The Last True Outlaw of the Lonesome West: Roddy Dean Pippin

He always wanted to be a cowboy, ever since he first read about 'em in Louis L'Amour novels and watched them in John Wayne westerns. The only trouble was: he wanted to be the outlaw. And when he grew up, he did. Transcending the flow of time, Roddy Dean Pippin chose to become the last great cattle rustler. But being an outlaw –– son, that's against the law in Texas. And that would be a problem for Roddy Dean Pippin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Elizabeth Dutton. You girl get me. You know I got
a question for you there, Bright asked, m M. Do
you know what my middle name is?

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Dizzy?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
You're on a roll, so I'm gonna ask you again.
Do you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Grillos pickles?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh? God?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, can I just say they'd be nothing without us?
No one had ever heard of them before we started
talking about them, that we made them famous. I don't
know if you know that.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm well aware I made I made you.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Made grillos famous. But also you and I keep them
afloat because we buy so many of their pickles and so.
But there are some of their products we don't buy.
You see where I'm going.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
You better put the dick and pickles.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
That was good, Sarah, that was fast. Look at you
lightning lightning over there?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, to hit me, run me over with it, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
So they're out of control right now with these mashups.
They need to be stopped.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yes, they do, we agree.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
There A bunch of people sent this to us. One
of them said that gorillas needed to be put on
time out, which I thought was fabulous. Anyway, they've teamed
up with Smoothie King to offer a pickle smoothie. Yeah,
there you go, and it's six bucks twenty out smoothie.

(01:28):
We missed it.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
That's seven dollars too much. God, you're on fire.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Today, look at you. It is so good international pickle. Oh,
we just missed it. May sixteen. So anyway, they were
like handing out free buckets of this stuff on that anyway,
Now you gotta pay for it. It's got bananas aside
from pickles, bananas, kale, apple juice, Kiwi juice, an electrolyte blend,

(01:57):
and coconut water that.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Sounds like something like I don't know, like Rocky would
drink to get ready to fight.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
That pickles are the new bacon, Like it's it's everywhere. Well,
so this guy on the Today Show, this food reporter
for them, Joe Lamour, he wrote this really great article
and he took one for the team and drank one
and he went and he got it and then took
it out to the car because he didn't want to
see if he had like a bad sip reaction. He

(02:24):
didn't want everyone to look at him. You want somewhere
to hurl, Yeah, he said, that it's strange but not bad,
but also not good. He said that it's like very
like the first taste is half and half banana pickle,
like sharing the stage. I think I'd have to be
pregnant to enjoy that, probably, and anyway, our guy, Mark Luker,

(02:47):
the Grillo's chief commercial officer. He starts off his comment
on it quote, we love to do unhinged collabs at Grillos.
I'm not going to eat.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
You the rest of it, thank you.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
I flatlined after that. But I'm so mad at them
because they'd be nothing without us, they would not exist
as a company. And yet we get zero free pickles
from these.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
That's also true, not a single chip nor a spear.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
No, I want free pickles.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Baby needs pickles, berbonate pickles.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
That's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Sit back down, Elizabeth Crime. This production of I've Got
Something for You.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, I'm ready. Does it involved pickles?

Speaker 2 (03:30):
No, but you can pretend. You can just imagine pickles
the whole time I'm talking. So at one time, right,
a fella could get rich by doing something ridiculous like
stealing cows. This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd

(04:04):
and outrageous capers. Heist and cons it's always ninety nine
percent murder free and one hundred percent what Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
No murder ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Elizabeth, you know that May is beef month.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
I just wanted to say, happy beef.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Every month is beef month to you.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
And all who celebrate our bovine friends. Well, beef months
is also what inspired me to tell you this story.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's beef like in cattle, not like fighting with people.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Months could be both.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, why not?

Speaker 2 (04:37):
You know, because it didn't Drake drop his new album
in the middle of beef Month. I'm just saying.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
So I didn't even realize that because I didn't even care.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Go ahead, back in the fifteen hundreds, you know, starting
story there, when the Spanish sled for what was called
the New World, they brought their cattle with them, Elizabeth,
to their colony in Mexico, Texas, Florida, California, the Carolinas.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
And that was the start of the cowboy way of
life in America. You could say there were cattle in
what would become America long before there was a single
Englishman on these shores.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
What happened one hundred years after that.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well after the Civil War in the United States, when
the railroads began to stitch the continent together cattle drives.
They would bring beef to the markets in the Midwest,
to Chicago, and then they would ship them back east
to like towns like Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia. And that is
when beef became valuable as a major source of meat
for our ever expanding population. Before then, it was like

(05:35):
mostly pigs and chicken.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
I do have a really quick question, what does this
have to do with Memet the Second In.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
This case we're starting after him.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Oh okay, just he is the.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Reason why the Spanish went west Elizabeth. So there you go.
You can thank Mema the Second for our beef industry. Now,
just like the expanding population of the US and the
beef population that was also expanding to meet this demand,
we know, Elizabeth is something that grows valuable, as beef
did after the Civil War, some folks will steal it

(06:07):
and boom, just like that. You've just invented cattle wrestling.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
I did.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah. Now, as you probably well know, cattle wrestling was
a serious offense back in the Old West. Oh yeah,
it totally was like cattle rustler. They could be imprisoned
or worse yet, they could be hanged for stealing cattle.
So due to the serious nature of this crime. Back
in eighteen seventy seven, down in Texas and Oklahoma, the
Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association was formed and they

(06:32):
launched the first ever cattle police cotwle police. Really, they
were called the Special Ranger Division COPS now the TSCR
it's still operational today. And so is there Special Ranger
Division of the Cattle Police.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Why isn't there a law and order cattle police.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Oh there needs to be.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
So good like in a western state in.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Tehas Yeah, cattle police.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
I'm hold on, I got to call Dick Wolf. Hey, hello,
Dick Wolf. I have a question.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
So field inspectors from the ts CRA they are legitimate
Texas lawmen and law women. And get this, Elizabeth, they
literally wear white hats. They are the good guys. Oh yeah,
just like the Lone Ranger. Just like the modern Texas
Rangers who also wear white or light colored cowboy hats.
So you know that they're the good guys, or at
least purport to be. Yeah, No, just like the Texas Rangers.

