Episode 693: Caryl Chessman: The Red Light Bandit

Hey weirdos, Elena here.

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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, Girl, this title sounds so you.

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I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.

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I am absolutely obsessed with a sweet treat after dinner, and my favorite sweet treat right now is my mochi.

It's mine, not yours.

Just kidding, you can have some too.

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I'm obsessed.

It's pillowy.

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I really am obsessed with the strawberry flavor right now.

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Hey weirdos, I'm Elena.

I'm Ash.

And this

is

Morbid.

Yay!

Yay!

Morbido.

The first big news is that Ash has finally come over to the side of wanting fall

and getting annoyed when people now she understands why it's annoying when people go can you just let me have my summer i know i'll kill them um yeah she's there now

i took dolores out you know my dog i took dolores out the other morning and it was so it was like eight o'clock in the morning and it was so

Fucking hot out

already.

And I said, you know what?

To hell with this.

Yeah.

I just want, I want to wear a sweatshirt comfortably.

I want to cozy for my cooking.

I have so, oh, shut your fucking face over there with the cozy fall cooking.

I started ordering new Halloween decorations.

I just want to decorate now.

I want.

My house.

Fall is just cozy and I want to be cozy.

I'm not cozy.

I'm sweaty.

And I'm tired of being sweaty.

And she told me this.

And the first thing I said is, now picture someone saying, just let me have my summer.

Summer just started.

And I said, and how do you feel?

I said, I'll kill them.

And she literally said, I'll kill them.

I'll kill them.

I love when that happens.

I love when somebody else gets it.

Oh, I just want it so bad.

And I want my like pumpkin drinks.

This summer has been too hot, too much.

Too fucking hot.

The bugs are huge.

I don't know what's going on.

No,

I opened my slider yesterday.

I wish this was visual just for this one moment.

There had to be a bug with wings, mind you.

Yeah.

Four inches long and four inches thick.

What's going on there?

No, I don't.

It's something hellacious.

Something hellacious.

They're deeper.

They're from the hell mouth.

I saw,

we went to the Ghost Show in Baltimore, Joan and I.

Have we not recorded since then?

I don't think we have.

It was fucking amazing.

Yay.

I'm not going to say anything.

to give anything away.

You got a cool sweatshirt.

Yeah, I did get it.

I got a batwing sweatshirt.

Yeah, that's fun.

I got the the girls some things.

Oh, you did?

Of course.

I met some listeners there.

That was fun and cool.

I love that.

And it was funny because

one listener came up like while we were at our seats and was like, hey, and like, that was like, oh my God, I listened to the podcast.

And I was like, girl.

I noticed you when you walked in the arena because she was just wearing like, you know, like when ghost concerts, everybody's like dressed up,

you know, in wild ways.

It's really fun to people watch and like participate.

And this girl had walked in, and I was like, Wow, she just looks phenomenal.

Oh, I just like, it was one of those things where you're just like, wow, like, where you're like, like, you're just like shit.

Like, I just happened to notice her when she walked in.

She had like really pretty hair.

And I was like, wow.

And so I had said to John, I was like, wow, she looks like amazing.

I just like noticed her.

And she was the one who came up and was like, I listened to the podcast.

So I was like, girl, I noticed you the second you walked in.

Morbidly.

It's the most wholesome experience.

Stunning everywhere they go.

Literally, because I eyes went right to her.

That's a serve.

But it was like a lot of fun.

And the reason I'm saying this is because in Baltimore, then when I got off the train, I immediately saw one of those lantern flies that

I think like Pennsylvania got infested with for a little while.

They're invasive, I'm pretty sure.

Like they go crazy.

Ew.

They're kind of cool looking, though.

I don't want to be.

invaded by them.

I don't want to be invaded, period.

So it's like, so like, I'm not here to tell you, like, oh, it's really cool that you get attacked by lanternflies every year.

Wasn't

Doug Bradley was talking about that on our ghost upstairs.

It was actually, I don't know if it got, if it got cut from like the final, I'm not sure how much of the conversation was in there.

But when we had Tobias on, I think it was like a full circle moment because when we had Tobias on and we brought Doug on, they were talking about, I think Tobias brought.

up actually like the lanternflies and how

yeah they're like really pretty oh they're pretty yeah but they're big yeah and i think tobias had brought up the lanternflies and how terrified he is and like needs therapy for bugs i get it and so and they were talking about how they like invade and i think it was doug's wife steph who was like actually i think they're really pretty like i don't care and i was like i get it They're bigger than a quarter.

They're huge.

That's fucked up.

They're really pretty, though.

They are pretty.

And I felt like it was such a full circle moment that I was going to a show, a ghost show in Baltimore.

And the first thing I saw was that lantern fly that we had talked about on the episode.

But then did it make you feel like you were ready for fall?

Yeah.

Like did it remind you that you were ready for it?

It did ready for fall a little bit.

But

for everybody that we met at the show, John and I, like that was so awesome.

And how fucking cool was that?

I love that.

It's always fun to meet you guys in the wild.

It was, especially at stuff like that, because then we're all excited about it together and it's really fun.

That's cool.

The show is so good.

I'm telling you.

Oh, that makes me want to go to a concert.

It's so good.

But yeah, that was a lot of fun.

And lanternflies and bugs.

And let's get fall going.

Please.

I'm ready.

I'm ready for it.

How many days until fall?

I was like, what?

70.

But that's not that much.

70 is a lot.

That's until official fall.

Facts.

We get fall well before official fall.

Not the last couple of years, though.

We get it.

The weather starts to change.

And yeah, she'll change.

You know, so we're changing.

We'll get that little crispness.

I just need to carve a pumpkin.

As soon as September 1st hits, it's fall.

I mean, yeah, in my heart.

So, like, that's all I'm looking forward to.

Yeah.

September 1st.

Back to school.

Back to school.

It's like September 1st hits, spooky season.

Yeah.

Fall.

Yeah.

Apples.

Hunter houses.

Like, let's go.

I'm, all right.

That's all I'm looking for.

Is September 1st.

I just need to get through this.

I'm in, I'm in a, a bad state.

I constantly say, well, don't worry, we'll get into the thing.

I just

look cool.

I have like reverse seasonal depression.

No, I think I'm not even joking about that.

Like, I know, like, no, it's not a joke.

I'm not joking.

I'm literally say I'm the most unhappy in this summer.

Yeah.

Like, it just doesn't.

No, I looked at Drew yesterday

for me.

Because Drew has like seasonal affective disorder in the winter.

And I looked at him and I was like, you know how Alina says that?

I was like, I always like, I was always like, do you really?

Yeah.

I felt like that.

Like, I can't kind of get it like yesterday i was like okay i'm all like i feel i feel upset in my heart i don't like it and like i'm shitty in the rest of the year yeah the only good thing about summer is that the kids are home yeah that is good that's literally the only thing that keeps me from like fully yeah diagnosing myself with

summer sadness yeah uh because then

they're around and i'm like oh well this is they give you happiness yeah that's true they give me a lot of happiness

so that's like the only thing that keeps me like yay Oh, but God, let's go, fall.

Yeah, let's go, fall.

I'm ready.

Stroto, what the fuck to wear?

No, that's the other thing.

I don't like summer clothes.

Everything is sticky.

Go buy the paperback version of the butcher game.

Put it in your pocket.

It's put it in your either pocket.

You need to pre-order that shit.

You can do it.

You should do it.

It's pretty great, I think.

Let's go like the book.

Yeah.

And paperbacks rock.

