6: Kryptonite

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Speaker 3 Novel.

Speaker 10 In the aftermath of Phoenix's arrest, there was a lot of local news coverage of the pepper spray incident.

Speaker 13 The same real-life superheroes

Speaker 10 People in Seattle started to question Phoenix's methods.

Speaker 10 Was he really out there fighting crime? Or was he just wandering around at 2 a.m. with a can of pepper spray looking to break up bar fights?

Speaker 10 Among the many Seattleites watching Phoenix's troubles unfold, was a mysterious figure lurking in the shadows.

Speaker 10 Eventually, he would emerge from the darkness. But for now, he was watching the coverage from his secret lair.

Speaker 14 You gotta have a villain. Can't be a hero without a villain.

Speaker 10 The Rain City superheroes had their detractors, but a single voice rose above the rest. A new enemy was about to surface.

Speaker 10 Hello and welcome.

Speaker 10 Rex Velvet, Seattle's greatest real-life supervillain, was born. Though he looked more like a character you might find on a bottle of mustache wax than a supervillain.

Speaker 10 He wore dapper outfits like velvet waistcoats and shiny suits, sometimes with a bow tie. He had an eye patch, a cartoonish mustache, and a flair for the dramatic.

Speaker 3 My dear city.

Speaker 3 I can recall a time when I could leave this lair and conduct my duties proudly and without distraction.

Speaker 3 But now he's out there,

Speaker 3 along with his silly gang of misfit power rangers disturbing the peace.

Speaker 10 He called himself the people's villain, and he vowed not to rest until he destroyed the famous Phoenix Jones.

Speaker 15 It's time to get real, Jones. The community would be better off without you.
You're doing more harm than good, and I'm willing to bet that a sensible, sane majority would agree with me.

Speaker 15 You're a nuisance, a problem child, a snitch, a fake.

Speaker 15 You must be stopped once and for all.

Speaker 15 Bollocks.

Speaker 10 Rex Velvet burst onto the scene in 2012. He made his entrance into the world in slick, high-production videos that he shot and released online.

Speaker 10 If this grand battle was to be judged on the quality of the videos they posted, Rex would have been the clear winner.

Speaker 10 His videos, mocking Phoenix and his team, started attracting hundreds of thousands of views. These days, like Phoenix, Rex Velvet doesn't have a secret identity.

Speaker 10 He posts his videos under his real name, Ryan Corey.

Speaker 14 He's the social villain. He's the culmination of all those old comic book villains that are part campy, part comically cowardly.

Speaker 14 You know, if Batman and Robin were to show up, the Riddler would just laugh and run away.

Speaker 10 In his civilian life, life, Rex is a video producer.

Speaker 10 He'd been watching the Rain City superhero's growing popularity and increasingly frequent TV appearances, but he was skeptical about them, especially after Phoenix's pepper spraying controversy.

Speaker 10 He had the idea of coming up with a character to call out what he saw as hypocrisy and to hold Phoenix to account.

Speaker 14 To make people think about, okay, well, is this really serving the community or is this serving an individual?

Speaker 10 Unlike Phoenix, Rex saw his supervillain identity as a make-believe character.

Speaker 14 It was kind of like playing WWF bad guy wrestler. This is the soap opera.

Speaker 10 Whereas Phoenix has told me many times, he's not playing a game. And that's not the only thing that Rex and Phoenix don't see eye to eye on.
Rex said he tried to reach out to Phoenix several times.

Speaker 10 When a friend of his approached Phoenix in the gym on his behalf, Phoenix seemed annoyed and flat out refused to speak to Rex.

Speaker 14 I thought back then, oh, maybe we can do some fundraising work. Maybe we can work with some non-profits.

Speaker 10 Rex told me he'd done some work as a super villain for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Speaker 14 When you're being involved at levels like that, you think, huh, why wouldn't this guy want to also be involved in charity work?

Speaker 10 Rex wasn't convinced by Phoenix's approach.

Speaker 14 I believe you want to lead a good life. And you see this as your maybe method for helping.

Speaker 14 I just wonder about the tact in which he's executing the vision. And is it effective? Is it getting the results you want? And is it serving the community or is it playing dress-up?

Speaker 10 I can see why Rex would have rubbed Phoenix the wrong way with his over-the-top comedy villain persona. As you know by now, Phoenix doesn't think there's anything funny about crime fighting.

Speaker 10 I also wonder if maybe it was an ego thing as well, that Phoenix didn't want to share the spotlight.

Speaker 10 But when I asked Phoenix about it, he said he had other reasons for his hatred of Rex.

Speaker 10 His whole thing was like, oh, I thought it would be fun to like play up our rivalry and use it as a way to raise money for charity, basically.

Speaker 8 That's not what he wanted to do. He wanted to sell vodka.
He called me trying to get me to get on t-shirts to sell vodka and make money.

Speaker 8 And he was talking about chopping the profits and going on a fucking tour. What a fucking liar.

Speaker 8 You wanted to sell t-shirts, go on a fake crime fighting tour, and fight each other in the city with fake fights. and sell tickets and t-shirts.
That's what that dude wanted to do. That dude's a liar.

Speaker 10 After hearing Phoenix talk openly about lying to the media to promote his own cause, it was curious to hear him get so fired up about truth telling.

Speaker 10 To strike back at Rex, Phoenix says he concocted a dastardly plan of his own.

Speaker 8 I copyrighted the name Rex Velvet and took the copyright legal ownership of it and then told him to cease and desist.

Speaker 3 Really?

Speaker 8 Yeah, fuck him.

Speaker 10 Rex never mentioned this or the alleged vodka deals when we spoke. But when we put it to him afterwards, he replied, I'll say this, none of that information is true.