(07:24):
The field inspectors of the tscra are also licensed to
carry guns and to make arrest. They're full on police.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Everyone is Texas, which is.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Also wide down. In Texas, the field inspectors are known
as cattle rangers, just like the Texas Rangers, which brings
us to one particular cattle ranger. His name is Scott Williamson. Okay,
you see, back in two thousand and three, two thousand
and four, when this story occurred that I'm going to
tell you, Williamson was a cattle ranger operating near the
Texas Panhandle. His region covered about seventeen counties located you know,

(07:55):
just south and east of the Panhandle. It's a land
that boasted many of Texas. His most famous cattle ranches,
such as the Four Sixes. Yeah, I won't give you
a whole listen on to them. But this also meant
there were plenty of cattle rustlers in the area, or
at least cattle rustling. Yeah. Now, typically Williamson he would
receive about eighty calls a year from ranchers who believed
they were the victims of cattle theft. Now, Williamson was

(08:17):
only expected to arrest a cattle rustling about twenty of
those cases. Which means his clearance rate was about twenty
five percent. Not exactly stellar, no cattle police, but as
cattle ranger Williamson told the Texas Monthly, and I quote,
a few of these thieves might get away from me
once or twice, but if they stay around here, I'll
get them. You can count on that. Yeah, you see,

(08:39):
these days, cattle wrestlers are rather rare, as Dan Mike Byrd,
who is the DA for Hardiman and whiel Barger Counties,
he put it, and I quote, you don't exactly come
across anyone these days who studies all his career options
and then announces, by god, I'm going to start a
cattle rustling operation. However, Elizabeth, some people will still give

(09:00):
it a go.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Well, you know what, an Oakland cattle wrestler is someone
who walks into a safeway and like shoves some porterhouses
down their pants and strolls out. It's very common, that
is true. People have been shoplifting meat in the Bay
area for a while now.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, but I would imagine.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
The cost of like beef is crazy expensive.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
It's very valuable, and even more so, let's.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
Go rustle some cattle.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah right, continue, Okay, Well, back to Da Dan Mike Byrd.
He also told Texas Monthly in a great article written
by Skip Hollandsworth. Quote, there will always be someone who
give cattle rustle on a try, especially when he learns
the kind of money he can make. But he usually
doesn't last very long at it. He finds out in
a hurry it's just a hell of a lot easier

(09:45):
to steal other things, which brings us, Elizabeth to our
crimer of the day. Yes, now, this story was requested
by rude dude, Liz Feedema. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
I did look it up, but I can only go
off of like a birthday party for Grandpa Fedima.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Liz, how you say that?

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Okay, thank you well, she wrote, and I quote, please,
I beg. I need a story on Roddy Dean Pippin. Liz,
your wish is our command now, Elizabeth, Yes, meet Roddy
Dean Pippin. Hiroddy, I think you like him. He's a
bit of a romantic, oh is he? Yeas Roddy once
told cattle ranger Scott Williamson. Quote, Sir, this is hard

(10:24):
to explain, but I never felt like I belonged in
the twentieth century. I romanticized about living a different life,
about being someone else, And well, I guess it's obvious
I got a little carried away. Yeah. See back in
two thousand and three, when our story takes place, Roddy
was a young man living in North Texas, and as
the Texas Monthly described him, Roddy was a lean young

(10:45):
man nineteen years of age at the time, had brown hair,
brown eyes. He preferred a classical western look. So think
justin cowboy boots, Wrangler blue jeans, snap button cowboy shirts,
topped off with a gray beaver felt cowboy hat.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Well, look at that real clean look like Temple Grand Right.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Around his waist, you'd find a big ass belt buckle,
just like a rodeo star would weary. He was that
kind of guy, a walking anachronism.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
What did the belt buckle say on it, Roddy, if
you bought it a trucker brought it.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yes, that's mine. Now. Roddy was a legit, born and
bred Texan. He wasn't like some outsider Johnny cum Lately.
He was like, I'm a Texan. No, he was born
and bred. Roddy was original. Yes, exactly. Roddy was originally
from a near Denton, Texas, which is there just above
Dallas in North Texas.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
I feel like we might have talked about I think.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
We've mentioned it before. And like many well mannered Texans,
Roddy would say yes sir and no sir, and he'd
tip his cowboy had to the ladies as he'd passed
on the sidewalk. He also used outdated phrases like god
willing that the creek don't rise, will meet again.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
I say that kind of.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Don't now. He also was sprinkling some Spanish being in Texas,
so he also occasionally give you a viacone Das.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
That's awesome, but we do.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, California, we got the same Spanish culture.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
His stay at home mother described her only child, Roddy
as quote a quiet boy. His father was often on
the road outside of the home. He worked in the
petrochemical industry, designing plants and factories or whatnot.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
I thought he was in the ice Capades and that's
why he wasn't at home.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
You can continue thinking that if you'd like, I will,
it's more fun. Probably I will. So it was often
just the two of them at home. Roddy and his mother,
and so she homeschooled him. And this was for one
simple reason. Roddy was a severe diabetic and he didn't
like being teased about it. Oh yeah, she told Texas Monthly,
and I quote, he didn't play much with other boys
because we lived out in the country, and also I

(12:41):
think he didn't want them to see him go through
one of his diabetic texts. The doctors told me he
was quote a brittle diabetic because his blood sugar has
would drop without any warning, and his jaw would lock
up and he'd collapse to the ground.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
And kids would tease him for this. This makes me,
You know, kids, I know what are we doing here?
That's why I don't like him.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Unluckily you don't have to be around him too much anymore. Now.
Roddy was a sort of severe diabetic that in order
to control his blood sugar and avoid insolent attacks and seizures,
he had to inject insulin six times a day every day.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Poor dear.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah. So, instead of rough housing with the other country boys,
Roddy stayed at home with his mother and he dreamed
of the wild West days. He'd flip through picture books
that glamorized the Texas of bygone era. He'd also he
watched plenty of Western movies. John Wayne was his favorite cowboy.
Later on, Roddy graduated to reading Western novels that expanded
his palette of cowboy here exactly. He'd love huge fan

(13:37):
of Louis Lamore.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
God, do you think he watched Lonesome Dove over over?

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Probably?

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Probably?

