Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, Sar Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: How are you.
Speaker 2: I'm doing pretty well about you?
Speaker 3: I am well good.
Speaker 2: I like your striped pants. There's like things that they
Speaker 2: give to like convicts in the nineteen thirties, a changing
Speaker 2: very fun and ridiculous. It really is.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ridiculous Crimes. You know it's ridiculous, Oh man pants.
Speaker 2: Well, you know how I like history, right, I do
Speaker 2: know that, and I'm often reading about random things, and
Speaker 2: so I went down this rabbit hole and I thought
Speaker 2: i'd share it with you. So the founder of the
Speaker 2: Chinese Han Empire, and it's like the ethnic honor the
Speaker 2: largest majority in China. So when they basically took over
Speaker 2: the area and launched the Han Empire, this was like
Speaker 2: two O two BC, right, right, But the guy who
Speaker 2: founded the Han Empire, the first emperor, was this guy
Speaker 2: named Lou Bang or Liu Bang. Right now, if I apologize,
Speaker 2: I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but it's my best I
Speaker 2: got so Neo Bang. He was originally just not of
Speaker 2: a nobility, royalty, nothing. It's just this regular guy and
Speaker 2: he gets this job right, taking a bunch of penal
Speaker 2: laborers like so I prisoned workers and he's supposed to
Speaker 2: escort them from a construction site to this other new
Speaker 2: construction site. And while they're going on the journey, some
Speaker 2: of the prisoners escape, right, And according to Keen law
Speaker 2: or you know qi n law, which was the previous empire,
Speaker 2: if the prisoners escaped, he would be put to death
Speaker 2: as the prison guard.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: They're like, you must have been on it. So what
Speaker 2: does he do. He switches sides and he joins the rebels,
Speaker 2: and they're like, man, this guy's good. He's a quick thinker.
Speaker 2: They make him the leader. And so then from that
Speaker 2: point on he joins what ends up being part of
Speaker 2: the rebel army because there's all these warring states in
Speaker 2: China at the time. So he joins his rebel army,
Speaker 2: he works his way up and then he gets into it,
Speaker 2: and then they win the fight, and he gets made like,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the many kings of a province.
Speaker 2: And then he leads an new revolution or rebellion against
Speaker 2: against the guy who he who rebellion he was helping
Speaker 2: defeats them in like two o two BC and thus
Speaker 2: founds the Han Empire. So the whole Han Empire is
Speaker 2: founded by a guy who was a prison guard who
Speaker 2: when the prisoners escaped, He's like, I'm with you, fellas.
Speaker 3: Prison guard to emperor. Yes, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: And this is like the one like when we talk
Speaker 2: about like China extends back. This is the point they're
Speaker 2: talking about other than the Yellow Emperor, which is like
Speaker 2: the real starting point. But this is like when the
Speaker 2: Han Empire. So this is like, you know, China's history was.
Speaker 3: Basically you're in the long haul.
Speaker 2: I just love that story. I'm with you fellas, like
Speaker 2: they're gonna kill me, so I guess I'm with you, Emperor. Boom, ridiculous.
Speaker 3: That's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3: Fighting the revenuers?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and
Speaker 3: outrageous capers. Heis and cons It's always always ninety nine
Speaker 3: percent murder free and one percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I know you always heard that we.
Speaker 3: Talked about moonshiners before. Oh yeah, you have basically homemade
Speaker 3: illegal liquor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, corn liquor, corn liquor.
Speaker 3: So when we talk about moonshine, we think about the
Speaker 3: Appalachian region. That's the stronghold.
Speaker 2: I think of my dad's family.
Speaker 3: You think your dad's family. Moon Shining in Appalachia has
Speaker 3: a really rich and fascinating history. It's tied to the culture,
Speaker 3: the economics, and that like rebel ethos of the communities.
Speaker 3: They're outsiders and they know it and then they like
Speaker 3: kind of revel in it.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's also, by the way, as I pointed
Speaker 2: out with my dad's family, this is true of Black
Speaker 2: and White and the Apple Asian region. It's like the
Speaker 2: re we all know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So let's start with how Moonshine got its start.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you, Saren Scott's Irish immigrants settled in
Speaker 3: the region in the eighteenth century, and they brought with
Speaker 3: them all these old traditions of distilling whiskey from their homelands.
Speaker 3: So remember whiskey with an e is from Ireland or
Speaker 3: the US whiskey with no e is from Scotland. Yes,
Speaker 3: and as Mike Myers used to say in the old
Speaker 3: SNL sketch, all things Scottish, if it's not Scottish, it's crap.
Speaker 3: Because you know, the Scots aren't the biggest fans of
Speaker 3: the English.
Speaker 2: I've heard this, Yeah, nor are the Irish.
Speaker 3: You know, the SNP Scottish National Party has called for
Speaker 3: another independence referendum and the Scottish Parliament endorsed it. Labor
Speaker 3: parties against it. So we shall see. And I've heard
Speaker 3: over and over that Scotland and Catalonia will be the
Speaker 3: tipping points in terms of independence in Europe, so like
Speaker 3: if they leave the UK and Spain respectively, then all
Speaker 3: these other areas will fill out suit. Anyway, let's go
Speaker 3: back to the seventeen hundred Scott's Irish. They had already
Speaker 3: been operating under a practice of defiance of British taxation,
Speaker 3: and illegal distilleries were part of that. So in the US,
Speaker 3: the first major flash point was in seventeen ninety one,
Speaker 3: Alexander Hamilton pushed through this federal excise tax on whiskey
Speaker 3: with any He wanted to find a way to pay
Speaker 3: down all that Revolutionary War debt, and so in the
Speaker 3: Appalachian region, whiskey wasn't like just some tipple that was currency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they used it to pay things like this is
Speaker 2: a standing bit of Congress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because if there's a surplus of grain, especially corn,
Speaker 3: they had to use it or lose it. So it
Speaker 3: doesn't keep and it takes up a ton of room.
Speaker 3: But if you distill it into liquor, you can solve
Speaker 3: both of those problems. It's you know, store, it's keeps longer,
Speaker 3: totally make new friends. So this new tax would have
Speaker 3: like absolutely wrecked the economy in Appalachia. You had to
Speaker 3: pay the tax in cash, and they didn't have cash.
Speaker 3: They just had hooch. The good folks of the mountains
Speaker 3: weren't having it. And thus was born the Whiskey Rebellion
Speaker 3: of seventeen ninety four Western Pennsylvania. So all these armed
Speaker 3: dissidents they attacked and they burned the house of the
Speaker 3: regional federal tax collector guy, and then four hundred armed
Speaker 3: rebels marched on Pittsburgh. And the powers that be they're terrified, like,
Speaker 3: we're gonna have a revolt. This is no good revolt. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So President Washington he invoked the Militia Act of seventeen.
Speaker 2: Ninety two, calling out the militia.