I like paperbacks personally a lot.

Yeah.

And it'll prepare you for who knows what, you know,

things and stuff.

So let's get into today's episode.

We should.

This is

one that is, it was just like super interesting to me, especially

like the trial and imprisonment in this case is very interesting.

There's a lot of

pieces that make it go like, holy shit.

All right.

And then this, the actual crimes are so like weird and random.

and fucked up that you're just like, okay.

But we're going to be talking about Carol Chessman, the red light bandit.

The red light bandit?

I love a bandit story.

That's the thing.

Whenever it's the something bandit, I'm in.

That's great.

Like, let's learn about it.

Yeah.

So

in early 1948, Los Angeles couples were absolutely terrorized by a series of robberies and there was like car theft involved, all that stuff.

And this was committed by a criminal who the press, of course, dubbed the red red light bandit.

The red light bandit is back at it again more on the news at five.

That's a literal rip from a news station from 1948.

Yeah.

I know, crazy that we were able to do that.

But the red light bandit was so-called that because they used a red light on top of their car to flag down victims, like act like a police officer essentially.

Oh, see, I thought they were.

Traffic lights?

Yes.

Me too.

I thought at red lights, they were seizing the opportunity.

And I said, wow, that's

confidence.

I also thought that too, because I was like, well, you don't have a lot of time at a red light usually.

But no, it was like a red light on their car.

Okay, okay.

Fortunately, the bandits' crime spree was quickly cut short when police arrested Carol Chessman, a Los Angeles resident with a criminal history that went way back.

His teen years.

Yeah, Carol.

Oh.

And it's Carol K, C-A-R-Y-L.

Oh, okay.

And you said to his teen years.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Carol Carol Whittier Chessman was born on May 27th, 1921 in St.

Joseph, Michigan.

He was born to Searle and Hallie Chessman.

Within six months of his birth, the family moved from Michigan to Glendale, California, which must be like a pretty big change.

Yeah, I would think so.

Although his parents spelled his name the traditional way, actually, C-A-R-O-L.

He actually later changed the spelling.

Basically, he wanted to avoid like, you know, the common, what he, like, what was considered like the female way of spelling it at the time.

Cause remember, this is the 40s.

The 40s.

So he changed back then even earlier.

Yeah, because he didn't want to be confused.

Like,

you know, when somebody just sees their name.

Right.

That's his deal.

So Carol Chessman's biography that he wrote.

actually that he had a part in biography um it has been it's been reported from a variety of sources but there are a lot of inconsistencies between his reports of his childhood and the narratives reported from independent sources.

Okay.

He tends to romanticize a lot of his life.

All right.

And I say that because there's like actual reports and evidence that will like dispute a lot of it.

What is apparent from both sources is that Chessman's early life was definitely marked by a lot of struggle and like tragedy, I would say.

He was born just before the onset of the Great Depression, which was 1929.

That's right.

His father, Searle, really struggled to maintain a stable job and to care for the family.

The financial struggles definitely raised significantly in 1930 when Hallie Chessman was actually in a really bad car accident and became paralyzed from the waist down.

Oh my goodness.

Really bad.

Oh, that's awful.

Obviously, there was a ton of hospital bills from this accident and she had ongoing care now.

She was paralyzed from the waist down.

Right.

So it became like a seriously crushing weight on the family, like financially, and especially Searle, who really wanted to be able to take care of this stuff.

And he really struggled to get out of this weight.

During Carol's childhood, actually, his father tried a few times, like a couple times, I believe, to unsuccessfully end his own life.

Oh, that's sad.

And it definitely affected Carol.

Yeah.

How could it not?

Although his mother's accident and the paralysis were the the focus of a lot of his younger years, Carol himself also struggled with a lot of physical ailments as a child.

He had, you know, he had some health problems like asthma and pneumonia, which are serious, but they, you know, are ones that are a little more common among children.

Others were more serious, like he had encephalitis at one point, which is swelling of the brain.

He had diphtheria, a severe bacterial infection of the nose and throat.

And he had a lot of times where he required a lot of hospitalizations.

And of course, this put another financial strain on the family's whole entire financial deal.

Yeah.

Despite all of this, Carol reported having a pretty decent childhood.

In his memoir, he wrote, weekends and vacation time, the three had great fun together, meaning his parents and him.

Oh, that's nice.

He said, there were trips to the ocean where with tiny pail and shovel, I discovered wonders in the sand.

Oh.

One thing about Carol is he has nice prose.

When he writes, he can write.

He's a writer.

It's impossible to know how frequently this actually happened in his childhood or like whether they did have great fun together, you know, but he repeatedly said this, but then he would also undermine that narrative in psychiatric interviews after he was arrested.

Okay.

He really plays both sides of the fence here.

Yeah.

According to Chessman, his childhood memories were actually largely painful and frustrating.

This is what he said later, because his his ailments frequently, quote, disrupted his childhood and left him feeling weak and ashamed, as did taunts from his playmates.

Now, his accounts of his relationship with his father also kind of contradict one another, depending on when they were told.

Okay.

So in his published memoirs, his early memories of his father are pretty positive, but he appears less nostalgic about his father than he was about his mother.

Which I feel like happens a lot, especially for that time period.

Yeah, definitely.

In truth, Searle Chessman was pretty generally a mild-mannered man, you know, who, whether fair or not, struggled a lot with his feelings of failure and a poor sense of self-worth that left him feeling very depressed a lot of the time, very despondent.

He also felt like he like internalized his son's ailments as like failure on his part because his son was seen as like frail.

That's sad.

And that whole, you know, self-sense of failure kind of led him to harbor feelings of resentment for Carol as well.

On one occasion, where his father had wrongly apparently believed that he had intentionally hurt his own mother, Carol claimed that his father repeatedly beat him with a bullwhip.

Oh, but

it is difficult to know whether that is a true thing that happened or whether it was added into the memoir on Carol's part for like effect.

Okay.

Because again, you just can't take everything he says as true.

Yeah.

And he contradicts a lot of his own statements yeah but that i mean that sounds unfortunately very of the time it also just sounds like he had a complicated childhood that's what it feels like no matter like what no matter what is true and what isn't yeah what definitely happened or not it should be complicated yeah yeah uh it's important to note that like many families especially at that time Searle and Hallie Chessman were very religious people who imparted their strong religious beliefs on their son as well.

This wasn't really, in this case, consequential in and of itself, but

they were also applied in the context of illness and disability.

So it became a really powerful source of shame.

Okay.

For example, like when he was initially diagnosed with severe asthma, Hallie Chessman's approach was: be brave and pray to God to be cured.

Oh,

yeah.

Of course, he was not cured just by praying and being brave.

So naturally, he felt that he was unworthy of God's love and attention because he was not cured through that.

That's true.

Which was a notion that he would come back to several times in the years that followed.

And honestly, it was kind of like, it was just like reinforcing and like.

eventually kind of justifying his feelings of shame and like feelings of being frail and like unworthy.

Yeah.

And obviously it's it's like, he was a kid when he was learning this stuff.

So that stuff does become internalized.

You know, it does.

Absolutely it does.

I assume.

Now, according to Carol Chessman, it was those feelings of guilt and shame that ultimately led him to commit his first crime, which also is obviously a very convenient way to describe why he started a life of crime, which is why you need to just be like, okay.

When Carol was around 14 years old, he returned home one afternoon.

And this is horrible.

If this is the, if this is really what happened, this is a horrible thing that happened.

Okay.

He returned home one afternoon to find his father attempting to end his own life by putting his head in the oven.

