WEBVTT - Part One: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:08.959 Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:13.320 that is mourning the temporary loss of its producer. Today, 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:18.720 Sophie got into a little bit of a kerfuffle with 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:24.400 the the ftc some shots were exchanged. Anyway, she's on 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:28.080 the run now, but we're we're expecting her to report 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:30.760 back in from her mountain hide away any day. But 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:34.800 until she gets back, Samantha McVeigh is with me, uh 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.600 today this week, Samantha, how are you doing good? 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:41.800 You know, I was just saying, I feel like Sophie 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.000 is our adult that supervises, so. 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:45.600 I'm a little nervous that she's not here. 0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:49.360 But it's okay because I also did another show with 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:51.680 Margaret and Sophie wasn't there either, So maybe she is 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:52.280 she mad at me. 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:54.320 Oh no, no, no, no, no. 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:55.600 No, it's she's just running. 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:59.080 It's it's just she's on the run from from the law. Yeah, yeah, 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.920 it's it's it's it's fine. Once she once she gets 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.959 to our hidden mountain fastness, uh in an undisclosed location 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:08.720 in the Rockies, she'll she'll be back on the calls. 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:13.200 Everything will be fine. Yeah, it gets We're going to 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.440 be doing the podcast via Morse code. Yeah, that is 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:18.399 going to be the only way to communicate. Yeah, we're 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.440 going to get some code talkers, but with like maybe 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.399 maybe Klingon based. I don't think the Feds can crack 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:29.039 that one yet. Uh not anymore. They got all those 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.440 feds out. Those are the first people the Trump folks fired. 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:41.640 Samantha stuff your mom never told you? Is your podcast? 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:43.120 You got anything else you want to plug up at 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:45.360 the top here before we get into our subject for 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:46.679 the week. 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:49.120 I don't think so. Yeah, I'm on a podcast. It 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:50.600 has a book. It's been around for a. 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:55.520 Bit, it has it. Yeah, an OG. And speaking of ogs, 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:59.400 we're going to be talking about one of the OG's 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:05.480 of being an abusive Christian cult leader in the United States, 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.960 the worst preacher of all time, a guy that Los 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.560 Angeles residents might be are going to be aware of 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:15.720 as well as most of our Alabama listeners. Tony Alamo, 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:19.200 what have you heard of this guy? Do you know? Total? 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:20.120 I don't. 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.160 I don't know, which is what I'm kind of surprised 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:24.280 by because I was really. 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.320 Deep into the Christian world. So, oh, yeah, I know 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:26.880 this one. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.280 He is, Well, he's one of the weirder ones and 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:33.520 he's one of like the worst people wherever he This guy, 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.320 oh man, he does all of the evil cult leader things, 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:43.320 child trafficking, slave labor, you know, all all all the 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:45.919 good stuff, abusive, a corpse. It's great. We got a 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:47.680 lot of fun stuff today. 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:49.080 Some modern day Christianity. 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.639 Let's go yeah, yeah, yeah, So again, his last name 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:55.679 is Alamo, but it's spelled Alamo, but that's not how 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.079 it's pronounced because the State of Texas would have come 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:01.160 after him then he would have had the rangers on 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:05.440 him long before the FBI finally took him down if 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:10.440 he'd been weakening Texas' brand. But yeah, Tony Alamo. And 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:12.680 this is this is kind of a weird one in 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:16.920 that he is not the initial leader of his cult. 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:21.000 That's kind of his wife. So it starts out as 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:25.160 him being almost like you used by this cult that 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:28.760 he later winds up running like he's always one of 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:31.440 the people running it, but like his wife is definitely 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:34.520 much more like the driving force of the cult when 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.600 they get started, which is interesting. You don't see that 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:41.280 a lot, you know, you know, So this is a 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:43.560 we're gonna be talking about a feminist icon in the 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.680 world of establishing a cult that chat traffics children across 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:47.520 state lifes. 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:50.360 And icon Well, that's exciting. 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:53.880 Yeah, it's good. Girls can do everything the boys can do, 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:57.000 including trafficking. 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:01.040 That's right. Obviously, we're always saying that equal opportunity. I 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:01.320 love it. 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:01.720 Yeah. 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:03.640 So one of my favorite things about this is that 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.040 these guys the people were talking about today were very 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:09.600 good friends of one of our friends of the pod 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.760 who had a run in of his own with law 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.920 enforcement in a town called Waco. But I'm getting ahead 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:17.000 of myself. 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:17.120 Here, Okay. 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:18.840 I was wondering, I'm not gonna lie. 