Speaker 3: They called up the state militias from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland,
Speaker 3: Come on, boys. In the fall of seventeen ninety four,
Speaker 3: Washington led thirteen thousand Delitia men into western Pennsylvania. So
Speaker 3: let's back up a second. Four hundred armed rebels, thirteen
Speaker 3: thousand militia men.
Speaker 2: I know they got long rifles, but that's going to
Speaker 2: be a wha. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That was actually the only time a sitting US president
Speaker 3: has ever led troops in the field. And then it's
Speaker 3: all talk after that. And so this shut the rebellion
Speaker 3: down with a quickness. Obviously, one hundred and fifty rebels
Speaker 3: were arrested, two got convicted of treason, but they were
Speaker 3: later pardoned and the tax stood. Then we're going to
Speaker 3: jump forward eighteen sixty two the Revenue Act, and that
Speaker 3: was passed to fund the Civil War, like we're constantly
Speaker 3: just taxing to fund these wars. It reimposed these super
Speaker 3: steep federal taxes on alcohol, and so that is when
Speaker 3: the super large scale moonshining took root in Appalachia. Federal
Speaker 3: revenuers as they called them, tax enforcement agents, started raiding stills,
Speaker 3: and it was mountain communities versus the Feds. There are
Speaker 3: a lot of families who had distilled openly for generations
Speaker 3: and now they're outlaws. So poor farming families in remote hollows,
Speaker 3: and like you said, black or white they were selling
Speaker 3: liquor as the only reliable source of cash income, and
Speaker 3: the recipes and the techniques were really closely guarded family secrets,
Speaker 3: and each one had its own sort of quality or character.
Speaker 3: And then also, you know, making your own whiskey fit
Speaker 3: right in with the region's value of independence and like
Speaker 3: the distrust of outside authority.
Speaker 2: Totally, and also a connection like both of the land
Speaker 2: and with the tradition of your family. So it's like,
Speaker 2: who are you to get.
Speaker 3: Involved the exactly. And then prohibition came and so that
Speaker 3: was championed by Protestant temperance movements in the region. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but it was also this cash cow for the Moonshiners.
Speaker 3: They're like, we love prot Yeah sure, so they're the
Speaker 3: demand for illegal mountain made whiskey just skyrock yeah.
Speaker 2: Them and the Canadians were like, okay, I love this.
Speaker 3: So we had these like one small family stills in
Speaker 3: the Holler are suddenly shipping out to big cities Chicago,
Speaker 3: New York. The criming became organized, and so you once
Speaker 3: had a bartering tool, now it's just a straight up industry.
Speaker 3: Prohibition ends, but the fight with the government continues. So
Speaker 3: booze was legal right all of a sudden, But the
Speaker 3: stills were still operating outside the law, and there was
Speaker 3: this like total cat and mouse game between the ATF
Speaker 3: that was called the Alcohol Tax Unit. Then and all
Speaker 3: these Appalachian moonshiners agents were staging huge raids moonshiners. They
Speaker 3: had to get more and more clever. They hid the
Speaker 3: stills deep in the woods. They had these really elaborate
Speaker 3: warning systems, and then they developed fast cars to outrun
Speaker 3: the law on delivery runs. And thus was born NASCAR.
Speaker 2: Go Watch Thunder Road to Robert Mitchell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they souped up their cars to outrun the revenuers.
Speaker 3: But then they just started racing each other. That's the
Speaker 3: natural instinct for and bragging rights. So by the seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties, nineteen seventies and eighties, improved roads, economic development programs,
Speaker 3: changing culture, Like we're kind of bringing about like the
Speaker 3: death knell to traditional moonshining. So this romantic outlaw image
Speaker 3: was fading as the practice became more associated with organized crime. Still,
Speaker 3: no pun intended. Moonshining shaped the culture in these really
Speaker 3: lasting ways. It influenced the music. There are a ton
Speaker 3: of folk and countryside County, oh Yeah, I'll celebrate in
Speaker 3: the moonshiner And it's in the storytelling, It's in this
Speaker 3: culture of resistance to authority. It's in the cuisine. You know,
Speaker 3: corn is like central to Mountain food ways. Moonshining holds
Speaker 3: on as one of the most evocative symbols of Appalachian identity.
Speaker 3: And I was pondering this, Sarin. Yeah, I was like
Speaker 3: thinking about how it's at this crossroads of ingenuity, pop
Speaker 3: independence and defiance, and that's kind of where we get
Speaker 3: like the best American stuff. So some former moonshiners decided
Speaker 3: to go legit. So you had states like Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia,
Speaker 3: and Kentucky. They issued craft distillery licenses and Appleachian moonshine
Speaker 3: became this like marketable brand. The mystique of that old
Speaker 3: tradition gets reclaimed as heritage rather than criminality. And one
Speaker 3: such man who went from outlaw to law abider to
Speaker 3: outlaw is the guy I want to tell you about today.
Speaker 3: To outlaw Zarin, Meet Marvin Popcorn Sutton.
Speaker 2: Get out of town Wi Hopcornton Hopcorn Sutton.
Speaker 3: He was born in nineteen forty se Joe Biden besties
Speaker 3: Total besties, popcorn. They fought, pulled out blades.
Speaker 2: He was born to go back to Delaware.
Speaker 3: He was born in nineteen forty six in Maggie Valley,
Speaker 3: North Carolina. And that's sort of between Asheville, North Carolina
Speaker 3: and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Yeah, right next to Great Smoky
Speaker 3: Mountains National Park. And it was originally Cherokee Country. So
Speaker 3: according to the Assembly magazine quote, his family had been
Speaker 3: in western North Carolina in the area of Hemphill and Kataluchi,
Speaker 3: as he put it in one interview, quote, as long
Speaker 3: as time lasted. And so they lived off the land.
Speaker 3: These people were just farming to survive, and they were
Speaker 3: just like their neighbors all up and down the hallers.
Speaker 3: His dad took whatever little gigs he could get. The
Speaker 3: mom kept the home. She would churn butter and trade
Speaker 3: that for groceries. In Waynesville, North Carolina, which was the
Speaker 3: next biggest town, and that was the county seat. Today
Speaker 3: that Waynesville has a population of like ten thousand people.
Speaker 3: And that's the big one, that's the big rural. Yeah,
Speaker 3: kids had to work too, popcorn quote. Grew up pulling
Speaker 3: weeds for home and picking tomatoes for fifteen cents an hour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, not even by like the amount he pulls, No.
Speaker 3: By the hour. So Maggie Valley, which has a population
Speaker 3: of about seventeen hundred people today, that at the time
Speaker 3: was pretty much a crossroads. And now it's been developed
Speaker 3: out first in the sixties because they put in an
Speaker 3: amusement park, an amusement that closed in two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: but then as the Chattaloochi Ski Area. That's the entry
Speaker 3: point to it. So that's where they get, like there's motels.
