Stooperheroes: A Grab Bag of Unlikely Avengers

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Most of us grew up loving superhero stories. My favorite
was always The X Men. I liked the idea of
these people who were born with mutations that initially made
them targets of bigotry or fear, then harnessing those differences
to do good in the world. I've always been a
big believer in give what you've got. If you have
a special gift or talent, use it to make the

(00:41):
world better. But here's the thing. Most of us recognize
that superheroes are a metaphor for this idea. You're not
supposed to literally dress up in a cape and tights
and go around town looking for muggers to beat up,
or create a mysterious fake identity to rally people toward
a nebulous cause. Evidently, though, some folks never got the

(01:02):
memo on that. We're going to tell you about a
couple of them. This is stuperheroes, a grab bag of
unlikely avengures. Case one a hard one to solve, the

(01:23):
tale of Penis Man. So campers for this one were
in Tempe, Arizona, right at the end of twenty nineteen.
COVID hadn't hit the US yet. We were all blissfully
unaware of the chaos that was about to fall upon us,
And in Tempe, a mystery was unfolding, the mystery of
Penis Man. All over town people were noticing his mark,

(01:44):
the name Penis Man in a distinctive all caps handwriting.
Tempe was no stranger to graffiti, but this guy was prolific.
He was tagging mattresses, dumpsters, the sides of buildings, pretty
much any blank space you could point a can of
spray paint at. My favorite is when he put it
on a row of Portagohn's one letter on each one.
That one was pretty impressive. But nobody knew why he

(02:08):
was doing this, and nobody knew who Penis Man was.
His moniker was popping up all over the place, but
like any good superhero, he refused to reveal his identity. Obviously,
our guy was a grower, not a shower. And in
the absence of a person to take credit for the
tags and explain his motive, Penis Man's legend began to grow.

(02:30):
Penis Man was developing a fan base. The thing that
cracks me up the most about this, by the way,
is that he wasn't out there drawing actual dis He
was just writing Penis Man all.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Over the place.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
There's just something about that that strikes me as so funny.
It's like something Dwight Shrewd would do. You Like, drawing
the dongs would be a step too far. We don't
want to get crazy over here, right, It's so funny
to me. The citizenry, of course, had its own opinions
on the matter. One of the local news stations did

(03:03):
some man on the street interviews, and reactions were mixed.
One lady called the graffiti obnoxious. One guy said he
thought it was pretty funny, but he'd hate for kids
to see it. He else, is literally just the word
penis Calm down, seem just the word penis.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Just a word, like it's the it's the correct word.
It's not yeah, I'm not Dick's dick man, Like that's
the that's the scientific Like that's the correct word.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
It's like a white shrewdie. I just can't even. Another
guy commented on the news station's website that Penis Man
was the only thing lately that made him proud to
be an Arizona. A lady responded that she thought penis
Man was immature and tacky, and although there were some
who agreed with her, she still got dogpiled to dust.

(03:51):
It must have been her first day on the Internet
or something. And the longer this went on, the more
Penis Man's fans adored him. A video about him on
a news station's YouTube channel and got comments like the man,
the myth, the legend, penis Man. A Facebook group emerged
penis Man Fans, then a Twitter page and an Instagram
account called meenis pan. There was fan art, there were

(04:17):
t shirts, there were presidential campaign materials penis Man twenty twenty,
and before long there were copycats. The real Penis Man
had been prolific enough now that there were impostors on
the loose. The tags were springing up everywhere. The Penis
Man fans were pleased about this for the most part.
The account admin tweeted, our official position on copycats is

(04:40):
that they are a good thing. Y'all, they have an
official position and the jokes right themselves.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
He went on.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
They helped throw the tempeped off the real Penis Man's trail.
But more importantly, they show that Penis Man is more
than just a single individual. Penis Man is an idea,
a move that's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Man.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I feel like the national anthem should be playing in
the background by now. A popular blogger named Coolie Mick
took it even further, writing, the Penis Man is a watchful,
silent hero of Tempe, Arizona. History. Books will be written
this time in society will be reflected upon. Do you
want to be on the side against the penis Man?

(05:24):
Of course you don't long live the penis Man. May
no street corners stop sign our park bench go untagged
in Tempe as long as you rain. Huh. So it
was all in good fun probably, but for some reason
heat related delirium maybe. As the weeks went by and
the tags continued to show up all over town, the
Tempe Police decided that Penis Man was a top priority.

(05:48):
These guys were determined to catch him. Imagine they had
a big Pepe Sylvia type board at the police headquarters
with like red yarn and thumb tacks marking all the
places Penis Man had left his stain.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, there's not much to do in Tempe, guessing.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, it sure sounds like it. I mean, you know,
by this point it was the very start of the pandemic.
We were all a little weird in the heads or whatever.
But considering that some of the other graffiti in town
was like racist and stuff, it doesn't seem like Penis
Man should have really been first on the list. But
what do I know, Well, somebody think of the children.

