December 17, 2013 • 34 mins
When a suspect or prisoner goes on the lam there are plenty of ways to hide: in plain sight, in the mountains, in another country. There are as many types of ways law enforcement uses to track wanted people as their are ways to go on the lam, but there are some founding principles to carrying out a successful manhunt and they actually include you. Learn about how the fuzz tracks down fugitives and how it's evolving in the age of social media in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's child
to be Chuck Bryant. Guest producer Noel is hanging out
with us for today and that makes the Stuff you
(00:23):
Should Know the podcast. That's right. I gotta kill him
with something different to call us, so you should know
the podcast boring were the explainerators? It's an infodcast. I
don't know. Podcast is what it is? Entertainment, Chuck. Yes,
(00:43):
do you know of a man named James Earl Ray? Yeah? Yeah,
the jerk. Yes, I saw him. I saw him referred
to as dim witted. Yeah, which makes his escape pretty thrilling.
And yeah, suspect really well, let me give you a
little back up. So, James Earl Ray was a Missouri
prison escape e when he rolled into Memphis to assassinate
(01:06):
Martin Luther King Jr. Who was in Memphis to support
the sanitation workers strike there in nineteen uh and James
Earl Ray got a room across the street from the
Lorraine Hotel where MLK was staying. Apparently published in the papers,
not only where he was staying, but his room number,
which I guess was custom at the time. Actually, from
(01:28):
what I understand it was customary. It wasn't unheard of. Uh.
And James Earlway got a room, found out that he
had a decent shot at the balcony outside of King's
room if he leaned out of the bathroom the shared
bathroom of his communal hotel and um shared bathroom huh
(01:49):
shared bathroom down if somebody could have gone in and
been like, oh sorry, sir, pretty much didn't see you
in here with that rifle, with that huge hunting rifle. Yeah, Well,
he got a shot off, he killed MLK and he
ran out of the place that was referred to as
a flophouse, and he left behind valuable evidence with his
prints on it, namely the rifle, bundle of his clothing
(02:10):
and some other stuff that they used to create a
trail for James Arlway got a name, eventually got a
picture and Jims were away made it out of Memphis,
and he actually made it to Canada, and he made
it to Portugal and then the UK uh. And the
way he made it was under an assumed passport, which
(02:33):
for a dim weighted Missouri prison escape e a forged passport.
That's pretty heavy stuff. Yeah, I think it was probably
easier back then. Well, okay, you know he was traveling
under the name George Ramon sneed right, and they found
out that he was traveling under that name because Canadian police,
(02:54):
after being contacted by American authorities with a picture of
James Roway, went through about a hundred and fifty thousand
passports that they had accepted. I guess they had copies
of him, Yeah, that I think about it. Uh, And
then finally found one that looked like James Lay. Uh
found out that the person traveling under that passport was,
(03:16):
in fact he throw airport or in London, and when
he went to Heathrow report they apprehended him and he said,
you got me. I'm James l Ray and I killed
MLK imagined that was tough because everyone back then looked
like James Lay. Yeah, pretty much. You know, all those
dudes looked the same back in the fifties. Um, although
this was the sixties, but he still looked like that
in the fifties. He looked, he did, uh, and he
(03:39):
confessed And then later on, of course, uh recan did
and said no, I was part of a plot and
a conspiracy. Um, and they said t s well, actually,
the King family said, you know what, we think this
guy's telling the truth. And they got a new trial
brought and um he died in prison before he could
be brought to trial again. Yeah, in the late nineties.
(04:02):
And then you two wrote a song about it. It
was the song Pride in the Name of Love Early
Morning April four, But that came before James alway. Yeah,
what do you mean you said, and then you two
wrote it was just missing. You confused me for a second. Yeah.
And I don't know if it was early morning either,
for I think for some reason, I always heard that
(04:23):
Bono got that one wrong. Yeah, I'll have to look
that up. I'm not sure what time it was. Yeah,
I'm sure we could find out, But Bonna wouldn't say
that morning is like a state of mind or something.
You know. I'm cool, I got on blue sunglasses always, so. Um.
The hump for James Earl Ray is just one example.
History is littered with man hunts, and what's strange about
(04:48):
that is that no man hunt really resembles other man hunts. Yeah,
I mean, it's it's weird. Like you can hold up
in the woods for years and then eventually get caught,
or if you're a Whitey Bulger, you can go out
in your driveway in Santa Monica and get caught. Like
I guess, uh, no man hunt is the same, because no,
(05:10):
going on the Lamb is the same. Some prefer hide
and plain sight deal, so I prefer the middle of
the woods. Some people prefer, you know, Bolivia, Sure you know, Nazis.
What would you do if I were on the run? Yeah,
on the Lamb, I would I would probably be a
woodland creature. I don't know, But even if I did know,
I wouldn't say on the podcast because that'd be pretty dumb.
(05:32):
In case I ever do need to go on the
LAMB in the future. Although the hide and plain sight
thing is there's something to be said for that. Sure
you know, yeah, Well, I mean you gotta get some
plastic surgery done in this day and age, yeah, or
just mess your face up a little bit. Well. Actually,
with Whitey Bulger, he was on the Lamb with his
longtime girlfriend Catherine Greek I believe her name was, and
(05:52):
she had extensive plastic surgery um and which had nothing
to do with being on the lamb. They well they
um she they she actually got them found. Yeah there there,
So white Boulger is on the line for sixteen years, right,
and it was he was up there with Osama bin
(06:13):
Lawden as one of America's most wanted fugitives. Um, there's
a million dollar bounty on it. Said, it was big time.
And whenever they found out that he had been somewhere,
they thought he was somewhere, they the FBI would take
out thirty second commercials on TV saying have you seen
this man? Have you seen this woman? This woman is
(06:33):
known to frequent hair salons. Uh, this guy's whitey Bulger
you know, called the FBI if you see him, uh
in the area during times when his girlfriend's demographic would
be watching TV. So this served a two fold purpose. One,
if she saw it and he saw it, then it
would scare him and hopefully flush him out of hiding,
because it's a lot easier to catch somebody out in
(06:55):
the open, which is a common tactic, right. Or Two,
the people that she might be friends with an associate
with could be watching TV at the time and drop
a dime on her. And in fact, that's what happened.
Someone like some lady. He gave her a pedicure at
a hair salon, called and said, uh, I think this
woman that you're looking for is here, and this is
her address. And the cops went to the to the
(07:17):
apartment said, uh, sir, it looks like somebody broke into
your your storage unit here around the corner. And why
do you bowlt your steps outside? And they go clink clink? What?