Speaker 2: And all that the beginning of the tourists.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, but back when popcorn was a pop there
Speaker 3: was only a small store which had one phone located
Speaker 3: within the store. That was the one phone in two Yeah,
Speaker 3: popcorn told people that the only time anyone used it
Speaker 3: was to ring up the undertaker when someone died. It
Speaker 3: was like the sole purpose of the phone. So there
Speaker 3: is young Popcorn in Maggie Valley. When he was just
Speaker 3: five years old, he was taught a trade. Five moonshininge.
Speaker 3: That's how old he was when someone took him to
Speaker 3: learn how to make this stuff. By the time he
Speaker 3: was six, he's like world weary. He was smoking cigarettes
Speaker 3: six years old. Six years old, so then by the
Speaker 3: time he s double shift by the time he's sixteen.
Speaker 3: Basically he decided to make a go of it and
Speaker 3: distill his own brand of moonshine. Sixteen, he was years
Speaker 3: into the year. He was not very good at it.
Speaker 3: Those eleven years of instruction apparently didn't help. He called
Speaker 3: it liquor. Oh wow, maybe that's why it didn't do
Speaker 3: too well. But he wanted to get it right. He
Speaker 3: decided to seriously work in the tradition of his daddy
Speaker 3: and his daddy's daddy. Oh Graham peppy. Yeah, So he
Speaker 3: decided to go like super old school with it. He
Speaker 3: heated it with wood, he balanced out the heat using
Speaker 3: fresh stream water. It was very much of the land
Speaker 3: that was on like a sense of place totally, which
Speaker 3: is kind of like Scottish whiskey about saying, yeah, the
Speaker 3: terror aspects exactly in the process and in the materials
Speaker 3: right right. And so this is how the og Scots
Speaker 3: Irish did it. And I do need to note that
Speaker 3: these aren't really Irish. There's Scots who were kind of
Speaker 3: pushed out by the English. To quote settle in the
Speaker 3: Ulster provinces in Ireland was to say, conquered Northern Ireland,
Speaker 3: Northern Ireland, but then they got pushed out of the
Speaker 3: Ulster Counties.
Speaker 2: You've seen the cool maps they do where people got
Speaker 2: to settle in Americas from the Aisles. You see, like
Speaker 2: this big arrow go right from there to the Appolis exactly.
Speaker 3: So, like the Scots were in the Ulster Counties and
Speaker 3: they're starving. The Catholics don't want them there, and the
Speaker 3: Anglicans who ran the place didn't want them there either.
Speaker 3: No one wanted them. So they ran off to the
Speaker 3: American colonies and no one wanted them there. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: so they headed for the hills like Appalachian Piedmont regions.
Speaker 3: It was rough living and that's when they like really
Speaker 3: developed backwoods living. You know, corn liquor because they didn't
Speaker 3: have barley like they'd use, you know in Ireland. So
Speaker 3: corn liquor was medicine. It was currency. And now we
Speaker 3: got popcorn. So now popcorn is around twenty years old,
Speaker 3: and he had perfected his liquor and he was distilling
Speaker 3: full time. And that's around the time that he earned
Speaker 3: his nickname. According to the Assembly quote, around the same
Speaker 3: time he picked up a fitting nickname for a corn
Speaker 3: whiskey distiller when he attacked a coin operated popcorn machine
Speaker 3: in a bar after it stole his dime. He snatched
Speaker 3: up a pool cue and showed the damn thing what
Speaker 3: he thought about it. It cost him fifty dollars and
Speaker 3: earned him a nickname he would use for the rest
Speaker 3: of his life. So let's stop there for an ad
Speaker 3: They're like, corn all a good popcorn over there, whooping
Speaker 3: on that machine. So we're gonna stop for an ad.
Speaker 3: Our very own revenuers. This is the tax that we
Speaker 3: all pay to listen to these tales of criminality. If
Speaker 3: you think about it, and when we return, pop corn
Speaker 3: gets popping.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth thereon right.
Speaker 3: It's nineteen sixties, okay, that's where we are right now.
Speaker 3: That's when Popcorn Sutton hit his stride making the legal
Speaker 3: hoops in Appalachia. He got away with it for a bit,
Speaker 3: but then he got busted. In the early seventies.
Speaker 2: He was like deep in the woods, oh yeah, because
Speaker 2: you can always think and see the if you're burning
Speaker 2: the fire, wach you're still the smoke will go up.
Speaker 2: So they used to look for the smoke in the woods.
Speaker 2: You like that shouldn't be got to go like way.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so per the Greenville Sun quote. In nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, Sutton was convicted in US District court on
Speaker 3: numerous federal charges relating to the manufacturing and possession of
Speaker 3: an unregistered still, having distilling apparatus, and untaxed liquor. He
Speaker 3: was given probation not good. Yeah, And then he got
Speaker 3: pinched again in nineteen eighty and this time it was
Speaker 3: on a felony drug offense. He got a five year
Speaker 3: suspended sentence.
Speaker 2: Do you know what the drug was?
Speaker 3: I'm going to guess weed, so he.
Speaker 2: Said, nineteen eighty so I had to open up, yeah,
Speaker 2: right to the floor. Question.
Speaker 3: He got five years suspended sentence. That's not bad. And
Speaker 3: then five years later he actually went to prison for
Speaker 3: the first time. Nineteen eighty five, he got convicted of
Speaker 3: assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
Speaker 2: Was another Sikes popcorn machine.
Speaker 3: I think it was a human popcorn. Enough, he's back out.
Speaker 3: So during the eighties and nineties, he like late eighties nineties,
Speaker 3: he went somewhat legit. He ran a junk shop on
Speaker 3: the outskirts of Cherokee, North Carolina. And when I say
Speaker 3: junk shop, I'm talking like old appliances, all these old
Speaker 3: dusty bottles.
Speaker 2: Folk arts, like stuff in a parking lot.
Speaker 3: Basically old fill in the blank.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like this still got some life in it.
Speaker 3: Yes, And you know it's like a dusty store. You
Speaker 3: walk in and immediately you're like sneezing.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven printer and he's like, you still
Speaker 2: got some life in it. You used matrix.
Speaker 3: Like stores like this litter the rural South.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they're not. They're little central California.
Speaker 3: And like more eclectic neighborhoods elsewhere, but they're in essence
Speaker 3: dust factor. Yes, let's just be real. And so in
Speaker 3: addition to selling all this old stuff, though, he also
Speaker 3: sold new bruise.
Speaker 2: New bruise bottles.
Speaker 3: Of moonshine were sold out of the back of the store.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like this speakeasy setup. You had
Speaker 3: to know that he had it, and he had to
Speaker 3: trust that you were cool about it. But then someone
Speaker 3: squealed and the revenue one revenuers came a colin, you know,
Speaker 3: someone I'm going to get you nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Eight damn revenue.
Speaker 3: Uh, And they hit the jack pot in that picker's
Speaker 3: paradise in the store, they came across popcorn still and
Speaker 3: sixty gallons of white lightning.
Speaker 2: He had to still in his store, like in the basement.