Speaker 10 This is the first time I've ever heard of it.

Speaker 10 Rex also said he never met Phoenix and that all his attempts to reach out to him so they could, quote, meet as men and discuss potential superhero collaborations had been unsuccessful.

Speaker 10 Just FYI, if you search the U.S.

Speaker 10 Copyright Office database, the only copyright filings for Rex Velvet are three videos and a logo, all registered to Ryan Corey, not Phoenix Jones or his alter ego, Ben Fodor.

Speaker 10 If you believe Phoenix's side of the story, Rex Velvet is an opportunist who tried to make a buck or maybe just promote his work as a video producer.

Speaker 10 According to Rex, Phoenix is stuck up and delusional, taking himself way too seriously. But as Phoenix himself told me, history is written by the winners.

Speaker 10 And either way, it wasn't long before Rex Velvet was sucked into the world of Phoenix Jones and his team.

Speaker 10 People started coming to Rex with allegations about Phoenix as if he were a real villain in search of dirt on Seattle's own hero.

Speaker 14 The magnet of Rex Velvet was drawing people in that really wanted to destroy. And you get threats aimed not at you, but at the hero.
People would play informant on the internet.

Speaker 14 I don't think he understands how far I've gone to make sure that people aren't attacking the guy. I don't want to see this guy hurt.
I don't want to see the city attacked.

Speaker 8 And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 14 Not signing up for that. No, thank you.

Speaker 4 I'm going to put a pause on this.

Speaker 10 They weren't all just random internet trolls either. Some of the people coming with stories about Phoenix and about Ben Fodor seemed like they were close to him.

Speaker 4 I'm like, wow, like, you call yourself Ben's friend?

Speaker 14 Like, you're kind of talking smack about your boy here behind his back. It's funny.
It's as if everyone that joined his cause doesn't like him.

Speaker 14 And the only person left who really is more than ever interested in liking him

Speaker 4 is me.

Speaker 14 And the most sinister thing that Rex could say is, well, well, well, no more friends.

Speaker 18 Guess you're stuck with me.

Speaker 10 In Seattle in 2012, the line between heroes and villains looked thinner than ever. Fresh from the trauma of the Nicole Westbrook shooting, Phoenix was going rogue out on patrols.

Speaker 10 Meanwhile, his fellow superheroes were dishing dirt to his arch enemy. And soon, the world of the Rain City superheroes would descend into costumed chaos.

Speaker 10 I'm David Weinberg, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, this is the Superhero Complex, episode 6, Kryptonite.

Speaker 10 By early 2012, Phoenix was struggling. He'd clashed with the authorities over the pepper spray arrest.
He'd lost the job he loved working with autistic kids.

Speaker 10 And he was also having to spend a lot of his time trying to prove to the state that he wasn't insane.

Speaker 3 A lot of his personal life would often be in shambles. His words, actually.

Speaker 10 That's Ivakatis, Phoenix's former right-hand man and unofficial chauffeur. He says that it was obvious that Phoenix was having money problems.

Speaker 3 I knew things weren't going well because he'd always be sniffing around for money. Or

Speaker 3 one time he came up with this idea, this was one of the many nights I was giving him a ride there's a long avenue full of bars and clubs way north of Seattle up in the U district he pitched this idea to me all right evil what do you think of this so all these bars all these clubs what if I talk to the owners and say

Speaker 3 we can watch and pay special attention to your club stand out front of your club you know write up a contract it'll be all very formal you know if you give us you know

Speaker 3 say a hundred dollars a week week or something, or, you know, we'll write it to the team. You know, I'll manage the funds, of course.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, dude, this is the mafia. This is what a mafia does.
You're offering air quotes protection from businesses who pay you. What? Are you hearing yourself?

Speaker 3 This is the worst idea in the long sad history of bad ideas. You can't be serious.
Like, oh, yeah, that's, that's true. I guess I didn't think about that.

Speaker 3 But he would end up actually doing exactly this. I think maybe two out of over a dozen businesses, you know, gave, I think one gave him like 40 bucks and

Speaker 3 he did with one of them and you know, he would like get a bunch of selfies and like he would kind of be like almost like an Instagram influencer about it.

Speaker 3 Like, hey, come on down to whatever the name of the bar was. And money was a big thing for him.
And that would also affect his mood pretty significantly.

Speaker 10 Evo had a theory about what was driving Phoenix's fixation on money.

Speaker 3 He sent me text messages or he would show me me pictures of, hey, what I was at last night. It would be a picture of him, both arms holding kind of like a hug pose of a giant stack of poker chips.

Speaker 3 And like, you could tell, no, this was legit at a casino. And it's like, oh man, I should quit my job and just do this full time.
And

Speaker 3 be living a high life in the very next patrol. Hey, everybody, I know it's only the 10th of the month, but if everyone can have their dues for next month paid, that would be great.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 I mean, shit like that would happen all the time.

Speaker 3 So in my particular case, you just flat out admit that, you know, I love gambling and he is incredibly smart and, you know, probably borders on like hard-reading levels of genius there.

Speaker 3 But gambling is gambling too, and that comes with its own dangers.

Speaker 10 Other members of the Rain City superheroes told me similar stories. Here's Midnight Jack.

Speaker 19 I think that he was really trying to be a good dude in the beginning. He was focusing all his energy into this superhero stuff.
And

Speaker 19 over time, he's kind of got beaten down, started gambling. I mean, the man's just not in a good place.

Speaker 10 I asked Phoenix about all of this, and he flatly denied it.

Speaker 10 You also said that you had a gambling problem. Is that true?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 8 That's weird. Like, what kind of gambling problem?