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Now, as you know, Louis Lamore wrote sprawl in westerns. Particular,
there was his series of novels about the fictional Sacket family. Now,
no doubt about it. Louis Lamore was one of the
very best at romanticizing the American West. And dear Roddy,
he just absorbed that like a dry sponge. And so
he had that same spirit of romance. And anyway, when
Roddy was a middle school age or if you preferred

(14:04):
junior high, his parents split up and Roddy stayed with
his mom. And at this point they decided it would
be best for him to attend school, like you need
to get back out there. Yeah, so he's still sensitive
to being made fun of. Roddy threw himself into being
as athletic as possible, just another one of the rough
and tumble boys. He played football, he ran track, he
rough housed with the best of them. And he also

(14:25):
started to dress, walk and talk like a movie cowboy,
just like a John Wayne Western, as he told the
New York Times, and I quote, I wore my pistols
into the bank. I was kind of out there, live
in a fantasy.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
I guess he hadn't been bullied enough, fed a little
bit more.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
But he didn't just play dress up, Elizabeth. He also
taught himself to rope and ride by studying the movie
Cowboys to learn how to properly rope livestock. Oh yeah,
And as you might imagine, Elizabeth, I relate very deeply
to his kid, because I did pretty much the same thing.
But I didn't wear my guns to the bank. But
I did study the Cowboy movies as particular the stunt men,
the ones who made John Wayne look so good on film,

(15:02):
like my man Yakima Canut. He's a legendary fall guy
who invented half of the stuntman skills we know today. Yeah.
Oh yeah, Now, Elizabeth, that I got to ask you something.
Did you ever imitate anyone in movies or TV? Is
that something you ever went through as a girl.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
No, not that I can recall nothing over right, No,
I really, you know, I'm jealous of my nephew because
he can do the Chewbacca girl.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
That's where you go.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
That's if I were to try and emulate, I would
do that. I don't know. I can't think of anything,
all right.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
I did it often, mostly like cowboys and anybody of that. ILK.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Maybe go and frame by frame through that movie eight seconds.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, back to old Roddy being Pippin. After he graduates
from high school, he attends college and he still wants
to be a real life cowboy, so he tries to
win a spot on the college's rodeo team.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Oh yeah, god, bless I love they have a rodeo team.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Right, he wants to be a real live bull rider.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
Only trouble libility, insurance, goodness.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Just pages and pages of what you have to sign
off on. So the trouble for him was learning to
rope from movies is one thing, right, learning to ride
bulls by watching same movies, Yeah, it doesn't work as well.
But Roddy didn't just watch bull riders. He also practiced
on a mechanical bull.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
I thought he was going to say, like his mom
like get on all fours across the kitchen, but like
give me your best.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
He's spurner in. Yeah, so the mechanical bulls, he'd ride
it if you are having trouble picturing it. They're the
kinds you find at western theme bars. You know, they
usually throw like fraternity brothers over you know, Aci over
tea kettle right now. Basically he was like John Travolta
and urban cowboy at this point in his life. Titepans, Yeah,
do you remember that one he were catch that on table? Well,
long story short, well, trying to be a bull rider.

(16:49):
Roddy got hurt, banged up his knee. Soon enough, his
college dreams dried up like the sun baked earth of
West Texas. I like that he dropped out of college
during his freshman.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Year, not his dreams signing, but you're thank you.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
So at this point he's dropping out, he moves to
a town just north of Fort Worth, Texas, and there
he finds work because now he needs employment, so he
starts doing day labor. He's working on a farm. Later
on he hauled hazardous waste. It was like, yeah, I'd
be loaded into a fifty gallon drum and he'd just
drive it out.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
Just like the cow pokes old time.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Right. So he loses that job though after he had
an insulin attack and his boss fired him because presumably
he was worried he might have another attack while he
was handling the hazardous waste. Let's just give him the
benefit of a doubt on that. At this point, Roddy's
life wasn't exactly taking shape as much as his sort
of like running downhill like rain water. Right, as Roddy
put it in an interview with Texas Monthly, and I quote,

(17:41):
I had a twenty dollars bill in my pocket, fourth
of a tank of gas, and a thirty thousand dollars
debt that I owed on my pickup. I had roughly
a couple of days of insulin left, five hand rolled cigarettes,
and a five dollar bill stuffed in the toe of
my boot just in case of emergency. I was desperate
and owed a number of hospital bills along with such
other bills is rent and normal utilities. So he was

(18:03):
a bind his way behind. Right after he gets fired
and he's driving home one day back to his modest
rental home, he heard the radio announcer reading out the
latest livestock report listing the most recent prices, including the
spike in the price of cattle. This sparks an idea. Meanwhile,
being recently unemployed, Roddy Dean Pippen had time to read

(18:23):
his old cowboy and Western books again, and so that
spark of an idea, it caught a flame, Elizabeth, as
Roddy tells it, and I quote, I read about the
old wrestlers and how they eluded the posses, and I said, Okay,
I'm going to give it a go. Right, So let's
pause there, take a break for some ads, and when
we're back we'll get to a rustling.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
And we're back, Elizabeth, we are back. You ready to
hear about some modern day cattle wrestling. I love this, Yes, okay,
one thing about modern cattle rustling. Things have changed since
the days of the open range, sure, right now. Back
in the day, a cattle rustler only needed a trusty
steed and a well maintained shooting iron. They'd ride out
until they found a herd of steers. Then they'd fire
off their six shooter a few times to get the

(19:27):
cattle stampeding, and once they had the steers on the move.
The cowboys would ride hard as they herded the cattle
and drove them off toward the horizon. Boom, stolen cattle.
But these days cattle rustling involves almost zero horses. Instead.
Now it's more like a dating apps. It's all about
using tech to separate some beef from the herd. If
you know what I mean. Now you see, Elizabeth. The

(19:48):
advent of barbed wire marked the end of the era
of the open range. As you well know now, fences
marked the advent of modern cattle ranches. So nowadays a
cattle rustler like my man Roddy, he can't just stampede
the herd and ride off with them to the horizon. Instead,
a modern cattle wrestler needs a truck and or a
trailer to steal steers and heifers, and perhaps they also

(20:10):
may be inclined to use a four wheeler or two.
But typically a cattle rustler drives along a fence line
of a sprawling ranch. They look for a weak point
in the fence, a spot where they can knock the
fence down or dismantle it, or maybe get lucky and
find a gate they can unlock. You get the idea.
Then they need to back up their truck and or
a trailer, and then if it's a trailer, drop the

(20:30):
trailer gate, lock the ramp into place, and start loading
up the stolen steer and heifers into the trailer. That's
not easy, because while cattle may be a rather trusting animal,
they are not easy to motivate. They resist being loaded
into a trailer, and steer can weigh around six hundred pounds,
So good luck moving a stubborn stell if you can
believe it. Some cattle wrestlers will try to squeeze stolen

(20:52):
cattle into the backseat of their car. What yes, which
is a terrible idea. Can you imagine driving around your
Hondo with a cow on the back.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
But you know, this is why I tell all the
cattle ranchers I know at my weekly speeches cattle Ranchers
of America, You're supposed to get each item of cattle,
each head, each cat, a bow tie collar with an

(21:25):
air tag GS tracking. They just look dapper, yeah, smart and.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Cute yeah, and they're easy to find. Well more often
than not. Amateurs also will manage to get a few
stolen cattle into their trailer right and then or the
back of their pickup truck if that's their approach, and
then when they try to drive off, since the cattle
at this point are unsecured, the unbalanced load begins to
pitch around and back, and the cattle gets tossed from