Speaker 3: So, according to the Smoky Mountains National Park Blog, yes, quote,
Speaker 3: while operating a distilling unit and selling illegal alcohol is
Speaker 3: a felony punishable by up to five years in prison
Speaker 3: and a fine up to ten thousand dollars. Popcorn Suddon
Speaker 3: was not initially sent to jail. The judge instead put
Speaker 3: him on probation and offered him an out with a
Speaker 3: suspended sentence.
Speaker 2: You know, fair enough, hard well, there.
Speaker 3: Must have been something really charming about old Popcorn.
Speaker 2: I was wondering.
Speaker 3: And when you look at his picture, you see that
Speaker 3: he's every inch the stereotypical old moonshiner.
Speaker 2: Does he even have the long beard?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's this one shot of him. He's like
Speaker 3: sitting in a chair, he's holding a jar moonshine, and
Speaker 3: he looks like an Appalachian philosopher king. Okay, he looks
Speaker 3: like he lost a bet with a taxidermist because his
Speaker 3: hat is like this leather contraption that a raccoon died
Speaker 3: on top of, and it's decorated with feathers that were
Speaker 3: stolen from a parrot who was probably like relieved to
Speaker 3: be rid of them. And you talked about like the
Speaker 3: long beard. The beard is less facial hair and more
Speaker 3: like this separate living entity that has decided to colonize
Speaker 3: his entire chest. It's just like it's like playing risk.
Speaker 2: Just creeping down.
Speaker 3: It's like a tumbleweed that settled down and like got
Speaker 3: married and raised a family there. And then he's got
Speaker 3: these overalls on. Right, It's like that's the official uniform
Speaker 3: of men who have zero interest in your opinions. So
Speaker 3: many pairs of overalls he's got, like the plaid flannel shirts.
Speaker 3: There's forty seven different colors and none of them were coordinated.
Speaker 3: And to be together, it's Phil Billie's chic. He's iconic.
Speaker 3: So I can see how people just couldn't make themselves
Speaker 3: commit this character the jail. You need him in town, yes,
Speaker 3: And he was a well known local.
Speaker 2: Character as a local color and through.
Speaker 3: The Assembly magazine describes him as sort of holding court
Speaker 3: in his junk shop. Nice and per the New York
Speaker 3: Times quote, he lived in a cluttered cabin on a
Speaker 3: wooded hill, where he also built his stills, gave pistols
Speaker 3: to the incoming sheriffs, and fathered so many children that
Speaker 3: no one has any idea of the exact accounting.
Speaker 2: Fathered so many children, really using the word father, little colonels,
Speaker 2: colonels throughout the countries, the children like a biblical spreading seed.
Speaker 3: I've made all kinds of liquor in my time, Hapcorn says,
Speaker 3: tending the still. I've made the fighting kind, the love
Speaker 3: and kind, the crime kind. I even made some one
Speaker 3: time and sold to this couple. They was happily married.
Speaker 3: Next damn week they was divorced. Yeah, the marriage buster,
Speaker 3: the bestseller. So here's this guy. He's in his fifties,
Speaker 3: but he looks way older.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking love seventies.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Sinna's a rail He's got the droopy overalls,
Speaker 3: a floppy hat. He walks all bent over from like
Speaker 3: years and years of carrying heavy bags of sugar up
Speaker 3: to his stills in the mountains. It is the age
Speaker 3: of like seven.
Speaker 2: So like the Warner Brothers animators who did like like
Speaker 2: all the old cartoons, will.
Speaker 3: Be like, he is our role model completely. He's weathered, yeah,
Speaker 3: and he looks like he's from this other time. But
Speaker 3: he's still He had a cell phone and he watched TV.
Speaker 2: I knew he did that.
Speaker 3: He just had like the old timey aesthetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was walking tradition.
Speaker 3: Yes, he restored a model.
Speaker 2: T Oh, really he drove it around.
Speaker 4: He would look.
Speaker 3: Super on brand if he actually drove it around. No,
Speaker 3: he it was garaged up and like he only took
Speaker 3: it out on special occasions.
Speaker 2: His investment property.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on the front bumper he painted mom corn in
Speaker 3: all caps in front of the passenger seat and popcorn
Speaker 3: in front of the driver's seats, just like hand painted.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: Instead, he ran around in a nineteen eighty two Ford Fairmount.
Speaker 2: Then he turned into a tutor.
Speaker 3: A Tudor. Yeah, it looks like it has a massive
Speaker 3: engine and like if you glance quickly out of the
Speaker 3: corner of your eye, you might think it's an El Camino.
Speaker 3: Like it kind of has that long like the back
Speaker 3: windows just like a slice of glass really, and the
Speaker 3: trunk is like super long. So he got that car
Speaker 3: by trading three gallons of moonshine for it. He called
Speaker 3: it his three jug car, and he sold He sold
Speaker 3: half gallon jars of corn liquor to a tourist for
Speaker 3: twenty five bucks a pop, so that car ran him
Speaker 3: about one hundred and fifty dollars. He didn't sell all
Speaker 3: of his stuff in small batches to tourists though, like
Speaker 3: he actually moved most of his product with bootleggers, like
Speaker 3: hundreds of gallons at a time. We were just all
Speaker 3: over the country.
Speaker 2: People come in. There was like, oh said, like a
Speaker 2: blossoming of interest in Chicago.
Speaker 3: No, just you know those in the know. Wait, he
Speaker 3: entered into the Ridiculous Crime Book Club in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: nine when he's self published Me and My Liquor spelled
Speaker 3: l I k K E R.
Speaker 2: Oh I I K K E R.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, yeah. The New York Times described it as
Speaker 3: quote a rambling, obscene and often hilarious account of his
Speaker 3: life in the trade.
Speaker 2: So it was like in the trade.
Speaker 3: A spiral bound affair and tons of photos, tons, all
Speaker 3: black and white, and it was it's printed in this
Speaker 3: sort of comic sands font and it starts with a
Speaker 3: scan of his license to sell moonshine certificate from the
Speaker 3: National Moonshine Association, signed by the mayor of Maggie Valley.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's this, Like any is this the governing body? Yes, okay,
Speaker 2: because it's like I.
Speaker 3: Think I think he did. Here's how the narrative starts. Quote,
Speaker 3: this book is all true. There is not a damn
Speaker 3: thing in it that is not true. My name is
Speaker 3: Popcorn Sutton, and how old of my It ain't nobody's
Speaker 3: damn business. I've been making, drinking and selling liquor for
Speaker 3: now on forty years. My granddaddy made drink and sold
Speaker 3: liquor most of his life. People worry about liquor killing them.
Speaker 3: I don't, because my granddaddy is proof it won't. He
Speaker 3: smoked camel cigarettes just like I do. One after another.
Speaker 3: He also drunk all the liquor he could get and
Speaker 3: chase all the women he could. He lived to be
Speaker 3: about ninety years old. So what in the hell am
Speaker 3: I worried about? Not a damn thing.