(06:24):
I can't allow them to see the word penis. Twenty
nineteen saw over three hundred thousand graffiti incidents in Tempe,
but apparently the town had some rule about obscene graffiti,
specifically where it had to be addressed within forty eight hours.
Can't you just see him in the war room at
the Tempepedee headquarters, like this filthy best or just keeps coming.

(06:46):
We must act now, gentlemen, or this menace will only
continue to spread his seeds of rebellion all over our city.
Jokes aside, though, is kind of understandable why they hated it.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah, I mean, for one thing, it was creating extra
work for the cleanup guys. That sucks. And for another
Penis Man had started tagging some local historical landmarks. It's
one thing to spray paint a dumpster, it's another to
unload all over the old Hayden flour Mill or the
big A on Hayden. Butte. I guess they were just

(07:19):
determined not to deliver a flaccid response.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I doll know Penis Man had become Temppds movie. Nope,
that's too easy. He was going to be their bad
Lagettysburg and he must be destroyed, no matter how hard
it would be.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
You gotta make sure your police stand off doesn't last
more than four hours, though, and you got to go
see a doctor. He tagged City Hall too, by the way,
and a bunch of spots on the campus of ASU.
And finally, on Thursday, January twenty third, it all came
to a head when the police got CCTV footed of

(08:00):
Penis Man tagging a wall. They had a clear view
of his face and better yet, a clear view of
his car. Busted Penis Man, it turns out, was a
thirty nine year old guy named Dustin Shomer, and he
didn't deny that he was responsible for some of the graffiti.

(08:22):
But was Dustin Shomer the real Penis Man or was
he one of the many impostors.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
A cheap knockoff.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Was he lifetime or was he Trojan? Well, according to him,
he's a copycat. Dustin told YouTuber Gavin Wants Pizza that
he first heard about Penis Man from a childhood friend
a few months after the whole thing started. He said
he and his friend had actually been arrested together for
graffiti when they were in high school. He told a

(08:54):
few sources that he suspects this friend is the real
Penis Man, but he can't prove it. The New Phoenix
Times tells it a little differently that Dustin was inspired
to copycat Penis Man when he heard some people talking
about the graffiti in a bar. He said, I thought
it was a good message. This isn't the only instance

(09:17):
where we'll find Dustin telling a couple of different stories.
By the way, we'll get to that later. Dustin seems
like an interesting guy. He's got a degree from Arizona
State University in Japanese language and literature. After graduation, he
moved to Germany. Natural choice when you've just spent the
last four years painstakingly learning Japanese right and lived there

(09:38):
for nine years. Interestingly, he says the Germans have a
really casual attitude about graffiti. It's not the kind of
thing you get arrested for there. Dustin also admits he
struggled with his mental health over the years. In an
interview with YouTuber Gavin Wants Pizza, he said he was
in a manic phase when he found out about Penis Man,

(09:59):
and he was total reckless and the way he went
about it. He didn't wear a mask, he didn't try
to hide his car. If you didn't know better, you'd
think he wanted to get caught. But he said that
A he wasn't thinking clearly at the time, and B
it didn't even occur to him that he might get
arrested for this.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
And look, you know, I'm I'm all for harmless full heros,
especially ones as funny as the anonymous Penis Man. But
people keep talking about the message behind the tags, like
penis Man will not be silenced, which okay, but like
what message are we talking about? What is the message?
I mean, he's writing penis Man on stuff. He's not
like Keith Herring over here, right, I guess maybe it's

(10:39):
just a message of general rebellion, and I guess I
can get behind that. I hate it when people refuse
to have a sense of humor, Like, come on, man,
is it really going to traumatize a kid to see
the word penis Really? I would have been delighted with
that as a kid. It's hilarious. So go on, Penis Man,
keep on keeping on. We're all behind you. Dustin himself

(11:01):
had a pretty firm idea of what the message was.
He posted on Facebook that penis Man was a quote
protest against corrupt local government, which seems like a little
bit of a reach to me.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
But what else? He wrote?

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Penis Man is neither man nor woman, You nor me.
We are all Penis Man? Are we, though?

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Dustin?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
I mean are we? I? For one am not interestingly enough? Though.
Dustin told a different story to YouTuber Gavin Want's Pizza.
To him, he said he just thought it would be
funny to write penis Man all over stuff. Plus he
liked the superhero vibe. He was into superheroes, so maybe
he was trolling with all that corrupt local government stuff.

