Speaker 1: This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 2: When he was a teenager, the shock rock singer Marilyn
Speaker 2: Manson was in a war with Christianity. Raised in evangelical
Speaker 2: religious schools in Florida, the teachings of Jesus didn't take root. Instead,
Speaker 2: they seeded a desire to mock and lampoon Christianity. This
Speaker 2: helps explain his whole deal, and it's also why Marilyn
Speaker 2: Manson and his friends once went on a rampage one
Speaker 2: holiday season and stole various icons of Baby Jesus from
Speaker 2: nativity scenes. But apparently, not only did they steal the
Speaker 2: infant Savior, they exchanged Baby Jesus for a ham, not
Speaker 2: like a spiral cut honeybagged beauty, but a ham. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: the next day, the prankster teens sent a communicate to
Speaker 2: the local newspaper. They wish to claim credit for their
Speaker 2: Baby Jesus stealing crime spree. But here's where it gets
Speaker 2: extra Marilyn Manson. The Florida teens claim they're a group
Speaker 2: of black radicals. Their communicate says their crime spree is
Speaker 2: meant as a protest of the quote plasticization of the
Speaker 2: black man's wisdom with the so called White Christmas. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's whack. And obviously Marilyn Manson was already playing with
Speaker 2: the electrified third rails of American culture, but he was
Speaker 2: far from the first person to think it was a
Speaker 2: good idea to steal baby Jesus. Welcome to very special
Speaker 2: episodes an iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Zarren Burnett,
Speaker 2: and this is Stealing Baby Jesus. The act of stealing
Speaker 2: a baby Jesus was so not new when Marilyn Manson
Speaker 2: ran a muck in Florida, lifting a few baby Jesus
Speaker 2: from the mangers, that, in fact, it was already a
Speaker 2: TV trope back in the early days of television, back
Speaker 2: when there were no reruns because all the shows were new.
Speaker 2: In a nineteen fifty three episode of the cop show Dragnet,
Speaker 2: detectives Joe Friday and Frank Smith get a call about
Speaker 2: a stolen baby Jesus. Only, unlike most episodes, the detectives
Speaker 2: can't solve the mystery of the missing figurine. They have
Speaker 2: to tell the parish priest there's not gonna be any
Speaker 2: baby Jesus this year. The episode ends on a sweet note, though,
Speaker 2: when a little boy rolls up with the missing Baby Jesus.
Speaker 2: He's pulling the Holy Infant in his wagon. But don't worry.
Speaker 2: The kid didn't steal Baby Jesus. Nor maybe he did
Speaker 2: and his guilt made him return it. The point is
Speaker 2: stealing Baby Jesus is a holiday tradition. It's almost as
Speaker 2: old a holiday tradition as the red and white Coca
Speaker 2: Cola Santa Claus. In the decade just before the Dragnet episode,
Speaker 2: stealing Baby Jesus was already a thing. If you check
Speaker 2: old newspapers, you'll find that's. Starting in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 2: headlines about a stolen Baby Jesus start popping up. For instance,
Speaker 2: in the Opealaikah Auburn News December nineteenth, nineteen forty nine edition,
Speaker 2: there are reports on a baby Jesus theft. The people
Speaker 2: of Opelika, Alabama, collectively wonder quote who took Baby Jesus
Speaker 2: from his crib and the outdoor Nativity scene at Saint
Speaker 2: Mary's Catholic Church. As the paper reports, their baby Jesus statue,
Speaker 2: which is the size of a large doll, gets stolen
Speaker 2: on a Saturday night, and come Sunday morning, the padre
Speaker 2: at Saint Mary's father Francis hey Big discovers the church's
Speaker 2: missing Baby Jesus. That's when the local authorities get involved.
Speaker 2: The cops have a short list of suspects. As a
Speaker 2: local paper reports.
Speaker 3: One church source said, the culprit could have been one
Speaker 3: of three type persons, a drunk one who didn't like religion, or.