Oh, shit.

Yeah.

Obviously very distraught and thinking that the financial instability of the family had led to this and that he believed he was partially a drain on those financial

situation.

He said he resolved to do whatever he could to help support the family after this.

In this case, that meant stealing food from the local grocery store to help feed the family.

Oh, which is devastating.

Yeah, that's just sad that he felt that much pressure.

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In his biography, Cell 2455 Death Row, which

Chessman describes taking up his old paper route as a guise for going from one store to another, where he stole small amounts of food from loading docks.

Okay.

Carol said he, quote, took no pleasure in the success of his deception or in having become a sneak thief.

But for the first time in his life, he was actually helping his family.

And at a time when it was was really needed the most, which, you know, so it seemed like it kind of made the behavior permissible.

Yeah.

But also, it kind of gave him the validation that he was looking for from his parents.

Oof, that's very,

you are 100% correct in saying it was a very complicated situation.

Definitely.

Later in life, he'd suggest that his slide into criminality had been the result of unforeseeable circumstances and uncontrollable psychological urges that are well

beyond his control.

The truth, truth, though, is, I would say, much messier and more complicated than he would ever write in his own memoirs.

In reality, David Ruth wrote, and

we have the source for this in our notes, adult betrayal and mistreatment by authorities fueled his already simmering rage.

For all his sentimentality and self-aggrandizement, Chessman echoed the expert's explanation of many criminal careers.

Basically, a mix of biological, social, and environmental circumstances shaped him into who he eventually became.

Yeah.

And there were a lot of opportunities for him to change course, but he just simply chose to go down this path.

Okay.

Like he really had a lot of opportunities to go down another path and he didn't choose that.

And that's sad.

Years later, in an analysis of various psychiatric examinations and interviews with those who knew Chessman as a child,

would collectively kind of indicate that he probably would have qualified for one or more psychiatric diagnoses.

After he was arrested when he was 18 years old, a psychiatrist wrote that Carol's quote boastfulness is compensation for underlying feelings of insecurity and inadequacy.

Yeah, that makes sense.

In fact, it seems as though his attitude and poor interpersonal skills were responsible for a lot of the problems that started developing in childhood.

According to one classmate, Carol was, quote, very argumentative in class.

He always talked way over people's heads and he had a superior attitude towards the other students.

In his own memoirs, Chessman suggested he was an outcast at school because of his frailty and chronic health problems.

Maybe it was a mix of both.

Independent sources, on the other hand, strongly indicate that the other students didn't like Carol because of his profound arrogance and generally irritating personality.

Yeah.

Not because he was frail and dealt with health issues.

All right.

Now,

because he didn't really have strong social supports and good friends, by the time he reached his teen years, he decided to just take up some bad ones because I don't have any, so why not?

Okay.

Barely into his teen years, he and his friends spent their time, the friends that he did find, spent their time away from school engaging in what probably would have just been described as like juvenile delinquency at the time.

Okay, good.

You know, smoking cigarettes, stealing liquor from their parents all the time.

They stole cars around

Glendale and took them for joyrides and then just like abandoned them.

She hated car is wild work.

Which was like kind of a thing.

Yeah.

Like that like teens would do.

Do the grand theft auto.

And just like joyride them.

Yeah.

And then just like abandon them or bring them back.

That's crazy.

Chessman wrote about the joyrides.

Having the powerful car under his control wrought a change in him.

It opened up with alcohol's help a new world, a world a man could conquer and do with it what he pleased.

Oh.

Which to me, that statement right there.

As he pleased.

Shows you where this is going.

Yeah, not anywhere good.

No.

Like the validation he felt by being able to provide food for his family during the struggling times, the sense of control and power he was feeling through his later criminal acts provided what I guess could be described as like a high.

Like it was addictive to him.

Yeah.

And he couldn't and wasn't going to deny it.

But in the summer of 1937, when he was only 16 years old, he was caught stealing a car.

According to a reporter for Time magazine, when he was taken to juvenile hall for booking, quote, he scrambled through a window, jumped into a truck, drove it up to the wall surrounding the place, climbed atop the truck, and escaped over the wall.

I like that when he got picked up for Grand Theft Auto, he just Grand Theft Auto to get his way out of there.

Like, what?

He said, you can't get me.

He said, I'm just going to do the same thing to get out of here.

Oh, man.

Unfortunately for him, he was quickly rearrested a few hours later when he was caught looting a drugstore in the middle of the night.

What the fuck?

Inexplicably, he had piled the store's entire supply of cigars into the middle of the floor and soaked them in whiskey bottles smashing the glass all over the floor oh my god yeah now remember he had only been picked up for it was he had stolen a car but he was it was basically a petty crime of joyriding yeah that's especially back then joyriding was like a thing yeah um now it's a far more significant crime.

I'm like, why did you make this a million times worse?

Well, this is even worse because he was sentenced to eight months at the Preston school.

Yeah, of industry.

Oh, I remember that school.

Yep, the juvenile detentions facility in Lone, California for offenders serving long sentences.

If you haven't listened to that episode, pause this episode.

It's a wild one.

Go listen to that and then pick back up here.

It's a wild episode.

It's crazy.

Gnarly.

Yeah.

He was released from Preston in April 1938 and was changed to.

Well, apparently not because he was

for just a little over a month when he was arrested a second time for stealing another car and was sent to the Los Angeles County Road Camp, which was a work camp alternative to prison.

Oof.

It was during his second stay at Preston that Carol met a group of boys who would prove pretty consequential on his path to becoming a career criminal.

Or an or.

Let's talk about the boy bandit gang, shall we?

The boy bandit gang?

Yes.

Let's do that.

Let's talk about it.

Let's do so.

Throughout his youth, Carol had engaged in

a lot of criminal behavior uh most of it petty rarely resulting in a massive consequence of like years or something um in some ways it you know he wasn't all that different from a lot of like disinfect disaffected youth of the era yeah essentially there was a lot of that going on right um but while in some ways it was kind of like just

youthful indiscretions, the social and cultural reaction to juvenile delinquency had changed during the Depression years.

And those youthful indiscretions were now being taken much more seriously.

People didn't have time for their shit.

Yeah, they didn't have time for that shit.

So we've been through a goddamn depression.

It's true.

So the change in how the Americans, you know, and the American system conceived of juvenile crime was kind of, it was related a little bit to the larger movement for prison reform that started like decades before this.

Because for the first time, children came to be seen as distinctly different from adult criminals.

Until that point, children who were convicted of crimes were generally thrown into adult prisons and just dealt with that.

Oh.

Like teens were just thrown in with like 50-year-old hardened criminals.

That's no point now.

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, reformists had succeeded in establishing, you know, separate laws and punishments for juvenile offenders.

That's where the Preston School of Industry came about, where they were treated more like, they were supposed to be treated, more like children in need of help than criminals deserving of massive punishment.

Yeah.

While this may have done a world of good for at-risk youth, a gentler approach to punishment did very little to discourage unrepentant young criminals like Carol Chessman from committing crimes as children and then just going on to do it as a girl.

So it just wasn't much of a different approach.

No, it really wasn't.

So while serving his second sentence, Chessman met a group of other young offenders around his age.

This included Robert Polack, Andrew Rutledge, and Gordon Klee.

Like Carol, these young men had come from lower middle-class families, and by the time they met in the fall of 1939, they had already committed like a ton of petty crimes.

Yeah.

Like just between them, they had just a mountain of petty crimes.

They were just doing crimes.

Just criming.