Speaker 10 Just that you were really into gambling and that he worried that some of the money that had been going to stuff got gambled away and that you would send him photos of you at like a poker table oh and acts like that

Speaker 8 that's all true absolutely okay now I know what he's talking about absolutely yeah so I played a shit ton of poker but it would have been hard to have a gambling problem doing that Phoenix told me he played tournament poker where you just pay a flat fee of $50 to buy into the competition so I'd play a tournament every Friday and I'd send my friends pictures of me with like 30,000 in chips so they're seeing these poker tip things and they're thinking I'm making mad cash but that's not how it works do you play poker at all not really i've been i went through a poker phase when it was was popular.

Speaker 8 So you understand when you buy into a tournament, the chips in front of you are not representative of money.

Speaker 10 This seems like a reasonable explanation to me. And for what it's worth, I believe Phoenix.
But I do think it seems credible that he might have had some financial difficulties after his arrest.

Speaker 10 And as for charging nightclubs money to protect them, Phoenix says that is 100% accurate. Sort of.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I definitely suggested that, but not in the mob shakedown way.

Speaker 10 No, I just feel like he was saying like it's a murky line to to be like, some of you get extra protection, and some of you, we're going to let crime.

Speaker 8 No, I don't think it's an extra line. Like, for example, we had 16 shootings take place outside of one nightclub.
And they're like, we love when you're out here. Fuck you, bro.

Speaker 8 If you want me to come and stand out in front of your club, you're going to give me some money for that. Like, that's stupid.
We're supposed to be helping random real crime.

Speaker 8 This is crime that takes place because of your establishment.

Speaker 8 So if you want me to stand outside of your establishment so you can use Phoenix Jones to pimp that everybody's okay, you're going to at least pay me money for that.

Speaker 8 I don't even consider that a bad thing. Yeah.

Speaker 8 But I definitely said it. And I shared it with the team because you're supposed to.

Speaker 8 And then the money never happened, so we didn't do it.

Speaker 8 We just did regular ass patrols.

Speaker 10 I could go on and on, letting Phoenix respond to the many wrongs that his former teammates accused him of. And in fact, I spent a lot of my time with Phoenix doing just that.

Speaker 10 There were moments when Phoenix did admit to some of those wrongs.

Speaker 10 Other times, like with the quote-unquote protection money, it just seemed to be a difference of opinion on the morality of what happened.

Speaker 10 But at the end of the day, Phoenix says that all of these disputes with his former crime fighting friends are issues of the past and rehashing them is a waste of time.

Speaker 8 These guys are so petty and stupid. There was just so many more important things.

Speaker 8 I mean, even if everything they assumed was right and everything they told you was right, let's say I had a crazy gambling problem. Let's just say these things, right?

Speaker 8 None of them change any of the patrolling or effect we did. Zero.
So why are you still talking about that?

Speaker 10 I do think that Phoenix is wrong on this point.

Speaker 10 Phoenix's teammates all felt that his erratic behavior and failure to communicate did in fact have an impact on their ability to fight crime. Which makes total sense.

Speaker 10 Phoenix was always the leader of the Rain City superheroes, and a group is only as effective as its leadership.

Speaker 10 And if Phoenix is going to take credit for all his team's success, shouldn't he also take responsibility for some of their failures?

Speaker 10 But then, to do that would mean that Phoenix would have to admit that he is not perfect at crime fighting.

Speaker 3 And he won't.

Speaker 10 Over time, the tension between Phoenix and his teammates built up until finally, one day, it all came to a head on a disastrous patrol that would tear the team apart.

Speaker 10 That's coming up.

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Speaker 10 In late April of 2012, the Rain City superheroes were preparing for their biggest patrol of the year. But according to Evakatis, Phoenix had become an absent leader.

Speaker 3 We'd patrol anywhere from three to five nights a week, and we would get wildly different results, kind of based on the day he's had, or you know, if he was hurting for money, or if he was having relationship problems, or something.

Speaker 3 There'd always be kind of something going on, and we never quite knew what we would get.

Speaker 3 Anytime he didn't want to be answered to anyone or didn't want to be accountable for anything, he would just shut off.

Speaker 3 He would get real angry and real pouty, call everyone traitors, and would disappear.

Speaker 10 Everything came to a head on May Day, 2012.

Speaker 10 May Day has always been a big day in Seattle. Thousands of people take to the streets to march for labor rights.
There are protests all over the city.

Speaker 10 I asked Phoenix if he thought that day was a turning point for the team.

Speaker 8 You mean clowns got caught as clowns and then eventually you have to ask yourself why you didn't show up? I don't think that's a turning point. I think you were bitches before and that showed it.

Speaker 10 Phoenix and the Rain City superheroes often showed up on May Day to keep watch over the crowds and to help keep the peace if things went awry,

Speaker 10 which is exactly what happened in 2012.

Speaker 10 El Caballero was right there in the thick of it.

Speaker 27 There was always two big protests in Seattle. The first one was the labor unions and the native rights and stuff, and that was always peaceful.
And there was another element that would show up.

Speaker 27 Well, I guess they call them black bloc.

Speaker 27 They would go out and look like hoodie ninjas and go and break windows and spray paint.

Speaker 27 And I think we can all agree that there's a lot of corporations and entities that are ripping people off and taking money and don't really care.

Speaker 27 But there's ways to go about things. And these people were just terrorists.
Terrorizing people, terrorizing things, and scaring the bejesus out of folks.

Speaker 10 The Rain City heroes didn't go blindly into these situations. They came prepared.
And that year, it was Evo who made detailed plans for the May Day patrols.

Speaker 3 There's an awful lot of like logistical planning that would go into something like this because we had people that was literally their contribution to the team was to do a lot of research ahead of time.

