Selects: The Great Finger in the Wendy’s Chili Caper

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Hey, everybody.

Happy Saturday morning or whenever this finds you.

Chuck here introducing this week's Selects episode.

And we're going to replay the Great Finger in the Wendy's Chili Caper episode from January 10th, 2019.

There was a finger found in Wendy's Chili, and this is that story.

Enough said.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.

Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry and this is the Stuff You Should Know Chili Caper Edition.

Corporate Investigations.

Las Vegas, San Jose,

Chile.

Yeah, and that means we get to use our special investigator nicknames.

Seattle Clark, Portland, Bryant, and San Francisco, Jerry Rowland.

Oh, that's not bad.

I would have chosen Tawny Katayan for me.

Yeah, that was a very ham-fisted way to set up an in-show mention of our three shows next week.

Oh, oh, yeah.

That was actually lost on me, Chucky.

Next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

It's apparently lost on the Pacific Northwest because no one's coming.

Next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we will be in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco on January 15th, 16th, and 17th at the Moore Theater, Revolution Hall, and the Castro for Sketchfest.

And you have a End of the World Live Friday night in San Francisco.

And I have a Movie Crush Live on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco.

I also have a Brooklyn End of the World 1 2 on the 24th, just FYI.

Hey, let's not get carried away here.

Okay, all right.

But those are the shows we have coming up, everyone.

So come on out.

There's still great tickets left at all three of these venues

and all five probably.

I'm not sold out for Movie Crush.

No, I'm not either.

No.

So, and especially those end of the world and movie crush shows are your best chance to hang out and talk to us personally because they're more intimate venues.

Like, I wear a negligee.

Well, Busy Phillips is there, so I'm going to have on my dinner jacket.

Oh, very nice.

Trying to impress her with my tuxedo look,

which is not impressive.

Tuxedo and jeans.

It's a look.

So get all the information at sysklive.com or for the

sketchfest shows, just go to the SF Sketchfest site and come out and support us, everyone, and shake our hand, pat us on the back, or spit on our shoes.

Don't do that, don't do that.

Spit between our shoes, just make it close, you know.

Yeah, if you really hate us, spit between our shoes.

There you go.

Yeah, that's gonna end up on a t-shirt.

I have a feeling.

All right, let's talk about chili fingers.

All right, so

back in 2005, actually, let's get in the Wayback Machine and go watch this thing go down.

Wayback Machine, just for this short distance?

Yeah, I mean, it's not like you can walk to 2005.

This is actually kind of great, though, because when you're 48 almost,

to go back

13 years.

I want to go back up and look and do it all over.

So all of a sudden, I'm 35, which I thought was old.

Yeah.

But man, I'd love to be 35 right now.

I'm pretty happy with 42, I've got to say.

I'm not quite happy with the kind of catcher's mitt that my face is turning into but everything else i'm pretty glad about yeah just wait just wait okay just wait 58 happens oh no you're staring down the barrel of 50 and you're going geez i only got like 15 more good years left dude that is so not true don't you know 50 is the new 35

is it you know what's funny is all the people in this wendy's and san jose we just showed up at are looking at us like what are these guys talking about i know they're like get your super bar order underway yeah they're like why don't you guys just be quiet and listen to chumbawamba like everybody else is right now i don't think they had super bar in 2005 that was more like the 80s and 90s but still what was it super bar yeah don't you don't remember that no wendy's in the 80s oh yeah had the super bar which was this weird combination of tacos and pasta and salad and baked potatoes and baked potatoes all just like whatever you want i forgot all about that man what a good idea yeah the super bar was a weird weird thing, but I ate it.

So there is no super bar anymore, but there is, if you look over there, there's a woman named Anna or Anna Ayala.

And she is sitting with her in-laws, her mother-in-law, her father-in-law, her brother-in-law, maybe a couple other people.

And she is about to bite down into a bite of Wendy's chili that she has just ordered at the San Jose

Wendy's, downtown San Jose Wendy's, I believe, on March 22nd, 2005.

Yeah, she's in her

late 30s.

It's cold in San Jose.

She's from Las Vegas, so she's not used to this.

She's actually, so she's from San Jose originally, but she's moved to Vegas a couple of years ago for me.

Well, sure.

She has lived in Las Vegas lately and has been warming in the sun there.

Right.

And is like, I don't like this cold.

I'm going to order some chili because...

That Wendy's chili is so, so good.

It's meaty and warm, as Ed puts it.

That's right.