Speaker 2: Obviously the police suspect may be super general. The cops
Speaker 2: feel it covers all the bases. But of those three
Speaker 2: types of person, none of them are master criminals. And yet,
Speaker 2: in terms of recovering stolen Baby Jesus is the police
Speaker 2: still often find they're outmatched. Try as the cops might.
Speaker 2: Far too often, no Baby Jesus is ever recovered. In
Speaker 2: case you didn't know it, Jesus returning is like one
Speaker 2: of his superpowers. Now considered this case of the missing
Speaker 2: Baby Jesus of Keensburg. In nineteen eighty one, Miss Keelan,
Speaker 2: an elderly resident of Keensburg, New Jersey, wakes up to
Speaker 2: find her Baby Jesus statue is missing. In fact, it's
Speaker 2: been stolen and a ransom note has been left behind.
Speaker 2: As Detective Dennis Rudd later tells reporters, the ransom note reads,
Speaker 2: we have stolen baby Jesus. If you ever want to
Speaker 2: see him again, leave fifteen dollars in a paper bag
Speaker 2: in the manger. This is no joke, have no fear.
Speaker 2: Detective Dennis Rudd has a plan to get back miss
Speaker 2: Keelan's baby Jesus. As the detective tells it, he and
Speaker 2: Patrolman Michael Kennedy were already quote full of the holiday spirit,
Speaker 2: as in the pair of officers had been sipping on eggnog,
Speaker 2: likely spiked with the good Irish whiskey. Now with their
Speaker 2: bellies warmed, the two cops come up with a plan
Speaker 2: to recover this nice old lady's stolen baby Jesus. The
Speaker 2: cops tell the kindly elderly woman they're gonna run a
Speaker 2: sting operation get back her baby Jesus. This pair of
Speaker 2: cops plans to conduct a stakeout. They'll catch the thieves
Speaker 2: when they come back for their ransom. Detective Rudd and
Speaker 2: Patrolman Kennedy instruct missus Keelan to find a paper bag,
Speaker 2: phill it with shredded paper, then put the bag in
Speaker 2: the manger right where the stolen baby Jesus was taken. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the two officers stake out the scene, They wait for
Speaker 2: the purse and stay warm with some more spiked eggnog.
Speaker 2: That's how I imagine the scene. Now, Old missus Keelan
Speaker 2: does as instructed. She filled a bag with shredded paper
Speaker 2: and left it in the manger for the baby Jesus thieves.
Speaker 2: Cops watched the spot, and eventually someone indeed walks up
Speaker 2: to the nativity scene. Suspicious, the cops leap out from
Speaker 2: where they're hiding. They seize the would be Baby Jesus thief.
Speaker 2: Only the man is missus Keelan's nephew. He hasn't heard
Speaker 2: about the stakeout. He's only heard about the missing Baby Jesus,
Speaker 2: and he came to check the scene of the crime.
Speaker 2: The cops do not have their man. The nephew is
Speaker 2: clearly not the kidnapper. After they failed to find the
Speaker 2: stolen infant Savior, the pair of officers promised the kindly
Speaker 2: utterly woman that quote police would help find a replacement
Speaker 2: for the statue in time for next Christmas. But those
Speaker 2: two officers who were quote so full of holiday cheer,
Speaker 2: they don't have to follow through on their promise, because
Speaker 2: there is a Christmas miracle acording to the local reporting,
Speaker 2: which was syndicated.
Speaker 4: The statue was found in a bag lying in a
Speaker 4: manger from which it had been stolen earlier last week.
Speaker 2: This poor, unfortunate Baby Jesus had seen rough times, back
Speaker 2: to the syndicated news story, Although both.
Speaker 4: The hands and the arms of the statue were bound
Speaker 4: with plastic rope, the infant was not harmed.
Speaker 2: After Baby Jesus makes his surprise return, Detective Rudd doesn't
Speaker 2: hesitate to take credit. He's happy to report to the
Speaker 2: press that police pressure must have scared the Baby Jesus thieves.