Speaker 2: I like a spirit, you know. I'm telling you this
Speaker 2: is a man who knows who he is, where he
Speaker 2: comes from, and where he's going.
Speaker 3: There's this photo of a rough looking woman in a
Speaker 3: house dress and an old man seated next to her
Speaker 3: on a floral sofa.
Speaker 2: So is this mom, Corny? No?
Speaker 3: No, the old guy's smoking a cigarette. There's like an
Speaker 3: old vacuum cleaner in the background. Yeah, here's the caption.
Speaker 3: This is smut Web and his wife, Lucille. Smut is
Speaker 3: dead now. He's the one that teached me how to
Speaker 3: make a damn moonshine still a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Smut wob.
Speaker 3: Yeah he's dead now.
Speaker 2: Case you're smutt case, here's your money now.
Speaker 3: So the whole thing is like sitting listening to some
Speaker 3: guy ramble on a rocking chair on his front porch.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: And my time in the very rural South has made
Speaker 3: me very familiar with this type of socializing. I bet
Speaker 3: there's a lot of technical remembrances about the actual making
Speaker 3: of the liquor, and then there are all these like
Speaker 3: scattered rambling anecdotes. I'm gonna hit you with one more,
Speaker 3: okay please, I have been worried all day. My doctor
Speaker 3: come to see me yesterday and he told me, popcoin
Speaker 3: noticed the spelling. You have only sixty two years to live.
Speaker 3: It was my doctor. He is nobody's damn business. I
Speaker 3: also had two of the best friends of my life
Speaker 3: visit me, Tonny Moore and his wife Alice. Me and
Speaker 3: Tonny Moore and all the More family goes back many years.
Speaker 3: I used to get drunkard in Hell with Claymore. His brother,
Speaker 3: played a guitar and sung a song Nobody's business.
Speaker 2: Was I do.
Speaker 3: One time, me and Ken Moore was out one night.
Speaker 3: We had just got bought a brand new Ford car.
Speaker 3: I think it was a Toreno. We left Grassy Fork
Speaker 3: headed to Newport, got the Hartford and then on the
Speaker 3: I forty West, then onto the bluffting curve. Ken had
Speaker 3: that god damn Ford wide open. This is the first
Speaker 3: time I ever pulled a gun on a man to
Speaker 3: get him to slow down. I told Ken, if we
Speaker 3: are gonna die, by God, we're going together. I had
Speaker 3: a Colt thirty eight cock right beside his head. That
Speaker 3: damn car was on two wheels going round that bluff
Speaker 3: and curve around one hundred miles an hour. No less,
Speaker 3: I am sure we made it to Newport some damn way,
Speaker 3: and I don't know how. We spent the night at
Speaker 3: Ryinharts Bar and made it back to Grassy Fork the
Speaker 3: same damn way, and I don't know how. Anyway, me
Speaker 3: and Ken Moore was always best of friends, just as
Speaker 3: the rest of the More family love.
Speaker 2: Anyway, anyway, I love a Claymore no relation to the munition,
Speaker 2: and Ken Moore, no relation to the truck.
Speaker 3: All the boys you know they are.
Speaker 2: One more. I was gonna ask, kidding me here you go.
Speaker 3: There are two things that I don't want a goddamn
Speaker 3: thing to do with. That is bad moonshine and viagra.
Speaker 3: I drunk some bad liquor one time, and it came
Speaker 3: one tinker's damn killing me. I couldn't sleep, or I
Speaker 3: couldn't just buy god pass out. Anyway, I did go
Speaker 3: to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, but
Speaker 3: when I did wake up, I was in a daze.
Speaker 3: The bed I thought was by God spinning around and
Speaker 3: all the ones that stopped spinning. Then I looked down
Speaker 3: at the foot of the bed and there sat a
Speaker 3: little purple eyed monkey with a pair of combat boots
Speaker 3: staring at me. That's when I stopped drinking badass liquor
Speaker 3: and the VIAGRAA to hell with it. Anyway, I ain't
Speaker 3: over the hill yet. The hills therea.
Speaker 2: Pills.
Speaker 3: So he released his book, which I now own as
Speaker 3: a downloaded PDA. No, I'm not kidding you. Amazing y'all
Speaker 3: send it to you and Not long after that, in
Speaker 3: two thousand and two, Neil Hutchison made a documentary about
Speaker 3: Popcorn called This is the Last damn Run of Liquor
Speaker 3: I'll ever make. It's the name of it. A lot
Speaker 3: of Hutchinson's work is focused on like cultures and transition
Speaker 3: and all over the world, but a lot of it
Speaker 3: in the South. And so initially the documentary was sold
Speaker 3: out of the junk shop, and then it became this
Speaker 3: like underground cult phenomenon, and then pretty soon the movie
Speaker 3: and Popcorn were getting profiled in newspapers. Daniel Johnson celebrities
Speaker 3: started coming calling, including good old Johnny Knoxville.
Speaker 2: Of course Tennessee.
Speaker 3: Yeah so he was, he was writ Yeah, I love that,
Speaker 3: that's his name. And then there was a History Channel
Speaker 3: documentary in two thousand and seven. Mark Ramsey, who was
Speaker 3: a close friend of Popcorn's, told him, quote, old man,
Speaker 3: you can't be a movie star and make liquor too,
Speaker 3: and then Popcorn answered him, you can't sell it if
Speaker 3: nobody knows you got it, like fair enough. Yeah. So
Speaker 3: Popcorn was still a fixture in Maggie Valley, but by
Speaker 3: this time he'd moved to eastern Tennessee just over the
Speaker 3: state line, specifically Cock County. He told people that he
Speaker 3: had a dual citizenship. He thought the move to Tennessee
Speaker 3: would be better for business, and he had a bunch
Speaker 3: of money from the movie and the History Channel thing,
Speaker 3: and he wanted to move on up ok So per
Speaker 3: the New York Times quote, nestled in the rocky embrace
Speaker 3: of the Great Smoky Mountains, Cock County was a moonshine
Speaker 3: center for as long as anyone here can recall. For
Speaker 3: most families in a rugged place with few opportunities, it
Speaker 3: was a matter of survival. But for an enterprising few,
Speaker 3: making it and hauling untaxed and unregulated liquor became a profitable, dangerous,
Speaker 3: and inevitably romanticized trade. Making moonshine later gave way to
Speaker 3: growing marijuana, and by the nineteen sixties the county was
Speaker 3: notorious for chop shops, cock fighting, rings, prostitution, and corrupt officials.
Speaker 3: Over the decades, the lawless elements have been corralled for
Speaker 3: the most part, but the batt old image of Cock
Speaker 3: County lingers and irks and.
Speaker 2: Irks when they got overrun by hippie outlaws, like we
Speaker 2: want to take a shot at this list e actually.
Speaker 3: So like, of course, Bondcorn feels right at home naturally,
Speaker 3: and so he set up shop outside Parrottsville, Tennessee, population
Speaker 3: two hundred and seventeen. Wow, Parrotsville are just outside of it.