(21:51):
side to side, which is why some amateur cattle wrestlers
end up rolling their trucks or cattle spill out onto
the road or worse yet, the highway. Oh yeah, Now,
if the cattle wrestler does manage to successfully drive off
with the stolen cattle and they don't tip their ride,
they still need to get the stolen steers to market.
Trouble with that is, cattles have brands which are meant

(22:13):
to identify them to which ranch they belong to or
what cattle and the steers are owned by. Sometimes a
cattle wrustler is able to rebrand the cattle because they
get sold over and over again sometimes so they'll have
sometimes multiple brands or better yet, a buyer will find
someone who's willing to overlook such things, but they still
have to negotiate a price, and it's hard to have

(22:34):
much leverage over a buyer who will overlook such things.
You know, if they know the cattle is stolen, because
then they can always, like you know, call the cattle
rangers and be like, yeah, I ain't paying you exactly,
So it's better to rebrand the steers and then pray
no one looks too closely. Yeah, Now, honestly, cattle rustling
is a hell of a lot of work and hassle
for a rather limited payday, Like if you steal electronics

(22:55):
or like jewelry. Yeah, that stuff never fights back, no right,
not ruins your vehicle. It's pretty much easy to sell, true,
which is why most folks who opt for crime no
longer choose cattle rustling.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, it's a challenge.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah right. Anyway, for his first cattle theft, Roddy couldn't
rely on the movies and the books he can typically
turned to and those cattle rustling days are gone, right,
So instead he had to invent his own methods. So
he got a friend from high school to help them,
and the friend had a four wheeler, so they would
go out there and he would stand on the back,
and they found this ranch not too far away that

(23:31):
was owned by a rich man who rarely ever came
out to visit his ranch. So you know, it's like,
how would he know if anyone stole some of his cattle.
He doesn't keep a good head count. So together Roddy
and his high school buddy, they drive out to the ranch.
They unload the four wheeler. Roddy climbs on back as
his friend's driving, and he's got his rope going over
his head. He's spinning the lariat and working together, they
rope some cattle. They managed to catch three calves and

(23:53):
then they load them into like a wooden crate he'd
built into the back of his Dutch pickup. And the
calves were so young that they had yet to be branded.
Oh stroke of good luck. Right, So the next day
Roddy drives out to the auction barn to sell the cattle,
and he told the folks at the auction barn that
the CAB's mother had died during a snowstorm. So the
folks at the auction barn are like okay, and they

(24:13):
bought the cattle.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
Just weeping. They're like, no, that's so sad.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Roddy breaking my heart, like baby's mom over here. So
Roddy he makes about two hundred and fifty bucks for
his first cattle, rustling for all three Yeah. So, since
that worked well, he did it again a few days later.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
That seems like a lot of work for two hundred
and fifty bucks, right, son, get a job.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
He tried that. They kept firing him.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yeah, I know, but at the jobs he was picking.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Yeah, well that's true.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
I guess he got other job more than handling toxic waste.
It's not your only option, Roderick.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Well, after wrestling that cattle, he decided he'd go back
and do it again. But he'd need to brand the
stolen cattle with his own brand. So he picked for
his brand the letters DP for his middle and last names,
Dean Pippin. Right, so Roddy printed up some phony paperwork
as proof of ownership, and then he got all dooted
up in his best Western where and he drove one
county away where he took his stolen cattle to an

(25:10):
auction barn to sell them. And while he sat there
in the bleachers with all the other ranchers and cattlemen,
his stolen cattle were sold. This time sale price five
hundred and fifty nine dollars twenty cents. Look at that,
doubling his profit.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
President.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, So at this point Roddy Dean Pippin is a hooked.
He thought he was a natural born cattle wrestler. As
Roddy told Texas Monthly, Sir, I knew what I was
doing was wrong, but I will admit to you. Right then,
I felt like I'd step back into another time. I
felt like I was someone different.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Good for him. These days he would just be breaking
even because of the fuel cot. Yes, driving around on
Texas is a diesel truck.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, he tried gassing up a diesel God. Yeah, so
he loved that. He got to play real life cowboy obviously,
you know, and he he got good at it. He
started to He would drag miss skeet branches behind his
truck to cover his tracks like a good old cowboy would, right,
and he'd he brought portable fencing with him to like
corral rustled cattle.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
He typically stole no more than six cattle at a time.
He found that was a manageable number. Yeah, and then
he poached the cattle that were usually grazing in like
the back forty of a ranch, like where people couldn't
see him from the house. And that way it would
likely also take a ranch for weeks, if not months,
to figure out that cattle had been stolen, because they're
way far away and he's not going out there and
bringing them in as long as they have some grass

(26:31):
to graze on.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah, they're not doing like a weekly inventory now.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
No.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
So one of the cattlemen who steers Roddy rustled, he said,
and I quote, I admit the kid knew what he
was doing. He drove his chuck and trailer to places
on the ranch I didn't think anyone would go, and
he was also very good at the way he disguised
his rustling. We found a hole in one of the
fences that led us to believe that some cows had
gotten loose and wandered off into the brush. I didn't

(26:56):
call Williamson to report a theft because it didn't occur
to me that russeller had shown up, taken the cows,
and then deliberately knocked the hole on the fence himself,
just to mislead us. Oh right, So by this point,
Roddy's grown savvy to the cattle industry, Like he'd learned
that brands are numerous in Texas and folks typically only

(27:16):
knew the local brand. Sure of Elizabeth, you want to
guess how many cattle brands there are in Texas?

Speaker 3 (27:22):
In all of Texas thirty nine billions close.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I know there are more than one hundred thousand cattle
brands in Texas. Yeah, so it's impossible to know them all.
It used to be at a time people knew all
of the brands. You can no longer do that. And
so Roddy figured people'd be less likely to recognize a
brand if it wasn't local. So he would then take
his rustled cattle and stolen steers a few counties away
where they went and recognized the brand, and it worked perfectly.