And so she sits down she's eating this thing and then all of a sudden look at her

she's just she's she's upset Josh she's gone berserk everybody at the table's got their hands up like whoa settle down and she's like just pointed at her chili her chili cup which she's reached the bottom of and she's saying that there's a finger in her chili Yeah, she just bit into a finger.

Yeah, she looks like she's about to puke.

I didn't see her vomit.

I didn't either.

But in court later, she would say she did.

So maybe we can be key witnesses.

Right.

She's going up to the counter, demanding, I think she just said to one of the cashiers, who did you kill to get this finger?

Which is a weird thing to say.

Yeah, she's yelling at everyone else in the restaurant with chili, saying, Don't eat that.

Yep.

There's fingers.

That's finger chili.

That's right.

Finger chili, no one wants.

Cha-cha-cha.

She's starting to try to start a chant, I believe.

And there's only one guy that's still eating, and he said, yeah, I ordered the finger chili.

Right.

He said, I think you got mine.

So she's freaking out.

Things are starting to go down.

There's a hubbub in the restaurant.

Everyone's got every, she has everyone's attention.

She's saying that she just found a finger in her chili.

The people at the counter are incredulous.

They're kind of poking at it a little bit.

They're saying, I think it's a vegetable or whatever.

Yeah, it looks like a carrot to me, lady.

Right, a very pale carrot with a fingernail on it.

And it's the fingernail really that does the trick.

After this point, it becomes clear to everyone in in the Wendy's that there is a finger that this woman just found in her chili.

There's a fingernail on it.

It's about an inch and a half of a finger from the tip to, well, about an inch and a half down.

And she just bit down on it and she found it in her chili.

So the Wendy's employees react swiftly.

They dump out all the chili.

They call the police.

The police come by and they say, well, this is a health department kind of thing, really.

And the police leave.

And the Wendy's employees call the owners of the franchise, J-E-M Management, and they say, don't do anything to that finger, put it in the freezer, and we'll be there in the morning.

And at this point, Ana Aleya leaves, or Ana Ayala, this is going to be very difficult because I want to say Aleya.

She leaves,

her family members are taking pictures of the location, and a huge national story has just begun.

By 10 o'clock that night, this happened about 7, by 10 o'clock on the local news, there's an unconfirmed report of a woman who found a finger in her chili at Wendy's.

And Dave Thomas gets indigestion immediately.

Well, he'd been dead a few years, so that'd be phenomenal.

Oh, I thought he was alive then.

He died in 2002.

Okay.

Well, he's rolling over in his grave.

But by this time, you know, he'd really kind of made Wendy's like a really loved and respected, you know, restaurant because everybody thought Dave Thomas was so great.

Well, yeah, and as are we out of the Wayback Machine, are we done play acting?

I was serious, but yes, we are.

Well, you were seriously play acting.

You were Lawrence Olivier, maybe.

I was delusional.

I thought we were in that way.

Okay.

So

almost immediately, word starts to spread on the news, obviously.

And as you might well imagine, the Wendy's restaurant chain, especially in the area, in the Bay Area and near San Jose,

it really starts to take a business hit,

as you would imagine.

People are not like, oh, they found a finger in some Wendy's chili.

That really reminds me how much I love Wendy's chili.

Let's go out and get a hot cup.

Right.

Because they are sort of famous for their chili.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, like, if you want chili at a fast food restaurant, you're going to Wendy's because you're not going to find it anywhere else.

They really planted their flag in the chili market.

Yeah, the old ANWs had pretty good chili.

Oh, yeah.

But you wanted that a dog.

Sure.

And of course, the Midwest, still very famous for their skyline chili,

which is delicious.

I guess that'd be fast food, huh?

Yeah, I think they actually have skyline chili restaurants.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is good.

It's quite good.

It is.

But if you're going to go just about anywhere in the U.S.

and you have a hankering for chili, you're going to go to Wendy's.

But like you said, sales started to plummet.

And not just like chili sales, all Wendy sales started to take a hit, especially in the Bay Area, like you said, especially in the western United States.

People were just kind of grossed out by this whole idea.

But like I said,

the cops had shown up and decided it was a health inspector's or a health department's jam.

They didn't really have anything to do with it.

So the next morning, the owners of the franchise, the county health inspector, they showed up.

I think they contacted Wendy's communications department, and the gears were starting to move.

There was something that they had to deal with, and that was basically threefold.

It was really twofold as far as Wendy's was concerned at first, but the third one crept in pretty quickly.

Whose finger was this?

Sure.

How did the finger get into the chili?

Yeah.

And then

after that, who was this woman who found the finger in her chili?