Speaker 2: That's like seven families too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much is home to Swaggerty Blockhouse. Okay, And
Speaker 3: a blockhouse is basically a building that's used as sort
Speaker 3: of like a fort with gun portals. And originally this
Speaker 3: one was supposed to have been built by a settler
Speaker 3: named James Swaggerty in seventeen eighty seven, but later inspection
Speaker 3: determined that it was actually a anti lever barn built
Speaker 3: by someone else in eighteen sixty, and it didn't stop
Speaker 3: it from being listed on the US National Register of
Speaker 3: Historic Places as the Swaggerty Blockhouse. There's a certain like
Speaker 3: parks and w rec Pawnee quality that story I really liked.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Popcorn he rented some land in Parrotsville and
Speaker 3: then built himself a house on it on the rented land,
Speaker 3: and it was decorated much like his junk shop, like
Speaker 3: he had old license plates, like lude knickknacks, like I
Speaker 3: think it's like ceramic salt and pepper shakers doing things
Speaker 3: they should antique tools. He papered the ceiling with dollar bills.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a that's a good look.
Speaker 3: Cute.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite bars I go to has.
Speaker 3: To the Alley in Oakland. You know, they're all it's
Speaker 3: like a fire trap. And so he also got himself
Speaker 3: a banjo. He paid eight grand for it.
Speaker 2: Eight grand?
Speaker 3: Could he play the banjo?
Speaker 4: No? No?
Speaker 2: Was it e scrugs banjo?
Speaker 3: He just he thought it was like a good looking accessory.
Speaker 2: He's like, this fits, this does he definitely is the
Speaker 2: way to atesterize his look.
Speaker 3: And he prepaid for his funeral. So this was two
Speaker 3: thousand and six. He's sixty years old. He bought a
Speaker 3: coffin and then he ordered up his gravestone granted and
Speaker 3: engraved on it was the following epitaph, Popcorn says you.
Speaker 3: So this feels like the right time to take an
Speaker 3: ad break and think about how that might be the
Speaker 3: best grave marker ideas around. And when we returned Parrotsville.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: All right, so we talk on popcorn. Sutton infamous moonshiner.
Speaker 2: I'm so into this guy.
Speaker 3: He moved to Parrot'sville, Tennessee, and it was there that
Speaker 3: he got three enormous stills running.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you were going to say new baby
Speaker 2: lamas well.
Speaker 3: Probably I'm going to assume yes. And those babies look
Speaker 3: so weird. They had beards. No, he had two eight
Speaker 3: hundred gallon jobs and the third one held one thousand
Speaker 3: and seven fifty gallons. Like chazam, that's some big stuff.
Speaker 2: This is like, you know, enough water for a small
Speaker 2: town if you had no water tower.
Speaker 3: He's like one of those AI centers. So he didn't
Speaker 3: he didn't do these the old fashioned way with the
Speaker 3: wood and the creek water. He ran these on unlighted gasoline.
Speaker 3: And it was there that he stored all his hoots
Speaker 3: jars in this stillhouse, as well as sacks of grain,
Speaker 3: a couple thousand pounds of sugar. So let's think about
Speaker 3: that gas, grain, sugar, Southern heats.
Speaker 2: Everything you've said is explosive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes me think fire, either.
Speaker 2: Fire or expos You've taken like, you know, non dairy
Speaker 2: creamer and waved it over like an open flame. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: can you realize, hey, kids, that's how bakeries catch fire.
Speaker 2: This flower has energy, sugar has energy. Will they will burn.
Speaker 3: Sarren just taught all the children the trick of non
Speaker 3: dairy powdered non dairy creamer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shaking over an open flame and it'll first person
Speaker 2: that's flash like a magician doing magic tricks.
Speaker 3: You're welcome, parents. So the Assembly magazine reported quote on
Speaker 3: April twenty fourth, two thousand and seven, a faulty wiring
Speaker 3: box ignited a fire in the stillhouse. There were dried
Speaker 3: out timbers, sacks of green and sugar and gasoline to
Speaker 3: feed the flame, and the fire was instantly out of control.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course, Saren.
Speaker 3: Close your eyes.
Speaker 2: You picture it.
Speaker 3: You are a firefighter with the Parrotsville Volunteer Fire Department.
Speaker 3: You're sitting in the back of your mechanic's garage, tinkering
Speaker 3: with a mini van someone brought in yesterday. As always,
Speaker 3: you have your police scanner radio on and the emergency
Speaker 3: alert pager on your belt. You're on call. The alarm
Speaker 3: sounds and you jump up, ready for action. Will it
Speaker 3: be a car accident, a heart attack?
Speaker 2: Nope?
Speaker 3: You trot toward your pickup truck, ready to head to
Speaker 3: the fire station and pick up the pumper truck. You
Speaker 3: glance at the pager and you see it fire. You
Speaker 3: look at the address.
Speaker 4: Hello.
Speaker 3: Oh. Eight or so minutes later, you're standing in front
Speaker 3: of the fire truck, staring at the giant column of
Speaker 3: black smoke rising out of Popcorn Sutton Stillhouse. Dagnavit. The
Speaker 3: fire chief is called in support from neighboring towns and districts,
Speaker 3: and you are sure they, as you did, are following
Speaker 3: the rising tower of smoke and embers to the scene.
Speaker 3: And you know the Sheriff's deputies are on their way too.
Speaker 3: You hear tires tearing up the gravel drive behind you.
Speaker 3: You spin around, expecting to see those very same deputies,
Speaker 3: but instead it's a blue Ford Fairmount, and behind the
Speaker 3: wheel is Popcorn himself. The old Coots certainly does make
Speaker 3: the finest moonshine you've ever sipped, but making that stump
Speaker 3: water comes with wrists. Like the fire raging out of
Speaker 3: control in.
Speaker 2: Front of you.
Speaker 3: Your fellow firefighters are doing their best to get an
Speaker 3: under controlled. You're manning the pump on the truck and
Speaker 3: backing up the chief as he tries to control the scene.
Speaker 3: Popcorn races up to you. He tells you he has
Speaker 3: three stills in there, plus a bunch of copper wire
Speaker 3: of dubious origin, bags of sugar, bunch of sour mash.
Speaker 3: You can't let the deputies see that stuff when they
Speaker 3: get here, he says, maybe just let it burn a son.
Speaker 3: You tell him, no, sir, you can't do that. You
Speaker 3: don't want this to spread and catch the woods on fire.
Speaker 3: Arcs of water spray behind you, pummeling the burning building
Speaker 3: and steaming high into the air. Popcorn stares at a
Speaker 3: school bus a few dozen feet from the stillhouse. Okay,
Speaker 3: he tells, you, just let me go move my school
Speaker 3: bus out of the way. No, you tell him, you
Speaker 3: can't get that close to an active conflagration. You love
Speaker 3: that word, conflagration. Popcorn tries to push past to you
Speaker 3: anyway and get to the bus. You hold them back.