(27:50):
The only legitimate thing he did that I think was
a questionable was he used his real Texas state driver's
license at the cattle auctions. Oh right, to his way
of thinking, though, a fake ID would alert the folks
making suspicious and then he would wind up raising the
attention of the cattle rangers. Right. Yeah, So at this point,
it's around April two thousand and three, Roddy is no
longer rustling cattle with his high school buddy. That guy

(28:12):
got scared of getting caught, and Roddy himself he said
he didn't intend to be a cattle rustler. Full time,
like you were saying, he was still thinking I can
find legitimate form, exactly a bit of a cattle dilettante.
So he did try to go legit. He got a
job working on an oil field, you know, and again
he lost his job when his boss learned about his

(28:33):
severe diabetes. So that's why cattle rustling felt like his
only option to make good money. Plus, it was damn
easy for him to romanticize the cattle russell than he
was doing. I mean, what's not to love about it, Elizabeth?
I mean, you're your own boss. You spend your days
out in nature, touching grass so to speak. You hang
out with.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
Animals, it smells great, you feel.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
The wind against your cheeks. It's idyllic. The only trouble
is it's also highly illegal, and getting busted is likely
only a matter of time. A problem other than cowboys,
his other main hero was the bandit of Sherwood Forest,
Robin Hood Boy, And just like old Rob Hood, Roddy
Dean Pippen was also a thief with a heart of gold,

(29:14):
a man who had rules for thieving. He had a
code of conduct. For instance, he never stole from ranchers
who couldn't afford to lose cattle. He didn't go down
to the family ranches that might be easy to steal from. Instead,
he preferred to hit ranches owned by big cattle operations corporations,
or them high falutin folk in Dallas who kept what
he called hobby herds.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Yeah, I can get with that.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
All had some cattle.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Well he's making like a couple hundred bucks. People aren't
gonna miss it.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
No, not necessarily. Basically, he reasoned the same thing. These
are people who could afford to lose a few steers.
And also they also kept insurance on their herds, so
it's like from the insurance companies.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yes, and that's God bless him for that.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Unfortunately, he didn't have any rule about working alone. Of course,
from the start he'd worked with a partner, his old
former high school buddy, but he didn't have the best
taste in picking his future partners for cattle rustling, which
turned out to be a huge mistake.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Did he like meet him in the gas station parking lote.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Practically for his new crew of cattle rustlers, Roddy picked
two old buddies of his, the Malone brothers, Darryl and David,
Roddy had gone to school with them. The Malone brothers
were twins and as adults they worked in the oil
fields as rousedabouts, and they were hard drinking men with
low ambition, and they had slow eyes, and they preferred

(30:33):
t shirts that had no sleeves. I think you can
imagine the type.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
They're twins, and they were two years apart exactly.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
So meanwhile, here comes our romantic cattle rustler, Roddy Pippen Yea.
And the way he remembers approaching the Malone brothers, he
put it and I quote, I was wearing my best
cowboy clothes, and I asked them if they were ready
to join up with me and live the life of
a rustler. They looked at me and said, what's a rustler? Oh,
not knowing what a rustler was in Texas.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
He's just like, sh don't worry about it.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
So pretty, don't talk. Don't talk. So once they learned
the definition, both slow eyed Malone twins were eager to
become real life cowboy outlaws. And even if they preferred
sneakers to cowboy boots, they were into it. They were like, well,
we do like the idea of free money. Yeah, they
were all down, but the Malone Twins had a few
demands of their own. If they were to join Roddy's
Russell and Gang one, the gang split all profits evenly,

(31:28):
just like how pirates would, right, and two their girlfriends
could join up the cow get out here for reasons
I cannot.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Explain anyone of them.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yes, Roddy agreed to the Malone twins demands. So now
the gang is Roddy and David Malone and their girlfriends
Melissa Marshall and Wendy Brunson.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
Roddy was poorly socialized as a child.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
I think I covered that right, and so that's how
we get here, Elizabeth. If you do the math, this
means if all five of them pull a job, the
Malone Twins and their girlfriends would get eighty percent of
the money they made.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
And then what it's like, seriously, four hundred dollars.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, exactly. So the first job is new Russell and Crew.
Roddy agreed to hit a millionaire's ranch, one that the
Malone Twins absolutely hated. The millionaire rancher was known to
be abusive to his cowboys, like he'd fire them if
they got injured or hurt, and they can no longer
cowboy for him. Basically, he's like an old school villain

(32:27):
from a western movie. You just picture that, right, a
man who was easy to rationalize steal in his cattle.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
And the twins were like, we don't like him, he's horrible.
What do you know about it? You don't work, You
didn't get fired from there.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
They knew somebody who did one time.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
He's a man.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
So that first night they wrestled cattle. It was just
David and Roddy, and to earn his half of the job,
David held the flashlight. Well, Roddy did all of the work.
He wrangled and rustled the calves, and then Roddy went
back with the other Malone twin, Darryl, and then he
did the same thing, turned the whole flash lives.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
And now it's suddenly, donnobie, they're probably doing this undercover
of dark.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Oh completely, always usually in dark.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Yeah, yeah, because in my mind it was under the
hot scorching son. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
No, They're going out there at two in the morning.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
And hold whole flash light for me.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
To me, this arrangement just doesn't seem fair, you know,
this whole but because because Roddy is the one who's
risking far more than anybody. He's the one who assle
has to handle the cattle.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Obviously, probably his flash lights.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Probably his batteries, his flat Also, remember, he's diabetic to
the point he could have an insulin attack and collapse.
And I doubt either these slack jawed twins would take
care of him if he passed out. But I'm not Roddy,
so I'm not gonna judge him. Maybe he liked the company.
I don't know. Now, there were certainly plenty of risks
of cattle rustling. I don't think I've covered it entirely,
But like one time Roddy and Darryl they drove out

(33:48):
to a ranch to steal some cattle. But when Roddy
tried to grab a calf, the mama cow freaked out.
She charged him and drove him into the barbed wire fence.
And now he's just like back filled with barbs.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
It's just ouch right good.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Then a few days later, but he's still not healed.
He still got the scabs on his back. Roddy went
back out with the other twin, David. As Roddy tells it, quote,
I stepped toward a big brangus swung my rope over
my head, let it go, and washed it land perfectly
over the cow's head. I pulled the rope tight, and
that old girl took off. I flew off my feet
behind her, and I found myself being dragged along the ground.

(34:24):
I held on for at least a minute until I
thought my enterds were gonna get torn out of my body.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
You know, I love when the animals win.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yes, I do, yes that, having seen this rustling debacle
go down, what do the Malone twins do? Well? They
tell Roddy he ain't no real rustler. They don't know
what a rustler is, but they got you. Yeah, as
Roddy remembers it, quote, Darryl said to me, Roddy Dean,
you ain't no cowboy, You're just a diabetic. I got
pretty peeved to be honest with you, I said, boys,

(34:53):
I'll be back as soon as my injuries here, I'll
be riding again across the Purple Sage.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
You ain't no cowboy, you're a amphet egg Like oh, burn, boys, Like,
what does that even? Why am I not there just
to rip on the twins on Roddy's behalf? Like I'd
still be standing there in the gas station parking lot. Well,
they're they're spilling mountain doing them. Their fists are holding
their five hour energy drinks shaking.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
So also, by the way, how can you not love
a guy who talks like this about his criming ways.
I'll be riding again across the purple stage.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
It's beautiful, right, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
So anyway, At this point, Roddy.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Figures, I want him to get trampled.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
You want both you, I want it all.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Brandy socks and draws everything.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
At this point, Roddy figures he needs to make some changes,
like Roddy, but dropping them alone twins isn't what he
comes up with. Instead, he decides he needs to pick
up sticks and move further away from his mother. Why.
It's because she's growing suspicious about how he's making all
this money.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
And all this money what he's got. After after he
spends all his money, he's like, now, can you only
lend me three?