Why did they even say that? Could they not go
inside or something? I guess they didn't have enough probable
cause they had to lure him outside. I love that
that's okay, it's not okay. Come in, but it's a
(07:38):
located line and say that your storage units busted into. Yeah, yeah,
I'm sure he is too. He might have gotten lazy
after sixteen years, and I don't think so, man. I
think he was really wound up pretty tight. I read
an um, a long form article by a neighbor of his,
a young guy who like befriended him over the years,
and he said he was wound up real tight, always
(07:59):
on the lookout. Did he write a book? Nam kg
he will called like neighbor to the mob. Pretty I'm
sure Matthew Modine, if next to Whitey Bold read that
book would be on the shells right now. Uh, and
it would be called Neighbor to the mob. Um. I
wonder what Aaron Cooper is going to make that? So
(08:20):
who else we got? John Wilkes Booth. He famously went
on the lamb for a pretty short time after he
shot Lincoln twelve days and ended up in a farmhouse
where there's all kinds of stories on how he might
have died, whether he was burned alive or whether he
was truly rooted out by the fire and then shot.
Did he die instantly? Did linger for a while? But
either way, man hunts have been around as long as
(08:43):
people have been killing people. Yeah, and there are some
principles that do kind of hold true for all man
hunts across the board, and pretty much one of them
is get the public involved. Because when you do that,
time and time again, man hunts have shown that like,
somebody out there has seen this person recently, and we'll
(09:04):
call right. Especially these days with technology, with like everyone
having a camera in their pocket basically or sharing on
social media or being up to the second with news reports,
it's like it's made man hunts easier. Yes, and then
the other factor that makes for successful manhunt is having
a lot of people doing a lot of grunt work,
(09:27):
like the Canadian officials going through all of those passports
to try to find one that looked like James R. Ray. Yeah.
I wonder how many people they visited before him, like
the other twelve guys that looked just like like, it's
not me, so all right, Chuck. So let's say that
somebody's on the run in the United States and it's
(09:47):
not a it's not a big deals not necessarily a
national manhunt. Um, it's a it's a regional man hunt.
Will say, Okay, like someone knocked off a liquor store
and shot somebody and was on the loose in a neighborhood.
We want to find that guy. What do you do? Well,
I'm glad you asked, because I've done this with mirrored
(10:08):
sunglasses on Bloodhound. The first thing you gotta do, my friend,
is containing the area. It's called containment, and um, it
sounds just like what it is. You are basically trying
to seal off an area and watch all the possible
exits from that area. Um, if it's a neighborhood, I
guess you're gonna just pick out a certain amount of
(10:29):
blockage and shut it down and have cops posted it
each street exit and just know that we have at
least this area completely contained if this dude is in here,
and we're gonna say, guys, because how many times do
women do stupid stuff like this and go on the lamb?
Not much? You know? Have you not heard of fellman Louise?
(10:50):
That's like the one thing. So, UM, if you do
have an area contained, what you want to do is
not just not let anybody in or out without finding
out if it's the person you're looking for. You also
probably want to go door to door and say, hey,
are you being held hostage right now? Did some guy
with a gun come into your basement window recently? And
(11:12):
that's what they did actually with a twenty square block area. Um,
when they were searching for the Boston Marathon bombers. Yeah,
should we talk about those guys real quick? Sure they
were jerks too, uh, the Sara Enough brothers. Um. They
blew up a couple of pressure cookers fashioned into bombs
(11:34):
at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and the
FBI got on it pretty quick, with um getting photos
released of who they thought these guys were, which turned
out to be really key because after a kind of
a crazy scene where one of them was shot and
killed by the police, like throwing bombs at the cops.
There's quite a scene run over by his brother. And
(11:56):
then the one I guess is that Zokar the d
as silent, right, Yeah, Joe Car or Joe Car I
think he is the one that ended up in a
residential neighborhood hiding in a boat under a tarp, and
he was They sniffed him off the case with some
infrared imaging and basically it was like predator. They're like,
(12:18):
there's a guy in that boat because I see his
red body breathing. Right. So the reason that they found
out that the dude was in the boat was because
the person who owned the boat was under in this
area under the security lockdown in containment UM and was
well aware thanks to the local news and social media
(12:40):
and everything else, that they were looking for this guy.
So when he saw that there was a dude in
his boat, he called the cops. That's how the cops
found suspect number two in the Boston bombing case. Right.
I bet that was a rush for that guy. I
read about like what he said. I think he was
kind of scared. I'm sure, because it's pretty obvious. Like
you see a guy there's a lockdown in your neighborhood,
(13:02):
and you see gotta go climb under your boat tarp
in their backyard. That's him, you know, bleeding guy. I
think he was bleeding at the time. Even more reason
so with with the Boston is a great case. Um
because it's a recent everybody knows about it, but because
it has like so many different points to it that
really kind of give you an idea of what a
man hunt consists of. So you've got containment, you've got
(13:24):
a door to door search, you've got um, the public
transportation being shut down. Yeah, that was a big one.
That's part of containment as well. Yeah, they set up
a no fly zone. Uh, they closed the schools, they
closed they shuttered businesses. It was basically the biggest shut
down of a major US city in history. People who
(13:45):
were in the containment area were asked to not leave
their house. That horrid news speak. Shelter in place, yea term.
Uh that sounds like you should be in a corner
like shelter in place. Yeah, I remember her a tweet
from Dr Ruth while that was going on, She's saying, Hey,
if you're having the shelter in place, maybe now is
(14:06):
a good time to turn off the TV and get
intimate with your loved one. I couldn't believe it. Uh
they say they're still counting up the moneys, but um,
it's tattling up to over a billion dollars for that man.
Not what isn't that crazy? Somebody's milking that. You gotta
think billion dollars. I got a little sidebar. Not on
(14:27):
a man hunt, but President Obama came through my neighborhood
a few months ago, like um, on his way to
school indicator for something, and literally drove like down the
block from my house the motor kaide, did did you
run out to him? Well, no, you can't. That's my point.
Like my friend, uh, you remember Chris Cox, his wife.
(14:49):
We ended up being stuck at the same intersection and
her house was across the street like forty ft away,
and she's like, sir, that is my house. I have
a babysitter there. I'm paying Like, can I just walk
across the street And he was like nope, no, He
would not let her walk across the street and enter
her own home. You have no rights the president is
on your street. Yeah, and he wasn't even It took
(15:09):
like another half hour and she's like, I really just
need to walk right there, and he wouldn't allow it.
So that's some serious lockdown. I guess the point is
when the government wants to lock you down, they can
lock you down. Yeah, pretty much. Um, so chuck, Uh,
you do have rights, however, Well, yeah, that's a good segue,
I guess, Um, it was a great segway. Buddy. Uh.
(15:31):
If if you're in if you're being told not to
leave your house, first of all, you can technically leave
your house, can you. I think you just your risk
of being shot at by the police go through the roof.
So that's a pretty good reason not to leave your house. Um,
just out of common sense. You can be enraged all
you want indoors, well, just like any other night, um,
(15:55):
and the police can't just come busting down your door
saying is he in here? No, Okay, let's go down
the next door. They can knock and say can we
come in and look? And you can say yeah, your nay. Um,
if they have probable cause, say one of them saw
the suspect run into your house, they can go in
after them without asking you. Yeah, or if they're creeping
(16:16):
around your backyard and peeking in your windows, which they
can do legally. Yeah, the cops, Yeah they can. Um
they could, you know, see somebody they think looks like
the suspect. And that's probable cause there's a there's a
loophole big enough to drive like an armored truck through
if you're not picking up on that. Yeah, if they
need to provide emergency services, they can do that. Yeah,
(16:37):
they can say, oh, we thought you you needed CPR.