Speaker 3: You can hear the sirens of the patrol cars approaching. Look, you,
Speaker 3: little Popcorn seeds that you I got eight hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty gallons of liquor in that there bus, and I
Speaker 3: ain't going down on a possession charge like that. He's
Speaker 3: a small man, but wiry and strong. His ropey muscles
Speaker 3: work as hard as they can to wriggle free from
Speaker 3: your brass. But you are a big old milk fed
Speaker 3: country boy, man of the mountains. That old fella isn't
Speaker 3: going anywhere. Popcorn takes one last long look at the bus,
Speaker 3: exhales unlets his whole body sag. You don't fall for
Speaker 3: those sorts of tricks, so you keep it in your clutches.
Speaker 3: You hate to do it, but you gotta hand them
Speaker 3: over to the deputies. You look up at the burning building.
Speaker 3: Your c just about tamping that fire all the way out.
Speaker 3: You side too arin. When the cops were finally able
Speaker 3: to get into the burned out building, they found those
Speaker 3: three stills, I bet they did. And they found thirty
Speaker 3: seven half gallon jar a moonshine. Yeah. But then they
Speaker 3: entered the untouched school, okay, and in there were eight
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty gallons of white lightning. They had already
Speaker 3: called in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ATF,
Speaker 3: knowing full well what they'd find ATF, busted him in
Speaker 3: no time. In July of two thousand and seven, Popcorn
Speaker 3: was fined three thousand dollars and got two years probation
Speaker 3: for possession of moonshine, plus another six months probation for
Speaker 3: possession of a still. He felt invincible, like if he
Speaker 3: could skate by on that kind of wrapped then there's
Speaker 3: no need to fret and certainly no need to slow down.
Speaker 3: In fact, he wanted to rebuild bigger and better than before.
Speaker 3: He's exactly but here's the thing, like he's not like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go straight now.
Speaker 2: I got lucky on that one.
Speaker 3: The revenuers are relentless. They kept an eye on Popcorn.
Speaker 3: And so a year after his sentencing on the fire
Speaker 3: case and he's on probe Yes Yes, ATF discovered that
Speaker 3: he had three stills again, and they came across this
Speaker 3: information when Popcorn sold two hundred gallons of corn liquor
Speaker 3: to an undercover agent. And Popcorn is like, look, i'll
Speaker 3: give you a deal. It's fifty dollars a gallon, and
Speaker 3: if you buy more than fifty gallons, the price goes
Speaker 3: down to thirty bucks a gallon. It's a good deal,
Speaker 3: and especially because there's no tax. What I love is
Speaker 3: that Popcorn offered different flavors of moonshine. He had apple
Speaker 3: pie that tasted like cinnamon and apple. He had cherry peach.
Speaker 3: Like I knew a guy when I lived down south
Speaker 3: who had a pilot'slicense and this little cessna, and he'd
Speaker 3: fly it up to Tennessee, pick up gallons of moonshine,
Speaker 3: and then fly it back down. And he didn't resell
Speaker 3: the stuff. He just shared it and enjoyed it himself.
Speaker 2: My dad moonshine, and it.
Speaker 3: Was flavored stuff like I took a sip of the
Speaker 3: peach one.
Speaker 2: Oh it burned.
Speaker 3: It tasted terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, moonshine. Guy tasted like old, like white lighting.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I don't see the purpose of get it.
Speaker 2: He gets to North Carolina to tell too much?
Speaker 3: Ay right, we're just using vague eas So anyway, it
Speaker 3: wasn't just that the agent made the sale. He also
Speaker 3: got video and in it you can see like a
Speaker 3: bunch of guns in the background. Oh no, and then
Speaker 3: there's popcorn being popcorn. Like he danced while he talked
Speaker 3: to the guy, and he was waxing eloquent on the
Speaker 3: specifics of how one goes about making moonshine, just like
Speaker 3: in his book. Per the Greenville Sun newspaper quote the
Speaker 3: week of March third, an undercover Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission
Speaker 3: TABC agent had a phone conversation with Sutton, and Sutton
Speaker 3: said he had five hundred gallons of moonshine to sell
Speaker 3: in Tennessee and four hundred gallons to sell in Maggie Valley,
Speaker 3: North Carolina. On March twelfth, two thousand and eight, Sutton
Speaker 3: took an undercover TABC agent to a barn on Scott
Speaker 3: Pond Road where three moonshine stills were located. So he's
Speaker 3: just not even sensing that these are undercover. That place
Speaker 3: on Scott Pond Road was the mother load.
Speaker 2: I can't believe he took him to. His mother loved more.
Speaker 3: Than eleven hundred gallons of sour mash, which would become
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty gallons a hooch. So that's proof
Speaker 3: of not just possession but production everything. Government sees it all. Oh,
Speaker 3: they came in Chronicles Magazine reported quote following Popcorn's arrest
Speaker 3: ATF Special Agent James Kavanaugh proclaimed moonshine is romanticized in
Speaker 3: folklore and in the movies. The truth, though, is that
Speaker 3: moonshine is a dangerous health issue and breeds other crime.
Speaker 3: Oh sta ain't lyon.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, sure, but like the dose makes the poison.
Speaker 2: Anything can be a criminal act or eything can be
Speaker 2: bad for your house. That's true if there's enough of it.
Speaker 3: So Popcorn he pleads guilty to possessing firearms and illegally
Speaker 3: producing distilled spirits by distillation from mash and other material.
Speaker 3: H his lawyer was like begging the court, begging the judge.
Speaker 2: Do not let him on the stand.
Speaker 3: No, please, because he pleads guilty. He's like, he cannot
Speaker 3: do time. He's two weak, he won't survive it. He
Speaker 3: said that Popcorn was quote sixty two and looks like
Speaker 3: he's eighty two. So he begged the judge please give
Speaker 3: him probation.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine how dehydrated his body? Oh my god,
Speaker 2: his entire life.
Speaker 3: And so he then is like pleading his case for leniency.
Speaker 3: The Greenville Son described the scene quote Sutton, wearing overalls
Speaker 3: and a denim jacket, promised the court he would never
Speaker 3: again make whiskey, doing so as he stood with a
Speaker 3: walking cane during sentencing, and he said, I'd like to
Speaker 3: die at home rather than in a penitentiary.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, please, come on, wouldn't so.
Speaker 3: A bunch of Popcorn's neighbors in the area signed a
Speaker 3: petition asking the court to have mercy on Popcorn. Here's
Speaker 3: what they said. Quote, the undersigned are personally acquainted with
Speaker 3: Marvin Popcorn Sutton. We trust him in any matters of
Speaker 3: great importance in our everyday lives, and welcome him as
Speaker 3: a neighbor. Considering his basic nature, age, and significant medical problems,
Speaker 3: we asked the court to consider leniency in sentencing Popcorn,
Speaker 3: and Popcorn he had just been diagnosed with cancer. Tip
Speaker 3: oh for Christis the judge I was like, that's all
Speaker 3: well and good, but he had yet to hear Popcorn
Speaker 3: say he was sorry for what he'd done. And the
Speaker 3: judge sid quote, Sutton seems to be proud of his
Speaker 3: disregard for the law, and no sentence thus far has
Speaker 3: deterred him from his continuing criminal activities.