And so Wendy's really started to focus on the first two.

Because

one thing, this whole, the way that this whole thing played out, the cops were very hands-off at first.

They felt this was a health department issue, a public health issue, and not a police issue, and basically said, you need to go figure this out yourself, Wendy's.

And so Wendy's had to do a lot of extra legwork that they probably wouldn't have had to do had the cops decided immediately that it was a criminal issue.

But in the cops' defense, it didn't appear immediately to be a criminal issue.

It appeared to be like a woman found a finger in her chili at Wendy's, and that's gross.

So go figure it out, Wendy.

Yeah, I also bet there was like one guy who literally ate, went to that specific Wendy's to get chili the next day

and was like, dude, that's the last place you're going to find a finger in your chili now.

Right, yeah.

Like, there's no way it would happen again.

What are the chances?

Yeah, like flying on an airline right after they have a crash.

He's like, you go to Burger King, you're going to get a finger.

They're going to purposely give you a finger, man.

Don't be naive.

All right.

So did you introduce police chief Rob Davis yet?

Not yet.

All right.

So this is the guy, San Jose Police Chief, that would ultimately lead this investigation.

Later on, though, after Wendy's did a lot of the initial legwork for him.

Yes, he would lead the investigation.

And

he basically

was like, I got to find out who this lady is.

Because Wendy's, they're operating on the down low here.

And this is a sort of a, and apparently this case is taught in classes now about like how to handle a crisis as a corporation.

Yeah,

I've seen it criticized.

I've also seen it held up as an example of what to do, too.

Well, I mean, here's what Wendy's can and can't do.

What they can do is quietly throw a lot of money at this investigation on their own.

And then publicly, what they can't do is start to go after this lady and be too sort of

dismissive of this finger.

Like, there's no way, lady, this lady's nut.

She's whatever.

She's after money.

Like, you can't do that as a public-facing company.

You have to be doing all your due diligence sort of quietly.

And they really were.

They really were.

So, how about this, dude?

Let's take a break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about the investigation that Wendy started.

How about that?

All right.

You're thoughtful about where your money goes.

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The point is, you're engaged with your investments, and Public gets that.

That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously.

On Public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul.

Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there.

Plus an industry-leading 3.8% APY high-yield cash account.

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously.

Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

That's public.com.

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Brokerage services for U.S.-listed registered securities, options, and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc., member Finrun SIPC.

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All right, Chuck.

So, like you said, Wendy's can't just be like, that lady's a liar.

There's no way that's our finger.

They had to basically operate in the background.

They couldn't appear like they were obstructing the police investigation.

They couldn't appear like they were smearing Anna Ayala, especially because the early reports were very sympathetic to this woman, too.

Everybody was very grossed out by this.

Sure.

But at the same time, they had to deal with this issue, and they had to get to the bottom of whose finger this was and where the finger came from.

Yeah, and so.

The obvious first place to start is the restaurant itself.

The employees there,

the very obvious first place to start is to see if anyone was missing a finger.

Sure.

And that's what they did.

They said, show us your hands.

Yeah, everyone looked at everyone's fingers.

They were all there, and they went, all right, so far, so good.

They would eventually put everyone on staff through a polygraph test,

which they all passed.

They would obviously then they would go to up the supply chain to see if this thing might have, because, you know, these things happen.

Yeah, rarely they do, though.

Well, I found five other cases of fingers in fast food.

That were legitimate.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, wow.

So it happens up the supply chain.

You know, there can be an industrial accident that leaves a finger in a bag of lettuce greens or something.

And that might eventually find its way to a Wendy's superbar.

Oh, my God.

You know,

it doesn't happen much.

I wouldn't be too freaked out.

I'm still freaked out.

We'll go over those at the end.

But they're going up the supply chain.

They're really doing their due diligence.

They can't find, they offer a reward at first of 50 grand, later 100 grand.

Well, they set up, yeah, a hotline for tips.

But they're basically,

as time is going on, becoming more and more confident that they did not have a finger in that chili

by their own fault.

They traced the chili ingredients to seven different suppliers, and they got documentation from all seven suppliers that nobody at their companies had suffered any kind of finger injury at any recent time.

And also, like you said, no one at the store, no one at any of the nearby stores had suffered any finger injury, let alone an amputation.

And so Wendy's was like, this didn't come from us.

This didn't come from inside our store.

And they also, they kind of ran a simultaneous forensic investigation as well.

They hired a woman named Dr.

Lynn Bates, who's the CEO of a company called Alteca out of Manhattan, Kansas.