Speaker 2: He takes the tack that once they knew the cops
Speaker 2: were after them, it was only a matter of time
Speaker 2: until they return the Baby Jesus, but no suspects were
Speaker 2: ever arrested. Three years later, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, baby Jesus
Speaker 2: stealing thieves strike again. Presumably it's not the same thieves,
Speaker 2: but again there is a ransom note. A syndicated UPI
Speaker 2: story on December thirteenth, nineteen eighty four, runs with the
Speaker 2: headline stolen Baby Jesus statue is returned. The thieves had
Speaker 2: stolen a three foot tall, ten pounds ceramic Baby Jesus,
Speaker 2: and they left in its place their ransom note. So
Speaker 2: what's the price to get baby Jesus back? Well, the
Speaker 2: ransom note read we have Jesus, we will hang them
Speaker 2: unless the police leave five cases of Budweiser here January first.
Speaker 2: There you go. The price of a baby Jesus is
Speaker 2: apparently five cases of watery American beer. But this trade
Speaker 2: doesn't get made because an anonymous tipster contacts the police.
Speaker 2: Whoever they are THEEF or not. They tell the police
Speaker 2: where they can find the missing baby Jesus. He is
Speaker 2: in a snowbank, and sure enough, there he is, right
Speaker 2: where he's promised to be. It's another Christmas miracle. But
Speaker 2: who who are all these pranksters and amateur ransom artists
Speaker 2: that want to steal Baby Jesus. More importantly, what's in
Speaker 2: it for these baby Jesus thieves? The twentieth century trend
Speaker 2: of stealing a baby Jesus has continued right on into
Speaker 2: the twenty first century. Even with the ever present ring
Speaker 2: cameras and all the surveillance cameras everywhere, people will still
Speaker 2: brave the risk of prison just to steal a baby Jesus.
Speaker 2: There's even a whole page of Wikipedia dedicated to the crime.
Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, the Boston Globe reported on a local
Speaker 2: Nativity scene that had been stolen three times over the
Speaker 2: last nine years, and that was nothing. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: the good folks in rural North Dakota had grown so
Speaker 2: used to people stealing their Baby Jesus that the local
Speaker 2: hardware store had to put up a sign. As their
Speaker 2: local paper, The Pioneer Press, reported.
Speaker 4: At Chiel's Home and Hardware and Fargo, the Earthly Father
Speaker 4: and Virgin Mother, a holy family set for seventy four
Speaker 4: dollars and ninety nine cents, sit on a shelf adoringly
Speaker 4: hovering over a small sign that says, please ask for
Speaker 4: Baby Jesus. For several years, the store has kept its
Speaker 4: Baby Jesus statuettes off the retail floor because of experiences
Speaker 4: with shoplifters.
Speaker 2: That same year, further west on the Pacific Northwest Coast,
Speaker 2: the Baby Jesus figurine became the most stolen item in
Speaker 2: the Seattle, Tacoma area, as local station KIRO Channel seven reported,
Speaker 2: and we asked an actor to recite.
Speaker 1: Seattle's Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church had a five dollars plastic
Speaker 1: baby Jesus stolen from its Nativity scene last December.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: It was as tacky as cheap as garage sale Baby Jesus,
Speaker 1: mom and Dad as you could get, said Pastor James Carney.
Speaker 2: Karad sale Baby Jesus. That's one hell of a band
Speaker 2: if you're in the market. There's also gregory music from
Speaker 2: Kaufer's Religious Supplies, a store there in Seattle. He told
Speaker 2: the local press from KIRO Channel seven.
Speaker 1: Everybody likes a baby. They never steal the wise men
Speaker 1: or camels or anything like that. It's always Baby Jesus.
Speaker 2: Who wants a wise man or a camel. People wouldn't
Speaker 2: necessarily even know it's a Christmas related camel. Now a
Speaker 2: baby swaddled maybe with a halo, that's what you call
Speaker 2: the reason for the season. Pastor James Carney from Seattle.
