WEBVTT - LIVE: Minneapolis - The Madd Gasser of Mattoon 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:06.880 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.240 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:19.200 Charles W. Chuck, Wayne Bryant. Jerry's not here, but all 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:21.799 of these lovely people are here at the State Theater 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:24.680 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:30.520 Wow. Him. 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:42.240 Not bad for a Thursday, Not bad at all. Thank 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:50.040 you guys for that feeling good. We'll edit that part out, 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.080 so tonight we're going to talk to you guys about 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:57.080 a little town you may or may not have heard of. 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.360 It's called Mattoon, Illinois. Has anyone ever heard of Mettun 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:03.920 a few of you? Is anyone from. 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:06.360 Mattoon any tunes out there? Really? 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:11.720 Okay, we'll try not to be mad at us because 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.320 the show starts like this. Mattoon is in a kind 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:19.640 of a triangle between Chicago to the north, Saint Louis 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:23.640 to the south, Indianapolis to whatever's over here, and it's 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:25.959 just far enough away from all of them to not 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:32.959 really get any of their reflective interestingness. Right, I'm sorry, 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.160 but there are two things that Mattoon lays claim to. One, 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:41.440 it calls itself the Begel Capital of the World because 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:45.280 in nineteen eighty five, Lenders Begels opened a factory there. 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:46.640 That is it. 0:01:49.840 --> 0:01:53.120 New York has no problem with this. Montreal has no 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:53.920 problem with it. 0:01:55.360 --> 0:02:00.000 Number two, Mattoon is world renowned for having been terrorized 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.040 by a mad gasser who went from house to house, 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:07.440 spraying residents with a noxious paralytic gas while they were 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:11.760 tucked safely away in their homes. Yeah right, Either that 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:14.600 or the town of Mattun went through one of the 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:19.079 best documented cases of mass delusion that has ever happened. 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:22.079 And the world's actually divided on what went down in 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.080 Mettune in nineteen forty four, and we're going to dive 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:26.320 into that here tonight. 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:30.839 What it wouldn't be funny After reaction, they're like, oh 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.760 my god, amazing. If you're like, so this is about 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:36.000 Linderspagels and sponsored. 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:38.240 We'd like to thank Lenders. 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:41.079 You should google that other super interesting story though. 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:44.120 Chucks full of beans tonight. 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:49.239 Everybody bullow what beans it means? 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:50.440 You're like, I'm full of it? 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.919 Where I come from, I've never heard that. I thought 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.120 that means we're party. No, I don't full of beans 0:02:58.880 --> 0:02:59.920 the musical fruit. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:01.360 All of these kay. 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.280 I can tell No, of course not well, nevermind. 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:07.360 Yeah, keep moving on. 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.960 So we're gonna take you back in time and hop 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:13.680 in the way back machine and go back to nineteen 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:19.560 forty four when it took place. Ok, wow, wayback machine. 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:23.799 This is the wayback machine. By the way, it's it's 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.280 in the mind. So we're all there together. I suddenly 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:31.280 just sound like a cult leader. So Matune in nineteen 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.200 forty four was a pretty small town of about sixteen thousand. 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:36.400 I think it's still a pretty small town if I'm 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:40.480 not mistaken. And it's populated back then with people with 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:42.880 some great names. So you're gonna hear some nineteen forty 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:47.160 four names tonight, like Bertha and Elmer and. 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.560 Hebrew Hebrew's my favorite, and Beulah. 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:54.240 And Urban, like great nineteen forties names that you just 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:57.400 don't hear anymore unless you are like a super hipster 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.800 and you name your kid Beulah. Yeah that's my great grandmother, 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:06.160 I promise. It was surrounded by fields corn and soybean, 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.520 so a lot of farming went on there. They did 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:10.640 have a couple of railroad junctions that still went through 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:13.560 the town, which was good because that also provided work. 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:16.880 And then there were a few factories we looked up 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:19.560 to see what was interesting, and there was a shoe company, 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:22.400 the Brown Shoe Company there, which seemed pretty cool. 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.360 Yeah, we couldn't get to the bottom of whether it 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:27.679 was named after the owner or they just made brown shoes. 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:31.320 When I was nineteen forty four, I bet it was both. 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:33.880 Yeah, a little bit from column May, a little bit 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:37.040 from columb But long way of saying, if you lived 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:38.839 in Mattoon, you probably were a farmer. 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.200 You may have worked on the railroad although livelong day, 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.960 or you might have worked at one of those factories. 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.039 It's what they call the pre bagel era. 