We're glad to see you're okay. Now that we're in
your house, we're looking around. Or another big loophole is
the exigent circumstances um, which I don't know in the
case of Boston, they could probably barge into anyone's home
and be covered under that one. Yeah, that's basically like
(16:57):
there we're there's a state of emergency going on, like
the civil law is just out the window because the
situation is so dire. And yeah, they argued that this
guy was running around with explosives. That's an emergency. As
far as I know, they didn't like go into any
houses unbidden though. Yeah, and we're not trying to say
(17:18):
like a it cakes like that, like bust down some doors.
You know, Like I'm not saying like cops shouldn't be
doing this stuff. They were like two bombers on the loose,
so I get it. Even still, the cops don't want
to bust down the door because they're going to have
to prove exigence circumstances, and if they can't, then any
evidence that they got from and on the awful searches
(17:39):
out the door, and so their case could be as well, Yeah,
you gotta be careful stuff like that. That's thing you
want to do is have your perp walk you like
all this cops speak, yeah walk, Yeah. If your purp
walks because of bad, bad evidence, then you're gonna be
uh what's that. What's it called in the cup? It's
(18:01):
suspended without pay. I'm feeling like we're channeling the TV
show episode we Yeah, oh yeah, you're like we had
a TV show. I just dooned doubt about that. Um okay,
where are we then? Well, I was saying that one
of the hallmarks of a good man hunt is having
(18:24):
a lot of people doing a lot of work and
again Boston was a good example of that. You had
a lot of different law enforcement agencies, basically ones you
hadn't even heard of, all ponying up personnel. Yeah, I
mean you're gonna get state cops, local cops, sheriff's, FBI,
and that that's for a case like that, or obviously
(18:45):
if it's something like U B. L. Then everyone seems
you're dark thirty or if you have it, you should.
You've got like thousands of people over a decade, all
over the world working together. It's just that one, lady.
It's just the one a d the pretty redhead. So um.
The author of this article makes a pretty good point
(19:07):
that during a man hunt there is such a thing
as um what in police speak would be called collateral damage.
I guess um. Like the l A p D search
for Christopher Dorner is a very good example of this.
You remember that case, Yeah, man, that was freaky. There's like,
there's a Facebook page it's twenty thousand plus people strong
(19:29):
and says it's called we Stand with Christopher Dorner. Yeah,
because he left behind. So he was an l A
p D officer who was fired for making a false
accusation against another cop. When he reported that a copy
was working with kicked a homeless man during an arrest,
but that was false. It was found false, and he
was fired as a result. From his perspective, if you
(19:52):
see it through his through his eyes, that was all
just a huge cover up, and they got rid of
the troublemaker who was not, you know, going with the
flow on the floor, the l a p D covering up.
So he leaves his like angry manifesto about you know
how the l a p D is the most corrupt
organization on the planet and it's racist, and um, there's
(20:13):
a lot of people out there who are like, I
know this to be true because I've I've been on
the wrong end of a night stick with the l
a p D. A confidential Yeah, exactly, and that's in
the forties. Yeah, I mean, that's that's I know they've
cleaned it up a lot, but that is one department
in this country that's been fraught with allegation. And his
point was they haven't cleaned it up a lot, they've
just gotten better at PR. So he goes on, he
(20:35):
takes the manifesto and ends up going on an assassination
killing spree, killing cops killed Um the woman who represented
him in his case, who is the daughter of a cop.
Um And it was announced like that's what's so scary
about it was like he was like, Hey, I'm coming
to kill cops. Exactly, You're not going to see me
(20:56):
coming either. He was on a rampage. Yeah, it was
scary stuff. So the l a p. D Is super
jumpy at this point and they fire on not one,
but two cars that don't have Christopher Dorner in him,
killed two people as a result, and um, finally there's
a standoff after they find him thanks to some park
(21:17):
rangers in Big Bear or Big Sir, one of the
two Big Bear, and he ends up setting his the
cabin he's in on fire and perishing in flames. But
the the the fact is to two different cars were
shot on by the l a p D UM during
the search for this guy. Um, so these aren't just
(21:40):
necessarily clean affairs. Saying with Bin Latten, you know, this
is part of the campaign that took place over a
very long time, and a lot of people were killed
to weaken the structure that was hiding him. Still, yeah,
drone strikes out the wazoo. Uh. They used some pretty
interesting tactics too, that we're not in movie, UM, even
(22:02):
though if I've heard the movie is pretty accurate. But
they didn't include everything. Obviously. They sent a doctor in
a c I A guy who conducted an immunization drive
in the neighborhood where they believed his compound was there
and basically hoping to come across d n A from
him or his family under the guise of a blood drive. Right,
(22:24):
it was immunization drive. Yeah, they didn't call it like, hey,
it's a d n A collection, right drive. But there
there was a lot a big public outcry, especially from
the vaccine establishment, saying like, dude, you can't do that
because now our name is on that vaccine, right and
the next time we want to have a real vaccine drive,
no one's gonna show up, and our vaccination people are
gonna get killed because they're gonna think they're c i A. Yeah,
(22:46):
there's a big, a big hubbub about that. UM. These days,
it's tough, especially if you're in a city like London, England,
two do anything without being caught on a closed circuit camera. UM.
In fact, that's how they eventually identified with the help
of UM. Actually, one of the victims in Boston, they're
(23:09):
on camera too. But if you're in a big city,
it's tough to get away with anything these days. Cameras
are everywhere. Uh. They also have UM. I mentioned the
UM infrared device, the forward looking infrared device, UM night vision.
You've got all sorts of tricks up your sleeve as
law enforcement agencies. You think you're hiding in a boat
(23:30):
under a tarp, that's pretty safe. You don't think about
the dude with the predator camera. They can see you
from you know, fifty ft away, breathing heavily. UM. They
also have like armor trucks. I think you mentioned those
even not even about this. Yeah, and you see those
things roll in like I'm sure they love to play
with those once a year again that was l ap D. Yeah,
(23:52):
but those are very expensive and UM, but they do
come in handy I guess about once a year if
you can afford it, if your town's large enough. We
should say that. UM. There was facial recognition software that
they had working on the video for the Boston bombing
and it did not work. Yeah, we have an article
on that. By the way, I think we should cover
(24:12):
that at some point. Facial recognition Yeah, that's scary stuff.