Speaker 2: He refused to let any stolen Baby Jesus become a
Speaker 2: bummer for his parishioners. Under his lead, the Capitol Hill
Speaker 2: Presbyterian Church decided to go songs Jesus for their Christmas
Speaker 2: decorations because, as he, or rather the actor reading his
Speaker 2: words will point out, it's just a symbol.
Speaker 3: There'll be no Baby Jesus. You'll have to come into
Speaker 3: the church and find the real Jesus. But in terms
Speaker 3: of the tacky, lit up plastic baby Jesus that we
Speaker 3: got from our garage sale, there will not be any
Speaker 3: baby Jesus, and we cannot put out Mary and Joseph
Speaker 3: Casette just looks kind of sad.
Speaker 2: And that's what the real sting is, not the loss,
Speaker 2: but rather how it feels to lose your Jesus. Stealing
Speaker 2: from a church is a holy violation, but when someone
Speaker 2: steals your baby Jesus, that's a far more personal, spiritual violation.
Speaker 2: It can hit extra hard for the truly faithful. Just
Speaker 2: ask Gloria Herrera of Richland Hills, Texas. She once found
Speaker 2: her family's baby Jesus had been stolen. As Gloria said,
Speaker 2: they took the family Jesus. How can anybody do that?
Speaker 2: In the case of her stolen baby Jesus, the thief
Speaker 2: was a teenage girl. There's no gender bias when it
Speaker 2: comes to stealing a baby Jesus, but we don't really
Speaker 2: know what the exact gender ratio is because if you
Speaker 2: check the decades of news stories, you'll see the baby
Speaker 2: Jesus thieves often aren't caught. In fact, they mostly get
Speaker 2: away with. In the rare instances when the thieves do
Speaker 2: get caught, it turns out that the purp is almost
Speaker 2: always one of three usual suspects teenagers on a spree,
Speaker 2: be it girls or boys. Or it might be older,
Speaker 2: angry anti religious types making a point. Or there's the
Speaker 2: last group, drunks acting on a wicked impulse. This is
Speaker 2: all based on newspaper stories. You could also go with
Speaker 2: the opinion of Mike Johnson. He's from Alliance Defense Fund.
Speaker 2: It's a conservative Christian legal group.
Speaker 3: I suspect most of it is childish pranks. Clearly they
Speaker 3: are adults with an agenda to remove Christ from Christmas,
Speaker 3: but they tend to occupy themselves with the courts in
Speaker 3: courtroom of public opinion.
Speaker 2: Now, if and when it is kids who steal Baby Jesus,
Speaker 2: it doesn't necessarily mean they're bad kids. But don't listen
Speaker 2: to me on that. Listen to Stephen Nissenbaum, former history
Speaker 2: professor from UMass and and author of the book The
Speaker 2: Battle for Christmas. He argues that the act of stealing
Speaker 2: Baby Jesus is harmless by definition, at least for the purpse.
Speaker 2: As Stephen Nissenbaum put it, and we had an actor recite.
Speaker 3: What it means is that it's okay to go around
Speaker 3: violating even pretty important norms as long as real human
Speaker 3: harm isn't being done. It's not exactly devalue in Christianity,
Speaker 3: but it is sort of a ritualized challenge to it.
Speaker 3: It could be Christian kids doing it, and on January second,
Speaker 3: they become good Christian kids.
Speaker 2: Again, that's an interesting question to consider. Can one steal
Speaker 2: Baby Jesus and still be a good person or even
Speaker 2: a good Christian. They call it Christmas City, but that's
Speaker 2: only a nickname. The town's government name is Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: It's a dream destination for those who love Christmas and
Speaker 2: for those who loved to steal a baby Jesus. In
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, thieves struck in Christmas City, or in this
Speaker 2: case the singular. It was a woman working alone. The
Speaker 2: baby Jesus was in a nativity scene in the Bethlehem
Speaker 2: public Square. The woman walked up, she appreciated the scene,
Speaker 2: She looked around and was just her in Baby Jesus.