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Exactly, like, where are you getting money?

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Son?

Speaker 2 (36:04):
So in the summer two thousand and three, Roddy moves
to Odell, Texas, and he buys a house located at
the end of a dirt road. He put down a
down payment. I don't know if you have him buy
it all outright. So Roddy calls it the perfect hat
out now it was. It was in the Red River
Valley right by the Oklahoma Texas border, and as a
cover for his outlaw ways, Roddy also gets another legit

(36:25):
job in the oil fields, but mostly he stays focused
on his goal of being the robin Hood of cattle rustlers.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
He is the poor that he's giving to.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Of course, and the Malone Twins is he's.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
Still riding around with the Malone Twins after they insulted it.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
He's got pride. You's got to prove them wrong. Okay, Lizabeth,
let's leave our story here for a moment, listen to
some ads, and when we get back, we'll hear how
this cattle wrestler pushed his luck one time too many.
Oh no, and we're back, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Back.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
You ready to hear more about this robin Hood of
the rains.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Yes, I wish he knew his real worth.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
I do too. Whenever Roddy didn't have to be at
work in the oil fields, he'd drive out to a ranch,
right and he'd find a place out in the pastures
where the cows would be grazing, and he'd sit there
close to the herd, like got right up against the
fence and so that way the cows get used to
his smell and just him being around. As Roddy tells it,
I'd sit there for hours, sometimes all night. I knew
that to get those cattle into my trailer, I had

(37:39):
to get them to trust me.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Oh, he's just like playing the harmonica, totally just cowbling
it so Roddy.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
At this point, he's rustling cattle from fifteen ranches in
the Red River Valleys, stealing on both sides of the border,
Texas and Oklahoma. And by then he'd earn the respect
of the Malone twins. He's successful.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
That's what we all want in life. I want them
to respect.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
I want those slack John yokels to think something of me.
During one job, he and Darryl stole twelve cows total
in seventy six hundred dollars. Well, hey, yeah, As Roddy
tells it, I slammed the trailer door, and Darrel looked
at me and said, Roddy Dean, I take back what
I said. You've gotten good.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
You're not a diabetic.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Things didn't always go so smoothly, even though he'd gotten good,
because like one time Roddy almost died a true cattle
rustler's death is he spied or herd of cattle. They
were all penned up, all ready to be taken to
market the next day. A right, So Roddy sees him.
He's like, I cannot avoid this. I must take advantage,
and so he backs up his trailer, steals a few
before the morning sun rises over the valley. But when

(38:46):
he opens the gate to the pen, a bull charged him,
and the herd followed the bull. So now Roddy damn
near dies in a stampede of cattle over Roddy. The
way he tells it, the hoofs of those cows ripped
up my wranglers, shredded my nice shirt, and just tore
up my beautiful resist all, just tore it all up.

(39:07):
But sir, I must tell you, as those cows stampeded
over me, the thought did occur to me that if
I was going to go down as a wrestler, this
was the perfect way to die. Right. No, by the way,
a resist all is his hat to cowboy hat. Okay,
So by this point Roddy had become so successful as
a cattle wrestler that talk begins to spread. This talk

(39:27):
eventually reached the ears of a cattle ranger, one Scott Williamson, Yes,
a fellow field inspector from the TSCRA. He called cattle
ranger Williamson and told him an informant had told him
that the rangers ought to be on the lookout for
a cattle wrestler named Roddy Pippin. Now the field inspector
asked if cattle ranger Williamson had ever heard of him.

(39:47):
He had not, Elizabeth, so he decided he ought to
familiarize himself with this young man. So Williamson looks up
his address and Odell takes a drive out to his place.
And remember, Roddy lives at the end of a dirt road,
so he didn't so much traffic like zero. So when
Roddy's out on his porch and he sees a cattle
ranger drived up towards his house, it probably set his

(40:08):
nerves on edge. Oh you wouldn't imagine right, Well, the
way Roddy tells it, I gave him a wave and
I walked inside, and I said to myself, Roddy the
posse is getting close. So as for the cattle ranger Williamson,
at this point, his cop instincts just kick in. He
senses Roddy is on the level. As he told Texas Monthly,

(40:29):
I could see him looking at me, and my instincts
kicked in. What I wondered, was this young man doing
a way out in this little community and how is
he really making a living?

Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, that's I wonder that too.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Right, So the cattle ranger he phones into headquarters and
he asked him to run a check on old Roddy Pippin.
Nothing came back. Now despite that, he still had his
cattle ranger instincts, and Roddy knows he's got a cattle
ranger keeping an eye on him. So now we're locked
in a tet tet.

Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
So this is also when Roddy decided it might be
time for him to get out of the cattle rustling game.
But first he pulled one last always do mistake, right
is Roddy put it quote, I was a foolish young man,
very foolish young man, but I believed I could pull
off one last big russell and then get out of

(41:17):
the business for good. So what was his one last
big Russell. Great question, Elizabeth, state the practically Roddy decided
to pull off one last rustle. He needed a big rig,
like a true cattle truck like you see on the
freeways in Texas. They just loaded down like a trailer,
carrying dozens of cattle in the back, their faces looking

(41:37):
through the holes. Right, So he planned to steal one
from a truck stop, not an empty eighteen wheeler. He'd
steal one that was loaded with cattle. What could go wrong?

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Jacket right, exactly, cow jackets.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
The way Roddy remembers it, quote, I had everything planned
out to the detail. I was going to take the
truck to Saint Louis or maybe Kansas City and sell
the cattle there. Oh hey, he's going like true nineteenth century.
He's like, I want to take it up to Kansas
City and sell it. Only better if he took it
to Dodge. Now. The problem was he was still loyal
to those knitwit twins, the Malone.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Brother He's attracted to their big cala.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Darryl and David, so he wanted them to help him
with his one last Russell. But there were complications, Elizabeth,
because David had gotten his girlfriend Windy pregnant, and so
they needed money for diapers and baby formula and whatnot.
And Darryl wasn't far behind. His girlfriend, Melissa was eight
months pregnant.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Look at these two.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah. So meanwhile, Roddy was in the hospital getting care
after a diabetic attack. So as soon as he gets
out of the hospital, he tells them alone twins, he's
ready to rustle.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
This is why he needs a job. He needs the
health insurance.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Pretty much, because his medical bills are pretty much crazy.
Imagine they're crippling his potential.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
The insulin costs alone, this insane.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
Well, when the Malone brothers here he's out of the hospital,
they're stoked because they need some more that easy free
money because they got baby concerns. Elizabeth, I'm a daddy now.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Yeah, they're exactly who we need as parents.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
It's August of two thousand and four, which I imagine
is not a pleasant time to be pregnant in Texas.
So eight months pregnant Melissa stays behind in Roddy's place
in Odell while Roddy and Daryl go on the hunt
for some cattle that can rustle up quickly and then
sell off before they pull their one last russell. It's
supposed to be just a quick, easy job, take a
diaper money job, right, So Roddy and Darryl successfully steal