Apparently Google has one that like they won't they won't
release to the public because they're afraid of the use
it will be put to. It's like that good and
that potentially bad. But the one the CIA has doesn't
work that well. I can see Google having way better
(24:33):
algorithms in the CIA, So chuck. Another aspect of Boston
search the Boston man hunt was the use of social
media for good and ill um or did good effect
and bad? I should say, Yeah, getting the word out
on Facebook and Twitter is not a bad idea. Yeah. Well,
the reddit was kind of the star of the show,
(24:56):
or the scapegoat, I should say, for um, social media
in the search for the Boston bombing suspects because they
were apparently like a couple of thousand stills, video stills
and photographs from the area around the time of the
bombing posted on a reddit subreddit, and um, all of
these people were like combing through them, like they were
(25:18):
trying to crowdsource this man hunt, which is a good intention. Yeah,
they were looking for suspects. This is before anybody ever
released any official photos. Um, and that in and of
itself is kind of a good idea. But it when
a step further where the people on Reddit were saying, um, okay,
I've got to figure it out and into this person,
(25:39):
and they would name a suspect, and all of a sudden,
there's a rumor out there that this person bombed the
Boston Marathon even though they hadn't. Um. So so Reddit
took a lot of heat for that, and apparently they
even took that forum down. Um. But social media also
helped in a lot of ways because everybody was totally
(26:01):
connected to this man hunt and had completely up to
the date, information to the minute, information from within that
containment area, from everywhere, and I guess kind of helped
a little more than just passively watching television during a
man hunt. Yeah. Another point, one of my favorite man hunts,
and this is weird to say that, but um actually,
(26:22):
you know what, let's take a break. I'm gonna tease
that and I'm going to reveal my favorite man hunt
after the break. Okay, So who is it? It's the
Uni bomber. Okay, Yeah, was on the LAMB for eighteen years,
(26:43):
one of the lengthiest man hunts in US history. Not
easy to hide out for that long. Um, and he
did it, which Uh, he did it in the wild
of Montana. Just pretty good idea. I guess if you're
gonna hide out, just drop off the map. Yeah, type manifestos.
Actually Montana. They should have been looking there, They should
have been going there first. But um, he mailed sixteen
(27:05):
bombs over the course of quite a few years and
ended up killing three people, wounding twenty three more. And uh,
I had a million dollar bounty on his head. One
his was one of the most wanted, and eventually he
was rooted out by his own brother who read one
of the manifestos and said that sounds like Teddy Yeah,
(27:27):
and went to the cops and said, hey, this guy
might be my brother. Um, the writing style, the things
he's saying like it very well could be my brother.
And it turned out that was him, right, So, which
is another another point for the case that for a
man hunt to work, you have to get the public involved,
and they did so by publishing these manifestos and said,
anybody familiar with this, and the guy's brother said, yeah, me, yeah,
(27:51):
same with Eric Robert Rudolph. Yeah, that his name. I
don't remember how they caught him. I believe it was
hikers in the wood turned him in. I might be wrong,
but he was definitely hiding out in the woods. And
he was, of course the Olympic bomber. Um, not the
guy they originally pinned on, which was pretty sad. What
(28:11):
was his name, Richard Jewell? Yeah, man, I felt so
bad with that dude. Yeah. Can you imagine, like life ruined? Yeah,
and they they compensated him pretty handsomely afterward. But then
he only lived a couple of million. Yeah. He died
of a heart attack a few years after that. I
don't think I knew that. Yeah, it's because he's like,
I'm eating steak in lobster every night, asked me the drawing.
(28:33):
But Richard Jewel, Yeah, I didn't know he died. Yeah. Um.
And then so back to online real quick. Um, there's
there's evidence that you can crowdsource a man hunt. There's
a whole group of people that live online that are
into true crime, that are that like used their interest
in their online search skills to try to find the
(28:56):
identities of like long lost serial killers, and there's sorts
of online man hunts the amateurs take on. Uh And
apparently the State Department held something called the Tag Challenge
where they had people hiding in cities around the world
and people had twelve hours online contestants had twelve hours
(29:18):
to find them in like these five different cities using
just mug shots and it worked. So they found that
with a search, as time becomes more of an essence,
like is the pressure amount, people stopped just shooting the
info out to wherever they can and start like really targeting,
focusing their search. And once you have a bunch of
(29:41):
people doing that who are really focused in searching, but
a lot of them and sharing information like on social media,
that's when they, like a search and not just a
man hunt or search for a person, but a search
for anything, um, becomes most successful. I guess. Well, yeah,
imagine in Boston that every thousands of people in that
(30:02):
twenty square block radius are looking out of their window.
Oh yeah for this dude. Yeah, so you've got thousands
and thousands of more eyeballs. That's two eyeballs per person
in most cases, unless you're one of those weird pirates
Boston pirates. And that's just that helps you know, Yeah,
as long as they're not out, don't grab their guns
(30:23):
and you know, get in position. Well yeah, that's sounds scary. Well,
that's why they released the pictures of the suspects finally,
because they were trying to to crack down on online
vigilantium that could lead to real life vigilanism. So, uh,
hats off to the dude who saw the dude in
the boat. You got anything else? I got nothing else?
(30:46):
All right, Well, if you want to learn more about
man hunts, you can type that word in the search
bar house toff works. And since I said search bar,
that means it's time for listener. Ma'm uh yeah, I'm
gonna call this Chess about Chess, and I'm gonna read
a couple of them, not here, but one now and
one another episode because we got a lot of great
feedback from chess enthusiasts. People dig this game. This is
(31:10):
from David Wagner. Hey, guys, while you were discussing the
concept of castling, y'all said you didn't quite understand the
value or strategy behind it. You're right, it is all
about protecting the king. Remember how you pointed out that
you want to control the center of the board, that
when your pieces are off to the side, they're not
as strong. Well, that has a lot to do with
why you want to castle Basically, the king is more vulnerable,
(31:33):
open to attacks and has less protection when he remains
in his original E R D square, So you want
to castle him and get him away from those center squares. Also,
you talk about the m passant rule, which is one
of my favorites and something almost never pass up. You
sound mostly because I get because I rarely get a
(31:53):
chance to implement. It doesn't happen when a pawn passes
another pond though on its first move out. It is
when it lands next to another pond that the latter
pond can capture it. So I think we screwed that up. Um,
not big time. We were close. No, I've got that
way wrong. Okay, one last thing and then I'll quit.
(32:14):
Chess pieces. You're gonna love this and their symbols on top.
Many of the basic pieces themselves serve as visual reminders
of how they can move. For example, the night is
l shaped, which is how it moves. The bishop's miter
has a diagonal slit in it. They move diagonally. The rook,
when seen from above, can move in the basic cardinal
(32:35):
directions forward, back, left, right, and on top of the
rook there are turrets pointing in all the cardinal directions.
A queen has many points on her ground showing that
she can go in any way, any direction, and that
small little cross on top of the king lets you
know how far he can go. Although that doesn't include
his diagnomos, which he can move in. The whole theory
(32:55):
kind of falls apart there a little bit um, but
that is a David Wagner in Columbia, South Carolina. Nice.
Thanks a lot, David Wagner. That was a great email, pleasant, approachable,
gentle with the correction, just good stuff all around. You
can dance to it all right, man, Way to go, Wagner. Uh.