Upon their release in early 1941, the four young men, along with a fifth unnamed young man, formed the Boy Bandit Gang.

I wonder how long it took them to come up with that.

You know they sat there and we call ourselves.

They were formed for the sole purpose of committing armed robbery.

So we've done.

Oh, we've upset.

And

years later in his memoir, Carol Chessman claimed that despite the full participation of others, the idea for the gang was his and his alone.

Okay.

That was it.

He wrote, my glib tongue talked them into the ways of banditry.

I accept full responsibility since I dreamed it angrily into existence.

Banditry.

Again, I say, beautifully written.

Yeah.

I dreamed it angrily into existence.

That's fuck.

That's good shit.

What a waste.

I know.

Like, truly a waste.

You could dream better shit into existence.

You could have dreamed a lot of beautiful shit into existence if you weren't such an asshole.

Why didn't you do that, man?

According to Chessman, the gang was never very successful when it came to their goals.

He wrote, Our efforts were not crowned with conspicuous economic success.

He said, we didn't make a lot of money.

Almost from the beginning, we ran into more trouble than money, even though clicking perfectly as a team.

Like all aspects of his life.

His descriptions of his boy bandit gang escapades are a mix of like faux humility,

a lot of boasting, and like the smallest

dash of honesty.

Yeah, like we actually weren't that good.

So it's a little bit.

But we were perfect.

Yeah, we were perfect, though.

We were well-oiled this year.

His descriptions of the gang's early activities make them sound like a band of practice criminals, you know, spending days studying their targets, developing detailed schedules, learning their routines, like so high, high-tech.

Yeah.

But at the same time, he freely admits the gang never made any money out of the jobs and mainly got by on whatever,

whatever they got from like robbing gas stations and liquor stores every now and then.

So like, which one is it?

Yeah, that's those two things are vastly different.

Based on his very like carefully curated descriptions of events, the reader of his memoirs will get the understanding that the gang as a group was just a bumbling group of young guys.

Yeah.

Who they were like teenage pranksters

that were like actually doing bad shit.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, but it was not good.

And when you read it, you get the idea that they were never really a threat and were kind of like harmless.

But in reality, they were not.

They were not harmless.

They were bumbling as fuck, but they were not harmless.

And the fact that they were bumbling as fuck with guns is really scary.

And that's the thing, like when you read his memoir, like be careful, because you're going to get the idea that like, oh, they were just like, they were just silly boys.

Silly boys.

Being silly.

And it's like, nope, they did bad shit.

Yeah.

So on the afternoon of February 1st, 1941, Chessman, Polak, Rutledge, and two others were driving in LA when they were pulled over by an LAPD patrol officer for a traffic violation.

The officer comes up to the car and he sees a large amount of new clothing and items in the car.

A loot.

And at the time, LA was experiencing a wave.

I don't know why I said it like that.

It was experiencing a wave of teen gang robberies.

It was like a thing.

The fuck.

I know.

Teen, like, just bandit gangs or a thing.

So the officer.

Yeah, he was like, oh shit, I've stumbled upon one of those youth gangs.

So he, yeah so he walked up to the car and said hello youth hello youths what are you up to so he asked a bystander to call for the sheriff he was like you know what call for the sheriff i'm gonna see what this is about yeah so the young woman went to the phone and chessman and the other men got out of the car young men i should say got out of the car and attacked the officer knocking him to the ground and kicking and punching him What the fuck?

Yeah.

Yeah, they're not just like silly.

Yeah, when the officer, no, they're not silly at all.

When the officer's partner saw what was happening, he rushed in, but he was dragged into the whole fight.

And at one point, one of the attackers managed to grab one of the officers' guns and shoot one of the officers in the leg, shattering his femur.

Oh, fuck.

Yeah.

So like,

fuck.

Oh, my God.

This was for a traffic violation.

Yeah.

So the gunshot and resulting injury were quickly followed by the sound of the sheriff's car approaching.

So the group split up with two of them running into a nearby orchard.

An orchard?

Which is very teenage bandit gang.

An orchard.

These two were living the teenage bandit gang life.

They were.

And then the other three were unable to start their own car.

So they hijacked a car at gunpoint and took it off towards downtown LA.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

Where are these kids' parents?

That's what I'm saying.

What followed was a long car chase in which Chessman, Polack, and Rutledge, who were in the car, were pursued for miles and were shooting at sheriff's deputies until one of the pursuing officers managed to fire a shot into one of the tires and caused the car to flip.

Oh, shit.

But all three of them ran out of the car, got out of the car.

What the hell?

In the end, the three were finally caught when Polak was shot in the side and in the leg.

And Rutledge was shot in the hand, forcing them to stop.

Ouch.

Later that day, sheriff's deputies received a tip about the identities of the other two men in the car and arrested Gordon Clee and William Taylor in each fucking orchard.

When they searched Klee's home, they discovered a pistol, which was later determined to be the gun stolen from the patrol officer at the traffic stop.

Why did you keep that at your home, you fucking hit me?

You know what I'm saying?

Like, glad you're that dumb.

Yeah, the two young men who were hurt were taken to the hospital and the others were booked.

All were charged with highway robbery, which for some reason just

get away with highway robbery out here.

That stream is just a gust.

Hearing someone actually booked on that is wild.

So wild.

They were also booked with assaulting two police officers and the shooting.

Yeah.

So the highway robbery thing sounds funny.

And then it's like, oh, also you shot people.

Right.

A shooting police officer.

A few days later, a sixth member of the boy bandit gang, 23-year-old Don Abbott, was arrested after Abbott's car, which was known to have been used in the robbery, was spotted in Los Angeles.

Like the other arrests, his arrests came after a long car chase where sheriff's officers traded multiple gunshots with Don Abbott and ultimately forced him off the road to stop the chase.

On February 13th, several witnesses, including the LAPD patrol officers who initiated the stop, identified the boy bandit gang members in court and testified to having been, quote, terrorized and in several instances beaten by the youths.

Yeah.

I have been beaten by youths.

I have been beaten by youths.

Fuck.

It's just that that quote is just like wild.

All were held over for trial on armed robbery charges in superior court.

And William Taylor was also charged with attempted murder for shooting the police officer.

Yeah.

Far from harmless, bumbling little boys robbing liquor stores described by Carol Chessman in his memoir, the boy bandit gang perpetrated a series of robberies that, while not violent in themselves in the beginning, seemed to have escalated very quickly to violence.

So they started small and they just really ratcheted it up.

And again, with like very little provocation.

Yeah.

It's not like they had a moment where like they, this was like, they had no other choice.

They literally got stopped for a traffic violation.

Like, what are you doing?

Now, Carol Chessman and the other members of the boy bandit gang were found guilty and given sentences of varying lengths for their participation in this assault, robbery, and shootout that led to the arrest.

Carol received a five-year sentence and was sent to San Quentin.

After serving just two years, his good behavior behavior and diligent work in the prison library earned him a transfer to the California Institution for Men, which was an open prison model in Chino, California.

Like the Preston School of Industry, the California Institute for Men was a product of the prison reform movement, which was aimed at rehabilitation rather than punishment.

Okay.

Which you can get behind.

Yeah, cool idea.

As the nation's first minimum security prison, inmates had considerably more freedom, were provided with job training and other life skills in the less like restrictive and punishing and more supportive environment.

Okay.

Which for like smaller time criminals,

totally, yeah, like why not?

Just as he had done at the Preston school years earlier, he used the relaxed attitude and minimum security environment to his advantage.

And in late August 1943, he escaped from the California Institution for Men.