And if you are looking for

evidence or study of a body part that was found in food, you go to Dr.

Lynn S.

Bates and Alteca because

they engage in forensic food microscopy.

That's what they do.

That's their bread and butter

is studying body parts found in food.

And she'd been doing it since 1986.

So Wendy's went to her and said, here is a piece of this finger.

Was this finger cooked in this chili?

Whose finger is it?

She's like, I can't tell you whose finger it is, but I can tell you that there is no indication that this finger was cooked for three hours in chili at 170 degrees.

It just wasn't.

So that was a, that combined with the, the, Wendy's, no, Wendy's employer or suppliers' employers missing a finger, that told Wendy's everything they needed to know, that they were being defrauded.

Yeah, and you would think just grab a fingerprint police force.

And they weren't able to.

They weren't able to, they said if they found a hand that they might could literally look and compare fingerprints, but they didn't get a good enough print off it to

do a legitimate database search.

Right, right.

They just had to sit around and wait for that hand to show up.

Because that thing had been cooking in chili for three hours.

It had not been cooked in chili for three hours.

That's right.

At any rate,

so Wendy's knew what was going on.

Now they had to go to the cops and say we're being defrauded.

Not only did they have the search for the missing finger investigation internally, and they hired Lynn Bates to

do forensic work on the finger itself, they also hired a detective to start looking around at Anna Ayala.

And the detective turned up some very interesting stuff about her.

Yeah, he was like, wait a minute, this woman has filed at least 13 civil lawsuits, some against major corporations.

And he probably could have stopped there.

And Wendy's would have just been like, Dave Thomas from the grave would have said, See there?

She's no good.

That's a good Dave Thomas impressive.

So, though, I think he would have said, like, she should still get the benefit of the doubt.

Oh, I don't know, man.

When someone is this

has a pattern of litigious behaviors like this.

Well, maybe he finished with, prove me wrong.

One, there were a couple of notable ones

that it's sort of frustratingly hard to find information.

She claimed that she won a $30,000 settlement from El Pollio Loco from medical bills from her daughter getting sick from Salmonella.

El Pollio Loco has always been on record saying, never happened.

We did not give that lady a dime.

Right.

GM, she sued GM because the front wheel of her car came off and there was an accident.

And that suit was dismissed with prejudice when she fired her lawyer.

It was a no-show in court.

Oh, is that what that means?

No, no, no.

With prejudice means you can't bring it back.

Oh, okay.

So

she can't say, well, like, well, I didn't show up and my lawyer was bad.

So let's do this again.

Okay, I got you.

I got you.

So basically, it was dead in the water.

So

she sued a former employer for sexual harassment.

I'm not even going to comment on that one because I have no idea.

That could very well have been legitimate.

That one struck me as possibly legitimate, but she dropped it.

Right.

She lawyered up immediately with the chili finger, and everything made

Chief Rob Davis very suspicious.

And then this

guy that lived with her family named Ken Bono or Bono.

What would you say, Bono?

I've been saying Bono.

It hasn't even occurred to me it could be Bono.

Ken Bono.

Maybe he's related to Bono.

Ken Bono, because the cops are starting to ask questions at this point.

They do official investigations.

They search her house.

She claims that they held a gun to her head, ransacked her home, and like abused her daughter.

Which is quite a charge for a finger-chilly house investigation.

There's a picture of her and her daughter in the driveway talking to a reporter, and her daughter's got like her arm in a sling, but like the kind of sling you just go buy at the

drugstore.

Yeah.

So this was a guy who lived, Bono lived with their family.

And when he's being investigated by the cops,

he said that this finger came from our aunt, our deceased aunt.

It's her finger.

Which is a weird thing to say, especially because Anna Ayala said, all of my aunts are alive.

I don't know what this guy's talking about, even though he lives in my house.

Yeah, was he trying to get money?

I don't know.

For some part, I can't figure out.

I couldn't find much on that guy.

I don't know what the deal was.

I also just saw references to a rumor that the media had been reporting on that it was her dead aunt's finger.

So I didn't see how it came from him or what he was trying to do with that, but that's that was a thing.

But that was just kind of like a little side thread that I think also made the cops a little more suspicious, too.

Like, that's just a weird thing to say, even jokingly.

Yeah, but they did actually get, while it didn't lead to the, uh, whose finger it was, that tip line did yield some stuff at first, right?

So, yeah, so like you said, Wendy set up a tip line, a hotline hotline that you could call in.

And what they were looking for specifically, ostensibly, was whose finger it was.

That's what they wanted information, the owner of the finger.