(43:29):
eight head of cattle and they drive back to Roddy's place.
There they wake up Melissa and in the middle of
the night they all plan to drive a few counties
away to sell the stolen calves for their quick score,
their the diaper money.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
So at this point it's Darryl and Melissa and Roddy
at his place and they're making their plans. They're getting
ready to load up the truck of the stolen cattle
and drive off to the auction houses. But rather than
me tell you about that, Elizabeth, close.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Your eyes, my eyes a close.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
I want you to picture it. Deep in the heart
of Texas. It's a dark and moonless night. The sprinkle
of stars overhead provide the only illumination. Constellations crowd the sky,
and you, Elizabeth, admire them, even though you don't know
what they are, since you are a simple stolen steer.

(44:17):
At the moment you and your fellow cattle are loaded
in the back of a trailer, you bump against each
other as You stare through gaps in the trailer to
spy on the stars above, and then you hear some
noise outside the trailer. It's a pair of cowboys and
what looks to be a pregnant woman so full with
baby she seems primed to pop any day now. After
the two cowboys load up the two trucks and all

(44:38):
three humans climb inside, you hear the truck engines roar
to light. Then you feel the tug of motion. The
truck tires crush gravel and dirt as they drive off
from the clapboard house. The trucks eventually find the smooth
blacktop of a country road. You and your fellow cattle
are all lulled by the motion, but a few moves
still compete with the sounds of the country. After a

(45:01):
little while, you notice something doesn't seem to be right.
The truck pulling you in the trailer speeds up, as
does the pickup truck that's followed. Then the trucks take
a hard turn onto another country road, and then you here,
why there's a third truck that takes that same turn.
The truck pulling the trailer that you're in speeds up,
as does the truck follow me, and so does that

(45:23):
third truck. You don't know, but you're involved in a chase.
All you know is the erratic driving is tossing you
and the other cattle around in the trailer. A worried
chorus of moves nes the air. The cattle have no
idea why the ride is suddenly so rough. The cowboy
drivers or the two trucks are talking on their cell phones,
which explains some of their erratic driving, and the fact

(45:44):
that the third truck chasing them stays close behind explains
the rest. The trucks enact a series of high speed
trucks which tosses you and the other cattle around to
the trailer. You hope, like hell, they calm down before
you or the other steer get hurt. There's more worry moves.
At another high speed turn, you hear the two trucks
part ways, but then you hear the throaty growl of

(46:06):
the third truck as it speeds up to continue giving chase.
Its engine is close to the trailer. You don't know it,
but the twenty nine year old woman behind the wheels
decided this cattle rustler ain't getting away from her. She's
certain he's hauling stolen cattle, and she's trying to rescue you.
It's not long before you hear a new truck joined

(46:26):
the chase. It must be the police, because you hear
its sirens scream out against the inky blackness of that
eternal night. And then you see police lights as they
illuminate you and the other cattle in the trailer. Soon enough,
the truck pulling the trailer slows down. Yes, that cattle
rustler's decided to stop running. The chase is over. Oh

(46:49):
my goodness, just like that, Elizabeth. Twenty year old cattle
rustler Roddy Dean Pippin reached the end of his trail
twenty years old. So when cattle ranger Williamson arrived at
the county jail, he came to question Roddy, and when
he interrogated him about the stolen cattle in his trailer,
Roddy insisted he bought them over the border in Oklahoma. Oh, okay,
that was clearly a lie. Roddy was doomed because the

(47:12):
rancher he'd stolen the cattle from had called in to
say he was missing steers. And not only that, he
told the cattle rangers what his brand looked like and
his description of his brand matched exactly the lazy Jay
that was branded on the cattle loaded in Roddy's trailer.
Huh So, Confronted with this fact, Roddy knows he's busted.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
The next day, Roddy spoke with his father, and his
old man told him, you need to come clean boy,
the way Roddy tells it quote but Dad said to me, son,
we raised you to be better than this. There's anything
else you need to get off your chest. You need
to do it. Your game is over acting like a rustler.
You need to stand up and take your punishment like
a real man. Elizabeth, this was terrible advice. Oh, I'm

(47:53):
I mean, I'm kidding somewhat. It was good advice on
one level, like father to son. But if you're a
lawyer listen to this, you might agree it was terrible
advice because Roddy had no criminal record. If he'd kept
his mouth shut, he was likely facing a single felony,
and one that would probably be reduced to probation. But instead,
he opened his mouth and confessed all he had done,

(48:14):
and after that, Roddy was legally speaking doomed. You see
over the course of a year and a half, our
modern day cattle rustler had stolen one hundred and thirty
head of cattle. He participated in twenty five different cattle heists,
and he'd made somewhere upwards around one hundred grand wow.
And he confessed all of this to cattle ranger Williamson.
And then Roddy said, in his ever poetic way, I

(48:36):
told him that I was sorry, but that the rustling
had gotten into my blood.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
Well, he's doing like cowboy code.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
I gotta be on it right, I gotta tell you everything.
So sadly, the DA Dan Mike Byrd he decided to
use the full force of his office to punish Roddy
and make example of this modern day cattle russell.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
I want you don't want kids seeing this and going
out in rustling.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
I guess not, As Dan Mike Bird told the Texas
Monthly Quote out here, our opinions about cattle wrestlers haven't
changed since the frontier days when cattle thieves were hanged.
We don't take kindly to any cattle wrestler, no matter
how pleasant he may be. He's easy on the But
Roddy pleads guilty to the charges Unfortunately, the judge holds

(49:20):
that same hard hearted opinion of justice that the DA favored.
So the judge sentences Roddy to the maximum four counts
of livestock theft, two years for each count, and rather
than concurrently, they are to be served consecutively. So eight
years in a Texas state prison. Oh no, But due
to his severe diabet, Roddy gets released early on probation.