If you want to send us an email or reach
(33:18):
out to us digitally to say hello or whatever, you
can tweet to us. Join us on Twitter at s
Y s K Podcast, Join us on Facebook at Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and hang
out at our awesome website. It's called Stuff you Should
(33:40):
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. Brought to
you by the all new Yota Corolla
Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's child
to be Chuck Bryant. Guest producer Noel is hanging out
with us for today and that makes the Stuff you
(00:23):
Should Know the podcast. That's right. I gotta kill him
with something different to call us, so you should know
the podcast boring were the explainerators? It's an infodcast. I
don't know. Podcast is what it is? Entertainment, Chuck. Yes,
(00:43):
do you know of a man named James Earl Ray? Yeah? Yeah,
the jerk. Yes, I saw him. I saw him referred
to as dim witted. Yeah, which makes his escape pretty thrilling.
And yeah, suspect really well, let me give you a
little back up. So, James Earl Ray was a Missouri
prison escape e when he rolled into Memphis to assassinate
(01:06):
Martin Luther King Jr. Who was in Memphis to support
the sanitation workers strike there in nineteen uh and James
Earl Ray got a room across the street from the
Lorraine Hotel where MLK was staying. Apparently published in the papers,
not only where he was staying, but his room number,
which I guess was custom at the time. Actually, from
(01:28):
what I understand it was customary. It wasn't unheard of. Uh.
And James Earlway got a room, found out that he
had a decent shot at the balcony outside of King's
room if he leaned out of the bathroom the shared
bathroom of his communal hotel and um shared bathroom huh
(01:49):
shared bathroom down if somebody could have gone in and
been like, oh sorry, sir, pretty much didn't see you
in here with that rifle, with that huge hunting rifle. Yeah, Well,
he got a shot off, he killed MLK and he
ran out of the place that was referred to as
a flophouse, and he left behind valuable evidence with his
prints on it, namely the rifle, bundle of his clothing
(02:10):
and some other stuff that they used to create a
trail for James Arlway got a name, eventually got a
picture and Jims were away made it out of Memphis,
and he actually made it to Canada, and he made
it to Portugal and then the UK uh. And the
way he made it was under an assumed passport, which
(02:33):
for a dim weighted Missouri prison escape e a forged passport.
That's pretty heavy stuff. Yeah, I think it was probably
easier back then. Well, okay, you know he was traveling
under the name George Ramon sneed right, and they found
out that he was traveling under that name because Canadian police,
(02:54):
after being contacted by American authorities with a picture of
James Roway, went through about a hundred and fifty thousand
passports that they had accepted. I guess they had copies
of him, Yeah, that I think about it. Uh, And
then finally found one that looked like James Lay. Uh
found out that the person traveling under that passport was,
(03:16):
in fact he throw airport or in London, and when
he went to Heathrow report they apprehended him and he said,
you got me. I'm James l Ray and I killed
MLK imagined that was tough because everyone back then looked
like James Lay. Yeah, pretty much. You know, all those
dudes looked the same back in the fifties. Um, although
this was the sixties, but he still looked like that
in the fifties. He looked, he did, uh, and he
(03:39):
confessed And then later on, of course, uh recan did
and said no, I was part of a plot and
a conspiracy. Um, and they said t s well, actually,
the King family said, you know what, we think this
guy's telling the truth. And they got a new trial
brought and um he died in prison before he could
be brought to trial again. Yeah, in the late nineties.
(04:02):
And then you two wrote a song about it. It
was the song Pride in the Name of Love Early
Morning April four, But that came before James alway. Yeah,
what do you mean you said, and then you two
wrote it was just missing. You confused me for a second. Yeah.
And I don't know if it was early morning either,
for I think for some reason, I always heard that
(04:23):
Bono got that one wrong. Yeah, I'll have to look
that up. I'm not sure what time it was. Yeah,
I'm sure we could find out, But Bonna wouldn't say
that morning is like a state of mind or something.
You know. I'm cool, I got on blue sunglasses always, so. Um.
The hump for James Earl Ray is just one example.
History is littered with man hunts, and what's strange about
(04:48):
that is that no man hunt really resembles other man hunts. Yeah,
I mean, it's it's weird. Like you can hold up
in the woods for years and then eventually get caught,
or if you're a Whitey Bulger, you can go out
in your driveway in Santa Monica and get caught. Like
I guess, uh, no man hunt is the same, because no,
(05:10):
going on the Lamb is the same. Some prefer hide
and plain sight deal, so I prefer the middle of
the woods. Some people prefer, you know, Bolivia, Sure you know, Nazis.
What would you do if I were on the run? Yeah,
on the Lamb, I would I would probably be a
woodland creature. I don't know, But even if I did know,
I wouldn't say on the podcast because that'd be pretty dumb.
(05:32):
In case I ever do need to go on the
LAMB in the future. Although the hide and plain sight
thing is there's something to be said for that. Sure
you know, yeah, Well, I mean you gotta get some
plastic surgery done in this day and age, yeah, or
just mess your face up a little bit. Well. Actually,
with Whitey Bulger, he was on the Lamb with his
longtime girlfriend Catherine Greek I believe her name was, and
(05:52):
she had extensive plastic surgery um and which had nothing
to do with being on the lamb. They well they
um she they she actually got them found. Yeah there there,
So white Boulger is on the line for sixteen years, right,
and it was he was up there with Osama bin
(06:13):
Lawden as one of America's most wanted fugitives. Um, there's
a million dollar bounty on it. Said, it was big time.
And whenever they found out that he had been somewhere,
they thought he was somewhere, they the FBI would take
out thirty second commercials on TV saying have you seen
this man? Have you seen this woman? This woman is
(06:33):
known to frequent hair salons. Uh, this guy's whitey Bulger
you know, called the FBI if you see him, uh
in the area during times when his girlfriend's demographic would
be watching TV. So this served a two fold purpose. One,
if she saw it and he saw it, then it
would scare him and hopefully flush him out of hiding,
because it's a lot easier to catch somebody out in
(06:55):
the open, which is a common tactic, right. Or Two,
the people that she might be friends with an associate
with could be watching TV at the time and drop
a dime on her. And in fact, that's what happened.
Someone like some lady. He gave her a pedicure at
a hair salon, called and said, uh, I think this
woman that you're looking for is here, and this is
her address. And the cops went to the to the
(07:17):
apartment said, uh, sir, it looks like somebody broke into
your your storage unit here around the corner. And why
do you bowlt your steps outside? And they go clink clink? What?
Why did they even say that? Could they not go
inside or something? I guess they didn't have enough probable
cause they had to lure him outside. I love that
that's okay, it's not okay. Come in, but it's a
(07:38):
located line and say that your storage units busted into. Yeah, yeah,
I'm sure he is too. He might have gotten lazy
after sixteen years, and I don't think so, man. I
think he was really wound up pretty tight. I read
an um, a long form article by a neighbor of his,
a young guy who like befriended him over the years,
and he said he was wound up real tight, always
(07:59):
on the lookout. Did he write a book? Nam kg
he will called like neighbor to the mob. Pretty I'm
sure Matthew Modine, if next to Whitey Bold read that
book would be on the shells right now. Uh, and
it would be called Neighbor to the mob. Um. I
wonder what Aaron Cooper is going to make that? So
(08:20):
who else we got? John Wilkes Booth. He famously went
on the lamb for a pretty short time after he
shot Lincoln twelve days and ended up in a farmhouse
where there's all kinds of stories on how he might
have died, whether he was burned alive or whether he
was truly rooted out by the fire and then shot.