Speaker 3 How do we safely patrol? How do we access vehicles if we need to get out of there? How do we get first aid to somebody if we need when roads are closed?

Speaker 10 According to Evo, Phoenix had decided on his own unusual strategy for monitoring the crowds.

Speaker 3 The night before May Day had happened, Phoenix said, tell you what, forget all that. Here's what we're going to do.
I got a buddy of mine.

Speaker 3 He works at the front desk at this hotel, and he's going to let us go in and use one of his hotel rooms.

Speaker 3 We're going to turn on the TV, we're going to party, we're going to have music, and we're just going to be watching all the local news stations.

Speaker 8 And when some fight breaks out on TV, we'll put on our gear and we'll run out the door and go save the day.

Speaker 3 The entire rest of us are just kind of sitting around blinking, just, what?

Speaker 3 What on earth?

Speaker 3 Well, no, I mean, by the time we'd see it on TV, I mean, it's obviously will long have passed. Well, what about all the research we did and all the intel work ahead of time?

Speaker 3 And Phoenix didn't want anything to do with it.

Speaker 10 The next morning, when a disgruntled set of Rain City heroes gathered in a parking garage to start the patrol, Phoenix turned up empty-handed.

Speaker 3 He was really, really upset because his buddy or something was sick that day or he couldn't make it. And basically, we didn't have a hotel room with our name on it.

Speaker 3 So it's kind of like, well, okay, we're just going to walk then.

Speaker 10 They followed the crowds through Seattle and began the patrol. People of all ages had come to protest with painted faces and colorful signs bearing irreverent slogans.

Speaker 10 But even in this eclectic crowd, the superheroes stood out with their costumes and shiny masks. They jostled through the packed streets.

Speaker 10 Evo says Phoenix wasn't sticking to the plan or communicating to the team.

Speaker 3 He wouldn't listen to anyone on the team. He had people that were professionally trained medics and EMTs.

Speaker 3 He had former military, that was me, and we'd have a couple other former veterans from time to time on the team. With actual boots on the ground combat experience, he wouldn't listen to the inputs.

Speaker 3 Anytime he didn't want to be answered to anyone or he didn't want to be accountable for anything, he would just shut off.

Speaker 10 Around 12.30, the protest started to escalate.

Speaker 17 Explosions and pepper spray in downtown Seattle. As May Day breaks down to May May Day.

Speaker 16 A.M.

Speaker 28 in Seattle. Demonstrations turn violent as thousands of people clog downtown streets.

Speaker 10 A group of about 75 anarchists entered the fray. They streamed into the downtown area and mixed in with the crowds marching towards Westlake Park.

Speaker 10 They were dressed all in black, and many of them were wielding bats and hammers as they snaked through the protest, hurling rocks and shattering the windows of shops and banks.

Speaker 10 Police officers in riot gear clashed with the crowds. We are disappointed in the police.

Speaker 10 People launched flares and smoke bombs into the air. Paint bombs in blood red and fluorescent green streaked the pavements and buildings.

Speaker 10 The downtown streets, normally packed with tourists, were filled with the smell of smoke and pepper spray.

Speaker 10 At the epicenter of the chaos, was the old federal courthouse. Here's Midnight Jack.

Speaker 19 This big, huge standoff ensues at the federal courthouse where they're throwing improvised explosives into the building that's occupied with people that work there.

Speaker 10 A roving group of the protesters had gathered outside the courthouse. They smashed in the glass doors and windows with flagpoles and bats.

Speaker 10 Someone tried to fire a smoke bomb into the building but it bounced off and burst into flames.

Speaker 10 Phoenix told me that's where he wanted to be, in the heart of the action.

Speaker 8 There was 12 of us, right?

Speaker 8 We get word that they're going to put a bomb in the federal building and blow it up.

Speaker 8 I put out the radio call that I need my team to show up. I need you guys to stand with me right now.
We got to do this together, brothers, and I mean it.

Speaker 8 Guess who shows up?

Speaker 8 El Caballero and Jack. That's it.

Speaker 10 So, Cabby, Jack, and Phoenix assembled at the courthouse.

Speaker 8 I'm looking out, and I see like 60 people in front of us. They're throwing stuff.

Speaker 8 Seattle's own superheroes held off a group of 60 protesters bent on destroying a federal building.

Speaker 8 I'm like, where's my team at? You know?

Speaker 8 Where you at, Evo? Oh, I'm in the military. I'm big.
I'm going to go fight some crime. You're not going to fight 60 ironclad terrorists, are you? You're just going to make me look like a clown.

Speaker 8 I'm standing in front of the building. I got Midnight Jack, the least trained of us all.
Never been in a fight with batons that his new know how to use.

Speaker 8 We've got El Caballero in hot pants, girls' hot pants, dragon on the back of his shirt, a luchador mask, and a sombrero that served no purpose but to offend Mexican people.

Speaker 10 In short, it was a highly costumed shit show.

Speaker 19 We're trying to fucking stop them from storming the building and throwing explosives and firebombs.

Speaker 8 It's just me in front of that door playing Mike Tyson punch out with dudes who come up. while Midnight Jack just douses everything he can see with pepper spray while screaming.

Speaker 8 And El Caballero is on the phone with 911.

Speaker 27 I didn't have anything. I was just moving my arms and holding people back.
And people were like, oh, that one guy pepper sprayed people. Oh, he pepper sprayed people.

Speaker 19 I sprayed probably 60 people that day. I don't regret any of it.
If you stepped up past a certain point, I sprayed you. You threw something at me, I sprayed you.

Speaker 19 You tried to hit me with something, I sprayed you.

Speaker 10 It might sound exciting, but El Caballero was really not a fan of the situation that Phoenix had put him in.