He was on the run for two weeks and he was arrested at a motel in Glendale on September 3rd.

And he claimed, this is what he claimed, that he, quote, suffered an attack of amnesia while serving as a plane, an airplane watcher at the institution, and that his first recollection, therefore, was when he found himself running through an orange grove near Upland.

What?

Yes.

Croix, if you will?

When that explanation

weirdly failed to convince the warden and the district attorney weirdly failed,

yeah, so crazy.

I don't know.

So they're tough.

They're tough.

I guess so.

You know, he had another story, though.

He changed his story.

Oh.

And he claimed he had, quote, run away only because he was hell-bent on carrying out a plot to kill or kidnap Hitler.

Weirdly, that didn't work either.

Oh, no.

I know.

It's weird that that one didn't work.

He was sent back to prison.

That's probably good.

Four more years.

That's probably swell.

Did they put him in a more maximum obscurity one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was.

It's weird that that one,

you know.

Like, be so for real right now.

I was like, wow, you really, like...

You went hard with that one.

You went from amnesia to that.

It's just like

you had no middle ground whatsoever.

Well, I respect your game.

Like, damn.

Yeah.

He really thought that was going to be like, oh,

I get into home.

That tells you so much about him.

It does.

Because he really thought that was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I was doing.

But here you are putting me in prison again.

Man.

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Throughout his memoirs and interviews, Carroll constantly tried to control the narrative of his own life, attempting to minimize the severity of any of his crimes, downplay his own inherent criminality.

But every time he was given the opportunity to change his ways and just start fresh, he just wasted no time getting straight back to being a criminal.

Every time.

Yeah.

In December 1947,

Carol was paroled and returned to Glendale, where he

had less than two weeks that passed.

Before he started planning another robbery scheme.

Brother Man.

Yeah, he just can't.

See, he doesn't, he will not let us.

Stop.

Let's go get a job.

He reached back out to his old associates and he tried to find a new accomplice.

He said, hey, y'all.

Yeah.

I'm out of the clink.

I'm out of the clink.

For 48 hours.

He says I want to go kill Hitler.

Now, it's important to note that this is where independent accounts of the red light bandit part ways with his own biography, like his own memoir, since he always maintained his innocence and claims he has nothing to do with the attacks that he was convicted for.

Interesting.

Even though he was identified.

Okay.

The Los Angeles County prosecutor at the time suggests otherwise.

According to the theory presented at his trial later, Carol and his new partner, David Knowles, like crime partner, David Knowles, started out small, robbing convenience stores.

You know, if they just got out of prison, we got to

start small.

Everybody has to start somewhere.

Yeah.

Robbing clothing stores for a handful of crumpled bills and change.

Okay.

Then one day as they were surveying the new dark gray Ford coupe they'd stolen, it occurred to Carol that it strongly resembled an LAPD prowler car driven by officers.

And it gave him an idea.

In fact, it wasn't just that it resembled an LAPD prowler in shape and color.

It also had a bright spotlight on the top, just like one would find on a police car.

Was it a police car?

Not real sure.

A few days later, in the late afternoon of January 18th, Thomas Bartle and his girlfriend were driving along the Pacific Coast Highway when a dark-colored coop came up fast behind them.

And there was a red light flashing on the roof.

That's so scary.

Assuming it was a police officer.

Because why, why would you not think otherwise?

Bartle pulled the car off the side of the road and was very surprised when the car behind them did the same because he wasn't doing anything.

So he thought like they're just going to get out of the way.

Right.

But he was like, oh shit, I'm being pulled over.

So he was like, oh, I don't know what I did.

But he rolled down the driver's side window as the driver of the car came and demanded to see his license.

In the moment, something about the scene, he said, like just didn't feel right.

Yeah.

So Bartle asked to see the officer's identification, which is fucking brilliant.

And especially for the time when

you are taught, especially in this time period, you just blindly respect authority.

Absolutely.

So for them to do that, I'm like, that's smart.

That's when the driver, though, produced a.45 caliber pistol and stuck it in Bartle's face

and demanded that he hand over whatever cash he had on him.

So the couple between them only had $15.

So he gave him all the money.

The man jumped back into his car and drove away.

Wow.

Which would be the weirdest interaction in the entire world.

Also all that fucking trauma for $15.

Yeah.

Later that night, the bandit was out on the streets again looking for another easy score.

That evening, Floyd Bellew and his girlfriend Elaine Boucha were parked on an isolated service road near the Rose Bowl.

Just as before, a man in a dark gray coop pulled up beside the car and the red light was like shining right through there, like blinding them essentially.

But the bandit this time did not bother with the pretense of being a police officer and instead just produced a gun immediately.

Oh.

And shouted, this is a stick-up.

Hand over your dough or I'll blow your brains out.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

So Bellu wasted no time doing as he was told, handing over about $20, and the bandit left the scene again.

Okay.

The next day, the news of the back-to-back robberies in the same evening made headlines around Southern California, of course.

And this is when the press dubbed the robbery the red light bandit.

Okay.

So given that no one was hurt in the robbery, the papers reported the incidents with like a lot of enthusiasm and sensationalistic flair, you know, like just being like, ha ha, silly bandits.

But little did they know, the bandit was just getting started.

So the next night, Jarnegan Leia and his girlfriend Regina Johnson were parked along an isolated road in the hollywood hills and that's when a dark gray coupe pulled up alongside them with the red light the bandit stepped out to the driver's side and leia saw an average looking man holding a 45 caliber pistol and his face was covered by a handkerchief the bandit took the 45 from leia's wallet that he said he had and another six dollars from johnson And he didn't flee the scene immediately, though.

Like he had done the stick-up thing, you know, like the whole thing instead he pulled Regina Johnson out of the car and dragged her back to the coop forcing her into the back seat and he started trying to sexually assault her oh wow so he escalated within 24 hours oh like the fall the night before he had done this to two couples and when he had just come up with the idea too when he had just come up with the idea it's almost like he was on like a power throw yeah he saw that he got away with it and he was like what else can i get away with oh that's awful.

Fortunately, before Chesman was able to get very far, because obviously, you know, this is Carol Chusman.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, you know, fortunately, before he was able to get like too far, the scene was suddenly lit up by the lights of an approaching car.

So Regina, being the brilliant boss she was, told her attacker that it might be the police and suggested he uncover his face so he didn't look so suspicious.

Because she was like, if, oh, if the police see somebody with a handkerchief back here, they're going to think you're attacking me.

Right.

Right.

You should pull it down.

Right.

So he was like, yeah, totally.

And he lowered the handkerchief.

And she saw his got a good look at his face.

Oh my God.

That was such a fucking brilliant.

Brilliant, but also such a bargain because

now you've seen his face.

Exactly.

That makes it even more interesting.

Because you're hoping that it goes the way you want it to.

Yeah.

Once the car had passed, Carol Chessman let her out of the car and left the scene.

Wow.

And they went straight to the sheriff's office and reported the robbery and the assault.

And now had and like enough to give them a lot of information.

Now, the press covered this and weirdly made no mention of the attempted rape of Regina Johnson in the coverage.

What the fuck?

Just said like, oh, another white bandit.

That wasn't tasteful.

Yeah.

Now, after the attack on Leia and Johnson, Chessman drove around for a few hours until just after midnight, when he spotted another car pulled off the side of the road.

After pulling up behind them and flashing the light, he went up to the driver's side and flashed a beam, like a flashlight beam into their eyes.

When he reached the car, he found that there was only one man in it.