Did he die instantly? Did linger for a while? But
either way, man hunts have been around as long as
(08:43):
people have been killing people. Yeah, and there are some
principles that do kind of hold true for all man
hunts across the board, and pretty much one of them
is get the public involved. Because when you do that,
time and time again, man hunts have shown that like,
somebody out there has seen this person recently, and we'll
(09:04):
call right. Especially these days with technology, with like everyone
having a camera in their pocket basically or sharing on
social media or being up to the second with news reports,
it's like it's made man hunts easier. Yes, and then
the other factor that makes for successful manhunt is having
a lot of people doing a lot of grunt work,
(09:27):
like the Canadian officials going through all of those passports
to try to find one that looked like James R. Ray. Yeah.
I wonder how many people they visited before him, like
the other twelve guys that looked just like like, it's
not me, so all right, Chuck. So let's say that
somebody's on the run in the United States and it's
(09:47):
not a it's not a big deals not necessarily a
national manhunt. Um, it's a it's a regional man hunt.
Will say, Okay, like someone knocked off a liquor store
and shot somebody and was on the loose in a neighborhood.
We want to find that guy. What do you do? Well,
I'm glad you asked, because I've done this with mirrored
(10:08):
sunglasses on Bloodhound. The first thing you gotta do, my friend,
is containing the area. It's called containment, and um, it
sounds just like what it is. You are basically trying
to seal off an area and watch all the possible
exits from that area. Um, if it's a neighborhood, I
guess you're gonna just pick out a certain amount of
(10:29):
blockage and shut it down and have cops posted it
each street exit and just know that we have at
least this area completely contained if this dude is in here,
and we're gonna say, guys, because how many times do
women do stupid stuff like this and go on the lamb?
Not much? You know? Have you not heard of fellman Louise?
(10:50):
That's like the one thing. So, UM, if you do
have an area contained, what you want to do is
not just not let anybody in or out without finding
out if it's the person you're looking for. You also
probably want to go door to door and say, hey,
are you being held hostage right now? Did some guy
with a gun come into your basement window recently? And
(11:12):
that's what they did actually with a twenty square block area. Um,
when they were searching for the Boston Marathon bombers. Yeah,
should we talk about those guys real quick? Sure they
were jerks too, uh, the Sara Enough brothers. Um. They
blew up a couple of pressure cookers fashioned into bombs
(11:34):
at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and the
FBI got on it pretty quick, with um getting photos
released of who they thought these guys were, which turned
out to be really key because after a kind of
a crazy scene where one of them was shot and
killed by the police, like throwing bombs at the cops.
There's quite a scene run over by his brother. And
(11:56):
then the one I guess is that Zokar the d
as silent, right, Yeah, Joe Car or Joe Car I
think he is the one that ended up in a
residential neighborhood hiding in a boat under a tarp, and
he was They sniffed him off the case with some
infrared imaging and basically it was like predator. They're like,
(12:18):
there's a guy in that boat because I see his
red body breathing. Right. So the reason that they found
out that the dude was in the boat was because
the person who owned the boat was under in this
area under the security lockdown in containment UM and was
well aware thanks to the local news and social media
(12:40):
and everything else, that they were looking for this guy.
So when he saw that there was a dude in
his boat, he called the cops. That's how the cops
found suspect number two in the Boston bombing case. Right.
I bet that was a rush for that guy. I
read about like what he said. I think he was
kind of scared. I'm sure, because it's pretty obvious. Like
you see a guy there's a lockdown in your neighborhood,
(13:02):
and you see gotta go climb under your boat tarp
in their backyard. That's him, you know, bleeding guy. I
think he was bleeding at the time. Even more reason
so with with the Boston is a great case. Um
because it's a recent everybody knows about it, but because
it has like so many different points to it that
really kind of give you an idea of what a
man hunt consists of. So you've got containment, you've got
(13:24):
a door to door search, you've got um, the public
transportation being shut down. Yeah, that was a big one.
That's part of containment as well. Yeah, they set up
a no fly zone. Uh, they closed the schools, they
closed they shuttered businesses. It was basically the biggest shut
down of a major US city in history. People who
(13:45):
were in the containment area were asked to not leave
their house. That horrid news speak. Shelter in place, yea term.
Uh that sounds like you should be in a corner
like shelter in place. Yeah, I remember her a tweet
from Dr Ruth while that was going on, She's saying, Hey,
if you're having the shelter in place, maybe now is
(14:06):
a good time to turn off the TV and get
intimate with your loved one. I couldn't believe it. Uh
they say they're still counting up the moneys, but um,
it's tattling up to over a billion dollars for that man.
Not what isn't that crazy? Somebody's milking that. You gotta
think billion dollars. I got a little sidebar. Not on
(14:27):
a man hunt, but President Obama came through my neighborhood
a few months ago, like um, on his way to
school indicator for something, and literally drove like down the
block from my house the motor kaide, did did you
run out to him? Well, no, you can't. That's my point.
Like my friend, uh, you remember Chris Cox, his wife.
(14:49):
We ended up being stuck at the same intersection and
her house was across the street like forty ft away,
and she's like, sir, that is my house. I have
a babysitter there. I'm paying Like, can I just walk
across the street And he was like nope, no, He
would not let her walk across the street and enter
her own home. You have no rights the president is
on your street. Yeah, and he wasn't even It took
(15:09):
like another half hour and she's like, I really just
need to walk right there, and he wouldn't allow it.
So that's some serious lockdown. I guess the point is
when the government wants to lock you down, they can
lock you down. Yeah, pretty much. Um, so chuck, Uh,
you do have rights, however, Well, yeah, that's a good segue,
I guess, Um, it was a great segway. Buddy. Uh.
(15:31):
If if you're in if you're being told not to
leave your house, first of all, you can technically leave
your house, can you. I think you just your risk
of being shot at by the police go through the roof.
So that's a pretty good reason not to leave your house. Um,
just out of common sense. You can be enraged all
you want indoors, well, just like any other night, um,
(15:55):
and the police can't just come busting down your door
saying is he in here? No, Okay, let's go down
the next door. They can knock and say can we
come in and look? And you can say yeah, your nay. Um,
if they have probable cause, say one of them saw
the suspect run into your house, they can go in
after them without asking you. Yeah, or if they're creeping
(16:16):
around your backyard and peeking in your windows, which they
can do legally. Yeah, the cops, Yeah they can. Um
they could, you know, see somebody they think looks like
the suspect. And that's probable cause there's a there's a
loophole big enough to drive like an armored truck through
if you're not picking up on that. Yeah, if they
need to provide emergency services, they can do that. Yeah,
(16:37):
they can say, oh, we thought you you needed CPR.