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:50.080 That's right. There's one other thing you need to know 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.680 about Mattoon in nineteen forty four. A significant portion of 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:56.760 its young men had left town and were off fighting 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.279 the World War two at the time, so it was 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.880 an anxious place to be back then. And this whole 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:05.000 thing that we're going to talk about tonight, the mad 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:08.760 Gasser of Mettune. It all started, depending on how you 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.520 look at it, on the night of Friday, September first, 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:15.080 at the home of mister and missus Burt Kearney. And 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.960 that is how they described women back then. They didn't 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.120 use their first names. Because what else do you need 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:24.520 to know? She's married to Burt. She took his last name. 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:29.120 Who cares about anything else? Well, we care, So we 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:32.520 went to great links to find the first names of 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.760 the women who were attacked. I'm a bit of a 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:42.560 thank you. Chuck has more stamina than me. I'm a 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:44.320 bit of a quitter. So I gave up with like 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:46.400 three or four, laughed, and he's like, no, and we 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:48.800 got it down to one. There's only one woman whose 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:50.600 first name. We couldn't find this whole thing. 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:52.760 Yeah, I couldn't find it. I've spent a lot of 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:57.000 time on ancestry dot com and find a grave dot 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:00.800 com because sometimes literally the only way you could find 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.960 out a woman's name is by standing over her grave 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:06.320 and looking at her gravestone, which is very sad. But 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:08.480 we got almost everyone. Yeah, so what was her name? 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:11.200 Her name was Aileen missus Kearny's first name was Aileen, 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:15.440 and at the time, her sister, Martha Reedy was staying 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.279 with her because Martha's husband was off fighting in World 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.200 War two overseas, and so that's why they let Martha 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:22.880 use her first name temporarily. 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:23.120 Yeah. 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:23.560 Well, he was. 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:33.720 Very generous. So about eleven PM. In this house, Aileen 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.640 retired to bed with her toddler daughter Dorothy at eleven PM. 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:41.560 I can only imagine this because Dorothy had just gotten 0:06:41.560 --> 0:06:46.480 home from working at the factory that day, and Aileen 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:48.560 noticed a strange smell in the house, like a really 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.640 sickeningly sweet guardinia kind of smell. They got stronger and stronger, 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:56.000 and as the smell grew stronger, she noticed that she 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:00.320 was losing I'm laughing, it's not funny, losing power over 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:03.440 her legs and arms, like it was paralyzing her. Her 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:08.359 mouth and throat got really dry and were burning. Little 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:13.160 Dorothy became ill. Don't worry, she would be okay, and 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.080 she called out for her sister because she was rightfully scared. 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.040 Yeah, her sister and in the room and was like, 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.280 what the hell is that? Smelling through the window open 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.600 and ran next door to Earl Robertson's house. No trouble 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.840 finding his name, right, He was the next door neighbor, 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:29.680 and he ran over to see what was going on. 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:33.120 And he went and searched the yard to see if 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:36.160 he could find anything, and he found absolutely nothing. They 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.400 called the cops. The cops came out. They searched and 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.040 they didn't find anything either, And everything's kind of settled 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:44.760 down for about an hour after that. 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.720 Yeah, so Alien's husband, the aforementioned Bert, is a cab driver. 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:51.960 Was a cab driver, and he was driving around in 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:54.360 nineteen forty four. When you're a cab driver, there's no 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:57.360 way to get in touch with anyone unless you stand 0:07:57.400 --> 0:07:59.160 on the corner and pretend like you need a ride. 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.960 No radios in the car or anything like that. And 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:06.280 they finally got in touch with Bert about an hour 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.600 and a half later. He rushes home at twelve thirty am, 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.320 and this is very key. When he pulls in an 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:14.040 hour and a half later, after the cops have gone, 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:19.640 he sees a tall, shadowy figure, tall, thin, athletic build 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.880 in the backyard, wearing what was described as a watch cap. 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.160 I didn't know what that was, but it's just like 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.800 a toboggan, like a beanie. I don't know which regionally 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:33.680 you call it here? What do you call it here? Beanie? Okay, 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:35.520 we'll go with Beanie. I didn't know if you were 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:37.320 close enough to Canada to call it a tuke. Are 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:43.400 you close to Canada? Where are we? I'm sorry, I 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:45.000 woke up from a nap and came straight here. 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:46.319 So did you really? 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:46.800 Oh? 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:51.120 Yeah, okay, I woke up and I was here thirteen 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.880 minutes later. Wow with a shower. 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:56.880 That's impressive and a tooth brush. Did you take a 0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:57.680 shower on the way? 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:02.120 I did. You just got to select uber shower. 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:06.920 You don't share those though, right now? 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:13.040 Yeah, they'd be fun. So he saw this figure, He 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:17.240 chased this prowler. The prowler runs away, gets away. They 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:19.520 call the cops, back out, the cops come back out. 