Speaker 27 Thing that's awesome. It's lame.

Speaker 27 The violence, the hatred, the anger. It's like, where are these people coming from? Why are you trying to hurt other people? Why are you doing these negative things?

Speaker 3 It's like, ah.

Speaker 27 And then to know that people's lives are in danger at the same time,

Speaker 27 it's not like a cookie-cutter movie.

Speaker 30 It's like real-life, intense stuff.

Speaker 10 By 3 p.m., the mayor of of Seattle had signed a proclamation of civil emergency.

Speaker 10 And just before 7 p.m., a rainstorm hit the city, causing the crowds to finally dissipate.

Speaker 10 An independent report commissioned by the Seattle police into the May Day riots singled out the Rain City superheroes and said their involvement resulted in allegations of assaults and crimes.

Speaker 10 The report recommended that next year the Seattle Police Department should collaborate with the city attorney's office to determine legal strategies to restrict superheroes from creating crime and interfering with law enforcement operations.

Speaker 10 Phoenix took to social media to complain.

Speaker 31 This is crazy, and I am super mad. We see crime, we call police, and we stop people from getting hurt.
That's not against the the law. What you're saying is you don't like us.

Speaker 31 You don't like that we're different. And because we're different from you, you're going to make these rules and try to shut us down.

Speaker 10 He even called out the author of the report by name.

Speaker 31 Michael Hillman, I hope your kids don't have Batman posters or anything in their house because you're a superhero hater.

Speaker 10 When we hung out, Phoenix claimed that Homeland Security and the FBI actually thanked him for intervening.

Speaker 8 Homeland Security comes up to us with these shotguns at the end. And I'm thinking, fuck.
So I get on the ground ground and he's like, what are you doing? I'm like, what do you mean?

Speaker 8 He's like, Jones, get up. You're fine.
I was like, okay.

Speaker 8 They gave over. They shook our hand and they brought us this like SUV.
There was this guy in it of like the leader of our regional branch of the FBI.

Speaker 10 Phoenix told me that the FBI agent asked him for help in identifying violent protesters from the courthouse. And that he said, quote, Jones, I like your work.

Speaker 8 He was like, I'm going to tell the Seattle police to leave you alone, but you fuck up, you fuck up. He's like, you don't think you have superpowers.
I was like, no, I don't have superpowers.

Speaker 8 He's like, okay.

Speaker 8 And that was the beginning of our relationship.

Speaker 10 I wasn't able to confirm any of this. When we asked the FBI about it, they said, quote, we will not be able to provide any information on this inquiry.

Speaker 10 The FBI has conversations with individuals for a variety of reasons on a daily basis. Whether they are a witness, victim, subject, or someone providing information.

Speaker 10 We cannot verify whether the FBI spoke to a particular individual.

Speaker 10 But if this was supposedly the beginning of Phoenix's budding relationship with the FBI, it was also one of the final chapters of the Rain City superheroes.

Speaker 10 When asked about Phoenix's view that his team had hung him out to dry that day, Evo was having none of it.

Speaker 3 It's the ultimate irony to hear that he didn't feel backed up, or in reality, he was just doing whatever came across his head at the moment. that's what he would say.

Speaker 3 It's like, well, I just felt you know, abandoned, or you know, you guys betrayed me, or you know, I just didn't feel like you know, you guys, you guys just wanted to gang up on me, or no one wanted to follow my expertise.

Speaker 3 No, dude, you just stopped showing, and you would be so wildly unpredictable and sporadic, nobody could trust him, or rely on him, or have any idea what version of Phoenix we're getting any particular night.

Speaker 3 If he would show, so

Speaker 3 that's a long-winded way of saying that's rich coming from him.

Speaker 10 Whatever the truth is, the way Phoenix told it, May Day was the final straw.

Speaker 8 That's when I stopped caring. I don't give a fuck.

Speaker 10 They don't care. But did it feel different between everyone after that?

Speaker 8 I mean, I guess there's no feeling because you guys don't matter. You did not show up.
You left me in front of a fucking riot. Who cares what they fucking think? Fuck that.

Speaker 8 I roll with you guys untrained, out of shape, and in ridiculous outfits, acting clowns every single day when I'm a professional warrior.

Speaker 8 And you can't show up one time when I have 60 people trying to murder me with a bomb?

Speaker 10 Evening arrived on May Day, 2012, and the dust began to settle across Seattle. The police cars filled with the protesters who'd been arrested made their convoy to the county jail.

Speaker 10 The SWAT police headed home and the last stragglers from the march dispersed. Shop owners boarded up the jagged holes in their windows, and the debris on the streets was swept away.

Speaker 10 But there was no cleaning up the mess that the Rain City superheroes were in.

Speaker 10 That's coming up.

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Speaker 10 When you talk to Phoenix, he makes it sound like he stopped trusting his teammates after the 2012 May Day debacle. He claims he decided to go it alone after that.

Speaker 10 But actually, that's not how things went down. Because after the May Day protests, Phoenix continued to patrol with some of the Rain City superheroes for over a year.

Speaker 10 And that, dear listener, is how we get to what is maybe the most fitting way I can think of for a team of comic book-inspired costume warriors to dissolve.

Speaker 10 Not in a blaze of crime-fighting glory, but in a petty dispute over a piece of clothing.

Speaker 10 A controversy that has come to be known as Helmet Gate.

Speaker 10 How did your relationship with the Rand City Heroes end or what caused you to leave the life?

Speaker 27 It was all about my purple helmet.

Speaker 10 This was news to me. Kind of.
Because I had heard the story of the falling out between El Caballero and Phoenix long before I met either of them.