We're glad to see you're okay. Now that we're in
your house, we're looking around. Or another big loophole is
the exigent circumstances um, which I don't know in the
case of Boston, they could probably barge into anyone's home
and be covered under that one. Yeah, that's basically like
(16:57):
there we're there's a state of emergency going on, like
the civil law is just out the window because the
situation is so dire. And yeah, they argued that this
guy was running around with explosives. That's an emergency. As
far as I know, they didn't like go into any
houses unbidden though. Yeah, and we're not trying to say
(17:18):
like a it cakes like that, like bust down some doors.
You know, Like I'm not saying like cops shouldn't be
doing this stuff. They were like two bombers on the loose,
so I get it. Even still, the cops don't want
to bust down the door because they're going to have
to prove exigence circumstances, and if they can't, then any
evidence that they got from and on the awful searches
(17:39):
out the door, and so their case could be as well, Yeah,
you gotta be careful stuff like that. That's thing you
want to do is have your perp walk you like
all this cops speak, yeah walk, Yeah. If your purp
walks because of bad, bad evidence, then you're gonna be
uh what's that. What's it called in the cup? It's
(18:01):
suspended without pay. I'm feeling like we're channeling the TV
show episode we Yeah, oh yeah, you're like we had
a TV show. I just dooned doubt about that. Um okay,
where are we then? Well, I was saying that one
of the hallmarks of a good man hunt is having
(18:24):
a lot of people doing a lot of work and
again Boston was a good example of that. You had
a lot of different law enforcement agencies, basically ones you
hadn't even heard of, all ponying up personnel. Yeah, I
mean you're gonna get state cops, local cops, sheriff's, FBI,
and that that's for a case like that, or obviously
(18:45):
if it's something like U B. L. Then everyone seems
you're dark thirty or if you have it, you should.
You've got like thousands of people over a decade, all
over the world working together. It's just that one, lady.
It's just the one a d the pretty redhead. So um.
The author of this article makes a pretty good point
(19:07):
that during a man hunt there is such a thing
as um what in police speak would be called collateral damage.
I guess um. Like the l A p D search
for Christopher Dorner is a very good example of this.
You remember that case, Yeah, man, that was freaky. There's like,
there's a Facebook page it's twenty thousand plus people strong
(19:29):
and says it's called we Stand with Christopher Dorner. Yeah,
because he left behind. So he was an l A
p D officer who was fired for making a false
accusation against another cop. When he reported that a copy
was working with kicked a homeless man during an arrest,
but that was false. It was found false, and he
was fired as a result. From his perspective, if you
(19:52):
see it through his through his eyes, that was all
just a huge cover up, and they got rid of
the troublemaker who was not, you know, going with the
flow on the floor, the l a p D covering up.
So he leaves his like angry manifesto about you know
how the l a p D is the most corrupt
organization on the planet and it's racist, and um, there's
(20:13):
a lot of people out there who are like, I
know this to be true because I've I've been on
the wrong end of a night stick with the l
a p D. A confidential Yeah, exactly, and that's in
the forties. Yeah, I mean, that's that's I know they've
cleaned it up a lot, but that is one department
in this country that's been fraught with allegation. And his
point was they haven't cleaned it up a lot, they've
just gotten better at PR. So he goes on, he
(20:35):
takes the manifesto and ends up going on an assassination
killing spree, killing cops killed Um the woman who represented
him in his case, who is the daughter of a cop.
Um And it was announced like that's what's so scary
about it was like he was like, Hey, I'm coming
to kill cops. Exactly, You're not going to see me
(20:56):
coming either. He was on a rampage. Yeah, it was
scary stuff. So the l a p. D Is super
jumpy at this point and they fire on not one,
but two cars that don't have Christopher Dorner in him,
killed two people as a result, and um, finally there's
a standoff after they find him thanks to some park
(21:17):
rangers in Big Bear or Big Sir, one of the
two Big Bear, and he ends up setting his the
cabin he's in on fire and perishing in flames. But
the the the fact is to two different cars were
shot on by the l a p D UM during
the search for this guy. Um, so these aren't just
(21:40):
necessarily clean affairs. Saying with Bin Latten, you know, this
is part of the campaign that took place over a
very long time, and a lot of people were killed
to weaken the structure that was hiding him. Still, yeah,
drone strikes out the wazoo. Uh. They used some pretty
interesting tactics too, that we're not in movie, UM, even
(22:02):
though if I've heard the movie is pretty accurate. But
they didn't include everything. Obviously. They sent a doctor in
a c I A guy who conducted an immunization drive
in the neighborhood where they believed his compound was there
and basically hoping to come across d n A from
him or his family under the guise of a blood drive. Right,
(22:24):
it was immunization drive. Yeah, they didn't call it like, hey,
it's a d n A collection, right drive. But there
there was a lot a big public outcry, especially from
the vaccine establishment, saying like, dude, you can't do that
because now our name is on that vaccine, right and
the next time we want to have a real vaccine drive,
no one's gonna show up, and our vaccination people are
gonna get killed because they're gonna think they're c i A. Yeah,
(22:46):
there's a big, a big hubbub about that. UM. These days,
it's tough, especially if you're in a city like London, England,
two do anything without being caught on a closed circuit camera. UM.
In fact, that's how they eventually identified with the help
of UM. Actually, one of the victims in Boston, they're
(23:09):
on camera too. But if you're in a big city,
it's tough to get away with anything these days. Cameras
are everywhere. Uh. They also have UM. I mentioned the
UM infrared device, the forward looking infrared device, UM night vision.
You've got all sorts of tricks up your sleeve as
law enforcement agencies. You think you're hiding in a boat
(23:30):
under a tarp, that's pretty safe. You don't think about
the dude with the predator camera. They can see you
from you know, fifty ft away, breathing heavily. UM. They
also have like armor trucks. I think you mentioned those
even not even about this. Yeah, and you see those
things roll in like I'm sure they love to play
with those once a year again that was l ap D. Yeah,
(23:52):
but those are very expensive and UM, but they do
come in handy I guess about once a year if
you can afford it, if your town's large enough. We
should say that. UM. There was facial recognition software that
they had working on the video for the Boston bombing
and it did not work. Yeah, we have an article
on that. By the way, I think we should cover
(24:12):
that at some point. Facial recognition Yeah, that's scary stuff.
