut, but he'd been having such a good time on the date and laughing so much, it had come open and started bleeding.

Oh, my God. When they drove to an alley and she helped super glue. his belly shut, Phoenix Jones was sure he'd found the one. Did it happen like that? Ben Photor's MFA career continued, obviously shirtless, and just as obviously lacking the scars of amateur super glue surgery. And if there's anyone who thinks a meet-cut story is improved by adding a random stab wound, it's him.

Anyway, they hit it off, possibly got married quite quickly. The sources are a little fuzzy on that. and Purple Rain was soon born. She did go out on the streets with Phoenix and his crew, but she mainly used her superhero identity as a tool to raise money for domestic violence charities. Purple Rain is pretty cool, too cool for Phoenix Jones, who she broke up with in 2013.

Good for her. Phoenix Jones had another semi-viral moment when a bunch of drunks were having fun following and insulting his crew, and Phoenix and one of them agreed to fight each other, all while a cop stood and watched. Seattle apparently has a mutual combat ordinance that says it's perfectly fine for two people to fight each other as long as they both agree to it and no one else gets hurt. There's no doubt that Phoenix Jones actually does know how to fight. He quickly knocked the dude out with the whole thing caught on camera because he rarely went out to fight crime without a videographer.

Defending the city is nice, but content is king. There's no doubt the guy was being a dick. but is that a really heroic thing to do? Yeah. Ben Fodor was a professional fighter, and this guy was just a drunk asshole. Ben could have just kept walking, but the man is 95% ego.

I'm pretty sure Batman would have just kept walking. Oh, for sure. Yeah. In 2012, there were widespread protests, including in Seattle, on Mayday. Phoenix Jones claimed that he'd learned about a plot to blow up a city courthouse. And when the police ignored him, Phoenix and his fellow hero set out to defend the courthouse. He almost certainly made the whole thing up to get footage of him and his

buddy's pepper spray any protesters who got too close. At one point, he calls out to Midnight Jack, Pepperwall, go back to back, brother. I kind of just like automatically wanted to do that in the whole Cogan voice, but I stopped myself. Well, protesters mill about around 30 feet away. very much trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. And then he got himself a bona fide supervillain. Oh, sort of. Rex Velvet had a bowler hat, eye patch, upturned mustache, bowtie, and shiny suit, and in a number of very well-made YouTube videos,

he declared his villainy, his contempt for the silly nerds of Seattle's superhero community, and his particular enmity for Phoenix Jones. All very obviously tongue-in-cheek. Rex Velvet was actually actor Ryan Corey, and his one act of super villainy was to kidnap Seattle Seahawks mascot Blitz, giving locals a chance to see one man in a bowler hat and another dressed as a giant bird racing across Lake Washington in a speedboat. I love this story so much. This was all arranged by the Make a Wish Foundation to give a 12-year-old named Colby, who suffered from spinal muscular atrophy, the chance to track down a supervillain and defeat him in an epic, silly.

string battle. You may have won the battle, but you have not won the war, Rex yelled as he fled. That must have been so fun for that kid. Yeah. Phoenix Jones took superheroing very seriously, and he did not get the joke. I don't have anything to say to him. I live in the real world, and I don't promote or accept or even acknowledge people who want to do acts of villainy at any time, even if it's not real. In April 2012, a young woman named Nicole Westbrook was shot in a drag by shooting close to where Phoenix Jones was patrolling. He and his crew hurried to the sound of the shots and jumped to some quick conclusions

when they saw a man in a backpack running away. There he is, that's the shooter, backpack running. Police would ultimately suspect that the man in the backpack was actually the intended target of the shooting, but Phoenix chased after him anyway. Later admitted that he deliberately didn't run as fast as he could because he was nervous about facing someone armed with a gun and that he was relieved when police stopped him and told him to stop chasing the guy.

This was all a very normal human response, and you have to give Ben some kudos for owning up to it, but he was nevertheless shaken up, both by the shooting. Nicole later died in hospital and his own response to it. Things went from bad to worse. El Caballero left the superhero crew, accusing Phoenix Jones of stealing his helmet. After their breakup, Purple Rain soon followed. The whole superhero team soon fell apart with former members accusing Jones of being a con artist.