Speaker 10 But the story that I found on blogs, long-lost Facebook pages, and podcasts was that they went from best friends to despised enemies because Phoenix had stolen El Caballero's sombrero.

Speaker 10 Apparently, no one fact-checked any of those accounts because while it is true that these two grown men did in fact have a falling out over a piece of headwear, it was not a sombrero, but a purple army helmet.

Speaker 27 A Mitch helmet, a nice tactical bulletproof helmet with the padding inside so I wouldn't get scrambled brains.

Speaker 10 It all started on a typical downtown patrol one night in 2013. After the patrol ended, Cabby forgot his helmet.

Speaker 27 I left it in Phoenix Jones' car for an evening. It was another night where we had fought real criminals and done real stuff, and I just absentmindedly left it in his vehicle.

Speaker 10 Evo remembers the saga of the purple helmet well. He says at first, the helmet just went missing.

Speaker 3 No one could find his helmet, and it was the most aggravating

Speaker 3 series of,

Speaker 3 I guess, backwards drama that honestly started getting pretty embarrassing.

Speaker 3 I would start losing sleep over stuff like this, or people would call me because I was the guy that kind of ran the team on the back end.

Speaker 10 Evo claims that Phoenix accused his girlfriend, Purple Rain, of stealing the helmet.

Speaker 3 I talked to her and was like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 Why on earth would I want El Cabariro's stinky helmet? That's gross. For whatever reason, we think he just gave it to, you know, a pretty young fan or something like that.

Speaker 10 It all sounds so petty to me, but for Cabby, it was no joke.

Speaker 27 It really struck a chord with me, this guy who I trust with my life.

Speaker 27 I mean, we're literally dodging bullets and knives and crazy terrorists this guy I trust with my life made my helmet disappear and it got a weird? Why did it get weird? Like, I don't know.

Speaker 10 For what it's worth, Phoenix has a response to the Purple Helmet story. He says it was in his car, which got towed and impounded, and that he was too embarrassed to admit this to his crew.

Speaker 10 Helmet Gate wasn't the first time things had allegedly gone missing around Phoenix.

Speaker 10 Crystal Marks told me that Phoenix couldn't be trusted when it came to money.

Speaker 32 He was charging people like money per month for medical insurance that the teams never saw the benefit for.

Speaker 32 He would say, yeah, I'll buy you a tactical vest, give me money, and then he would never provide the vest.

Speaker 10 Evo said he personally had to reimburse team members. He sent me a photo of a receipt he kept for a vest he paid for out of his own pocket to give to a fellow superhero.

Speaker 10 Soon, these disputes spilled out onto the Rain City superhero's social media accounts.

Speaker 33 PJ has been proven to be consistently dishonest, unreliable, and untrustworthy.

Speaker 34 He's a liar and a bum. He shouldn't be asking people for money or playing to the media the way he does.

Speaker 33 Gear is replaceable. Friendship, loyalty, and trust are not.

Speaker 10 The theft allegations and the mud slinging escalated. Phoenix held a fundraiser for Purple Reign's anti-domestic violence campaign.
Someone accused them of embezzling funds, and things got nasty.

Speaker 34 How about some answers if you want to show how honest this campaign is?

Speaker 33 Using slanderous language is illegal. Some people don't deserve to have any secret identity.
I never understood why that cow was out on patrol. She does not have any athletic ability or street skill.

Speaker 34 She flirted with all the guys on the team and wanted to be the center of attention.

Speaker 33 I refuse to involve myself in this textual spewing and ask that my name be kept out of these theatrics. I strongly suggest you research the term harassment and take a good hard look in the mirror.

Speaker 10 The accusation of embezzlement turned out to be false. The Seattle Weekly did a piece about it.
The charity confirmed that they had received the money. Phoenix was vindicated.

Speaker 10 But then he launched another fundraiser for himself. This time, he wanted to raise $10,000 for a new super suit.

Speaker 10 The campaign offered incentives for donations. For the entry-level $10, you could get a rubber Phoenix Jones bracelet.
It went all the way up to $2,000 or more.

Speaker 10 For that, you were promised a whole pile of Phoenix merch. A Phoenix Jones replica helmet, billed as fits most normal-sized heads, is bullet and blunt trauma-resistant.

Speaker 10 Plus, the honor of having your name engraved on Phoenix's brand new suit. He posted the link for donations on Purple Reign's anti-domestic violence website.

Speaker 10 It even caught caught the eye of actor Rain Wilson, who plays Dwight in the Office. He posted about it on Facebook.
Given her previous experiences with Phoenix, Crystal Marks was not impressed.

Speaker 32 I think Phoenix Jones is a liar, 100%.

Speaker 32 I mean, come at me for whatever you need to for saying it, but raising money for his super suit, which sounds so ridiculous to say those words out loud, but like this high-end, like tactical suit that was like super bulletproof and like stab-proof.

Speaker 32 He did a GoFundMe for it. Tons of money.

Speaker 12 Where's the suit, dude? Like it never happened.

Speaker 10 The tide of public opinion looked to be turning on Phoenix.

Speaker 10 More allegations against him started surfacing. A superhero named Urban Avenger called Phoenix an egocentric glory hound, and a blog post titled, Phoenix Jones Sells Snake Oil, Calls It a Super Suit.

Speaker 10 The Seattle Weekly ran a piece called The Emperor's New Suit with a cartoon of Phoenix straining to pull his rubber super suit on over his bloated belly, which is labeled hubris.

Speaker 10 One of the Rain City superheroes took to Facebook to claim that Phoenix had stolen his GoPro to boot.

Speaker 10 Then, the Seattle Weekly published another story that quoted a superhero saying, Phoenix Jones is a con artist thief, stealing from his closest friends and fans with zero integrity for his community.