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:22.679 Of course, there's nothing there still, And that was about it. 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.959 About ninety minutes after onset, Aileen was able to move 0:09:26.960 --> 0:09:30.040 her arms and legs. Little Dorothy was feeling fine. The 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.840 next morning, went off to the factory to work and 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:33.679 everything was okay. 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.760 Yeah, And that was the end of that. But the 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:41.600 story continues. The next day, a guy from the local paper, 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.240 the Mattoon Journal Gazette. His name was John Miller. He 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:46.400 was one of their writers, He was an editor. He 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:49.320 kind of did it all. He found out about this 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:53.280 story and he investigated it, and that night's paper, Saturday's 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:57.320 paper had a huge headline across the front page, took 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:00.880 up six of the eight columns on page one anesthetic 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:02.560 prowler on the loose. 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:06.840 Yeah. The other two headlines we like to do our research. 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:10.800 We went on the micropiche big headline there, Bagel's Breakfast 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:15.760 to the Future. They were trying to build up some buds, sure, 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:17.000 forty years earlier. 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:23.000 So there was a sub sub headline too, missus Kearney 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.880 and daughter first victims. And so keep in mind, this 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.360 one incident happened. This is the lone incident as far 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.240 as anyone knew, nothing else had happened. And yet they 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.480 were described as the first victims of the anesthetic prowler 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.000 that's now clearly on the loose. This is what the 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:41.640 paper said to everybody the day after the attack. 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:44.360 Yeah, and I think even speculated about what it might be. 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:46.280 There was a lot of speculation early on, right. 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:47.760 Yeah, a lot. 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.719 Yeah, all right, So you have to keep in mind 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:54.360 the Matune Journal gazette was received by ninety seven percent 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:58.280 of the town, which I thought was hysterical because even 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:01.080 in nineteen forty four there were the three centers who 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:07.480 was like mainstream media, no better not throw that paper 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:12.079 on my front porch. But it was a little paper. 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:14.199 It was almost like a church bulletin. It was very sweet. 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.040 It was about six or eight pages long. Typically it 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:19.440 did not publish on Sundays. Well, I guess it's not 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.920 like a church bulletin or holidays, and this was Labor 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.920 Day weekend, so the story runs on Saturday, Sunday followed, 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.040 and then Labor Day Monday followed. So the story is 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.640 lobbed out there about this mad gasser. First victims, and 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.280 people are just sitting around waiting for news to roll 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:36.800 in for two. 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:40.120 Days, right, And then they weren't just sitting around though. 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:42.600 Some people came forward. They'd read the story and were like, 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.959 this happened to me too. There was one woman named 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.520 missus Olive Brown who had suffered an attack a few 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:55.800 months before, and the local softball commissioner too, Yeah, this is. 0:11:56.200 --> 0:11:59.800 This guy's name is Urban Raife what in nineteen forty 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.559 four name? That is? He and his wife Pauline we 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.839 got her name, said that they experienced the same thing 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:09.360 just one night before Aileen and little Dorothy. And I 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:11.480 guess Urban thought it might be a gas leak. So 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:16.079 even though he was literally paralyzed, he somehow asked his wife, 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:18.120 woke her up and asked her if she had left 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.880 the gas on. I'm not sure how that happened. She 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:27.600 had not right, so they noticed the smell. After about 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:32.240 ninety minutes, it wore off and they chopped it up 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:34.959 to eating bad hot dogs. 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.439 They were paralyzed for ninety minutes, and they just chalked 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:39.800 it up. 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:43.040 To the hot dogs, you know that, saying, Yodo Twins game, 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.440 have a hot dog from like the fifth inning on. 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:46.120 You can't move. 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:49.559 They're like, I can't do the seventh inning stretch. 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:52.800 Yeah, they thought it was that. We've all been there. 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.520 So there's another family. All these people are coming forward 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:03.240 now from the Saturday's article, the family of Patrice Ryder 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:07.600 and her kids. They were also ill. They were struck ill. 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.200 She became kind of lightheaded. She found her kids vomiting, 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:14.360 and Shirley said, oh, it must be the hot dogs. 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:19.440 Tuesday was also the day we got our first physical evidence. 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:22.680 There was one Beula Cordis, who came home on that 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:27.560 night and found a piece of pink cloth that was 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.760 not hers on her front porch, and she picked it up. 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:33.640 She noticed it was moist, and she did what you do. 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:39.320 She put it in her face and inhaled deeply. Yeah, 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:40.360 and what happened to her. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.000 She described as like coming into contact with a strong 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:47.840 electrical current. By the way, she immediately regretted, huffing, this 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:50.760 is a strange pink rag. Yeah, she said. Her knees 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:54.200 went wildly, and then it gets worse. Her lips cracked, 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.320 her mouth went dry, they started to bleed. She began 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:01.400 bleeding from her mouth, and again she regretted, huffing that 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:05.320 pinkregg basically right off the bat for sure. 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:07.280 The same night, about an hour later, there was a 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:11.160 woman named Marjorie Burrell. She was stricken, but and this 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:13.880 is also key, in the same house her eighteen month 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:18.640 old son, fresh known from the factory, completely unaffected. 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:22.760 Right, So now it's clear there's something weird going on. 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.400 This wasn't just one incident. People are coming forward and 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.680 now they're also finding physical evidence of stuff. Right. So 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.360 the next night, it was Wednesday, September fifth, and there 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:38.280 were four more attacks, One on Laura Jenkin, the owner 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:40.600 of the Big Four restaurant. From what we can tell, 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:44.800 she was unaffiliated with any man. There was another one 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:48.840 about an hour later on missus Viola Spangler, and then 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.360 about an hour after that, eleven year old Glenda Hendershot 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:56.040 was attacked and she was the daughter of a mister Hendershot. 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:57.000 Right factory manager by the. 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.320 Way, she was the little girl. 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:00.560 Yeah, eleven. 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:03.080 Almost cigars. 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:05.520 I don't think we mentioned too that the cops took 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:09.320 hold obviously took the evidence into hand at pink cloth, 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:13.880 and I guess it managed to avoid the urge to 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:20.040 breathe deeply into it because it's it's moist. Yeah, that's 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:24.440 what you do. Let me see what that is. I mean, 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:27.680 at the worst, it's a cat urine. 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:29.880 That would be pretty bad. 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:31.760 It'd be terrible, a snoop. 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:31.840 Full of that. 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:36.040 Yeah. Also, a sixty year old man named Fred Goebel 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:38.880 was stricken about an hour after that. And this is 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.360 also key because this was the second spotting of an individual, 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:46.040 another tall, thin prowler fleeing the scene. 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.560 And we did the math. Fred Goebels was sixty and 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:52.040 nineteen forty four, which would make him roughly eight hundred 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.360 years old today. 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:58.680 The Josh math. I love it. 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:00.480 It works out sometimes. 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:03.520 All right. So by Thursday night in Mattoon, Illinois, it 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:06.040 is on like Donkey Kong, even though that wasn't a thing, 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:10.400 and the town were pretty scared. People were you know, rightfully. 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:12.400 So they were locking their doors, they were locking their windows, 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:14.120 which is not something you really did back then. 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.000 Yeah, and the town paper wasn't helping things either. On 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:21.120 Thursday's paper, there was another headline, another six columns of 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:25.560 eight columns, Mad and Nestetist strikes again with an exclamation 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:28.080 point this time. So there is pulling out all the stops. 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:32.920 That's right, if you're curious. The other headline bagels colon 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:40.320 like an unsweetened donut. So another thing started happening on Thursday, 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:44.480 which is these gentlemen and their sons in the town, 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:49.720 the Anti Theft Association, got their guns, got some makeshift weapons. 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:54.120 These are those three percent. I think I need to 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.760 point that out. They start roaming the town like you know, 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.600 the vigilantes, like there were quasi deputy. I think they 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:03.280 were supposed to, you know, like the cops would get 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:05.919 help from them for cattle wrestling and like chicken thieving 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.520 and stuff like that. But they knew this was a 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:10.280 big deal, so they grabbed their guns and gut in 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:11.320 their trucks and did their thing. 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:15.080 Yes, so after only a couple of newspaper reports the 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:18.000 course of a few days, the town of Mattoon is 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:22.840 really high strung. The police commissioner, the guy in charge 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:25.879 of all of the police for Mettun, was quoted in 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.359 the paper as saying that he wouldn't walk across his 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:32.760 own backyard at night for ten thousand dollars. Yeah, that's 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:33.840 the guy in charge. 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.720 Yeah, you know, as we do. We did our financial 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.359 conversion because we love those. You knew it would feature 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:44.280 a financial money conversion, so we went to our TRUSTe 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:47.119 west Egg calculator and that would be one hundred and 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.520 seventy six, three hundred and six dollars per day. So 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.080 he's not helping matters that would walk through any backyards 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:54.200 for that kind of day, for sure. 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:01.800 So they also issued a PSA to citizen which said, hey, 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:04.119 if you're going to shoot somebody looking through your window, 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:08.199 take care because there's these vigilantes out wandering around looking 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.240 through your window. So we don't want you guys shooting 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:11.840 one another. 