(11:41):
I mean, on what planet is that activism? If somebody
could explain that to me, I would love to hear it.
He did tag the front of one of the municipal
buildings in Tempe, but come on, you know he's not
exactly a freedom fighter over here. He did enjoy all
the Penis Man fan pages, he said, and he participated
in some of the discussion. He got into a back

(12:01):
and forth with that lady who called the tags Taki,
for example, told her if she didn't like Penis Man,
she should go start her own movement. Some of his
comments were funny. Now there are two different accounts of
how Dustin's arrest went down. Dustin tells it like this,
and this is again from the Gavin Wants Pizza interview.
Go watch the whole thing if you're interested. It's really

(12:22):
you know, it's fascinating. Dustin said, I was sitting at
my computer. I'd woken up kind of late in the day.
I was up late the night before, I think, maybe tagging,
and I was at my computer, which was by the
front door. There was a loud knock at the door.
I opened the door. I was still in my boxers,
and there was a police officer with a silenced machine gun,

(12:43):
a police officer with a shotgun, a police officer with
a bean bag shotgun, a police officer with a pistol,
police officer with a battering ram, and then several other
officers downstairs. These officers were all on my balcony outside
my door, and they basically said, put your hands behind
your back. You know you're under arrest. They were ready
to pound down my door if I didn't open it
in seconds. And there was officers all over the complex,

(13:06):
dozens of officers in the bushes, plane closed officers, uniformed officers.
There was news media there, I think Channel three, And yeah,
it was scary. He said. He thinks they were hoping
for the chance to shoot him. He says he has
PTSD from having all those weapons in his face. Sounds
absolutely awful, right, just a grossly outsized response. But here's

(13:30):
the thing. There's news footage of the cops walking up
to Dustin's door, cuffing him and purp walking him out
of his apartment building and into a police car, and
it tells a different story.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
We see three.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Cops, one with a canine, and no sign of anybody
in swat gear, nobody bursting out of the bushes, nobody
carrying a battering ram. The cops seemed to have their
bulletproof vests on. But that's about it yet, as far
as we could tell, Dustin sticking to his story. Could
it be that his perceptions were clouded because of his
mania and the rest of the situation. Maybe, but dude,

(14:02):
there's footage of it. At some point you got to
consider that you're wrong, and we've got to consider that
he might just be lying.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
In the aftermath of Dustin's arrest, the allegedly real Penis
Man came out of the shadows with a YouTube video
and y'all, this thing has to be seen to believe.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
It's so wrong.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
It's a guy in a latex penis mask that looks
like something out of Herodu's bosh painting. Like that thing's
gonna haunt my nightmares, writing Penis Man on a piece
of poster board to prove he's the real guy. How
that proves anything? I don't know, But yeah, like I
maybe he thinks like some handwriting graffiti, aspert is going

(14:47):
to come out and be like, yup.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
And I really it does look like the tags it does,
But come on, man, like that proves nothing.

Speaker 1 (14:55):
He said that he regretted that Dustin Schomer had to
suffer for his sin. But he still didn't identify himself,
so he must not have felt that bad. And I mean,
Dustin admitted that he did some of the graffiti, so
it's not like they had an innocent man, innocent man.
See I'm doing it too, talking like the guy's Hannibal
Lecter or something.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
That's contagious.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Anyway, for reasons I cannot fathom, they decided to throw
the entire book at the span. They charged Dustin with
eight counts of criminal damage to property, sixteen counts of
aggravated criminal damage, and one count of first degree trespass.
Some of these were felony charges.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
If he'd been convicted on all counts and gotten the
maximum sentence for each, he could have served twenty plus
years in prison, which I hope we could all agree
is some bullshit.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Good count mighty. That is so dumb.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, Like they don't they don't yell at Banksy for
his shit in England, like you know, by England for
millions of dollars. Yeah, England has Banksy. We have Penis Man, Yeah, Penis.
It's about equivalent.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Well, they're both making deep political statements, evidently, I know.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
And they're about equal as far as they're deb in
my opinion, I'm joking. I'm joking.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
Get out. Really, I didn't pick up on that.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
I don't like Banksy. That was the joke anyway. Lucky
for Dustin, he was offered a plea deal. In the end,
he was sentenced to three years of supervised probation, a
deferred four month jail sentence. He won't have to serve
it if he completes five hundred hours of community service,
and he had to pay eight grand in restitution. It's

(16:41):
a lot for a few graffiti tags. But hey, it's
not twenty years, so that's something. Later, he told Gavin
Wants Pizza that after his arrest, he got a ton
of dms from random people who wanted to get to
know him, wanted to pick the brain of the Penis Man.
It wasn't great for his mental health at the time,
he said, ended up not enjoying his notoriety much. The

(17:02):
alleged real Penis Man remains a phantom, and he seems
to have stopped tagging. So that's where the case stands today,
and now that this chapter of his story has apparently
reached its climax, only one question remains. Is y'all worn out?
Or will Penis Man rise again?