Speaker 10 El Caballero went to the press too, telling the Seattle Weekly, quote, I've always thought of Phoenix as our quarterback, but I feel betrayed by his actions, and certain trusts have been broken.

Speaker 10 Soon after that, Cabi formally announced his departure from the Rain City Heroes on his Facebook page.

Speaker 10 He said, quote, effective immediately, attention, family and friends, fans, law enforcement, and even my enemies. I will no longer, I said that part louder because it was in all caps.

Speaker 10 I will no longer be working with Phoenix Jones.

Speaker 10 After three years of patrols, I see loyalty is worth nothing to him. I feel betrayed by a man I called my brother, and that hurts.

Speaker 10 His dishonesty, manipulation, and deceit has caused me to not want to be associated with someone I can't trust. I will continue to wear my mask and patrol the streets of Seattle.

Speaker 10 but will henceforth not be aligned with him or the Rain City superhero movement. I respect the team members individually.

Speaker 10 The Phoenix has nosedived into the flames, and I'm done with him.

Speaker 10 After El Caballero's departure, Morale also took a nosedive.

Speaker 10 Phoenix's girlfriend, Prebal Rain, announced that she was officially leaving the team too, and that she and Phoenix were no longer together.

Speaker 10 Discontent was brewing in what remained of the Rain City superhero movement. Igo said everyone came to him with their grievances.

Speaker 10 They wanted to know what had really gone down between Cabby and Phoenix.

Speaker 3 Everyone is very much on edge and every person on the team, stop me if this sounds familiar, had heard a different version of this same story.

Speaker 3 And we had all been talking about it and realized that, okay, someone is full of shit in the common denominator here is Phoenix Jones.

Speaker 10 The superheroes gathered for a crisis meeting. Their plan was to challenge Phoenix on everything that had been going down and to hold him accountable.

Speaker 3 So we get to this meeting to kind of like, okay, here's what we're going to do going forward and stuff like that. And here's what actually happened and here's how we're going to resolve it.

Speaker 3 He want nothing of the sort. He said, all right, well, all medical insurance stuff is going to go through my friend Dave.

Speaker 3 So any questions, go through him. And we're going to put schedules on the new Facebook page.
And everything's fine going forward. Any questions? All right, let's go.
I'm like, oh, hold up.

Speaker 3 Nothing's been answered. What?

Speaker 3 This, what,

Speaker 3 we have so many questions about what just just happened.

Speaker 3 And, you know, like, if this happened to El Carbiro, one of your most trusted allies, you doing this stuff to him, like, what else she gonna do?

Speaker 10 The more his teammates challenged him, the more Phoenix dismissed their claims, and things got heated.

Speaker 3 I almost threw a table at him. I was so mad.

Speaker 10 They confronted their former leader, and Phoenix lost his cool.

Speaker 3 He threw the world's biggest internet tantrum, which I still have screenshots of, of him talking about, well, you're all betrayers and you're all traitors. And I started this team so I can can end it.

Speaker 3 So the RCSM is officially resolved. PGA out.

Speaker 3 And that was that.

Speaker 10 Soon after the final blowout, Phoenix posted his resignation from the Rain City superheroes on his Facebook page. It was written in all caps and full of typos and grammatical errors.

Speaker 10 Here's a condensed version.

Speaker 3 First off, I'm sorry I started fighting crime years ago and inspired a lot if people to do the same. I really thought that having a large group of civilian crime fighters was a good idea.
I was wrong.

Speaker 3 It takes a certain type of person to do this job correctly. And unfortunately, I have inspired, worked with, and even taught some of the wrong kinds of people.

Speaker 3 As of today, the Rain City superhero movement is over. I will be patrolling solo with supers I trust.

Speaker 3 I will not go into many details, but I feel you deserve a few reasons why we can no longer work together.

Speaker 3 Certain members cannot run 2.5 miles in 30 minutes, or do five pull-ups or 25 sit-ups in two minutes, or believe it is okay to carry illegal weapons, or want to patrol with other superheroes that have a track record of making bad choices that are potential dangerous.

Speaker 3 I love being a superhero, and I believe there is a certain level of professionalism that goes with that.

Speaker 3 When I or any member of the RCSM show up to help you, I want you to know that we have first aid CPR training.

Speaker 3 We have taking blood-borne pathogens training and that we will only work with others who are equally physically and medically trained.

Speaker 10 I'm sorry if I let anyone down.

Speaker 3 I will continue to patrol and help people. I just can't in good conscience continue to put my seal of approval on people I feel are not loyal or properly trained.

Speaker 3 As always, be safe, make good choices, and I'll see you in the streets.

Speaker 10 When we talked about the team breakup, Phoenix said that people are fickle and driven by the attention, and that no one on his team brought up these disputes back in their crime-fighting heyday.

Speaker 10 It was only later, after things went south with the team, that he says these grievances started surfacing.

Speaker 8 When we had these arguments and disagreements, that was pre-people knowing my identity.

Speaker 8 After my identity came out, we got all popular and everyone was doing these interviews and everything was going on. So all of us were all buddy buddy fine.

Speaker 8 Then we went and had these arguments later and they brought up all this shit from past saying, well, we never solved all this and we stuck with you for four years and you're this and you're that.

Speaker 8 And I'm thinking, well, if you want to come at me personally, then fuck you.

Speaker 10 Maybe I'm a sucker, but I always believed Phoenix whenever I was with him. From the first moment I met him, he told me that he would answer me honestly about any accusation someone made against him.

Speaker 10 He also told me there were other things that he'd done that were wrong, but he would never admit them to me.

Speaker 10 I would have to find out for myself, and if I did, then he would answer truthfully about the incident.