Speaker 2: I want to legal fielty.
Speaker 3: So June Yeah. Basically January two thousand and nine, Popcorn
Speaker 3: got sentenced to eighteen months in federal prison, and the
Speaker 3: judge said he could quote self report to prison when notified,
Speaker 3: and until then he's under house arrest. Now his whole life,
Speaker 3: Popcorn had decided his own fate, like he'd set his
Speaker 3: own course. Laws be damned, society be damned. Good sense
Speaker 3: be damned.
Speaker 5: And then.
Speaker 3: He's confronted with a scenario that he couldn't work around
Speaker 3: and that he couldn't control. He found a way to
Speaker 3: choose his own path for the last time. On March sixteenth,
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, just four days before he was
Speaker 3: supposed to report to prison, he connected the exhaust pipe
Speaker 3: of his forward to a hose and you can figure
Speaker 3: out the rest. So his daughter told the Knoxville News quote,
Speaker 3: nobody was going to tell him what to do. He
Speaker 3: did it his way. He always lived a death before
Speaker 3: dishonor kind of life. Those factors gave Marvin the strength
Speaker 3: to die the way he lived, according to his own
Speaker 3: wishes and no one else's. And now before he died,
Speaker 3: Popcorn wanted to make sure he had a legacy. It's
Speaker 3: like he knew his end was near. So he worked
Speaker 3: with this former professional supercross motorcycle racer named Jamie Grocer
Speaker 3: to teach him the ropes. And Grocer wanted to get
Speaker 3: into distilling spirits, but he wanted to do it legally
Speaker 3: and pay the taxi.
Speaker 2: We handmake our labels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it was like catching on culturally with the
Speaker 3: Mason Jar aesthetic and stuff and so this way, it's
Speaker 3: a quick way to do it too, because it goes
Speaker 3: straight to market. You don't have to age it. So
Speaker 3: Grocer told Halma Today this newspaper quote. He kept teaching
Speaker 3: me what he'd learned. He told me, no one else
Speaker 3: knows what you know, and he was methodical about passing
Speaker 3: it along. So Grocer and his business partners asked Popcorn
Speaker 3: who he'd like to work with for a celebrity tie in,
Speaker 3: and Popcorn is like, there is only one person, one person.
Speaker 3: Hank Williams Junior, of course, Cephas Bosiphis told Halma Today,
Speaker 3: quote My initial reaction was I have zero interest, none,
Speaker 3: But then they showed me Popcorn's whole story and I
Speaker 3: related to him and I admired him. Here was the
Speaker 3: last real Moonshiner, and Moonshine has been so connected to
Speaker 3: the music and to the South. It used to be everywhere.
Speaker 3: So eventually Popcorn's wife, Pam, and the distiller marketed Popcorn
Speaker 3: Sutton's Tennessee White whiskey and they used Popcorn's og Backwoods recipe,
Speaker 3: handcrafted and all that, and then that kind of petered out,
Speaker 3: and then Pam started working with a guy named Joe
Speaker 3: Baker and they developed Popcorn Sutton Bourbon Whiskey blend and
Speaker 3: Popcorn Sutton liquor. L like KK e er so in
Speaker 3: a way, popcorn lives on. So Zarin was here ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2: I've got to get my hands on some of this
Speaker 2: liquor with two k's enjoying myself a fine night in
Speaker 2: honor of popcorn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, raised wind to pop p Oh.
Speaker 2: I love his story. I mean, this is some real
Speaker 2: life Duke Brothers stuff, but I mean, like the outrageousness
Speaker 2: of it, the whole Uncle jessiness of it is just incredible.
Speaker 3: Well, we talk so much about characters. We love the characters,
Speaker 3: and this guy's just pure character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got so much character enough for like two
Speaker 2: three people. Yes, exactly, Elizabeth, what's your ridiculous takeway?
Speaker 3: I you know, I think like he I just keep
Speaker 3: going back to character that he's He's this prototype and
Speaker 3: this almost stereotype, but you see all the little individual
Speaker 3: things he brings to the whole experience. And I know
Speaker 3: I've been sitting on this story for a while because
Speaker 3: of the way he went out. I wasn't sure if
Speaker 3: that was something to talk about, But then I thought no,
Speaker 3: you know that's part of his lord and his legend,
Speaker 3: and it's just it's a fascinating story. And how quickly
Speaker 3: he had to grow up, you know, six years old,
Speaker 3: smoking cigarettes and like all the things that he kind
Speaker 3: of accomplished totally self created. Amazing.
Speaker 2: I don't imagine there was a lot of schooling involved,
Speaker 2: apprenticeship there, but none internships. It's very much a self
Speaker 2: directed path, very much, you know what.
Speaker 3: I think I need that talk back, Dave.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 5: I like you, Hey, producer, Dave, Elizabeth and Zarin. This
Speaker 5: is Ada from Wyoming and I'm listening to your Pippin'
Speaker 5: Outlaw episode, and you were laughing about him joining the
Speaker 5: rodeo team. So I thought you'd find it amusing to
Speaker 5: know that my community college in my hometown lost some
Speaker 5: funding a few years ago and so they had to
Speaker 5: get rid of all the sports teams except for rodeo.
Speaker 5: So now the only sport we offer his rodeo, and
Speaker 5: it brings in a ton of people from Canada all over.
Speaker 3: I love it. It's awesome and I love that it
Speaker 3: brings all these people in over the border. Hard draw
Speaker 3: community college sports, so big ups.
Speaker 2: Hopefully they give out a really good belt.
Speaker 3: You know they do. They got an awesome belt. That's
Speaker 3: it for today. You can find us online at ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue
Speaker 3: Sky and on Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime pod,
Speaker 3: email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and most importantly,
Speaker 3: download the free iHeart app and leave us a talkback.
Speaker 3: Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
Speaker 3: and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Kombucha Brewer to
Speaker 3: the Stars Dave Cousten. Our Ridiculous assistant is Terry Pretzel's Maldonado.
Speaker 3: Fon research is by Marissa Pictato, Chip Brown and Jabbari
Speaker 3: cheese Stick Davis. The theme song is by Thomas Ritz,
Speaker 3: Cracker Lee and Travis Peanut. Dutton post wardrobe is provided
Speaker 3: by Botany five hundred producer Dave Coustin's wardrobe by mister
Speaker 3: Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
Speaker 3: and Mister Andre. Executive producers are undercover atf agents Ben
Speaker 3: Bollen and Noel.
Speaker 4: B Ridicous Crime Say It one More Timeous Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
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