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Penis Man, Penis Man does whatever a Penis can. He
rises up in the night. He's coming fast to win
the fight. Look Out, look out, Penis Man. Brow I've
been waiting to do that the whole time.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
I know you have.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
So that's got to be one of the weirdest stories
I have ever heard in my life. And this next
one is even weirder. Case two up from the ashes

(18:17):
and back down again, the strange story of Phoenix Jones.
For this one, We're in Seattle, Washington, January of twenty twenty.
The city was in shock. A superhero, Phoenix Jones, had fallen,
not to the devilish plans of some nefarious foe, not
in some noble act of self sacrifice. No, Phoenix Jones,

(18:37):
an icon of Seattle's weird real life superhero scene, had
fallen for an undercover sting operation where he thought he
was selling ecstasy and cocaine to a bunch of women
in town to celebrate a birthday. So how in the
hail did we get here? Well? Benjamin John Francis Fodor
or possibly Fodor I'm not sure, which was born in Texas,

(18:59):
in nineteen eight and spent his early years bouncing through
the foster care system until a Seattle couple adopted him
at the age of nine. Both he and his new brother,
Caros loved comic books, martial arts, and movies that dripped
with testosterone. These were definitely kids who could happily sit
and watch Predator three times in a row. I mean same, honestly,
but whatever. Karros joined the Marines as soon as he could,

(19:22):
but that evidently wasn't for Ben. There aren't any crowds
in the military. Ben fought in his first amateur MMA
fight in two thousand and six at the age of eighteen.
He used the name Fear the flat top so you
can guess it is hairstyle straight up and topped with
gold like a Duracell battery. The black and gold color
scheme would stay with Ben, although not in his hair

(19:44):
that would go back to black. But for the rest
of the story, just to assume, it gets a little
wilder with every year that goes by, Ben could fight
as an amateur. His record was fifteen wins and two defeats.
He would briefly go pro in twenty thirteen, but we
have to be clear what that means. Okay, this wasn't
like playing Major League baseball. This was fighting in front

(20:05):
of small crowds for not much money. By now, Ben
had two kids and his real job was at a
daycare center for children with special needs. But like any
good superhero, it was soon time for young Ben to
come face to face with his nemesis, a crushing, ravenous
need for attention. According to Ben, a couple of things

(20:26):
triggered his superheroic metamorphosis. First, his car got broken into,
and his young son fell and cut himself on the glass.
What really piste bin Off was that plenty of people
apparently saw the break in and did nothing at all
about it. I don't know what he wanted him to do.
The thief had left a ski mask in the broken
glass beside the car. You know those ski masks that

(20:47):
car thieves always wear and discard at the scene of
the crime. Ben put the mask in his glove compartment. Look, okay,
maybe the dude's car got broken into. It's not that
uncommon in big cities. Happen to be like five times
when I used to live in Baltimore. But the mask
stuff just sounds made up to me. Either, way as
origin stories go, this is hardly Batman's parents getting gunned

(21:10):
down in Crame Alley. There has to be an acceptable
bar of criminal activity that inspires a vigilanti lifestyle, or
the streets would just be full of costumed weirdos and
double Parker vengeance man would be slashing tires all over town.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
I would be I would be.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
The vengeance woman of the people that don't put their
shopping carts back. I'm not sure what that would be called,
but anyway.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
There is a there are there is a guy.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
There is a guy I know the cart narks though.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
And he's and he's he's so mean, and it's so yeah,
it's so entertaining. And listen, I love it because I
used to work at a grocery store and I was
the cartgirl and it was a fucking nightmare, I'm sure,
a fucking nightmare. And people are so rude and it
takes two seconds people put your crow.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
And obviously they're except for some people, we get that,
but like, if you're perfectly able to do it, freaking
do it for God's sakes.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Because here's here's what, here's the excuse. I constantly hear, right, well,
I'm a mom and I'm afraid of being abducted at
the grocery. You're not going to be fucking abducted to
the grocery. People say that is yes, because they think
their children are gonna do. My beautiful blonde daughter is
going to be child trafficked. I'm like, well, first of all,
that's based in racism. So parking a lot of the Kroger,

(22:29):
your child is more likely to be be trafficked by
you or a family member than a stranger at a
parking lot. And like target, Absolutely, you can walk your
child in the in the cart to the cart corral,
pick them up where they are safe with you, and

(22:49):
walk back to your car.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
And honestly, if you're genuinely worried about that, do not
bring the kids with you. Do that, like if you
really think that is likely to happen, which I promise
you is isn't. I have been a true crime obsessive
for almost thirty years and I have never heard of
anything like that in terms of trafficking or whatever. If
you're that worried about it, then for the love of God,

(23:11):
don't take the kid with you. It's a war zone
out there.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Apparently, if you're genuinely scared of like statistics about missing children.
I urge you to look into why why the statistics
are the way they are. Ninety percent of missing children
are found okay, like, and most of them are abducted
by a custodial parent. And the reason because because of