He insisted they all get bulletproof suits like his, telling them he knew a guy who could make them. They just had to give Phoenix the cash for the work. They did, but no fancy suits ever appeared. Phoenix also insisted they pay him a monthly fee for health insurance, but never showed them any evidence of these policies actually existing. I kind of wish they did exist, just so I could see what the premiums would be. And what does your organization do, sir?

Oh, we go out at night looking to get into fights. The exiting heroes also claimed that Jones only really cared about making a mark on the internet and that his crime fighting mainly consisted of goading drunk people leaving bars into fights so he could get some good video footage. Phoenix Jones continued to patrol the city alone, but clearly wasn't getting the buzz out of it that he once had. He tried a couple of things to boost his superhero profile, commissioning a comic book with himself as the hero and using the Phoenix Jones character in his MMA fights.

This included a fight against his brother Caros, who after he got out of the Marines had also pursued a career in MMA, with more success than Ben, even briefly fighting in the UFC. This was hyped up as a civil war between two brothers who despised each other. It's probably not a coincidence that they pulled this stunt right when Captain America's Civil War was coming out. Anyway, the two brothers convincingly snarled at each other and pushed each other around. Ben told the camera, when Caros looks at himself,

he's going to have to ask himself if he'd be ready to kill me, because that's what it's going to take. You did this. This is your fault. Oh, Ben, always with the drama. Caros didn't kill him, but did convincingly whip his little brother's ass, winning a unanimous decision. The two of them apparently got along fine when Ben's not hammin it, up for the cameras, by the way.

After his true identity was revealed, Ben got fired from the daycare center where he worked, which I think is understandable. However he justified it, Ben was clearly someone who enjoyed violence. And that, plus his superhero life, could open up an employer to all sorts of liabilities. He tried to make a serious attempt at an MMA career, but that wasn't paying many bills. So what was paying the bills? Not all superheroes can be nepo babies like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne. One of Phoenix Jones's particular targets was drug dealers.

There's plenty of footage of him warning drug dealers to get out of Seattle, including one where he puts his best Christian bail voice and yells, Stop doing drugs in my city! At someone. At least, these were people Phoenix Jones assumed were drug dealers, but as we've already seen, he would have been first in line to buy a jump to conclusion. Matt. All he really wanted was footage to post online.

In 2020, Ben Fodor was arrested in an undercover drug bust for selling small amounts of ecstasy and cocaine. Acquaintances said he'd been doing it for years. This confirmed what his enemies thought about him and left those who still admired him distraught. The internet being a weird place, this included a guy in a ghost face mask who went on YouTube to say, I idolized you. I would watch your videos all the fucking time.

And now I hear you're a drug dealer now. Fuck you. Oh, wow. Wow. But you know what? Actually, like some of the superheroes really probably could have used to drug deal and side hustle because, you know, like Peter Parker, he didn't have a lot of money. Think what he could have done with all that.

Honestly, if Peter Parker just sold a little weed on his college campus, like, I think he'd be fine. He could probably afford better gear, you know? And with the spidey senses, he could tell if somebody was like, An undercover cop or an arc, like, he'd be fine. Come on. It's hard to trace down exactly what happened next, but it looks like Ben pled guilty and didn't serve any time. In 2022, he was apparently trying to get a visa to go and fight in Ukraine, which was

probably just him running his big mouth and certainly wasn't going to happen because he was on felony probation. He's apparently still suiting up as Phoenix Jones every now and again, although based on his Instagram, these days, this is mainly about. posting at the Seattle PD about things he sees out on the streets. He's 37 years old and doesn't seem to have grown up at all. Most people who have worked with him or known him seem to hate his guts, but there are plenty of people online still eager to kiss his butt, and I kind of suspect that's all this strange man really needs. And our main two sources for that one were interesting stuff

from around the world, the YouTube channel, which we love, and Atrocity Guide. They both have really good long-form videos on Phoenix if you want more information. So, holy shit, people are weird, right? And that leads me into our tagline, which is very true today. That was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. If you haven't booked your spot yet on the Crime Wave True Crime Cruise from November 3rd through November 7th. Get on it, y'all. There's just a few rooms left. Join Katie and me, plus last podcast on the left, scared to death, and sinisterhood for a rock and good time at sea.

You can pay all at once or set up a payment plan, but you've got to have a fan code to book a ticket. So go to crimewave at sea.com slash campfire and take it from there. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Stacy, Allie, Franklin, and Carolyn. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes more, plus tons of extra content, like patrons-only episodes and hilarious post-show discussions. So if you can, come join us at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.