So he robbed the driver of one dollar

and then left.

Yeah.

A dollar.

He's thinking this is another couple.

Yeah.

And he gets one guy with one dollar on him.

Yikes.

So he went quiet for like two days and then he headed out on the streets again on the night of January 22nd.

This time, he went back out to the Hollywood Hills, where he had attacked Leigh Ann Johnson a few nights earlier, and quickly found another couple parked on a lover's lane overlooking the city.

After parking the coop, he flashed the red spotlight into the car and approached the driver's side and demanded that the driver, 20-year-old Frank Hurlbutt, hand over his money.

The couple assumed that if they gave him the money, he would just leave.

Yeah, because they had also heard this covered in the press and they didn't mention that he had tried to rape one of the women so this woman has no reason to believe this man is going to do something to her which was a really massive disservice to her yeah in that moment absolutely it was it pisses me off that they didn't cover that but instead of letting them leave after getting the money He pulled 17-year-old Mary Louise Meza out of the car and began dragging her back to his own vehicle.

Oh, God.

Once Mary was out of the car, Frank put his own car into gear and fled the scene, which he later claimed he was going to get the police.

But that must have been a really horrifying sight for his girlfriend to see.

I'm going to keep my comment to myself.

When, yeah, when,

and this is even weirder, when Carol Chessman saw Frank leave the scene, he jumped in the front seat with Mary still in the back seat and started chasing Frank through the Hollywood Hills.

What?

When he finally managed to catch up, Carol tried to force the other car off the road, but only managed to get his own car stuck and allowed Frank to escape.

Okay.

Once he was out of sight, Carol Chessman drove to a secluded area and raped Mary,

threatening to kill her boyfriend if she didn't comply.

Oh.

When he'd finished, he let her go and drove away.

Just dropped her in a secluded area

and drove away.

That poor girl.

The next day.

17 years old.

Oh, yeah.

The next day, the papers all reported enthusiastically on the exploits of the red light bandit.

But once again, quiet.

Why aren't they saying that he's raping women?

That's huge news.

Instead, the way they reported it was that Chessman had, quote, let Mary out of his car unharmed within a block of her home.

Unharmed?

Instead of drove her to a secluded area, raped her, and then left her.

What the fuck?

Why?

Like, that's what I mean.

What good reason do you have to not report what's actually fucking happening?

Aside from, like, oh, it'll really get people all in attention.

Because they see this as like, oh, this, this crazy red light bandit, like, that's not fun if he's raping people.

Like, it's only funny if he's just taking a dollar from people.

But it's like, okay, now women are in the middle of the day.

Now you've made everybody unsafe.

Right.

So the next afternoon, Chessman and Knowles entered a clothing store in Redondo and armed with a 45-caliber pistol and a toy pistol, held held up the clerk.

His name was Melvin Weisler, and they held up a second employee, Joe Lesher.

When Joe hesitated in giving over his wallet, Chessman beat him in the head and face with the butt of the.45 and threatened to kill him.

Oh, God.

After getting the cash from the registers and the two men's wallets, Carol Chessman and Knowles gathered up around $500 worth of men's clothes from the racks and then fled, leaving in the dark gray coop.

Once they were gone, they obviously reported this whole thing to the police and described the two men in their vehicle for the dispatcher.

Around the same time, two LA traffic officers who happened to be driving behind the coop heard the broadcast about the robbery and realized the description matched the car driving in front of them, which must have been a wild thing.

Yeah, it's like, okay, he's right here.

We're like, oh, we're in perfect position.

Of course, as soon as they hit the lights and instructed the driver, pull over, Chessman proceeded to pedal to the metal and started fleeing.

Of course.

Weaving in and out of side streets at 80 miles per hour.

Oh, that's so scary.

Once again, he found,

this is just like a funny little like full circle moment because it's like, now Carol Chessman has found himself just repeating that same car chase with, you know, his earlier criminal career and his later one.

Yep.

So this resulted in a nearly hour-long high-speed chase through the streets of Los Angeles.

Holy.

With Chessman and Knowles trading gunfire with what became an eight-car team of pursuers.

Oh my God.

Had Chessman not run into like LA traffic, essentially, like downtown traffic.

Let's be thankful for that.

Yeah.

They would have probably got away.

Yeah.

But he attempted to make a U-turn to avoid the traffic and was rammed by one of the pursuing officers, bringing the car to a stop.

Damn.

To David Knowles, the stalled car was reason enough to throw up his hands and surrender.

Yeah.

But Chessman wasn't giving up.

So he jumped out of the car, fled into the alleys

between the nearby houses.

And it was only after the officers fired two warning shots above his head that he gave up.

That's definitely the time, if any.

Now, in his memoir, he says that one of the shots grazed the top of his head.

Oh, please.

But there's photographs taken of directly after his arrest, and there's no injury on his head.

That he's a lying sack of shit.

When the officers searched the car, which they determined was stolen several weeks earlier, they found a detachable roof-mounted spotlight.

spotlight the screws were found in chessman's shirt pocket other evidence taken from the vehicle was a 45 caliber pistol a toy pistol a pen light hundreds of dollars of clothing all with the price tag still attached unreal based on the evidence and the identifications provided by uh weisler and letcher both men that were robbed at the store yeah they were booked on a variety of charges, including armed robbery, and both were considered prime suspects in the red light bandit robberies as well.

So the day after this, Mary Louise Mezza came to the station with her mother.

Remember, she's 17.

Yeah.

Where she identified Carol Chessman as the man who'd robbed and sexually, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted her.

Right.

But told officers she'd never seen Knowles before.

Okay.

So he was not part of that.

More identifications were made in the following days, including one from Regina Johnson, who also identified only Carol Chessman as her attacker.

Yep.

Now, upon interrogation, Carol admitted he'd stolen the clothing and to being the red light bandit, but he denied the rape allegations and sexual assault allegations.

Of course.

Later, he would claim, among other things, that the confession had been beaten out of him over the course of three days by several LAPD officers.

Doubt it.

He said, I was brutally beaten, denied sleep, threatened with further violence, not allowed to see an attorney or my father, grilled to exhaustion, and promised only two or three counts of robbery charges would be filed if I confessed to the red light crimes.

Now,

I don't think it's like

a hidden fact that the LAPD has a long and unfortunate history of

employing tactics.

This is true.

Are brutal.

This is true.

Especially when it comes to extracting a confession.

Can't get away from that.

Nope.

In this case, though,

The evidence doesn't really support his claims.

You know, just like the shot of like the warning shot above his head that he said grazed his head.

There's photographs that prove that's wrong.

Well, they also had so much evidence that it doesn't seem like they would really even need a confession to bring this anywhere.

Well, and there was a lot of photos taken of him after his arrest.

And he was during this interrogation and after.

If he had been beaten and abused as severely as he claimed to be,

there would be some marks.

There was no marks on him.

And this is not way back in the 40s.

Like they didn't retouch the photos, you know.

Exactly.

And they weren't really shying away from leaving marks on criminals back then, especially.

So the fact that he didn't have marks on him was pretty wild.

Obviously, you know, I wasn't there, so I don't know, but the evidence points in the direction that he's a lying sex shit.

Yeah.

He's also a rapist, so I don't really care what he says.

That's the thing.

So it's like, regardless of the denials, in late January, Carroll was indicted on 18 counts, including robbery, kidnapping, and rape.

On March 12th, both Chessman and Knowles appeared before a judge in Superior Court and pleaded pleaded not guilty, and a trial date was set for April.