But they were taking any and all tips that people called in.

And they started offering 50 grand, like you said.

They later uped to 100 grand.

And it started to yield some tips, like pretty, pretty much off the bat.

I think the San Jose Police, and Wendy's is funneling this information to the cops as it comes in, like as good tips come in.

But two very early on came in from what the San Jose police said, there were two different people who supposedly did not know each other who told very similar stories about how Ana Ayala had told them that she was fleecing Wendy's, that all of this was just a fraud for money to extort money from Wendy's in a lawsuit.

So that

That combined with all the evidence that Wendy's had gathered that it the finger had not come from inside their store,

All of Ana Ayala's background,

all of that put together really turned the tide, not just on a police investigation, but also on the media against Ana Ayala.

And she had started this,

she had created a huge media circus around this issue.

Like she went on Good Morning America.

And I could not find it.

I think Good Morning America just took the video down.

Probably just burned it.

Because she just went on and lied, lied,

lied through her teeth about what had happened and just pointed at Wendy's and said, like, these guys screwed up and this is the most disgusting thing that could happen to somebody.

And I'm torn up inside about it.

And they should pay on national news about a week after the incident.

Yeah, so.

Like you said, this is all playing out pretty quickly.

It's all over the news.

It's all over late night talk show comedy.

Just bad joke after bad joke coming out of Jay Leno's mouth.

I won't even repeat the one that Ed included.

I like the Letterman one.

Did you see Letterman's?

What was his?

He said that she'd been spotted going back at Wendy's and ordering chili again because she was going back to collect all five.

See, that's good.

Yeah, you got to give it up for Letterman.

What was Leno's something about him?

They don't, the chili now comes with fingernail clippers beside the fingernail clippers.

And that really just

encapsulates the difference between those two men.

It does.

Although they have their joke writers, but still.

The love of cars, I think, is also a big differentiator.

I don't think Letterman really cares about cars.

Shout out to Brian Kiley and Rob Kuttner.

Shout out to the mid-90s Letterman book of top 10 lists that helped shape me as a human being.

Brian and Rob are Conan O'Brien's monologue joke writers and have been for many, many years.

Did I tell you you me and I went to see Conan O'Brien live with Ron Funches and a couple of other people?

Yeah, we did see some standards.

Oh, it was so good.

And we actually turned out

we were sitting next to a member of the SYSK Army throughout the show.

Oh, no way.

Yeah.

He was like, are you Josh and Yumi?

We were like, yeah, he was a good guy.

Good kid.

Yumi was like, I'm Yumi, but that's not Josh.

Right.

He's like, well, that's weird.

I'm suspicious now.

All right.

Where were we?

All right.

It's all over the news.

This is all playing out very fast, but the dragnet is sort of closing in

thanks to Wendy's investigations, thanks to the cops getting involved.

And Miss Ayala is starting to feel the heat.

And like anyone who, and I think the cat's out of the bag now, right?

I think it was.

She put the finger in the chili.

Yeah.

Anytime someone does something like that, it seems like two things happen.

They brag to their friends because they're dummies to begin with.

And then that net starts to close and it all starts to fall apart.

Right.

So her response, and this is a pretty human response.

She basically said, once the media spotlight went from sympathetic to her to, wait a minute, who are you again?

And how do you explain this thing and that thing and all this?

She was like, Never mind.

Yeah.

That's basically what she said.

She said, you know, I can't handle this media spotlight or anything anymore.

So I'm just going to drop my lawsuit against Wendy's.

We'll just forget all about this.

Yeah.

And Wendy said, no, we're not going to just forget all about this.

No.

Of course not.

Let's take a break, shall we?

Yeah.

We're going to take a break.

You're thoughtful about where your money goes.

You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side.

The point is, you're engaged with your investments, and public gets that.

That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously.

On Public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul.

Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there.

Plus an industry-leading 3.8% APY high-yield cash account.

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously.

Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

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So I can't, surely when Ana Ayala was like,

okay, I'm just going to drop the lawsuit and this will go away, there had to only have been maybe one and a quarter percent of her brain that thought that that was actually going to work, that it was actually going to go away.

She seems like street-wise and savvy enough to me that

she knew it probably wasn't just going to go away, that that was nothing but hope, right?

I guess.

I'm curious about that.

Yeah, I don't know, man.

But like the more that they poke into her private life, then you learn that she and her husband, James Placentia,

had,

there was a, and this one's hard to get information on, too.

From what I can tell is they sold a trailer,

a trailer park trailer that did not belong to them.