Speaker 2: The temptation was too great, so yoiit. She walked off
Speaker 2: with that holy infant. She was likely drunk, very drunk. Now,
Speaker 2: the good folks of Christmas City couldn't, or rather wouldn't,
Speaker 2: let some drunk cooke just come into Bethlehem steal their
Speaker 2: baby Jesus and walk away. Except that's exactly what happened. However,
Speaker 2: in this case, she doesn't get away with the crime
Speaker 2: for very long. Tiny Baby Jesus of Christmas City is
Speaker 2: eventually recovered. Sadly, though Baby Jesus isn't returned unharmed, he's
Speaker 2: most definitely harmed. In fact, local police have to glue
Speaker 2: the legs back on to Baby Jesus, which sounds like
Speaker 2: a scene from a Scorsese film, like if he made
Speaker 2: a Christmas movie. To make sure their baby Jesus is
Speaker 2: never again stolen from Christmas City, the local authorities install
Speaker 2: a surveillance camera trained on the Bethlehem Public Square. Locals
Speaker 2: nickname it the Jesus Camp because if you want to
Speaker 2: keep your baby Jesus safe, this seems to be the
Speaker 2: most common response increased security instead of say prayer. Now,
Speaker 2: some towns will try to chain their baby Jesus to
Speaker 2: like a pedestal. That can work. Other folks often try
Speaker 2: to nail their baby Jesus down to the manger. Now,
Speaker 2: when it comes to nailing Jesus, as any good Christian
Speaker 2: can tell you, Christmas is the wrong holiday for Jesus
Speaker 2: and nails. That's Easter, which leaves the Christmas City solution
Speaker 2: as the best and the most common option to safeguard
Speaker 2: a baby Jesus from thieves. Surveillance cameras aka Jesus cams
Speaker 2: got to keep an eye on that holy infant. There's
Speaker 2: a company in New York called brick House Security. They
Speaker 2: offer a rare service they call it GPS Jesus. You
Speaker 2: can chip your baby Jesus statue just like a pet poodle.
Speaker 2: That way, if someone comes and steals it, no matter
Speaker 2: where they take them, you can go and save Jesus,
Speaker 2: which is a fun little switch up. According to the
Speaker 2: CEO of brick House Security, the real genius of their
Speaker 2: GPS based system is that it's a CoP's best friend
Speaker 2: as far as saving your stolen baby Jesus, a CEO
Speaker 2: Todd Morris puts.
Speaker 3: It, Normally, police have a difficult time dealing with property theft,
Speaker 3: and some people think it's because police don't care about
Speaker 3: theft of small objects, even if they're religious nature. But
Speaker 3: it's not that police don't care, it's that they rarely
Speaker 3: have the ability to act.
Speaker 2: That's where GPS Jesus comes in. But that's not CEO
Speaker 2: Todd Morris, that's an actor portraying him. Back to our
Speaker 2: actor portrayal of CEO Todd Morris.
Speaker 3: If somebody moves Baby Jesus, emails and text messages go
Speaker 3: out and several people from our server and we can
Speaker 3: check with him to see if there's a problem, if
Speaker 3: he should be moving, if he shouldn't be moving. If
Speaker 3: they call us and we say we can't find them,
Speaker 3: we will log on while on the phone and interface
Speaker 3: with local law enforcement to help them track down Baby Jesus.
Speaker 2: Basically, the company tells the cops what GPS Jesus is
Speaker 2: telling them, and then the cops go and save them.
Speaker 2: But what happens when the cops actually catch the criminals
Speaker 2: and the Purps don't just return Baby Jesus. Well, there
Speaker 2: was a group of friends, three nineteen year olds who
Speaker 2: stole a baby Jesus from a Methodist church in Forest, Virginia.
Speaker 2: But then these brain geniuses posted a photo on Facebook
Speaker 2: of them at the Nativity scene.
Speaker 3: Nice, oh yeah, br They.