By his own admission, Carroll had had a long, a very difficult time finding a lawyer who was willing to take his case.

I mean, I could understand why.

Yeah, I mean, they had a lot of evidence tying him to the red light cases, including the light itself and several victims.

Not to identify him.

Like the red light.

They said, babe, we actually have the red light.

Yeah, we have that.

Most lawyers he spoke with told him they could try to get him a decent deal and keep him from getting a life sentence, but none none believed they had a chance at acquittal.

That makes sense.

Unfortunately, as far as Chessman was concerned, a total acquittal was the only acceptable outcome.

So with the trial date coming up, he made the universally

unwise decision to represent himself at trial.

No!

Yeah.

That really is universally unwise.

He later said, a courtroom and I were not strangers.

I was familiar generally with the rules and evidence.

And although acquired informally, I possessed a working knowledge of criminal trial procedure.

So he may have thought he was familiar with how a criminal trial worked, but when the trial began at the end of April 1948, he showed himself to be less than prepared to be a lawyer.

I always think about like the confidence that it takes to say, I'm going to represent myself

in court.

And it's like, when you really sit down and watch a trial and all the formalities and all the proceedings that take place, it's like,

you're not equipped to do that if you don't have a background in law.

You don't.

You're just not equipped to do that.

There's a reason that the LSATs exist.

Are fucking hard as fuck.

Yeah.

There's a reason that people are losing their minds studying for that.

And it's like, it's so insulting too, to like actual lawyers who have gone through the process.

And it's like somebody, it's like, I know I am not

adequately equipped to fully educate my children in a a way that a teacher who went to school for this can do.

I would love to be able to do that.

I know I'm not though.

But just like same energy.

It's the same energy.

And just like with that, there are so many people that think they are

equipped to do that.

They can do better

and could do better.

And there's people.

who make the effort to actually become able to do these kind of things.

So,

you know, like that is absolutely a thing.

But there's people who just think they're better.

Me?

like Carol Chessman saying I'm going to represent myself because I've been in a court of law before.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Me saying I can teach my kids because I went to school all the shit because I've been in a school before.

Yeah.

It's not the same thing.

No, it's like I have not been a teacher before.

It's crazy.

Like people take

years sometimes to get cases ready.

Absolutely.

It's not easy.

No.

So it's a real, it's a real fucking gamble, dude.

And it's a bad one.

Yeah.

But sometimes it just becomes such a farce.

Fucking farce.

That's the thing.

And it becomes a circus and it draws away from like the shit that actually happened.

And it can make.

Yeah.

And then the victims' families have to sit there and watch this fucking idiot try to bumble his ass through a whole trial.

And when they just want to get to the end, like you see it so many times.

And it's like, yeah.

These people, they should just be told, shut the fuck up.

They should.

You take what you can get.

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So in addition to constantly refusing the assistance and guidance of the public defender assigned to assist him, he submitted a witness list that included a surprising number of people,

including the L.A.

County District Attorney and several judges, many of whom had nothing to do with the case.

So why were you going to call them?

Also, while the prosecutor walked the jury through the mountain of evidence implicating Chessman and Knowles in the crimes, Carol just focused largely on character witnesses.

And about a week into the trial, his mother, Hallie, was brought into the courtroom on a stretcher to testify on his behalf and testified about her son's quote genius intellect and strong character it doesn't count if your mom says it all and it's like and also you really made her go through that and exactly and it's like dude no one's arguing that you're dumb yeah that's

part of here this is about if you raped a couple of girls stole a bunch of things and have assaulted shot people yeah robbed people

like all this shit

to kill people like this is about a whole lot more than your level of intellect.

I don't care if you're smart.

No.

I'm sure you are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Clearly not smart enough to not make those choices.

To not be doing that shit.

It's like, I don't give a shit if you're a genius.

That doesn't make it okay.

Yeah.

So after a three weeks trial, it came to a conclusion with an unexpected closing statement from the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney J.

Miller Levy, in which Miller urged the jury to not only find Chessman guilty, but to also sentence him to death for his crimes.

Under normal circumstances, even the most violent of his crimes didn't qualify for the death sentence.

But Miller argued, and this is where it gets interesting, that due to several aspects of the crimes, the little Lindbergh law was more than appropriate.

Now, we have not covered this, and we will.

We're going to cover the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

Yeah.

It just stresses me out.

Yeah.

But we are going to cover it.

It's an important case to cover.

It's fascinating.

Following the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, U.S.

Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act, new legislation that made kidnapping a federal offense and could be eligible for the death penalty.

Miller argued that because Chessman had detained Regina Johnson and Mary Louise Meza during the robbery for, quote, immoral purposes

and had transported Mary

to a secluded area.

He had violated the Federal Kidnapping Act and thus should be held to the same standard as anyone else who kidnapped someone in order to enact violence against them.

That's a valid argument.

Which is a valid argument when you look at it logistically.

Yeah.

Like it is a valid argument.

Now, to many observers, the request for the death penalty seemed like a reach.

But after 32 hours of deliberation, the jury emerged and found Chessman guilty on nearly all counts and sentenced him to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison.

When the sentence was read in court, Chessman jokingly replied, I still owe 260 years for violating my parole, Your Honor.

Oh, so this was all just a big joke to him.

I'm like, dude, you just got sentenced to die.

I wonder if they would have reached that same decision had he not represented himself.

I think it is very, very possible that he pissed people off during that whole thing.

I think he antagonized.

Yeah.

And I think it was a bad move on his part.

Now, after the verdict, Carol Chessman was removed to San Quentin's death row, where he immediately started the appeal process.

David Knowles, meanwhile, was also found guilty of all but the rape charges and was spared the death penalty because

it doesn't allow that.

Two years later, in 1950, Knowles' convictions were reversed upon appeal due to the lack of evidence tying him to the crimes that he was tried for.

The lack of evidence?

Pretty wild.

I thought there was a mountain of evidence.

Definitely against Chessman.

I think Knowles was less, there was some room for...

Well, and I guess he was just along for the ride.

And then who knows who was holding the real guns and all that.

And how they were able to argue that in the appeal.

Now, by the time he had been sentenced to death, Carol Chessman had already made something of a name for himself in amateur writing.

He had published a few essays about his life in small magazines.

The strange and what some saw as inappropriate application of the death penalty in his case also served to build upon this public persona for him because he seized the opportunity and started writing his first memoir, Cell 2345, Death Row.

Beginning in the 1950s, the nation was starting to rethink its approach to criminal justice and called into question, among other things, the

like, you know, the moral, ethical, you know.

implications.

There it is.

I was trying to, I was like, what is the word I'm looking for?

Of the death penalty.

In that sense, Carroll's case came at a pretty politically politically useful time for him and his supporters and opponents of the death penalty in general.

It really all kind of like went together.

Uh, given the circumstances of the crimes and the ways in which those crimes had been punished historically, the application of the death penalty in this case, a lot of people thought was cruel and unusual punishment, which I can see that side.

Yeah, you know, I get it.

Um, in his writing, Carol took advantage.

of the moment, framing his life story as one that he had been let down by the authorities in his life and by a system that was supposedly put in place to help him reform his criminal ways.

But again, remember, he has on his first rodeo.

He was given many times to reform his criminal ways.

He was sent to places to reform

that.

And he

shit in their face, escaped, and then two weeks out of there was already starting his new thing.

So that's not valid.

So regardless of how you feel about the death penalty, it's like him saying like that is just bullshit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, quoting quoting a recently published article in Time magazine, Carol Chessman wrote, too many institutions, quote, had become infused with the rot-producing idea that the salvation of the individual and so of society depends upon conformity and adjustment.