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:20.880 Yeah, a little bit of where there's some way to 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:23.720 go that comes in here. Yeah, ali O, Waco. 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:26.320 All seemed too convenient. 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.920 That's right. Now. Tony was not just the leader of 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:32.839 the cult, you know again, he was basically its first 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:35.520 member or maybe co leader, with the woman who became 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:37.880 his wife, who we're going to talk about before we 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:43.240 talk about Tony, because she is fascinating too, Edith opel Horn, 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.080 which is you know, and she's she's got that serial 0:04:47.160 --> 0:04:49.880 killer name starting I know, Opal there's something sinister about that. 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:52.480 It's a middle name is sinister, and it's also bless 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:54.600 your heart, like she's going to poison you, but it's 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:56.080 going to be a really great pie. 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.760 Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yes, And she is she is, This 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.520 is a she is a down home girl. Now, if 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.680 you if your first thought when I said Tony Alamo 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:08.080 was that like, oh, well, that's way too good a 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:10.080 name of a cult leader to be a real cult 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.880 leader's name, you are correct. And Tony was not born 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:18.920 Tony Alamo. He was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman on September twentieth, 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:23.719 nineteen thirty four, in Joplin, Missouri. So again, this is 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.760 kind of rare for evangelical Christian cult leaders, but he 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:31.200 was born into a Jewish family. His parents were immigrants 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.160 from Romania, and while this may seem like an unlikely 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:38.080 background again for an Evangelical Christian cult leader, Bernie's family 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:41.279 was never religious, and as a boy, his parents identity 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:43.680 like it told him, hey, you should tell people that 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:46.480 you're Romanian, not Jewish, because if you tell him you're Jewish, 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:48.599 you're gonna get beaten up. Right Like we're in We're 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.560 in Joplin, Missouri in the forties and fifties. You know, 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:53.320 you know, you really don't, you know what I mean? 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:57.360 Dropping that too much now. Edith was also born into 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.120 a Jewish family on April twenty fifth, nineteen twenty for 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.760 in Alma, Arkansas, a small town about the same size 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.280 as Dire, Kansas, where the family moved shortly after her birth. 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:11.520 Her father was a convert or, her family was mixed religion. 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:14.000 It's a little unclear to me because she told her 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.839 daughter later that she first encountered the Bible reciting passages 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:20.839 from it at her father's sick bed. He'd been sent 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:24.480 home from the military early due to contracting tuberculosis, and 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.000 over the course of several years he wasted away and 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:29.839 tried to stay outside to avoid spreading the illness to 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:33.159 his family. So he's like camping out to try to 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:37.719 stop from getting his family sick, which is yeah, I 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:39.920 mean that's some real like thirties. 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:43.080 Just quarantine you out there. 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:45.680 Yeah, dad lives in the yard because otherwise they'll get 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:49.919 us all killed. Edith would later claim to have refused 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:52.320 to listen to what he said and like because she 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.839 was convinced that she could heal him by reciting Bible passages, 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:59.440 so she insisted on sitting next to his cot or 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.239 whatever night. This may have been later myth making after 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.440 she converted, Because our only source on her childhood is 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.240 her either way, what we can confirm is that from 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:12.720 an early age, Edith dreamed of being a star in 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.400 the newly forming film industry, which had just come to 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:19.120 be centered in Hollywood, California. But her dreams were interrupted 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:21.320 by the northern normal patterns of life in a small 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:26.600 southern town. By which I mean she got pregnant extremely young, obviously, right, 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.880 Like she's a dire like our kidsaw in the fucking 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:32.200 thirties and forties. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:33.800 What else is there to do? 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:36.880 Well? I mean literally, there is nothing else that you 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.120 can do aside from get pregnant early and have your 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:44.400 brother's and husband die of various coal related diseases or 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:49.760 farming related accidents. You know. Yeah, yeah, obviously, like people, 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.560 there have numerous different things that they can do with 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:54.720 their lives, all of which involved dying young. 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:56.000 Dying young. 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:56.520 Yeah. 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:56.680 So. 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.640 Debbie Scrivener describes what happened next in the book Whispering 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:04.960 in the Daylight, which is about the Alamos quote. She 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.040 married at fourteen, had a baby at fifteen, and divorced 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.640 at sixteen. It was then that Edith ople decided to 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:12.840 take charge of her own journey to stardom and headed 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.400 to California. When she reached Hollywood, Edith Ople changed her 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:20.080 name to Susan Fleetwood. After failed attempts at a singing 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:23.360 an acting career, she married and then divorced Saul Lippowitz 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:27.120 and converted from her Jewish roots to Evangelical Christianity. She 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.920 began to preach and teach informally. And she just straight 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:34.200 up abandons her son right now. This is her son 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:38.160 that she has at fifteen. But yeah, she just kind 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:41.240 of bounces on the family she's got over there, moves 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.520 to Hollywood and starts trying to make it. And the 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.319 one daughter that she has with Saul Lippowitz is named 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:54.680 Christhion like christ Hiao n KOI I'm guessing Koy was. 