(23:38):
the way the Amber alert system is, they have to
be reported. So when people say there's whatever I think,
I say, somebody say there's three hundred thousand missing missing
children every year or something, I'm like, that would be
like a national crisis.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
So no, there's a lot of weird misinformation.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
There aren't. But some children go missing multiple times. Some
children run away but they're returned by the end of
the day. Some parents there's custody issues. That's all all
it is. Anyway, Sorry, I digress.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
That's not all it is. I mean, abductions happened, but
they're very rare.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
They're very rare.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
It is vanishingly rare to have a stranger abduct your child.
It just really is, I promise you. So anyway, that
was the hell of a rabbit hole, all right. So
next one of Ben's friends was getting beat up outside
a bar, and again no one was doing anything. Ben
ran back to his car to get his phone and
call the police. This was twenty ten, well into the

(24:36):
cell phone era. Any of you out there leaving your
phones in your car because I'm not Anyway. When he
was getting his phone, Ben found the ski mask the
car thief had left, and he put it on, and
I imagine there was like theme music going when he
did that, you know, slowly put the ski mask on,
ran back to the bar and chased after and detained
the guy attacking his buddy until the cops got there.

(24:57):
Now that's a little weird, right, why'd you need the mauth?
So what I think actually happened is that Ben bought
a ski mask and kept it in his glove compartment
just in case an opportunity came up for him to
have some fun playing Daredevil. And evidently he did have fun,
because from then on Ben Fodor decided he was going
to be a superhero.

Speaker 1 (25:18):
If you ask me, the itch Ben was feeling would
have been scratched just as well if he joined a
little community theater, because at Harton he's just a big
drama seeking ham. But he chose the grim, lonely life
of a crime fighter instead. Well not really so lonely
because one of the first things Ben did was recruit

(25:39):
a crew to follow him around and back him up.
It's dangerous out there, you know, you could get hurt.
That though, was a little later. At first, Ben just
drove around Seattle at night, and if he saw anything suspicious,
he'd just put on the ski mask, take off a shirt,
jump out of his car, and start shouting. Okay, if
you want to keep a secret identity, I get the

(26:00):
ski mask, but why is he taking off the shirt.
Ben had distinctive tattoos, which everyone got to see at
MMA events. This wasn't helping him keep a secret identity,
but it did let him show off his pecks and ads,
which I kind of think was the whole point. Yeah,
I'm not exactly sure how reassured victims of street crime

(26:21):
were to have a big, half naked dude in a
ski mask running towards them and yelling, but Ben apparently
did successfully scare off some criminals. Not surprisingly, he was
also apprehended by police several times. If you're an officer
responding to a crime scene, I don't think you're just
going to accept the word of a guy in the
ski mask that he's there. To fight crime, just like you.

(26:45):
Ben developed a proper superhero identity Phoenix Jones. Well, I
say proper, but the second name part is a bit weird.
It's not Aquaman Johnson or Black Widow Smith. It's probably
a nod to Indiana Jones because his first costume featured
a fedora black fedora, black ski mask, black cape, gray shirt,

(27:05):
black pants. It was terrible. He also wasn't finding it
easy to dive into the superhero life. One time, from
the rooftops he saw a woman being mugged. Batman might
be able to swing down a second, but Phoenix Jones
had to clatter noisily down a fire escape. When he
got to the ground, panting, the woman said, he left already,

(27:26):
And you look like Count Chocula. You look stupid.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
This woman is my freaking hero. Oh my god, that
Count Chocula.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Forget the local community theater, like he would have loved,
like he would love just being part of like one
of those like small like not quite WWE, like wrestling groups.
Like I think he had a blast he created character.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Like, yeah, I agree completely. He's very theatrical.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, like he'd love coming down from the top rope
to you know, hit the criminal like I just anyway.
Maybe he tried to get down that fire escape as
fast as he could, but as we'll see a little later,
reacting slowly to situations where he might actually get hurt
would turn out to be one of Phoenix Jones's signature moves.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
He started arming himself with Batman style gadgets. He got
a grappling hook, but discovered they're a lot harder to
use than it looks like in the comic books, and
soon ditched it. And speaking of ditching things, he also
got a net gun and one time tried to fire
it at a fleeing criminal, but the net just tangled
up Phoenix Jones himself and he tripped and fell into

(28:49):
a ditch, where he started drowning in four inches of water.
Like Krook he was chasing, came back, turned him over
so he wouldn't die, paunched him in the face and
told him to give up being a superhero, which I
think was excellent advice for free for freezies. Oh my god.