Speaker 2: Literally posted evidence of their crime, which means it wasn't
Speaker 2: hard to catch them. When they got busted, they caught
Speaker 2: real charges. They were tried, convicted, and sentenced. The ringleader
Speaker 2: got one year in jail, his two buddies sentenced to
Speaker 2: sixty days behind bars, and all three had to pay
Speaker 2: the church five hundred dollars in restitution. These larcenist nineteen
Speaker 2: year olds did try to explain to the cops and
Speaker 2: later to the court and the judge what they did
Speaker 2: was just meant to be a prank, a joke, a
Speaker 2: harmless bit of fun. It's not like baby Jesus got
Speaker 2: hurt this time. But whether or not baby Jesus got hurt,
Speaker 2: totally loses sight of what makes stealing a baby Jesus
Speaker 2: so much damn fun. It's partly the fact that it's
Speaker 2: a doll baby of Jesus. In the Christian tradition, God
Speaker 2: became human and was born of a virgin named Mary.
Speaker 2: Their holy son is Jesus, born in a manger, hunted
Speaker 2: by the King of the land, survivor of a baby genocide.
Speaker 2: It's a wild story, whether you believe it or not.
Speaker 2: I was raised a Catholic, so try as I might,
Speaker 2: I can't help but believe in the story even old
Speaker 2: baby doll Jesus. However, you're not supposed to act like
Speaker 2: the ba baby doll Jesus that you see in the
Speaker 2: Nativity scenes is a baby doll. It's meant to be
Speaker 2: a representation of God as a human being. Thus the
Speaker 2: baby doll becomes sacred. And this is where we run
Speaker 2: headlong into mass consumerism and the various plastic and ceramic Jesuses.
Speaker 2: The fact you can buy a cheap plastic baby Jesus
Speaker 2: that's supposed to be this revered holy icon makes it
Speaker 2: funny to steal a statue of God as a doll baby.
Speaker 2: Yet frankly, at the most soulful level, for some believers,
Speaker 2: stealing a baby Jesus can even be a way to
Speaker 2: restore Jesus to a more sacred place in your life.
Speaker 2: If you don't know this. These days fewer folks attend church,
Speaker 2: yet it seems people still take part in the holiday season,
Speaker 2: all of its decorations and its festivities. This is how
Speaker 2: Kurt Busiek, pastor of a manual Baptist in Parkersburg, West Virginia,
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion that a stolen baby Jesus may
Speaker 2: actually be a secret blessing. In twenty eighteen, Pastor Boussiek
Speaker 2: told The New York Times quote, my thought is, hey,
Speaker 2: if they steal one, we'll keep putting it out. I
Speaker 2: can't think of a better way to get the message
Speaker 2: of Christmas out than for people to keep taking Jesus home. Now,
Speaker 2: there's a man who believes God truly works in mysterious ways,
Speaker 2: and that's how. By stealing a baby Jesus, you're celebrating
Speaker 2: the reason for the season. So maybe this holiday season,
Speaker 2: go steal a baby Jesus, then return it and enjoy
Speaker 2: a merry Christmas.
Speaker 5: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 5: This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Sarah Burnett, and
Speaker 5: Jason English. Today's episode was written by Zaren Burnett. Our
Speaker 5: producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound designed by Chris Childs,
Speaker 5: Mixing and mastering by Chris Childs. Original music by Alice McCoy.
Speaker 5: Show logo by Lucy Kntonia Let me thank our virtual
Speaker 5: troop of voice actors Jonathan Washington, Chris Childs, Elizabeth Dutton,
Speaker 5: Katie Maddie, Josh Fisher, and Zaron Burnett. Our Executive producer
Speaker 5: is Jason English and on behalf of the entire Very
Speaker 5: Special Episodes Family. I wish you a married Christmas, haty Honicah,
Speaker 5: Happy holidays, have a joyous college football Bowl season, marry everything.
Speaker 5: We'll be back next week, probably next Monday, with one
Speaker 5: last episode of twenty twenty four. Very Special Episodes is
Speaker 5: a production of iHeart Podcasts. Please do not go steal
Speaker 5: Baby Jesus.