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:57.120 I mean, I don't actually know where Koy comes from here. 0:08:57.440 --> 0:08:59.200 That must be her married name. That's what she writes 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.400 under as an adult. I have never heard of the 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:07.320 name Christhian before. This may be a misspelling of the 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:11.440 name Christaan, like like christ o in, which is a 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:14.400 Latin girl's name that means follower of Christ. But I 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.560 don't know. Chris theon doesn't appear to be anything right. 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:20.200 It sounds like as an amalgamation of saying Christ and 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:22.880 then like Thessalonians, one of the chapters like. 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:26.200 That maybe yeah, yeah, somebody's flipping through a Bible on 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:28.160 an epidural and is like, I got a name. 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.360 I'll take these two things, buy them together. Beautiful, yeah, perfect, 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:34.160 no problems here. 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.280 Yeah. Now, according to Chris, we're going to call her 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:39.120 Chris because I'm not going to try to pronounce that 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:41.480 name the whole time, and that's generally what she seems 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.640 to go by. Edith, her mom makes a living during 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:48.600 this period, primarily as a con woman because she's trying 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.320 to find work. In the movie, she does some acting gigs, 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.680 but they do not her career doesn't take off right. 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:57.840 Her daughter will credit this to the fact that she 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.920 just does not have the look that hally Wood's going for. 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:05.120 In this period. She was, per her daughter quote, beautiful 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:07.240 in the weirdest way, not like you would look at 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:09.800 her and go wow, a striking beauty. But when she 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:11.920 walked in a room, she had so much command that 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:16.080 people stopped talking. So she's not the kind of she 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:20.000 doesn't have the right look to get the big Hollywood gigs. 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.079 But she does have the right look to make people 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:25.400 pay attention to her and kind of gravitates naturally to 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:26.880 conning them as a result. 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:29.600 I mean, it's all tracks to where she goes. 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.839 It feels like it's very perfectly natural. Yes, I'm seeing 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:37.560 the a to be here very easily, very quickly. When 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:40.600 she managed to get work or successfully work at con 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:44.119 the family would have money, and so during Chris's childhood 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:49.079 they swung wildly between mild solvency and absolute poverty with 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:52.480 such regularity that it made Chris's childhood kind of dizzying. 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.080 Also dizzying was the violence that Edith employed on a 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:58.600 near daily basis. And I'm not going to read a 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:02.200 lot of detailed stories of physical abuse here. Chris has 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.079 a book that she's going to write later about her childhood, 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:07.760 and her book, Mama Said, has some of the worst 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:11.160 and most descriptions of like the beating and psychological abuse 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.680 of a little kid that I've ever read. Edith is 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:18.680 a very bad mother, Like I cannot overemphasize how abuse 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:21.959 of this woman is to her daughter, or at least 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.320 that's how Chris relates it. I don't know why she 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.800 would lie about the specific things that she's lying about, 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.120 given that they comport entirely with the life that Edith 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:34.520 is going to live from this point forward. Right, So, Edith, 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.640 now living as Susan and her daughter, spent years on 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.280 the margins. Once Chris is thirteen, Edith is like, Hey, 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:44.120 you got to start earning your keep, right, You're basically 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.319 an adult woman. It's time for you to start going 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.040 out for parts and recording demo tapes as a singer. 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:51.600 And you know, you kind of get the feeling that 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:53.559 part of what she's doing is like, Hey, you know 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:55.880 you're you're the age that a lot of creeps in 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:58.600 Hollywood are interested in. If you can make that work 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:02.319 for us, go do it. It's a it's a bad 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.320 again childhood. The two live in a one room apartment 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.800 with a pull down Murphy bed and survived primarily off 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.040 of what Chris describes as mystery cans, which are canned 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.199 foods with the labels removed that sold for cheaper than 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.960 regular food. Quote, you would open these cans and whatever 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:20.920 you opened, you ate. 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:22.920 It's like a surprise. 