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:16.720 Yeah, no, good. So this was sort of a busy 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.280 time for the cops obviously, right, because they didn't usually 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:20.520 get calls like this, right. 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.600 No, and they weren't set up for crime. The Mattsom 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:27.560 Police Department wasn't certainly not for a spiking crime. So 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.160 politically the police force was in disarray. You had Thomas Wright, 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:32.960 the guy wh wouldn't walk through his own backyard, the 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:37.120 police commissioner. Ostensibly he's in charge, he's calling the shots. 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:39.240 But they also had a police chief. His name was 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.639 ce Cole, and he seems to have been totally comfortable 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.560 undermining Thomas Wright's authority at every turn. And to make 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.960 matters worse, the police force was split down the middle, 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:52.840 with some loyal to Thomas right and some loyal to 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:55.639 Chief Coal. And that's not a good thing when you 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:58.359 only have ten people on your police force. 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:01.600 Yeah, and that was about half of what they should 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:03.600 have had. They were understaffed. They should have had around 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:07.239 twenty cops only had ten. And as a result of this, 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:11.080 over the previous months there was you know, sort of 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:12.879 a spike and crime that didn't have anything to do 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:15.320 with this, like robberies and stuff like that. There were 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:17.840 army checks rolling in. A lot of the young men 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.560 were off fighting. Like we said, everyone knew that. So 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:22.960 there was a spike and crime for a Mattoon. I 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:25.239 don't think it's anything you know, to worry about like 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.720 today's big cities. Sure, but for Mattoon. It was a 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:28.800 spike and crime right. 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:34.159 So the understaffed, resource strapped Mattoon police department took to 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:37.240 ignoring and covering up crimes that it didn't have the 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:38.760 resources to investigate. 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:44.600 That's right. The cops are hard at work. They're freaking 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.480 out a little bit. They started working, you know, double 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:50.440 shifts because they were down half of what they should 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.200 have been. Like we said, they also didn't have two 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.800 A radios in the car. Yet they did exist, but 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:57.919 they couldn't afford that kind of thing in such a 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.760 small department. So when calls came in, they came into 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.120 city Hall and there had to be a cop there 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:06.720 with a car that said, well, well where are we 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.400 supposed to go? And that's how they got police out. 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.280 Yeah, it's not the best way to run the police force. 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.639 And then even worse, the vigilantes from the anti Theft Association. 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:19.160 They figured out that if they hung around city Hall 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:21.320 and when the cops peeled off, they were going to 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:25.240 a call, so that any theft association would tear off 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:29.679 after him, ostensibly with bluegrass music playing them on. And 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:31.960 eventually the police department was like, we're going to arrest 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:34.320 you if you keep following us to calls to shoot 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:35.160 whoever's there. 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.280 So things are getting a little crazy, just like a 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.560 movie would happen, or I guess what would happen to movie? 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:46.040 What a weird way to say that. The states that 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:50.119 two investigators one Richard Piper and Francis with an I 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:58.680 Barry from the Illinois Bureau of Crime, Identification and Investigation. Yeah, 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.359 it's a little where it doesn't even spell anything, it 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:08.160 spells ye. So yeah, good point. So they arrived on Thursday, 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:10.800 and that was when these vigilantes had kind of hit 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:14.480 the streets. Things are getting a little crazy. They take 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:19.440 possession of that pink cloth from Bula Cordis again managing. 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:22.359 I think it probably was harmless by this point, but 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:24.960 they didn't press it into their face, thankfully, because they're 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:28.960 real pros. And then the FBI also showed up, supposedly 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:30.760 just to observe, but there were a couple of Feds there. 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:35.080 Yeah, and so Mattoon's small police force ended up being 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.960 supplemented eventually with some state patrol officers. The police force 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:42.959 ended up being doubled, and even better, the state patrol 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:47.040 officers brought two way radios with them, which the police department. 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:48.879 Was very happy about Can you imagine what that was like? 0:21:49.119 --> 0:21:51.480 Yeah, so now they didn't have to just hang around 0:21:51.520 --> 0:21:53.760 city Hall all the time, and they could coordinate out 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:55.280 in the field. It was like a whole new day. 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:57.360 Basically, They're like, we're like real cops now. 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:05.080 Yeah, so I feel like this is going pretty well. 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:09.320 You guys too, Yeah, okay, okay, Well then that means 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:11.560 we have to put a message break in right about 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.679