(29:10):
When the police turned up and found the fedora wearing
superhero tied up in a dish, they laughed and took
photos of him. Oh oh lord, A less titanic ego
might have been bruised, but Phoenix Jones kept at it.
While he tried to break up a street fight, he
got cut with a knife, and that inspired him to

(29:32):
get a new look, a sleek rubber suit complete with
molded pecks and abs, very obviously based on the DC
Hero night Wing, but with gold instead of blue. It's
honestly a pretty sweet outfit, and I assumed Ben Foto
paid somebody else to design it because he had zero
sense of style himself. Initially, he still tried to pair
his sleek new look with his fedora and cape, and

(29:53):
when you see a picture of it, just imagine that,
I imagine how stupidout look. He claimed that his super
was stab proof and bulletproof titanium and steel, which it
very obviously was not. Actual bulletproof vests are a real thing,
of course, but as far as I know, they don't
come with a molded six pack, so that wouldn't do
for Phoenix Joones. The new outfit also featured clunky boots

(30:17):
that looked suspiciously like their main purpose was to add
an inch or so of height. A local comic book
store had a neat little back room with a hidden
door disguised as one of the shells holding the comics,
and this was where Ben Fodor would go to change
into his Phoenix Choones identity. Obviously, everyone at the comic
book store knew who he was, and if this was

(30:38):
about preserving his supposedly secret identity, he might as well
have changed back at his apartment and saved himself some time.
But that wasn't what it was about. He was a
big kid playing a game, and the secret quick change
was part of that. A local news story drastically increased
Phoenix Jones's profile in the Northwest. If you've ever spent

(30:58):
much time watching local news, you'll know there very fond
of their look at this freak stories. Along with his
upgraded profile, he got an upgraded arsenal, a stun baton, handcuffs,
and two million Scovil pepper spray, which would very quickly
become his go to weapon. Now, I'm not gonna say
Phoenix Jones didn't do any good. He chased off or

(31:20):
pepper sprayed a couple of would be car thieves and
used the stun baton to convince a drunk driver to
get out of his car, and in twenty eleven, he
broke up what he claimed to think was a street fight.
The participants said they were just dancing, and the end
result was a young woman chasing Phoenix Jones down the street,
trying to beat him with her shoe, saying, you shit,

(31:40):
you got pepper spray in my eye. I love how
hard the women were on him, because it's like, you know,
he was hoping he was gonna get laid out of this,
and they're just like, fuck off, Count Chocola Lord. Someone
on the street made a pretty confused nine to one
one call. There was a huge fight on Columbia and Western.

(32:02):
A huge group of people are fighting in pepper spray
and superheroes. I don't know. Phoenix Jones was arrested but
was released without charge. But when you're arrested Phoenix Jones,
crime fighter isn't really gonna cut it as an ID.
They got his real name. Of course, anyone with much
interest in Phoenix Jones had already long since put two

(32:23):
and two together and figured out he was Ben Fodor,
but he decided to do a dramatic reveal anyway, pulling
off his mask outside the courthouse and saying I'm Phoenix Jones.
I'm also Ben Fodor. I also protect this city. I
also am a father, I also am a brother. I'm
just like everyone else. The only difference is that I

(32:43):
decided to make a difference and stop crime in my neighborhood,
in my area. Like we said, he really should have
just joined a community theater. The big Goob Phoenix Jones
was soon joined on the streets by other attention hungry
weirdos like Ghost, Midnight Jack, and notably El Cavaliero, a lanky,
pasty white dude who described himself as a luchador crime

(33:06):
fighter and patrolled the streets in a Mexican wrestler's mask
and red sombrero. Now, this led to one uncomfortable confrontation
with an understandably pissed off Mexican dude who thought El
Cavaliero was making fun of his heritage. El Cavaliero's response was, well,
you're wearing an argyle shirt. That's Scottish. The Mexican dude

(33:30):
just said, what, which I think is pretty much exactly
the right response.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Why do they always? Why are they why are they
trying hats? The the capes, I kind of get why
are they all trying hats? On top of baxs hats.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
It is weird that Ha's gonna fly right off in
a real combat situation.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Come on, not to yeah, not to mention the you know,
the the implications of the sombrero on a white guy, like, oh,
it's so wrong. Oh god, that's so funny. Another member
of Phoenix Jones's superhero crew was Purple Rain, his girlfriend.
Apparently they met on a dating app with Ben Foder

(34:08):
using a fake name and identity. A few hours before
their first date, he messaged her and said, I sort
of moonlight as a superhero. I'm going to come in
my supersuit. I'm not going to take my mask off
because I have a secret identity. You have to refer
to me as Phoenix and I'll see you there. I

(34:28):
think a lot of people would go on that date
just for the story, but apparently they really hit it off.
Phoenix's date said, your suit looks wet. Apparently Phoenix Jones
had been stabbed earlier in the day and had superglued
the wound shut, but he'd been having such a good
time on the date and laughing so much it had