(49:41):
After he serves his first two years, he's put under
house arrest and he goes to live with his mother,
and there he meets a girl named Jace and they
fall in love. Well, I mean, he's on house arrests,
he's not supposed to go any She must have.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Come around gonna rustle him.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
You need help hanging that laundry on the line. So
they fall in love, they get married. But then in
November two thousand and nine, the court objected to his
house arrest probation and they order him back to prison
to finish out his sentence. They're like, he's getting married,
seems like he's getting he's getting happy.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
I don't like that exactly.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
So compliant Roddy rides his horse to the local courthouse. Wait,
the horse, he goes on horseback ride to the courthouse,
shows up. There's no officers there, so he has to
wait for officers to show up to like arrest him.
He turns himself in.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
It honks the horn he.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Hits to turn himself in to finish out a sentence.
And while he's locked up again, Roddy did what he
should have done the first time. He let his imagination
wander and he starts writing short stories about being a
cattle rustler. Right, Roddy puts to paper the story of
the bull led stampede that nearly killed him. He called
that one riverheerd, oh yeah. He wrote another story about
lying in bed with his then girlfriend Jayce while he

(50:55):
dreamed of rustling cattle. It was the divides of a
desperado like him, despite wanting to stay by her side
in their warm bed. As if called by nature it's itself.
Roddy gets up and he goes outside to walk among
the cattle are grazing on the grass, and Roddy wrote
about this quote large hairy, horned hooved animals known as

(51:16):
the last true legacy to me of the West. I
could hear the sound of two red tailed hawks screeching
as it circled over the herd, and the smell of
manure drifting in the fresh air. I could smell money,
and in my mind that particular odor was the sweetest
scent a man could and ever would have the pleasure
of smelling manure. This pros is like Sam Shepherd and

(51:40):
Louis Lamore had a literary baby. So meanwhile, Roddy is
now languishing in the Texas State Prison serving out his sentence.
He's also growing weaker and weaker because he's not getting
proper medical attention from his severe diabetes. He starts suffering
numerous seizures. It looks like he will not outlive his
prison sentence. As Roddy told texts this monthly quote, all

(52:01):
I want is one more chance to be outside, a
dream of sitting beneath an oak tree, fully dressed in
my cowboy apparel with my felt cowboy hat, arched toward
the heavens on a beautiful spring morning. Now, he did
have lawyers working on his behalf to secure a new
parole for him for medical release. Yeah, he gets a
hearing his mother testifies on his behalf. Roddy takes the

(52:22):
stand the Texas State Parole Board they listen to his
story and then they deny his parole.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
Cold blood is right.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
And then in twenty eleven, Roddy was back in the
headlines because, as the Texas Tribune reported, Roddy requested that
the Texas Court change his sentence and instead of dying
inside the prison walls, he asked that the court hang
him in the Hartiman County Square. Whoa, he wished to
feel the sun on his face one last time and
then die like a real live Old West outlaw. He

(52:51):
wanted a true cattle wrestler's death. Yeah, right, just hanging
from a rope.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Were they stoked to give him this?

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Well again, the Texas Court was like, nope, we ain't
give you that. You dine inside, boy. They wanted to
keep him in prison for at least two more years
to finish out the rest of his sentence. And it
seems that they were fine with the last cattle rustler
dying inside the prison's walls. If that happened, they blamed
the outlaw. He shouldn't have been in there, right. So,
But don't you worry, Elizabeth, there is no one percent
in this story. The Texas Parole Board does not end

(53:19):
Roddy Pippen. Because Providence stepped in and placed its heavenly
finger on the scale of justice. You see, a Texas
appeals court overruled the parole board and ordered that Roddy
be released early, excellent, and so in October twenty eleven,
at age twenty seven, now Roddy Dean Pippen was finally released.
He is once again free to roam among the purple sage. Yeah,

(53:41):
so's takeaway here, Elizabeth.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
Oh my goodness, stay away from slow twins.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
You say that often. I know you're always.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Saying that on a T shirt. What's your takeaway?

Speaker 2 (53:53):
I love this kid. It's great, you know, like, I
understand that he's, like, you know, making choices that are
not the best and that are obviously a little bit
you know, self inflated with. Like I know that I'm
trying to live inside of a fantasy and there's no
room for fantasy in this cruel, cruel world in Texas.
But I respect it, I love it. I loved this kid.
I'm like, I'm rooting for Roddy Pippen. I hope that

(54:14):
he and jac are happy and doing well.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Same same.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
So, uh, now that we've heard all of that, you
in the move for a talkback, we watched this word
I love a producer, D what you got for us? Oh,
oh my god, I love gee.

Speaker 4 (54:37):
Okay, hear me out. I've been thinking about the whole
stealing baby Jesus thing. I think I found a solution.
We need to brand the baby Jesus that, when stolen,
will erupt in a spew of holy water instead of
spit up, and then start blaring George Michael's nineteen eighty

(54:57):
seven hit song you Gotta Have Faith.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
That's genius. That is genius.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
I like it over the top.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
Some glitter in there too, glitter bomb Jesus blue paint.
It just sizzles on the people.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
Yeah, some Marian blue, Marian blue.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
The stain. They're all stay like a smurf, glitter smurf.
I love thank you for the George Michael, the Jorge
Michelle Chef's kiss. I love that very nice.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Well. As always, you can find us elsewhere on online.
On a Ridiculous Crime is usually the handle, and we're
on Instagram where you can find pictures of all the
people and elements of the story. We tell you there's
also a blue sky if you want to go check that,
and also We have our account Ridiculous Crime pod pod
on YouTube. So if you like listening to your podcasts

(55:45):
on YouTube, go there. We got some animations for you
to check out. We have our website Ridiculous Crime dot com.
That's where we got a merch and all sorts of
fun gifts and uh, it is a beautiful website. I
think you would enjoy it. It's like a little holiday
in your work Georges. Oh yeah, it's online holiday. Oh
and they obviously go to the iHeart app download it.
Leave us a talkback because we'd love to hear your

(56:07):
voice and maybe you'd like to hear your voice here too,
So there you go. Oh and you can also email
us if you'd like to Ridiculous Crime at jamail dot com.
That's gmail dot com. Thank you for listening. As always,
we will catch you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted

(56:27):
by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produce and edited by
the King of the Sonic Wranglers Bad Dave Kustu thanks
to our assistant Terry Maldonado. Fam Research is by our
chroniclers of the Purple Sage Marissa Brown and Jabari Davis.
Our theme song is by Our Ramblin Cowboy Band, the
Yellow Roses of Texas, Thomas Lee and Travis Dutt. The

(56:48):
host wardrobe provided by Bonny five hundred. Producer Dave's wardrobe
provided by Mister Guy of Beverly Hills, guest Haarrah, makeup
by Sparkleshot and the Mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben Bad,
Moon Bowldin and No Big Hat Brown. Ridicous Crime Say

(57:11):
It One More Time.

Speaker 3 (57:12):
Piquious Crime.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.