Speaker 10 This policy felt reasonable to me, and I took Phoenix at his word. And I thought it was an indication that he was willing to admit when he was wrong.

Speaker 10 I bought into his logic because it seemed to make sense to me. And I also agree with him that so much of the beef between him and his crew always felt a little petty.

Speaker 10 Like, who cares about what happened to a purple helmet? Does it even matter in the grand scheme of things?

Speaker 10 But looking back on it, I don't think he lived up to his promise of answering everything truthfully. A lot of it, I think, is tied up in his desire to be the best at everything.

Speaker 10 I think that desire was what made him a champion bowler, an MMA fighter. But I think it is also the quality that made him an ineffective leader.

Speaker 10 It blinded him to the possibility that he could be wrong or that someone in his group might have a better idea for how to be good crime fighters.

Speaker 10 And I felt like he was still blinded by it when he talked about his former crew.

Speaker 8 I don't know how I associated with these clowns for so long.

Speaker 10 That's one thing I am curious about. Like on one hand, you seemed to

Speaker 10 have disdain and like.

Speaker 8 Because I carried them. Yeah.
I carried these motherfuckers. I carried them.

Speaker 17 Because you were lonely or like what?

Speaker 8 Oh, because they believed in what I believed in when no one else believed in it.

Speaker 8 You know what it's like to get up and get dressed every day and put on a rubber suit and make people fucking laugh at you in the streets? Like, it fucking sucks.

Speaker 8 So even if you're huge and fat, or you're out of shape, or you're a former freaking drug addict, homeless kid, if you're gonna say, I believe in you two, let's go walk together, I would rather do that with you people who believe in me, believe in the concept.

Speaker 20 And they talk about me letting them down, you let me down.

Speaker 8 I got stabbed for you, El Cavalero, because you don't know how to do a disarm. You lied and said you know how to do knife fighting skills and you fucking don't.
And I got stabbed. Like,

Speaker 8 for real, I got fucking stabbed and you want to talk about a helmet fuck you Jack

Speaker 8 Jack

Speaker 8 Jack can't even run he has asthma he can't even fucking run

Speaker 8 there's videos where I run into after bad guys and he can't run

Speaker 8 like what the fuck

Speaker 10 It's clear that there's genuine hurt and betrayal behind Phoenix's anger. And also on the side of the other Rain City superheroes.

Speaker 10 Just because they wear goofy outfits doesn't mean they aren't people with real feelings.

Speaker 10 And for all the bitterness, I think the reason there's so much hurt involved in this highly costumed severance is because all of them once bought into the belief that Phoenix talks about.

Speaker 10 The mission that had united them.

Speaker 10 And maybe that's hard to understand from the outside.

Speaker 10 But to enter into the world of real-life superheroes, you have to rethink certain beliefs about how the world works.

Speaker 10 Because to believe in their mission is to believe that a guy in a sombrero and purple hot pants is actually the man who might at any moment save your life from a hammer-wielding mugger lurking in an alleyway.

Speaker 10 That's the thing I find so fascinating about all of this. The mashup of the absurdity with the seriousness of what these masked adventurers were trying to pull off.

Speaker 10 Their dream was powerful. Too powerful to be totally crushed by a purple army helmet and some snarky Facebook comments.

Speaker 10 After all, this wasn't the end for Phoenix Jones. After the breakup, he would set out on a bid to conquer the world in a different arena.

Speaker 10 And in a way, it wasn't the end of the Rain City superhero movement either. The team may have disbanded, but the legend they'd built together lived on.

Speaker 10 And out of the darkness, a new generation of superheroes would rise up to unite behind it. That's coming up next time.

Speaker 10 The superhero complex is hosted and written by me, David Weinberg, and reported by me, Amalia Sortland, and Caroline Thornham. Production from Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham.

Speaker 10 Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien, and David Waters are executive producers. Fact-checking by Andrew Schwartz.
Production management from Cherie Houston, Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe.

Speaker 10 Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters.
Original music is composed by Paul Housden.

Speaker 10 Special thanks to Peter Tangen, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Meara, Katrina Norvell, Beth Ann Makaluso, Oren Rosenbaum, Shelby Schenkman, and all the team at UTA.

Speaker 10 For more from Novel, visit novel.audio.

Speaker 16 From SC, launched to legacy.com. Today we're speaking with Dr.
Robert Engelhorn, CEO and president of BMW Manufacturing. And today's topic is location.

Speaker 16 BMW South Carolina produces more BMWs than anywhere else in the world and has just doubled down on their South Carolina investment. So Dr.
Engelhorn, first question: why South Carolina?

Speaker 29 South Carolina is a great place to be. Not only the sun, which is shining most of the time here, I like the food, I like the atmosphere and the friendliness.

Speaker 29 It's about really the pro-business attitude. Again, a very talented and skilled workhorse going the extra mile.
It's a fantastic place to be.

Speaker 16 You mentioned South Carolina's pro-business government. Tell me more about that.

Speaker 29 Since the beginning, the Department of Commerce is one of our closest partners here in South Carolina. They're doing a fantastic job.

Speaker 29 And the last 30 years, there have been a tremendous momentum of growth.

Speaker 29 Now, looking towards our future investments of 1.7 billion US dollars for electric vehicles here, and this wouldn't have been possible without them.

Speaker 16 If you'd like to hear more, visit sclaunchthelegacy.com.

Speaker 35 Gun violence isn't just a policy issue. It's personal.
Every day in America, 125 people are shot and killed. For too many, it's left a mark.
And for all of us, it's a crisis we can do something about.

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But guess what?

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Speaker 36 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 37 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 36 Season Zero of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch. Head over to globalgaming league.com.

Speaker 3 Com, com. Global, global, global, global, global, global, global.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.