Yes, for $11,000.

She did specifically.

I don't know that he was involved.

He may have even owned the trailer, but regardless, she did not own the trailer, sold it to a woman for $11,000.

And later on, the woman and her children were evicted from the trailer that they thought they owned, that they didn't own.

Yes.

They also learned that her husband, I guess from her previous marriage, owed a lot of money and child support.

And so things are starting to fall into place to where they're like, this lady is always making up stories and suing companies.

She's always looking for that get-rich angle.

Her husband owes a ton of money.

400K.

And so this is all sorting,

they're starting to

finger her, if you will, for this crime.

It's the worst pun ever.

I thought we were going to make it through this, but no.

I've even been saying tip line about fingers.

I'm just ignoring it.

I know you did.

But okay, all right, it's done.

It's out there.

So they finally,

like you said, even though she was like, oh, let's just forget about it.

They're like, no, no, no, we can't do that.

And then there enters a lady that just kind of, and it didn't end up having the hugest impact on the case itself, but it is worth mentioning this woman named Sandy Allman.

This is a little strange.

So this is a woman who owned

exotic cats.

Big cats.

Leopards.

Jaguars,

tigers, I think.

Is that how we're saying jaguars now?

Jaguar?

Yeah.

Wow.

That's how the Brit says it on the commercial.

Is it a year-end sales event up in here?

Yeah, the Jaguar X-12.

So this lady owns these big cats.

This is not too far from Vegas, where she lives in Pahrump, Nevada, I guess.

Or is it California on the California side, you know?

I think it's Nevada.

Okay.

I don't know, actually, now that you mention it.

And she eventually, I guess, has to get rid of these cats and calls in a rescue group that does things like this.

They're like, we're a wild animal orphanage and you're a dum-dum who bought all these animals you shouldn't have had.

So now we will deal with it.

And during this transfer of animals, she's attacked by a spotted leopard and it bites off her finger.

Yes.

And she says, she comes forward and says, I think that is my finger.

No, no, I think actually a person who was at the wildlife rescue at the time was the one who called the tip line with that one.

Oh, I thought because she wanted to take a DNA test and everything.

Oh, I didn't see that.

Okay, all right.

Cool.

So she's the one who called and said that's my finger?

Well, she wanted, I don't know if she literally picked up the phone and called,

but she got involved such that she wanted to take a DNA test to find out if that was her finger.

Gotcha.

Okay, cool, cool.

Well, yeah, because she had said that the last time she'd seen it, it was on ice in the emergency room.

So I guess she wasn't the sentimental type who's like, I want my finger back.

Would you?

Oh, yeah.

Float it in some formaldehyde?

Yumi would probably have that thing gilded and wear it around her neck.

Oh.

Yeah.

I'd be like, that's my finger on Yumi's neck.

Check it out.

But so the whole thing was just a red herring, though, a blind alley, right?

Like it went nowhere.

No, it was not her finger.

No.

There were some other tips that came in about the finger.

The Mexican authorities, I guess, just over the border, got involved because it was rumored that an incident with a ranch hand losing a finger in Mexico had been the source of the finger.

Even as Ana Ayala, who, by the way, that whole tip about the trailer sale, the trailer scam, that came in from Wendy's hotline as well.

Oh, really?

By this time, I believe it was day

22.

No, I'm sorry, it was day

30, 32, I believe, about a month after the incident originally happened, Ana Ayala and Jamie

Placencia, her husband, were both arrested in Las Vegas.

Him for the child support payments, failure to pay child support, her for that trailer scam.

And so while they're on ice in Las Vegas, Wendy's is still conducting this investigation.

San Jose are still conducting this investigation.

And they've got them.

They have them on this other stuff.

But I guess they just kind of kept him from running.

And that's why they arrested him,

knowing that they were eventually going to build the case.

I'm not sure, but that's exactly what happened.

Because I think about 52 days after she walked into that Wendy's and put the finger in the chili and took that bite,

they charged them for grand theft for basically defrauding Wendy's.

Yeah, and at this point, as far as the police were concerned, they were like, We don't even need to know whose finger this is at this point.

Right.

Like, that's really immaterial.

But Wendy's, they still have a public relations crisis going on.

And they're like, we really would like to find out where this finger came from.

Just so like as many facts out there as possible will really help us restore our good name.

Right.

If we can actually pinpoint whose finger this is and exactly how this happened and let everybody know what went on.

Yeah.

So they actually, that's when they upped the

reward from 50,000 to 100,000, right?

That's right.