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:26.319 It's like a surprise. Yeah, exactly. You're keeping your life interesting, 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.560 probably just pounding a lot of pure fucking coconut oil 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:37.000 or whatever, like right, imagining, Yeah, yeah, pie, if you're lucky, 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:41.960 pie me. Yeah, a lot of inspired suits. Suits. Oh 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:46.720 my god. Yeah, that's like that. That's such a perfect 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:51.240 like absolute poverty, uh story right there. Yeah, just just 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:53.840 eating mystery cans with my mom as she tries to 0:12:53.880 --> 0:13:00.360 pip me out to the music industry to go, Yeah, 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:03.360 get pregnant or drop and eat pea, right, like, those 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:07.040 are your options. So by this point, by the times 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:11.120 Chris is thirteen, Edith has aged out of most of 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:14.600 the roles that interested her. Right. She is, again, particularly 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:16.800 for this period of Hollywood, too old to become a 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.640 leading lady, right, and the bulk of her earnings now 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:23.280 come from con artistry. And here is how Debbie Scrivener 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:27.520 describes her most successful and repeated con. She developed her 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:31.000 evangelical skills by scamming churches under the pretense of being 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.920 a missionary seeking funds. She would say to Chris put 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:36.439 on address, We're going to do a church. They would go, 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:38.840 and during the service, Susan would stand and say, I 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.200 have a message from the Lord and I need to speak. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:44.600 Susan would speak, Chris would sing, church members would pass 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.440 a love offering and mother and daughter would leave with money. 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.960 And so, at age thirty four, Edith Opelhorn gave birth 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.320 to a new persona Susan Lippowitz, with business acumen, powers 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:58.000 of persuasion, and gritty determination. Well in place. There's some 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:00.240 disagreement in my sources of her when she's got that's 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.440 going by Susan, but it appears to be something she 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:07.000 takes on as part of this, like I'm going to 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:10.120 be scamming churches. And I think it's interesting again that 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:12.400 she comes from like a background that is very much 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:16.719 not evangelical Christianity, which may be why she knows how 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:19.760 to manipulate these people so well, maybe it's just the 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.000 simple fact that none of this is sacred to her 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:23.960 and the way it is to these people. So she's 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:26.560 able to kind of look in from the outside and like, oh, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.080 I know how to fuck with these I know how 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:29.880 to get their money, right, Yeah, I know what they 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:33.040 want to hear. They want to see my daughter singing. Yeah. 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.080 I mean, if she truly was trying to heal her father, 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:39.080 realize it doesn't work and this is bs, I'm gonna 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:39.760 just take their money. 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.160 Then I'm gonna take their fucking money. They're they lied 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:44.400 to me when my dad was sitting. Yeah, maybe there's 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:48.160 something there too, just like if I'm green lighting the 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.640 HBO mini series, that's at least how I try to gain. Yeah, 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:52.600 that's how we're going to start. 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:54.440 Give her a little that's her villain origin. 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:58.200 Right, right, So Susan nursed clear ambitions of turning her 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.200 daughter into a money ticket, and and Chris's initial ambition 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.520 was music. But Susan was the kind of mom who 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:07.720 was more than capable of acting on opportunity. One day 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:10.400 in nineteen sixty four or sixty five, when Chris was 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.360 in eighth grade, she rode home on a city bus. 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:15.880 Now this was during a time again we're talking sixty 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.160 four or sixty five, this is a time of a 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:22.600 heightened racial tension, particularly in Los Angeles. The way Chris 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:26.600 describes it decades later, and again, Chris is not being 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:30.480 raised what we would call racially open minded. Right, Her 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:35.560 mom grows up in the South in the twenties and thirties. 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:38.920 She is raised believing some very racist things. So she 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:41.240 sees Chris sees this group of black girls on the 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.440 bus and quote, I may have given them a look. 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:48.240 They didn't like I'm not sure. One of the girls 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:51.800 responds by sticking out her foot, and Chris trips and falls, 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:54.600 and then the girls laugh at her, and other people 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.680 on the bus start laughing too, and so Chris runs 0:15:57.680 --> 0:15:59.960 for the exit and then trips herself on her way 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.280 out right, and so she winds up with like scraped up, 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.000 bloody knees and everything. And that's, as Chris says it, 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:08.720 that's all that happened, right, Like, you know, she's probably 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:11.200 this girl who's raised very racist, gives a mean look 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.680 to a black girl who trips her, and the encounter 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.600 ends right in the grand scheme of things, not a 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:20.640 huge deal. But when Chris gets home, Susan sees that 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:23.560 she has bloody hands and knees, mostly from the second 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.840 time that she fell on her own. And Susan's like, 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.480 what happened? And Chris told her, right, I got tripped 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.720 on the bus by this black girl. And Susan responds, 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:35.080 you let a bunch of and then she drops several 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.920 slurs in a row. Run you off a public bus. 