(34:50):
come open and started bleeding.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
When they drove to an alley, and she helped superglue
his belly shut. Phoenix Jones was sure he'd found the one.
Did it happen like that? Ben Foter's MMA career continued,
obviously shirtless and just as obviously lacking the scars of
amateur super glue surgery. And if there's anyone who thinks

(35:15):
a be cute story is improved by adding a random
stab wound, it's him. Anyway, They hit it off, possibly
got married quite quickly. The sources are a little fuzzy
on that, and Purple Rain was soon born. She did
go out on the streets with Phoenix and his crew,
but she mainly used her superhero identity as a tool
to raise money for domestic violence charities. Purple Rain is

(35:36):
pretty cool. Too cool for Phoenix Jones, who she broke
up with in twenty thirteen, good for Huck Freedix. Jones
had another semiviral moment when a bunch of drunks were
having fun following and insulting his crew and Phoenix, and
one of them agreed to fight each other, all while
a cop stood and watched. Seattle apparently has a mutual
combat ordinance that says it's perfectly fine for two people

(35:59):
to fight each other as long as they both agree
to it and no one else gets hurt. There's no
doubt that Phoenix Jones actually does know how to fight.
He quickly knocked the dude out, with the whole thing
caught on camera because he rarely went out to fight
crime without a videographer. Defending the city is nice, but
content is king. There's no doubt the guy was being

(36:21):
a dick. But is that a really heroic thing to do? Yeah,
Ben Photor was a professional fighter and this guy was
just a drunk asshole. Ben could have just kept walking.
But the man is ninety five percent ego.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
I'm pretty sure Batman would have just kept walking.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yes, Oh for sure. Yeah. In twenty twelve, there were
widespread protests, including in Seattle. On May Day, Phoenix Jones
claimed that he'd learned about a plot to blow up
a city courthouse, and when the police ignored him, Phoenix
and his fellow hero set out to defend the courthouse.
He almost certainly made the whole thing up to get
footage of him and his buddy's pepper spray any protesters

(37:02):
who got too close.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
My god. At one point he calls out to Midnight
Jack pepper Wall, go back to back brother. I kind
of just like automatically wanted to do that in the
whole Kogan voice, but I stopped myself while protesters mill
about around thirty feet away, very much trying to make
a mountain out of a mole hill. And then he

(37:25):
got himself a bona fide supervillain, oh sort of. Rex
Velvet had a bowler hat, eye patch, upturned mustache, bow tie,
and shiny suit, and in a number of very well
made YouTube videos he declared his villainy, his contempt for
the silly nerds of Seattle's superhero community, and his particular
enmity for Phoenix Shoones, all very obviously tongue in cheek.

(37:49):
Rex Velvet was actually actor Ryan Corey, and his one
act of supervillainy was to kidnap Seattle Seahawks' mascot Blitz,
giving locals a chance to see one man in a
bowler hat and another dressed as a giant bird racing
across Lake Washington in a speedboat. I love this story
so much. This was all arranged by the Make a

(38:10):
Wish Foundation to give a twelve year old named Colby,
who suffered from spinal muscular atrophy, the chance to track
down a super villain and defeat him in an epic
silly string battle. You may have won the battle, but
you have not won the war, Rex yelled as he fled.
That must have been so fun for that kid. Yeah,
Phoenix Jones took superheroing very seriously, and he did not

(38:32):
get the joke. I don't have anything to say to him.
I live in the real world, and I don't promote
or accept or even acknowledge people who want to do
acts of villainy at any time, even if it's not real.
In April twenty twelve, a young woman named Nicole Westbrook
was shot in a drive by shooting close to where
Phoenix Jones was patrolling. He and his crew hurried to

(38:54):
the sound of the shots and jumped to some quick
conclusions when they saw a man in a backpack running away.
There he is as the shooter. Backpack running Police would
ultimately suspect that the man in the backpack was actually
the intended target of the shooting, but Phoenix chased after
him anyway. Later admitted that he deliberately didn't run as
fast as he could because he was nervous about facing

(39:15):
someone armed with a gun, and that he was relieved
when police stopped him and told him to stop chasing
the guy. This was all a very normal human response,
and you have to give Ben some kudos for owning
up to it, but he was nevertheless shaken up, both
by the shooting Nicole later died in hospital and his
own response to it. Things went from bad to worse.