He, on the other hand, said, thought that he was the real embodiment of the American spirit, a man who longed to be free and had simply been abandoned in the rush towards progress.

I think it's a little more nuanced than that.

You rape people.

Yeah.

You know, his arguments, however well written they were, which they were, were nothing more than an extension of the manipulations he'd been practicing against authority ever since he started.

Honestly, his

exhibiting antisocial traits when he was young.

Yeah.

But nevertheless, to many American readers, those arguments made sense.

And within a short time after his conviction, his death sentence became a popular cause among a lot of American elites who opposed the death penalty.

Really?

Yeah.

In the years after this, Chessman gained a massive audience and a diverse group of supporters who included famous authors like Norman Mailer, Ray Bradbury, and icons like former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Marlon Brando.

Hello?

Yeah.

His memoir was

a rapist.

That's the thing.

It's like, I get why you're saying like the death penalty might

is not like appropriate in this situation, but like to support like i don't know about that like do you think they supported

him or did they just support him getting off of death row i would assume they must just support him getting off of death row yes i i can

understand that yeah i don't know that i would go out of my way to support that yeah

i don't i don't know i think i would need to know a lot more yeah about because i get the like that the death penalty seems inappropriate in this situation like that i can get behind but

I just, I'm like,

I don't know.

It's a hard time.

I have a really tough, and I think we've talked about this so many times.

I have a very tough time with the death penalty because sometimes I find it applicable.

Yeah.

It's one of those things.

And that's just how I feel.

It's hard to, but at the same time, it's very difficult because we've seen cases where people are wrongfully convicted.

That's the thing.

And that's where it gets hairy.

That's why I like err on the side of I don't like the death penalty.

Yeah.

I live somewhere in the gray.

I can teeter over into the gray.

i'm never fully for it i'm i live in a gray if i live anywhere yeah i'm definitely not fully for it that's exactly how i feel that's the thing like nothing fix it and i think nothing fix nothing fix it nothing fixes it or like takes away what happened that's why it's like i just rely on like the victims families and what they to tell me what they think you know what i mean because i'm like i i can't imagine yeah being that that 17 year old's mother yeah because i think i would want that guy to die i think i would too but it's like but is that

is you know i mean like that's emotion and that's yeah that doesn't really like and then you have the apply on your heart well that's the thing

it's so difficult and applying emotion into the justice system is a slippery slope yeah it just doesn't work yeah so it's like i that's why i don't I can see it when a victim's family is like, I want this guy dead.

I can, I get it.

I can, I get it.

And then it's like, but then I, when I look at it as a third-party outsider, I'm like, I just don't think it fixes a lot.

Yeah.

And I think it creates more issues.

And I think it creates more like trauma for everybody involved.

And I don't know.

Yeah.

It's hard.

It's hard to sit down and really make a decision about how you feel about it.

And this is just us talking about it.

We're not like taking stances or trying to tell you what you should think.

No, if anything, neither of us.

Like that's the thing.

Like we're just talking through it.

This is just us like kind of like just talking through this as it comes through our mind.

Yeah.

And we've done this before.

So, like, this doesn't need to be taken very seriously.

It's like, you should think this.

Yeah.

Um, because I think you're free to think what you want.

I think everybody's opinion of it is valid because it's such a nuanced and complicated topic.

Topic.

And I think everybody's opinion on it is very valid.

And,

you know,

and so varied.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, we digress.

Yeah.

This is just one of those crazy things.

But

his memoir, which he published in 1954, it was published a great critical and commercial success and was adapted into a successful film the following year.

Yeah.

Despite all those personal successes, Carol Chessman's appeals to the higher courts all failed on their merits.

The basis for the appeals varied and ranged from claims of

forcible extraction of a confession to prejudicial errors on the part of the prosecutor and the courts, to a violation of his equal protection of rights.

Among his most frequent complaints was that several witnesses perjured themselves on the stands, and the court record was later amended to cover up those lies.

That's what he was claiming.

Okay.

With regard to that, the justices of the California Supreme Court wrote: At no time since the original reporter's transcript of the trial was prepared, has defendant made it appear that the transcript does not adequately and substantially reflect the nature of the people's people's case and of his defense.

Okay.

So they're basically being like, you're just saying that now.

You've never once brought this up before.

Yeah.

Like all his other unsupported claims, this was flatly rejected.

In the decade after this, he continued writing, publishing, and pleading his case to anyone who would listen.

He was often persuasive and won over a lot of important people, but none of it was enough to produce the desired outcome.

And by 1960, he'd exhausted all his opportunities to appeal.

On the morning of May 2nd, 1960, after 12 years of fighting, Carol Chessman was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin prison and was pronounced dead a little past 10 a.m.

One reporter wrote, just as the fatal fumes rose, the 38-year-old Chessman seemed to chuckle.

Oh.

Yeah, which is like chilling.

That is chilling.

In a pretty cruel twist of fate, to end this story, just after he was pronounced dead, the warden at San Quentin received word that the state Supreme Court had decided to impose a stay of execution for Chessman while they considered a habeas corpus argument.

It gets worse.

That morning, a secretary for the justices rushed to get in contact with someone in a position of authority at the prison, but she accidentally dialed the wrong number and was unable to reach anyone.

By the time she realized the mistake, Chessman had been executed.

Oh.

And this is why I can't get behind it.

They were about to give him a stay.

Oh.

To at least look into another argument.

Like, ooh.

It's just like, oh shit.

That's.

Yeah.

Wow.

And then after he was executed, he was cremated.

And his, he had requested that his ashes be sent to Forest Lawn Cemetery to be interred with his parents.

Yeah.

But the management at the cemetery refused to inter him because of the crimes he had committed.

So they were instead interned at Mount Tamalpis Cemetery.

I'm sorry if I said that wrong.

until 1974.

And then they were disinterred and scattered off the coast of California.

So an interesting end.

A very interesting end.

I did not see that coming.

Dialing the wrong number is clerical errors.

You are diabolical.

Diabolical.

Truly diabolical.

Like

that poor girl

probably thought about that every day for the rest of her life.

That's rough.

Which also sucks because he's a rapist at the end of the day.

Yeah.

But like, That's a huge mistake.

Yeah.

That's why it's so

like i just bounce yeah

back and forth between a gray and an against yeah it's tough i can't oh we could talk about it all day we could talk about it all day oh i yeah yeah yeah wow that's that's a lot to watch

it really is yeah in the grand scheme of things i really just feel so horrible for the two women that he assaulted and the men that got

and dealt with the trauma and had to deal with their you know their girlfriends at the time being kidnapped and assaulted those who did deal with it those who did deal with it exactly wow yeah

damn that that's a wild tale i really thought it was going to be a little more like bob-haired bandit-esque yeah you would think but it got dark pretty quick i mean that case did get dark too but this one is dark on a on a different level that ending to that story is yeah the ending threw me for a loop same i feel in a tizzy of it right now yeah threw me for a loop wow well thank you for that story.

Yeah.

And thanks to Dave for coming up with that one because that was a Dave, a Dave original.

A king, if you will.

A king, if you will.

And if we will.

And he will.

And we will.

We all will.

We all will.

And hopefully, something that you all do is we hope you keep listening.

Yeah, we hope you keep it.

We,

but not so weird that you dial the wrong number.

Ooh.

Yikes.

Also, not so weird that you rape people because that's bigger.

That's That's a bigger deal.

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