And that's when they hit the jackpot, which is, ironically, they got two callers

on the $100,000 line.

Go ahead, caller.

You're on the $100,000

chili finger line.

And then for the next 30 seconds, like, hello, am I, am I on?

Can you hear me?

Yes, you're on.

You're on.

Go ahead, call her.

Go ahead, call her.

Am I live right now?

So

they call the two people called.

One to this day, as far as I can tell, has remained anonymous.

The other one was a guy named Mike Casey.

And Mike Casey owned a company called Lamb Asphalt out of Las Vegas, Nevada.

And he happened to be the employer of Jamie Placencia.

That's right.

And he said, it's weird because you arrested one of my employees, one of my longtime employees,

for the scam.

And I also have another employee named Brian Rossiter who lost a finger not too long ago.

And I think they might be connected.

I think that might be Brian Rossiter's finger.

Yeah.

And that's how the whole thing finally came crashing down because they got a hold of Brian Rossiter.

They gave him a DNA test.

They matched it to the DNA taken from the finger, and they said it's Brian Rossiter's finger.

Brian Rossiter worked with Jamie Plasencia.

Jamie Plasencia was married to Ana Ayala.

Ana Ayala found a finger in her chili.

Ipso facto, something's rotten in Denmark, and that's how it stands.

Yeah, and it's even a little weirder when you find out the details.

So Brian is at work.

Someone slams the tailgate of the truck truck on his hand.

Mm-hmm cuts an inch and a half off of his finger.

Can you imagine?

No, dude.

No.

Cuts off his finger.

And it's funny too, because Ed points out, instead of like driving to the hospital,

which is what any normal person would have done, he had owed Placentia some money.

Placentia, and this is a man, a husband of a woman, and it seems like they're both always looking to scam somebody.

They're looking for the angle.

He sees this finger and he goes, hey, you owe me money.

Some people say it was 50 bucks.

We don't know for sure.

I saw 100 almost everywhere.

Okay, so let's say it's 100.

Okay.

He's like, you give me that finger and we'll just call it square.

And not only that, my friend, but if you ever hear about this finger in the news,

keep it quiet.

And I will give you a quarter of a million dollars at some point in the future.

Yep.

That's what they call the carrot and the other carrot.

Yeah.

So he said, just drip some blood on this roof shingle, and that will be our contract.

Right.

Right, right.

Just sign X with your stub, your bloody stub.

This old used roof shingle.

I saw, actually, I saw that he did go to the hospital and came back to the work site with his amputated finger.

And that's what Jamie Placenci was like, hey, hey, I'm sure he did.

What are you going to do with that?

Any sense at all?

Yeah.

That he would just be like, wait a minute.

So they, so, so Brian Rossiter gives him his finger, and that's where the whole thing began, just a couple months before, right?

Yeah, and I think didn't Rossiter himself also call the tip line?

I didn't see that anywhere.

Okay, I heard he called the tip line

himself because he knew at this point he was getting no money out of the scam.

So he thought, let me try and get this hundred grand at least.

Right.

And Wendy's never would cop to whether or not he got any tip line money.

Right.

And so Mike Casey, the guy who, from all, from everything that it seems he was innocent of this, he just happened to put two and two together because he knew the guys.

He said originally, hey, you know, my asphalt company maintains the lots of a few Wendy's around here, and they've always been good to me, so I wanted to help out.

That was an article in May.

An article in September is Mike Casey saying, you know, Wendy's never paid me that money for the hotline.

So I don't know if he ever got it, but from what I saw, he was going to have to split it with the one other anonymous caller.

I don't know if that was Brian Rossiter or not.

Maybe Brian Rossiter was scared that Jamie Placencia might do something if he found out that he had been, he had tipped him off or what.

But supposedly, Mike Casey and this anonymous caller were going to split that hundred grand.

So whether Wendy's actually pay that money or not, that remains to be seen.

I don't know.

I didn't see that anywhere.

Well, in the end,

Ayala and her husband, she got sentenced to nine years.

He got sentenced to 12 because I think they piled on him for the

probably child support, right?

Or was it the trailer scam?

Yeah, he, no, he got three and a third years for the

child support thing.

Oh, okay.

I don't know how long he actually served.

I think she only served about four of that nine.

She later revealed some more details, including that she did cook the finger.

Yeah.

So

apparently was not a,

it wasn't a raw finger,

nor, though, was it cooked in 170-degree chili for three hours.

Right.

But it was cooked a little bit.

I think she just literally probably put it in a pan and was thinking, like, oh, wait a minute.

I bet they didn't think I would think of this.