(39:37):
El Caballero left the Superhero Crew, accusing Phoenix Jones of
stealing his helmet after their breakup. Purple Rain soon followed.
The whole Superhero team soon fell apart, with former members
accusing Jones of being a con artist. He insisted they
all get bulletproof suits like his, telling them he knew
a guy who could make them. They just had to

(39:58):
give Phoenix the cash for the work they did, but
no fancy suits ever appeared. Phoenix also insisted they pay
him a monthly fee for health insurance, but never show
them any evidence of these policies actually existing. I kind
of wish they did exist, just so I could see
what the premiums would be. Only and what does your

(40:18):
organization do, sir? Oh? We go out at night looking
to get into fights. The exiting heroes also claimed that
Jones only really cared about making a mark on the Internet,
and that his crime fighting mainly consisted of goating drunk
people leaving bars in to fight so he could get
some good video footage. Phoenix Jones continued to patrol the

(40:39):
city alone, but clearly wasn't getting the buzz out of
it that he once had. He tried a couple of
things to boost his superhero profile, commissioning a comic book
with himself as the hero and using the Phoenix Jones
character in his MMA fights. This included a fight against
his brother Caros, who after he got out of the Marines,
had also pursued a career in MMA with more success

(41:00):
than Ben, even briefly fighting in the UFC. This was
hyped up as a civil war between two brothers who
despised each other. It's probably not a coincidence that they
pulled this stunt right when Captain America's Civil War was
coming out. Anyway, the two brothers convincingly snarled at each
other and pushed each other around. Ben told the camera,
when Karros looks at himself, he's going to have to

(41:22):
ask himself if he'd be ready to kill me because
that's what it's going to take. You did this, This
is your fault. Oh, Ben, always with the drama. Caros
didn't kill him, but did convincingly whip his little brother's ass,
winning a unanimous decision. The two of them apparently got
along fine when Ben's not hamming it up for the cameras.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
By the way, after his true identity was revealed, Ben
got fired from the daycare center where he worked, which
I think is understandable. However, he justified it. Ben was
clearly someone who enjoyed violence, and that plus his superhero life,
could open up an employer to all sorts of liabilities.

(42:02):
He tried to make a serious attempt at an MMA career,
but that wasn't paying many bills, So what was paying
the bills? Not all superheroes can be NEPO babies, like
Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne. One of Phoenix Jones's particular
targets was drug dealers. There's plenty of footage of him
warning drug dealers to get out of Seattle, including one

(42:24):
where he puts his best Christian Bale voice and yells
stop doing drugs in my city at someone at least
these were people Phoenix Jones assumed were drug dealers, but
as we've already seen, he would have been first in
line to buy a jumped conclusions, Matt, All he really
wanted was footage to post online. In twenty twenty, Benfotor

(42:47):
was arrested in an undercovered drug bust for selling small
amounts of ecstasy and cocaine. Acquaintances said he'd been doing
it for years. This confirmed what his enemy thought about
him and left those who still admired him distraught. The
Internet being a weird place, This included a guy in
a ghost face mask who went on YouTube to say
I idolized you. I would watch your videos all the

(43:08):
fucking time, and now I hear you're a drug dealer.
Now fuck you.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Oh well, well, but you know what, actually, like some
of the superheroes really probably could have used a drug
deal inside hustle because you know, like Peter Parker, he
didn't have a lot of money. I think what he
could have done with all that.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Honestly, if Peter Parker just sold a little weed on
his college campus, I cou'd be fine.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Like he could probably be more better gear, you.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Know, and with the spidy senses he could tell if
somebody was like, yeah, an undercover cop or an arc
like eve me fine, come on. It's hard to trace
down exactly what happened next, but it looks like Ben
Plaid guilty and didn't serve any time. In twenty twenty two,
he was apparently trying to get a visa to go
and fight in Ukraine, which was probably just him running

(43:58):
his big mouth and certainly wasn't going to happen because
he was on felony probation. He's apparently still suiting up
as Phoenix Jones every now and again, although based on
his Instagram these days, this is mainly about posting at
the Seattle PD about things he sees out on the streets.
He's thirty seven years old and doesn't seem to have
grown up at all. Most people who have worked with

(44:20):
him or known him seem to hate his guts, but
there are plenty of people online still eager to kiss
his butt, and I kind of suspect that's all this
strange man really needs.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
And our main two sources for that one were Interesting
Stuff from around the World, a YouTube channel which we love,
and Atrocity Guide. They both have really good long form
videos on Phoenix if you want more information. So holy shit,
people are weird, right, and that leads me into our tagline,
which is very true today. That was a wild one, right, Campers.

(44:54):
You know we'll have another one for you next week,
but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and
stay until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire.
If you haven't booked your spot yet on the Crimewave
True Crime Cruise from November three through November seventh, get
on at y'all, there's just a few rooms left. Join
Katie and Me plus last podcast on the Left, Scared
to Death and Sinisterhood for a rock and good time

(45:16):
at sea. You can pay all at once or set
up a payment plan, but you've got to have a
fan code to book a ticket, So go to Crimewave
atc dot com slash campfire and take it from there.
And as always, we want to send a grateful shout
out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you
so much to Stacy, Alli, Franklin and Carolyn. We appreciate
y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not

(45:37):
yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show
get every episode add free at least a day early,
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