Apparently Google has one that like they won't they won't
release to the public because they're afraid of the use
it will be put to. It's like that good and
that potentially bad. But the one the CIA has doesn't
work that well. I can see Google having way better
(24:33):
algorithms in the CIA, So chuck. Another aspect of Boston
search the Boston man hunt was the use of social
media for good and ill um or did good effect
and bad? I should say, Yeah, getting the word out
on Facebook and Twitter is not a bad idea. Yeah. Well,
the reddit was kind of the star of the show,
(24:56):
or the scapegoat, I should say, for um, social media
in the search for the Boston bombing suspects because they
were apparently like a couple of thousand stills, video stills
and photographs from the area around the time of the
bombing posted on a reddit subreddit, and um, all of
these people were like combing through them, like they were
(25:18):
trying to crowdsource this man hunt, which is a good intention. Yeah,
they were looking for suspects. This is before anybody ever
released any official photos. Um, and that in and of
itself is kind of a good idea. But it when
a step further where the people on Reddit were saying, um, okay,
I've got to figure it out and into this person,
(25:39):
and they would name a suspect, and all of a sudden,
there's a rumor out there that this person bombed the
Boston Marathon even though they hadn't. Um. So so Reddit
took a lot of heat for that, and apparently they
even took that forum down. Um. But social media also
helped in a lot of ways because everybody was totally
(26:01):
connected to this man hunt and had completely up to
the date, information to the minute, information from within that
containment area, from everywhere, and I guess kind of helped
a little more than just passively watching television during a
man hunt. Yeah. Another point, one of my favorite man hunts,
and this is weird to say that, but um actually,
(26:22):
you know what, let's take a break. I'm gonna tease
that and I'm going to reveal my favorite man hunt
after the break. Okay, So who is it? It's the
Uni bomber. Okay, Yeah, was on the LAMB for eighteen years,
(26:43):
one of the lengthiest man hunts in US history. Not
easy to hide out for that long. Um, and he
did it, which Uh, he did it in the wild
of Montana. Just pretty good idea. I guess if you're
gonna hide out, just drop off the map. Yeah, type manifestos.
Actually Montana. They should have been looking there, They should
have been going there first. But um, he mailed sixteen
(27:05):
bombs over the course of quite a few years and
ended up killing three people, wounding twenty three more. And uh,
I had a million dollar bounty on his head. One
his was one of the most wanted, and eventually he
was rooted out by his own brother who read one
of the manifestos and said that sounds like Teddy Yeah,
(27:27):
and went to the cops and said, hey, this guy
might be my brother. Um, the writing style, the things
he's saying like it very well could be my brother.
And it turned out that was him, right, So, which
is another another point for the case that for a
man hunt to work, you have to get the public involved,
and they did so by publishing these manifestos and said,
anybody familiar with this, and the guy's brother said, yeah, me, yeah,
(27:51):
same with Eric Robert Rudolph. Yeah, that his name. I
don't remember how they caught him. I believe it was
hikers in the wood turned him in. I might be wrong,
but he was definitely hiding out in the woods. And
he was, of course the Olympic bomber. Um, not the
guy they originally pinned on, which was pretty sad. What
(28:11):
was his name, Richard Jewell? Yeah, man, I felt so
bad with that dude. Yeah. Can you imagine, like life ruined? Yeah,
and they they compensated him pretty handsomely afterward. But then
he only lived a couple of million. Yeah. He died
of a heart attack a few years after that. I
don't think I knew that. Yeah, it's because he's like,
I'm eating steak in lobster every night, asked me the drawing.
(28:33):
But Richard Jewel, Yeah, I didn't know he died. Yeah. Um.
And then so back to online real quick. Um, there's
there's evidence that you can crowdsource a man hunt. There's
a whole group of people that live online that are
into true crime, that are that like used their interest
in their online search skills to try to find the
(28:56):
identities of like long lost serial killers, and there's sorts
of online man hunts the amateurs take on. Uh And
apparently the State Department held something called the Tag Challenge
where they had people hiding in cities around the world
and people had twelve hours online contestants had twelve hours
(29:18):
to find them in like these five different cities using
just mug shots and it worked. So they found that
with a search, as time becomes more of an essence,
like is the pressure amount, people stopped just shooting the
info out to wherever they can and start like really targeting,
focusing their search. And once you have a bunch of
(29:41):
people doing that who are really focused in searching, but
a lot of them and sharing information like on social media,
that's when they, like a search and not just a
man hunt or search for a person, but a search
for anything, um, becomes most successful. I guess. Well, yeah,
imagine in Boston that every thousands of people in that
(30:02):
twenty square block radius are looking out of their window.
Oh yeah for this dude. Yeah, so you've got thousands
and thousands of more eyeballs. That's two eyeballs per person
in most cases, unless you're one of those weird pirates
Boston pirates. And that's just that helps you know, Yeah,
as long as they're not out, don't grab their guns
(30:23):
and you know, get in position. Well yeah, that's sounds scary. Well,
that's why they released the pictures of the suspects finally,
because they were trying to to crack down on online
vigilantium that could lead to real life vigilanism. So, uh,
hats off to the dude who saw the dude in
the boat. You got anything else? I got nothing else?
(30:46):
All right, Well, if you want to learn more about
man hunts, you can type that word in the search
bar house toff works. And since I said search bar,
that means it's time for listener. Ma'm uh yeah, I'm
gonna call this Chess about Chess, and I'm gonna read
a couple of them, not here, but one now and
one another episode because we got a lot of great
feedback from chess enthusiasts. People dig this game. This is
(31:10):
from David Wagner. Hey, guys, while you were discussing the
concept of castling, y'all said you didn't quite understand the
value or strategy behind it. You're right, it is all
about protecting the king. Remember how you pointed out that
you want to control the center of the board, that
when your pieces are off to the side, they're not
as strong. Well, that has a lot to do with
why you want to castle Basically, the king is more vulnerable,
(31:33):
open to attacks and has less protection when he remains
in his original E R D square, So you want
to castle him and get him away from those center squares. Also,
you talk about the m passant rule, which is one
of my favorites and something almost never pass up. You
sound mostly because I get because I rarely get a
(31:53):
chance to implement. It doesn't happen when a pawn passes
another pond though on its first move out. It is
when it lands next to another pond that the latter
pond can capture it. So I think we screwed that up. Um,
not big time. We were close. No, I've got that
way wrong. Okay, one last thing and then I'll quit.
(32:14):
Chess pieces. You're gonna love this and their symbols on top.
Many of the basic pieces themselves serve as visual reminders
of how they can move. For example, the night is
l shaped, which is how it moves. The bishop's miter
has a diagonal slit in it. They move diagonally. The rook,
when seen from above, can move in the basic cardinal
(32:35):
directions forward, back, left, right, and on top of the
rook there are turrets pointing in all the cardinal directions.
A queen has many points on her ground showing that
she can go in any way, any direction, and that
small little cross on top of the king lets you
know how far he can go. Although that doesn't include
his diagnomos, which he can move in. The whole theory
(32:55):
kind of falls apart there a little bit um, but
that is a David Wagner in Columbia, South Carolina. Nice.
Thanks a lot, David Wagner. That was a great email, pleasant, approachable,
gentle with the correction, just good stuff all around. You
can dance to it all right, man, Way to go, Wagner. Uh.
If you want to send us an email or reach
(33:18):
out to us digitally to say hello or whatever, you
can tweet to us. Join us on Twitter at s
Y s K Podcast, Join us on Facebook at Facebook
dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and hang
out at our awesome website. It's called Stuff you Should
(33:40):
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. Brought to
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Josh Clark
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