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.320 Chris tries to explain, I couldn't do anything, but Susan 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:45.080 is drunk, so she beats her daughter mercilessly breaking her 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:47.320 nose badly enough that she has to go to the 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.000 hospital because there's blood coming out of her ears. Right, 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:54.240 So we're talking like very serious abuse here. So when 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:57.920 they get to the hospital, they can't Susan, Like, Susan 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.480 doesn't want her daughter saying, well, I got tripped on 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.160 the bus and scraped up my knees and then my 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:04.440 mom beat me so bad I have a concussion, right, 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:06.360 because then Mom's going to get arrested. Right. 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:07.240 That's not great. 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:10.479 That's not great. Yeah, that's like even even in this 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:15.679 period of time, in the mid sixties, that's child abuse. Yeah. 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:19.040 So because her injuries require an explanation, Susan on the 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:21.560 way over to the hospital is coaching her daughter, who 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:23.960 has a head injury, like, hey, you got to you 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:25.960 gotta say it was those girls on the bus. You 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:27.840 gotta say it was like a race thing that they 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.359 beat you up because you're white. And then her book, 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:34.000 Mama said, Chris writes quote those six black girl and 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:36.359 this is her talking about like how she what she 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.439 tells the hospital, those six black girls beat me up 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:41.040 on the bus. I told them I got on the 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:43.600 bus and that girl tripped me, uttered racial slurs, knocked 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:45.960 me down and kicked me. Mom chimed in to add 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.280 another fantastic detail. Every time I retold the story, you 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:51.840 know what they said to her. They were screaming at her, screaming, 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.640 We're going to take over America, you white bitch. They 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.560 told her this is their city. The nurses, all white, 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:01.080 would gasp and cluck, and then even more racist things 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.000 get said. I think you get the idea right. Like 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:09.919 she is, Susan is very much leaning into the racial 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.440 animus of the time in order to try and make 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.280 this a story that she can sell not just to 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.440 these like white hospital workers, but to the media, which 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:22.000 is where she's going to go next, because when she 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:24.520 calls the cops, the cops are like, we don't really 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:26.919 care about some kids getting into a fight on a bus. 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:29.080 This is where the lapd and this is the sixties. 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.200 There's so much else going on right now and where 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.040 the LAPD, So we don't really care about much anyway. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:38.879 So she starts reaching out to every newspaper in town 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.680 to tell them increasingly elaborate lies about the hate crime 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:45.920 her daughter had suffered. The only reporter who shows up 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:48.680 is a guy from the Harold Examiner, and the next 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:50.919 day Chris is on the front page of the paper. 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.840 Now this ignites a response from the local community, and 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.320 that's what brings the cops out. A whole bunch of 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.639 particularly the most racist people in LA start sending bouquets 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:06.200 of flowers to Chris, often with very racist messages in them. Susan, 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:08.960 because again this is all about money for Sue, she 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:12.239 tries to sue the bus company and eventually gets her 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:16.359 daughter on local TV, which turns her into, in Chris's words, 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:20.160 a martyr for the cause. The John Birch Society gets 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:26.159 interested and Susan and Chris are enrolled in the organization. Yeah, 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:28.960 so this is she This is like the kind of 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.040 the first big con. Susan realizes she can play with 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.480 her daughter, is like, I'm going to try and make 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.600 her like the face of the anti integration movement, right 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:41.320 and it You know, this works for a little while. 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.600 Spurred to action by media attention, the LAPD takes to 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.640 the field with the usual degree of competence you would expect. 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:53.439 This is from Chris's book. Six black girls were arrested, 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:56.480 thrown in jail, charged, and dragged into a courtroom to 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:59.199 answer for my mother's crime. Mama told me I'd have 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:01.800 to testify on the witness stand. The thought made me 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.480 want to die. Mama caught me trying to overdose on 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.240 pills before the court date. She poured salt water down 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:09.960 my throat until I threw everything up. She didn't beat 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:12.000 me this time, though. She couldn't have me showing up 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:18.679 to court with fresh wounds. So pretty bad, pretty bad story. Yeah, 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:21.639 she didn't beat that's but she didn't beat her. She 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:23.560 just nearly drowned her with salt water. 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:27.080 It's fine, fine, it's fine, A sailing solutions, everything's great. 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:29.880 You know, I'm actually surprised that the police didn't jump 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.600 in and be like, oh, racial stuff, let's go beat 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:34.840 some people like that seems like something they would want 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:36.520 to do because they don't actually want to work. 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:40.400 Yeah, I mean I think that's that's that's my expectation. 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:42.320 But also you have to you have to note that 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.000