Right.

And cooked up the finger a little bit.

One thing that she didn't think of, though, Chuck, was

she didn't bite the finger.

And they found out pretty quickly through forensic investigation that there was no bite in the finger.

Nor did she throw up in the restaurant like she said she did, because there were people in the restaurant that were like, no,

she didn't vomit that I saw.

And employees were like, no, she didn't throw up that I saw.

Her father-in-law and mother-in-law both said that they saw her throw up, but yeah, there was no evidence of vomit anywhere in the bathroom or around her table or anything.

Yeah, and they did a pretty bad job.

Yeah, they did.

I was going to use a nasty word to characterize it, but it's a family show.

Well, these are the worst kind of of people, man.

These litigious, like,

just like work for your money, man.

Going around suing corporations.

I know.

So, mad.

Wendy supposedly lost $2.5 million in verifiable lost money.

They had to cut people's hours.

This is another thing that kind of gets left off a lot.

They had to cut the hours of the employees in the Bay Area, in particular, because there was such little foot traffic coming through their stores.

So when they were convicted and sentenced, Jamie Plasencia and Ana Ayala were sentenced to pay back $170,000 plus dollars in lost wages to the Wendy's employees.

Oh, and they were also ordered to pay

$500,000 to JEM management who owned the Wendy's, and then like another

substantial amount to Wendy's if if they ever profited from the crime.

Man.

Bad people.

She was banned from Wendy's, which I don't know how you enforce that.

Yeah, I was wondering that myself, actually.

It seems like I don't know if there's every Wendy's has a picture of her or something like that.

I know at sports stadiums they do that when people are banned, and that is a little more enforceable because, like, you can literally just have everyone be aware of that person that's like checking tickets and things, but you can't.

How can you keep someone from coming into any Wendy's anywhere?

I don't know.

They can try at least.

They can send a message by saying

you can't come here any longer.

Arby's two fingers, 2004, 2012.

No.

Cole's Frozen Custard in Wilmington, North Carolina, finger, 2005.

Oh, man.

TGI Friday's hamburger had a finger in 2006.

Wow.

And those are all verified and they found, you know, like

it was in the supply chain.

Like someone lost a finger and it got mixed in.

It's very, just very unfortunate.

I'm sure there were quiet settlements on those.

I'm sure, too.

That's bizarre.

I had no idea that that happened.

I thought it was almost always either a case of mistaken identity or a hoax.

I didn't realize that actually really happened, you know?

Oh, yeah.

Well, that's the Wendy's Chili Finger caper.

If you ever wanted to know about it, now you do.

And we're glad that you do.

We're glad we were the ones that told you.

And if you want to know more about it, go read contemporary articles at the time.

It's awesome just to see something like that unfold.

It's so cool.

And since I said that, it's it's time for listener mail.

And hey, shout out to Wendy's.

I'm sure, I don't know if they like people still talking about this or not, but they did not put a finger in anyone's chili.

Yeah, good point.

I want to make that clear.

Good point.

All right, I'm going to call this Adidas Puma.

Hey, guys, just finished listening to the feud between Adi and Rudy Dassler.

I wanted to say I really enjoyed it.

My dad is actually from

Herzog-Ginnerach.

We were an Adidas family through and through, and my godmother,

Aunt Helga, worked for Adidas as an administrative assistant for years.

In addition to this, I almost jumped out of my seat when you mentioned the mayor of Herzog.

You spoke of Dr.

German Hawker and how he refed a soccer match wearing one Adidas shoe and one Puma.

My uncle Hans was the mayor right before Hawker was.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, I knew you wouldn't be referring to him because he wouldn't have been caught dead in even one puma

because of my aunt's work at the opposing shop.

I didn't wear Puma gear myself until I was grown and could buy it myself, and my entire German family called me a traitor.

And this was in the early 2000s, so the tension is still real.

I'm sure it was lighthearted, at least I hope I was.

Okay.

In any case, I just want to let you know your research was spot on.

Really love hearing about something I knew a little bit about.

By the way, I also use your show in my classroom teaching 12th-grade government and civics, and the kids love it.

Nice.

So, shout out to Jennifer Wesner Gajo

at Thompson Stations, Tennessee and your senior government class.

Well, thank you, Ms.

Gajou and class.

That's probably not pronounced right.

Gaujo.

I have no idea.

Gaucho Genev?

Yeah.

Gancho Genev.

That's what it is.

If you want to get in touch with us to say hi about an old episode or for whatever reason, you can go on to stuffyushouldn't know.com, check out our social media links, and

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